This month, the Shurat HaDin Law Center is taking foreign tourists on an eight-day "exploration of Israel’s struggle for survival and security" that includes briefings by intelligence officers and demonstrations by masked commandoes, as well as visits to military trials of Hamas members.
“The origin of tyranny is iniquity, and springing from a poisonous root, it is a tree which grows and sprouts into a baleful pestilent growth, and to which the axe must by all means be laid.” As true as this was to John Salisbury in the twelfth century, it remains the same in the 21st century, and it forms the basis from which many of the crises in the Middle East have sprung.
After a 2002 Israel Defense Forces attack, the Palestinian residents of the West Bank town of Jenin made it a point of pride to rebuild the razed buildings, restore homes ransacked by occupation, repave roads dug up by Israeli tanks, and replant olive groves uprooted by Israeli bulldozers.
The United States supplies most of Israel’s weapons, and it bears some responsibility for the escalating violence in Israel and Lebanon. It must now use its influence to call for an immediate cease-fire in the assault that has killed so many innocent civilians.
Since the Palestinian Legislative Council elections earlier this year, in which the Islamist group Hamas captured a majority of seats, the Bush administration has suspended U.S. economic assistance to the Palestine Authority (PA) and has led an international effort to impose sanctions against the Palestinians. This has meant enormous hardship for ordinary Palestinians, with reports that hospitals in Gaza have difficulty providing immunizations for children or dialysis machines for kidney patients. The World Health Organization warns of a “rapid decline of the public health system … toward a possible collapse.”
Lost amidst the predictably negative reaction to the victory by Hamas in the Palestinian parliamentary elections is the crucial role that the U.S. government had in bringing the radical Islamist group to power.
In a 2002 Le Monde Diplomatique article titled “Constructing Catastrophe,” Israeli journalist Amon Kapeliouk challenged one of the central myths about the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. To wit: that Palestinian President Yasir Arafat was offered a great deal at the Camp David talks in July 2000, but turned it down and launched Intifada II.
At a time of year when Jews and Christians are celebrating the spirit of justice and peace inspired by events in the Holy Land many centuries ago, Congress has been working to insure that the Holy Land of today experiences neither.
Much has been written in support of and against SharonÂs planned disengagement from the Gaza Strip, to include the dismantling of the settlements in the Gaza Strip, isolated settlements in the northern part of the West Bank, and the redeployment of the Israeli army within the Gaza Strip; yet one crucially important aspect has been overlooked by most commentators: the precedent of dismantling settlements and its potentially transforming and cathartic affect on Israeli society.
The Palestinian struggle for freedom and independence is larger than the late President Yasser Arafat. The decades-long symbolism that Arafat embodied should not be underestimated. It is this symbolism that Palestinians are mourning. The substance of ArafatÂs symbolism has to do with how it has represented Palestinian nationalism and the five decade struggle for justice for a people that were dispossessed in 1948, militarily occupied in 1967, attacked while in exile in 1970 in Jordan and 1982 in Lebanon, and most recently, battered in their own homes in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. A wide spectrum of opinions about Arafat, the man and the leader, will surely outlive the international flurry of media interest in his death. However, the world must be aware that the Palestinian struggle is beyond any single individual.