Sharon’s unilateral “disengagement” plan from Gaza does not seem to bode well for the future of the economy of the Gaza Strip. A careful reflection on the economic ramifications of what the plan has to offer will lead to this unfortunate outcome. The formidable challenge facing all concerned parties is how to make the Israeli pullout from Gaza, if and when it happens, a success to be emulated in other parts of the Palestinian occupied territories, and not a blunder to be regretted later on. Dr. Mohammed El-Samhouri, a senior economic advisor to the Palestinian Minister of Foreign Affairs, examines the plan. Read more about Gaza Disengagement Plan: An Economist's Viewpoint
US President George W. Bush set out his vision for the Middle East in a speech he gave in the Rose Garden on 24 June 2002. The problem with his vision is that it keeps changing, writes Victor Kattan, a correspondent for Arab Media Watch who covered the oral pleadings which took place before the International Court of Justice in The Hague in February 2004. He is the author of “The Right of Return Revisited”, which will be published in a forthcoming edition of the Mediterranean Journal of Human Rights. Read more about The President's Vision: Development Under Occupation
In a few months, the International Court will conclude its deliberations on the wall that Israeli constructs on Palestinian land. It has long been claimed that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is a political problem and that the solution is a political solution. However, what the Palestinians have been witnessing since 1967 is land grab and settlements expansion done through “legal” means, when in fact the law was always abused to satisfy Israel’s expansionist whims. Azem Bishara, a legal expert, argues that an advisory opinion will reverse that process with an authoritative statement on basic legal issues that have been long disputed by Israel. Read more about The Wall and the Court: Replacing Politics with Law
At a time when the Western world worries about weapons of mass destruction in terrorist hands, a more basic device has emerged as the weapon of choice - a life itself. This use of life as a weapon - now exercised mainly by Islamic youths - is frequently presented as the manifestation of Islamic fanaticism. But studies by serious scholars and recent surveys show that the spate of suicide attacks in the Middle East is linked more to politics than to religion. Riaz Hassan, a professor of sociology at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia, examines recent studies on the subject. Read more about Suicide bombers driven more by politics than religious fundamentalism
Biddu is a beautiful Palestinian village, surrounded with vines and fruit orchards, a few miles to the east of the Israeli border of 1967. In the last couple of months, the village, that has lived in peace with its Israeli neighbors even during the present Intifada, has become yet another symbol in the history of Israel/Palestine. The misfortune of this village is that its lands, as well as the lands of the other small Palestinian villages nearby, border the “Jerusalem corridor” - a sequence of Israeli neighborhoods to the North of Jerusalem. Israeli control of this land would enable territorial continuity “clean of Palestinians” from this corridor to the settlement of Givat Zeev, built deep inside the occupied West Bank, close to Ramallah. Read more about Biddu: The struggle against the Wall
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s recent statements on the situation in Palestine confirm that under his weak leadership the United Nations will have no role in resolving the conflict or protecting its victims. Rather, he has aligned himself with the logic that Palestinians, uniquely, must earn from their oppressors the basic human rights that for all other people are inherent. EI’s Ali Abunimah examines how Annan’s pro-Israel record has discredited the UN, and helped create an atmosphere in which Israeli war crimes are tolerated. Read more about Kofi Annan's pro-Israel policy discredits the UN
“A few weeks ago, I registered online for the 2004 Israel Solidarity Day featuring the Walk With Israel, sponsored by the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago (JUF)…because I wanted to get on the JUF mailing list, then forgot all about it,” writes EI co-founder Ali Abunimah. So imagine how surprised Abunimah was when a few days before the event received a personal letter from Mr. Jay Tcath, the director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago informing him he was banned! Here is the story, and the exchange of letters between Tcath and Abunimah. Read more about EI's Ali Abunimah banned by Chicago Zionist organization
“Arafat is filthy swine, there is no Palestine,” and “Thank you for killing my cousins in Israel,” were some of the more polite slogans shouted at EI’s Ali Abunimah and Benjamin Doherty and me as we protested silently at the annual “Walk With Israel” on Chicago’s lakefront today on May 6, 2001. Abunimah tells a story of how Chicago’s leading Zionist organization met peaceful free speech with threats of violence, abuse and an effort to limit the constitutional right to free speech on public property. Read more about Spat upon, threatened, we stood for Palestine
Two weeks ago, Sharon met George Bush to discuss his plan for the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip. On the face of it, this could have been welcomed as a major first step towards peace, that is, if it was not linked with a further intention to retain most of the major settlements in the occupied territories on the West Bank. Adri Nieuwhof and Jeff Handmaker argue that up until now, the European Union has failed to use the means it has at its disposal to enforce respect for international law and human rights. The EU must no longer take the middle ground, merely limiting its role to expressing support for the peace process. They cannot claim that the peace process needs time. In fact, there is no peace process and no time left: we are at the point of no return. Read more about Sharon’s violent policy, a point of no return for the European Union
As a privileged young Israeli, Mordechai Vanunu took a risk and exposed Israel for operating an illegal nuclear weapons programme. While the rest of the world sought to reduce its weapons of mass destruction, Israel was evidently busy stockpiling them. After being illegally abducted from Italy, Vanunu served a sentence of 18 years imprisonment, 12 years of which were in solitary confinement. Now freed by the Israeli government, he leaves behind concrete walls, but will be thrown into a bureaucratic “prison” that denies him basic freedoms. Is this the democratic country in the Middle East that according to its government respects rule of law? Read more about Israel, a country that respects the rule of law?
