Gaza Activists in Trouble

This will fly under the radar of most news reporting this weekend (as Obama’s selection of Joe Biden as his Vice-Presidential running mate will doubtless scoop up all media attention), but this is a very important story to note for those concerned about Gaza, and more importantly free protest and demonstration.

According to Al Jazeera, Israel’s Foreign Minister Aviv Shiron has issued threats to two vessels from the ‘Free Gaza’ Protest Group, who are attempting to land in Gaza to deliver balloons and hearing aids. Let me repeat that threatening cargo - balloons (for children) and hearing aids (for the hard of hearing).

There are rumours the Israeli Navy may even fire upon the ships as they enter the Gaza coast in the next few hours. Lauren Booth (Tony Blair’s Sister-in-Law) is actually aboard one of the vessels steaming toward Gaza under Greek flags, and has been quoted as saying:

I’ve been nervous, but today I’m excited. It’s not about our fear, it’s about the people waiting in Gaza, you can’t think about anything else.

Forget about this VP-selection news vortex you are about to enter, and keep your eyes on the Gaza coast - it’s important.

Mahmoud Darwish (1941 - 2008)

Dispensing of the politics and the arguments and the angst and the anger, this post is dedicated to one of the world’s most important and infleuntial poets, Mahmoud Darwish, who died of heart failure earlier this week in Houston, Texas.

Darwish was not only a profound and urgent poet of his times - he was a sensitive and sober observer of the human condition - creating some of the Middle East’s most important verse; whilst providing his Palestinian homeland a creative voice, a passion, and a cultural identity.

To many Palestinians he was a Goethe or a Shakespeare or a Whitman. To many Palestinians he was simply their own - and used his tremendous talent to inform, polarize and persuade.

Rather than re-phrase or worse, re-state some of the wonderful obituaries that have already been written, this post will simply end with a thanks. A profound thanks. Poetry is an art whose champions rarely leave the paper and truly affect a nation, a world. Darwish was an exception - and poetry, Palestinians, and the world will always be grateful.

I believe Darwish’s own views of poetry will suffice as a coda:

A person can only be born in one place. However, he may die several times elsewhere: in the exiles and prisons, and in a homeland transformed by the occupation and oppression into a nightmare. Poetry is perhaps what teaches us to nurture the charming illusion: how to be reborn out of ourselves over and over again, and use words to construct a better world, a fictitious world that enables us to sign a pact for a permanent and comprehensive peace … with life.

Palestinians May Demand Citizenship

Given the never-ending negotiation over the proposed borders of a viable Palestinian State, not to mention the ongoing carving up of the West Bank making a single contiguous state nearly impossible, Palestinian Negotiator Ahmed Qurei was quoted overnight by Reuters as saying:

If Israel continues to reject our propositions regarding the borders [of a future Palestinian state], we might demand Israeli citizenship.

Not only is this a further statement of the pessimism the Palestinian Leadership feels in the possibly of a Palestinian State, but strategically, the statement presents a true challenge to Israel to prove to the world that it is indeed a Democratic State. Given the fact that Palestinians living within the Green Line (much less those trapped in the West Bank and Gaza) are regularly and unjustly persecuted by the Israeli government (from one-sided voting rights to racist land ownership policies), the prospect of Israel handing citizenship to an ethnically separate population is impossible within the ideological tenets of Zionism (and thus the platform of the State of Israel).

Let us not forget that an Ethnic State (by definition) cannot be Democratic. It can further be argued that the subsequent ethnic cleansing of Israel’s borders and passive encouragement of emigration of Palestinian families proves Israel’s goals are quite the opposite of citizenship for Arab families. Rather, much of the impetus in continuing the so-called ‘roadmap’ is to create a prison (sorry, a broken, weak and non-contiguous Palestinian State) to deposit the non-Jewish (Arab) residents of Israel - to legitimize the final ’solution’ to the world as working for peace on behalf of the Palestinians.

The Palestinian Leadership is right (and brilliant) to raise the question of Israeli citizenship. The move is now over to Israel - who will no doubt claim their goal is a true state and ‘home’ for the Palestinians in a Palestinian-run West Bank - as Israel could never allow Palestinians the same legal rights as Jewish families within Israel.

Moreover, they simply want the Palestinians out.

How’s that for Democracy…?

Disgusting Settler Violence in Hebron

Yet again, the Jewish settlers of Hebron raise the bar in the ongoing abuse and humiliation of their Palestinian neighbors in full view and with complete support of the IDF. On this occasion - during a wedding on Saturday night, settlers pushed a 15-year old boy off the roof of his home - breaking his back in the fall. He is currently listed in ’serious condition’.

Worse, five other Palestinians were injured on Friday night when settlers attacked another wedding party. The following is taken from the Maan News Agency:

Settlers occupying a house belonging to Ar-Rajabi family pelted the wedding party with stones and empty bottles, injuring Ramzi Al-Ja’bari, Fadi Al-Ja’bari and a woman from Al-Ja’bari family, according to Bassam Al-Jabir, an eyewitness who lives near the Israeli settlement Kiryat Arba. Al-Jabir also reported that the settlers attacked the home of Palestinian magistrate judge Munthir Da’na with stones.

These racist and thoroughly disgusting assaults are an everyday occurence in Hebron. I could easily update this blog solely with news of ongoing incidents on a daily (if not hourly) basis. It is one thing to claim these settlers do or do not have the right to live on Palestinian land in the West Bank. Let’s just ‘park’ that line of debate for the moment.

What is not under debate - and cannot be excused - is the fundamental denial of Human Rights that these settlers perpetrate. The ideological abuse heaped upon the Palestinian families of Hebron (actively by the settlers and passively by the Israeli Army) is only getting worse by the day.

To get a feel for the anger and racist attitudes of these settlers - check out the abuse on British Journalists in Hebron:

These blog posts are not only identical, they are utterly pointless if more people do not speak out. Hebron is a microcosm of Palestinian life in the West Bank at it’s most extreme.

And these extremists must be stopped.

Number of Settlers Up 4% in 2007

Today’s Ha’aretz (well, once you trawl past the anti-Iran stuff) quietly lists a very disturbing but not surprising statistic released by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics that the number of settlers in the West Bank jumped by 4% in 2007.

That may sound like a small number - but it’s beyond numbers at this point - and more worrying, “The Jerusalem District Planning and Construction Committee in July approved the construction of 1,800 new settler homes in Har Homa and Pisgat Ze’ev, two neighborhoods over the Green Line division. The plan, which still requires approval from Jerusalem’s local committee, includes the construction of 920 new housing units in Har Homa and 880 units in Pisgat Ze’ev.”

Uh - roadmap anyone? I encourage you to check out this recent report from Real News: