Discontented Soul

Between Freedom and Fear
by Khaled Amayreh

5 August

With two weeks to go, Gazans are looking ahead to a life free of military occupation — they hope, writes Khaled Amayreh in Palestine
With its nearly 1.4 million tormented souls - thanks to decades of institutionalised Israeli repression - the Gaza Strip is readying itself for the upcoming Israeli withdrawal, slated to begin in two weeks. The public mood is far from euphoric, Gazans navigating between cautious hope for a better tomorrow and nagging apprehension about a future that is increasingly fraught with unpredictability and danger.
For many ordinary Gazans, like Omar Salameh of the Khan Younis refugee camp, freedom from the spectre of death by random Israeli bullets fired by trigger-happy soldiers manning nearby watchtowers, represents the ultimate good riddance. "Reality has taught us the hard way to keep our dreams modest and realistic. We are not dreaming of miracles in this part of the world. All we want is to be able to live our lives quietly and safely," he told Al-Ahram Weekly.
"And to be able to earn our daily bread and feed our kids. If we achieve this, we will be the happiest people on earth," Salameh added.
Salameh's modest aspirations are in the minds of many. The suffering and pain meted out to most Gazans by a sustained Israeli blitz decimated the psychological health of the bulk of Gaza's citizenry. Hence, most are not entertaining grand dreams about the post-withdrawal period, such as Gaza becoming the Singapore of the Middle East. In fact, ordinary Gazans who talked to the Weekly are merely looking forward to simple, even petty, things which people in the rest of the world take for granted, such as being able to travel to the next town or outside the country freely, and having a job with a stable income.
This is not to say that Gazans are lukewarm about the Israeli withdrawal. The opposite is true. Gazans are preparing for "victory" celebrations and parades all over the heavily populated 370-square kilometre Strip.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) and its ruling Fatah Party is planning a large carnival to celebrate "liberation" from the yoke of occupation. And Hamas, whose sustained and valiant armed resistance against Israel played a key role in getting it to leave Gaza, is also planning to highlight the "landmark event" with visible celebrations.
"This will be the most significant event in annals of the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1948," argues the chief spokesman of Hamas in Gaza, Mahmoud Al-Zahar. "This is the first time Zionism retreats from an occupied Palestinian land. The event has both historic and symbolic significance of immense proportions," said Al-Zahar, who lost his eldest son when Israeli warplanes bombed his home two years ago.
Like most Palestinians, Al-Zahar angrily dismisses "those Westerners and some Arabs" who view the Israeli withdrawal as an expression of "good will and magnanimity" on Israel's part. "What good will, what desire for peace? Look, Israel wouldn't have decided to leave Gaza had Gaza not become a heavy burden unto Israel. We became a painful thorn in Israel's side. In short, the price for keeping Gaza under occupation had already become greater and more painful than giving it up, and the reason for that is the resistance."
But is Israel going to leave Gaza alone? This is the main question many Palestinians are trying hard to answer in light of Israel's incessant refusal to reveal the details of its impending withdrawal from Gaza. For example, there is little or no clarity as to whether Israel will permanently withdraw from the Rafah border crossing, Gaza's sole throughway to the outside world. This is a paramount issue for Gazans and the PA since keeping the border crossing under Israeli control would in effect reduce Gaza to a huge concentration camp, rendering the entire withdrawal meaningless and without substance.
Some Israeli officials have hinted that resolving the issue might be postponed for a few months pending an agreement with Egypt over the deployment of some 700 Egyptian security personnel to guard the "Philadelphi passage" along the Rafah-Sinai border. Postponement, however, will be utterly unacceptable to the Palestinians and, most likely, to the Egyptians as well, who would view it as signalling bad faith on Israel's part.
Furthermore, Israel has indicated it will retain control of Gaza's skies and territorial waters, which will effectively prevent any real move from occupation to a semblance of genuine independence.
For their part, Israeli officials and media have consistently refrained from using the term "withdrawal" (nessiga in Hebrew) in referring to the pullout, instead of using the term "disengagement". This, according to Gaza lawyer Raji Al-Sourani, means that the Gaza Strip will remain under Israeli occupation pursuant international law. "How could the Gaza Strip be independent as long as Israel remains in control of our skies, waters, borders and economy?" Al-Sourani told journalists in Gaza this week.
Al-Sourani's concerns are widespread. In fact, they represent the biggest "catch-22" in the entire withdrawal plan, as Gazan journalist and expert on Israeli affairs Saleh Naami points out. In an interview with the Weekly, Naami warned that unless the international community pressures Israel to make the withdrawal from Gaza "genuine, complete and irreversible", the "smell of blood and powder" would return within a few weeks. "I am not trying to underestimate the significance of this withdrawal. However, what the world and many Palestinians often forget is that Gaza in itself is not an independent variable. We know that Sharon wants to use the withdrawal from Gaza in order to consolidate the occupation of the West Bank. If this is proven true - and it seems it will be proven true - then Gaza will become another Southern Lebanon sooner or later," Naami said.
The PA, along with the Quartet (the UN, US, EU and Russia) are well aware of this ominous scenario but are trying to give the "peace process" the benefit of the doubt, working on two main fronts: first, by linking the mid-August withdrawal with the "roadmap" peace plan, hoping that the Gaza withdrawal will generate psychological momentum towards the revival of the "process" in the West Bank; and second, by pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the virtually destroyed Gazan economy, which donors hope would improve the collective mood of Gazans, making them preoccupied with rebuilding their shattered lives rather than with what Ariel Sharon is doing in the West Bank.
This is certainly what the Bush administration plans - or perhaps hopes. However, it is difficult to give optimism the benefit of the doubt as long the Israeli state continues to narrow Palestinian horizons in the West Bank by caging them inside virtual detention camps surrounded by gigantic concrete walls, and by cutting off East Jerusalem, the Palestinians' religious, cultural and economic capital, from the rest of the West Bank. The overall situation is likely to exacerbate further if Israel reneges on the "safe passage" between the West Bank and Gaza.
In sum, the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza will undoubtedly give the Palestinians a good dose of temporary psychological equanimity. It will improve their mood for a while. But without real change, the effect will not be long lasting.
Every Palestinian - including soon-to-be-liberated Gazans - will sooner or later be reawakened by the heavy reality of the Israeli occupation in the West Bank. It is an ugly reality made up of barbed wires, concrete walls, settlements and ever more sinister repression. The difference between disengagement and withdrawal may be significant for Gazans, but the entire conflict will not pivot upon it.

A Feast of Death
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t Perspective
3 August

Now thou art come unto a feast of death.
- William Shakespeare, Henry VI

On Tuesday, some took solemn note of the fact that the total number of "Coalition" fatalities from the invasion and occupation of Iraq had reached 2,000. On Wednesday afternoon, that number blurred upwards again to 2,015 dead soldiers. 1,821 of those served under the American flag. Fourteen US Marines died on Wednesday when their vehicle was shattered by a large bomb. Six other Marines were killed together on Monday, and a seventh is reportedly being held hostage. Two more Marines also died Monday, both from car bombings in separate locations.
We are only three days into the month of August, and 22 US soldiers are dead. 54 died in July, 78 died in June, and 80 died in May. The occupation has lasted 868 days. More than two thousand soldiers, almost all of them young American boys and girls, have had the life blasted out of them because they were sent by their commander in chief to find weapons of mass destruction that did not exist. Those soldiers who remain, those soldiers who have been redeployed into the war zone two or three times already, wait with grim resolve to be brought home to their families whole and sane and safe.
Acclaimed novelist EL Doctorow has penned some words about George W Bush and his understanding of death and this war. "This president," wrote Doctorow, "does not know what death is. He hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the WMDs he can't seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man. He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country."
"But you study him," continued Doctorow. "You look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the thousand dead young men and women who wanted to be what they could be. They come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers and fathers or wives and children who will suffer to the end of their days a terribly torn fabric of familial relationships and the inconsolable remembrance of aborted life. They come to his desk as a political liability which is why the press is not permitted to photograph the arrival of their coffins from Iraq. How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret and he regrets nothing."
The occupation of Iraq is almost a thousand days old now, and as the self-serving justifications for invasion wither in the desert sun, as the neo-conservative "Bush Doctrine" collapses in a swelling flood of blood and total failure, as more and more people see impeachment as a moral necessity, as those who stand in opposition wonder what they can do to thwart a corrupt and crazed administration that exists entirely without checks and balances, there remains one act of defiance and strength and solidarity that cannot be ignored…
Those who would defend Mr. Bush and his deranged war policies are fond of labelling dissenters as unpatriotic, un-American cowards. In Dallas this weekend, there will be a journalist who risked his life over and over to report the truth of Iraq from within. There will be a Marine who fought in Iraq and returned to organize against the war. There will be a mother whose sacrifice and sorrow is beyond description. There will be hundreds of veterans
who have served in World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and elsewhere, who stand now for peace and the end of the occupation.
It has been a hot summer so far, and this feast of death continues in Iraq with no end in sight. The Veterans for Peace, the Gold Star mothers, the Iraq veterans, the journalists who have seen the reality of Iraq, and the hundreds of thousands coming to Washington in September appear to have every intention of making this summer hotter still.

Oil and Blood
by Bob Herbert
The New York Times
1 August

It's the oil, stupid.
It is now generally understood that the US-led war in Iraq has become a debacle. Nevertheless, Iraqis are supposed to have their constitution ratified and a permanent government elected by the end of the year. It's a logical escape hatch for George W. Bush. He could declare victory, as a senator once suggested to Lyndon Johnson in the early years of Vietnam, and bring the troops home as quickly as possible.
His mantra would be: There's a government in place. We won. We're out of there.
But don't count on it. The Bush administration has no plans to bring the troops home from this misguided war, which has taken a fearful toll in lives and injuries while at the same time weakening the military, damaging the international reputation of the United States, serving as a world-class recruiting tool for terrorist groups and blowing a hole the size of Baghdad in Washington's budget.
A wiser leader would begin to cut some of these losses. But the whole point of this war, it seems, was to establish a long-term military presence in Iraq to ensure American domination of the Middle East and its precious oil reserves, which have been described, the author Daniel Yergin tells us, as "the greatest single prize in all history."
You can run through all the wildly varying rationales for this war: the weapons of mass destruction (that were never found), the need to remove the unmitigated evil of Saddam (whom we had once cosied up to), the connection to Al Qaeda (which was bogus), and, one of President Bush's favourites, the need to fight the terrorists "over there" so we won't have to fight them here at home.
All the rationales have to genuflect before "The Prize," the title of Mr. Yergin's Pulitzer-Prize-winning book.
It's the oil, stupid.
What has so often gotten lost in all the talk about terror and weapons of mass destruction is the fact that for so many of the most influential members of the Bush administration, the obsessive desire to invade Iraq preceded the Sept. 11 attacks. It preceded the Bush administration. The neoconservatives were beating the war drums on Iraq as far back as the late 1990s.
Iraq was supposed to be a first step. Iran was also in the neoconservatives' sights. The neocons envisaged US control of the region (and its oil), to be followed inevitably by the realization of their ultimate dream, a global American empire. Of course it sounds like madness, which is why we should have been paying closer attention from the beginning.
The madness took a Dr. Strangelovian turn in the summer of 2002, before the war with Iraq was launched. As The Washington Post first reported, an influential Pentagon advisory board was given a briefing prepared by a Rand Corporation analyst who said the US should consider seizing the oil fields and financial assets of Saudi Arabia if it did not stop its support of terrorism.
Mercifully the briefing went nowhere. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said it did not represent the "dominant opinion" within the administration.
The point here is that the invasion of Iraq was part of a much larger, long-term policy that had to do with the US imposing its will, militarily when necessary, throughout the Middle East and beyond. The war has gone badly, and the viciousness of the Iraq insurgency has put the torch to the idea of further pre-emptive adventures by the Bush administration.
But dreams of empire die hard. American GIs are dug into Iraq, and the bases have been built for a long stay. The war may be going badly, but the primary consideration is that there is still a tremendous amount of oil at stake, the second-largest reserves on the planet. And neocon fantasies aside, the global competition for the planet's finite oil reserves intensifies by the hour.
Lyndon Johnson ignored the unsolicited advice of Senator George Aiken of Vermont - to declare victory in Vietnam in 1966. The war continued for nearly a decade. Many high-level government figures believe that US troops will be in Iraq for a minimum of 5 more years, and perhaps 10.
That should be understood by the people who think that the formation of a permanent Iraqi government will lead to the withdrawal of American troops.
There is no real withdrawal plan. The fighting and the dying will continue indefinitely.

Kill Them There, or They'll Kill Us Here
by Steve Weissman
t r u t h o u t Perspective
28 July

Having lived in London during the IRA bombing campaign of the 1970s, I can feel a small part of the terror that bus and subway riders must have felt when the four bombs exploded on July 7, and again when only the detonators went off last week. This is what life has become in an age of terror, and it could get even worse unless we get a grip on how terror works.
One key is how we choose to respond.
Like most people, I feel anger and revulsion for the suicidal "Fools of God" who believe that their religious faith gives them the right to maim and kill others. But history and logic suggest that striking back the wrong way too often harms more of the innocent and only helps the terrorists get what they want. Just look at how our deadly military reaction to 9/11 has built support for Osama bin Laden throughout the Islamic world.
To prove more effective against the terrorists, I would act on a different emotion - the disgust many of us feel when President Bush rushes to use every act of terror to sell his own murderous Crusade.
Addressing the July 7 bombings in London on his weekend radio address two days later, Mr. Bush could hardly wait to repeat his customary mantra:
"We are now waging a global war on terror - from the mountains of Afghanistan ... to the plains of Iraq," he declared. "We will stay on the offense, fighting the
terrorists abroad so we do not have to face them at home."
Kill them there, or they'll kill us here.
Never mind that Mr. Bush's show of force in Afghanistan and Iraq did not stop the terrorists from killing and maiming in Bali, Casablanca, Riyadh, Jakarta, Istanbul, Madrid, Baghdad, and London.
Never mind that the CIA's National Intelligence Council warned over a year ago that Iraq had replaced Afghanistan as both a recruiting and training ground for the next generation of professionalized terrorists, who will over time "disperse to various other countries," including the United States.
Never mind that the CIA warned again this May that Iraq had become a real-world laboratory for urban combat, dispersing to other countries Iraqi and foreign combatants more adept and better organized than they were before the conflict.
Forget every inconvenient fact. Just suck in your gut and repeat after your president: Kill them there, or they'll kill us here.
In the terrifying shadow of 9/11, Mr. Bush's words worked. They helped win him a second term. And they allowed him to pursue control of an increasing share of the world's oil and natural gas - not just in Iraq, but across Central Asia. Somehow, Mr. Bush always seems to find the biggest terrorist threats in those countries that his friends in Big Oil and his neo-con advisers most covet.
But, his mantra appears to be losing its magic. According to the polls, a sizeable majority of Americans now oppose the war in Iraq, and many are beginning to see the continued presence of American troops over there as a provocation to Arabs and other Muslims and a growing threat to American security at home.
Give the disillusionment a few more months to simmer, add a bit more scandal over the administration's outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame, and even more Americans will see just how Mr. Bush has betrayed us all in a truly disgusting way.
The hard job will be to mobilize that disgust into an effective political opposition.
But, don't go cock-a-hoop quite yet. Though Iraq has enflamed Muslims everywhere and recruited untold thousands to commit terrorist atrocities, bringing American troops home will not end the attacks. As the Muslim Brotherhood splinter led by Abd al-Salam Farag showed with the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981 and the North African Salafis showed with their bombings in France during the 1990s, politicized Islamists turned to terror long before Iraq.
The gain would be more nuanced. Terrorists would find far less support among their fellow Muslims. Team Bush would suffer a major political defeat, opening the door to a more rational response to any further acts of terror. And the world would turn away from a faith-based clash of civilizations, in which we would all end up being losers.