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ContentsVOLUME 8 NUMBER 2 SPRING 2006RABI AL-THANI 1427

Editorial 3

Surviving on the Margins: Life Stories of Palestinian

Refugee Women in Lebanon 5MARIA HOLT

Human Rights Violations, War Crimes and Crimes

Against Humanity – Why an Economic Boycott

of Israel is Justified 15PROFESSOR NORMAN G. FINKELSTIEN

An Obligation to Act 19HILARY WISE

Ariel Sharon: A Napoleon, Made in Israel 23URI AVNERY

Settlements in Jerusalem 27MAZEN NUSEIBAH

Waqf – The Eternal Legacy 35

BOOK REVIEW 39

Landscapes of the Jihad

by Faisal DevjiRVIEWED BY ISMAIL PATEL

Britain, The Hashemites and Arab Rule, 1920-1925:

The Sherifian Solution

by Timothy J. ParisRVIEWED BY ANTHONY MCROY

The Modern Middle East

by Ilan PappeREVIEWED BY ANTHONY MCROY

Catastrophe Remembered: Palestine, Israel and

The International Refugees; Essays in Memory of

Edward Said

by Nur MasalhaREVIEWED BY ANTHONY MCROY

Bethlehem Besieged: Stories of Hope in Times of Trouble

by Mitrir RahebREVIEWED BY SAMUEL JACOB KURUVILLA

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To Allah belongs the East and the West, wherever you

turn, there is the presence of Allah. For Allah is All-

Embracing, All-Knowing.

May Allah’s blessings be upon all His Prophets from Adam

to His final Messenger, Muhammad (saw).

In January 2006, the Palestinians called the Americanand European bluff by participating in the widelyacclaimed, fair and transparent elections. The occupiedpeople of Palestine elected a new government despiteall the odds being stacked heavily against them. Israel’soccupation policies and imposition of voting restrictionswere intended to bar any meaningful election results, withthe Israeli choice of Fatah the only ‘acceptable’ option.However, in droves, Palestinians voted out the old regimewith its decay and corruption, bringing in the new bloodof Hamas, which has spend years serving Palestinians atthe grass roots.

The impact of the results still reverberate weeks andmonths afters their initial upshot. The most gallingresponse from some of Israel’s allies was a rejection ofthe results, as democratic as they were, on the basis thatHamas is not viewed as an acceptable choice to them.Ironically, these are the same nations and governmentsthat espouse democracy as a mark of civilisation and aconcept that they would die for. The Palestinian exampleserves as a reminder that to these nations, it seemsdemocracy outside their borders is subject to theirpolitical interest.

For Hamas, the reigns of power will not be easy tocommand. The first parliamentary session broke downinto a commotion with Fatah officials deserting theroom in protest. A sign that many bridges need to bebuilt within the new Palestinian Authority and trust andrespect for each other is the highest target to be

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E D I T O R I A L

achieved. Unless there is a show of unity, the externalsuppression of funds and aid will make an alreadydifficult task impossible. Israel is withholding vital taxfunds, and the US and EU have followed suit witheconomic aid on the condition that Hamas ‘renounceviolence’ and recognise Israel. The demand by Israelthat Hamas ‘renounce violence’ is a contradiction interms. Israel is the state that has established itself onviolence, persisted in an illegal occupation, refused toapply Geneva Conventions to an occupied people,illegally annexed land, imposed numerous restrictionsand punishments amounting to war crimes; and yet itdemands that the Palestinians give up their legitimateand internationally recognised right to self-defence andresisting occupation. The paradox is clear, and Hamashas thus far shown a steely resolve against conceding toIsraeli demands.

It is apparent that the ordinary people of Palestinewill be the ones who once again suffer in this politicalstand-off, and in recognition of this, the EU took thesteps of releasing funds for aid which would be directedby other than the PA. But what does this mean for thefuture of Palestinians? The PA is recognising its friendsand allies, and relying increasingly on its Arab neighboursfor financial support. For the West, this is a catastrophein the making, as it is States such as Iran and Syria whoare the most sympathetic to the Palestinians cause.However, a sharp signal to Washington came from itsallies in Saudi Arabia who refused to abandon the PAdespite a highly publicised tour of the region by theSecretary of State Condoleezza Rice. This unwillingnessto ditch the Palestinians was unexpected, yet belies theexasperation in the political realms of the Muslim worldwith Western policies regarding Israel. Even they are nowrefusing to tow the line.

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A YOUTH EXCHANGE PROGRAMME WITH

AN NAJAH NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, NABLUS, PALESTINE

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Dr Maria Holt*

Surviving on The Margins: Life Stories

of Palestininan Refugee Women in

Lebanon

For Palestinians, 1948 is mourned as theyear when “Palestine ceased to exist. Itlost its name, it lost its territory, and it

lost many of its people”.1 It was the year ofal-Nakbah (the catastrophe), in which the stateof Israel was established in a large part of theformer British Mandate territory of Palestine,and as many as one million Palestinians fled toneighbouring countries, just across the bordersfrom their homeland. Approximately 100,0002

travelled north into Lebanon, where theywaited to return home. But 57 years havepassed and they are still waiting.

Today the majority of Palestinians living inLebanon, despite their determination topreserve their identity as “an integral unity ofland and people”,3 remain stranded on thefringes of their former land and have fewtangible connections with it. Nonetheless, therefugee community, and particularly thewomen of the community, has sought toinspire in successive generations a powerfulsense of what it means to be Palestinian. Askany Palestinian child, born and raised in aLebanese camp, where “home” is and he orshe will name “their” village in Palestine andinsist upon their right to return to it. But,beyond their shared sense of being a nation, akey element of Palestinian identity in Lebanonis marginalization, both in the sense of livingon the borders of their homeland and ofbeing marginalized by the state in which theytemporarily reside.

Anyone who becomes acquainted with thesituation of Palestinian refugees in Lebanonwill reach the conclusion that it is hopeless,and that there is little that can be done. In myview, it is necessary to look beyond perceptions

of hopelessness and to appreciate theunique community that has emerged inresponse to exile, violence and despair; toconsider, in Edward Said’s words, the“transition from being in exile to becoming

Palestinian once again”.4

In this article, I will explore howPalestinians’ experiences in exile have shapedtheir identity and their outlook in the early21st century, and enabled them to become

Palestinian again. I am interested inunderstanding how being – but notbelonging – in Lebanon has influencedrefugees’ perceptions of themselves. Myarticle will focus on refugee women andwill ask what impact “living on the margins”has had on their development. By listeningto the life stories of women living in thecamps of Lebanon,5 I will investigatewhether women’s sense of “Palestinian-ness” differs from men’s, what impact theirliving experiences in Lebanon have had ontheir current state of mind, and whatsolutions they envisage for a more tolerablefuture.

Outside the interior

“Every direct route to the interior, and

consequently the interior itself, is either

blocked or pre-empted. The most we can hope

for is to find margins – normally neglected

surfaces and relatively isolated, irregularly

placed spots – on which to put ourselves”.6

Even after over half a century,Palestinian refugees who reside outside theborders of Palestine,7 whatever their status

* DR MARIA HOLT is a Research Fellow in the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University ofWestminster. She has been researching and writing about Palestinian women, both in the occupied territoriesand in Lebanon, for many years. Her PhD compared the effects of violent conflict on Shi’i and Palestinianwomen in Lebanon. She is currently working on an AHRC-funded project about the experiences of Palestinianrefugee women in Lebanon, in terms of memory, identity and change. This article is based on a paper presentedat the “Borders and Borderlands” conference, Corfu, September 2005.

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or individual circumstances, are still regardedas “strangers” and continue to regardthemselves – first and foremost – asPalestinians. But it is an identity characterizedby contradictions. On one level are memoriesof Palestine, which have been handed downthrough generations and, to some extent,mythologized as, for example, in the followingaccount: “We were living in Alama, in thecountry, amongst the plantations and the olivetrees. There was bounty all around. Amongstthe blossoms, the orange blossoms. Oh, howbeautiful it was”.8

On another level, the idealization of thelost homeland contrasts with an everyday lifeof violence and impoverishment, as expressedin the anguish of an elderly woman living inAin el-Hilweh camp in southern Lebanon, whoasked “how she should explain to hergrandchildren, who had known only the stenchof the camp’s open sewers, what it was liketo wake up to the scent of fresh lemons”.9

The violence of traumatic upheaval cannotbe underestimated. Bereft of place, people“become homeless in at least three existentialsenses. First, they suffer the angst of beingdislodged from their most enduringattachments and familiar places. This iscompounded by being beset, chronically, byproblems of adjusting to new surroundings.Second, they also suffer banishment and thestigma of being outcasts… Finally…they areimpelled by an urge to reassemble a damagedidentity and a broken history”.10

This raises the question of the particularmeanings of “identity” for Palestinian womenin exile, and how these sometimes conflict witheach other. The first focuses on “genderidentity” which, as Skjelsbaek argues, is“negotiable… Masculinity and femininity arenegotiated interpretations of what it means to bea man or a woman. These interpretationsdetermine male and female actions, behaviour,perceptions and rationality”.11 Recognition ofour “identity”, according to Arneil, “is to makeexplicit where we exist, historically, culturally,geographically”.12 It is likely that refugeewomen experience difficulties negotiatingbetween a consciousness of “gender identity”and traditional notions of being a woman ina largely male-dominated environment where,as Steans notes, the “desire to achieve changesin the position of women can easily beportrayed as a betrayal of culture or nationalidentity”.13

A second strand of identity, and one thatis arguably given more weight, is that of beingpart of a larger Palestinian Diaspora. This

identity is characterized by “continuingattachment to the notion of Palestine, thecollective loss and trauma of exile, theoutrage over the injustice of dispossessionand mis-recognition, the idea of return, andthe concept and practice of resistance”.14

It emphasizes “the sacredness of ‘theCause’ and the importance of sacrifice forthe homeland”.15 It is expressed in grass-roots commemorations of life in Palestineand “becomes for subsequent generationsnot merely a narrative or practice ofremembering and reconstructing, but thebasis of their political identity and themotivation for their political mobilization”.16

For Nabulsi, “identity is basedexclusively on the general will” of thePalestinian people, wherever they are.17

However, while they claim to be a single“nation”, possessing certain characteristicsin common, Palestinian exile communitiesthroughout the Middle East have alsoevolved into unique entities, stemmingfrom “different senses of what it meansto be Palestinian engendered by more thanforty years of dislocation and dispersion”.18

A third strand of identity can be locatedin the conflict between the nationalnarrative of determination and resistance,and the complex reality of everyday life inthe various sites of exile.This can lead, onoccasion, to what may be described as“proclaimed” memory. Sometimes therefugees relate their memories not in orderto paint a true picture of the past but eitherto proclaim their shared story of nationalsuffering or to put a stop to intrusivequestioning. While individual refugees mayexpress certain reservations in private, theyoften prefer to wax “ideological andeloquent, announcing that ‘as a Palestinian,like any other, I long to return no matterwhat the conditions’”.19

Khalili too has noted a dissonancebetween the refugees’ memories and howthe national leadership presents these. Shespeaks of “PLO posters and postcardsfrom the mid-1970s “…brimming withreferences to orange groves, wheat andolive harvests, keys to lost houses,picturesque village architecture, andtraditional dress”.20 Palestinians “wentthrough the trauma”21 of becomingrefugees, and those who found themselvesin Lebanon inhabit an insecure and fearfulsituation, the antithesis of home. Theiruprooting is commemorated as a tragicevent, which endowed the refugee

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community with the identity of victim. This,in turn, has produced what Hoffmanndescribes as “the transmission of traumaticexperiences across generations”.22

It is clear that women and men share aloyalty to the larger story of “Palestine”; asSayigh observes, “though national struggleinvolves men and women equally, part of thisstruggle is to preserve women’s role inreproducing national culture and morality”.23

At the same time, their responses arecoloured, firstly, by men’s control andpoliticization of the national narrative; and,secondly, by the misery of their currentcircumstances. Although the notion of a“general will” of the Palestinian people tendsto override the “desire to achieve changes inthe position of women”, it has also hadunintended consequences. The bearing andraising of children remains women’s primeresponsibility and, it has been argued, theirmost important contribution to the nationalcause. However, as a result of theirparticipation in the national struggle, manywomen – as I will discuss in the next section –have had the opportunity to access less familiarforms of “gender identity”.

Experiences of exile

“When we had locked the house up my mother

put the key in her pocket and said, ‘I must get

that veranda repaired when we get back’. She

still has the key”.24

The first few years after 1948 were “onesof physical hardship, material deprivation, andpsychological trauma over the loss of kin,homes and country. Conditions at thebeginning were very bad, as one survivordescribes: ‘Seven families to a tent, somefamilies lived in caves. There wasovercrowding and sickness. Many old peopleand children died’”.25

The refugees experienced abruptdislocation from the only homes they had everknown and a new condition of having nothing.This resulted in intense insecurity,bewilderment, a sense of loss and grieving anduncertainty about the future. These formerpeasants were “uprooted” and “felt powerlessin the wake of the sudden loss of control overtheir destiny and an intense frustration overthe inability of any person, institution, orgovernment to remedy their situation”.26

In pre-1948 Palestine women had takenpart, with men, in the struggle against Britishrule. They had a sense of belonging, in terms

both of geography and the routines ofdaily life. But, in Lebanon, besides the lossof their homes and communities, meaningalso disappeared. Women throughout theDiaspora, as Fleishmann notes, “becamecaught up in family and communalsurvival”.27

The refugees sought comfort in thefamiliar rituals of religion and tradition andwomen were usually treated with respectwithin their own communities. However,as Sayigh suggests, a “negative effect ofexile was that, since the Lebaneseenvironment was perceived as alien andaggressive, the entire camp communityfocused on women’s behaviour, condoning‘honour’ crimes and hiding them from theLebanese authorities”.28

She argues that the camps became“moral communities”, wherein thereputation of a family, neighbourhood orwhole camp “would be discussed in termsof the behaviour of its banat (youngunmarried women)”.29 At the same time,women experienced various forms ofviolence. According to one refugee: “I wasa teenager in Beirut when one day I arrivedhome at the camp…to discover that agroup of drunken policemen had forcedtheir way in and beaten up my mother andtwo sisters, apparently for failing toproduce an identity card or UNRWA cardor some other wretched document”.30

They suffered from lack of opportunityand harsh living conditions. One womantold me how she and her family fled overthe border and lived for a time in a villageclose to Palestine. Eventually they movedfurther from the border and established arudimentary camp. The camp grewgradually but, as it was not registered byUNRWA,31 its population had few facilities;residents did not obtain running water until1985.32

Women, like men, continued to mournthe lost homeland. Peteet argues, however,that “the collective nature of loss …affect(ed) the sexes differently. Women’straditional role as socializers of children wasinfused with new significance in the exilecommunity, where a specifically Palestinianidentity was emerging and memories ofthe past were highly valued”.33

Yet, although women assumedresponsibility for keeping alive the memoryof Palestine for successive generations –through songs, food, stories and particularmodes of speech – society remained

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patriarchal. In spite of changing circumstances,most camp families were “hostile to theemployment of women outside the home andpreferred their daughters to marry as soon aspossible after leaving school. Once married,women were seen as being obliged to givepriority to child-rearing and running thehousehold”.34

In the absence of a homeland, Palestiniansin Lebanon sought other meanings. For thegenerations born outside Palestine, “politicalconsciousness is the supreme good, the key tosuccessful struggle”,35 and, in the 1960s, aresistance movement began to develop underthe auspices of the Palestine LiberationOrganization (PLO). Stamatopoulou-Robbinsargues that “the emergence of the Palestiniannational movement resulted in a narrative verydifferent from the stories of the generationsbefore the ‘Generation of the Revolution’ (jilal-thawra)”,36 and this raises the question ofwhether the “new” narrative diminishedwomen’s role as transmitters of Palestinianmemory or empowered them to challengetraditional practices.

The PLO and its commitment to an“armed popular revolution”, together withgreater autonomy within the camps, providedan opportunity for some women to becomepolitically active. There is no doubt that, duringthe period of the resistance movement,women’s status underwent significant change.As a result of UNRWA’s educational services,the majority of girls for the first time had theopportunity to go to school. In addition, the“meaning of work” for women wastransformed during this period as to workbecame “a national endeavour and a statementof women’s increased autonomy andparticipation in public life”.37

One could argue that, for many youngcamp women, the opportunity to contributeto the widely respected “national endeavour”was a form of liberation. A woman inRashidiyya camp in southern Lebanon, forexample, told me how she was raised withinthe PLO. She described herself as “a fighterfor Palestine”, ready to encourage her fivechildren to join the fight and even herself tobecome a “martyr”. She declared that shewould never give up the struggle against Israelbut would fight “to the last woman”.38

Although it would not be accurate todescribe this behaviour as part of a consciousquest for greater “liberation” for women, their“very acts of participating publicly, sometimeseven violently, in the major issues of their day,and transgressing gendered norms of

behaviour constitute feminism”.39 At thesame time, however, the transgression ofboundaries remains difficult for women.A woman in her early fifties told me howher husband, who had been a fighter, waskilled in the first Israeli invasion of thesouth. Only 22 when her husband died andwith a week-old baby, she found life verydifficult. Society, she said, does not lookkindly on widows and cannot accept thata woman might choose to live alone. Shewas not able to re-marry and thereforeprevented from having the large family shehad wanted.40 My research revealed thatmost women continue to see themselvesprimarily in terms of marriage andchildbearing; this is both a personal and apolitical identity.

After the Israeli invasion of 1982, whichresulted in the removal of the PLO fromLebanon, Palestinians – men and women– were beset by feelings of profoundhopelessness; they had struggled to assertwhat they regard as their fundamentalrights, but their efforts have led neither toregaining their homeland nor living indignity. As the women’s narratives illustrate,violence has contributed towards theconstruction of a Palestinian identity inexile. Violence has been described as“nothing more than the most flagrantmanifestation of power”.41

The other side of the coin ispowerlessness. Without the right to live a“normal” life, women are exposed toinadequate health care provisions, feweducational opportunities, a lack of jobseven if a person is educated, highly sub-standard housing, no security about thefuture nor sense of belonging, an absenceof legal protection and the negation ofnational identity, and these are allexperienced, to varying degrees, as formsof violence.

Many women reported healthproblems. A woman in Bourj el Barajnetold me she feels frustrated; she is verydepressed and suffers from badheadaches.42 Another said that, as a resultof the war, she is diabetic and afflicted withhigh blood pressure.43 Many were injuredduring the course of the conflict, causinglong-term disabilities, or have developedillnesses as a result of stress and poverty.The lack of affordable health careexacerbates the situation.

Others allude to the problems ofschooling for their children. Almost all

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bemoan the injustice of their lives in Lebanon.The camps tend to be claustrophobicenvironments, in which a woman mustconstantly guard against threats to herreputation. A woman in Chatila campconfirmed that “women must bear the weightof special scrutiny”.44 In her words, a woman“should be controlled because eyes are fixedon women…she must respect her house, andrespect herself ”.45

A woman official of a politicalorganization told me that, in her view, thegreatest violence experienced by womenrefugees in Lebanon is being forced to liveoutside their own country,46 a sentimentechoed by many of the so-called “ordinary”women of the camps.

Another “political” woman said: “Womenhave lost sons, husbands, and have been forcedto become responsible, but they do not enjoyfull rights because they are women; this isanother form of violence”.47 Not being ableto live on one’s land, said the head of theGeneral Union of Palestinian Women inLebanon, creates feelings of insecurity.Palestinians exist in a constant state of“temporariness”, which has persisted for over50 years; they are condemned always to resistyet never to enjoy the fruits of resistance. Thesuffering of the Palestinian woman, sheasserted, “is because she is deprived of herhumanitarian rights in Lebanon. Women feelthey are living in a place of refuge, which causespsychological problems”.48

Peacemaking and the right of return

“The right of return, but to where? Only to

our homeland, only to our villages. Not to another

place”.49

Clearly, as Rami Khouri remarks, “the singlemost important component of peacemakinghas been and remains today the status of thePalestinian refugees – not how to resettle themor find them jobs, but how to restore to themtheir full human rights and dignity within thecontext of their national community”.50

Having suffered so much and for so long,what do the refugees themselves want?According to a 2003 working paper, the“starting point in crafting durable solutions forrefugees are the wishes of the refugeesthemselves”.51 Many acknowledge they wouldsimply like a place to live which is safe andpermanent. However, a recent poll reveals that,if they had a choice, only ten per cent ofrefugees would opt to stay in Lebanon. The

vast majority said they would prefer to returnto what is now Israel, although they rejectIsraeli citizenship.52 Several women I metechoed this conclusion, asserting that theirobjective is to return to their land where, inthe words of one woman, they can continueto fight “to get rid of the Israelis”.53

The notion of hopelessness, which wasthe starting point of this article, fails to dojustice either to the refugees’ livedexperiences or their aspirations. In thissection, I would like to discuss some ofthe responses that have been advanced toaddress the apparently “hopeless” plight ofthe refugees, resting on a recognition oftheir unique circumstances as a people“bereft of place”. I would also like toconsider the particular impacts of these“solutions” on women. There are severallevels of response.

While it is possible to analyze the currentplight and evolving identity of women, suchdiscussions fail to address the core issue,which is one of return. All Palestinians towhom I spoke in Lebanon, withoutexception, insisted on their moral and legalright to return to the land and villages theywere forced to leave in 1948. Both thePalestinian leadership and individualrefugees cite United Nations Resolution 194of December 1948, which calls for therepatriation of the Palestinian refugees.Although the resolution is reaffirmed everyyear by the General Assembly, Israel refusesto implement it, arguing that mass returnwill destroy the Jewish character of thestate. But scholars such as Salman Abu Sittarbelieve that the impracticality of return is a“persistent myth”.54 He has carried outconsiderable research in this area and arguesthat the concentration of Israeli Jews today“is largely in and around pre-1948 Jewishland and that Palestinian land is still largelyempty”.55 In his view, if the Lebanonrefugees were to return to their homes inGalilee and elsewhere, the impact wouldscarcely be felt by the Israelis.56

Haifa Jamal notes, too, that “theproblem is not geography”.57 But thesolution of return seems increasinglyunlikely since the Israeli government,supported by a growing body of worldopinion, insists that the refugees should nowbe settled in the states where they reside.At best, some of the refugees currently inLebanon may be permitted to take upresidence in a future Palestinian state in theWest Bank and Gaza Strip.

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Another level at which the debate overpossible solutions is taking place is that of thePalestinian Diaspora. At official and personallevels, the link with Palestine and with thecommunity in exile seems to be as strong asever. Many of the women I interviewed inLebanon referred to the West Bank and GazaStrip. A female leader in the south explainedthat “all Palestinians, wherever they are, facethe same suffering. And all consider the causeis their own cause; they are suffering as onepeople”.58 Palestinians in Lebanon today, asSayigh notes, “have not lost sight of nationalissues”.59 In the words of one: “Our firstpriority is to preserve our national identity”.60

Many undertake solidarity activities forPalestinians living under occupation; theycollect money for families in Palestine andorganize marches and demonstrations toexpress their national cohesion.

In addition, live coverage of the al-Aqsa

intifada, which began in the West Bank and GazaStrip in September 2000, “has been a powerfulmechanism for generating solidarity andnationalist sentiment among DiasporaPalestinians”.61 It has created, in the words ofone commentator, “a new Palestinian narrative”.

He writes: “So intense has been thesuffering that the power of the new narrativehas potential to replace the old Palestiniannarrative as the central theme of their collectiveidentity. Since 1948 the Palestiniannarrative…has been one of loss and suffering,of exile and refuge. That is why the refugeeissue and the demand for right of return hasbecome the most fundamental facet of theircollective identity. The narrative being shapedin the past four years is one of heroism, ofstruggle for freedom, liberation andindependence. It is a narrative of the meekagainst the mighty, of resistance anddetermination”.62

The question then arises as to how this“new narrative” can be applied to Palestiniansliving in Lebanon, whose expectations of asatisfactory resolution to the conflict are nothigh. The debate is occurring on two levels:the level of realistic expectation of return andthe level of solidarity with the larger PalestinianDiaspora.

A third level of engagement for exiledPalestinians takes place in the “virtual” world.In a recent article, Diana Allan argues thatyoung Palestinians living in Lebanon are findingnew ways of connecting with the widerPalestinian community, not through storiespassed down through families but throughnew media technologies. Chat rooms and

websites, she says, “have provided campyouth and Palestinians across the Diasporawith virtual spaces in which to meet andshare their experiences”.63

It then becomes possible to be part of alarger Palestinian community withoutinhabiting the same territory. For Hanafi, “anew model of nation state must beconceptualized based on flexible borders,flexible citizenship and some kind ofseparation between the nation and state”.He calls it the “extra-territorial nation state”.64

Peteet suggests that, for refugees, “placeis a lived experience – an elsewhere – that iscarried from one site to another in exile.As it travels, attachment to original placeintersects with new places to nuanceidentity…identity remains territorialized butnot necessarily confined by any single place.It is grounded in specific villages andregions or cities yet de-territorialized andre-territorialized: as identity travels, it is re-configured in new places and takes on newcontours”.65

A fourth consideration in the search fora just solution is the pressing need of therefugees to live in dignity in their place ofexile. The lack of civil rights is high on theagenda for most Palestinians, who insist thatother forms of violence and deprivationstem from this basic condition. In theabsence of a realistic expectation of return,the refugees are entitled to lead a decentlife in Lebanon. But the Lebanesegovernment takes the view that return isthe only option for the refugees and thatgiving them rights in Lebanon wouldabsolve Israel of responsibility.

Advocacy groups such as the PalestinianHuman Rights Organization in Beirut areof the firm opinion that “Palestinians mustbe recognized as refugees, not aliens, andgranted the rights outlined in suchcovenants as the 1951 Geneva Conventionon Refugees and, more broadly, theInternational Covenant on Social,Economic and Cultural Rights”.66

For some Palestinians, there is adetermination to stay where they are. Inthe words of a woman who defendedBeirut with the PLO during the Israeli siegeof 1982: “Most of the people wereevacuated. But in the camps, in Bourj alBarajneh, people stayed to the end. Noexaggeration. For them it was an importantpoint. We left Palestine in 1948. In 1967 ithappened again. Then we left the south.Now we’ve had it. We’re not leaving”.67

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Since many are convinced they will neverbe able to return to Palestine, some of therefugees believe that the only solution is toleave Lebanon for “somewhere better”, forexample Europe, Canada or elsewhere, topursue dreams of a better life. But there aredifferences in this respect between men andwomen. In the opinion of a woman in Bourjel-Barajneh, Palestine is now more importantfor women than for men. Many young men,she said, want to leave Lebanon – this is theirsolution – but the women cannot leave so theyare more attached to their Palestinian identity.68

Conclusion: living on the margins

“We were besieged for five months and the world

said, ̀ Let them be destroyed.’ But insh’allah we

shall remain strong and hold our heads high.

We have a cause. Our goal isn’t Lebanon. If

they offered me the whole of Lebanon, I’d tell

them it’s not equal to one Palestinian olive”.69

Throughout this article, I have tried tomake a balance between, on the one hand, thepain and humiliation of living on the marginsof their land but not being able to return to itand, on the other, the empowering qualitiesof a dynamic identity for women. If we thinkin terms of boundaries and border crossings,it is clear that Palestinian women have gonesome way towards “crossing” into what hastraditionally been defined as male-controlledspace. But the larger border remains, in thesense, firstly, that Palestinians appear no nearerto “crossing back” into their homeland; and,secondly, that the Palestinian Diaspora has notsucceeded in creating a “borderless” entity (a“virtual” nation or deterritorialized state) thatadequately addresses Palestinian aspirations.While Palestinians certainly speak to each otheracross national boundaries, suchcommunication does not constitute a realisticalternative to the national state to whichPalestinians believe they are entitled. While thefact of living so close to the places they regardas home has had a traumatizing effect onwomen it has also encouraged resistance,resilience and alternative modes of being anation. Proximity has affected Palestinianbehaviour since 1948 in terms of, firstly, abelief that armed struggle would liberate theirland and enable them to return; secondly, ofan unsatisfied yearning, nourished by memoryand a sense of injustice; and, thirdly, of variousforms of violence, past and present.

When the Israelis ended their 22-yearoccupation of southern Lebanon in May 2000,

many Palestinians took the opportunity oftravelling to the border so they could finallysee their homeland. A busload ofPalestinians from Rashidiyya camp, makingtheir first visit to the border, weredescribed as “singing and clapping almostall the way”, and then, as they caught sightof their homeland, “there were tears,longing, anger and nostalgia”.70

A group of children living in a campin southern Lebanon “had been to theborder…after the withdrawal of theIsraeli army … They were anxious to goback and see Jerusalem. One of thechildren commented that when theyreturned to Palestine their rights would beguaranteed … One boy said that everyonecalled them ‘Palestinians in Lebanon’, butthat they would rather be called ‘those whowould return’ (aydun)… They all wanted togo back to their homeland”.71

In the early days after they fled or wereuprooted from their homes in Palestine,women played an important role astransmitters of an oral tradition of story-telling. But as time passed, it is likely thatyoung people became less interested inhearing “the old stories”. According to awoman in the south, most Palestinians inLebanon have forgotten Palestine; theyused to tell stories about Palestine but now“everyone is tired of talking”.72 It may bethat, while older people have grown wearywith repeating the old stories, the youngergeneration is no longer listening and hasceased to seek its identity through thetransmission of oral narratives. Witheducation and technological advance, youngpeople are finding other outlets. Refugeesimagine the future in terms of fear andpromise. Women, too, changed. They haveacquired education and skills, and they playedan active role in the resistance movement.These were important developments interms of psychological resilience but theysaw few tangible gains. The patriarchalcharacter of society changed very little andthe hope of victory and return disappearedafter the Israeli invasion of 1982.

As we consider the future forPalestinians in Lebanon, it is difficult notto feel pessimistic. They have moved fullcircle, from desperate exiles torevolutionaries and back again to anunwelcome refugee problem. In theprocess, their identity has passed throughseveral phases. When they first arrived inLebanon, their identity was grounded in

12 Al-Aqsa

the reality of home; their memories werespecific and could be described in concreteterms. The people who had made the journeyto Lebanon told each other stories in ordernot to forget. Then they told their childrenstories; they described homes, villages andlandscapes in loving detail, and younger people,in turn, treasured these memories of what hadbeen forcibly removed from them but whichthey themselves had not experienced; a senseof grievance was nurtured in successivegenerations. Identity became an abstractnotion, connected to a real place but existingin conditions of victimization andbereavement; in Samir Khalaf ’s phrase, it wasa “damaged identity”. Exile was difficult andincreasingly violent, and slowly the refugeesstarted to evolve a new identity based onagency rather than disempowerment.Nowadays, young Palestinians in New York,Beirut and Nablus, who may never share astate or even meet face to face, communicatewith each other through the Internet.

The life stories of Palestinian refugeewomen reveal that violence has inhibited theirability to participate in the national strugglebut, paradoxically, the violent environmentcreated opportunities for greater femaleinvolvement in the reconstruction of meaning.Nonetheless, most of the leaders were andstill are men and many women say they seelittle point participating in politics.

According to a male representative of oneof the political factions: “Since the Palestinianrevolution started, the woman has had animportant role in the struggle, along with theman. She is a mother; she raises her childrento love their country and to sacrifice themselvesfor their homeland. Women are involved inall work – political, social and voluntary work;a few are involved in military work. But thereis no need to carry a gun to be a fighter…There is another role for women in thestruggle: to protest in order to gain civil rightsand the right to return and by supporting theintifada in Palestine”.73

Although Palestinians in Lebanon remaina disempowered community, in terms of civil,political and international rights, they have beenable to restore to the “suffering nation” a senseof self-esteem. Their struggle, although afailure in practical terms, has born fruit in thesense that they have not forgotten their land,they are still just as determined to return to it,and they continue to hand down to theirchildren a strong sense of belonging. In otherwords, they have survived.

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Abu Sitta, Salman, Palestinian Right to Return: Sacred,

Legal and Possible, London: Palestinian ReturnCentre, second revised edition, May 1999.

Allan, Diana, “Mythologising al-Nakba: Narratives,Collective Identity and Cultural Practice amongPalestinian Refugees in Lebanon”, Oral History,Volume 33, No 1, Spring 2005.

Arneil, Barbara, Politics and Feminism , Oxford:Blackwell, 1999.

Arzt, Donna, Refugees into Citizens: Palestinians and

the End of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, New York:Council on Foreign Relations, 1997.

BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian ResidencyRights, ‘Representative Research’ – A Practical

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as Part of a Comprehensive Solution to the Israeli-

Palestinian Conflict, prepared for the IDRCStocktaking Conference on Palestinian Refugees,Ottawa, 18 – 20 June 2003.

Badr, Liana (translated by Samira Kawar), The Eye

of the Mirror, Reading: Garnet Publishing, 1994(original text 1991).

Baskin, Gershon, “Heading toward a new Palestiniannarrative”, Jerusalem Post, 21 February 2005.

Bowman, Glen, “A Country of Words: Conceivingthe Palestinian Nation from the Position ofExile”, in Laclau, Ernesto, editor, The Making of

Political Identities, London: Verso, 1994.

Fleischmann, Ellen L, The Nation and its ‘New Women’:

The Palestinian Women’s Movement 1920 – 1948,Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.

Gilmour, David, Dispossessed: The Ordeal of the

Palestinians, London: Sphere Books, 1980.

Hanafi, Sari, “Opening the Debate on the Right ofReturn”, Middle East Report, 222, Spring 2002.

Hoffmann, Eva, After Such Knowledge: A Mediation on

the Aftermath of the Holocaust, London: Vintage,2005.

Joint Parliamentary Middle East CouncilsCommission of Enquiry – Palestinian Refugees,Right of Return, London, March 2001.

Kadi, Leila S, Basic Political Documents of the Armed

Palestinian Resistance Movement, Beirut: PLOResearch Center, 1969.

Kanafani, Ghassan (translated by HilaryKirkpatrick), Men in the Sun, Washington DC:Three Continents Press, 1978.

Khalaf, Samir, Beirut Reclaimed: Reflections on Urban

Design and the Restoration of Civility, Beirut: Daran-Nahar, 1993.

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Khalili, Laleh, “Grass-Roots Commemorations:Remembering the land in the Camps of Lebanon”,Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol XXXIV, No 1, Autumn2004.

McDowall, David, The Palestinians, London: TheMinority Rights Group, October 1987.

Murphy, Jay, editor, For Palestine, New York & London:Writers & Readers, 1993.

Nabulsi, Karma, “Being Palestinian”, http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/Being_Palestinian.html

Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research,Palestinian Refugee Surveys, Ramallah, 2003,

Palestinian Human Rights Organization, Beirut, Political

and Legal Status of Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon.

Peteet, Julie M, Gender in Crisis: Women and the Palestinian

Resistance Movement, New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1991.

Peteet, Julie, “From Refugees to Minority: Palestiniansin Post-War Lebanon, Middle East Report 200, July –September 1996.

Peteet, Julie M, “Lebanon: Palestinian Refugees in thePost-War Period”, WRITENET Country Papers,December 1997, www.unhcr.ch/refworld/country/writenet/wrilbn.htm

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Sayigh, Rosemary, Too Many Enemies: The Palestinian

Experience in Lebanon, London & New Jersey: ZedBooks, 1994.

Sayigh, Rosemary, “Palestinians in Lebanon: HarshPresent, Uncertain Future”, Journal of Palestine Studies,Vol XXV, No 1, Autumn 1995.

Sayigh, Rosemary, “Remembering Mothers, FormingDaughters: Palestinian Women’s Narratives inRefugee Camps in Lebanon”, in Abdo, Nahla, andLentin, Ronit, editors, Women and the Politics of

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Responses to Political Strife, Basingstoke: MacmillanEducation, 1986.

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Steans, Jill, Gender and International Relations: An

Introduction, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998.

Steger, Manfred B, and Lind, Nancy S, editors,Violence and Its Alternatives, Basingstoke:Macmillan, 1999.

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Zureik, Elia, “Palestinian Refugees Must Be Allowedto Choose”, PLO Negotiations AffairsDepartment.

Notes

1. For more information, visit www.btselem.org.Because of conditions in the PalestinianTerritories, confirmations of deaths often lagbehind their occurrence. Thus, B’Tselem’sstatistics for Palestinian deaths tend to increaseover time. For this reason the numbers onPalestinian deaths in this study slightly exceedthe numbers noted in our previous studies.

2. Richard Curtiss, “The Cost of Israel to USTaxpayers, Washington Report on Middle East

Affairs, Dec. ’97, pp 43-45, http://w w w. w r m e a . c o m / b a c k i s s u e s / 1 2 9 7 /9712043.html

3. For more information about the attack on theLiberty, visit http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/ussliberty.html

4. Assault on the Liberty, James Ennes (RandomHouse 1980; Ballantine 1986; Reintree Press2002), http://www.ussliberty.org.

5. They Dare to Speak Out (Lawrence Hill Books,1989), Paul Findley, p. 161.

6. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/us_ints/ul-commfindings.html

7. http://www.ifamericansknew.org/cur_sit/heroism.html

8. Deborah Sontag, “Suicide Bomber Kills 3Israelis,” New York Times, March 5, 2001; it’sinteresting to see how this situation was reportedelsewhere; for example, the Houston Chronicle

carried Sontag’s story under the headline:“Palestinian suicide bomber kills 3 Israelis:Attack gladdens West Bank mourners as conflictgrows”

9. Neve Gordon & Ruchama Marton, Torture:

Human Rights, Medical Ethics and the Case of Israel,Zed Books, London; See for example, AmnestyInternational Report, “Israel and the OccupiedTerritories: Mass detention in cruel, inhumanand degrading conditions”, May 23, 2002, http:// w e b . a m n e s t y . o r g / l i b r a r y / i n d e x /engmde150742002.

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Human Rights Violations, War Crimes

and Crimes against Humanity –

Why an Economic Boycott of Israel is Justified

Professor Norman G. Finkelstien*

In early January Kristin Halvorsen, current

Norwegian Finance Minister and leader of the

Left Socialist Party (a member of the current

three-party governmental coalition), expressed her

personal and party support for a Norwegian

boycott of Israeli goods and services. Almost

immediately the Israeli ambassador to Norway

protested and Condoleezza Rice threatened

Norway with “serious political consequences” if

Halvorsen’s statement represented the policy of

the current government. Norwegian Foreign

Minister Jonas Gahr Støre then dashed off a

letter to Rice (addressed “Dear Condi”), assuring

her that the Left Socialist Party’s position on an

economic boycott of Israel “has never been and

will never be” the policy of the Norwegian

government. For her part Halvorsen distanced

herself from her previous statements, as top leaders

of the foreign affairs department criticized her

and drew parallels between a boycott of Israeli

goods and the Nazi boycott of Jewish shops.

T he recent proposal that Norwayboycott Israeli goods has provokedpassionate debate. In my view, a

rational examination of this issue would posetwo questions:

1. Do Israeli human rights violationswarrant an economic boycott?

2. Can such a boycott make a meaningfulcontribution toward ending theseviolations?

I would argue that both these questionsshould be answered in the affirmative.Although the subject of many reports byhuman rights organizations, Israel’s real humanrights record in the Occupied PalestinianTerritory is generally not well known abroad.This is primarily due to the formidable publicrelations industry of Israel’s defenders as wellas the effective-ness of their tactics ofintimidation, such as labelling critics of Israelipolicy anti-Semitic.

Yet, it is an incontestable fact that Israelhas committed a broad range of human rights

violations, many rising to the level of warcrimes and crimes against humanity. Theseinclude ‘Illegal Killings’, ‘Torture’ and‘House Demolitions’.

Illegal Killings

Whereas Palestinian suicide attackstargeting Israeli civilians have garneredmuch media attention, Israel’s quantitativelyworse record of killing non-combatants isless well known. According to the mostrecent figures of the Israeli InformationCenter for Human Rights in the OccupiedTerritories (B’Tselem), 3,386 Palestinianshave been killed since September 2000, ofwhom 1,008 were identified as combatants,as opposed to 992 Israelis killed, of whom309 were combatants. This means that threetimes more Palestinians than Israelis havebeen killed and up to three times morePalestinian civilians than Israeli civilians.Israel’s defenders maintain that there’s adifference between targeting civilians andinadvertently killing them. B’Tselemdisputes this:”[W]hen so many civilians havebeen killed and wounded, the lack of intentmakes no difference. Israel remainsresponsible.”

Furthermore, Amnesty Internationalreports that “many” Palestinians have notbeen accidentally killed but “deliberatelytargeted,” while the award-winning NewYork Times journalist Chris Hedges reportsthat Israeli soldiers “entice children like miceinto a trap and murder them for sport.”

Torture

“From 1967,” Amnesty reports, “theIsraeli security services have routinelytortured Palestinian political suspects in theOccupied Territories.” B’Tselem found thateighty-five percent of Palestiniansinterrogated by Israeli security serviceswere subjected to “methods constitutingtorture,” while already a decade ago

16 Al-Aqsa

Human Rights Watch estimated that “thenumber of Palestinians tortured or severelyill-treated” was “in the tens of thousands - anumber that becomes especially significantwhen it is remembered that the universe ofadult and adolescent male Palestinians in theWest Bank and Gaza is under three-quartersof one million.” In 1987 Israel became “theonly country in the world to have effectivelylegalized torture” (Amnesty).

Although the Israeli Supreme Court seemedto ban torture in a 1999 decision, the PublicCommittee Against Torture in Israel reportedin 2003 that Israeli security forces continuedto apply torture in a “methodical and routine”fashion. A 2001 B’Tselem study documentedthat Israeli security forces often applied “severetorture” to “Palestinian minors.”

House demolitions

“Israel has implemented a policy of massdemolition of Palestinian houses in theOccupied Territories,” B’Tselem reports, andsince September 2000 “has destroyed some4,170 Palestinian homes.”

Until just recently Israel routinely resortedto house demolitions as a form of collectivepunishment. According to Middle East Watch,apart from Israel, the only other country inthe world that used such a draconianpunishment was Iraq under Saddam Hussein.In addition, Israel has demolished thousandsof “illegal” homes that Palestinians builtbecause of Israel’s refusal to provide buildingpermits. The motive behind destroying thesehomes, according to Amnesty, has been tomaximize the area available for Jewish settlers:“Palestinians are targeted for no other reasonthan they are Palestinians.”

Finally, Israel has destroyed hundred ofhomes on security pretexts, yet a Human RightsWatch report on Gaza found that “the patternof destruction strongly suggests that Israeliforces demolished homes wholesale,regardless of whether they posed a specificthreat.” Amnesty, likewise, found that “Israel’sextensive destruction of homes and propertiesthroughout the West Bank and Gaza is notjustified by military necessity,” and that “Someof these acts of destruction amount to gravebreaches of the Fourth Geneva Conventionand are war crimes.”

Apart from the sheer magnitude of itshuman rights violations, the uniqueness ofIsraeli policies merits notice.

“Israel has created in the OccupiedTerritories a regime of separation based on

discrimination, applying two separatesystems of law in the same area and basingthe rights of individuals on their nationality,”B’Tselem has concluded.

“This regime is the only one of its kindin the world, and is reminiscent ofdistasteful regimes from the past, such asthe apartheid regime in South Africa.” Ifsingling out South Africa for aninternational economic boycott wasdefensible, it would seem equally defensibleto single out Israel’s occupation, whichuniquely resembles the apartheid regime.

Although an economic boycott can bejustified on moral grounds, the questionremains whether diplomacy might be moreeffectively employed instead. Thedocumentary record in this regard,however, is not encouraging. The basicterms for resolving the Israel-Palestineconflict are embodied in U.N. resolution242 and subsequent U.N. resolutions, whichcall for a full Israeli withdrawal from theWest Bank and Gaza and the establishmentof a Palestinian state in these areas inexchange for recognition of Israel’s rightto live in peace and security with itsneighbours. Each year the overwhelmingmajority of member States of the UnitedNations vote in favour of this two-statesettlement, and each year Israel and theUnited States (and a few South Pacificislands) oppose it. Similarly, in March 2002all twenty-two member States of the ArabLeague proposed this two-state settlementas well as “normal relations with Israel.”Israel ignored the proposal.

Not only has Israel stubbornly rejectedthis two-state settlement, but the policies itis currently pursuing will abort anypossibility of a viable Palestinian state. Whileworld attention has been riveted by Israel’sredeployment from Gaza, Sara Roy ofHarvard University observes that the“Gaza Disengagement Plan is, at heart, aninstrument for Israel’s continued annexationof West Bank land and the physicalintegration of that land into Israel.”

In particular, Israel has beenconstructing a wall deep inside the WestBank that will annex the most productiveland and water resources as well as EastJerusalem, the centre of Palestinian life. Itwill also effectively sever the West Bank intwo. Although Israel initially claimed that itwas building the wall to fight terrorism,the consensus among human rightsorganizations is that it is really a land grab

Al-Aqsa 17

to annex illegal Jewish settlements into Israel.Recently, Israel’s Justice Minister franklyacknowledged that the wall will serve as “thefuture border of the state of Israel.”

The current policies of the Israeligovernment will lead either to endlessbloodshed or the dismemberment ofPalestine. “It remains virtually impossible toconceive of a Palestinian state without its capitalin Jerusalem,” the respected Crisis Grouprecently concluded, and accordingly Israelipolicies in the West Bank “are at war with anyviable two-state solution and will not bolsterIsrael’s security; in fact, they will undermine it,weakening Palestinian pragmatists and sowingthe seeds of growing radicalization.”

Recalling the U.N. Charter principle that itis inadmissible to acquire territory by war, theInternational Court of Justice declared in alandmark 2004 opinion that Israel’s settlementsin the Occupied Palestinian Territory and thewall being built to annex them to Israel wereillegal under international law. It called on Israelto cease construction of the wall, dismantlethose parts already completed and compensatePalestinians for damages.

Crucially, it also stressed the legalresponsibilities of the international community:all States are under an obligation not torecognize the illegal situation resulting fromthe construction of the wall in the OccupiedPalestinian Territory, including in and aroundEast Jerusalem. They are also under anobligation not to render aid or assistance inmaintaining the situation created by suchconstruction. It is also for all States, whilerespecting the United Nations Charter andinternational law, to see to it that anyimpediment, resulting from the constructionof the wall, to the exercise by the Palestinianpeople of its right to self-determination isbrought to an end.

A subsequent U.N. General Assemblyresolution supporting the World Courtopinion passed overwhelmingly. However, theIsraeli government ignored the Court’s opinion,continuing construction at a rapid pace, whileIsrael’s Supreme Court ruled that the wall waslegal.

Due to the obstructionist tactics of theUnited States, the United Nations has not beenable to effectively confront Israel’s illegalpractices. Indeed, although it is true that theU.N. keeps Israel to a double standard, it’s

exactly the reverse of the one Israel’sdefenders allege: Israel is held not to ahigher but lower standard than othermember States.

A study by Marc Weller of CambridgeUniversity comparing Israel and theOccupied Palestinian Territory withcomparable situations in Bosnia andHerzegovina, Kosovo, East Timor,occupied Kuwait and Iraq, and Rwandafound that Israel has enjoyed “virtualimmunity” from enforcement measuressuch as an arms embargo and economicsanctions typically adopted by the U.N.against member States condemned foridentical violations of international law.

Due in part to an aggressive campaignaccusing Europe of a “new anti-Semitism,”the European Union has also failed in itslegal obligation to enforce international lawin the Occupied Palestinian Territory.Although the claim of a “new anti-Semitism” has no basis in fact (all theevidence points to a lessening of anti-Semitism in Europe), the EU has reactedby appeasing Israel. It has even suppressedpublication of one of its own reports,because the authors - like the Crisis Groupand many others - concluded that due toIsraeli policies the “prospects for a two-state solution with east Jerusalem as thecapital of Palestine are receding.”

The moral burden to avert theimpending catastrophe must now beborne by individual states that areprepared to respect their obligations underinternational law and by individual menand women of conscience. In acourageous initiative, American-basedHuman Rights Watch recently called onthe U.S. government to reduce significantlyits financial aid to Israel until Israelterminates its illegal policies in the WestBank. An economic boycott would seemto be an equally judicious undertaking. Anon-violent tactic, the purpose of whichis to achieve a just and lasting settlementof the Israel-Palestine conflict, cannotlegitimately be called anti-Semitic. Indeed,the real enemies of Jews are those whodebase the memory of Jewish sufferingby equating principled opposition toIsrael’s illegal and immoral policies withanti-Semitism.

18 Al-Aqsa

Al-Aqsa 19

In 2005 the media focus, in relation to theMiddle East, was largely on Iraq, forobvious reasons. It has everything: high

profile violence, vital commercial and strategicinterests, ‘our boys’ in danger, and so on.People feel they can grasp the immediatebackground and history to the situation and,more or less, what is happening there now.(Even if many forget that the West backedand armed Saddam at the height of his power,and turned a blind eye to his atrocities.) Thevocal and widespread opposition to the war,too, has been reasonably well covered.

However, in TV news and the popularpress the issue of Israel/Palestine has been nomore than a shadowy backdrop to theoccasional suicide bombing – which of coursehits the headlines. The whole historical processof colonisation, the ongoing expropriation ofPalestinian land and demolition of homes,denial of access to workplaces or schools, theassassinations with horrific ‘collateral damage’– these are hardly a blip on the radar screen asfar as our media are concerned. This is partlaziness, part cowardice in the face of thepowerful Zionist lobby. For most membersof the general public the conflict is just toocomplex and intractable to wrestle with – andone that doesn’t concern us directly anyway.

I would argue that, on the contrary, theissue is of direct and immediate concern to allof us, for both practical and moral reasons. Ihave travelled and worked in the Middle Eastfor over thirty years, and have seen how theUK and US responsibility for the foundationof Israel, and their continuing unconditionalsupport for it, is viewed by virtually everyoneyou meet. From Morocco to the Sudan, evenin the smallest village, people are much betterinformed on the facts than the averageLondoner. They are outraged by the apparentabsence of conscience shown by ourgovernments with regard to the plight of the

Palestinians, especially now that AlJazeeraand Arabiyya bypass the bland, state-controlled local TV channels, people seewhat is going on; close-up and on a dailybasis. When yet another Palestinian motheris forced to give birth at a checkpoint,under the nuzzle of an Israeli gun, and thebaby dies, they ask, “Don’t your peopleknow about this?” and I have to answer,“I’m afraid not”. (The only occasion onwhich such an incident was covered waswhen a woman gave birth to twins –unusual and therefore worthy of mediainterest.)

They see the utter hypocrisy of the Westcalling for respect for international law andcompliance with UN resolutions, andextolling the virtues of free speech anddemocracy, whilst actively supporting oneof the most lawless regimes in the world.

That simmering outrage has poisonedour relations with the peoples of Arab andMuslim countries across the globe andundoubtedly sowed the seeds of 9/11 inthe US and 7/7 in the UK. Iraq was simplythe fuse that ignited the powder keg. Thisis not to excuse such acts of violence inany way, but it is unimaginable that hatredcould be nurtured on this scale without ourown decades-long involvement in theregion.

A political solution to the Israel/Palestine question, based on justice, wouldat a stroke open the way for moreharmonious relations across the globe.Israel would benefit as much as thePalestinians, if they genuinely wish to livein peace within secure borders.Unfortunately, Israel is only too happy toexploit US readiness to rubberstamp anynew piece of land grabbing it chooses topursue. Without external pressure, noprogress can be made.

An Obligation To Act

Hilary Wise*

* HILARY WISE is Editor of ‘Palestine News’, the quarterly magazine of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.A booklet containing the basic facts relating to the conflict is available in the PSC booklet: ‘Why Palestine’ Seewww.palestinecampaign.org.

20 Al-Aqsa

In the UK, when you work in a nationalorganisation like the Palestine SolidarityCampaign, which campaigns at grassroots levelto promote support for Palestinian rights, youcome across a great deal of sympathy for thePalestinian people. It is usually sufficient toshow a map of the area, indicating theexpansion of Israeli colonisation, with theillegal settlements swallowing up the farmlandand surrounding the remaining Palestiniantowns and villages; the illegal Wall built onPalestinian, not Israeli land; the illegal highwayscrisscrossing the West Bank (that only Israeliscan use); and people here are outraged too.But the reaction is typically: “The US is backingthem; what can we, as individuals in the UK,possibly do?” The answer is: a great deal.

We have to begin by informing people –starting with ourselves. All the information isout there, on the websites of campaigningorganisations and of international NGOsworking in the area, such as Save the Children,the International Red Cross, War on Want,Christian Aid and many others.

Films showing very graphically just what ishappening are available on video or DVD;Palestinians living in the UK or visiting fromthe Occupied Territories speak at conferencesand meetings around the country, as do Israelirefuseniks and international observers andactivists who have spent months in Palestiniancommunities. Both Palestinian and Israelihistorians have written volumes on the truehistory of the region. If you want to campaignactively it is important to have a solidgrounding in the facts, as pro-Israel speakersand writers still seek to promote the myths of‘the empty land’, the tiny helpless state evennow threatened by powerful neighbours, andso on. They need to be confronted withaccurate facts and figures – and with a fewshocking quotations from Israeli leaders,revealing the deep-rooted racism inherent inZionist ideology.

Armed with information, the next step isto act. The old slogan says: “Strength throughunity” – and it still holds good, for all politicalcampaigning. One hundred people actingseparately can be an irritant. One hundredpeople acting together can be a real force forchange. There is already a complex networkof organisations, both in the UK andworldwide, involved in campaigning on thePalestinian issue; some are religiously based,some are secular. Every year at the massiveEuropean Social Forum (to be held in Athensthis year), Palestine is increasingly becoming acentral issue, and the meeting is an opportunity

to strengthen the networks at the Europeanlevel.

A great deal of progress has alreadybeen made. At the beginning of the secondIntifada, about five years ago, virtually allcriticism of Israel was labelled anti-Semitic.Now it is possible to speak without beingimmediately reviled and discounted. Israelhas done a good job in demonstrating itsown brutality and contempt for the law. Itcan no longer present itself as a weak,embattled little nation struggling forsurvival, when it was offered 78% offormer Palestine by the PLO in 1988, inreturn for a mini Palestinian state, with theunanimous backing of other Arab nations.UN resolutions are piling up, calling onIsrael to obey international law. The mostrecent backed the 2004 ruling of theInternational Court of Justice that the Wallbeing built on Palestinian territory is illegaland should be dismantled, and thePalestinians compensated.

The arguments are being won, in theUN, on campuses, in conferences and onthe rare occasions when they are properlyaired in the media. (Hence the increasinglyhysterical tone of the Zionist apologists,and the attempts we are witnessing in theUS to suppress discussion of the facts inuniversities.) Now is the time to redoubleall our efforts.

Last July, 170 Palestinian civil societyorganisations called for the boycott of allIsraeli goods and pro-occupationorganisations. Every week groups ofpeople and individuals around the UKleaflet supermarkets stocking Israeli goods,and stage events at checkouts to highlightthe need to put direct pressure on the Israeliregime. (Europe is the biggest importer ofIsraeli goods; the disappearance of thismarket would be a body-blow to theIsraeli economy.) This is, after all, howSouth African Apartheid began to crumble,with the grassroots campaigners showinggovernment the way.

MPs are, by and large, surprisinglyignorant of foreign affairs. You can lobbyyours with hard facts, not rhetoric, andpress them, politely but firmly, to state theirown position. There are Early Day Motionsin the House of Commons that they cansign in support of Palestinian rights. (Lastyear one calling for the removal of the Wallattracted over 200 signatures.) There areregular delegations of MPs visiting theOccupied Territories and an all-party

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organisation that actively campaigns within theHouse of Commons. Press your MP to sign,to speak, to join, to visit, and to get involved.Your vote matters to him or her. At the nextelection, if enough people are sufficiently vocalin enough constituencies, the Palestinian issuewill become an election issue.

Find out what is already happening in yourpart of the world and decide what yourinvolvement could be. It might be putting in afew hours a week helping in an office, it mightbe leafleting a supermarket, hosting visitingPalestinian children in the UK for a holiday,forging a link between your local school andone in Palestine; it might be giving financialhelp to a national or local organisation, ororganising a public meeting. Simply openingup a discussion of the issue with friends,colleagues or neighbours is of hugeimportance.

If you belong to a union, you can campaign– again, from an informed position – for yourbranch to affiliate to a pro-Palestinianorganisation. This will lead to unions affiliatingat national level – a step which was crucial inthe struggle against Apartheid in South Africa.(Already 15 national trade unions have affiliatedto the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which isholding a conference this spring to bringtogether British and Palestinian trade unionists.)

The national media may be difficult topenetrate but, even there, informed responsesto biased material, and provision of moreaccurate information can have a long-termpositive effect. The local media, both radioand the press, are much more open. Activistscycling to Jerusalem, or a group hostingPalestinian visitors, are very likely to get localcoverage. Just provide plenty of information,in advance, and keep up the dialogue once ithas been initiated.

The charge of anti-Semitism will still bemade, of course: when arguments are lacking,the opposition will resort to insult, to try and

close the debate through intimidation. Letus be clear: anti-Semitism is not merely anodious doctrine – it is highly counter-productive. Zionists in general, and theIsraeli regime in particular, clutch at anymanifestation of it with positive euphoria.At last – an excuse for Israel’s actions, inthe name of Jews worldwide!

To ally oneself with the anti-Semiticcamp, and in par ticular to deny theHolocaust, is to play the Zionist game.Those Zionists who cannot bringthemselves to use the weird biblicaljustifications for Jewish rule of the land‘between the Nile and the Euphrates’, sofavoured by extreme Christianfundamentalists, prefer the argument thatthe Holocaust shows Jews can only be safein a self-inflicted ghetto, bristling withweapons of mass destruction. If oneseeks to refute that argument by claimingthe Holocaust didn’t happen, one acceptsthe Zionist line of reasoning. Let us arguerather that the Palestinians played no partin the horrors of WWII, and that Israel’spolicies of brutal occupation andexpansion make Jews in general andIsraelis in particular more, not less,vulnerable.

Language matters. To call Israelis ‘Jews’is to fall into that same trap. Many Jewsand some brave Israelis are utterly opposedto Zionist policies; let us recognise theircontribution and work closely with them.

But before you adopt a new resolution,to stand up and be counted on the vitalissue of Palestinian rights, make no mistake:there is no magic formula, no silver bullet.Accept you will be in it for the long haul.Once you commit yourself, make sure thatcommitment, however modest, is ongoingand practical. Passive sympathy for thePalestinian people is of no use to anyone –except to the Israeli regime.

�

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Al-Aqsa 23

He was an Israeli Napoleon

From early youth, he was totally convincedthat he was the only person in the world whocould save the State of Israel. That was anabsolute certainty, free of any doubt. He justknew that he must achieve supreme power, inorder to fulfill the mission that fate hadentrusted him with.

This belief led to a complete integrationof personal egocentrism and nationalegocentrism. For a person who believes he hassuch a mission, there is no difference betweenthe personal and the national interest. What isgood for him automatically becomes goodfor the nation, and vice versa. This means thatanyone who hinders him from attaining poweris really committing a crime against the State.And anyone helping him to come to power isreally doing a patriotic deed.

This belief directed all his actions fordecades. It explains the dogged determination,the tenacity, and the unbending perseverancethat became his trade mark earning him hisnickname “the bulldozer”. This attractedadmirers, who fell completely under hisinfluence.

It also explains his attitude to moneymatters. It has been said that he “does not stopat a red light”, that “laws are not for him”.More than once he was accused of acceptingmillions from rich Jews abroad. On the daybefore his fateful stroke, it came out that thepolice had formally accused him of receivinga bribe of three million dollars from a casino-owner. (It is quite possible that this raised hisblood pressure and helped to cause the massivestroke.) But not all these millionaires expecteda return. Some of them believed, as he didhimself, that by supporting him, they were

Ariel Sharon: A Napoleon, Made in Israel

Uri Avnery*

actually supporting the State of Israel. Canthere be a more sacred duty than toprovide an assured income to the IsraeliNapoleon, so that he can devote his entireenergy to the fulfillment of his historicmission?

On his long journey, Sharon easilyovercame such hurdles. They did not diverthim from his course. Personal tragedies andpolitical defeats did not hold him up for amoment. The accidents that killed his firstwife and his oldest son, his dismissal fromoffice after being convicted by a board ofinquiry of “indirect responsibility” for theSabra and Shatila massacres, as well as themany other setbacks, failures anddisappointments that struck himthroughout the years did not deter him.They did not divert him for an instant fromhis endeavor to achieve supreme power.

And now it was all coming true. OnWednesday, January 4, 2006, he could becertain that in three months time he wouldbecome the sole leader of Israel. He hadcreated a party that belonged to him aloneand that was not only on track to occupy acentral position in the next Knesset, but alsoto cut all other parties into pieces.

He was determined to use this powerto change the political landscape of Israelaltogether and introduce a presidentialsystem, which would have given him anall-powerful position, like that enjoyed byJuan Peron in his heyday in Argentina. Then,at long last, he would be able to realize hishistoric mission of laying the tracks onwhich Israel would run for generations, asDavid Ben-Gurion had done before him.

And then, just when it seemed thatnothing could stop him anymore, with cruel

* URI AVNERY is the founding member of Ghush Shalom, the Israeli Peace bloc. In his teenage years he wasanIindependence fighter in the Irgun (1938-1942) and later a soldier in the Israeli Army. A three-time Knessetmember (1965-1973, and 1979-1983), Avnery was the first Israeli to establish contact with the PalestinianLiberation Organization leadership, in 1974. During the war on Lebanon in 1982 he crossed “enemy lines” to bethe first Israeli to meet with Yasser Arafat. He has been a journalist since 1947, including 40 years as Editor-in-Chief of the newsmagazine Ha’olam Haze, and is the author of numerous books on the conflict.

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suddenness, his own body betrayed him. Whathappened resembles a central motif of theJewish myth: the fate of Moses, whom Godpunished for his pride by allowing him aglimpse of the Promised Land from afar, buthaving him die before he could set foot on itssoil. On the threshold of absolute power, thestroke hit Ariel Sharon.

While he was still fighting for his life inhospital, the myth of “Sharon’s Legacy” wasalready beginning to form.

As has happened with many leaders whodid not leave a written testament, everyindividual is free to imagine a Sharon of hisown. Leftists, who only yesterday had cursedSharon as the murderer of Kibieh, the butcherof Sabra and Shatila and the man responsiblefor the plunder and slaughter in the occupiedPalestinian territories, began to admire him asthe “Man of Peace”. Settlers, who hadcondemned him as a traitor, remembered thatit was he who had created the settlements andkept on enlarging them to this day.

Only yesterday he was one of the mosthated people in Israel and the world. Today,after the evacuation of Gush Katif, he hasbecome the darling of the public, almost fromwall to wall. The leaders of nations crownedhim as the “great warrior who has turned intoa hero of peace”.

Everybody agrees that Sharon has changedcompletely, that he has gone from one extremeto the other, the proverbial Ethiopian who haschanged his skin, the leopard who has changedhis spots. All these analyses have only one thingin common: they have nothing to do with thereal Ariel Sharon. They are based on ignorance,illusion and self-deception.

A look at his long career (helped, I mayadd, by some personal knowledge) show thathe has not changed at all. He stayed true to hisfundamental approach, only adapting hisslogans to changing times and circumstances.His master-plan remained as it was at thebeginning.

Underlying his world view is a simplistic,19th century style nationalism, which says: ourpeople stands above all others, other peopleare inferior. The rights of our nation are sacred,other nations have no rights at all. The rulesof morality apply only to relations within thenation, not to relations between nations.

He absorbed this conviction with hismother’s milk. It governed Kfar Malal, thecooperative village in which he was born, as italso governed the whole world at the time.Among Jews in particular it was reinforcedby the horrors of the Holocaust. The slogan

“all the world is against us” is deeplyanchored in the national psyche and isapplied especially to Arabs.

On this moral base the aim emerged:to establish a Jewish state, as large aspossible, free of non-Jews. That could leadto the conclusion that the ethnic cleansing,begun by Ben-Gurion in 1948, when halfthe Palestinians were deprived of theirhomes and land, must be completed.Sharon’s career began shortly after, whenhe was appointed to lead the undercovercommando Unit 101, whose murderousactions beyond the borders were designedmainly to prevent the refugees frominfiltrating back to their villages.

However, Sharon became convincedquite early that another wholesale ethniccleansing was impossible in the foreseeablefuture (barring some unforeseeableinternational event changing conditionsaltogether.)

In default of this option, Sharonbelieved that Israel must annex all the areasbetween the Mediterranean and the Jordanwithout a dense Palestinian population.Already decades ago, he prepared a mapthat he showed proudly to local andforeign personalities in order to convertthem to his views.

According to this map, Israel will annexthe areas along the pre-1967 border as wellas the Jordan valley, up to the “back ofthe mountain” (an expression particularlydear to Sharon). It will also annex severalEast-West strips to connect the Jordanvalley with the Green Line. In theseterritories that are marked for annexation,Sharon created a dense net of settlements.That was his principal endeavor throughoutthe last thirty years, in all his diverse positions- Minister of Agriculture, Minister ofIndustry and Trade, Minister of Defense,Minister of Housing, Foreign Minister,Minister of Infrastructure, and PrimeMinister - and this work is going on at thisminute.

The areas with a dense Palestinianpopulation, Sharon intended to hand overto Palestinian self-government. He wasdetermined to remove from them all thesettlements that were set up there withoutthinking. This way, eight or nine Palestinianenclaves would have come into being, cutoff from each other, each one surroundedby settlers and Israeli army installations. Hedid not care whether these would be calleda “Palestinian state”. His recent use of this

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term is an example of his ability to adapthimself, outwardly and verbally, to changingsituations.

The Gaza strip is one of these enclaves.That is, the real significance of the uprootingof the settlements and the withdrawal of theIsraeli army. It is the first stage in the realizationof the map: this small area, with a densePalestinian population of a million and aquarter, was turned over to the Palestinians.The Israeli land, sea and air forces surroundthe strip almost completely. The very existenceof its inhabitants depends at all times on themercy of Israel, which controls all entrancesand exits (except the Rafah crossing intoEgypt, which is monitored by Israel fromafar.) Israel can cut off the water and electricitysupply at a moment’s notice. Sharon intendedto create the same situation in Hebron,Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin and the other areas.

Is this a “peace plan”?

Peace is made between nations which agreeto create a situation where all of them can livein freedom, well-being and mutual respect andbelieve that that is good for them. This is notwhat Sharon had in mind. As a military man,he knows only truces. If peace had beenhanded to him on a platter, he would not haverecognized it.

He knew perfectly well that no Palestinianleader could possibly agree to his map, nowor ever. That’s why he did not intend to haveany political negotiations with the Palestinians.His slogan was “we have no partner”. Heintended to realize all the stages of his plan“unilaterally”, as he did in Gaza - withoutdialogue with the Palestinians, withoutconsidering their requirements and aspirations,and, of course, without seeking their consent.

But Sharon did indeed intend to makepeace - peace with the United States. Heconsidered American consent as essential. Heknew that Washington could not give itsconsent to his whole plan. So he intended toobtain their agreement phase by phase. SincePresident Bush has submitted to him entirely,and no one knows who will succeed him,Sharon intended to realize the main part ofhis plan within the next two or three years,before the end of the President’s term inoffice. That is one of the reasons for hishurry. He had to come to absolute power

now, immediately. Only the strokeprevented this.

The eagerness with which so many goodpeople on the left embraced the “SharonLegacy” does not show their grasp of hisplans, but rather their own longing forpeace. They long with all their heart for astrong leader, who has the will and theability to end the conflict.

The determination with which Sharonremoved the settlers from Gush Katif filledthese leftists with enthusiasm. Who wouldhave believed that there was a leadercapable of carrying it out, without civilwar, without bloodshed? And if this hashappened in the Gaza Strip, why can’t ithappen in the West Bank? Sharon will drivethe settlers out and make peace; all this,without the Left having to lift a finger. Thesavior, like Deus, will jump ex machina. Asthe Hebrew proverb goes, “the work ofthe righteous is done by others”, who maybe something quite other than righteous.

Sharon has easily adapted himself to thislonging of the public. He has not changedhis plan, but given it a new veneer, in thespirit of the times. From now on, heappeared as the “Man of Peace”. He nevercared which mask it was convenient towear. But this mask reflects the deepestwishes of the Israeli people.

From this point of view, the imaginary“Sharon Legacy” can play a positive role.When he created his new party, he tookwith him a lot of Likud people, those whohad come to the conclusion that the goalof “The Whole of Eretz Israel” hasbecome impossible to attain. Many of thesewill remain in the Kadima party even afterSharon has left the tribune. As a result ofan ongoing, slow subterranean process,Likud people, too, are ready to accept thepartition of the country. The whole systemis moving in the direction of peace.

The “Sharon Legacy”, even if imaginary,may become a blessing, if Sharon appearsin it in his latest incarnation: Sharon the up-rooter of settlements, Sharon who is readyto give up parts of Eretz Israel, Sharonwho agrees to a Palestinian state.

True, this was not Sharon’s intention.But, as Sharon himself might have said: Itis not the intentions that matter, but theresults on the ground.

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Al-Aqsa 27

Israeli settlements are communities built forIsraeli Jewish settlers in areas occupied byIsrael during the 1967 war. These areas

are in the West Bank including East Jerusalem,the Golan Heights and formerly the GazaStrip. Settlements are large housing projectsbuilt illegally under international law and at theexpense of Palestinians whose land isconfiscated to make room for the settlementbuildings.

Building settlements in and aroundJerusalem has been an ideological objective forJews since the middle of the 19th century inorder to determine the political future ofJerusalem. This began with the Yemen Mosheneighborhood in 1850 followed by MeaSharem and Mafour Haim in 1858.

The British municipality during the mandateadded to the municipal boundariesneighborhoods with Jewish majorities such asGivat Shaul, Montifeury, Beit Vegan andothers, while it limited the municipalboundaries in the east to the outskirts of anumber of Arab neighborhoods such as Attur,Shufat and Isawya.

From 1918 to 1948, the built area increasedunder the British mandate from 4130 dunamsto 7230 dunams. In 1948 Jerusalem wasdivided into two cities, East Jerusalem underJordanian rule and West Jerusalem under Israelirule. During the following 19 years, EastJerusalem remained approximately the samearea while the West grew larger.

Within days of the end of the 1967 war,Israel started its wide scale settlement buildingin East Jerusalem. The main settlement areaswere as follows:

1. Starting with the Old City, the Arabneighborhood of Haret El Sharaf wasdestroyed completely, thus abolishing

595 buildings that included residentialhouses,1,048 stores , 5 mosques,schools and market place. 6000inhabitants were made homeless. AJewish neighborhood was built in thearea, and in 1995, settlers numbered24,000.

2. In Neve Yacove, between 1968 and1980, 1,835 dunams were con-fiscated to build 3800 housing unitsfor about 20,000 settlers.

3. In Ramot in 1970, 4,840 dunamswere confiscated to build 8,000housing units for 37,000 Jewishsettlers. This settlement was theexpanded to include 2,000 moreunits.

4. In Gilo, 7,484 housing units werebuilt for 30,000 settlers.

5. The Talpiot Mizrah settlement wasbuilt on 2,240 dunams of con-fiscated land in 1970. It is part ofthe Southern Belt around Jerusalemhousing about 15,000 settlers.

6. The Maalot Dafna settlement wasbuilt on 389 dunams of land takenfrom what was known as ‘No Man’sLand’ during the years between1948 and 1967. More than 1,164units were built in this settlement for4,700 settlers. Part of this land is usedby road Number 1.

7. The Hebrew University wasestablished in 1924 on land takenfrom Isawyah village. During theyears 1948-1967 it was under thecontrol of the U.N force. After1967, 740 more dunams of land wasconfiscated from the village toenlarge the settlement and adddormitories to the University. The

Settlements in Jerusalem

Mazen Nuseibah*

* MAZEN NUSEIBAH’s family has lived in Jerusalem for centuries. He is a graduate of Jordan University (BScBiology), Al-Quds Open University (BA Islamic Education) and is currently an MA student in Islamic Studies atAl-Quds University. His father’s land was confiscated in East Jerusalem in 1968. He petitioned the Israeli courtsfor the return of the land in 1991, but lost the case although the land had been left derelict by the Israeli armyfor 23 years.

28 Al-Aqsa

settlement is inhabited by 24,000 settlersand has a strategic significance as it over-looks East Jerusalem from one side andthe Jordan Valley from the other.

8. In 1970, 1,198 dunums of land wasconfiscated from Palestinians to makeway for the Reikhes Shufat settlement,where 2,165 housing units were built.This settlement forms the Eastern Beltof the ring surrounding Jerusalem, withNeve Yacove, Pisgat Zeive and PisgatOmer.

9. The Pisgat Zeive and Pisgat Omersettlements were built on the landowned by residents of the Arab villagesof Beit-Hanina, Shufat, Hizma andAnatta. The whole area confiscatedfrom these villages amounts to 3,800dunams. 12,000 housing units wereplanned for over 100,000 settlers.

10. The Ramat Ashkol settlement lies onthe Northern entrance of Jerusalem onthe road from the West Bank city ofRamallah. This was one of the earliestsettlements that has more than one aim:in addition to settling more than 7,000settlers, it is supposed to block the roadfrom Ramallah and form a continuityof buildings between East and WestJerusalem, in order to make it look likeone city. Thus, Jerusalem becomesenveloped by Jewish settlers.

11. The settlement of Attarot was built asan industrial area on 1,200 dunams ofland confiscated in 1970 from Kalandia.A number of manufacturers have beenmoved to it and there are plans to enlargethe airport to export through it.

12. Givaat Hamatos was built on an areaof about 170 dunams of landconfiscated from Beit-safafa village andneighboring Beit-Jala city. It wasestablished in 1991 with 6,500 housingunits and contributes to the SouthernBelt surrounding Jerusalem.

13. Givat Hasarfatit was built on the landsof the Arab villages of Shufat and Lifta.There are 5,000 housing units on an areaof 822 dunams.

14. Har Homa was built on the lands ofthe Sur-Baheir and Im-Tuba villages. Theland was confiscated in the 1970 ‘s as anatural reserve, but in 1991 plans weremade to build the settlement.

The settlements listed above were built closeto Jerusalem and are now consideredneighborhoods of the city or could be

described as the inner belt or ring aroundthe city. This ring was then followed andstrengthened by an‘outer ring’ whichcompletely isolates the city from its Arabneighbours. This outer ring includes:

From the South

The Etzion Bloc isolates Bethlehemfrom its Southern region. This bloc includesthe Bitar Elite settlement with its extremistsettlers located between Arab communitiesextending westward towards the Hadassaharea. The second settlement in this bloc isKfar Etzion, extending to the tops of theJerusalem Mountains. Then comes Effrat,which blocs the road between Bethlehemand Hebron.

Another settlement that is consideredpart of this bloc but falls in the East, farfrom the Green Line, is the Teqoasettlement. It is connected by a bypass roadto the Har Homa settlement.

From the East

The ring consists of the Kedar, MaalehAdumin, Mishor Adumin and KfarAdumim settlements. These are connectedto the center of the city by a road thatincludes a tunnel under Mount Scopustoward road Number 1. This greatlyreduces traveling time for the settlers.

From the North

This bloc forming the northern part ofthe belt includes the Alamon, Adam, ShaarBinyamin, Kochave Yacove and Psagotsettlements. These are connected by anEastern bypass road.

New Settlements

Beside the settlements mentionedabove, which already exist and arecontinually undergoing additional buildingand expansion; there are a number of newsettlements that are in the planning stagesor under construction. Of these newsettlements, there are:

a. Ras El Amoud: 132 units amide anArab neighborhood.

b. The Eastern Gate project: 2,000 unitsto connect Givaat Hasarfatit withPisgat-zeive in East Jerusalem.

Al-Aqsa 29

c. Abu-Deis: 200 units in Abu-Deis toestablish a Jewish presence in what wassupposed to be the Palestinian AutonomyCapital as some Israelis suggested.

d. Silwan: Jewish settlers and Yeshivastudents, with the help of theGovernment, are planning to ‘recapture’what they call the City of David.

e. The E-1 plan: a plan to build 1,500 unitsin addition to 3,000 hotel rooms toconnect Jerusalem proper with MaaleAdumin.

f. Karem el Mufti: the millionaire IrwinMoskovitz supported settlements inJerusalem long ago, including thebuilding in Maale Adumin, Burj AlLaqlaq, Beit Orot in Al Tur and others.Moskovitz rented the Shepered hotel in1967 for the Border Police Force as acamp. Plans are now being made todemolish the hotel and build in its place,and the surrounding 30 dunums (whichwas confiscated from its Arab owners),90 housing units. This will link the illegalMount Scopus residence and ShimounHatzidik Tomb residence, whichincludes 8 families and 50 Yeshivastudents, with neighboring governmentbuildings and police headquarters.

These settlements, new and old, will beserved by the construction of two new roads:Road 5 and road 45. These two roads areplanned to:

i Complete the siege around Jerusalem,and isolate it from the West Bank.

ii Connect all the settlements aroundJerusalem together.

iii Connect these settlements with thecoastal area inside Israel.

These two roads will stretch 45kilometers around Jerusalem from the eastand south and north of the city and willdemolish at least 38 Palestinian buildingsand more than 700 hectars of agriculturalland to pave its path. It will also make anycontinuity between Jerusalem and thenearby Palestinian villages, such as Abu-Deis, Mikhmas, Jabaa, Zeim and Kalandiaimpossible.

All of these settlement building projectson confiscated East Jerusalem land obligedthe Israeli municipality to extend itsjurisdiction, and thus the area that it wasresponsible for, from 6.5 sq. kilometerspre-1967 to over 123 sq. kilometers.

Settling in the Old City

Jewish presence in the Old City beganto be more apparent in the beginning ofthe nineteenth century in the Jewish Quarter,which was less than one fourth of what isknown today. Its location was importantto Jewish people for a number of reasons:

i No Muslim or Christian holy placeswere there.

ii It was near to the Wailing Wall.iii It overlooks the Mount of Olives

where, in Jewish eschatology, thedead will be resurrected at theapocalypse.

Sephardic Jews lived in the JewishQuarter in the early nineteenth century andthey were integrated with the Arabcommunity, having the same language andhabits. Later, when they grew in numbers,they rented or bought houses in the MuslimQuarter.

In the first three decades of theTwentieth century, after the aims of theZionist movement began to be clear,tension rose between Arabs and Jews.Two main incidents occurred: the 1929Buraq clashes and the 1936 Arabrevolution. These incidents resulted in themovement of Jews from Muslimneighborhoods inside the walls to thenewly built Jewish neighborhoods outsidethe walls. Jewish property was sold orleased or even abandoned. Thismovement was through individual choice,and not under direct pressure from theArab residents. Palestine was under theBritish Mandate at that time.

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During the 1948 war, residents of the JewishQuarter left to the Western part of the city.After the war, their properties were rented bythe Jordanian Custodian of the Enemy Propertyto Arab refugees from areas occupied by Israel.

After 1967, as mentioned earlier, the firststep taken by Israel was demolishing the HaretEl Sharaf and Haret El Magharibehneighborhoods. More than 595 buildings weredemolished, of which only 105 were ownedby Jews before 1948. The area was expandedmore than once and life was made moredifficult for those living around it.

The other main step towards settling in theold city was made by establishing governmentassociations under settlers’ names cover, totransfer properties from Arab to Jewish hands.This was done secretly under the Labor partybefore 1977, but more transparently under theLikud party with Ariel Sharon in differentMinistry Offices. Attareit Cohaneim was oneof the main groups that implemented this policy,acquiring 123 properties from 1982 to 1992,one of which was Sharon’s residence in the oldcity. Sharon pumped millions of Dollars fromdifferent ministry budgets into these groups’activities. He even used his authorities to grantthem government properties, such as the landnear Herods Gate bought by the JewishNational Fund from the Russian Church, thenmoved to the Israel Land Department whichin turn handed it to Attaerit Cohaneim.

Cooperation between settlers andgovernment personnel was paramount inlocating properties owned by absentees. Afterlocating these properties, they were sold bythe government to the settlers or entered byforce by the settlers with the knowledge thatnobody would go to court to restore them.

Other ways of obtaining properties illegallywas through fake purchase agreements fromunknown persons with no rights to theproperty. The settlers would then move intothe property and wait for the real owner totake legal action to restore his property, amatter that would take many years toconclude. This was the case with the St. JohnHospice, owned by the Greek OrthodoxChurch in the Christian Quarter. Eventually, inthis case, the Church prevailed in court andsettlers were ordered to leave the hospice.

Different Israeli policy towards Settlers

and Arabs in Jerusalem

Below is a comparison between what isoffered to settlers and the policy towardsArabs in Jerusalem.

Settlers

To encourage settling in East Jerusalemand the West Bank, consequent Israeligovernments have afforded to settlers:

1. Housing subsidies.2. Income tax reductions.3. Low interest loans.4. Subsidies for water, electricity and

telephone services.5. Loans to cover moving expenses.6. Security provisions.

These subsidies have resulted in settlersreceiving 12% of the Israeli domesticbudget though they form only 2.4% of theIsraeli population.

Treatment of Arabs in East Jerusalem

One of the main objectives of the Israelioccupation of East Jerusalem is to replacethe Palestinian population with Jewishsettlers. To fulfill this objective a numberof steps have been taken through-out the38 years of occupation against the Arabpopulation in Jerusalem such as:

• Confiscation of land: in 1967, Arabsowned 100% of the land in EastJerusalem, but today they own only14% of it. This decrease in the areawhere Arabs can live and build hasnot taken in to consideration thenormal population growth.

• Destruction of newly built houses:buildings that are constructedwithout municipal permits aredemolished. It is impossible toobtain the required permits as theyare not given to Arabs in the firstplace. Thus, the Palestinians areforced to build without permits toaccommodate growing families.

• New laws: new laws have beenimposed to decrease the number ofinhabitants in East Jerusalem, suchas loss of citizenship in Jerusalemfor those who lived outside the cityfor more than 7 years, even if theylived in the West Bank and notoutside the country. Confiscation ofJerusalem ID cards under differentguises also prevents their bearersfrom entering the city again, even iftheir homes and jobs are there.Statistics show that between the years1967 and 2004, 6,396 Palestinian

Al-Aqsa 31

Jerusalemites had their residency rightsrevoked.

• Increasing tax: Arabs are forced to payhigh taxes under threat of differentpunishments. This is especially difficultto meet due to the bad economicconditions resulting from theoccupation policies.

• Military barriers: The city is surroundedby barriers, making life difficult or evenimpossible for workers, students, sickpeople and everybody else.

• Closing Palestinian institutions thatprovide vital services to the Arabcitizens in the city.

• Enabling settlers to acquire estates insideand outside the walls by different illegalways such as the Law of Absentees, orby buying the rights from somebodywho rents the estate and not the owner.

All these actions together have one aim: toforce Arabs to consider leaving the city.

The aims of settlements in Jerusalem

Israelis from different factions and groupshave decided among themselves, and againstthe will of the entire world, that Jerusalemmust stay under their control. Not taking intoconsideration international law or advice fromtheir closest friends, the Americans or theEuropeans, and neglecting the calls of morethan 1.2 billion Muslims around the world,who cannot reach their third holiest place.

To fulfill this ambition, settlements inJerusalem are aimed at:

1. Solving the demographic problem tothe benefit of the Israelis.

2. Preventing geographic continuitybetween Arab neighborhoods aroundthe city and in East Jerusalem.

3. Forming more than one separating beltor ring between Jerusalem and WestBank cities around it.

4. Preventing normal population growthin the Arab community east of the city.

5. Annexing large areas of land with assmall a population as possible.

6. Separating Arab citizens by building theseparation Wall. 75,000 to 100,000Palestinians have been cut off fromJerusalem in the areas of Ram,Samiramis and Dahiat el Barid.

The illegality of Israeli settlements

A. Settling in occupied areas under theinternational law:

i Article 49, paragraph 6 of the FourthGeneva Convention explicitlystipulates: ‘The occupying powershall not deport or transfer parts ofits own civilian population into theterritory it occupied”.

ii Article 46 of the Hague Conventionprohibits the confiscation of privateproperty in occupied territory.

iii Article 55 of the Hague Conventionstipulates that: “The occupying stateshall be regarded only as admini-strator and usufructuary of publicbuildings, real estate, forests, andagricultural estates belonging to thehostile state, and situated in theoccupied country. It must safeguardthe capital of these properties andadministrate them in accordancewith the rule of usufruct”. Thismeans that the occupying powerdoes not become the owner of theterritories and properties of theoccupied country and does not usethem for serving the interests of itscivilians. This rule applies to theoccupied territory’s natural resources.

B. Security Council resolutionsconcerning Israeli settlements:

i The United Nations Security Councilresolution 242 calls for: ‘just andlasting peace in the Middle East. Theconfiscated areas upon whichsettlements are built were illegallyconfiscated.’

ii The United Nation’s Security Councilresolution 465, which was un-animously adopted, made it clearthat: Israeli policy and practice ofsettling parts of its population andnew immigrants in the occupiedterritories constitute a seriousobstruction to achieve a comp-rehensive, just and lasting peace inthe Middle East. The SecurityCouncil called upon Israel todismantle the existing settlements andin particular to cease on an urgentbasis, the establishment, constructionand planning of settlements in theArab territories occupied since 1967including Jerusalem.

iii Security Council resolution 446 (1979)

- Stresses the urgent need toachieve a comprehensive andlasting peace in the Middle East.

32 Al-Aqsa

- Affirms, once more, that the fourthGeneva Convention relative to theprotection of civilians in time of waris applicable to the Arab Territoriesoccupied in 1967 including EastJerusalem.

- Determines that the policy andpractices of Israel in establishingsettlements in the Palestinian andArab territories occupied in 1967,have no legal validity.

- Strongly deplores the failure ofIsrael to abide by Security Councilresolutions 237(1967) 252(1968)298(1971) and the consensus state-ment by the President of the SecurityCouncil on 11 November 1976 andthe General Assembly resolutions2253 and 2254 of July 1967. 32/5of October 1977 and 33/113 ofDecember 1978.

In addition to all the previously mentionedviolations by Israel, building in Jerusalem afterthe 1993 Oslo Agreement is a violation to thisagreement which prohibits any of theconflicting parties to take any action that mayalter the outcome of final status negotiationsover Jerusalem.

Although Israel violated all internationallaws concerning occupied lands and did notcommit itself to any General Councilresolution; it still considers itself as a State ofLaw thus giving itself the right to decide thefuture of the city alone by ‘The Law ofProclaiming Jerusalem the capital of Israel’which states:

1. Jerusalem, complete and united, is thecapital of Israel.

2. Jerusalem is the seat of the Presidentof the state, the Kenneset, theGovernment and the Supreme Court.

3. The Holy Places shall be protected fromdesecration and any other violation andfrom anything likely to violate thefreedom of access of the members ofthe different religions to the placessacred to them or their feelings towardsthese places.

(In reality, Al Aqsa mosque has beenattacked many times, under Israelioccupation, by armed soldiers. Also, fireburned parts of it in1968. Tens ofMuslims were killed in these attacks andhundreds injured. In addition, Muslimsliving a number of miles away fromthe mosque are not allowed to reach it,

because they have West Bankidentity cards. Similarly, there aremillions of Muslims around theworld that are forbidden fromvisiting Jerusalem).

4. (a) the government shall provide forthe development and prosperity ofJerusalem and the well being of itsinhabitants by allocating specialfunds, including a special annual grantto the municipality.(b) Jerusalem shall be given specialpriority in the activities of theauthorities of the state so as tofurther its development in economicand other matters.

The law was signed by Menachem Begin,as Prime Minister, and Yitzhak Navon, asPresident of the stat, on 30 July 1980.

On the political arena, Israel hasmaintained its goals in keeping Jerusalemunder occupation with a Jewish majority.For 25 years, from 1967 to1993, theJerusalem issue was not allowed to betackled by any Arab negotiator such asEgyptian-Israeli negotiations in the CampDavid peace treaty of 1978.

In the 1993 Oslo Accords, the questionof Jerusalem was postponed to thepermanent status negotiation.

In 1996, during secret negotiationbetween Israel and the Palestinians, Israel,under a Labour Government, proposed athree point plan that kept Israeli sovereigntyover the city which was refused byPalestinians.

At Camp David in 2000, PresidentClinton proposed a solution for Jerusalemwhich divided the Eastern part of the city,inside and outside the wall, intoneighborhoods under Israeli and Palestiniansovereignties, although all neighborhoods areArabs, except the Jewish Quarter inside thewalls. The strangest proposal in Clinton’splan was dividing El Haram El Sharifhorizontally and vertically, into apartmentsbetween Jews and Muslims. When the planwas proposed to Barak, he refused it. Yethe returned the plan to Clinton to proposeto Arafat so that the public refusal was madeto look like it came from the Palestinians.

Arab Citizens Resistance to

Settlements

Arab citizens of Jerusalem, in spite ofthe scarcity of resources that was available

Al-Aqsa 33

to them, resisted the policy of uprooting themfrom their city in many ways, including:

i Forming committees to solve urgentdaily problems that Israel was notinterested in, either deliberately orbecause money was spent on theWestern part of the city, such aseducation, trade and personal security.

ii Building homes despite the restrictionsimposed.

iii Founding major establishments to createroots in the city in spite of Israeliobstacles, such as Al-Quds Universityand the Arab Studies Establishment.

iv Meeting high living costs despite unfaircompetition between the two parts ofthe city in trade, especially in the sectorof tourism where tourists are directedby different means to buy andaccommodate in the West rather thanthe East of the city.

v Resistance to confiscation of land hasnot stopped throughout the 38 years ofoccupation. Methods used vary inrange, and include recourse to the Israelicourts or to the internationalcommunity.

vi Despite steps taken by Israel to reducethe number of Jerusalem I.D. carriers,their numbers are still increasing. Forexample, when building of the

Al-Aqsa

Editor

The Articles published in this journal do not necessarily reflect the views ofthe Editorial Board or of Friends of Al-aqsa

�

Separation Wall resulted in Arabsmoving from outside the wall toinside it, families were ready to livein smaller houses and under badliving conditions rather than leavingtheir city.

vii At the centre of the struggle is Al-Aqsa Mosque, and Arabs inJerusalem have always been ready todefend the Mosque. Israeli settlersand fanatics have always showedtheir will and intention to destroy theMosque and build the claimedTemple instead. This had resulted ina number of confrontationswhereby hundreds of Palestinianshave fallen as martyrs or beenwounded. In the last decadeMuslims put great efforts intorepairing parts of the Mosque, soas not to leave any abandoned areaswhich the Israelis might claim forthemselves.

The building of settlements has alwaysbeen a clear and strategic method usedby Israel to Judaize Jerusalem. In thismission it has had some success, butPalestinians have shown that they willcontinue their struggle for their birthrightto a land inhabited by them forgenerations.

34 Al-Aqsa

Al-Aqsa 35

1400 years ago a great social institution was established by

the Prophet Muhammad H. The tradition was carried on

by his companions and many subsequent generations. It

provided immense benefit to the poor and created some of

the greatest thinkers, scholars and institutions of Islamic

civilisation. That great tradition is known as ‘Waqf ’ and it

is fast being forgotten by Muslims around the world.

What is Waqf ?

Waqf (plural: Awqaf) refers to the commitmentof property or money, whose benefit or profit isused for charitable or religious purposes. Central tothe idea of Waqf is that it is lasting; the gift isregarded as belonging to ‘Allah’ and therefore cannotbe sold.

Although Waqf is not expressly mentioned inthe Qur’an, it is mentioned in the teachings and deedsof the Prophet Muhammad HHHHH. In one such saying,the blessed Prophet HHHHH said “When a person dies all

their actions come to an end except three: ongoing charity,

knowledge from which people continue to benefit and

righteous children who pray for them.” The ongoingcharity to which the Prophet HHHHH refers is Waqf.

An eloquent example of one of the first recordedAwqaf, is that of a man named Mukhairiq who inhis Will bequeathed seven of his orchards to theProphet Muhammad HHHHH. On his death, the ProphetHHHHH took hold of the orchards and made them acharitable Waqf for the poor and needy.

There are many further instances of Waqf madeby the Prophet HHHHH and his close companions, someof whom would stake much of their property asWaqf such as Umar al Khattab HHHHH , one of thecompanions of the Prophet HHHHH who later went onto become the second caliph. He approached theProphet HHHHH for advice after obtaining some valuableland. The Prophet HHHHH advised him to transform thedonated land to charitable Waqf so that it couldneither be sold nor gifted. Umar dedicated the landto benefit the poor, needy relatives, ‘to set free slaves’in the way of Allah, for travellers and to entertainguests.

Waqf continued to play a key role in thedevelopment of Islamic civilisations. During thehistoric Malmuk and Ottoman eras, Waqf shapedmany aspects of life in the scientific, social andeconomic fields.

In the field of health for example, one of themany institutions that benefited from Waqf was theAl Noori Hospital in Damascus founded in 1145AD.

It was one of the first hospitals to adopt medicalrecords and was also used as a medical schoolfrom which many eminent physicians graduated,including Ibn Nafis, a scholar who discovered aircirculation in the lungs. The hospital served forseven centuries and parts of it still exist today!

Another hospital that benefited from Awqafwas the Mansuri Hospital in Cairo, built byMansur Qalaun in 1248AD. Converted from apalace, the hospital catered for thousands ofpatients with separate wards for men and womenand as well as different wards for various illnesses.The hospital was equipped with its ownpharmacy, library and lecture halls, and also hadits own mosque as well as a chapel for Christianpatients. According to the rules of Waqf uponwhich the hospital was founded, no one wasever turned away and no limits were set as tohow long a person could stay.

In the field of education, countless schools,libraries and universities were built, with revenuesfrom Awqaf paying for books, teaching materials,employee salaries, building maintenance andstipends for students. Universities such as Al-Azhar in Cairo, Al Qarawiyyin in Fez and Zaitounain Tunis were founded upon Waqf and forgenerations have continued to produce greatscholars and reformers.

Awqaf was used in various other spheres oflife, including the building of roads and bridges,providing drinking water for towns and villages,setting up soup kitchens for the poor and thebuilding and maintenance of mosques andchapels.

Islamic Relief and Waqf

Guided by the illustrious record of Waqf inIslamic civilisation, Islamic Relief started its

Waqf programme in 2000, and has adesignated department that arranges fordonations to be invested in accordance withprinciples of Islamic law.

Donors are invited to make a donation whichis preserved through investment. The annualprofit that it makes is then used to help the poorthrough various development projects. Since2001, Islamic Relief has implemented Waqfprojects in 16 countries worldwide.

Recent Waqf projects have included providingemergency and relief aid to Tsunami victims inIndonesia, building a computer training centre

Waqf – The Eternal Legacy

36 Al-Aqsa

for orphaned Palestinian children in Jordan andproviding specialist eye treatment for patients inBangladesh as part of its ‘restoring eyesight project’.

To find out more about Islamic

Relief ’s Waqf scheme visit:

www.islamic-relief.org.uk

or call:

0121 622 0622

for a free Waqf information pack

Al-Aqsa 37

38 Al-Aqsa

Al-Aqsa 39

B O O K R E V I E W

Landscapes of the Jihad

BY FAISAL DEVJI, Hardcover: 184 pages,Cornell UniversityPress (2005), ISBN: 0801444373, Price £15

Faisal Devji, Assistant Professor of History at New SchoolUniversity, provides a mentally stimulating essay thatsmashes the conventional wisdom and narratives of Al-

Qaeda and the jihad. Not everything he says should be takenverbatim but he does apply the brakes in any thinking person’smental stride.

Devji contends that post 9/11, with the Qur’an on the ‘NewYork best-sellers list, one can justify in stating that Islam hasbecome an American phenomenon, to an extent that Americansmight even be more interested in and informed about it than areMuslims (p. xii)’.

Devji’s purpose is not, he says, to provide a sociology of Al-Qaeda’s jihad, but rather the reverse: to encourage us to reflecton the landscapes of its global effect by a process of abstractionthat is signalled by a profligate use of ‘the jihad’ as a term todescribe the global nature of Al-Qaeda.

The Essay’s premise of Al-Qaeda’s global nature is succinctlyhandled by highlighting the bombings and attacks from Kenya,Tanzania, Sudan, Yemen and Afghanistan. ‘[This] remarkablydispersed sequence of events in which the killers and victims,causes and effects, countries and targets involved, shared neitherhistory nor geography and had nothing to do with eachother…yet it was only in this temporary configuration ofdispersed peoples and places that Al-Qaeda’s jihad was establishedas a global movement (p. 8)’. The resultant outcome of theglobalisation of Al-Qaeda’s jihad may lead to wider demandsfor democratisation of the Middle East, whereas the violentelement of jihad becomes finite.

The conventional wisdom in the West for explaining Al-Qaeda has been a group driven by fundamentalist Islamic belief,with the right wing adding ‘hell bent on destroying the west’.Devji shows, with evidence, that most of the 9/11 and Madridbombers had little knowledge of Islam. ‘[Jihad makers] notonly are old methods of learning persuasion and practices madeparochial and sometimes even redundant by the jihad, but a newkind of Muslim, too, is created in the process, one not definedby any notion of cultic uniformity (p. 20)’.

Al-Qaeda’s success or, as Devji proposes, factors that madejihad into global movements are: ‘[1] the failure of local strugglesand [2] the inability to control a global landscape of operationsby the politics of intentionality (p. 31)’. Al-Qaeda’s jihad, beyondthe politics of causes, is argued as being objected to by Islamistgroups like Hamas, Ikhwan and Jamaat-e Islamia. Statementspost 9/11 by these groups expressed sympathy and sorrow atthe incident.

To many observers and politicians, Al-Qaeda’s success isput down to the neglect of the plight of the Palestinians.However, Devji argues that Palestine is only a tool for jihadrather than the cause of it. ‘As far as Bin Laden is concerned acause like the Palestinian one must be subordinated to thejihad as a global struggle (p. 69)’. In his evidence, Devji quotesBin Laden from an interview in October 2001, as saying ‘Jihadis a duty to liberate Al-Aqsa and to help the powerless inPalestine, Iraq and Lebanon and in every Muslim country. Thereis no doubt that the liberation of the Arabian Peninsula frominfidels is a duty as well. But it is not right to say that Osamaput the Palestinian issue first…(p. 69).’

A significant section of his argument lies in the fact thatjihad has become metaphysical: ‘Conceptually, however, thejihad’s global character is manifested in its abandonment of thefreedom struggle for the religious war. In other words, it is nolonger because Muslim populations in certain countries happento be oppressed by Christian or Jewish ones that the jihad isdeclared, but rather because the war itself is also a metaphysicalone…(p. 74)’.

A chapter has been dedicated to the effect and use of mediaby the jihadi. While there is no doubt that media plays a pivotalrole in advancing jihad, Devji perhaps over steps the mark whenhe says, ‘jihad is more a product of the media than it is of anylocal tradition or situation and school or lineage of Muslimauthority (p. 87)’. To support his theory, he gives an account themartyr Suraqah al-Andalusi’s conversion to the jihad afterlistening to an audio cassette.

Chapter 5 is rather provocatively titled, ‘The Death of God’in which jihad’s ability to wrest authority from establishedinstitutes is argued. Devji contends, ‘given the jihad’sdismemberment of the juridical authority that had for centuriesbeen located in a clerical class known as the Ulama ...(p. 112)’.

In the final chapter Devji assesses the impact of the ‘War OnTerror’ on the West itself and America in particular. By subvertingthe constitution and undermining civil liberties and impedingthe financial, demographic and technological mobility that providethe foundations of its own economic might, the ‘US becomes asuicide state, its martyrdom mirroring the many martyrdoms ofthe jihad (p. 138)’. A parting shot to America is given whenDevji warns that it is ‘ America’s very role as a superpower thatmakes it a political dinosaur, out-moded both because the enemyit was made to fight no longer exists and because global politicsis no longer defined in hemispheric or even properly geographicalterms (p. 136/7)’.

This is a serious book argued in scholarly fashion and is amust read for both the layman and the policy makers. There isno doubt many references will be made to this book by studentsof jihad and Islam, anthropologists and political activists.

Leicester Ismail Patel

40 Al-Aqsa

Britain, The Hashemites and Arab Rule,

1920–1925: The Sherifian Solution

BY TIMOTHY J. PARIS, Frank Cass Publishers, 2003, ISBN714654515, Hardback Pp. 392.

Paris’ book on British policy regarding the Hashemi familyaround the First World War is detailed, lucid andilluminating. What emerges from his book is how cynical

and duplicitous British policy was in regard to the region, andhow unattractive and inept the Hashemi really were (so what elseis new?). There are several issues in the book of special interest.The main emphasis of the book is that the Sherifian solution –rule by the Hashemites, the family of Husain, sheriff of theHoly Places – was a British solution to a British problem: howto reconcile promises of Arab self-rule and war-time debt withthe need to dominate the region. The method was indirect ruleby British-controlled clients: ‘If… Faisal…in Mesopotamia, knewthat his father’s position in the Hijaz and his brother Abdullah’sposition in Transjordan were dependent on his own goodbehaviour, he would be … amenable to British policies’, p. 2.

The origins of the British alliance with the Hashemites goesback to two factors: the way the central Ottoman governmentwould often play-off rival branches of the family, and the effectof the secularist C.U.P 1908 revolution, which Husain foundanathema, p. 12. There is no evidence that Husain before 1915was attracted to Arab nationalism but his son Abdullah becameinvolved in 1914, p.22, and, after another son, Ali, discovered aTurkish plan to depose Husain, he was eventually won over.When the Sultan declared jihad in 1915, it was essential for thisto be backed by the Sherif. The British however, concerned at theeffect on their Muslim subjects, were interested in preventingthis.

Hence the Husain-McMahon correspondence, where theBritish High Commissioner in Egypt promised both ‘an ArabKhalifate of Islam’, p. 29, and Arab independence in all the areasclaimed by Husain with three qualifications: some of the borderarea with what is now Turkey; ‘special administrativearrangements’ by Britain in Basra and Baghdad (sound familiar);and exclusion of Syrian districts to the west of Damascus, Homs,Hama and Aleppo. Husain was only prepared to agree totemporary exclusion of the latter two. It is quite clear that Palestinewas part of the area promised to Husain, making the Balfour

Declaration essentially an act of betrayal: ‘it was intended to exceptcoastal Syria, not Palestine’, p. 209.

It is also clear from the McMahon pledges that Transjordanwas never considered part of the area of exclusion from Arabrule, p. 209.

The League of Nations approved Transjordanian exemptionfrom the Zionist provisions of the Palestine Mandate, p. 214.Interestingly, both the US and the Vatican at first opposed thePalestine Mandate, p. 210.

The first Hashemite rulers emerge as incompetent and self-interested. Abdullah was inept in Transjordan, p. 188, and waswilling to accommodate British plans for Zionism so long as hisown power was assured, pp. 207-208.

Ben Gurion’s dictum that ‘the Arab states are Israel’s firstline of defence’ seems all too true; Sir Herbert Samuel, the ZionistBritish Commissioner, referred to Abdullah as Britain’s ‘asset’.Husain ruled Hijaz with ‘cruelty’, imprisoning and torturingpeople incurring his displeasure; raising ‘staggering taxes andexorbitant customs dues’ which stymied the economy, p. 253.

Hijazis would have shed few tears when he left.One issue of particular interest to British Muslims, the

largest group of which are of South Asian origins, is the role ofthe Imperial Indian government and the India Office in thesaga. British interests in Arabia included ‘protection of the searoutes to India, the security of …pilgrimage routes for theEmpire’s immense Muslim population…’, p.1. Indeed, in regardto Britain’s Arab policy, ‘India exercised an important and, attimes, decisive influence’, p. 321.

It is a revelation to see how concerned the colonial Indianadministration was to secure free and safe facility of IndianMuslims to perform the Hajj. This involved defraying costs ofthe passage from India, a Vice-Consul at Jeddah, and a ‘HajjOfficer’ to look after their concerns, p. 306.

Yet Husain proved both corrupt and incompetent inadministration of the rite. Husain later lost Hijaz to Ibn Saud,Faisal’s family was killed in the 1958 Iraq coup, and Abdullahwas assassinated because of his collusion with the Zionists.Whether the remaining Hashemis in Jordan will survive remainsto be seen.

The Modern Middle EastBY ILAN PAPPÉ, London & New York: Routledge, (2005),Pp.344.

Ilan Pappé is a prominent Israeli historian and his book is ofa standard we have come to expect of his writings. It coverseverything: politics, economics, urban and rural history,

popular culture, theatre, writing, women, Islam and globalisation– a veritable tour de force. Pappé defines the modern Middle East

Al-Aqsa 41

as beginning with Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt in 1798, p. 4,and this perhaps reminds us that the history of the modernMiddle East is one of unwelcome Western intrusions. Pappésees the region as stuck in a transitional period between traditionand modernity. Of course, it all depends on one’s interpretationof the latter.

Of particular interest is how Pappé presents the OttomanEmpire as multiracial and pluralistic, p. 15, although he obliquelynotes that it was accompanied by ‘despotism and tyranny’.However, he observes that Istanbul in 1893 was only halfMuslim, and included ‘a large Jewish community made up ofrefugees from the Spanish Inquisition who had been welcomedto Istanbul at the beginning of the sixteenth century by SultanBayzeid II’. This is an issue which causes frequent consternationamong Muslims: they welcomed Jewish refugees from Europe’s‘religious cleansing’ in Spain, and yet today they are often accusedof anti-Semitism.

Another significant observation is that ‘When Arab societieswere subjected to direct European rule, religion became an ideologyof resistance and, hence, “fanatic” and threatening to Westerneyes’, p. 17. Perhaps someone should bring this point to the noticeof Blair and Bush; instead of seeing ‘Islamist terrorism’ as thefruit of ‘an evil ideology’ bent on world conquest, the destructionof Western democracy and the physical destruction of Americansand Britons, they might realise that it is the neo-colonial presencethat causes it. On the other hand, it can be seen that if Muslimsocieties are repressive, especially to minorities, they give a ‘pretextfor European colonial intervention and invasion’, p. 18. This isexactly what happened with the Ottoman State in the 19th centuryover its treatment of Christians, but the kind of argument wasalso employed to justify the invasion of Iraq.

One area in which Pappé is particularly good is in his analogyof the French colonisation of Algeria and that of Zionism inPalestine: ‘In Algeria the power of the French Empire was utilizedfor confiscating land for the new settlers; in Palestine it was theJewish capital that encouraged local landlords, most of whowere absentees, to sell their land with the tenants and peasantson it’, p. 19. He observes that Edward Said noted the parallels.Pappé notes that French rule was based on ‘a system of totalapartheid, discriminating against Algerians in every sphere oflife’, p. 26. Similarly, another forgotten arena of oppression isLibya, where Mussolini killed half the population.

Another invaluable point made by Pappé is how US policyin the region changed. Following President Kennedy’sassassination ‘Israel was built into an American bastion in theregion’, in a way that did not always benefit the Americans, p. 29.However, this insensitivity to justice was not always a characteristicof US policy. At the end of the First World War, America wasquite positive towards Arab self-determination, pp. 21, 25, whichis a rebuke to those who see America as inherently evil.Nonetheless, Pappé denounces the Americans as dishonestpower brokers in the present situation, p. 36.

Pappé is also good on demonstrating that Middle EasternIslam is not a monolith, and again he refers us to the work ofEdward Said, p. 269. This is as true of ‘political’ Islam as any‘other’ kind; Pappé points to the difference between the Islamicgovernments of Iran and Turkey, where Islam plays a major rolein determining foreign policy in the former, and none with thelatter, p. 271. Again, the much-neglected Takfir wa al-Hijra groupin Egypt took the response of not fighting the ‘apostate’ society’but in a rather literal understanding of the Sunnah of Hijra inthe present age, withdrew into desert caves, p. 274.

Two other areas of interest include the way the Islamists inEgypt took over the Labour Party and moved it from socialism

to political Islam as a result of an initial electoral alliance, p. 280.It can be seen that the Muslim-Left alliance we see in Britain inthe form of the RESPECT coalition can claim a long pedigree!The other point is how Palestinian Israeli citizens have consideredcampaigning for ethnic or national autonomy in the face ofresistance from Israeli society to a more ‘democratized reality’.

Catastrophe Remembered: Palestine,

Israel and the Internal Refugees; Essays

in Memory of Edward SaidED. NUR MASALHA, London: Zed Books, (2005), Pp.300.

Catastrophe Remembered, principally about the plight of IsraeliArabs, is long overdue and, for that reason alone, mostwelcome. It has long been my opinion that the question

of Israeli Arabs should be at the forefront of the concern forPalestinian rights, rather than at the margins, since so much ofwhat the Israeli regime does to Palestinians in the Diaspora andin the Occupied Territories is only possible because of what itcan do (legally, according to its terms), to those Palestinians whoare Israeli citizens. A multiple-authored work always poses theproblem of unevenness, but that is happily absent from thisbook. Inevitably, however, there is much overlapping.

The racial oppression of Israeli Arabs is perhaps the regime’sbest-kept secret. So often we hear that Israeli Arabs are full citizens,despite the US State Department’s annual reports that prove thecontrary is true. Perhaps even less well-known is that two werevictims of the Nakba. Masalha’s essay illustrates the Orwellianstance of the regime to internally displaced refugees: they are‘present absentees’, p. 24.

This 1984-style contradiction describes the fact that they arepresent in the state, but absent from their original homes. Theseaccount for 25% of the entire Israeli Arab population – a hugenumber, usually overlooked by everyone. It should be notedthat the displacement continued after 1948, giving lie to the claimthat the destruction of villages occurred in the heat of war orwas a security matter.

In 1951 ‘residents of thirteen small Arab villages in Wadi‘Ara were expelled over the border’, p. 27. Similarly, 700 peoplefrom Kafr Yasif village in Galilee were expelled. These were byno means isolated incidents. As well as displacement, a plethoraof laws and military regulations prevented internal refugees fromreturning and enabled the state to confiscate their lands.Moreover, this should not be seen as a transfer from private topublic ownership; the properties then come under the Israel

42 Al-Aqsa

Lands Authority, who often transfer it to the Jewish NationalFund – whose constitution reserves all ownership to Jews only,p. 35. It should be noted that there has been no comment fromeither Blair or Bush about Palestinian villages being ‘wiped offthe map’.

The situation has been particularly bad for ‘UnrecognisedVillages’. This especially affects the Negev Bedouin. The situationaffects about a tenth of Israeli Arabs, p. 200. Again, theirdisappearance from the map has not resulted in any excited andexasperated response from Prime Minister Blair. As a result ofthe Planning and Construction Law of 1965, only 123 Arablocalities were recognised by the authorities; all others were deemedillegal. This means that they are denied political representation,resources, grants, etc. The authorities frequently demolishbuildings in these villages.

Two of the most helpful aspects of the book are its coverageof the growing Israeli Arab resistance to the status quo andemerging Israeli Jewish solidarity. In the 1990s there wasestablished a ‘National Association for the Defense of the Rightsof Internally Displaced’ Palestinians (ADRID), p. 97. This isfighting for the right of Israeli Arabs to return to their originalvillages. Parallel to this is the creation of Zochrot (‘remember’ inHebrew), a group of Israeli Jews committed to bringing thereality of the Nakba to Israeli public attention, p. 219. This isessential, because the Nakba is ignored or denied in the officialand educational discourse. It is at this point that a further chaptercould have been added. Nakba-denial is not peculiar to the Israeliregime and its apologists. ‘Holocaust-denial’ is rightlycondemned in the West, as is denial of the Armenian massacresof 1915, yet no criticism is ever directed at those engaged in oneof the biggest assaults on history by denying the Nakba. TheBritish government – despite its complicity in the disaster –refuses to commemorate it. Yet what have Muslim and Arabrepresentatives in the West done to raise the issue of the IsraeliArabs and their sufferings as a result of this Catastrophe?

Dr Anthony McRoy1

1 Dr Anthony McRoy is an Irish Evangelical Christian lecturer and writer, a specialist in Middle Eastern history and current affairs, BritishMuslims, and the concept of Jihad. He writes for several Muslim and Christian publications, regularly appears on Middle Eastern TV, andlectures in Islamics at the Evangelical Theological College of Wales. His first book is From Rushdie to 7/7: The Radicalisation of Islam in Britain.

Al-Aqsa 43

Bethlehem Besieged: Stories of Hope

in Times of Trouble

BY MITRI RAHEB, Minneapolis, Fortress Press, (2004), ISBN0800636538, Pp.157.

The Author, Rev. Mitri Raheb is pastor of the EvangelicalLutheran Christmas Church in the occupied West Bankcity of Bethlehem. This book is his second, the first being

an articulation of his theological convictions based on personalexperiences, ‘I am a Palestinian Christian’ (Fortress Press, 1995).The present book deals with the Author’s experiences duringthe 2002 Israeli siege of Bethlehem and the Church of theNativity in Madbaseh Square, adjoining Manger Square in thecentre of the old town. He records the extreme and wantondestruction suffered by his institution, the Lutheran Church andits affiliated organs in Bethlehem. The book is styled in aninspirational fashion, with emotive pictures between chapters,all to ensure that the spirit of hope and recovery must triumphin the midst of destruction, subjugation and mindless prejudice.The first chapter of the book acts as a sort of introduction aswell as a conclusion as the Author telescopes us through theentire episode of the destruction of his buildings and institutionsand their extraordinary regeneration within a year or so. As he sofittingly states, ‘the compound has again been a beacon of hopeduring times of despair’ (p. 16).

The second chapter gives us a blow-by-blow description ofthe incredible risks taken by the pastor in confronting the Israelitroops that were destroying his house and Church buildings onthat fateful Thursday, April 4th, 2002. We are held almost spellbound as the Author, with an uncanny talent for detail, managesto take us through his confrontation with the troops, in theprocess revealing some of the misconceptions that the averageIsraeli soldier has about Palestinians and Arabs in general. Hequotes one soldier as snarling at him that “Arabic in the ugliestlanguage in the world” (p.22).

In the next chapter, the Author describes an incident thatwould never otherwise be reported, as far as Palestinian-Israelinews is concerned. Apparently, one of the militants that hadtaken refuge within the Church of the Nativity, a member of theHAMAS group called Muhammad, fell ill and was taken care ofby one of the Franciscan friars within the Church, a priest by thename of Father Amjad. This incident took place right when theIsraeli and indeed much of the world media, that often doesnothing better than toe the Israeli line, was reporting that the

priests within the Church were being held captive by the militantsagainst their will. Rev. Raheb also reminds us that many ordinaryPalestinian civilians were also caught up in the Church, again incontravention of the popularly held view that all the people whohad sought refuge in the Church were militants and terrorists.

In his next two chapters, the Author describes how Churchlife was conducted during the four months period whenBethlehem and indeed much of the West Bank cities were undercurfew in 2002. He describes the extraordinarily humiliating andcruel behaviour of the Israeli soldiers who made people caughtduring curfew hours take off their clothes and walk home naked,in addition to the thousands of shekels worth of fines, thebrutal interrogations, beatings, detention and even torture thatthey would have to experience (p.47).

In chapter six, the Author describes how he himself once,along with his mother, took refuge within the Church of theNativity in Bethlehem, his hometown. This occurred during theJune 1967 Israeli invasion of the West Bank of Jordan. TheNativity church has had a long history of being a place of refugein times of trouble, running back hundreds of years. As a Churchdedicated to the memory of the mother of Christ, St. Mary, theChurch has a special significance for the local Muslim communityas well. During Ottoman times, Muslim pilgrims would oftenvisit the Church and the monks were committed as per therequirements of the ‘status quo’, that all-embracing code ofconduct as far as the Christian institutions of the Holy Landwere concerned, to look after all their needs. Father Mitri describeshis life till the fateful day in 2002, as having been lived under thebaleful glare of the Israeli occupation. It is no wonder that hetitles this chapter, ‘The land that swallows its children’.

Chapter seven describes a routine faced by countlessPalestinians innumerable times in their lives, namely the delayand the roadblocks created by Israeli planners to disruptPalestinian life as much as possible. In the Author’s case, it resultedin the death of his own father-in-law, who suffering from aserious heart attack was denied permission to enter Jerusalem togo to hospital on the flimsiest of excuses and, when finally hewas able to make his entry, it was just too late.

Chapter eight, while ostensibly dealing with the difficultiesfaced by the Author to get a driving license or even drive inoccupied Palestine, actually conveys the message of the almosttotal blockade under which most Palestinians in the West Banklabour at the moment. Conditions seem even worse thanapartheid South Africa in some instances. Chapter nine describesthe painful and racist experience of being denied permission toleave the country to visit the US despite having all paper work inorder, just for the sole reason of being a Palestinian. Chapter tenreads rather like a sermon as the Author tries to analyse why thePalestinian people have to suffer as they do, bearing the bruntnot only of their own sins but also those of other people likethe Europeans, the Israelis, other Arab nations and theAmericans. In the midst of all this suffering, the Author feelsthat the only way is to persevere, until (in the Author’s words),‘Israel and the world muster the courage to take their share (ofguilt)’.

The Author goes on to describe an incident that was oftenhighlighted in the world media and consequently familiar to allPalestine watchers, during the first Intifada, namely almost dailyshootings versus tank duels that used to take place between thePalestinian towns of Bethlehem and Beit Jala and the Israelisettlement of Gilo across the valley from them. Mitri narrates, invery touching terms, the human misery that must result fromthese incidents as well as the grand march for peace sponsoredby the residents of the two towns to reclaim their streets for

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1 Samuel Jacob Kuruvilla is a PhD student at the University of Exeter in the Department of Politics. His area of speciality is Middle EastPolitics.

peace again. Mitri’s book is full of interesting anecdotes andincidents. Witness his analysis of why a group of Palestinianpainters, Christian as well Muslim, but mainly Muslim, whenasked to draw their perceptions of Christ from a Palestinianperspective, should, with just one exception draw Christ crucified,despite the absence of this incident from the life of Christ inIslamic historiography. His striking conclusion is that the bestway to present the modern Palestinian experience at the handsof the Israelis is to draw Christ crucified. Mitri tries to explainwhy his institution in Bethlehem has such a large number ofwell-qualified and trained staff, who actually had no business tobe wasting their lives in such a thankless place as the Jerusalem-Bethlehem-Ramallah triangle. He puts this down solely tocommitment and the desire to do some good where it is mostneeded.

Mitri ends the books with some sound advise to his fellowChristians in Europe and America. He exhorts them to stopbeing spectators and, instead, to start being actors in trying toconvince their respective governments to stop funding themilitary government of Israel and instead to invest in peace-building initiatives. In the midst of this, he insists on theimportance of hope, both from the Palestinian as well as Israelipoint of view. Without hope of a better tomorrow there is nofuture for the region. The alternative is too bloody tocontemplate. Again, as Christians, Mitri feels that ‘we are actorson Christ’s behalf ’ (p. 156).

The book ends with a very colourful and emotive descriptionof the concept of Christian hope. To quote again, ‘if we plant atree today, there will be shade for the children to play in, therewill be oil to heal the wounds, and there will be olive branches towave when peace arrives. (p. 157).

A striking vision for the, as yet, seemingly unattainablefuture.

Samuel Jacob Kuruvilla1

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