The Dominion - Jon Elmer

The Iggy We Know

dawn — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 06:00:00 +0000

Liberal leader backed Israeli assaults on Lebanon, Gaza

VANCOUVER–Confronted by his first international crisis as the newly-anointed leader of the Liberal Party, Michael Ignatieff’s handling of Israel’s 22-day assault on Gaza marked a continuation of the current Liberal-Conservative consensus on Canadian foreign policy in the Middle East and Central Asia.

On December 27, 2008, without warning and at the height of the midday bustle in the overcrowded Gaza Strip, Israel unleashed the single most devastating aerial attack in its 41-year occupation of Gaza, killing 230 people and overwhelming hospitals with more than 750 wounded in a single day.

Many of those who died were killed in the first five minutes of the bombings, as Israel used a ‘shock and awe’-style massacre intended to, in the words of Defence Minister Ehud Barak, “totally change the rules of the game.”

Three days after the attack was launched, Ignatieff broke his silence with a written statement. Despite a death toll that had risen to 350 Palestinians along with two Israelis after 72 hours, Ignatieff began his message by expressing concern for the victims “on all sides,” before “unequivocally” condemning Hamas and “affirm[ing] Israel's right to defend itself.”

For their part, the Conservatives were pointedly silent on Israel’s assault as well; when they did speak, it was only to blame Hamas and its rocket fire from Gaza and back Israel’s bombardment. “Canada maintains that the rocket attacks are the cause of this crisis,” Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said.

The statements by both parties once again staked Canada’s position as unreserved support for Israel, well beyond norms in the diplomatic community, and out of all proportion to the scale of Israel’s long-running devastation of Gaza.

Since 2000, Palestinian rocket fire has killed 16 people in Israel, according to Israeli government numbers; during that same time, more than 4,400 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza alone.

The Economist noted during the invasion that “Gazans have long felt they lived in an open prison; now they are trapped in a shooting gallery.”

Following Israel’s shelling of a United Nations shelter on January 6, calls for a ceasefire grew louder. The head of the UN agency that oversees Gaza’s 1.1 million refugees, John Ging, appealed emphatically to the international community to intervene. “There's nowhere safe in Gaza. Everyone here is terrorized and traumatized,” Ging said.

When Ignatieff spoke publicly for the first time, on January 8 at a town hall in Halifax, he was unwilling to concede that the bombardment should end. He offered only that perhaps “we are approaching the time when a ceasefire will be appropriate,” according to a transcript published in the Canadian Jewish News.

Indeed, Ignatieff went so far as to cast doubt on the gruesome images of civilian carnage coming from Gaza, particularly children, which had shocked the world. “We have to understand that many of the images we see out of Gaza are structured and created and organized by Hamas,” the former human rights professor said when asked about Israel’s shelling of a United Nations elementary school-turned-shelter, which killed 42 people.

Ignatieff offered no evidence for his remarkable claim, which - though indistinguishable from Conservative Party official statements - was more than even Israel’s spokespersons were willing to assert in the hours and days before the army finally admitted to shelling the school. “What happened in the UN school was not a mistake,” foreign minister Tzipi Livni told Der Spiegel, one week after the attack.

Ignatieff also used the crisis to reiterate his support for Israel’s punitive and devastating siege of Gaza which followed Hamas’ decisive election victory in the winter of 2006. “Canada can't touch Hamas with a 10-foot pole,” he said, casting Canada’s significant diplomatic support for the extraordinarily cruel blockade into a cheap sound bite.

None of this is new territory for Ignatieff. When Israel attacked Lebanon in the summer of 2006, Ignatieff, then a leadership contender, notoriously broke a three-week silence only to characterize Israel’s brutal massacre of 28 civilians in the village of Qana, most of whom were children, as “frankly, inevitable.”

At the time of Ignatieff’s statements on Israel’s bombing of the civilian shelter, news reports indicated a toll of more than 50 dead. To that, Ignatieff observed: “This is the kind of dirty war you’re in when you have to do this and I’m not losing sleep about that.”

Ignatieff’s message was clear: these terrible crimes are part and parcel of diplomatic support for Israel’s dirty wars. Indeed, the Liberal party made no effort to distance themselves from Ignatieff’s statements on Qana as “inevitable.” The record clearly shows that Ignatieff – however vulgar his phrasing – had simply stated the effect of party policy.

In both invasions, Israel’s principle diplomatic concern was avoiding an immediate ceasefire; in both cases, the Liberals and the Conservatives actively pursued Israel’s objectives as the terrible civilian toll mounted – 1,200 dead in Lebanon and 1,400 in Gaza.

While the Liberal-Conservative consensus on foreign policy in the Middle East predates Ignatieff, the crises in Gaza and Lebanon show that the new Liberal leader intends to strengthen it.

Jon Elmer is an independent journalist and researcher who covers the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Iggy and Obamy

Mission Extended

hillarybain — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 13:00:36 +0000

Pro-US panel was key in extending Afghan mission

Buoyed by the recommendations of a government-appointed blue-ribbon panel, on March 13 Canada's parliament approved a motion to extend its combat mission in Afghanistan until the end of 2011.

The outcome of the motion was effectively predetermined, as the two largest parties in the House of Commons -- the Liberals and the governing Conservatives -- agreed on the wording of the resolution in the weeks leading up to the vote.

Conservative Defence Minister Peter MacKay called the vote "historic" and applauded the "bipartisan consensus" it achieved. Liberal leader Stéphane Dion characterised the resolution as "basically the Liberal motion on Afghanistan."

The political debate about the motion to extend the mission was shaped by the Independent Panel on Canada's Future Role in Afghanistan, a study group appointed by Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and led by former Liberal Foreign Affairs Minister John Manley.

The Manley Panel, as it came to be known, was created by the prime minister in October 2007 and foreshadowed the importance of the parliamentary vote on Afghanistan, which took place within the context of a Conservative minority government. Without approval from the Liberal members of parliament, the Conservative confidence motion would not have passed, thus bringing down the government and forcing a federal election.

For their part, the Liberals were hard-pressed to vote against the Afghanistan intervention given that it was Liberal governments that brought Canada into the mission in 2001 and into the heart of the counterinsurgency war in Kandahar in 2005.

The motion passed 198-77, with the New Democratic Party and Bloc Québécois in opposition. NDP leader Jack Layton criticised the "carte blanche" the motion afforded and urged Canadians to "remember this during elections."

During the vote, protestors in the House of Commons public gallery chanted, "End it, don't extend it," while demonstrations against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan took place in more than 20 cities across Canada on Saturday, March 15.

While the Manley Panel was bipartisan in affiliation, its members shared an essential vision of the importance of Canada's integration with the United States. Stephen Clarkson, a professor of political economy at the University of Toronto, said the panel "was clearly selected on the basis of reliably delivering a pro-US interpretation of the Canadian interest."

The panel included three senior officials from the era of Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, including: Derek Burney, a key architect of the controversial North American Free Trade Agreement; Jake Epp, a former cabinet minister and oil executive; and Paul Tellier, former head of the Canadian National Railway and Bombardier Inc.

The fifth panel member, former journalist Pamela Wallin, recently served as the Canadian Consulate General in New York. For his part, Manley's significant efforts to integrate Canada-US security apparatuses with Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge after the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, earned him TIME Magazine Canada's "Newsmaker of the Year" in December 2001.

"They are all either conservative Liberals, or Conservatives who have an involvement in the United States-Canada relationship," said Clarkson, who has written extensively on US-Canadian political and economic relations and is the author of Uncle Sam and Us.

"Since Canada's role in Afghanistan is so obviously connected to Ottawa's desire to please Washington, it was very unlikely they would recommend anything other than staying in Afghanistan," he said.

Shortly after the publication of the panel's report, the Manley committee's executive director, Elissa Goldberg, was appointed Canada's top civilian representative in Kandahar, where she said she will be facilitating the "overall leadership and strategic direction" of Canada's mission.

The significance of the report on the outcome of the vote was clear. Defence Minister Peter MacKay immediately pointed to the "important work of the Manley Panel [which] formed the basis for members of parliament to draw upon." Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier called the report "key" to the vote and said it was "appreciated internationally."

Bernier told reporters on Parliament Hill that the motion allowed the prime minister to go to the upcoming NATO summit in Bucharest "with a strong mandate in his pocket." The Bucharest meeting is considered an important strategy session for NATO, as the security conditions continue to deteriorate in Afghanistan.

The motion that passed in parliament stated that the "extension of Canada's military presence in Afghanistan is approved by this House expressly on the condition that NATO secure a battle group of approximately 1,000 to rotate into Kandahar, no later than February 2009."

The parliamentary extension also calls for Canada to secure transport helicopters and improved unmanned aerial surveillance drones, something the Manley Panel also recommended to reduce the number of casualties of Canadian soldiers. Since 2002, 82 Canadians have been killed in Afghanistan; 31 of the last 33 combat fatalities resulting from roadside bombs.

Speaking at a conference of senior government officials and policymakers in Brussels on Sunday, MacKay pushed his request for additional NATO troops in Canada's area of responsibility: "Come up with a thousand troops and you get to keep 2,500," he said, referring to the number of Canadian troops stationed in Kandahar.

US President George W. Bush said that he intends to use the Bucharest summit to persuade allies to ramp-up the fight in the south. "We're mindful of their request and we want to help them meet that request," Bush said of the Canadian contingency.

Retired Canadian Major-General Terry Liston said that the troop request is simply a political gesture, far short of what NATO generals on the ground say is required. "Just in Kandahar province, according to American [counterinsurgency] doctrine you'd need about 16,000 soldiers," he said. "It's a drop in the bucket, the 1,000."

Meanwhile, in anticipation of the so-called fighting season in Afghanistan, the US has sent an additional 3,600 Marines on a seven-month deployment to southern Afghanistan. The Marines, about half of whom have already arrived in the country, will operate under Canadian Major-General Marc Lessard and NATO's Regional Command South, which includes Helmand and Kandahar provinces -- the heart of the Afghan insurgency.

A report by the United Nations secretary-general earlier this month detailed a sharp increase in insurgent activity in 2007, an average of 566 incidents a month, compared with 425 a month in 2006. Data from the United States Central Command indicates a concurrent rise in NATO and US airstrikes during that same period –- 2,926 bombs dropped in 2007, up from 1,770 in 2006. More than 8,000 people were killed last year, including at least 1,500 civilians, the U.N. said.

A version of this article was published by IPS

Fighter Plane in Afghanistan

Growing Insurgencies, Irregular Warfare, part II

dru — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 03:33:57 +0000

Development Aid as Counterinsurgency Tool

TORONTO, Mar 23 (IPS) - A soon-to-be-completed Canadian Forces counterinsurgency field manual foreshadows the type of interventions that the military in this country is preparing for the coming decades, according to a draft edition obtained by IPS.

Gone is the era of major military powers fighting the tank battles or aerial dogfights that defined warfare during the 20th century.

The new military environment is often urban-based warfare against fighters operating amid, and often with significant support from, local populations.

This type of insurgent warfare has marked the period since the end of the Cold War and has been underlined by attempts to control populations in so-called "failed states" operating without a central government, not the defeat of armies or the strict acquisition of territory.

Insurgencies are animated by "ideas for social change" and therefore the response necessarily "involves much more than simply military action," the manual states.

"It is a multi-agency approach -- military, paramilitary, political, economic, psychological and civic actions -- that seeks to not only defeat the insurgents themselves, but the root causes of, and support for, the insurgency," it says.

Increasingly, development aid is being used as a key weapon to advance the military's counterinsurgency campaigns.

As the head of the army Lt. Gen. Andrew Leslie recently told journalists in Vancouver, the Canadian Forces work "hand-in-glove with the folks from the Canadian International Development Agency [as well as] reinforce the diplomatic activities and efforts of Foreign Affairs."

In the language of the Department of Foreign Affairs, this integration is known as the "3-D approach" -- defence, diplomacy and development acting together to further Canada's "interests" in the world.

Canada has showcased this new foreign policy posture in Afghanistan, in what MP Michael Ignatieff called "a paradigm shift" and Canada's top soldier, Rick Hillier, has described as "a glimpse of the future."

In a comprehensive policy review tabled before Parliament in 2005, the Department of National Defence boasted that "the ability to respond to the challenge of failed and failing states will serve as a benchmark for the Canadian Forces."

Counterinsurgency is by no means new and the lessons of history's irregular wars -- the United States in Vietnam, the British in the Malay, Canada's Northwest Rebellion -- are as relevant as ever. Yet, according to the manual's lead author, this is the first time that Canada has formally drafted a counterinsurgency field manual for training its soldiers and officers.

In an interview with IPS, Maj. D.J. Lambert, director for army doctrine, described the manual's focus on a "comprehensive approach."

In order to effectively defeat the local uprisings, "the military is working hand-in-hand with other agencies, with a unifying theme and a unity of purpose and, ideally, effort," Lambert said.

The most recent report by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) on plans and priorities declares that the agency "will set core policy directions for Canadian development assistance in a manner that is consistent with Canada's foreign policy."

CIDA identifies three "countries of strategic importance for Canada" -- Afghanistan, Haiti and Iraq. In each instance, Canada is among the top-five donor countries. Each of the three priority countries is experiencing deepening crises of human security, foreign occupations and -- particularly in the case of Iraq and Afghanistan -- growing insurgencies.

A significant portion of CIDA's funding in each of these countries is earmarked for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to assist in training police cadets.

The RCMP's director general of international policing, David Beer, testified before a parliamentary committee late last year that more than 34,700 Iraqi police were trained under the Canada-backed training programme in neighbouring Jordan.

Beer added that, "approximately 10 per cent" of the recruits trained by Canada have been killed in service in Iraq.

The security apparatus in all three countries has been roundly criticised by human rights groups for widespread abuses.

After having received virtually zero Canadian aid during the 1990s, Afghanistan has, since9/11, become Canada's largest recipient of development money.

According to CIDA, by the end of the current fiscal year (2006-2007), "Canada will have invested nearly $600 million [$517,482,000US] since the fall of the Taliban." Over a 10-year period beginning in 2001, Canada will have committed nearly $862 million US in development aid to Afghanistan.

While only a fraction of the military spending, Canada's aid contribution to Afghanistan represents a significant element of CIDA's $2.5billion annual budget.

Canadian Forces have administered dozens of aid projects with CIDA throughout Afghanistan under the auspices of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams. The PRTs are units comprised of soldiers, aid workers and civilian contractors.

"The PRT's are very much a realisation of good counterinsurgency principles, with co-operation and shared intent across the different agencies," said Lambert in a telephone interview.

The PRT model was first developed by the US during Operation Enduring Freedom in late 2002. It has since been extended across Afghanistan and was recently applied as a model for the George W. Bush administration's 20,000-troop "surge" in Iraq. The Bush administration has referred to the Iraq PRT's as "powerful tools in achieving our counterinsurgency strategy."

As Canada's draft manual notes: "It is unlikely that the conflict will be suddenly ended with a major military victory against the insurgents." Instead, "typical measures of effectiveness are numbers of violent incidents and the level of popular support for the government."

By all accounts, those benchmarks continue to deteriorate in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A widely cited US intelligence report about Afghanistan released in early 2007 showed a spike in suicide attacks from 27 in 2005 to 139 in 2006. Roadside bomb attacks more than doubled from 783 to 1,677 and direct attacks using small-arms and grenades increased almost threefold to 4,542 from 1,558.

A report this week by the Senlis Council found that support for the Taliban has "rocketed" in the last year and half, while 80 per cent of respondents in southern and eastern Afghanistan -- the heart of NATO's counterinsurgency fight -- expressed worry about feeding their families.

*This story is part two of a two-part series on the transformation of Canada's military and humanitarian missions.

Guarding a Meeting

Provincial Reconstruction Team Carrying Bags of Flour

Growing Insurgencies, Irregular Warfare

dru — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 05:41:39 +0000

Counterinsurgency Manual Shows Military's New Face

TORONTO, Mar 22 (IPS) - Following closely behind their counterparts in the United States and Britain, Canada's Department of National Defence is preparing a comprehensive counterinsurgency field manual for its soldiers and officers.

The manual will guide Canadian Forces doctrine and training well into the future, according to a draft edition obtained by IPS.

A 250-page publication, the field manual outlines the principles and practices of fighting the kind of insurgencies that have come to define warfare for the Western powers in the 21st century, in places like Chechnya, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The manual has been two years in development and is scheduled for release later this year. In it, insurgent wars are characterised by their tendency to be local and often popular movements, rather than the traditional military conflicts between states. This type of irregular warfare has confounded US and NATO forces in Iraq and Afghanistan respectively, where growing insurgencies have taken a bloody toll on local populations, as well as Western troops, and signs of success are few and far between.

The increased prominence of the doctrine was recently on display when Gen. David Petraeus, author of the United States Army and Marine Corps counterinsurgency field manual, took command of US forces in Iraq in early 2007.

While perhaps as relevant as ever, counterinsurgency is not a new phenomenon, as the Canadian manual notes up-front. Indigenous forces battled the Roman Empire in present-day Germany, Scotland and the Middle East two millennia ago. The British Empire fought insurgencies in 19th-century Afghanistan, as did the French in Algeria after the Second World War. The US withdrew from Vietnam in 1975 after a vicious, decade-long counterinsurgency war against Vietnamese guerrillas.

Maj. D.J. Lambert, the Canadian director of army doctrine and lead author of the manual, has cited several examples of historic Canadian counterinsurgencies, including battles with George Washington's US forces and the Northwest Rebellion led by Louis Riel and the Metis in 1885.

Presently, while Canada's Afghanistan mission dominates the attention and resources of the military, according to the manual, Canadian Forces are actively engaged in various levels of confrontation with at least three ongoing insurgencies -- in Afghanistan, in Haiti and with domestic, indigenous organisations in Canada, such as the Mohawk Warrior Society.

Despite its "specific and limited aims," the First Nations rebellions in Canada are nevertheless insurgencies because they are animated by the goal of altering political relationships both with the Canadian government and at the local level -- within indigenous Reservations themselves -- "through the threat of, or use of, violence," the manual states.

In recent years, Canadian Forces have been used by the federal government in high-profile land confrontations with indigenous communities and protestors, including lethal standoffs with the Mohawk community of Kanehsatake in the 1990 Oka Crisis and with the Ojibway community at Ipperwash in 1995.

Canadian Forces have been present in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, since before the ouster of popularly-elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in a military coup in February 2004. According to the draft manual, Canadian Forces have been "conducting COIN [counterinsurgency] operations against the criminally-based insurgency in Haiti since early 2004."

Since the attacks on New York and Washington in September 2001, Canadian Forces have played a key combat role in Afghanistan, both in the US-led Operation Enduring Freedom and the recent NATO mission to quell the growing uprising against the Western-backed government of Hamid Karzai.

Today in Afghanistan, Canadian Forces from the Royal Canadian Regiment in Gagetown, New Brunswick are engaged in NATO's first major offensive of the season against what are broadly labelled as Taliban insurgents. Codenamed Operation Achilles, the mission is characterised by NATO and Canadian officials as a pre-emptive attack on Taliban forces in Helmand Province who are reportedly preparing to launch a "spring offensive" against the presence of foreign troops.

Maj. Gen. Ton van Loon, NATO's commander in Southern Afghanistan, said in a statement this week that Operation Achilles is the largest combined NATO-Afghan mission to date, involving 4,500 NATO troops and upwards of 1,000 Afghan National Army forces at its peak.

Meanwhile, an Afghanistan-focused policy group, the Senlis Council, released the "alarming" results of a survey this week which polled 17,000 people in southern and eastern Afghanistan. The survey showed that one-half of respondents believed the Western-led war will fail to defeat the Taliban, and 87 per cent of respondents believed that the tactics used by the Western forces in dealing with the insurgency were "not right."

"The results from the survey are extremely alarming because they indicate that the international community is in serious trouble in Afghanistan," Senlis Council President Norine MacDonald said in a statement Monday. "A return of the Taliban into power would have grave consequences for both the people of Afghanistan and for global security."

The counterinsurgency manual is one part of a significant modernising and restructuring of the Canadian Forces that the DND is billing as an effort to create a more effective force in fighting for Canada's "national interests" in the post-Cold War global order. But the changes are not only doctrinal; the intensity of the combat in Afghanistan is something Canadians haven't seen since at least the 1950s, when Canadian Forces fought in Korea.

"It is a fascinating time to be a Canadian soldier," Lt. Gen. Andrew Leslie, head of the army, told journalists at a recent policy briefing at the Fraser Institute, a conservative research institute in Vancouver.

"We are no longer a blunt instrument relegated solely to watching from the sidelines or inter-positioning ourselves between two formerly warring factions," Leslie said.

Canadian generals such as Leslie, Chief of Staff Rick Hillier and retired Maj. Gen. Louis MacKenzie have been outspoken critics of the accuracy and utility of the long-fostered national self-image of the Canadian military as a neutral middle-power and "blue-helmeted" peacekeeper.

While the Canadian Forces’ commitment in Afghanistan is currently slated to end in February 2009, "Let's not kid ourselves," Gen. Leslie said. The enormous resources invested by the government in the transformation of Canada's armed forces are clearly not for Afghanistan alone, he said, adding: "It is logical to expect that we will go somewhere fairly similar to Afghanistan and do much the same sort of activity."

This story is part one of a two-part series on the transformation of Canada's military and humanitarian missions. With additional reporting by Anthony Fenton in Vancouver.

Provincial Reconstruction Team, Kandahar

Training Facility

Le Soutien des États-Unis au Fatah Crée un Nouveau Conflit

hillarybain — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 12:20:46 +0000

Le Hamas et le Fatah s'engagent dans une rivalité meurtrière.

Le son des explosions, des fusillades intenses et des sirènes d'ambulances a de nouveau retenti dans la bande de Gaza, le 1er février, seulement deux jours après la cessation des combats entre les partisans du Fatah et du Hamas durant lesquels plus de 30 Palestiniens sont morts.

À la tombée de la nuit, on dénombrait six décès et plus de 60 blessés à Gaza. Des combattants fidèles au gouvernement élu du Hamas – la force exécutive du ministre de l'Intérieur et la milice du mouvement islamiste, les Brigades Izzadin Al-Qassam – affrontaient les forces de sécurité du Fatah, fidèles au Président de l'Autorité palestinienne Mahmoud Abbas.

Dans l'après-midi, au moment des combats, le Hamas a intercepté quatre camions de chargement venant d'Israël par le passage de Kerem Shalom. Ces derniers ont voulu réquisitionner la cargaison d'armes destinée à la garde présidentielle, une force de sécurité fidèle à M. Abbas et soutenue par les États-Unis.

Le Fatah a officiellement nié toute connaissance de cette cargaison d'armes. Selon son porte-parole, Tawfiq Abu Khoussa, le convoi transportait seulement des tentes, des générateurs et du matériel médical.

En décembre dernier, un chargement de 2 000 fusils, 20 000 chargeurs et 2 millions de cartouches d’origine égyptienne était transporté à travers ce même passage de Kerem Shalom. Le convoi, officialisé par Israël, avait également rejoint la bande de Gaza.

La reprise de la violence s'est produite au moment où Washington a annoncé le débloquement de 86,4 millions de dollars supplémentaires pour soutenir le Président M. Abbas.

Les dirigeants du Hamas ont dénoncé la participation de Washington dans l’entraînement et le financement des forces de sécurité du Fatah. Son porte-parole, Ismayil Radwan, a déclaré dans une intervention publique que l'intention de Washington était de « susciter une guerre civile dans l'arène palestinienne ».

Pour Mouin Rabbani, analyste éminent à l'International Crisis Group, les États-Unis poussent la garde présidentielle de M. Abbas à devenir la principale force de sécurité palestinienne. « Elle est renforcée afin de combattre la force exécutive du Hamas » a-t-il affirmé à IPS. Selon lui, les États-Unis travaillent sur le long terme au lieu de chercher à attiser les récents affrontements à Gaza.

« Il n'y a pas d'instigation directe des Américains car ils ne sont pas encore convaincus que le Fatah est prêt à affronter le Hamas », poursuit M. Rabbani. « Mais ils commencent à fournir des quantités importantes d'armes, entraînent et financent le Fatah dans l’espoir qu’il dominera le conflit final. »

Washington a confirmé l’entraînement de la garde présidentielle de M. Abbas à la tactique des combats de rue, à Jéricho en Cisjordanie, sous la direction du lieutenant général Keith Dayton, coordinateur américain de la sécurité auprès d'Israël et de l'Autorité palestinienne.

En décembre, K. Dayton avait déclaré au quotidien israélien Yedioth Ahronoth: « Nous sommes engagés dans le renforcement de la garde présidentielle, procédant à son instruction, l'aidant à se développer elle-même et lui donnant des idées ». K. Dayton avait démenti la préparation de cette force à la confrontation avec le Hamas.

Toujours en décembre, le Congrès américain a voté la loi contre le terrorisme palestinien. Celle-ci vise explicitement la direction élue du Hamas et cherche à soutenir l'Autorité palestinienne en association avec le Fatah.

En vertu de cette loi, les États-Unis sanctionnent le Hamas jusqu'à ce que « l'Autorité palestinienne, contrôlée par le Hamas, accomplisse des progrès notoires dans la purge des individus des services de sécurité liés au terrorisme, dans le démantèlement de toutes les infrastructures terroristes, dans la coopération avec les services de sécurité israéliens, dans l'arrêt de toute motivation anti-américaine et anti-israélienne, et dans l'assurance de la démocratie et de la transparence financière. »

Le mouvement islamique Hamas a mis fin à 40 années de règne du Fatah sur la scène politique palestinienne en gagnant les élections parlementaires de janvier 2006. Un régime de sanctions sévères, initié par les États-Unis, a été imposé au Hamas lors de la formation du gouvernement au mois de mars suivant. C'est la première fois, selon les Nations Unies, que de telles sanctions sont prises contre une population sous occupation. Les sanctions ont aggravé la situation à Gaza, déjà qualifiée de crise humanitaire par des agences onusiennes comme le Programme Alimentaire Mondiale (PAM).

Au minimum, les trois quarts du million et demi d’habitants vivent dans la pauvreté et sont menacés d'insuffisance alimentaire. En outre, plus de 220 000 personnes sont totalement dépendantes de l'assistance alimentaire du PAM.

Cependant, d'après les sondages, les sanctions ne sont pas parvenues à éroder la popularité du Hamas.

Pour les Palestiniens, ce combat interne est une crise supplémentaire à celle des 40 années d’occupation israélienne. « Ce matin, je voulais amener ma fille au jardin d'enfants, mais je n'ai pu passer à cause des barrages routiers. Toutes les boutiques sont fermées et les rues sont vides. La population de Gaza écoute seulement les nouvelles et les coups de feu », a confié Nabil Diab, chargé des relations publiques pour le Croissant Rouge palestinien à Gaza ville.

« Les gamins avaient l'habitude de jouer aux “Palestiniens contre les Israéliens“. Maintenant, ils jouent au “Fatah contre le Hamas“ », dit le père de deux enfants.

Le Centre Al-Mezan pour les Droits de l'Homme à Gaza a dénombré 63 morts et plus de 300 blessés durant les combats de décembre entre le Hamas et le Fatah.

Ces affrontements armés ont lieu dans l’une des régions les plus densément peuplées du monde et font énormément de victimes civiles : huit enfants tués et plus de 30 blessés durant le mois de janvier. Une souffrance de plus pour les habitants de Gaza qui ont vécu 60 ans de déplacements forcés et sept années de guerre longue et oppressante avec Israël.

Les Palestiniens restent lucides sur les conséquences de cette lutte politique interne. Cette phrase lâchée à IPS par une habitante de Gaza, pressée de rentrer chez elle avec ses courses, résume bien leurs inquiétudes : « Si ces combats continuent, nous allons nous anéantir nous-mêmes ».

Sources : IPS, « U.S. Backing for Fatah Stirs New Conflict »
Traduction : Campagne Civile Internationale pour la Protection du Peuple Palestinien (CCIPPP) et Vivien Jaboeuf

Un Drapeau Palestinien

Mohammed Dahlan

Peter MacKay in Israel and Palestine

dru — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 02:50:20 +0000

What the Foreign Minister did not see or discuss during his visit

GAZA CITY, GAZA -- Despite the impression cast by corporate news coverage, there is never anything like "calm" here in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The casualty count for 2006 released by Israeli human rights group B'Tselem reports that Israeli forces killed 660 Palestinians, while 17 Israeli civilians were killed, 13 of them in the West Bank [pdf]. The violence is often spectacular, as during the summer and fall siege operations in Gaza that killed more than 450 Palestinians under withering aerial bombardment, artillery barrages and two major ground invasions. But, as an unusually frank headline in the current edition of the Economist rightly stated, "It's the little things that make an occupation."

When Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay visited Israel this week, it was these "little things" that he missed--like the more than 530 fixed checkpoints and roadblocks identified in a joint UN-IDF count in the occupied West Bank. These obstacles make simple travel between neighbouring Palestinian villages often impossible, particularly when added to the more than 7,000 "flying checkpoints" that spring up at the whim of the Israeli army, anywhere and at anytime. As the Economist pointed out, "arbitrariness is one of the most crippling features of these rules."

The checkpoints and closure regime enforced by Israel is more than inconvenient; all too often, it is deadly. On Friday, as MacKay met with President Abbas in Amman, Israeli soldiers at the Hawara checkpoint outside of the West Bank city of Nablus refused the Israeli-issued permits of a patient returning from liver surgery in Palestinian East Jerusalem. The soldiers forced Tayseer Al Qaisi out of the car and ordered him to walk across the checkpoint. Al Qaisi, a father of eight, was weakened critically by the surgery and collapsed only a few hundred feet into the checkpoint. As reported by David Chater of Al Jazeera International, a Palestinian ambulance was prevented from entering the area for two hours. Mr Al Qaisi died while waiting for help.

In meetings with top Israeli cabinet ministers, Peter MacKay did not mention the more than 2,200 hours of strict curfew enforced by tanks and gunfire over the last two years, or the more than 5,400 Palestinians who were arrested or detained on Palestinian land last year [pdf]--including more than half of the elected Palestinian cabinet, the Speaker of Parliament and scores of local and municipal officials. He did not ask about the Palestinian prisoner who died in Israeli custody this week, or about the hunger strike being waged by political prisoners at Ansar III in the Negev desert in response to an attack by guards with police dogs and tear gas. While MacKay gave ample notice that he would be discussing the Israeli soldier captured on the Gaza border in June, he almost surely did not bring up the 11,000 political prisoners being held by Israel, some 400 of them children.

Nor did MacKay talk about the more than 30 incursions into Palestinian cities and villages by the Israeli army in the last eight days, or the 14 fisherman shot off the coast of Rafah last week as they fished in Palestinian waters. He didn't talk about the 15 Palestinians injured by Israeli forces in protests this week, or of 10-year-old schoolgirl, Abir Aramin, who died on January 20 as she left the grounds of her school in Anata. According to witnesses, Abir was pursued by Israeli forces as she tried to run awayand was shot in the head with a stun grenade or tear gas canister at close range.

It's doubtful that MacKay raised the issue of last week's bulldozing of the entire "unrecognized" Bedouin village of Twail Abu-Jarwal in the Negev Desert. The Bedouin were displaced because they were illegally "trespassing" on the land of the Jewish state, despite the fact that their presence in the desert long predates the State of Israel. They are being forcibly relocated to urban reservations, while the Negev is prepared for settlement by the Jewish National Fund. In the "only democracy in the Middle East," at least 75,000 Bedouin live in more than 40 villages that are officially "unrecognized," where, like in Palestinian areas, building permits are denied and demolition orders are routinely carried out. The unrecognized villages have no infrastructure--no sewage, no water or electricity, and often no health or education facilities.

While Arab and Bedouin homes are destroyed, Jewish ones are being built. On the same day that MacKay arrived in the region, the Olmert government announced that 44 new housing units would be built in the Maale Adumim settlement near Jerusalem, a settlement which effectively, if not absolutely, severs the West Bank in two. In fact, MacKay won't deal with the issue of settlements at all--not the 121 illegal settlements and 100 outposts in the West Bank, nor the scores of settlements in occupied-East Jerusalem, beyond acknowledging the massive infrastructure of permanent dispossession as a "hindrance." In fact, along with their Jewish-only roads and attendant security footprint, these settlements render a Palestinian state an impossibility. Rather than fortified colonies on illegally occupied land, the Canadian government calls the settlements "facts on the ground." Not to be outdone, Stephen Harper referred to the settlement blocs as "democratic realities" in addressing a Zionist advocacy group in early 2006 [pdf].

MacKay did not address the substance of the 700 km-long barrier of sniper towers, concrete walls and deadly electronic fences snaking deep into the West Bank (80 per cent of the wall is built on UN recognized Palestinian land) in order to annex the massive settlement blocs into Israel and isolate the Palestinians into enclaves. He did not visit the machinery of settlement and dispossession created by the wall, the checkpoints, the settlements, the settler-only roads. John Dugard, South African human rights lawyer and UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory told the UN General Assembly, "In other countries the process would be described as ethnic cleansing, but political correctness [forbids] such language where Israel was concerned."

MacKay certainly did not visit Gaza, where 1.5 million people (one million of whom are refugees) are sealed off from the rest of the world, teetering on the edge of total social and humanitarian collapse because of the cruel and comprehensive sanctions regime that he so proudly vanguards. MacKay boastfully declared "not a red cent to Hamas" when the movement won the Palestinian elections early last year, but failed to see what that means on the streets of Gaza. He did not visit the EU-funded power station that was destroyed by the Israeli Air Force in June, nor did he visit the refugee camps where a million of the world's poorest people have been condemned to endless months of crippling power shortages, random blackouts and Israeli-imposed shortages of cooking and heating gas.

He didn't see the rubble left from thousands of aerial bombing raids and tens of thousands of artillery shells. He didn't see the roads shredded by tanks, or the pile of gravel in Beit Hanun that used to be an 800-year-old mosque. He didn't see the graffiti on the demolished houses that reads "we will never forget." He didn't walk in the refugee camps as winter rains and sewage run in rivers down the unpaved streets, or visit the beachside picnic site where the Ghaliya family was massacred in front of the eyes of seven-year-old Huda, whose horrified tears were broadcast around the world. He didn't visit the ambulance workers at the Red Crescent, four of whom were killed by the Israeli army since June. Where does Canada stand on the killing of medical relief workers, Mr. MacKay?

And what about the home of the Atamna family in Beit Hanun, where blood still covers the walls and pieces of shrapnel are scattered on the floor and embedded in the cinderblock walls after an artillery barrage by the Israeli army? The IDF had used the family's home as a forward operating base in the November operation during which more than one hundred Palestinians were killed; the Atamna family was cordoned into one room and guarded by soldiers. The morning after the army left their home, the shells came. Within moments, 60 members of the extended family lay in the street, either maimed or dead. When asked what they would say to the Canadian government, defending Israel's atrocities as it does time and again, Iyad Atamna said: "We don't want your money or your political support, just come here for one day before you speak about justice."

Jon Elmer is in Gaza City.

Mother Tutoring Daughter, Beit Hanun

Fishing Boats, Gaza

Warfighters, Not Missionaries

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 12:30:57 +0000

The origins of the three-block war

Canadian soldiers guarding prisoners in Aghanistan. illustration by sylvia nickerson

Based on an excerpt from the forthcoming book, The Afghanistan Adventure: Canada's foreign policy for the 21st century by Jon Elmer and Anthony Fenton

Notwithstanding the massive historical record of brutal colonial interventions justified as "for the good of the natives," Canada's politicians and pundits wax daily about Canada's unique effort to liberate the schoolgirls of Afghanistan. This missionary rhetoric stands in stark contrast to the jargon that pervades the pronouncements of Canada's foreign policy establishment – including not only the military, but also Foreign Affairs and the Canadian International Development Agency.

The posture of the establishment's policymakers and planners betrays an aggressive, military-borne doctrine rooted in advancing Canadian "interests" on a global scale. The implementation of the "three-block war" doctrine is an illustrative example of Canada's intentions. Simply put, the three-block war is an urban warfare doctrine that identifies three separate but often simultaneous spheres of enforcing military control in a city–warfighting, policing and facilitating aid.

Canada's top soldier, General Rick Hillier, has stated that, "We have to be experts on what is called in general terms the three-block war in order to have an effect across the world." As he explained to a Senate Committee, the entire structure of the Canadian Forces (CF) is training in the three-block war "every hour of every day."

While Hillier is surely the loudest, he is not the only one discussing it. Throughout policy documents, reports and speeches, the three-block war names the operational thrust that the CF–indeed, the whole of the foreign policy establishment–are implementing for the 21st century.

The doctrine did not begin in Afghanistan (see Haiti); but, as Michael Ignatieff acknowledged during the parliamentary debate on the extension of the mission in the spring of 2006, the significance of the Afghanistan operation is that it is a test of the "paradigm shift" from "peacekeeping" to "peace enforcement."

What is the "three-block war"?

The term 'three-block war' was coined by then-head of the US Marine Corps, General Charles C. Krulak, in a revealing and instructive speech at the National Press Club in Washington in the fall of 1997. In setting the stage for the introduction of the new doctrine, Krulak drew on a lesson from imperial Rome: adapt or be defeated.

Krulak's speech was crafted around a tale of woe suffered by the mighty Roman infantry under the commander of Caesar Augustus's expeditionary forces, Publius Quintilius Varus, in 9 AD. After being roundly defeated by the under-armed militias of the indigenous Germanic tribes, Varus was said to have retreated while despondently muttering "ne cras, ne cras"–not like yesterday, not like yesterday.

"[O]ur enemies will not allow us to fight the son of Desert Storm," said Krulak, "but they will try to draw us into the stepchild of Chechnya." With this phrase, Krulak ushered in the 'fourth generation' of warfare, bidding adieu to the 'manoeuvre' warfare doctrine that defined WWII and the Cold War posture, ie. formal state militaries fighting in enormous mechanized battalions.

The Russian wars on Chechnya, particularly in the capital, Grozny, were among the bloodiest urban fights since WWII, characterized by almost total destruction of the human and physical landscape. The fighting is house to house. Gone are the frontlines and the uniforms; the battlefield is the city. The enemy is ostensibly the entire population.

And, as Krulak said to Ted Koppel on ABC's Nightline in 1999: "There is absolutely no environment more lethal than fighting building to building."

Said Krulak: "Throughout modern history, we have consciously skirted fighting in urban areas. It is a very difficult and dangerous place to fight. It is one that we want to avoid. But by 2010, over 70 per cent of the world's population will live in urban slums and in cities, most of them within 300 miles of a coastline. It is here where our enemies will challenge us. The urban areas will become the centre of gravity of our foes, and cities, as I'm sure you realize, have the potential to negate much of our technological advantage."

This, however, is the landscape of the 21st century battlefield. Barely halfway into the first decade of the century, there have already been two major wars unleashed by the US centred on the three-block model, and when Israel's wars in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as the month-long war in Lebanon in the summer of 2006 are added to the mix, the "stepchild" of Chechnya is Gaza, Jenin, Kandahar and Fallujah.

"The three-block war in microcosm"

Iraq's Fallujah is "the three-block war in microcosm," Lt. Col. Brennan Byrne told the Marine Corps Times. Byrne led Marines into Fallujah in the landmark aggression in 2004, only days after four mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm were killed there, their charred bodies notoriously hung from a bridge.

In large swathes of Fallujah, a city of 300,000, the fighting was essentially block-by-block, backed by a massive aerial bombardment from jet fighters and helicopter gunships. Thousands were killed, more than 150,000 displaced and 50 per cent of the city's buildings, including more than 39,000 homes, were damaged or destroyed according to US officials. "Fallujah has been a return to full-up Marine Corps smash-mouth combat," Byrne said.

In a story published during the second major invasion of Fallujah in November 2004, the Times of London told a remarkable tale of the operative doctrine in stark relief. It is therefore worth quoting at length:

Between burnt-out apartments and minarets shot through by tank shells, a lone Iraqi man marched resolutely down Fallujah's deserted main street, a pair of white long johns held aloft on a stick instead of a white flag. Under his arm he bore a rare treasure: a boxed TV dinner with the alluring brand name in English: My Kind of Chicken. Kemal Muhammad Saleh, an unexpectedly cheerful 44-year-old man... [who] relies on handouts by the US and Iraqi forces to survive in his devastated city... In the distance the occasional cloud of smoke rises from an incoming US artillery shell. This is what US military doctrine terms a three-block war–troops can be fighting a deadly foe in one part of town, patrolling another and rebuilding the safer areas. Colonel Mike Olivier, of the Marines civil affairs team, put the US strategy in more blunt terms. 'This is the way the Americans work: first we blow the f*** out of your house, then we pay you to rebuild it. Look at World War II, look at Najaf [Iraq]. We'll give them money, we'll give them jobs and we'll make capitalists of all of them,' he grinned.

Despite multiple massive offensives into Fallujah, the US has not been–by any measure–able to control Fallujah, or indeed, almost anywhere in the whole of Iraq. The same is true for large parts of Afghanistan. Both wars–for which victory has already been claimed–are continuing to worsen. In light of these failures, the US armed forces set about writing a counterinsurgency manual for its soldiers in order to bring the war doctrine up to speed with the operational realities in Iraq and Afghanistan. So strong was the military's avoidance of fighting insurgents or guerrillas in urban settings, that this is the first field manual on urban counterinsurgency in a generation. A final draft of the field manual–FM 3-24–was leaked in June of 2006

Marine Corp commander James Mattis–with leadership experience in southern Afghanistan and Iraq, including leading the Fallujah assault–was tapped to oversee the penning of the manual, along with army general David Petraeus. Mattis, known as "Mad Dog," is an architect of the three-block war strategy. Mattis made headlines in February 2005 when he told a public audience during a recruiting speech: "It's a lot of fun to fight 'em, it's a hell of a hoot, it's fun to shoot some people. I'll be right up front with you, I like brawlin', and one thing we have to do is make certain we're advertising, recruiting, selecting the right kind of people to go into this fight so you're not out there with people who have any misunderstanding what this is all about. You go into Afghanistan, you've got guys who slapped women around for five years 'cause they didn't wear a veil. Guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway, so it's a helluva lot of fun to shoot 'em. It's a good fight. But as much emotional satisfaction–for all the emotional satisfaction you get from really whacking somebody like that, the main effort, ladies and gentlemen, is to diminish the conditions that drive people to sign up for these kinds of insurgencies."

In his more refined pronouncements, Mattis has been a leading figure in the transformation of the Marines, from boot camp to doctrine. His model is the three-block war; it is the urban battlefield. As Mattis said in an influential paper published in the journal of the US Naval Institute: "Look at combat in the 'contested zones' of urban and other complex terrain. We need to create the same sort of dominance we currently hold in the Global Commons to our ground forces in these contested zones."

In short, Mattis argues that if the US is to maintain its dominance in the coming era, it will have to micromanage hostile urban environments. This is reflected throughout the counterinsurgency manual, which is clear in its repeated references to the doctrine as proactive, management warfare; warfare of choice. The three-block war doctrine is a model for domination, first and foremost; it is a warfighting doctrine with the express purpose of cementing US dominance in the world for the next generation and beyond.

The counterinsurgency Field Manual is thorough and serious, and stands in sharp contrast to the political rhetoric of the War on Terror. The two hundred fifty page manual makes very little use of the term or the concept of 'terrorism', noting in the first sentence that rather than random violence, the uprisings that forces will face are "political in nature" and deeply rooted in the social fabric of what the military would euphemistically term the 'contested zone', namely: the community.

The objective is not to deal with individual threats; it is to construct doctrine to deal with wars of imposition and conquest in the new environment.

Canadian planners tend to focus attention on the two other blocks of the three-block war in order to cement the political message that they are trying to advance within the peacekeeper mythology. The goal, according to the doctrine, is to set the 'development' aspects to the tune of the combat element. A Maclean's embed last year described a pre-battle pep-talk in which Lt Col Ian Hope sent CF into battle by calling them Canada's "developmental warriors."

The political messaging of the Afghanistan mission centres around a "hearts and minds" campaign. Rhetorically, the three-block war doctrine is well-suited to Canada's aggressive shift. It maintains the "peacekeeping" and "clothing refugees" missionary elements that have been so deeply entrenched in the national consciousness. Emerging as it is from the era of the peacekeeper mythology, Canadian opinion-makers would prefer this to be the face of the Canadian Forces until it can be determined that the Canadian populace is behind the warfighting component.

The corporate press has been happy to oblige. In the spring of 2006, as the fighting in Afghanistan reached the fiercest levels since 2001, Maclean's ran a feature under the title "Canada's Kandahar balancing act," and illustrated the piece with "the other side of Canada's rather menacing military firepower." The magazine chose a picture of Master Corporal Elizabeth Churchill cradling an Afghan baby.

The generals put more clarity to the issue. As Major-General Stuart Beare said during Senate committee testimony, Canadian Forces are "not necessarily trying to win hearts and minds here. That's a pretty tall order. You're trying to create tolerance of the international forces."

In short, says Hillier, CF must "be combat-ready and be able to conduct operations to survive. If you want to deter people from threatening your mission, you have to be seen as capable and seen as too big a bully to take on. If all those things fail and you cannot deter violence, you have to be able to fight and win. That is fundamental to everything we do."

It was precisely in articulating the three-block war doctrine during a cross-country speaking tour with Bill Graham that Rick Hillier ripped a page from General Mattis's playbook and made Canadian headlines with his comment that Canadian Forces were fighting "detestable murderers and scumbags" in Afghanistan, in defence of Canada's interests. "We're not the public service of Canada," he said. "We're not just another department. We are the Canadian Forces, and our job is to be able to kill people."

Afghanistan is not a random act of Canadian policy; it is the entire foreign policy apparatus acting on a well-articulated plan. Despite the well-crafted mythology of the peacekeeper, Canada's intervention in Afghanistan is important not because it is a departure from the past but because it is, in the words of the country's top soldier, a "glimpse of the future."

Jon Elmer determines that Afghanistan is not a random act of Canadian policy, but an entire foreign policy apparatus acting on a well-articulated plan.

'Disengagement' Affords Some Relief for Gaza Fishing Enclave

Thu, 20 Oct 2005 16:37:36 +0000

Coastal villages no longer a veritable prison, but access to fishing, export remain blocked

[This article was originally published by New Standard News, a daily source of original journalism. Non-corporate journalism depends on reader support; please consider contributing to New Standard News to ensure more independent coverage from the Middle East and elsewhere.]

AL-MAWASI, PALESTINE -- Few Gaza communities stand to benefit more from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's August "disengagement" than the coastal area of Al-Mawasi. Abutting the Gush Katif settlements, Al-Mawasi, a 14 kilometer strip of land just one kilometer wide, had been a veritable prison for years.

The enclave's 5,000 residents were wedged between the settlement and the sea, cut off from the rest of Gaza. Restrictions were so harsh that the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem characterized them as "incarceration… strangulation… and collective punishment."

For the past five years, people could only access Al-Mawasi through a single checkpoint, and it was virtually impossible for non-residents to enter the area – be they family, friends or merchants.

"Life here was impossible," Ismail Abu Zahr told The NewStandard while standing on the Al-Mawasi beach.

"Free movement" – as the Israeli army called the lowest level of access restriction – was enforced by an unseen soldier on a loudspeaker and a magnetic ID-card system, and was restricted to women, men over 40 and children under 12. Residents, however, say this eased level of restriction was almost never in place, and traffic through the checkpoint by anyone was essentially non-existent.

Al-Mawasi's residents are primarily fishermen, farmers and their families, the land being some of Gaza's most fertile. Israel's harsh closure regime left Al-Mawasi's fishermen without access to the sea, and farmers without a market for their goods.

Back-to-back Shipping

Goods entering Al-Mawasi were subject to a "back-to-back" system, whereby trucks offloaded their produce or merchandise at the checkpoint and reloaded them into another truck on the other side.

This form of transport, which is still the system in place between the Gaza Strip and Israel, is enormously costly and time-consuming, resulting in spoiled produce and inflated prices for merchandise.

According to a report by B'Tselem, the Israeli government successfully cut movement of goods to and from Al-Mawasi by 90 percent from pre-intifada levels, with closures beginning after the September 2000 uprising.

The back-to-back transportation system and suffocating restrictions crippled the enclave's economy. Farmers and fishermen who depend on the export of their goods for survival were forced to seek employment as day laborers in Gaza's Jewish settlements. "We were left with no other options," Ismail Abu Zahr said, casting his fishing line into the sea for the first time in years.

But even the pool of Palestinians able to find labor in Jewish settlements was limited, falling from more than 1,000 workers in 2000 to less than 150 by 2005 as Israeli security concerns increased and even cheaper, primarily Asian and Eastern European, migrant laborers filled the positions.

The houses of Al-Mawasi stood in stark contrast to the villas of the Gush Katif settlement. Dilapidated shanties made of sheet metal and discarded building supplies are only meters away from the remains of what were once the lavish seaside homes of Jewish settlers.

Former Palestinain summer home occupied by settlers and destroyed upon their departure.

A row of a dozen homes on the beachfront in Al-Mawasi -- originally summer homes for Palestinians --were taken over and occupied by settlers from Gush Katif. When the settlers and the IDF quit Gaza this year,the militaryeffectively destroyedthe structures alongwith the settler's villas in Gush Katif. © Jon Elmer 2005

Living in conditions of crushing poverty, less than 15 percent of Al-Mawasi residents were connected to the electricity grid; the rest relied on two generators that operated only in the evenings. With tight army checkpoints, residents had sporadic and unpredictable access to fuel, dictated by the apparent whims of Israeli authorities.

Withdrawal from Gaza

The departure of the settlers offers modest relief for the population of Gaza, but the optimism here is still very guarded.

"To make this pullout a positive development," said Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi, General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, a political reform organization, "Palestinians must have freedom of movement, the freedom to import and export goods, control of air and sea, and free passage between Gaza and the West Bank."

It is the continued military control that Israel exerts over Gaza that worries Barghouthi, who finished as runner-up in the most recent Palestinian presidential election.

Indeed, Israeli F-16s continue to roar overhead daily, the coastline is spotted with Israeli warships patrolling Gaza's waters, and the borders with Israel and Gaza are effectively sealed.

"Israel must give up Gaza completely and stop interfering in the daily life and affairs of Palestinians," Barghouthi told The NewStandard, noting his concern that the back-to-back shipping regime and lack of an economic link even to the West Bank – let alone the rest of the world – would stifle Gaza's economy.

An Al-Mawasi fisherman holding his day's catch along the Gaza coastline. Al-Fishermen here are delighted by the recent evacuation of the settlers and soldiers from the area, but are still unable to access the sea because of a de facto prohibition by Israeli warships patrolling the coast. © Jon Elmer 2005

"This is very important," he said. "Gaza is a very small area: only 1 percent of the land of historic Palestine, and less than 6 percent of the occupied territories. Alone, it is not viable economically: it has 1.4 million people in an area that is 366 square kilometers… and Israel remains in control of its land, air and sea."

The World Bank cites similar concerns. In a comprehensive June 2004 report commissioned by both the Israeli government and the Palestinian National Authority, the World Bank warned that unless Israel's restrictions on the freedom of movement and goods are overhauled the disengagement will have "very little impact" on Gaza's economy and "would create worse hardship than is seen today."

The World Bank points to Israel's closure regime as, "above all," the source of the Palestinian economic recession, which it characterized as "among the worst in modern history," exceeding the scale of losses experienced during America's Great Depression and the Argentine collapse of 2001-2002.

Still, Much Work to be Done

Despite the hardships, there is a tangible sense of relief among Al-Mawasi residents with the departure of the Gaza settlements, army sniper towers and internal checkpoints.

"There was a huge celebration here," Ali Maharbe told TNS on the Al-Mawasi shoreline. "And the sheer joy of finally going to the sea again," he said, smiling.

"When the settlers were here, I was prevented from fishing," Maharbe continued. "The situation is a lot better but we are still forbidden from using our boats, so the fishing is tough," he added, digging into his sand-covered cache to show off the day's modest catch gained by casting his line into the ocean from the beach.

Many of Al-Mawasi's fishermen described the same prohibitions. When TNS visited the enclave, there was not a single Palestinian boat at sea, but scores of fisherman were casting their lines and plying their trade with improvised nets from the beach.

The IDF denies that there are still formal restrictions on Palestinian boats in the sea off Al-Mawasi, but it is apparent that the unofficial rules are well-understood by Palestinians, who say it is not uncommon for the Israeli warships to shoot at the fishermen and their boats, even on the shore.

An Israeli warship patrols the sea off the Al-Mawasi coast. Local fishermen say that while official restrictions against them taking their boats offshore have been lifted, they still risk having Israeli gunboats fire upon them. © Jon Elmer 2005

Israeli warships and patrol boats are clearly visible, as are Israeli trawlers. Fishing well within the coastal waters of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli fishing boats are "guarded" by the naval vessels. "That is part of the operational duties of the Navy," the IDF media office told TNS.

Still, for the first time in years the beach is full of Al-Mawasi's fishermen visibly enjoying their new freedom, however limited.

Jon Elmer reports from Gaza, where, despire 'disengagement', fishing boats are shot at and access to foreign markets remains blocked

Air Raids Terrorize Gaza Residents, Target Key Infrastructure

Tue, 04 Oct 2005 17:50:18 +0000

Homes, roadway, school bombed; sonic booms are new tactic

GAZA CITY--Israeli pilots carried out a series of air and artillery strikes throughout the Gaza Strip, targeting civilian infrastructure, assassinating militants and striking fear into the population with deafening noise as low-flying F-16 fighter jets shatter the sound barrier overhead day and night.

Coming only two weeks after the completion of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Gaza "disengagement," the offensive by the Israeli Air Force is officially ongoing, though strikes have been suspended for some days following a unilateral ceasefire observed by Hamas militants.

Dubbed "Operation First Rain," the offensive is ostensibly designed to target terrorists responsible for firing improvised rockets into the southern Israeli town of Sderot, injuring several people. A spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told The New Standard that militants fired a total of 37 rockets and three mortar shells from Gaza between Friday, September 23 and Tuesday, September 27, when the leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad declared an end to the rocket attacks.

Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said publicly that Israel would respond to the attacks with an "iron fist," and Israeli retaliation continued for days after Hamas's missiles fell silent.

"If the sleep of Sderot's children is disturbed and there's a feeling of insecurity among some Sderot residents, the same will be true for Hamas and [Islamic] Jihad leaders," he told reporters on the Gaza–Israel border.

The insecurity in Gaza, however, is felt far beyond the Palestinian militias. In addition to political offices, metal shops and warehouses, Israeli warplanes and helicopters have fired missiles at civilian infrastructure including a roadway, school, bridge, residential homes, and two power generators that were struck early Wednesday morning, cutting off electricity to Gaza City's 500,000 residents for hours.

The sonic booms that erupt when F-16 fighter jets break the sound barrier over the tiny coastal strip often knock pictures from the walls of Palestinian homes. Residents are compelled to keep their windows open lest the pressure blow them out. The sporadic, thunderous claps rattle the nerves of adults and children alike.

The collapsed ceiling of the Al-Arqam elementary school in Gaza City. Israeli An Israeli military spokesperson told The New Standard the school was bombed becuase "it was bringing up the next generation of Hamas members." © Jon Elmer 2005

Sajida Srour, the director of a kindergarten and nursery school in Gaza City, said the children – long accustomed to F-16s – scream whenever the sonic booms rip through the air, and it is not uncommon for the children to wet themselves.

If insecurity is the goal, the air raids have been effective, added Fadi Srour, who is among the staff at his mother's nursery. "It works. People are terrified."

Gaza residents told TNS that deafening booms from low-flying supersonic aircraft constitute a tactic that was not used by the Israeli Air Force when Jewish settlers lived in Gaza.

Assassinations Resume

Israel also resumed its policy of assassination this week, killing senior Islamic Jihad leader Mohammad Sheikh Khalil on Sunday with a targeted strike at his car on a busy Gaza City street. The Israeli military killed four others it said were suspected militants in two separate attacks in Gaza.

Mofaz threatened to widen the targeted killings. "If Hamas [leaders] Mahmoud Al-Zahar, Ismail Haniyeh and others continue to shoot Qassam [rockets], we will send them to where Yassin and Rantisi are now," the minister said, referring to the assassinations of Hamas co-founders Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantissi, killed by Israeli air strikes in early 2004.

Israel has assassinated more than 150 Palestinian military and political leaders during the five-year uprising.

According to a Palestine Red Crescent Society report, the Israeli air strikes injured at least 32 civilians throughout the week, including an infant who was among the 22 wounded when Israel bombed the Dar Al-Arqam school in Gaza City on Saturday.

Abu Yassin, who lives across the street from the school, said the two missiles that struck the school sounded similar to the sonic booms, "except this time we saw a huge flash of light, followed by screaming and crying and then the sound of sirens as ambulances came to evacuate the wounded."

Large sections of the school were destroyed as floors collapsed on top of one another. Crushed and mangled desks and chairs were left covered in a thick concrete dust. Several nearby houses were sprayed with large pieces of shrapnel, and a large chunk of the school's floor tiling lay in Abu Yassin's garden.

A classroom in the Al-Arqam elementary school. The school was one of numerous targets bombed so far by Israel during "Operation First Rain," which the army said was designed to target militants responsible for homemade rocket fire from Gaza into Israel. © Jon Elmer 2005

Dar Al-Arqam is an Islamic boys school in the Tufah district of Gaza City. The school is part of Hamas's expansive social infrastructure throughout Gaza, which includes daycares, hospitals and economic welfare programs.

Al-Arqam's more than 1,000 students are predominately in the elementary grades; enrollment is open to all Palestinians, and the school operates under a Palestinian Authority license.

Israel, however, makes no distinction between the civilian and military infrastructure of Hamas. Israeli Captain Yael Hartmann told TNS that the school was targeted because "it was bringing up the next generation of Hamas members."

The day after the attack, hundreds of school children took to the streets in protest of the bombing.

Increased Tensions

The Palestinian rocket fire began early on the morning of Friday, September 23 in response to an Israeli raid in the West Bank city of Tul Karm during which Israel killed three Islamic Jihad militants. The rockets increased following an explosion at a Hamas rally in the Gaza refugee camp of Jabalya on Friday afternoon, which killed 21 Palestinians and injured more than 60, including many children. Hamas blamed Israel, but most other sources claim the explosion was an accident involving Hamas weaponry. Hamas has since formally discontinued all armed rallies.

On Wednesday, Israel fired artillery into the Gaza Strip, hitting a field outside Beit Hanoun from where many of the rockets were fired.

The chief of Operation First Rain, Major General Yisrael Zvi, told reporters that Israel may use artillery against civilian homes in the densely populated area of northern Gaza. "We will warn residents, make sure they leave, and then fire artillery into the area," he said without elaborating on how they would ensure the population – some 100,000 people – had fled.

"The Israel Defense Forces will turn this town into a demilitarized zone," Zvi added in reference to Beit Hanoun.

Israeli forces, armor and artillery are currently amassed on the Gaza border, threatening a ground invasion.

On Sunday, Captain Hartmann characterized Operation First Rain as a "success" and told TNS that the offensive would continue despite Hamas's public statements and adherence to a ceasefire since Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Wednesday marked the end of the fifth year of the Palestinian uprising that began on September 28, 2000. In the fifth year, the least deadly thus far, 425 Palestinians and 56 Israelis died in violence, according to data collected from the IDF, Israeli Foreign Ministry and human rights group B'Tselem, Ha'aretz reported.

Israel's first air campaign since withdrawal has targeted a school and other facilities, and marks the introduction of sonic booms as a tactic. Jon Elmer reports from Gaza.

Violence, Poverty Underscore Story of Iraqi Refugees in Jordan

Thu, 28 Jul 2005 20:48:11 +0000

Iraqi men in a park in Amman, Jordan. Photo: Jon Elmer 2005

AMMAN, Jul 22 - Hisham Jamil is unequivocal when asked why he and his wife have chosen a life of unemployment in a foreign country over the life they built together in Baghdad.

"You know why we left," he said as he walked hand-in-hand with his wife, Hamsa, down a busy street here in Jordan's capital. "The whole world knows why we left. We can't live in Baghdad anymore; it is as simple as that. Life is impossible."

Jamil, a fashion designer in his now-former life in Baghdad, said his family's home was destroyed in March 2004 by a massive car bomb that targeted Baghdad's popular Mount Lebanon Hotel. "Our home was adjacent to the Hotel. It has been structurally damaged to such a degree that selling it is impossible; so too is living in it," Jamil said.

Transcending economic and social class, religion and hometown, the principal reason Iraqis living in Jordan cite for fleeing their country is the ubiquitous violence and instability that has engulfed and suffocated Iraq since the March 2003 US-led invasion of their country.

Rather than focusing on a grand political narrative, Jamil, like virtually all Iraqis who spoke to The NewStandard, stressed the lack of electricity, sanitation, potable water and absense of security that plagues daily life in Iraq. Because of this, he said, "life is impossible on the most basic level."

Carol, a middle-aged beautician and salon owner in Baghdad's Adhamiyah district, left Iraq in June. She is equally blunt in explaining why she left.

"We are full of frustration and angst," she said over dinner with several Iraqi friends. "No one in the world would leave their home willingly, unless it was under such circumstances."

The violence is, of course, not a mysterious phenomenon to Iraqis. They see it as a direct result of the ongoing occupation.

"At first we believed that America has come to save us from a cursed situation under Saddam Hussein," said Carol. "But in fact they have given us an even greater curse. We have no dignity; we are humiliated. We have no water, no electricity, and no security. We don't understand. We know the Americans can make the situation better, but they are not."

Popular accounts on the streets of Amman place the number of Iraqis in Jordan seeking refuge from the war at 500,000 and higher, though only a tiny fraction of these people are officially categorized as refugees.

Jordanian Interior Ministry General Secretary Mukhaimer Abu Jamous told TNS that the accepted number of Iraqis in Jordan is more like 300,000 – though he was quick to claim that these are not refugees, but rather people on personal business or vacation.

An official at the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) in Amman said that 15,000 Iraqis had received temporary protection for asylum-seekers pending official refugee status. Only 800 Iraqis have received official refugee status in Jordan, she added, almost all of whom fled during the Saddam Hussein regime. The official refused to allow TNS to report her name, claiming it is UNHCR policy for spokespeople not to be identified in news stories.

According to the official, "only in the rarest of occasions" have those who fled after March 2003 received official designation, and therefore the attendant compensation from UNHCR. All such rare cases are characterized as the "most vulnerable" – primarily the elderly or ill.

A lack of resources makes outreach to those Iraqis who have fled the war impossible for the UNHCR, the official said, and only those who approach the offices are able to navigate the necessary bureaucratic machinations in order to qualify as recognized refugees.

Both the Interior Ministry and the UN agency said that, although they had expected one, there was no influx of Iraqis as a result of the war, and that the flow across the border has been steady but unchanged by the conditions in Iraq. "Influx is a big word, we cannot say that that is what has happened," said Adel Al-Hadid, director of international organizations at the Interior Ministry.

Refugees shopping in an almost all-Iraqi area of downtown Amman, Jordan, July 2005. Photo: Jon Elmer 2005.

Yet, on the streets of Amman, popular sentiment is that "influx" is exactly the word for it. Whether in the malls, parks, or simply on the street, Iraqis are everywhere in Amman.

While most Iraqis living in Jordan were able to successfully escape the violence of their home country, others, like Suasan Shakir, were not so lucky.

Shakir left the violence of Iraq overland on a makeshift gurney in the collapsed back seat of an SUV. A terrorist attack left her paralyzed in November 2004. A man trying to sneak a bomb into the bank where Shakir worked detonated his deadly burden early when police stopped him at a checkpoint. His payload of explosives killed two officers and sprayed shrapnel throughout the immediate area.

Along with about two-dozen other bank employees being shuttled to work on a minibus, Shakir was waiting at the same checkpoint. Five pieces of shrapnel embedded in her spine, and one penetrated the base of her skull, coming to rest in her brain. She fell paralyzed instantly, losing her ability to see or speak.

The staff at a Baghdad hospital was able to stabilize Shakir's condition, but her husband says a lack of resources and medicines robbed her of the chance to improve in her home country. Doraid Kadhim Abd-al Hameed took the opportunity to move his wife to Amman in search of better care, presently unavailable in Iraq after fifteen years of sanctions, war and occupation.

In the more than three months since Shakir arrived in Amman, her husband reported, their family has spent upward of $25,000 USD on her care, with no help from any government.

Abd-al Hameed says he has sold everything of value to pay for his wife's care: his bookstore, a building he rented-out and his car. "I bought my bookstore in 1996 for $10,000," Abd-al Hameed recalled. "Because of the situation in Iraq, I received only $2,000 when I sold it one month ago," he said. His modest monthly income of $200 has been all but eliminated by the sale of his store and the building he owned in Baghdad. The substantial income they claim now is the $125 USD per month Shakir receives from her former employer.

"If we were to take legal action against the British and the Americans – who created this catastrophe for all Iraqis – the problem would be how to even imagine what degree of compensation to ask for," Abd-al Hameed added. "We have lost everything: our future, our families' future…" His voice trailed off as he choked-back tears.

Shakir's condition has improved since coming to the Ibn Al-Haytham Hospital in Amman. Last month she began to see for the first time since the accident and her speech is slowly returning, though during a bedside interview, her enunciation was limited, her words slurred.

Yet, in a day or so, Shakir will return to Iraq, the family unable to sustain the costs of treatment in Amman.

"Please, I ask that you put more pressure on the American government – on the Western governments – to pull out of Iraq, immediately," said Abd-al Hameed as Shakir wept.

The Poverty of Diaspora

The package of twelve kitchen sponges with scouring-pads cost pennies each, but for Thayla Kareem they represent hope that she will someday return to her family in southern Iraq. Kareem is one of thousands of Iraqi refugees struggling to make ends meet on the streets of Amman.

An Iraqi street vendor sells her wares in Amman, Jordan, July 2005. Photo: Jon Elmer 2005

Known as the basta – an Arabic term that describes their simple existence, whereby their goods are spread out on cardboard or small mats placed on the ground, rather than in proper market stalls – Iraqi women such as Kareem are fixtures on streets throughout the city.

Dressed from head to toe in traditional, flowing black abaayas, these women sell everything from sponges and toothbrushes to individual cigarettes -- anything that comes cheap and can be resold at a modest profit.

Because of debt incurred starting her small street enterprise, and the meager revenues it brings in, Kareem is stuck in Jordan, hundreds of miles away from her family in Amara, in southern Iraq. "The work is not good enough," Kareem said, squatting in the hot midday sun on the marble steps of a grocery store.

"I pay 30 [Jordanian dinars] every month for rent, electricity and water," noted Kareem. Thirty JD is about $42 USD, a substantial burden on her monthly take. She shares an apartment with seven other Iraqi women – all of them street vendors.

The economic difficulties affect a large swath of the Iraqi refugee population in Jordan. On any given day the downtown parks of Amman are a haven for unemployed Iraqi men, ranging in age from late teens to elders.

Ziad, a 25-year-old originally from Baghdad, now spends his afternoons sitting listlessly in the park beside the Roman Amphitheatre in Amman's downtown core, along with dozens of other Iraqis.

"I have been here for eighteen months," Ziad said. "I left Iraq after the war, as the resistance began to escalate. I could no longer get to work safely; car bombs and American attacks made such a simple task a gamble for your life."

In the summer of 2003, Ziad said he began to line up for the newly opening positions in the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps and police forces. "But how many bombs exploding in the line-ups would it take before you decided to stop?" Ziad asked rhetorically.

"I would rather be unemployed in Jordan than dead in Iraq," he added flatly.

Ziad said he has had several odd jobs since arriving in Jordan, including one in a restaurant, where his salary was one-half that of his Jordanian coworkers. He quit, frustrated at the wage discrimination.

"I search each day for work," Ziad insisted, "but everyone says the same thing: 'I'll call you back.' They never do."

There is a degree of resentment, simmering just below the surface, toward the Iraqis living among Jordanians, believing their arrival has driven prices up dramatically. A Jordanian taxi driver put the common nationalist perspective in plain terms: "You see, they sold their country and came here to buy ours."

The competition for "unskilled" labor has become fierce as well, as so-called "illegal" Iraqi refugees have allegedly driven wages down across the board by working for significantly less than the previously prevailing rate. Meanwhile, signs can be spotted in Amman that advertise "Jordanian workers wanted," a not-so-subtle reference to the developing segregation.

Work permits are very difficult to obtain for Iraqis in Jordan, and their cost is often prohibitive. At approximately $225 each, a one-year permit costs more than most "unskilled" jobs pay in a month.

"I have tried so hard to get a work permit," said Hisham Jamil, the former fashion designer. "It seems that it isn't possible for Iraqis."

Abu Jamous of the Interior Ministry explained that this obstacle is a natural step in protecting Jordanian workers.

Salah, a Shia Muslim from the southern city of Hilla, has been living in Jordan since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in April 2003.

At 27, Salah said he possesses a degree in Computer Science, which should render him a hot resource in Iraq, a country that has experienced a relative boom in Internet access and the spread of technology since the fall of Saddam. Instead, Salah, spray bottle hanging from his pocket, pushes a broom through the Mecca Mall, collecting fallen ketchup packages and random French fries strewn about the bustling food court.

In Amman, Salah lives like many refugees who do not have the support of a wealthy family; that is, in a small apartment that he shares with 15 other Iraqis. He pays only $25 USD a month for his accommodations, "which means I can send the rest home to my family in Hilla," he said.

"I came here for work, to feed my family," he said. His family in Hilla has 20 members dependent almost solely on Salah's modest wages. Salah said he is the only one of them with work.

Salah works in the mall from 7 a.m. until the mall's midnight closing, seven days a week. His monthly pay of about $160 USD constitutes significantly less than the $200-plus made by Jordanians for the same work.

This discrimination is simply the reality for most Iraqis who are fortunate enough to find work in Jordan.

Salah obtained his job in housekeeping in April 2003. "Back then, it was relatively easy for Iraqis to work," he said. "But I fear my time is running out. My contract ends at the end of the year." he lamented. When his contract expires, so too does his work permit.

As he sees it, when that happens, Salah will have two options: either obtain an extension on his work permit -- virtually impossible for Iraqis working in the general labor sector unless their employers vouch for them -- or else live illegally and likely unemployed in Jordan, facing the possibility of sanction and deportation.

Abu Jamous said that the Jordanian Public Security Department is "proactive" in working with inspectors from the Department of Labor in seeking out "illegals," as he referred to undocumented immigrants, be they Iraqi or otherwise.

If workers are caught in violation of the typical three-month visas or year-long work permits, Abu Jamous added, they are detained in police custody for seven days before being deported to the third country of their choice. According to the Interior Ministry, immigrants generally choose expulsion to a country like Yemen, which does not require a visa.

"For humanitarian reasons, we cannot deport them back to Iraq if their life is deemed to be in danger there," said Abu Jamous.

Still, that does little to quell Salah's anxiety about his soon-to-expire permit. "I have to support my family," he said. "I do not know what I will do."

In Jordan, Jon Elmer describes the plight of thousands of Iraqi refugees.

On Iraq-Jordan Border, Various Roles Play Out in Desert

Tue, 19 Jul 2005 17:40:54 +0000

AL-KARAMA, Jul 13 - Omar Al-Jarirri is the controller of the Mahat'ta, the staging point for travelers preparing to make the 1,000-kilometer trip from Amman, Jordan to Baghdad, Iraq by car. This is the way most Iraqis travel in and out of Iraq. Air service in occupied Iraq is cost-prohibitive for most.

The departure area is a dusty harbor of white, late-model Chevrolet Suburban sport utility vehicles.

The drivers, almost all Iraqi, often sleep in their vehicles, partly in order to get a good spot in the line-up and partly because their homes are in Iraq, a thousand kilometres away. The vehicles most often leave Amman in the middle of the night to avoid driving in Iraq after dusk. Almost none of the drivers owns his own vehicle; they are simply the ones hired to negotiate the harrowing journey to Baghdad.

A small man dressed in a flowing white dishdasha, Al-Jarirri walks with a pronounced limp. "Ninety-nine percent" of the travelers on the Amman-to-Baghdad voyage are Iraqis who have fled their war-torn country and are "going back to visit family," he said.

The highway, a vast desert expanse marked by signs warning of camels, is a rat race of SUVs, leap-frogging one another for the whole 400 kilometres to the Al-Karama border crossing.

Bilal, who has driven the route regularly since the climax of the US-led invasion of his country in 2003, is a 22-year-old from Sadr City, the sprawling, poverty-stricken Shia district in Baghdad. After the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime, Bilal applied for a nursing position at Baghdad's biggest hospital, Madinat Al-Tib -- Medicine City. But when he called on his school to obtain his nursing records, Bilal learned that the files had gone missing when looters stole the school's computers during the chaos that swept over Baghdad in the first days of US occupation.

"All of my records were destroyed. You must have seen this on TV," he said, referring to the riotous images broadcast around the world in the days following the fall of Baghdad.

"'You're free, take what you want,'" Bilal mimicked sardonically, a reference to Rumsfeld's infamous statement in the second week of April: "Freedom's untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things."

Bilal said he proposed to a woman about a year ago, but her mother refused the marriage because he no longer had a degree and could not acquire decent work without one. So he tried to pay a bribe in order to get a job as a police officer, but it failed to secure him one of the most dangerous jobs on earth.

Instead, he drives the infamous land route, which Iraqis refer to simply as "the highway," through some of Iraq's most dangerous areas, including the restive Al-Anbar province.

The highway requires operators to be alert and hyper-vigilant, always on the lookout for US convoys, which require the drivers to pullover as far as possible.

"If we drive too fast, or are too tired to notice the American convoy in the distance, they will shoot me up, and waste my car," said Bilal, something that has happened more times than anyone knows on the highway and elsewhere throughout Iraq.

The drivers are not permitted to work legally in Jordan, and in Iraq, they are under siege.

"Why do I have to stay up all night to make a simple living," Bilal said, rubbing his eyes between deep yawns. "We are exhausted. This is no life."

Usually, Bilal shuttles between four and six passengers per trip. Though each traveler pays 15 Jordanian dinars -- about $20 USD -- for the ride to Baghdad, Bilal makes only about $40 USD for each round trip, a journey that generally has him away from home for four or five days.

With each trip home, he imports items that his family needs but finds difficult to obtain in Iraq. This time, the precious cargo is boxes of laundry and dish soap.

The dominance that the Suburbans enjoy over the Jordanian road is not broken until about 350 km's east of Amman, near the town of Al-Ruwayshid. There, they are joined by the bah'haar, or "merchant seamen" -- smugglers who run Iraqi gasoline out to Jordan.

Omar Al-Hayek, one of the elder seamen, explains the moniker: "Just as the fishermen who head out onto the sea in search of plenty, for the benefit of those on shore, we are transporting the riches of Iraq: the gas."

Apparently one of four original seamen, Al-Hayek, said he has been smuggling gas across the border to Jordan since the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1988. Before that, he explained, the smuggling was in the opposite direction, from Jordan to Iraq.

But the end of the war saw Iraq's oil production skyrocket, reaching levels comparable to those boasted by Saudi Arabia. Al-Hayek describes the years following the war with Iran as the glory days of the merchant seamen.

His car, a baby-blue 1991 Chevrolet Caprice station-wagon, is in relatively decent condition. Given the volatile cargo, it has to be. Yet, juxtaposed against the late-model Suburbans, the seamen's sedans of '80s vintage, retro-fitted with large storage tanks that hold up to 500 liters of gas, look decidedly aged and worn. They travel at about half the speed of the Suburbans.

"I take the car into my mechanic after each day, just to make sure everything is right, and safe," Al-Hayek said.

The smell of fuel in the car is overwhelming. One little flaw – a flat tire, an errant spark, a damaged muffler – could lead to catastrophe.

Tankers wait on the Jordanian side of the Iraq border for their American military escorts to arrive and take them into the war zone. (© Jon Elmer 2005)

The border is a mesh of people heading west into Jordan – some are Iraqi workers escaping the rampant unemployment and lack of opportunity in their homeland, some are merchants moving their wares to markets elsewhere. Many others are going to visit family members who have escaped the chaos in Iraq or are themselves fleeing.

Refugee camps on the Jordanian side tell this story in stark relief. They lay off the roadside, hastily constructed of tents with tattered sides flapping in the incessent wind that blows from Saudi Arabia to Syria unimpeded. Small funnel clouds of sand dance about the camps, just one element of the desert's relentless brutality indefinitely endured by those lacking the funds to escape the new Iraqi nightmare in style.

Although many Iraqis wealthy enough to move out of the war-torn country did so before, or during the initial stages of the war, the ever-deteriorating security situation in Iraq has increased the refugee flow dramatically.

Still others are simply seeking short reprieve: a vacation in Jordan's resort towns of Aqaba or Petra, or just a hotel in peaceful Amman.

The Fayez family from the Al-Khadimiyah district of Baghdad is one such case. They are taking 10 days to themselves in a three-star hotel in the Jordanian capital. "We need a break," said Nour, the eldest daughter. "The situation is impossible."

Nour recently completed high school and should have much to look forward to. But the conditions in Baghdad are so chaotic and unpredictable that daily life has been all but confined to the home, she relayed. "There is no life; there is no hope. We must leave."

The border is a major conduit for the machinery of occupation as well. Dozens of trucks – many of them tankers importing fuels for the aircraft and armoured vehicles, others supply trucks toting cargo covered by flapping tarps – wait in long line-ups for military escort into Iraq.

In no small part, it is these convoys that make the highway so dangerous, as they are vast, vulnerable and coveted targets for ambush. Their burned-out carcases litter the highway across Iraq as testament.

On the Jordanian side, the border is patrolled by the Jordanian military; on the Iraqi side, it is the US Marine Corps keeping a watchful eye.

The actual border crossing station between Jordan and Iraq looks like most other terminals between nations, with long line-ups and crowds in the various offices. But here at Al-Karama, the language of expedition is spoken in cash.

Caught in a long wait, cars nudging bumpers with hardly an inch between them, a single Jordanian Dinar slipped subtly out the window to an official will secure a key place in the line-up, or may in fact open another lane altogether. With each incremental move, and each official encountered, the appropriate documents are passed out the window, the necessary money stowed inside. Bilal, the veteran driver, is adept at this form of communication.

The Al-Karama border area is patrolled by a unit from the US Marines' 2nd Division.

Attracted by the sound of English spoken with North American accents, one of the Marines notices that the passport officer is demanding from The NewStandard, a bribe well beyond the usual $1 or $2.

"Hey, 'hajji,' you takin' money? How many times did I tell you not to take money," barked a 19-year-old Marine named Rusty. The epithet "hajji" is an Arabic term conveying great respect, commonly turned on its head by occupation personnel to disparage Arabs and other brown-skinned people in Iraq. "I tell you, we always have to baby-sit these guys," Rusty remarked condescendingly.

Rusty said he graduated high school in May 2004 and immediately enlisted. A distinct accent confirmed his claim to North Carolina as home. In March, the Corps deployed him to the border crossing, where he will likely remain until September.

Rusty's father, also a Marine, only recently returned to the US after serving his own tour in Iraq. "My mom used to worry all the time; now she only worries half the time."

Rusty, dressed to the brim in uniform -- helmet, sunglasses, Kevlar flak jacket with shielding neck-piece, hand on the shaft of his M-16 – was sweating, visibly uncomfortable. "They hate us," he said. "They sure want us out of their country."

Asked if he sees himself leaving, Rusty responded without a moment of hesitation. "No way; we'll be here forever."

Rusty said his platoon has not experienced much combat. "We raid that village over there all the time," he said, pointing to the village of Trebil, "but we never find anything."

Asked if he was disappointed at the lack of action, the Marine nodded slowly. "Yeah, I mean, it would make me feel better about myself," Rusty said, lifting his helmet to wipe sweat from his forehead.

Hours later in Trebil, a village general store owner named Abu Mustafa sarcastically contested Rusty's claim of weekly incursions. "Not really," he said smiling. "Once we went fifteen days without a search."

Jon Elmer speaks to truckers, soldiers, shopkeepers and migrant workers at the edge of the occupation of Iraq.

U.S. has Invasive, High-Tech Plans for Fallujah's Returning Refugees

Sun, 12 Dec 2004 05:57:40 +0000

The New Standard -- Occupation forces intend to erect a "model city" from the ruins of Fallujah, including a high-tech security infrastructure complete with DNA testing, retina scans and ID badges for all the city's residents, according to Marine Corps officers interviewed by the Boston Globe.

Under plans currently on the table, before re-entering their rubble-strewn city the more than 200,000 refugees who fled the month-long American offensive in Fallujah will be required to pass through what are being called "citizen processing centers," where they will be screened and a database of their identities will be created through a series of procedures, including DNA testing and retina scans.

Identification badges displaying the individual's home address would be mandatory in the new Fallujah described by Marines, and cars -- the makeshift delivery device of choice for insurgent bombings -- would be banned altogether.

According to the Globe, Marine officers are also debating compulsory employment for all Fallujah's men in military-type reconstruction corps, a system they compare to that established in post-World War Two Germany.

"They're never going to like us," said Lieutenant Colonel Dave Bellon, a Marine intelligence officer who believes the US military should exploit Sunni Arabs' traditional ways. "They want to figure out who the dominant tribe is and say, 'I'm with you.' We need to be the benevolent, dominant tribe."

Major General Richard Natonski, who commanded last month's invasion of Fallujah by US and Iraqi forces, credited Iraq's interim government as coming up with all the ideas for rebuilding Fallujah.

Day to Day: Life in Occupied Palestine

Fri, 25 Jun 2004 05:06:20 +0000

A photo essay

Suicide bombings; rocket attacks; bombing raids; asassinations; official reports; posturing; political wrangling. Whatever its bias, mainstream press coverage of the middle east overwhelmingly ignores the daily life of people living under occupation. But without understanding the conditions that Palestinians deal with every day, how can a coherent account of the situation and its attendant crises be attempted? With this in mind, we asked independent journalist Jon Elmer to compile a series of photographs from his three month stay in the West Bank and Gaza. Elmer's work can be found at www.fromoccupiedpalestine.org --ed.

RAFAH–This is a view of the so-called Philadelphi Route, the de facto border between Egypt and the refugee camp of Rafah (pop. 120,000), in the southern Gaza Strip. The fresh bulldozer tracks betray the evidence of what the army named Operation Root Canal, a major Israeli offensive in October 2003 during which armoured bulldozers made more than 1500 people homeless in less than 48 hours in this densely populated camp. The Philadelphi Route is used as a patrol road by Israeli tanks and is lined by sniper towers that keep constant watch (and often shoot, as you can see on the next spread), and is therefore the crucial staging point for Israeli aggression in the Gaza Strip; since the al Aqsa intifada began in September 2000 more than 370 people in Rafah have been killed, at least 240 of them civilians and more than 100 children. According to the United Nations agency that administers the refugee camps in Gaza, UNRWA, more than 14,666 people have been made homeless by Israeli bulldozers, more than 10% of the camp's population.

In Rafah, the violence of occupation is a slow and steady grind. The Israeli army rains bullets into the camp regularly, both from the towers and the tanks–every building facing the Philadelphi Route is pockmarked by thousands of bullets and shells, and the homes facing the border have bricked over their windows to protect their families.

The violence is comprehensive. It is massive : tank shells, Apache helicopter missiles, heavy machine-gun fire are regular features of the Gazan landscape. This wall stands on its own amid dozens of razed homes.

The violence can also be subtle: a single, precisely placed bullet from a sniper's rifle made a hole in this family's rooftop water tank, draining their only water source in a camp with critical water shortages. Many of the water tanks we saw had been patched multiple times.

ROADBLOCK–The Israeli occupation and military control is maintained through a massive network of roadblocks, trenches and checkpoints. In August of 2003, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs counted more than 300 roadblocks in the northern West Bank alone. Virtually every single road in the entire Occupied Palestinian Territories is obstructed in some fundamental way–be it guarded by soldiers, a trench dug across the road making it impassable, or a metal gate. Although justified by the Israelis in terms of 'security', it is difficult to maintain that argument in the face of photographs of unmanned gates. Palestinians I met never made estimates of how long it would take to get through roadblocks and checkpoints, but it typically could take eight hours to travel the 80 kilometres from Jenin to Ramallah. Rough estimates usually provided at least one hour for every 10 kilometres travelled.

Closures have forced Palestinians to detour through fields, olive groves, streams and valleys--only some of the examples of how I travelled--to reach their destination.

Travelling off road is a dangerous proposition, as the window of this Palestinian taxi attests.

JENIN–This is a 'street-school' in the West Bank city of Jenin, a school that is set up in the basement of a mosque or neighbourhood home to tutor children who are prohibited from going to class because the city is under curfew. This means 24-hour house arrest, with with the danger of being shot on sight by Israeli soldiers enforcing the order. In 2002, Jenin had 175 days of curfew. Street-schools are a way for children to learn, close to home. This photograph was taken on the sixth consecutive day of curfew in October 2003.

QALQILIYA–Reaching eight meters into the air, the enormous Wall around Qalqiliya (pop. 50,000) is protected by a razor wire fence and sniper towers every 300 metres. It has all the trappings of a maximum security prison; a single gate regulates exit and entry into the city, manned by an Israeli guard or locked altogether. By the time the wall is complete, more than 50% of the West Bank will be annexed to Israel, and the Palestinians will live in three (depending on how you count) walled enclaves, disconnected from one another, with movement at the whim of the Israeli army.

JENIN–Top: A tank, guns blazing, fills the downtown of Jenin with a diesel smokescreen to enforce a curfew order. The enormous trail of destruction left in the wake of the tanks is constant, and it is left to the community in Jenin to clean it up.

A merchant repairs the concrete sidewalk in front of his store during a break in the Israeli offensive.

HEBRON–An Israeli soldier patrols house to house in the Old City in Hebron (pop. 90,000). 500 Jewish settlers have a colony in the centre of Hebron that is guarded by roughly 700 Israeli soldiers. The entire city is often put under strict curfew (34 schools are closed) to allow the Jewish residents free movement between their fortified settlement and the holy sites.

photo essay by Jon Elmer

Israelis Criticizing Israel

Tue, 02 Dec 2003 03:23:39 +0000

The occupation of Palestine from the inside, out

A dusty expanse is all that remains of 400 houses in Jenin razed by Israeli bulldozers. photo: Valerie Zink/FromOccupiedPalestine.org

Jessica Montell is the Executive Director of B'Tselem, The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. [Read the full interview]

Jon Elmer: Three Jewish settlers from the West Bank settlement of Bat Ayin were convicted on September 17 of plotting to bomb a Palestinian girls school in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of At-Tur, as well as a hospital. Judges said that scores of school children would have been slaughtered if the attack had not been foiled. Back in April a group calling itself Revenge of the Infants hurled grenades into a high school in Jenin, injuring 29. Can you discuss Jewish settler terrorism?

Jessica Montell: Over the past three years we have seen an increase in violence against both Israelis and Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. It seems that as part of this intifada, people on both sides are taking the law into their own hands and committing acts of violence against the other community.

From a human rights perspective, we are more concerned with the response of the Israeli authorities and the responsibility of Israel to enforce the law and to punish people who violate the law. The Israeli authorities are, on the whole, much more lenient toward Jews who break the law-including acts of violence-than they are toward Palestinians.

The intensive investigations, arrests, interrogations, and prosecutions in the case [of the settlers from Bat Ayin] stand in stark contrast to what we see as very lax law enforcement against the routine violence by settlers toward Palestinians.

"People go about their life, their work, their studies, their coffee shops, while just a few kilometres away, a whole society is dying."

We've issued three reports in this intifada, and several before that, about the lax law enforcement [toward settlers]. The findings are that in contrast to incidents of violence by Palestinians, where law enforcement is extremely severe (to the point of collective punishment and violations of the human rights of innocent Palestinians), in the case of violence by settlers, the Israeli authorities tend to be overly forgiving. They turn a blind eye, and do not take enough measures to protect Palestinians and their property.

Jon Elmer: In B'Tselem's report Land Grab (2002), you conclude: "Israel has created in the Occupied Territories a regime of separation based on discrimination, applying two separate systems of law in the same area and basing the rights of individuals on their nationality. This regime is the only one of its kind in the world." Is that not a textbook definition of apartheid?

Jessica Montell: Apartheid has symbolic value because of the South African context. You can draw plenty of similarities, and you can also see lots of differences between apartheid South Africa and Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. I think the word apartheid is useful for mobilizing people because of its emotional power. In some cases, the situation in the West Bank is worse than apartheid in South Africa. For example, the roads network in the West Bank, where Jews are allowed to travel on roads that Palestinians are not allowed to travel on, or the separation fence, which Palestinians call the Apartheid Wall.

I was recently at a conference with John Dugard, who is now the Special Rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights for the Occupations Palestinian Territories, and is originally from South Africa. He was (jokingly) offended that apartheid was being maligned [by its comparison the Israeli occupation]. In South Africa you didn't have apartheid on the roads, you didn't have walls being constructed...

There are, however, clear similarities between apartheid South Africa and Israel's policies in the West Bank, and over the past three years they have become even clearer as the separation has intensified. Every area of life-legal rights, benefits, privileges, allocation of resources, the justice system, criminal prosecution-now has two separate tracks, one for Israelis and one for Palestinians.

* * *

Tanya Reinhart is a professor of linguistics and media studies at Tel Aviv University and Utrecht in the Netherlands. She is the author of Israel-Palestine: How to end the war of 1948 (Seven Stories Press, 2002) [Read the full interview]

"Every area of life-legal rights, benefits, privileges, allocation of resources, the justice system, criminal prosecution-now has two separate tracks, one for Israelis and one for Palestinians."

Jon Elmer: Gideon Levy wrote in Ha'aretz recently: "Every day of quiet in Israel is another day of crass disregard for what is going on in our backyard. If there is no terrorism there are no Palestinians." What is your feeling on that statement?

Tanya Reinhart: It is true that the Israelis view the Palestinians only through their effect on Israeli society. It is really amazing how life in Tel Aviv goes on normally when there is no terror. People go about their life, their work, their studies, their coffee shops, while just a few kilometres away, a whole society is dying.

What is happening in the Territories is a process of slow and steady genocide. People die from being shot and killed, many die from their wounds--the number of wounded is enormous, it is in the tens of thousands. Often, people cannot get medical treatment, so someone with a heart attack will die at a roadblock because they can not get to the hospital. There is a serious shortage of food, so there is malnutrition of children. The Palestinian society is dying-daily-and there is hardly any awareness of this in Israeli society.

The established Israeli peace camp actually collapsed in the Oslo years. From their perspective, they were fully willing to accept that in the Oslo Accords Israel had in fact given the Palestinians back their land. There were a few technicalities to still go over in the coming years, but essentially the occupation was over.

No facts on the ground-like the fact that the number of settlers doubled since Oslo, that the confiscated Palestinian land increased in size, and that the one million Palestinians in Gaza were locked in a prison surrounded by massive electronic fences, with the Israeli army guarding the prison from outside-none of this was actually perceived by the Israeli peace camp.

* * *

Uri Avnery is a founding member of Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc). In his teenage years he was an independence fighter in the Irgun (1938-1942) and later a soldier in the Israeli Army. A three-time Knesset member (1965-1973, and 1979-1983), Avnery was the first Israeli to establish contact with the Palestinian Liberation Organization leadership, in 1974. During the war on Lebanon in 1982 he crossed "enemy lines" to be the first Israeli to meet with Yasser Arafat. He has been a journalist since 1947, including 40 years as editor-in-chief of the newsmagazine Ha'olam Haze, and is the author of numerous books on the conflict. [Read the full interview]

Jon Elmer: Can there be a solution to the conflict that does not properly and justly deal with the Palestinian right of return?

Uri Avnery: The Palestinian right of return has many different aspects. There is the moral aspect, the political aspect, and the practical aspect. I believe that Israel must concede to the Palestinian right of return in principle. Israel must, first of all, assume its responsibility for what happened in 1948, as far as we are to blame-and we are to blame for a great part of it, if not for all-and we must recognize in principle the right of refugees to return.

In practice, we have to find a complex solution to a very complex problem. It is manifestly idiotic to believe that Israel, with five million Jewish citizens and one million Arab citizens, will concede to the return of four million refugees. It will not happen. We can wish it, we can think it's just, that it's moral, but it will not happen. No country commits suicide.

Now the question is: how do we solve the problem by allowing a number of refugees to return to Israel, allowing a number of refugees to return to the Palestinian state, and allowing a number of refugees to settle, with general compensation, where they want to settle? It is not an insolvable problem; there are possible solutions to this problem that concerns human beings. It is not an abstract problem, it involves four million human beings, and more than 50 years of various sorts of misery. It is possible to find a solution for them, and it can be done. It involves some good will and a readiness to give up historic myths on both sides.

Jon Elmer: It is a popular refrain-in North America at least, where I live-that there is no hope. The two sides have been fighting for thousands of years and there is just no solution. Israelis and Palestinians will always kill each other. After all your experience, from independence fighter, to frontline journalist, to member of the Knesset, to peace activist, what is the solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict?

Uri Avnery: The solution is perfectly clear. All parts of the conflict have been amply debated and discussed. Many plans have been put on the table-hundreds. And everybody knows by now exactly the parameters of a peace solution. We at Gush Shalom have published a draft text of a peace agreement, and I am fairly certain that when peace comes about, it will be more or less on these lines.

The solution is this: there will be a state of Palestine in all of the occupied territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The so-called Green-Line, the border that existed before 1967, will come into being again. There may be small adjustments, a small exchange of territories, but [the Green-Line] will be the border between Israel and Palestine. Jerusalem will be the shared capital-East Jerusalem will be the capital of Palestine, West Jerusalem will be the capital of Israel. All settlements must be evacuated. The security must be arranged for both people, and there must be a moral solution and a practical solution.

On these lines, there will be peace. And if you ask me, they could make peace in one week. The trouble is that both people find it very difficult to come to this point. And when I say both people, I don't want to establish a symmetrical situation-there is no symmetry here: there are occupiers, and the occupied. And as the occupier, we have the responsibility to lead this process. This is what I, as an Israeli patriot, tell my own people.

* * *

Jeff Halper is an anthropologist and the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). [Read the full interview]

Jon Elmer: Do you see a long-term political plan within Israel? Or is it just reacting?

Jeff Halper: Well, Sharon is accused of not having a political plan and just blindly hitting out against the 'infrastructure of terror,' as they call it. But I think there is a very definite political plan: apartheid. Sharon calls this plan cantonization: a Palestinian state on about 42 per cent of the West Bank in three or four islands, all controlled and surrounded by Israel.

The plan involves making the Palestinians submit by getting a weak Palestinian leadership that will sign off on this Bantustan, this cantonization. It involves getting rid of the Palestinian middle class that would oppose it by what we call 'quiet transfer'-forcing them out of the country with bad housing, bad education and no economic life, in order to create a very malleable Palestinian mass that would then simply passively accept a Bantustan. Sharon is not saying that explicitly, he is leaving things deliberately vague, but that is where he is going.

Jon Elmer: Noam Chomsky has said that Israel is essentially an offshore American base. What strategic role does Israel play in the American empire, and what does that mean for activism within the United States, in terms of ending the occupation?

Jeff Halper: I don't completely agree with Chomsky-I think he underestimates the proactiveness of Israel, and how Israel manipulates the United States. In a way, if you did a rational analysis, you would say that [America's support of Israel] is counter-productive for the United States. It is messing up the whole Muslim world, it is messing up oil, and now there is occupation of Iraq and its comparison to here. The alliance of America and Israel made sense in the Cold War-we used to have a joke within Israel that we were America's largest aircraft carrier. Maybe then it made sense, but today?

The key that everyone is missing, though Chomsky has picked up on it because this is what he studies, is that Israel has located itself very strategically right in the centre of the global arms industry. Israel's sophisticated military hardware and military software are very important to weapons development in the United States. Israel has also become the main subcontractor of American arms. Just last year, Israel signed a contract to train and equip the Chinese army. It signed another multi-billion dollar contract to train and equip the Indian army. What is it equipping them with? It is equipping them with American weapons.

Israel is very important, because on the one hand it is a very sophisticated, high-tech arms developer and dealer. But on the other hand, there are no ethical or moral constraints: there is no Congress, there are no human rights concerns, there are no laws against taking bribes-the Israeli government can do anything it wants to. So you have very sophisticated rogue state-not a Libyan rogue state, but a high tech, military-expert rogue state. Now that is tremendously useful, both for Europe and for the United States.

For example, there are American congressional constraints on selling arms to China because of China's human rights problems. So what Israel does is it tinkers with American arms just enough that they can be considered Israeli arms, and in that way bypasses Congress.

For the most part, Israel is the subcontractor for American arms to the 'Third World.' There is no terrible regime-Columbia, Guatemala, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile during the time of the colonels, Burma, Taiwan, Zaire, Liberia, Congo, Sierra Leone-there is not one that does not have a major military connection to Israel. Israeli arms dealers are there [acting as] mercenaries. The guy behind Noriega was Michael Harari, an Israeli, who got out of Panama. Israeli mercenaries in Sierra Leone go around the UN boycotts of what are called blood diamonds, same in Angola. Israel was very involved in South Africa, of course, during the apartheid regime. Now Israel is developing missile systems with England, developing a new jet aircraft for Holland, and it just bought three sophisticated submarines from Germany. So Israel is playing with the big boys.

Israeli arms dealers are at home, they're like fish in water in the rough and tumble countries that eat Americans alive: Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Russia, China, Indonesia, these countries where Americans just cannot operate, partly because of business practices and partly because they have [congressional] constraints and laws.

So this is the missing piece. If you read the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) website, the main pro-Israel lobby in the US, there's one piece called "Strategic Cooperation." The United States and Israel have a formal treaty, a formal alliance, which gives Israel access to almost all of American military technology.

When AIPAC sells Israel to Congress, it doesn't go to congressmen and ask them to support Israel because it is Judea Christian, or because it is the 'only democracy in the Middle East,' which it also does. It sells it on this basis: "You are a member of Congress and it is your responsibility to support Israel, because this is how many industries in your state have business links to Israel, this is how many military research people are sitting in universities in your district, this is how many jobs in your district are dependent on the military and the defence industry," and they translate it down to the extent to which your district is dependent on Israel. Therefore, if you are voting against Israel, you are voting against the goose that lays the golden egg.

In most of the districts in the United States, members of Congress have a great dependence on the military. More than half of industrial employment in California is in one way or another connected to defence. Israel is right there, right in the middle of it all. And that is part of its strength.

And then we (the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, for example) come to a member of Congress, we talk about human rights, about occupation, about Palestinians, and he says: "Look I know, I read the papers, I'm not dumb, but that is not the basis on which I vote. The basis on which I vote is what is good for my constituents."

* * *

For additional interviews with Israelis and Palestinians, visit FromOccupiedPalestine.org.

The occupation of Palestine from the inside, out

Public debate about Israel tends to be framed in terms of Israel as a unified country and its foreign opponents, anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic and otherwise. Widely ignored are the Israeli intellectuals and leaders who are strongly opposed to their country's actions, and the accounts that inspire their strong opposition.

Independent Canadian journalists Jon Elmer and Valerie Zink are currently reporting from the West Bank and Gaza. The following is a series of excerpts from interviews they have conducted with diverse critical voices within Israel. The full interviews and other coverage can be read on their web site, FromOccupiedPalestine.org.

Snapshot of an Occupied Land

Tue, 21 Oct 2003 02:41:42 +0000

Jenin is well known as the fiercest centre of resistance in the West Bank, but it is difficult to see how shooting children regularly and enforcing a suffocating and unrelenting curfew day after day eases that resistance. Intuitively, it seems obvious that such actions only serve to entrench it.

An Israeli armoured personnel carrier sprays smoke and machine gun fire while enforcing a 24-hour curfew in Jenin. photo: Valerie Zink/FromOccupiedPalestine.org

The standard justification - though, of course, one is never necessary for Israel, which has a green light from the Americans and a slovenly silence from the "international community" - is the suicide bombings.

The most recent bombing, in Haifa (where from, incidentally, almost all of this refugee camp was once expelled), was carried out on October fourth by a 27 year-old woman who was a lawyer from Jenin. Perhaps this reasoning works for the eight days of curfew so far in October, but what of the 21 days in September?

"It is the subtle forms of resistance, what the rest of the world might call 'life', that seem to be occupying the overwhelming majority of the Israeli military's time and budget."

I spoke with a civil engineer working on the UNRWA Jenin Camp Rehabilitation Project the other day. The night before our meeting the army burst into his home and told his father that they were taking one of the men in the family. None of them had links to resistance groups, there was no particular reason, no particular target - just one man, aged 18-35 in the home. It was his father's choice, the soldier said, "or else I choose."

The UN engineer explained the army's rationale with a story of his own arbitrary arrest several months earlier. He was manacled, blindfolded, held on his knees for hours, beaten, and taken to the infamous Salem prison where he stayed for eleven days without charge or defence. "They want us only because we are from Jenin. That's all. They even tell us this."

Yet, after almost two weeks of being constantly on the streets photographing, I have still not seen a single Palestinian gunman. Rather, it is the subtle forms of resistance, what the rest of the world might call "life," that seem to be occupying the overwhelming majority of the Israeli military's time and budget.

During the first few days of curfew, the city looked like a ghost town, the population holed up under collective house arrest. But the last few days have seen more and more people moving about.

On the main street, coffee vendors and vegetable carts have begun to reappear and people are emerging from their homes to get food and medicine, drink coffee, and just sit on the sidewalks and talk. Shops are opening one fold of their steel doors to allow a slim entrance, and a small market has even established itself less than twenty feet from the central site of the stone throwing and machine gunning.

In response, the tanks are now enforcing the curfew steadily all day, circling the city, passing up and down the main street firing their machine guns, tearing up the boulevards and spraying the sidewalks and homes with a thick diesel smokescreen that leaves the midday sunshine looking like the densest of maritime fog, taking several minutes to clear.

Before the tanks reach the main street, someone will come running up the road yelling "they're coming!" and the shopkeepers quickly seal their steel doors, the adults scurry down the alleys leaving their coffee cups where they were, the photographers get in position and the children prepare their stones.

The tanks pass, shooting hundreds of rounds and spraying clouds of smoke as the children heave their stones - while some play a terrifying game where they mount the back of the tank and ride the enormous death machine in a way that leaves them oddly untouchable since the mounted gun cannot shoot down at itself.

By the time the clouds of smoke have cleared, the men are back in their seats drinking their coffee, the stores have opened the one fold of their steel doors and the children are crowding around the Palestinian photographers to see if their picture will be sent around the world by the Agence France Press or Associated Press. And so it goes, hour after hour.

Jon Elmer of From Occupied Palestine.org reports on curfew enforcement in the West Bank town of Jenin.