Opinion/Editorial

An interview with Ami Ayalon, originally published on 23 December 2001 in French under the title ” L’urgence, c’est de se désengager inconditionnellement des territoires”, in the leading newspaper Le Monde.

I am writing to urge you to take immediate action in response to Israel’s double-arrest and beating today of leading Palestinian human rights activist and physician Dr. Mustafa Barhgouthi.

This past month hundreds of international observers responded to Palestinian calls for an international observer/protection force to protest the ongoing Israeli occupation and serve as witnesses to Israel’s military practices against the Palestinian people.

I am sorry I am sending you best wishes for the New Year rather late. The reason is because I had to spend my New Year night in a detention cell at Tel Aviv’s Lod or Ben Gurion airport. Then I was deported to where I flew from.

While reading “Playing Into Sharon’s Hands” (Jan 25th), one should bear in mind that writer Robert Malley was an advisor on this very conflict in an administration described by more than one Israeli official as the ‘most pro-Israeli in history’. For him to be berating Bush for a lack of even handedness and decisive action is high irony.

Clouds and rain. Lovely low clouds which hide plenty of things, including the mountains, the settlements and the tanks. For a moment you feel as if you are drinking your morning coffee on a piece of isolated, or liberated, dreamland where peace and harmony prevail.

While we have seen peace established with several Arab states, we have yet to see any Israeli commitment to full withdrawal, and many acts on the ground that suggest quite the opposite.

The Israeli gangster regime is continuing Sharon’s declared campaign to kill Palestinians deliberately and cause them as much pain as possible in order to force them to submit quietly to Israel’s military rule.

The following material relates to the extrajudicial killing of Palestinian Mahmoud Salah by a Israeli Border Police unit, on Friday 8 March 2002, in Beit Hanina, Jerusalem.

The Electronic Intifada remains gravely concerned at the ongoing Israeli attacks, which are resulting in the deaths and serious injury of innocent Palestinian civilians, the damage of family homes and property, and the Israeli state intimidation of the Palestinian civilian population with violence.