Comrade, On Behalf of the family of Irish Republican Army Volunteer Francis Hughes, who died on Hunger Strike on the 12th of May 1981, we offer to you and your comrades our total support and best wishes.

“On this day you will have completed 59 days on Hunger Strike. It was after 59 days on Hunger Strike that my brother died.. My cousin Thomas Mc Elwee also died after 62 days.

The Irish people understand the plight of the Palestinian people. Our country has been occupied by the British for 800 years, and throughout all those years we have suffered murder, imprisonment, and death on Hunger Strike.
The Palestinian people are a proud people. You must keep up the struggle. You have a lot of support and sympathy worldwide. My thoughts and prayers are with Khader Adnan his comrades, family, and friends on this day.”

Oliver Hughes, February 14th, 2012,

Click on the following link to watch video

Khader Adnan receives message of support from Oliver Hughes

A Tunisian medical aid convoy began its journey to Gaza on Thursday from Tunis, Palestinian officials said.

The convoy carrying four tons of medical aid left Tunis-Carthage International Airport earlier in the day, medical officials told Ma’an.

The coordinator of the medical services in the Gaza Strip said the convoy was organized by a Tunisian scout group and will arrive in Cairo and depart for Gaza shortly thereafter.

Some 11 scout leaders are part of the delegation, which is to visit Gaza’s hospitals and civil society groups before checking up on local scouts.

Ma’an

The prisoner swap deal with Israel, which Hamas has concluded through Egyptian and German intermediaries, is undoubtedly a perfect gift to the entire Palestinian people, given the deal’s auspicious timing, having taken place three weeks before the occurrence of Eidul Adha holiday.

Families celebrating the reception in RamAllah

The imminent release of some 1030 Palestinians from Israeli bastilles, dungeons and concentration camps is a definitive victory for Palestine and its struggling people by all conceivable standards.

Israel, the country, which has been oppressing and tormenting our people nonstop  for generations, has been forced to treat us with some respect, with a semblance of parity despite the enormous gap in the balance of powers between the two sides.

Israel, after all, is effectively a superpower which also tightly controls the politics and policies of the world’s sole superpower, its guardian-ally, the United States.

This is whereas Hamas is a small, besieged and blockaded resistance group, with a few thousand militiamen, struggling to resist a Nazi-like militaristic state that is hell-bent on murdering more Palestinians and stealing still more of their land.

Hence, the success of Hamas and other resistance groups to deal with Israel from a position of near  parity is a great moral, psychological and political victory for the Palestinian Islamist movement.

We should all remember that only a few months ago, Israel was demanding rather vociferously the destruction of  all Hamas’s human and resistance infrastructure.

Indeed, in addition to  the overwhelming joy which will hover over more than a thousand Palestinian  households, the deal will encompass the entire  Palestinian people because in the final analysis the prisoners’ cause is the national cause par excellance.

For many decades, Israel instilled in our minds the idea that Palestinian freedom fighters are “hopeless cases” that would only leave jail on their way to their graves!!

This deal is proving that for Palestinian political and resistance prisoners, spending one’s life and dying in an Israeli jail is not and doesn’t have to be an ineluctable fate.

This should be viewed as a strategic gain for the resistance as well as a huge morale booster for the estimated 4000 prisoners, still languishing in Israeli jails, and their families and beloved ones.

This means that the Israeli theory of deterrence will never be the same from now on. Yes, Israel is likely to seek and find ways and means to reaffirm and renew its psychological deterrence. However, the Palestinians, too, will never stop being more creative and more innovative, and, yes, more daring, in their unrelenting efforts to force Israel to meet their just grievances.

Because, ultimately, those fighting a foreign occupation are akin to those resisting rape and murder. One really exaggerates little by saying that the Israeli occupation of Palestine is an ultimate act of rape.

Hence, calling these Palestinian heroes “terrorists” and other evil epithets is the ultimate form of “fornication with language.”

Another point, which must be featured prominently, is that protracted negotiations between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and successive arrogant Israeli governments produced virtually nothing, apart from the accumulating frustration and despair among our people.

Hence the imminent swap deal shows that resistance to Israeli aggression, terror and criminality, should never ever be abandoned because then there would be no pressure on Israel to meet Palestinian demands, however just and legitimate these demands may be.

Yes, Israel might occasionally resort to offering Palestinians some “overtures” and “gestures of good will.” But this is very much like receiving handouts and charity whereby the giver decides everything while the receiver, or more correctly the beggar, has no choice but to accept whatever is thrown unto him.

Beggars can’t be choosers.

I felt I had to employ this analogy because since the conclusion of the hapless Oslo Accords in 1993, Israeli rejectionism, insolence, and arrogance of power effectively reduced the pathetic PA into a vanquished supplicant, begging Israel and the United States, for everything, from obtaining a travel permit to reach Jerusalem to releasing Palestinian inmates from Israeli jails.

Now, the resistance is demonstrating that its way pays off, because Israel knows only the language of real politik, in other word the language of force.

There is no doubt the imminent prisoner exchange deal will boost the status and stature of Hamas, not only among Palestinians but among Muslims worldwide. Hamas deserves this enhanced standing; it has earned it the hard way.

Rawhi Mushtaha (right) who was imprisoned since 1988

The deal is also expected to further cement relations between Egypt and Hamas. The deal asserted Egypt’s Arab and regional status as a central state which will always be a huge asset for all Arabs and Muslims and their various causes.

We hope and  pray that Cairo will keep moving away from the Zionist axis and keep getting nearer and closer to the masses’ axis.

The masses, long humiliated by nefarious Israeli policies and  murderous Israeli practices,  hate and loathe   Israel, the criminal state that doesn’t stop trying to obliterate the Arab-Islamic identity of Palestine, even by burning mosques and unearthing ancient cemeteries.

A final salute must go to those who kept Shalit’s whereabouts an absolute secret for more than five years.

Those unknown soldiers proved to friend and foe alike that there are still honorable men in Palestine who won’t be intimidated by sticks or induced by carrots.

Their exemplary determination, discipline, resilience and integrity thwarted Israeli efforts to rescue or liberate Shalit, who was being detained all these months and years, not in Tehran or Cairo, or Beirut, but under Israel’s nose, in her very backyard, only a few kilometers from Israel’s centers of power.

Finally, a word or two to Israel and its leaders.

I know you are in no mood to receive advice from Gentiles, let alone from your enemy, or more correctly, your victims, the Palestinians.  Your phenomenal arrogance and insolence don’t allow you to be reasonable, just and wise.

But let me tell you this, don’t you ever  force the Palestinians to kidnap your soldiers; treat them with some Justice and respect, don’t detain their children  for prolonged periods for political reasons, treat them as you would want to be treated.

Remember the pornographic oppression you are meting out to us, such as dumping our young men, including intellectuals, in your jails and dungeons is likely to boomerang on you.

PIC

Over 300 pilgrims left Gaza for Mecca on Friday night, to take part in Eid al-Adha celebrations in the holy city, the director of Palestinian Airlines said.

The first group, which left Gaza via the Rafah crossing to take two Palestinian Airlines jets from the northern Sinai town El-Arish, will be followed by pilgrims from the West Bank later in the month.

Airline chief Ziad al-Bada told Ma’an that 328 pilgrims were on their way to Saudi Arabia, where they will complete the Muslim pilgrimage to mark Eid al-Adha in early November.

This is the third year Palestinian Airlines has transported Palestinians to Mecca for Hajj, or pilgrimage, al-Bada said.

Based in Egypt and owned by the Palestinian Authority, the three-plane fleet offers once-a-week flights to Amman and charter services to Saudi Arabia during the pilgrimage season.

Ma’an

One of the groups involved in the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit said Thursday that the transfer of some 450 Palestinian prisoners will begin Tuesday.

Spokesman Abu Mujahed of the Popular Resistance Committees said Thursday that as soon as the detainees are released, officials will check each one to make sure they are among those listed in the deal.

Once the prisoners are checked, the factions holding Shalit will release him too.

An official in the PRC’s military wing, meanwhile, released a list of prisoners it says Israel agreed to free in exchange for Shalit. The list includes 477 names along with the conditions of each prisoner’s release.

Several lists are floating around, including one which appeared on Hamas’ Al-Aqsa TV. The ministry of prisoners affairs in the Gaza Strip says none of them are entirely accurate.

Abu Mujahed, the PRC spokesman, said those detainees who are to be exiled from the West Bank will depart Israel via Egypt and enter Gaza. Those who will be exiled abroad will go to Turkey or Qatar via Cairo.

Israel and Hamas agreed Tuesday to swap more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for captive soldier Shalit, resolving one of the most emotive and intractable issues between them.

The deal was overseen by the Egyptian intelligence minister two weeks ago. Israel and Hamas send delegates to Cairo and it was agreed that 450 prisoners would be freed in a first round.

There are at least 6,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. They are regarded as heroes in their struggle against Israeli occupation and quest for statehood.

Shalit, who also holds French citizenship, was last seen in a videotape released by his captors in September 2009. He has received no visits from the Red Cross, despite many appeals.

Ma’an

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 Palestinian blogger and writer from the Gaza Strip has been awarded the Honorary Anna Lindh Mediterranean Journalist Award for 2011, a statement from the Anna Lindh foundation said on Friday.

Asma al-Ghoul was awarded the prize for her “commitment to freedom of expression and her courage in facing repression,” a statement said.

Al-Ghoul’s blog, AsmaGaza, tackles political and social life in Palestine and the Middle East.

She was one of six journalists to receive a prize for reporting across cultures, and one of only two people to receive an honorary award.

Mohamed al-Dahshan, the Egyptian writer who was at the forefront of the Egyptian revolution, was also awarded an honorary prize for writing on social change in Egypt.

Maan

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

The Palestinian Authority will be able to export agricultural and fisheries products directly to the European Union from next year, under a trade deal approved by MEPs.

Until now, Palestinian exports have been controlled by Israeli customs authorities. But the European Parliament voted today to give Gaza and the West Bank duty-free and mostly quota-free access to EU farm and fishery markets. It also opens up Palestinian markets for some European goods.

Describing the agreement, which will enter into force next year, as a “first step towards the development of a nation,” Socialist and Democrat group MEP Maria Eleni Koppi said the Palestinian economy would benefit fully from the expansion in trade.

The deal received a caution welcome from the European United Left/Nordic Green Left group in parliament. Paul Murphy MEP said that, “if implemented, it could provide a level of assistance to the Palestinian people” – but added that its effects would be limited.

“While the EU can abolish tariffs on goods coming from the occupied territories, the difficulty is getting the goods out in the first place”. He denounced Israel’s blockade on Gaza as a “disastrous humanitarian catastrophe” leading to the “deliberate destruction of their economy”.

He said 500 checkpoints delaying and obstructing exports would also limit the benefits of the deal on the West Bank. “If the EU is serious about assisting the Palestinian people, gestures like this are simply not enough. It must end its complicity with the Israeli occupation,” he said.

In 2009 trade between the EU and Palestine totalled €56.6m, of which €50.5m were EU exports. Of the €6.1m Palestinian products, more than 70 per cent were agricultural. The new deal can be extended after 10 years.

The Palestinian Authority is in the process of seeking United Nations Security Council recognition as a state, after presenting its case at the general assembly last week. But the United States has said it will veto the proposal, while EU countries have been divided on the issue.

PublicServiceEurope.com

At the United Nations building in New York City on Friday, 23 September 2011, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority and chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) addresses the General Assembly in his bid to obtain full recognition of Palestine, as a state, in the United Nations.

As President Obama, and Prime Ministers Cameron and Netanyahu were when they spoke, Mahmoud Abbas is sharply dressed and wears a suit.

There is only one major difference between him and the others, but a crucial one: Mahmoud Abbas gives his speech in Arabic.

Mahmoud Abbas wears the imperialists’ clothes but does not speak the imperialists’ language of choice. Abbas, in the eyes of Obama, Cameron and Netanyahu, represents the “other” — the “majority world” (often mistakenly called “developing world”), the oppressed. He represents the people that, for them, do not count.

For all the talk about the PA bid putting the US and Israel under pressure, for all the nervousness shown by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US President Barack Obama and the rest, they do not, at the end of the day, care the slightest about it.

They do not care if all the polls in the world showed that the majority of people asked are in favor of recognizing Palestine as a state and they do not care if Abbas wears a suit or not.

Abbas could have worn Arafat’s famous kuffiyeh, the checkered scarf that has become a Palestinian nationalist symbol; the result would have been the same. In their heads, there will always be masters (them) and servants (the others). Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinians, today, still represent the other.

And the other does not have a voice, even at the UN.

The UN is one of the most undemocratic bodies in the world. After all, five permanent members have the right to veto anything they disagree with. The decisions of those five members, the masters — United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia and China — overrule the actions that the rest of the world is sometimes willing to take.

In a way, this arrangement mirrors internationally what goes on in most countries: A powerful elite living the high-life and making decisions for everyone else while the majority of humanity is struggling to make ends meet.

The UN is therefore part of the problem and will never bring justice to the Palestinians. It is precisely this body which exacerbated in 1947 the mess the Palestinians are currently in by passing a resolution calling for the partition of Palestine without the consent of its indigenous people. Thus, the UN violated the Palestinians’ right to self-determination at the very moment other colonized peoples were exercising theirs.

Since then, dozens of resolutions have been adopted by the General Assembly and the Security Council upholding the Palestinians’ right of self-determination, demanding an end of occupation and colonization and Israeli withdrawal from occupied lands, and the right of return of the refugees.

Yet without exception, those resolutions have been violated by Israel with total impunity. Why? Because Israel is part of the masters’ clique. Israel is in their club and represents the same interests.

While it is easy to understand the PA’s motivations in making a move at the UN — taking matters for the first time in a long time into their own hands, not succumbing to pressure, making a statement — it has unfortunately very little chance to make any real difference on the ground. By going to the UN, the PA continues to accept the rules of its master/oppressor.

In history, there has never been a case of a master relinquishing power for philosophical and altruistic reasons.

Did the slave masters suddenly decide that it was morally reprehensible to use other people as slaves? Did the segregationists in the US decide that Rosa Parks, after all, should be able to sit in the seat of her choice when going on a bus?

Did white South Africans, after the Sharpeville massacre, think that killing black women, kids and innocents was not what their beloved God or nationalist ideology had in mind? Did Hosni Mubarak after more than thirty years in power think that it was time to have a real democracy in Egypt?

They did not.

Those struggles were won by people’s power. When the people said NO. When the people, despite eventually facing terrible consequences, organized, took on the streets, marched, chanted, went on strike, united, rebelled and said “we will not have it your way any longer.”

What will make the road shorter for the Palestinians — who have already struggled and endured for so long — is to mobilize as much international solidarity as possible, to shift the balance in favor of the people faster.

And this is on the way. Palestinian civil society has done precisely this with its 2005 civil society call for boycott divestment and sanctions (BDS).

All over the world, people acting on the BDS call are building a movement, and building momemtum that no one can control because it comes from the bottom up, is in constant evolution and keeps re-inventing itself. A movement based on human rights and international law.

This movement, accompanied by other initiatives such as the International Solidarity Movement, the Free Gaza Movement, the flotillas and “‘flytilla,” the Viva Palestina convoys, the Russell Tribunal on Palestine and many other creative and spontaneous actions hav isolated and delegitimized Israel, a rogue state, far more effectively than years of endless and fruitless negotiations.

People are taking matters into their own hands; they are writing and making, history. The masters know that this has happened many time in the past. The thought of it happening again sends shivers into their expensive suits.

Frank Barat

Electronic Intifada