A strangled people

[Ibtisam]

Source:

 

The Guardian

 

It is a strange feeling: after working as a productive professional in Gaza for five years, I have become a black market junkie. I make several phone calls a day hunting for fuel for my car, diesel for the electricity generator waiting on standby to power the house, even cigarettes and vitamins. The only way to get hold of these things, to buy life-saving medicines, to purchase the essentials for a life of basic dignity, is through the black market, if at all. Today all Gaza suffers severe water shortages, with the fuel needed to pump and transport water (as well as sewage) dangerously scarce. The few cars seen on Gaza's mostly empty streets today almost invariably run on used cooking oil due to the lack of diesel.

 

That feeling of strangeness continued as I read the statement delivered by the Quartet in London yesterday. The four powers mediating in the Middle East - the United Nations, European Union, United States and Russia - spoke of "deep concern" and demanded "concrete steps by both sides". There was no sense, however, that they had properly grasped the depth of Gaza's plight or the realities in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. World politics seems to have morphed into a diplomacy of denial - a denial of how much more firm the international community must be towards the cause of an occupied and dying people.

This diplomacy of denial only gives succour to Israel's urge to exercise its will over Palestinians, and over besieged Gazans particularly. Israel's cabinet seeks to play God over Gaza by bluntly controlling every facet of civilian life. Tearing up the West Bank presents a threat of similarly terrible consequences. Israel's separation barrier and hundreds of checkpoints threaten to create numerous smaller Gazas in the West Bank. The villages and cities that are becoming increasingly isolated and economically strangled today could become hotspots of desperation and violence tomorrow.

 

Last week in Gaza, Israel not only continued depriving the people of fuel and cooking gas, it held back supplies to UN agencies such as Unrwa - the agency devoted to the health, education, food supplies and more of Gaza's poor and deprived population. In hindering the operations of the UN, Israel was hindering the Quartet, of which the UN is a part.

 

Israel's current policies are slowly expelling Palestinians from their land and pushing those who remain into indignity, desperation and extremism. The word "siege" no longer seems adequate to describe what is being done to Gaza. The territory's 1.5 million people have been thrust into a humanitarian catastrophe. It has become a nonsense to speak of peace negotiations while Israel creates more injustices on the ground in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

 

In statements ahead of the Quartet's London meeting, Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, acknowledged the "difficult" issues of borders and the fate of Jerusalem as well as Israel's responsibility to improve the lives of Palestinians. Rice insisted that the US does not regard Israel's settlement expansion as a fait accompli when it comes to a final agreement on borders.

 

If there was a glimmer of hope in the Quartet's statement and Rice's words, however, it is hard to foresee constructive action in its tow. The US administration is nearing the end of its term. The UN is undermined. Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, is appeasing hawks in Israel's military establishment, the settlement movement and the Knesset itself - even as he extends what increasingly looks like an illusory hand of peace to Palestinians. Palestinian politicians, too, must recognise that their embarrassing and divisive standoff only diminishes the world's appreciation of the suffering of their people.

 

In the meantime, the Palestinian people are approaching something close to destitution. It is not enough for the Quartet to push for peace between Palestinians and Israelis. World politicians and delegates, including Israelis of all convictions, must be encouraged, and allowed, to come to Gaza and witness what is happening here today. Only then will observers be able to assess just how Palestinians are made to live, and to assess the world's moral obligation towards a people who surely deserve a chance of a dignified and peaceful life.

 

· Sami Abdel-Shafi is the co-founder and senior partner at Emerge Consulting Group, a management consultancy in Gaza City.

 

 

The London mayor with Israeli Soldiers

[Ibtisam]

Also on TV today; The birth of Israel.

 

The former BBC Middle East correspondent, Tim Llewellyn, looks back at the history of Israel.

The contrast between the growing Jewish society in Palestine - the Yishuv - and the indigenous, mainly Muslim Arab population could not have been greater.

 

In 1917, two-thirds of the roughly 600,000 Arab population, were rural and village-based, with local, clannish loyalties and little connection with the towns. What passed for "national" Arab leadership was based in the towns, though there was little national identity. Two or three established, rival families dominated Palestinian politics.

 

 

Tilling the land ¿ Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs

 

The majority of the Jews arriving in Palestine were well organised, motivated and skilled. In the early 1920s, they set up an underground army, the Haganah, or Defence. A Jewish shadow government was set up, with departments which looked after every aspect of society: education, trades unions, farmers, the "kibbutzim" settlements that spread across Palestine, the law, and political parties.

 

During World War II, Haganah fighters joined the British Army, acquiring military skills and experience. Not so the Arabs.

 

 

Prime target: In 1946, Irgun Zwei Leumi bombed the British army headquarters at the King David Hotel

At the same time, extremist groups such as the Irgun Zwei Leumi and the Lehi, or Stern Group, began a brutal campaign of assassinations, bombings, kidnappings, intimidations, disruptions and sabotage. Their actions were directed against Briton, Arab and even Jews.

 

During the World War, the Zionist movement clearly defined its objective as a dominant Jewish state in Palestine. Deep plans were laid.

 

 

Building a new home in Palestine

After 1945, as the facts and consequences of Hitler's death camps became evident, the Jewish underground intensified the terror campaign to oust the British, whom they accused of Arab sympathies. Jewish organisations tried to restart unlimited immigration.

 

Enormous emotional and political support for the Zionists came from the United States. The enfeebled postwar British Government no longer had the strength or the stomach to control Palestine or try to find a middle way that would suit both Jews and Arabs.

 

The first Israeli-Arab war

 

 

Britain handed the problem to the United Nations. On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly voted to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab sectors.

 

There was violent and total Arab opposition, but wild Jewish acclaim. Fighting started almost immediately.

 

Even before the mandate ended, in April and May, Jewish fighters moved to protect, consolidate and widen the territory for the new Jewish state. Often they attacked areas designated for Arabs, and tried to depopulate Arab areas in the planned Jewish sector.

 

On April 9, Jewish fighters massacred scores of Palestinian villagers, including old people, women and children, in the West Jerusalem village of Deir Yassin, causing widespread panic and greatly augmenting the flight of Palestinians from their homes across the country.

 

As the Jewish authorities had predicted, Arab armies from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon tried to invade Palestine as soon as the British forces actually left. But the Arab campaign was a generally badly organised, uncoordinated affair with untrained units who were no match for the Haganah and, later, the Israeli Defence Force.

 

The Palestinian militias and other Arab irregulars were also easily crushed.

 

There was one exception: the British-trained and British-officered Arab Legion, under the command of King Abdullah of Jordan. But it was constrained financially and politically by the British-dominated King, who had already colluded with the Jewish leaders on territorial matters and who had ambitions in Palestine.

 

The Arab Legion, therefore, was restricted to defending territory in and around East Jerusalem and the Old City and on the West Bank of the Jordan, which it did successfully.

 

 

Israeli soldiers raise the flag over Um-Rashrash, now Eilat Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs

 

The refugees

 

By the middle of 1949 up to 700,000 of about 900,000 Palestinian Arabs had left the affected region, forced out by a combination of Jewish/Israeli terror tactics, the frightening thrust of war, the contagious panic of local residents, fractious and incompetent Arab leadership, the flight of some richer and therefore influential families and the actual sale of Arab land to the Jews without coercion, often by absentee Arab landlords.

 

These Palestinians had fled from their homes for ever, though they did not know it at the time. They ended up in the refugee camps of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egyptian-run Gaza and in the Palestinian territory of the West Bank, which was ruled by the Jordanian King Abdullah, as was Arab East Jerusalem.

 

Those Palestinian refugees and their descendants in the region now number more than three million. Israel has since refused to allow the refugees to return as long as Arab states remain pledged to its destruction, often claiming that there was no room for them anyway.

 

Peace treaties and agreements with Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian movement have not altered this.

 

 

Celebrating the UN vote

In 1917, there had been 50,000 or so Jews in Palestine. By 1948, they had become 650,000 Israelis. At the same time, the majority of Palestinian Arabs had left Israel; only 200,000 or so withstood the war and other depradations and remained in Israel.

 

Israel became a state on May 15, 1948, and was recognised by the United States and the Soviet Union that same day.

 

BBC website.

[Chimera]

Problem with the Arab armies was the fact that the selection of Generals and other army officers was based on family lineages instead of merit. This explains why the Jordanian army performed better compared to the other Arab armies. When Egypt transformed it's armed forces after the six day war and started basing it on meritocracy it actually restored the previously crushed Arab pride during the Y.K war despite the end result being a stalemate