Madison Rafah Journal

IBRAHIM BARZAK, Associated Press, July 29, 2007

More than 100 Palestinians stranded for weeks in Egypt after the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip began returning home Sunday, entering Israel and riding buses to a crossing point into northern Gaza.

The first three Palestinians crossed into Gaza through the Erez checkpoint late Sunday afternoon. They were greeted with kisses and hugs from relatives, who rushed them away in cars.

The violent Hamas takeover of Gaza last month triggered the closure of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, which was run by Palestinian security officials with European supervision and Israeli security in the background.

The closure stranded about 6,000 Palestinians on the Egyptian side. During the violence, the European monitors fled and Hamas militiamen took control of the terminal.

Earlier Sunday, about 1,000 Palestinians gathered in a stadium in the Egyptian town of el-Arish, where authorities read the names of 105 people who they said were approved by Israel to return to Gaza. (Read on …)

The Siren Song of Elliott Abrams

KATHLEEN CHRISTISON, CounterPunch, July 26, 2007

“Coup” is the word being widely used to describe what happened in Gaza in June when Hamas militias defeated the armed security forces of Fatah and chased them out of Gaza. But, as so often with the manipulative language used in the conflict between the Palestinians and Israel, the terminology here is backward. Hamas was the legally constituted, democratically elected government of the Palestinians, so in the first place Hamas did not stage a coup but rather was the target of a coup planned against it. Furthermore, the coup — which failed in Gaza but succeeded overall when Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, acting in violation of Palestinian law, cut Gaza adrift, unseated the Palestinian unity government headed by Hamas, and named a new prime minister and cabinet — was the handiwork of the United States and Israel.

The Fatah attacks against Hamas in Gaza were initiated at the whim of, and with arms and training provided by, the United States and Israel. No one seems to be making any secret of this. Immediately after Hamas won legislative elections in January 2006, Elliott Abrams, who runs U.S. policy toward Israel from his senior position on the National Security Council staff, met with a group of Palestinian businessmen and spoke openly of the need for a “hard coup” against Hamas. According to Palestinians who were there, Abrams was “unshakable” in his determination to oust Hamas. When the Palestinians, urging engagement with Hamas instead of confrontation, observed that Abrams’ scheme would bring more suffering and even starvation to Gaza’s already impoverished population, Abrams dismissed their concerns by claiming that it wouldn’t be the fault of the U.S. if that happened.

Abrams has been working on his coup plan ever since with his friends in Israel. As part of this scheme, the U.S. also urged Abbas — again making no secret of this — to dissolve the Fatah-Hamas unity government formed in March this year, form a new government, and call for new elections. Abbas acceded to U.S. demands with embarrassing alacrity after Hamas took Gaza. In a further gratuitous turn of the screw, he has appealed to Israel to turn up the heat on Hamas in Gaza by stopping delivery of fuel to Gaza’s power plant and keeping the Rafah border crossing point from Egypt closed so that none of the thousands of Palestinian waiting at the border to return home will be able to enter.

The UN’s outgoing Middle East envoy, Alvaro de Soto, whose final report on his two years in Palestine-Israel was recently leaked to the press, describes Abrams and a State Department colleague, Assistant Secretary David Welch, threatening immediately after the Hamas election victory to cut off U.S. contributions to the UN if it did not agree to a cutback in aid to the Palestinian Authority by the Quartet (of which the UN is a member, along with the U.S., the EU, and Russia). De Soto also describes a gleeful U.S. response to Hamas-Fatah fighting earlier this year. The U.S., he says, clearly pushed for this confrontation, and at a meeting of Quartet envoys, the U.S. delegate crowed that “I like this violence” because “it means that other Palestinians are resisting Hamas.”

The Israeli-U.S. strategy for Palestine is now crystal clear: overturn the will of the people (in this case as expressed through democratic elections), kill off any resistance (Hamas in this case, along with any civilians who might get in the way), co-opt a quisling leadership (Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas), push out and kill if necessary as many people as international opinion will allow, ultimately rid Palestine of most Palestinians. The cast of characters and organizations has changed from earlier times, but this has essentially been Israel’s strategy from the beginning. (Read on …)

Ilene R. Prusher, The Christian Science Monitor, July 27, 2007

When Issa Jaber was teaching civics and history, he tried as much as possible to stick to the books. The texts, issued by the Israeli Ministry of Education, teach the history of the Jewish state’s establishment in 1948 from a natural perspective – its Zionist founders.

Except that for an Arab teacher to stand in front of a classroom and speak about Israel’s War of Independence and not mention that Palestinians call the same event the Nakba (Catastrophe) isn’t so natural. Recognizing that, this week Israel’s Minister of Education approved an Arabic textbook mentioning the Nakba, a move that is garnering applause in some corners and outrage in others.

“All the time as teachers we were facing a dilemma: to teach the curriculum as it is, or to teach what we feel inside,” says Mr. Jaber, who now runs the education system of Abu Ghosh, an Israeli-Arab town close to Jerusalem with about 1,000 secondary school students per year.

The controversy seems to focus on a few little lines that were written for little people. The textbook in question is written for third graders and was originally written in Hebrew and translated into Arabic.

But the book’s importance extends beyond the classroom. To traditional Zionists, teaching children to view 1948 as the Nakba legitimizes the decision of Arab countries to refuse acceptance of Israel’s creation as a state. And to many of Israel’s 1.2 million Arab citizens, ignoring this term is like denying a piece of their history. (Read on …)

Agence France Presse, July 27, 2007

The Israeli military on Friday suspended an officer and five soldiers over the shooting of a Palestinian civilian from a taxi they commandeered during an operation in the occupied West Bank.

The incident — described by central command as “grave” — happened during an operation in Al-Dhahiriyeh south of Hebron on Thursday.

The commander of the unit stopped a Palestinian taxi, ordered out the passengers and drivers, took control of the vehicle and began to drive with his soldiers round the city, the military said.

“The force identified a suspicious Palestinian, fired towards him and identified hitting him. The force did not stop to give the man medical care but instead continued their activity without reporting the incident,” it added.

Adham Nazmi al-Shalami, 18, was seriously wounded in the chest by Israeli forces while working in his father’s quarry and was taken to an Israeli hospital, Palestinian medics said. (Read on …)

Mohammed Omer, Rafah Today, 17 July 07

An impossibly crowded area. Chaos. A slow, imprisoned death. This, briefly, is the appalling life—though it is hard to term it living—at the Rafah border.

Terrible food, sparse water, poor hygiene, and inadequate shelter. The conditions are ripe for tragedy. Seriously ill people face preventable deaths as, despite their desperate need of medical care, the Rafah border remains closed, preventing passage to medical facilities and to safety back home. For Gazans, it is the equivalent of shutting down Los Angeles airports and banning all other transportation while F-16s, helicopters, and warplanes hover over the static population of the city, ensuring no one can make it back home.

For over one month, at both the Palestinian and Egyptian sides, people have been waiting at the Rafah border –without medicine, with little to no food or water, shelter-less and blistering under the searing Gazan summer sun. All are waiting for the first of 7 consecutive gates to be opened, which will allow the stranded thousands to cross into Gaza or out to seek medical help.

The Rafah border is strictly controlled by Israel, closely monitored by video-cameras. Israel is not allowing the border to open, despite previous agreements to keep the crossing open for 24 hours. Slighting that agreement, Israel hasn’t opened it lately. So, each day ordinary citizens are paying the price, one which comes at the cost of health and life! At least 28 have died as a result of the strict denial of passage to and from Gaza at the Rafah crossing, completely closed since June 10, where nearly 6,000 Palestinians wait without adequate food, water, or shelter in the intense sweltering heat of summer. Even those with severe medical emergencies are being denied passage.

Patients have the right to medicine, children to drinking water, and people to respect—at the very least respect as humans, not to mention as Palestinians, Muslims, or Arabs. Frequently I wonder, how can anyone allow human beings to suffer like this, to be kept waiting even though many are only a tantalizing half an hour away from home. Yet their proximity to home has no impact on their reality: they are stuck, trapped, in another country without the basic services of citizens. Where is the international outrage and action? (Read on …)

Emptiness, very little movement, no life, humiliation

Nina Mayorek of MachsomWatch, Occupation Magazine, 21 July 2007

Saturday morning

8 AM-Huwarra
There is a large amount of yellow cabs at a new parking lot by the checkpoint. Taxi drivers compete for a few potential passengers. A taxi driver approaches us and asks for our help in getting running water and toilets. The occupier ‘generously’ arranged such a well signed-posted parking lot with clear markings in blue and white colors where parking is allowed but underemployed drivers who await passengers for the whole day in blazing sun want more.
The passage through the checkpoint seems to be rather quick, but passing men tell us they have been waiting between 15 min to one hour. Each man has to take off his trousers belt, present his ID and open all belongings. One should do it in a relaxed manner with a pleasant expression on one`s face. Otherwise, as we witnessed, a young man is taken to a closed cabin and a soldier performs a body search. We asked this man how the search was done. ‘Oh, nothing special’ said the young man, ‘I just had to take my trousers and shoes off, and the searching soldier asked me why I am so nervous, and I told him that this is my nature, I can do nothing about it.’
One could imagine that one is in a third world airport and has to undergo checking before getting into an airplane, but no, this is ‘normal’ checking on the way to a visit to an auntie, to work, or to some other daily arrangements.

10 a.m Atara (Northern entrance to Ramallah)
The movement of cars is scarce. There is a summer holiday for schools and students. Nobody goes to the seashore, because it is not allowed to Palestinians to go there, and now, this summer, access was denied to Palestinian families even to that last small stretch of the Dead Sea shore. Border policmen are bored and want to speak with us. The policeman that approaches is a nice chap. He lives in a nearby settlement. He has an excellent job so near his home. ‘There is relaxation in checking, explains this soldier. We are ordered to make only sample-checking’. These are clearly the good will gestures for Abu-Mazen.

B’Tselem and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, May 2007

Over the years, Israel established a number of settlement points in and around the Old City of Hebron, which had traditionally served as the commercial center for the entire southern West Bank. Israeli law-enforcement authorities and security forces have made the entire Palestinian population pay the price for protecting Israeli settlement in the city. To this end, the authorities impose a regime intentionally and openly based on the “separation principle”, as a result of which Israel created legal and physical segregation between the Israeli settlers and the Palestinian majority.

This policy led to the economic collapse of the center of Hebron and drove many Palestinians out of the area. The findings of a survey conducted in preparation of this report show that at least 1,014 Palestinian housing units in the center of Hebron have been vacated by their occupants. This number represents 41.9 percent of the housing units in the relevant area. Sixty-five percent (659) of the empty apartments became vacant during the course of the second intifada. Regarding Palestinian commercial establishments, 1,829 are no longer open for business. This number represents 76.6 percent of all the commercial establishments in the surveyed area. Of the closed businesses, 62.4 percent (1,141) were closed during the second intifada. At least 440 of them closed pursuant to military orders.

The main elements of Israel ‘s separation policy are the severe and extensive restrictions on Palestinian movement and the authorities’ systematic failure to enforce law and order on violent settlers attacking Palestinians. The city’s Palestinian residents also suffer as a direct result of the actions of Israel ‘s security forces.

Restriction on Palestinian movement and the closing of businesses

During the first three years of the intifada, the army imposed a curfew on the Palestinians in the city center of Hebron for more than 377 days total, including a consecutive period of 182 days, with short breaks to obtain provisions. (Read on …)

Agence France Presse, Jul 20, 2007

James Wolfensohn, the former special envoy for the Middle East Quartet, has accused the US administration of thwarting his efforts on the job, according to an interview published in Israel on Friday.

“There was never a desire on the part of the Americans to give up control of the negotiations, and I would doubt that in the eyes of… the State Department team, I was ever anything but a nuisance,” Haaretz quoted him as saying.

“The basic problem was that I didn’t have the authority. The Quartet had the authority and within the Quartet it was the Americans who had the authority,” the former World Bank president told the daily newspaper.

“It was not a Quartet decision to close the office,” he said in what Haaretz called a “very unsubtle hint” over his resignation in 2006.

Haaretz said Wolfensohn believed Israeli officials also regarded him as a nuisance, particularly after former prime minister Ariel Sharon disappeared from public life following a stroke in January 2006. (Read on …)