Israel/Palestine

State-building in reverse
The cycle of tit-for-tat violence in the Israeli-occupied territories has resumed, dashing hopes for a lasting ceasefire that might lead to a renewal of the peace process. Palestinians’ hopes of achieving their own state are dying away, with dangerous consequences

Military assault, economic deprivation and political implosion from within and the slow, attritional destruction of Mr Arafat and his Palestinian Authority are, or so Palestinians insist, Mr Sharon’s way of banishing the dream that Israel’s 34-year occupation of the West Bank and Gaza will end. “I don’t know if Israel is deliberately destroying the potential for Palestinian statehood,” said one UN diplomat involved in trying to get some sort of political process back in place. “But I do know that any viable state needs to control its borders and police, and meet its people’s most basic economic needs. By damaging precisely these institutions and capacities, Israel is in effect preventing the Palestinians from managing their own affairs. It is like a kind of state-building in reverse.”
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On the way to the next crime

The recurring stupidity is the government spitting in its own face. It has happened time and again, just when it appears that the Israeli case is relatively strong. The West's attention is directed to Arafat's frauds and then the security forces send a senior Palestinian to kingdom come for what he had done in his rich career. A relative calm threatens to send Sharon back to the jaws of the political track, and wham - children in Gaza are killed by a land mine, dozens of families are thrown out of their homes into a rainy night, and another Fatah official, this time one Raed Karmi, is gathered into the bosom of his forefathers in Tul Karm.

How can such serial stupidity take place with such impressive pinpoint precision? Only because it's intentional. And what does it intend? To disrupt even the slightest possibility, no matter how far-fetched, that a steep decline in the number of Israeli casualties after Yasser Arafat's speech a month ago would lead - heaven forbid - to talks with the Palestinian leadership.
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Want Security? End the Occupation

Israel's assassination of Fatah activist Raed Karmi on Monday was predictable. Despite Israel's having killed more than 18 Palestinians since President Yasser Arafat's call for a cease-fire on Dec. 18, there have been no Israeli civilian casualties during that time. That, according to world governments and the international press, constituted a "lull in the violence." But a lull in the violence is exactly what Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon cannot afford. He was elected in a time of crisis and knows that his rule is sustainable only in a time of crisis. For his own political survival, he will do whatever it takes, and look for any excuse, to stoke the flames of unrest and avoid a return to peace negotiations.
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The only way for Israelis to have security is, quite simply, to end the 35-year- old Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory. Israelis must abandon the myth that it is possible to have peace and occupation at the same time, that peaceful coexistence is possible between slave and master. The lack of Israeli security is born of the lack of Palestinian freedom. Israel will have security only after the end of occupation, not before.
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I am not a terrorist, but neither am I a pacifist. I am simply a regular guy from the Palestinian street advocating only what every other oppressed person has advocated -- the right to help myself in the absence of help from anywhere else.

This principle may well lead to my assassination. So let my position be clear in order that my death not be lightly dismissed by the world as just one more statistic in Israel's "war on terrorism." For six years I languished as a political prisoner in an Israeli jail, where I was tortured, where I hung blindfolded as an Israeli beat my genitals with a stick. But since 1994, when I believed Israel was serious about ending its occupation, I have been a tireless advocate of a peace based on fairness and equality. I led delegations of Palestinians in meetings with Israeli parliamentarians to promote mutual understanding and cooperation. I still seek peaceful coexistence between the equal and independent countries of Israel and Palestine based on full withdrawal from Palestinian territories occupied in 1967 and a just resolution to the plight of Palestinian refugees pursuant to U.N. resolutions. I do not seek to destroy Israel but only to end its occupation of my country.
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