Israel's onslaught on Gaza is a crime that cannot succeed

The US-backed attempt to bring Hamas to heel by overwhelming force is in fact more likely to boost the movement's appeal

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/30/israel-and-the-palestinians-middle-east

• 
• • Seumas Milne
  • The Guardian, Tuesday 30 December 2008
  • 
    

Israel's decision to launch its devastating attack on Gaza on a Saturday was a "stroke of brilliance", the country's biggest selling paper Yediot Aharonot crowed: "the element of surprise increased the number of people who were killed". The daily Ma'ariv agreed: "We left them in shock and awe".

Of the ferocity of the assault on one of the most overcrowded and destitute corners of the earth, there is at least no question. In the bloodiest onslaught on blockaded Gaza since it was captured and occupied by Israel 41 years ago, at least 310 people were killed and more than a thousand reported injured in the first 48 hours alone.

As well as scores of ordinary police officers incinerated in a passing-out parade, at least 56 civilians were said by the UN to have died as Israel used American-supplied F-16s and Apache helicopters to attack a string of civilian targets it linked to Hamas, including a mosque, private homes and the Islamic university. Hamas military and political facilities were mostly deserted, while police stations in residential areas were teeming as they were pulverised.

As Israeli journalist Amos Harel wrote in Ha'aretz at the weekend, "little or no weight was apparently devoted to the question of harming innocent civilians", as in US operations in Iraq. Among those killed in the first wave of strikes were eight teenage students waiting for a bus and four girls from the same family in Jabaliya, aged one to 12 years old.

Anyone who doubts the impact of these atrocities among Arabs and Muslims worldwide should switch on the satellite television stations that are watched avidly across the Middle East and which - unlike their western counterparts - do not habitually sanitise the barbarity meted out in the name of multiple wars on terror.

Then, having seen a child dying in her parent's arms live on TV, consider what sort of western response there would have been to an attack on Israel, or the US or Britain for that matter, which left more than 300 dead in a couple of days.

You can be certain it would be met with the most sweeping condemnation, that the US president-elect would do a great deal more than "monitor" the situation and the British prime minister go much further than simply call for "restraint" on both sides.

But that is in fact all they did do, though the British government has since joined the call for a ceasefire. There has, of course, been no western denunciation of the Israeli slaughter - such aerial destruction is, after all, routinely called in by the US and Britain in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan.

Instead, Hamas and the Palestinians of Gaza are held responsible for what has been visited upon them. How could any government not respond with overwhelming force to the constant firing of rockets into its territory, the Israelis demand, echoed by western governments and media.

But that is to turn reality on its head. Like the West Bank, the Gaza Strip has been - and continues to be - illegally occupied by Israel since 1967. Despite the withdrawal of troops and settlements three years ago, Israel maintains complete control of the territory by sea, air and land. And since Hamas won the Palestinian elections in 2006, Israel has punished its 1.5 million people with an inhuman blockade of essential supplies, backed by the US and the European Union.

Like any occupied people, the Palestinians have the right to resist, whether they choose to exercise it or not. But there is no right of defence for an illegal occupation - there is an obligation to withdraw comprehensively. During the last seven years, 14 Israelis have been killed by mostly homemade rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, while more than 5,000 Palestinians were killed by Israel with some of the most advanced US-supplied armaments in the world. And while no rockets are fired from the West Bank, 45 Palestinians have died there at Israel's hands this year alone. The issue is of course not just the vast disparity in weapons and power, but that one side is the occupier, the other the occupied.

Hamas is likewise blamed for last month's breakdown of the six-month tahdi'a, or lull. But, in a weary reprise of past ceasefires, it was in fact sunk by Israel's assassination of six Hamas fighters in Gaza on 5 November and its refusal to lift its siege of the embattled territory as expected under an Egyptian-brokered deal. The truth is that Israel and its western sponsors have set their face against an accommodation with the Palestinians' democratic choice and have instead thrown their political weight, cash and arms behind a sustained attempt to overthrow it.

The complete failure of that approach has brought us to this week's horrific pass. Israeli leaders believe they can bomb Hamas into submission with a "decisive blow" that will establish a "new security environment" - and boost their electoral fortunes in the process before Barack Obama comes to office.

But as with Israel's disastrous assault on Lebanon two years ago - or its earlier siege of Yasser Arafat's PLO in Beirut in 1982 - it is a strategy that cannot succeed. Even more than Hezbollah, Hamas's appeal among Palestinians and beyond doesn't derive from its puny infrastructure, or even its Islamist ideology, but its spirit of resistance to decades of injustice. So long as it remains standing in the face of this onslaught, its influence will only be strengthened. And if it is not with rockets, its retaliation is bound to take other forms, as Hamas's leader Khalid Mish'al made clear at the weekend.

Meanwhile, the US and Israeli-backed Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has been further diminished by being seen as having colluded in the Israeli assault on his own people - as has the already rock-bottom credibility of the Egyptian regime. What is now taking place in the Palestinian territories is a futile crime in which the US and its allies are deeply complicit - and unless Obama is prepared to change course, it is likely to have bitter consequences that will touch us all.

s.milne@guardian.co.uk

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Einab junction: inside Israel's new terminals

Anna Baltzer writing from Einab junction, occupied West Bank, Live from Palestine, 1 December 2008

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9979.shtml

The newly built terminal at the Einab junction in the West Bank.

When I first visited the West Bank in 2003, checkpoints were controlled by young Israeli soldiers, nervously clutching their weapons and yelling at Palestinians to stay in line. When I returned in 2005, I found many checkpoints replaced by metal turnstiles into which Palestinians were herded to wait for soldiers to push a button, letting them through one by one or sometimes not at all. Each year I return, the method of control over Palestinian movement is further institutionalized, most recently Israeli terminal-style buildings, entirely separating soldiers from the Palestinians whose movement they are controlling.

I first encountered one of these terminals after visiting a women's cooperative in Tulkarm to purchase embroidery to send home. Because there are no reliable postal services in the West Bank, and because I did not want to risk the products being damaged or confiscated by Israeli airport security if I transported them in my luggage, I knew I would have to send them to the United States from a post office in Israel. I had traveled from Tulkarm to Tel Aviv once in the past by taking a shared taxi to the nearby Einab junction, where I had walked from the Palestinian road to the Israeli one and caught transport into Israel.

This second time, I was traveling with my backpack and six plastic bags full of embroidery, and I assumed the trip would be as straightforward as it had been in the past. When I arrived at Einab junction, I found a large new building, fortified by several layers of metal fences, walls, and gates. The first layer reminded me of rural parts of Israel's wall in the West Bank -- wire fence reinforced with electric sensory wire and razor wire with a heavy iron gate. The gate was open but nobody was on the other side. I walked through and came to two large iron turnstiles surrounded by a wall of iron bars. The turnstiles were locked. Frustrated, I put down my six bags to rest for a moment. Maybe someone would come back? I waited, but still there was nobody.

I called out. "Hello? Anybody there?"

"Please wait a moment," a staticky voice above me blared. I looked up to find a speaker attached to the turnstile.

I didn't have much choice but to wait.

Whoever was operating the turnstiles didn't seem to be in much of a hurry, so I took out my camera.

"Excuse me!" the voice snapped.

"Yes," I answered as I took my first photo.

"Please put your camera away immediately!"

"Please let me in immediately," I answered.

"I said to wait," said the voice, and I answered, "And I am waiting."

The light above the turnstile turned from red to green and I put away my camera and picked up my bags to walk through. It was difficult squeezing into the tight rotating cage with all my bags, and by the time I'd made it to the other side, I was hot and cranky.

In front of me was a metal detector surrounded by iron bars. I began to walk through but the voice called out from another speaker above: "Stop!"

I continued through the metal detector and groaned, "What?!" into the air, wondering where he was watching me from.

"Go back and put down your bags."

The second gate where Palestinians must wait before entering the terminal building.

I went back through the metal detector and set down my six bags, which were feeling heavier by the minute. I took the opportunity to take another picture. The soldier didn't bother protesting this time, but ordered me to walk through the metal detector again.

I tried to pick up my bags again but he ordered, "No, without your bags." I walked through. Nothing happened.

"Now, go back."

I closed my eyes with a sigh, walked back, picked up my six bags, and walked through again before he could give me the order to do so. Somehow this seemed so much worse than the turnstiles and metal detectors I had seen at Huwwara checkpoint near Nablus. At least there you could see the people humiliating you. Or maybe it was more upsetting because I wasn't used to being the one humiliated.

Beyond the metal detector was another set of turnstiles, locked again. I took a deep breath and stared at the red light, hoping to see it turn green rather than let the guard hear my voice crack if I spoke. Thankfully, the turnstile buzzed and I squeezed through to reach the building itself. That was the end of the pre-screening. Now it was time for the real screening.

The inside of the building reminded me of an airport terminal -- high ceilings and multiple floors, and multilingual signs for travelers. The ones here read, "Prepare documents for inspection" in Hebrew, Arabic and English. The signs didn't clarify where one was supposed to go, however. There were a series of five doors with red lights on top, and I called out, "OK, my documents are ready ... Now what?" I had yet to see a human face.

This time nobody answered, so I asked again. Again, nothing. I set my bags down, annoyed. My back was hurting, I was sweating, and I didn't know where I was or what was going to happen to me. I yelled, "Is anybody there?! Hellooooooo!"

Eventually a second voice crackling through the through the static from a speaker on the wall announced: "Please proceed to the door."

"Which door?"

"The one on the left."

"Left of what? Where are you?"

"I can see you," the voice said. "Walk backwards and go left."

I saw a door behind me on the left and carried my bags over to it. Above the door was a red light, which I stared at. Nothing happened. I was ready to cry. "Now what?" I yelled. Silence. I yelled again, even louder.

"What am I supposed to do?!"

"Calm down!" yelled a cheerful soldier walking by on an upper level above me. He was finishing a conversation on his walkie-talkie, and put up his hand for me to wait. I glared at him. "Go there," he pointed to another door near the one I was standing at, and began to walk away.

"No, please!" I blurted out, forgetting my policy of not pleading with soldiers. "You're the first human face I've seen and I'm starting to lose it."

He motioned towards the door and promised that if I stood there, the light would eventually turn green. I picked up my bags, approached the door, set them down, and waited. Eventually, the light turned green, this time accompanied by a little buzz that unlatched the full iron door. I expected to find a soldier on the other side, but as the heavy door slammed behind me I found myself in a tiny room with white walls, no windows, and a second iron door. That door eventually buzzed as well, and I struggled to open it as I held my bags, settling to kick one in front of me instead.

The next room had three walls and a double-paned window with a soldier on the other side. The soldier asked for my ID and I slipped it under the glass. He tried to make small talk and asked me what part of the US I was from and I demurred. I told him flatly, "For the first time in my life, I want to blow something up."

He must not have heard me because he let me through to the next tiny windowless room. [this needs to be cut out] The next buzzing heavy door led out into the other open-spaced side of the terminal, where I picked up the pace, hoping to get out finally, an hour after I'd arrived. No such luck.

One more soldier behind a window beckoned for my passport again. "Where's your visa?" he asked, not finding the stamped slip of paper issued by Israel when the passport itself is not stamped. I answered truthfully, "They told me at the airport that there were none left and that it would be OK." As the words came out, I realized how absurd this sounded, and I kicked myself for falling for it when I'd flown in the week before. How could the airport run out of visa sheets? Wasn't it more likely that they were deliberately trying to inhibit my travel in the occupied territories?

It was hard to blame the soldier, since, for all he knew, I'd snuck in over the hills of Jordan. "Whatever," I sighed. "Call airport security -- I promise I'm in the system."

I knew it would be a while, so I sat down again. I thought I was past the point of anger until I noticed a line of 25 or so Palestinians waiting outside to come in from the other direction, heading back to Tulkarm. Had they been waiting there all this time? Why weren't they being processed? I asked the guard holding my passport and he said he'd tend to them after I left.

It was one thing to feel frustrated and humiliated, but another to know that my ordeal had held up dozens of Palestinians from getting back to their homes and families. "Wait," I said. "Are you telling me that in your fancy new facility you can't process people coming in two directions? Don't let the problem with me delay these people any longer."

He told me not to worry, that the Palestinians were used to waiting. This made me even more upset. I insisted that I would rather wait longer myself, and eventually he beckoned the group forward. I marveled as they waited patiently and yet somehow not submissively, beacons of dignity next to my defeated and angry presence. I took out my camera and took a few photos. Within seconds, a guard appeared next to me -- in person, nothing but air between us! -- and said sternly, "Come with me."

I followed the guard back towards the section of the terminal from which I had just come. We passed through the windowless rooms and into a new room with crates on the floor. From there, the guard opened another, even heavier iron door, and motioned for me to pass ahead of him. Expecting the guard to follow me in, I turned and instead found him placing my bags into the crates. Realizing that soldiers were going to go through my bags, I demanded to be present during the search to ensure that nothing would be damaged or stolen. "That's not possible," the guard said flatly, and the door slammed shut between me and my belongings.

I kicked the door with frustration, realizing that all my contact information for Palestinian organizers and friends was still on my computer. I realized that I still had my phone in my pocket and quickly called my friend Kobi, an Israeli activist. I told him where I was and asked if he might make some calls on my behalf. He said he'd do what he could and we hung up.

I looked around the room. It was empty except for a chair and an empty crate on the floor. There were no other doors, but there was a two-paned window with a soldier watching me from the other side of it. "What are you looking at?" I snapped at the soldier, and he walked out of view. Another soldier appeared, a young woman. She spoke into an intercom so that I could hear her through the window. "Please take off your clothes and put them in the container on the floor."

It took a moment for the words to sink in. Once they had, I looked the soldier straight in the eyes, and I began to undress. I removed each piece of clothing slowly, not once taking my eyes off hers. I watched her with a look of hurt. I wanted her to see that she was not just searching me -- she was humiliating me. Several times she looked away. When I was down to my underwear, the soldier stopped me; she said that was enough. A part of me wished that she hadn't. Perhaps if I were completely naked, she would more likely recognize the extent of my humiliation and her role in it.

Palestinians, most on their way home from work, wait to show their ID cards to Israeli soldiers behind the glass.

The iron door behind me buzzed and the soldier told me to place the crate containing my clothes and phone into the room where I had last seen the guard. My other belongings were long since gone, and I could hear soldiers in the next room going through them. When I got back to the room, the soldier in the window was gone. I sat down on the chair and waited. The soldiers next door were chatting and laughing. I imagined them examining my personal photographs and letters. I was too upset to sit still. I stood up and started pacing back and forth in the small room. I had to do something -- anything -- to express my emotions. If I could hear them, then they could hear me. I began to sing.

I sang an old song that I'd learned at summer camp as a child. Its words were meaningless, but I sang it at the top of my lungs. Within seconds, the female soldier was at the window, looking alarmed. I waved. I sang that stupid song until my voice hurt. It felt good to sing -- I felt empowered. It was easier to act like a crazy person than a prisoner. If I was unpredictable, then they had lost the power to control me.

Half an hour passed. Or was it an hour? My energy had worn off and I sat down miserably on the chair. I was tired. The soldiers were gone from the next room now. What was taking them so long? It was cold in the room, and I had nothing to cover myself with. I began to shiver and rock back and forth on the chair. I had no more energy to yell. I began to cry. I cried for what felt like a long time. Eventually, the female soldier appeared in the window. I could tell she felt bad for me. I looked away. The door buzzed and she instructed me to open it. On the other side was a jacket and a cup of water. I put on the jacket and drank the water to soothe my throat, but I was unimpressed. I didn't want a jacket or water. I wanted my freedom to leave. I wanted my dignity back.

Time passed. I stopped looking at the soldiers and talking to them. I stopped thinking of ways to pass the time or express myself. I didn't even feel like myself anymore. I felt empty, defeated. I just sat and waited, with a feeling of profound loneliness.

After what felt like an eternity, the iron door buzzed and I opened it to find all my clothes and bags in a large pile brimming over the tops of the containers. The soldiers had emptied every single item separately into the crates. The papers from my notebook were strewn about loosely. Each piece of embroidery had been removed from its protective wrapper and crumpled into a pile. A can of tuna had been opened and left amidst the hand-sewn garments. Even the boxes of Turkish delight -- a soft sticky candy covered with powdered sugar, which I'd brought for some friends -- had been opened and rummaged through.

The only thing stronger than my anger was my desire to leave. I sat down miserably and folded everything back into my bags. I was crying uncontrollably, but I bit my tongue each time I was tempted to speak. When I was dressed and ready, I stood up, collected myself, and tried to open the door. It was locked.

"The door's still locked," I informed the soldier watching through the window.

"Yes, please wait a little longer."

"Why?" I asked. "You saw everything I have. You know I'm not a security threat, and surely you know by now that I have a visa.

"I'm sorry but you're going to have to wait," she said.

I couldn't hold myself back any longer. I lost it. I opened up my bags and took out what was left of my canned tuna. With my fingers, I began to spread the oily fish all over the window.

"What are you doing?" asked the soldier, disturbed.

"You don't respect my stuff, I don't respect yours," I answered.

Next, I opened a box of Turkish delight. "I'm not going to stop until you let me out," I announced as I began mashing the gummy cubes into the hinges of the iron door.

"OK, OK," said the soldier's voice over the intercom. "You can go now." The door buzzed.

I gathered my bags and walked out. A soldier was waiting for me on the other side. He gave me my passport and said I was free to leave. I called Kobi as soon as I was outside. He said it was the US consulate that had helped get me released. The army claimed they were holding me because of the photographs I had taken inside the terminal. Interestingly, they hadn't bothered to delete the images from my camera when they searched my bags.

I told Kobi what had happened. I felt as if I had lost a part of myself inside that terminal as I had slowly lost control. Kobi reminded me that even the option of losing control was a sign of privilege -- Palestinians who behaved as I had would not likely have been freed. I tried to imagine what it would be like to endure such an invasive screening every day of my life.

Kobi told me a story about his Palestinian friend, Sara, whom he'd met in Maryland. Sara would frequently travel back and forth between her home in Palestine and the US, where she was studying. Each time she returned to Palestine, she was able to walk right through the checkpoints. She had enough confidence to just assert her will and go through, simply by the fact that she was used to being treated like a person. And each time, after a few months in Palestine, she would lose that ability.

In just a few hours I had gone from empowerment to craziness to submission to destructiveness. What would I become after months of such treatment? What about a lifetime of the even worse treatment that Palestinians experience?

All images by Anna Baltzer.

Anna Baltzer is a 28-year-old Jewish American Columbia graduate, Fulbright scholar, and the granddaughter of Holocaust refugees. She is a three-time volunteer with the International Women's Peace Service in the West Bank and is currently touring the United States with her book, Witness in Palestine: A Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories. For more information visit: www.AnnaInTheMiddleEast.com.

Mamilla : Chronicle of a Cemetery:

Chronicle of a Cemetery: Museum of Tolerance Planned on Muslim Heritage Site in West Jerusalem

Written by Susanna Mendoza for the Alternative Information Center (AIC)
Monday, 27 August 2007

The Mamilla Cemetery, its name derived from “Maman Allah,” meaning God's Sanctuary, hides behind dense vegetation at one end of Independence Park in the heart of West Jerusalem.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons that it has become a meeting place for the city’s gay community—a secluded location where one can hide from the strict scrutiny of the Holy Land. No matter where one turns in Jerusalem it's impossible to escape the often suffocating weight of religious traditions. It is not surprising then, that the Jerusalemite gay community chose Independence Park, symbolic in its name, as the starting point of the last gay pride in June 2007. The truth is that, with the exception of the gay community and occasionally some absent-minded tourist, very few people come to this cemetery, unknown even to many of the city's citizens.

The Mamilla Cemetery would perhaps still be unknown if some six years ago, the Wiesenthal Center (a Jewish human rights organization) hadn't announced its intentions to build, on the south side of the graveyard, the Museum of Tolerance, with the full support of Jerusalem's Municipality. Commencement of the digging for this museum, which claims to show the "unity and respect between Jewish and people of all traditions," aroused the ire of the Muslim community, particularly when human remains began to be exhumed. "They wouldn't have done this if this was a Jewish cemetery. There are other spaces to build this. It is another political demonstration because they know this is a provocation for us," affirms Dr. Yussuf Nachti, Archeology expert for the office of the Waqf, the Islamic Court in Jerusalem. When asked about the dilapidated condition of the cemetery, the office of the Waqf responded that they are not authorized to work in West Jerusalem, much less to take care of some ruins, no matter how old they are.

Charles Levine, former spokesperson for the Wiesenthal Center, stated that there is no reason for the anger of the Muslim community. “We are building on land handed over by the Municipality of Jerusalem, designated as a public space. Besides, I don't understand why they didn't protest twenty years ago, when a parking lot was built on land from the same graveyard.” In a recent press release, the Wiesenthal Center claimed that the cemetery has not been considered sacred since 1967, when the Muslim Court passed a judgment stating that it had lost its mundras, its sanctity as a place for burials.

With or without sanctity, this cemetery deserves a place in any tourist guidebook, even though it is practically in ruins. It is a wonderful example of Islamic art in Jerusalem, and the last resting place of numerous Muslim personalities from centuries past. If one chooses to venture through the undergrowth and walk among the crumbling tombstones, they will discover that there lies, in a cubical mausoleum complete with a dome, the Mamluk emir Aidughi Kubaki, who was governor of Aleppo and Safed before being exiled to Jerusalem where he was finally buried in the year 1289 C.E. It is one of the few constructions that continue to stand, though badly stained by pollution and graffiti, amongst the more meager hundred or so tombs remaining here. In order to get up close and see the tombstones, one must also step over trash bags, Coca-Cola cans, and the scattered stones from the raided tumuli.

Said, an expert archeologist of Jerusalem, has dedicated part of his career to the study of this cemetery. For him, it is much more than an ancient necropolis; it is a sample of the extensive history of this land. Said explains that there is proof here of a link between the tombstones standing today and the Byzantine origins of the cemetery. Here stood a church called “The Red,” where monks were buried for decades until the Persian invasion of 614 C.E. Only a quarter of the original cemetery now remains: it once extended to what is today the Sheraton Plaza Hotel on King David Street, 600 meters from where it now ends. Most of it vanished after the construction of the Independence Park in 1964, built to commemorate the War of 1948. In the cemetery we can also find the Mamilla Pool, used as a cistern to provide water to the city. It also connects with a bigger pool, called the Sultan’s Pool, just outside Jerusalem’s Old City. “It is a pity that we are losing this place, little by little. It used to be the most important Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem, all the families were buried here, and now almost nothing remains of it. No one cares about it,” laments Said, while he removes a bag of chips from a fallen tombstone.

However, the crux of this dispute is not the protection of the graveyard, argues Attorney Shmuel Berkowitz, the Wiesenthal Center's consultant against a petition to the Israeli Supreme Court to stop the construction. Sitting in his office near Jaffa Street, the lawyer explains that the center made public its intentions to build on top of the Mamilla cemetery some ten years ago. “This project was made public a decade ago and back then no one submitted any complaint. The plan of the project was published in the newspapers and it was announced that the architect would be Frank Gehry. Why didn't the Islamic group that is making so much noise in the Tribunal now say anything back then? This is clearly a political opportunity for them which they're trying to profit from.”

The group that took the case to court four years ago was the Israeli Islamic Party, affirming that to build on the site of a cemetery constitutes a sacrilege, because, according to the ruling of the President of the Islamic Court, Sheikh Ahmad Natour, a graveyard never loses its sanctity. Yet Berkowitz disagrees: "We know for sure, and Muslims can not deny it, that the verdict of the Islamic religion is that if there are no burials for thirty to forty years, the place is not holy anymore." To support his argument, Berkowitz refers to Fajer al-Sailai Ibn Ali, the 19th Century religious leader who made this ruling. Furthermore, Berkowitz argues, "in 1964, the Islamic Authority revoked the sanctity of this place in order to justify the construction of the Independence Park. Then there were no problems".

However, Mahmoud Awari, one of the main historians of the city, refutes this point : "After 1948, all the holy places for Islam fell under Israeli hands, as did the Islamic Authority that took care of them. Back then, it was the Israelis who elected the leaders of the court, so it is very probable that the decision to take away the holiness of the Mamilla cemetery was a direct order from the Israeli government."

Meanwhile, construction on the Museum has stopped, awaiting a ruling by the Supreme Court. One hundred and fifty million dollars has been invested in this project, and the nearly year long delay in construction amounts to a considerable financial loss for the Wiesenthal Center, as well as for the Municipality of Jerusalem. This ambitious project was originally seen as a great victory for the Jerusalem Municipality, and at the 2004 ceremony for the laying of the foundation stone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ehud Olmert were among the distinguished guests. Frank Gehry, who, among other achievements, designed the Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao, was chosen as the architect of the project, which was planned to be finished in 2009. The museum, once finished, will have an exhibition hall, a library about the Holocaust, and an education center.

One of the reasons this area was chosen was its central location. The project belongs to a plan aiming to revitalize the entire area, which, for many years now, has been deteriorating into one of Jerusalem's poorest neighborhoods. Also included in the plan to inject more money into this area is the construction of an exclusive mall and luxury flats. The area will be called the Mamilla Complex, and will, the planners hope, encourage families to go for walks here. Why allow some old bones, who no one remembers any more, to interfere in such a project?

Only a few hundred meters separate this opulent project from East Jerusalem, where the Palestinian population of the city lives. What will happen when Palestinian residents want to go for a walk through Mamilla?

Dr. Nachti believes that this is just another measure to separate the two sides—West Jerusalem, the Jewish side, and East Jerusalem, the Palestinian side. Whether it is true that the Mamilla Complex will create another strife ridden barrier, it is unlikely to be within the reach of many Palestinian residents, for whom the level of poverty is almost fifty percent more than among Jewish citizens.

Beneath the sociopolitical debate and conflict, the Mamilla cemetery languishes in oblivion. The buried soldiers of Saladin, who reconquered Jerusalem from the Crusaders, have become a bother and it has been a long time since anyone came to mourn the dead in this cemetery. Who would have thought the great Kubaki would be involved in such an earthly debate? In a city as ethnically and religiously diverse as Jerusalem, in the intricate web of vulnerabilities of the city, nothing is trivial and everything ends up having a political, social or historical foundation which emerges at the slightest touch. The Wiesenthal Center has discovered an obstacle more complicated than even Jerusalem's topography, and now finds itself engaged in a conflict whose ramifications extend far beyond its own project, to the very foundations of urban development. Even with Arnold Schwarzenegger on their side, they are facing a hard battle.

A monument to a lost time and lost hopes

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1032834.html

By Meron Benvenisti

3 November 2008

Shimon Peres did it in style, as usual. The marking of the 10th anniversary of the Peres Center for Peace was a glittering event, full of international celebrities and famous artists, and of course included the poem written by the principal guest, beginning, "Oh, My Lord, it is time to pray." The high point of the festivities was the dedication of the Peres Peace House in Jaffa, a magnificent building of huge green blocks, which cost $15 million, three times the original estimate. The building is windowless and air-conditioned throughout and blocked off from its surroundings, which are home to a poor Arab population. Its faces the sea, as though its builders were hinting that the chance for peace lies in the West, beyond the sea, and not in the East, where neighbor enemies dwell. The magnificence and elegance cannot, unfortunately, blur the sense of missed opportunity. The events surrounding the establishment of the Peres Center for Peace in October 1997 powerfully demonstrated the political culture that favored peace; that was suffused with confidence in the possibility of achieving peace; and defied the approach of Benjamin Netanyahu, who defeated Peres and did everything possible to torpedo the Oslo Accords. The festivities today cannot hide the fact that the only a meager vestige of the peace camp remains, the peace industry functions by the power of inertia and those involved in it must invent excuses for their activity, and that suggests they are turning peace into a tool for achieving their own personal ends. Advertisement   Only in hindsight are we able to see the fatal damage done by the Oslo Accords, which inspired Peres to establish the center: The accords, instead of bringing about a change in the status quo, have become the pillar of a de facto binational regime (called "the occupation"), which has become institutionalized as a permanent regime. The Oslo Accords are the legal infrastructure for the division of the West Bank into cantons, which allow for direct Israeli control over 60 percent of the territory (Area C), as well as a constitutional infrastructure for the existence of a virtual Palestinian Authority. The plethora of titles assumed by its leaders and the official uniforms of its soldiers make it possible to maintain the false illusion of the temporary nature of the regime of Israeli control, and thus to perpetuate it. In the activity of the Peres Center for Peace there is no evident effort being made to change the political and socioeconomic status quo in the occupied territories, but just the opposite: Efforts are being made to train the Palestinian population to accept its inferiority and prepare it to survive under the arbitrary constraints imposed by Israel, to guarantee the ethnic superiority of the Jews. With patronizing colonialism, the center presents an olive grower who is discovering the advantages of cooperative marketing; a pediatrician who is receiving professional training in Israeli hospitals; and a Palestinian importer who is learning the secrets of transporting merchandise via Israeli ports, which are famous for their efficiency; and of course soccer competitions and joint orchestras of Israelis and Palestinians, which paint a false picture of coexistence. There is no chance that the activists and administrators of the peace center will participate in the daily struggle of the Palestinian olive pickers; in the frustrating efforts to transport critically ill people via the checkpoints; or to breach the economic siege and sea blockade of Gaza. The Peres Center for Peace does not publish reports about the catastrophic economic situation of the Palestinians and does not warn about Israel's responsibility for this situation; after all, it is not a club of Israel-hating anarchists but one of respectable people, who mostly contribute to peace in the generous funding of glittering events and participation in them. It has always been maintained that the principal, and perhaps revolutionary contribution, of the Oslo Accords did not lie in the "declaration of principles," but in the mutual recognition between the Palestinian national movement and the State of Israel. But this mutual recognition, which turned the Palestinians from a terrorist entity into a legitimate entity in the eyes of the Israelis, was erased in the wake of the suicide attacks and the violence of the Al-Aqsa intifada, after which the pre-Oslo viewpoint returned. Now the Jews are giving the Arabs a bill of divorce, turning their backs on them, imprisoning them behind sealed walls and checkpoints, willingly keeping to themselves and praying that the Mediterranean will dry up or that a bridge will be built that will connect them directly to Europe. This mentality has created two monumental structures in the past decade, whose symbolic significance is greater than their functional value: the separation fence and the new Ben-Gurion International Airport terminal. The former is designed to hide the Palestinians and erase them from our consciousness, and the latter serves as an escape hatch and the basis for an aerial bridge to the West. The third monument that was built in this decade, the Peres Peace House in Jaffa, joins them as a memorial to a time and hopes that have been lost, and the only thing that remains is to join in Peres' prayer: "Then send a Ray of Hope for a new way."

Senan Abdelqader - a Palestinian architect

 44, an architect in Beit Safafa, just south of Jerusalem

• Rory McCarthy
  
• Tuesday June 5 2007

Senan Abdelqader, an Israeli Arab architect at his office in Jerusalem. Photograph: Gali Tibbon

Senan Abdelqader - an infant when the war was fought - was born and grew up in the Arab village of Taibeh, in Israel. He left, aged 18, to study in Germany, returning 15 years later as a qualified, practising, prize-winning architect.

Abdelqader is from the 20% minority of Arabs living within Israel, a people most often referred to by the Israeli establishment as Arab Israelis. It is not a term he uses. "I am sure about my identity. I am an Arab Palestinian ... I don't feel myself very Israeli," he says. He carries an Israeli passport, but that isolates him from most of the Arab world - he can only travel to Jordan and Egypt. "But even when I go there I am considered an Israeli and I am not part of Arabic culture. And this is painful. I cannot feel myself."

In Israel he is part of a minority that, though it has citizenship, suffers routine and continued discrimination, particularly at work and in government spending on housing and education. Although Palestinian Israelis can travel freely within Israel, they, like all Israeli citizens, are not allowed to travel to the main urban centres of the West Bank. Often they are also restricted from travelling to Gaza. There are Palestinian Israeli MPs in the Knesset, and earlier this year the first Muslim Arab cabinet member was appointed. However, several Palestinian Israeli intellectuals and activists have begun a campaign to demand broader rights in Israel, and have started to challenge the notion of Israel as a Jewish state.

The fraught question of identity shapes Abdelqader's work. No new Arab town has been built in Israel since the state was created. "Since 1948, the urban fabric in Palestine has been stopped. But it is more than stopped, it has been forced to take a kind of agricultural mentality." Arab towns in Israel are more like enlarged and overcrowded villages.

Abdelqader, who is now perhaps the leading Palestinian Israeli architect in Israel, is working on a project to design a contemporary art museum for Umm al-Fahm, an Arab town in northern Israel. His design puts the museum inside a wide bridge that stretches across a valley, a bridge that will be part public, cultural space, part busy walkway. It is unusual for a Palestinian Israeli architect to have such input in a public project. "We are not part of the process of influencing and creating public spaces."

Although he has worked on several other buildings in Israel, there has been little opportunity to work alongside architects living in the occupied Palestinian territories, even though they live nearby, speak the same language and share the same history. Many Palestinians sense a broad divide between those living within Israel and those living in the West Bank or Gaza, both in terms of opportunity and ambition. While Palestinians in the occupied territories are still struggling to end 40 years of occupation and establish their own state, within Israel some leading Palestinian figures have become increasingly vocal in demanding broader, collective rights and in challenging the rationale of a Jewish state.

Two agendas

"The Palestinian nation became divided into two different agendas and it makes me very sorry not having the opportunity to work together with them," he says. "There are two different agendas: we are looking for equality, they are looking for authority."

He teaches architecture at Tel Aviv University, where the vast majority of his students are Jewish Israelis. That itself is often an initial challenge for the students in a country where the two communities often do not mix, or see each other only through the tint of mutual suspicion and unequal power relations, where Arabs are more often seen working in menial jobs, standing at the petrol pump or cleaning the streets.

"Jewish Israeli society has to understand that we were here and part of the landscape before they came and they will understand that they have to have more respect for us."

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