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CRIES FROM PALESTINE AND CRIES FROM ISRAEL

March 6, 2001

"My sister-in-law just called crying - about 4 hours ago Al-Bireh had about 3 minutes of heavy gunfire..... her neighbor, Aida, was walking back home on the Friends road from Ramallah after shopping for the Eid holiday. Her husband was walking with her when a single bullet from Pesgot settlement entered her shoulder and tore into her body. Rushed to Ramallah hospital she was pronounced dead 30 minutes later....her kids are home and were informed a few minutes ago that their mother will never come home.... Today, Saturday, we laid to rest a beautiful 9-yr old boy.....Tomorrow, Sunday, we will bury Aida..... Monday is only two days away..."

Sam Bahour - Saturday

"In the past 24 hours, the Israeli forces have escalated their attacks on Palestinian civilians. They have tightened the siege imposed on the Palestinian towns, especially Ramallah and el Bireh... The Israeli forces' escalation of attacks have resulted in the killing of three Palestinians during the last 24 hours. A fourth has died of wounds of an earlier shooting. Apparently in all four cases, those killed had not been taking part in any demonstrations or clashes and were not posing any threat to Israeli soldiers or settlers when they were killed."

LAW Society - Saturday

"The iron grip of the closure in its new format is increasingly strangling a population of 2.8 million people, yet no one is saying a word, not around the cabinet table of the outgoing government - the peace government - not among those who are going to serve in the new government, and not in the opposition of the Zionist left."

Gideon Levy - Sunday

Appalling! Outrageous! War Crimes! Revenge! They are different kinds of cries of course. The Palestinians are bleeding, dying, and being collectively strangled and tortured. But from at least some Israelis and some Jews around the world there are cries of serious anguish and moral protest.

APPALLING EQUATION

By Gideon Levy

[Ha'aretz, Op Ed, 4 March 2001]: The Palestinians' cemeteries will be filled with visitors tomorrow. Every year the Palestinians visit the graves of their loved ones on the morning of the Feast of the Sacrifice, Id al Adha; tomorrow they will be visiting more than 300 fresh graves, of which 87 hold the remains of children. Then they will return to their homes for the festive meals. This year, though, few families will be partaking of sheep's meat, the traditional food of this holiday, but will be eating chicken instead, because of the price. And many children will not be wearing new holiday clothes, as is the custom, because their parents don't have the money to buy them. There will also be fewer than the usual number of guests - some relatives won't be able to attend because of the closure imposed in the territories.

It has been a long time - since their calamity in 1948 - that the Palestinians have endured such a hard Feast of the Sacrifice. Just an hour's drive from Jerusalem, a cruel drama has been under way for the past five months the likes of which have not been seen since the early period of the Israeli occupation, but the majority of Israelis are taking absolutely no interest in it. The iron grip of the closure in its new format is increasingly strangling a population of 2.8 million people, yet no one is saying a word, not around the cabinet table of the outgoing government - the peace government - not among those who are going to serve in the new government, and not in the opposition of the Zionist left.

It has to be said starkly and simply: There has never been a closure like this there, in the land of the barriers and the closures. In the worst of the times of the previous Intifada, when the IDF was in every corner and curfew reigned supreme, there was not a situation in which a whole people was jailed without a trial and without the right of appeal. Appeal? If in the past the fate of a woman about to give birth, or of a sick person who was about to die, depended on the humanity of the young soldier who was manning the roadblock, and who either let them pass or not, now the Palestinians can only dream about a good soldier who once might perhaps have raised the barrier: Israel has split the West Bank by means of hundreds of trenches, dirt ramparts and concrete cubes which have been placed at the entrance to most of the towns and villages.

No one enters and no one leaves, not those who are pregnant and not those who are dying. There isn't even a soldier with whom one can plead and beg. The village, the refugee camp or the town are besieged and their residents are imprisoned. A schoolchild cannot get safely to his school, or a student to her college, or an adult to his work.

A network of bizarre Burma roads that break through the encirclement are sending an entire people along muddy, rocky routes, with the situation aggravated by a substantial risk of getting caught or getting shot by soldiers who often open fire on the desperate travelers trying, somehow, to cling to the routine of their lives. Only those who travel on the roads of the West Bank can grasp the full extent of the atrocity.

This mass jailing of an entire people, with its monstrously inhumane dimension, entails also a mortal economic blow. According to data of the United Nations envoy Terje Roed-Larsen, the credibility of which there is no reason to doubt, the Palestinians are losing $6.8 million a day because of the present closure, and to date their losses total more than a billion dollars. For an economy that was shaky to begin with, that is a death blow. A quarter of a million unemployed, a million people living beneath the Palestinian poverty line - $2.10 a day - and a 50 percent decline in the gross national product: These are nightmarish statistics not only for the Palestinians but for the Israelis as well.

Never before has there been distress and suffering on this scale among the Palestinians in the territories. They will engender unprecedented despair and ultimately they will spark violence more cruel and painful than anything seen so far. Already now, 84 percent of the Palestinians, who are generally steeled against adversity, say that they are suffering from "psychological hardship," according to an up-to-date survey conducted by Bir Zeit University. The number increases day by day.

Their hardship will be transformed into more and more terrorist attacks. This is the point: the horrific distress of the Palestinians because of the present closure will quickly turn into the distress of the Israelis. If their Feast of the Sacrifice looks the way it does, then our Purim will not bring with it much happiness either. Simple as it is, no one is taking into account the gravity of this appalling equation. Even those who have in their hearts considerations based on a humanitarian or moral approach, should have long since calculated the profit and loss balance for Israel.

The present closure is totally unrelated to security considerations. Anyone who doubts this is invited to go to the barriers and roadblocks and see thousands of pedestrians and vehicles managing, despite everything, to sneak into Israel under the nose of the soldiers. Those who are willing to take the risk of doing this in order to work, will certainly also do it in order to perpetrate a terrorist attack. The true purpose of the closure is to please the frightened settlers and perhaps also, the suspicion arises, to destroy the Palestinian Authority, for reasons which are difficult to comprehend.

The current siege, a shamefully appalling operation, must be lifted quickly. This must not be made conditional on the cessation of the violence, because the siege itself is the most effective spur of violence. We are not even talking any longer about entering Israel, but about free entry to Nablus.

There is no measure that the prime minister-elect, Ariel Sharon, can take that would contribute more to effecting a dramatic change in the situation than to remove, immediately and unconditionally, the trenches and the earth ramparts from the already difficult life of the Palestinians. That will be not only a humane action but an intelligent one.


March 2001


Magazine






SHARON UPSCALES VIOLENCE TO UNPRECEDENTED LEVELS
(March 31, 2001)
Yesterday, on Palestinian Land Day, the Israeli army killed five Palestinians in Nablus and one in Ramallah during civilian demonstrations protesting the Israeli occupation. 150 Palestinians were injured, several of them in critical condition.

CHOMSKY ON THE MID-EAST CONFLICT
(March 31, 2001)
Well, just how dangerous is the crisis in the Middle East? There is a UN Special Envoy, a Norwegian, Roed-Larson. A couple of days ago, he warned that Israel's blockade of the Palestinian areas is leading to enormous suffering and could rapidly detonate a regional war.

FIVE PALESTINIANS KILLED AS WAR OF WORDS FLARES IN MIDDLE EAST
(March 30, 2001)
Clashes raged across the Palestinian territories Friday, killing five Palestinians, as Israelis and Palestinians exchanged fiery rhetoric on the traditionally violent anniversary of a 1976 Israeli crackdown on Arab demonstrators.

CLASHES ERUPT AMID WAVE OF ANTI-ISRAELI PROTESTS
(March 30, 2001)
Israeli troops opened fire with live rounds on Friday to try to halt Palestinians marching in cities across the West Bank and Gaza Strip to demand civil rights and an end to Israeli occupation.

AN ISRAELI OFFERS HOPE AMIDST THE DARKNESS
(March 30, 2001)
In the past two weeks, we are witnessing the beginning of a new phase: Israelis and Palestinians are extending a hesitant hand to each other, across the IDF's barricades and checkpoints.

A CONFLICT SINKING TO NEW DEPTHS
(March 29, 2001)
The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has sunk to appalling new depths with several days of intensified violence that left children on both sides to form the bulk of the dead.

ISRAELIS STRIKE, NOBODY RESPONDS
(March 29, 2001)
The Egyptians and Jordanians could and should totally suspend their relations with Israel; but they do not. The Arabs could collectively demand Israel be suspended from the U.N. General Assembly; but they did not decide to do so at their little summit just ended where they in fact did nothing serious.

ASSAD & SADDAM "ATTACK"
(March 28, 2001)
Lot of rhetoric, more than expected in fact. But mostly a smookescreen for never-ending impotence and inexcuseable weakness. So much for the Arab Summit in Amman. Until those Arab "leaders" who have squandered the wealth and heritage of their countries, and indeed of their once powerful civilization, are replaced; until the "client regimes" of the Arab world are no more; this tragic spectacle known as Arab "summits" will continue to be a deep embarrassment and a historic tragedy.

ARAB SUMMITS - RIDICULOUS SPECTACLES
(March 27, 2001)
Arab "leaders", the "client regimes", and Arab "summits", have been ridiculous spectacles for a long time now. Last time they met like this the American armies were descending on Arabia, getting ready to destroy Iraq and put one of their own, the despicable British-created Emir, back on his oil throne in Kuwait City.

ARAB SUMMITEERS AND CROCODILE TEARS
(March 26, 2001)
"They will talk and talk and talk and look important and remain as always, impotent, indecisive and inactive. They might pledge a few pennies to the Palestinian dying or the mortally wounded, they might voice support of the 6-month-old Intifida, but nothing but pomp and ceremony will come of it all."

TIME TO FORCE A U.S. VETO AND TAKE SERIOUS ACTION AGAINST ISRAEL
(March 25, 2001)
What the Arab States meeting in summit in Amman on Tuesday should do is not a mystery: First they should insist on a U.N. Security Council resolution that has teeth; and if the U.S. vetos so be it.

THE U.N. AND THE ARAB LEAGUE CHARADES
(March 25, 2001)
The U.N. and Arab League charades have gone on for so many years now. Never has either body taken serious action when it comes to Israel. Always the U.S. is there to block the way, to twist things from potentially useful to impotent, to manuever so that the U.S. remains dominant internationally and Israel remains dominant in the region.

ISRAELI ARMY BRUTALLY ATTACKS PEACEFUL CIVILIAN PROTEST MARCH
(March 24, 2001)
Today at 1:00 p.m., the Israeli army fired sound bombs, tear gas, and rubber coated steel bullets at thousands of peaceful protesters at the Al-Ram checkpoint.

SHARON MOVING FAST
(March 24, 2001)
haron and company are now likely to move quickly to further "control" the Palestinians and establish their hegemonic and war-threatening policies in the Middle East.

Today in Occupied Palestine
(March 23, 2001)
Amr Moussa and the Arab political elite representing the "client regimes" have been deceived and acted foolishingly, as well as selfishly, for quite a long time now.

AL-JAZEERA - ARAFAT STILL TWISTS TO ISRAELI AND U.S. TUNE
(March 22, 2001)
Al-Jazeera satellite TV now feeds a hungry Arab world, one starved for so long that even this carefully-controlled Qatari-financed TV news and pictures source has met with considerable success.

WHAT SHOULD BE WITH ISRAEL
(March 22, 2001)
If the Arabs regimes were serious, indeed if they were truly independent, they would institute a Arab and Muslim regional boycott of Israel at this point, at least suspend all diplomatic and economic relations with Israel, and forcefully move to have the U.N. General Assembly suspend Israeli credentials (as was done with South Africa in the days of Apartheid) as soon as the U.S. again prevents the Security Council from acting in the days ahead.

ARAB AND MUSLIM GROUPS IN USA WORSE THAN EVER
(March 20, 2001)
We were wrong in our analysis earlier today. The Arab and Muslim groups did not even manage a few hundred protestors at the White House today -- the number was closer to a few dozen at most, including the handful of fanatical bearded and side-curled Naturei Karta Jews who are encouraged by these groups to show up these days.

WASHINGTON SCENE: ARAB AND MUSLIM GROUPS PROVE IMPOTENCE ONCE AGAIN
(March 20, 2001)
It's depressing, almost pathetic, to watch the Arab and Muslim American groups "protest" these days. Leaderless and strategyless, though as usual feverishly combining all of their capabilities together to create even this, the groups managed to bring maybe five or six hundred persons to the sidewalk across from the Washington Hilton last evening for a carefully self-controlled demonstration.

WHAT ISRAEL IS DOING IS "FORBIDDEN"
(March 19, 2001)
"What is being done in the territories is simply forbidden. To safeguard against such acts, people have established laws and norms; those who wish to return to the norms current a century ago ought not to be surprised when they are treated as pariahs - indeed, as ghosts from bygone days."

ARABS URGE U.N. TO SEND INTERNATIONAL FORCE TO PALESTINIAN
(March 16, 2001)
The Israelis will insist on a U.S. veto of any Security Council resolution involving any serious observer force. And Shimon Peres willingly serving Ariel Sharon as his Foreign Minister makes it much easier for the Israelis to deflect international pressures.

WE DIDN'T SEE; WE DIDN'T KNOW
(March 15, 2001)
The Palestinian people have many symbols, and one of them is Bir Zeit university near Ramallah - the secular intellectual center of the society.

SHARON COMETH
(March 14, 2001)
Monday in Washington the various Arab-American groups will stage a protest demonstration outside the Washington Hilton where now Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will be talking to the lead organization that makes up the Israeli-Jewish lobby in Washington.

U.S. MEDIA ESTABLISHMENT HELPS PREPARE SHARON'S WAY
(March 13, 2001)
Sharon's PR people are working hard preparing his way for a triumphant visit to the USA in a few days. They choose Lally Weymouth, long a "friendly journalist", for one of his first major interviews -- published in Newsweek this week.

ISRAELI CONCENTRATION CAMPS
(March 12, 2001)
If barbed wire were used, the symbolism would be too much like concentration camps of old.

BIR ZEIT UNIVERSITY CRIES OUT FOR HELP
(March 11, 2001)
As usual these days, the Palestinian people are being collectively tortured into submission with still expanding forms of bondage, oppression, and brutal force.

PERES FRONTS FOR SHARON AS ISRAELIS PUSH FORWARD MAJOR PROPAGANDA
(March 10, 200198)
Who is more despicable is debateable these days. But surely Shimon Peres is deserving of nomination. As Israeli army snipers pick off Palestinians and as Israeli army bulldozers dig trenches around Palestinian towns and cities, Peres fronts for the new Sharon regime telling the world the Israelis are going to "make life better for the Palestinians"!

TRENCH AND SIEGE WARFARE
(March 8, 2001)
The words, and the acts, go back before the bible itself -- trench warfare and siege. The Romans built walls and laid siege to Jerusalem and Masada. Trenches, though for a different purpose, became synonymous with World War I.

CRIES FROM PALESTINE AND CRIES FROM ISRAEL
(March 6, 2001)
My sister-in-law just called crying - about 4 hours ago Al-Bireh had about 3 minutes of heavy gunfire..... her neighbor, Aida, was walking back home on the Friends road from Ramallah after shopping for the Eid holiday.

OH MY GOD! CLINTON WON'T LEAVE THE WORLD ALONE!
(March 5, 2001)
They came to Washington -- the two-for-one power couple -- with the campaign promise to bring health care to all Americans; they left (but Hillary is already back on Capitol Hill) with the dangerous corporate for profit HMO's in power and more uninsured than ever despite the economic juggernaunt.

MIDEAST CONFLICT TEARS AT BROTHERLY BOND
(March 5, 2001)
Hostilities engulf West Bank siblings, who remain close despite their split between Jewish and Muslim faiths.

BOMB BLAST IN ISRAELI COASTAL CITY
(March 4, 2001)
A powerful bomb exploded during morning rush hour Sunday in a crowded open-air market in the Israeli coastal city of Netanya.

ISRAELIS LAY SIEGE TO PALESTINIAN CITIES
(March 3, 2001)
Sometime in the future there will be a day of reckoning for the Israelis. But that day is not yet here while the suffering of the Palestinians is, literally, more and more as each day dawns.

FIELD OF THORNS
(March 3, 2001)
The Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which in late September 2000 began as a wave of popular protest against Ariel Sharon's belligerent incursion into Jerusalem's sacred Haram al-Sharif, has developed into a full-fledged war of attrition against the Israeli occupation, which rather ironically paved the aggressive right-wing leader's path to power.

REGIONAL WAR PREPARATIONS AND PUBLIC OPINION MANIPULATION ESCALATE
(March 2, 2001)
Iraq responded to U.S. air strikes on Feb. 16 by deploying thousands of troops from six divisions to positions near the Jordanian border, triggering military alerts in Tel Aviv, Washington and in several Gulf capitals.

SHARON AND PERES TEAM UP
(March 2, 2001)
It was a massacre. Not since Sabra and Chatila had I seen the innocent slaughtered like this. The Lebanese refugee women and children and men lay in heaps, their heads or arms or legs missing, beheaded or disemboweled.

SHARON GETS READY TO ACT. ARAFAT GETS READY TO LEAVE?
(March 1, 2001)
Arafat and regime are about collapse -- i.e., the money and capabilities provided by the U.S. and Israel to keep the PA going are being cut off if Arafat doesn't shape up!

BLEAK FUTURE FOR BOTH PALESTINIANS AND ISRAELIS
(March 1, 2001)
Shimon Peres has many secrets to try to keep, and that explains his desperation to stay in power practically at any cost. Ariel Sharon knows this.




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