Gaza / Sderot Crisis

[This report was circulated by Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel -- ED NOTE]

By ]Jeff Halper

September 1, 2008

Now, a few days after my release from jail in the wake of my trip to Gaza, I'm posting a few notes to sum things up.

First, the mission of the Free Gaza Movement to break the Israeli siege proved a success beyond all expectations. Our reaching Gaza and leaving has created a free and regular channel between Gaza and the outside world.

It has done so because it has forced the Israeli government to make a clear policy declaration: that it is not occupying Gaza and therefore will not prevent the free movement of Palestinians in and out (at least by sea). (Israel's security concerns can easily be accommodated by instituting a technical system of checks similar to those of other ports.)

by Dr. Robert D. Crane

[Dr. Crane has since 1994 headed his own research center, the Center for Policy Research. He was a foreign policy adviser to Richard Nixon, 1962-1967. In the early '80s he became a convert to islam and has since written and taught extensively on Muslim theology and its application to world politics. Since the concept of Hudna, usually translated "truce" or "cease-fire," has become important in debates over Israeli-Palestinian relations in Gaza, The Shalom Center is making his theopolitical analysis available. ]

Hudna is a classical Islamic solution for intractable conflicts. In English it is usually translated simply as “truce.” Unfortunately, the word “truce” usually means merely a mutually agreed interlude of a false peace in the course of a protracted conflict. During the Aqsa or Second Intifada, inaugurated by Sharon’s invasion of the Temple Mount in September, 2000, the Islamic liberation movement known as Hamas (Movement of Islamic Resistance, Harakat al Muqawama al Islamiya), has revived the ancient Islamic concept of hudna as a strategy to pursue permanent peace.

Gershon Baskin
THE JERUSALEM POST, Jan. 28, 2008

[Baskin is co-director of the Israel-Palestine Center for Research & Information
www.ipcri.org]

Even after the disengagement from Gaza, Israel remained legally
responsible for the welfare of the 1.5 million Palestinians there.
International law considered the Gaza Strip to be under Israeli occupation
even after every single settler and soldier left.

The reason for Israel's continued legal responsibility is mainly based on the fact that Israel
sealed all of Gaza's borders to the outside world and prevented the
opening of a sea or airport in Gaza for the use of the Palestinians.

This report is from "Gisha," (Hebrew for "access" and "approach"), an Israeli not-for-profit organization, founded in 2005, whose goal is to protect the freedom of movement of Palestinians, especially Gaza residents. Gisha promotes rights guaranteed by international and Israeli law. It is one of the plaintiffs in a suit before the Israeli Supreme Court challenging the fuel cuts to gaza.

Israel's "Relief":
Fuel Cuts of Up to 81%
New Electricity Cuts Beginning
February 7

Monday, January 28, 2008: After more than a week of near-total ban on fuel supplies, Israel said yesterday that it would resume permitting Gaza residents to purchase fuel – but would limit the amount they could buy by as much as 81% and would cut the electricity supplied directly to Gaza beginning February 7.

Dear Friends and Supporters.

It is rather unusual for us to send you two emails in one week. However, we know that many of you have been enquiring as to what RHR’s position is on the current blockade of Gaza. We are committed to doing what we can to stop the blockade and hope that we can prevail on the international community to do more to bring an end to the firing of kassam rockets on Israel. Our task is not easy. A poll done for Israel’s “Reshet B” radio station found that Some 63.7% believe that we should intensify the blockade and 10% believe that we should leave it the way it is , while only 22.1% believe that it should be lessened.

Peace-seekers –

As of January 28, the most immediate version of the Gaza-Sderot crisis has eased slightly -- but not ended.

After more than a week of near-total ban on fuel supplies, the Israeli Army told the israeli Supreme Court yesterday that it would resume permitting Gaza residents to purchase fuel –- but would limit the amount they could buy by as much as 81% and would cut the electricity supplied directly to Gaza beginning February 7.

Even this limited easing probably came under pressure from three sources:

• the mass nonviolent civil-disobedience movement of Palestinians and world-wide coverage of it in the breakthrough of the border at Rafah, which to many people looked and felt like the crossing of the Red Sea or the fall of the Berlin Wall;

Uri Avnery is a veteran Israeli peace activist and former member of Knesset.

26.01.08

http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1201278309/

Worse than a Crime

IT LOOKED like the fall of the Berlin wall. And not only did it look like it. For a moment, the Rafah crossing was the Brandenburg Gate.

It is impossible not to feel exhilaration when masses of oppressed and hungry people break down the wall that is shutting them in, their eyes radiant, embracing everybody they meet - to feel so even when it is your own government that erected the wall in the first place.

The Gaza Strip is the largest prison on earth. The breaking of the Rafah wall was an act of liberation. It proves that an inhuman policy is always a stupid policy: no power can stand up against a mass of people that has crossed the border of despair.

Two American Jewish organizations with important connections into mainstream Jewry along with an independent stance on Israeli-Palestinian issues have sent out major statements on the Gaza-Sderot crisis that call for negotiations between the Israeli government and Hamas, looking toward a ceasefire and an end to the blockade.

FROM BRIT TZEDEK V'SHALOM (Jan. 25, 2008):
Tell Bush: Support Israel-Hamas Ceasefire, End Gaza Blockade Now!

It is impossible to read the news coming out of Gaza and Israel over the last several days and not be convinced that something has gone terribly wrong.

Dear Shalom Center readers and members –

We are posting the reports that follow about the convoy of Israelis that brought relief supplies to Gaza on Saturday, January 26, demanding as they did so an end to the embargo on food and fuel imposed on Gaza by the Israeli government. We are doing so because we think it important for a wide spectrum of American readers to know what some Israelis opposed to government policy on Gaza are saying -– even though we do not always agree with everything they are saying.

The first of these reports came before the event, announcing it, and reached us directly from Israel. The rest were sent out by Jewish Peace News -- www.jewishpeacenews.net

Eyad al-Sarraj and Sara Roy
January 26, 2008
Boston Globe

[Eyad al-Sarraj is founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program. Sara Roy is senior research scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University.For her story as a child of Holocaust survivors, see http://www.shalomctr.org/node/1343.]

AN ISRAELI convoy of goods and peace activists will go today to Erez, Israel's border with Gaza, and many Palestinians will be on the other side waiting. They will not see one another, but Palestinians will know there are Jews who condemn the siege inflicted on the tiny territory by Israel's military establishment and want to see an end to the 40-year-old occupation.