UNDERNEWS
FROM THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
12 APRIL 2008
NADER ONLY CANDIDATE TO STAND UP FOR CARTER TALKS WITH HAMAS
RALPH NADER Once again, former President Jimmy Carter is to be commended for taking the initiative toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The announcement that he will meet next week in Damascus with Khaled Meshal, the leader of Hamas, is consonant with a poll by the leading Israeli newspaper - Haaretz - that found 64 percent of Israelis favor direct talks with Hamas. Only 28 percent were opposed.
Both United Nations and European Union officials have demanded that the Israeli government lift the siege or blockade which is severely depriving Palestinian civilian families of needed medicine, food, electricity, clean water, fuel and other critical life-saving supplies and materials. Gaza has become the world's largest prison with 1.5 million inmates - many sick or dying - making that tiny enclave a major humanitarian crisis that invites moral and political denunciation by world leaders.
In addition, during the hostilities over the past year, Palestinians have suffered at least 300 civilian casualties to every Israeli civilian casualty.
The major party Presidential candidates - McCain, most offensively for one who says he stands against individual and collective torture - and Clinton and Obama - distanced themselves from Carter's forthcoming initiative.
McCain, renewing his fealty to Washington's Puppet Show, condemned Carter's move, while Clinton and Obama declared they disagreed with Carter.
THE HAMAS STATEMENT BUSH & ISRAEL WANT EVERYONE TO IGNORE
GERSHOM GORENBERG, PROSPECT What would happen if Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal gave an interview and nearly no one in the West listened? Well then, it would be possible for the Israeli government and the Bush administration to continue with dead-end policies for dealing with the Islamic movement that rules Gaza, without anyone asking questions about failed strategic assumptions.
Meshaal is the Damascus-based head of Hamas' political bureau, its main leadership body. While his precise relationship with the head of the Hamas government in Gaza, Ismail Haniyeh, is unclear, Meshaal is normally described as Hamas' leader. Last week he gave an interview to Al-Ayyam, a pro-Fatah Palestinian daily. In it, he stressed that he's still committed to the Palestinian unity agreements of 2006, the basis for last year's short-lived Hamas-Fatah power- sharing deal in the Palestinian Authority. He reiterated that he would accept a Palestinian state based on the pre-1967 boundaries -- that is, alongside Israel, not in place of it -- though without any commitment to recognize Israel formally.
Put differently, Meshaal was saying that his organization is willing to accept the reality of Israel, even if it is not happy about doing so. He's ready for Hamas to rejoin a unity government with Fatah -- reuniting Gaza and the West Bank -- and to be a silent partner while Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas of Fatah negotiates peace. He has not become a dove, but he is sidling his way toward being a pragmatic hawk. At the least, Meshaal's stance is reason for his adversaries to weigh a renewal of Palestinian unity as an alternative to siege of Gaza.
The Meshaal interview got brief coverage in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, and was picked up by an Italian news agency. In English language press it was barely covered. That's a shame. Asked by Al-Ayyam reporter Abdelrayuf Arnaout if Hamas sought to eradicate Israel, Meshaal answered: "We are committed to the political platform on which we agreed with the other Palestinian forces and in convergence with Arab position" - meaning the Arab League proposal for full peace with Israel, based on the pre-1967 lines. "All the international parties," Meshaal said, should treat this as the Hamas position, and not "search in the minds of peoples" for their feelings.
ONE WEEK IN GAZA
PALESTINIAN CENTRE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS - Weekly Report on Israeli human rights violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory 03 - 09 Apr 2008:
- 8 Palestinians, including a child and a farmer, were killed by IOF in the Gaza Strip.
- 5 of the victims, including a child and his uncle, were killed in a series of attacks launched by IOF against the east of Gaza City in less than 5 hours.
- A Palestinian child was run down to death by an Israeli settler.
- 25 Palestinian, including 5 children, were wounded by IOF in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
- IOF conducted 30 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank, and 7 ones into the Gaza Strip.
- IOF arrested 65 Palestinian civilians, including 7 children and a girl, in the West Bank and 10 others, including 3 children, in the Gaza Strip.
- IOF razed at least 125 donums [31 acres] of agricultural land.
- IOF damaged a number of civilian facilities in the northeast of Gaza City.
- IOF raided a number of charities and NGOs in Ramallah and al-Bireh.
- IOF raided and searched a number of charities, mosques and shops in Qalqilya, and closed 4 charities.
- The fuel crisis in the Gaza Strip has escalated.
- 6 Palestinian civilian were arrested by IOF at military checkpoints in the West Bank.
- 2 Israeli settlers attacked a Palestinian family near Nablus.
Summary: Israeli violations of international law and humanitarian law seriously escalated in the OPT, especially in the Gaza Strip, during the reporting period (3 – 9 April 2008):
DON'T CRY FOR ME, ARKANSAS
Nostalgic moments from the Clinton years
MID EAST
BBC - Israel has said it will not allow a UN official appointed to investigate Israeli human rights abuses to enter the country or Palestinian territories. It said it made the decision after Richard Falk told the BBC he stood by comments he made comparing Israel's actions in Gaza to those of the Nazis. Mr Falk is due to take up his post with the UN Human Rights Council in May. The foreign ministry said it would deny Mr Falk a visa at least until a council meeting in September.
BBC US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has asked for "embarrassing" travel restrictions on Nelson Mandela and South African leaders to be lifted. A bill has been introduced in the US Congress to remove from databases any reference to South Africa's governing party and its leaders as terrorists. The African National Congress was designated as a terrorist organization by South Africa's old apartheid regime. At present a waiver is needed for any ANC leaders to enter the country. "It is frankly a rather embarrassing matter that I still have to waive in my own counterparts - the foreign minister of South Africa, not to mention the great leader, Nelson Mandela," Ms Rice told lawmakers in Washington. Last week, Howard Berman, chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, who introduced the bill said it was "shameful" that the United States still treated the ANC this way.
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