The Real Palestinian Catastrophe (Philadelphia Daily News)

This item is available on the Middle East Forum website, at http://www.meforum.org/article/1695

The Real Palestinian 'Catastrophe'

by Cameron S. Brown and Asaf Romirowsky
Philadelphia Daily News
May 29, 2007

On May 15, the Palestinians commemorated the 59th anniversary of al-Naqba ("the Catastrophe"), a day of "mourning" the establishment of the modern state of Israel on May 15, 1948.

In a sense, al-Naqba is the quintessential event that separates the Palestinians' historical experience from that of other Arab Muslim groups and forges their unique national identity.

It is worth noting that the Palestinians use the same day Israel declared its independence to mark their national day. As is the case with so much of Palestinian society and culture, it is the actions of their Jewish neighbors - not anything of their own doing - that's the constant focus of their attention.

Which brings us to the question: What exactly is the real "catastrophe"? Given that this year's al-Naqba commemoration has been overshadowed by the anarchy and infighting in Gaza, many Palestinians say that the real Naqba is the lack of unity in their society. Indeed, this internal factionalism is often cited by Palestinians as one of the key reasons they lost in the first place during the 1948 war opposing the formation of Israel.

Perhaps. But it looking at a different aspect of this year's Naqba events might give us a better hint of what the real Palestinian problem is.

In the early morning of May 15, Hamas used mortars, missiles and machine guns to attack a Presidential Guard contingent belonging to Fatah that was stationed near the Karni border crossing with Israel. Hamas then hit a jeep carrying Fatah reinforcements, and ensured their targets were dead by shooting them in the head at close range.

When the shooting was over, 10 Fatah members were dead, with a similar number wounded.

Suddenly aware that their unprovoked massacre may have gone too far, Hamas claimed it was Israel who had actually killed the Fatah people and threatened any journalist who dared report otherwise.

Then, in a truly perverse twist, Hamas launched more than 20 rockets at the Israeli town of Sderot "to take revenge" for the massacre they themselves had committed.

Given the overwhelming evidence and eyewitness accounts of those who were there, it was clear to most Palestinians that Hamas had committed the massacre. Still, when trying to explain the cause of the current infighting, several Palestinians, including Musa Abu Marzouk, deputy head of Hamas' political bureau, insisted that Israel was somehow to blame.

This is the real Palestinian Naqba, the disaster at the root of Palestinian suffering since even before 1948.

Instead of taking responsibility for their role in shaping their destiny, on virtually every occasion, the Palestinians have twisted their worldview to put the blame solely on Israel.

There is no self-awareness, not to mention self-criticism. No sense of accountability.

Since the Six-Day War of 1967, this tendency has only become worse. All too often, Palestinians claim that living under Israeli occupation has "driven" them to terrorism, as if they had no choice but to walk into a café and blow up people sitting there.

Such an approach not only ignores the pre-1967 (and indeed pre-1948) Palestinian terrorism. (It also fails to recognize that history has numerous examples of non-violent movements that were much more effective at achieving their aims.)

But the most unfortunate part of the Palestinians' fate is that they have had so many supporters around the world (including significant segments of the Israeli public) that they were by no means destined for the poverty and misery they find themselves in today. They certainly weren't destined to remain stateless almost 60 years after the United Nations passed the partition plan.

The lesson is that only when Palestinians, leadership and public alike, start to consider how their own actions have been the primary cause for the sorry state they're in will there be a chance for it to improve.

And once that true soul-searching finally takes place, and they begin to take responsibility for their collective destiny, the Palestinian people will be able to help themselves far more than all the other nations of the world have ever been able to.

Cameron S. Brown is deputy director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center in Herzliya, Israel. Asaf Romirowsky is a Campus Watch Associate Fellow for the Middle East Forum and the Manager of Israel & Middle East Affairs for the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia.

This item is available on the Middle East Forum website, at http://www.meforum.org/article/1695

Aid to PA nearly tripled in 2006 despite international boycott

Last update - 11:53 16/05/2007  

Aid to PA nearly tripled in '06, despite international boycott

By Amira Hass, Haaretz Correspondent

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/860220.html

Donations to the Palestinian Authority almost tripled last year as a result of the international boycott of the Hamas government, according to a report published this month by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Aid in 2006 totaled $900 million, up from $349 million a year earlier.

The boycott meant that most countries refused to channel money directly to the PA, and Israel refused to transfer the tax revenues it collects on the PA's behalf.

However, Arab and Western nations continued and even increased their donations, channeling them through either a "Hamas bypass" mechanism known as the Temporary International Mechanism (TIM), or the office of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. This money, which compensated entirely for the halt in Israeli tax transfers, partially financed the salaries of PA employees and was used to make welfare payments to the needy.

Normally, Israeli tax transfers cover about two-thirds of the Palestinian Authority's budget. Had economic activity in 2006 continued at the same level as the year before, they would have reached an estimated $800 million last year. But in fact, the PA's gross domestic product fell by 8 to 10 percent in 2006.

According to the report, the biggest contributor to the PA last year was the Arab League, which gave $448 million.

The European Union gave $219 million and the World Bank gave $42 million. In addition, the government obtained an estimated $180 million by smuggling in cash from abroad.

The report noted that, in part because less money was funneled directly to the PA, the trend toward greater financial transparency was reversed in 2006, even though the PA's donors have pushed for transparency for years.

For instance, instead of monthly reports on the utilization of the PA's budget, reports were published only semiannually, violating the PA's budget law.

Abbas' office issued no comprehensive data on its expenditures or receipts of money from abroad, while the Palestinian Investment Fund did not fully report its dealings with either the banks or Abbas' office.

Overall, TIM meant that the PA Finance Ministry had no control over income and expenditures and could not draft a budget for 2006, while its 2007 budget proposal lacked relevant data such as income and expenses for 2006 or the number of public-sector employees. It also caused other government offices to lag in payments to suppliers and resulted in the government's total expenditure falling 31 percent in 2006 to $1.37 billion. Its payments for salaries in particular dropped from $1 billion in 2005 to $655 million.

TIM also resulted in bureaucratic duplication and financial uncertainty for the recipients, the report said. For example, many employees did not receive their salaries regularly.

The document was written by Dr. Karim Nashashibi, who until two months ago was the International Monetary Fund's representative for the West Bank and Gaza.

Lebanon 1982: "What I saw at the Islamic revolution" (Hezbollah)

Baltimore Sun
What I saw at the Islamic revolution
By Hussain Abdul-Hussain
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.hezbollah20may20,0,910940.story?coll=bal-oped-headlines

May 20, 2007

"Enough soccer; we should go occupy the army barracks," said Ali, whose dad, a religious scholar, had sent him to get us. I was 8 and didn't want to stop playing, but we reluctantly followed Ali to the top of the Sheik Abdullah hill, the site of the biggest Lebanese army barracks in the country. There we saw hundreds of women, all in black cloaks, shouting, "Death to Amin Gemayel" - the former Lebanese president - "Death to America," and "Death to Israel."

It was the summer of 1982, and I had no idea that I was about to take part in the birth of a movement that would shake the Middle East and the world.

For a young boy spending the summer at his mother's village in Baalbek, in eastern Lebanon, the scene was disorienting. I had no clue who Amin Gemayel was, or the point of the protest. Coming from Baghdad, I was used to schoolteachers taking us to the streets to shout slogans praising Saddam Hussein. But Lebanon was different.

Ali's dad told us to go stand behind "the sisters" and shout "Death to America," which we did. After some time, the barracks' guards gave up and opened the gates. As soldiers left, bearded men with khaki outfits in Toyota Jeeps and on motorcycles sped into the compound and occupied the emptied barracks.

This was the first takeover of a state building by a new group I had just heard of: Hezbollah. The non-Arab-speaking, bearded men in khaki uniforms were their trainers and mentors, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

This story of how Hezbollah came to be is quite different from the account given by most scholars and observers.

It was the end of the summer, and we were due to fly back home. But my dad was required to join the Iraqi army, and in order to avoid conscription my family decided to stay in Baalbek, where we lived for the next five years.

In 1982, seven years after the start of the civil war, the Lebanese government was too weak and fragmented to stand in Hezbollah's way. After taking over the barracks, Hezbollah occupied the House of Public Teachers, another state-owned building, and turned it into the Imam Khomeini Hospital. Around that time, Hezbollah and the Revolutionary Guards had occupied a 19th-century building, the Khawwam Hotel, and turned it into their headquarters. Most walls around the city were painted with murals of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini along with quotes from him promising the destruction of Israel and the end of America, or urging martyrdom.

The owner of the only liquor store in town was shot dead and his business closed. Women wearing outfits deemed un-Islamic risked young militants throwing acidic material on the uncovered parts of their bodies . Celebrations with loud music were usually greeted with the explosion of a frightening "sonic bomb."

Meanwhile, loyalists were rewarded. Word had it that women wearing black chadors and men growing their beards received $300 and $100 a month respectively. The unemployed were given jobs at the newly founded hospitals, schools, militia and radio station.

This was an Islamic republic in formation. Hezbollah's slogan at the time was "the Islamic Revolution in Lebanon." But the Syrian regime was in control of most of Lebanon, including Baalbek, and was unwilling to see an Iranian seed sprout in its backyard. Syria therefore inspired its loyalist Shiite group, Amal, to wage battles against Hezbollah, and these continued until the conclusion of the Lebanese civil war in 1990, when Iran and Syria reached a deal over the role of the party. According to the deal, Hezbollah would be allowed to maintain its arms, but its role would be limited to "resistance."

Hezbollah became a joint Iranian-Syrian venture and turned its slogan into "the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon." Hezbollah was also integrated into the Lebanese political fabric. Later, it would win a parliamentary bloc and gain a say in all of the nation's affairs.

Its history was rewritten. Today, most academics have it that Hezbollah was founded in Beirut in 1985 as a resistance movement against Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. The truth is that Hezbollah was founded in Baalbek in 1982 as the nucleus of a hoped-for Islamic republic in Lebanon.

Hezbollah is often depicted as having stayed away from the Lebanese civil war, which is also a fallacy. The truth is that Hezbollah clashed with Amal, the Lebanese Communist Party and the Syrian Social Nationalist Party during the war.

The history of Hezbollah and its intentions for Lebanon should be reexamined. The Lebanese media reported that Hezbollah had taken all compensation money that the government had paid to the people whose houses were destroyed during last summer's war with Israel. The party plans collective reconstruction for the southern suburb that has become its territory since the mid-1980s and will be replacing the destroyed units with new ones - a role that should be reserved for the Lebanese state.

With its own militia, foreign alliances and reconstruction plans, Hezbollah today maintains its own state at the expense of the Lebanese state and its elected government.

When I last visited Baalbek, this winter, I saw Ali. He had broken with the party long ago. He complained that Hezbollah now has banks, schools, hospitals, radio, TV, grocery stores and housing plans. Ali, who owns a grocery, told me that if you were not with them, they would keep you out of their network, and you could barely make enough to survive. I asked him whether he would join a Hezbollah protest today like we did 25 years ago.

"I will join a protest to make them leave us alone," he replied. "We have been pious Shiites since the days of our ancestors, and we do not need the Persians or their money to teach us how to keep our faith."
--

Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a media analyst, is a former reporter for The Daily Star of Lebanon. His e-mail is hahussain @ gmail.com.

Copyright © 2007, The Baltimore Sun

From Gaza to rocket-battered kibbutz

From Gaza to rocket-battered kibbutz

Ynet News - 09:32 , 05.31.07

http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-3406895,00.html

Gaza resident Raif Dula refused to leave his wife's side when she was hospitalized in Israel. Now a guest at Kibbutz Mefalsim, he too is under constant Qassam bombardment
Matan Tzuri

In the first days of the increased Qassam rocket attacks from Gaza, the IDF targeted a building operated by Hamas, killing several people and wounding others.

 

Among those wounded were Raif Dula and his wife Amal, who was seriously wounded and eventually evacuated to an Israeli hospital in Ashkelon for intensive treatment.

 

Barrages Continue

Qassams hit Negev, IAF strikes in Gaza / Shmulik Hadad Rocket fire continues Thursday morning. Two Qassams hit open areas in southern community, one of them starting fire; no injuries reported. Moments later, Air Force attacks two Qassam launching machines in northern Gaza Strip Full story

But Raif, who himself sustained a leg wound in the attack, refused to leave her there alone and sought to stay by her side in Israel.

 

Years ago Raif used to work as an electrician at Kibbutz Mefalsim, located just south of the city of Sderot and like all communities neighboring Gaza, a daily victim of Qassam attacks.

 

Raif contacted the kibbutz and Sha'ar Hanegev council chairman Alon Shuster and asked for their help in obtaining a permit to stay. Remembering his history with them, the kibbutz made a collective effort to help Raif and secured the necessary authorizations for him from the State.

 

Now when he's not in the hospital Raif comes back to the kibbutz where he is staying with Rachel and Hanan Brouda, members of the kibbutz's founding generation who volunteered to serve as Raif's "adoptive family" during his stay.

 

"I dream that one day there will be peace and then I can come back to Israel and spend time with my friends, like it used to be," said Raif.