Weekly Briefing No. 20 In this Briefing: (No. 20 2007) Annapolis, As Seen from Gaza by Laila El-Haddad The Vital Need for Unity by Rami Khoury Demands of a Thief by Gideon Levy Human Rights Organizations Demand Annapolis uphold international law Links to Annapolis protests in Palestine Chasing a Ghost by Soumaya Ghannoushi Between Apartheid and the Status Quo by Jeff Halper (IF YOU READ ONLY ONE, READ THIS ONE.) Plus: Two articles on actual real life in Gaza!! Annapolis, As Seen from Gaza by Laila El-Haddad (Nov. 22, 2007) Excerpt: The conference simply generates new and ever-more superfluous and intricate promises which Israeli leaders can commit to and yet somehow evade. An exercise in legal obfuscation at its best: we won't build new settlements, we'll just expropriate more land and expand to account for their "natural growth", until they resemble towns, not colonies, and have them legitimised by a US administration looking for some way to save face... Full Article: http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/laila_elhaddad/2007/11/annapolis_as_seen_from_gaza.html FATAH AND HAMAS The vital need for unity By Rami G. Khouri (Published: November 19, 2007) Excerpt: These intra-Palestinian tensions are being exploited by the United States and Israel to try and destroy Hamas by supporting Abbas and Fatah, and by pushing a bizarre new peace process that is supposed to kick off with a meeting at Annapolis, Maryland, in the coming weeks. This U.S.-driven peace process is unlikely to achieve either credibility or success if one of its main purposes is to deepen the Fatah-Hamas split, and then to link the intra-Palestinian clashes with the resumption of peace talks. Trying to defeat Hamas in this way runs the additional risk of turning Abbas and Fatah into discredited collaborators with an addiction to power. Full article at: http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/11/19/opinion/edkhouri.php Demands of a thief (Gideon Levy, Haaretz, 11-26-07) The public discourse in Israel has momentarily awoken from its slumber. "To give or not to give," that is the Shakespearean question - "to make concessions" or "not to make concessions." It is good that initial signs of life in the Israeli public have emerged. It was worth going to Annapolis if only for this reason - but this discourse is baseless and distorted. Israel is not being asked "to give" anything to the Palestinians; it is only being asked to return - to return their stolen land and restore their trampled self-respect, along with their fundamental human rights and humanity. This is the primary core issue, the only one worthy of the title, and no one talks about it anymore. Full Article: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/927531.html Rights orgs: Uphold international law at Annapolis The following letter was sent on 26 November 2007 to key negotiating parties including the President of the Palestinian National Authority, the Israeli Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, and EU and UN Officials: As Palestinian human rights and civil society organizations, we the undersigned, are deeply concerned by the lack of a clearly articulated legal framework for the upcoming diplomatic negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) to be held at Annapolis on 27 November. http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9123.shtml The Palestinian protest against the Annapolis conference : visit this link for accounts of various protests in Gaza and West Bank: http://www.imemc.org/article/51755 Chasing a ghost If Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas is to be believed, the Annapolis peace conference "will be a historic opportunity to open a new page in the history of the Middle East based on the establishment of our independent Palestinian state". But this seems more like wishful thinking. For aside from being more concerned with preparing the ground for the approaching attack on Iran than with resolving the Palestinian Israeli conflict, the conference is subject to a set of limitations that combine to lower its threshold and shrink its potential. http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/soumaya_ghannoushi_/2007/11/fallacy_of_the_palestinian_sta.html BETWEEN APARTHEID AND THE STATUS QUO By Jeff Halper (November 27, 2007) One may well think that the struggle inside the Jewish community of Israel is between those of the political right, who want to maintain the settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank so as to “redeem” the Greater Land of Israel as a Jewish country, and those of the left who seek a two-state solution with the Palestinians and are thus willing to relinquish enough of the “Territories,” if not all, in order that a viable Palestinian state may emerge. This is not really the case. Polls and the make-up of the Israeli government suggest that perhaps a quarter of Israeli Jews fall into the first group, the die-hards, while not more than 10% support a full withdrawal from the Occupied Territories. (Virtually no Israeli Jews use the term “occupation,” which Israel denies it has.) The vast majority of Israeli Jews, stretching from the liberal Meretz party through Labor, Kadima and into the “liberal” wing of the Likud, excepting only the religious parties and the extreme right-wing led by former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the current Minister of Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman, share a broad consensus: for both security reasons and because of Israel’s “facts on the ground,” the Arabs (as we call the Palestinians) will have to settle for a truncated mini-state on no more than 15-20% of the country between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. Full article: http://www.icahd.org/icahdukdev/eng/articles.asp?menu=6&submenu=2&site=UK&article=365 ***************************************** Meanwhile, Back to Reality in Gaza: The Gaza Strip: Disengagement two years on Two years ago, Israel completed its unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. We all remember the intense media campaign shamelessly portraying the settlers as dispossessed victims of a bold move for peace. Among others, Harvard economist Sara Roy argued that Israel's version of disengagement would bring disaster to an already desperate Gaza. Today, we are witnessing emergence of an unparalleled economic catastrophe in the Gaza Strip and with it, the evaporation of the last remaining hopes for a Palestinian state. http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9118.shtml Cancer patient becomes 18th medical victim of Gaza siege in three weeks A 69-year-old cancer patient has died after Israeli authorities refused him permission to leave the Gaza Strip for treatment, medical sources said. Spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committee, Rami Abdo, said that Ali Abdullah Awada from the Nuseirat refugee camp died on Saturday morning, after frantic attempts by his family to take him abroad for treatment failed. He is the 18th patient to die during the last three weeks because of the Israeli siege on the coastal enclave. As well as the difficulty of getting Israeli permission to travel abroad for medical treatment, hospitals in the Gaza Strip are running out of medicines. http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=26456 ***************************************************************** Weekly Briefing No. 21: Annapolis Deconstructed This briefing deals with various aspects of the recently-concluded Annapolis conference. Changing the Roles of Peacemaking by Roger Lieberman The 12 Myths of Annapolis By Phylis Bennis Democracy Now interview with Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi and Daniel Levy A is for Apartheid and Annapolis by Susan Abulhawa Syria describes Annapolis as Defeat for Palestinians Annapolis and Settlements: Three articles Annapolis and the Right of Return: Will Peace Cost me my Home? ...And the Backtracking begins: Olmert says no deal by end of 2008 Changing the Roles of Peacemaking by Roger Lieberman Excerpt: As the legacy of the Oslo years painfully reminds us, a faulty “peace process” can be more harmful to the struggle for a just peace than no process at all. When the American public is told that their government's diplomats are earnestly laboring to resolve the Mideast crisis, they tend to lose interest in the crisis itself on the assumption that the most able individuals are giving peace a good college try. When diplomacy breaks down and fighting between the parties in contention resumes, ordinary Americans generally come to one of two erroneous conclusions. The first of these is that the Israel-Palestine conflict is a tribal feud of Biblical antiquity, beyond the ability of “rational” Westerners to mediate. The second, of course, is that peace efforts have failed because Israel has no Palestinian “peace partner”, and thus has no option but to perpetuate the occupation, and “daily reconquer its existence” - or something. But either of these misconceptions leads to the same result: allowing Israel to continue bulldozing its way through the remnants of Palestinian society under the ludicrous pretext of “defending itself”. Full article at: http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story-12020763920.htm THE 12 MYTHS OF ANNAPOLIS By Phillis Bennis, Institute for Policy Studies Myth 1) The Annapolis meeting was designed to launch serious new negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians that aimed at ending the occupation and producing a just, lasting and comprehensive peace in the region based on a two-state solution. In fact, the two main reasons for the conference had virtually nothing to do with Israel or Palestine. The real reasons for convening the conference were 1) to strengthen Arab government support for U.S. strategies in the Middle East, including the war in Iraq and particularly the escalation of pressure aimed at Iran. 2) To provide a photo-op to reframe Condoleezza Rice’s legacy, now largely shaped by her embrace of Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon in 2006, to the legacy of a would-be peacemaker. Full article: http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?act_id=17641 Democracy Now Interview on Annapolis: AMY GOODMAN: Mustafa Barghouti, your response to the summit at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis? MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: Well, the only official thing that came out of this is the statement, the joint statement, and in that statement, the Palestinian delegation failed to present any of the Palestinian demands. Basically, the Palestinian delegation, being very weak and with great doubts about how representative it is, made one concession after the other. And everything they promised the Palestinian people, they failed to achieve. ... What is most drastic is that after all this big gathering and all these expenses on such a conference, or a meeting, all we get is the same road map that was there back in 2003 and that was never implemented. And in my opinion, what happened was very risky, because instead of discussing the real issues, the Israeli side managed to mobilize the American side; to marginalize completely the Quartet, which has no role from now on; to completely ignore and omit any mentioning of the basis and reference of negotiations, like UN resolutions, United Nations decisions ... For full interview: http://www.apartheidmasked.org/?p=316#more-316 A is for Apartheid and Annapolis By Susan Abulhawa In the 80s, we gave up 78% of our homeland to try to pick up the pieces of our lives on the remaining 22% of Palestine. This was, and remains, the only true (brave or otherwise) concession ever made in the so-called ‘Middle East Conflict.” Next came Camp David, then Madrid, then Oslo, then another Camp David, Taba, Wye, (deep breath) Sharm el Sheikh, the Disengagement, the Road Map. Through it all, Israel continued to divide, carve out, confiscate and settle that 22%. They scattered us into a diaspora, shut down our schools, bombed damn near every inch of the West Bank and Gaza, herded us into ghettos, set up checkpoints all around us and employed every tool of imperialism, times ten, to get rid of or subjugate us as a cheap labor force. Now we arrive at yet another surreal meeting in the clouds: Annapolis. Full article: http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story-12020764259.htm Syria describes Annapolis as defeat for Palestinians State-run Tishrin daily says Annapolis peace conference favored Israeli side, ended with no real promise for peace. 'Israel as Jewish State is consecration of Israeli racism,' says lead editorial (AP) Full article at: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3477750,00.html THREE ARTICLES ON THE PROBLEM OF SETTLEMENTS (1) The right to our land must be restored By Fareed Taamallah This week in Annapolis, Maryland the United States government will host a conference between Palestinian and Israeli leaders to launch peace talks on a permanent agreement. A vital component of the peace proposals to be discussed involves exchanges of territory that would allow Israel to keep its West Bank "settlement blocs" while compensating Palestinians with land inside Israel. But my community of Qira, like many others, cannot survive in a Palestinian state divided by Israel's settlement blocs. The settlement blocs are built on Palestinian agricultural land and water resources, and carve the West Bank into disconnected Palestinian bantustans. Full article at: http://imeu.net/news/article007134.shtml (2) Separate but unequal in Palestine: The road to apartheid By Mohammed Khatib On the eve of the meeting intended to restart negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians at Annapolis, Maryland, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced that Israel will build no new West Bank settlements, but will not "strangle" existing Israeli settlements. This means that construction in the 149 existing Israeli settlements throughout the West Bank that are strangling Palestinians, including the settlements on our village's land, will continue unchecked. Olmert's cynical announcement underlines our fear that Israel, with US support, will insist on retaining most West Bank settlements in the upcoming negotiations, locking Palestinians into a "separate but unequal" position. Full article at: http://imeu.net/news/article007143.shtml (3) Haaretz Editorial: A halt, not a suspension (11-30-07) When Ehud Olmert warns that the world could impose a "South African solution" on Israel if two states are not created, side by side, he is tacitly admitting that expansion of the settlements is making Israel look increasingly like an apartheid regime. The agreement to withdraw, or to make "painful concessions," as it is sanctimoniously called, is therefore less painful than any other alternative. Full Article: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/929727.html Will Peace Cost Me My Home? By Ghada Ageel (LA Times, Dec. 1, 2007) Sixty years ago, my grandparents lived in the beautiful village of Beit Daras, a few kilometers north of Gaza. They were farmers and owned hundreds of acres of land. But in 1948...we became refugees... queueing for tents, food and assistance, while the state of Israel was established on the ruins of my family's property and on the ruins of hundreds of other Palestinian villages. ... I raise this story today because it remains profoundly relevant to the Middle East peace process -- and to help convey the deep-seated fears of Palestinian refugees that we will be asked to exonerate Israel for its actions and to relinquish our right to return home. That cannot be allowed to happen. All refugees have the right to return. This is an individual right, long recognized in international law, that cannot be negotiated away. Palestinian refugees -- and there are more than 4 million of us registered with the United Nations today -- hold this right no less than Kosovar or Rwandan or any other refugees. Full Article at: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-oe-ageel1dec01,1,940804.story?ctrack=1&cset=true Backtracking Begins: Olmert plays down peace deal chances by end of 2008 http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071202/wl_nm/palestinians_israel_dc ******************************************************************** Opportunities to visit Palestine in 2008 "No amount of reading, attending lectures or watching films can convey an accurate understanding of the “facts on the ground”, which are crucial to any program of advocacy." -- ICAHD Dear Members and Friends of MRSCP, Have you been thinking about visiting Palestine? If so, check out these upcoming opportunities to do just that...in particular I call your attention to the upcoming March delegation of Interfaith Peace Builders, which is being co-led by Wisconsin's own Cathy Sultan of Eau Claire. To get more information or to apply to any of these, please use the links to contact them directly. (For spring tours, deadlines may be approaching so act now.) If you are in southern Wisconsin and are seriously considering participating in any of these visits, feel free to contact MRSCP because we may be interested in working with you on pre- and post-tour briefings and report-backs, as well as efforts to subsidize the cost of the trip. In the case of Interfaith Peace Builders, we are currently in posession of a large quantity of their tour promotion materials which would be available for your use. Below you will first find a chronological list of 2008 tours followed by a listing by group. ALL of these are very worthwhile. Barb O. MRSCP Chronological Order of Visits: March (Easter) 2008: Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) tour March 29 - April 12, 2008: Interfaith Peace Builders: "Voices of the Peace Makers: Palestinians and Israelis Chart a Shared Future" with the National Peace Foundation April 5 - 15, 2008: Global Exchange RealityTour July 1-12, 2008: Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA) (Tour based out of Ibdaa Center in Dheisheh Camp near Bethlehem) July 14-29: ICAHD Home rebuilding camp July 26-August 9: Interfaith Peace Builders: "Investing in Peace: Models for Addressing an Ongoing Occupation" November 8-22, 2008 Interfaith Peace Builders (Olive Harvest delegation with American Friends Service Committee) December 6 - 16, 2008: Global Exchange Reality Tour ******************************** Israeli Committtee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) tours: For information on their 10 day March 2008 tour, listed as "over the Easter Holiday" click here: http://www.icahd.org/eng/news.asp?menu=5&submenu=1&item=520 For information on their summer rebuilding camp July 14-29, where participants will rebuild a Palestinian home in Anata, West Bank, click here: http://www.icahd.org/eng/articles.asp?menu=6&submenu=2&article=434 * Interfaith Peace-Builders Delegations to Israel/Palestine Interfaith Peace-Builders (IFPB) sends delegations to Israel and Palestine so that US citizens can see the conflict with their own eyes. Participants have the opportunity to learn directly from Israeli and Palestinian nonviolent peace/human-rights activists, to spend time in Palestinian and Israeli homes, and to experience the situation of Palestinians living under military occupation. For more information, contact the IFPB office directly by phone (202-244-0821) or email office@ifpbdel.org. Upcoming Delegations in 2008: March 29 - April 12, 2008 July 26-August 9: see http://www.ifpbdel.org/del28/default.html November 8-22, 2008 * Global Exchange's Delegations to Palestine & Israel As the Israeli military continues to place Palestinian towns, villages and refugee camps under siege, Palestinians continue to resist the 40 year Occupation of their land. GX's delegations to Palestine/Israel strive to further the US public's understanding of the region's history and realities by giving participants first-hand exposure to the aspirations and frustrations of Palestinians living under Occupation, the dimensions of the human rights crisis under Israeli rule, as well as the perspectives of Palestinians and Israelis who are working for a just peace and end to the occupation. For additional information, review our Palestine resources. For a selection of recent news items compiled by Global Exchange, review our Palestine News Updates. Prospects for Peace with Justice April 05, 2008 - April 15, 2008 December 06, 2008 - December 16, 2008 For more information you can contact Global Exchange (800-497-1994 x. 251) or email palestine@globalexchange.org. *July 1-12, 2008: Middle East Children's Alliance Delegation to Palestine/Israel On MECA's twelve-day delegation you will be taken on a geographic, political, historical and cultural tour of Palestine/Israel by two MECA staff people, and Yacoub Odeh, refugee, former political prisoner, and human rights worker. We will travel by van to witness the impact of the Israeli occupation and visit organizations working for justice and equality. You will learn about refugees, land confiscation, political prisoners, women's initiatives, mental and physical health issues, civil rights in Israel, and the lives of children. The group of eight to twelve people will stay at the guesthouse of MECA's long-time partner Ibdaa Cultural Center in Dheisheh Refugee Camp, near Bethlehem. Ibdaa is a lively place in the heart of the community with great food and comfortable accommodations. Cost: $1,800 not including airfare. More info: www.mecaforpeace.org/delegation Contact: Deborah Agre at 510-548-0542 or Deborah@mecaforpeace.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTE: This info is from Occupation End Notes the US Campaign to End thje Israelil Occupation's bi-monthly newsletter, designed as a tool for activists. For this newsletter to be successful, we need your participation. Use us to promote events, give feedback on recent actions, recommend resources, or just learn from other activists in the movement. If you or your organization are planning an event aimed at ending the occupation, or you have information for the Newsletter, please contact the US Campaign at office@endtheoccupation.org. The US Campaign aims to change U.S. policies that sustain Israel's 40-year occupation of the Palestinian West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, and that deny equal rights for all.