Volume 8 - Issue 2 - Spring 2006

ISSUE 8 Vol.2 - SPRING 2006

> Surviving On The Margins: Life Stories Of Palestinian Refugee Women In Lebanon

By Dr Maria Holt > Human Rights Violations, War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity: Why an Economic Boycott of Israel is Justified

By Professor Norman G. Finkelstein > An Obligation To Act

By Hilary Wise > Ariel Sharon: A Napoleon, Made in Israel

By Uri Avnery > Settlements in Jerusalem

By Mazen Nuseibah

Concerned with Palestinian Issues

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JOURNAL

Al- A q s a Published By Friends of Al-Aqsa PO Box 5127 Leicester LE2 0WU, UK Tel: ++44(0)1162125441 Mobile: 07711823524 Fax: ++(0)1162537575 e-mail:info@aqsa.org.uk Website:www.aqsa.org.uk

Editorial Surviving on the Margins: Life Stories of Palestinian Refugee

ISSN 1463-3930 EDITOR Ismail Adam Patel

Human Rights Violations, War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity – Why an Economic Boycott of Israel is Justified

SUB-EDITOR Rajnaara Akhtar

An Obligation to Act HILARY WISE

PRODUCTION ASSISTANTS Nasreen Ibrahim Azizul Hoque PRINTERS Impress Printers, Batley

Ariel Sharon: A Napoleon, Made in Israel Waqf – The Eternal Legacy Settlements in Jerusalem MAZEN NUSEIBAH

© 2006 Friends of Al-Aqsa

WE WELCOME Papers, articles and comments on any issue relating to Palestine and the Middle East Conflict.

We especially encourage writings relating to the History, Politics, Architecture, Religion, International Law and Human Rights violations in the region.

The word count should not exceed 2,000 words. Reviews of books relating to the issue of Palestine are also welcome and should not exceed 1,000 words.

Letters on any related topics can also be sent and the Editor reserves the right to edit letters for the purpose of clarity. All contributions should be in Word format, Times New Roman font size 12 and send to the Editor either via email or on disc at the above address. It must include the author’s full name, address and a brief curriculum vitae.

BOOK REVIEWS Landscapes of the Jihad

By Faisal Devji ABU HUZAYFAH Britain, The Hashemites and Arab Rule, 1920-1925: The Sherifian Solution REVIEWED BY ANTHONY MCROY The Modern Middle East REVIEWED BY ANTHONY MCROY Catastrophe Remembered: Palestine, Israel and the International Refugees;

Bethlehem Besieged: Stories of Hope in Times of Trouble

By Mitri Raheb REVIEWED BY SAMUEL JACOB KURUVILLA

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E D I T O R I A L

To Allah belongs the East and the West, wherever you turn, there is the presence of Allah.

For Allah is All-Embracing, All-Knowing.

May Allah’s blessings be upon all His Prophets from Adam to His final Messenger, Muhammad (saw).

In January 2006, the Palestinians called the American and European bluff by participating in the widely acclaimed, fair and transparent elections. The occupied people of Palestine elected a new government despite all the odds being stacked heavily against them. Israel’s occupation policies and imposition of voting restrictions were intended to bar any meaningful election results, with the Israeli choice of Fatah the only ‘acceptable’ option. However, in droves, Palestinians voted out the old regime with its decay and corruption, bringing in the new blood of Hamas, which has spend years serving Palestinians at the grass roots.

The impact of the results still reverberate weeks and months afters their initial upshot.

The most galling response from some of Israel’s allies was a rejection of the results, as democratic as they were, on the basis that Hamas is not viewed as an acceptable choice to them. Ironically, these are the same nations and governments that espouse democracy as a mark of civilisation and a concept that they would die for. The Palestinian example serves as a reminder that to these nations, it seems democracy outside their borders is subject to their political interest.

For Hamas, the reigns of power will not be easy to command. The first parliamentary session broke down into a commotion with Fatah officials deserting the room in protest. A sign that many bridges need to be built within the new Palestinian Authority and trust and respect for each other is the highest target to be achieved. Unless there is a show of unity, the external suppression of funds and aid will make an already difficult task impossible. Israel is withholding vital tax funds, and the US and EU have followed suit with economic aid on the condition that Hamas ‘renounce violence’ and recognise Israel. The demand by Israel that Hamas ‘renounce violence’ is a contradiction in terms. Israel is the state that has established itself on violence, persisted in an illegal occupation, refused to apply Geneva Conventions to an occupied people, illegally annexed land, imposed numerous restrictions and punishments amounting to war crimes; and yet it demands that the Palestinians give up their legitimate and internationally recognised right to self-defence and resisting occupation. The paradox is clear, and Hamas has thus far shown a steely resolve against conceding to Israeli demands.

It is apparent that the ordinary people of Palestine will be the ones who once again suffer in this political stand-off, and in recognition of this, the EU took the steps of releasing funds for aid which would be directed by other than the PA. But what does this mean for the future of Palestinians? The PA is recognising its friends and allies, and relying increasingly on its Arab neighbours for financial support. For the West, this is a catastrophe in the making, as it is States such as Iran and Syria who are the most sympathetic to the Palestinians cause.

However, a sharp signal to Washington came from its allies in Saudi Arabia who refused to abandon the PA despite a highly publicised tour of the region by the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. This unwillingness to ditch the Palestinians was unexpected, yet belies the exasperation in the political realms of the Muslim world with Western policies regarding Israel. Even they are now refusing to tow the line.

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Surviving On The Margins: Life Stories Of Palestinian Refugee Women In Lebanon Dr Maria Holt*

For Palestinians, 1948 is mourned as the year when “Palestine ceased to exist. It lost its name, it lost its territory, and it lost many of its people”.1 It was the year of al-Nakbah (the catastrophe), in which the state of Israel was established in a large part of the former British Mandate territory of Palestine, and as many as one million Palestinians fled to neighbouring countries, just across the borders from their homeland. Approximately 100,0002 travelled north into Lebanon, where they waited to return home. But 57 years have passed and they are still waiting.

Today the majority of Palestinians living in Lebanon, despite their determination to preserve their identity as “an integral unity of land and people”,3 remain stranded on the fringes of their former land and have few tangible connections with it. Nonetheless, the refugee community, and particularly the women of the community, has sought to inspire in successive generations a powerful sense of what it means to be Palestinian. Ask any Palestinian child, born and raised in a Lebanese camp, where “home” is and he or she will name “their” village in Palestine and insist upon their right to return to it. But, beyond their shared sense of being a nation, a key element of Palestinian identity in Lebanon is marginalization, both in the sense of living on the borders of their homeland and of being marginalized by the state in which they temporarily reside.

my view, it is necessary to look beyond perceptions of hopelessness and to appreciate the unique community that has emerged in response to exile, violence and despair; to consider, in Edward Said’s words, the “transition from being in exile to becoming Palestinian once again”.4 In this article, I will explore how Palestinians’ experiences in exile have shaped their identity and their outlook in the early 21st century, and enabled them to become Palestinian again. I am interested in understanding how being – but not belonging – in Lebanon has influenced refugees’ perceptions of themselves. My article will focus on refugee women and will ask what impact “living on the margins” has had on their development. By listening to the life stories of women living in the camps of Lebanon,5 I will investigate whether women’s sense of “Palestinian-ness” differs from men’s, what impact their living experiences in Lebanon have had on their current state of mind, and what solutions they envisage for a more tolerable future.

Anyone who becomes acquainted with the situation of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon will reach the conclusion that it is hopeless, and that there is little that can be done. In

Even after over half a century, Palestinian refugees who reside outside the borders of Palestine,7 whatever their status or individual idual circumstances, are still regarded as

Ask any Palestinian child, born and raised in a Lebanese camp, where “home” is and he or she will name “their” village in Palestine and insist upon their right to return to it

Outside the interior “Every direct route to the interior, and consequently the interior itself, is either blocked or pre-empted. The most we can hope for is to find margins – normally neglected surfaces and relatively isolated, irregularly placed spots – on which to put ourselves”.6

*Dr Maria Holt is a Research Fellow in the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster. She has been researching and writing about Palestinian women, both in the occupied territories and in Lebanon, for many years. Her PhD compared the effects of violent conflict on Shi’i and Palestinian women in Lebanon. She is currently working on an AHRC-funded project about the experiences of Palestinian refugee women in Lebanon, in terms of memory, identity and change. This article is based on a paper presented at the “Borders and Borderlands” conference, Corfu, September 2005.

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of victim. This, in turn, has produced what Hoffmann describes as “the transmission of traumatic experiences across generations”.1 It is clear that women and men share a loyalty to the larger story of “Palestine”; as Sayigh observes, “though national struggle involves men and women equally, part of this struggle is to preserve women’s role in reproducing national culture and morality”.2 At the same time, their responses are coloured, firstly, by men’s control and politicization of the national narrative; and, secondly, by the misery of their current circumstances.

Although the notion of a “general will” of the Palestinian people tends to override the “desire to achieve changes in the position of women”, it has also had unintended consequences.

The bearing and raising of children remains women’s prime responsibility and, it has been argued, their most important contribution to the national cause. However, as a result of their participation in the national struggle, many women – as I will discuss in the next section – have had the opportunity to access less familiar forms of “gender identity”.

Experiences of exile “When we had locked the house up my mother put the key in her pocket and said, ‘I must get that veranda repaired when we get back’. She still has the key”.24 The first few years after 1948 were “ones of physical hardship, material deprivation, and psychological trauma over the loss of kin, homes and country. Conditions at the beginning were very bad, as one survivor describes: ‘Seven families to a tent, some families lived in caves. There was overcrowding and sickness. Many old people and children died’”.25 The refugees experienced abrupt dislocation from the only homes they had ever known and a new condition of having nothing. This resulted in intense insecurity, bewilderment, a sense of loss and grieving and uncertainty about the future. These former peasants were “uprooted” and “felt powerless in the wake of the sudden loss of control over their destiny and an intense frustration over the inability of any person, institution, or government to remedy their situation”.26 In pre-1948 Palestine women had taken part, with men, in the struggle against British rule.

They had a sense of belonging, in terms

both of geography and the routines of daily life. But, in Lebanon, besides the loss of their homes and communities, meaning also disappeared. Women throughout the Diaspora, as Fleishmann notes, “became caught up in family and communal survival”.27 The refugees sought comfort in the familiar rituals of religion and tradition and women were usually treated with respect within their own communities. However, as Sayigh suggests, a “negative effect of exile was that, since the Lebanese environment was perceived as alien and aggressive, the entire camp community focused on women’s behaviour, condoning ‘honour’ crimes and hiding them from the Lebanese authorities”.28 She argues that the camps became “moral communities”, wherein the reputation of a family, neighbourhood or whole camp “would be discussed in terms of the behaviour of its banat (young unmarried women)”.29 At the same time, women experienced various forms of violence. According to one refugee: “I was a teenager in Beirut when one day I arrived home at the camp…to discover that a group of drunken policemen had forced their way in and beaten up my mother and two sisters, apparently for failing to produce an identity card or UNRWA card or some other wretched document”.30 They suffered from lack of opportunity and harsh living conditions. One woman told me how she and her family fled over the border and lived for a time in a village close to Palestine. Eventually they moved further from the border and established a rudimentary camp. The camp grew gradually but, as it was not registered by UNRWA,8 its population had few facilities; residents did not obtain running water until 1985.31

The refugees experienced abrupt dislocation from the only homes they had ever known and a new condition of having nothing.

This resulted in intense insecurity, bewilderment, a sense of loss and grieving

its population had few facilities; residents did not obtain running water until 1985

Women, like men, continued to mourn the lost homeland. Peteet argues, however, that “the collective nature of loss…affect(ed) the sexes differently. Women’s traditional role as socializers of children was infused with new significance in the exile community, where a specifically Palestinian identity was emerging and memories of the past were highly valued”.32 Yet, although women assumed responsibility for keeping alive the memory of Palestine for successive generations – through songs, food, stories and particular modes of speech – society remained patriarchal.

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“how she should explain to her grandchildren, who had known only the stench of the camp’s open sewers, what it was like to wake up to the scent of fresh lemons”

Palestinians “went through the trauma” of becoming refugees, and those who found themselves in Lebanon inhabit an insecure and fearful situation, the antithesis of home

“strangers” and continue to regard themselves – first and foremost – as Palestinians. But it is an identity characterized by contradictions.

On one level are memories of Palestine, which have been handed down through generations and, to some extent, mythologized as, for example, in the following account: “We were living in Alama, in the country, amongst the plantations and the olive trees. There was bounty all around. Amongst the blossoms, the orange blossoms. Oh, how beautiful it was”.1 On another level, the idealization of the lost homeland contrasts with an everyday life of violence and impoverishment, as expressed in the anguish of an elderly woman living in Ain el-Hilweh camp in southern Lebanon, who asked “how she should explain to her grandchildren, who had known only the stench of the camp’s open sewers, what it was like to wake up to the scent of fresh lemons”.2 The violence of traumatic upheaval cannot be underestimated. Bereft of place, people “become homeless in at least three existential senses. First, they suffer the angst of being dislodged from their most enduring attachments and familiar places. This is compounded by being beset, chronically, by problems of adjusting to new surroundings.

Second, they also suffer banishment and the stigma of being outcasts… Finally…they are impelled by an urge to reassemble a damaged identity and a broken history”.3 This raises the question of the particular meanings of “identity” for Palestinian women in exile, and how these sometimes conflict with each other. The first focuses on “gender identity” which, as Skjelsbaek argues, is “negotiable… Masculinity and femininity are negotiated interpretations of what it means to be a man or a woman. These interpretations determine male and female actions, behaviour, perceptions and rationality”.4 Recognition of our “identity”, according to Arneil, “is to make explicit where we exist, historically, culturally, geographically”.5 It is likely that refugee women experience difficulties negotiating between a consciousness of “gender identity” and traditional notions of being a woman in a largely male-dominated environment where, as Steans notes, the “desire to achieve changes in the position of women can easily be portrayed as a betrayal of culture or national identity”.6 A second strand of identity, and one that is arguably given more weight, is that of being part of a larger Palestinian Diaspora. This

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identity is characterized by “continuing attachment to the notion of Palestine, the collective loss and trauma of exile, the outrage over the injustice of dispossession and mis-recognition, the idea of return, and the concept and practice of resistance”.7 It emphasizes “the sacredness of ‘the Cause’ and the importance of sacrifice for the homeland”.8 It is expressed in grass-roots commemorations of life in Palestine and “becomes for subsequent generations not merely a narrative or practice of remembering and reconstructing, but the basis of their political identity and the motivation for their political mobilization”.9 For Nabulsi, “identity is based exclusively on the general will” of the Palestinian people, wherever they are.10 However, while they claim to be a single “nation”, possessing certain characteristics in common, Palestinian exile communities throughout the Middle East have also evolved into unique entities, stemming from “different senses of what it means to be Palestinian engendered by more than forty years of dislocation and dispersion”.11 A third strand of identity can be located in the conflict between the national narrative of determination and resistance, and the complex reality of everyday life in the various sites of exile.This can lead, on occasion, to what may be described as “proclaimed” memory.

Sometimes the refugees relate their memories not in order to paint a true picture of the past but either to proclaim their shared story of national suffering or to put a stop to intrusive questioning. While individual refugees may express certain reservations in private, they often prefer to wax “ideological and eloquent, announcing that ‘as a Palestinian, like any other, I long to return no matter what the conditions’”.12 Khalili too has noted a dissonance between the refugees’ memories and how the national leadership presents these. She speaks of “PLO posters and postcards from the mid1970s “…brimming with references to orange groves, wheat and olive harvests, keys to lost houses, picturesque village architecture, and traditional dress”.13 Palestinians “went through the trauma”14 of becoming refugees, and those who found themselves in Lebanon inhabit an insecure and fearful situation, the antithesis of home. Their uprooting is commemorated as a tragic which endowed

the refugee community with the identity

which a woman must constantly guard against threats to her reputation. A woman in Chatila camp confirmed that “women must bear the weight of special scrutiny”.44 In her words, a woman “should be controlled because eyes are fixed on women…she must respect her house, and respect herself”.45 A woman official of a political organization told me that, in her view, the greatest violence experienced by women refugees in Lebanon is being forced to live outside their own country,46 a sentiment echoed by many of the so-called “ordinary” women of the camps.

Another “political” woman said: “Women have lost sons, husbands, and have been forced to become responsible, but they do not enjoy full rights because they are women; this is another form of violence”.47 Not being able to live on one’s land, said the head of the General Union of Palestinian Women in Lebanon, creates feelings of insecurity. Palestinians exist in a constant state of “temporariness”, which has persisted for over 50 years; they are condemned always to resist yet never to enjoy the fruits of resistance. The suffering of the Palestinian woman, she asserted, “is because she is deprived of her humanitarian rights in Lebanon. Women feel they are living in a place of refuge, which causes psychological problems”.48 Peacemaking and the right of return “The right of return, but to where? Only to our homeland, only to our villages. Not to another place”.49 Clearly, as Rami Khouri remarks, “the single most important component of peacemaking has been and remains today the status of the Palestinian refugees – not how to resettle them or find them jobs, but how to restore to them their full human rights and dignity within the context of their national community”.50 Having suffered so much and for so long, what do the refugees themselves want? According to a 2003 working paper, the “starting point in crafting durable solutions for refugees are the wishes of the refugees themselves”.51 Many acknowledge they would simply like a place to live which is safe and permanent.

However, a recent poll reveals that, if they had a choice, only ten per cent of refugees would opt to stay in Lebanon. The vast majority said they would prefer to return to what is now Israel, although they reject Israeli citizenship.52 Several women I met echoed

this conclusion, asserting that their objective is to return to their land where, in the words of one woman, they can continue to fight “to get rid of the Israelis”.53 The notion of hopelessness, which was the starting point of this article, fails to do justice either to the refugees’ lived experiences or their aspirations. In this section, I would like to discuss some of the responses that have been advanced to address the apparently “hopeless” plight of the refugees, resting on a recognition of their unique circumstances as a people “bereft of place”. I would also like to consider the particular impacts of these “solutions” on women. There are several levels of response.

While it is possible to analyze the current plight and evolving identity of women, such discussions fail to address the core issue, which is one of return. All Palestinians to whom I spoke in Lebanon, without exception, insisted on their moral and legal right to return to the land and villages they were forced to leave in 1948. Both the Palestinian leadership and individual refugees cite United Nations Resolution 194 of December 1948, which calls for the repatriation of the Palestinian refugees. Although the resolution is reaffirmed every year by the General Assembly, Israel refuses to implement it, arguing that mass return will destroy the Jewish character of the state. But scholars such as Salman Abu Sittar believe that the impracticality of return is a “persistent myth”.54 He has carried out considerable research in this area and argues that the concentration of Israeli Jews today “is largely in and around pre-1948 Jewish land and that Palestinian land is still largely empty”.55 In his view, if the Lebanon refugees were to return to their homes in Galilee and elsewhere, the impact would scarcely be felt by the Israelis.56

the greatest violence experienced by women refugees in Lebanon is being forced to live outside their own country

if the Lebanon refugees were to return to their homes in Galilee and elsewhere, the impact would Haifa Jamal notes, too, that “the problem is not geography”.57 But the solution of return scarcely be felt by seems increasingly unlikely since the Israeli the Israelis government, supported by a growing body of world opinion, insists that the refugees should now be settled in the states where they reside. At best, some of the refugees currently in Lebanon may be permitted to take up residence in a future Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Another level at which the debate over possible solutions is taking place is that of the Palestinian Diaspora. At official and personal Al-Aqsa 9

In spite of changing circumstances, most camp families were “hostile to the employment of women outside the home and preferred their daughters to marry as soon as possible after leaving school. Once married, women were seen as being obliged to give priority to childrearing and running the household”.34

For the generations born outside Palestine, “political consciousness is the supreme good, the key to successful struggle”

Without the right to live a “normal” life, women are exposed to inadequate health care provisions, few educational opportunities, a lack of jobs

In the absence of a homeland, Palestinians in Lebanon sought other meanings. For the generations born outside Palestine, “political consciousness is the supreme good, the key to successful struggle”,35 and, in the 1960s, a resistance movement began to develop under the auspices of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

StamatopoulouRobbins argues that “the emergence of the Palestinian national movement resulted in a narrative very different from the stories of the generations before the ‘Generation of the Revolution’ ((jil al-thawra)”,36 and this raises the question of whether the “new” narrative diminished women’s role as transmitters of Palestinian memory or empowered them to challenge traditional practices.

The PLO and its commitment to an “armed popular revolution”, together with greater autonomy within the camps, provided an opportunity for some women to become politically active. There is no doubt that, during the period of the resistance movement, women’s status underwent significant change. As a result of UNRWA’s educational services, the majority of girls for the first time had the opportunity to go to school. In addition, the “meaning of work” for women was transformed during this period as to work became “a national endeavour and a statement of women’s increased autonomy and participation in public life”.37 One could argue that, for many young camp women, the opportunity to contribute to the widely respected “national endeavour” was a form of liberation. A woman in Rashidiyya camp in southern Lebanon, for example, told me how she was raised within the PLO. She described herself as “a fighter for Palestine”, ready to encourage her five children to join the fight and even herself to become a “martyr”.

She declared that she would never give up the struggle against Israel but would fight “to the last woman”.38 Although it would not be accurate to describe this behaviour as part of a conscious quest for greater “liberation” for women, their “very acts of participating publicly, sometimes even

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violently, in the major issues of their day, and transgressing gendered norms of behaviour constitute feminism”.39 At the same time, however, the transgression of boundaries remains difficult for women. A woman in her early fifties told me how her husband, who had been a fighter, was killed in the first Israeli invasion of the south. Only 22 when her husband died and with a week-old baby, she found life very difficult. Society, she said, does not look kindly on widows and cannot accept that a woman might choose to live alone. She was not able to re-marry and therefore prevented from having the large family she had wanted.40 My research revealed that most women continue to see themselves primarily in terms of marriage and childbearing; this is both a personal and a political identity.

After the Israeli invasion of 1982, which resulted in the removal of the PLO from Lebanon, Palestinians – men and women – were beset by feelings of profound hopelessness; they had struggled to assert what they regard as their fundamental rights, but their efforts have led neither to regaining their homeland nor living in dignity. As the women’s narratives illustrate, violence has contributed towards the construction of a Palestinian identity in exile. Violence has been described as “nothing more than the most flagrant manifestation of power”.41 The other side of the coin is powerlessness.

Without the right to live a “normal” life, women are exposed to inadequate health care provisions, few educational opportunities, a lack of jobs even if a person is educated, highly sub-standard housing, no security about the future nor sense of belonging, an absence of legal protection and the negation of national identity, and these are all experienced, to varying degrees, as forms of violence.

Many women reported health problems. A woman in Bourj el Barajne told me she feels frustrated; she is very depressed and suffers from bad headaches.42 Another said that, as a result of the war, she is diabetic and afflicted with high blood pressure.43 Many were injured during the course of the conflict, causing long-term disabilities, or have developed illnesses as a result of stress and poverty. The lack of affordable health care exacerbates the situation.

Others allude to the problems of schooling for their children. Almost all bemoan the injustice of their lives in Lebanon. The camps tend to be claustrophobic environments, in

But in the camps, in Bourj al Barajneh, people stayed to the end. No exaggeration. For them it was an important point. We left Palestine in 1948. In 1967 it happened again. Then we left the south. Now we’ve had it. We’re not leaving”.1 Since many are convinced they will never be able to return to Palestine, some of the refugees believe that the only solution is to leave Lebanon for “somewhere better”, for example Europe, Canada or elsewhere, to pursue dreams of a better life. But there are differences in this respect between men and women. In the opinion of a woman in Bourj el-Barajneh, Palestine is now more important for women than for men. Many young men, she said, want to leave Lebanon – this is their solution – but the women cannot leave so they are more attached to their Palestinian identity.2 Conclusion: living on the margins “We were besieged for five months and the world said, `Let them be destroyed.’ But insh’allah we shall remain strong and hold our heads high. We have a cause. Our goal isn’t Lebanon. If they offered me the whole of Lebanon, I’d tell them it’s not equal to one Palestinian olive”.1 Throughout this article, I have tried to make a balance between, on the one hand, the pain and humiliation of living on the margins of their land but not being able to return to it and, on the other, the empowering qualities of a dynamic identity for women. If we think in terms of boundaries and border crossings, it is clear that Palestinian women have gone some way towards “crossing” into what has traditionally been defined as male-controlled space. But the larger border remains, in the sense, firstly, that Palestinians appear no nearer to “crossing back” into their homeland; and, secondly, that the Palestinian Diaspora has not succeeded in creating a “borderless” entity (a “virtual” nation or deterritorialized state) that adequately addresses Palestinian aspirations. While Palestinians certainly speak to each other across national boundaries, such communication does not constitute a realistic alternative to the national state to which Palestinians believe they are entitled. While the fact of living so close to the places they regard as home has had a traumatizing effect on women it has also encouraged resistance, resilience and alternative modes of being a

nation. Proximity has affected Palestinian behaviour since 1948 in terms of, firstly, a belief that armed struggle would liberate their land and enable them to return; secondly, of an unsatisfied yearning, nourished by memory and a sense of injustice; and, thirdly, of various forms of violence, past and present.

When the Israelis ended their 22-year occupation of southern Lebanon in May 2000, many Palestinians took the opportunity of travelling to the border so they could finally see their homeland. A busload of Palestinians from Rashidiyya camp, making their first visit to the border, were described as “singing and clapping almost all the way”, and then, as they caught sight of their homeland, “there were tears, longing, anger and nostalgia”.2 A group of children living in a camp in southern Lebanon “had been to the border…after the withdrawal of the Israeli army… They were anxious to go back and see Jerusalem. One of the children commented that when they returned to Palestine their rights would be guaranteed… One boy said that everyone called them ‘Palestinians in Lebanon’, but that they would rather be called ‘those who would return’ (aydun)… They all wanted to go back to their homeland”.3 In the early days after they fled or were uprooted from their homes in Palestine, women played an important role as transmitters of an oral tradition of story-telling. But as time passed, it is likely that young people became less interested in hearing “the old stories”. According to a woman in the south, most Palestinians in Lebanon have forgotten Palestine; they used to tell stories about Palestine but now “everyone is tired of talking”.4 It may be that, while older people have grown weary with repeating the old stories, the younger generation is no longer listening and has ceased to seek its identity through the transmission of oral narratives.

With education and technological advance, young people are finding other outlets.

Refugees imagine the future in terms of fear and promise. Women, too, changed. They have acquired education and skills, and they played an active role in the resistance movement.

These were important developments in terms of psychological resilience but they saw few tangible gains. The patriarchal character of society changed very little and the hope of victory and return disappeared after the Israeli invasion of 1982.

“We left Palestine in 1948. In 1967 it happened again.

Then we left the south. Now we’ve had it. We’re not leaving”

everyone called them ‘Palestinians in Lebanon’, but that they would rather be called ‘those who would return’ (aydun)…

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“So intense has been the suffering that the power of the new narrative has potential to replace the old Palestinian narrative...”

“Palestinians must be recognized as refugees, not aliens, and granted the rights outlined in such covenants as the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees...”

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levels, the link with Palestine and with the community in exile seems to be as strong as ever. Many of the women I interviewed in Lebanon referred to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. A female leader in the south explained that “all Palestinians, wherever they are, face the same suffering. And all consider the cause is their own cause; they are suffering as one people”.1 Palestinians in Lebanon today, as Sayigh notes, “have not lost sight of national issues”.2 In the words of one: “Our first priority is to preserve our national identity”.3 Many undertake solidarity activities for Palestinians living under occupation; they collect money for families in Palestine and organize marches and demonstrations to express their national cohesion.

In addition, live coverage of the al-Aqsa intifada, which began in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in September 2000, “has been a powerful mechanism for generating solidarity and nationalist sentiment among Diaspora Palestinians”.4 It has created, in the words of one commentator, “a new Palestinian narrative”.

He writes: “So intense has been the suffering that the power of the new narrative has potential to replace the old Palestinian narrative as the central theme of their collective identity.

Since 1948 the Palestinian narrative…has been one of loss and suffering, of exile and refuge. That is why the refugee issue and the demand for right of return has become the most fundamental facet of their collective identity. The narrative being shaped in the past four years is one of heroism, of struggle for freedom, liberation and independence. It is a narrative of the meek against the mighty, of resistance and determination”.5 The question then arises as to how this “new narrative” can be applied to Palestinians living in Lebanon, whose expectations of a satisfactory resolution to the conflict are not high. The debate is occurring on two levels: the level of realistic expectation of return and the level of solidarity with the larger Palestinian Diaspora.

A third level of engagement for exiled Palestinians takes place in the “virtual” world. In a recent article, Diana Allan argues that young Palestinians living in Lebanon are finding new ways of connecting with the wider Palestinian community, not through stories passed down through families but through new media technologies. Chat rooms

and websites, she says, “have provided camp youth and Palestinians across the Diaspora with virtual spaces in which to meet and share their experiences”.6 It then becomes possible to be part of a larger Palestinian community without inhabiting the same territory. For Hanafi, “a new model of nation state must be conceptualized based on flexible borders, flexible citizenship and some kind of separation between the nation and state”. He calls it the “extra-territorial nation state”.7 Peteet suggests that, for refugees, “place is a lived experience – an elsewhere – that is carried from one site to another in exile. As it travels, attachment to original place intersects with new places to nuance identity…identity remains territorialized but not necessarily confined by any single place. It is grounded in specific villages and regions or cities yet de-territorialized and re-territorialized: as identity travels, it is re-configured in new places and takes on new contours”.8 Classical Model of the Nation-State.

8 Peteet, Julie, “The Palestinians in Lebanon: Identity at the Margins”, The Journal of the International Institute, Vol 3, No 3.

A fourth consideration in the search for a just solution is the pressing need of the refugees to live in dignity in their place of exile. The lack of civil rights is high on the agenda for most Palestinians, who insist that other forms of violence and deprivation stem from this basic condition. In the absence of a realistic expectation of return, the refugees are entitled to lead a decent life in Lebanon.

But the Lebanese government takes the view that return is the only option for the refugees and that giving them rights in Lebanon would absolve Israel of responsibility.

Advocacy groups such as the Palestinian Human Rights Organization in Beirut are of the firm opinion that “Palestinians must be recognized as refugees, not aliens, and granted the rights outlined in such covenants as the 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees and, more broadly, the International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights”.1 For some Palestinians, there is a determination to stay where they are. In the words of a woman who defended Beirut with the PLO during the Israeli siege of 1982: “Most of the people were evacuated.

Joint Parliamentary Middle East Councils Commission of Enquiry – Palestinian Refugees, Right of Return, London, March 2001.

Kadi, Leila S, Basic Political Documents of the Armed Palestinian Resistance Movement, Beirut: PLO Research Center, 1969.

Kanafani, Ghassan (translated by Hilary Kirkpatrick), Men in the Sun, Washington DC: Three Continents Press, 1978.

Khalaf, Samir, Beirut Reclaimed: Reflections on Urban Design and the Restoration of Civility, Beirut: Dar anNahar, 1993.

Khalili, Laleh, “Grass-Roots Commemorations: Remembering the land in the Camps of Lebanon”, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol XXXIV, No 1, Autumn 2004.

McDowall, David, The Palestinians, London: The Minority Rights Group, October 1987.

Murphy, Jay, editor, For Palestine, New York & London: Writers & Readers, 1993.

Nabulsi, Karma, “Being Palestinian”, http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/Being_ Palestinian.html Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, Palestinian Refugee Surveys, Ramallah, 2003, Palestinian Human Rights Organization, Beirut, Political and Legal Status of Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon.

Peteet, Julie M, Gender in Crisis: Women and the Palestinian Resistance Movement, New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.

Peteet, Julie, “From Refugees to Minority: Palestinians in Post-War Lebanon, Middle East Report 200, July – September 1996.

Peteet, Julie M, “Lebanon: Palestinian Refugees in the Post-War Period”, WRITENET Country Papers, December 1997, www.unhcr.ch/refworld/country/ writenet/wrilbn.htm Peteet, Julie, “Icons and Militants: Mothering in the Danger Zone”, in Saliba, Therese, Allen, Carolyn, and Howard, Judith A, editors, Gender, Politics and Islam, Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 2002.

Said, Edward W, After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives, London and Boston, Faber and Faber, 1986.

Said, Edward W, The Politics of Dispossession: The Struggle for Palestinian Self-Determination 19691994, London: Vintage, 1995.

Sayigh,

Rosemary,

“The

Palestinian

Experience: Integration and NonIntegration in the Arab Ghourba”, Arab Studies Quarterly1, no 2, Spring 1979.

Sayigh, Rosemary, Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries, London: Zed Books, 1988.

Sayigh, Rosemary, Too Many Enemies: The Palestinian Experience in Lebanon, London & New Jersey: Zed Books, 1994.

Sayigh, Rosemary, “Palestinians in Lebanon: Harsh Present, Uncertain Future”, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol XXV, No 1, Autumn 1995.

Sayigh, Rosemary, “Remembering Mothers, Forming Daughters: Palestinian Women’s Narratives in Refugee Camps in Lebanon”, in Abdo, Nahla, and Lentin, Ronit, editors, Women and the Politics of Military Confrontation, New York & Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2002.

Sayigh Rosemary, and Peteet, Julie, “Between Two Fires: Palestinian Women in Lebanon”, in Ridd, Rosemary, and Callaway, Helen, Caught up in Conflict: Women’s Responses to Political Strife, Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, 1986.

Skjelsbaek, Inger, “Is Femininity Inherently Peaceful” in Skjelsbaek, Inger, and Smith, Dan, editors, Gender, Peace and Conflict, London: Sage Publications, 2001.

Stamatopoulou-Robbins, Sophia Chloe, “Palestine Online: An Emerging Virtual Homeland?” RSC Working Paper No 28, Oxford: Refugee Studies Centre, September 2005.

Steans, Jill, Gender and International Relations: An Introduction, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998.

Steger, Manfred B, and Lind, Nancy S, editors, Violence and Its Alternatives, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999.

Turki, Fawaz, The Disinherited Disinherited, New York: Monthly Review Books, 1972.

Zureik, Elia, “Palestinian Refugees Must Be Allowed to Choose”, PLO Negotiations Affairs Department.

NOTES

1 Gilmour, David, Dispossessed: The Ordeal of the Palestinians, London: Sphere Books, 1980, p.19.

2 Out of a total of at least 725,000 Palestinians (UN figures). The number of registered refugees in Lebanon currently stands at 401,071 (out of a regional total of 4,283,892); they are situated in 12 camps (UNRWA, 30 June 2005).

3 Declaration of the State of Palestine, proclaimed by the Palestine National Council on 15 November 1988 in Algiers.

4 Said, Edward W, The Politics of Dispossession: The Struggle for Palestinian Self-Determination 19691994, London: Vintage, 1995, p.4.

5 I carried out fieldwork in the Lebanese camps from the late 1990s to 2003 for my PhD thesis. I visited almost all the camps but focused mainly on Bourj elBarajne in Beirut, Ain Hilweh in Sidon and Rashidiyya south of Tyre.

6 Said, Edward W, After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives, London and Boston, Faber and Faber, 1986, p.63.

7 By “Palestine” I mean the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the territory of the former British mandate, which became the state of Israel in May 1948.

8 The fictional character Um Hassan in Tal el-Zaatar camp, recalling her early life in Palestine, in the novel The Eye of the Mirror by Liana Badr, pp.108-9.

9 Zureik, Elia, “Palestinian Refugees Must Be Allowed to Choose”, PLO Negotiations Affairs Department.

10 Khalaf, Samir, Beirut Reclaimed: Reflections on Urban Design and the Restoration of Civility, Beirut: Dar anNahar, 1993, p.96.

11 Skjelsbaek, Inger, “Is Femininity Inherently Peaceful” in Skjelsbaek, Inger, and Smith, Dan, editors, Gender, Peace and Conflict, London: Sage Publications, 2001, p.47.

12 Arneil, Barbara, Politics and Feminism , Oxford: Blackwell, 1999, p.109.

13 Steans, Jill, Gender and International Relations: An Introduction, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998, p.73.

14 Peteet, Julie M, “Lebanon: Palestinian Refugees in the Post-War Period”, Writenet Country Papers, December 1997, p.11.

15 Sayigh, Too Many Enemies, p.9.

16 Khalili, Laleh, “Grass-Roots Commemorations: Remembering the land in the Camps of Lebanon”, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol XXXIV, No 1, Autumn 2004, p.19.

17 Nabulsi, Karma, “Being Palestinian”, http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/Being_ Palestinian.html 18 Bowman, Glen, “A Country of Words: Conceiving the Palestinian Nation from the Position of Exile”, in Laclau, Ernesto, editor, The Making of Political Identities, London: Verso, 1994.

19 Hanafi, Sari, “Opening the Debate on the Right of Return”, Middle East Report, 222.

20 Khalili, Laleh, “Grass-Roots Commemorations: Remembering the Land in the Camps of Lebanon”, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol XXXIV, No 1, Autumn 2004, p.8 and p.7.

21 Kilpatrick, Hilary, “Introduction” to Kanafani, Ghassan (translated by Hilary Kilpatrick), Men in the Sun, Washington DC: Three Continents Press, 1978, p.2.

22 Hoffmann, Eva, After Such Knowledge: A Mediation on the Aftermath of the Holocaust, London: Vintage, 2005, p.xii.

23 Sayigh, “Remembering Mothers, Forming Daughters”, p.67.

24 Dr Sareh Nasser, a lecturer at Amman University, recalling how his family left the village of Lifta near Jerusalem, quoted in Minority Rights Report The Palestinians, p.4.

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Their struggle, although a failure in practical terms, has born fruit in the sense that they have not forgotten their land, they are still just as determined to return to it

As we consider the future for Palestinians in Lebanon, it is difficult not to feel pessimistic.

They have moved full circle, from desperate exiles to revolutionaries and back again to an unwelcome refugee problem. In the process, their identity has passed through several phases. When they first arrived in Lebanon, their identity was grounded in the reality of home; their memories were specific and could be described in concrete terms. The people who had made the journey to Lebanon told each other stories in order not to forget.

Then they told their children stories; they described homes, villages and landscapes in loving detail, and younger people, in turn, treasured these memories of what had been forcibly removed from them but which they themselves had not experienced; a sense of grievance was nurtured in successive generations. Identity became an abstract notion, connected to a real place but existing in conditions of victimization and bereavement; in Samir Khalaf’s phrase, it was a “damaged identity”. Exile was difficult and increasingly violent, and slowly the refugees started to evolve a new identity based on agency rather than disempowerment. Nowadays, young Palestinians in New York, Beirut and Nablus, who may never share a state or even meet face to face, communicate with each other through the Internet.

The life stories of Palestinian refugee women reveal that violence has inhibited their ability to participate in the national struggle but, paradoxically, the violent environment created opportunities for greater female involvement in the reconstruction of meaning.

Nonetheless, most of the leaders were and still are men and many women say they see little point participating in politics.

According to a male representative of one of the political factions: “Since the Palestinian revolution started, the woman has had an important role in the struggle, along with the man. She is a mother; she raises her children to love their country and to sacrifice themselves for their homeland. Women are involved in all work – political, social and voluntary work; a few are involved in military work. But there is no need to carry a gun to be a fighter… There is another role for women in the struggle: to protest in order to gain civil rights and the right to return and by supporting the intifada in Palestine”.73 Although Palestinians in Lebanon remain a

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disempowered community, in terms of civil, political and international rights, they have been able to restore to the “suffering nation” a sense of self-esteem. Their struggle, although a failure in practical terms, has born fruit in the sense that they have not forgotten their land, they are still just as determined to return to it, and they continue to hand down to their children a strong sense of belonging. In other words, they have survived.

Bibliography Abu Sitta, Salman, “The Feasibility of the Right of Return”, ICJ and CIMEL paper, June 1997.

Abu Sitta, Salman, Palestinian Right to Return: Sacred, Legal and Possible, London: Palestinian Return Centre, second revised edition, May 1999.

Allan, Diana, “Mythologising al-Nakba: Narratives, Collective Identity and Cultural Practice among Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon”, Oral History, Volume 33, No 1, Spring 2005.

Arneil, Barbara, Politics and Feminism , Oxford: Blackwell, 1999.

Arzt, Donna, Refugees into Citizens: Palestinians and the End of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1997.

BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency Rights, ‘Representative Research’ – A Practical Approach to Durable Solutions for Palestinian Refugees as Part of a Comprehensive Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, prepared for the IDRC Stocktaking Conference on Palestinian Refugees, Ottawa, 18 – 20 June 2003.

Badr, Liana (translated by Samira Kawar), The Eye of the Mirror, Reading: Garnet Publishing, 1994 (original text 1991).

Baskin, Gershon, “Heading toward a new Palestinian narrative”, Jerusalem Post, 21 February 2005.

Bowman, Glen, “A Country of Words: Conceiving the Palestinian Nation from the Position of Exile”, in Laclau, Ernesto, editor, The Making of Political Identities, London: Verso, 1994.

Fleischmann, Ellen L, The Nation and its ‘New Women’: The Palestinian Women’s Movement 1920 – 1948, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.

Gilmour, David, Dispossessed: The Ordeal of the Palestinians, London: Sphere Books, 1980.

Hanafi, Sari, “Opening the Debate on the Right of Return”, Middle East Report, 222, Spring 2002.

Hoffmann, Eva, After Such Knowledge: A Mediation on the Aftermath of the Holocaust, London: Vintage, 2005.

Human Rights Violations, War Crimes & Crimes against Humanity Why an Economic Boycott of Israel is Justified Professor Norman G. Finkelstein* In early January Kristin Halvorsen, current Norwegian Finance Minister and leader of the Left Socialist Party (a member of the current three-party governmental coalition), expressed her personal and party support for a Norwegian boycott of Israeli goods and services. Almost immediately the Israeli ambassador to Norway protested and Condoleezza Rice threatened Norway with “serious political consequences” if Halvorsen’s statement represented the policy of the current government. Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre then dashed off a letter to Rice (addressed “Dear Condi”), assuring her that the Left Socialist Party’s position on an economic boycott of Israel “has never been and will never be” the policy of the Norwegian government. For her part Halvorsen distanced herself from her previous statements, as top leaders of the foreign affairs department criticized her and drew parallels between a boycott of Israeli goods and the Nazi boycott of Jewish shops.

The recent proposal that Norway boycott Israeli goods has provoked passionate debate.

In my view, a rational examination of this issue would pose two questions: 1) Do Israeli human rights violations warrant an economic boycott?

2) Can such a boycott make a meaningful contribution toward ending these violations?

I would argue that both these questions should be answered in the affirmative. Although the subject of many reports by human rights organizations, Israel’s real human rights record in the Occupied Palestinian Territory is generally not well known abroad. This is primarily due to the formidable public relations industry of Israel’s defenders as well as the effectiveness of their tactics of intimidation, such as labelling critics of Israeli policy anti-Semitic.

Yet, it is an incontestable fact that Israel has committed a broad range of human rights violations, many rising to the level of war crimes and crimes against humanity. These include ‘Illegal Killings’, ‘Torture’ and ‘House Demolitions’.

Illegal Killings Whereas Palestinian suicide attacks targeting Israeli civilians have garnered much media attention, Israel’s quantitatively worse record of killing non-combatants is less well known.

According to the most recent figures of the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B’Tselem), 3,386 Palestinians have been killed since September 2000, of whom 1,008 were identified as combatants, as opposed to 992 Israelis killed, of whom 309 were combatants. This means that three times more Palestinians than Israelis have been killed and up to three times more Palestinian civilians than Israeli civilians.

Israel’s defenders maintain that there’s a difference between targeting civilians and inadvertently killing them. B’Tselem disputes this:”[W]hen so many civilians have been killed and wounded, the lack of intent makes no difference. Israel remains responsible.”

Palestinians have not been accidentally killed but “deliberately targeted”

Furthermore, Amnesty International reports that “many” Palestinians have not been accidentally killed but “deliberately targeted,” while the award-winning New York Times journalist Chris Hedges reports that Israeli soldiers “entice children like mice into a trap and murder them for sport.”

Torture “From 1967,” Amnesty reports, “the Israeli security services have routinely tortured Palestinian political suspects in the Occupied Territories.”

*Professor Finkelstein is a world renowned writer ob the Israeli/Palestinian issue. He teaches political science at De Paul University, and his books include: The Holocaust Industry, Image and reality of the Israel – Palestinian conflict and Beyond Chutzpah.

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25 Sayigh Rosemary, and Peteet, Julie, “Between Two Fires: Palestinian Women in Lebanon”, in Ridd, Rosemary, and Callaway, Helen, Caught up in Conflict: Women’s Responses to Political Strife, Basingstoke: Macmillan Education, 1886, pp.108-9.

26 Peteet, Julie M, Gender in Crisis: Women and the Palestinian Resistance Movement, New York: Columbia University Press, 1991, p.24.

27 Fleischmann, Ellen L, The Nation and its ‘New’ Women: The Palestinian Women’s Movement 1920-1948, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003, p.209.

28 Sayigh, Rosemary, “Remembering Mothers, Forming Daughters: Palestinian Women’s Narratives in Refugee Camps in Lebanon”, in Abdo, Nahla, and Lentin, Ronit, editors, Women and the Politics of Military Confrontation, New York & Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2002, p.60.

29 Sayigh, “Remembering Mothers, Forming Daughters”, p.61.

30 Turki, Fawaz, The Disinherited Disinherited, New York: Monthly Review Books, 1972, p.40.

31 The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA) was established in 1950.

32 Interview, Kasmiye camp, near Tyre, 31 May 2003.

33 Peteet, Gender in Crisis, p.35.

34 Sayigh and Peteet, “Between Two Fires”, p.110.

35 Sayigh, Rosemary, Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries, London: Zed Books, 1988, p.13.

36 Stamatopoulou-Robbins, Sophia Chloe, “Palestine Online: An Emerging Virtual Homeland?” RSC Working Paper No 28, Oxford: Refugee Studies Centre, September 2005, p.16.

37 Peteet, Gender in Crisis, p.36.

38 Interview, Rashidiyya camp, Tyre, 5 June 2003.

39 Fleischmann, The Nation and its ‘New’ Women, p.209.

40 Interview, Bourj el-Barajne camp, Beirut, 4 June 2003.

41 Arendt, Hannah, excerpt from “On Violence”, in Steger, Manfred B, and Lind, Nancy S, editors, Violence and Its Alternatives, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999, p.3.

42 Interview, Bourj el Barajne camp, Beirut, 3 June 2003.

43 Interview, Bourj el-Barajne camp, Beirut, 3 June 2003.

44 Umm Marwan, born in 1938 in a small village near Akka, quoted by Sayigh, “Remembering Mothers, Forming Daughters”, p.69.

45 Sayigh, “Remembering Mothers, Forming Daughters”, p.69.

46 Meeting with Khaldat Hossain, Democratic Palestinian Women’s Organization, Mar Elias Camp, Beirut, 18 September 2002.

47 Meeting with Samira Salah, Arab Union Women’s League, Beirut, 29 May 2003.

48 Meeting with Amneh Jibril, head of the General Union of Palestinian Women

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in Lebanon, Ain el-Hilweh camp, Sidon, 7 June 2003.

49 Qasem Ayna, Coordinator of Forum of NGOs Working in the Palestinian Community, part of evidence given to Joint Parliamentary Middle East Councils Commission of Enquiry – Palestinian Refugees, Right of Return, Beirut, 7 September 2000, published London, March 2001.

50 Khouri, Rami, “Foreword”, in Arzt, Donna E, Refugees Into Citizens: Palestinians and the End of the ArabIsraeli Conflict, New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1997, p.xii.

51 BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency Rights, ‘Representative Research’ – A Practical Approach to Durable Solutions for Palestinian Refugees as Part of a Comprehensive Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, prepared for the IDRC Stocktaking Conference on Palestinian Refugees, Ottawa, 18 – 20 June 2003.

52 “Palestinian Refugee Surveys”, carried out by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, Ramallah, 2003, carried out among refugees in the West Bank & Gaza, Lebanon and Jordan.

53 Interview, Rashidiyya Camp, Tyre, 5 June 2003.

54 Abu Sitta, Salman, “The Feasibility of the Right of Return”, ICJ and CIMEL paper, June 1997.

55 Abu Sitta, Salman, Palestinian Right to Return: Sacred, Legal and Possible, London: Palestinian Return Centre, second revised edition, May 1999, p.46.

56 Abu Sitta, Palestinian Right to Return, p.52.

57 Haifa Jamal, evidence taken at Coordination Forum of NGOs Working in the Palestinian Community, Beirut, 7 September 2000, Joint Parliamentary Middle East Councils Commission of Enquiry – Palestinian Refugees, Right of Return, London, March 2001.

58 Interview with Amneh Jibril, head of GUPW in Lebanon, Ain el-Hilweh camp, Sidon, 7 June 2003.

59 Sayigh, Rosemary, “Palestinians in Lebanon: Harsh Present, Uncertain Future”, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol XXV, No 1, Autumn 1995, p.52.

60 A local resistance cadre, quoted in Sayigh, “Palestinians in Lebanon”, p.52.

61 Allan, Diana, “Mythologising alNakba: Narratives, Collective Identity and Cultural Practice among Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon”, Oral History, Volume 33, No 1, Spring 2005, p.54.

62 Baskin, Gershon, “Heading toward a new Palestinian narrative”, Jerusalem Post, 21 February 2005.

63 Allen, “Mythologising al-Nakba”, p.54.

64 Hanafi, Sari, Patterns of Return: Challenging the Classical Model of the Nation-State.

65 Peteet, Julie, “The Palestinians in Lebanon: Identity at the Margins”, The Journal of the International Institute, Vol 3, No 3.

66 PHRO, Political and Legal Status of Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon.

67 Obenziner, Hilton, “The Siege of

Beirut”, from an interview conducted with a Palestinian woman, in Murphy, Jay, editor, For Palestine, New York & London: Writers & Readers, 1993, p.41.

68 Interview, Bourj el-Barajne camp, Beirut,9 June 2003.

69 Quoted in Sayigh, Too Many Enemies, p.3.

70 Jo Beech, notes from her visit to Lebanon, August 2000 (unpublished).

71 Joint Parliamentary Middle East Councils Commission of Enquiry, Right of Return, meeting with children in Mieh Mieh camp, Sidon, 9 September 2000.

72 Interview, Kasmiye camp, near Tyre, 31 May 2003.

73 Meeting with Ahmed Moustafa, Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), in Bourj el-Barajne camp, Beirut, 9 June 2003.

annex the most productive land and water resources as well as East Jerusalem, the centre of Palestinian life. It will also effectively sever the West Bank in two. Although Israel initially claimed that it was building the wall to fight terrorism, the consensus among human rights organizations is that it is really a land grab to annex illegal Jewish settlements into Israel. Recently, Israel’s Justice Minister frankly acknowledged that the wall will serve as “the future border of the state of Israel.”

The current policies of the Israeli government will lead either to endless bloodshed or the dismemberment of Palestine. “It remains virtually impossible to conceive of a Palestinian state without its capital in Jerusalem,” the respected Crisis Group recently concluded, and accordingly Israeli policies in the West Bank “are at war with any viable two-state solution and will not bolster Israel’s security; in fact, they will undermine it, weakening Palestinian pragmatists and sowing the seeds of growing radicalization.”

Recalling the U.N. Charter principle that it is inadmissible to acquire territory by war, the International Court of Justice declared in a landmark 2004 opinion that Israel’s settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and the wall being built to annex them to Israel were illegal under international law. It called on Israel to cease construction of the wall, dismantle those parts already completed and compensate Palestinians for damages.

Crucially, it also stressed the legal responsibilities of the international community: all States are under an obligation not to recognize the illegal situation resulting from the construction of the wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem. They are also under an obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining the situation created by such construction. It is also for all States, while respecting the United Nations Charter and international law, to see to it that any impediment, resulting from the construction of the wall, to the exercise by the Palestinian people of its right to self-determination is brought to an end.

A subsequent U.N. General Assembly resolution supporting the World Court opinion passed overwhelmingly. However, the Israeli government ignored the Court’s opinion, continuing construction

at a rapid pace, while Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that the wall was legal.

Due to the obstructionist tactics of the United States, the United Nations has not been able to effectively confront Israel’s illegal practices.

Indeed, although it is true that the U.N. keeps Israel to a double standard, it’s exactly the reverse of the one Israel’s defenders allege: Israel is held not to a higher but lower standard than other member States.

A study by Marc Weller of Cambridge University comparing Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory with comparable situations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, East Timor, occupied Kuwait and Iraq, and Rwanda found that Israel has enjoyed “virtual immunity” from enforcement measures such as an arms embargo and economic sanctions typically adopted by the U.N. against member States condemned for identical violations of international law.

Due in part to an aggressive campaign accusing Europe of a “new anti-Semitism,” the European Union has also failed in its legal obligation to enforce international law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Although the claim of a “new anti-Semitism” has no basis in fact (all the evidence points to a lessening of anti-Semitism in Europe), the EU has reacted by appeasing Israel. It has even suppressed publication of one of its own reports, because the authors - like the Crisis Group and many others - concluded that due to Israeli policies the “prospects for a two-state solution with east Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine are receding.”

The moral burden to avert the impending catastrophe must now be borne by individual states that are prepared to respect their obligations under international law and by individual men and women of conscience.

In a courageous initiative, American-based Human Rights Watch recently called on the U.S. government to reduce significantly its financial aid to Israel until Israel terminates its illegal policies in the West Bank. An economic boycott would seem to be an equally judicious undertaking. A non-violent tactic, the purpose of which is to achieve a just and lasting settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict, cannot legitimately be called antiSemitic. Indeed, the real enemies of Jews are those who debase the memory of Jewish suffering by equating principled opposition to Israel’s illegal and immoral policies with anti-Semitism.

Israeli policies in the West Bank “are at war with any viable two-state solution and will not bolster Israel’s security

Israel has enjoyed “virtual immunity” from enforcement measures such as an arms embargo and economic sanctions typically adopted by the U.N. against member States condemned for identical violations of international law.

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If singling out South Africa for an international economic boycott was defensible, it would seem equally defensible to single out Israel’s occupation

B’Tselem found that eighty-five percent of Palestinians interrogated by Israeli security services were subjected to “methods constituting torture,” while already a decade ago Human Rights Watch estimated that “the number of Palestinians tortured or severely ill-treated” was “in the tens of thousands - a number that becomes especially significant when it is remembered that the universe of adult and adolescent male Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza is under three-quarters of one million.” In 1987 Israel became “the only country in the world to have effectively legalized torture” (Amnesty).

Although the Israeli Supreme Court seemed to ban torture in a 1999 decision, the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel reported in 2003 that Israeli security forces continued to apply torture in a “methodical and routine” fashion. A 2001 B’Tselem study documented that Israeli security forces often applied “severe torture” to “Palestinian minors.”

House demolitions

Harvard University observes that the “Gaza Disengagement Plan is, at heart, an instrument for Israel’s continued annexation of West Bank

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“Israel has implemented a policy of mass demolition of Palestinian houses in the Occupied Territories,” B’Tselem reports, and since September 2000 “has destroyed some 4,170 Palestinian homes.”

Until just recently Israel routinely resorted to house demolitions as a form of collective punishment. According to Middle East Watch, apart from Israel, the only other country in the world that used such a draconian punishment was Iraq under Saddam Hussein. In addition, Israel has demolished thousands of “illegal” homes that Palestinians built because of Israel’s refusal to provide building permits.

The motive behind destroying these homes, according to Amnesty, has been to maximize the area available for Jewish settlers: “Palestinians are targeted for no other reason than they are Palestinians.”

Finally, Israel has destroyed hundred of homes on security pretexts, yet a Human Rights Watch report on Gaza found that “the pattern of destruction strongly suggests that Israeli forces demolished homes wholesale, regardless of whether they posed a specific threat.” Amnesty, likewise, found that “Israel’s extensive destruction of homes and properties throughout the West Bank and Gaza is not justified by military necessity,” and that “Some of these acts of destruction amount to grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention and are war crimes.”

Apart from the sheer magnitude of its human

rights violations, the uniqueness of Israeli policies merits notice.

“Israel has created in the Occupied Territories a regime of separation based on discrimination, applying two separate systems of law in the same area and basing the rights of individuals on their nationality,” B’Tselem has concluded.

“This regime is the only one of its kind in the world, and is reminiscent of distasteful regimes from the past, such as the apartheid regime in South Africa.” If singling out South Africa for an international economic boycott was defensible, it would seem equally defensible to single out Israel’s occupation, which uniquely resembles the apartheid regime.

Although an economic boycott can be justified on moral grounds, the question remains whether diplomacy might be more effectively employed instead. The documentary record in this regard, however, is not encouraging. The basic terms for resolving the Israel-Palestine conflict are embodied in U.N. resolution 242 and subsequent U.N. resolutions, which call for a full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza and the establishment of a Palestinian state in these areas in exchange for recognition of Israel’s right to live in peace and security with its neighbours. Each year the overwhelming majority of member States of the United Nations vote in favour of this two-state settlement, and each year Israel and the United States (and a few South Pacific islands) oppose it. Similarly, in March 2002 all twenty-two member States of the Arab League proposed this two-state settlement as well as “normal relations with Israel.” Israel ignored the proposal.

Not only has Israel stubbornly rejected this two-state settlement, but the policies it is currently pursuing will abort any possibility of a viable Palestinian state.

While world attention has been riveted by Israel’s redeployment from Gaza, Sara Roy of Harvard University observes that the “Gaza Disengagement Plan is, at heart, an instrument for Israel’s continued annexation of WestBank land and the physical integration of that land into Israel.”

In particular, Israel has been constructing a wall deep inside the West Bank Bank land and the physical integration of that land into Israel.”

In particular, Israel has been constructing a wall deep inside the West Bank that will

An Obligation To Act *Hilary Wise In 2005 the media focus, in relation to the Middle East, was largely on Iraq, for obvious reasons. It has everything: high profile violence, vital commercial and strategic interests, ‘our boys’ in danger, and so on.

People feel they can grasp the immediate background and history to the situation and, more or less, what is happening there now.

(Even if many forget that the West backed and armed Saddam at the height of his power, and turned a blind eye to his atrocities.) The vocal and widespread opposition to the war, too, has been reasonably well covered.

of the Palestinians, especially now that AlJazeera and Arabiyya bypass the bland, state-controlled local TV channels, people see what is going on; close-up and on a daily basis. When yet another Palestinian mother is forced to give birth at a checkpoint, under the nuzzle of an Israeli gun, and the baby dies, they ask, “Don’t your people know about this?” and I have to answer, “I’m afraid not”.

(The only occasion on which such an incident was covered was when a woman gave birth to twins – unusual and therefore worthy of media interest.)

However, in TV news and the popular press the issue of Israel/Palestine has been no more than a shadowy backdrop to the occasional suicide bombing – which of course hits the headlines. The whole historical process of colonisation, the ongoing expropriation of Palestinian land and demolition of homes, denial of access to workplaces or schools, the assassinations with horrific ‘collateral damage’ – these are hardly a blip on the radar screen as far as our media are concerned. This is part laziness, part cowardice in the face of the powerful Zionist lobby. For most members of the general public the conflict is just too complex and intractable to wrestle with – and one that doesn’t concern us directly anyway.

I would argue that, on the contrary, the issue is of direct and immediate concern to all of us, for both practical and moral reasons. I have travelled and worked in the Middle East for over thirty years, and have seen how the UK and US responsibility for the foundation of Israel, and their continuing unconditional support for it, is viewed by virtually everyone you meet. From Morocco to the Sudan, even in the smallest village, people are much better informed on the facts than the average Londoner. They are outraged by the apparent absence of conscience shown by our governments with regard to the plight

They see the utter hypocrisy of the West calling for respect for international law and compliance with UN resolutions, and extolling the virtues of free speech and democracy, whilst actively supporting one of the most lawless regimes in the world.

in TV news and the popular press the issue of Israel/ Palestine has been no more than a shadowy backdrop to the occasional suicide bombing

That simmering outrage has poisoned our relations with the peoples of Arab and Muslim countries across the globe and undoubtedly sowed the seeds of 9/11 in the US and 7/7 in the UK. Iraq was simply the fuse that ignited the powder keg. This is not to excuse such acts of violence in any way, but it is unimaginable that hatred could be nurtured on this scale without our own decades-long involvement in the region.

A political solution to the Israel/Palestine question, based on justice, would at a stroke open the way for more harmonious relations across the globe. Israel would benefit as much as the Palestinians, if they genuinely wish to live in peace within secure borders.

Unfortunately, Israel is only too happy to exploit US readiness to rubberstamp any new piece of land grabbing it chooses to pursue.

Without external pressure, no progress can be made.

*Hilary Wise is Editor of ‘Palestine News’, the quarterly magazine of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

A booklet containing the basic facts relating to the conflict is available in the PSC booklet: ‘Why Palestine. See www.palestinecampaign.org

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of the Wall attracted over 200 signatures.)

There are regular delegations of MPs visiting the Occupied Territories and an all-party organisation that actively campaigns within the House of Commons. Press your MP to sign, to speak, to join, to visit, and to get involved. Your vote matters to him or her.

At the next election, if enough people are sufficiently vocal in enough constituencies, the Palestinian issue will become an election issue.

Find out what is already happening in your part of the world and decide what your involvement could be. It might be putting in a few hours a week helping in an office, it might be leafleting a supermarket, hosting visiting Palestinian children in the UK for a holiday, forging a link between your local school and one in Palestine; it might be giving financial help to a national or local organisation, or organising a public meeting.

Simply opening up a discussion of the issue with friends, colleagues or neighbours is of huge importance.

If you belong to a union, you can campaign – again, from an informed position – for your branch to affiliate to a pro-Palestinian organisation. This will lead to unions affiliating at national level – a step which was crucial in the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa. (Already 15 national trade unions have affiliated to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which is holding a conference this spring to bring together British and Palestinian trade unionists.)

The national media may be difficult to penetrate but, even there, informed responses to biased material, and provision of more accurate information can have a long-term positive effect. The local media, both radio and the press, are much more open. Activists cycling to Jerusalem, or a group hosting Palestinian visitors, are very likely to get local coverage. Just provide plenty of information, in advance, and keep up the dialogue once it

has been initiated.

The charge of anti-Semitism will still be made, of course: when arguments are lacking, the opposition will resort to insult, to try and close the debate through intimidation. Let us be clear: anti-Semitism is not merely an odious doctrine – it is highly counter-productive.

Zionists in general, and the Israeli regime in particular, clutch at any manifestation of it with positive euphoria. At last – an excuse for Israel’s actions, in the name of Jews worldwide!

To ally oneself with the anti-Semitic camp, and in particular to deny the Holocaust, is to play the Zionist game. Those Zionists who cannot bring themselves to use the weird biblical justifications for Jewish rule of the land ‘between the Nile and the Euphrates’, so favoured by extreme Christian fundamentalists, prefer the argument that the Holocaust shows Jews can only be safe in a self-inflicted ghetto, bristling with weapons of mass destruction. If one seeks to refute that argument by claiming the Holocaust didn’t happen, one accepts the Zionist line of reasoning. Let us argue rather that the Palestinians played no part in the horrors of WWII, and that Israel’s policies of brutal occupation and expansion make Jews in general and Israelis in particular more, not less, vulnerable.

To ally oneself with the anti-Semitic camp, and in particular to deny the Holocaust, is to play the Zionist game

Language matters. To call Israelis ‘Jews’ is to fall into that same trap. Many Jews and some brave Israelis are utterly opposed to Zionist policies; let us recognise their contribution and work closely with them.

But before you adopt a new resolution, to stand up and be counted on the vital issue of Palestinian rights, make no mistake: there is no magic formula, no silver bullet. Accept you will be in it for the long haul. Once you commit yourself, make sure that commitment, however modest, is ongoing and practical.

Passive sympathy for the Palestinian people is of no use to anyone – except to the Israeli regime.

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Israel has done a good job in demonstrating its own brutality and contempt for the law

In the UK, when you work in a national organisation like the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which campaigns at grassroots level to promote support for Palestinian rights, you come across a great deal of sympathy for the Palestinian people. It is usually sufficient to show a map of the area, indicating the expansion of Israeli colonisation, with the illegal settlements swallowing up the farmland and surrounding the remaining Palestinian towns and villages; the illegal Wall built on Palestinian, not Israeli land; the illegal highways crisscrossing the West Bank (that only Israelis can use); and people here are outraged too. But the reaction is typically: “The US is backing them; what can we, as individuals in the UK, possibly do?”

The answer is: a great deal.

We have to begin by informing people – starting with ourselves. All the information is out there, on the websites of campaigning organisations and of international NGOs working in the area, such as Save the Children, the International Red Cross, War on Want, Christian Aid, Interpal and many others.

Films showing very graphically just what is happening are available on video or DVD; Palestinians living in the UK or visiting from the Occupied Territories speak at conferences and meetings around the country, as do Israeli refuseniks and international observers and activists who have spent months in Palestinian communities. Both Palestinian and Israeli historians have written volumes on the true history of the region. If you want to campaign actively it is important to have a solid grounding in the facts, as pro-Israel speakers and writers still seek to promote the myths of ‘the empty land’, the tiny helpless state even now threatened by powerful neighbours, and so on. They need to be confronted with accurate facts and figures – and with a few shocking quotations from Israeli leaders, revealing the deep-rooted racism inherent in MPs are, by and Zionist ideology.

large, surprisingly ignorant of foreign affairs. You can lobby yours with hard facts

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Armed with information, the next step is to act. The old slogan says: “Strength through unity” – and it still holds good, for all political campaigning. One hundred people acting separately can be an irritant. One hundred people acting together can be a real force for change. There is already a complex network of organisations, both in the UK and worldwide, involved in campaigning on the Palestinian issue; some are religiously

based, some are secular. Every year at the massive European Social Forum (to be held in Athens this year), Palestine is increasingly becoming a central issue, and the meeting is an opportunity to strengthen the networks at the European level.

A great deal of progress has already been made.

At the beginning of the second Intifada, about five years ago, virtually all criticism of Israel was labelled anti-Semitic. Now it is possible to speak without being immediately reviled and discounted. Israel has done a good job in demonstrating its own brutality and contempt for the law. It can no longer present itself as a weak, embattled little nation struggling for survival, when it was offered 78% of former Palestine by the PLO in 1988, in return for a mini Palestinian state, with the unanimous backing of other Arab nations. UN resolutions are piling up, calling on Israel to obey international law. The most recent backed the 2004 ruling of the International Court of Justice that the Wall being built on Palestinian territory is illegal and should be dismantled, and the Palestinians compensated.

The arguments are being won, in the UN, on campuses, in conferences and on the rare occasions when they are properly aired in the media. (Hence the increasingly hysterical tone of the Zionist apologists, and the attempts we are witnessing in the US to suppress discussion of the facts in universities.) Now is the time to redouble all our efforts.

Last July, 170 Palestinian civil society organisations called for the boycott of all Israeli goods and pro-occupation organisations.

Every week groups of people and individuals around the UK leaflet supermarkets stocking Israeli goods, and stage events at checkouts to highlight the need to put direct pressure on the Israeli regime. (Europe is the biggest importer of Israeli goods; the disappearance of this market would be a body-blow to the Israeli economy.) This is, after all, how South African Apartheid began to crumble, with the grassroots campaigners showing government the way.

MPs are, by and large, surprisingly ignorant of foreign affairs. You can lobby yours with hard facts, not rhetoric, and press them, politely but firmly, to state their own position. There are Early Day Motions in the House of Commons that they can sign in support of Palestinian rights. (Last year one calling for the removal

Ariel Sharon: A Napoleon, Made in Israel Uri Avnery* He was an Israeli Napoleon.

From early youth, he was totally convinced that he was the only person in the world who could save the State of Israel. That was an absolute certainty, free of any doubt. He just knew that he must achieve supreme power, in order to fulfill the mission that fate had entrusted him with.

This belief led to a complete integration of personal egocentrism and national egocentrism. For a person who believes he has such a mission, there is no difference between the personal and the national interest. What is good for him automatically becomes good for the nation, and vice versa. This means that anyone who hinders him from attaining power is really committing a crime against the State.

And anyone helping him to come to power is really doing a patriotic deed.

This belief directed all his actions for decades.

It explains the dogged determination, the tenacity, and the unbending perseverance that became his trade mark earning him his nickname “the bulldozer”. This attracted admirers, who fell completely under his influence.

It also explains his attitude to money matters.

It has been said that he “does not stop at a red light”, that “laws are not for him”. More than once he was accused of accepting millions from rich Jews abroad. On the day before his fateful stroke, it came out that the police had formally accused him of receiving a bribe of three million dollars from a casino-owner.

(It is quite possible that this raised his blood pressure and helped to cause the massive stroke.) But not all these millionaires expected a return. Some of them believed, as he did himself, that by supporting him, they were

actually supporting the State of Israel. Can there be a more sacred duty than to provide an assured income to the Israeli Napoleon, so that he can devote his entire energy to the fulfillment of his historic mission?

On his long journey, Sharon easily overcame such hurdles. They did not divert him from his course. Personal tragedies and political defeats did not hold him up for a moment.

The accidents that killed his first wife and his oldest son, his dismissal from office after being convicted by a board of inquiry of “indirect responsibility” for the Sabra and Shatila massacres, as well as the many other setbacks, failures and disappointments that struck him throughout the years did not deter him. They did not divert him for an instant from his endeavor to achieve supreme power.

the dogged determination, the tenacity, and the unbending perseverance that became his trade mark earning him And now it was all coming true. On his nickname “the Wednesday, January 4, 2006, he could be bulldozer” certain that in three months time he would become the sole leader of Israel. He had created a party that belonged to him alone and that was not only on track to occupy a central position in the next Knesset, but also to cut all other parties into pieces.

He was determined to use this power to change the political landscape of Israel altogether and introduce a presidential system, which would have given him an all-powerful position, like that enjoyed by Juan Peron in his heyday in Argentina. Then, at long last, he would be able to realize his historic mission of laying the tracks on which Israel would run for generations, as David Ben-Gurion had done before him.

And then, just when it seemed that nothing could stop him anymore, with cruel

*Uri Avnery is the founding member of Ghush Shalom, the Israeli Peace bloc. In his teenage years he was an independence fighter in the Irgun (1938-1942) and later a soldier in the Israeli Army. A three-time Knesset member (1965-1973, and 1979-1983), Avnery was the first Israeli to establish contact with the Palestinian Liberation Organization leadership, in 1974. During the war on Lebanon in 1982 he crossed “enemy lines” to be the first Israeli to meet with Yasser Arafat. He has been a journalist since 1947, including 40 years as Editor-in-Chief of the newsmagazine Ha’olam Haze, and is the author of numerous books on the conflict.

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these would be called a “Palestinian state”.

His recent use of this term is an example of his ability to adapt himself, outwardly and verbally, to changing situations.

The Gaza strip is one of these enclaves. That is, the real significance of the uprooting of the settlements and the withdrawal of the Israeli army. It is the first stage in the realization of the map: this small area, with a dense Palestinian population of a million and a quarter, was turned over to the Palestinians. The Israeli land, sea and air forces surround the strip almost completely. The very existence of its inhabitants depends at all times on the mercy of Israel, which controls all entrances and exits (except the Rafah crossing into Egypt, which is monitored by Israel from afar.) Israel can cut off the water and electricity supply at a moment’s notice. Sharon intended to create the same situation in Hebron, Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin and the other areas.

Is this a “peace plan”?

Peace is made between nations which agree to create a situation where all of them can live in freedom, well-being and mutual respect and believe that that is good for them. This is not what Sharon had in mind. As a military man, he knows only truces. If peace had been handed to him on a platter, he would not have recognized it.

He knew perfectly well that no Palestinian leader could possibly agree to his map, now or ever. That’s why he did not intend to have any political negotiations with the Palestinians. His slogan was “we have no partner”. He intended to realize all the stages of his plan “unilaterally”, as he did in Gaza - without dialogue with the Palestinians, without considering their requirements and aspirations, and, of course, without seeking their consent.

But Sharon did indeed intend to make peace - peace with the United States. He considered American consent as essential. He knew that Washington could not give its consent to his whole plan. So he intended to obtain their agreement phase by phase. Since President Bush has submitted to him entirely, and no one knows who will succeed him, Sharon intended to realize the main part of his plan within the next two or three years, before the end of the President’s term in office. That is one of the reasons for his hurry. He had to come to absolute power now, immediately.

Only the stroke prevented this.

people on the left embraced the “Sharon Legacy” does not show their grasp of his plans, but rather their own longing for peace.

They long with all their heart for a strong leader, who has the will and the ability to end the conflict.

The determination with which Sharon removed the settlers from Gush Katif filled these leftists with enthusiasm. Who would have believed that there was a leader capable of carrying it out, without civil war, without bloodshed? And if this has happened in the Gaza Strip, why can’t it happen in the West Bank? Sharon will drive the settlers out and make peace; all this, without the Left having to lift a finger. The savior, like Deus, will jump ex machina. As the Hebrew proverb goes, “the work of the righteous is done by others”, who may be something quite other than righteous.

Sharon has easily adapted himself to this longing of the public. He has not changed his plan, but given it a new veneer, in the spirit of the times. From now on, he appeared as the “Man of Peace”. He never cared which mask it was convenient to wear. But this mask reflects the deepest wishes of the Israeli people.

If peace had been handed to him on a platter, he would not have recognized it

From this point of view, the imaginary “Sharon Legacy” can play a positive role. When he created his new party, he took with him a lot of Likud people, those who had come to the conclusion that the goal of “The Whole of Eretz Israel” has become impossible to attain.

Many of these will remain in the Kadima party even after Sharon has left the tribune.

As a result of an ongoing, slow subterranean process, Likud people, too, are ready to accept the partition of the country. The whole system is moving in the direction of peace.

he did not intend to have any political negotiations with the Palestinians. His slogan was “we have The “Sharon Legacy”, even if imaginary, may no partner” become a blessing, if Sharon appears in it in his latest incarnation: Sharon the up-rooter of settlements, Sharon who is ready to give up parts of Eretz Israel, Sharon who agrees to a Palestinian state.

True, this was not Sharon’s intention. But, as Sharon himself might have said: It is not the intentions that matter, but the results on the ground.

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On this moral base the aim emerged: to establish a Jewish state, as large as possible, free of nonJews

suddenness, his own body betrayed him.

What happened resembles a central motif of the Jewish myth: the fate of Moses, whom God punished for his pride by allowing him a glimpse of the Promised Land from afar, but having him die before he could set foot on its soil. On the threshold of absolute power, the stroke hit Ariel Sharon.

milk. It governed Kfar Malal, the cooperative village in which he was born, as it also governed the whole world at the time. Among Jews in particular it was reinforced by the horrors of the Holocaust. The slogan “all the world is against us” is deeply anchored in the national psyche and is applied especially to Arabs.

While he was still fighting for his life in hospital, the myth of “Sharon’s Legacy” was already beginning to form.

On this moral base the aim emerged: to establish a Jewish state, as large as possible, free of non-Jews. That could lead to the conclusion that the ethnic cleansing, begun

by Ben-Gurion in 1948, when half the Palestinians were deprived of their homes and land, must be completed. Sharon’s career began shortly after, when he was appointed to lead the undercover commando Unit 101, whose murderous actions beyond the borders were designed mainly to prevent the refugees from infiltrating back to their villages.

As has happened with many leaders who did not leave a written testament, every individual is free to imagine a Sharon of his own. Leftists, who only yesterday had cursed Sharon as the murderer of Kibieh, the butcher of Sabra and Shatila and the man responsible for the plunder and slaughter in the occupied Palestinian territories, began to admire him as the “Man of Peace”. Settlers, who had condemned him as a traitor, remembered that it was he who had created the settlements and kept on enlarging them to this day.

Only yesterday he was one of the most hated people in Israel and the world. Today, after the evacuation of Gush Katif, he has become the darling of the public, almost from wall to wall. The leaders of nations crowned him as the “great warrior who has turned into a hero of peace”.

our people stands above all others, other people are inferior. The rights of our nation are sacred, other nations have no rights at all

Everybody agrees that Sharon has changed completely, that he has gone from one extreme to the other, the proverbial Ethiopian who has changed his skin, the leopard who has changed his spots. All these analyses have only one thing in common: they have nothing to do with the real Ariel Sharon. They are based on ignorance, illusion and selfdeception.

A look at his long career (helped, I may add, by some personal knowledge) show that he has not changed at all. He stayed true to his fundamental approach, only adapting his slogans to changing times and circumstances.

His master-plan remained as it was at the beginning.

Underlying his world view is a simplistic, 19th century style nationalism, which says: our people stands above all others, other people are inferior. The rights of our nation are sacred, other nations have no rights at all.

The rules of morality apply only to relations within the nation, not to relations between nations.

He absorbed this conviction with his mother’s

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However, Sharon became convinced quite early that another wholesale ethnic cleansing was impossible in the foreseeable future (barring some unforeseeable international event changing conditions altogether.)

In default of this option, Sharon believed that Israel must annex all the areas between the Mediterranean and the Jordan without a dense Palestinian population. Already decades ago, he prepared a map that he showed proudly to local and foreign personalities in order to convert them to his views.

According to this map, Israel will annex the areas along the pre-1967 border as well as the Jordan valley, up to the “back of the mountain” (an expression particularly dear to Sharon). It will also annex several EastWest strips to connect the Jordan valley with the Green Line. In these territories that are marked for annexation, Sharon created a dense net of settlements. That was his principal endeavor throughout the last thirty years, in all his diverse positions - Minister of Agriculture, Minister of Industry and Trade, Minister of Defense, Minister of Housing, Foreign Minister, Minister of Infrastructure, and Prime Minister - and this work is going on at this minute.

The areas with a dense Palestinian population, Sharon intended to hand over to Palestinian self-government. He was determined to remove from them all the settlements that were set up there without thinking. This way, eight or nine Palestinian enclaves would have come into being, cut off from each other, each one surrounded by settlers and Israeli army installations. He did not care whether these

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Settlements in Jerusalem Mazen Nuseibah

Israeli settlements are communities built for Israeli Jewish settlers in areas occupied by Israel during the 1967 war. These areas are in the West Bank including East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and formerly the Gaza Strip. Settlements are large housing projects built illegally under international law and at the expense of Palestinians whose land is confiscated to make room for the settlement buildings.

Building settlements in and around Jerusalem has been an ideological objective for Jews since the middle of the 19th century in order to determine the political future of Jerusalem. This began with the Yemen Moshe neighborhood in 1850 followed by Mea Sharem and Mafour Haim in 1858.

The British municipality during the mandate added to the municipal boundaries neighborhoods with Jewish majorities such as Givat Shaul, Montifeury, Beit Vegan and others, while it limited the municipal boundaries in the east to the outskirts of a number of Arab neighborhoods such as Attur, Shufat and Isawya.

From 1918 to 1948, the built area increased under the British mandate from 4130 dunams to 7230 dunams. In 1948 Jerusalem was divided into two cities, East Jerusalem under Jordanian rule and West Jerusalem under Israeli rule. During the following 19 years, East Jerusalem remained approximately the same area while the West grew larger.

Within days of the end of the 1967 war, Israel started its wide scale settlement building in East Jerusalem. The main settlement areas were as follows:

1. Starting with the Old City, the Arab neighborhood of Haret El Sharaf was destroyed completely, thus abolishing 595 buildings that included residential houses,1,048 stores , 5 mosques, schools and market place. 6000 inhabitants were made homeless. A Jewish neighborhood was built in the area, and in 1995, settlers numbered 24,000.

2. In Neve Yacove, between 1968 and 1980, 1,835 dunams were confiscated to build 3800 housing units for about 20,000 settlers.

3. In Ramot in 1970, 4,840 dunams were confiscated to build 8,000 housing units for 37,000 Jewish settlers. This settlement was the expanded to include 2,000 more units.

4. In Gilo, 7,484 housing units were built for 30,000 settlers.

5. The Talpiot Mizrah settlement was built on 2,240 dunams of confiscated land in 1970. It is part of the Southern Belt around Jerusalem housing about 15,000 settlers.

6. The Maalot Dafna settlement was built on 389 dunams of land taken from what was known as ‘No Man’s Land’ during the years between 1948 and 1967. More than 1,164 units were built in this settlement for 4,700 settlers. Part of this land is used by road Number 1.

7. The Hebrew University was established in 1924 on land taken from Isawyah village.

During the years 1948-1967 it was under the control of the U.N force. After 1967, 740 more dunams of land was confiscated from the village to enlarge the settlement and add dormitories to the University. The settlement

The Hebrew University was established in 1924 on land taken from Isawyah village

Mazen Nuseibah’s family has lived in Jerusalem for centuries. He is a graduate of Jordan University (BSc Biology), Al-Quds Open University (BA Islamic Education) and is currently an MA student in Islamic Studies at Al-Quds University. His father’s land was confiscated in East Jerusalem in 1968. He petitioned the Israeli courts for the return of the land in 1991, but lost the case although the land had been left derelict by the Israeli army for 23 years.

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c. Abu-Deis: 200 units in Abu-Deis to establish a Jewish presence in what was supposed to be the Palestinian Autonomy Capital as some Israelis suggested. d. Silwan: Jewish settlers and Yeshiva students, with the help of the Government, are planning to ‘recapture’ what they call the City of David. e. The E-1 plan: a plan to build 1,500 units in addition to 3,000 hotel rooms to connect Jerusalem proper with Maale Adumin. f. Karem el Mufti: the millionaire Irwin Moskovitz supported settlements in Jerusalem long ago, including the building in Maale Adumin, Burj Al Laqlaq, Beit Orot in Al Tur and others. Moskovitz rented the Shepered hotel in 1967 for the Border Police Force as a camp. Plans are now being made to demolish the hotel and build in its place, and the surrounding 30 dunums (which was confiscated from its Arab owners), 90 housing units. This will link the illegal Mount Scopus residence and Shimoun Hatzidik Tomb residence, which includes 8 families and 50 Yeshiva students, with neighboring government buildings and police headquarters.

(iii)

around Jerusalem together.

Connect these settlements with the coastal area inside Israel.

These two roads will stretch 45 kilometers around Jerusalem from the east and south and north of the city and will demolish at least 38 Palestinian buildings and more than 700 hectars of agricultural land to pave its path.

It will also make any continuity between Jerusalem and the nearby Palestinian villages, such as Abu-Deis, Mikhmas, Jabaa, Zeim and Kalandia impossible.

All of these settlement building projects on confiscated East Jerusalem land obliged the Israeli municipality to extend its jurisdiction, and thus the area that it was responsible for, from 6.5 sq. kilometers pre-1967 to over 123 sq. kilometers.

Settling in the Old City Jewish presence in the Old City began to be more apparent in the beginning of the nineteenth century in the Jewish Quarter, which was less than one fourth of what is known today. Its location was important to Jewish people for a number of reasons: (i) No Muslim or Christian holy places were there. (ii) It was near to the Wailing Wall. (iii) It overlooks the Mount of Olives where, in Jewish eschatology, the dead will be resurrected at the apocalypse.

Sephardic Jews lived in the Jewish Quarter in the early nineteenth century and they were integrated with the Arab community, having the same language and habits. Later, when they grew in numbers, they rented or bought houses in the Muslim Quarter.

These settlements, new and old, will be served by the construction of two new roads: Road 5 and road 45. These two roads are planned to: (i) (ii)

Complete the siege around Jerusalem, and isolate it from the West Bank.

Connect all the settlements

In the first three decades of the Twentieth century, after the aims of the Zionist movement began to be clear, tension rose between Arabs and Jews. Two main incidents occurred: the 1929 Buraq clashes and the 1936 Arab revolution. These incidents resulted in the movement of Jews from Muslim neighborhoods inside the walls to the newly built Jewish neighborhoods outside the walls. Jewish property was sold or leased or even abandoned. This movement was through individual choice, and not under direct pressure from the Arab residents. Palestine was under the British Mandate at that time.

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1. is inhabited by 24,000 settlers and has a strategic significance as it over-looks East Jerusalem from one side and the Jordan Valley from the other.

This ring was then followed and strengthened by an‘outer ring’ which completely isolates the city from its Arab neighbours

2. In 1970, 1,198 dunums of land was confiscated from Palestinians to make way for the Reikhes Shufat settlement, where 2,165 housing units were built. This settlement forms the Eastern Belt of the ring surrounding Jerusalem, with Neve Yacove, Pisgat Zeive and Pisgat Omer.

3. The Pisgat Zeive and Pisgat Omer settlements were built on the land owned by residents of the Arab villages of Beit-Hanina, Shufat, Hizma and Anatta. The whole area confiscated from these villages amounts to 3,800 dunams. 12,000 housing units were planned for over 100,000 settlers.

10. The Ramat Ashkol settlement lies on the Northern entrance of Jerusalem on the road from the West Bank city of Ramallah. This was one of the earliest settlements that has more than one aim: in addition to settling more than 7,000 settlers, it is supposed to block the road from Ramallah and form a continuity of buildings between East and West Jerusalem, in order to make it look like one city. Thus, Jerusalem becomes enveloped

by Jewish settlers.

11. The settlement of Attarot was built as an industrial area on 1,200 dunams of land confiscated in 1970 from Kalandia. A number of manufacturers have been moved to it and there are plans to enlarge the airport to export through it.

12. Givaat Hamatos was built on an area of about 170 dunams of land confiscated from Beit-safafa village and neighboring Beit-Jala city. It was established in 1991 with 6,500 housing units and contributes to the Southern Belt surrounding Jerusalem.

13. Givat Hasarfatit was built on the lands of the Arab villages of Shufat and Lifta. There are 5,000 housing units on an area of 822 dunams.

14. Har Homa was built on the lands of the Sur-Baheir and Im-Tuba villages. The land was confiscated in the 1970 `s as a natural reserve, but in 1991 plans were made to build the settlement.

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The settlements listed above were built close to Jerusalem and are now considered neighborhoods of the city or could be described as the inner belt or ring around the city. This ring was then followed and strengthened by an‘outer ring’ which completely isolates the city from its Arab neighbours. This outer ring includes: From the South The Etzion Bloc isolates Bethlehem from its Southern region. This bloc includes the Bitar Elite settlement with its extremist settlers located between Arab communities extending westward towards the Hadassah area. The second settlement in this bloc is Kfar Etzion, extending to the tops of the Jerusalem Mountains. Then comes Effrat, which blocs the road between Bethlehem and Hebron.

Another settlement that is considered part of this bloc but falls in the East, far from the Green Line, is the Teqoa settlement. It is connected by a bypass road to the Har Homa settlement.

From the East The ring consists of the Kedar, Maaleh Adumin, Mishor Adumin and Kfar Adumim settlements. These are connected to the center of the city by a road that includes a tunnel under Mount Scopus toward road Number 1. This greatly reduces traveling time for the settlers.

From the North This bloc forming the northern part of the belt includes the Alamon, Adam, Shaar Binyamin, Kochave Yacove and Psagot settlements.

These are connected by an Eastern bypass road.

New Settlements Beside the settlements mentioned above, which already exist and are continually undergoing additional building and expansion; there are a number of new settlements that are in the planning stages or under construction.

Of these new settlements, there are: a. Ras El Amoud: 132 units amide an Arab neighborhood. b. The Eastern Gate project: 2,000 units to connect Givaat Hasarfatit with Pisgat-zeive in East Jerusalem.

Palestinian Jerusalemites had their residency rights revoked.

A) Settling in occupied areas under the international law:

* Increasing tax: Arabs are forced to pay high taxes under threat of different punishments.

This is especially difficult to meet due to the bad economic conditions resulting from the occupation policies.

i. Article 49, paragraph 6 of the Fourth Geneva Convention explicitly stipulates: ‘The occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupied”.

* Military barriers: The city is surrounded by barriers, making life difficult or even impossible for workers, students, sick people and everybody else.

ii. Article 46 of the Hague Convention prohibits the confiscation of private property in occupied territory.

* Closing Palestinian institutions that provide vital services to the Arab citizens in the city. * Enabling settlers to acquire estates inside and outside the walls by different illegal ways such as the Law of Absentees, or by buying the rights from somebody who rents the estate and not the owner.

All these actions together have one aim: to force Arabs to consider leaving the city.

The aims of settlements in Jerusalem Israelis from different factions and groups have decided among themselves, and against the will of the entire world, that Jerusalem must stay under their control. Not taking into consideration international law or advice from their closest friends, the Americans or the Europeans, and neglecting the calls of more than 1.2 billion Muslims around the world, who cannot reach their third holiest place.

To fulfill this ambition, settlements in Jerusalem are aimed at: 1. Solving the demographic problem to the benefit of the Israelis.

2. Preventing geographic continuity between Arab neighborhoods around the city and in East Jerusalem.

3. Forming more than one separating belt or ring between Jerusalem and West Bank cities around it.

4. Preventing normal population growth in the Arab community east of the city.

5. Annexing large areas of land with as small a population as possible.

6. Separating Arab citizens by building the separation Wall. 75,000 to 100,000 Palestinians have been cut off from Jerusalem in the areas of Ram, Samiramis and Dahiat el Barid.

iii. Article 55 of the Hague Convention stipulates that: “The occupying state shall be regarded only as administrator and usufructuary of public buildings, real estate, forests, and agricultural estates belonging to the hostile state, and situated in the occupied country. It must safeguard the capital of these properties and administrate them in accordance with the rule of usufruct”. This means that the occupying power does not become the owner of the territories and properties of the occupied country and does not use them for serving the interests of its civilians. This rule applies to the occupied territory’s natural resources.

B) Security Council resolutions concerning Israeli settlements: i. The United Nations Security Council resolution 242 calls for: ‘just and lasting peace in the Middle East. The confiscated areas upon which settlements are built were illegally confiscated.’ ii. The United Nation’s Security Council resolution 465, which was unanimously adopted, made it clear that: Israeli policy and practice of settling parts of its population and new immigrants in the occupied territories constitute a serious obstruction to achieve a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East. The Security Council called upon Israel to dismantle the existing settlements and in particular to cease on an urgent basis, the establishment, construction and planning of settlements in the Arab territories occupied since 1967 including Jerusalem. iii. Security Council resolution 446 (1979): - Stresses the urgent need to achieve a comprehensive and lasting peace in the Middle East.

The illegality of Israeli settlements Al-Aqsa 33

During the 1948 war, residents of the Jewish Quarter left to the Western part of the city.

After the war, their properties were rented by the Jordanian Custodian of the Enemy Property to Arab refugees from areas occupied

by Israel.

After 1967, as mentioned earlier, the first step taken by Israel was demolishing the Haret El Sharaf and Haret El Magharibeh neighborhoods. More than 595 buildings were demolished, of which only 105 were owned by Jews before 1948. The area was expanded more than once and life was made more difficult for those living around it.

The other main step towards settling in the old city was made by establishing government associations under settlers’ names cover, to transfer properties from Arab to Jewish hands.

This was done secretly under the Labor party before 1977, but more transparently under the Likud party with Ariel Sharon in different Ministry Offices. Attareit Cohaneim was one of the main groups that implemented this policy, acquiring 123 properties from 1982 to 1992, one of which was Sharon’s residence in the old city. Sharon pumped millions of Dollars from different ministry budgets into these groups’ activities. He even used his authorities to grant them government properties, such as the land near Herods Gate bought by the Jewish National Fund from the Russian Church, then moved to the Israel Land Department which in turn handed it to Attaerit Cohaneim.

Cooperation between settlers and government personnel was paramount in locating properties owned by absentees. After locating these properties, they were sold by the government to the settlers or entered by force by the settlers with the knowledge that nobody would go to court to restore them.

Other ways of obtaining properties illegally was through fake purchase agreements from unknown persons with no rights to the property. The settlers would then move into the property and wait for the real owner to take legal action to restore his property, a matter that would take many years to conclude.

This was the case with the St. John Hospice, owned by the Greek Orthodox Church in the Christian Quarter. Eventually, in this case, the Church prevailed in court and settlers were ordered to leave the hospice.

Different Israeli policy towards Settlers Al-Aqsa 32

and Arabs in Jerusalem Below is a comparison between what is offered to settlers and the policy towards Arabs in Jerusalem.

Settlers To encourage settling in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, consequent Israeli governments have afforded to settlers: 1. Housing subsidies.

2. Income tax reductions.

3. Low interest loans.

4. Subsidies for water, electricity and telephone services.

5. Loans to cover moving expenses.

6. Security provisions.

These subsidies have resulted in settlers receiving 12% of the Israeli domestic budget though they form only 2.4% of the Israeli population.

Treatment of Arabs in East Jerusalem: One of the main objectives of the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem is to replace the Palestinian population with Jewish settlers.

To fulfill this objective a number of steps have been taken through-out the 38 years of occupation against the Arab population in Jerusalem such as: * Confiscation of land: in 1967, Arabs owned 100% of the land in East Jerusalem, but today they own only 14% of it. This decrease in the area where Arabs can live and build has not taken in to consideration the normal population growth. * Destruction of newly built houses: buildings that are constructed without municipal permits are demolished. It is impossible to obtain the required permits as they are not given to Arabs in the first place. Thus, the Palestinians are forced to build without permits to accommodate growing families. * New laws: new laws have been imposed to decrease the number of inhabitants in East Jerusalem, such as loss of citizenship in Jerusalem for those who lived outside the city for more than 7 years, even if they lived in the West Bank and not outside the country.

Confiscation of Jerusalem ID cards under different guises also prevents their bearers from entering the city again, even if their homes and jobs are there. Statistics show that between the years 1967 and 2004, 6,396

i.

Building homes despite the restrictions imposed. ii.

Founding major establishments to create roots in the city in spite of Israeli obstacles, such as Al-Quds University and the Arab Studies Establishment. iii. Meeting high living costs despite unfair competition between the two parts of the city in trade, especially in the sector of tourism where tourists are directed by different means to buy and accommodate in the West rather than the East of the city. iv.

Resistance to confiscation of land has not stopped throughout the 38 years of occupation. Methods used vary in range, and include recourse to the Israeli courts or to the international community. vi. Despite steps taken by Israel to reduce the number of Jerusalem I.D. carriers, their numbers are still increasing. For example, when building of the Separation Wall resulted in Arabs moving from outside the wall to

inside it, families were ready to live in smaller houses and under bad living conditions rather than leaving their city. vii. At the centre of the struggle is Al-Aqsa Mosque, and Arabs in Jerusalem have always been ready to defend the Mosque. Israeli settlers and fanatics have always showed their will and intention to destroy the Mosque and build the claimed Temple instead. This had resulted in a number of confrontations whereby hundreds of Palestinians have fallen as martyrs or been wounded. In the last decade Muslims put great efforts into repairing parts of the Mosque, so as not to leave any abandoned areas which the Israelis might claim for themselves.

The building of settlements has always been a clear and strategic method used by Israel to Judaize Jerusalem. In this mission it has had some success, but Palestinians have shown that they will continue their struggle for their birthright to a land inhabited by them for generations.

Al-Aqsa editor The articles published in this journal do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial board or of Friends of Al-Aqsa

Al-Aqsa 35

- Affirms, once more, that the fourth Geneva Convention relative to the protection of civilians in time of war is applicable to the Arab Territories occupied in 1967 including East Jerusalem.

- Determines that the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and Arab territories occupied in 1967, have no legal validity.

- Strongly deplores the failure of Israel to abide by Security Council resolutions 237(1967) 252(1968) 298(1971) and the consensus statement by the President of the Security Council on 11 November 1976 and the General Assembly resolutions 2253 and 2254 of July 1967. 32/5 of October 1977 and 33/113 of December 1978.

In addition to all the previously mentioned violations by Israel, building in Jerusalem after the 1993 Oslo Agreement is a violation to this agreement which prohibits any of the conflicting parties to take any action that may alter the outcome of final status negotiations over Jerusalem.

Although Israel violated all international laws concerning occupied lands and did not commit itself to any General Council resolution; it still considers itself as a State of Law thus giving itself the right to decide the future of the city alone by ‘The Law of Proclaiming Jerusalem the capital of Israel’ which states: 1. Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel.

2. Jerusalem is the seat of the President of the state, the Kenneset, the Government and the Supreme Court.

3. The Holy Places shall be protected from desecration and any other violation and from anything likely to violate the freedom of access of the members of the different religions to the places sacred to them or their feelings towards these places.

(In reality, Al Aqsa mosque has been attacked many times, under Israeli occupation, by armed soldiers. Also, fire burned parts of it in1968. Tens of Muslims were killed in these attacks and hundreds injured. In addition, Muslims living a number of miles away from the mosque are not allowed to reach it, because they have West Bank identity cards.

Similarly, there are millions of Muslims around the world that are forbidden from visiting Jerusalem).

4. a) the government shall provide for the development and prosperity of Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa 34

the well being of its inhabitants by allocating special funds, including a special annual grant to the municipality. b) Jerusalem shall be given special priority in the activities of the authorities of the state so as to further its development in economic and other matters.

The law was signed by Menachem Begin, as Prime Minister, and Yitzhak Navon, as President of the stat, on 30 July 1980.

On the political arena, Israel has maintained its goals in keeping Jerusalem under occupation with a Jewish majority. For 25 years, from 1967 to1993, the Jerusalem issue was not allowed to be tackled by any Arab negotiator such as Egyptian-Israeli negotiations in the Camp David peace treaty of 1978.

In the 1993 Oslo Accords, the question of Jerusalem was postponed to the permanent status negotiation.

In 1996, during secret negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians, Israel, under a Labour Government, proposed a three point plan that kept Israeli sovereignty over the city which was refused by Palestinians.

At Camp David in 2000, President Clinton proposed a solution for Jerusalem which divided the Eastern part of the city, inside and outside the wall, into neighborhoods under Israeli and Palestinian sovereignties, although all neighborhoods are Arabs, except the Jewish Quarter inside the walls. The strangest proposal in Clinton’s plan was dividing El Haram El Sharif horizontally and vertically, into apartments between Jews and Muslims.

When the plan was proposed to Barak, he refused it. Yet he returned the plan to Clinton to propose to Arafat so that the public refusal was made to look like it came from the Palestinians.

Arab Citizens Resistance to Settlements Arab citizens of Jerusalem, in spite of the scarcity of resources that was available them, resisted the policy of uprooting them from their city in many ways, including: i.

Forming committees to solve urgent daily problems that Israel was not interested in, either deliberately or because money was spent on the Western part of the city, such as education, trade and personal security.

Britain, the Hashemites and Arab Rule, 1920-1925: The Sherifian Solution

essentially an act of betrayal: ‘it was intended to except coastal Syria, not Palestine’, p. 209.

It is also clear from the McMahon pledges that Transjordan was never considered part of the area of exclusion from Arab rule, p. 209.

The League of Nations approved Transjordanian exemption from the Zionist provisions of the Palestine Mandate, p. 214. Interestingly, both the US and the Vatican at first opposed the Palestine Mandate, p. 210.

by Timothy J. Paris, Frank Cass Publishers, 2003, ISBN 714654515, Hardback Pp392,

The first Hashemite rulers emerge as incompetent and selfinterested. Abdullah was inept in Transjordan, p. 188, and was willing to accommodate British plans for Zionism so long as his own power was assured, pp. 207-208.

Ben Gurion’s dictum that ‘the Arab states are Israel’s first line of defence’ seems all too true; Sir Herbert Samuel, the Zionist British Commissioner, referred to Abdullah as Britain’s ‘asset’. Husain ruled Hijaz with ‘cruelty’, imprisoning and torturing people incurring his displeasure; raising ‘staggering taxes and exorbitant customs dues’ which stymied the economy, p. 253.

Hijazis would have shed few tears when he left.

Paris’ book on British policy regarding the Hashemi family around the First World War is detailed, lucid and illuminating. What emerges from his book is how cynical and duplicitous British policy was in regard to the region, and how unattractive and inept the Hashemi really were (so what else is new?). There are several issues in the book of special interest. The main emphasis of the book is that the Sherifian solution – rule by the Hashemites, the family of Husain, sheriff of the Holy Places – was a British solution to a British problem: how to reconcile promises of Arab self-rule and war-time debt with the need to dominate the region. The method was indirect rule by British-controlled clients: ‘If… Faisal…in Mesopotamia, knew that his father’s position in the Hijaz and his brother Abdullah’s position in Transjordan were dependent on his own good behaviour, he would be … amenable to British policies’, p. 2.

The origins of the British alliance with the Hashemites goes back to two factors: the way the central Ottoman government would often play-off rival branches of the family, and the effect of the secularist C.U.P 1908 revolution, which Husain found anathema, p. 12. There is no evidence that Husain before 1915 was attracted to Arab nationalism but his son Abdullah became involved in 1914, p.22, and, after another son, Ali, discovered a Turkish plan to depose Husain, he was eventually won over. When the Sultan declared jihad in 1915, it was essential for this to be backed by the Sherif. The British however, concerned at the effect on their Muslim subjects, were interested in preventing this.

Hence the Husain-McMahon correspondence, where the British High Commissioner in Egypt promised both ‘an Arab Khalifate of Islam’, p. 29, and Arab independence in all the areas claimed by Husain with three qualifications: some of the border area with what is now Turkey; ‘special administrative arrangements’ by Britain in Basra and Baghdad (sound familiar); and exclusion of Syrian districts to the west of Damascus, Homs, Hama and Aleppo. Husain was only prepared to agree to temporary exclusion of the latter two. It is quite clear that Palestine was part of the area promised to Husain, making the Balfour Declaration

One issue of particular interest to British Muslims, the largest group of which are of South Asian origins, is the role of the Imperial Indian government and the India Office in the saga. British interests in Arabia included ‘protection of the sea routes to India, the security of …pilgrimage routes for the Empire’s immense Muslim population…’, p.1.

Indeed, in regard to Britain’s Arab policy, ‘India exercised an important and, at times, decisive influence’, p. 321.

It is a revelation to see how concerned the colonial Indian administration was to secure free and safe facility of Indian Muslims to perform the Hajj. This involved defraying costs of the passage from India, a Vice-Consul at Jeddah, and a ‘Hajj Officer’ to look after their concerns, p. 306.

Yet Husain proved both corrupt and incompetent in administration of the rite. Husain later lost Hijaz to Ibn Saud, Faisal’s family was killed in the 1958 Iraq coup, and Abdullah was assassinated because of his collusion with the Zionists. Whether the remaining Hashemis in Jordan will survive remains to be seen.

The Modern Middle East

by Ilan Pappé, (London & New York: Routledge, 2005), 344pp.

Al-Aqsa 37

B O O K

R E V I E W

Landscapes of the Jihad

the politics of causes, is argued as being objected to by Islamist groups like Hamas, Ikhwan and Jamaat-e Islamia. Statements post 9/11 by these groups expressed sympathy and sorrow at the incident.

Faisal Devji, Hardcover: 184 pages, Publisher: Cornell University Press (2005), ISBN: 0801444373, Price £15

To many observers and politicians, Al-Qaeda’s success is put down to the neglect of the plight of the Palestinians. However, Devji argues that Palestine is only a tool for jihad rather than the cause of it. ‘As far as Bin Laden is concerned a cause like the Palestinian one must be subordinated to the jihad as a global struggle (p. 69)’. In his evidence, Devji quotes Bin Laden from an interview in October 2001, as saying ‘Jihad is a duty to liberate Al-Aqsa and to help the powerless in Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon and in every Muslim country. There is no doubt that the liberation of the Arabian Peninsula from infidels is a duty as well. But it is not right to say that Osama put the Palestinian issue first…(p. 69).’

Faisal Devji, Assistant Professor of History at New School University, provides a mentally stimulating essay that smashes the conventional wisdom and narratives of Al-Qaeda and the jihad. Not everything he says should be taken verbatim but he does apply the brakes in any thinking person’s mental stride.

Devji contends that post 9/11, with the Qur’an on the ‘New York best-sellers list, one can justify in stating that Islam has become an American phenomenon, to an extent that Americans might even be more interested in and informed about it than are Muslims (p. xii)’.

Devji’s purpose is not, he says, to provide a sociology of AlQaeda’s jihad, but rather the reverse: to encourage us to reflect on the landscapes of its global effect by a process of abstraction that is signalled by a profligate use of ‘the jihad’ as a term to describe the global nature of Al-Qaeda.

The Essay’s premise of Al-Qaeda’s global nature is succinctly handled by highlighting the bombings and attacks from Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan, Yemen and Afghanistan. ‘[This] remarkably dispersed sequence of events in which the killers and victims, causes and effects, countries and targets involved, shared neither history nor geography and had nothing to do with each other… yet it was only in this temporary configuration of dispersed peoples and places that Al-Qaeda’s jihad was established as a global movement (p. 8)’. The resultant outcome of the globalisation of Al-Qaeda’s jihad may lead to wider demands for democratisation of the Middle East, whereas the violent element of jihad becomes finite.

The conventional wisdom in the West for explaining Al-Qaeda has been a group driven by fundamentalist Islamic belief, with the right wing adding ‘hell bent on destroying the west’. Devji shows, with evidence, that most of the 9/11 and Madrid bombers had little knowledge of Islam. ‘[Jihad makers] not only are old methods of learning persuasion and practices made parochial and sometimes even redundant by the jihad, but a new kind of Muslim, too, is created in the process, one not defined by any notion of cultic uniformity (p. 20)’.

Al-Qaeda’s success or, as Devji proposes, factors that made jihad into global movements are: ‘[1] the failure of local struggles and [2] the inability to control a global landscape of operations by the politics of intentionality (p. 31)’. Al-Qaeda’s jihad, beyond

Al-Aqsa 36

A significant section of his argument lies in the fact that jihad has become metaphysical: ‘Conceptually, however, the jihad’s global character is manifested in its abandonment of the freedom struggle for the religious war. In other words, it is no longer because Muslim populations in certain countries happen to be oppressed by Christian or Jewish ones that the jihad is declared, but rather because the war itself is also a metaphysical one…(p.

74)’.

A chapter has been dedicated to the effect and use of media by the jihadi. While there is no doubt that media plays a pivotal role in advancing jihad, Devji perhaps over steps the mark when he says, ‘jihad is more a product of the media than it is of any local tradition or situation and school or lineage of Muslim authority (p. 87)’. To support his theory, he gives an account the martyr Suraqah al-Andalusi’s conversion to the jihad after listening to an audio cassette.

Chapter 5 is rather provocatively titled, ‘The Death of God’ in which jihad’s ability to wrest authority from established institutes is argued. Devji contends, ‘given the jihad’s dismemberment of the juridical authority that had for centuries been located in a clerical class known as the Ulama ...(p. 112)’.

In the final chapter Devji assesses the impact of the ‘War On Terror’ on the West itself and America in particular. By subverting the constitution and undermining civil liberties and impeding the financial, demographic and technological mobility that provide the foundations of its own economic might, the ‘US becomes a suicide state, its martyrdom mirroring the many martyrdoms of the jihad (p. 138)’. A parting shot to America is given when Devji warns that it is ‘ America’s very role as a superpower that makes it a political dinosaur, out-moded both because the enemy it was made to fight no longer exists and because global politics is no longer defined in hemispheric or even properly geographical terms (p. 136/7)’.

This is a serious book argued in scholarly fashion and is a must read for both the layman and the policy makers. There is no doubt many references will be made to this book by students of jihad and Islam, anthropologists and political activists.

Reviewed by Abu Huzayfah, Leicester

The racial oppression of Israeli Arabs is perhaps the regime’s best-kept secret. So often we hear that Israeli Arabs are full citizens, despite the US State Department’s annual reports that prove the contrary is true. Perhaps even less well-known is that two were victims of the Nakba.

Masalha’s essay illustrates the Orwellian stance of the regime to internally displaced refugees: they are ‘‘present absentees’, p. 24.

This 1984-style contradiction describes the fact that they are present in the state, but absent from their original homes. These account for 25% of the entire Israeli Arab population – a huge number, usually overlooked by everyone. It should be noted that the displacement continued after 1948, giving lie to the claim that the destruction of villages occurred in the heat of war or was a security matter.

In 1951 ‘residents of thirteen small Arab villages in Wadi ‘Ara were expelled over the border’, p. 27. Similarly, 700 people from Kafr Yasif village in Galilee were expelled.

These were by no means isolated incidents. As well as displacement, a plethora of laws and military regulations prevented internal refugees from returning and enabled the state to confiscate their lands. Moreover, this should not be seen as a transfer from private to public ownership; the properties then come under the Israel Lands Authority, who often transfer it to the Jewish National Fund – whose constitution reserves all ownership to Jews only, p. 35.

It should be noted that there has been no comment from either Blair or Bush about Palestinian villages being ‘wiped off the map’.

The situation has been particularly bad for ‘Unrecognised Villages’. This especially affects the Negev Bedouin. The situation affects about a tenth of Israeli Arabs, p. 200.

Again, their disappearance from the map has not resulted in any excited and exasperated response from Prime Minister Blair. As a result of the Planning and Construction Law of 1965, only 123 Arab localities were recognised by the authorities; all others were deemed illegal. This means that they are denied political representation, resources, grants, etc. The authorities frequently demolish buildings in these villages.

Two of the most helpful aspects of the book are its coverage of the growing Israeli Arab resistance to the status quo and emerging Israeli Jewish solidarity. In the 1990s there was established a ‘National Association for the Defense of the Rights of Internally Displaced’ Palestinians (ADRID), p.

97. This is fighting for the right of Israeli Arabs to return to their original villages. Parallel to this is the creation of Zochrot (‘remember’ in Hebrew), a group of Israeli Jews committed to bringing the reality of the Nakba to Israeli public attention, p. 219. This is essential, because the Nakba is ignored or denied in the official and educational discourse. It is at this point that a further chapter could have been added. Nakba-denial is not peculiar to the Israeli regime and its apologists. ‘Holocaust-denial’ is rightly condemned in the West, as is denial of the Armenian

massacres of 1915, yet no criticism is ever directed at those engaged in one of the biggest assaults on history by denying the Nakba. The British government – despite its complicity in the disaster – refuses to commemorate it. Yet what have Muslim and Arab representatives in the West done to raise the issue of the Israeli Arabs and their sufferings as a result of this Catastrophe?

Reviewed by Dr Anthony McRoy, London

Bethlehem Besieged: Stories of Hope in Times of Trouble

By Mitri Raheb, (Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 2004) ISBN 0-8006-3653-8, 157 pp.

The Author, Rev. Mitri Raheb is pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem. This book is his second and deals with the Author’s experiences during the 2002 Israeli siege of Bethlehem and the Church of the Nativity in Madbaseh Square, adjoining Manger Square in the centre of the old town. He records the extreme and wanton destruction suffered by his institution, the Lutheran Church and its affiliated organs in Bethlehem. The book is styled in an inspirational fashion, with emotive pictures between chapters, all to ensure that the spirit of hope and recovery must triumph in the midst of destruction, subjugation and mindless prejudice. The first chapter of the book acts as a sort of introduction as well as a conclusion as the Author telescopes us through the entire episode of the destruction of his buildings and institutions and their extraordinary regeneration within a year or so. As he so fittingly states, ‘the compound has again been a beacon of hope during times of despair’ (p. 16).

The second chapter gives us a blow-by-blow description of the incredible risks taken by the pastor in confronting the Israeli troops that were destroying his house and Church buildings on that fateful Thursday, April 4th, 2002.

We are held almost spell bound as the Author, with an uncanny talent for detail, manages to take us through his confrontation with the troops, in the process revealing some of the misconceptions that the average Israeli soldier has about Palestinians and Arabs in general. He quotes one soldier as snarling at him that “Arabic in the ugliest language in the world” (p.22).

In the next chapter, the Author describes an incident that would never otherwise be reported, as far as PalestinianAl-Aqsa 39

Ilan Pappé is a prominent Israeli historian and his book is of a standard we have come to expect of his writings.

It covers everything: politics, economics, urban and rural history, popular culture, theatre, writing, women, Islam and globalisation – a veritable tour de force. Pappé defines the modern Middle East as beginning with Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798, p. 4, and this perhaps reminds us that the history of the modern Middle East is one of unwelcome Western intrusions. Pappé sees the region as stuck in a transitional period between tradition and modernity. Of course, it all depends on one’s interpretation of the latter.

Of particular interest is how Pappé presents the Ottoman Empire as multiracial and pluralistic, p. 15, although he obliquely notes that it was accompanied by ‘despotism and tyranny’. However, he observes that Istanbul in 1893 was only half Muslim, and included ‘a large Jewish community made up of refugees from the Spanish Inquisition who had been welcomed to Istanbul at the beginning of the sixteenth century by Sultan Bayzeid II’. This is an issue which causes frequent consternation among Muslims: they welcomed Jewish refugees from Europe’s ‘religious cleansing’ in Spain, and yet today they are often accused of anti-Semitism.

Another significant observation is that ‘When Arab societies were subjected to direct European rule, religion became an ideology of resistance and, hence, “fanatic” and threatening to Western eyes’, p. 17. Perhaps someone should bring this point to the notice of Blair and Bush; instead of seeing ‘Islamist terrorism’ as the fruit of ‘an evil ideology’ bent on world conquest, the destruction of Western democracy and the physical destruction of Americans and Britons, they might realise that it is the neo-colonial presence that causes it. On the other hand, it can be seen that if Muslim societies are repressive, especially to minorities, they give a ‘pretext for European colonial intervention and invasion’, p. 18. This is exactly what happened with the Ottoman State in the 19th century over its treatment of Christians, but the kind of argument was also employed to justify the invasion of Iraq.

One area in which Pappé is particularly good is in his analogy of the French colonisation of Algeria and that of Zionism in Palestine: ‘In Algeria the power of the French Empire was utilized for confiscating land for the new settlers; in Palestine it was the Jewish capital that encouraged local landlords, most of who were absentees, to sell their land with the tenants and peasants on it’, p.

19. He observes that Edward Said noted the parallels.

Pappé notes that French rule was based on ‘a system of total apartheid, discriminating against Algerians in every sphere of life’, p. 26. Similarly, another forgotten arena of oppression is Libya, where Mussolini killed half the population.

Another invaluable point made by Pappé is how US policy in the region changed. Following President Kennedy’s Al-Aqsa 38

assassination ‘Israel was built into an American bastion in the region’, in a way that did not always benefit the Americans, p. 29. However, this insensitivity to justice was not always a characteristic of US policy. At the end of the First World War, America was quite positive towards Arab self-determination, pp. 21, 25, which is a rebuke to those who see America as inherently evil. Nonetheless, Pappé denounces the Americans as dishonest power brokers in the present situation, p. 36.

Pappé is also good on demonstrating that Middle Eastern Islam is not a monolith, and again he refers us to the work of Edward Said, p. 269. This is as true of ‘political’ Islam as any ‘other’ kind; Pappé points to the difference between the Islamic governments of Iran and Turkey, where Islam plays a major role in determining foreign policy in the former, and none with the latter, p. 271. Again, the muchneglected Takfir wa al-Hijra group in Egypt took the response of not fighting the ‘apostate’ society’ but in a rather literal understanding of the Sunnah of Hijra in the present age, withdrew into desert caves, p. 274.

Two other areas of interest include the way the Islamists in Egypt took over the Labour Party and moved it from socialism to political Islam as a result of an initial electoral alliance, p. 280. It can be seen that the Muslim-Left alliance we see in Britain in the form of the RESPECT coalition can claim a long pedigree! The other point is how Palestinian Israeli citizens have considered campaigning for ethnic or national autonomy in the face of resistance from Israeli society to a more ‘democratized reality’.

Catastrophe Remembered ed. Nur Masalha, (London: Zed Books, 2005), 300pp.

Catastrophe Remembered Remembered, principally about the plight of Israeli Arabs, is long overdue and, for that reason alone, most welcome. It has long been my opinion that the question of Israeli Arabs should be at the forefront of the concern for Palestinian rights, rather than at the margins, since so much of what the Israeli regime does to Palestinians in the Diaspora and in the Occupied Territories is only possible because of what it can do (legally, according to its terms), to those Palestinians who are Israeli citizens. A multipleauthored work always poses the problem of unevenness, but that is happily absent from this book. Inevitably, however, there is much overlapping.

that had taken refuge within the Church of the Nativity, a member of the HAMAS group called Muhammad, fell ill and was taken care of by one of the Franciscan friars within the Church, a priest by the name of Father Amjad.

This incident took place even as the Israeli and indeed much of the world media, was reporting that the priests within the Church were being held captive by the militants against their will. Rev. Raheb also reminds us that many ordinary Palestinian civilians were also caught up in the Church, again in contravention of the popularly held view that all the people who had sought refuge in the Church were militants and terrorists.

In his next two chapters, the Author describes how Church life was conducted during the four months period when Bethlehem and much of the West Bank cities were under curfew in 2002. He describes the humiliating and cruel behaviour of the Israeli soldiers who made people caught during curfew hours take off their clothes and walk home naked, in addition to the thousands of shekels worth of fines, the brutal interrogations, beatings, detention and even torture that they would have to experience (p.47).

In chapter six, the Author describes how he himself once, along with his mother, took refuge within the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, his hometown. This occurred during the June 1967 Israeli invasion of the West Bank of Jordan. The Nativity church has had a long history of being a place of refuge in times of trouble, running back hundreds of years. As a Church dedicated to the memory of the mother of Christ, St. Mary, the Church has a special significance for the local Muslim community as well.

During Ottoman times, Muslim pilgrims would often visit the Church and the monks were committed as per the requirements of the ‘status quo’, that all-embracing code of conduct as far as the Christian institutions of the Holy Land were concerned, to look after all their needs.

Chapter seven describes a routine faced by countless Palestinians innumerable times in their lives, namely the delay and the roadblocks created by Israeli planners to disrupt Palestinian life as much as possible. In the Author’s case, it resulted in the death of his own father-inlaw, who suffering from a serious heart attack was denied permission to enter Jerusalem to go to hospital on the flimsiest of excuses and, when finally he was able to make his entry, it was just too late.

Chapter eight conveys the message of the almost total blockade under which most Palestinians in the West Bank labour at the moment. Conditions seem even worse than apartheid South Africa in some instances. Chapter nine describes the painful and racist experience of being

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denied permission to leave the country to visit the US despite having all paper work in order, just for the sole reason of being a Palestinian. Chapter ten reads rather like a sermon as the Author tries to analyse why the Palestinian people have to suffer as they do, bearing the brunt not only of their own sins but also those of other people like the Europeans, the Israelis, other Arab nations and the Americans. In the midst of all this suffering, the Author feels that the only way is to persevere, until (in the Author’s words), ‘Israel and the world muster the courage to take their share (of guilt)’.

The Author goes on to describe an incident that was often highlighted in the world media and consequently familiar to all Palestine watchers, during the first Intifada, namely almost daily shootings versus tank duels that used to take place between the Palestinian towns of Bethlehem and Beit Jala and the Israeli settlement of Gilo across the valley from them. Mitri’s book is full of interesting anecdotes and incidents. Witness his analysis of why a group of Palestinian painters, Christian as well Muslim, but mainly Muslim, when asked to draw their perceptions of Christ from a Palestinian perspective, should, with just one exception draw Christ crucified, despite the absence of this incident from the life of Christ in Islamic historiography. His striking conclusion is that the best way to present the modern Palestinian experience at the hands of the Israelis is to draw Christ crucified.

Mitri ends the books with some sound advise to his fellow Christians in Europe and America. He exhorts them to stop being spectators and, instead, to start being actors in trying to convince their respective governments to stop funding the military government of Israel and instead to invest in peace-building initiatives. In the midst of this, he insists on the importance of hope, both from the Palestinian as well as Israeli point of view. Without hope of a better tomorrow there is no future for the region. The alternative is too bloody to contemplate. Again, as Christians, Mitri feels that ‘we are actors on Christ’s behalf’ (p. 156).

The book ends with a very colourful and emotive description of the concept of Christian hope. To quote again, ‘if we plant a tree today, there will be shade for the children to play in, there will be oil to heal the wounds, and there will be olive branches to wave when peace arrives. (p. 157). A striking vision for the, as yet, seemingly unattainable future.

Reviewed by Samuel Jacob Kuruvilla, Exeter