Have yourself a very Orthodox Christmas

Minus all the Western commercial hoopla of 25 December, 300 million members of the Eastern Orthodox Church celebrated its Christmas today. The day is celebrated on January 7 according to the old Julian calendar by the Russian, Serbian, Georgian and Jerusalem Orthodox Churches and Mount Athos monasteries commemorate the birth of Jesus 13 days after Western Christmas. Unlike the Catholic Church where the Pope in preeminent, there are 14 autocephalous churches in the Orthodox community, though the mother church is Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the “first among equals”. Photo: Orthodox priests lead a Christmas service at the Bosnian Orthodox Church in Sarajevo (Amel Emric / AP)

At the 1459 Council of Florence monks from the self-governing Mt Athos in Greece refused to let Catholic and Orthodox Churches in return for Western military help against the Turks. As a result Constantinople fell to the Ottomans but Orthodoxy survived doctrinally intact. In today’s Istanbul as in many places across southern and eastern Europe, Orthodox Christian worshippers plunged into chilly waters to retrieve crucifixes in ceremonies commemorating the baptism of Jesus. Hundreds from Istanbul's now tiny Greek Orthodox community and Greek tourists attended the Epiphany ceremony of the Blessing of the Waters. About 20 faithful leaped into the cold Golden Horn inlet to retrieve a wooden cross thrown by the spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I. Apostolos Oikonomou, a 40-year-old Greek man, clinched the cross. "This year I was the lucky guy," he said. "I wish everybody peace and happy New Year."

Over 5,000 worshippers gathered at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ Our Saviour including outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his wife Svetlana. Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, called on the congregation to withstand the “cult of hasty lucre”. Archpriest Sergius Zvonarev of the Moscow Patriarchate said the day was both a solemn ritual and joyous celebration, Zvonarev said the Russian Orthodox Church remained loyal to the Julian calendar which regulated church life and traditions for centuries. “It reveres these traditions as the entire civilized world used to live by them in the past,” he said.

Orthodox Christians gathered in Bethlehem in front of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in the Church of the Nativity. Barely days after a fight between various Christian sects over territorial rights in the church, the Mayor of Bethlehem Victor Batarseh said the theme of this year’s celebration was Palestine celebrates hope. “Our message in these days is love and peace to all especially in the Holy Land”, Batarseh said. Over 2,000 scouts from all over the West Bank held a parade through Bethlehem with their marching bands and bagpipes.

Many in Bethlehem say the best band is the Syriac Orthodox Scouts’ pipers. Bethlehem’s Syriac Orthodox community is proud to trace its roots to the ancient Aramean peoples and are among the few people left that speak the language of Jesus, Aramaic. The scouts were established in 1958 and became internationally successful in sports in the 60s and 70s. After the Oslo Accords, their pipers became President Yasser Arafat’s military band. One former band member said they were in Gaza playing the bagpipes for Arafat when the news of Rabin’s assassination was announced. “They thought it was a Palestinian who had killed him so they would not let us leave Gaza,” he said. Today they took centre stage in Manger Square.

In Egypt, Copts nervously celebrated the day as sectarian violence continued, the first Christmas in the post Hosni Mubarak era. US President Barack Obama used the occasion to call for the protection of Copts and other minorities. "I want to reaffirm the commitment of the US to work for the protection of Christian and other religious minorities around the world," he said. The call comes after the military rulers cracked down on a Coptic march in October. Coptic Pope Shenouda III commended Islamist leaders, who attended the Coptic Church service. "We all celebrate together as Egyptians,” Shenouda said.

Gaza: A History of Neglect

While the recent flotilla attempts to end the economic blockade have turned it into front page news, Gaza has been a forgotten add-on for most of its 62 years of existence. For millennia it was simply a part of Palestine occupied by a succession of foreign rulers. On 14 May 1948 the last of those rulers, the British high commissioner, left Palestine formally ending the colonial mandate. (photo:AP)

The Zionists immediately proclaimed an independent Israel. Within 24 hours armies from Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Iraq launched an attack across the frontier but stopped short at occupying Jewish settlements. The Israelis battle-hardened from fighting Germans and British alike routed the invaders.

When fighting ended in January 1949 Palestine had disappeared from the map. Most went to Israel, the west Bank went to Jordan leaving behind just the tiny strip of Gaza administered by Egypt. The strip was home to thousands of Palestinian refugees who fled across the border or were forced to leave by Jewish settlers.

Egypt’s King Farouk ordered the building of a new palace in Gaza where he could preside over a Palestinian Arab Government. But his grandiose schemes fell apart when Nasser and his Free Officers deposed him in a coup in 1952. Nasser turned his attentions to removing the hated British from the Suez Canal Zone while Gaza reverted to near lawless anarchy and fedayeen raids against Israel.

Four years later the Israelis invaded the strip in the Suez War. It followed a blitz attack on Egyptian forces in Sinai then a diversion south to open up the Gulf of Aqaba. The southern end of the Strip became one of the key battlefields of the war but the Israelis quickly overran the 8,000 Egyptian defenders before taking Gaza City.

After the war Israel told the UN it would keep its troops in Gaza and Sharm el-Sheikh in Sinai. The Americans although sympathetic to Israel, reacted angrily and threatened to cut off aid and end its guarantee of unrestricted oil supplies. With a likely vote on a UN resolution condemning Israel, then Prime Minister Ben Gurion accepted the inevitable and agreed to withdraw from Sinai and Gaza in exchange for access to the Gulf of Aqaba. The war ended the facade there was an independent government in Gaza. Direct control went back to Cairo with a military governor installed in Gaza City.

Gaza changed hands again in 1967 when once again the Strip and Sinai were vital battlefields in the Egyptian flank of the Six Day War. At the end of the war the Israeli Government voted unanimously to return the Sinai to Egypt and the Golan Heights to Syria in return for peace agreements. However Gaza was conspicuously absent from the decision and the arrangement was rejected by Egypt and Syria.

Israeli historian Benny Morris said at least 70,000 Gazans emigrated to Egypt and were forced to sign documents saying they were leaving of their own free will. Israelis moved into the Strip in large numbers taking up one fifth of the land in an already crowded area. Israel finally gave Sinai back to Egypt in 1979 but once again the status of Gaza was not addressed by President Carter’s peace treaty. Egypt did however agree to renounce its territorial claims on the area freeing it to become a part of Palestine, in theory.

Growing Palestinian unrest led to the First Intifada from 1987 to 1993 and a year later to the Oslo Accords which called for the total withdrawal of the IDF from parts of Gaza and the West Bank. It also created the Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority for these areas for a transitional period of five years. It was also the first time that Israel and the Palestinians agreed to view Gaza and the West Bank as a single territorial unit. The Oslo Accords were a brave move but ultimately foundered on aspects that had been deliberately put into the ‘too hard basket’: Israeli settlements, Palestinian refugees, security and border control, and the status of Jerusalem.

Yet there was impact in Gaza. The IDF left Gaza City and the urban conurbation around it and the Palestinian Authority began to administer and police the region in their place. The PA was racked by corruption and mismanagement and by 2000 most of the Strip’s 400,000 residents were frustrated by the lack of progress and the squalid conditions they lived in. The scene was set for the Second Intifada and the fracturing of the Oslo Accords.

After Israeli soldier were killed by a Palestinian mob in the West bank, the IDF launched retaliatory air strikes against PA targets in the West Bank and Gaza. Attitudes hardened on both sides with Israel turning to the right wing Likud Party while Hamas grew in popularity in Gaza. As matters dragged on for years, an exasperated Ariel Sharon decided in 2004 to unilaterally evict all Israelis from Gaza’s 21 settlements. The IDF withdrew a year later. The disengagement did not address wider issues of occupation. Israel still retained control over Gaza’s borders, airspace, coastline, infrastructure and power grid.

Nevertheless the withdrawal gave fresh hope to a peace settlement, hopes that were soon dashed again. In Palestine parliamentary elections were held in early 2006 for the first time in 10 years. Hamas stunned the ruling Fatah party by easily winning the election. With Hamas refusing to recognise Israel, the US and EU imposed sanctions on Palestine. Israel also imposed a blockade on the Strip which exists to this day. The election result also led to the “fratricidal war” between Hamas and Fatah and the latter used its greater numbers in the West Bank to wrest back power there. Hamas remained entrenched in the Strip.

They also continued their low-level war against Israel with home-made Qassam rockets a constant irritant in border regions. In December 2008, Israel lost patience and launched Operation Cast Lead with a series of air strikes before a ground-based invasion in which over a thousand Palestinians were killed and most of Gaza’s infrastructure was destroyed in a three-week campaign. Today the border remains sealed and the IDF strictly controls travel to and from the area.

The end result may to be harden attitudes within the Strip that its future lies not as part of a united Palestine with the West Bank but as a separate country in its own right. It is this reality that no one in the region has yet confronted.

Helen Thomas and the truth about Palestine

Nothing has depressed me more this week than the Helen Thomas affair. If you cannot have a controversial opinion after living on the planet for nine decades then when can you have one?

Thomas had to “retire in disgrace” after she said the Jews should leave Palestine. But she knows a bit about what she was talking about. All her working life she has watched the disaster that has unfolded in the region since Israel’s independence in 1948. In an age where media allow governments to get away with lies about “the peace process” for a journalist of almost 70 years standing to lose her job when she call a spade a spade even when it’s a particularly dirty shovel, is particularly odious.

Where as Palestinians can trace a 2,000 year old link of habitation with their land, the Jewish Diaspora of Europeans, Russians and Africans have been there at most a 100 years. The Jews must reach into their religion to find their ancient connection with Israel. And given how they have battered the original inhabitants into submission, It takes little wonder to imagine a Palestine which is a lot more of a Holy Land without the xenophobes that now administer the country in Jerusalem (a capital recognized by no other country).

Thomas is no fool. She knows she has no power to change facts and knows full well that the Israelis are going nowhere. She has seen first hand how US support and military hardware makes the Knesset well-nigh invincible. With the blessing of every president since Eisenhower (the first of 11 presidents Thomas reported on) Israel have increased their strangehold on Palestine. Thomas could see only too well how they turned the West Bank into a mess of powerless Bantustans and how they have bombed the Strip back into stateless inertia.

So when this knowledgeable near 90 year old is asked a leading question by a Jewish rabbi “Any comments on Israel?” it is hardly wonder she should reply “I think the Jews should get out of Palestine.”

It was the use of the word “Jews” that hung her. If she had said “I think the Israelis should get out of Palestine” it would have been perfectly valid and free from the hoary charge of “anti-Semitism”, a cliché that shows no understanding of what a Semite actually is.

Perhaps Thomas realised this or perhaps she didn’t. She is 89 years old after all. But she did quickly realise was how much an the effect her words would have on the mediated public sphere, given she is a product of it. She chose to fall on her own sword rather than have to constantly justify a position that is so anathema to the US mainstream.

Thomas’s Cassandra-like words exposed her to a path of political deviance. That is unsustainable in any path of American public trust which is based on the media lie that Israel is never wrong.

But she is old enough to remember another event in the same year as Israel’s independence. In 1948, the Russians imposed a wilful blockade on West Berlin aimed at starving it out of political existence. The western powers led by the US defeated it using a combination of outrage and ingenuity.

The blockade of Gaza deserves similar outrage regardless of your feelings about the legitimacy of the Hamas Government. 400,000 people are being systematically starved by a government in a brutal piece of collective punishment. In any other context, this would be called genocide. Shutting an old woman up won't make it any better.

Israel massacres peace activists in the Mediterranean

The Israel Defence Force has murdered at least 16 people after storming ships on the high sea bound for Gaza. The six ships of the flotilla were carrying 10,000 tonnes of aid and around 600 human right activists from around the world who were determined to break Israel’s three year long blockade of the Palestinian territory. Israel had repeatedly said it would not let them in and IDF forces boarded the boats around 65km off Gaza before beginning their killing spree. Free Gaza Movement, the organisers of the flotilla, said the troops opened fire as soon as they stormed the convoy despite the raising of a white flag.

With the flotilla carrying mainly medical and food supplies, most of the world’s governments have condemned Israel’s provocative actions. Israeli police are on high alert across the country to prevent any civil disturbances. Meanwhile in Gaza, the Hamas government held an emergency meeting chaired by premier Ismail Haneya, following the Israeli Television Channel 10 report that 16 activists on the ships were killed and 30 wounded, including the Israeli-Arab Islamic activist Sheikh Raed Sallah (though the Jerusalem Post said he is injured not dead).

The IDF version of events needs to be treated with extreme caution but they said soldiers were attacked with knives and clubs as they boarded the six vessels. It said the violence turned deadly when an activist grabbed a weapon from one of the commandos. “The weapon discharged,” they said ambiguously not making it clear whether the activist fired it or if it went off accidentally.

The six ships of the flotilla sailed under Turkish and American flags and set off from Cyprus yesterday. Israeli forces said they would not allow them to land and the flotilla deliberated slowed down so that any forced landing would happen in daylight hours to maximize the media exposure. Meanwhile at the port in Gaza City, Hamas prepared a welcoming party with marquees and a buffet to greet the flotilla which was expected mid-afternoon today.

The first contact happened 200 kms off the Gaza shore. The IDF contacted the flotilla by radio and told them the Gaza Strip was a closed military zone. They offered them two options either follow the navy to Ashdod Port in Israel or else be commandeered by commandos. "If you ignore this order and enter the blockaded area, the Israeli navy will be forced to take all the necessary measures in order to enforce this blockade,” the IDF told them. The flotilla radar detected three Israeli ships in the area. After boarding the vessels and going on a shooting spree, the IDF towed the vessels to Ashdod.

The Hamas Government in Gaza said it considered the dead activists "as the martyrs of the Freedom Flotilla, adding that "the world should put an end to the biggest country of pirates.” Meanwhile Gaza premier Ismail Hanaya called the attack an international crime and a political scandal carried out according to an Israeli military order. “I call on the Palestinian Authority to immediately suspend its negotiations with Israel,” he said. He also called for street protects and the Arab states to respond to “end the unfair Israeli siege."

Israel justified its actions saying it already allows 15,000 tonnes of aid into Gaza each week. However the UN said this is just a quarter of what the Gaza Strip needs. Somewhere between 35 and 60 percent of Gaza’s agriculture industry was destroyed by Israel’s three week long invasion in 2008-2009 which left the land contaminated and cratered. This is the ninth time that the Free Gaza movement has tried to ship in humanitarian aid to Gaza since August 2008 but only five have been successful and none since Operation Cast Lead turned Gaza into a wasteland. The latest action confirms Israel is prepared to thumb its nose at international criticism as it lurches further into right-wing extremist nationalism.

Lot's lot: The Death of the Jordan

“You can almost jump across this river. In other places, you don’t need to even jump. You can just cross it. It’s ankle deep.” This was an Israeli scientist’s sad assessment of the dying Jordan River. Gidon Bromberg’s anecdotal evidence was backed by his team of Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian environmental scientists which says large stretches of the Jordan River could dry up by 2011. (photo: Getty)

A report from the EcoPeace / Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME) group say the river is in grave danger from excessive water diversion and pollution as well as being treated as a backyard dump. An astonishing 98 percent of its fresh water is currently being diverted while discharge of large quantities of untreated sewage is threatening to cause irreversible damage to the river valley. In the last 50 years, the river’s annual flow has dropped from more than 1.3 billion cubic meters to less than 30 million cubic meters and it has lost half its biodiversity due to habitat loss and the high salinity of the water.

FoEME is an unique environmental peacemaking movement and a tri-lateral organisation that brings together Jordanian, Palestinian, and Israeli environmentalists. FoEME say their primary objective is the promotion of cooperative efforts to protect their shared environmental heritage. This, they say has a double purpose, that of advancing sustainable regional development and the creation of necessary conditions for lasting peace in the region.

The Jordan River is sacred to three religions. It is mentioned in Genesis: "And Lot lifted up his eyes, and saw that the Jordan Valley was well watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord." A pillar of salt near Deir Ain Abata in the Dead Sea is said to be Lot’s wife, after she turned to watch the destruction of Sodom. The Jordan is also the traditional baptismal site of Jesus and many of Mohammad’s venerable companions are buried near its banks, making it a holy site for Muslims around the world as well.

The Jordan Valley is also of immense ecological significance. The Valley is part of the 7,200-kilometre Great Rift Valley and is at the centre of one of the most important bird migration flyways on the planet. 500 million birds migrate annually through this narrow corridor between Europe and Africa. The area is also an important Middle Eastern wetland; both Birdlife International andWetland International have declared the entire river basin a significant bird and wetland area, maintaining many globally valuable species that are regionally or globally threatened or endangered species. The plight of the river is adding the strain on these species.

FoEME’s Israeli co-director Gidon Bromberg took journalists on a tour of the region to tell them what is killing the river and to tell them how much water is needed to save it and where the water would come from. Al Jazeera’s Orly Halpern said the river “was a narrow foul brownish stream that gurgled its way south”. Bromberg said the sewage from an additional 15,000 Israelis living in the upper Jordan Valley, 6,000 Israeli settlers, 60,000 Palestinians and 250,000 Jordanians provides the Lower Jordan with most of its water."No one can say this is holy water," said Bromberg. "The Jordan River has become holy shit.”

In their water quality study released 3 May entitled “Towards a Living River Jordan” (pdf) FoEME said the Lower Jordan needed 400 million cubic metres of fresh water annually to return to life. They suggest 220 mcm should be provided by Israel, 100 by Syria and 90 by Jordan based on the historical usage of the water. In addition, the report says the river needs an annual minor flood event to flush out the salinity of the water. It said Israel and Jordan are building new waste water treatment plants which will remove the pollutants but further action is now required to allocate fresh water.

But FoEME is pleased by the first steps. Earlier this year, the Israeli Ministry of Environment released the Terms of Reference (ToR) for their proposal to rehabilitate the LJR from the Sea of Galilee to Bezeq Stream at the border with the Palestinian West Bank. The Israeli side presented the ToR to Jordanian and Palestinian stakeholders for comments during FoEME’s Regional Advisory Committee in February. FoEME praised this as a “first step towards rehabilitation and encourages the international community to support Jordan and Palestine in the development of their own ToRs as partners to the rehabilitation effort.”

FoEME say a billion cubic metres of water could be saved if appropriate economies were introduced in Israel, Jordan and Palestine. "In the middle of the desert we continue to flush our toilets with fresh water rather than using grey water or even better - waterless toilets; and we grow tropical fruit for export," Bromberg said. "We can do much better in reducing water loss and we need to treat and reuse all of the sewage water that we produce."

UN to discuss Goldstone Report on Israel's war crimes in Gaza

The UN Security Council has agreed to Libya’s request for an emergency session to discuss a report on Israeli war crimes in its Gaza incursion last year. The closed door talks will take place later today to discuss South African Justice Richard Goldstone’s Report into the war which was produced without the co-operation of Israel. Palestine has approved the talks a week after deferring a UN debate on the matter to March 2010. But Libyan spokesman Ahmed Gebreel said his country had requested the meeting "because of the seriousness of the report and because we think it's too long to wait until March". (photo of Israeli air assault on Gaza on 28 Dec 2008 by Amir Farshad Ebrahimi)

The UN released the report entitled “Human rights in Palestine and other occupied territories: Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict” last month. The 575 page report looked at Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip and its military air and ground offensive which lasted from 27 December 2008 to 18 January 2009. An estimated 1,500 people were killed in the invasion of which just ten were Israeli soldiers (4 of these died from friendly fire) and three were Israeli civilians.

During the 22-day war, Israeli attacks totally destroyed the Palestinian Legislative Council and the Gaza main prison. The report rejected the Israeli justification these buildings were part of the “Hamas terrorist infrastructure” and said they were deliberate attacks on civilian objects. The report also condemned the attacks on six police stations which resulted in the deaths of 99 police officers and nine civilians. Israel deliberately targeted police on the grounds they were considered part of the Palestinian military but the report found they were a civilian law-enforcement agency.

The report found that Palestinian militants launched rockets from urban areas and did not adequately distinguish themselves from non-combatants. However, it found no evidence that mosques or hospitals were used as “military shields”. It also acknowledged Israel made significant efforts to issue warnings for civilians to get out of harm’s way but many of their warnings were not specific and lacked credibility.

It condemned Israel for its flagrant attack on the UNRWA (UN Relief and Works Agency) field office which offered shelter to 700 people. The IDF attacked the building with high explosives for several hours despite the fact they were aware of who was there and the fact the compound contained a huge fuel depot. On the same day (15 January), Israel also attacked a Gaza City hospital without warning. The attack caused a day-long fire and panic among evacuated patients.

The report also criticised an Israeli attack on al-Fakhura junction in Jabalya next to a UNRWA school where 1,300 people were taking shelter. Mortar shells killed at least 35 people in an attack that was “indiscriminate in violation of international law”. The report said 10 out of another 11 attacks on civilian targets had no military objective. The impact was compounded by Israeli refusal to evacuate wounded or permit access to ambulances. It said IDF conduct was “criminal” and constituted “grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention in respect of wilful killings.”

The report also condemned deliberate attacks against industrial installations, food production, sewage treatment and housing. Israel also used blindfolded Palestinian shields to enter houses of suspected militants and detained large numbers of men, women and children for the duration of the conflict. The entire mission was carried out according to “Dahiya Doctrine” (also practiced in the Lebanon war in 2006) which involves disproportionate force, maximum disruption and damage and the transformation of civilians into military targets.

The report also considered the continued detention of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit who was captured in 2006 by a Palestinian group. While the report said Shalit was entitled to POW status and is entitled to a visit from the Red Cross, it did not justify the blockade of the Strip as it constituted “collective punishment”. It certainly does not justify the imprisonment of 8,100 Palestinian political prisoners.

The report also accused Gaza forces of targeting five Fatah members who were killed for their political affiliation. It also accused the Palestinian Authority of torture and inhumane treatment of Hamas prisoners in the West Bank. Goldstone considered the West Bank situation as “closely interrelated” to Gaza but Israel refused access for them to visit the territory (they were able to visit Gaza via Egypt). The report said that attacks in the West Bank coincided with the Gaza assault and the IDF killed a number of protesters. Israel has taken no action to punish soldiers and settlers for violence against Palestinians.

The report also blamed Gaza for its persistent rocket attacks. It said that Palestinian armed groups have launched 8,000 rockets into southern Israel since 2001 with a range of 40kms from the border. These attacks have killed three people and injured another one thousand causing a high level of psychological trauma and an exodus of residents from the area. The report said they were indiscriminate attacks against civilian populations in order to spread terror and is contrary to humanitarian law.

The report recommended international legal action against Israel and Hamas for war crimes and possible crimes against humanity. It recommended the findings are handed to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague and also urged the UN Security Council and, separately, the General Assembly, to ensure that those responsible for the crimes are brought to justice.

But Palestinian authorities initially did not support a UN review of Goldstone’s report. A week ago, President Mahmoud Abbas withdrew Palestinian support for a vote in the UN Human Rights Council to have the report sent to the General Assembly for possible action. Such a vote may have eventually led toward possible war crimes tribunals. Palestinian officials said Abbas’s decision was made “under heavy US pressure”. The decision was widely criticised within Palestine. Electronic Intifada called it “the most blatant case yet of PA betrayal of Palestinian rights and surrender to Israeli dictates.”

But now a senior Palestinian politician, Yasser Abed Rabbo, has said they had erred by seeking the deferral. "We must say a mistake has been made,” he said. “This mistake should not be underestimated or concealed.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meanwhile claimed the report's conclusions would "devastate the peace process". This is a disengenous complaint given that peace talks are currently going nowhere due to Netenyahu’s insistence on continuing with illegal settlement-building in the West Bank. It is Israel who have "devastated" the peace process just as they devastated Gaza ten months ago.

Israel bombs Sudan

The New York Times has revealed Israeli warplanes attacked a truck convoy in Sudan in January. There are also unconfirmed reports of a second attack in February. The Times says the first attack occurred to block a suspected arms delivery to Hamas in Gaza. Depending on which report you read, anywhere from 39 to 800 people were killed in the two attacks. The Times’ sources are two American officials privy to privy to classified intelligence assessments. They say Iran was smuggling weapons to Palestine via Sudan. Sudan has admitted the attacks took place but Israel has yet to formally take responsibility.

The story broke in the most unlikely way. The little known Mabrouk Mubarak Saleem, Sudan’s minister for highways, claimed earlier this week that a “major power” had carried out two previously unknown air strike inside Sudan – one on 27 January 27 and another on 11 February. His comments were reported by the Egyptian newspaper Al-Shurooq on Tuesday. They found a local angle saying “a major power bombed small trucks carrying arms” headed towards Sudan’s border with Egypt.

On Wednesday, the Iranian English language PressTV reported that America had carried out the attacks from a base in nearby Djibouti. It said Sudan had confirmed reports that the US Air Force conducted the January strike. It said 39 people were killed in the attack which occurred in the desert northwest of Port Sudan, near the Mount Al-Sha'anoon. It quoted Saleem’s claim that "major power bombed small trucks carrying arms, burring all of them. It killed Sudanese, Eritrean and Ethiopians [passengers] and injured others."

Today, Sudan changed its tune and said Israel was probably responsible. Foreign Ministry spokesman Ali al-Sadig said the Sudanese were still gathering evidence at the site, and would not react while the investigation was ongoing. He claimed that the convoys were likely smuggling goods, but not weapons. "We contacted the Americans and they categorically denied they were involved," he said. "We are still trying to verify it. Most probably it involved Israel."

There are conflicting reports on casualties. The New York Times story repeated Saleem’s figure of 39 but they also quoted a second government spokesman who said more than a hundred were killed. However, the Los Angeles Times reported yet another Sudanese government source, Fatih Mahmoud Awad, a Transport Ministry spokesman, who said as many as 800 people died in the two attacks. He said each convoy had more than a dozen vehicles. It is possible that the reports are not conflicting and that the major casualties occurred in the February strike. However, very few details have emerged yet about the second attack.

Both the US and Israel had the motive to carry out the attack. Earlier this year Israel signed an agreement with the US in one of the last acts of the Bush administration. On 15 January, then-Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni flew to Washington to sign a memorandum of understanding to marshal an international effort to prevent arms from reaching Gaza. Under the terms of the agreement the US would organise “like-minded” countries to use methods such as interdiction to prevent arms from reaching Gaza.

The Sudanese strikes appear to be the first examples of interdiction. Israeli analysts called it a comfortable strike against a distracted enemy. Israeli security specialist and writer Gad Shimron said Sudan was a “pro-Hamas hostile state”, but was in no position to respond. They're in over their heads with Darfur; the last thing they need is further complications,” he told the Jerusalem Post. Shimron was with Mossad when they entered Sudan in the 1980s for Operation Moses to airlift Ethiopian Jews to Israel. "The air force knows this place [eastern Sudan] well. It flew at low altitudes there during Operation Moses," he said. "It's logical to assume that the weapons were tracked from the minute they left Iran.”

Outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert refused to confirm Israeli involvement but gave a strong hint overnight when there was "nowhere in the world" that Israel cannot reach. Speaking at a conference at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, he said Israel operates everywhere where we can hit what he called “terror infrastructure”. These were to be found “in close places, in places further away, everywhere where we can hit terror infrastructure,” he said. “We hit them and we hit them in a way that increases deterrence.” It is the closest yet that Israel has admitted to an act of war on Sudan.

Below is very brief footage Al-Jazeera acquired of the first bombing aftermath.

Abbas tries to muscle in on Gaza peace talks

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas made a powerplay for Fatah involvement in the Gaza peace talks when met his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak in Cairo on Monday. He criticised Hamas saying they promoted conflict with Israel and says they must respect his authority as leader of the Palestinian state. He also warned he will not talk with any group that fails to recognise the legitimacy of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO). Abbas’ party Fatah is the largest faction within the PLO whereas Hamas is not aligned with it.

Abbas’s call comes a week after Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal described the PLO as impotent. Meshaal, who is exiled in Damascus, said the PLO “expresses a state of impotence, abuse and a tool to deepen divisions". Hamas have ruled Gaza alone after defeating Fatah security forces in a five day civil war in 2007. However Gaza's borders have been closed in an 18-month Israeli blockade as revenge for continued Qassam rocket attacks from the Strip. Israel launched a devastating all out attack on Gaza in late December that left 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead (a disparity of a hundred casualties to one). The war ended with on 18 January both sides declaring unilateral ceasefires.

Egypt has been mediating between Israel and Hamas in attempt to avoid further bloodshed as well as end the blockade. Mubarak will now walk a delicate tightrope as he holds separate talks with Israeli officials and Palestinians from both Hamas and now Fatah factions. Relations are at an all-time low between the two groups. Fatah accuses Hamas of killing, torturing and beating up Fatah activists in Gaza while Hamas in turn accuses Fatah of helping the Israeli military to strike Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip during the war. While the talks go on, so do the tit-for-tat attacks between Israel and Gaza. Gaza resumed rocket fire on Israeli border towns shortly after the ceasefire and in response warplanes launched air strikes across Gaza late on Sunday. Yesterday, one Palestinian was killed and four others wounded in an Israeli air strike on a vehicle carrying militants in the southern town of Rafah.

Meanwhile Barack Obama’s new Middle East envoy George Mitchell outlined American priorities for the region. Speaking in Israel last week, he said the new administration wanted to consolidate the truce and immediately address Gaza’s humanitarian needs. His appointment was welcomed by Palestinians who remember his last mission to the Middle East in 2000 when he recommended the Israelis lift the restrictions that prevent the Palestinians building up their economy. But Israeli PM Ehud Olmert told him bluntly that Israel would respond to what he called “every Hamas violation of the cease-fire, be they rocket attacks, strikes along the border fence or smuggling through tunnels.”

Olmert also told Mitchell that Gaza border crossings will not open permanently for the passage of goods unless a deal is reached on kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. As The Guardian points out, what Mitchell offers is sustained engagement right from the start of the Obama administration. The British daily says George Mitchell is “someone who will stay with it day after day, as he did in Northern Ireland.” This will be necessary as the history of Gaza’s politics is just as intractable as Northern Ireland’s.

Originally part of the British mandate of Palestine, Gaza came under harsh Egyptian military control after the 1948 war. Its citizens were forbidden from entering Egypt itself but in the 1950s its teeming refugee camps were a breeding ground for the Egyptian-founded Muslim Brotherhood network which brought about an which brought about an awakening of political Islam. Some refugees became Palestinian fighters known as “fidayun” and began conducting raids on isolated Jewish settlements near the border. Yasser Arafat emerged as leader of the “fidayun” calling his group The Movement for the Liberation of Palestine (which spelt “fatah” – victory – in reverse).

After the 1967 Six Day War, Israel occupied the Gaza Strip. The crowded Strip held 850,000 of the 1.5 million Palestinians in the occupied territories. A third of these were children and the unemployment rate was around 35 percent. For the next twenty years Gaza suffered a form of apartheid under a new occupier while continuing to be ignored at Arab summits. The failure of the PLO to provide protection against harassment propelled many people into the arms of Islamist groups. In 1987 the people’s frustration turned into the intifada (“shaking off”). This involved throwing stones at soldiers, preventing workers from getting to Israeli crossing points and liberating villages for a few days before the Israeli army returned. In response, the IDF bombarded villages with tear gas, charge in large numbers and used steel bullets wrapped in rubber.

Initially the 1993 Oslo Accords were viewed positively in Gaza. There would be no more curfews, or nightly break-ins or harassment on the roads. However as the Israelis imposed border closures it quickly became apparent that Oslo had turned Gaza into a huge prison. In the mid 1990s Israel encircled Gaza with a huge wall, electric fences and guard towers which effectively sealed off the Strip. The second intifada in October 2000 saw the beginning of primitive rocket attacks across the border into Israel.

In 2005, Israel enacted its unilateral disengagement plan to evict Israelis from 21 settlements in Gaza despite intense criticism from right-wing factions. But hopes that this would lead to a permanent settlement soon died. The locals were far from grateful and voted Hamas to victory in Palestinian government elections a year later. They would eventually muscle Fatah out of the Strip. Israel was left guarding a very hostile prisoner that does even recognise the existence of its jailor. Mitchell will need all his considerable skills of diplomacy to sort out the mess.

Backman turnoff overdrive: Free speech and the Australian Israeli lobby

Paul Ramadge, editor of The Age, has badly damaged his reputation for editorial independence over his role in the Backman affair. The story began a couple of weeks ago when freelance journalist Michael Backman wrote an article in the Melbourne broadsheet heavily critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza. The Australian Jewish lobby publicly attacked it as "offensive to Jews". Within days, The Age editor issued an apology for the article (and incorrectly blamed a lack of supervision over the holiday period for publishing it). Backman also apologised to the Jewish community for any hurt caused. He subsequently removed the offending article from his own site but the text can be still be retrieved thanks to the ever reliable Google cache.

The fact is that Backman has nothing to apologise for. His issues about Israel need to be discussed and not thrown out of the public space. Backman does not deny Israel's right to exist, but his is an angry thesis bristling with frustration about the way it is treated with kid gloves in the western world. Like most things written in anger, it is far from perfect. His comparison between Israel/Gaza and Melbourne/Bendigo was hilariously bad and was deservedly lampooned by right-wing commentators such as Tim Blair. And his allegations about rude Israeli backpackers in Nepal were totally unsubstantiated.

Nonetheless, many of his statements in the article about the state of Israel are absolutely true and well worth repeating:

“Israel's utter inability to transform the Palestinians from enemies into friends has imposed big costs on us all.”

“The enmity many Muslims now feel for Israel has nothing to do with religion.”

“Hamas did not enjoy the support of all the people of Gaza. It does now.”

“Israel needs to change.”

And Israel does need to change. Ever since its birth, the country’s consistently hawkish attitude towards any kind of a negotiated settlement means that the Palestinian question continues to be one of the world’s most intractable problems. Palestinians still call 1948 “Al Nakbah”. In English it is “the catastrophe” from which they have never recovered. It is also a catastrophe that Israel has never acknowledged.

Its treatment is in stark contrast to what the nation deems as its own catastrophe: the Holocaust. But the Holocaust does not belong to Israel and its treatment of survivors has not always been impeccable. According to Jewish Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, during the war Zionists were more worried by the threat of Palestinians than the fate of European Jews and were selective about which Jews could enter the country (they wanted only the fittest). And afterwards, only ten percent of the three million Holocaust survivors went to Israel (the vast majority preferred to flee to America). Those that did arrive were initially hated by the Zionists who were already there before the war. The newcomers, like the many Arab Jews who also migrated to Israel after 1948, were housed in camps that must have given many of them uncomfortable reminders of what they left behind.

Pappé also says Israelis refer to the Holocaust as “the other planet”. The wording is important as it means the incomprehensible acts of that other planet could not possibly be imagined in theirs. However since 1948, Israel has treated Palestinians ("unpeople") with exactly the same disrespect as Germany treated its unwanted minorities ("untermenschen"). To get round these inconvenient arguments, Israel claimed patrimony over the Holocaust. The Shoah was conflated with the notion of Israel in order to serve the national ambitions of successive Israeli governments. Pappé suffered death threats for his ideas and was forced to leave Israel.

Whenever anti-Israeli ideas such as Pappé’s and Backman’s appear, the Holocaust and associated shibboleth of anti-semitism can be used to stop them. It works particularly well in Australia. While hard hitting criticism similar to Backman's are published as a matter of record in the vibrant Israeli press, they were deemed too potent for our media. Not for the first time the ever watchful Israeli government lobby got their way and extracted grovelling apologies from all concerned. The effect is to muzzle effective debate about Israel in this country.

The Australian architect for this strategy is Colin Rubinstein. For the last ten years, Rubenstein has been the executive director for Australia’s most powerful Israeli lobby group, the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC). Based in Melbourne and funded by private donations, AIJAC is a high profile and assertive lobby group. It was Rubenstein and the AIJAC who were the most aggressive lobby group against the awarding of the Sydney Peace Prize to Hanan Ashrawi. Although their bullying tactics were exposed by Antony Loewenstein’s "My Israel Question", they continue to have a chilling effect on the Israel debate in this country. They do this by consistently attacking any public suggestion Israel is in the wrong or might need to compromise, and then use their considerable muscle, and manufactured shame over the Holocaust to close the argument down. It is usually easier for a journalist or an editor to self-censor than to take them on.

And so when Rubenstein saw Backman’s article, he did what he always does when confronted with an anti-Israeli polemic and went for the jugular. Rubenstein arranged to meet with Age editor Paul Ramadge twice last week. Meanwhile the Australian Jewish News reported unnamed “critics in the Jewish community” (they were Jewish Community Council of Victoria president John Searle and Zionist Council of Victoria president Danny Lamm) calling Backman’s column “blatantly anti-semitic” and “hate speech against the Jews”.

Of course it was neither, There is no evidence of anti-semitism in the article. It is not hate speech against the Jews but rather hate speech against the Israeli government. That might not be appealing to some, but it is not unreasonable to publish such an attitude. It is also protected under the “fair comment” provisions of our libel laws. But it didn't take long for the lobby group pressure to bear. Paul Ramadge caved in to Rubenstein and cravenly removed the piece.

On his website Michael Backman proclaims “truth belongs to the people; not the government”. But in this case, as in many others related to reporting of Israel in Australia, truth belonged to neither. It was the power to influence that took truth off the agenda. It is not a matter of whether you agree with Backman or not, the default position is you cannot even say what Backman said and have it published in a leading newspaper. Like it or not, Colin Rubenstein remains one of the Australia’s most powerful gatekeepers of opinion in the public sphere.

Israel's Supreme Court overturns electoral ban on Arab parties

The Israeli Supreme Court yesterday overruled a parliamentary panel which had barred the Arab parties United Arab List-Ta'al (UAL-Ta’al) and Balad from running for Knesset (parliament). The decision enables the two parties to run in the national elections scheduled for 10 February. The nine Supreme Court justices unanimously accepted the UAL-Ta'al appeal, while the Balad appeal was accepted by eight justices against one.

The two appeals were submitted by the Israeli-Arab rights group Adalah earlier this week. Adalah claimed that the decision to disqualify the parties was a violation of their rights. They also claimed it also ignored the legal opinion of Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz that there was not enough evidence to justify preventing the participation of the parties in the Knesset elections. Jafar Farah, director of the Haifa-based Mossawa: Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens in Israel, called the decision part of a "fascist atmosphere that exists in the media and in political parties that is excluding the Arab community in Israel."

The original decision had been made in the heat of the Gaza conflict. Two ultra right parties Yisrael Beiteinu and National Union-National Religious Party requested the Arab parties be banned by the parliamentary Central Elections Committee (CEC) which comprises of members of all party factions. The CEC met on 12 January and ruled the parties ineligible to fight the elections on the grounds they did not recognise Israel and called for armed conflict against the state. Arab CEC members boycotted the vote and called the vote the actions of a “fascist, racist state”. Members of all three major parties (Kadima, Labour, Likud) voted to expel the parties.

However it was the ultra-right faction which was predictably unhappiest with the court’s overruling. Yisrael Beitenu Chairman Avigdor Lieberman described it as "unfortunate” as it established no boundary to prevent Arab Knesset members from being disloyal to the state. He warned his party would continue the offensive. “[The ruling] gave the Arab parties license to kill the state of Israel as a Jewish democratic state," he said. “In the next Knesset, we will pass a citizenship law that will prevent the disloyalty of some of Israel's Arabs.”

However the left-wing non denominational Hadash party welcomed the judgement. Hadash Member of the Knesset (MK) Mohammad Barakeh said he had expected the decision. He wants to go down the opposite path to Avigdor Lieberman and deny the CEC the right to disqualify parties from running. This is not the first time that the CEC has attempted to ban the Arab parties, or the first time the court has overruled it. "It's a scenario that is renewed during every election, said Barakeh, “due to the hopes of Lieberman and those similar to him to recruit more anti-Arab members to the committee."

Israel is home to 1.4 million Islamic and Christian Arabs who form about 20 percent of the total population. But they are represented by only 8 percent of parliament with just ten 10 Arabs in the 120-seat Knesset. Balad holds three of those seats. It was formed in 1995 in order to create political awareness within the Arab sector in Israel and oppose the 1993 Oslo Accords.


UAL-Ta’al was established around the same time as Balad and now holds four seats. It has similar goals to Balad and calls for an end to the Israeli occupation and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital. Both parties now hope that the indignation over their ban and the general conduct of the Gaza war will result in a strong Arab turnout at the ballot box. UAL-Ta’al leader and MK Ahmed Tibi described the ruling as a rallying call for his party. “This battle is not yet complete because racism has now become the mainstream in Israel,” he said. “We will finish this operation in Israel on the day of elections."

Defiant Hamas continue rocket attacks under Israeli assault

Gaza militants have defied the Israeli ground invasion and have fired dozens of rockets across the border in the last 24 hours. Five Qassam rockets struck the town of Sderot causing one minor injury and another struck Ashdod but caused no known damage or casualties. A house in Ashkelon took a hit from a more powerful Grad rocket but there were no fatalities. 12 Qassam rockets hit the Sdot Negev area on Saturday; all landed in open fields and caused no injuries. The main impact of these strikes continues to be psychological, as it has been for the last seven years.

The Gaza Strip has been separated from Israel by a security barrier since 1996. In 2005 Israel withdrew its civilian and military presence according to its unilateral disengagement plan, but retained control over airspace and maritime access. The attacks began after the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. The rockets were the only way that Gaza Palestinians could continue to carry the war into Israel. After Hamas won control of Gaza in June 2007 elections, Israel imposed a blockade on the Strip and its 1.5 million inhabitants. They allowed only basic humanitarian items in and permitted no exports paralysing the economy. The Israeli government declared Gaza a "hostile entity" in response to continued rocket attacks, and said it would start cutting fuel imports. The reduction in fuel supplies and a chronic lack of spare parts has severely impacted sewage treatment, waste collection, water supply and medical facilities. Aid agencies said the situation had become a humanitarian crisis.

Gaza began launching Qassam rockets in 2001. As of February 2008, they have killed 13 people, mostly in the nearby border town of Sderot. There has been no effort at negotiation in that time. Israel refuses to talk to Gaza’s rulers because Hamas in turn refuses to acknowledge the Jewish state's right to exist, will not renounce violence and doesn’t adhere to previous peace agreements signed by Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction. Nevertheless as recently as February 2008, Israel’s public attitude was that a large scale ground operation would not put an end to the rocket fire.

But as the frequency has increased, Israeli public pressure had been mounting on the government to stop the rockets. With an Israeli election and a less friendly US administration in the wings, the Israeli government finally believed the time was right to react. In the past week, IDF artillery bombs have killed more than 480 Palestinians and injured 3,000 in Gaza. In same period, four Israelis have been killed and 59 wounded in Hamas rocket attacks. The rockets remain the Palestinians most potent, albeit random, weapon of retaliation.

Qassam rockets are named for the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades (Hamas’s military wing) which in turn was named for the 1930s Palestinian leader Mojahed Izz ad-Din al-Qassam. Bombmakers supplied the first prototype in 2001 and a year later produced the Qassam 2, an improved version which attacked nearby Israeli settlements and towns. The rockets consist of a warhead, an engine and a tail segment. The warhead is filled with TNT and urea nitrate. They are fuelled by mixture of sugar and potassium nitrate (which is widely available as a fertiliser). Often they are crudely made explosives-packed pipes with metal fins welded onto the end. Qassam rockets are free-flying and lack any guidance system. As a result, they are notoriously inaccurate and many fail to even cross the border into Israel.

The rockets have a range of four to forty kilometres and spread their submunitions over a broad area. A large number remain unexploded and become defacto landmines. But they rarely cause any injuries, and they did not kill an Israeli until 28 June, 2004. The main success of the rockets has been psychological and has created an atmosphere of fear in all of the Southern Israeli border towns. The number of attacks has increased dramatically in recent years. By November, Israel had indicated it had lost patience: PM Ehud Olmert ominously told his audience "The question is not whether there will be a confrontation, but when it will take place, under what circumstances, and who will control these circumstances, who will dictate them, and who will know to exploit the time from the beginning of the ceasefire until the moment of confrontation in the best possible way.” Israel has begun the confrontation but the question will be whether it can control the consequences.

Israeli mayoral elections tomorrow

Israel prepares for its general election next February with municipal and mayoral elections to be held throughout the country tomorrow. Jerusalem, the largest city, is the flashpoint and the race has highlighted religious rifts splitting the city and, by extension, the entire country. Although the major parties do not contest mayoral elections, the vote will give some indication of the thinking in advance of the national poll.

The two leading contenders for the job are ultra-Orthodox rabbi, Meir Porush, 53, and Nir Barkat, 49, a moderate city councillor and high-tech entrepreneur. Neither is likely to win the race outright and will rely on middle ground. Shmuel Sandler, a political scientist at Bar-Ilan University near Tel Aviv, said the contest has become a culture war and a battle between secular and religious forces. There could be a backlash by voters against religious parties in the countrywide ballot if Porush wins, Sandler said.

Porush has asked not to be judged by the length of his beard but there is little doubt he plans to promote an ultra-religious agenda if elected. Last week he stirred the pot by saying no Israeli city would have a secular mayor within 10 to 15 years. While his speech was delivered in Yiddish and intended for a private audience of supporters, they were taped and shown on TV news with Hebrew subtitles. "We are growing and multiplying at a fast pace,” he said. “Within 10 years there will not be a secular candidate at all in any city, except maybe in an abandoned village.”

If this wasn’t enough to worry people in secular neighbourhoods, they are also concerned their areas have been encroached in recent years by the ultra-Orthodox. Pnina Dadon told The Guardian her west Jerusalem district has seen a steady increase in synagogues and religious kindergartens. The original inhabitants are moving out. "The secular people are running away, especially the young. They just don't feel comfortable any more," said Dadon. "It's not that I hate them. It's just that I want my freedom."

But the campaign of secular candidate Nir Barkat is not without its issues either. His concern, similar to Dadon’s, is young people fleeing the capital in greater numbers. His plan is to build thousands of new apartments in East Jerusalem, which Israel occupied after the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed. Such settlements would not win Israel any friends internationally and would present further obstacles to peace with the Palestinians. But Barkat is not fussed by international opinion. "The young people are leaving Jerusalem," he says. "This is a real danger to Jerusalem's future and causes a decline in the general standard of living in the city."

The third candidate in the Jerusalem election is the Russian-born wildcard billionaire Arcady Gaydamak who is attempted to court the Arab vote. This will be difficult as the elections are a purely Jewish affair. Most Palestinian residents, who make up almost a third of the city's 700,000 population, are expected to boycott the election as they have done since Israel conquered East Jerusalem in 1967. "Our religious and national positions on the issue are clear,” said Mohammed Hussein, mufti of Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories. “They forbid participation as a voter or a candidate in these elections for an authority that represents the Israeli occupation.”

But Jerusalem activist Akram Salhab disagrees with this strategy. He says the boycott is an example of “the lazy thinking” dominating the Palestinian political scene. He says real gains are sacrificed to maintain a purely symbolic boycott that doesn’t achieve anything for the Arab population. Despite having 30 percent of the population, they only receive about 10 percent of council funding. “In the blink of an eye you are transported from a modern, well maintained high street with neatly painted red and white curbs, to a pot-hole ridden road from somewhere in the third world,” he says.

Jerusalem inaugurates the Bridge of Strings

The Jerusalem skyline was changed dramatically with the lavish inauguration of a huge new bridge this week. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert opened the $73 million structure in a gala presentation despite interruptions from ultra-Orthodox Jews who demanded “promiscuous” female dancers be dressed modestly with long skirts and full head cover to cover their hair. The 250 meter long and 120 meter high harp-like structure is known by two names, the “Bridge of Cords” and the “Bridge of Strings”. It has an elevated walkway and will eventually carry a new light rail line. The bridge was designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava and curves from the city’s main western entrance suspended by 66 white cables attached to a spire. Like all new structures, it has attracted vitriol and praise in equal measure.

Last week, Jerusalem’s opposition leader urged Israel’s President to boycott the lavish inauguration of the bridge. Nir Barkat said Shimon Peres should not attend the ceremony due to its "wasteful" expenditure of public funds. The inauguration is part of the anniversary celebrations of Israel’s 40 year occupation of the entire city which it took from Jordan during the Six Day War. The bridge celebration is eating up a large slice of the anniversary funds. Barkat wrote to Peres that it would have been appropriate for the public funds for the inauguration be invested in “other burning and more pressing needs in the city such as education, children's meals, city sanitation, job projects, and housing for young couples.”

Writing in ynetnews.com, Jackie Levy agrees with Barkat. Levy described the building of the new bridge as a “tasteless act” and a luxury Jerusalem could ill afford. He said it was difficult to recall a more “huge, pretentious, expensive and arrogant” work built for the sake of so little. Levy acknowledged the bridge was spectacular and of beautiful design. But it was ill-suited to a poor city where 40 percent of the population (Jewish and Arab) live below the poverty – four times as many as in Tel Aviv and Haifa. Levy said it was a pretentious and wasteful bridge “whose inauguration celebrations alone account for more than half of the city’s annual culture budget.”

Others were more favourable. Calatrava himself had no hesitation in calling it his favourite work. The Spaniard had built over 40 bridges around the world including ones nearing completion on Venice’s Grand Canal. But he described the Jerusalem work his “unquestionable favourite.” He said the most important aspect about the bridge was the fact it was in Jerusalem. “I have always loved Jerusalem, which is a universal city for everyone,” he said. “But now that I know the city I love it even more.”

He said the bridge was a unique engineering challenge. A nearby highway tunnel hindered the building of bridge supports there and the span had to be held by cables suspended from the mast, which was complicated by the sharp turn of the train route. The bridge design also had to accommodate the traditional urban landscape of Jerusalem, where all buildings are faced with local limestone under an ordinance dating to British rule at the end of World War I. The ramps leading to the bridge are being clad in stone, and a pedestrian plaza planned underneath will also feature stone benches and stone-faced light fixtures. Calatrava said the bridge “covers the gap between tradition and modernity.”

However the bridge will remain unused for two years due to delays in the provision of the light rail service. Digging in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Shuafat in North Jerusalem has been held up by the discovery of a first century urban community. Coins found at the site date the community to between 70 and 150 AD and it appears to be a joint Jewish and Roman neighbourhood. While the find delighted archaeologists, it dismayed rail planners of the 15km network which will link Mount Herzl in southern and predominantly Jewish Jerusalem to Pisgat Ze'ev, via Shuafat, in the north. Daniel Seidemann, a Jewish lawyer who promotes Palestinian rights in Jerusalem, described the route of the railway as ideological. "It serves the mantra of the undivided eternal capital that few believe in today,” he said. “Given the reality of life here, and the glass walls between the neighbourhoods, it goes against the grain of how the city works."

But finding a solution for the future of Jerusalem is the most intractable element of the Israel-Palestine peace process. Jews demand it never again be divided as it was from 1948 to 1967 while the ultra-Orthodox demand the right to pray at the Wailing Wall. But there is a steady Jewish exodus of the secular population precisely because of the relentless campaign of the Orthodox to remodel the city in their own image. Meanwhile the Arab percentage of the city is slowly growing. The city is slowly being rundown, its infrastructure has deteriorated, and its narrow lanes have become a giant traffic jam at most times of the day. Writing in Dying For Jerusalem, American Jewish historian Walter Laqueur says that it is a mystery why this “problematic holy city should remain the main bone of contention on the road to peace”. It seems too much to hope for the road to peace to be paved by a bridge of strings.

Israel’s new Intifada Law twists the knife in Palestinians

Last week, the Israeli Knesset approved a first reading of a bill designed to ban Palestinians from claiming compensation for harm caused by military operations. The hugely controversial bill requires two more readings to pass before it is entered into law and would give its troops exemption from liability for any damage caused to people or property. It is the second attempt at such a law after an earlier version was overturned in court two years ago. Deputy Speaker of the Knesset and Likud supporter of the new bill, Gideon Sa’ar, called it an end to “an ATM funding terror against [Israel’s] citizens”.

The new bill has been dubbed Intifada Law II. It is aimed at circumventing a ruling that overturned a similar law in 2006. The law exempts the state from responsibility for damages suffered by Palestinians in the Intifada. The original Intifada Law was enacted in 2002 to give the state backdated immunity against Palestinian compensation suits for personal injury or property damage incurred during Israeli operations in the occupied territories. However the High Court of Justice acted on a petition from human rights organisations and ruled it contradicted the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Freedom, because it undermined the rights to life, dignity, property and freedom. "Not all ends justify the means," wrote then-court president Aharon Barak in his ruling.

This time round, the bill seeks to expand the definition of the term “military act” under which the state is exempt from being held accountable for damage. It summarily deems residents of the occupied territories to be citizens of “enemy states” and operatives of “terrorist organisations”. So defined, they would be ineligible to seek compensation for damage caused by the IDF because it fell under the legal umbrella of the “military act”. Civil rights organization Adalah (Justice) criticized the amendment proposal. "The bill opposes all logic and principles of Israeli and international law,” it said. “A lack of ability to file claims will result in the impossibility of investigating abuse and property damage cases.”

The original law was a backlash to the Al Aqsa Intifada which began in 2000 after Ariel Sharon's provocative visit to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Then Prime Minister Ehud Barak dispatched a massive military and police presence to the Al Aqsa mosque on the Muslim day of prayer. Several Palestinians were killed and 200 injured in the violence that followed. A UN report into the aftermath found no evidence of Palestinian gunfire with the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) responsible for nearly all of the casualties.

The IDF killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians and imposed an even more brutal regime than existed prior to the Intifada. The UN Commission of Rights inquiry found the IDF did not suffer a single casualty as a result of Palestinian demonstrations but nevertheless subjected the population to harsh collective punishment and humiliation. The few Israeli casualties occurred at settlement roads and isolated checkpoints and the report said that these should be examined in the light of “settler violence against Palestinian civilians adjoining settlements and of IDF complicity in such violence”.

However the result of this inquiry and others has been virtually ignored in the West. A HRW report on the violence in the West Bank city of Hebron found the IDF had a “disregard for human rights and international humanitarian law”. However its findings that tens of thousands of Palestinians in the city were held as virtual prisoners for months was totally ignored in the US apart from one brief appearance in a Washington Post article five days later. Similarly when Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem accused the IDF of using Palestinian civilians as human shields, its report also sunk without trace in the west.

According to Noam Chomsky it is meaningless to condemn these actions as “Israeli atrocities” in the “Israeli-Palestinian conflict”. In his essay on Israel’s response to the Intifada in his “Pirates and Emperors Old and New” (2nd edition), he says the conflict should be more properly described as being between US/Israel and Palestine. Helicopters which fired missiles into Palestinian civilian areas are “US helicopters with Israeli pilots”. US supply is critical because as Israel’s own Ministry of Defence admitted “it is impractical to think we can manufacture...major weapons systems of this kind in Israel.”

The US media has been complicit in the one-sided nature of the conflict. As the Electronic Intifada (EI) wrote in 2004, coverage of IDF offensive actions in the occupied territories is scantily reported in the west. It examined the Rafah campaign where Israel bulldozed homes leaving 12 dead and 500 people homeless and found most US coverage read as if they were Israeli press releases. Their damning conclusion is that Palestinians and Israelis continue to die because Americans get a grossly distorted account of events that doesn’t recognise the imbalance of power or any idea of the extent of the US role in the conflict.

EI’s complaint is that the Western media takes Israel at their word and does little to question their side of the story. As EI’s Ali Abunimah says “the basic narrative of Palestine is always subordinated to Israel”. When the Western media describe a 'relative calm' in Israeli-Palestine violence, it usually means that few or no Israelis were being killed during the 'relative calm', but many Palestinians were being killed and injured. As Abunimah describes, “if it wasn't happening to Israelis it wasn't happening at all.” Now Israel's Intifada Law II is about to confirm the non-existence of Palestinian victims of Israeli violence.

Tunisia's President expels Arafat’s widow

Tunisia has revoked the citizenship of the widow of the former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, after she fled the country last week. The 44-year-old widow Suha Arafat had moved to Malta where she is living with her Palestinian brother. She settled in Tunis after Arafat's death in November 2004 and was granted citizenship two years later. Suha had a long and so far unresolved dispute with the Palestinian authorities where she left homes in Ramallah and Gaza. According to Arab news reports Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali withdrew Arafat's naturalized status in a special decree last week. The decree offered no reason for the withdrawal.

Suha Daoud Tawil was raised as an affluent Catholic in the West Bank. Her father was Daoud Tawil, a wealthy banker with business in the West Bank and Jordan. Suha studied at the famed Sorbonne University in Paris. She met Arafat while on assignment in Jordan for a French newspaper. Although 34 years younger that Yasser, they married secretly in 1990 after she converted to Islam. The secret was not revealed for another two years. The marriage took place in Tunisia where Arafat lived in exile. Tunis had been the PLO headquarters since the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 which forced Arafat to leave Beirut.

When Arafat finally returned to Palestine after the 1994 Oslo Accords, his wife followed him. However she moved again to Paris in July 1995 to give birth to their only daughter Zahwa. Suha stayed on in Paris with her mother and daughter. She took no further part in Palestinian politics and was believed to be estranged from her husband. She remained abroad while her husband was held under house arrest by the Israelis and she attracted much criticism from Palestinians for her supposedly unpatriotic actions.

When Arafat died Suha and Zahwa attended a memorial service in Cairo but were advised by Palestinian authorities not to attend the Ramallah funeral service on security grounds. After her husband’s death she moved back to Tunis where the couple first lived. She lived in a Tunis suburb until last week when she fled to Malta. While the Palestinian embassy in Tunis declined to comment, some reports attributed the decision to revoke her citizenship to a disagreement with some of her partners on projects in Tunisia.

It remains possible that Suha has somehow attracted the ire of long-term Tunisian leader Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Last summer a Tunisian website reported that she secretly married the President’s brother. However Arafat has denied the reports. What is less in doubt is the autocratic regime of Ben Ali who has been in power since 1987.

In fact, Tunisia has only had two leaders in the half century since independence from France in 1956. The country’s first leader was Habib Bourguiba, known as the “Supreme Warrior” and the “Father of Tunisia”. Bourguiba was a rarity in early Arab-African politics – a consistently secular and pro-West president who made French the official language ahead of Arabic. After leading the fight for independence from France, Bourguiba ruled with an iron fist for over 30 years.

Bourguiba’s downfall was orchestrated by Muslim activist leader Rached Ghannouchi. Ghannouchi was an academic who returned from exile in France to lead the Islamic Tendency Movement’. He rejected Bourguiba’s secular approach and argued for a return to Tunisia’s indigenous Arab-Islamic heritage. Bourguiba imprisoned Ghannouchi in 1981 for three years as an “Islamic threat” and again in 1987 claiming his movement was plotting to overthrow the government. Ghannouchi was given a life sentence but Bourguiba ordered a retrial and demanded the death sentence.

Outraged by Ghannounchi’s second arrest, the Islamic movement threatened to break out into open rebellion. Bourguiba’s second in command Zine el Abedine Ben Ali took advantage of the crisis to seize power. Ben Ali moved quickly to legitimise his regime by releasing Ghannouchi and making concessions to the Islamic Movement. However all that changed with the First Gulf War when Ben Ali claimed there was a plot against him. He destroyed the power of the Islamists by a sweeping series of police actions. Ghannouchi fled overseas and was sentenced in absentia.

Since then Ben Ali has consolidated his regime with internationally neutral politics dominated by a pragmatic attitude. He gained a reputation as one of the most reliable leaders in the third world. However his troubles remain at home. Journalists and politically moderate activists have been persecuted and imprisoned for demanding democracy and freedom of speech. Ben Ali shows no sign of retiring. His presidency was rubber-stamped in 2004 for another five year term and constitutional amendments could see him stand again in 2009.