Peace of no choice

Peace of no choice

TOI-Billboard, November 5, 2006
The Other Israel's email updates
--Rabin rally recorded by Adam Keller, with extensive quotes of Grossman's speech
--Selectionof the past week, mostly from Occupation Magazine http://www.kibush.co.il/

Peace of no choice
Adam Keller
"Precisely a year ago, it was Amir Peretz who mounted the stage at the annual Rabin Memorial - to anoint himself Rabin's successor and speak of his dream that 'One day, Israeli and Palestinain children will play together in the no-man's-land between Israel and the Gaza Strip'... Wisely, the organizers of this year's commemoration took a blanket decision to have no politicians at all."
http://toibillboard.info/Nov.4-rep.htm

Picks of the past week
Comment & analysis
Pummeling the victim
Rima Merriman - The Electronic Intifada - "The terrible imbalance of power between the Israelis and Palestinians makes it impossible for Israel, regardless of which government is in power, to deal with the Palestinians in any way except through a lens of assumed moral, cultural, and racial superiority."
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=17207

Open Letter to the Jewish Communities of Canada
Abraham Weizfeld - general email - Despite growing international opposition to these policies, Israel continues to pursue a primarily military strategy while claiming to speak in the name of Jewish people around the world. In the absence of an alternative public Jewish voice, all Jewish people are tainted by default with the fallout from such policies. In the absence of an alternative public Jewish voice, all Jewish people are tainted by default with the fallout from such policies.
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=17198

Third party needed
Ron Pundak - Ynet/Yediot Ahronot - "According to Barak, the Palestinians didn`t have a basis for demanding 100 percent of the West Bank, and therefore the negotiations went round in circles without determining the principle that the Palestinian state would be founded upon implementation of resolution 242 according to the Egyptian precedent, land for peace."
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=17162

In a Stormy Year, Peretz Raises and Then Forfeits Left’s Hopes
Gershom Gorenberg - Forward - "Whatever its security merits, the Bir Nabalah checkpoint does prove one thing: Having appeared there last June — a month after Labor Party leader Amir Peretz became defense minister — it has become one more symbol of the Israeli left’s burning disillusionment with Peretz."
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=17160

MK Tibi meets with Palestinian FM Mahmoud Zahar in Cairo
Yoav Stern - Haaretz - Deputy Speaker of the Knesset MK Ahmed Tibi (Ra'am-Ta'al) met with Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar of Hamas in Cairo on Friday. They discussed Israel`s military operation in Gaza and called on the international community to intervene in order to end the operation. This is the first meeting of an Israeli Knesset Member with a senior member of Hamas.
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=17190

Israel`s scandalous siege of Gaza
Patrick Seale -- International Herald Tribune -- "How long will the `international community` allow the slaughter to continue? The cruel repression of the occupied territories, and of Gaza in particular, is one of the most scandalous in the world today. It is the blackest stain on Israel`s patchy record as a would-be democratic state"
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=17098

Who is Afraid of the Iranian Bomb?
Uri Avnery -- Gush Shalom -- "It seems that we Israelis are always in need of something to be afraid of. When we open our eyes in the morning, we must see the danger-of-the-day. Otherwise, what is there to get up for? Perhaps it`s not the public that is to blame, but the politicians who use fear as a means of control"
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=17095

The Neo-Barbarians
Michael Warschawski -- AIC -- "The US and Israel — but also Blair’s Great Britain, Italy of Berlusconi and even Romano Prodi, and increasingly other western countries — are conducting a world-war against the peoples of the planet, with an unhidden agenda: to impose, by violence and/or threat, the rule of the Neoliberal Empire. This global war is a crusade of the Neo-Barbarians against human civilization"
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=17089

Reports
Beit Hanoun: Women act as human shields
Ali Waked, Gaza - Ynet News - Gaza Strip town under siege for five days now as part of Operation Autumn Clouds. All access roads blocked. Men leaving city accompanied by women who act as their 'human shields.' Residents report severe humanitarian crisis. UNRWA: IDF not allowing food and water into Gaza Strip. IDF denies reports
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3324081,00.html

27 Palestinians killed in IDF Gaza raids over weekend
Avi Issacharoff and Amos Harel - Haaretz - "11 civilians, including 12-year-old girl, among the dead". And a testimony of a young Palestinian from Beit Hanoun: "They shoot at anything that moves"
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=17204

Frenchman shot by Israeli forces in Bil’in
ISM media team - palsolidarity.com - For the second week in a row the Israeli military have shot a demonstrator with live ammunition at the Palestinian village of Bil’in. This week was the turn of 69-year old Frenchman José Jeandrot, a volunteer in the olive harvest as part of a delegation from a French solidarity group. He was shot in the wrist and received treatment in Sheikh Zaid hospital in Ramallah. José was shot by Israeli forces that were still in the village after the demonstration ended.
http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/11/03/bilin-03-11-06/

Snapshots Without Pictures
Jerry Levin - CPT - From The Inside Looking Out: Report 71 - pictures from the daily life in occupied Hebron.
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=17206
Army attack non-violent protest in Al Khader village near Bethlehem city
Link to International Solidarity Movement report on the 3.11.06 demonstration at the tunnel checkpoint on route 60. "The olives and olive oil were dumped in the path of traffic, causing confusion on the road and a good deal of disruption for over an hour. This symbolic action was intended to draw attention to the severe difficulties faced by Palestinian farmers, increasing numbers of whom cannot access their land."
http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/11/03/khadr-olive-action/
Til the IDF do us apart
Ali Waked - Ynet - Saad Banoura from Bethlehem wants to move to US with his American wife, but the IDF is making things difficult. Army won’t give Banoura permit to enter East Jerusalem so he can be interviewed for visa at US consulate. Meanwhile, his wife’s visa is about to expire.
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=17195
When reaching one`s lands becomes resistance to the occupation
Ali Samoudi - PNN - The farmer, forced to travel four hours to reach lands which are very near his home, said “Despite all kinds of oppression we will lay down on the ground. I insist on keeping my land and cultivating it. They want to pressure us to abandon our land and succumb to the policy of fait accompli.”
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=17194
Interview: Yehuda Shaul of Breaking the Silence
Christopher Brown - The Electronic Intifada - "The name Breaking the Silence was apt because what is going in the occupied territories is one of the biggest taboos in Israel. "It`s like the thing you never talk about," says Shaul. "It`s the dirt from the backyard that you do everything to keep in the backyard. The last thing you want is that this dirt will come to the front.""
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=17155

Strangling Gaza will not make Israel safer
Mona El-Farra -- IMEU -- "Is Israel`s economy threatened by Gaza`s impoverished fishermen, who are banned from fishing beyond 100 yards from the seacoast, or by its struggling farmers whose orchards are bulldozed? Do Israelis eat better knowing that one million Palestinians are on the verge of starvation? Will destroying Gaza`s infrastructure, its schools, its hospitals, its small businesses bring Israel lasting peace? Does killing our children somehow make Israeli children safer?"
http://www.kibush.co.il/show_file.asp?num=17099

Facts & figures

The olive harvest in the West Bank and Gaza
UN - October 2006 - olive harvest fact sheet - "2006 Harvest critical for fragile Palestinian economy 9 million olive trees 35,000 metric tons of olive oil to be produced $118 million contribution to economy. "
http://www.ochaopt.org/documents/olive_harvest_factsheet_2006_en.pdf

***
Occupation Magazine http://www.kibush.co.il/ (articles and action news, look at it daily - includes a useful archive)
ISM website http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/ (informing especially about joint Palestinian-Israeli-international anti-Wall struggle in the villages)
Robert Rosenberg'ssummary of "peace" issues in the Israeli media http://www.ariga.com/ (on workdays)
http://www.theheadlines.org/ (a variety of papers, followed dayly by Shadi Fadda)
http://electronicintifada.net/new.shtml (Palestinian press agency, including own research)
http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php (Palestinian on-line News agency that publishes news and articles in English from it's own as well as other sources, including from the Hebrew press)

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