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Watching the Gazan Fiasco . . . the shame of it all
(Jennifer Loewenstein, Counterpunch, August 17, 2005)
A great charade is taking place in front of the world media in the Gaza Strip. It is the staged evacuation of 8000 Jewish settlers from their illegal settlement homes, and it has been carefully designed to create imagery to support Israel's US-backed takeover of the West Bank and cantonization of the Palestinians. . . . There was never the slightest reason for Israel to send in the army to remove these settlers. The entire operation could have been managed, without the melodrama necessary for a media frenzy, by providing them with a fixed date on which the IDF would withdraw from inside the Gaza Strip. A week before, all the settlers will quietly have left ­with no TV cameras, no weeping girls, no anguished soldiers, no commentators asking cloying questions of how Jews could remove other Jews from their homes, and no more trauma about their terrible suffering, the world's victims, who therefore have to be helped to kick the Palestinians out of the West Bank. . . . The settlers will relocate to other parts of Israel ­ and in some cases to other illegal settlements in the West Bank ­handsomely compensated for their inconvenience. Indeed, each Jewish family leaving the Gaza Strip will receive between $140,000 and $400,000 just for the cost of the home they leave behind. But these details are rarely mentioned in the tempest of reporting on the "great confrontation" and "historical moment" brought to us by Sharon and the thieving, murderous settler-culture he helped create. . . . In the 5 years of Israel's brutal suppression of the Palestinian uprising against the occupation, I never once saw or heard a segment as long and with as much sentimental, human detail as I did here; never once remember a reporter allowing a sympathetic young Palestinian woman, whose home was just bulldozed and who lost everything she owned, tell of her pain and sorrow, of her memories and her family's memories; never got to listen to her reflect on where she would go now and how she would live. And yet in Gaza alone more than 23,000 people have lost their homes to Israeli bulldozers and bombs since September 2000 -- often at a moment's notice ­ on the grounds that they "threatened Israel's security." . . . Where were the cameramen in May 2004 in Rafah when refugees twice over lost their homes again in a single night's raid, able to retrieve nothing of what they owned? Where were they when bulldozers and tanks tore up paved streets with steel blades, wrecked the sewage and water pipes, cut electricity lines, and demolished a park and a zoo; when snipers shot two children, a brother and sister, feeding their pigeons on the roof of their home? When the occupying army fired a tank shell into a group of peaceful demonstrators killing 14 of them including two children? Where have they been for the past five years when the summer heat of Rafah makes life so unbearable it is all one can do to sit quietly in the shade of one's corrugated tin roof -- because s/he is forbidden to go to the sea, ten minutes' walking distance from the city center? Or because if they ventured to the more open spaces they became walking human targets? . . . Where were the 900 international journalists in April 2002 after the Jenin refugee camp was laid to waste in the matter of a week in a show of pure Israeli hubris and sadism? Where were the 900 international journalists last fall when the Jabalya refugee camp in Gaza lay under an Israeli siege and more than 100 civilians were killed? Where were they for five years while the entire physical infrastructure of the Gaza Strip was being destroyed? Which one of them reported that every crime of the Israeli occupation ­ from home demolitions, targeted assassinations and total closures to the murder of civilians and the wanton destruction of commercial and public property . . . Where are the hundreds of journalists who should be covering the many non-violent protests by Palestinians and Israelis against the Apartheid Wall? ­Non-violent protesters met with violence and humiliation by Israeli armed forces? Where are the hundreds of journalists who should be reporting on the economic and geographic encirclement of Palestinian East Jerusalem and of the bisection of the West Bank and the subdivision of each region into dozens of isolated mini-prisons? Why aren't we being barraged by outraged reports about the Jewish-only bypass roads? About the hundreds of pointless internal checkpoints? About the countless untried executions and maimings? About the torture and abuse of Palestinians in Israeli prisons? . . . Where were these hundreds of journalists when each of the 680 Palestinian children shot to death by Israeli soldiers over the last 5 years was laid to rest by grief-stricken family members? The shame of it all defies words. . . . Sharon's unilateral "Disengagement" plan is not ending the occupation of Gaza. The Israelis are not relinquishing control over the Strip. They are retaining control of all land, air and sea borders including the Philadelphi corridor along the Gaza/Egypt border where the Egyptians may be allowed to patrol under Israel's watchful eye and according to Israel's strictest terms. The 1.4 million inhabitants of Gaza remain prisoners in a giant penal colony, despite what their partisan leaders are attempting to claim. . . . When will the Palestinian history of 1948 and 1967, and of each passing day under the violence of dispossession and dehumanization, get a headline in our papers?

posted by LoZo 3:26 PM

 

Israel plans new West Bank homes
(BBC NEWS, 4 August 2005)
Israel's housing ministry has issued tenders for 72 new homes on a settlement in the West Bank. . . . Housing Ministry official Kobi Bleich said the buildings would extend the Beitar Ilit, south of Jerusalem, near the Palestinian town of Bethlehem. . . . Palestinian Planning Minister Ghassan al-Khattib described the planned development as a "provocation to the Palestinian people." . . . Beitar Ilit is already home to more than 20,000 settlers. The extension of the settlement would make it part of the Gush Etzion settlement bloc. . . . US President George Bush has warned Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon against further settlement expansion in the West Bank. . . . The expansion also contravenes commitments made by Israel under the US-backed roadmap peace plan. . . . The ministry has issued tenders to build 235 housing units in West Bank settlements so far this year. . . . Over 400,000 Israelis live in 150 settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. . . . The international community considers all settlements in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, as illegal under international law.

posted by LoZo 5:16 PM

 

Israeli bus killer lynched by mob
(BBC NEWS, 4 August 2005)
An Israeli soldier has shot dead four people on a bus in an Israeli Arab town and then been lynched by a crowd. . . . The 19-year-old, who is believed to have deserted in protest against the Gaza pullout this month, opened fire as the bus passed through Shfaram. . . . The gunman was beaten to death by the crowd when he ran out of bullets and went to change the magazine in his gun, Israeli media report. . . . Mohammed Barakeh, an Israeli Arab member of parliament, said at the scene that the dead were Israeli Arabs and all residents of Shfaram. . . . Several people were also injured, some seriously. . . . The army named the man as Eden Natan Zaada, 19, from the Jewish settlement of Tapuah in the West Bank. . . . Media reports said he was absent without leave from his army unit with his firearm, and was a member of the extremist Kach party, which has been outlawed. . . . "It seems like Jewish terror against Arabs," police spokesman Avi Zelba told Reuters news agency. . . . Israel is preparing to pull its settlers out of the occupied Gaza Strip and they have been fears of attacks by Jewish settlers opposed to the pullout. . . . Local people in Shfaram accused the police of double standards. . . . "If this attack had occurred in a Jewish neighbourhood and the attacker was Arab, he would have been killed immediately," one unnamed witness was quoted as saying by the Jerusalem Post. . . . "The police came and they didn't do anything... They were holding him alive in the bus."

posted by LoZo 5:12 PM

 

Israeli settler murders 3 Palestinians on bus
(Cynthia Johnston, Reuters, 4 August 2005)
An Israeli in military uniform shot dead three people aboard a bus in an Arab town in the northern Galilee region on Thursday and wounded four others before being set on by passengers, police said. . . . Israeli media reported that the gunman was a settler from the West Bank who had left his unit after refusing to take part in Israel's planned withdrawal from the occupied Gaza Strip, which starts in two weeks. . . . Police said the motive for the shooting in the town of Shfaram was unclear. An Israeli Arab member of parliament said he believed it was a political attack. . . . Israeli army officers have said they fear right-wing Israelis could attack Palestinians as a way to stir conflict that would tie down Israeli forces, in an attempt to prevent the evacuation. . . . Israeli Arab parliament member Mohammed Barakeh, quoted by the Haaretz Web site, said: "We are witnessing attempts by extreme right-wing people, terrorists, who want to set the region ablaze and feel they have freedom of action." . . . After the shooting, the gunman was attacked by other passengers on the bus in the Israeli Arab town of Shfaram, police said. . . . Police said they arrested the gunman, and that some officers were hurt as they tried to shield him from the crowd. Israeli television showed pictures of bodies covered by sheets lying on the road outside the bus, whose windows were broken.

posted by LoZo 10:22 AM