Editor’s
Note:
We have two short articles today, followed by additional
links to other interesting articles on the Middle East.
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is not on the front
pages, pushed to the rear due to the Iraq war. It is
still there and no matter what the outcome in Iraq, this
issue will become key after the elections.
The second article concerns the possibility of an
Israeli attack on Iran. Is this likely? Will the US
attack before Israel?
Refusing To Blind The Other Eye- By Amira Hass
The villages west of Ramallah are full of prickly pear
cactus. Many years ago these villages were known for
their many residents who, while picking the fruit, had
become blinded in one eye from the barbed cactus, when
the inflammation went untreated, became infected, and
eventually blinded the eye.
That was the story told by a Fatah member last week on
his way from Ramallah to the village of Budrus, to take
part in a protest march against the separation fence.
That activist had also joined a renewed initiative of a
group of Palestinians seeking ways of returning to a
mass unarmed struggle against the occupation.
Talking about this and that, he also told the tale about
a villager, blind in one eye, who came home after an
absence of many years and found that all the other
villagers had become blind in both eyes, and were
worshiping a tree in the village as if it were Allah.
He tried to explain their mistake to them, but they
rejected his efforts. Finally they told him, "If you
want to be a son of this village, accept the tree as
your god. If you don't, then leave." The man wanted to
stay, and so he blinded himself in the other eye.
This story can be a universal parable for the power of
socialization. But the man who told it, who had spent
more than 10 years in Israeli jails, was addressing his
own society. He pointed out the difficulty for him and
other like-minded Palestinians in swimming against the
tide, against traditional internal behavior in Fatah and
against conventions that have become rooted in the
struggle against the Israeli occupation.
One convention, for example, is that the number of those
Killed (on both sides) is a measure of the struggle's
success. Another is that a weapon makes he who wields it
into a fighter. To earn this title, it is enough to be
photographed holding the weapon at a public event in the
refugee camp and shooting it in the air, or using it to
threaten merchants to close their stores. The
all-embracing violence of the Israeli occupation, and
the willingness of the weapon-wielders to die, are
enough to make people ashamed of criticizing them
publicly.
What is interesting is that the Palestinians are used to
Mass unarmed resistance to the occupation, more than
they tend to believe of themselves and more than the
Israelis are willing to admit. And not just when it
comes to mass, stubborn demonstrations, which the
residents of Budrus began and through which they even
managed to save a grand old olive grove from the maws of
the bulldozers.
Many types of resilience can be learned from the
Palestinians. After all, the Israeli occupation after
and before September 2000 is as invasive as can be. It
invades and suffocates every aspect of people's lives,
until one can blow up from fury and frustration: trees
and greenhouses uprooted using a million excuses (within
spitting distance from the ever-expanding outposts); a
toilet that may not be built in a school because it is
in Area C; a new water pipe the width of which is
limited by the Israelis; construction prohibitions in
East Jerusalem; the paternalistic comments of an officer
in the civil administration, or a young soldier at a
reception window; authorization given or denied to
travel for cancer treatment; or permission to visit
first-degree relatives in Gaza only if they are dying or
already dead.
People invent thousands of solutions. They obtain false
documents, build without permits, send pictures of the
grandchildren by email, bring water from distant wells,
care for the children of an imprisoned brother, walk for
hours through the mountains to circumvent roadblocks,
tell jokes about themselves, send their kids to karate
and debka dance lessons, establish an endless number of
local committees to debate everything, and sneak into
Israel to earn a livelihood to support their families in
spite of the dangers.
But the personal creative resilience of the masses has
not translated into a strategy of popular resistance.
That was to have been the task of the creative
leadership, which is non existent.
It is difficult to know if the renewed initiative of the
grass-roots struggle will succeed this time. But it is
another expression of the fact that an ever-increasing
number of Palestinians refuses to be blinded in the
other eye.
***********************************************************
Would Israel strike first at Iran? By Joshua Mitnick
TEL AVIV-- Moments before dispatching Israeli pilots to
bomb Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in June, 1981, army
Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan is said to have depicted the
importance of the mission in stark terms: "The
alternative is our destruction.''
In ordering the lightning knockout, Israel served notice
to its Middle Eastern foes that the Jewish state would
act – Even preemptively - to deprive them of a nuclear
option.
Two decades later, the Osirak precedent endures. As the
Bush administration steps up its rhetoric against Iran's
nuclear program, the possibility of Israel following
through on veiled threats to hit Iranian sites remains a
wildcard.
But several Israeli experts say that the Osirak
experience bears little relevance in the case of Iran
and that the chances of a repeat strike are very low.
Unlike in the early 1980s when Israel found itself
isolated in perceiving a threat from Iraq's nuclear
program, the prospect of US-led multilateral pressure
against Iran casts a unilateral strike in a
more-problematic light.
With National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice warning
last week that the US won't tolerate a nuclear Iran,
Israel is much more likely to act in tandem with its
most powerful ally rather than electing to go it alone,
observers say.
"The circumstances are quite different,'' says Ephraim
Kam, head of the Begin Sadat Center for Strategic
Studies at Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel. "If
Israel is going to take any move beyond the diplomatic
move, there should be better understanding in the
international arena that there is no way to stop the
Iranians.''
Tehran admits it has sought so-called dual-use nuclear
technology in order to generate electricity, but denies
it aims to build nuclear weapons.
Repeat performance?
Even the very ability of Israel's military to repeat the
decisive strike achieved at Osirak appears doubtful.
While the Iraqi nuclear effort was concentrated at the
Osirak plant, nuclear experts say the Iranians have
dispersed their program at multiple sites, some of which
are hidden underground.
That makes a repeat performance of the clean and
decisive blow against Iraq almost impossible, analysts
say. Not only is it unclear how Israeli forces would
eliminate underground centrifuge installations, but the
task of locating all of Iran's nuclear targets requires
a high degree of intelligence and risk.
"I don't think there's an option for a preemptive act
Because we're talking about a different sort of a
nuclear program,'' says Shmuel Bar, a fellow at the
Institute for Policy and Strategy at the
Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel. "A
hit-and-run preemptive attack can't guarantee much
success.''
Even so, first-strike offensives have been an essential
element of Israel's defensive doctrine for decades – the
most famous instance being the Israeli Air Force's
destruction of Egyptian air bases to open the 1967 Arab-
Israeli War. That approach still influences the Israeli
defense establishment.
With Israeli intelligence agencies estimating that Iran
Will acquire nuclear weaponry by 2007, defense officials
on Occasion drop hints of a first strike. Defense
Minister Shaul Mofaz (who was born in Iran) said in a
December radio interview that Israel would try to
minimize civilian casualties in such an attack.
Last week, Israeli army Chief of Staff Moshe Yaalon said
in An interview with the daily newspaper Yediot Ahronot
that Israel "can't rely on others'' in facing the threat
from Iran.
Both countries have engaged in a cat-and-mouse game of
Missile tests in recent weeks. Iran has said it would
strike at Israel with its ballistic missiles if Israel
attacks its nuclear facilities.
"For Israel it's quite clear, that we're not going to
wait for a threat to be realized,'' says Ephraim Inbar,
head of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel
Aviv University. "For self-defense we have to act in a
preemptive mode.''
Nevertheless, a lone Israeli strike reminiscent of 1981
seems less likely at a time when US forces are sitting
in neighboring Iraq, officials and analysts say. By
acting independently, Israel would be forgoing the
intelligence and manpower of the better-positioned
American military.
US complicity?
The Osirak strike generated a chorus of international
Condemnation that included US Secretary of State
Alexander Haig and UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. But
beyond a temporary halt in F-16 fighter jet shipments
from the US, there was no lasting fallout.
Unlike 1981, the blame for such an attack today would
not Be limited to Israel. The US would be perceived in
the Muslim world as being complicit - probably boosting
the motivation of extremists to carry out terrorist
attacks on Western targets.
"Certainly it would be seen as a continuation of what
The Americans did in Iraq,'' says Bruce Maddy Weizman, a
fellow at the Dayan Center for Middle East and African
Studies at Tel Aviv University. "Israel and US are
widely perceived to be acting in concert.''
For their part, Israeli officials argue that Iran's
ambition is to use nuclear prominence to threaten Saudi
Arabia, Europe, and US influence in the Gulf.
That position makes it harder to justify another Osirak,
Because such an action would contradict Israeli claims
that Iran's nuclear program is a global threat rather
than a regional one.
"We don't want to create the impression that it's on our
shoulders,'' says Israeli legislator Yuval Steinmetz,
chair of the parliament's foreign affairs and defense
committee.
"This time it's not up to Israel to save the world.''
***********************************************************
More selected Readings on the Middle East
Failed Peace Mission Leaves Najaf
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200408/s1179336.htm
Will Abu Ghraib Fade Away?- Asia Times
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FH13Ak01.html
Coincidence Theorists Guide To 9-11
http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2004/08/coincidence-theorists-guide-to-911.html
Mercenaries In Arab Dress Attack in Najaf
http://www.rense.com/general56/anaj.htm
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