NOVANEWS
Dear Friends,
I apologize for not writing a few words of introduction last night, especially as I did not feel entirely at ease with 2 of the items. But at almost 3 AM I was fairly sure that anything that I wrote would not make sense.
So, to go back briefly to yesterday’s items, one of them that I feel needed comment was the one on hasbara. The point that it made was important, i.e., that the Israeli government pays more attention to its image than to its policies. However, in contradiction to the author, I do see ‘hasbara’ as propaganda, whether or not the people who engage in it believe what they are saying. Those who ply it promote the government line against all evidence of what is happening on the ground, much of which you are familiar with from messages as mine, media, etc, and some of you know also from experience.
The 2nd item that I have some qualms with is the one on ‘one state.’ By now you of course know that I do support a single state with separation of religion from state, with equal rights to all citizens. But if I understood the proposal correctly, it recommends a state within a state—that is to say, a Palestinian state within the Israeli one. Although I respect the opinions of those who support it, I have grave doubts of its workability. Item 8 below paints a single state that seems to me more just though perhaps more difficult to achieve. That Israel is moving towards a single state is undeniable. But it intends it to be a single ‘Greater Israel,’ with as few Palestinians and other non-Jews in it as possible.
All the dozen or so newspapers that I scanned today had the identical prediction of what the Netanyahu-Obama talks would be about, and what Obama would say, namely, he would tell Israel to hold off with an attack on Iran. Item 1 (of 10 below) is one of these reports, with links to a few others.
Item 2 goes further—it recommends that before attacking Iran, Israel’s leaders should remember the results of Israel’s attack on Iraq, which, according to this report was a disaster—that is, the attack accomplished its immediate aim, but brought in its wake much worse.
Item 3 briefly reports that the Palestinians intend to give Israel a deadline for accepting the “ground rules”—i.e., cessation of settlement construction, and retiring to the ’67 line. If Israel refuses, the Palestinians will end ‘talks.’
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The Washington Times had 3 items on Israel today. Unusual. One of these is the report on what Obama will tell Netanyahu. The other 2 are opinion pieces on how to solve the conflict. One of these is item 4, which recommends a temporary solution—Israel will return some of the West Bank to the Palestinians, and Hamas and Israel will agree to a long term truce. In the opinion of the authors, this will serve both Israeli and Palestinian interests for the short term. Will it? Is that what the Palestinians want? Israel’s leaders want the ‘Greater Israel,’ which hardly suggests a willingness to return anything. Palestinians want justice, freedom of movement, the right of return, and to be treated like human beings. This recommendation serves neither. The other item in the WP is item 8. It outlines a single state for both peoples.
Item 5 is a video about Palestinian prisoners boycotting Israeli courts. The video is brief (about 5 minutes) but worth your time.
Item 6 takes the subject of Palestinian non-violent resistance, and argues that the ‘US must seize the opportunity to support Palestinian non-violence.
Item 7, ‘Abandoned in Jerusalem,’ deals with the way that Israeli authorities treat Palestinian residents of Jerusalem.
Item 8 is, as I said, an outline for a single state.
Item 9 briefly states the case for the boycott movement, ending with a cogent response to those who claim that supporters of bds want to see the end of Israel. Omar Rahman states that the boycott is not about Israel but about recovering Palestinian rights, and that this does not necessarily mean dispensing with all Zionist desires.
Item 10 is a longish tale about a personal experience, which does, nevertheless, help understand why some Palestinians have resorted to violence: “Why I met the man who tried to kill me.”
That’s it for tonight. Hope that Obama will put it on the line, ‘Don’t touch Iran,’ and that Israel’s leaders listen. Of course, if Obama states in no uncertain terms that the United States will not help Israel should it attack Iran, even Netanyahu and Barak will have no choice but to listen. I hope.
Dorothy
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1 Ynet
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Obama and Netanyahu (Archives) Photo: Avi Ohayon, GPO
US urges Israeli patience on Iran
Ahead of PM Netanyahu’s visit to United States, US officials say Washington is ‘trying to make the decision to attack Iran as hard as possible for Israel’
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4197791,00.html
Ynet
Ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with US President Barack Obama in Washington next week, White House officials said that the US’ stance on a possible Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities is clear.
“We’re trying to make the decision to attack Iran as hard as possible for Israel,” an administration official, speaking anonymously, told the Washington Post.
White House officials said that for now, both the Democrats and the Republicans feel that a strike would be premature and that the diplomatic efforts and international sanctions have yet to exhaust themselves.
“Obama plans to caution Netanyahu against attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months, urging patience while international economic sanctions take full effect,” the report said.
Obama and Netanyahu (Archives: GPO)
Israel maintains that time is running out and that the West must find a way to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions in the immediate future.
The US, however, is still hesitant: While the administration has voiced adamant intention to prevent Iran from containing nuclear weapons, it has yet to make the leap to declaring it wants to stop Iran’s nuclear ambitions, i.e. – its civilian and nuclear efforts – altogether.
Many within the administration also fear that a preemptive strike by Israel may spark a regional war. Obama himself said Thursday that “Nobody has declared war on Iran – yet.”
Netanyahu and Obama’s talks are likely to focus on the effectiveness of sanctions and the perils of a unilateral Israeli attack. “People really don’t want war,” a second administration official said. “They really don’t.”
Washington officials said that Obama is likely to attempt to reassure the Israeli prime minister of the US’ resolve and commitment to Israel’s security, while urging patience and signaling to Iran that the two allies agree on the importance of stopping it from getting a nuclear weapon.
In an interview published Friday in Atlantic Magazine, Obama said that “the Israeli government recognizes that, as president of the United States, I don’t bluff.
“At a time when there is not a lot of sympathy for Iran and its only real ally (Syria) is on the ropes, do we want a distraction in which suddenly Iran can portray itself as the victim?” Obama said in the interview.
Still, Defense Minister Ehud Barak recently warned that Iran is approaching what he calls “the zone of immunity,” a milestone after which an attack would perhaps prove ineffective in setting back the Iranian program.
“When the chips are down and there’s a lot at stake, the Israeli prime minister still calls the president of the United States,” Dennis Ross, a counselor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who served as Obama’s senior adviser on Israel and Iran, said.
Iran insists that its nuclear program serves a civilian purpose only, but the West – backed by IAEA findings – believes that to be untrue.
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More on this subject:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17236549
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2 Washington Post
Friday, March 2, 2012
Before attacking Iran, Israel should learn from its 1981 strike on Iraq
By Colin H. Kahl
On June 7, 1981, eight Israeli F-16 fighter jets, protected by six F-15 escorts, dropped 16 2,000-pound bombs on the nearly completed Osirak nuclear reactor at the Tuwaitha complex in Iraq. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Defense Minister Ariel Sharon saw the reactor as central to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s quest to build nuclear weapons, and they believed that it posed an existential threat to Israel.
The timing of the strike was justified by intelligence reports suggesting that Osirak would soon become operational. Two days later, Begin explained the raid to the public: “We chose this moment: now, not later, because later may be too late, perhaps forever. And if we stood by idly, two, three years, at the most four years, and Saddam Hussein would have produced his three, four, five bombs . . . another Holocaust would have happened in the history of the Jewish people.”
Three decades later, eerily similar arguments can be heard regarding the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran. Last May, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahutold a joint session of the U.S. Congress that “the hinge of history may soon turn, for the greatest danger of all could soon be upon us: a militant Islamic regime armed with nuclear weapons.” In a Feb. 2 speech in Israel, Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Barak channeled Begin in making the case for possible military action against Iran, arguing that “those who say ‘later’ may find that later is too late.” And late last month, Barak sought to discredit Israeli President Shimon Peres’s reported opposition to a possible strike on Iran by pointing to his dissent during the 1981 attack.
When Netanyahu meets with President Obama on Monday and addresses the annual meeting of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, later that day, we should expect additional dire assessments and warnings of military action.
For Israelis considering a strike on Iran, Osirak seems like a model for effective preventive war. After all, Hussein never got the bomb, and if Israel was able to brush back one enemy hell-bent on its destruction, it can do so again. But a closer look at the Osirak episode, drawing on recent academic research and memoirs of individuals involved with Iraq’s program, argues powerfully against an Israeli strike on Iran today.
To begin with, Hussein was not on the brink of a bomb in 1981. By the late 1970s, he thought Iraq should develop nuclear weapons at some point, and he hoped to use the Osirak reactor to further that goal. But new evidence suggests that Hussein had not decided to launch a full-fledged weapons program prior to the Israeli strike. According to Norwegian scholar Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer, a leading authority on the Iraqi program, “on the eve of the attack on Osirak . . . Iraq’s pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability was both directionless and disorganized.”
Moreover, as Emory University political scientist Dan Reiter details in a 2005 study, the Osirak reactor was not well designed to efficiently produce weapons-grade plutonium. If Hussein had decided to use Osirak to develop nuclear weapons and Iraqi scientists somehow evaded detection, it would still have taken several years — perhaps well into the 1990s — to produce enough plutonium for a single bomb. And even with sufficient fissile material, Iraq would have had to design and construct the weapon itself, a process that hadn’t started before Israel attacked.
The risks of a near-term Iraqi breakthrough were further undercut by the presence of French technicians at Osirak, as well as regular inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. As a result, any significant diversion of highly enriched uranium fuel or attempts to produce fissionable plutonium would probably have been detected.
By demonstrating Iraq’s vulnerability, the attack on Osirak actually increased Hussein’s determination to develop a nuclear deterrent and provided Iraq’s scientists an opportunity to better organize the program. The Iraqi leader devoted significantly more resources toward pursuing nuclear weapons after the Israeli assault. As Reiter notes, “the Iraqi nuclear program increased from a program of 400 scientists and $400 million to one of 7,000 scientists and $10 billion.”
Iraq’s nuclear efforts also went underground. Hussein allowed the IAEA to verify Osirak’s destruction, but then he shifted from a plutonium strategy to a more dispersed and ambitious uranium-enrichment strategy. This approach relied on undeclared sites, away from the prying eyes of inspectors, and aimed to develop local technology and expertise to reduce the reliance on foreign suppliers of sensitive technologies. When inspectors finally gained access after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, they were shocked by the extent of Iraq’s nuclear infrastructure and how close Hussein had gotten to a bomb.
Ultimately, Israel’s 1981 raid didn’t end Iraq’s drive to develop nuclear weapons. It took the destruction of the Gulf War, followed by more than a decade of sanctions, containment, inspections, no-fly zones and periodic bombing — not to mention the 2003 U.S. invasion — to eliminate the program. The international community got lucky: Had Hussein not been dumb enough to invade Kuwait in 1990, he probably would have gotten the bomb sometime by the mid-1990s.
Iran’s nuclear program is more advanced than Hussein’s was in 1981. But the Islamic republic is still not on the cusp of entering the nuclear club. As the IAEA has documented, Iran is putting all the pieces in place to have the option to develop nuclear weapons at some point. Were Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to decide tomorrow to go for a bomb, Iran probably has the technical capability to produce a testable nuclear device in about a year and a missile-capable device in several years. But as Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate Arms Services Committee on Feb. 16, it does not appear that Khamenei has made this decision.
Moreover, Khamenei is unlikely to dash for a bomb in the near future because IAEA inspectors would probably detect Iranian efforts to divert low-enriched uranium and enrich it to weapons-grade level at declared facilities. Such brazen acts would trigger a draconian international response. Until Iran can pursue such efforts more quickly or in secret — which could be years from now — Khamenei is unlikely to act.
Also, an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure would be more risky and less effective than the Osirak raid. In 1981, a relatively small number of Israeli aircraft flew 600 miles across Jordanian, Saudi and Iraqi airspace to hit a single, vulnerable, above-ground target. This was no easy feat, but it is nothing compared with the complexity of a strike on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.
Such an attack would probably require dozens of aircraft to travel at least 1,000 miles over Arab airspace to reach their targets, stretching the limits of Israeli refueling capabilities. Israeli jets would then have to circumvent Iranian air defenses and drop hundreds of precision-guided munitions on the hardened Natanz enrichment facility, the Fordow enrichment site deep in a mountain near Qom, the Isfahan uranium-conversion facility, the heavy-water production plant and plutonium reactor under construction at Arak, and multiple centrifuge production facilities in and around populated areas of Tehran and Natanz.
These same aircraft would not be able to reengage any missed targets — they would need to race back to defend Israel against retaliation by Iran and its proxies, including Lebanese Hezbollah and possibly Hamas.
Unlike an attack by the U.S. military, which has much more powerful munitions and the ability to sustain a large-scale bombing campaign, an Israeli assault would probably be a one-off strike with more limited effects.
No wonder that Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently told CNN that an Israeli attack would set the program back only “a couple of years” and “wouldn’t achieve their long-term objectives.” (Because a U.S. strike would potentially be more effective, the administration has kept that option on the table even as it has cautioned against an Israeli attack.)
Should Israel rush to war, Iran might follow Hussein’s example and rebuild its nuclear program in a way that is harder to detect and more costly to stop. And while there seems to be consensus among Iranians that the country has a right to a robust civilian nuclear program, there is no domestic agreement yet on the pursuit of nuclear weapons. Even the supreme leader has hedged his bets, insisting that Iran has the right to pursue technological advances with possible military applications, while repeatedly declaring that possession or use of nuclear weapons would be a “grave sin” against Islam.
After an Israeli strike, that internal debate would be settled — hard-line arguments would win the day.
Short of invasion and regime change — outcomes beyond Israel’s capabilities — it would be nearly impossible to prevent Iran from rebuilding its program. Iran’s nuclear infrastructure is much more advanced, dispersed and protected, and is less reliant on foreign supplies of key technology, than was the case with Iraq’s program in 1981.
Although Barak often warns that Israel must strike before Iran’s facilities are so protected that they enter a “zone of immunity” from Israeli military action, Iran would be likely to reconstitute its program in the very sites — and probably new clandestine ones — that are invulnerable to Israeli attack. An Israeli strike would also end any prospect of Iran cooperating with the IAEA, seriously undermining the international community’s ability to detect rebuilding efforts.
Barely a week after the Osirak raid, Begin told CBS News that the attack “will be a precedent for every future government in Israel.” Yet, if history repeats itself, an Israeli attack would result in a wounded adversary more determined than ever to get a nuclear bomb. And then the world would face the same terrible choices it ultimately faced with Iraq: decades of containment to stall nuclear rebuilding efforts, invasion and occupation — or acquiescence to an implacable nuclear-armed foe.
outlook@washpost.com
Colin H. Kahl is an associate professor at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. From 2009 to 2011, he was the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East.
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3 Washington Post
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Palestinians to give Israelis deadline to accept ‘ground rules’ on settlements, border
By Associated Press
JERICHO, West Bank — Palestinian officials say they’ll give a deadline to Israel to accept ground rules for negotiations, and suggest that a ‘no’ will allow them to shelve Mideast talks until it does.
Palestinians ended low-level talks in February, claiming Israel didn’t present serious offers.
The officials said Saturday they’ll ask Israel in writing to freeze settlements and recognize the pre-1967 frontier as a baseline for border talks. Israel has refused to do so.
Palestinians believe negotiating with Israel’s right-wing government is pointless. Israeli rejection of the ground rules would let them pursue other strategies, including a bid for Palestinian U.N. membership.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki did not say when Israel would need to respond.
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4 Washington Post
Saturday, March 3, 2012
Mideast peace, with something short of a deal
By Robert Malley and Aaron David Miller
President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will devote little time Monday to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in part because of Iran and election-year politics. But the principal cause is this: A negotiated, two-state solution is running harder than ever against intractable political and psychological realities in Israel, Palestine and the Arab world. These are pushing toward a de facto outcome that will not be negotiated, comprehensive or conflict-ending.
Even assuming Netanyahu is prepared to embrace a two-state solution acceptable to Palestinians, he would have to take on powerful settler and right-wing constituencies at a time when regional tumult and Iran’s nuclear progress exacerbate national feelings of insecurity. Netanyahu’s assertion that the Palestinian split and instability in the Arab world counsel against risky moves might be a convenient excuse to do nothing — but that doesn’t necessarily make it wrong. And he is unlikely to jeopardize his political future or his country’s security chasing a solution that, to his mind, does both.
Among Palestinians, the brewing crisis over President Mahmoud Abbas’s potential succession, popular disenchantment with the peace process and the appeal of internationalizing the conflict mean there are few political incentives for flexibility toward Israel. Divisions between the Fatah and Hamas factions complicate matters: Their recent agreement is paper-thin and highlights that, for now, Palestinians are focused more on immediate politics than on their longer-term fate.
Then there are regional developments: Abbas can no longer rely on influential Arab cover for controversial compromises. The Islamist wave is a reliable indicator of where popular Arab sentiment resides; it probably will not translate into imminent hostility toward Israel but, at a minimum, excludes a forthcoming approach.
Conditions will not remain static. Over time, the political landscape is likely to be carved by local actors’ concerns. Reports of Israel’s isolation may be exaggerated, but international ill will is mounting. Israelis recognize that if Palestinians remain under occupation for much longer, they may drop their call for independent statehood and demand equal rights in a single, binational (i.e., no longer Jewish) state. Israel has a potential answer: a withdrawal from the most populated areas of the West Bank, preserving the bulk of settlements and overall Israeli dominion and sparing the country a wrenching internal conflict. The idea is not new: Mooted in Gaza in 2005, its planned extension to the West Bank was halted when Palestinians’ acquisition of weapons through a porous border with Egypt soured Israelis’ mood. Sooner or later, the plan could be revived, coupled with an Israeli military presence in the Jordan Valley to minimize risks of a Gazan repeat.
Fatah and the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority have a long-term objective that differs markedly from Israel’s: a state enjoying full sovereign rights on virtually all the land occupied in 1967. But many among them are working toward goals that are closer at hand: building institutions of a putative state, governing their people and lessening Israel’s footprint. They are unlikely to agree with Jerusalem over the scope of its withdrawal, which almost certainly makes negotiations futile. For now, a unilateral Israeli decision could suit both sides.
A greater chasm separates Hamas’s and Israel’s ideas for a permanent solution. Paradoxically, this means they could be inclined to settle for a long-term de facto understanding — what the Islamist movement calls a truce and Israel calls an interim arrangement. Here, too, their perspectives collide, as Hamas’s conception of a truce entails a full withdrawal from the West Bank and the right of return for Palestinian refugees, steps Israel will adamantly reject in a permanent or temporary agreement. Still, an Israeli pullout from parts of the West Bank, coupled with a mutual cease-fire but without any interaction with or recognition of the Jewish state, is something Hamas would welcome as a victory without endorsing as a deal.
Such an outcome would promote the protagonists’ short-term interests. Israel would mollify Western critics and neutralize the Palestinian demographic threat; Fatah could continue building institutions of a future state; Hamas again may claim credit for pushing Israel back without compromising on core principles. But the conflict would endure. Israel would not achieve Arab recognition or an end to Palestinian claims; Fatah would not have produced a sovereign, independent state or resolved the refugee issue; and Hamas would have to acquiesce in the continued presence of a Jewish state on what it considers Palestinian land. The ultimate reckoning would still loom, arguably under conditions more inimical to the comprehensive resolution all claim to seek.
Since the inception of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the status of the land between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea has been determined almost invariably by acts of war or unilateral decisions. Even the Oslo Accords altered the status of Palestinian territory little on the ground. Someday this may change. For now, events outside the negotiating room again deserve far more consideration than what’s happening inside — and could shape Israeli-Palestinian relations for some time to come.
5 Palestinian prisoners boycott Israeli courts
Al Jazeera Thursday, March 1, 2012
http://www.aljazeera.com/video/middleeast/2012/03/20123111553561860.html
video and text
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6 Al Jazeera
Saturday, March 3, 2012
By Yousef Munayyer, a writer and political analyst based in Washington, DC.
RSS
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/03/201233135633153770.html
US must seize opportunity to support Palestinian non-violence
The United States should seize the opportunity as push for peace while Palestinians increasingly embrace non-violence.
The latest poll shows 61 per cent of Palestinians favouring non-violent resistance as an alternative to stalled negotiations [EPA]
Washington, DC – Khader Adnan spent 66 days on hunger strike, a symbolic, self-denying act of non-violent resistance to Israel’s practice of “administrative detention” or imprisonment without charge. His story quickly became well known and began to inspire other Palestinian political prisoners to follow his non-violent lead.
But Adnan’s is merely the latest episode in a growing wave of Palestinian non-violent resistance. While Palestinian non-violence has been a historic part of the struggle for Palestinian rights, armed struggle has been a component of resistance that often dominated the headlines.
Today things are changing significantly. More than ever, polling data shows, Palestinians are supporting non-violent resistance. A series of polls of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza which included a question on non-violence reveals an undeniable trend in the past 18 months. In June of 2010, for example 51 per cent of Palestinians polled responded that non-violent resistance was a preferred alternative to stalled negotiations. In the most recent poll conducted at the end of 2011, that number jumped to over 61 per cent.
Palestinian prisoner ends hunger strike
There are several factors that contribute to this undeniable shift.
First, there is a continued call by Palestinian and international civil society for non-violent resistance. Advocacy and solidarity along these lines has reverberated through Palestine and internationally thanks to the internet and social media. It took several days of the twitter hashtag #KhaderAdnan trending globally before international mainstream media took note, forcing the Israelis to address what had become an embarrassing situation by cutting a deal with the hunger striker.
Second, we can not discount the effect of the Arab Spring and especially the success of revolutions in Tunis and Egypt where people power triumphed over repressive regimes and relatively light force was used before the multitudes brought swift change upon the regimes.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, Palestinians have seen firsthand the difference in effect non-violent resistance and armed resistance has on them and the Israelis. Armed resistance to the occupation, while encouraged and supported by some and protected by international law, can come at a high cost.
The Israelis are well armed with F-16s, tanks, Apache helicopters, drones, laser guided missiles, and armed robots (most courtesy of the US). But the killing of several civilian non-violent activists aboard the Freedom Flotilla, the shooting of several unarmed demonstrators in the Golan, Lebanon and Gaza at events commemorating Nakba Day last year, and the routine arrest, beatings and often killings of non-violent protesters in the occupied territories has proven the old adage, “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”.
This sentiment was reflected by Major Amos Gilad, an Israeli military official, to American diplomats in a WikiLeaks cable last year when he confessed “we don’t do Gandhi very well”.
Non-violent resistance is like Judo – the Japanese martial art based on using an enemy’s strength and momentum against him – and the Palestinians find themselves facing a 300 kg Sumo wrestler. It is a strategic choice to resist the occupation.
Increasingly, Palestinians are realising the effectiveness of this strategy. Large swaths of the Palestinian public are in support of these non-violent methods today, but for how long?
For years, many asked where the Palestinian Gandhi is. Well, today, you are starting to hear about the ones imprisoned or shot because the internet has levelled the information battlefield.
Fadi Quran, a non-violent protester who was forcefully arrested this week under false pretenses, was released on bail by the Israelis after a YouTube video of his arrest – rifled around the world through Twitter – was published. It showed Fadi was pepper sprayed and forcefully arrested by Israeli officers for no crime at all. Had this happened 10 years ago, Fadi might still be in an “administrative detention” and we would have never have heard of him.
“Silence in the face of injustice is complicity with the oppressor.”
– Dr Martin Luther King, Jr
In nearly each and every high profile act of Palestinian non-violent resistance the official Israeli response has been demonisation of the protesters while the American response, more often than not, has been silence.
As the great Dr Martin Luther King taught us, “silence in the face of injustice is complicity with the oppressor”.
Today, however, the cost of remaining silent for the United States is not merely complicity with the oppressor, but also missing a critical opportunity. This is a moment when Palestinians are increasingly choosing non-violent resistance, a point President Obama highlighted in his important Cairo speech in 2009, and the United States should support this effort.
The window, however, to grow Palestinian support of non-violence may close as quickly as it opened if continued Israeli repression is not condemned forcefully by Israel’s principal ally. Should the US continue to support repressive and colonialist Israeli policies, the pendulum of public opinion may soon swing back to armed resistance as another generation of Palestinians grows up dreaming of freedom from occupation.
Yousef Munayyer is Executive Director of the Palestine Center in Washington, DC.
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7 [forwarded by Abla]
Haaretz
Friday, March 2, 2012
Abandoned in Jerusalem
Jerusalem city hall and Israel’s Education Ministry have an obligation to provide Jerusalem children with a decent education that endangers neither their lives or their future.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/abandoned-in-jerusalem-1.415994
By Yehudit Oppenheimer
The horrifying accident that took place near the Adam roadblock north of Jerusalem last month, in which six Palestinian children and their teacher were killed, and dozens of other children were injured, raises a great many questions. The racist remarks and the schadenfreude that were documented by visitors to the Facebook page of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the tragedy are indeed shocking. What is no less shocking is that the Prime Minister’s Bureau did not hasten to remove them. But the ongoing preoccupation with such reactions deflects attention from a much more substantive issue – the unbearable existential situation with which the residents of this section of Jerusalem are forced to contend on a daily basis and the way in which Israeli authorities completely ignore their living conditions.
It seems that Israel, which is quick to send emergency teams to any humanitarian disaster in the far reaches of the world, was in no hurry to help this time, when disaster struck in its backyard, on the road between the Adam and Qalandiyah roadblocks. This thoroughfare, contrary to the impression that the authorities tried to create, is in the heart of Area C, and thus under full Israeli administrative and security responsibility. But, despite the close proximity of the accident to several Israeli communities and to a military checkpoint – it took more than 20 minutes for emergency crews to arrive, by which point Palestinian passersby had extinguished the fire.
But even more serious questions need to be addressed, beyond the specific handling of the event itself, about the circumstances surrounding it. About half of the children in the bus, which caught fire after it was struck by a truck, were Jerusalem residents who live in the vicinity of the Shoafat refugee camp, in neighborhoods that are within the jurisdiction of the Jerusalem municipality. The building of the separation barrier nearly a decade ago left these neighborhoods outside of the fence and turned them into crowded and neglected enclaves, for which the authorities in general, and the Jerusalem municipality in particular, have relinquished responsibility.
As a result, the infrastructures and services in these neighborhoods – Shoafat camp, Dahiyat al-Salam, Ras Hamis, New Anata – in which more than 35,000 people live in unbearably crowded conditions, are on the verge of collapse. These neighborhoods have no emergency services whatsoever, neither medical first aid nor firefighting services. So when the children, pupils from a private school on their way to a school trip, were trapped in a burning bus, their communities could not dispatch even a single fire engine or medical crew to help them.
Moreover it must be asked why children of Jerusalem families, most of which have difficulties making ends meet, need to study in a private school outside the boundaries of the city. Have their parents really chosen to give them a private education, or is it because of the bitter truth that all these crowded neighborhoods are served by a single municipal primary school, and the conditions there – the structure is a former sheep pen, and is close to what was until recently an operating and polluting factory – also have been described by professionals as being unsuitable?
Just to be clear: In the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, private education is not necessarily synonymous with high quality. In many cases, rather, we are talking about semi-pirate initiatives that are not supervised and have no obligation to uphold even minimal standards, either in terms of the level of education or even of safety.
Of course, it is possible to place the blame for the high rate of dead and injured in the recent accident on the school principal, who filled up one bus with more than 60 children, and this suspicion has to be investigated. But neither Jerusalem city hall nor Israel’s Education Ministry can deny that they have an obligation to provide Jerusalem children with a decent and suitable education that endangers neither their lives or their future.
This accident raises too many difficult questions for the Israeli policy makers who have allowed urban neighborhoods that were once an integral part of East Jerusalem to be turned into cut-off and abandoned locales whose condition is deteriorating rapidly from day to day. The attempt to fix the boundaries of Jerusalem through unilateral steps, rather than agreed-upon political negotiations, has created enclaves that are constantly in peril. In general, the almost 70,000 Palestinian residents of neighborhoods beyond the separation fence but still within Jerusalem’s jurisdiction (in the areas of Shoafat in the northeast and in the Qalandiyah area in the north ) live under inhuman conditions today.
For them, an even greater humanitarian disaster is only a matter of time.
Yehudit Oppenheimer is the director-general of the NGO Ir Amim, which is dedicated to establishing an egalitarian and stable Jerusalem with a negotiated political future.
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8 Washington Post
Saturday, March 3,2012
One state for Palestinians and Israelis
By Ahmed Moor
For decades the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has eluded well-intentioned peacemakers. Diplomats have talked, shaken hands, snapped photos — and returned home from summits with strikingly little to show for their efforts. Meanwhile, the occupation of Palestinian territories grew more restrictive. Israel’s settlements developed into towns and small cities as Palestinians were penned into smaller and smaller spaces. While diplomats shuffled from Madrid to Oslo to Wye River, from Camp David to Taba to Annapolis and resort towns in between, the illegal settlements expanded. And the window for two states closed.
Palestine and Israel are two parts of the same country — something those who have not been to the region may find hard to imagine. The area of Mandate Palestine — that’s Israel, the West Bank and Gaza — is about the size of New Jersey. The country is so small that Palestinians on the hilly West Bank can view the Israeli coastline from their homes (never mind that restrictions on Palestinian movement have prevented the vast majority from ever visiting the sea). Moreover, one out of five Israelis is a Palestinian, and about one of every six residents of the occupied territories is a Jewish settler.
The degree to which the country is a single, indivisible unit is sometimes underscored by the most mundane experiences. A Palestinian friend recently told me about being pulled over for speeding in the West Bank. The person who ticketed him was an Israeli army official.
Yes, Palestine has been colonized out of existence, and the Israeli army is busy policing traffic.
The army’s nearness to the average Palestinian extends beyond settlements. The region has few freshwater resources. In Israel, maintaining access to water is a matter of national security. The mountain aquifer underneath the West Bank’s rocky topography is one major source, and the army regularly destroys “unauthorized” wells and cisterns to secure Israeli hegemony over the scarce resource.
It was awareness that there will never be a viable Palestinian state that prompted me to work with other Harvard students to organize a one-state conference this weekend. Our work has been informed by the uncontroversial view that all people are created equal. Assessing an environment in which Israel controls the lives of 4 million people and deprives them of basic human rights, we ask whether there is an alternative: Can the one-state solution deliver equal rights to everyone?
Critics say that raising the question of equal rights in Israel/Palestine reveals our motives; we seek to destroy Israel, they say. They contend civil rights for everyone in the country will mean “the elimination of Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people.”
For some, everything that happens in the Middle East is viewed through the prism of what is best for the Jewish people. But the Palestinians are people, too. Preserving “Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people” is a costly endeavor. And I regret that the cost is borne almost exclusively by Palestinians living under apartheid.
It is also worth asking whether permanent occupation is good for the Jewish people. Palestinians learn about thousands of years of Jewish suffering, persecution and genocide, and we wonder whether Israel can really be the height of Jewish achievement. Did the Jewish people survive for so long only to become another people’s occupiers and permanent oppressors?
Many of my Jewish friends and peers in Israel and in America answer that question resoundingly: No. Peter Beinart has done an admirable job chronicling the movement of young American Jews away from Israel. But in Israel, something different is happening.
About a year ago, I marched down a winding lane in the windswept village of Bilin to protest the Israeli seizure of village lands. The nonviolent action was organized by the village’s Popular Committee, and, as is typical, a group of Israelis joined in solidarity. Many of these young people had publicly rejected their Jewish privilege. They were there because we were equals, united in our rejection of military occupation and apartheid.
In Israel/Palestine, the struggle for human dignity and freedom is edifying. The call for equal rights is energizing and uplifting. And in a region where hope founders and falters so frequently, that’s saying a lot.
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9 Saturday, March 3 2012Independent commentary and news from Israel & PalestineCategories
http://972mag.com/response-noam-weiners-view-of-boycott-is-flawed/36971/
Omar Rahman
Boycott movement about Palestinian rights, not destroying Israel
Noam Wiener’s post against the BDS movement once again fails to understand the movement and the general plight of Palestinians.
I am really not sure how I missed this guest post by Noam Wiener on the boycott movement, and the flurry of comments it generated, but I wanted to add a few of my own. There were way too many comments to read and I am sure that I am reiterating what many of our in-tuned readers certainly stated, but here it goes.
I have two central issues with this piece, starting with the following excerpt:
When I choose to boycott somebody, I am telling that somebody that they are, for me, a non-entity. They become transparent, not to be addressed, not to be dealt with, and not to be considered. Boycotting means denying not just an entity’s business, but its voice.
1. I don’t believe boycott means what he says it means. I may boycott Nike because it practices child labor in Malaysia, but that does not mean I view Nike as a “non-entity” with no right to exist. Boycott is about Israeli practices, not about Israel. Unfortunately, inherent Israeli exclusionary practices that privilege one people and disenfranchise another fit this bill, and may consequently force Israel to be a state for all its citizens: not such a terrible thing in my estimation.
2. No matter how many times people say it, there are those like Noam Wiener who fail time and again to understand or empathize with the refugee issue. They can say the occupation is the source of all evil till they run out of breath, but they must acknowledge that the refugees are also not a “non-entity” and that their existence and plight must be addressed.
To say that Palestinians must recognize Israel and Israeli self-determination is fine. But Israelis must then recognize Palestine and Palestinian self-determination, which includes the self-determination of refugees who were driven from their homes and desire either to return or be given compensation and resettled. Israeli self-determination does not trump its Palestinian counterpart, nor the rights that are essential to this conflict. Jewish nationalism’s desire for a state of its own, in which Jews constitute the majority, cannot justly come at the expense of another people – like white South African society’s (forgive the overuse of this comparison) desire to have an exclusionary state at the expense of the black South African population.
ADDITION:
I am not a spokesperson for BDS but I am going to attempt to reconcile what some people, including Norman Finkelstein, view as a contradiction in the movement’s logic. The argument goes that although the three-tiered platform of BDS sounds benign, together it amounts to the “destruction of Israel.” In my opinion Israel was established at the expense and destruction of Palestinian society, because of the inherent consequences of creating a majority Jewish state on top of what was a country that was populated by a non-Jewish majority. This intrinsic obstacle was rectified by Zionists through the displacement of the majority of Palestinians, forbidding their return and erasing the traces of their society and legacy. What BDS, and the Palestinian cause in general, has always been about is recovering Palestinian rights. Of course this means ending the exclusionary nature of Israel that perpetuates their dispossession and violation of their rights.
WHAT IT DOES NOT NECESSARILY MEAN is that Israelis must lose the full scope of Zionist tenets, which include a return of Jews to their ancestral homeland and the rebirth of Judaism and Jewish life within the context of their origins and spiritual center. Thus many of the social and cultural aspects of Zionism can continue, just not those that come at the expense and oppression of the Palestinian people.
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10 The Guardian
Friday 2 March 2012
Why I met the man who tried to kill me
In 2009, while working in Gaza, Arthur Neslen was attacked on the street by a knife-wielding stranger. Last year, he went back to meet his assailant
Arthur Neslen
Face-time with my would-be murderer: Arthur Neslen meets Khalid (in background) – ‘The only Jews he had ever met were uniformed gunmen who brought with them fears of collaboration, expulsion and death.’ Photographs: Alessio Romenzi for the Guardian
On 26 May 2009, I had finished an interview at the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) headquarters in Gaza City and was taking photographs outside for a book I was writing about Palestinian identity. Visitors to the Strip were few and far between then, especially after the kidnap of the BBC journalist Alan Johnston by Palestinian militants in 2007. I’d worked with Alan at the BBC World Service, and after his abduction I put off going to Gaza for as long as I could. But after his release, and then Israel’s bombing campaign and invasion the following winter, I needed to return. Mental health groups were reporting an epidemic of post-traumatic stress sweeping the Strip that no book about Palestinian identity could ignore.
That day as I crouched, snapping away, a finger tapped my back. I turned and hauled myself up to see a young, trim-bearded man in a red bandanna, smiling from ear to ear. He looked so pleased to see me that I automatically smiled back and said, “Ahlan wa sahlan” (“Greetings”). But the man, whom I will call Khalid, seemed in a trance. Still smiling, he held up a long, red-and-white-handled dagger. Then he unsheathed the blade, raised it above his head and plunged it towards my chest. A split-second of dissonance between the smile and the dagger broke with a jolt as I spun around and sprinted off down the street, yelling for help.
Palestinians are famously welcoming to foreign visitors, sometimes embarrassingly so. But this time, as if in a nightmare, everyone I passed on the street seemed to ripple towards the walls, which were high, ringed with barbed wire and had no doors. In my initial dash, I had got about 10 yards on Khalid, but he was younger than me, determined, and inexorably catching up. After 200 metres, I stopped at a road junction, unable to run farther without exhausting myself beyond any hope of self-defence.
As I shouted and pleaded for help from frightened-looking strangers, a bearded man peeped out from behind a doorway and frantically ushered me into a security compound. From inside, a Hamas policeman in a black uniform barged past me, the door swung shut behind him and two gunshots exploded deafeningly on the street outside. More officers spilled out after him, one offering me his pistol as he went – I declined – and Khalid was quickly overpowered and arrested.
Despite my lack of physical injury, I didn’t sleep well after the attack. Death seemed to be everywhere and I would jump at the sound of a banged door. It felt as if someone had turned up the contrast and colour on the outside world. I feared that Khalid was an al-Qaida-style jihadist, but friends said he had been taken to a psychiatric hospital. So I carried on interviewing psychiatrists, taxi drivers and tunnel engineers, but tried to stay off the streets and began varying my daily routines.
The rumour that Khalid had been released began a week after the attack. Gaza’s Hamas government often let Salafist offenders go, to assuage national-religious sentiments among its members, to convince them it was not going soft on the Islam agenda and to prevent more radical challenges to their authority. But if that also meant that Khalid wasn’t mentally ill, my environment was suddenly more dangerous.
A Gazan journalist I knew went to the psychiatric hospital to inquire about Khalid’s case for a possible story. She was berated by the clinic’s director for her lack of Islamic dress and questioned as to why she was helping a non-Muslim. Khalid had already been freed. For a few days after that, I carried a pair of scissors in my back pocket, in case of another attack. They would not have helped much, but I felt an acute sense of vulnerability.
Hamas had an interest in protecting internationals, and its officers had saved my life. But there was an unpredictable element in the mix. The interior minister, Fathi Hamad, knew that I was Jewish from a disastrous interview the year before, which he had used instead to interrogate me about my motives for not converting to Islam. The cops who arrested Khalid also knew I was Jewish. My statement after the attack had been a straightforward affair, until the translating officer was asked to read my full name from my passport. A long pause followed his recitation of my second name, Isaac. “What?” the chief officer queried, and asked for my name to be repeated. The translator did so, using “Yitzhak” – a Hebraised version of Isaac. A longer and much more uncomfortable silence followed, before the officer asked for my address in Gaza. Shortly after that, two Hamas secret policemen took up a permanent presence in a car outside my apartment. It had never been much of a reassurance, but with Khalid’s release it began to feel sinister.
When the border crossing at Erez reopened a few days later, I made a beeline for the exit, my interviews unfinished, never expecting to return. But the question of who Khalid was, and what circumstances led him to the UN building that day, stayed with me. It was a bit like walking out of a paranoid Hollywood thriller before the end. My political sympathies were definitively with the Palestinians, but the murder in Gaza of the pro-Palestinian activist Vittorio Arrigoni in April 2011 – apparently by would-be jihadists – demonstrated that this was no guarantee of safety. Khalid’s smiling face was a blank canvas on to which I could project orientalist fears. But I did not want to live like that. And if Khalid was not a Salafi jihadist, I did not need to. So I launched my own inquiry.
Through notes I had taken at the time, and phone calls to people I knew on the Strip, Khalid was eventually located by a friend at the al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights. Khalid was a nationalist, not a jihadist, his family said. He was also a schizophrenic, with a story that put the UNRWA events in a wholly different, and more sympathetic, light. When Khalid’s brother Asad eventually told my friend that Khalid would talk to me in a controlled environment, at his home, I agreed, despite my fears.
Arthur Neslen on Al-Azhar Road, Gaza, scene of Khalid’s attack on him.
Gaza is situated within hermetically sealed borders that are just 8km by 22km. Within that, 95% of private sector industry has shut down, official unemployment runs at 45% and four out of five people exist on UN food aid. Walking into the Strip through Erez and its 200 yards of rubble-strewn no man’s land has a through-the-looking-glass feel to it, a bit like a prison visit. Although I trust my friend’s judgments about the safety of the interview, as Erez’s steel gates clang shut behind me, I am still consumed by fear.
In the taxi to Khalid’s apartment, I stare at passing tenement blocks as though for the last time and feel an overwhelming urge to tell the driver to turn around and head for the border. But sometimes the places of terror and safety are not where they seem, I remind myself. I never invited Khalid into my life but he is there now, and I have a place in his life, too. I tell myself that this is a chance to turn that space into a positive and healing one for both of us. In reality, I have already come too far to turn back.
And so, two and a half years after the attack, I find myself at arm’s-length from a shoeless Khalid. He is smaller than I remember, but still stocky, and clearly disturbed. His eyebrows easily scrunch up like angry seagulls on his pitted brow, but his voice is quiet.
“I was born in Libya in 1982,” he says. “We lived in Benghazi and Tripoli, but we moved a lot. My father was a teacher, so he worked in different countries. We were diaspora refugees.” Khalid was a middle child of eight brothers and sisters. When he was 13, his family returned to the Palestinian territories, hoping for an independent state after the signing of the Oslo Accords.
His first contact with Israeli Jews came when the family arrived at the Allenby bridge crossing between Jordan and the West Bank. “We were separated,” Khalid says. “They took my sister and brother aside, and I think they blackmailed them. They wanted them to do things that the Israelis thought were right – but they were wrong. That was an assault on the family. It was a bad thing that they did.” Asad disputes Khalid’s “blackmail and collaboration” interpretation of events, but even suspicions of treachery in Gaza can be a black mark on a family’s honour.
In Gaza, Khalid found it “a little difficult” to build relationships after leaving his friends in Libya. His family did not have ID cards and every trip they took along Gaza’s north-south Salah ad-Din road was perilous. “If we were captured at a checkpoint, we ran the risk of being deported,” Khalid says, and he runs his hand over his head, agitated. “It wasn’t safe for us at all, so we decided to move again.”
As the 1990s dragged on, Khalid became politicised by the second intifada – an uprising for Palestinian statehood that began in September 2000 – and increasingly withdrawn. “I finished my secondary education, and went to university [the Al-Azhar University, 100m from the UNRWA building],” he says, knitting his fingers into a cat’s cradle. But he dropped out after two years. “I could just see more destruction and murder of Palestinians.”
Khalid’s unaligned political beliefs took on a religious tinge, even if his own prayer patterns were fitful. His primary political motivation was to recover all of pre-1948 Palestine. “I always liked fighting the occupation,” he tells me with bravado.
What is the best strategy, I ask.
“Jihad,” he replies instantly and flashes me an eye-to-eye stare. “The best way is through jihad, as the prophet Muhammad ordered all Muslims to do when non-Muslims occupy Muslim land.” Still, he could be friends with non-Muslims, he says, “so long as they are not bad people who have come here to launch wars or hurt people”.
In Khalid’s bare salon, a young cousin appears with a tray of hot mint tea, and I notice a wreath of funereal-looking flowers in one corner. Tell me about what happened to you during Operation Cast Lead, the 2009 invasion, I ask him.
“On the first day, there were attacks across Gaza and I saw martyrs falling everywhere, including good people who fought the occupation,” Khalid replies. As the bombing increased and the death toll rose, he heard a despairing Gazan on TV pleading for ambulances and political acts of help. When the Israelis came to a nearby neighbourhood on 12 January, “I thought that I must go there and ask them to stop their escalation. The soldiers pointed their guns at me and ordered me to strip. They handcuffed me so tightly that my wrists bled for an entire day. Then they put me inside the entrance of a house they were controlling so that every soldier who entered or left could hit me. They constantly swore, saying bad things about my family, and they beat me with their boots and rifle butts.”
His arresting officer wouldn’t let him eat or rest. “He made me stand near a window for two or three hours,” Khalid says. “I was handcuffed and blindfolded, and I could hear very loud shooting from nearby. I was all the time standing there, and the officer was shooting from behind me.”
In the district where Khalid was held, there were widespread accusations of the use of “human shields” – one such incident, three days after Khalid’s arrest, led (unusually) to a conviction in an Israeli court – but Israel’s policy of preventing Gazans from leaving the Strip to file lawsuits or give evidence against their army prevented Khalid from taking his case any further.
He remembers being forced by soldiers to march the next day, still blindfolded and handcuffed, and in a state of fear and exhaustion. He was then interrogated, and driven in an armoured vehicle to a detention camp. A pattern of questioning, strip searches, violence and humiliations ensued while he was dragged through Israel’s military and judicial system. “I mostly remember being beaten by many people, on the way to court, even once in the court,” Khalid recalls, pulling at his fingers. “While I was asked questions, I was beaten. When they told me to take my clothes off, I was beaten.”
After one interrogation, he remembers signing a statement written by his jailers in Hebrew, a language he does not understand. Finally, in March 2009, he was taken back to the labyrinthine Erez border terminal and pushed through its metallic corridors into a Gaza that was by then 20% rubble. Two months later, I met him in Gaza City.
An Israeli justice ministry spokesperson confirmed the dates of Khalid’s detention and release, and place of arrest. “During his investigation in the field by the IDF, he noted that he was active in Hamas and that he intended to perpetrate a suicide attack,” their statement says, adding that no charges were ever filed against him.
How did he come to be outside the UNRWA building in May 2009? “I left home and went to the university that day,” Khalid begins, blankly. “I waited for two hours with the knife. I saw foreigners in Jeeps, and I thought these were people who were participating in wars against us.” UNRWA’s employees are forbidden to walk Gaza’s streets and must travel in armoured Land Rovers.
One of the things that helped me get over the attack, I told him, was knowing that he never stabbed me in the back when he had the chance. Khalid clucks his tongue. “I was very cautious to make sure that I didn’t do something wrong,” he says. “I was waiting for somebody who was part of the wars against us, and I saw this man with a camera.
“I approached him very closely,” Khalid goes on, “to make sure that this was a person who had hurt us. When I pulled the knife, he ran away. I didn’t want to warn him. I wanted to see that this was a person who was fighting against us. The person ran away and was crying, ‘Help, help, help’ and there were men who fired in the air and took the knife from me and took me to the police station. Maybe it was you?”
Since my barmitzvah, I had never felt that I looked particularly Jewish. At school in east London in the early 1980s, I was frightened that appearing Jewish would make me a target for attack. More than once, it did. Still, I never denied being Jewish and fought my corner when faced with violent antisemites. But I cannot see Khalid as one of those. What was it about me that made him think I was one of the people fighting against the Palestinians?
“I don’t know,” Khalid replies, exasperated. “It was strange, because usually these people are in cars and this man was walking. But the people who attack us are many – too many – and there is nothing we can do but to fight them back.”
From beyond the window, a ghostly wail is seeping out of a mosque. “There was another incident on the anniversary of the war last year,” Khalid continues coldly. “There was a big gathering. I went there with my knives. I saw a foreigner. I approached him. I stabbed him. The knife was weak and it broke. He didn’t die. They arrested me again and then they released me the same day.”
Asad later tells me that Khalid’s description of the second incident was exaggerated, and that he had been arrested after acting aggressively and trying to hit the man.
As frightening as Khalid’s words are, I do not react. Throughout our conversation, I have consciously tried to calm any tension by slowing my speech, lowering my tone, avoiding any outward sign of emotion. “The most important thing is that nobody told me that these people did not launch wars against the Palestinians,” Khalid says. “Since then, I have understood that they did not and things have been better. There are solidarity people who come here to help. If they didn’t hurt Palestinians, I would, of course, be happy to work with them and be friends.”
At this, I lean forward and we embrace. As we do, I feel my shoulder blades instinctively tense. I realise that I don’t actually know how I feel towards Khalid. His initial justification to the police after the attack on me had been that he thought I was “a Yahud [Jew] who had come to steal Palestinian land”. Perhaps it was a plea for extenuating circumstances. The only Jews he had ever met were uniformed gunmen who brought with them fears of collaboration, expulsion and death.
I do not request an apology and none is offered. Khalid has been a diagnosed schizophrenic since 2007 and, Asad says, had never behaved violently before he was arrested during Operation Cast Lead. I can appreciate that his attempt to kill me was nothing personal.
His words are often ambiguous and our reconciliation has been as spartan as his family’s apartment, but at least I have an explanation, and that helps a lot. Khalid has a human face to me again, and I hope that he feels the same way, too. The chain of trauma that linked us has been acknowledged, if not broken. I wish only that I could have told him that I was Jewish.