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| FEATURED | US Aid Deal Gives Green Light to Israel's Erasure of Palestine
By Jonathan Cook - Nazareth The announcement last week by the United States of the largest military aid package in its history - to Israel - was a win for both sides. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu could boast that his lobbying had boosted aid from $3.1 billion to $3.8bn a year - a 22 per cent increase - for a decade starting in 2019. Netanyahu has presented this as a rebuff to those who accuse him of jeopardising Israeli security interests with his government's repeated affronts to the White House. In the past weeks alone, defence minister Avigdor Lieberman has compared last year's nuclear deal between Washington and Iran with the 1938 Munich pact, which bolstered Hitler; and Netanyahu has implied that US opposition to settlement expansion is the same as support for the "ethnic cleansing" of Jews. American president Barack Obama, meanwhile, hopes to stifle his own critics who insinuate that he is anti-Israel. The deal should serve as a fillip too for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic party's candidate to succeed Obama in November's election. In reality, however, the Obama administration has quietly punished Netanyahu for his misbehaviour. Israeli expectations of a $4.5bn-a-year deal were whittled down after Netanyahu stalled negotiations last year as he sought to recruit Congress to his battle against the Iran deal. In fact, Israel already receives roughly $3.8bn - if Congress's assistance on developing missile defence programmes is factored in. Notably, Israel has been forced to promise not to approach Congress for extra funds. Netanyahu's agreement to such terms has incensed Israeli loyalists in Congress such as Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who had been fighting Netanyahu's corner to win an even larger aid handout from US taxpayers. He accused the Israeli prime minister on Friday of having "pulled the rug from under us". As Ehud Barak, Netanyahu's former defence minister, also pointed out in a series of TV interviews in Israel, the deal fails to take into account either inflation or the dollar's depreciation against the shekel. A bigger blow still is the White House's demand to phase out a special exemption that allowed Israel to spend nearly 40 per cent of aid locally on weapon and fuel purchases. Israel will soon have to buy all its armaments from the US, ending what amounted to a subsidy to its own arms industry. Netanyahu preferred to sign the deal now rather than wait till the next president is installed, even though Clinton and her Republican challenger, Donald Trump, are expected to be even more craven towards Israel. That appears to reflect Netanyahu's fear that the US political environment will be more uncertain after the election and could lead to long delays in an agreement, and apprehension about the implications for Israel of Trump's general opposition to foreign aid. Nonetheless, Washington's renewed military largesse - in the face of almost continual insults - inevitably fuels claims that the Israeli tail is wagging the US dog. Even the New York Times has described the aid package as "too big". Since the 1973 war, Israel has received at least $100bn in military aid, with more assistance hidden from view. Back in the 1970s, Washington paid half of Israel's military budget. Today it still foots a fifth of the bill, despite Israel's economic success. But the US expects a return on its massive investment. As the late Israeli politician-general Ariel Sharon once observed, Israel has been a US "aircraft carrier" in the Middle East, acting as the regional bully and carrying out operations that benefit Washington. Almost no one implicates the US in Israeli attacks that wiped out Iraq and Syria's nuclear programmes. A nuclear-armed Iraq or Syria, however, would have deterred later US-backed moves at regime overthrow, as well as countering the strategic advantage Israel derives from its own large nuclear arsenal. In addition, Israel's US-sponsored military prowess is a triple boon to the US weapons industry, the country's most powerful lobby. Public funds are siphoned off to let Israel buy goodies from American arms makers. That, in turn, serves as a shop window for other customers and spurs an endless and lucrative game of catch-up in the rest of the Middle East. The first F-35 fighter jets to arrive in Israel in December - their various components produced in 46 US states - will increase the clamour for the cutting-edge warplane. Israel is also a "front-line laboratory", as former Israeli army negotiator Eival Gilady admitted at the weekend, that develops and field-tests new technology Washington can later use itself. The US is planning to buy back the missile interception system Iron Dome - which neutralises battlefield threats of retaliation - it largely paid for. Israel works closely too with the US in developing cyberwarfare, such as the Stuxnet worm that damaged Iran's civilian nuclear programme. But the clearest message from Israel's new aid package is one delivered to the Palestinians: Washington sees no pressing strategic interest in ending the occupation. It stood up to Netanyahu over the Iran deal but will not risk a damaging clash with Israel and its loyalists in Congress over Palestinian statehood. Some believe that Obama signed the aid agreement to win the credibility necessary to overcome his domestic Israel lobby and pull a rabbit from the hat: an initiative, unveiled shortly before he leaves office, that corners Netanyahu into making peace. Hopes have been raised by an expected meeting at the United Nations in New York on Wednesday. But their first talks in 10 months are planned only to demonstrate the unity necessary to confound critics of the aid deal. If Obama really wanted to pressure Netanyahu, he would have used the aid agreement as leverage. Now Netanyahu need not fear US financial retaliation, even as he intensifies effective annexation of the West Bank. Netanyahu has drawn the right lesson from the aid deal - he can act again the Palestinians with continuing impunity and lots of US military hardware. (A version of this article first appeared in the National Abu Dhabi.) - Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed Books). He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Visit his website at www.jonathan-cook.net. http://www.palestinechronicle.com/us-aid-deal-gives-green-light-israels-erasure-palestine/
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| FEATURED | Barghouti: Israel Displays Impudence Without Limits By Dr. Mustafa al-Barghouti Every time I accuse the Israeli Prime Minister with impudence, he becomes more impudent. He reached a new level of impudence when he demanded the removal of all settlements, which is considered illegal by all international laws - an ethnic cleansing. Natenyahu's best technique is to lie and repeat lies in order to be believed. This is not a new strategy, as several dictators, fascists, and racist regimes used this method before, but they could not stop the truth from rising. Everybody knows that the major ethnic cleansing took place in the region by Zionist gangs who forced over 70% of Palestinians to leave their homeland in 1948. Natenyahu cannot hide the truth of completing this cleansing against Palestinians in the valleys, around Jerusalem, and several areas in Hebron, most known is Susya village. He also cannot deny that this army destroyed Al-Araqeeb village in Naqab over a hundred times. In addition to that, legions expelled us from the resistance villages like Bab-Shams, Ahfad Younis, Al Manateer, and Win Hijleh, although we built those villages on Palestinian lands. Natenyahu's government cannot justify banning people of Iqrit and Made Bir'im from returning to their homes despite them being Israeli nationals. There is no justification for banning people of Lifta, Emmaus, Yalu, and Beirut Nuba from the hope of returning to their destroyed villages. 400 Palestinian villages were destroyed by Israel who still wants to demolish more. This is the most repulsive ethnic cleansing in the 20th century and resulted in over six million Palestinian refugees around the world being prevented from returning. Natenyahu and the Israeli government can continue describing themselves as the only democracy in the region, and say that it respects Human rights while it is the victim. However, this doesn't disclaim the fact that Israel has the most longstanding occupation in recent history, as well as the most racist apartheid regime of this age. Nevertheless, the historical experience of what happened in Palestine shows that the lax attitude with regards to falsifying history or overlooking it may turn Palestinians from victims into aggressors in the minds of those who are unaware of facts. The Israeli media and its hermetic control helps in falsifying history, as it turns any lie told by Natenyahu or his minsters into propaganda and spreads it all over the world. Two days ago, I had a look into a well-made handbook delivered to every Israeli passenger at the airport. It includes a very aggressive attack on the BDS movement and accuses it of anti-semetism. It also accuses the Palestinians of corruption and terrorism as they fail at every attempt to attain peace. The handbook invited every Israeli passenger to be a spokesman of the spread of propaganda in order to blacken the reputation of Palestinians, no matter to what party they belong to. The shameful thing is that the author is Yair Lapid of Yesh Atid from the opposition, who claims to be moderate. In fact, we are facing a propagandist war against every Palestinian, and we have no choice but to stop it by confrontation and spreading the Palestinian version that relies on facts and information. This can only achieve success if it its governed by an organized awareness campaign. (This article was published in Arabic by Safed. It was translated into English by The Palestine Chronicle.) - Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi is the General Secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative. http://www.palestinechronicle.com/impudence-without-limits/
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| FEATURED | Risking Death by Drowning to Escape Gaza Siege By Hamza Abu Eltarabesh Sajed's family understands why he decided to travel towards Europe. Opportunities are severely restricted in Gaza, which has been under siege and closure since 2007 and has suffered three devastating Israeli military attacks since 2008. "After the long years of siege and three wars, people want to have a way out," Muhammad, Sajed's brother, said. "They need an option to get out of this prison. The last war made many people think about finding opportunities so that their children could escape horror and death." Sajed had a small media production company which was bombed by Israel in August 2014. He rented an office in al-Basha Tower, a high-rise building in Gaza City. The building was attacked late at night. Sajed and his colleagues were not there at the time, but all of their firm's equipment was destroyed. The company was known as Sjaia after the Arabic word for "qualities." Established only a few months before it was bombed, Sajed had borrowed money in order to set it up. "Sajed always chased his dreams and was really enthusiastic about his work," said his sister Nour. "He was the one who gave us strength when we tried to console him for losing the company," she added. "He was relieved that he and his friends weren't in the office at the time. He was more worried about the people who lost their homes or members of their families." Following the attack, Sajed decided to travel to Turkey to pursue a Masters program in media studies. He had obtained a scholarship to study there one year earlier. He had, however, previously been unable to take up the scholarship because of travel restrictions. Sajed was determined to keep the company going, despite the attack. He planned to run it from Turkey and return to Gaza once his studies were completed. Traveling to Turkey by a safe, legal route - via Egypt - was not possible. "The Egyptian authorities had denied entry to people from Gaza who held visas for Turkey, among other countries," Nour said. This meant that Sajed was unable to go through the Rafah crossing, which separates Gaza from Egypt. Instead, he had to enter Egypt through a tunnel. And once in Egypt, he was not able to travel to Turkey. With little alternative, he embarked on the dangerous voyage towards Italy. "Dying Slowly" Palestinians have continued to try and leave Gaza, despite the disasters and drownings. Muhammad Lubad set off from Gaza just a few days after the sinking that likely claimed Sajed's life. Muhammad, an art graduate from al-Aqsa University in Gaza, resolved not to let fear stop him. After paying $2,000 to a people smuggler - contacted via a mutual friend - he took a seasickness tablet and boarded a boat in the Egyptian port city of Alexandria. Muhammad left his wife and two children behind in Gaza. He was planning to sail towards Italy and find a way out of Gaza for his family once he arrived in Europe. Before boarding the boat, Muhammad called his mother Amna. "I begged him to come back," she recalled. "I had heard about the other boat which had sunk. Unfortunately, he would not listen. I kept crying until he asked me forgiveness and helped me to calm down." The boat on which Muhammad left Egypt was small. There were 15 other passengers on board, mostly women and children. The boat sailed for about an hour before it reached a fishing vessel. All of the boat's passengers were transferred to that vessel, which was carrying a few hundred people. The vessel was alarmingly overcrowded. "It was a mess," said Muhammad. "We huddled together, barely able to find places to sit. A child near me was crying, a woman was ill. There was a man hugging his child tightly." The voyage lasted for days. At one point, the boat's captain started shouting. "At that moment, we realized there was something wrong with the boat's engine," said Muhammad. "But the captain said that everything was under control." Although it could not sail properly, the boat remained at sea for several more days. Food became increasingly scarce. "Nights were full of horror," Muhammad said. "Children were frightened and crying. When you looked around, it was as if you were surrounded by dead people. Then in the mornings, the sunlight would be too strong. I became so dizzy that it was unbearable. It was really tiring. I tried my best to keep going by eating dates."About 10 days into the voyage, Muhammad heard someone shout, "My son is dying." Osama, a 4-year-old, had gone into a coma. Muhammad tried to help the boy's family, but there was nothing he could do. The boy died a day later. Muhammad helped Osama's father wrap the child's body in a white cloth before he was placed in a wooden box. Eventually, the boat was surrounded by a number of vessels and by Egyptian maritime police who pointed guns at the passengers. They ordered the passengers to leave the boat one by one. The passengers were brought to the coast and kept in a sports hall for a couple of days. Then the passengers from Gaza, including Muhammad, were deported back to the Strip. Amna, Muhammad's mother, was hugely relieved. "When Muhammad called me and said that he was back, I came back to life once again," she said. "I died every day that I didn't hear from him." Muhammad is nonetheless still planning to leave. "I will travel when I have the opportunity to do so," he said. "We're dying slowly in Gaza." Rising Above Hardship Some Palestinians have survived their dangerous journeys out of Gaza and arrived in Europe. Abdel-Aziz Hamdouna now lives in Brussels, where he is hoping to establish a career as an artist. It took more than two weeks of traveling before he made it to the Belgian capital earlier this year. Abdel-Aziz grew up in the Jabaliya refugee camp, north of Gaza City.After leaving Gaza in February, he flew from Cairo to Istanbul. Unlike when Sajed set off, the Egyptian authorities were allowing people from Gaza to travel if they had Turkish visas. From Istanbul, he and a few other young men traveled to Izmir, Turkey's third-largest city. As arranged, they met a people smuggler there. Each man paid the smuggler $1,000. Then they boarded an inflatable boat. It sailed towards Greece, carrying approximately 25 people. The crossing to a Greek island took a few hours and everyone landed safely. In Greece, the authorities placed Abdel-Aziz in a refugee camp. There he was able to secure a document enabling him to travel by boat to Athens with Syrian refugees. Abdel-Aziz recalled it was cold when he arrived. "I bought some food, water and clothes from one of the Syrian refugees who was in the camp where the Greek police put us," he said. Abdel-Aziz did not stay in the camp for long. When it was dark, he escaped by climbing over the camp's fence. "I had a map to show me the way to Macedonia," he recalled. Abdel-Aziz walked for hours until he was too exhausted to go any farther. After lighting a fire to keep himself warm, he lay down on the ground and fell asleep. Day after day, Abdel-Aziz found enough strength to keep moving toward Macedonia. He met some young men from Algeria in a forest and they proceeded together. They eventually reached a military checkpoint on the Greek-Macedonian border after a few days. It was not possible, however, for them to enter Macedonia. The authorities were only allowing Syrian refugees through. As a Palestinian, Abdel-Aziz lacked the right documentation. Realizing that they had no chance of getting past the checkpoint, Abdel-Aziz and his Algerian friends turned back toward the forest. As they were walking, a police car started following them. The young men ran until they reached a river, which they swam across despite the cold of the water. The men had to walk through woodland again. They did so for another few days before coming across another Macedonian military checkpoint, Abdel-Aziz recalled. Hundreds of people were waiting at that crossing. He and his friends joined them. The Macedonian forces, who have been known to use heavy-handed tactics at the border crossing, opened fire on the refugees. Abdel-Aziz managed to run away, but became separated from his Algerian friends. Alone and out of food, all he had to sustain himself was a bottle of water and some cigarettes. As he tried to sleep one night, he was attacked by dogs. He escaped by climbing a tree. Abdel-Aziz finally found a way into Macedonia with the help of a refugee family he had met. "I first saw this family from afar," he said. "They were among the refugees standing in a queue." Abdel-Aziz crossed Macedonia and entered into Serbia. "I told one of the [Red Cross] staff that I could draw," he said. "She agreed to pay for my ticket if I drew her portrait." He felt unwell on the train, but kept traveling until he reached Germany. Then he began the final leg of his journey - to Belgium. It involved walking, taking lifts in cars and sleeping in the restrooms of restaurants. Safely there, Abdel-Aziz has a title for an art exhibition that he is hoping to organize about his journey and his experiences in Gaza. He wants to call it Phoenix. The name seems apposite. Like so many refugees, he is determined to rise above hardship and oppression. -Hamza Abu Eltarabesh is a freelance journalist and writer from Gaza. (This article was first published by The Electronic Intifada and is republished in the Palestine Chronicle with permission from the author) http://www.palestinechronicle.com/26153-2/
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| FEATURED | Survivors Recount Sabra-Shatila Massacre By Nour Samaha - Shatila Camp, Lebanon (Three women who lived through the 1982 massacre at Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon remember harrowing killings.) The fighters began at sunset, meticulously working their way through the alleys and homes, bodies riddled with bullets and slashed with machetes left crumpled in their wake. Between September 16-18, 1982, in the middle of Lebanon's civil war and a few months after Israel's invasion of the country, hundreds of members of the Phalange party - a Lebanese Christian militia - in collaboration with the Israeli army, slaughtered about 2,000 Palestinian refugees, mostly women, children, and the elderly, in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp located in Beirut. The massacre came on the heels of the assassination of Bashir Gemayel, the leader of the Phalangists. The Phalangists wrongly blamed the Palestinians for the assassination, and executed the massacre as a reprisal attack with the Israeli army, who had invaded Lebanon to fight the Palestinians and supporters of the Palestinian cause. Three survivors recounted their stories to Al Jazeera, 30 years after the massacre. Siham Balqis, a resident of Shatila, was 26 years old when it happened. "We heard gunshots on Thursday night, but didn't think anything of it, because it was the war and this was not an unusual sound for us," she told Al Jazeera. Living at the Shatila end of the two camps, she said men began in Sabra and worked their way northwards. "They didn't reach us until Saturday morning." At 7am, she was confronted by three Phalangists and an Israeli soldier who ordered them to leave their house. "One of the Lebanese launched forward to attack me, but the Israeli pulled him off me, as if to show he was the better of the two," she remembered. In the commotion that ensued, a Lebanese neighbour of hers spoke to the fighters, saying she heard they were slaughtering people. The fighters dismissed these claims, so she asked them to help the Palestinians who were holed up in Gaza Hospital, located at the Sabra end of the camp. After asking for directions, the fighters marched those they had rounded up, about 200 people, to the hospital. Once there, they ordered the doctors and nurses out of the building, the majority of whom were foreign or Lebanese. "I remember there was one Palestinian boy from the Salem family, in his early 20s, who donned a doctor's coat to try and escape," Balqis said. "The Lebanese caught him, realised he was Palestinian, and pumped his body full of bullets." Crawl and Die At one point, the fighters separated the group, putting the women to one side and the remaining men on the other. "They would pick on the men at random and make them crawl on the floor. If they thought they crawled well, they assumed it was due to some sort of military training, so they took them behind a sand bank and killed them." The Lebanese fighters took those they had not killed and forced them to march over the dead bodies scattered on the streets toward the large sports stadium on the outskirts of the camp. "We were made to walk over the dead bodies, and among cluster bombs," Balqis said. "At one point I passed a tank, where the body of a baby only a few days old was stuck to the wheel." At the stadium, the command changed from Lebanese to Israeli. "It was here the Israelis took my brother Salah, who was 30-years-old, for interrogation," she said. Inside the stadium the men were interrogated, tortured, and killed. Few were able to leave alive. The Israelis threatened them, saying, "If you don't cooperate with us, we will hand you over to the Phalangists." Wadha Sabeq, 33-years-old at the time, was living in Bir Hassan, a predominantly Lebanese neighbourhood just outside the camps. "On Friday morning, our neighbors told us we needed to get our IDs stamped next to the Kuwaiti embassy," outside the Sabra entrance, she told Al Jazeera. "So we went." She brought her eight children, ranging from three years to 19-years-old. As they walked past Shatila, they were stopped by the Phalangists. "They took us with others and separated the men from the women." The fighters took away 15 men from her family, including her 19-year-old son Mohammad, her 15-year-old son Ali, and her 30-year-old brother. "They lined the men up against the wall, and told the women to go to the sports stadium. They ordered us to walk in a single file, and to look neither left nor right." Phalangist fighters walked next to them to ensure they followed the instructions. This was the last time she saw her family. Once at the stadium, they waited. "We still didn't know what was going on, we still thought they wanted to check our IDs," she said. After spending the whole day at the stadium, the Israelis sent them home. Covered in Blood The following morning Sabeq headed back to the stadium to ask about the men. "A woman came down to the stadium screaming, telling us to go up to the camp to identify the slaughtered," she said. They ran up to the camp, and as she saw the bodies scattered on the ground, Sabeq fainted. "You couldn't look at the faces of the bodies, they were covered in blood and disfigured," she said. "You could only identify people by the clothes they were wearing. "I couldn't find my sons, none of my family," Sabeq said. "We went to the Red Crescent, to the hospitals, every day, to ask about them. No one had answers." "We never found their bodies," she said, tears running down her cheeks. Jameel Khalifa was 16-years-old and newly engaged when the massacre took place. "On Saturday morning, we saw them [fighters] climbing down the sand bank and heading for the houses," she told Al Jazeera. "We saw the tanks coming in, on them were Israeli soldiers and Lebanese fighters, some in civilian clothes, some with masks on." As the fighters began pounding on the front door, most of her family escaped through the back into their neighbors' shelter. On hearing the soldiers' orders that they would not shoot if they surrendered, an elderly woman in the shelter ripped up her white scarf, handing each of them a strip to wave to stop them from being shot at. "My dad was holding me, telling me not to leave the shelter, but I told him we should," she said. The women left the shelter first. As her mother came out the shelter, a Lebanese fighter shoved his Kalashnikov in her stomach. "I'm going to kill you, you, b****!" An Israeli soldier observing nearby told him in Hebrew to leave her alone. "My father was coming out [of] the shelter behind my mother. As he stepped out, he was killed with a bullet to the head by an Israeli soldier," Khalifa said. No One Believed Us Like everyone else, the group was forced to move by the fighters. On the way, Khalifa and a few other children managed to escape down a little alley toward one of the mosques located further inside the camp. "We came across a group of elderly folk sitting outside the mosque, and told them the Israelis had come and were killing people. They didn't believe us, called us liars, and told us to leave them alone," she said. Khalifa eventually found herself at the Gaza Hospital, where she was able to reunite with her family. Watching as people around them were executed, the group plotted to escape and managed to sneak out through one of the many tiny alleys that make up the camp. "We were really scared to leave because we'd seen others try and get killed by snipers," Khalifa remembered. They managed to get out of the camp and found refuge in a school in the Lebanese neighbourhood of Corniche el Mazraa. They only returned to the camp once they received news the massacre was over. "We went back to see dead bodies explode as they were being removed because the Phalangists and Israelis placed mines underneath them," she said. "I remember the smell. It was so strong, and it stayed for a week, even though they sprayed the camp to get rid of it." -Nour Samaha is journalist covering the Middle East for the last 10 years, with an expert focus on Syria, Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian Territories. (This article was first published by Al-Jazeera and is republished in the Palestine Chronicle with permission from the author). http://www.palestinechronicle.com/26148-2/
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