JENIN GRAFFITI ADOPTS POLITE SLOGANS IN ENGLISH FOR VIP VISITORS

Jenin graffiti artists adopt English for benefit of VIP visitors
By Hamza Hendawi
The Associated Press
April 29, 2002

For the benefit of foreign visitors and U.N. investigators, much of the fresh graffiti in this Palestinian refugee camp is in English these days, not Arabic; and it's uncharacteristically placid, almost polite.

Battered by a fierce battle between Palestinian gunmen and Israeli troops, the Jenin refugee camp – a bastion of militancy – has gone to great lengths to project an image of moderation for its visitors, and in preparation for a visit by a U.N. team mandated to probe Israel's military operations in the camp.

Israel on Sunday decided not to allow the team to come to the region, repeating its objections to the team's composition and charging that its findings would certainly blame Israel. The Israelis said consultations with the world body would continue over the makeup of the team and the scope of its inquiry.

The team was to look into claims that hundreds of Palestinians, many of them civilians, were killed during the April 3-11 battle either in heavy shelling or buried alive when giant bulldozers moved in to bring down homes suspected of sheltering gunmen.

Israel, which lost 23 men in the battle, says several dozen Palestinians died, mostly gunmen. So far, nearly 50 Palestinian bodies have been recovered, according to the Jenin hospital.

The battle was fought as part of an Israeli military campaign launched March 29 to hunt militants in the West Bank following a series of particularly lethal suicide bombings.

The Palestinians are making sure that whoever visits the Jenin refugee camp – those who have already been include members of the European Parliament, U.S. church leaders, Amnesty International Secretary-General Irene Khan and Bianca Jagger, ex-wife of pop music legend Mick Jagger – reads the right slogans and sees the right stuff.

"We love Palestine" and "Palestine is for the Palestinians" read two of the new English-language slogans on the walls of the Jenin camp – very different from the venomous and warlike graffiti that has for years threatened "rivers of blood" or "opening the gates of hell" on the walls of every Palestinian town, village and refugee camp.

An old graffito declaring that "Osama bin Laden is a hero" has been painted over. Bin Laden is thought by the United States to be the architect of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, events that sent a few dozen Palestinians publicly celebrating on the day much to the dismay of many, including Yasser Arafat's administration.

In the huge mound of debris and rubble that was the heart of the Jenin camp, several families spend their days just sitting at the spot where their homes once stood. Huge Palestinian flags together with those of different Palestinian factions and militias are hoisted over buildings of which parts are still standing.

Israeli military sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, say the Palestinians have taken measures to "prepare" the Jenin camp for the arrival of the U.N. team.

The preparations, they say, include instructions to residents who had lost their homes to spend the day where their houses once stood and to halt any reconstruction of damaged houses so the U.N. team can see the extent of the destruction. Palestinian gunmen left in the camp, they said, have been instructed not to engage in any military activity for the duration of the U.N. team's visit.

Palestinian Jenin lawmaker Jamal al-Shati denied that Palestinian authorities were trying to "flirt" with the U.N. team or important visitors, arguing that the fresh slogans and the camp residents spending their days on the mounds of debris were spontaneous and emotional acts of a people in distress.

 

"THIS WAS A MASSACRE OF THE JEWS, NOT OF US"

Claims of massacre go unsupported by Palestinian fighters
By Charles A. Radin and Dan Ephron
The Boston Globe
April 29, 2002

Palestinian Authority allegations that a large-scale massacre of civilians was committed by Israeli troops during their invasion of the refugee camp here appear to be crumbling under the weight of eyewitness accounts from Palestinian fighters who participated in the battle and camp residents who remained in their homes until the final hours of the fighting.

In interviews yesterday with teenage fighters, a leader of Islamic Jihad, an elderly man whose home was at the center of the fighting, and other Palestinian residents, all of whom were in the camp during the battle, none reported seeing large numbers of civilians killed. All said they were allowed to surrender or evacuate when they were ready to do so, though some reported being mistreated while in Israeli detention.

Palestinian Authority leaders have asserted that more than 500 people, mostly women and children, were killed in the camp and that many of the dead were buried by Israeli forces in mass graves. Investigators for Amnesty International said that Israel failed to provide safe passage from the camp to noncombatants.

The Palestinian allegations led to the creation of a UN fact-finding team for Jenin, but Israel yesterday barred the team from arriving amid allegations of an anti-Israel bias.

Israel says that those Palestinians killed in the Jenin battle were almost all fighters, that none were buried in mass graves, and that ample chance was given to fighters to surrender and for civilians to leave. It initially estimated the death toll at 100 to 200, and has since revised that toll downward to 50.

Meanwhile, a British military adviser to Amnesty, Reserve Major David Holley, was quoted yesterday by Reuters news service as dismissing the Palestinian allegations of a massacre and predicting that no evidence would be found to substantiate them.

Jamal al-Shati, who was appointed by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to document events at the camp, said last night that 52 deaths have been documented, including those of three women and five children under 14. He asserts that the Israelis secretly removed bodies from the battleground.

Munir Arsam, 15, a member of Islamic Jihad, said that during the siege, which began April 3 and ended around April 11, he did scouting work for older militants, threw homemade pipe bombs, and helped with ambushes of Israeli troops. He said he was one of 50 boys, divided into groups of 10 by militant leaders, who were assigned these tasks.

In contrast with allegations by some Palestinians and Amnesty investigators, Arsam said women and children were able to evacuate the camp before the climactic battle began. Even at the height of the struggle, fighters were able to put down their weapons and surrender, he said, though he also said, as did the Amnesty investigators, that those who surrendered were beaten and otherwise mistreated while in detention.

Arsam said he knew of five fighters in houses bulldozed by the Israelis, at least two of whom were wounded and screaming for help when the bulldozers came. "The men in the tanks and bulldozers could not hear them," he said.

He said he saw Sheik Ri'ad Abu Abd, 57, of Tulkarem, one of the Palestinian heroes of the battle, wounded with a bullet in the leg near the end of the fighting, and asked him if he wanted to surrender.

"He said 'No, I want to die, I want to fight and die,' and a while later that house was bulldozed," Arsam said. On the last day of the battle, with no ammunition left, Arsam buried the weapon he had acquired during the fighting and surrendered.

"They destroyed all the houses in Hawashin," he said, describing a now-demolished neighborhood in the camp. "I was in the last house, and they called out, 'Surrender or we will fire at you.' There were only two of us, so we left, and they destroyed the house." He said the Israeli soldiers held him for four days, frequently beating and kicking him to make him confess to membership in Hamas or Islamic Jihad, then released him.

Asked if he felt any massacre had occurred, Arsam said: "We killed them and they killed us, but we were victorious."

Abdel Rahman Sa'adi, 14, another Islamic Jihad grenade-thrower, said he was one of a group of 11 adults and seven young men who surrendered upon Israeli demand. He said they were confined in a courtyard near the camp to which the Israeli troops brought dozens of other men and women.

"They told all the small kids to just leave, and they let all the women go after they checked their bags," said Sa'adi, who has braces and was wearing a baseball cap. "None of them were kept for questioning."

"Of course the Palestinians won" this battle, he said, because "they did not shake our morale. This was a massacre of the Jews, not of us."

Prompted by bystanders, he revised his statement. "I think there was a massacre here – maybe 100 people," he said.

Khalid Mohammed Taleb, 70, lay on a concrete slab from his ruined house, shaded by a makeshift plastic awning, watching with a blank expression as people clambered over the rubble yesterday and buried mines and grenades occasionally exploded.

"I come every day," he said. "I lived here 50 years."

Taleb and his extended family of 11 people stayed in the camp rather than evacuating because "we thought it would be like the first invasion, they would make an incursion and leave. I used to say I wouldn't leave even if they buried me in this house, but I saw the bulldozers killing people and I left."

That was around midnight, on the day before the battle ended.

Taleb said he raised a white flag and walked at the front of a group of 20 people – his own family and those of two neighbors. The destruction of his house and the surrounding buildings occurred after the civilians left, he said, when only fighters remained.

He said several times that no civilians were killed, but after repeated questioning from reporters and bystanders, he said: "Well, maybe one or two. It was a big battle." Was it a massacre? "Perhaps," he said. "Both sides lost."

An Islamic Jihad leader, who insisted on anonymity, said he was wounded as the battle drew to a close, and crawled 300 yards to where other fighters were gathered.

"There were 35 of us, and they were bringing down houses on us, so we surrendered," he said. Israeli soldiers "threw me on the garbage near the hospital at noon" on the last day of the battle, "and I remained there until 1 a.m." The Israelis did not attempt to confine or question him, and he returned to the camp Saturday, he said.

All the fighters said that the Israelis failed to wipe out the militant leadership in the camp, which long has been known as an Islamic Jihad stronghold.

"Of course we are reorganizing," said the Islamic Jihad leader, who walked with a cane and was thronged by comrades near the wreckage. "I don't know what is the plan, what is the strategy, but people are full of hatred."

Arsam, the 15-year-old fighter, said leaders of Islamic Jihad and other factions were taking new groups of youngsters to a hill near Jenin every day for military training, teaching them to fire automatic weapons and to make bombs.

A spokesman for the Israeli army asserted, meanwhile, that Palestinians were moving bodies of people not killed in the Jenin fighting into graveyards around the camp "to score points with the UN committee due to arrive to investigate the happenings in the Jenin refugee camp." The military said this charge was based on information received from Israeli intelligence agencies, and refused to elaborate.

This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 4/29/2002.

 

"THERE IS NO JUSTICE TO BE HAD IN THE U.N. FOR THE JEWISH STATE"

"The U.N. Won't Investigate the Real Tragedy"
By Yossi Klein Halevi
The Los Angeles Times
April 28, 2002

The United Nations commission formed to investigate the nonexistent Israeli "massacre" in the West Bank town of Jenin could have been a means for some desperately needed truth-telling about the Middle East conflict.

Instead, given its mandate to focus on Israel's self-defense rather than on the Palestinian terrorism that provoked it, the commission will only confirm that there is no justice to be had in the U.N. for the Jewish state.

The commission won't be investigating how the Palestinian Authority, established and lavishly funded by the international community, abused its sponsors' trust by turning Jenin and other West Bank towns into centers for suicide bomb factories. The commission won't be investigating how Palestinian terrorists used civilian neighborhoods as shields for their death work and Red Crescent ambulances to transport explosives belts into Israeli cities.

The commission won't be investigating the verifiable massacres that have happened here in Israel's cafes and wedding halls, on its street corners and buses.

The commission won't be investigating the role played by Yasser Arafat's official apparatus – his police and militias and intelligence services – in planning, funding and recruiting for the suicide killer operations.

The commission won't be investigating how the internationally recognized leadership of the Palestinian people nurtured a culture of suicide among its young – for example, Arafat's televised plea to God to grant him the martyrdom of the suicide bomber who killed 28 Israelis in the Passover massacre, or his wife's public lament that she had no son to offer as a suicide killer.

The commission won't be investigating the cultural infrastructure that made terror possible – the Palestinian textbooks that exclude Israel from the map of the Middle East, the Palestinian media that proclaim that the Holocaust never happened, the Palestinian mosques where preachers invoke God's blessing for those who kill civilians.

The commission won't be investigating how donor nations, especially those of the European Union, allowed the Palestinian Authority to sustain a terrorist war for the last 19 months, lavishing funds on a corrupt regime that devotes its budget to building bomb factories rather than hospitals and schools.

The commission won't be investigating the Arab world's culpability in creating the Palestinian refugee crisis by rejecting the U.N.'s own partition plan in 1947 and then maintaining the Middle East conflict by rejecting President Clinton's peace plan that would have created a Palestinian state on almost all the territories and part of Jerusalem.

The commission won't be investigating why much of the world's media rushed to proclaim a massacre in Jenin without evidence, and then appeared disappointed not to find mass graves beneath Jenin's rubble.

Neither will the commission be investigating itself to expose how the U.N. has been hijacked by a coalition of international dictatorships that have singled out Israel, which struggles to maintain democratic norms under permanent siege, as the world body's symbol of evil.

It won't be investigating how a country such as Syria, whose government routinely imprisons opponents and has sponsored the mass murder of its own citizens, is given a seat on the Security Council, to say nothing of its seat on the U.N.'s Human Rights Commission.

And it won't be investigating the U.N.'s neglect of desperate human rights issues such as the occupation of Tibet and of Lebanon and the mass murder and enslavement of black Sudanese.

Those are all issues that have been obscured by the U.N.'s obsessive focus on Palestinian statelessness, which the Palestinians refused to end through negotiation and compromise.

The commission won't be investigating the real tragedy: how the U.N. squandered the dream of a united humanity animated by justice – a dream first offered by the prophets of ancient Israel – and instead joined the unholy coalition of Islamic fundamentalists, far-left moralizers and far-right neofascists in again targeting the Jewish people.

 

THE FINDINGS ARE KNOWN IN ADVANCE

The findings are known in advance
By Ze'ev Segal
Ha'aretz
April 29, 2002

The commission investigating the events of the Sabra and Chatilla refugee camps determined that the massacre was carried out by the Phalangists and that the State of Israel thus did not bear direct responsibility for it.

In a note to the summary of their report, published in February 1983, the members of the Kahan commission said they were not deluding themselves into thinking that "the results of this inquiry would convince or satisfy those with prejudiced views and a selective conscience."

About a year ago, the Belgian court hearing the case against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and other senior Israeli officials was presented with a whole set of testimonies, which appeared to be well-coordinated and orchestrated, about atrocities allegedly committed by Israeli soldiers in the camps.

A similar set of testimonies could also be the daily bread of the fact-finding committee appointed by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan to look into the events in the Jenin refugee camp. Palestinian sources, who are still making waves in international broadcasts, continue to claim there was a massacre in Jenin. This is the picture that will be presented to the fact-finding team by Palestinian witnesses, who will presumably speak with a single voice.

There is reason for concern that Israeli testimony will not lead the committee – which is commissioned to report its findings to the UN secretary-general and Security Council – to an unequivocal conclusion that there was never was any massacre. A complete rejection of the massacre claim would entail a pointed refutation of the testimony of the Palestinian side, something the committee would seek to avoid given its political nature.

The fact-finding committee is comprised of people of political and humanitarian background, without legal expertise in the objective and professional reviewing of facts. The committee does not include any experts with military background in fighting terror, and the general characteristics of the committee are far from that of the commission of inquiry that is customary in Israel. This type of committee does not even raise an expectation that its investigation would be impartial.

Israeli government officials assume that the recordings, photographs and transcripts of prisoner interrogations pointing to the truth would be relevant only to a fact-finding committee of a legal nature. The UN committee is not like this. At best it may conclude – in a "note" attached to the findings or in some other way – that it is impossible to determine with certainty that there was a massacre in Jenin. This conclusion would come together with the predictable findings that Israel used "excessive force" and "prevented humanitarian aid." This type of conclusion was actually already sounded by Terje Larsen, according to which "Israel prevented aid organizations and international assistance from entering for seven days."

This type of statement, without addressing the overall context, is enough to open the gates to war crimes tribunals and other investigations, and serve as the basis for anti-Israel decisions in UN institutions. The UN secretary general did not rule out the possibility of putting soldiers on trial for war crimes, though UN sources said those testifying would be promised immunity.

The need to vigorously oppose sending soldiers before the UN panel is not because we have something to hide. The widespread assumption is that we have nothing to hide. The IDF could have submitted its material and personnel for a review before a neutral and objective committee, but not to a committee representing the the Security Council, in which Israel does not get a fair hearing.

The promise of immunity for IDF soldiers from international criminal prosecution is a bluff. Immunity inherently exists only on the assumption that those implicated under questioning will not travel abroad. Otherwise, they will not have immunity and the findings of the committee will haunt them wherever they go. A government decision to subject them to questioning would be inconsistent with the state's obligation to protect the dignity and freedom of its soldiers, as also expressed in the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Freedom.

It is accepted in law that a state can renege on a promise in the face of a clear "public interest." Israel does not need to stand by its initial agreement to the formation of a UN committee in light of its composition and character, which does not promise an honest and unbiased inquiry.

Israel cannot agree to cooperate with a committee that would discuss the actions in Jenin according to political considerations without addressing the overall picture of Jenin as "the capital of suicide bombers" and the whole series of horrific attacks that led to the IDF action. Israel could submit to the committee – if its relationship with the United States so required – recordings and aerial photos of the Jenin operation, and documents about Jenin's role in terror and about the chain of terror attacks in Israel and the territories.

However, the government should not, under any condition, expose IDF soldiers to an international inquiry whose findings are actually known in advance.

TRANSCRIPT: DENNIS ROSS ON FOX NEWS

Transcript: Dennis Ross, Former U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East
FOX News Sunday
April 21, 2002.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,50863,00.html

BRIT HUME, HOST: Former Middle East envoy Dennis Ross has worked to achieve Middle East peace throughout President Clinton's final days in office. In the months following Clinton's failed peace summit at Camp David, U.S. negotiators continued behind-the-scenes peace talks with the Palestinians and Israelis up until January 2001, and that followed Clinton's presentation of ideas at the end of December 2000.

Dennis Ross joins us now with more details on all that, and Fred Barnes joins the questioning.

So, Dennis, talk to us a little bit, if you can – I might note that we're proud to able to say that you're a Fox News contributing analyst.

DENNIS ROSS, FMR. U.S. SPECIAL ENVOY TO THE MIDDLE EAST: Thank you.

HUME: Talk to us about the sequence of events. The Camp David talks, there was an offer. That was rejected. Talks continued. You come now to December, and the president has a new set of ideas. What unfolded?

ROSS: Let me give you the sequence, because I think it puts all this in perspective.

Number one, at Camp David we did not put a comprehensive set of ideas on the table. We put ideas on the table that would have affected the borders and would have affected Jerusalem.

Arafat could not accept any of that. In fact, during the 15 days there, he never himself raised a single idea. His negotiators did, to be fair to them, but he didn't. The only new idea he raised at Camp David was that the temple didn't exist in Jerusalem, it existed in Nablus.

HUME: This is the temple where Ariel Sharon paid a visit, which was used as a kind of a pre-text for the beginning of the new intifada, correct?

ROSS: This is the core of the Jewish faith.

HUME: Right.

ROSS: So he was denying the core of the Jewish faith there. After the summit, he immediately came back to us and he said, "We need to have another summit," to which we said, "We just shot our wad. We got a no from you. You're prepared actually do a deal before we go back to something like that."

He agreed to set up a private channel between his people and the Israelis, which I joined at the end of August. And there were serious discussions that went on, and we were poised to present our ideas the end of September, which is when the intifada erupted. He knew we were poised to present the ideas. His own people were telling him they looked good. And we asked him to intervene to ensure there wouldn't be violence after the Sharon visit, the day after. He said he would. He didn't lift a finger.

Now, eventually we were able to get back to a point where private channels between the two sides led each of them to again ask us to present the ideas. This was in early December. We brought the negotiators here.

HUME: Now, this was a request to the Clinton administration...

ROSS: Yes.

HUME: ... to formulate a plan. Both sides wanted this?

ROSS: Absolutely.

HUME: All right.

ROSS: Both sides asked us to present these ideas.

HUME: All right. And they were?

ROSS: The ideas were presented on December 23 by the president, and they basically said the following: On borders, there would be about a 5 percent annexation in the West Bank for the Israelis and a 2 percent swap. So there would be a net 97 percent of the territory that would go to the Palestinians.

On Jerusalem, the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem would become the capitol of the Palestinian state.

On the issue of refugees, there would be a right of return for the refugees to their own state, not to Israel, but there would also be a fund of $30 billion internationally that would be put together for either compensation or to cover repatriation, resettlement, rehabilitation costs.

And when it came to security, there would be a international presence, in place of the Israelis, in the Jordan Valley.

These were ideas that were comprehensive, unprecedented, stretched very far, represented a culmination of an effort in our best judgment as to what each side could accept after thousands of hours of debate, discussion with each side.

BARNES: Now, Palestinian officials say to this day that Arafat said yes.

ROSS: Arafat came to the White House on January 2. Met with the president, and I was there in the Oval Office. He said yes, and then he added reservations that basically meant he rejected every single one of the things he was supposed to give.

HUME: What was he supposed to give?

ROSS: He supposed to give, on Jerusalem, the idea that there would be for the Israelis sovereignty over the Western Wall, which would cover the areas that are of religious significance to Israel. He rejected that.

HUME: He rejected their being able to have that?

ROSS: He rejected that.

He rejected the idea on the refugees. He said we need a whole new formula, as if what we had presented was non-existent.

He rejected the basic ideas on security. He wouldn't even countenance the idea that the Israelis would be able to operate in Palestinian airspace.

You know when you fly into Israel today you go to Ben Gurion. You fly in over the West Bank because you can't – there's no space through otherwise. He rejected that.

So every single one of the ideas that was asked of him he rejected.

HUME: Now, let's take a look at the map. Now, this is what – how the Israelis had created a map based on the president's ideas. And...

ROSS: Right.

HUME: ... what can we – that situation shows that the territory at least is contiguous. What about Gaza on that map?

ROSS: The Israelis would have gotten completely out of Gaza. And what you see also in this line, they show an area of temporary Israeli control along the border.

HUME: Right.

ROSS: Now, that was an Israeli desire. That was not what we presented. But we presented something that did point out that it would take six years before the Israelis would be totally out of the Jordan Valley.

So that map there that you see, which shows a very narrow green space along the border, would become part of the orange. So the Palestinians would have in the West Bank an area that was contiguous. Those who say there were cantons, completely untrue. It was contiguous.

HUME: Cantons being ghettos, in effect...

ROSS: Right.

HUME: ... that would be cut off from other parts of the Palestinian state.

ROSS: Completely untrue.

And to connect Gaza with the West Bank, there would have been an elevated highway, an elevated railroad, to ensure that there would be not just safe passage for the Palestinians, but free passage.

BARNES: I have two other questions. One, the Palestinians point out that this was never put on paper, this offer. Why not?

ROSS: We presented this to them so that they could record it. When the president presented it, he went over it at dictation speed. He then left the cabinet room. I stayed behind. I sat with them to be sure, and checked to be sure that every single word.

The reason we did it this way was to be sure they had it and they could record it. But we told the Palestinians and Israelis, if you cannot accept these ideas, this is the culmination of the effort, we withdraw them. We did not want to formalize it. We wanted them to understand we meant what we said. You don't accept it, it's not for negotiation, this is the end of it, we withdraw it.

So that's why they have it themselves recorded. And to this day, the Palestinians have not presented to their own people what was available.

BARNES: In other words, Arafat might use it as a basis for further negotiations so he'd get more?

ROSS: Well, exactly.

HUME: Which is what, in fact, he tried to do, according to your account.

ROSS: We treated it as not only a culmination. We wanted to be sure it couldn't be a floor for negotiations.

HUME: Right.

ROSS: It couldn't be a ceiling. It was the roof.

HUME: This was a final offer?

ROSS: Exactly. Exactly right.

HUME: This was the solution.

BARNES: Was Arafat alone in rejecting it? I mean, what about his negotiators?

ROSS: It's very clear to me that his negotiators understood this was the best they were ever going to get. They wanted him to accept it. He was not prepared to accept it.

HUME: Now, it is often said that this whole sequence of talks here sort of fell apart or ended or broke down or whatever because of the intervention of the Israeli elections. What about that?

ROSS: The real issue you have to understand was not the Israeli elections. It was the end of the Clinton administration. The reason we would come with what was a culminating offer was because we were out of time.

They asked us to present the ideas, both sides. We were governed by the fact that the Clinton administration was going to end, and both sides said we understand this is the point of decision.

HUME: What, in your view, was the reason that Arafat, in effect, said no?

ROSS: Because fundamentally I do not believe he can end the conflict. We had one critical clause in this agreement, and that clause was, this is the end of the conflict.

Arafat's whole life has been governed by struggle and a cause. Everything he has done as leader of the Palestinians is to always leave his options open, never close a door. He was being asked here, you've got to close the door. For him to end the conflict is to end himself.

HUME: Might it not also have been true, though, Dennis, that, because the intifada had already begun – so you had the Camp David offer rejected, the violence begins anew, a new offer from the Clinton administration comes along, the Israelis agree to it, Barak agrees to it...

ROSS: Yes.

HUME: ... might he not have concluded that the violence was working?

ROSS: It is possible he concluded that. It is possible he thought he could do and get more with the violence. There's no doubt in my mind that he thought the violence would create pressure on the Israelis and on us and maybe the rest of the world.

And I think there's one other factor. You have to understand that Barak was able to reposition Israel internationally. Israel was seen as having demonstrated unmistakably it wanted peace, and the reason it wasn't available, achievable was because Arafat wouldn't accept it.

Arafat needed to re-establish the Palestinians as a victim, and unfortunately they are a victim, and we see it now in a terrible way.

HUME: Dennis Ross, thank you so much.

 

MYTHS OF THE INTFADA

Myths of the Intifada
Yasser Arafat has propagated three myths about the deals he turned down. Now Dennis Ross has set the record straight.
By Fred Barnes
The Weekly Standard
April 25, 2002

Palestinian and other apologists for Yasser Arafat have propagated three myths about his failure to reach peace with Israel. And only now--two years after Israeli Palestinian peace talks collapsed because of Arafat's intransigence – is the truth becoming known. This is mostly thanks to Dennis Ross, the Middle East negotiator for both the first Bush administration and President Clinton.

The first myth is that the final deal offered to Arafat would have created a new Palestinian state fragmented into four "cantons" on the West Bank, each surrounded by Israeli territory, none connected to Gaza. It was understandably unacceptable to the Palestinians. The second is that Arafat actually accepted a later, more generous peace settlement, only to have it nullified by the election of Ariel Sharon as Israeli prime minister in February 2001. And the third is that this final offer, an official United States proposal made by Clinton, was never put on paper, making it a matter not to be taken seriously, then or now. (Yes, the myths conflict. Arafat is said to have turned down one final deal but accepted another, later, final offer.)

Myth number one has an element of truth. Indeed, the terms of the peace settlement offered by then-Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak at Camp David in July 2000 involved four separate clusters of territory on the West Bank and no land link to Gaza. Arafat said no and didn't make a counteroffer. Instead, in September, he started a violent new intifada, or insurrection, against Israel. But the myth, persistently voiced by such Arafat sympathizers as James Zogby of the Arab American Institute and the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, is that this was the final peace proposal. It wasn't.

Following the Camp David summit, Arafat asked for another meeting, according to Ross, and was told he would need to be prepared to accept a deal before a new summit would be set up. So Arafat "agreed to set up a private channel between his people and the Israelis," Ross told Brit Hume on "Fox News Sunday" on April 21. Arafat knew the United States was "poised to present our ideas" when he ordered a new intifada. The United States asked Arafat to prevent violence from erupting after Sharon's provocative visit to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and he said he would. "He didn't lift a finger," Ross said.

In December 2000, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators were brought to Washington. And on December 23, President Clinton presented a new plan to them. The Palestinians would get 97 percent of the West Bank, Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem would become the capital of the new Palestinian state, refugees would be allowed to return to Palestine but not Israel, and a $30 billion fund would be established to compensate refugees. This was the final offer: The cantons were gone and a land link to Gaza was included.

And that leads into myth two, that Arafat accepted the fresh and far more generous proposal. True, he said yes when he met with Clinton on January 2, 2001, in the Oval Office. "Then he added reservations that basically meant he rejected every single one of the things he was supposed to give," Ross said. He rejected the idea Israelis would have sovereignty over the Western Wall in Jerusalem and other religious sites. He rejected the scheme for refugees and what Ross called "the basic ideas on security... So every single one of the ideas that was asked of him, he rejected." How can Ross be so sure of that? He was in the room with Clinton and Arafat when it happened.

As for myth three, Palestinian spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi and others have dismissed the U.S. offer, which the Israelis under Barak were willing to accept, as so inconsequential it wasn't even written down and publicly announced. But by late 2000, Ross said, Americans had learned Arafat's negotiating style. Any formal offer would be taken as the floor for further negotiations requiring more Israeli concessions. But with the Clinton administration soon to leave office, there wasn't time to allow Arafat to prolong talks. "We wanted them to understand we meant what we said," Ross said. "You don't accept it, it's not for negotiation, this is the end of it, we withdraw it... It couldn't be the floor for negotiations. It was the roof." So for Arafat, it was take it or leave it. He left it, and soon the negotiating environment changed with the election of Sharon and George W. Bush.

In truth, the offer was written down when it was initially presented by Clinton in December. "He went over it at dictation speed," Ross said. After Clinton left the meeting, Ross stayed behind to make certain the Palestinian negotiators had gotten "every single word." They had. A footnote: Ross insists the Palestinian negotiators were ready to accept the offer. They "understood this was the best they were ever going to get. They wanted [Arafat] to accept it." He refused. Why? Ross believes Arafat simply doesn't want to end the conflict with Israel. His career is governed by struggle and leaving his options open. "For him to end the conflict is to end himself," Ross said.

What's important about the history of peace talks in the Middle East is what it tells us about Arafat. The inescapable conclusion is that he will never reach a settlement with Israelis leading to two countries, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace. The Israelis? An honest recounting of the Clinton-led peace talks shows they were willing, though hardly eager, to make substantial concessions to reach a settlement. Had Arafat gone along, Ross believes Barak could have sold the deal to the Israeli people, even as Palestinian terrorism continued and Sharon's election victory loomed. Maybe so, but that was a moment in time that, because of Arafat, has now passed away.

(Fred Barnes is executive editor of The Weekly Standard)

FULL ARTICLES

"FANTASY LAND IS FUN, BUT WE'VE ENCOURAGED THE ARABS IN THEIR PERCULIAR DEMENTIAS FOR TOO LONG"

It's time to snap out of Arab fantasy land
By Mark Steyn
The National Post (Canada)
April 18, 2002

So what do you think of this Israeli "massacre" at the Jenin refugee camp?

"All British officials tend to become pro-Arab, or, perhaps, more accurately anti-Jew," wrote Sir John Hope-Simpson in the 1920s wrapping up a stint in the British Mandate of Palestine. "Personally, I can quite well understand this trait. The helplessness of the fellah appeals to the British official. The offensive assertion of the Jewish immigrant is, on the other hand, repellent." Progressive humanitarianism, as much as old-school colonialism, prefers its clientele "helpless," and, despite Iranian weaponry and Iraqi money and the human sacrifice of its schoolchildren, the Palestinians have been masters at selling their "helplessness" to the West.

Odd, isn't it? The Americans are routinely accused of being (in Pat Buchanan's phrase) Israel's amen corner. But Washington is at least prepared to offer the odd, qualified criticism of Sharon. The rest of the world, by contrast, is happy to parrot Yasser's talking points without modifying a single semi-colon. In the last month, I've found as many Jew-haters on the Continent as in the Middle East, but the difference is that the Arabs are fierce in their hatred, no matter how contorted their arguments, while the Europeans are lazy, off-hand Jew-haters – they don't need arguments, they're happy to let the Arabs supply the script. Thus, the extraordinary resolution this week by the UN Human Rights Commission which accuses Israel of many and varied human rights violations, makes no mention of suicide bombers, and endorses the movement for a Palestinian state by "all available means, including armed struggle" – i.e., terrorism. The resolution could have been drafted by the Arab League or the PLO. Forty of the 53 nations on the Commission approved it, including six EU members: Austria, Belgium, France, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. Only five countries could summon the will to vote against: Britain, Canada, Germany, the Czech Republic and Guatemala. (The U.S. is not a member of the HRC, having been kicked off by a coalition of Euro-Arab schemers.)

This is only the most extreme example of how the less sense the Arabs make the more the debate is framed in their terms. For all the tedious bleating of the Euroninnies, what Israel is doing is perfectly legal. Even if you sincerely believe that "Chairman" Arafat is entirely blameless when it comes to the suicide bombers, when a neighbouring jurisdiction is the base for hostile incursions, a sovereign state has the right of hot pursuit. Britain has certainly availed herself of this internationally recognized principle: In the 19th century, when the Fenians launched raids on Canada from upstate New York, the British thought nothing of infringing American sovereignty to hit back – and Washington accepted they were entitled to do so. But the rights every other sovereign state takes for granted are denied to Israel. "The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews," wrote America's great longshoreman philosopher Eric Hoffer after the 1967 war. "Other nations drive out thousands, even millions of people and there is no refugee problem ... But everyone insists that Israel must take back every single Arab ... Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world." Thus, the massive population displacements in Europe at the end of the Second World War are forever, but those in Palestine a mere three years later must be corrected and reversed. On the Continent, losing wars comes with a territorial price: The Germans aren't going to be back in Danzig any time soon. But, in the Middle East, no matter how often the Arabs attack Israel and lose, their claims to their lost territory manage to be both inviolable but endlessly transferable.

So even the so-called "two-state solution" subscribes to an Arafatist view of the situation. Creating yet another fetid Arab dictatorship in the West Bank would be, technically, a "three-state solution" and, indeed, a second Palestinian state, Jordan, whose population has always been majority Palestinian. It was created in the original "two-state settlement" 80 years ago, when the British partitioned their new Mandate of Palestine, carving off the western three-quarters into a territory called "Transjordan" and keeping the surviving eastern quarter under the name "Palestine." They did this for two reasons: First, they needed to stop one of the Hashemite boys, Abdullah, from marching on Syria and the best they could come up with was to halt him in Amman and suggest he serve as interim governor; but secondly, Churchill, as Colonial Secretary, thought the fairest way to fulfill Britain's pledges to both Arabs and Jews during the Great War was by confining Zionists to a Jewish National Home west of the Jordan and creating a separate Arab entity in Palestine east of the Jordan. The only thing he got wrong was the names: If instead of inventing the designation "Transjordan," he'd just called the eastern territory "Palestine" and the west "Israel" (or "Judah"), the Arafatist claim would be a much tougher sell.

The Zionists have been trading "land for peace" ever since the Great War, and the result is they've got hardly any land and less peace than ever before. As early as 1921, Chaim Weizmann wrote to Churchill protesting the ever shrinking borders of the potential Jewish homeland. To the north, Britain had surrendered traditionally Palestinian land to France in fixing the Mandate's border with Lebanon and Syria and, by giving the eastern three-quarters to Abdullah, had removed the rich fields of Gilead, Moab and Edom. The 1947 UN Partition took more land – a partition of the previous partition – but the Zionists accepted it. In 1993, Oslo was the biggest gamble yet, the creation of a mini-fiefdom for their bloodiest enemy. The "Palestinian Authority" was an unlikely bet for a state but, from Arafat's point of view, it would make an ideal launch-point from which to kill Jews in the very heart of their tiny sliver of territory.

Other than that, what's the point? I'm sure the Middle East can always use another squalid corrupt dictatorship, but at the very least it ought to be a viable squalid corrupt dictatorship. An Arafatist squat on the West Bank and Gaza would be insufficient. If Israel is, to the French, a "shitty little country," this would be littler and shittier. Therefore, Arafat would seek to augment it with territory from either west or east, Israel or Jordan. The likelihood is that he'd be able to destabilize Jordan far more quickly than he could destroy Israel. If it's a choice between an Arafat sewer straddling the Jordan River or the Hashemites, I know which I'd prefer.

Israel should take what it needs of the West Bank for a buffer, round up every terrorist it can, and announce that the Jordanians are welcome to what's left. If King Abdullah doesn't want it and chooses to call in the UN blue helmets in perpetuity, so be it. But the last eight years should have taught Israel that it cannot live within its 1967 borders next to a thug statelet whose sole purpose is to liquidate it. The Arabs have succeeded in luring the West into their bizarro alternative universe, where land lost by a foolish king is mysteriously transformed into the personal property of a terrorist organization, where the "armed struggle" of wired schoolgirls is UN-approved, and where the "right to exist" is something to be negotiated. Fantasy land is fun, but we've encouraged the Arabs in their peculiar dementias for too long. It's time to get real.

 

"JENIN CAMP LOOKS LIKE THE SCENE OF A CRIME…"

The battle for the truth
What really happened in Jenin camp?
Leader
The Guardian
April 17, 2002

Jenin camp looks like the scene of a crime. Its concrete rubble and tortured metal evokes another horror half a world away in New York, smaller in scale but every bit as repellent in its particulars, no less distressing, and every bit as man-made. Jenin smells like a crime. The stench of decaying flesh, of dead bodies left to rot or buried unabsolved under collapsed buildings greets those aid workers and reporters who manage to gain access. What cruel deficit of pity denies those who died the benefit of departing grace? Jenin feels like a crime. No sentient person can sift this evidence of broken lives and homes; witness the dry-eyed children, their minds shocked and twisted beyond words; look upon the detritus of a frugal, refugee existence – tin plates in a kitchen sink, cheap bathroom tiles, abandoned sleeping mats – turned into ownerless rubbish by bullets, bulldozers and rockets; and not demand an urgent reckoning. Jenin already has that aura of infamy that attaches to a crime of especial notoriety. The story of Jenin, as yet still half-told, is set to live on in memory and myth, as nightmare and as heroic apocalypse, gaining a separate existence and significance in the history of the Palestinian struggle. As the leading peace campaigner, Uri Avnery, points out, Jenin, like the Jews' Massada, could be the stuff of legend upon which dreams are built, informing, defining (and perhaps warping) the consciousness of the emerging Palestinian nation state.

Such myth-making and nation-building hardly formed a part of Ariel Sharon's plan when he sent his soldiers into Jenin. But nor is it entirely proper to portray the camp battles, in which still unknown numbers of people were killed or wounded, as victories for either side, moral or otherwise. Both are losers; and if the leaders of the "international community" had been more resolute Mr Sharon would have been no more able to mount his West Bank invasion than Hamas would have been allowed to pursue its suicidal attacks. Yet while Mr Sharon's talent for wanton destruction has once again proved deeply counter-productive, is he also guilty, as the Palestinians claim, of a heinous and exceptional crime? In short, what really happened inside Jenin?

The world needs to know. To that end, Jenin must be treated like a crime scene, investigated without delay, before the evidence disappears or is destroyed. The UN human rights commission has ordered an inquiry led by Mary Robinson. Israel and the Palestinians should cooperate fully – and even if they cannot agree a general ceasefire, in Jenin at least the truce must hold. The EU's aid commissioner says Israel breached the 1949 Geneva convention by blocking the delivery of humanitarian assistance in Jenin. Israel must ensure that all restrictions on aid agency and media access are lifted forthwith. These and other aspects of its behaviour in Jenin in respect of civilian rights, treatment of prisoners and the disposal of bodies must also be investigated – as should Israeli claims that Palestinian gunmen used civilians as human shields.

The world needs to know what really happened in Jenin if only to be better equipped to stop it happening again. Both Israelis and Palestinians need to know, because more disinformation, more denial and lies, and yet more tragic myth-making only feed the hatred and deepen the divide. Most of all perhaps, the children of Jenin need to know. The future of this land, if it still has one, lies with them. To deny them the truth would be yet another crime.

 

THERE WAS NO MASSACRE IN JENIN

There was no massacre in Jenin
Editorial
Ha'aretz
April 19, 2002

The claim that there was a "massacre" in the Jenin refugee camp has been taken up by many news media around the world, human rights groups and even among many governments. This claim, originally made during the height of the fighting in the refugee camp, reverberates with gravity, seriously damaging Israel's political campaign to justify its self defense against terror and the legitimacy of the means it is using in that campaign.

In Israel, too, suspicions were raised that there was truth to the Palestinian claims. Many feared that Jenin would be added to the black list of massacres that have shocked the world. The IDF contributed to those fears when it issued a preliminary estimate of hundreds of dead in the camp (it turned out that several score were killed, with the exact number still unknown) and by blocking journalists from entering the camp to report what was happening inside. That was an invitation to another charge, also widely reported, of an alleged cover-up.

In recent days, journalists – including Ha'aretz reporters – have visited the camp, gathering their own first-hand impressions and eyewitness testimony about the IDF's operations. Ha'aretz reporter Amira Hass spent several days in the camp, and her report appears in today's pages. There is evidence of intense combat, but, with appropriate caution, it can already be said what did not happen in the Jenin refugee camp. There was no massacre. No order from above was given, nor was a local initiative executed, to deliberately and systematically kill unarmed people.

In Israel of 2002, there is practically no way to cover up atrocities. Testimony by commanders and fighters in Jenin, many of whom were civilians called up into reserves for the purpose of the operation, as well as testimony by those who observed the events through various means refute the claims of a massacre. The fighting was intense, as could be expected in built-up areas, and especially against the background of rapid Israeli successes in other areas, particularly the Nablus casbah. Armed Palestinians shot, blew up and mined houses and alleyways. The soldiers, who had difficulty progressing, used bulldozers and suffered heavy losses – 23 soldiers were killed. Under such circumstances, civilians were also harmed. That is a terrible, sorrowful fact, resulting from the nature of the fighting, and in some specific cases there should be an examination to determine whether everything necessary was done to prevent civilian casualties. But declaring the fighting in Jenin a "massacre" is a mistake on the part of the naive, and a slander by others.

Palestinian propagandists have made perverse use of legends that, in part, were invented outside Jenin. Leading these propagandists were officials of the Palestinian Authority who issued baseless charges of "executions," fanning the flames of hatred against Israel. The readiness of international elements, including the heads of the European Union, to accept the Palestinian version without question, is testimony to their character, to Israel's fragile situation and to Ariel Sharon's negative image.

 

MP ACCUSES SHARON OF 'BARBARISM'

Yesterday in Parliament
MP accuses Sharon of 'barbarism'
All sides condemn West Bank incursions
By Nicholas Watt
The Guardian
April 17, 2002

The veteran Labour MP and prominent Jewish parliamentarian, Gerald Kaufman, yesterday launched a ferocious attack on the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, denouncing him as a "war criminal" who was staining the Star of David.

Speaking in a Commons debate on the Middle East crisis, in which MPs from across the house condemned Israel's incursions into the West Bank, Mr Kaufman likened Mr Sharon's tactics to the actions of Zionist terrorists in Palestine in the 1940s.

In an emotional speech, in which he described himself as a lifelong friend of Israel, the former shadow foreign secretary said: "Sharon has ordered his troops to use methods of barbarism against the Palestinians ... It is time to remind Sharon that the Star of David belongs to all Jews and not to his repulsive government. His actions are staining the Star of David with blood. The Jewish people, whose gifts to civilised discourse include Einstein and Epstein, are now symbolised throughout the world by the blustering bully Ariel Sharon, a war criminal implicated in the murder of Palestinians in the Sabra-Shatila camp and now involved in killing Palestinians once again."

To nods of approval from MPs, Mr Kaufman condemned Palestinian suicide bombers. But he added that it was important to ask why Palestinians resort to such tactics. "We need to ask how we would feel if we had been occupied for 35 years by a foreign power which denied us the most elementary human rights and decent living conditions."

Mr Kaufman then likened the suicide bombers to the Zionist Irgun and Stern gangs, which launched a series of terrorist attacks in Palestine in the run-up to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

"We need to ask what the Jews did in comparable circumstances," he said. "In 1946 the Irgun controlled by Menacham Begin blew up the King David hotel in Jerusalem, slaughtering 91 innocent people. In 1948 the Palestinians denounced what they described as a massacre in the village of Deir Yassin ... The difference between the Deir Yassin massacre and what happened in Jenin is that Deir Yassin was the work of terrorist groups denounced by mainstream Jewish groups. The horrors in Jenin were carried out by the official Israeli army."

A Blair loyalist, Mr Kaufman warned that Mr Sharon's conduct had made it impossible for Britain and the United States to take action against Iraq. "To do so would unite the whole Muslim world against the US, the coalition against terrorism would disintegrate, western economies could suffer a shock comparable to the oil shock of 1973."

Mr Kaufman's attack on the Israeli government were echoed across the chamber. The former Tory cabinet minister, John Gummer, said that a fundamental distinction should be drawn between the actions of the Israelis and that of the Arabs.

"Israel is a state, with the trappings of a state which claims the legitimacy of a state and the more that it rightly claims that legitimacy, the more it has to be judged by the standards of a state and the standards of democracy," he said.

Amid such a serious Middle East crisis it was irresponsible of Washington to take such a tough stance against Iraq, Mr Gummer warned. He criticised the "kind of approach that says that we judge what is in our self-interest and our self-defence and thereby can do anything we like, irrespective either of international law or the UN or indeed frankly of the evidence before us".

Ann Clwyd, the Labour backbencher who has just returned from a visit to the Jenin refugee camp with the UN, said the EU should consider economic sanctions against Israel. Apologising for her croaky voice, caused by dust from Israeli tanks, she said it was not enough for European countries to "simply bleat condemnation".

Ms Clwyd added: "They need to withdraw European ambassadors from Israel. They need to impose an arms embargo as Germany has already done, and they should consider what economic sanctions can be put in place."

 

CAN TOM PAULIN BE SERIOUS?

Can Tom Paulin be serious?
By Rod Liddle
The Guardian
April 17, 2002

There is a wonderful phrase in Arabic which I would like to share with you, if I may: "Ayoha al-motsaeb, al satheg, al-fahesh, al-makhodo'a!"

Beautifully alliterative, isn't it? Roll it around your tongue a while. Shout it at the neighbours – if you feel so disposed – and see if the dogs bark and the caravans move on.

It means "naive, deluded, self-righteous, egregious bigot". But it sounds much better in Arabic and any journalist, you might think, would be proud to write it on the page.

So it is a mystery, then, why the respectable Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram decided instead to describe Tom Paulin simply as an "intellectual". Perhaps they thought my phrase contravened the journalistic convention of neutrality – but then, "intellectual" is hardly a neutral phrase either, as it implies that Paulin is generally in the habit of – at the very least – thinking about stuff before he opens his mouth.

Paulin was interviewed by Al-Ahram about the situation in the Middle East. Among other things, he opined that the US-born Jewish settlers should be shot dead. "They are Nazis, racists," he said, adding – unnecessarily, you might argue – "I feel nothing but hatred for them."

He also pronounced that the state of Israel had no right to exist, that Tony Blair's government was "Zionist", and that the suicide bombers were an expression of "deep injustice and tragedy". However, he advised that more conventional guerrilla warfare would, tactically, stand a greater chance of success than murdering busloads of civilians – an approbation which, I'm, certain, convinced young Palestinian militants in Jenin and Hebron and Ramallah to reluctantly unbuckle their explosive belts and settle back down in front of the television.

I know that the Middle East is a crisis in which so many of us feel impotent and bereft of answers; we blunder around blindly in search of help or guidance. And I suppose, like the famous chimp at the typewriter who will, given infinity, produce by random chance, Macbeth, we, in our infinite bewilderment, will, by the same procedure, eventually end up with Paulin as our mentor or pedagogue. Maybe this is why Al-Ahram approached him.

Or perhaps I've got it all wrong and, over in Egypt, Paulin is revered as a sage and a prophet and his views frequently sought out. The only way to find out for sure was to ring Al-Ahram and ask them.

Except that, at Al-Ahram in Cairo, they'd never heard of Paulin. "Don't know him. Is he a person?" I was asked, mysteriously. They told me to ring the London office and track down the interviewer, Omayma Abdel Latif.

But they hadn't heard of Paulin in London, either. "Who's he?" they said, again. They'd heard of Omayma, though, which was promising. Omayma's based in Oxford, where she's studying at the university, they explained.

Ah, well, now we have either a coincidence or a possible answer to our conundrum. Because Paulin lectures in 19th- and 20th-century literature at Oxford University, a post from which, some have argued, he should be removed for his latest intemperate opinions.

Perhaps they met in one of those fragrant cloisters, Paulin brimming with fury, Omayma desperate for a bit of copy. Omayma hasn't returned my call just yet so we will simply have to wonder about the fortuitous meeting which resulted in so much outrage.

Anyway, I forwarded to Al-Ahram a list of names of alternative Middle East pundits should they, one day, tire of Paulin. Lee Bowyer, Dale Winton and Kelly Brook were my top three. I also offered them 800 words on why the Egyptian government are corrupt and incompetent jackanapes, but, oddly, this semi-official newspaper demurred. "We publish things when they are based upon hard facts, not just, how can I say, bad feeling." Oh yeah?

Still, the Paulin business shook me out of my Wasp-ish complacency. I'd been inclined to dismiss as paranoid repeated complaints from British Jews that there was a new mood of anti-semitism abroad: I was wrong.

Paulin will undoubtedly claim that his remarks are not anti-semitic, but merely anti-Zionist. He may even believe that himself. So might the others, generally from the left, who, when cross-examined about their opposition to what they call Zionism, reveal a dark and visceral loathing of Jews.

There is a theory, loosely based on Freud, that the left's demonisation of capitalists was simply a displaced anti-semitism; and it's true that the old communist caricatures of big businessmen were almost identical to the Nazi depiction of the "filthy Jew", with his business suit, venal expression and relentless appropriation of other people's money. But the whole thing seemed too neat, too glib a theory, to be convincing.

But I can see the displaced anti-semitism at work in the catch-all, ill-defined term "anti-Zionism". And if you doubt it look at Paulin's words – not the stuff about the rights of Palestinians, which we might all agree with – but, quite simply, in this: "hatred" and "shot dead".

 

PARALLEL UNIVERSES

Parallel universes
Most of the world sees Palestinians as the victims, but in Israel and the US events are given a different meaning
By Jonathan Freedland
The Guardian
April 17, 2002

Of all the stories and testimonies emerging from the ruins of Jenin, one detail, picked up by the Guardian's Suzanne Goldenberg, captures completely the strange tragedy unfolding in the Middle East. It does not convey the horror wrought in that West Bank town, nor the suffering of its victims. But it says everything about why this disaster is happening.

Goldenberg describes a line of graffiti, written in "neat blue ink", on a wall in the home of Aisha Salah. She is a Palestinian whose house was seized by Israeli soldiers, for use as a base of operations. Before they left, one of them took up his pen and wrote on the wall: "I don't have another land."

That was no spur of the moment doodle. That is a phrase ingrained in the Israeli, and wider Jewish, consciousness. Ein Lee Eretz Acheret is even the title of a favourite Hebrew folk song, the kind of standard that will be performed at countless Israeli Independence Day celebrations later today.

That simple, almost apologetic phrase, "I have no other land" expresses how Israelis and Jews see themselves in this conflict – as a victim nation, exiled, dispossessed and desperate for their own home – and how far apart that is from the way almost everyone else sees them. It goes to the heart of the strange truth about the current conflict: that the two sides are living in parallel universes, where the same set of facts has two entirely different meanings depending where you stand.

Palestinians are clear on what they see. They are the victims of an aggression so brutal it has shocked even them, a people who have suffered so much. In the Battle of Jenin, as Palestinian national myth will no doubt come to know it, they have seen a town shaken and upended as if by man-made earthquake: homes sliced, whole blocks flattened and reduced to rubble.

The streets are strewn with corpses, and there are more underneath the wreckage. Palestinians say bodies were piled up and taken away in trucks; that men were lined up, thinking they were under arrest, and shot; that homes were hit by helicopter gunships even as civilians cowered inside. Among the dead are the elderly and the very young, left to die, it is said, because no ambulance was allowed to get near. For Palestinians, Jenin 2002 is a tragedy on a par with Beirut 1982, when Christian Phalangists massacred hundreds in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, unhindered by the Israeli army which then ruled the city.

The Palestinians' friends around the world will draw a similar conclusion. Most of world opinion will be outraged by the images at last coming out of Jenin: the front page of every broadsheet newspaper in Britain yesterday adopted the same tone of shock and fury at the havoc Israel had wrought.

Britons and others will see an already beleaguered people taking yet another pounding from a regional superpower which has no business being there in the first place. They will see the home-made pipe bombs and booby-traps, discovered by the Israelis, and see only the meagre tools of resistance – the puny weapons of a powerless people confronting a mighty occupier.

The arrest of the key Palestinian leader, Marwan Barghouti, will just confirm the view that Goliath is trying to choke David. The images of the small, uniformed Barghouti led off by Israeli soldiers will evoke memories of every dissident detained throughout history, jailed by the hated regime he was struggling to depose. If he is put on trial, it will be seen as a show trial – an attempt by Israel to crush a political challenge by legal means.

Yet just a few short miles away, in Israel, these same events mean something else completely. Israel is a small nation, just 6 million people, that has faced an onslaught in recent months unimaginable in any other western country: every day bringing carnage to the high street, the wedding celebration, the religious service. Just as Americans were determined to wipe out the "hornets' nest" which had sent the 19 hijackers of September 11 their way, so Israel has finally set to work rooting out the terrorists who have made Israelis' lives a daily hell. In this view, Jenin is Israel's Kandahar, dispatching nearly one in four of the suicide bombers who have deliberately murdered civilians, often targeting the young and defenceless.

There is damage, to be sure. But, say the Israelis, it's not much worse than the way parts of Afghanistan looked after the US military set to work on al-Qaida strongholds there. Some civilians were killed, but that's what happens when terrorists hide among the innocent. To support the US battle against the Taliban only to oppose Israel's own war against terrorism is to be guilty of a double standard. What would the critics have Israel do? Sit there and take it? Israel asked Yasser Arafat to clean out the terrorists and he didn't do the job – just as the Taliban never booted out al-Qaida. So, following a lead set by George Bush and Tony Blair, Ariel Sharon did what he had to do.

Those weapons stashes found in Jenin, like the armed men who shot back, killing 23 Israeli soldiers, only go to show what kind of terror academy the town had become. As for Barghouti, would anyone have raised an outcry if the Americans arrested Mullah Omar? Yet, say the Israelis, there is ample evidence linking Barghouti to the young "martyrs" who kill themselves and others: he gets the credit for wresting the suicide tactic out of the hands of Hamas and Islamic Jihad and getting Arafat's own Fatah movement in on the action.

Judged like that, Operation Defensive Shield is messy, yes, but wholly justified. And this is not only the view of Sharon and the hardliners in his cabinet. A poll conducted last week, admittedly before the truth of Jenin came to light, found 86% Israeli support for the military campaign in the West Bank. That would include a large number of people who once identified with the peace camp and the left.

And they do not inhabit this universe alone. On Monday an estimated 100,000 people, mainly American Jews, gathered at the steps of the US Capitol to protest in favour of Israel. They note the rise in anti-semitism worldwide, see an Arab "street" inherently hostile to any Jewish state in their midst, and reflect on the suicide bombers and their choice of targets – the latest, biggest one during a Passover seder – and believe that, not for the first time, Jews are facing an existential threat. And remember, like the song says, they have no other land. So they carry placards comparing Sharon to Winston Churchill, glad that someone is fighting back.

These are the two universes, now living in parallel. In Washington, thousands gather to demand justice for the endangered people of Israel. In London, 36 hours earlier, 50,000 gather demanding justice for the endangered people of Palestine. Both sides believe they are the victim, both sides are fighting for their very lives. And, like parallel lines, they never touch.

 

"EVIDENCE OF ISRAELI CONTEMPT FOR GENEVA CONVENTION"

Analysis: Evidence of Israeli contempt for Geneva convention
By Suzanne Goldenberg
The Guardian
April 17, 2002

The accusation from British and Palestinian politicians that Israel has been involved in war crimes raises questions about the extent to which its military incursion into the occupied territories may have broken the terms of the Geneva convention.

Human rights workers say the definition of a war crime hinges on a cardinal principle of a body of international humanitarian law, including the Geneva convention. "The spirit and soul is to limit the effect of armed violence on those not taking part in the fighting," said Antonella Notari, a spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva. "It is primarily the responsibility of those fighting the war to look after the wellbeing of civilians."

On that count, Israel has failed on a massive scale – and not just in Jenin. Nineteen days of curfew and siege on West Bank towns have deprived one million Palestinians of access to medical care, food and drinking water. Israeli tanks trundled over water mains, and ploughed through electricity and phone wires, depriving most neighbourhoods of basic services.

In Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Nablus, as well as Jenin, there is indisputable proof that the Israeli army denied Palestinian civilians the basic protection of medical care. Bodies rotted in homes and streets for days; the wounded bled to death because the Israeli army banned ambulances from entering the battle zones.

In Jenin, junior surgeons performed brain surgery from phone instructions given by leading practitioners in Jordan. Likewise in Ramallah several mothers were talked through the delivery of their children over mobile phones.

There are also widespread accounts from Palestinians in Ramallah, Nablus and Jenin that the Israeli army regularly seized male civilians from their homes and used them as human shields. They forced the men to walk ahead of soldiers as they searched homes in camps and towns, putting them first in the line of fire from Palestinian fighters.

As well, there are scattered accounts of Palestinian civilians killed inside their homes by machine-gun fire from Israeli helicopter gunships and from tank shells in Jenin, Ramallah, Nablus and Bethlehem, generally at the start of each invasion.

Although the laws that govern war focus on the protection of civilians, they also require armies to afford some protection to combatants. "Combatants must be treated humanely and must be given a fair trial," Ms Notari said.

In Ramallah, however, captured Palestinian policemen were forced to strip to their underwear and were held in appalling conditions at a nearby Israeli army base, denied food, water and shelter for hours. A few were also shot as they were on the verge of surrender.

The Israeli roundups also made no distinction between fighter and ordinary Palestinians. In Nablus, Jenin, Ramallah and other cities, 5,000 males from their teens to their 40s were detained.

But the destruction visited on the Jenin refugee camp – and in the old city, or casbah, of Nablus where dozens of stone houses were demolished – is a far murkier affair. Although much of the devastation in Jenin and Nablus appears wanton, international law remains unclear on destruction of homes in combat zones.

The nature of the fighting in Jenin and other cities further complicates the matter. The Israeli army says it was forced to demolish civilian homes because they were occupied by Palestinian gunmen. That argument may become much hardier to sustain, though, when the full scale of the damage inflicted on Palestinian towns becomes clearer in the coming days.

However, yesterday's calls for Israel's military campaign to be classed a war crime are unlikely to be translated into any legal action.

The international war crimes tribunals now in existence were established specifically to investigate atrocities that occurred in the Balkans and in Rwanda. The UN international criminal court, which has just been ratified, does not come into force until July 1 and cannot act retrospectively.

The most likely legal avenue at the moment to investigate Israel's offensive remains the Israeli supreme court – which is not politically practical.

FULL ARTICLES

"I STAND WITH ISRAEL, I STAND WITH THE JEWS"

Oriana Fallaci on Antisemitism
Panorama (Italian magazine)
April 12, 2002

I find it shameful that in Italy there should be a procession of individuals dressed as suicide bombers who spew vile abuse at Israel, hold up photographs of Israeli leaders on whose foreheads they have drawn the swasitka, incite people to hate the Jews. And who, in order to see Jews once again in the extermination camps, in the gas chambers, in the ovens of Dachau and Mauthausen and Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen et cetera, would sell their own mother to a harem.

I find it shameful that the Catholic Church should permit a bishop, one with lodgings in the Vatican no less, a saintly man who was found in Jerusalem with an arsenal of arms and explosives hidden in the secret compartments of his sacred Mercedes, to participate in that procession and plant himself in front of a microphone to thank in the name of God the suicide bombers who massacre the Jews in pizzerias and supermarkets. To call them "martyrs who go to their deaths as to a party."

I find it shameful that in France, the France of Liberty-Equality-Fraternity, they burn synagogues, terrorize Jews, profane their cemeteries. I find it shameful that the youth of Holland and Germany and Denmark flaunt the kaffiah just as Mussolini's avant garde used to flaunt the club and the fascist badge. I find it shameful that in nearly all the universities of Europe Palestinian students sponsor and nurture anti-semitism. That in Sweden they asked that the Nobel Peace Prize given to Shimon Peres in 1994 be taken back and conferred on the dove with the olive branch in his mouth, that is on Arafat. I find it shameful that the distinguished members of the Committee, a Committee that (it would appear) rewards political color rather than merit, should take this request into consideration and even respond to it. In hell the Nobel Prize honors he who does not receive it.

I find it shameful (we're back in Italy) that state-run television stations contribute to the resurgent antisemitism, crying only over Palestinian deaths while playing down Israeli deaths, glossing over them in unwilling tones. I find it shameful that in their debates they host with much deference the scoundrels with turban or kaffiah who yesterday sang hymns to the slaughter at New York and today sing hymns to the slaughters at Jerusalem, at Haifa, at Netanya, at Tel Aviv. I find it shameful that the press does the same, that it is indignant because Israeli tanks surround the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, that it is not indignant because inside that same church two hundred Palestinian terrorists well armed with machine guns and munitions and explosives (among them are various leaders of Hamas and Al-Aqsa) are not unwelcome guests of the monks (who then accept bottles of mineral water and jars of honey from the soldiers of those tanks). I find it shameful that, in giving the number of Israelis killed since the beginning of the Second Intifada (four hundred twelve), a noted daily newspaper found it appropriate to underline in capital letters that more people are killed in their traffic accidents. (Six hundred a year).

I find it shameful that the Roman Observer, the newspaper of the Pope – a Pope who not long ago left in the Wailing Wall a letter of apology for the Jews – accuses of extermination a people who were exterminated in the millions by Christians. By Europeans. I find it shameful that this newspaper denies to the survivors of that people (survivors who still have numbers tattooed on their arms) the right to react, to defend themselves, to not be exterminated again. I find it shameful that in the name of Jesus Christ (a Jew without whom they would all be unemployed), the priests of our parishes or Social Centers or whatever they are flirt with the assassins of those in Jerusalem who cannot go to eat a pizza or buy some eggs without being blown up. I find it shameful that they are on the side of the very ones who inaugurated terrorism, killing us on airplanes, in airports, at the Olympics, and who today entertain themselves by killing western journalists. By shooting them, abducting them, cutting their throats, dec