Lawrence of Cyberia

Quote of the Week, 26.1.06

When I first got to Hebron I wouldn't open fire on little children. And I was sure that if I ever killed or hurt anyone, I'd go so crazy that I'd leave the army. But finally I did shoot someone, and nothing happened to me. In Hebron I shot the legs off of two kids, and I was sure I wouldn't be able to sleep anymore at night, but nothing happened. Two weeks ago I hurt a Palestinian policeman, and that didn't affect me either. You become so apathetic you don't care at all. Shooting is the IDF soldier's way of meditating. It's like shooting is your way of letting go of all your anger when you're in the army. In Hebron there's this order they call "punitive shooting": just open fire on whatever you like. I opened fire not on any sources of fire but on windows where there was just wash hanging to dry. I knew that there were people who would be hit. But at that moment it was just shoot, shoot, shoot.

-- Extract from an interview with Israeli soldiers (who are identified by pseudonyms) conducted by Israeli journalist Uri Blau and printed in Kol Ha'Ir, a Jerusalem weekly, in September 2001. Translated from Hebrew by Tal Haran, and published in English translation in the April 2002 edition of Harpers Magazine.

Photo (Click to enlarge): Mourners carry the body of Rahma Abu Shamas during her funeral procession through the streets of the central Gaza Strip town of Deir Al Balah, Wednesday Jan. 26, 2005. (Mahmud Hams)

Rahma was having breakfast in her home in the central Gaza Strip refugee camp of Dayr al-Balah, when her house was struck by a burst of machine gun fire from an IDF watchtower in the nearby settlement of Kfar Darom. She was hit in the head by a single heavy-calibre bullet, and died shortly after.

She was the youngest of ten children in a desperately poor Palestinian refugee family, and was particularly attached to her 12-year-old sister, Basma. Her favourite game was drawing with a stick in the dirt, pretending that she could write like her older siblings.

Rahma Abu Shamas was three years old, and was shot dead in her own home by an Israeli soldier who opened fire on her house one year ago today, on 26 Jan 2005.

Olmert Hopes To Resume Talks; I Hope To Win Lottery

I hereby nominate this as my Misleading Headline of the Week: Olmert hopes to resume talks with Palestinians

The article I linked to is from the Pakistan Daily Times, but that’s not particularly important as the original from Reuters and almost all the papers that picked up on the story up echoed the same hopeful thrust of this headline, suggesting that there is a renewed hope of peace talks now that Ehud Olmert at the helm. The problem is that if you read the whole article, you find that the headline might be technically true, but it’s an awfully optimistic take on what Olmert actually said about the prospects for final status talks:

JERUSALEM: Interim Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Tuesday that he hoped to resume peace negotiations with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas after Israel’s March 28 general election. But Olmert said that such talks would depend on Israel’s long-standing demand for Abbas to disarm militant groups, a process the Palestinians are supposed to start under a US-brokered road map to peace.

“I hope that based on the results of their (Jan 25 Palestinian) elections, and after that the results of our elections, I will be able to enter negotiations with (Abbas) on condition that he will uphold his commitments ... for a permanent settlement between us and the Palestinians,” Olmert told reporters. But he added: “That depends on whether he (Abbas) will uphold his commitments to disarm the terror groups, and I hope that he will do this.”

Only For Arabs

I don't sign demolition orders for Jewish homes, only for Arabs.

"In Jerusalem, Israel turned urban planning into a tool of the government, to be used to help prevent the expansion of the city’s non-Jewish population. It was a ruthless policy, if only for the fact that the needs (to say nothing of the rights) of Palestinian residents were ignored. Israel saw the adoption of strict zoning plans as a way of limiting the number of new homes build in Arab neighborhoods, and thereby ensuring that the Arab percentage of the city’s population – 28.8 in 1967 – did not grow beyond this level. Allowing “too many” new homes in Arab neighborhoods would mean “too many” Arab residents in the city. The idea was to move as many Jews as possible into East Jerusalem, and move as many Arabs as possible out of the city entirely."

Palestinian Suhail Shabana sits on her sofa as an Israeli police officer gives her ten minutes to leave her house before it was demolished in Beit Hanina in East Jerusalem, Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2004. The Shabana family was given notice yesterday by Israeli authorities that the house was to be destroyed. Israeli authorities often demolish houses they say were built without permits. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)


"Of the 17,600 acres of land that comprise East Jerusalem (including the Old City and the commercial downtown of East Jerusalem), Palestinian citizens of Jerusalem have today the right to use and develop less than 9% of it. According to the 1995 Statistical Yearbook of Jerusalem, 35% (6,250 acres) of the lands were expropriated for Israeli neighborhoods, roads and other facilities. While 80% of land expropriated since 1967 comes from Palestinians, the vast majority of that land has been designated for Jewish housing and other needs. Close to 0% [zero per cent] of expropriated land has been designated for Arab use."

Suhaila Shabana sits inside her house before Israeli authorities demolished it because it was built without permission in Beit Hanina in the Jerusalem suburbs, December 1, 2004. (REUTERS/Ammar Awad)


"While approximately 55% of the building violations detected each year are in Jewish neighborhoods, 72% of the Jerusalem demolitions are of Palestinian homes."

Palestinian Mohammed Shabana, left, holds the hand of one of his children as he walks towards his house that was demolished by Israeli authorities in Beit Hanina in East Jerusalem, Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2004. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer)

I don't sign demolition orders for Jewish homes, only for Arabs.
-- Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, Haim Miller; February 7th, 1998.

Source: The quotes are from Rabbis For Human Rights - Jerusalem Home Demolitions (PDF document).

Abu Mazen As Ben-Gurion

Same sh*t, different day. Abu Mazen, who won't lift a finger to dismantle the infrastructure of terror is whining again that Israel's "security measures" are only making things worse:

Two hundred and fifty thousand Palestinians in East Jerusalem and suburbs, the core of our nation's social and industrial life, and thirty thousand Palestinians in Bethlehem, are isolated from all normal contact with the outside world, facing complete breakdown of the mechanism of civilized life apart from food supplies and a skeleton medical service. Industry crippled, trade paralyzed, unemployment threatening to become catastrophic. Industrial raw materials cannot enter, goods manufactured with available stock cannot be marketed outside. Workers cut off from places of work, children from schools. These restrictions have not affected terrorists nor stopped their outrages but instead have increased resentment of the hard-hit population, created fertile soil for terrorist propaganda, frustrating the Authority's attempt to combat terrorism by itself. Collective punishment is absolutely futile and senseless unless its real intention is to punish the whole community, ruin its economy and destroy the possibility of a viable Palestinian state.

Actually, Abu Mazen never really said that. But it sounds just like him doesn't it? Funnily enough, it's actually based on a quote by David Ben-Gurion, from an opinion piece he had published in the London Times in 1948, decrying the use of martial law in response to Zionist terrorism in Palestine. This is what he really wrote:

Two hundred and fifty thousand Jews of Tel Aviv and suburbs, core of country's social and industrial life, and thirty thousands of Jews in Jerusalem, mostly working-class quarters, isolated from all normal contact with outside world, facing complete breakdown of [the] mechanism [of] civilized life apart from food supplies and skeleton medical service. Industry crippled, trade paralyzed, unemployment threatening to become catastrophic. Industrial raw materials cannot enter, goods manufactured with available stock cannot be marketed outside. Workers cut off from places of work, children from schools. These restrictions have not affected terrorists nor stopped their outrages but instead have increased resentment of hard-hit population, created fertile soil for terrorist propaganda, frustrating community's attempt to combat terrorism by itself. Martial Law absolutely futile and senseless unless really meant to punish whole community, ruin its economy and destroy the foundations of the Jewish National Home. ...

Use It Or Lose It

I used to be stationed at a military base overseas where, at the end of every fiscal year, there was an intense flurry of expenditure by the base administrators, in order to spend every last penny in the annual budget. The reason for this was that the amount they would get to spend next year was dependent upon how much they spent this year: if they didn't use up everything they were allocated in one year, then the logic was that they obviously didn't need that much money, and next year's budget would be correspondingly reduced. So they had to find something to spend their money on.

I remember especially how that worked one year when, with the end of the accounting period looming, the base administrators realized they had a chunk of money they had to spend out of the "Building Repairs & Maintenance" fund. They decided they would knock down the base social club, and build a shiny new one on the same spot. The problem was that building a new clubhouse could only be paid for out of the "Building Construction" budget, which was already used up for the year, while the money they actually had left to spend was in the "Building Repairs & Maintenance" account. (And you have to spend government money on the purpose it is allocated for, you can't just switch it between accounts).

So to get round the problem, they completely demolished the existing club except for a skeletal framework of iron girders inside one wall. And then they built an entirely new building around these girders, and paid for it out of the "Repairs & Maintenance" fund. Because it didn't count as new construction so long as you left those pieces of iron from the old building standing hidden somewhere inside the new walls.

The base administrators got to spend all their money, we got a brand new clubhouse whether we needed it or not, and everyone found it kind of funny in an ironic, "yes-it's-a-waste-but-everyone-does-it-with-government-money" kind of way.

And apparently that's a common mindset in other countries, among people who have to use or lose taxpayers' money by the end of the year. But it's not as funny when the leftover money is in your "Home Demolitions" fund, and the people on the receiving end, instead of getting a spanking new clubhouse, lose everything they have:

Yesterday, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition (ICAHD) received information that the Israeli government was planning on demolishing houses in Anata, Beit Hanina and Silwan. Although the demolition of Palestinian homes was supposed to end with the first phase of the Road Map, Israel insists disingenuously that we are only in a "pre-Road Map" phase - even though the Road Map was initiated in mid-2003. This means, in Israel's interpretation, that the Palestinians must carry out all their responsibilities under Phase 1 and even Phase 2 (reform the Palestinian Authority, end violence, etc.), while Israel is free to pursue its goals of strengthening its hold on the Occupied Territories without any interference whatsoever - a clear violation of the principle of "mutuality" that underlies the Road Map Process.

Indeed, for Israel, house demolitions are merely "business as usual." The Jerusalem Municipality has a million and a half unused shekels ($300,000) in the demolition line of its annual budget. Whatever is left at the beginning of the year is lost. Since such an amount pays for about 70 demolitions, the Municipality is under pressure to demolish as many homes as possible in the next month and a half. Add to this the policy of demolishing Palestinian homes situated too close to the route of the Wall. This was one of the reasons given for demolishing the homes in Anata - even though the Wall has not yet been built...

-- "The Miserable Occupation On A Miserable Morning", via email from ICAHD. (Read the whole email online, here).

Photo: An Israeli bulldozer demolishes a Palestinian house in Anata, 21 Nov 2005. (via the ICAHD)

Gaza For Jerusalem

Cartoon: Clay Bennett for the Christian Science Monitor.


Reprising my periodic role as the miserable Cassandra of the peace process, I thought I would dump some cold water on the peace-is-just-around-the-corner-euphoria by mentioning that:

1. Since withdrawing from Gaza, Israel has actually seized more land in the West Bank than the size of the entire Gaza Strip.

2. Even though the Gaza settlements are gone, there are actually today thousands more settlers in the Occupied Territories than there were when the Gaza settlements still stood.

3. Construction of the Wall is proceeding particularly quickly around al-Ram, and settlement expansion is particularly frenetic in the Maale Adumim bloc, as Israel attempts to cut off occupied East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank.

4. This is to preempt the possibility of East Jerusalem ever becoming the capital of Palestine, despite the fact that without a shared Jerusalem there will never be a solution to the conflict.

5. The most recent plans to expand Maale Adumim settlement, involving the construction of 350 more homes for Israelis to settle illegally in the Occupied Territories, have the approval of none other than the Left’s Great White Hope, Amir Peretz.

6. Simply daring to point out that Israel is implementing a de facto annexation of Arab East Jerusalem, and that this is illegal, contrary to the Road Map, and will radicalize both East Jerusalemites and Muslims further afield, makes you “one-sided” and “unrelentingly pro-Palestinian”.

Optimism's important. I'm enjoying as much as anybody the sight of the political realignment in Israel and the drawing in of Hamas to the Palestinian Parliamentary process, and speculating where it might all end. But optimism stops being a plus if you can only keep it up by closing your eyes to what's happening on the ground, and pretending that what you want to see happening really is.

Three Years Ago Today

At about noon on 31 March 2002, Murad ‘Awaisa (and his father and brothers) were among thousands of Palestinian men detained without charge by I.D.F. soldiers at the beginning of “Operation Defensive Shield”. His father and brothers were released 12 days later.

Murad was held with about a dozen other detainees, in an apartment that the I.D.F. had commandeered in the same apartment bloc where he lived. His hands were tightly bound with wire, and when he complained about the pain to his hands, he was beaten.

At about 8:00pm, Murad and another detainee, Rashad Jabareen, asked to be taken to the bathroom. Jabareen was taken first and, upon his return, warned the other detainees that he had been beaten on his way to and from the bathroom. So when Murad ‘Awaisa’s turn came, he said he did not want to go anymore. The soldiers told him that he had asked, so he was going to go: they forcibly removed him, hands still bound, from the room.

About 20 minutes later, the remaining detainees heard intense gunfire. ‘Awaisa never returned from the bathroom, and soldiers told the detainees that he was dead. Sometime during the night of 31 March-1 April, Murad ‘Awaisa’s naked body was taken from the apartment building and dumped in the street outside.

Next morning, the I.D.F. officer in command of the soldiers who took away Murad returned to the ‘Awaisas' apartment and asked Murad’s mother for the phone number of the local hospital, explaining that someone was sick and needed an ambulance. She saw an ambulance arrive about 30 minutes later, but the soldier did not mention to her that the patient she saw being removed from the scene was already dead, and that it was her son.

At Ramallah hospital, doctors found that Murad ‘Awaisa had been shot twice, once in the knee and once in the chest, close to the heart. Needle marks in his arm indicated that attempts had been made to resuscitate him.

When the owners of the apartment in which Murad had been held were allowed to return, they found heavy bloodstains in the bathroom and in one bedroom, along with 40-60 bullet cartridges, Murad’s bullet-damaged clothes, and needles and other first-aid objects.

Murad ‘Awaisa was 17 years old when he was killed, and in the eleventh grade at school. He died three years ago today, and no-one has ever been prosecuted in connection with his death.

Palestinian Women Get Breast Cancer Too

What I discovered [in the peace negotiations] was that a West Bank Palestinian could not build, work, study, purchase land, grow produce, start a business, take a walk at night, enter Israel, go abroad, or visit his family in Gaza or Jordan without a permit from us. About one third of the Palestinian population had been detained or imprisoned by Israel. And the whole population had been grossly humiliated by us. -- Uri Savir, Israeli peace negotiator, former Director General of the Israeli Foreign Office

Since the Occupation began in 1967, Palestinian daily life has been regulated by a system of I.D.F. military orders that regulate, as Uri Savir discovered, almost every aspect of everyday life. By the end of the first intifada, West Bank Palestinians were subject to a total of 1300 military orders, requiring them to seek Israeli permission for even the most routine activities. Freedom of movement was one of the few Palestinian activities that did not traditionally require an Israeli permit, but since 1991 Israel has added an additional series of restrictions, taking away the right to travel too. First, Palestinians lost the right to travel outside the Territories (a restriction known as "Closure"). Then in 1996, at the height of the Oslo years when the burden of Occupation was supposedly lessening, they lost the right to travel beyond their own area within the Territories (a.k.a. "Internal Closure").

By restricting freedom of movement to smaller and smaller areas, Israel has progressively sealed off the Palestinian population into small enclaves. Today, urban Palestinians cannot leave their respective cities without a "freedom-of-movement" permit. And those Palestinians who live on land that Israel particularly covets, such as the East Jerusalem area or in the shadow of the Wall, have even less mobility than that: in those areas, Palestinians may require an Israeli permit to go to work in their own fields, to sleep in their own home, to visit their own wives and children, even to climb their own stairs.

The Bart Simpson Defense

Fortunately for me, I live in a part of the world where it’s fairly unlikely that I am ever going to be the victim of a violent death, much less murder. But just in case, I think I’m going to insert a stipulation in my will instructing that, should the unthinkable happen, the investigation into my death is not to pass within 100 miles of any member of the I.D.F.’s legal unit. Because there’s just something about I.D.F. investigations that doesn’t fill me with confidence that my killer would ever be brought to justice. For example:

Case 1. The Mughayer Siblings

The I.D.F. investigation: About 11.30am last Tuesday, within moments of each other, Asma al-Mughair, 16, and her brother Ahmed, 13, died on the roof of their home in the Tel Sultan district of Rafah. The Israeli Defence Force… said the next day that it had investigated the incident and concluded that the siblings were killed by "a work accident" - a euphemism for a militant's bomb that explodes while it is being assembled - or by a roadside bomb set by Palestinian militants. The I.D.F. rejected the family's claim that the two children were shot dead by an Israeli sniper. (Source)

The Reality: Dr Ahmed Abu Nkaria, who pronounced the Mughayar children dead, insists on proving the manner of their killing. He pulls Asma's body from the mortuary's refrigeration unit and fumbles through the teenager's hair to reveal the hole where the bullet entered above one ear and ripped a much larger wound as it emerged above the other …Her 13-year-old brother's corpse is a short drive away in the cold-storage room of an Israeli-owned flower-growing company. Dr Nkaria rolls the child over to show a tiny round hole in his forehead, just above his fringe. There is a much larger hole at the back of the head where the bullet came out. Neither Asma nor Ahmed show signs of any other injuries, particularly of the kind that might be expected from a blast, such as shrapnel spread across the body, burns, or mutilation. (Source)

The Transfer Tsunami

1. Holocaust, (noun): The genocide of European Jews and systematic mass murder of others by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II.

[Orig. Middle English burnt offering; from the Greek "holokaustos", burnt whole, (from "kaiein", to burn)].

2. Disengagement, (noun): The formal term for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's proposal to dismantle 25 of the almost 150 illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

[Orig. Hebrew “hitnatkut”, lit. unhooking oneself, disconnecting oneself].

3. Chutzpah, (noun): Equating definition 1 with definition 2 for one’s own political advantage.

[Orig. Yiddish “khutspe” unbelievable gall; insolence; audacity; from Mish. Heb. הטחה, to be insolent. Photo - A Jewish settler boy wears a Star of David badge as he plays with friends during a demonstration against Israel's plan to remove the settlers from Gaza, at the Jewish part of Gaza Strip; December 21, 2004. The usage of the Star of David badges, part of the settler's campaign, drew accusations they were desecrating memories of the Holocaust and bent on dividing Israeli society. REUTERS/Nir Elias ].

And there's more: according to former Israeli Foreign Minister and Defense Minister Moshe Arens, the proposed disengagement from Gaza is also analogous to the internment of Japanese-Americans in the United States during World War II! I can’t imagine what the next apocalyptic installment in this pantomime is going to be. Maybe the “Transfer Tsunami”?