Khader Adnan is now on his 62nd day on Hunger Strike, and is very close to death.

Yesterday, Khader’s wife visited him in hospital, and she described his condition in the following statement:

 ”His health has drastically deteriorated from the last time I saw him. . . .I expect the worst,”

“The world should pressure the Israeli government to release him before it’s too late.”

““Israel denied Khader fairness & decency, maybe the rest of humanity will show more mercy.”

 

A Doctor who examined Khader on Wednesday, described his condition as been “In immediate danger of death”, and his Lawyers have filed an urgent appeal. The appeal was approved by a High Court Justice, and will be heard at the earliest opportunity.

Richard Falk, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories,  described the situation as urgent, and said the international community should intervene on Mr. Adnan’s behalf.

“In view of the emergency of his situation, the Government of Israel must take immediate and effective action to safeguard Mr. Adnan’s life, while upholding his rights,” said Mr. Falk in a statement.

Richard Falk went even further today in an Op Ed piece in the following Al Jazeera article:

Saving Khader Adnan’s life is saving our own soul Richard Falk

The Jimmy Carter Center in Atlanta issued the following statement today:

“The Carter Center calls on the Israeli government to immediately charge or release Palestinian prisoner Khader Adnan, who was arrested on Dec. 17, 2011, based on “secret evidence” and has been held in administrative detention without charge. Mr. Adnan has undertaken a hunger strike since his arrest 62 days ago and his life is in imminent danger. His grave medical condition has been verified by Physicians for Human Rights-Israel.”

Due to the urgency of Khader’s condition, the Palestinian Council of Human Rights Organizations (PCHRO) urges the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the European Union to take immediate action and intervene with Israel in the strongest manner possible to save Khader’s life.

The PCHRO demands that the international community put pressure on Israel to end his arbitrary detention before it is too late.

Across the world, vigils are been held for Khader, and at the prison facility, Ofer, daily demonstrations are been held. The protesters have come under sustained attacks from the Israeli military, and many people have been injured after been shot with rubber bullets, and effects of tear gas inhalation.

Support for Khader Adnan has also come in from Oliver Hughes, whose brother Francis , 25, died in the H Blocks after 59 days. His cousin, Thomas McElwee, 33, also died on Hunger Strike after 62 days. In total, 10 Irish men died during this Hunger Strike in 1981 which included Bobby Sands.

OnTuesday, as Khader Adnan entered his 60th day on Hunger Strike, Oliver, sends a message of support and solidarity to Khader.

Click on the link below to hear Oliver’s message.

Khader Adnan receives message of support from Oliver Hughes. Feb 14th, 2012

Khader was arrested on 17 December 2011 and has since been refusing food and medical treatment until he is granted release. On 8 January 2012, Israeli authorities issued a four-month administrative detention order, which was confirmed on 7 February 2012 by an Israeli military judge despite his worsening health condition.

The appeal against his administrative detention order was rejected by an Israeli military judge on 13 February.

Carlos Latuff

The “induced euphoria” that characterises discussions within the mainstream media around the upcoming declaration of an independent Palestinian state in September ignores the stark realities on the ground and the warnings of critical commentators. Depicting such a declaration as a “breakthrough”, and a “challenge” to the defunct “peace process” and the right-wing government of Israel, serves to obscure Israel’s continued denial of Palestinian rights while reinforcing the international community’s implicit endorsement of an apartheid state in the Middle East.

The drive for recognition is led by Salam Fayyad, the appointed Prime Minister of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority (PA). It is based on the decision made during the 1970s by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) to adopt the more flexible program of a “two-state solution”. This program maintains that the Palestinian question, the essence of the Arab-Israeli conflict, can be resolved with the establishment of an “independent state” in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital. In this program Palestinian refugees would return to the state of “Palestine” but not to their homes in Israel, which defines itself as “the state of Jews”. Yet “independence” does not deal with this issue, nor does it heed calls made by the 1.2 million Palestinian citizens of Israel to transform the struggle into an anti-apartheid movement, since they are treated as third-class citizens.

All this is supposed to be implemented after the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the West Bank and Gaza. Or will it merely be a redeployment of forces as witnessed during the Oslo period? Yet proponents of this strategy claim that independence guarantees that Israel will deal with the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank as one people, and that the Palestinian question can be resolved according to international law, thus satisfying the minimum political and national rights of the Palestinian people.

Forget about the fact that Israel has as many as 573 permanent barriers and checkpoints around the occupied West Bank, as well as an additional 69 “flying” checkpoints; and you might also want to ignore the fact that the existing “Jewish-only” colonies have annexed more than 54 per cent of the West Bank.

At the 1991 Madrid Conference, then Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir’s “hawkish” government did not even accept the Palestinian “right” to administrative autonomy. However, with the coming of the “dovish” Meretz/Labor government, led by Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, the PLO leadership escaped into behind-curtains negotiations in Norway. By signing the Oslo Accords, Israel was released of the heavy burden of administering Gaza and the seven crowded cities of the West Bank. The first intifada was ended by an official – and secret – PLO decision without achieving its interim national goals, namely “freedom and independence”, and without the consent of the people the organisation purported to represent.

This same idea of “independence” was once rejected by the PLO, because it did not address the “minimum legitimate rights” of Palestinians and because it is the antithesis of the Palestinian struggle for liberation. What is proposed in place of these rights is a state in name only. In other words, the Palestinians must accept full autonomy on a fraction of their land, and never think of sovereignty or control of borders, water reserves, and most importantly, the return of the refugees. That was the Oslo agreement and it is also the intended “Declaration of Independence”. No wonder, then, that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu makes it clear that he “might agree to a Palestinian state through negotiations”.

Nor does this declaration promise to be in accordance with the 1947 UN partition plan, which granted the Palestinians only 47 per cent of historic Palestine even though they comprised over two-thirds of the population. Once declared, the future “independent” Palestinian state will occupy less than 20 per cent of historic Palestine. By creating a Bantustan and calling it a “viable state”, Israel will get rid of the burden of 3.5 million Palestinians. The PA will rule over the maximum number of Palestinians on the minimum number of fragments of land – fragments that we can call “The State of Palestine”. This “state” will be recognised by tens of countries – South Africa’s infamous Bantustan tribal chiefs must be very envious!

One can only assume that the much talked-about and celebrated “independence” will simply reinforce the same role that the PA played under Oslo. Namely providing policing and security measures designed to disarm the Palestinian resistance groups. These were the first demands made of the Palestinians at Oslo in 1993, Camp David in 2000, Annapolis in 2007 and Washington last year. Meanwhile, within this framework of negotiations and demands, no commitments or obligations are imposed on Israel.

Just as the Oslo Accords signified the end of popular non-violent resistance of the first intifada, this declaration of independence has a similar goal, namely ending the growing international support for the Palestinian cause since Israel’s 2008-2009 winter onslaught on Gaza and its attack on the Freedom Flotilla last May.Yet it falls short of providing Palestinians with the minimal protection and security from any future Israeli attacks and atrocities. The invasion and siege of Gaza was a product of Oslo. Before the Oslo Accords were signed Israel never used its full arsenal of F-16s, phosphorous bombs, and DIME weapons to attack refugee camps in the Gaza and the West Bank. Over 1,200 Palestinians were killed from 1987-1993 during the first intifada. Israel eclipsed that number during its three-week invasion in 2009; it managed to brutally kill more than 1,443 in Gaza alone. This does not include the victims of Israel’s siege in place since 2006, which has been marked by closures and repeated Israeli attacks before the invasion of Gaza and since.

Ultimately, what this intended “declaration of independence” offers the Palestinian people is a mirage, an “independent homeland” that is a Bantustan-in-disguise. Although it is recognised by so many friendly countries, it stops short of providing Palestinians freedom and liberation. Critical debate – as opposed to one that is biased and demagogic – requires scrutiny of the distortions of history through ideological misrepresentations. What needs to be addressed is an historical human vision of the Palestinian and Jewish questions, a vision that never denies the rights of a people, that guarantees complete equality, and abolishes apartheid – instead of recognising a new Bantustan 17 years after the fall of apartheid in South Africa.

Haidar Eid is an associate professor at Al-Aqsa University in Gaza.

Al-Jazeera

A top Palestinian official reiterated Sunday calls to replace Tony Blair as the Quartet’s Mideast envoy, despite a recent announcement by the Palestinian Authority, according to which the Palestinians were willing to work with Blair despite criticism of his alleged impartiality.

Palestinian concerns regarding Blair’s alleged lack of impartiality in his duty as Mideast envoy first surfaced earlier this month, as Nabil Shaath, a senior aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said the former British premier and was “useless.”
Tony Blair and Salam Fayyad – AP

Tony Blair, Middle East Quartet Representative, left, and Prime Minister of the Palestinian National Authority Salam Fayyad in Brussels, April 13, 2011.
Photo by: AP

“Lately, [Blair] talks like an Israeli diplomat, selling their policies,” Shaath told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah. “Therefore, he is useless to us.”

Just days following Shaath’s remarks, Mohammed Ishtayeh, a member of the Central Committee of the dominant Fatah movement and a confidant of Abbas, told Voice of Palestine radio that Blair was no longer trusted to be an impartial mediator.

Following that wave of criticism, Abbas’s spokesman indicated last week that the Palestinians would continue to work with Blair, saying: “The Palestinian presidency will continue to work with the envoy of the international Quartet Committee Tony Blair in his capacity as the choice of the Quartet.”

However, speaking with Al-Jazeera in an interview released on Sunday, Ishtayeh reiterated his demand to replace Blair as Mideast envoy, saying that discontent of the Quartet envoy’s conduct was pervasive throughout PA leadership.

“The Palestinian leadership has raised this issue very seriously. The general consensus among the Palestinian leadership is that he is not anymore an honest broker,” Ishtayeh told Al-Jazeera, adding that “the expected thing for him to do is to say ‘I’m sorry, goodbye.’”

“The biggest problem that he did actually for us is that all of a sudden he started speaking against our steps going toward the United Nations,” the top PA official said, adding: “You cannot be a mediator for the Quartet in which 50% of the Quartet supports our step.”

According to the Al-Jazeera, a PA spokesman indicated that the Palestinians would not openly criticize the Quartet envoy.

Ishtayeh also referred to recent reports in British media, accusing the former U.K. premier of an inappropriate coming together of his role as peace broker and his private business ventures.

“We’ve seen reports by the British media which actually show explicitly that Mr. Tony Blair has very serious conflicts of interest in which he is doing business during the term of his official duties, and I think that’s not a very healthy situation,” the top official said. “It erodes his credibility as an envoy for the Quartet.”

In response to Ishtayeh’s claims, a Blair spokesperson told Haaretz that the former U.K. PM “had never spoken against the Palestinian intention to approach the UN, arguing that it was a matter for the Palestinians to decide.”

“Our focus is on activating the Quartet statement’s call for a return to direct talks between the parties. It is the job of the Quartet Representative to interact with both sides, not least so that we can continue to deliver change on the ground for Palestinians to improve their quality of life.”

In reference to claims of Blair’s alleged conflicts of interest, the spokesperson for the former British premier said that “Tony Blair has advocated for the both the Wataniya project and the Gaza gas development at the direct request of the Palestinians.”

“It is his responsibility as Quartet Representative to work to build the Palestinian economy and the Wataniya project represented the single largest foreign direct investment there has been into the Palestinian Authority,” the statement added, saying: “That is good news for the Palestinians.”

“The fact that we have been doing so is hardly a revelation: it is listed on our website. Both were long-standing demands of the international community. In neither case was Mr. Blair even aware JPMorgan had a connection with the company. He never discussed it with them. They never raised it with him,” the statement added.

Haaretz

At midnight the Palestinian vigil against the predations of nearby Jewish settlers begins. Five students, armed with a pocket-torch, stand guard at the hilltop entrance of the small Palestinian village of Kfar Qusra. Farmers and their wives pitch camp in their fields, watching their flocks.

It is not an even fight. Jewish settlers wield M-16 rifles. Villagers have mobile phones and stones. But after religious zealots from the nearby Esh Kodesh (“Holy Light”) outpost scrawled “Muhammad is a pig” in Hebrew on the walls of the village mosque and rolled burning tyres inside its prayer hall, the villagers decided that the moral high ground was no longer enough. “The age of sumud (stubborn steadfastness) has passed,” says a local businessman. “We must defend ourselves. The whole town is prepared.” At an evening planning meeting, an 85-year-old landowner encourages his sons to abduct the next settler who chops down trees in his olive groves or slaughters one of his sheep.

Outgunned, outnumbered, but now fighting back

So far the new, more robust tactics of the villagers have worked. On September 16th, a week after the attack on the mosque, a Qusra farmer, Fathallah Abu Rayda, spied a band of settlers near his local well, seemingly intent on destroying or poisoning it, and notified the village network. Within minutes the mosque’s loudspeakers had sounded the alarm, and hundreds had gathered to shoo the intruders away. One fled, said villagers, in his underpants. In the panic Mr Abu Rayda was shot in the leg, but they have yet to return.

Mahmoud Abbas’s diplomatic manoeuvring in New York has left many villagers confused. But he may have raised expectations, especially in Area C, the rural 60% of the West Bank, including Qusra, which an “interim agreement” between the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and Israel in 1995 left under Israel’s full control. Ever since, Israel has tightened its grip over Area C, weaving a web of settlements, military bases, roads, separation barriers and checkpoints. Palestinian police in the designated area patrol in plain clothes and unarmed, but are not allowed to use force to restrain the settlers if they seek to impose themselves on the Palestinian villagers either by attacking them or by damaging their property. Settlers now outnumber Palestinians in Area C by two to one; they regard the territory as theirs. Hence their horror at suggestions that the proposed two states should be based on the pre-1967 line, for that would mean their removal.

With Mr Abbas now promising to secure Palestine’s legal right to the land at the UN, other Palestinian villages are also establishing networks to look out for trespassing settlers. A new group called Youth Against Settlements has opened an operations room in Hebron to co-ordinate 300 volunteers who patrol the southern part of the West Bank that surrounds the city by car, by bicycle and on foot. They now scour the land, watching out for settler raids.
In response to the UN bid, Jewish settlers are mobilising too. By day they march about, brandishing large Israeli flags. By night, activists exact what they call “price-tags”, for instance by defiling mosques, in the hope of provoking a conflict which the well-armed settlers feel sure they could win. They have also used their formidable presence in Israel’s combat units and supporters in Mr Netanyahu’s ruling coalition to press home their advantage. To ward off anticipated Palestinian demonstrations in the wake of the UN vote in New York, Israeli soldiers armed with stun-grenades, tear-gas and a foul-smelling liquid known as skunk have moved into settlements near Palestinian towns. If hordes try to enter, says a settler security officer, the settlers are licensed to shoot.

Even before Mr Abbas at last declared his intention to bid for statehood at the UN Security Council, friction was mounting. As Jewish settlers and Palestinian villagers race to fill the West Bank’s remaining open land with orchards and housing, it has been getting increasingly crowded.

Bizarrely, each side, in some respects, feeds the other’s appetite. Settlers pay Palestinian labourers to build their homes; Palestinians use the proceeds to expand their own villages. Zealots on both sides see land as sacred. Qusra’s villagers celebrated their success in chasing settlers away by staging their Friday prayers in the fields, prostrating themselves on the ploughed earth.

Might such rural friction trigger broader unrest? Ramallah, Mr Abbas’s seat of government, is but half an hour’s drive south, provided you get through two checkpoints without being delayed. But its stylish cafés offer an agreeable diversion from Area C’s grim daily grind. Mr Abbas’s men have laboured to harness rural vigilantes to ensure that demonstrations are confined to the West Bank cities they control.

But the interim agreements prevent them from operating in Area C, so they are powerless to deter or contain clashes between villagers and settlers. Moreover, the radicals of Hamas, the Islamist group that abhors Mr Abbas and his ruling faction on the West Bank, have a freer hand to stir up trouble. In the past Hamas has sought to undermine Mr Abbas’s diplomatic initiatives. On the eve of talks between Mr Abbas and the Israelis last year, Hamas staged a lethal drive-by shooting near Qusra.

Indeed, the sneers of Hamas against Mr Abbas appeal to quite a few of the villagers. Six years ago Hamas won local elections in Qusra and nearby villages, and could do so again. While lauding Mr Abbas for his recent stand in New York, some Qusra people say he has run to the UN only because he is too weak to act on the ground. All anti-settler monitors say they will abide by his calls for non-violence (though stone-throwing is thought not to count). But a villager adds menacingly, “If Hamas were in charge, not a single settler would dare raid our land.”

The Economist

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the 11 September attacks in New York and Washington. And predictably, there has already been an excess of analysis in the mainstream media about the significance of the monstrous crimes committed a decade ago. Equally predictably, most of the analysis is repetitive and superficial.

Nonetheless, when I flicked through some newspapers, I came across a comment that came close to echoing my own thoughts. It was from a writer called Amy Waldman, whose debut novel The Submission was published recently. Waldman argues that the date of 11 September 2001 is now considered sacred in the United States. Indeed, it has been imbued with so much sacredness that there is “no limit to the profanity justified to preserve it.”

In an insult to the innocent people killed 10 years ago, the US establishment has used their deaths as an excuse to launch all-out-attacks against the defenceless populations of Afghanistan and Iraq and to bomb Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. Israel, meanwhile, was quick to jump on George Bush’s bandwagon and to claim that its ceaseless oppression of the Palestinian people made it an indispensable ally in the so-called war on terror.

Israel has chalked up a long list of profanities over the past decade. I will now zoom in on one of them: a 2002 offensive named Operation Defensive Shield.

That operation began at the end of March 2002 with the bombing of the compound where Yasser Arafat was based in Ramallah. Altogether it lasted four months, involved the Israeli military reinvading parts of the West Bank they were supposed to have vacated under the Oslo accords and killing almost 500 Palestinians, over 70 of whom were children. Perhaps its most infamous episode was the sustained shelling of Jenin refugee camp, where more than 4,000 people were left homeless because of the systematic demolition of buildings. Medical relief teams were blocked from entering the camp for 10 days during a two-week period, when 54 Palestinians in the camp were killed. Amnesty International and other human rights groups who investigated the events stated plainly that Israel had perpetrated war crimes.

Shock doctrine in Palestine

At a time when people in the West Bank were still traumatized by Israel’s latest acts of brutality, Palestine fell victim to what the Naomi Klein has subsequently called the shock doctrine. In June 2002, Salam Fayyad took over as finance minister of the Palestinian Authority after Yasser Arafat was strongarmed into appointing him by the United States and the European Union.

According to the official narrative, Fayyad was appointed to root out corruption in the PA. Undoubtedly, such corruption was a major problem, yet I do not believe that tackling it was a high priority for the West. Instead, there is ample evidence to indicate that Fayyad was imposed on the PA because he was regarded as somebody that would do more or less exactly what the US and Europe told him to do.

As he has become the Palestinian Authority’s prime minister since then, it is important to ask the question: who exactly is Salam Fayyad?

For almost 15 years before he joined the PA, Fayyad worked for the International Monetary Fund, which is largely controlled by the US Treasury. He was clearly inculcated with the neoliberal dogma laid down by that institution, judging by the economic blueprints that he has signed. These have placed the interests of a corporate elite ahead of those of ordinary Palestinians. He has recommended, for example, that more than one-fifth of all public sector jobs should be cut by the PA.

Fayyad has had his ego inflated enormously over the past few years. He has received lavish praise from that vile war criminal Tony Blair and from Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief. And his old pals in the IMF and the World Bank have fed his delusions of grandeur by stating that the PA is sufficiently prepared to assume the responsibilities of statehood. According to Fayyad, these assurances amount to the “birth certificate” of a Palestinian state.

Neoliberal birth cert What kind of a “birth certificate”, then, is being drawn up for the state which Fayyad wants to have recognised at the UN later this month? This certificate will say, implicitly if not explicitly, that Palestine must pursue economic policies that have been shown time and time again to widen the gap between the rich and the poor. Institutions like the IMF are determined to keep the Palestinian economy on a tight leash, just as they have with many other economies around the world.

The Netherlands is one of several EU governments that has signalled it will oppose the vote on Palestinian statehood at the UN. This proves once again that Uri Rosenthal and Mark Rutte, the Dutch foreign minister and premier, will do almost anything that Israel requests them to do. But that doesn’t mean the PA’s statehood initiative should be supported, simply because some of the most reactionary political leaders in Europe are against it.

The truth is that even those European governments, like that of Spain, who have indicated they will back the statehood initiative cannot be considered real friends of the Palestinian people. And I emphasize that I mean the Palestinian people as a whole, not the quislings in the Palestinian Authority. For all 27 states in the EU and all of the major EU institutions have increased their cooperation with Israel so considerably in recent years that all of them must be considered complicit in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people.

Europe sides with the aggressor

I will cite one example of EU-Israel cooperation, with which I have become slightly obsessed. This cooperation is in the field of scientific research. Israel is the most active non-European participant in the EU’s multi-annual research programme. That programme has been allocated €53 billion between 2007 and 2013, with Israel taking part in some 800 coordinated activities under it.

A few days ago, I checked Cordis, the EU’s online information service on scientific research, to see if there are many cases where Dutch universities or private firms are linked up with Israel in projects funded by the European taxpayer. The result of my search indicated that the number of such projects involving both the Netherlands and Israel could be as high as 200.

To give you a flavour of these projects, there is one called Maaximus, which is designed to make aeroplanes that are lighter and can be more quickly assembled than the ones you will find landing today at Schiphol. This 70 million euro project brings together several Dutch partners, including the University of Eindhoven and the National Aerospace Laboratory here in Amsterdam, with Israel Aerospace Industries. Israel Aerospace Industries is one of the main suppliers of the pilotless drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that were used to bomb civilians during Israel’s attack on Gaza in 2008 and 2009.

Towards the end of this year, the European Commission is scheduled to publish a formal blueprint for the future of EU scientific research policy. From all of the discussions I and others have had with EU officials about the surrounding themes, it appears that the Commission is determined to keep on subsidising Israeli weapons manufacturers and by extension providing support to Israeli war crimes.

The EU’s decision to embrace the Israeli arms industry more tightly than before is partly a result of lobbying by international weapons manufacturers. They have convinced policy-makers that it is necessary to allocate them more resources to ensure that Europe doesn’t have to deal with its own 11 September.

Well, I remain unconvinced that subsidising an industry that relies on war to generate profits makes us or future generations safer. And even if it did, I do not want even one cent of my tax euros to be given to Israeli arms companies. This support for companies who profit from oppressing Palestinians is the most grotesque aspect of the EU’s relationship with Israel. And that is why it must be stopped.

Electronic Intifada

“If the aim of the blockade policy was to weaken the Hamas administration, the public employment numbers suggest this has failed,” a UNRWA spokesman said Tuesday as the UN marks Gaza’s fifth year under intense Israeli siege.

Commenting on a report released by the UN agency charged with providing care and services for the one million refugees living in the Gaza Strip, on the fifth anniversary of the siege, spokesman Chris Gunness added “it has certainly been highly successful in punishing some of the poorest of the poor in the Middle East region.”

According to UNRWA, wages in Gaza fell 34.5 per cent since the first half of 2006, while unemployment reached 45.2 percent in the second half of 2010.

“These are disturbing trends,” Gunness said, “and the refugees, which make up two thirds of Gaza’s 1.5 million population were the worst hit in the period covered in this report. It is hard to understand the logic of a man-made policy which deliberately impoverishes so many and condemns hundreds of thousands of potentially productive people to a life of destitution.”

On 14 June 2006, militants in the Gaza Strip captured an Israeli soldier patrolling its border. In retaliation for the capture of a soldier, Israeli forces entered the West Bank and abducted eight Hamas ministers and 21 party lawmakers from their homes and offices. Imports and exports into and out of Gaza were scaled down to a fraction of normal levels in an attempt to pressure the ruling party Hamas to return the soldier.

Hamas, negotiating on behalf of the factions which captured the soldier, are demanding the release of 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in return for his release.

Israel tightened the siege, restricting access to coastal fishing waters in October 2006, reducing the fishing limit from 20 nautical miles down to six. Then following Israel’s offensive on Gaza in the winter of 2008-9, the fishing limit was reduced to three nautical miles, effectively quashing the industry.

Imports between 2006-2010 were restricted to a short list of goods, with reports suggesting calculations had been made to import only the minimum necessary food supplies to sustain the population. After an international aid flotilla sailed to Gaza in June 2010 and Israeli commandos shot and killed nine of the activists on board, world outcry against the siege prompted a slight easing, with more commercial goods permitted in.

Prohibitions on industrial goods and building materials remain, however, making reconstruction of the 6,000 homes destroyed during Israel’s winter offensive impossible without intervention from international agencies.

Israel says materials used in construction of homes could be used to manufacture weapons.

A massive tunnel import industry grew in the southern Gaza Strip after the blockade was imposed, allowing building materials, cars foodstuffs and weapons to be brought into Gaza. The goods are too expensive for most Palestinians in the Strip to afford.

Exports of goods and produce from Gaza have effectively been stopped, with only a few hundred loads of strawberries and carnations having been exported to Europe under a Dutch government program since the imposition of the siege.

During the past five years, UNRWA noted in its report, that the private sector had been hit particularly hard in comparison with the public sector. While private businesses were forced to cut nearly 8,000 jobs in the second half of 2010, the Hamas dominated public sector grew by nearly three percent over the same period.

“Our research indicates that since 2007, Hamas has been able to increase public employment by at least one-fifth,” said Gunness. “Even more striking, in what should have been a relatively good year for the Gaza private sector with the supposed easing of the blockade, the public sector generated 70% of all net job growth as between second-half 2009 and second-half 2010.”

UNRWA has stated that it will continue to operate in the health and education sectors in Gaza, with some 213,000 children currently attending UNRWA run schools. However, the report stated that since the start of the blockade, the number of people living on less than one dollar a day has tripled to nearly 300,000 since the blockade was imposed.

“With many reconstruction projects still awaiting approval, the future looks bleak” Gunness said.

Ma’an

The Palestinian security officer at the Rafah border was overly polite. He wore a black uniform and walked around self-assuredly, as he instructed weary travelers on their next moves before being allowed back into Gaza. On the other side of the border, in Egypt, there was much anxiety, fear and anticipation.

‘Things will get better,’ said a Palestinian engineer from Gaza, who once studied and now works in a Swedish town south of Stockholm. What he meant was that things will get better at the border crossing, in terms of the relationship between Gaza and Egypt. Without a decisive Egyptian decision to reopen the crossing – completely – Gaza will continue to reel under the Israeli siege. Others agree, but Gazans have learned not to become too confident about political statements promising positive changes.

However, the Egypt of today belongs to an entirely different political category to the Egypt of Hosni Mubarak’s leadership. Palestinians, especially those trapped behind the shut borders in Gaza, are well aware of this. Still they are cautious. ‘Inshallah’ – God willing, they say, ‘May Allah bring good things.’

For now, things remain difficult at the border. When Egyptian border officials collect passports for examination, and return a few hours later to read aloud the names of those allowed in, a large crowd gathers around them. Tensions soon escalate to yelling, and occasional tears.

‘Go back or I will not give any his passport back,’ shouted a large Egyptian officer with some disdain. The veins on the side of his face suddenly bulked up. The crowd disbanded, only to return seconds later. The officer looked exhausted and clearly fed up. The Gaza travelers had already moved beyond the point of humiliation. They simply wanted to get from here to there, and back.

A young woman with a contorted back trotted behind her mother. Her pain was apparent on her face. ‘Yallah yamma,’ – hurry, daughter – urged the mother. ‘They might close the gate any minute.’ The girl, in her twenties, paused, closed her eyes tight, as if summoning whatever strength remained in her frail body to carry on for a few seconds longer.

The gate of the Egyptian border point was very wide, but only a small gap of a few feet was open. When it opened, early Thursday, May 19, hundreds tried to rush in at once. Large bags were tossed over people’s heads, children cried in panic, officers yelled, and a few dared to yell back. ‘Just open the gate, the big one,’ someone said. A white-haired little man, in an oversize, ancient suit, stood back and shock his head. ‘It’s a tragedy,’ he said. Soon, he too was forced to lose his civility and push against the mass of desperate humanity. Later, I saw him inside the border point, circling around nervously and intently puffing on a cigarette.

Here at the border, everyone is nervous, even those who have no reason to be. The Egyptian officers are edgy, as if their fate too is being determined somehow. Both sides know that the Gaza-Egypt border is undergoing an important transition. Egypt’s new foreign minister, Nabil al-Arabi, had already promised a breakup with the past, thus an opening of the border between his country and Gaza. There is much trust among Palestinians that the new Egypt is genuine, but also a fear that a politically vulnerable Egypt might be forced to compromise on its early stances.

But the Egyptian people seem determined to keep their government in check. Palestine is a major theme now in large protests. Hundreds of Egyptian activists were arrested, and many were wounded as they rallied near the Israeli embassy in Cairo, which was closed for few days before re-opening again. An Egyptian call to march to Gaza, in commemoration of the Palestinian Nakba of 1948 – the Day of Catastrophe – was aborted after the Egyptian army sealed much of Sinai. Tanks still dot the highway leading from Cairo to Gaza via the Sinai desert. The soldiers are very polite, though. The Egyptian driver who took me to Rafah in a very late hour seemed happiest with the revolution in his country, simply because he is now treated with respect by men in uniform. ‘Officers used to treat us with so much disrespect,’ he said with a retrospective sense of grief. ‘Now, we are like brothers.’ The driver extended his hand for an unnecessary handshake with a noticeably short solider, wearing a pair of slippers.

The sense of joy, however, hasn’t made it to the Gaza border yet. The hope and anticipation that Gazans feel towards the changes underway in Egypt can only be understood after a degree of investigation. The distance between Cairo and Rafah is long and arduous. It will be no easy task to translate political will in the former into meaningful policy in the latter. Still, the Egyptian people are keeping up the pressure, and Palestinians in Gaza remain hopeful.

At the end, no one was turned back. Everyone made it into Gaza. The man with the very old suit was still smoking and cursing for no apparent reason. The girl with the hurt back was still in terrible pain, but also happy to be home. The Gaza-Swedish engineer had a crowd of young cousins waiting for him. In Rafah, I found myself invited to a lunch followed by Arabic coffee with many men I didn’t know, most of whom were called Mohammed. They all seemed happy.

‘So, Egypt has changed, right?’ asked one Mohammed with a knowing smile and a nod. Everyone seemed to agree, although they didn’t pinpoint exactly how that change has affected Gaza so far. Palestinians in Gaza survive largely because of the 500 or so tunnels that connect the impoverished, besieged Strip to Egypt. Now, they feed on hope and cheap cigarettes, much of it also coming from Egypt.

‘Ramzy Baroud,’ called out an older officer loudly. ‘Welcome home, son,’ he said, as he handed me my passport and waved me in. No words could possibly have been sweeter at that moment.

After seventeen years of constant attempts to visit Gaza again, I am finally here.

I am in Gaza. I am home.

Ramzy Baroud

Palestine chronicle

SOME 20 leading Israeli leftists have signed a petition urging European leaders to support Palestinian statehood at the United Nations.

The petition, delivered yesterday to European ambassadors based in Israel, said UN endorsement of Palestinian statehood would not harm Israeli interests. “Prime Minister Netanyahu’s speech in Washington and the sweeping support he received from the US Congress shows that the peace process has reached its end,” the statement said, stressing that Israel has a choice between recognising a Palestinian state or a renewed wave of violence.

Among those signing the petition were the former speaker of the Knesset parliament, Avraham Burg, former foreign ministry director general Alon Liel, a Nobel laureate, writers and academics.

Mr Liel said he was worried about Israel becoming an apartheid state if the diplomatic stalemate continued. “I think that if there is no vote in September on recognising a Palestinian state, we shall find ourselves sliding even more rapidly into the slippery slope of a shared state, which I view as a true catastrophe.”

The signatories argued that given the mutual suspicions between the sides and current foot-dragging, a Palestinian declaration of independence was not just a right, but also a positive, constructive step.

The petitioners said that, as Israeli citizens, they will support a Palestinian declaration of statehood based on the 1967 lines, with agreed land swaps. The petition also called for Gaza , which is controlled by Hamas, to be included as part of a future Palestinian state as long as it is ruled by a Palestinian leadership that recognises Israel’s existence.

The petition followed weekend surveys in the Israeli newspapers that showed solid support for Mr Netanyahu’s hawkish speech to Congress, and a 13 per cent rise in his popularity compared to recent polls taken before his trip to the US.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said Palestinians are not seeking to isolate Israel on the international stage, but will pursue their unilateral drive for UN recognition of statehood unless peace talks resume. “We do not want to isolate Israel or to delegitimise it. On the contrary, we want to co-exist with it,” he said.

Speaking in Doha ahead of today’s meeting of Arab leaders to discuss the diplomatic deadlock, Mr Abbas said negotiations remained the best option as far as the Palestinians were concerned.

“We will review the steps we will take – persisting with negotiations as the fundamental way to achieving a resolution,” he said. “If we fail in reaching this solution, then we confirm that we will go to the United Nations.”

The Palestinians are expected to ask the UN general assembly in September to endorse an independent state, even without signing a peace agreement with Israel. It is expected a large majority of UN member states would vote in favour of such a resolution. Both Mr Netanyahu and US president Barack Obama have criticised such a move, arguing that bilateral negotiations are the only way to end the impasse.

The Irish Times