Blueprint for Gaza attack was long planned

Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 12 January 2009

Palestinians run for cover from Israeli air strikes that are part of a larger pre-meditated Israeli war on the Gaza Strip. (Mohamed Al-Zanon/MaanImages)

As Israel rejected the terms of the proposed United Nations ceasefire at the weekend, Israeli military analysts were speculating on the nature of the next stage of the attack on Gaza, or the "third phase" of the fighting as it is being referred to.

Having struck thousands of targets from the air in the first phase, followed by a ground invasion that saw troops push into much of Gaza, a third phase would involve a significant expansion of these operations.

It would require the deployment of thousands of reserve soldiers, who are completing their training on bases in the Negev, and the destruction and seizure of built-up areas closer to the heart of Gaza City, Hamas's key stronghold. The number of civilian casualties could be expected to rise rapidly.

A fourth phase, the overthrow of Hamas and direct reoccupation of Gaza, is apparently desired neither by the army nor Israel's political leadership, which fears the economic and military costs.

An expansion of "Operation Cast Lead" is expected in the next few days should Israel decide that negotiations at the UN and elsewhere are not to its liking. Israeli warplanes have dropped leaflets warning Gaza residents of an imminent escalation: "Stay safe by following our orders."

Last week Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, warned that the army had still not exhausted its military options.

Those options have long been in preparation, as the defense minister, Ehud Barak, admitted early on in the offensive. He said he and the army had been planning the attack for at least six months. In fact, indications are that the invasion's blueprint was drawn up much earlier, probably 18 months ago.

It was then that Hamas foiled a coup plot by its chief rival, Fatah, backed by the United States. The flight of many Gazan members of Fatah to the West Bank convinced Barak that Israel's lengthy blockade of the tiny enclave alone would not bring Hamas to heel.

Barak began expanding the blockade to include shortages of electricity and fuel. It was widely assumed that this was designed to pressure the civilian population of Gaza to rebel against Hamas. However, it may also have been a central plank of Barak's military strategy: any general knows that it is easier to fight an army -- or in this case a militia -- that is tired, cold and hungry. More so if the fighters' family and friends are starving too.

A few months later, Barak's loyal deputy, Matan Vilnai, made his now infamous comment that, should the rocket fire continue, Gazans would face a "shoah" -- the Hebrew word for holocaust.

The shoah remark was quickly disowned, but at the same time Barak and his team began proposing to the cabinet tactics that could be used in a military assault.

These aggressive measures were designed to "send Gaza decades into the past," as the head of the army command in Gaza, Yoav Galant, described Israel's attack on its opening day.

The plan, as the local media noted in March, required directing artillery fire and air strikes at civilian neighborhoods from which rockets were fired, despite being a violation of international law. Legal advisers, Barak noted, were seeking ways to avoid such prohibitions, presumably in the hope the international community would turn a blind eye.

One early success on this front were the air strikes against police stations that opened the offensive and killed dozens. In international law, policemen are regarded as non-combatants -- a fact that was almost universally overlooked.

But Israel has also struck a range of patently civilian targets, including government buildings, universities, mosques and medical clinics, as well as schools. It has tried to argue, with less success, that the connection between these public institutions and Hamas, the enclave's ruler, make them legitimate targets.

A second aspect of the military strategy was to declare areas of Gaza "combat zones" in which the army would have free rein and from which residents would be expected to flee. If they did not, they would lose their civilian status and become legitimate targets.

That policy already appears to have been implemented in the form of aerial leafleting campaigns warning residents to leave such areas as Rafah and northern Gaza. In the past few days Israeli commanders have been boasting about the extreme violence they are using in these locations.

The goal in both Rafah and northern Gaza may be to ensure that they remain largely unpopulated: in the case of Rafah, to make tunneling to Egypt harder; and in the northern Strip, from which rockets have been fired at longer ranges, to ensure they do not reach Tel Aviv.

In a third phase such tactics would probably be significantly extended as the army pushed onwards. Swathes of Gaza might be declared closed military zones, with their residents effectively herded into the main population centers.

As Barak was unveiling his strategy a year ago, the interior minister, Meir Sheetrit, suggested that the army "decide on a neighborhood in Gaza and level it." If a third phase begins, it remains to be seen whether Israel will pursue such measures.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

This article originally appeared in The National published in Abu Dhabi and is republished with permission.

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Palestine's Guernica and the Myths of Israeli Victimhood

View From a Palestinian Leader: Mustafa Barghouti

This is a guest post written by Mustafa Barghouthi, Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative. These comments and views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Washington Note or Huffington Post. Barghouti is a former secular candidate for President of Palestine and has been a strong advocate of non-violent responses to Israeli occupation. Barghouti is thought by many to be a leading contender in the next Palestinian presidential election. The Washington Note has also solicited perspectives from various national leaders and incumbent Knesset leaders in Israel.

Here is a link to an interview that Steve Clemons did with Barghouti in July 2008 regarding Barack Obama's trip to Israel and Palestine.

Palestine's Guernica and the Myths of Israeli Victimhood

The Israeli campaign of 'death from above' began around 11 am, on Saturday morning, the 27th of December, and stretched straight through the night into this morning. The massacre continues Sunday as I write these words.

The bloodiest single day in Palestine since the War of 1967 is far from over following on Israel's promised that this is 'only the beginning' of their campaign of state terror. At least 290 people have been murdered thus far, but the body count continues to rise at a dramatic pace as more mutilated bodies are pulled from the rubble, previous victims succumb to their wounds and new casualties are created by the minute.

What has and is occurring is nothing short of a war crime, yet the Israeli public relations machine is in full-swing, churning out lies by the minute.

Once and for all it is time to expose the myths that they have created.

1. Israelis have claimed to have ended the occupation of the Gaza Strip in 2005.

While Israel has indeed removed the settlements from the tiny coastal Strip, they have in no way ended the occupation. They remained in control of the borders, the airspace and the waterways of Gaza, and have carried out frequent raids and targeted assassinations since the disengagement.

Furthermore, since 2006 Israel has imposed a comprehensive siege on the Strip. For over two years, Gazans have lived on the edge of starvation and without the most basic necessities of human life, such as cooking or heating oil and basic medications. This siege has already caused a humanitarian catastrophe which has only been exacerbated by the dramatic increase in Israeli military aggression.

2. Israel claims that Hamas violated the cease-fire and pulled out of it unilaterally.

Hamas indeed respected their side of the ceasefire, except on those occasions early on when Israel carried out major offensives in the West Bank. In the last two months, the ceasefire broke down with Israelis killing several Palestinians and resulting in the response of Hamas. In other words, Hamas has not carried out an unprovoked attack throughout the period of the cease-fire.

Israel, however, did not live up to any of its obligations of ending the siege and allowing vital humanitarian aid to resume in Gaza. Rather than the average of 450 trucks per day being allowed across the border, on the best days, only eighty have been allowed in - with the border remaining hermetically sealed 70% of the time. Throughout the supposed 'cease-fire' Gazans have been forced to live like animals, with a total of 262 dying due to the inaccessibility of proper medical care.

Now after hundreds dead and counting, it is Israel who refuses to re-enter talks over a cease-fire. They are not intent on securing peace as they claim; it is more and more clear that they are seeking regime change - whatever the cost.

3. Israel claims to be pursuing peace with 'peaceful Palestinians'.

Before the on-going massacre in the Gaza Strip, and throughout the entirety of the Annapolis Peace Process, Israel has continued and even intensified its occupation of the West Bank. In 2008, settlement expansion increased by a factor of 38, a further 4,950 Palestinians were arrested - mostly from the West Bank, and checkpoints rose from 521 to 699.

Furthermore, since the onset of the peace talks, Israel has killed 546 Palestinians, among them 76 children. These gruesome statistics are set to rise dramatically now, but previous Israeli transgressions should not be forgotten amidst this most recent horror.

Only this morning, Israel shot and killed a young peaceful protester in the West Bank village of Nihlin, and has injured dozens more over the last few hours. It is certain that they will continue to employ deadly force at non-violent demonstrations and we expect a sizable body count in the West Bank as a result. If Israel is in fact pursuing peace with 'good Palestinians', who are they talking about?

4. Israel is acting in self-defense.

It is difficult to claim self defense in a confrontation which they themselves have sparked, but they are doing it anyway. Self-defense is reactionary, while the actions of Israel over the last two days have been clearly premeditated. Not only did the Israeli press widely report the ongoing public relations campaign being undertaken by Israel to prepare Israeli and international public opinion for the attack, but Israel has also reportedly tried to convince the Palestinians that an attack was not coming by briefly opening crossings and reporting future meetings on the topic. They did so to insure that casualties would be maximized and that the citizens of Gaza would be unprepared for their impending slaughter.

It is also misleading to claim self-defense in a conflict with such an overwhelming asymmetry of power. Israel is the largest military force in the region, and the fifth largest in the world. Furthermore, they are the fourth largest exporter of arms and have a military industrial complex rivaling that of the United States. In other words, Israel has always had a comprehensive monopoly over the use of force, and much like its super power ally, Israel uses war as an advertising showcase of its many instruments of death.

5. Israel claims to have struck military targets only.

Even while image after image of dead and mutilated women and children flash across our televisions, Israel brazenly claims that their munitions expertly struck only military installations. We know this to be false as many other civilian sites have been hit by airstrikes including a hospital and mosque.

In the most densely populated area on the planet, tons upon tons of explosives have been dropped. The first estimates of injured are in the thousands. Israel will claim that these are merely 'collateral damage' or accidental deaths. The sheer ridiculousness and inhumanity of such a claim should sicken the world community.

6. Israel claims that it is attacking Hamas and not the Palestinian people.

First and foremost, missiles do not differentiate people by their political affiliation; they simply kill everyone in their path. Israel knows this, and so do Palestinians. What Israel also knows, but is not saying publicly, is how much their recent actions will actually strengthen Hamas - whose message of resistance and revenge is being echoed by the angry and grieving.

The targets of the strike, police and not Hamas militants, give us some clue as to Israel's mistaken intention. They are hoping to create anarchy in the Strip by removing the pillar of law and order.

7. Israel claims that Palestinians are the source of violence.

Let us be clear and unequivocal. The occupation of Palestine since the War of 1967 has been and remains the root of violence between Israelis and Palestinians. Violence can be ended with the occupation and the granting of Palestine's national and human rights. Hamas does not control the West Bank and yet we remain occupied, our rights violated and our children killed.

With these myths understood, let us ponder the real reasons behind these airstrikes; what we find may be even more disgusting than the act itself.

The leaders Israel are holding press conferences, dressed in black, with sleeves rolled up.

'It's time to fight', they say, 'but it won't be easy.'

To prove just how hard it is, Livni, Olmert and Barack did not even wear make-up to the press conference, and Barak has ended his presidential campaign to focus on the Gaza campaign. What heroes...what leaders...

We all know the truth: the suspension of the electioneering is exactly that - electioneering.

Like John McCain's suspension of his presidential campaign to return to Washington to 'deal with' the financial crisis, this act is little more than a publicity stunt.

The candidates have to appear 'tough enough to lead', and there is seemingly no better way of doing that than bathing in Palestinian blood.

'Look at me,' Livni says in her black suit and unkempt hair, 'I am a warrior. I am strong enough to pull the trigger. Don't you feel more confident about voting for me, now that you know I am as ruthless as Bibi Netanyahu?'

I do not know which is more disturbing, her and Barack, or the constituency they are trying to please.

In the end, this will in no way improve the security of the average Israeli; in fact it can be expected to get much worse in the coming days as the massacre could presumably provoke a new generation of suicide bombers.

It will not undermine Hamas either, and it will not result in the three fools, Barack, Livni and Olmert, looking 'tough'. Their misguided political venture will likely blow up in their faces as did the brutally similar 2006 invasion of Lebanon.

In closing, there is another reason - beyond the internal politics of Israel - why this attack has been allowed to occur: the complicity and silence of the international community.

Israel cannot and would not act against the will of its economic allies in Europe or its military allies in the US. Israel may be pulling the trigger ending hundreds, perhaps even thousands of lives this week, but it is the apathy of the world and the inhumane tolerance of Palestinian suffering which allows this to occur.

'The evil only exists because the good remain silent'

From Occupied Palestine. . .

-- Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi

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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.