Jefferson Corner

In the US, people like Dennis Ross, Alan Dershowitz, Elie Weisel are all bent out of shape since Carter”s book ” Palestine, Peace not Apartheid” came out and as expected all simply hate to recognize the fact that the Israeli Occupation is more than apartheid, it is inhuman, cruel and it is clear indication that Israeli society for the most part is really sick. How could any human being accept seeing others going through these 400 check points as if they are livestock. It is too bad the American Jewish community for the most part does not live up to the moral standing that is expected of it, and for the most part remains silent about Israel’s crimes in the Occupied Territories. Mr. Ross, if it looks like apartheid, sound like apperthied and feel like apartheid, then it is apartheid. You and the others like you, might as well admit it. You could not deny that Israel’s Occupation is not only illegal and criminal but is apartheid as well.
Sami Jamil Jadallah, editor

It’s simple apartheid
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/825/op15.htm21-17.12 Al-AhramJust as the US and Europe once opposed apartheid in South Africa, Israel’s discrimination against Palestinians must be similarly exposed and dismantled, writes Jamil Dakwar*
President Jimmy Carter is drawing criticism because his new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, uses the label apartheid to describe Israeli practices in the occupied Palestinian territories. As second-class citizens in their own land, the term “apartheid” often rings truer for Palestinian citizens of Israel than democracy.
Israel’s Jewish majority enjoys a thriving democracy. But Israel’s non-Jewish citizens — nearly 20 per cent of the population — live a different reality. Palestinian citizens of Israel send their children to separate but unequal schools that receive less funding than Jewish schools, they cannot buy land or lease apartments in most Jewish towns, and they must often stand in a separate line at the airport from Jewish people.
While it is in the West Bank and Gaza that the apartheid analogy holds best, in many ways Palestinian citizens of Israel live under an apartheid-like legal regime. More than 20 Israeli laws explicitly privilege Jews over non-Jews, including the law of return that grants automatic citizenship rights to Jews from anywhere in the world upon request, inviting them to settle on land that is not theirs, while denying that same right to Palestinians. Israeli housing and land policies are racially driven. Hundreds of thousands of acres of privately owned land have been expropriated from Palestinians for the establishment of Jewish settlements.
The nationality and entry into Israel law prevents Palestinians from the occupied territories who are married to Palestinian citizens of Israel from gaining residency or citizenship status. The law forces thousands of Palestinian citizens of Israel to either leave Israel or live apart from their families.
Israel’s recently appointed deputy prime minister and minister for strategic threats, Avigdor Lieberman, considers Palestinian citizens of Israel to be a “demographic threat”. Over the years, he has advocated ridding Israel of its indigenous Palestinian inhabitants to maintain a Jewish majority. His appointment did not elicit the same outrage as the 1999 victory of Jorg Haider’s Freedom Party in Austria. Back then, Israel re-called its ambassador, Europe threatened Austria with economic sanctions and the US threatened to react swiftly to any expression of racism or anti-Semitism.
In the West Bank, though Palestinians have lived under Israeli rule for 40 years, they have no voice in Israeli politics and very limited recourse to Israel’s legal system. Hundreds of checkpoints impede movement, disrupting, or blocking access to schools, jobs and medical care. As under South Africa’s “pass system”, Palestinians often require permission to travel from one village to the next inside the West Bank. South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu said during a visit to Palestine that the situation was “much like what happened to us black people in South Africa.” At the same time, Israel has constructed a vast road system for the exclusive use of Jewish settlers living illegally in the West Bank. This network of settlements and segregated roads bisects the West Bank, furthering the Palestinians’ isolation and loss of land and property.
Israel’s separation wall/barrier inside the West Bank confiscates Palestinian land and separates Palestinian communities. Dwarfing the Berlin Wall, it serves not solely security, but reaches deep into the West Bank to encompass major illegal Jewish settlements. Palestinians in the West Bank are increasingly penned into ghettoes that resemble the Bantustans of apartheid South Africa.
Meanwhile, Israel “withdrew” from Gaza more than a year ago, but it continues to control Gaza’s borders, airspace and coastline and continues military strikes and operations inside Gaza at will. Determining everything that gets in or out, it has turned Gaza into the world’s largest open-air prison.
Though it took decades, the world (with the exception of Israel) united against the South African apartheid regime and demanded equal rights for all of that country’s citizens. This same standard should be applied to Israel immediately. The discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel and the oppression of Palestinians in the occupied territories, as well as disinherited Palestinian refugees, demands a comprehensive solution based on international law and equal rights regardless of race, religion or ethnicity.
The United States and the EU have a pivotal role to play. The US State Department and the EU have repeatedly documented Israel’s discriminatory practices. Yet while the Bush administration and the EU demanded that Palestinians under occupation develop democratic systems, no pressure has been applied to Israel to reform its exclusivist democracy for Jews to include all citizens of Israel, including 20 per cent of its citizens who are Palestinians. It is time the US and the EU hold Israel to account by making its massive economic and military aid contingent upon Israel abandoning its discriminatory policies. Americans and Europeans shunned apartheid once. It is time to do it again.
* The writer is a formerly senior lawyer with Adalah, the legal Centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel

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The other day after dinner, a number of us, Palestinian-Americans sat at the table to get feed back from one of our good friends who arrived the same day from Ramallah. Of course the subject of the discussions ranged from the armed skirmishes taking place between Fatah and Hamas and Mahmoud Abbas calls for new elections and of course the ever lingering issue of corruptions and cleaning up the Palestinian Authority and the freezing of the Fatah militias and its warlords.
The discussions were quite frank and open with no reservations and our good friend whom we have known for sometimes was also quite open and very frank and quite objectives in addition to being well informed.
Of course and as always, I spoke my mind and was quite frank in my criticism of both Fatah and Hamas, both of which have narrow interest and do not represent or put forwards what is best for the Palestinians. Hamas, sad to say did not live up to the expectation, even though it was handicapped right out of the gate and did not take advantage of its sweep in the election to offer a good solid alternative to the corrupt and incompetent Fatah. Hamas made the fatal mistake of not coming out with its “peace plan” and in support of the Arab Peace Plan, and instead put itself in the corner by getting directions and instructions from Khalid Mishal who is not elected by any one and who gets his instructions from Damascus, which over the last 40 years did not do the Palestinian people much favors. Hamas behaved as if it continues to run small NGO and is not a government that has to take care of every thing from education to garbage collections to providing public security.
Fatah on the other hand did not and will not change at long as the decisions are in the hands of the old guards who proved they are, not only corrupt but a total failure and as long as the decision is also in the hands of warlords and those who became very rich from racketeering, protection money and selling cement to build the Israeli War.
Between a wall and a hard stone sits President Mahmoud Abbas who was elected on a “Peace Plan” by the overwhelming majority of the people. Even Hamas was elected not because of its ‘war plans” but as an alternative to Fatah and in the absence of any “liberation” plans. I did agree with my friend that the Hamas was elected as a majority in the parliament, but once selected to form the government must be committed to carry out the president program and not its own agenda, letting the parliament decide on major legalisations. I also agreed with my friend, the only way out of this deadlock and impasse is a new presidential and parliamentary elections. The situation on the ground does not stand a Hamas government, that is unable or unwilling to address the daily issues of the people and one that does not advance a peace plan, having tried a ‘war” plans for the last 40 years and it failed. Abbas is right in calling a new election and must not only call for new elections, but must set a date not later than 120 days from the date he submit his resignation and 120 days from dissolving the parliament. The Palestinians people could not stand to have a Hamas government that gets its instructions from Damascus and could not afford a government that does not go along and show strong an unequivocal support for the King Abdallah’ Peace Plan. Equally important in all of this is giving the opportunity to the Palestinians in the Diaspora, who form a “ majority” to have a say so in what is going on and who must have a voice and participate in the decision to move forward with peace. The PLO as an organization no longer serves the purpose and is no longer the right mechanism for the Palestinians. More important, the PLO was never elected by the people and its executives are nothing but old bags whose time has come to retire to the farm and whose executives are at best parasites that serve no good purpose. President Abbas has a once in life opportunity to rise above the partisan level and has a chance to prove that he is the president of all the people and not as head of Fatah. He must prove to the people that he has what it takes in courage, vision, and commitment to peace to take the people out of the mess they are in. He also must take the decision to clean the place up, clean it from all the thugs, warlords, and corruption mafia of his Fatah and must clean and get rid of all of the militias out there and give them alternative and productive job. He also has to get rid of a number of key people around him who are nothing more than incompetent parasites and warlords. His strength is not Fatah men, but the average citizen who is looking for a leader to stand up to the occasion and deliver independence and liberation. Removing some 30 checks points out of 400 is not enough. The people want liberation and an end to the occupation. Let us see if President Abbas live up to the expectation and prove he is the president of all the people. Hamas must accept its failure and agree to go back to the people and not cling to power for the next 3 years. Until the people elect Khalid Mishal he should not make the decisions.

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