by Ghassan Bannoura

BETHLEHEM - The small Palestinian village of Bil’in, located in the central West Bank, hosted its fourth annual conference on non-violent resistance to the Israeli separation barrier and West Bank settlements, from 22 – 24 April.

Certainly, nonviolent, peaceful forms of resistance are not something new to Palestinian society. What makes Bil’in a special story is that it’s where Israelis and Palestinians began working together to fight against the separation barrier and settlement construction. Local and international protesters have been conducting weekly nonviolent demonstrations against the Israeli wall in Bil'in for four years.

Since the protests started, a large number of Israelis have joined the villagers in their attempt to protect their lands. Jonathon Polack, for example, is an Israeli who takes part in the Bil’in protest each week. He says he comes to Bil’in because he feels it’s his duty. “What is being done here is being done in my name, as an Israeli. It’s my duty to come and help the Palestinian farmers keep their lands. It’s the minimum requirement for every Israeli.”

by Darya Shaikh

NEW YORK – In the midst of a stalled peace process in the Middle East, a new poll released today by the OneVoice Movement, an international grassroots peace movement equally represented both in Israel and in Palestine, provides a snapshot of Israeli and Palestinian public opinion and insights into how peace negotiations should move forward from now on.

With fieldwork conducted after the recent Gaza war and Israeli elections on 10 February, the poll engaged 500 Israelis and 600 Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza on final status issues and negotiations. The questions pushed beyond the usual, intransigent ‘yes’ or ‘no’ responses, attempting to get to the heart of what people on the ground are willing to accept and how they think the process should play out.

At the macro level, the findings indicate that the two-state solution remains the only resolution that is acceptable to the majority of both Israelis and Palestinians: 74 percent of Palestinians and 78 percent of Israelis would be willing to accept a two-state solution, while 59 percent of Palestinians and 66 percent of Israelis find a single, bi-national state to be unacceptable.

What’s more, Israelis and Palestinians are as convinced as ever that negotiations are the way to get there: 77 percent of Israelis and 71 percent of Palestinians find a negotiated peace to be either ‘essential’ or ‘desirable’.

Of course, that’s the macro view, and it’s not the whole story. The findings imply that mainstream Israeli and Palestinian populations have yet to acknowledge the significant concerns of the other side.

The Obama administration has released several Bush era memos issued by the Office of Legal Council between the years of 2002 and 2005. The memos elaborate, in detail, a legal justification of such controversial interrogation techniques as waterboarding.

The ACLU has made the memos available in PDF format here

Glenn Greenwald, from Salon.com, has given the memos, and their legal implications, a thorough examination here.

In Video:

.... Watch Part II of Keith Olbermann's Countdown.


Commentary:

Is Torture Really Over?	Obama: Memo release a weighty decision.

"In 'The Soldier's Heart,' FRONTLINE explores the psychological cost of war and investigates whether the military is doing enough to help the many combat veterans coming home with emotional problems. With unprecedented access to active duty service members at Camp Pendleton, a Marine base in San Diego, and through interviews with mental health experts both in and out of the military and members of a Camp Pendleton support group, FRONTLINE uncovers one of the underreported stories from the war in Iraq."

        • Watch the Video Online                                 • Visit the Website

(Above: Slideshow of Protest in Cairo Demanding Philip's release).

Philip Rizk, a Wheaton College graduate and a German-Egyptian dual citizen, was arrested by Egyptian authorities on Friday night, February 6th. Despite the Egyptian populace's widely shared sympathy for the plight of Palestinian civilians, the Egyptian government has chosen to crack down on peaceful Gaza activists and demonstrators. Today, according to the facebook group set up by his family, Philip has been released.

According to the group notices: "Philip is out, he is safe and home with his family. He requests that all upcoming planned protests and marches still take place to end siege on Gaza."

The incident begs the question of why Egypt would risk the threat of international protests to detain and silence the voice of one humanitarian advocate? Two views from the press:

From the Guardian:

Abducted in Egypt

The detention of protesters highlights Middle East governments' ambivalent attitudes towards support for the Palestinians

By Ben White

Last Friday night, after a peaceful, small-scale march north of Cairo in solidarity with the besieged Palestinians of Gaza, Egyptian secret police kidnapped one of the event organisers, Philip Rizk. Philip is an Egyptian-German blogger, film-maker and activist, who had previously lived in Gaza for two years. As I write this, no one has yet received confirmation of his location or had any communication with him.

There are more detailed accounts of what happened on Friday and events since then on various blogs. The family, while desperately worried, have been working with local activists and friends abroad to mobilise a campaign for Philip's release (the Facebook group attracted more than 2,500 members in the first two days).

However, Phil would be the first to point to the fact that what has happened to him is all too common in Mubarak's Egypt. In fact, this "Mafia-style" abduction, and the Palestine focus of Philip's work that made him a target for Egypt's mukhabarat, draws attention to some larger developments in Egypt and the region.

Firstly, it is no coincidence that the Egyptian police chose to clamp down on a display (however modest) of both support for the Palestinians and opposition to Egypt's policies towards the Gaza Strip and Israel. Even before Israel launched its assault on the Palestinians in Gaza, Mubarak was under pressure for helping to maintain the blockade on Gaza as Israel's "siege" ground on. But Egypt became the target of particularly fierce anger once Operation Cast Lead had begun, as reports emerged of possible Egyptian collusion.

Read the Full Article

Van Spirits Away Protester in Egypt, Signaling Crackdown on Criticism Over Gaza

From the New York Times:

By Michael Slackman

CAIRO — State security came for Philip Rizk on Friday night. He had just finished a six-mile protest walk with about 15 friends to raise support for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip when he was detained for hours and then hustled into an unmarked van and driven off. He has not been seen or heard from since.

For two days the authorities denied that he was being held. Then on Sunday, at 10 p.m., a security official at the American University in Cairo, where Mr. Rizk studies, was able to confirm his arrest to his family. His mother and father tried to get some sleep, but at 1 a.m., security agents showed up at their door, five plainclothesmen and two guards carrying automatic weapons.

After searching their apartment, the security agents tried to take his father, Magid, away, too. He refused to go, and the authorities backed off when representatives of the German Embassy and Amnesty International arrived in the middle of the night. Philip Rizk’s mother, Judith, is German, and he has dual Egyptian-German citizenship.

“It’s like a bad movie,” Mrs. Rizk said.

The war in Gaza has left its mark in Egypt. The authorities here have been increasingly frustrated with criticism at home and abroad for refusing to fully open the border between Rafah and Gaza.

Read the Full Article

by William Bache
03 February 2009

San Antonio, Texas - Nothing would telegraph the message that "America is back" in the Middle East with a balanced, smart-power policy better than for US President Barack Obama to immediately send a US Naval hospital ship to Gaza.

The deployment of a hospital ship should be the centrepiece of a highly visible American-led, sea-based disaster response and humanitarian relief effort. This action will help restore America's global image as a nation that cares about the downtrodden, who are, in this case, predominantly Muslims and Arabs.

The time is right for the dramatic deployment of a humanitarian relief task force to respond to the desperate needs of the people locked in the Gaza Strip. Over 1,300 Palestinians have been killed– and over 5,000 wounded – by military violence. Most of the casualties are civilians who were caught in brutal combat operations in densely populated urban areas. "I have seen only a fraction of the destruction. This is shocking and alarming", said UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon after his visit to Gaza on 21 January.

Thousands of survivors of the violence need definitive medical care to survive their wounds and recover this winter. Yet, the Israeli and Egyptian governments continue to refuse the transportation of the injured into their respective countries for medical care.

The visible and explicit support of this war by the Bush administration was not in the great humanitarian tradition of the United States. Something must be done to counter Bush's legacy. The US military possesses great capabilities to support humanitarian relief efforts in the area, and can make a real difference in relieving human suffering.

"Thousands of survivors of the violence need definitive medical care to survive their wounds and recover this winter. Yet, the Israeli and Egyptian governments continue to refuse the transportation of the injured into their respective countries for medical care."

There are two US Navy hospital ships, each with a self-contained definitive treatment facility with 12 fully-equipped operating rooms, a 1,000-bed hospital facility, radiological services, a medical laboratory, a pharmacy, an optometry lab, a CAT scan and two oxygen-producing plants. Helicopters can deliver patients to the ship while it is at sea. As non-combatant vessels they are protected by The Hague and Geneva Conventions, and therefore free from any military interference.

The movement of medical supplies and of the US military hospital, pre-positioned in Israel, to Gaza or Egypt to support casualty triage and the efforts of local medical personnel should start immediately. The helicopters from a US aircraft carrier can provide medical evacuation from the triage area in Gaza to the hospital ship and/or to airfields in Israel or Egypt for subsequent medical evacuation to Europe or the United States.

The 18-month Israeli embargo of Gaza has resulted in the degradation of the electrical power infrastructure and failure of the sewage treatment system. A US Navy nuclear submarine can provide emergency electrical power for Gaza this winter, as one did for the Virgin Islands after Hurricane Hugo in 1989. Military construction battalions, especially the famous Navy "Sea Bees", should be part of the effort to restore critical infrastructure degraded by the embargo and combat operations.

President Obama should immediately direct his Secretary of State and Defense Secretary to coordinate an American inter-agency disaster response effort.

To show our willingness to work with everyone interested in taking care of the widows, orphans and wounded of the Gaza disaster, Arab countries should be invited to provide Arabic-speaking medical personnel to work side-by-side with Americans on the hospital ship.

President Obama could again make history. A deployment of the hospital ship in Gaza would be remembered by Arabs everywhere for generations to come.

_____________________

William Bache, of VIM Consultants, is a retired US Army Colonel, writer and interfaith study facilitator based in Istanbul. This article originally appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle's SFGate blog and was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).

Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 3 February 2009, www.commongroundnews.org
Copyright permission is granted for publication.