Daily Times Editorial, Pakistan
Hamas and Fatah spent the whole of Wednesday killing each other’s men till the count reached 20, and Israel had nothing to do with these killings. The Gaza Strip saw four days of utter mayhem as these armed groups clashed. After having killed 40, including some innocent people, the two sides have now reached a ceasefire that no one believes will hold. Hamas and Fatah are together in the “national unity” government running the Palestinian Authority. Israel, not wanting to be a mere witness, joined in and killed a Hamas militant. After that a revenge strike was launched into Israel.
The two feuding parties had gone to Saudi Arabia and agreed to a “national unity†government so that the regional Arab states could put forward a new initiative to resolve the Palestinian issue with Israel. This was the Makkah Agreement that has fallen apart. But this is not the first time that the Saudis have tried to put Muslim warriors together and failed: the fractious mujahideen who engaged in history’s most terrible civil war in Afghanistan in the decade of the 1990s had similarly gone to the Holy Land and sworn to bind their differences.
Continue reading ‘Palestine’s lethal schism’
A photography exhibition titled “Side by Side or Face to Face” by Swiss photographer Jean Mohr depicting daily life in Israel and Palestine is on display at Ä°stanbul’s State Fine Arts Gallery through May 25. The exhibit, jointly organized by the Swiss Consulate General in Ä°stanbul, Metis Publishing and the sociology department of BoÄŸaziçi University, showcases 64 photos the artist took between 1949 and 2003.
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Ghassan Khatib
The American benchmarks plan that was recently submitted to both Israelis and Palestinians is a very significant step. It marks an important and useful change of gear for American involvement in the conflict in an apparent effort to arrest the deteriorating economic and political Palestinian situation.
It doesn’t, however, include anything new at all. The benchmarks are components of past agreements that the parties, mainly Israel, have failed to fulfill to date.
Some of these benchmarks simply set new dates for old commitments. Most of these were already stipulated in the Agreement on Movement and Access that was negotiated during and after the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza Strip settlements in 2005 with the help of the then special envoy of the Quartet, James Wolfensohn, and brokered by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The rest relate to security issues, particularly Gaza-related security requirements.
Nevertheless, the benchmarks plan is important in that it indicates that Washington has begun to understand that the economic deterioration in the Palestinian territories is a major factor in the radicalization of the population and consequent violence. If Israeli sanctions and restrictions–the main cause of this dire economic condition–aim at combating violence and “terrorism”, then in fact they have backfired and are producing just the opposite.
The Americans along with other international actors have realized, rightly, that Israeli reluctance to implement the original AMA has contributed dramatically to the economic deterioration in occupied Palestinian territory. The World Bank alluded to this in its recent report, “Movement and Access Restrictions in the West Bank: Uncertainty and Inefficiency in the Palestinian Economy”, concluding that Israeli restrictions on Palestinian movement, which to the Bank have no security justification, are responsible for the economic deterioration and for preventing the success of any efforts toward economic recovery.
Continue reading ‘New dates, old commitments’
Julia Pitner
With the celebration of Israel’s 59th year of independence comes the mourning of the 59th year of what the Palestinians call Al-Nakba — the disaster. Israel celebrated its Independence this week by “locking down” the Palestinians in their towns and villages through the total closure of all checkpoints encircling major Palestinian population centers.
This year, the Palestinians will remember their nearly six decades of dispossession by marking the expulsion of vast majority of the people; splitting up of families; and the creation of hundred’s of thousands of refugees, many of whom remain refugees today. They will remember the villages that no longer exist and the family farmlands that are now Israeli cities, shopping malls, forests, farms, and highways, places that Palestinians are not even allowed to visit. But those who remain in Palestine will also remember that they are still here, and they will swear that they will never again be forced to leave their lands and families. But this is a difficult oath to keep, not only because of IDF brutality, but also because of the structural, systematic violence of Israeli bureaucracy.
The sad truth is that while the Palestinians commemorate the Nakba of 1948, the disaster is ongoing up until today. Now, however, the oppression is subtler than the forced marches of the citizens of Ramla, the forced exodus of hundreds of thousands, or those who fled from violence or from the fear and confusion about what the Jewish militias were threatening or the Arab governments promising. It is a slow, forced exodus that is not exciting enough to warrant any airtime or column space. We are witnessing the slow but sure strangulation of Palestinian culture and existence in their homeland through Israeli bureaucratic policies and strategies. Palestinians are a people being squeezed to death, not only by a wall that cuts off farmers from their ancestral lands and splits families in two, but also by a system of paper, permits, proof, and permissions.
Continue reading ‘The Nakba has never ended’
The Japanese government has decided to resume direct economic assistance for the PNA, Japan’s Yomiuri newspaper said Thursday. Japanese foreign ministry officials will visit the Palestinian National Authority in June to discuss the plan in details.
TOKYO, May 10 (RIA Novosti) - The Japanese government has decided to resume direct economic assistance for the PNA, Japan’s Yomiuri newspaper said Thursday.
Japanese foreign ministry officials will visit the Palestinian National Authority in June to discuss the plan in details.
From 1993 through 2005 Tokyo issued $1 billion to the PNA, but the country suspended the assistance after Hamas came to power in March 2006, fearing that the sums could be appropriated for military purposes by the Islamist movement.
Tokyo continued its assistance to the PNA through UN programs avoiding money transfers to the Hamas-controlled government. But as soon as Fatah and Hamas formed a coalition government as part of the PNA in March 2007, the Japanese government decided to resume direct economic assistance.