From Occupied Palestine

Hanan Ashrawi Interview
JON ELMER
The Progressive vol 70 no 4 (April 2006): p. 31-34

Hanan Ashrawi is a Palestinian legislator, academic, and intellectual who was reelected to the Palestinian Legislative Council in January's national elections. Ashrawi's party is the Third Way, a newly created political faction that won two seats in the 132-seat council.

A just peace or no peace
ISMAIL HANIYEH
Guardian, 31 March 2006

Do policymakers in Washington and Europe ever feel ashamed of their scandalous double standards? Before and since the Palestinian elections in January, they have continually insisted that Hamas comply with certain demands. They want us to recognise Israel, call off our resistance, and commit ourselves to whatever deals Israel and the Palestinian leadership reached in the past.

Finished with Likud
GRAHAM USHER
al-Ahram Weekly, 30 March - 5 April, 2006

It was poverty not disengagement that determined the outcome of the Israeli elections

Jerusalem -- The emotions said it all. Israel's next prime minister, a subdued Ehud Olmert, said the victory of his Kadima Party in the Israeli elections on Tuesday was an endorsement of his "convergence" plan. Over the next four years, he averred, Israel will determine its permanent borders, mostly in the occupied West Bank, to ensure its "Jewish and democratic" character. "If the Palestinians are wise enough to act, then in the near future we will sit together at the negotiating table to create a new reality. If they do not, Israel will take its destiny in hand," he said.

IDF officer cleared in death of Gaza girl to receive compensation from state
AMOS HAREL
Ha'aretz, 22 March 2006

[background: Harper's; Guardian]

Borderline unilateralism
YAAKOV KATZ
Jerusalem Post, 23 March 2006

Seven days before the elections, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz is busy. Not, he says, with electioneering and campaigning, however.

Indeed, ensconced in his spacious office on the top floor of Tel Aviv's "Kiriya" military headquarters, he seems confident he will still be here after March 28 to continue doing what he has done most of his life - guarding the country.

The Israel Lobby
JOHN MEARSHEIMER and STEPHEN WALT
London Review of Books: vol 28 no 6, 23 March 2006

[academic paper, footnoted: Harvard School of Government RWP06-011]

For the past several decades, and especially since the Six-Day War in 1967, the centrepiece of US Middle Eastern policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering support for Israel and the related effort to spread 'democracy' throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardised not only US security but that of much of the rest of the world. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state? One might assume that the bond between the two countries was based on shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives, but neither explanation can account for the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the US provides.

The Israel Lobby, part II
JOHN MEARSHEIMER and STEPHEN WALT
London Review of Books: Vol. 28 No. 6, 23 March 2006

[Read entire article]

continued from part I ...

By the mid-1990s there was considerable dissatisfaction with dual containment, because it made the United States the mortal enemy of two countries that hated each other, and forced Washington to bear the burden of containing both. But it was a strategy the Lobby favoured and worked actively in Congress to preserve. Pressed by AIPAC and other pro-Israel forces, Clinton toughened up the policy in the spring of 1995 by imposing an economic embargo on Iran. But AIPAC and the others wanted more. The result was the 1996 Iran and Libya Sanctions Act, which imposed sanctions on any foreign companies investing more than $40 million to develop petroleum resources in Iran or Libya. As Ze'ev Schiff, the military correspondent of Ha'aretz, noted at the time, 'Israel is but a tiny element in the big scheme, but one should not conclude that it cannot influence those within the Beltway.'

Mofaz tells Post: These are Israel's borders
YAAKOV KATZ
Jerusalem Post, 21 March 2006

Israel will begin setting its final borders over the next two years according to a plan based on including the major West Bank settlement blocs and the Jordan Valley, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

A sudden exit, a jail is stormed - and Israel's long wait is over
CHRIS McGREAL
Guardian, 15 March 2006

[see also, STEVE BELL cartoon]

Jericho -- With explosions and gunfire echoing across Jericho yesterday, Colonel Ronnie Blekin finally got the men for whom he and his army had waited for four years: the Palestinians accused of one of the most audacious political killings in Israeli history - the assassination of a cabinet minister in a Jerusalem hotel in 2001.

Sisterhood of Hamas
HELENA COBBAN
Salon.com, 14 March 2006

Women fueled the rise of the Islamist party through their work in schools and hospitals that serve the Palestinian people.

Jabaliya, Gaza -- The preschool's iron gate clangs behind us, shutting out the dust and concrete-block ugliness of Jabaliya, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in the world (population 120,000). In here, around the paved schoolyard, everything is clean, freshly painted and orderly. An energetic young woman in full Islamic coverup is leading two dozen 4-year-olds in some vigorous phys ed. Tiny voices echo out through the open classroom windows.