AxisMundi Jerusalem

from FaithWorld:

Don’t preach to us, Hamas tells secular West

The West is floundering in immorality and has no right to criticise the Islamist movement Hamas over the way it governs the Palestinian territory of Gaza, a veteran leader of the militant group said. Hamas strategist Mahmoud Al-Zahar told Reuters in an interview that Islamic traditions deserved respect and he accused Europe of promoting promiscuity and political hypocrisy.

"We have the right to control our life according to our religion, not according to your religion. You have no religion, You are secular," said Zahar, who is one of the group's most influential and respected voices.

"You do not live like human beings. You do not (even) live like animals. You accept homosexuality. And now you criticise us?" he said, speaking from his apartment building in the densely populated Mediterranean city.

Hamas, which is an acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement and means "zeal" in Arabic, won a fair, 2006 Palestinian parliamentary election and then seized control of Gaza in 2007 after routing rival forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas.

Sitting in a cavernous reception room, with an old Mercedes saloon car parked in one corner, Zahar denounced European states, such as France, for recently barring Muslim women from wearing full face veils in public.

"We are the ones who respect women and honour women ... not you," he said. "You use women as an animal. She has one husband and hundreds of thousands of boyfriends. You don't know who is the father of your sons, because of the way you respect women."

Read the full article here.

Mia Farrow visits Israel and the Palestinian territories

U.S. actress and U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Goodwill Ambassador Mia Farrow ended her week-long trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories today, after visiting the Gaza Strip, the southern Israeli town of Sderot and Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.

She has been focusing on projects in Africa for the past several years but said “it was time” for her to visit Israel and the Palestinian territories. “My cause is children suffering in conflict zones, and this is the place for it,” she told Reuters.

Farrow visited a hospital and an artificial limb center and met children at a northern Gaza school last Thursday, deploring the living conditions in the Gaza Strip.  The next day Farrow traveled to Sderot, an Israeli city just a few kilometres (miles) from the Gaza border that was regularly targeted by rockets fired by Palestinian militants, and a nearby kibbutz.

Farrow ended her official schedule on Saturday with a visit to Jenin refugee camp, site of the fierce 2002 battle between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants. She toured the camp’s women’s activity center and spent time with the children, dancing traditional Palestinian dances and playing games. She visited a home in the refugee camp and toured the streets to meet more residents.

She declined to comment on the political situation, except to voice support for Justice Richard Goldstone, who led a U.N. commission that found that Israel and Hamas committed war crimes in the December-January Gaza war.

“I’ve read facts lifted from the report, and I’m using the word facts, because it’s an independent investigation and I believe it is. I believe Justice Goldstone is an incredible man and he found fault on both sides,” Farrow said. “But I thought that Israel’s response was overwhelming and catastrophic. And I’ve seen that.”

As the children watched Farrow drive away from the refugee camp I asked Reema, a seven-year-old girl wearing braided pigtails, if she knew who the former fashion model and veteran actress with 40 films under her belt was. Her response: “I don’t know who she is… someone who likes kids and came to visit?”

Tunnel smugglers in Gaza

By: Suhaib Salem When you walk inside the border area between Gaza Strip and Egypt, the first thing you see are hundreds of tunnels, used by smugglers to bring goods into the Gaza Strip. Building any tunnel is a hard task that requires precise care. Tunnel smugglers need to supply the underground passageway with electricity, air and a telecommunications unit.

Working underground is like living on another planet. Going down inside one of these tunnels is a very terrifying venture. Darkness fills the entire tunnel, which runs deep and long. Some small lamps are hung to light the way, cables lie on the ground and intercoms connect one side of the border to the other. These intercoms are used by the smugglers to enable the one who based on the Egyptian side to contact his colleague on the Palestinian side. After walking a few steps inside the tunnel, you hear humming from neighboring smugglers digging their own tunnels. Sometimes one tunnel breaches the wall of its neighbor, putting both in danger of collapse. Different types of tunnels are used for certain tasks. The food smuggling tunnel differs from the tunnel used for smuggling cattle or animals.

Each tunnel is custom built for its own purpose. Tunnels for cattle and animals are longer and deeper to ease the movement of calf or sheep inside the passageway. When Hamas seized power from the rival Fatah movement in 2007, Israel tightened its blockade of the Gaza strip. Today Gazans consider the tunnels a main crossing, and most of their needs — cement, medicine, food, refrigerators and raw materials — are supplied through them. Many shops in the Gaza Strip offer smuggled goods and people come from throughout the territory to shop in the markets of Rafah, on the Egyptian border. The frontier area is frequently bombed by Israel, which says it is trying to stop weapons smuggling into the costal enclave. Egyptian border forces also bomb some tunnels from time to time. Tunnels owners repair their tunnels as fast as possible. Despite the danger, Mohammed Joma, 35, decided to work underground to feed his family. Joma, who was working inside Israel as a labourer before a Palestinian uprising erupted in 2000, said: “I face risks every day but the bad circumstances force me to (work in the tunnels). Every day, my wife and my children bid me farewell before going to my work because they think that I may not return to my house. No one likes this work, but I need to build my family’s future.” Joma receives 100 Israeli shekels a day for his labours. Tunnel owners and many businessmen in Gaza are getting rich off the smuggling trade.

Clash of Islamists the talk of Gaza

Coming home on Sunday after a long day at work, there was still no rest. Several of my neighbours in Gaza were escaping the late evening heat of their apartments to sit outside our building chatting about the previous two days that had seen the bloodiest inter-Palestinian fighting in two years, between forces of the Islamist Hamas rulers of Gaza and gunmen of an al Qaeda-style group. It left 28 people dead.

Knowing I’ma journalist, and discovering that I had been at the scene of the clashes, down in the south of the Gaza Strip at Rafah, the neighbours started bombarding me with their questions. Most of them were confused about what exactly happened between these two groups, which both endorse Islam as a political ideology.

Some of them asked whether the clashes would have a backlash and whether they should keep a distance from Hamas police stations and even restaurants to avoid being blown up by followers of the Jund Ansar Allah (the Warriors of God), whose leader had been killed in the fighting with Hamas security forces.

Most of the neighbors did not condone the radical splinter group’s support of the use of force to impose Islamic law on Gaza’s community of 1.5 million people, nearly all of whom are Muslim. But some were confused over the religious implications of such clashes with Hamas, which also sees itself as a guardian of Islamic orthodoxy.

“Killing in the name of Islam?” said Mustafa, one of my neighbours, reflecting on the clash of two groups both sure of their beliefs. “But who among the dead will go to heaven and who to hell? Who was the good guy and who was the evil one?”

“Those wanted to establish an emirate,” said Abu Hassan, referring to Jund Ansar Allah. “Do you know what that means? Like the Taliban in Afghanistan. That means American warships will sail to Gaza.”

Others complained that Hamas itself sometimes seemed no less extreme in its religious views than these small, al Qaeda-like groups. They cited a recent campaign by Hamas’s religious affairs ministry in Gaza to encourage women to wear headscarves and adhere to Islamic values. “Hamas police are stopping couples walking in streets and checking their IDs,” one of the neighbours complained. “Am I supposed to carry around my marriage certificate whenever I go out with my wife?”

In the firing line

Israel’s military has been hit with a barrage of human rights reports this week. One, by the Israeli human rights group Gisha, criticises Israel’s policy of banning Palestinians from leaving the Gaza strip. The Red Cross has also filed a report, “Gaza: 1.5 Million People Trapped in Despair,” as well as a film(Gaza: Paying the Price) criticising Israel’s three-week incursion into Gaza last winter, known as “Operation Cast Lead.”

Meanwhile, former war crimes prosecutor Richard Goldstone has begun collecting evidence about Operation Cast Lead for the UN Human Rights Council.

This week also saw a report on Gaza filed by Amnesty International as well as one by Human Rights Watch (HRW), which accuses Israel of using drones that killed civilians: “Drone operators can clearly see their targets on the ground and also divert their missiles after launch,” said Marc Garlasco, senior military analyst at Human Rights Watch and co-author of the report. “Given these capabilities, Israel needs to explain why these civilian deaths took place.”

A recent report by Reuters’ Dan Williams discusses the HRW report, including critiques of the group’s research by some military analysts:

“The value of such forensics was disputed by Robert Hewson, editor of Jane’s Air-Launched Weapons. “Human Rights Watch makes a lot of claims and assumptions about weapons and drones, all of which is still fairly speculative, because we have so little evidence,” Hewson said…Despite his misgivings about the report, Hewson said it pointed to a broader problem of Israeli military doctrine. “What Israel has is total intelligence, surveillance, and reconaissance (over Gaza), which makes it extremely difficult for them to deny they knew who they were shooting at most of the time.”

Read Dan’s entire article here.

Several columnists in the Israeli media have come to the IDF’s defence. In the Jerusalem Post, Alan Dershowitz’s blog (Called the “Double Standard Watch”) has a new article, “The UN Kangaroo Investigations,” which states that ” The very mandate that authorized the Gaza investigation reveals its bias against Israel. The council has already concluded, without any pretense an investigation, that Israel is guilty of “grave violations of human rights due to its military attacks.” Another article by Edwin Bennatan, “Richard Goldstone’s Phony Inquiry on Gaza” criticizes the recent legal onslaught as well for bias.

First Palestinian Animated Film Treads Lightly on Heavy Subject

The true story of a young Gazan woman’s futile battle against breast cancer has been commemorated in the first-ever Palestinian animated commercial film. “Fatenah” debuted last night in the West Bank city of Ramallah, at the Al-Kasabah Theater, and was received by a large and enthusiastic audience.

“I liked the balance of tragedy and comedy,” said one viewer. “It was depressing but also a very accurate picture of how Palestinians have to try and get health care, being treated as less than human beings.”

The film, only 30-minutes long, draws inspiration from a true story of a woman who died in the midst of trying to get treatment for breast cancer. Her story was documented by the Israeli branch of Physicians for Human Rights.

Director and animator Ahmad Habash says the piece, which is being funded by the World Health Organization in the occupied Palestinian territories, tries not to portray either side—Israeli or Palestinian—as sheer good or evil. “That’s the reality,” he said. “There were doctors that tricked the girl and those that helped her on the Palestinian side. And on the Israeli side there were people who helped her, and those who didn’t”.

Much of the tragedy was in watching Fatenah’s humiliating and frustrating attempts to get into Israel for treatment. This was set off by a touch of black comedy, with Palestinian doctors who brushed off the girl’s concerns over the lump in her breast, saying she “should just loosen her bra,” or that “those things tend to go away with marriage.” (Despite significant deviations from the real-life story, Habash says that those encounters with doctors actually took place.)

As if to compliment a story of fighting for basic needs, the film’s animators had their own back story of struggle as well: “We faced a lot of problems. We weren’t able to go to Gaza. People in Gaza had to help us, they sent us pictures, and video.”

Following the money from Washington to the West Bank…

By encouraging foreign investment in the Palestinian economy, and notably the part of it controlled by President Mahmoud Abbas rather than the Hamas Islamist-ruled Gaza Strip, the United States and its allies hope to create conditions more conducive for long-stalled peace talks with Israel to succeed.

Israel, too, led by the government installed this month under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is hoping for an “economic peace” with the Palestinian Authority.

Reuters has reviewed aid and investment promotion programmes developed by Washington, the European Union and other donors. 

In a series of stories running this week, Reuters will explore U.S. aid contracts won by firms run by Abbas’s sons, a shift in the structure and governance of a Palestinian investment fund, and the role of a small group of politically-powerful Palestinian companies linked by a web of cross holdings. 

Wanted: an ethical code of war

    International law governing the conduct of war is based on the traditional model of two armies on a battlefield. It fails to apply effectively to ‘terrorist conflicts’ and provides insufficient response to the ethical dilemmas that arise.

    Until effective international law is developed to regulate the ‘war on terror’, no decisive ethical code will exist. This is not only a challenge for the Israeli military. It is shared by all Western armies fighting to preserve core democratic values.

    The above is the thesis of an Israeli foreign ministry briefing published March 25 in response to allegations that Israel flouted the rules of war in its Gaza offensive Dec 27-Jan 18 against Islamist militants led by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

     Here are a few excerpts. It may be noted that the docmuent does not define “terrorist” or allude in any way to the political, religious, national or other causes underlying “terrorist” activities. You can read the full document (one and a half pages only) here.

“Terrorists have developed a number of strategies … to offset their military inferiority … at the same time they place the value of propaganda above the value of human life.”

“Terrorists attempty to deligitimize the actions of their state targets: by protraying themselves as victims, by accusing the state of unfair play, and by waging war in densely populated areas and causing panic among the populace with the ultimate goal of obtaining media coverage.”

“To confront ethical dilemmas arising during counter-terrorist operations, the IDF (Israel Defence Force) developed a moral code, The Spirit of the IDF .

The code is composed of Israeli values, democratic Western values and commitment to international laws. It is deeply integrated  throughout each IDF soldier’s education.

Spirit places a high standard of personal judgement when targetting terrorists who seek shelter among civilians.

Until an effective international deterrent exists, terrorists will continue to use civilians as human shields. The advantages to amoral forces of operating from densely-populated urban areas are clear, as are the media advtanges arising from international condemnation of counter-terrorist operations in these areas. As a result, international legal attention to this issue is vital.”

A new thought?

It’s not every day you hear a new thought in what is one of the modern world’s oldest and most intractable conflicts. I’m not sure I heard one today. But I might have, in speaking to a Hamas official in Gaza. Let me share it with you.

Ayman Taha, the Hamas official recently returned from Cairo, was largely filling us in on negotiations he has been party to with Fatah, Hamas’s arch-rival, with a view to mending the two-year-old schism that has crippled Palestinian politics and seen Hamas seize control of the Gaza Strip while Fatah retains the West Bank. Although we would, later in the day, hear of firmer plans to resume these reconciliation talks in Egypt, Taha limited his view of the good news largely to the fact that talks were happening at all. The bad news, he said, was that the two sides were still far apart on core issues. That’s a pretty familiar refrain on many aspects of the Middle East conflict.

When I pressed Taha on some of the long-term elements of the Palestinian conflict with Israel, however, I did hear something a little different. Taha is not a key policymaker and it may well be that the thought he expressed in passing while describing the long-term possibilities has been voiced by others. But it seemed sufficiently different to me from the most typical summary of Hamas’s ultimate aims to be worth noting here.

Put simply, many Hamas officials and independent analysts characterise the Islamists’ goal as the total destruction of the state of Israel and the expulsion of most Jews from all the territory of what was, at the start of 1948, British-ruled Palestine.  The Hamas charter is a document that confuses many with its religious language and, for many, obscures rather than illuminates the movement’s vision of the distant future. However, among its objectives, it condemns Fatah’s recognition of Israel’s existence and the interim peace accords its late leader Yasser Arafat struck with Israel in the name of the Palestinians.  This is one of the main bones of contention in Cairo. The closest Hamas leaders get to accepting Israel is talk of a long-term ceasefire, a hudna , that might last a decade or two, during which Palestinians would establish a state in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and Jerusalem – ie beyond the borders Israel had before its territorial conquests of 1967. One can look at that as a temporary acceptance of what Fatah, Israel and Western powers see as the permanent solution. My question in conversations with Hamas officials has always been, however, ‘what comes after the hudna?’ Many Israelis see all Hamas’s offers of ceasefires, long or short, as mere rest and re-arming breaks in its long march to push them into the sea. Typically, Hamas officials are vague on what might follow the hudna and do not waver from a stated determination never to let Israel remain.

In this regard, Ayman Taha, one of a younger guard of Hamas political figures in Gaza, did not disappoint. “We will never recognise Israel’s right to exist in our land,” he said. But he also said something else intriguing.

It went as follows:

Q: Can you ever make peace with Israel?

Captured Israeli soldier’s parents take protest to Olmert’s doorstep

Dubbed Israel’s most polite protesters by one Israeli newspaper columnist, the parents of captured soldier Gilad Shalit have set up a protest tent outside Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s Jerusalem residence to press for his release.

Shalit, 22, has been held since 2006 by militants from Hamas and two other groups who tunnelled into Israel from the Gaza Strip. Hamas has demanded Israel release hundreds of its members held in Israeli prisons in exchange for the soldier.

Some of those Hamas men have been convicted of carrying out attacks that have killed Israelis, and the prospect of their release has set off a heated debate in Israel.

Israeli leaders have agreed to numerically lopsided swaps with Arab enemies in the past in exchange for captured soldiers or their bodies. Those in Israel opposed to a similar deal to get Shalit back argue it would only strengthen Hamas’s resolve in its fight against Israel.