From Occupied Palestine

Between violence and non-violence
AMIRA HASS
Ha'aretz, 25 August 2004

The original violence, the primordial, ongoing violence, is the violence of the side that imposed through its military superiority a reign over another nation. Can Israeli society be attentive to the popular Palestinian struggle, and conduct the necessary internal revolution to truly disengage from the colonialist characteristics of the state of Israel?

The grand experiment: PA municipal elections to take place in December
AMIRA HASS
Ha'aretz, 25 August 2004

A great experiment is to take place in the Palestinian Authority the first week of December: Stage I of municipal and local council elections, the first ever under the PA.

The elections are scheduled to take place in three stages over the course of a year, with the first elections to be held in 36 municipalities and local councils - 10 in the Gaza Strip and the rest in the West Bank.

Refusing to be blinded in the other eye
AMIRA HASS
Ha'aretz, 18 August 2004

The villages west of Ramallah are full of prickly pear cactus. Many years ago these villages were known for their many residents who, while picking the fruit, had become blinded in one eye from the barbed cactus, when the inflammation went untreated, became infected, and eventually blinded the eye. That was the story told by a Fatah member last week on his way from Ramallah to the village of Budrus, to take part in a protest march against the separation fence. That activist had also joined a renewed initiative of a group of Palestinians seeking ways of returning to a mass unarmed struggle against the occupation.

There is order in the anarchy
AMIRA HASS
Ha'aretz, 4 August 2004

There's no theft in Nablus. Maybe here and there, but it's not a phenomenon. About half the residents of the town have been impoverished by the tough closure, and the classic tension between the refugee camps has intensified. Anyone coming to the city through the IDF blockade arrives with baggage full of nerves: for the lost time, the rifles aimed at them by the soldiers, and the soldiers' insulting language.

Palestinian parents' nightmare in Nablus
AMIRA HASS
Ha'aretz, 1 August 2004

Five minors from Nablus have been arrested in recent months, suspected of having been sent to carry out attacks of some kind - two boys and three girls aged 15 and under. Nobody is able to control the youngsters being recruited for suicide missions.

And thanks to the IDF
AMIRA HASS
Ha'aretz, 28 July 2004

The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade gunmen are very helpful to the IDF when it goes to kill them. In direct contradiction of any guerrilla logic, they roam the streets armed, even though they know very well that army troops are going in and out of the cities at will, that camouflaged soldiers could pop up anywhere and there are collaborators everywhere.

Living beside the checkpoints
AMIRA HASS
Ha'aretz, 22 July 2004

The soldiers at the Huwarra checkpoint at the southern entrance to Nablus shouted commands in Arabic: Rukh (walk), Wakf (stand), Iftah (open). Dozens of women, crowded between the rows of cement plates, waited about half an hour for their turn to be checked. The last thing that interested them was the bad pronunciation and the use of the masculine gender. The women were thinking about the taxis waiting on the southern side of the checkpoint, about 200 meters away, that would take them home. The men stood in a separate line. The men and women watched silently as the three soldiers stopped a young man between the cement plates. Two aimed their rifles at him as the third shackled his hands behind his back with white plastic bracelets.

Demonstrations in Gaza for and against Mousa Arafat - sometimes called Moshe
AMIRA HASS
Ha'aretz, 20 July 2004

RAFAH -- Among the Rafah residents demonstrating Sunday against the appointment of Mousa Arafat as head of the General Security forces in Gaza was Y., whose son and two brothers work for Military Intelligence, Mousa Arafat's command.

What really influences the High Court
AMIRA HASS
Ha'aretz, 8 July 2004

There's no way to know what really influenced the High Court justices when they decided last week to cancel 30 kilometers of the separation fence route that cuts through Palestinian areas northwest of Jerusalem. The naked facts presented to them in the petition by Mohammed Dahle? Or the voices around the facts, like the upcoming decision by the International Court of Justice in The Hague, or the photographs of elderly people clutching at trees and boulders while young soldiers scatter them with tear gas.

Arafat losing in Fatah's elections in Gaza
AMIRA HASS
Haaretz, 6 July 2004

Over Yasser Arafat's objections, the Fatah movement in Gaza is proceeding with elections that began on May 26 and are expected to go on for several more weeks.

According to Fatah sources, so far the vast majority of those elected are identified with the reformists who are demanding greater democracy in the movement, and the old guard is losing. Other sources are saying bluntly that Mohammed Dahlan's camp is winning.