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Carter Calls Israel Treatment of Palestinians a Crime •
Palestinian Official Says Talks With Israelis Yield Little •
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No Peace Without Hamas
By Mahmoud al-Zahar
The Washington Post
Thursday 17 April 2008
Gaza - President Jimmy Carter's sensible plan to visit the Hamas leadership
this week brings honesty and pragmatism to the Middle East while underscoring
the fact that American policy has reached its dead end. Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice acts as if a few alterations here and there would make the hideous straitjacket
of apartheid fit better. While Rice persuades Israeli occupation forces to cut
a few dozen meaningless roadblocks from among the more than 500 West Bank control
points, these forces simultaneously choke off fuel supplies to Gaza; blockade
its 1.5 million people; approve illegal housing projects on West Bank land;
and attack Gaza City with F-16s, killing men, women and children. Sadly, this
is "business as usual" for the Palestinians.
Last week's attack on the Nahal Oz fuel depot should not surprise critics in
the West. Palestinians are fighting a total war waged on us by a nation that
mobilizes against our people with every means at its disposal - from its high-tech
military to its economic stranglehold, from its falsified history to its judiciary
that "legalizes" the infrastructure of apartheid. Resistance remains
our only option. Sixty-five years ago, the courageous Jews of the Warsaw ghetto
rose in defense of their people. We Gazans, living in the world's largest open-air
prison, can do no less.
The U.S.-Israeli alliance has sought to negate the results of the January 2006
elections, when the Palestinian people handed our party a mandate to rule. Hundreds
of independent monitors, Carter among them, declared this the fairest election
ever held in the Arab Middle East. Yet efforts to subvert our democratic experience
include the American coup d'etat that created the new sectarian paradigm with
Fatah and the continuing warfare against and enforced isolation of Gazans.
Now, finally, we have the welcome tonic of Carter saying what any independent,
uncorrupted thinker should conclude: that no "peace plan," "road
map" or "legacy" can succeed unless we are sitting at the negotiating
table and without any preconditions.
Israel's escalation of violence since the staged Annapolis "peace conference"
in November has been consistent with its policy of illegal, often deadly collective
punishment - in violation of international conventions. Israeli military strikes
on Gaza have killed hundreds of Palestinians since then with unwavering White
House approval; in 2007 alone the ratio of Palestinians to Israelis killed was
40 to 1, up from 4 to 1 during the period from 2000 to 2005.
Only three months ago I buried my son Hussam, who studied finance at college
and wanted to be an accountant; he was killed by an Israeli airstrike. In 2003,
I buried Khaled - my first-born - after an Israeli F-16 targeting me wounded
my daughter and my wife and flattened the apartment building where we lived,
injuring and killing many of our neighbors. Last year, my son-in-law was killed.
Hussam was only 21, but like most young men in Gaza he had grown up fast out
of necessity. When I was his age, I wanted to be a surgeon; in the 1960s, we
were already refugees, but there was no humiliating blockade then. But now,
after decades of imprisonment, killing, statelessness and impoverishment, we
ask: What peace can there be if there is no dignity first? And where does dignity
come from if not from justice?
Our movement fights on because we cannot allow the foundational crime at the
core of the Jewish state - the violent expulsion from our lands and villages
that made us refugees - to slip out of world consciousness, forgotten or negotiated
away. Judaism - which gave so much to human culture in the contributions of
its ancient lawgivers and modern proponents of tikkun olam - has corrupted
itself in the detour into Zionism, nationalism and apartheid.
A "peace process" with Palestinians cannot take even its first tiny
step until Israel first withdraws to the borders of 1967; dismantles all settlements;
removes all soldiers from Gaza and the West Bank; repudiates its illegal annexation
of Jerusalem; releases all prisoners; and ends its blockade of our international
borders, our coastline and our airspace permanently. This would provide the
starting point for just negotiations and would lay the groundwork for the return
of millions of refugees. Given what we have lost, it is the only basis by which
we can start to be whole again.
I am eternally proud of my sons and miss them every day. I think of them as
fathers everywhere, even in Israel, think of their sons - as innocent boys,
as curious students, as young men with limitless potential - not as "gunmen"
or "militants." But better that they were defenders of their people
than parties to their ultimate dispossession; better that they were active in
the Palestinian struggle for survival than passive witnesses to our subjugation.
History teaches us that everything is in flux. Our fight to redress the material
crimes of 1948 is scarcely begun, and adversity has taught us patience. As for
the Israeli state and its Spartan culture of permanent war, it is all too vulnerable
to time, fatigue and demographics: In the end, it is always a question of our
children and those who come after us.
------------
Mahmoud al-Zahar, a surgeon, is a founder of Hamas. He is foreign
minister in the government of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, which was elected
in January 2006.
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Carter Calls Israel Treatment of Palestinians a Crime
By Jeffrey Fleishman
The Los Angeles Times
Friday 18 April 2008
The former president speaks to students
in Cairo after meeting Hamas officials.
Cairo - Former President Carter told a university audience here Thursday
that the treatment of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military
was "a crime" but that there were "officials in Israel quite
willing to meet with Hamas" and that may happen "in the near future."
Carter spoke to students and faculty at American University in Cairo after
talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and a separate three-hour meeting
with Hamas officials. The Bush administration and Israel have set rules to not
talk to the militant Palestinian group, which controls the Gaza Strip, but Carter
said, "I consider myself immune" from such restrictions.
He added that he wasn't acting as a negotiator or mediator, but hoped that
he "might set an example to be emulated" by others.
The former president's meetings with Hamas in recent days have outraged Israelis,
but Carter was undeterred, even suggesting that his recent book, "Palestine:
Peace Not Apartheid," was aptly named because apartheid "is the exact
description of what's happening in Palestine now."
He spoke to a mostly appreciative audience, except for one American student
from Amherst, Mass., who suggested that Carter was giving legitimacy to terrorists
by meeting with Hamas. A murmur went through the crowd.
The former Georgia governor said he told Hamas officials that "the worst
thing" they were doing to their cause was firing rockets into Israel, which
he called "abominable and an act of terrorism." Before the student
could agree, Carter did his own mathematics of bloodshed. He said that for every
Israeli killed in the conflict, 30 to 40 Palestinians died because of Israel's
superior military and "pinpoint accuracy."
His white eyebrows bright in the spotlight, Carter then slipped back into diplomatic
mode: "I'm not blaming one [side] or the other. . . . Any side that kills
innocent people is guilty of terrorism."
Carter said Hamas officials told him that they would allow a referendum on
the fate of Palestinians if Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the rival Palestinian
Authority, and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert reached an agreement. Carter
added that Israelis must be assured that Hamas would stop rocket attacks and
suicide bombers.
"I think it's an atrocity what is being perpetuated as punishment"
against the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza, Carter said. He added that the
situation was "a crime" and that people were being "starved"
to death living behind walls in prison conditions.
It was almost 30 years ago that Carter, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and
Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin made peace at Camp David. Thursday, Carter
took a moment to remember those times. He drew applause when, with a jab at
the Bush administration, he mentioned that he didn't wait until his final days
in office to try to find a way to peace.
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Palestinian Official Says Talks With Israelis Yield Little
By Isabel Kershner
The New York Times
Friday 18 April 2008
Jerusalem - The Palestinian Authority's foreign minister on Thursday
offered an unusually bleak assessment of the negotiations with Israel and said
President Mahmoud Abbas would seek more active American intervention when he
meets with President Bush in Washington this month.
Riad Malki, the foreign minister and minister of information in the West Bank-based
government, told the Foreign Press Association here that the talks on the core
issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had so far yielded "no results."
The Israelis and the Palestinians agreed to the talks at the American-sponsored
peace conference at Annapolis, Md., last November. The stated goal was to reach
an accord by the end of 2008 based on Mr. Bush's vision of two states
living side by side.
"Yes, they are talking," Mr. Malki said. "All the issues
are on the table. But we did not conclude any issue. How long will it take?
Nobody knows."
Both sides have maintained a strict silence on the content of the talks, mostly
making vague comments that they have been serious. Israeli officials suggest
that the sides are making progress, but Mr. Malki, a political independent,
presented a more dismal view.
If the number of meetings between Mr. Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
of Israel, or between the negotiation team leaders, were any indicator of progress,
"we should be encouraged," he said. "But unfortunately these
are not indicators."
The negotiating teams are led by Israel's foreign minister, Tzipi Livni,
and a former Palestinian prime minister and peace talks veteran, Ahmed Qurei.
Arye Mekel, a spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry, rejected Mr. Malki's
assessment, saying that only a "small circle of people" had full
information about the content of the talks. "Discussions are continuing;
we are making progress," he said.
But Mr. Malki said Israel's settlement building and its refusal to introduce
real changes in conditions in the West Bank showed that Israel's attitude
had "regressed considerably."
Israel says it is building only in existing settlements, in areas that it intends
to keep under any future deal, and cites security concerns as an impediment
to sweeping changes on the ground.
At Annapolis, it was agreed that the United States would monitor both sides'
performance in fulfilling obligations under the 2003 peace plan known as the
road map. Mr. Malki said the Palestinians might ask the Americans for "third-party
monitoring" of the negotiations as well.
Mr. Abbas, currently in Moscow, told university students there on Thursday
that the negotiations "are not advancing at the required pace or yielding
the progress necessary for us to reach the agreed objectives by the agreed dates."
He is asking Russia to hold a conference in June to advance the peace efforts.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Thursday that a date for
such a meeting could be set "very soon."
But Mr. Olmert recently told reporters in Jerusalem that "this habit"
of going from one international convention to another "is not something
that I am particularly in favor of."
In Cairo on Thursday, former President Jimmy Carter met with Hamas leaders
from Gaza and spoke at the American University, Reuters reported. He criticized
Israel's action, after Hamas took over Gaza by force last June, to allow
only basic supplies to be moved into the territory.
Mr. Carter said Palestinians in Gaza were being "starved to death,"
receiving fewer calories a day than people in the poorest parts of Africa. "It's
an atrocity what is being perpetrated as punishment on the people in Gaza,"
he said.
Hamas officials praised Mr. Carter for meeting with them. "This meeting
is a message to those who don't recognize Hamas's legitimacy as
a movement," the former Palestinian foreign minister, Mahmoud al-Zahar,
was quoted as saying on the Hamas Web site.
The United States, Israel and the European Union consider Hamas a terrorist
organization.
Israeli-Palestinian tensions continued to be high on Thursday, a day after
confrontations and Israeli strikes in Gaza left 18 Palestinians, including several
children, and 3 Israeli soldiers dead.
Israeli forces killed two Palestinians during an early morning raid in Qabatiya,
in the northern West Bank. Palestinian officials said one was a militant from
Islamic Jihad and the other was a 16-year-old. The Israeli military identified
them as Bilal Zaalah, leader of the Islamic Jihad in Qabatiya, and his deputy,
and said they had been armed.
In Gaza, Hamas issued a statement calling on its fighters to attack Israel
"in every place and with all means available." In the early afternoon,
one Palestinian militant was killed by Israeli fire near the Kerem Shalom border
crossing, where essential food and medical supplies are moved into Gaza. The
army closed the crossing as a result.
Later in the day, Palestinian snipers fired at the Nahal Oz fuel depot on Israel's
border with Gaza, causing that to close down as well, the Israeli military said.
Also on Thursday, thousands attended the funeral in Gaza of a Reuters cameraman,
Fadel Shana, 23, who was killed by an Israeli tank shell while filming the hostilities
on Wednesday. A medical examination showed that Mr. Shana was killed by metal
darts from an exploding shell, Reuters reported.
Mr. Shana was killed while standing by his jeep, which was clearly marked with
press signs, Reuters said. The army has expressed regret over his death.
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