Dear friends,
As I have been repeating over and over, the situation here is moving rapidly downhill. The most recent hostage-taking in Jericho by Israel is just one more notch downward. Today's Israeli military attack (as I write) on Jenin, AGAIN!!!!, is another. Olmert's statement 2 days ago that the illegal settlement in the North of the West Bank, Ariel, is part of Israel is another, and so on.
The situation from ground zero is the most tense I've seen in a decade. The expected beating that the Palestinians are bracing for for exercising democracy, US style, has people on edge. These last Israeli military actions just added to an already deteriorating reality. Worse yet, is if the PA was in any way part of this fiasco!
To fully understand the internal ramifications of the Jericho ordeal, once needs to understand the Middle East and Arab culture. Humiliation is seen worse than a wound from live ammunition. So as the attached cartoon from the Guardian depicts, one can only speculate what a humiliated people in despair from a 38 yr foreign military occupation will react. My bet says Palestinians will not vanish into thin air.
I wonder if the Palestinians need to buy some bulldozers and head to the houses of all those Israeli political figures and soldiers, who killed thousands of Palestinians, and to bring them to justice in Ramallah.
US-UK Collusion, HELLO, GOOD MORNING,
Sam
'Israel prevented initial Saadat trial'
Orly Halpern, Mar. 16, 2006, From The Jerusalem Post
Ahmed Saadat was never tried because Israel refused to provide the Palestinian Authority with evidence that he ordered the murder of transportation minister Rehavam Ze'evi, Alastair Crooke, a former security adviser to the European Union's special envoy to the Middle East, told The Jerusalem Post Wednesday.
"[Former PA chairman Yasser] Arafat insisted that evidence be produced and that [Saadat] stand trial in Palestine," he said by phone from London. "Israel was not prepared to give evidence to the Palestinians or to Arafat."
In January 2002, Saadat, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was arrested by PA special forces, who also caught the four PFLP members responsible for Ze'evi's murder. The five were held at Arafat's Mukata headquarters in Ramallah.
In March, the IDF laid siege to the headquarters, locking Arafat in and demanding the surrender of the PFLP members along with Fuad Shubaki, the PA official accused of organizing the Karine A weapons ship.
Crooke was involved in the security negotiations to end the standoff. "I was negotiating over the standoff at the Church of the Nativity [in Bethlehem], which was running parallel to the discussions of the Mukata," said Crooke, who had been an MI-6 agent for 30 years. "Shubaki, Saadat and the situation in Bethlehem were essential to ending the siege of the Mukata."
A secret agreement between the Israelis and the PA was reached so that Arafat would be freed. "To end the standoff, it was agreed that [Saadat, Shubaki and the other four] would be detained at a Palestinian prison under US and UK supervision," said Crooke, who mediated between Israelis and Palestinians on numerous occasions during his six years in the country.
On April 29, a PA military tribunal tried the four PFLP members and sentenced them to terms up to 18 years' imprisonment for killing Ze'evi. Arafat, however, ruled that because Saadat was a political leader and not a military leader, his case must be decided by the PA judiciary, and without evidence there would be no trial. Later that day they were transferred to the Jericho jail. IDF forces withdrew from the Mukata on May 2.
Western supervision at a PA jail was Crooke's idea. "It was my genesis," said Crooke, who created the idea to solve another problem: Palestinian security prisoners who escaped through the jails' "revolving doors." "I gave some suggestions at the time how in Gaza and Jericho the EU would provide monitored detention centers to prevent the revolving door."
The prisons would be hi-tech with electronic signatures, voice and fingerprint recognition and TV monitoring, all of which could be done remotely by satellite, as well as close up, said Crooke, who was called back to London in 2003 for reasons of "personal security" according to his employers.
The Israelis, he said, preferred to leave the EU out of the standoff and work directly with the US and UK. The UK offered to serve as the prison monitor and the US joined.
Saadat, who now faces trial after being captured by the IDF on Tuesday, became the head of the PFLP only days before Ze'evi was killed in October. He took over from Abu Ali Mustafa, one of the founders of the PFLP and its former head, who was assassinated by Israeli forces seven weeks earlier.
The PFLP said it carried out the assassination of Ze'evi in revenge for the killing of Mustafa. Israel said Saadat had given the orders.
"No evidence was forthcoming at the time," said Crooke. "I don't think anyone knows the nature of the evidence that the Israelis have."
Contextually Related posts:
Haitham,
For those of us not “of” your culture but understand it, let me tell you this: As I watched the pictures of the prisoners being brought out in their underwear I knew what the purpose was, humiliation. For those not knowing this, they might think it was a strip-down of some sort in order to make sure these men had “nothing on them” so to speak. This case was an overt action to parade almost naked men as a symbol to all Palestinians. They were but one step away from the guns being pointed at them. The symbolism is stark.
I hear the despair in your post here. May God watch over you in your time of need. “Yeah though I walk through the valley of death, I will fear no evil:for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me”(Psalms 23). This Psalm belongs to all of us. It is my prayer for all Palestinians. Take care.
I was a monitor there and have first hand knowledge of how the detainees were treated. They all had just about everything they needed. They were even allowed to take their spouses into their quarters and to have sex. There was no such thing as seclusion even though that was what the agreement was between US, BRITISH, PLO, AND ISRAELS. Shobaki had his own bird santuary, cook, gardener, and aides. They all had tons of visitors so do not tell me of how bad it was for them. They all had air conditioning while their palestinian brothers, both civilian prisoners and gurds worked and slept in 120 degree weather. So, what do you think of that?
That the detainees were living in luxury still does not justify Israels actions. Saadat was imprisoned without a fair trial, so I can’t see that ‘open detention’ for him is wrong. Maybe they had more luxury than can be justified, but that is no justification for the Zionazis to storm the prison. Btw, if the prison was so open, why did the occupation force need heavy artillery?!?
{ 1 trackback }