The Palestine Papers 3: PA Colluding to Strangle Gaza

Qurei to Israel: "Occupy the crossing"

On January 23, 2008, masked gunmen demolished the steel wall alongside the Philadelphi route in Rafah and hundreds of thousands Gazans entered Egypt to buy food and supplies. Less than two weeks later, in a meeting in West Jerusalem, Ahmed Qurei, the former Palestinian Authority prime minister, asked Tzipi Livni, the former Israeli foreign minister, if Israel could re-occupy the Philadephi corridor to seal the border and cut off supplies to Hamas.

Livni: We’ll not give legitimacy to Hamas and we’ll stop the smuggling of money and arms from Egypt. Did the opening of the borders appear to be a victory of Hamas?”

Qurei: Yes, they appeared to have ended the siege.

Livni: The Egyptians don’t do enough, and we’re sure they can do much more.

Qurei: What can you do about the Philadelphi Crossing?

Livni: We’re not there.

Qurei: You’ve re-occupied the West Bank, and you can occupy the crossing if you want.

Livni: We can re-occupy the Gaza Strip. What is your position?

Qurei to Israel: "Occupy the crossing"

Later that month, during another meeting on the issue of security, Livni seemed willing to retake control of the corridor after Israel and the PA would reach a peace agreement.

Livni: Regarding Philadelphi, whether or not it was a mistake to leave it. If indeed it was a mistake, since Egypt is not effective like Jordan, can our agreement provide for Israeli presence in Philadelphi?

Qurei: Palestine will be independent but can co-ordinate. Agreement should reflect that with a commitment to security. Therefore regarding parameters I believe security is part of regional vision. Other neighbours don't have a problem -- regional security is interconnected.

Even before the takeover in 2007, the PA was desperately trying to keep control over the Gaza Strip by pleading for more weapons from the US, as is reflected in a meeting between Saeb Erekat, the chief PA negotiator, and Keith Dayton, the then-US security co-ordinator for Israel and the PA in May 2006:

Erekat: The PG [Presidential Guard] is in dire need of guns and ammunition. Particularly with the situation in Gaza, this issue is critical. [Keith Dayton replied that he will raise this point with Israelis particularly in meeting with Ephraim, (Israeli deputy defence minister) tomorrow]. "We need to re-establish security liaison with Israel. This is the best way to maintain security."

After the Hamas takeover in 2007, the fighting capabilities of Hamas and other resistance forces in the West Bank were crushed. The PA then started to crack down on the civilian infrastructure of the movement, as is shown in a meeting between Yoav Mordechai, the the head of the Civil Administration in the Occupied Territories, and Hazem Atallah, the PA police chief in the West Bank, in May 2008 in Tel Aviv.

In one of the most candid examples of the PA’s bid to tighten the noose around the Gaza Strip in order to punish Hamas, Erekat shows his disagreements with Israel and Egypt on their Gaza policy. In a meeting with George Mitchell, the US Middle East envoy in October 2009, Erekat appears frustrated that not enough was being done to maintain the siege on Gaza:

Erekat: Senator, I am just briefing you on my meetings with the Israelis. I am not giving you a message. They were good meetings. I told Amos Gilad [Israel’s chief negotiator]: you are Egypt’s man. You know the Egyptians. 11km! [Referring to the length of the border with Gaza]. What’s going on with you and the US, the $23 million [given by the US Agency for International Development to prevent tunnels] and ditches - its business as usual in the tunnels - the Hamas economy...Amos Gilad started laughing!

Mitchell: What did he say?

Erekat: They don’t want to say anything negative about Egypt. It’s their strategic relation with them. But they make me pay the price. I am no longer there. I am not alone responsible for the coup d’etat in Gaza

(al Jazeera & Guardian sources)

The Palestine Papers 2: PA surrendering everything and getting nothing

The papers reveal the extreme extent of what Palestinian Authority leadership was willing to surrender in order to please ever intransigent, overbearing, domineering and confident Isreali negotiators. They capitulated, gave up on everything, selling out the whole of Jerusalem (biggest Yerushalayim for Israel), relinquishing Palestinian right of return in accepting only a small token number of refugee return, recognising Israel as a fully Jewish State implying Zionism and accepting unconditionally a future state predetermined derisively (in future) by Israel itself. In typical sardonic Israeli response, these were deemed not enough, rejected disdainfully and the PA was left at a lurch, bargaining away all its chips dirt cheap.

Among the shameful episodes:- when PA purposely delayed release of Goldstone Report of Israeli atrocities in its Gaza onslaught as urged by the Israelis and the US citing not to hamper negotiations. PA also knew in advance of Israeli plans to attack Gaza. The excerpts:-

The papers indicate that the PA was warned in advance of and complicit in the 2008-2009 Israeli invasion of Gaza that claimed the lives of over 1,400 Palestinians. In addition, transcripts recount several discussions in which PA negotiators urged the Israelis to tighten their siege of the Gaza strip that has subjected a million-and-a-half Palestinians to hunger and misery. (WSWS)

By offering or at least indicating that it was prepared to offer such huge concessions, the PA leadership encouraged Israel’s political and military leaders in their belief that if only they are intransigent, repressive and brutal enough for long enough, they can break the will of the Palestinians to continue their struggle and force them to accept a handful of crumbs from Zionism’s table. (Alan Hart, ICH)

The documents – many of which will be published by the Guardian and Al Jazeera – also reveal:

They outline major concessions Palestinians offered during talks, which were rejected by Israel. They include:

• · a formal offer to allow Israel to annex all but one of the Jewish settlements built in occupied East Jerusalem
• 
  
• · an international committee to take over Jerusalem's Temple Mount, which houses the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque - Islam's third holiest site
• 
  
• · limiting the number of Palestinian refugees returning to 100,000 over a span of 10 years

• The scale of confidential concessions offered by Palestinian negotiators, including on the highly sensitive issue of the right of return of Palestinian refugees.

• How Israeli leaders privately asked for some Arab citizens to be transferred to a new Palestinian state.

• The intimate level of covert co-operation between Israeli security forces and the Palestinian Authority.

• The central role of British intelligence in drawing up a secret plan to crush Hamas in the Palestinian territories.

• How Palestinian Authority (PA) leaders were privately tipped off about Israel's 2008-9 war in Gaza.

The Palestine Papers - PA killing our own people

The Palestine Papers starkly revealed by Al Jazeera shows the Palestinian Authority under Mahmud Abbas as amil, as jasus for the Israelis, quislings, collaborators and spies in the service of the colonising Zionist State. What is more shocking is that among Palestinians suffering in occupation, PA treachery and connivance is well known. These documents only confirm the depths of brutal corruption of Abu Mazen's cabal and the Quartet's inhuman experiment in maintaining systematic apartheid by deceit and betrayal. Below are excerpts: -

The al-Madhoun Assassination

Documents include handwritten notes of 2005 exchange between PA and Israel on plan to kill Palestinian fighter in Gaza, By David Poort, January 25, 2011 "Al- Jazeera" - -

Al-Madhoun (born 1973) was a leading figure within the Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade, a movement aligned to Fatah, which at that stage still held power in Gaza. In a joint committee meeting on fugitives in mid-2005 in Tel Aviv between Shaul Mofaz, the then-Israeli defence minister, and Nasser Youssef, the PA minister of interior, the PA was asked to kill al-Madhoun.

Mofaz: “[…] Hassan Madhoun, we know his address and Rasheed Abu Shabak [chief of the Preventative Security Organisation in Gaza] knows that. Why don't you kill him? Hamas fired [Qassam rockets] because of the elections and this is a challenge to you and a warning to Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas, the PA president].”

Youssef: “We gave instructions to Rasheed [Abu Shabak] and will see.”

Mofaz: “Since we spoke, he has been planning an operation, and that's four weeks ago, and we know that he wants to strike Qarni or Erez [another border crossing between Gaza and Israel]. He is not Hamas and you can kill him.”

Youssef: “We work, the country is not easy, our capabilities are limited, and you haven't offered anything.”

Mofaz: “I understand that nothing has been accomplished in the [Gaza] Strip.”

Less then a month after this meeting, on November 1, 2005, al-Madhoun was killed in his car by a missile fired from an Israeli Apache helicopter over the skies of Gaza. The attack also killed a wanted Hamas activist and wounded three other people.

The very next day, Mofaz, who by that time was in Washington said, "We want to deal with President Abbas," after meeting with Condoleezza Rice, the then-US Secretary of State, before going to the White House to confer with Stephen Hadley, the then-national security adviser.

"We are waiting to see how the Palestinian Authority will deal with terrorist groups," the Israeli minister said.

Saeb Erekat, the PA’s chief negotiator acknowledged the cost of gaining US approval and Israeli trust, in a meeting on September 17, 2009 with David Hale, the deputy US Middle East envoy.

Erekat: "We have had to kill Palestinians to establish one authority, one gun and the rule of law. We continue to perform our obligations. We have invested time and effort and killed our own people to maintain order and the rule of law."

“Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade is part of the Fatah movement and they agreed to be part of the current security apparatus, even though this was not my position when I was a prime minister. I wanted the Brigade to remain as it was to confront Hamas,” Qurei told Livni.

“[…] reaching an agreement is a matter of survival for us. It’s the way to defeat Hamas,” Erekat told Marc Otte, the EU negotiator, in June 2008.

Earlier that year, on January 22, Qurei told Livni; “We’ll defeat Hamas if we reach an agreement, and this will be our response to their claim that gaining back our land can be achieved through resistance only.”

The Grovelling President of USA resorting to bribes?

Here are two telling excerpts of how low and humiliated Obama has become these days............

Obama is fresh from groveling before Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. He pleaded with Israel’s leader to impose a short, token freeze on settlement building in exchange for a multi-billion dollar bribe from Washington of advanced US F-35 stealth warplanes, promises of UN vetoes, and raising the value of US arms stockpiled for Israel’s use to $1 billion. Rarely has a US president crawled so low.

Israel will likely take Obama’s bribe, with more sweeteners, but not before rubbing his face in the dirt to show who really runs US Mideast policy and as a warning not to mess with Israel. The last US president to challenge Israel’s colonization of the West Bank, George H. W. Bush, was ousted in 1992 after one term. (ICH, Eric Margolis)

In any other country, the current American bribe to Israel, and the latter's reluctance to accept it, in return for even a temporary end to the theft of somebody else's property would be regarded as preposterous. Three billion dollars' worth of fighter bombers in return for a temporary freeze in West Bank colonisation for a mere 90 days? Not including East Jerusalem – so goodbye to the last chance of the east of the holy city for a Palestinian capital – and, if Benjamin Netanyahu so wishes, a rip-roaring continuation of settlement on Arab land. In the ordinary sane world in which we think we live, there is only one word for Barack Obama's offer: appeasement. Usually, our lords and masters use that word with disdain and disgust.

Anyone who panders to injustice by one people against another people is called an appeaser. Anyone who prefers peace at any price, let alone a $3bn bribe to the guilty party – is an appeaser. Anyone who will not risk the consequences of standing up for international morality against territorial greed is an appeaser. Those of us who did not want to invade Afghanistan were condemned as appeasers. Those of us who did not want to invade Iraq were vilified as appeasers. Yet that is precisely what Obama has done in his pathetic, unbelievable effort to plead with Netanyahu for just 90 days of submission to international law. Obama is an appeaser.

Palestinian "prime minister" Salam Fayyad, educated in the US so, naturally, a safe pair of hands, has put "growth before grumbling, roads before ranting, and security before everything". Having been occupied by a brutal army for 43 years, those wretched, dispossessed Palestinians, along with their cousins in the West Bank who have been homeless for 62 years, have at last stopped ranting and grumbling and feeling sorry for themselves and generally play-acting in order to honour the only thing that matters. Not justice. Certainly not democracy, but to the one God which Christians, Jews and Muslims are all now supposed to worship: security.

Yes, they have joined the true brotherhood of mankind. Israel will be safe at last. That this infantile narrative now drives Hillary Clinton who told us 11 years ago that Jerusalem was "the eternal and indivisible capital of Israel" proves that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has now reached its apogee, its most treacherous and final moment. And if Netanyahu has any sense – I'm talking about the Zionist, expansionist kind – he will wait out the 90 days, then thumb his nose at the US. In the three months of "good behaviour", of course, the Palestinians will have to bite the bullet and sit down to "peace" talks which will decide the future borders of Israel and "Palestine". But since Israel controls 62 per cent of the West Bank this leaves Fayyad and his chums about 10.9 per cent of mandate Palestine to argue about.

And at the cost of $827 a second, they'd better do some quick grovelling. They will. We should all hang our heads in shame. But we won't. It's not about people. It's about presentation. It's not about justice. It's about "security". And cash. Lots of it. Goodbye Palestine. (The Independent, Robert Fisk)

The Aid Flotilla

The Incident

Israeli commandos conduct a bloody raid on a humanitarian flotilla in international waters seizing crew, passengers and ships. Nine Turkish men on board the Mavi Marmara were shot a total of 30 times and five were killed by gunshot wounds to the head, according to the vice-chairman of the Turkish council of forensic medicine. The results revealed that a 60-year-old man, Ibrahim Bilgen, was shot four times in the temple, chest, hip and back. A 19-year-old, named as Fulkan Dogan, who also has US citizenship, was shot five times from less that 45cm, in the face, in the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back. Two other men were shot four times, and five of the victims were shot either in the back of the head or in the back.

Turkish Response

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed it most forcefully in a televised speech last week: "You [Israel] killed 19-year-old Furkan Dogan brutally. Which faith, which holy book can be an excuse for killing him? I am speaking to them in their own language. The sixth commandment says, 'Thou shalt not kill'. Did you not understand? I'll say again. I say in English, 'You shall not kill'. Did you still not understand? So I'll say to you in your own language. I say in Hebrew, 'Lo Tirtzakh'."

US Response

"We communicated with Israel through multiple channels many times regarding the flotilla. We emphasised caution and restraint, given the anticipated presence of civilians, including American citizens," a State Department spokesman said in a statement.

Israeli Response

The usual claim that Israel offers time and again in order to justify its vicious repression of the Palestinian people is that it has the right to defend itself. Few would argue that it doesn't. But it can only do it legally. For decades now Israel has been engaged in provocative actions on Palestinian territory - appropriating land that belongs to Palestinians, destroying century-old olive groves, diverting water to Jewish settlements, leaving an inadequate supply for Palestinian farmers, and on and on.. When people object, Israel goes into its "we are victims mode." Like the schoolyard bully who runs crying to the teacher when a classmate finally fights back.

From Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz: "Recently an intelligence official actually called the absence of Palestinian terror a 'propaganda problem.'"

Israeli Contempt

British consulate officials were treated contemptuously. One example: the British consulate official from Jerusalem tried to have a private conversation through a prison cell door--we weren't allowed to meet face to face--with two British citizens. The junior prison guard refused to move. When he was asked to move, he brought two other prison guards. When the diplomat explained that under all international treaties, protocol and the law, he's entitled to speak to his nationals privately, the junior guard said, "Go to your international tribunals, go to your law, we don't care."

In another incident, Ann Wright, ex US diplomat had been seen in a videotape of detainees being brought into Ashdod, an Israeli port. In an interview, she said she was held at a "brand new Israeli prison" in Barsheba, where she was treated well. But she said that law enforcement officials upon her departure, airport law enforcement officials were "laughing, giggling, commenting on (the) wounded and dead. It was a very pitiful, pitiful performance by law enforcement people."

Israeli Sarcasm

A video mocking the humanitarian activists was distributed officially by the Israeli government before being pulled back due to vehement protests of its blatant insensivity. Mark Regev, Israeli government spokesman, defends the attack which killed nine passengers on the Freedom Flotilla and commented on the video. "I called my kids in to watch it because I thought it was funny, it's how Israelis feel" he said.

Prior to the storming of the Turkish ship, the Israeli GPO (Government Press Office) sent an e-mail to journalists sarcastically recommending that while covering "alleged humanitarian difficulties," journalists should dine at one of Gaza's few restaurants. "We have been told the beef stroganoff and cream of spinach soup are highly recommended," the e-mail said.

Humour or black comedy does not always side with Israel or its supporters. Jon Stewart on The Daily Show said Charles Krauthammer, columnist and fervent Israel supporter, made the stupidest @#$& thing anyone ever said about the Middle East. Krauthammer said that there was no need for the flotilla since there was no humanitarian crisis and no one was starving in Gaza. Stewart smirked and paused and said that whatever anyone thinks of the Israeli leadership or Hamas, or religious beliefs, if someone fails to see the suffering in Gaza that needs to be alleviated, then his heart is so dead that "tourists flock there to float their backs in it".

Obama's Meek Response

Here’s what we’ve got. You’ve got a situation in which Israel has legitimate security concerns when they’ve got missiles raining down on cities along the Israel-Gaza border. I’ve been to those towns and seen the holes that were made by missiles coming through people’s bedrooms. So Israel has a legitimate concern there. On the other hand, you’ve got a blockade up that is preventing people in Palestinian Gaza from having job opportunities and being able to create businesses and engage in trade and have opportunity for the future.

Robert Fisk's Observation

I wasn't personally at all surprised at the killings on the Turkish ship. In Lebanon, I've seen this indisciplined rabble of an army – as "elite" as the average rabble of Arab armies – shooting at civilians. I saw them watching the Sabra and Shatila massacre of Palestinians on the morning of 18 September (the last day of the slaughter) by their vicious Lebanese militia allies. I was present at the Qana massacre by Israeli gunners in 1996 – "Arabushim" (the equivalent of the abusive term "Ayrab" in English), one of the gunners called the 106 dead civilians, more than half of them children, in the Israeli press. Then the Israeli government of Nobel laureate Shimon Peres said there were terrorists among the dead civilians – totally untrue, but who cares? – and then came the second Qana massacre in 2006 and then the 2008-09 Gaza slaughter of 1,300 Palestinians, most of them children, and then..

Apartheid 2010

The most likely outcome is that Greater Israel will become a full-fledged apartheid state. There are already separate laws, separate roads and separate housing in the occupied territories, and the Palestinians are essentially confined to impoverished enclaves. Indeed, two former Israeli prime ministers — Ehud Barak and Olmert — have made just this point. Olmert said that if the two-state solution collapses, Israel will face a "South African-style struggle." He went so far as to argue, "as soon as that happens, the state of Israel is finished."

It is already there. It is apartheid in its lowest and banal form.

(various news and media sources)

Gaza and the West Bank

The Goldstone report cited Eli Yishai, Israeli interior minister, as saying, “We should bombard thousands of houses in Gaza, destroy Gaza. As simple as that.”

Noam Chomsky says that in the case of Gaza, it's just savage torture. They are keeping the population barely alive because they don't want to be accused of genocide, but that's it. It's limited to survival. It's not the worst atrocity in the world, but it is one of the most savage. Egypt is cooperating fully by building a wall and refusing to allow concrete to go in and things like that, so it's an Israeli-Egyptian operation that is literally torturing the people of Gaza in a way that one can't think of a precedent, and it's getting worse.

In the West Bank, first of all it's not Israel: it's the United States and Israel. The United States sets the bounds of what they can do and cooperates with them. It's a joint operation, just as the attack on Gaza was. But they're continuing to impose their stranglehold, and they're taking what they want. The land inside the separation wall, which is in fact an annexation wall, they'll take that. They'll take the Jordan Valley, and they'll take what's called Jerusalem, which is far larger than Jerusalem ever was, as it's a huge area expanding into the West Bank.

In the West Bank they moved, in their phrase, from 'colonialism' to 'neo- colonialism'. They construct neo-colonial structures on the West Bank. Typically, they have a sector of extreme wealth and privilege that collaborates with the former colonial power, and then a mass of misery and horror surrounding it. That's what's being done. So if you go to Ramallah, it's kind of like Paris, you live a nice life, there are elegant restaurants, and so on, but of course if you go into the countryside, it's quite different, and there are checkpoints and life's impossible. There's only totally dependent development, and they will not allow independent development, and they're trying to impose a permanent arrangement of this kind.

An advocate of economic peace, Salam Fayyad is trying to arrange for Palestinians to have forms of employment other than working in the settlements and doing whatever construction they can manage to do within the Israeli framework, maybe even in Area C, the Israeli- controlled area, and just taking small steps towards trying to lay the basis for a future independent Palestinian entity. Israel might very well accept it. The Israeli deputy prime, Silvan Shalom said it's fine, if they want to call the cantons they'll leave to them a state, then that's fine, but it'll be a state without borders.

There's another element to it, which is the military force. There is an army run by an American general, Keith Dayton, which is trained by Jordan with Canadian and Israeli cooperation, and has caused a lot of enthusiasm in the United States. John Kerry, who is head of the Senate foreign relations committee, said that for the first time Israel has a legitimate negotiating partner because during the Gaza attack or Operation Cast Lead, the Dayton army was able to prevent any protests. They were so effective during the Gaza attack that Israel was able to shift forces from the West Bank to Gaza to extend the attack with para-military forces controlled by the colonial power that keep the population under control.

The largely docile Palestinian Authority in the West Bank is known for its corruption, passivity and its ridiculed belated campaign to boycott the settlements and their products. PA officials are virtual hostages albeit quite appreciative and cooperative collaborators. The resistance has apparently been crushed by General Dayton's army. All the militias and fighters in the West Bank have been effectively subdued especially Hamas.

The Fatah-heavy West Bank government headed by president Mahmoud Abbas receives considerable support, financial and otherwise, from the United States and Europe, so Hamas is persona non grata in this part of the Palestinian territories. Palestinian soldiers say the drop in terror attacks across the West Bank have little to do with Israeli actions - like checkpoints and the "security barrier" - and much to do with the National Security Force. Now, Palestinian and Israeli military commanders sometimes share information with each other have "some small degree of co-operation," . Also the degree of collaboration is such Israel insists the National Security Force not patrol between midnight and 6am, to not interfere with Israeli night raids in the West Bank villages.

In early 2006, immediately following the election of Hamas, Canada was the first country in the world to boycott the new government, ahead even of Israel. "Not a red cent to Hamas," said Peter MacKay, the then Canadian foreign minister, setting the tone for a crippling blockade that the United Nations has called "possibly the most rigorous form of international sanctions imposed in modern times". In 2005, immediately following Israel's 'disengagement' from Gaza, Canada dispatched a top official from the Canada Border Services Agency, Denis Lefebvre, to advise Israel and the Palestinian Authority during the earlier stages of the blockade of Gaza.

It was at this juncture that Canada began funding and training Palestinian forces to monitor the sealed borders of the Gaza Strip, under the auspices of General Keith Dayton, the US security coordinator. Known at the time as the Karni Project, named after the principle commercial crossing into Gaza, the initiative was a covert - though not clandestine - effort to train a pliable security force to work with Israel.

A Jerusalem Post analysis tabbed the project as "a prototype for the running of Palestine". Provocations by Dahlan's security forces were seen by Hamas and many others as precipitating the Hamas takeover in Gaza. The Karni project saw the US and its Canadian allies "engaging in a dirty war in an effort to provide a corrupt PA dictatorship with victory".

On the heels of the Hamas takeover, Canada re-instituted its funding for the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and redoubled its efforts to back Dayton's security forces training initiative to back appointed Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and to prevent the Hamas government from taking power in the West Bank. In many crucial ways, Canada is the heart of the Dayton project - 18 of the training officers are Canadian and 10 are American.

Fayyad lauded US and Canada's efforts in not only the security sector but also governance and working to create legitimacy for Fayyad's impending unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood. Canada recently removed longstanding funding for UNRWA, the agency responsible for Palestinian refugee affairs, and reallocated it to Fayyad's security project. "Our paramount concern is the security of Israel," said Canada's minister of public safety.

General Dayton is in charge of equipping and training the new Fatah-allied Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces in the West Bank. While the PA says its forces are trained to impose law and order, they have also clamped down on political opposition, including Hamas. Under the Oslo peace agreements the West bank is divided into three zones, Area A - full PA control, Area B - Palestinian civil control and Israeli security control, and Area C - complete Israeli military control. However, Israeli forces have freedom to operate wherever they choose in the West Bank.

Israeli security officials said despite recent U.S. training, they were also concerned Abbas is not strong enough in the West Bank to impose law and order without the help of the Israeli army. According to the officials, Fatah's intelligence apparatus routinely hands the Israel Defense Forces lists of Hamas militants that threaten Fatah rule, requesting that Israel make arrests.

A supporter of economic peace says that If the Palestinians were to form a state while the people were poor, uneducated, unemployed, and angry — then that would be a recipe for further disaster and war. If they were to have stable lives, then they would be less likely to throw that away by pursuing further war and terrorism against Israel. After all, people in the comfortable middle-class — in any country — are the least likely to rock the boat. If given a choice, most people would prefer not to starve — even if it means accepting a political arrangement that they might not necessarily like.

In the meantime, for those who still resist this grand US-Israeli project on pliant Palestinian governance, there is Gaza as a living showcase as the most deplorable and miserable state whom any Palestinian would dread with the latest fear of forced deportation out of the West Bank.

(various news sources)

Support Viva Palestina

Yesterday, we pledged to sponsor a group on route to a gathering in KL in conjunction with the Malaysian convoy for Viva Palestina II, the second brave humanitarian wave to break the brutal siege of Gaza. Will they make it? Knowing the Egyptian authorities can be vindictive and treacherous, we can only pray. We shared our grim feelings and heard a brief tale of the harrowing and bewildering events of the first convoy. It was amazing that it got through even though the multinational team had to endure being pelted by stones and tear-gassed. Egyptian riot police even battled charged them. The activists and aid workers stood their ground and never relented nor did they fight back even under severe provocation. Many were bloodied even the old and the senior citizens among them. They did manage to get through to bring the aid into Gaza and they made their point although it came at a price. They had come from all walks of life to bring a ray of hope to the forgotten Palestinians. We salute them.

Many activists have tried to enter Gaza to bring help and aid but it is such an uphill struggle against unfriendly Egyptian bureaucrats and harsh border guards. If you brought a medical team, sometimes the medicine gets through but the medical doctors and personnel are turned away and vice versa. If you insist then you are threatened or even arrested. One unfortunate medical team leader was harshly treated.

When a friendly ambassador tried to intervene and help, the Interior Minister no less told him off simply that it was an Arab matter and the ambassador did not understand Arab issues. Actually, there is no humane reason to obstruct aid and aid workers from entering Gaza. But for some intriguing and ghastly purpose, Palestinians are being made to suffer openly in the eyes of the world. The Arab regimes are directly and categorically complicit and responsible, and in this case the Egyptian government is the key culprit by perpetuating and collaborating in the inhuman siege and the punishing sanctions imposed upon Gaza. That is as contemptuously Arabian as you can get!

Everyone knows about the steel walls being built sophisticatedly to block the smuggling tunnels, the lifeline of Gazan survival. Underground walls are funded and constructed with US assistance. How could such feats of engineering be so ruthless. Now, if the Egyptians do not want to help the Palestinians then they should not be in the way and be so cruel as to add to the suffering and persistently frustrate relief efforts. But that is the way it is when corruption has made its way into the deepest crevices of authorities and people in power. They only answer the master's call and we all know who their masters are in Tel Aviv and Washington. The latest fatal gassing of Gaza tunnel workers is an example of the extreme measures they take to prolong human suffering. Murder is just an option for corrupt people.

At the same time, the West Bank is being flooded with goods and amenities, semblance of relative peace and comfort. It is deliberately being spruced up to make clear who among the Palestinians are condemned. Those who do not conform shall be evicted and exiled to where else but Gaza, the biggest illegal prison on planet earth. If you are a Palestinian in the territories, you either be grateful for being in occupied West Bank or suffer in the slums of Gaza. In the meantime talk is being spun endlessly around "settlements freeze" as if it is the main issue. This blatant deception is simply an elaborate cover up and scheme to deprive and eliminate physically, economically and emotionally 1.5 million innocent Palestinians from the face of the earth. The real issue is the wanton injustice being perpetuated and perpetrated by Israel, funded and abetted by the USA, and collaborated by corrupt Arab regimes.

So back to the second Viva Palestina convoy, may your journey be safe and may you be successful. You carry the burden and the guilt of the world upon you. We know it ought to be our right and responsibility to wage war to free Gaza and save its inhabitants. It is our right since time immemorial and it is in the UN charter as the right of all nations and peoples to be free and be safe from imposed cruelty. But since everyone is powerless and paralysed by the sheer inhumanity of it all, we better do our bit to remind the world of its guilt in not freeing Gaza and to bring some relief to its people. We do this so that on the Day of Judgement, we can all be accounted with what we did to help. For the ones against us and stopping us, their accounts are not of our concern.

Let us all support Viva Palestina,

ma'a salama fi amanillah.