From Occupied Palestine

The assassination of Count Bernadotte - and the death of peace
DONALD MACINTYRE
Independent, 18 September 2008

1967: A personal testimony
URI AVNERY
Gush Shalom, June 2007

On May 25, 1967, twelve days before the Six-day war, I published in Haolam Hazeh, the news magazine of which I was the editor, an article entitled "Nasser Has Fallen Into a Trap". That sounded crazy, because, at the time, all Israel was in the grip of mortal fear.

Out of sight maybe, but not out of mind
ZAFRIR RINAT
Ha'aretz, 13 June 2007

Olmert should have more of an insight than most into terrorism
GEOFFREY WHEATCROFT
Guardian, 14 September 2006

Sixty years ago the sort of atrocity that Israel's leaders habitually condemn helped bring the country into being

After Tony Blair's latest - and perhaps final - trip to the Levant, the TUC must have seemed almost a relief. There were no banners in Brighton reading "Blair, you killer, go to hell", like those that greeted him in Lebanon last weekend - on a visit that seemed a very long time since the prime minister told the Labour conference, in the wake of September 11: "The starving, the wretched, the dispossessed, the ignorant, those living in want and squalour from the deserts of northern Africa to the slums of Gaza, to the mountain ranges of Afghanistan: they too are our cause."

Let's be Realists, let's demand the impossible!
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
In These Times, 30 August 2006

One of the most repulsive moments of the present Middle East conflict occurred after one of Hezbollah's rockets killed two Israeli-Arab children: Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah pointedly apologized only for these deaths, thus making it clear that there is nothing to regret in the deaths of Israeli civilians. Doesn't this make clear the ethical difference between Hezbollah and the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF), which always regret civilian casualties among the Lebanese, perceiving them as a necessary evil?

Agatha In The Rain
URI AVNERY
Gush Shalom, 1 July 2006

"ISRAEL HAS declared war on the Palestinian people! The Palestinian people will answer in kind! The Palestinian rebellion will go on! The Palestinian fighters are steadfast in the service of the nation! Down with the Nazi-Zionist occupation! Out with the unclean infidels from the Holy Land! Destroyed Rafah - we shall build you anew! Long live the Palestinian revolution! Long live the State of Palestine!"

The roots of Sharon's legacy
SALMAN ABU SITTA
al-Ahram Weekly, 26 January - 1 February 2006

Israel's policy towards the Palestinians was not only forged out of the experiences of European Jews at the hands of Nazi Germany, but it also replicates the brutality, writes SALMAN ABU SITTA

Zionist practice in Palestine has always been to grab the land and expel its inhabitants. It is a simple strategy that in today's world is denounced as a war crime, as ruthless ethnic cleansing.

No peaceful solution
MERON RAPOPORT
Ha'aretz, 13 August 2005

And apparently, despite his very innocent appearance, with his curls and his slow speech, Avi Shlaim - the third and least familiar member of the group of new historians - knows that he is a sort of enemy of the people, and even enjoys it with refined British enjoyment. And now he has come to Israel, armed with his book, "The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World."

Shards of memory
GIDEON LEVY
Ha'aretz Magazine, 3 June 2005

This is the most Arab-free area in Israel. It was the scene of total ethnic cleansing, which left not a vestige apart from the heaps of ruins and the sabra bushes. On the coastal plain, between Jaffa and Gaza, not one Palestinian village remains intact. Now the settlers of the Gush Katif bloc from the Gaza Strip are to be brought here. In a bitterly ironic jest of fate, the settlers who sowed ruin and destruction in the Gaza Strip will now live on the ruins of the homes of the residents who were their invisible neighbors in the refugee camps.

Armed struggle: a context
SAMIR GHATTAS
Al-Ahram Weekly, 27 January - 2 February 2005

Discerning the successes and failures of the Palestinian armed struggle requires a dispassionate analysis of background, writes SAMIR GHATTAS

During New Year celebrations 40 years ago Israel, along with many Arab countries, was stunned by the first statement issued by Fatah. The Palestinian paramilitary organisation had just declared responsibility for its first freedom fighting operation and its determination to continue the armed struggle whatever the obstacles.