Settlers vow revenge over Jerusalem massacre
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- Written by Toni O'Loughlin in Jerusalem Toni O'Loughlin in Jerusalem
- Published: 08 March 2008 08 March 2008
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As violence spirals and calls for peace talks grow, extremists say they will build a new West Bank settlement for each of the eight students killed
Israel's far-right settler movement has set itself on a renewed collision course with the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, declaring that last week's massacre in a Jewish religious school had targeted them directly and vowing to build a new illegal outpost in the West Bank for every one of the killed students.
Amid a sense of spiralling crisis in Israeli and the Occupied Territories - which has stemmed from the impression that both Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas are rudderless amid the climbing violence - Abbas performed yet another policy U-turn, calling for new talks with Israel after having earlier appeared to back away from peace talks.
The latest moves follow the killing on Thursday by a Palestinian gunmen of eight Jewish seminary students, the bloodiest attack in Israel in two years. Hamas, which had vowed to avenge the more than 125 Palestinians killed in a recent Gaza offensive by Israel, at first claimed responsibility, then backtracked.
The Yeshiva Shootings: Background and context
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- Written by Jewish Peace News Jewish Peace News
- Published: 07 March 2008 07 March 2008
- Hits: 4954 4954
As has been widely reported, a gunman in Jerusalem opened fire at the
Mercaz Harav yeshiva yesterday, killing 8 students (most of them
children) and wounding at least 9. At a time like this, there are two
different sets responsibilities to the victims: one is to mourn the
brutal deaths of these boys and young men. At the same time, we need
to work to prevent this sort of thing from happening again, which
requires us to understand the context in which this act of terrorism
occurred. Failing to understand this atrocity within the overall
context of the occupation reinforces the right-wing line that
Palestinian violence is motivated simply by anti-Semitism, blood
hatred, or Biblical feuds.
Although the gunman’s specific motives are unclear, this killing comes
at a moment that the New York Times somewhat delicately describes as a
time of “tension”. Israel’s latest attack on Gaza has left over 130
Palestinians dead, half of them civilians. Just yesterday, a 20
day-old infant was buried after being shot in the head by Israeli
soldiers. Another contextualizing factor is the nature of the yeshiva
where the attack took place, a key institution in the militant
settlers’ movement, which has been stealing land from Palestinians in
the occupied territories for decades, believing God intended the land
for Jews.
These horrific killings are utterly unjustifiable, and Hamas’ praise
for the operation is both contemptible and chilling. It is important
not to let this sort illegitimate act of terrorist violence obscure the
legitimate and urgent grievances of the Palestinian people under
occupation and in exile. It is vital to keep this in mind, because
whatever the specific motivations of the gunman might have been,
terrorist violence like this is almost always a symptom of Israel’s
expansionist policies and is unlikely to end until the occupation is
over.
Event: Friday rally calls for cease-fire in Gaza, builds support for anti-war mobilization
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- Written by PPRC PPRC
- Published: 07 March 2008 07 March 2008
- Hits: 4759 4759
For Immediate Release
Event: Friday rally calls for cease-fire in Gaza, builds support for
anti-war mobilization marking five years of Iraq war and occupation.
Date: Friday, March 7, 2008
Time: 5:00 PM
Place: Pioneer Courthouse Square, SW Broadway & SW Yamhill, downtown
Portland
Gaza situation 'worst since 1967'
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- Written by BBC News BBC News
- Published: 05 March 2008 05 March 2008
- Hits: 4413 4413
Gaza conditions 'at 40-year low'
Gaza's humanitarian situation is the worst it has been since the Israeli occupation began in 1967, say UK-based human rights and development groups.
They include Amnesty International, Save the Children, Cafod, Care International and Christian Aid.
They criticise Israel's blockade on Gaza as illegal collective punishment which fails to deliver security.
Israel says its military action and other measures are lawful and needed to stop rocket attacks from Gaza.
The groups' report, Gaza Strip: A Humanitarian Implosion, says the blockade has dramatically worsened levels of poverty and unemployment, and has led to deterioration in education and health services.
'Disaster'
More than 1.1 million Gazans are dependent on food aid and of 110,000 workers previously employed in the private sector, 75,000 have now lost their jobs, the report says.
"Unless the blockade ends now, it will be impossible to pull Gaza back from the brink of this disaster and any hopes for peace in the region will be dashed," said Geoffrey Dennis, of Care International UK.
The mega prison of Palestine
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- Written by Ilan Pappe, The Electronic Intifada Ilan Pappe, The Electronic Intifada
- Published: 05 March 2008 05 March 2008
- Hits: 4673 4673
However, in recent weeks a clearer Israeli strategy towards the Gaza Strip's future has emerged and it is part of the overall new thinking about the fate of the occupied territories in general. It is in essence, a refinement of the unilateralism adopted by Israel ever since the collapse of the Camp David "peace talks" in the summer of 2000. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, his party Kadima, and his successor Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, delineated very clearly what unilateralism entailed: Israel would annex about 50 percent of the West Bank, not as a homogeneous chunk of it, but as the total space of the settlement blocs, the apartheid roads, the military bases and the "national park reserves" (which are no-go areas for Palestinians). This was more or less implemented in the last eight years. These purely Jewish entities cut the West Bank into 11 small cantons and sub-cantons. They are all separated from each other by this complex colonial Jewish presence. The most important part of this encroachment is the greater Jerusalem wedge that divides the West Bank into two discrete regions with no land connection for the Palestinians.
The wall thus is stretched and reincarnated in various forms all over the West Bank, encircling at times individual villages, neighborhoods or towns. The cartographic picture of this new edifice gives a clue to the new strategy both towards the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The 21st century Jewish state is about to complete the construction of two mega prisons, the largest of their kind in human history.
They are different in shape: the West Bank is made of small ghettos and the one in Gaza is a huge mega ghetto of its own. There is another difference: the Gaza Strip is now, in the twisted perception of the Israelis, the ward where the "most dangerous inmates" are kept. The West Bank, on the other hand, is still run as a huge complex of open air prisons in the form of normal human habitations such as a village or a town interconnected and supervised by a prison authority of immense military and violent power.
As far as the Israelis are concerned, the mega prison of the West Bank can be called a state. Advisor to Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, Yasser Abed Rabbo, in the last days of February 2008, threatened the Israelis with a unilateral declaration of independence, inspired by recent events in Kosovo. However, it seemed that nobody on the Israeli side objected to the idea very much. This is more or less the message a bewildered Ahmed Qurei, the Abbas-appointed Palestinian negotiator, received from Tzipi Livni, Israel's foreign minister, when he phoned to assure her that Abed Rabbo was not speaking in the name of the PA. He got the impression that her main worry was is in fact quite the opposite: that the PA would not agree to call the mega prisons a state in the near future.
This unwillingness, together with Hamas' insistence of resisting the mega prison system by a war of liberation, forced the Israelis to rethink their strategy towards the Gaza Strip. It transpires that not even the most cooperative members of the PA are willing to accept the mega prison reality as "peace" or even as a "two state settlement." And Hamas and Islamic Jihad even translate this unwillingness into Qassam attacks on Israel. So the model of the most dangerous ward developed: the leading strategists in the army and the government embrace themselves for a very long-term "management" of the system they have built, while pledging commitment to a vacuous "peace process," with very little global interest in it, and a continued struggle from within, against it.
The Gaza Strip is now seen as the most dangerous ward in this complex and thus the one against which the most brutal punitive means have to be employed. Killing the "inmates" by aerial or artillery bombing, or by economic strangulation, are not just inevitable results of the punitive action chosen, but also desirable ones. The bombing of Sderot is also the inevitable and in a way desirable consequence of this strategy. Inevitable, as the punitive action cannot destroy the resistance and quite often generates a retaliation. The retaliation in its turn provides the logic and basis for the next punitive action, should someone in domestic public opinion doubt the wisdom of the new strategy.
In the near future, any similar resistance from parts of the West Bank mega prison would be dealt with in a similar way. And these actions are very likely to take place in the very near future. Indeed, the third intifada is on its way and the Israeli response would be a further elaboration of the mega prison system. Downsizing the number of "inmates" in both mega prisons would be still a very high priority in this strategy by means of ethnic cleansing, systematic killings and economic strangulation.
But there are wedges that prevent the destructive machine from rolling. It seems that a growing number of Jews in Israel (a majority according to a recent CNN poll) wish their government to begin negotiations with Hamas. A mega prison is fine, but if the wardens' residential areas are likely to come under fire in the future then the system fails. Alas, I doubt whether the CNN poll represents accurately the present Israeli mood; but it does indicate a hopeful trend that vindicates the Hamas insistence that Israel only understands the language of force. But it may not be enough and the perfection of the mega prison system in the meantime continues unabated and the punitive measures of its authority are claiming the lives of many more children, women and men in the Gaza Strip.
As always it is important to be reminded that the west can put an end to this unprecedented inhumanity and criminality, tomorrow. But so far this is not happening. Although the efforts to make Israel a pariah state continue with full force, they are still limited to civil society. Hopefully, this energy will one day be translated into governmental policies on the ground. We can only pray it will not be too late for the victims of this horrific Zionist invention: the mega prison of Palestine.
Ilan Pappe is chair in the Department of History at the University of Exeter.