From Occupied Palestine

Captive in Gaza
GRAHAM USHER
Al-Ahram Weekly, 6-12 July 2006

There are four aims behind operation "Summer Rain", the Israeli army's latest invasion of Gaza, according to ministers, officers and analysts. The first is to free "unconditionally" Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier captured by Palestinian guerrillas just outside the Strip on 25 June. The second is to end Palestinian "rocket fire" that, in the last month, has peppered Sederot and other Israeli areas on the Gaza border, so far without serious injury.

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.

The price of democracy
GRAHAM USHER
al-Ahram Weekly, 12-18 May 2005

Fatah got more seats than Hamas in local elections in the occupied territories last week but Hamas won the contest, writes GRAHAM USHER in Salfit

"In the past the only Palestinian politics was Fatah politics. But now the situation is changing. People are more educated and we understand it's not enough to vote out of loyalty. One should vote for parties that have the power, the will and attitude to change things," said Halimi Omar Mattar, a 22 year-old engineering student, outside a school in Salfit.

Third parties
GRAHAM USHER
al-Ahram Weekly, 3-9 March 2005

Jerusalem -- On 25 February a Palestinian suicide bomber killed five Israelis and wounded 50 others outside a nightclub in Tel Aviv. It was the first attack inside Israel since 1 November. It also brought to a close the period of calm that followed Mahmoud Abbas's ceasefire declaration at the Sharm El-Sheikh summit on 8 February.

Calm is relative of course. Since 1 November, 170 Palestinian men, women and children have been killed by Israeli army and settlers. Twenty-five have been slain since Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (AMB) announced a de facto moratorium on military operations on 23 January.

'We are at war'
GRAHAM USHER
Al-Ahram Weekly, 1 December 2004

There are some - including in his Fatah movement - who see Yasser Arafat's death as an opportunity for change. Not so Zakaria Zubeidi, leader of the Al-Aqsa Brigades in the northern West Bank. GRAHAM USHER spoke with him in Jenin

Jenin -- On 15 November the Israeli army ended a two-week long incursion into Jenin. Nine Palestinians were killed, including four civilians, 25 wounded and 25 arrested. One arms cache was found. It is the third morning of the Muslim Eid Al-Fitr feast, the fifth after Yasser Arafat's death. Jenin is a ruin of shell-cratered roads and lampposts flattened by tanks. As the Israelis drive out, we drive in - looking for the same man.

Un-deciding disengagement
GRAHAM USHER
Al-Ahram Weekly, 28 October - 3 November 2004

On 26 October the Israeli parliament passed by 67 votes to 45 Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan, under which 7,000 settlers from Gaza and several hundred from four settlements in the northern West Bank will be evacuated sometime next year. Some called the decision historic: others "a kind of treason" by a man who has long stewarded Israel's colonising drive in the West Bank and Gaza.

Marwan Barghouti: Radical pragmatist
GRAHAM USHER
al Ahram Weekly, 3-9 June 2004

Barring events, on 6 June Marwan Barghouti will be sentenced for the murder of four Israelis and one Greek civilian. Israel's state prosecution is recommending five life terms. Few doubt he will receive or -- for a large swathe of Israeli Jewish opinion -- deserve them. "Whatever he was in the past, he was convicted today of murdering Israelis," said an Israeli government spokesman on 20 May, the day of the conviction.

The price of withdrawal
GRAHAM USHER
al Ahram Weekly, 20-26 May 2004

Rafah -- A woman pulls a wooden cart laden with bedding, kitchen utensils and water tanks through a jagged landscape of destroyed homes and smouldering rubbish. It could be a still from the 1948 war which saw the new Jewish state born and most of the Palestinians' ancestral homeland lost -- events whose 56th anniversary was commemorated last weekend in rallies and marches throughout Israel, the occupied territories and the wider Palestinian diasporas. It is Rafah refugee camp, Sunday 16 May, one day ahead of Israel's most massive military incursion into Gaza since it was occupied in the 1967 war.

A reshaped table
GRAHAM USHER
al Ahram Weekly, 1-7 April 2004

The assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin empowered Hamas and the only way to defuse its effect is to accept this, writes Graham Usher from Gaza and Ramallah

"We know Bush is the enemy of God, the enemy of Islam and the enemy of the Muslim people," raged Abdul-Aziz Al- Rantisi, Hamas's new political leader in Gaza. He was speaking on Sunday at a rally at Gaza's Islamic University hours after the US vetoed a UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel's assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin last week. The Arab summit in Tunisia had also just collapsed due to "divisions" over the issue of political reform in the Arab world. Rantisi did not spare Arab leaders the lash of his tongue.

Endgame begins
GRAHAM USHER
al-Ahram Weekly, 25-31 March 2004

Four days after Israeli helicopter gunships killed Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and seven other Palestinians in Gaza City, Israel and Palestine have the feel of nations teetering on the brink of an earthquake. In the immediate aftermath the Israeli army slapped a draconian closure on the occupied territories and maintained the highest security alert throughout Israel. In their blockaded towns, villages and refugee camps Palestinians observed three days of mourning and strikes in which the rich neighbourhoods of Ramallah were shuttered every bit as tightly as the barrios in Gaza.