The ICJ advisory opinion, one of the most important legal opinions on the question of Palestine and international peace and security in the region since the United Nations assumed responsibility for the future of the country in 1947, presents a clear alternative to the status quo � i.e., the Oslo process, the international Road Map, the Sharon disengagement plan, and, the April 2004 US letter of assurance to Israel. International law provides the foundation for this alternative. The legal opinion rendered by the ICJ lays out the �driving rules� or universal standards for resolving the conflict. Read more about The International Court and the Wall: An Alternative Road Map
Regular EI contributor Hasan Abu Nimah was a member of the joint Jordanian-Palestinian delegation at the Washington peace talks in the early 1990s, and he was present when the Jordan-Israel peace treaty was signed ten years ago. He argues that Israel views this treaty, like other agreements, as a tool to strengthen itself at the expense of its neighbours, and has squandered the chance for genuine peace. On the sombre 10th anniversary of the treaty, Israelis should ask their leaders why they never missed an opportunity to miss all the opportunities for peace that their neighbours have repeatedly offered them. Read more about Peace with Jordan: Another opportunity missed by Israel
Does the death of an Arab weigh the same as that of a US or Israeli citizen? The Israeli army, with utter impunity, has killed more unarmed Palestinian civilians since September 2000 than the number of people who died on September 11, 2001. In conducting 238 extrajudicial executions the army has also killed 186 bystanders (including 26 women and 39 children). Two thirds of the 621 children (two thirds under 15 years) killed at checkpoints, in the street, on the way to school, in their homes, died from small arms fire, directed in over half of cases to the head, neck and chest—the sniper’s wound. Clearly, soldiers are routinely authorised to shoot to kill children in situations of minimal or no threat. These statistics attract far less publicity than suicide bombings, atrocious though these are too. Derek Summerfield comments. Read more about Palestine: the assault on health and other war crimes
As usual, there has been a disproportionate and unbalanced reaction to recent and ongoing violence in our region. EI contributor Hasan Abu Nimah looks at the media, official and UN reactions to Israel’s massacres in Gaza and US attacks in Iraq on the one hand, and the Taba bombings and attacks on westerners in Iraq on the other. More and more we see a world in which those who possess high-tech weaponry and uniforms are entitled to kill people far from their shores with absolute impunity and call it “self-defence” while those who challenge them in their own streets and villages in any way are labelled “terrorists”. Read more about Double standards that kill
The fourth anniversary of Israel’s violent crackdown on the Palestinian uprising, which coincided with its latest massacre of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, occasioned a number of analyses, many concluding — wishfully — that the Intifada has been “counterproductive” for the Palestinians, or even a “failure.” But EI contributor Hasan Abu Nimah and co-founder Ali Abunimah argue that Israel remains at a strategic dead end, while Palestinians on the ground are unbroken and Israel is far from victory. The is a danger that Israel, unable to escape from this predicament, may seek to spread the conflict to its neighbors. Read more about Judging the Intifada
Today (25 September 2004) is the first anniversary of Edward Said’s death. Time passes by so quickly and hence it seems as if only yesterday we were all reading those touching and insightful obituaries of the man and his philosophy. From brilliant long expositions to short but genuine eulogies, it seems that everything that could be said was candidly presented to those who knew him and the millions who have only heard of him. Such a litany of words should have enabled us to resign to his death, but his absence seems to me still incomprehensible. What would have happened if we still had Edward with us in this last year? Ilan Pappe ponders the question. Read more about One Year Later: Remembering Edward Said
Israel portrays the children of Palestine as terrorists, faceless stone throwers, but due to Israeli policies, it’s highly complex matrix of control, the health, education and overall well-being of the 1.8 million children of Palestine are at severe risk, Adah Kay, Professor at City University, London stated at the UN Conference on Palestine held in New York City in mid-September. Kay co-authored the book Stolen Youth, with Catherine Cook and Adam Hanieh, former staff and volunteers with Defense for Children International. Published in 2004 and subtitled, “The Politics of Israel’s Detention of Palestinian Children,” Stolen Youth is the first book to explore Israel’s incarceration of Palestinian children based on first-hand information from international human rights groups and NGO workers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Read more about The future of Palestine's children and society at risk
As new Labour, the Liberal Democrats, and the Tories prepare for their party political conferences in Bournemouth and Brighton in the coming weeks, Palestinians from Balata to Beit Jibrin will be locked up in their homes and refugee camps for the fourth consecutive year. Against this background, occasional EI correspondent Victor Kattan interviewed Afif Safieh, the Palestinian General-Delegate to the UK and the Holy See - a sophisticated and suave chain-smoker - who invariably describes himself as a diplomat, a democrat, a political scientist and an observer of the British domestic political scene. Read more about Interview with Afif Safieh, Palestinian General-Delegate to the UK and the Holy See
The recent visit of Mohandas K. Gandhi’s grandson, Arun Gandhi, to Palestine has sparked new discussion about the role of nonviolence in the Palestinian struggle for freedom. In a speech before the Palestinian Legislative Council, Gandhi called upon 50,000 Palestinian refugees to march back home en masse from their exile in Jordan, forcing the Israelis to choose between relenting to a wave of people power, or gunning the marchers down in cold blood. EI co-founder Ali Abunimah sorts the genuine efforts to energize the struggle with non-violent tactics from the spurious ones designed to shift the blame from the occupier to the occupied. Read more about The myth of Gandhi and Palestinian reality
The bright red letters stand out starkly against the ugly grey cement. The wall that is slicing through East Jerusalem is some thirty feet high, but casts its shadow for miles. There is little the Palestinians hemmed in on both sides of the wall can do to oppose it. So, the wall is dotted with marks where rocks have been thrown at it in anger, and covered with graffiti. Some graffiti writers ask if the builder of this wall can be a “man of peace”. Some ask how a people whose history is full of ghettos can now be building one. And someone decided to remind us all, in those blood-red letters, that it was “Paid by USA”. Read more about The writing on the wall