Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
The West Bank Rises Up
Ramallah’s landscape this February 21 has overtones of a war zone. Residents have dismantled the ancient stone wall across the street for a series of barricades. The smoke of a burning tire rises in the clear early afternoon air over nearby al-Am‘ari refugee camp and army flares light the camp at night. The camp’s main entrance has been sealed by a wall of cement-filled barrels. Helicopters chop the air overhead; sirens of ambulances and army jeeps pierce streets that are virtually deserted this afternoon, ordinarily a busy time of day. In camps and villages, even the winter nights are the scenes of sharp confrontation.
From the Editors (May/June 1988)
In the land of Palestine-Israel, the “generation of occupation” has rewritten the equations that will describe the dynamics of any future political equilibrium.
Israeli rulers are determined to stand against this sea change. Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin insists that the uprising will achieve no Palestinian political purpose. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir deftly expressed the limits of his brutish imagination when, on the eve of Land Day, he declaimed that “a test of strength between us and them [‘the Arabs of Israel’] is like the test of strength between an elephant and a fly.”
“The State Cannot Make Criminals Of Those Who Want Peace”
Reuven Kaminer immigrated to Israel from the United States in the early 1950s and became a prominent figure in Shasi (Israeli Socialist Left). He was a member of the Israeli delegation that met with the PLO in Romania in November 1986. Israeli authorities brought Kaminer and three others to trial for violating a recent law that makes such meetings illegal. Joel Beinin interviewed him in Jerusalem in August 1987.
Where does the legal process of the trial of the four who went to Romania stand now?
The trial will continue at least until December. Nobody is in a hurry. We are not interested in permitting the prosecution to have a quick and easy trial. We want a detailed hearing of our position.
International Human Rights Organizations and the Palestine Question
Unlike the news media, human rights organizations have only limited contact with mass public opinion, but they constitute a primary source of information on human rights conditions around the world. They play a subtle, crucial role in shaping the opinions of political leaders, news commentators and other strata of articulate opinion. Their ability to influence political debate and issues can sometimes lead to startling results, as recently happened when 40 US senators voiced their concern over Indonesian atrocities in East Timor. [1] This achievement was all the more remarkable in that it occurred in the absence of popular outcry and media coverage.
Avishai, The Tragedy of Zionism
Bernard Avishai, The Tragedy of Zionism — Revolution and Democracy in the Land of Israel, (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1985).
Germany’s Greens and Israel
The German Greens are having a hard time defining a Middle East policy. No wonder. Besides the usual difficulties of the whole European left, they are German.
How hard it could be was brought home with a thud by the six Greens who toured Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel and the occupied territories in December 1984. Trip leaders Jürgen Reents, of the Hamburg left wing of the party, and Gabriele Gottwald, the Greens’ most dedicated Third World solidarity militant, were startled and hurt when the Israeli press distorted their views and impugned their motives.
Melman, The Master Terrorist
Yossi Melman, The Master Terrorist: The True Story Behind Abu Nidal (New York: Adama Books, 1986).
Yossi Melman has pieced together “an interim report” that provides, within limits, a substantial sketch of Abu Nidal and his Palestinian fringe group, most widely known as the Abu Nidal group, or the Fatah Revolutionary Council. As the correspondent of the Israeli daily Ha-aretz, Melman covered the trial of Abu Nidal group members whose assassination attempt upon the Israeli ambassador in London served as Israel’s pretext for its 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Melman uses that trial as both the primary source and the framework for The Master Terrorist.
PNC Strengthens Palestinian Hand
The most striking impression to a casual observer at the Club des Pins Conference Center in Algiers where the Palestine National Council met over April 20-25 was the emotional intensity of the greetings and reunions between long-lost friends among the 2000 or more Palestinians in the corridors outside the main meeting hall. As in Amman in 1984 and Algiers in 1983, the PNC now clearly plays a vital role in bringing together Palestinians in the post-Beirut situation, where there is no longer any center for diaspora politics.
Shipler, Arab and Jew
David Shipler, Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in the Promised Land (New York: Times Books, 1986).
Reading this massive 556-page book by David Shipler, the New York Times correspondent in Jerusalem from 1979-1984, is dizzyingly similar to reading 200 Times feature stories in a row. Shipler’s compendium of profiles, interviews and reflections on Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs is structured in the main as a series of miniature stories, linked by Shipler’s own reflections and analysis, both overt and tacit.
“You Have to Prove to the Palestinians That You Are Serious About Peace”
Arie Arnon has been a leading Israeli proponent of political negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, and opponent of the occupation of the West Bank, Gaza and Golan. He is currently a member of the Progressive List for Peace, and teaches economics at Beersheva University. Zachary Lockman interviewed him in Jerusalem in February 1987.
What was your political outlook before the June 1967 war?
“The Pressure Should Be on the US and Israel to Recognize the PLO”
Hilton Obenzinger is a member of the executive committee of the November 29 Committee for Palestine, and on the staff of their bimonthly, Palestine Focus. His book of poems, This Passover or the Next I Will Never Be in Jerusalem, was reviewed in our February 1982 issue. Joel Beinin interviewed him in San Francisco in February 1987.
Tell us about the kind of organizing work that you’ve been involved in with the November 29 Committee.
“The US Must Start Negotiations with the PLO”
Gail Pressberg is the Middle East coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). Joe Stork spoke with her in Washington in late March 1987.
Where is the peace movement at now with regard to Middle East issues?
“They Control the Hill, But We’ve Got a Lot of Positions Around the Hill”
Jim Zogby is the director of the Arab American Institute in Washington. He was a founder of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign (PHRC) and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC). Joe Stork spoke with him on March 18, 1987.
How did you get engaged in Middle East organizing?
From the Editors (May/June 1987)
The fate of Palestine seems strangely linked to years ending in seven. Theodore Herzl’s new Zionist movement held its first congress in Basel in 1897. In November 1917, the Balfour Declaration tried to define the Palestinians into oblivion as the country’s “non-Jewish inhabitants.” In July 1937, the Peel Commission recommended, for the first time officially, partition of Palestine. In November 1947, the United Nations proclaimed partition as an international consensus. 1957 seemed to mark a reversal of Arab defeat, as this consensus compelled Israel, France and Britain to withdraw from Egypt and Sinai following the Suez aggression of late 1956.
Israel Cracks Down on Jewish Peace Activists
Jerusalem, March 10 — On November 7, 1986, 21 Israeli peace activists landed at Ben-Gurion International Airport, returning from a three-day trip to Romania. Within minutes, four were ordered to report for interrogation by the Israeli police. The four — Latif Dori (of the left-Zionist MAPAM party), Eliezer Feiler (of Rakah, the Israeli Communist party), Yael Lotan (active in circles close to the Progressive List for Peace), and Reuven Kaminer (of SHASI, the Israeli Socialist Left) — were later indicted under the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance.
Thought Control in the US
From a comparative perspective, the United States is unusual if not unique in the lack of restraints on freedom of expression. It is also unusual in the range and effectiveness of the methods employed to restrain freedom of thought. The two phenomena are related. Liberal democratic theorists have long noted that in a society where the voice of the people is heard, elite groups must insure that that voice says the right things. The less the state is able to employ violence in defense of the interests of elite groups that effectively dominate it, the more it becomes necessary to devise techniques of “manufacture of consent,” in the words of Walter Lippmann over 60 years ago.
The PLO and the European Peace Movement
In July 1985, the European Nuclear Disarmament movement (END) convened in Amsterdam. One plenary session featured a discussion between Ilan Halevi and Mary Kaldor concerning peace movement support for liberation struggles in the Third World, and for the Palestine Liberation Organization in particular. The question had provoked considerable controversy at END’s meetings a year earlier, and the conference organizers responded by inviting Halevi and Kaldor to discuss frankly the issues at stake, including pacifism, political violence and the reluctance of Western peace forces to confront Israeli militarism and occupation policies.
Hundreds of Communities Hold “Speak Out” Activities
It was a small but brave demonstration. On October 23, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, 20 people marched down a major street during lunch hour, carrying an Israeli and a Palestinian flag. Sponsored by a local coalition of Jews, Palestinians and peace activists, the group distributed leaflets and postcards along the route, urging people to write Congress to promote US recognition of the PLO and mutual recognition between Israel and the PLO.
From the West Bank to Armageddon
From the West Bank to Armageddon A 45-minute slide-tape program produced by Sara Freedman and Ted German for Boston Mobilization for Survival. Available from Survival Education Fund.
Organizing around Middle East issues has never been easy in the United States. A number of obvious political problems have caused many people on the left to shy away from open support for the struggles of the people of the region and clear-cut opposition to US policy. But activists anxious to reach potentially sympathetic people in the peace and anti-intervention movements have also suffered from a lack of resources to help clarify the complex struggles in the region and explain the character and costs of US involvement there.
Shadowplay
Alain Gresh, The PLO: The Struggle Within (London: Zed Press, 1985).
Over the past several years in the Occupied Territories, Palestinian intellectuals and activists close to the PLO mainstream have met with Israelis from a number of political factions represented in the Knesset. Their apparent aim has been to influence the elusive center of the Israeli Labor Party.
