Some interesting articles I have come across lately that I might have blogged on if there were more than 24 hours a day. Well worth a read, even without my valuable blog commentary (!):
1. The revenge of Sheikh Yassin
One early and unanticipated piece of fall-out from Israel’s assassination of Sheikh Ahmad Yassin was the killing of the four U.S. contractors that led to the punitive assault on Fallujah. Another appears to be the disintegration of Israel’s friendship with its only regional ally, Turkey:
The assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin at the end of March was a turning point for [Turkish PM] Erdogan... Did any of the officers in the chief of staff's forum that prepared the assassination of Sheikh Yassin inform the prime minister of all its implications? Did anyone warn the defense minister that beyond the significance of the sheikh's assassination in the local arena, a collapse of the political front that has been carefully built up over the years could be anticipated? Did they warn that India would have a hard time digesting it, that Turkey would be unable to tolerate it? Did they foresee that the strategic alliances with these countries would be put to a difficult test? The leaders of Hamas promised revenge for the assassination of Yassin. They don't have to bother; the sheikh's revenge is already upon us, in full force.
2. Israel lays claim to Palestine's water; from The New Scientist
The most reliable water source in Israel/Palestine is the western aquifer, which is replenished largely by West Bank rainfall and lies extensively under the West Bank. Eighty per cent of its waters, however, are reserved for Israel’s use. Israel proposes to continue to take the lion’s share of West Bank water, even in the event of Palestinian independence. It suggests that Palestinians could rely on desalinated water from the Mediterranean, pumped uphill through Israel to the West Bank. This would leave Palestinians reliant upon expensive, imported water that could be cut off at a whim by Israel. Question: why doesn’t Israel, with its extensive coastline, desalinate Mediterranean water for its own use, and let the Palestinians use the water that falls on Palestinian land and collects in reservoirs under Palestinian territory?
3. Two articles by Gideon Levy responding to the attempts by the settlers' movement to portray themselves as "victims" in the proposed disengagement from Gaza:
Undeserving Of Compassion -- [T]he main reason the settlers do not deserve compassion is the immorality and the wickedness that are inherent in their deeds. This refers not just to the minority among them, who abused the Palestinians and treated them with violence and cruelty. This refers to all the settlers... Every morning, as they leave their homes, they see tens of thousands of imprisoned Palestinians mired in mud, making their way under the blazing sun, stuck at checkpoints or locked behind iron gates, while the settlers travel with lordly freedom on their roads. From the windows of their homes, they see the women in labor, the elderly and the sick, and the children plodding across fields, trying to get to school or the hospital, and they know that they are the cause of the situation. They see farmers whose olive groves were plundered in order to build another road for them, and providers whose places of work were demolished to expand another settlement. The settlers have no problem living with this reality. None of them cries out in protest, no one's conscience torments him. Where were they when thousands of Palestinians were evacuated from their homes and their land without any compensation?
Compensate The Settlers For What? -- There is not and never has been in the history of the state such a destructive and immoral enterprise as the settlement enterprise. From the start it was established to undermine any and every chance for a peace agreement and to erect a defensive barrier against any just solution. It was born out of territorial greed and continued to criminally disinherit the Palestinians. The settlers settled on land they had stolen, or which was stolen for them; the harm inherent in their actions not only did not trouble them, but some even went out of their way to hurt their neighbors - and so there is no moral basis for compensating them. Now there is a possibility, for the first time, that a tiny part of this hapless enterprise will come to an end. Shockingly late in the day, we must now hold them to account for the blood they shed in vain. Now is the time to say to them - you extorted enough, you cost us too much, you deserve nothing more.
4. Celebrating Life In Rafah by Ramzy Baroud
A Palestinian friend of mine, who is living far away from home, told me that as she witnessed the images of the victims of Rafah, she felt a strange and overpowering sense of pride. She said, "If I had not been born Palestinian, I would've wished to be." I understood, and I too felt the same...
5. '48 Beats '67 In Battle Over Right Of Return
As the West Bank Wall cuts deeper into Palestinian territory, annexing the productive land that would have been the basis for a Palestinian state, political commentators such as Ali Jerbawi (of Bir Zeit) have warned that Palestinians will inevitably reject the quasi-state that is left for them, and will press instead for democratic rights in a binational state. While the PA still officially professes support for the two-state solution, Danny Rubinstein noted the beginnings of a sea-change among the Palestinian public who this year abandoned commemorations of the 1967 Nakhsa (which began the Israeli Occupation and which underlies the two-state solution) in favour of the 1948 Nakba, with its associations of dispossession, exile and one Palestine, complete.
6. Truth v. Deceit in Foreign Policy
Some choice remarks from former Member of the Knesset, Shulamit Aloni: We are the violent ones; we are the cheats. Our very foundations have been undermined by our adulation of force, and all this is called a democracy. There cannot be democracy when we rule over three million people who have no voice. We do not even try to understand that what the Palestinians want is sovereignty and human rights...The present war is not a war of survival, but a colonial war. I cannot live with the way we continually wail that we are the victim, and do not examine our own morality. We are busy destroying the vital infrastructure of three million people, and then pretend that we are the victims.
It's time to tell the truth to the people, straight to their faces!
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