From Occupied Palestine

Palestinian terrorism, morality, and Germany
TED HONDERICH
Lecture in Leipzig, 19 October 2003

1. The Principle of Humanity

There is a morality to which we are all committed. Each of us is committed to it by two things -- our own great and fundamental desires in our lives along with our moral judgements in defence of them, and our rationality, the fact of our having reasons that necessarily are general. We are committed to this morality, in short, by our human nature.

Two out of five
NADAV SHRAGAI
Ha'aretz, 25 September 2003

Almost 40 percent of the Israeli fatalities in the intifada were murdered in the territories. From September 2000 to the beginning of the hudna, 17,405 attacks were recorded in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip

'It was a small piece of hell. You just don't know who to help'
CHRIS McGREAL
Guardian, 20 August 2003

Jerusalem -- The shadowy organisers of last night's slaughter chose their target with care before they dispatched their human bomb.

The suicide attacker - homicide bomber, as the Israelis prefer to call them - was not in search of just any passing bus to blow up, as has so often happened in the past.

IDF retaliates for Rosh Ha'ayin bombing, evicts terrorist's family, demolishes home
ARNON REGULAR
Ha'aretz, 14 August 2003

The Israel Defense Forces yesterday destroyed the home of the terrorist who blew himself up in Rosh Ha'ayin the previous day. A curfew was imposed on the Askar refugee camp near Nablus early yesterday morning as IDF soldiers encircled the house where Khamis Gerwan, 17, had lived.

Suicide attacks in Israel test road map to peace
CHRIS McGREAL
Guardian, 13 August 2003

Rosh Ha'ayin -- Two teenage suicide bombers killed two Israelis yesterday in the most serious breach yet of the ceasefire that is seen as crucial to keeping the region's battered road map peace process alive.

US publicly condemns Hamas, but privately rails at Israel
JUSTIN HUGGLER in Jerusalem
SA'ID GHAZALI in Jericho
Independent, 21 June 2003

Colin Powell told Palestinian leaders yesterday to take on the militant group Hamas and urged Israel to pull out of the Gaza Strip and curb assassinations of Palestinian militants.

General Powell, the US Secretary of State, was here to try to rescue the road-map peace plan personally backed by President George Bush, which calls for an independent Palestinian state by 2005. Hopes at the Aqaba summit this month that the peace process might finally move forward after two and a half years of bloodshed have since evaporated in yet another round of tit-for-tat violence.

The story of Hiba, 19, a suicide bomber. Can the road-map put an end to all this?
SA'ID GHAZALI
Independent, 27 May 2003

Tubas, West Bank -- Even her family is baffled that Hiba Daraghmeh insisted on covering herself from head to toe in a dark brown, all-enveloping robe at all times. The white veil she also wore - a badge of Islamic fundamentalism - concealed her head, mouth and nose. Only her almond-coloured eyes were visible to the outside world.

Activists face deportation after suicide bombing
JUSTIN HUGGLER and NIGEL MORRIS
Independent, 3 May 2003

The Israeli authorities said yesterday that they intended to step up deportations of foreign activists in the occupied territories. They said the alleged British suicide bomber, Asif Mohammed Hanif, and his accomplice, had posed as human shields to travel freely between Israel and the Gaza Strip.

Suicide bombers are the appalling but inevitable result of decades of despair
SA'ID GHAZALI
Independent, 25 March 2002

Let's get matters clear from the outset: suicide bombings are appalling and unjustifiable, like all lethal attacks on innocent civilians. It is a strange and shocking phenomenon not only for Israel, the US and the West, but for the Palestinians too. But – after three more young Arab men obliterated themselves last week, wiping out another 10 Israeli lives – we have an obligation to ask ourselves why the phenomenon occurs.

The awesome cruelty of a doomed people
ROBERT FISK
Independent, 12 September 2001

So it has come to this. The entire modern history of the Middle East – the collapse of the Ottoman empire , the Balfour declaration, Lawrence of Arabia's lies, the Arab revolt, the foundation of the state of Israel, four Arab-Israeli wars and the 34 years of Israel's brutal occupation of Arab land – all erased within hours as those who claim to represent a crushed, humiliated population struck back with the wickedness and awesome cruelty of a doomed people. Is it fair – is it moral – to write this so soon, without proof, without a shred of evidence, when the last act of barbarism in Oklahoma turned out to be the work of home-grown Americans? I fear it is. America is at war and, unless I am grotesquely mistaken, many thousands more are now scheduled to die in the Middle East, perhaps in America too. Some of us warned of "the explosion to come''. But we never dreamed this nightmare.