Palestine
Postmortem of a Compassionate Checkpoint
In late October 2000, the intifada was in its then bloodiest throes. In his offices in Stockholm harbor, architect Alexis Pontvik followed the news from the Middle East with growing disquiet but little surprise. What perhaps would have been his most prominent project to date had already been stowed in a large steel drawer, but he had pored over it often enough to understand the frustrations that eventually came to a boil in the Palestinian territories.
Sparks of Activist Spirit in Egypt
For a few days in October 2000, near the beginning of the second Palestinian intifada, it looked as though Egypt's student movement had finally found its voice again after years of quiescence. Students at Cairo University and other schools demonstrated daily and even clashed with security forces during attempts to march on the Israeli embassy to show their solidarity with the Palestinians. When this movement petered out soon after it began, most observers sympathetic to the student movement shook their heads and lamented the loss of Egypt's activist spirit.
In Ramallah, Grueling Reoccupation Grinds On
He was the tallest of the Palestinian policemen. Thin, his olive drab uniform ballooning over his boots, he swayed momentarily as a helmeted Israeli soldier stood behind him and tucked the muzzle of a gun into the Palestinian's right armpit, keeping his finger on the trigger. Only then did the line of crouching soldiers descend down the driveway into the Ramallah apartment. The Palestinian, his hands in the air, shielded them on their way.
Women and the Palestinian Left
Palestinian women played a major role in the intifada of 1987-93, but have not, so far, in the current uprising. In January 2001, the Jerusalem-based magazine Between the Lines asked Eileen Kuttab, director of the Women’s Studies Institute at Birzeit University in the West Bank, to talk about the widely noted lack of women’s participation, and prospects for change. An excerpt from her comments is reprinted here with permission.
Has the women’s movement participated as a movement in the current intifada?
Jerusalem
Texts Reviewed
Salim Tamari, ed., Jerusalem, 1948: The Arab Neighborhoods and Their Fate in the War (Jerusalem: Institute of Jerusalem Studies and Badil Resource Center, 1999).
Meron Benvenisti, City of Stone: The Hidden History of Jerusalem (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996).
Michael Dumper, The Politics of Jerusalem Since 1967 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997).
Under Siege
By mid-November, Israel had imposed over 50 days of closure on the whole of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestinian persons and goods were refused entry into Israel, or exit from the confines of the Occupied Territories. Mobility within Palestinian-controlled areas was also curtailed. According to available estimates, each day of ongoing closure represents a loss of $8.45 million — totaling $336 million as of November 7 — to the Palestinian economy. [1] If damage to physical assets and human lives were added, the losses would be still higher.
Hebron Under Curfew
As I sit here writing on October 30, 2000, I hear voices outside — a rare occurrence these days. Our apartment is in H2, the Israeli-controlled part of Hebron. In 1997, an interim agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) split Hebron in two. 100,000 Palestinians live in H1, administered by the PA. Today the curfew imposed on October 1 — a 24 hour-a-day house arrest for the 40,000 Palestinians living in H2 — was lifted, supposedly for good. (The curfew was reimposed on October 31. At press time it had not been lifted.) “Or at least until the army changes their minds,” explained one of our friends. In H2, as many as 2,000 Israeli soldiers guard about 400 Jewish settlers.
Fatah’s Tanzim
On November 9, 2000, Hussein Abayat and Khalid Salahat, along with around 50 other Palestinians, were visiting one of the seven houses hit by Israeli tank shells the previous night in the West Bank village of Beit Sahour. They then climbed into their Mitsubishi pickup truck to drive back up the hill to the heart of the village. Thirty seconds later, the truck was a smoldering shell, hit by an anti-tank missile launched from an Israeli Apache helicopter. Abayat was killed instantaneously — as were two Palestinian women standing behind his van — and Salahat was severely wounded. The two men were the first victims of an Israeli policy of "initiated" assassinations aimed at taking out the "ground" leadership of the Palestinian intifada.
The Iron Fist in the Peace Process
Televised images of Israeli combat soldiers killing unarmed Palestinian children and helicopters strafing Palestinian neighborhoods have publicly exposed the Israeli military force that undergirds and shapes the Oslo process.
Stifling Democracy Within Palestinian Unions
In well-furbished offices overlooking downtown Nablus, Shahir Sa'd, General Secretary of the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions (PGFTU) sells his vision of the post-Oslo labor movement. "With the return of the Palestinian Authority (PA) we could concentrate on workers' issues, rather than struggling with national ones and we could merge the unions under one banner, and we have done that, consolidating 187 unions into 12."
Al-Haq
On a crisp November day in 1984, I first stepped into the small apartment on Ramallah's main street that housed the offices of what was then known as Law in the Service of Man (a somewhat ungainly translation of the more universal al-qanoun min ajal al-insan — Law in the Service of the Human Being). The receptionist, who doubled as administrative assistant, sat in an entrance space immediately off a small glassed-in veranda. The dining room served as meeting room-cum-library. Two small bedrooms offered working space for researchers.
The Transformation of Islamist NGOs in Palestine
"It's over for this generation of Islamic activists. We tried and failed, but time is on our side. We must plant the seeds for an Islamic future in the next generation through social change. We must alter the mindset and mentality of people through an Islamic value system. We do this through example and education. We do it quietly and with persistence." [1]
