By James Petras* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Introduction

Most accounts of the Arab revolts from Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, Yemen, Jordan, Bahrain, Iraq and elsewhere have focused on the most immediate causes: political dictatorships, unemployment, repression and the wounding and killing of protestors. They have given most attention to the "middle class", young, educated activists, their communication via the internet, (Los Angeles Times, Feb. 16, 2011) and, in the case of Israel and its Zionists conspiracy theorists, "the hidden hand" of Islamic extremists (Daily Alert Feb. 25, 2011).

What is lacking is any attempt to provide a framework for the revolt which takes account of the large scale, long and medium term socio-economic structures as well as the immediate 'detonators' of political action. The scope and depth of the popular uprisings, as well as the diverse political and social forces which have entered into the conflicts, preclude any explanations which look at one dimension of the struggles.

The best approach involves a 'funnel framework' in which, at the wide end (the long-term, large-scale structures), stands the nature of the economic, class and political system; the middle-term is defined by the dynamic cumulative effects of these structures on changes in political, social and economic relations; the short-term causes, which precipitate the socio-political-psychological responses, or social consciousness leading to political action.

The Nature of the Arab Economies

With the exception of Jordan, most of the Arab economies where the revolts are taking place are based on 'rents' from oil, gas, minerals and tourism, which provide most of the export earnings and state revenues(Financial Times, Feb. 22, 2011, p. 14). These economic sectors are, in effect, export enclavesWorld Bank Annual Report 2009). These export sectors do not have links to a diversified productive domestic economy: oil is exported and finished manufactured goods as well as financial and high tech services are all imported and controlled by foreign multi-nationals and ex-pats linked to the ruling class (Economic and Political Weekly, Feb. 12, 2011, p. 11). Tourism reinforces 'rental' income, as the sector, which provides 'foreign exchange' and tax revenues to the class – clan state. The latter relies on state-subsidized foreign capital and local politically connected 'real estate' developers for investment and imported foreign construction laborers. employing a tiny fraction of the labor force and define a highly specialized economy (

Rent-based income may generate great wealth, especially as energy prices soar, but the funds accrue to a class of "rentiers" who have no vocation or inclination for deepening and extending the process of economic development and innovation. The rentiers "specialize" in financial speculation, overseas investments via private equity firms, extravagant consumption of high-end luxury goods and billion-dollar and billion-euro secret private accounts in overseas banks.

The rentier economy provides few jobs in modern productive activity; the high end is controlled by extended family-clan members and foreign financial corporations via ex-pat experts; technical and low-end employment is taken up by contract foreign labor, at income levels and working conditions below what the skilled local labor force is willing to accept.

The enclave rentier economy results in a clan-based ruling class which 'confounds' public and private ownership: what's 'state' is actually absolutist monarchs and their extended families at the top and their client tribal leader, political entourage and technocrats in the middle.

These are "closed ruling classes". Entry is confined to select members of the clan or family dynasties and a small number of "entrepreneurial" individuals who might accumulate wealth servicing the ruling clan-class. The 'inner circle' lives off of rental income, secures payoffs from partnerships in real estate where they provide no skills, but only official permits, land grants, import licenses and tax holidays.

Beyond pillaging the public treasury, the ruling clan-class promotes 'free trade', i.e. importing cheap finished products, thus undermining any indigenous domestic start-ups in the 'productive' manufacturing, agricultural or technical sector.

As a result there is no entrepreneurial national capitalist or 'middle class'. What passes for a middle class are largely public sector employees (teachers, health professionals, functionaries, firemen, police officials, military officers) who depend on their salaries, which, in turn, depend on their subservience to absolutist power. They have no chance of advancing to the higher echelons or of opening economic opportunities for their educated offspring.

The concentration of economic, social and political power in a closed clan-class controlled system leads to an enormous concentration of wealth. Given the social distance between rulers and ruled, the wealth generated by high commodity prices produces a highly distorted image of per-capital "wealth"; adding billionaires and millionaires on top of a mass of low-income and underemployed youth provides a deceptively high average income (Washington Blog, 2/24/11).

Rentier Rule: By Arms and Handouts

To compensate for these great disparities in society and to protect the position of the parasitical rentier ruling class, the latter pursues alliances with, multi-billion dollar arms corporations, and military protection from the dominant (USA) imperial power. The rulers engage in "neo-colonization by invitation", offering land for military bases and airfields, ports for naval operations, collusion in financing proxy mercenaries against anti-imperial adversaries and submission to Zionist hegemony in the region (despite occasional inconsequential criticisms).

In the middle term, rule by force is complemented by paternalistic handouts to the rural poor and tribal clans; food subsidies for the urban poor; and dead-end make-work employment for the educated unemployed (Financial Times, 2/25/11, p. 1). Both costly arms purchases and paternalistic subsidies reflect the lack of any capacity for productive investments. Billions are spent on arms rather than diversifying the economy. Hundreds of millions are spent on one-shot paternalistic handouts, rather than long-term investments generating productive employment.

The 'glue' holding this system together is the combination of modern pillage of public wealth and natural energy resources and the use of traditional clan and neo-colonial recruits and mercenary contractors to control and repress the population. US modern armaments are at the service of anachronistic absolutist monarchies and dictatorships, based on the principles of 18^th century dynastic rule.

The introduction and extension of the most up-to-date communication systems and ultra-modern architecture shopping centers cater to an elite strata of luxury consumers and provides a stark contrast to the vast majority of unemployed educated youth, excluded from the top and pressured from below by low-paid overseas contract workers.

Neo-Liberal Destabilization

The rentier class-clans are pressured by the international financial institutions and local bankers to 'reform' their economies: 'open' the domestic market and public enterprises to foreign investors and reduce deficits resulting from the global crises by introducing neo-liberal reforms (Economic and Political Weekly, 2/12/11, p. 11).

As a result of "economic reforms" food subsidies for the poor have been lowered or eliminated and state employment has been reduced, closing off one of the few opportunities for educated youth. Taxes on consumers and salaried/wage workers are increased while the real estate developers, financial speculators and importers receive tax exonerations. De-regulation has exacerbated massive corruption, not only among the rentier ruling class-clan, but also by their immediate business entourage.

The paternalistic 'bonds' tying the lower and middle class to the ruling class have been eroded by foreign-induced neo-liberal "reforms", which combine 'modern' foreign exploitation with the existing "traditional" forms of domestic private pillage. The class-clan regimes no longer can rely on the clan, tribal, clerical and clientelistic loyalties to isolate urban trade unions, student, small business and low paid public sector movements.

The Street against the Palace

The 'immediate causes' of the Arab revolts are centered in the huge demographic-class contradictions of the clan-class ruled rentier economy. The ruling oligarchy rules over a mass of unemployed and underemployed young workers; the latter involves between 50% to 65% of the population under 25 years of age (Washington Blog, 2/24/11). The dynamic "modern" rentier economy does not incorporatethe street as venders, transport and contract workers and in personal services. The ultra- modern oil, gas, real estate, tourism and shopping-mall sectors are dependent on the political the newly educated young into modern employment; it relegates them into the low-paid unprotected "informal economy" of and military support of backward traditional clerical, tribal and clan leaders, who are subsidized but never 'incorporated' into the sphere of modern production. The modern urban industrial working class with small, independent trade unions is banned. Middle class civic associations are either under state control or confined to petitioning the absolutist state.

The 'underdevelopment' of social organizations, linked to social classes engaged in modern productive activity, means that the pivot of social and political action is the street. Unemployed and underemployed part-time youth engaged in the informal sector are found in the plazas, at kiosks, cafes, street corner society, and markets, moving around and about and outside the centers of absolutist administrative power. The urban mass does not occupy strategic positions in the economic system; but it is available for mass mobilizations capable of paralyzing the streets and plazas through which goods and services are transported out and profits are realized. Equally important, mass movements launched by the unemployed youth provide an opportunity for oppressed professionals, public sector employees, small business people and the self-employed to engage in protests without being subject to reprisals at their place of employment – dispelling the "fear factor" of losing one's job.

The political and social confrontation revolves around the opposite poles: clientelistic oligarchies and de clasé masses (the Arab Street). The former depends directly on the state (military/police apparatus) and the latter on amorphous local, informal, face-to-face improvised organizations. The exception is the minority of university students who move via the internet. Organized industrial trade unions come into the struggle late and largely focus on sectoral economic demands, with some exceptions – especially in public enterprises, controlled by cronies of the oligarchs, where workers demand changes in management.

As a result of the social particularities of the rentier states, the uprisings do not take the form of class struggles between wage labor and industrial capitalists. They emerge as mass political revolts against the oligarchical state. Street-based social movements demonstrate their capacity to delegitimize state authority, paralyze the economy, and can lead up to the ousting of the ruling autocrats. But it is the nature of mass street movements to fill the squares with relative ease, but also to be dispersed when the symbols of oppression are ousted. Street-based movements lack the organization and leadership to project, let alone impose a new political or social order. Their power is found in their ability to pressureseize power and protect the entire rentier state and economic structure while sustaining their ties with their imperial mentors. existing elites and institutions, not to replace the state and economy.

Hence the surprising ease with which the US, Israeli and EU backed Egyptian military were able to seize power and protect the entire rentier state and economic structure while sustaining their ties with their imperial mentors.

Converging Conditions and the "Demonstration Effect"

The spread of the Arab revolts across North Africa, the Middle East and Gulf States is, in the first instance, a product of similar historical and social conditions: rentier states ruled by family-clan oligarchs dependent on "rents" from capital intensive oil and energy exports, which confine the vast majority of youth to marginal informal 'street-based' economic activities.

The "power of example" or the "demonstration effect" can only be understood by recognizing the same socio-political conditions in each country. Street power – mass urban movements – presumes the streetlocus of the principal actors and the takeover of the plazas as the place to exert political power and project social demands. No doubt the partial successes in Egypt and Tunisia did detonate the movements elsewhere. But they did so only in countries with the same historical legacy, the same social polarities between rentier – clan rulers and marginal street labor and especially where the rulers were deeply integrated and subordinated to imperial economic and military networks. as the economic

Conclusion

Rentier rulers govern via their ties to the US and EU military and financial institutions. They modernize their affluent enclaves and marginalize recently educated youth, who are confined to low paid jobs, especially in the insecure informal sector, centered in the streets of the capital cities. Neo-liberal privatizations, reductions in public subsidies (for food, unemployment subsidies, cooking oil, gas, transport, health, and education) shattered the paternalistic ties through which the rulers contained the discontent of the young and poor, as well as clerical elites and tribal chiefs. The confluence of classes and masses, modern and traditional, was a direct result of a process of neo-liberalization from above and exclusion from below. The neo-liberal "reformers" promise that the 'market' would substitute well-paying jobs for the loss of state paternalistic subsidies was false. The neo-liberal polices reinforced the concentration of wealth while weakening state controls over the masses.

The world capitalist economic crises led Europe and the US to tighten their immigration controls, eliminating one of the escape valves of the regimes – the massive flight of unemployed educated youth seeking jobs abroad. Out-migration was no longer an option; the choices narrowed to struggle or suffer. Studies show that those who emigrate tend to be the most ambitious, better educated (within their class) and greatest risk takers. Now, confined to their home country, with few illusions of overseas opportunities, they are forced to struggle for individual mobility at home through collective social and political action.

Equally important among the political youth, is the fact that the US, as guarantor of the rentier regimes, is seen as a declining imperial power: challenged economically in the world market by China; facing defeat as an occupying colonial ruler in Iraq and Afghanistan; and humiliated as a subservient and mendacious servant of an increasingly discredited Israel via its Zionist agents in the Obama regime and Congress. All of these elements of US imperial decay and discredit, encourage the pro-democracy movements to move forward against the US clients and lessen their fears that the US military would intervene and face a third military front. The mass movements view their oligarchies as "third tier" regimes: rentier states under US hegemony, which, in turn, is under Israeli – Zionist tutelage. With 130 countries in the UN General Assembly and the entire Security Council, minus the US, condemning Israeli colonial expansion; with Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia and the forthcoming new regimes in Yemen and Bahrain promising democratic foreign policies, the mass movements realize that all of Israel's modern arms and 680,000 soldiers are of no avail in the face of its total diplomatic isolation, its loss of regional rentier clients, and the utter discredit of its bombastic militarist rulers and their Zionist agents in the US diplomatic corps (Financial Times 2/24/11, p. 7).

The very socio-economic structures and political conditions which detonated the pro-democracy mass movements, the unemployed and underemployed youth organized from "the street", now present the greatest challenge: can the amorphous and diverse mass becomes an organized social and political force which can take state power, democratize the regime and, at the same time, create a new productive economy to provide stable well- paying employment, so far lacking in the rentier economy? The political outcome to date is indeterminate: democrats and socialists compete with clerical, monarchist, and neoliberal forces bankrolled by the U.S.

It is premature to celebrate a popular democratic revolution....

* James Petras' latest books, Global Depression and Regional Wars (Atlanta, Clarity Press, 2009) is the third in a series, including Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power (Atlanta, Clarity Press 2008) and The Power of Israel in the United States (Atlanta, Clarity Press 2006), analyzing the influence of militarism and Zionism in American foreign policy.

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By Lawrence Davidson * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Part I - The Security Council Resolution and Veto

The inspiring moments when President Obama appeared before the cameras, and thus the world, to declare that the dictator Hosni Mubarak must step down and the people of Egypt given the inalienable right to self-determination are now in the past. It was a moment when U.S. foreign policy actually appeared to correspond to the foreign reality it addressed. Ironically, it was this very correspondence that made the moment anomalous–something quite out of the ordinary. Therefore, soon after Mubarak went into involuntary retirement at Sharm el-Sheik, Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was off to Israel and Jordan to confirm that foreign policy would immediately return to its normal pathway. What is the norm here? Well, it is one where U.S. foreign policy references domestic political reality, like the power of the Zionist lobbies, rather than anything that might serve objective national interests. For all intents and purposes that was Mullen's message, we are back on the normative track. And, on 18 February 2011, the administration backed up the admiral's words with deeds.

On that day the American ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, vetoed a Lebanese/Palestinian sponsored resolution in the Security Council that simply stated the truth–that the settlements built and being built on Palestinian occupied territory are illegal and an obstacle to peace. Except for Israel itself, this is admitted by everyone, including the U.S. State Department. The resolution had over120 cosponsors (just about the entire non-Western world) and the support of every other member of the Security Council. The only thing wrong with it was that it singled out the Israelis as the culprits and was thus anathema to the politicians in Washington. For the Obama administration, it was a supremely embarrassing moment.

It was so embarrassing that the administration had invested a lot of energy in trying to make sure the moment never came. Someone in the White House, either Secretary of State Hilary Clinton or President Obama himself, called Mahmoud Abbas to tell him that the U.S. had a compromise in the works that would make the objectionable resolution unnecessary. And what sort of compromise did Washington have in mind? It turned out to be the same old "balanced" position that they U.S. has maintained for years. The compromise statement would express "strong opposition to any unilateral actions by any party which might prejudice the outcome of negotiations...and reaffirm that it does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity....and condemns all forms of violence, including rocket fire from Gaza and stresses the need for calm and security for both peoples." By surrounding the seminal issue of settlements with all the other references to what the Palestinians might be doing, such a statement would sustain the Israeli position that the Palestinians are also obstacles to peace. That in turn would make this pronouncement marginally acceptable to both those embedded in the domestic reality of Congress and to the men in Jerusalem. Indeed, the Americans had pre-cleared their proffered compromise with Israel prior to offering it to Abbas. The Palestinians, of course, said that such pablum missed the point and they would have none of it.

Part II - Multiple Realities

The concept of multiple realities is the key to understanding American behavior when it comes to Israel/Palestine. Thus, on 17 February 2011, it was reported that Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the Democratic Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, the Republican House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (a rabid anti-Castro Cuban American), that committee's ranking Democratic member Howard Berman, the Middle East subcommittee Chariman Republican Steve Cabot, the subcommittee's ranking Democratic member Gary Ackerman, and others as well, were insisting that Obama "pledge to...veto any U.N. Security Council resolution that criticizes Israel regarding final status issues." After all, as Cantor and Hoyer stated, the fault lies with the Palestinians. It is they who "reject the difficult but vital responsibility of making peace with Israel through direct negotiations and instead advocate for anti-Israel measures by the United Nations Security Council [that are] counterproductive and unacceptable."

American politicians can only say these things because their audience is first, the Zionist lobbies themselves (from whom they desire political support and fear political opposition) and second, an ignorant American public who can not judge the veracity of their comments. So, while their position does reference the rather shabby political reality in Congress, their characterization of the reality under which Abbas and his fellows operate is all wrong. That other reality has recently been revealed by the leaked Palestine Papers. These show very clearly that the men Cantor and Hoyer accuse of avoiding "direct negotiations" had been in just those sort of talks but a short time ago, and while negotiating had offered the Israelis everything short of their very souls. Whereupon the Israelis had turned up their noses, walked away and recommenced building on stolen land. That left the Palestinian "leadership" in their own domestic political bind. For while the American politicians have to answer to lobbyists, the Palestinians now had to answer to an increasingly angry citizenry. At this point one can ask if, according to the Congressmen, it so necessary for the Palestinian politicians to "take up the difficult but vital responsibility of making peace with Israel," why should it not be equally required that American politicians take on "the difficult but necessary responsibility" of shaking off their corrupt dependency on Zionist dictates so as to pressure the Israelis to make a just peace? The whole thing makes no sense unless one takes into consideration: multi realities and the politicians' propensity for hypocrisy and double standards.

The result of all this was that on February 18^th the UN representatives of three quarters of nations of the earth went about their business in muted disgust at the cowardice of the world's greatest power. They probably avoided making eye contact with Ambassador Rice who had played the role of the good and loyal soldier. Hanan Ashrawi, a respected and very smart member of the PLO Executive Committee, had said that an American veto would be "a direct affront to the international community and the requirements of peace." And so it was. But then, that is the rest of the world's reality, which has yet to penetrate the Washington DC beltway. Inside that beltway it is the requirements of domestic politics, and not that of peace, that holds sway.

In the meantime, in the far off land of Palestine, the Israelis announced the plans for 120 new settlement units to be built in occupied East Jerusalem. The politicians in Jerusalem play to yet another reality–one shaped by ideology and power. The ideology of Zionism they dreamt up all by themselves. The power, at least in part, is made the USA. It is strange how history sometimes repeats itself. If, in November 1947, the UN had voted against the partition of Palestine it would have made no difference to the Zionists who were then determined to make Israel a reality come what may. And, on February 18^th, if the Security Council had voted in favor of the resolution describing settlements as illegal, it would have made no difference to the Israelis who are determined to make greater Israel a reality come what may.

This is our present multiple realities mess. And, it is going to take more than UN resolutions to bring everyone concerned into the same world. The key group here is not the Palestinian politicos nor even the American politicians. The key group is the Israelis. It is their ideologically driven reality that has to reconstructed. When that happens the American politicians will meekly follow along. And how is this to be achieved? Through the slow but sure isolation of the Zionist state and its ideologues. Through a process of isolation that relentlessly raises the cost of Zionist reality until it is too great to bear. That process has already begun and will continue until racism is a dead issue in Israel whatever its ultimate borders. This struggle is now in the hands of a worldwide movement of civil society. And that movement will be the one to decide the ultimate reality in Israel/Palestine.

* Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University. He is the author of numerous books, including Islamic Fundamentalism and America's Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to Israeli Statehood.

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Hassan Barari * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The refugees' right of return has become a key issue in political discourse in Jordan. Neither the government nor opposition forces can afford to suggest an alternative point of view. Explicit in official statements is that Jordan has a stake in final status issues, particularly refugees, and it will accept nothing short of a "just" solution to the refugee problem.

The concept of "just" solution is incorporated in the text of the Arab Peace Initiative endorsed in March 2002. The text reads: "a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem is to be agreed upon in accordance with United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194." Judging from what we know about previous negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Palestinians are not serious when they talk about the right of return. Diverse accounts of previous negotiations show clearly that the Palestinian negotiators have given up on the right of return and instead suggest the return of a few thousand refugees.

This submission, on the part of the Arabs, has to do with a widely-held conviction that Israel will not accept the right of return of about four million Palestinian refugees lest this compromise the Jewish nature of the state, the raison d'etre of Zionism. In private, many Arab officials make the case that Israel will not hesitate to pull out of any peace process if this core Zionist value is threatened. Therefore, this reasoning continues, the Arabs must be realistic and accept other options for solving the refugee problem, including "tawtin" or patriation. One need only read the Geneva document signed by Israeli non-officials and their Palestinian counterparts to see that the Palestinians have written off the concept of refugees' physical return to Israel proper.

Without a doubt, the Arab position as indicated in the above clause of the API is an accommodating one. It was phrased to send a clear message to Israelis that any solution that is not agreed upon by Israel will not be on the table. Put differently, the clause clearly gives Israel veto power over any solution that is not to Israel's liking.

That said, one needs to read article four of the API to understand the predicament of the Arabs. This article posits "...the rejection of all forms of Palestinian patriation [tawtin] which conflict with the special circumstances of the Arab host countries." This is most relevant to Jordan and Lebanon.

On the whole, Jordanians argue that Palestinian refugees must be repatriated regardless of how this affects Israel as a state and society. Political forces view tawtin as an abhorrent option because it has the potential to compromise the identity of Jordan. East Bankers in particular fear tawtin lest this transform them into a minority in their own country. The reformist nationalist Jordanians view this identity issue as an obstacle to introducing much needed genuine political reform.

Even the Islamists are against tawtin. In fact, one of the reasons for their opposition to the Oslo agreements and the 1994 Wadi Araba Jordan-Israel peace agreement is the issue of refugees. Neither Islamists nor Jordanian nationalists trust the PLO to negotiate with Israel on this specific issue.

Although the government has not said anything different publicly, some former officials, including a former prime minister, say that Jordan is for a "just" solution, one that enables the refugees to practice the right of return. Nevertheless, they insinuate that if refugees choose not to return they will be dealt with as Jordanian citizens with full rights. One may interpret this position as an acknowledgment of the impotence of the Arabs to do more. By throwing the ball into the court of refugees themselves, the state wants to pass the buck.

Some academics and politicians indicate they probably would not mind tawtin when they focus their arguments on displaced persons rather than refugees. Their argument is that if the displaced persons (some 900,000, who fled to Jordan in 1967 and thereafter) go back to the West Bank and Gaza, then East Bankers will be the majority and democracy would be welcome even if the refugees remain. In fact, many see the return of displaced persons as a personal decision, while the PLO rejects that notion despite its statements to the contrary.

In brief, regardless of where the regime in Jordan stands on this issue, Jordanians on the whole mistrust the PLO to handle this issue separately. Any decision on this will directly complicate the situation in Jordan, thus sowing the seeds of instability. For this reason, many politicians argue for better relations with Hamas to make it difficult for the PLO to concede and solve the problem at Jordan's expense.

* Hassan Barari is professor of international relations at the University of Jordan.

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In 2002, the Arab Peace Initiative offered to Israel the scenario of a comprehensive regional peace in exchange for "...a just solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees in conformity with Resolution 194". A further clause was aimed at reassuring the host countries' concerns, by endorsing "the rejection of all forms of Palestinian patriation ["tawtin"] which conflict with the special circumstances of the Arab host countries".

Almost ten years later, the long-standing issue of the Palestinian refugees' right of return, enshrined in international law since 1949, remains dramatically unresolved. The recent release of the Palestine papers has, if anything, confirmed the lack of any serious plan that would bring justice to four generations of displacement and statelessness.

For over the last 60 years, Palestinian refugees have been held hostage by two inflexible standpoints. On the one hand, Israel has adamantly refused to be considered accountable for the tragedy of the refugee crisis, the Nakba, and is only ready to accommodate, on historical Palestine, a symbolic number of first generation refugees. On the other hand, many host countries (with the exception of Jordan, where Palestinians have access to citizenship rights but are subject to more subtle forms of discrimination and exclusion) have endorsed the claim that tawtin (naturalization) and even "tawtir" (development) would constitute a de-facto assimilation of the refugee populations and, eventually, undermine their right of return.

In this context, Palestinian refugees are facing a paradoxical situation. They need to keep alive their identity and specificity as refugees (bearing the duty of representing the quintessential character of the Palestinian question), thereby normatively performing the role of the marginal subject, living in a condition of "permanent temporariness". At the same time, they are urged to find ways to exit their economic, political and social marginality in order to take in their hands their present and future predicaments.

With few exceptions, academic scholarship has also predominantly embraced a dichotomic understanding, where "return" is opposed to "integration". Pragmatists consider a full implementation of the right of return utopian (e.g., the Nusseibeh-Ayalon formula, 2002), while radical ideologues like Joseph Massad see any compromise on the forms and numbers of return as an attempt to nullify its political dimension by reducing it to a mere humanitarian question.

I would like to suggest that these polarised debates ignore not only refugees' realities on the ground, but also, and more importantly, their diverse and creative strategies for reconciling "return" with "integration". Whoever has conducted research among refugees in recent times cannot but clearly sense how refugees are increasingly partaking simultaneously in two identities and discourses, that of return ("haq al-awda"), and that of participation here and now. This could be seen as a reaction to the progressive abandonment of the refugee issue by the Palestinian Authority and the marginalisation of the Palestine Liberation Organisation as a site for the national claims of all Palestinians.

The diversity of the various locations of displacement cannot and should not, of course, be ignored. Palestinians live under different predicaments in their countries of exile, and these are often crucial in shaping their imaginations of return. However, all refugees across gender, generation and location share the idea that return is an individual, inalienable right that cannot be negotiated or dismissed from above. This sacred principle does not, however, contrast with individual and collective strategies of economic and political survival emerging from below.

In order to keep alive and politically visible the refugee's tragedy and "the right of return", Palestinian refugees are urged to integrate (but not assimilate) and are producing political narratives, which see "integration" and "return" as compatible and desirable. In fact, a recurrent narrative is that the more politically, economically and socially integrated Palestinian refugees are, the more they are likely to achieve the social and political capital critical to mobilize for the right of return in creative ways.

It could be said that Palestinian refugees are trying to think in terms of a post-national form of integration (not the classic top-down tawtin), one that should allow them to achieve rights and entitlements where they live, but without giving up their individual right of return and their membership claims in a Palestinian nation.

On the ground, this means differentiating between tawtin (naturalisation) from above and tatwir (development) and integration from below. The latter include bettering one's own living conditions and enacting survival strategies, among them self-urbanization, self-political representation, and also, more importantly, access to social, civil and even political rights in the countries where they reside.

By formulating new political strategies that reconcile integration (or citizenship) with return, Palestinian refugees may challenge both the state of denial and abandonment in which they have been left by their national representatives, but also the deeply-rooted, exclusionary nature of their host states' conceptions of citizenship.

In this sense, Palestinian refugees may become a political avant-garde, forcing us to rethink new political spaces and structures for the future Palestinian state.

* Ruba Salih is a researcher at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

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Illustration by Carlos Latuff

By Stephen Lendman * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

US imperial policy includes regime change, affecting foes as well as no longer useful friends. Past targets included former Philippines leader Ferdinand Marcos, Iran's Shah (Mohammad Reza Pahlavi), and Iraq's Saddam Hussein, among others. According to some reports, Mubarak is next - aging, damaged and expendable.

George Friedman runs Stratfor, a private global intelligence service. On January 29, he issued a special Egypt report, saying:

On January 29, "Egypt's internal security forces (including Central Security Forces anti-riot paramilitaries) were glaringly absent" after confronting protesters forcefully for several days. Army personnel replaced them. Demonstrators welcomed them.

"There is more (going on) than meets the eye." While media reports focus on reform, democracy and human rights, "revolutions, including this one, are made up of many more actors than (Facebook and Twitter) liberal voices...." Some are, in fact, suspect, using social network sites for other than purported reasons.

Like Iran's 1979 revolution, "the ideology and composition of protesters can wind up having very little to do with the" behind the scenes political forces gaining power. Egypt's military may be preparing to seize it. Former air force chief/civil aviation minister Ahmed Shafiq is new prime minister, tasked with forming a new government, and intelligence head Omar Suleiman is Egypt's first ever vice president under Mubarak, effectively second in command.

Moreover, Defense Minister Field Marshall Mohammed Hussein Tantawi "returned to Cairo after a week of intense discussions with senior US officials." He heads the Republican Guard, responsible for defending major government and strategic institutions, the symbols of entrenched power. Also back is Lt. General Sami Annan. Both men with others "are likely managing the political process behind the scenes."

As a result, expect more political changes, military commanders apparently willing to give Mubarak time to leave gracefully, but not much as unrest won't subside until he's gone.

Egypt's military is key as "guarantor of regime stability." It's never "relinquished its rights to the state" no matter who's president, made easier with popular support, unlike the hated police. But it's not a monolithic force, nor can it shake its history of mid-level commanders like Gamal Abdel Nasser seizing power. In 1981, Islamists and junior officers assassinated Anwar Sadat, elevating Mubarak to the presidency.

"The history of the modern Egyptian republic haunts Egypt's generals today. Though long suppressed, an Islamist strand exists amongst the junior ranks of Egypt's modern military." It could include "a cabal of colonels," seeing a chance to seize power to address longstanding grievances, especially regarding US and Israeli policies, or perhaps promise change but maintain continuity.

So far, no coup d'etat signs have emerged. While Egypt's military remains disciplined under a chain of command, "those trying to manage the crisis from the top cannot forget" their country's history of successful mid-level commander coups. Given Egypt's growing instability, another one is possible.

Washington and Israel are maneuvering for control. Egypt's fate, believes Friedman, "lies in the ability of the military to not only manage the streets and the politicians, but also itself."

He also said plainclothes Egyptian security forces are destroying public property, media reports blaming it on protesters. It also bears repeating - an overt police presence is absent, and military forces aren't stopping demonstrations or enforcing curfews, appearing to back (or at least not oppose) dissident groups instead.

Omar Suleiman's Role

On January 29, New Yorker writer Jane Mayer headlined, "Who is Omar Suleiman? saying:

Well-known in Washington, he's poised to become president after Mubarak. As intelligence chief, he was CIA's "point man in Egypt for renditions," the agency's snatch and grab policy against "terror suspects from around the world," sending many to Egypt, perhaps to disappear as Marjorie Cohn explained in her book "Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law," quoting a former CIA agent saying:

"If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear (after torture and interrogation) - never to see them again - you send them to Egypt," a place of no return for many, Suleiman in charge as impresario.

America Backing Regime Change?

On January 28, London Telegraph writers Tim Ross, Matthew Moore and Steven Swinford headlined, "Egypt protests: America's secret backing for rebel leaders behind uprising," saying:

For the past three years, regime change plans have been ongoing, according to WikiLeaks released documents, accessed here.

Dated February 2008 from the US Cairo embassy to Washington, they "disclose the extent of American support for" Mubarak opponents, saying "Egyptians need to replace the current regime with (the appearance of) a parliamentary democracy. Under undisclosed US control, of course, "several opposition forces - including the Wafd, Nasserite, Marama and Tagammu parties, and the Muslim brotherhood, Kifaya and Revolutionary Socialist movements - have agreed to support an unwritten plan for a transition to (a new order), involving a weakened presidency and an empowered prime minister and parliament, before the scheduled (September) 2011 presidential elections."

Though previously supporting Mubarak, the documents show US supporting backing forces while publicly praising him as an important ally. They also revealed regular contact with opponents throughout 2008 and 2009, planning regime change, but not what protesters have in mind.

In June 2006, the National Security Network (NSN) was established "to revitalize America's national security policy (by) developing innovative national security solutions (to counter) emerging threats...."

Arab populations have long heard variations on Washington's theme, repeated in a NSN January 27 press release, saying: "The Obama administration seeks to encourage political reforms without destabilizing the region."

In other words, democracy is messy and unreliable. Dictatorships are much easier to control, and when one despots proves unreliable or outlives his usefulness, replace him with another, perhaps smoothed by transitional authority.

Mubarak's time has passed. Business as usual is planned. Democratic rhetoric masks it, the same kind US audiences hear from leaders flouting it at home and abroad.

Comments on The Angry Arab News Service

Edited by Professor As'ad AbuKhalil, it provides daily commentaries on regional events. On January 29, it cited "Comrade Joseph" saying:

"I am very worried that the Americans have taken over the direction of the Egyptian revolution. Let us remember that all possible candidates to replace Mubarak (are US) handpicked....including (ElBaradei) as well as Army chief of staff Anan, or anyone else for that matter. Obama has proven once more that" America is the Arab world's strongest anti-democracy ally.

As a result, Arabs must be vigilant and "very cautious (about) what happens next. (America) wants to mortgage the freedom of all Arabs" to secure Western and Israeli interests.

Responding, AbuKhalil expressed less concern, saying: "there is (only) so much that the US can do to control the situation." However, he sees a "US coup at the top" because America and Israel want regime continuity without Mubarak. What follows depends on "how hard (Egyptians) press. (He) think(s) that they won't be fooled, even if the process of change take(s) a while, a year or more."

However events play out, they face formidable Washington and Tel Aviv adversaries, waging wars to solidify power, especially in strategically important places.

A Final Comment

Unless America plans war or wants foreign adversaries vilified, rarely ever do US media report overseas news, especially like Middle East uprisings. Notably, little about Tunisia, Jordan, Yemen or Algeria was covered. But Egypt's turmoil is main-featured on television and in print. Moreover, coverage includes unheard of pro-opposition views, meaning official Washington supports them.

In addition, though protesters want Mubarak out, anti-American signs aren't evident or reports of Washington's longstanding pernicious influence. Reform, however, requires ending it. Otherwise, new faces will continue old policies leaving deep-rooted hardships unaddressed.

In other words, everything will change but stay the same. Regional turmoil, especially Egypt's, will only reshuffle the deck to look different when, in fact, neoliberal exploitation will persist, covert forces well positioned to assure it.

Moreover, skilled Western and regional media will keep US and foreign audiences fooled, assuring support for new Washington favorites thought different from old ones, when, in fact, they're the same.

* Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon.

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By Stephen Lendman * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Protesters flee from tear gas fire during clashes in Cairo, January 28, 2011. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh

"On Thursday, protesters hurled petrol bombs at a fire station in Suez, setting it ablaze. They tried but failed to (torch) a local" Mubarak-controlled National Party office. Near Giza, on Cairo's outskirts, police attacked hundreds of protesters with tear gas, rubber bullets and batons. In Ismailia, the scene repeated, police using similar tactics to disperse crowds. Ahead of expected massive Friday protests, Cairo was uncharacteristically quiet.

On January 28, Al Jazeerah headlined, "Fresh protests erupt in Egypt, saying:

Following Friday prayers, "angry demonstrators demand(ed) an end to Hosni Mubarak's 30-year presidency....(d)etermined protesters," vowing to "carry on until their demands are met."

In Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, Mansoura and Sharqiya, "protesters streamed out of mosques shortly after prayers," chanting anti-Mubarak slogans.

On Thursday night, former IAEA Director General and National Alliance for Change founder Mohamed ElBaradei returned home, saying he's ready to lead "transition" if asked. In a late 2010 Al Masry Al Youm interview, he expressed support for an opposition alliance saying:

"I hope in the next phase we will have a united opposition, the NAC, the Al-Wafd party, the (Muslim) Brotherhood, the Gabha (Democratic Front party) - we need everyone. And of course we need to link the young people with the labor unions and the elite with the young people."

On Friday, he reportedly was "prevented from moving freely by security forces." AP reported water cannons doused him, and supporters who tried shielding him were beaten.

So far, seven are reported dead. Well over 1,200 were arrested, yet protesters aren't deterred.

An international press freedom group said journalists were being beaten and arrested. Al Jazeera reported four French reporters apprehended. An AP photographer was attacked. The London Guardian said ElBaradei was "detained." Earlier on Friday he said Mubarak's regime was on its "last legs."

A CNN crew had its camera smashed. Vodafone said cell phone service was suspended "in selected areas." Internet service was also shut down. In Cairo and other cities, harsh crackdowns continued with tear gas, rubber bullets, some reported live fire, water cannons, sound bombs, beatings and arrests.

London Guardian correspondent Jack Shenker called Cairo a "war zone." WikiLeaks released a cable from US Egyptian ambassador Margaret Scobey saying:

"Torture and police brutality in Egypt are endemic and widespread. The police use brutal methods mostly against common criminals to extract confessions, but also against demonstrators, certain political prisoners and unfortunate bystanders."

Former US Middle East diplomat Aaron David Miller said:

"It's one thing when this happens in Tunisia, a marginal Arab state, but you're now talking about one of the two or three pillars of American security in the region being confronted with the ripple effects of a wave."

Graeme Bannerman, former US State Department Policy Planning Staff Middle East analyst said:

"Popular opinion in the Middle East runs so against American policies that any change in any (regional) government....that becomes more popular will have an anti-American and certainly less friendly direction towards the US which will be a serious political problem for us."

A circulated flyer said:

"Without beating around the bush or postponing or playing us for fools and without more false promises, we, the people of Egypt, demand all of our long forgotten rights to be granted and this time there is no turning back....we have learned our lesson....we have finally broken free of all fears."

On January 25, Egypt's "day of wrath," copies circulated, containing specific political and economic demands, including:

• salary and pension increases;
• financial aid for unemployed workers;
• canceling the law of emergency, empowering authorities to arrest people without warrants;
• demanding Mubarak's ouster and his son, Gamal, prevented from succeeding him;
• dissolving Egypt's fraudulently elected parliament;
• holding free democratic elections; and
• banning Egyptian exports to Israel, mainly its natural gas.

From Alexandria, Dr. Ashraf Ezzat called Egypt's events "historic," perhaps signaling the end of repressive Mubarak rule and the nation's "addiction to Authoritarianism."

Events are fast-moving and breathtaking. Earlier, the Muslim Brotherhood refused to take part in street protests. That changed, the group saying it participated on Friday to control them.

On January 28, New York Times writers David Kirkpatrick and Alan Cowell headlined, "Clashes in Cairo Extend Arab World's Days of Unrest," saying:

Pouring out of mosques after noon prayers, "thousands of demonstrators....across Cairo and other Egyptian cities....intensified their campaign to oust President Hosni Mubarak...." Police confronted them violently, Reuters reporting:

"Dozens of people were wounded as police and demonstrators fought running street battles in Cairo on Friday in unprecedented protests against" Mubarak's three-decade rule. "Witnesses saw dozens of Egyptians bruised, bloodied and fainting." Medical sources reported at least five deaths and hundreds wounded.

"Snatch squads of plain clothes security men dragged off suspected ringleaders." Friday was the largest, bloodiest day so far. Reuters said, for the first time, army forces were on streets, but it wasn't clear what role they'll play. In Cairo's Tahir square, people encircled a military vehicle, shaking hands with soldiers, and chanting, "The army and people are united. The revolution has come."

On January 29, Al Jazeera headlined, "Protesters back on Egypt streets," saying:

"Similar crowds were gathering in the cities of Alexandria and Suez....They are calling for regime change....The latest protests reflected popular discontent with Mubarak's midnight address, where he announced that he was dismissing his government but remaining in power."

On Saturday, Cairo streets again looked like a war zone. Army forces replaced police. People embraced them as allies. Events are fluid and bear watching.

So far, protests show no signs of abating. Across the region, events are truly breathtaking. Long-suffering people taste change and demand it. They've never had a better chance than now, but getting it won't be quick or easy.

Popular Revolt in Yemen

On January 27, New York Times writers Anthony Shadid, Nada Bakri and Kareem Fahim headlined, "Waves of Unrest Spread to Yemen, Shaking a Region," saying:

On Thursday, thousands "took to the streets of Yemen (where) secular and Islamist Egyptian opposition leaders vowed to join large protests expected Friday as calls for change rang across the Arab world."

At issue - ending Ali Abdullah Saleh's 32-year rule. From 1978 - 1990, he was president of the Yemen Arab Republic (North Yemen). Since then, he chaired the Presidential Council of the Republic of Yemen (North and South Yemen).

Throughout Sanaa, the capital, thousands demanded he go, protesters chanting, "Enough being in power for 30 years! Gone in just 20 years," referring to Tunisia's Ben Ali. Earlier demonstrations preceded Thursday's mass one against a hated ruler of one of the world's poorest nations where half the population lives on less than $2 a day. Wealth distribution is extreme. Governance is notoriously corrupt and brutal. Chronic hunger is a major problem. Illiteracy tops 50%, and perhaps unemployment matches it.

Journalist Patrick Cockburn once called Yemen:

"a dangerous place. Wonderfully beautiful, the mountainous north of the country is guerrilla paradise. The Yemenis are exceptionally hospitable....humorous, sociable and democratic, infinitely preferable as company to the arrogant ignorant playboys of the (rich regional) oil states."

The capital Sanaa dates back to the 6th century BC Sabaean dynasty. However, it's power is limited, given the strength of tribes, clans, and influential families in a society very much a gun culture and prone to direct action.

On average, Yemenis own three guns per person in a nation of 23 million people, including one or more automatic weapons, like an AK-47 as well as heavier arms. Yemeni Professor Ahmed al-Kibsi once told a British reporter: "Just as you have your tie, the Yemeni will carry his gun," and isn't at all shy about using it.

As a result, "Yemen has all the explosive ingredients of Lebanon, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan," so US entanglement there may become another quagmire, besides others in the region already, compounded by explosive revolutionary fervor.

Aided by Washington and Saudi Arabia, Saleh is waging repressive war against northern Shia tribes, causing thousands of deaths and many more displaced. In addition, he's fighting armed secessionists in the South.

The New York Times calls Yemen "a haven for Islamic jihadists and the site of what amounts to a secret American war against leaders of a branch that Al Qaeda has established there."

What's at stake? At most, Yemen has four billion proved barrels of oil reserves and modest amounts of natural gas, hardly a reason for war. More important is its strategic location near the Horn of Africa on Saudi Arabia's southern border, the Red Sea, its Bab el- Mandeb strait (a key chokepoint separating Yemen from Eritrea through which three million barrels of oil pass daily), and the Gulf of Aden connection to the Indian Ocean.

In late 2009, Saudi forces bombed and used tanks against Yemen. In addition, a rebel group called the Young Believers said US jets launched multiple attacks in Yemen's northwest Sa'ada Province. Britain's Daily Telegraph reported US Special Forces train Yemen's army, and operate covertly on their own. The CIA also operates freely, using death squads and daily drone attacks.

Unlike Tunisia's spontaneous uprising, an opposition coalition organized Yemen's protests, hoping for US backing whether or not possible. However, once unleashed, popular anger has a life of its own, inspired for the same reasons as in Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, and Tunisia - deep poverty, mass unemployment, high food and energy prices, repression, and governments unresponsive to popular needs.

On January 27, Al Jazeera headlined, "Anti-government rallies hit Yemen," saying:

"Tens of thousands (demanded change), call(ing) for an end to" Saleh's government. In Aden, a 28-year old unemployed man, Souad Sabri, self-immolated, protesting economic hardships. Medical officials said he was rushed to the hospital in critical condition.

Saleh is also accused wanting to hand power to his son, Ahmed, head of the elite Presidential Guard. In a January 23 television address, he denied it, saying "We are a republic. We reject bequeathing" the presidency. However, after decades of strongman rule, street protesters believe otherwise, wanting a clean sweep for change.

One banner read "Game over." A student shouted "We want change like Tunisia." Despite Yemen's largest protests since Saleh got power, security forces have mostly kept a low profile. According to a government spokesman:

"No major clashes or arrests occurred, and police presence was minimal. The government strongly respects the democratic right for a peaceful assembly."

On January 20, independent reports disagreed, saying clashes and gun battles erupted in Aden, injuring at least seven people. Government forces used tear gas and live fire to disperse protesters. Dozens were detained, including Tawakul Karman, a prominent human rights activist, accused of organizing anti-government demonstrations. Later released, she told CNN International that a Tunisia-inspired revolution was ongoing.

On January 28, Hakim al-Masmari, editor-in-chief of the Yemen Post told the BBC that people no longer will put up with widespread poverty, and that protests will likely continue because people believe "all chances of a dialogue with the ruling party are vanishing."

Uprising in Jordan

On January 28, Al Jazeera headlined, "Thousands protest in Jordan," saying:

As in Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Yemen, mass protests "demand(ed) the country's prime minister step down, and (that) the government curb rising prices, inflation and unemployment."

Denouncing Prime Minister Samir Rifai, many shouted, "Rifai go away, prices are on fire and so are the Jordanians." Protesters were joined by members of the Islamic Action Front and the Muslim Brotherhood's political wing. According to Professor Ibrahim Alloush:

"We're demanding changes on how the country is now run," accusing officials of impoverishing working people, and imposing regressive taxes, forcing them to pay proportionally more than they can afford. He also accused parliament of complicity with the prime minister. As a result, "This is what had led people to protest in the streets because they don't have venues for venting how they feel through legal means."

Jordanian demonstrations will likely continue as so far they're doing in Tunisia, Algeria, Yemen and Egypt. Other eruptions may follow, including perhaps in the West Bank against repressive PA enforcers, serving Israel, not Palestinians.

Note: During Israel's 2006 Lebanon war, then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice infamously told the Lebanese people they were experiencing "the birth pangs of a new Middle East." Relatives of the dead, the injured and displaced weren't amused. Today, in contrast, popular uprisings, for the first time, may produce real democracies that never before existed. Events are fast-moving and breathtaking. Only time will show how they play out.

A Final Comment

Unlike America's major media, Al Jazeera provides important coverage of world events, including, of course, in the Middle East. On January 27, however, New York Times writers Robert Worth and David Kirkpatrick headlined, "Seizing a Moment, Al Jazeera Galvanizes Arab Frustration," saying:

Middle East uprisings have a common thread "uniting them: Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite channel whose aggressive coverage has helped propel insurgent emotions from one capital to the next." Calling it "Al Jazeera's moment," it helped "shape a narrative of popular rage against oppressive American-backed Arab governments" and Israel since established 15 years ago.

"That narrative has long been implicit in the channel's heavy emphasis on Arab suffering and political crisis, its screaming-match talk shows, even its sensational news banner and swelling orchestral accompaniments."

George Washington University Professor Marc Lynch was quoted saying:

"The notion that there is a common struggle across the Arab world is something Al Jazeerah helped create. They did not cause these events, but it's almost impossible to imagine all this happening without Al Jazeera."

The Times writers accused it of "tailoring its coverage to support Hezbollah (and) Hamas," Tunisia's uprising, earlier sympathy for Saddam Hussein, and most recently against Israel and PA authorities in the "Palestine Papers."

"There is little doubt that Al Jazeera takes sides in the Palestinian dispute." In fact, it produces credible journalism unlike The New York Times and rest of America's MSM, supporting wealth and power, imperial lawlessness, tinpot dictators like Mubarak, Ben Ali and many others, and corrupt US politics under both parties. They deliver managed news, not truth on what people most need to know. Thankfully, they can access AlJazeera and other alternative media sources online to find out, what growing numbers now do regularly.

* Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon.

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By Carlos Latuff

By Jim Lobe and Ali Gharib

Gleeful Israeli leaders and their neoconservative supporters here have spent much of the past week insisting that the State Department cables published by WikiLeaks prove that Sunni Arab leaders in the Middle East are far more preoccupied with the threat posed by an ascendant and possibly nuclear Iran than with a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But a closer look at the relevant cables shows a far more consistent message to Washington coming from its Arab allies: that curbing Iran and resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are inextricably linked and that the most effective way of achieving the former is make tangible progress on the latter.

Indeed endorsements of "linkage" - the notion, accepted at the highest levels of the U.S. military, that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will help promote U.S. strategic interests in the Middle East - emerges as a recurring theme in previously confidential discussions with Arab leaders and U.S. diplomats on how best to counter Iran's growing regional power and deter Tehran's nuclear program.

That's not the message, of course, that Israel and its backers have been touting since the first batch of 220 documents was released Nov. 29 by WikiLeaks.

Indeed, none other than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately seized on purported anti-Iranian comments by the Arab leaders quoted prominently in the New York Times as vindication of Israel's position.

"[T]here is a gap between what is said by leaders in private and what they say in public, especially in our region, because our region is hostage to a narrative, and that narrative is the result of nearly 60 years of propaganda," he told a media conference in Tel Aviv immediately after the initial WikiLeaks release. "In this narrative, the single greatest threat to regional peace and to the region's future is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Israel's alleged aggression."

"However, the reality is that leaders understand that this narrative is bankrupt. The reality is that there is a new understanding that there is a new threat here," he declared, suggesting the existence of a de facto consensus between Israel and Sunni Arab states that Tehran must be prevented from achieving a nuclear-weapons capacity by any means necessary.

That message was immediately echoed by neoconservative backers of Netanyahu's Likud Party here for much of the past week.

"Obama has taken his eye off the real ball, placed friendly Arab states in a precarious situation, and misrepresented to the American people and the world that the non-peace talks are necessary to curb the Iranian threat," asserted Jennifer Rubin in Commentary magazine's Contentions blog.

"Governments in the region do not in fact care very much about the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. They are transfixed by Iran." wrote David Frum, a former George W. Bush speechwriter on his FrumForum blog and in Canada's National Post. "If the Palestinian issue is so unimportant to the Middle East, why is it so important to us?"

While that line has since been repeated continuously by neoconservative bloggers, columnists, and publications, they find little echo in the cables themselves.

"[T]he key to containing Iran revolves around progress in the Israel/Palestine issue," Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan told visiting U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner during a Jul. 15, 2009 meeting, according to one cable dated five days later.

"To win [over Arab public opinion], the U.S. should quickly bring about a two-state solution over the objections of the Netanyahu government," added bin Nayef, whose bristling hostility toward Iran was made plain by his comparison – highlighted by the Times – of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Adolf Hitler.

Five months later, in a Dec. 9, 2009 meeting with Deputy Secretary of Energy Daniel Poneman, bin Zayed returned to that theme. He "emphasized the strategic importance of creating a Palestinian State (i.e., resolving the Israeli- Palestinian conflict) as the way to create genuine Middle Eastern unity on the question of Iran's nuclear program and regional ambitions," the cable's author reported.

A May 27, 2008 cable describes a conversation between Rep. Jeff Fortenberry with Gamal Mubarak, son and heir apparent of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Asked by the congressman how best to counter Iran's nuclear program, Mubarak replied, "Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as well as Jordan, are the 'heavyweights' that can counter Iran."

The cable goes on to describe Mubarak as "advocat[ing] movement on the Israeli/Palestinian track to remove a prime issue that Iran can use as a pretext."

"Speaking to PolOffs [political officers] in early February 2009, immediately after the Gaza War, Director of the Jordanian Prime Minister's Political Office Khaled Al-Qadi noted that the Gaza crisis had allowed Iranian interference in inter-Arab relations to reach unprecedented levels," according to a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Amman shortly after the three-week Gaza War between Israel and Hamas ended in January 2009.

Jordan's government also depicted the ongoing Israeli- Palestinian conflict as a key factor in the expansion of Iran's regional influence, according to the Apr. 2, 2009 cable.

"Jordanian leaders have argued that the only way to pull the rug out from under Hezbollah - and by extension their Iranian patrons - would be for Israel to hand over the disputed Sheba'a Farms to Lebanon," it went on. "With Hezbollah lacking the 'resistance to occupation' rationale for continued confrontation with Israel, it would lose its raison d'etre and probably domestic support."

During a Feb. 14, 2010 meeting with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, Qatar Emir Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani suggested that Israel's efforts to rally U.S. and Arab support for a more confrontational policy toward Iran was really related to the Israel-Palestine conflict. "[T]he Israelis," he is reported as telling his guest, are "...using Iran's quest for nuclear weapons as a diversion from settling matters with the Palestinians."

Three days later, according to a cable sent Feb. 22, 2010, UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nayan warned another Congressional delegation led by Nita Lowey, a strong Israel supporter in the House of Representatives, against a military attack on Iran. According to the cable, the minister ended the meeting with a "soliloquy on the importance of a successful peace process between Israel and its neighbors as perhaps the best way of reducing Iran's regional influence."

The fact that the Arab leaders placed so much emphasis on the importance of making progress in resolving the Palestinian-Israeli dispute clearly did not come as any surprise to U.S. regional experts; nor would it be surprising to them if Israeli leaders and their neo- conservative backers have worked hard – as they have for the past week - to ignore or obscure that message.

Already in a January 2007 cable released by WikiLeaks, the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv was warning Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the Israeli government was "deeply concerned that Israeli-Palestinian issues not become linked in American minds to creating a more propitious regional environment for whatever steps we decide to take to address the deteriorating situation in Iraq" which at the time appeared to be disintegrating into sectarian civil war.

That concern was prompted by the publication the previous November of a report by the Iraq Study Group headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Rep. Lee Hamilton which, among other findings, bluntly concluded that "the United States will not be able to achieve its goals in the Middle East unless the United States deals directly with the Arab-Israeli conflict."

(Inter Press Service)

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By Stephen Lendman * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

1948 Nakba, Palestinian Refugee Camp

In his book, "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story," Ramzy Baroud recounted his father Mohammed's story. Born in 1938 in Beit Daras village, he saw it conquered, leveled and erased, except from the memory he took to his grave. A captive in his own land, he lived years as a Gaza Nuseirat camp refugee, raising his family including son Ramzy, dreaming always of going home, struggling as a freedom fighter to end decades of conflict, violence, occupation, and oppression, what Edward Said called "a slow death," shattered hopes, and inexorable toll of its incalculable horror to so many.

Spanning over seven decades of history and survivor recollections, it tells a powerful firsthand story of those who lived it, not the airbrushed Western version of the new Israeli state, born in blood, mass slaughter, destruction, and displacement of hundreds of thousands of survivors, to this day oppressed, harassed, intimidated, humiliated, attacked and arrested for being Muslims, not Jews on their own land, in their own country, illegally occupied for decades.

In his book "Behind the Wall: Life, Love, and Struggle in Palestine," Rick Wiles recounts other refugee stories, people he encountered firsthand in the West Bank, connecting them to their original villages, expulsion, daily life and dreams of return.

Abu Gaush shared his own 1967 experience, saying:

During the Six Day War, "My family fled to the mountains as we were frightened that 1948 was happening all over again....The soldiers emptied all the houses in the villages and forced everyone out onto the streets. The only direction left was to Ramallah, and they told us to go there. Other soldiers were saying, 'Go to Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) - all land before there is ours - and if you stop before (arriving), we will kill you.' "

Including poignant photos, Wiles' book includes seven sections, discussing: Memories of Exile, The Wall, The Spirit of Resistance, Purity and Love, Land of Palestine, Strength and Sumoud (steadfastness), and Dreams of Return, including his final image of a grandfather giving his original home's key to his son, symbolic of the continuing right to return struggle, what won't ever stop until succeeding.

Numbers of Palestinian Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons

Al Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, says Palestinian refugees today are the world's "longest suffering and largest refugee population." In its January 2010 report titled, "Survey of Palestinian Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons, 2008 - 2009," the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights (BRC) calls them "the largest and longest-standing case of forced displacement in the world today," numbering 9.8 million, increasing by about 100,000 a year.

Most are refugees, another 450,000 internally displaced. For over six decades, they've been denied solutions and reparations for their rights under international law and UN resolutions. An earlier article discussed BRC's report in detail.

Life in Occupied Camps

Besides those internally displaced, Palestinians have lived in forced exile for decades throughout the world, most within 100 km of their original homes. Those in camps comprise about 21% of the total. Hundreds of thousands of others are in 17 unofficial camps in Occupied Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. About 79% live outside UNRWA's 58 camps, including many in West Bank villages and cities, about 100 locales comprising over half the population.

In 2008, the European University Institute's Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies published a report titled, "Palestine Refugee Camps: Disciplinary Space and Territory of Exception," examining daily camp life in 59 camps: 19 in the West Bank, 8 in Gaza, 12 in Lebanon, 10 in Jordan, and 10 in Syria. Saying they're not "natural" settings, they become "slum areas" or under-developed urban sprawls, some "open spaces," others "closed."

In Lebanon, for example, "the gap between the numbers of camp and urban refugee dwellers....is enormous," compared to Jordan and Syria where differences are minimal, yet even "country-by-country analysis does not in any way suggest internal homogeneity, because the question of camp locations within the different countries matters as well."

Some are more urban, other peripheral or rural, the differences among them huge, including job discrimination, poverty, and overall conditions. According to Norweigian Institute for Applied Social Science surveys in Jordan and Syria, Palestinian refugee living conditions for those outside camps differ little from host country populations. In camps, however, it's worse, especially in Lebanon. Education there is one of many problems, 60% of 18 - 29 year old Palestinians not finishing school.

In Lebanon and Jordan, 60% of camp homes lack proper sanitary installations for safe drinking water. Population density is a major issue, too many people occupying too little space, creating an enormous environmental and public health problem. Buildings are crammed together in narrow alleys, with little natural light, exposure to hazardous substances, inadequate temperature control, and poor ventilation. In Lebanon, the infant mortality rate is 239 per 100,000 births, and chronic infant illnesses are up to three times higher than the country's norm.

The Schuman Centre's study preceded Cast Lead, so its Gaza analysis needed updating. The war displaced up to 90,000 people and caused mass destruction. Yet little reconstruction is possible with the Strip under siege and virtually all needed materials and spare parts banned. In addition, three years of closure wrecked Gaza's economy, and sent unemployment and poverty levels soaring - the former up to 65%, the latter 80% with 96% of the Strip's industrial capacity shuttered, leaving well over 80% of the population aid-dependent. Three-fourths of Gazans live in camps, but all of them get below minimal amounts of everything, struggling daily to survive.

Overall, Palestinians see camps as "symbols of illegitimacy," a disconnected gray zone under occupation conditions. Of the 4.8 million registered by UNWRA, about 1.2 million live in Gaza, another 800,000 in the West Bank in 27 camps - 19 in the West Bank, 8 in Gaza, the rest in towns and villages.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), their 2009 dependency ratio is 85.3% in Gaza and 72.1% in the West Bank. High unemployment and poverty remain grave in both areas, especially in Gaza. So does public health and malnutrition, causing growing levels of illnesses and chronic diseases.

UNWRA calls the refugee population "victims of health inequalities," the occupation, of course, the main contributor, resulting in a chronic imbalance between needs and demands on the one hand, and resources and other constraints on the other. Healthcare, personal safety, legal and political protection, and human welfare are fundamental human rights. Under occupation, they're consistently denied, especially in Gaza under siege.

Despite established laws, no international body has an explicit mandate to protect Palestinian refugees. After the 1948 Nakba, the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP), UNWRA, and later the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) were supposed to provide aid, protection, and reparations, but supplied little. In addition, UN agencies, the ICRC, and world community, in deference to Israel, avoided durable solutions, including their obligation to enforce binding international law provisions.

Moreover, refugees are seen more as needing humanitarian aid than having mandated rights, even though international law protects them, including their "inalienable right" of return. As a result, displaced Palestinians remain among the world's most neglected, abused people, including diaspora ones (the majority) excluded from the political process and peace negotiations.

The Palestinian National Authority (PA) represents those in the Territories alone, but, in fact, given the Hamas/Fatah split, only West Bank and East Jerusalemites. Most Palestinians are thus disenfranchised. As a result, a volunteer Civitas participant, a collective research project on exiled Palestinian communities, expressed her frustration, saying:

"Before the peace treaties, Palestinian political parties were more effective, and we had a voice: we worked properly! We made our voice heard to the entire world. But the world now hears only the voice of the Palestinian president, and his prime minister. As a citizen, I no longer have a voice. His voice is enough, (and he collaborates with Israel. Earlier) my voice was heard. If....peace....silence(s) me then I don't want it!"

Diaspora and internal refugees demand their legal rights. Those in Gaza and the West Bank can challenge their occupier directly. Those outside cannot. Without legal documents, passports, travel rights, identity papers, electoral involvement, and ownership and inheritance entitlements, they can't seek redress for decades of injustice, what Israel all along has denied, unchallenged by PA officials. Unless their collective voices are heard, the conflict's historical roots and their rights will go unaddressed, and they'll remain the world's "longest suffering and largest refugee population."

* Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon.

Related posts:

• Updated: Lost Palestinian Refugee Camps on UN-Google Earth Map
• Corrupt analogy: exposing israel’s attempts to equate the Palestinian refugee plight with Jewish immigrants from the Arab world
• Palestinian Youngsters Used as Human Shields By Israeli Occupation Forces in Balata Refugee Camp

By Stephen Lendman * | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

In 1982, Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs senior advisor Oded Yinon published a revealing document for regional conquest and dominance. Still relevant today, it's titled "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s, translated, edited, and retitled "The Zionist Plan for the Middle East" (read document below) by distinguished Professor Israel Shahak (1933 - 2001), longtime activist, analyst, and outspoken Israeli critic.

Its publisher, the Association of Arab-American University Graduates called it "the most explicit, detailed and unambiguous statement to date of the Zionist strategy in the Middle East....Its importance....lies not in its historical value but in the nightmare which it represents," what thereafter continued to unfold.

Its two essential premises include:

• to survive, Israel must dominate the region and become a world power, and
• succeeding requires dividing Arab nations into small states - Balkanizing them along ethnic and sectarian lines as Israeli satellites, controllable satraps, the idea modeled after the Ottoman Empire's Millet (or nation) system under which local authorities governed confessional communities with separate ethnic identities.

Israel's 1967 Golan seizure and 1978 and 1982 Lebanon invasions followed the plan, Yinon noting "far-reaching opportunities for the first time since 1967, (created by the) very stormy situation surround(ing) Israel," resurrected whenever Israel wishes. Its method involves preemptive belligerence against Palestinians and regional states, making them all eventual targets to be weakened, fragmented, divided, and reconfigured under Israeli control.

In 1982, it included dividing Iraq into Shi'ite, Sunni, and Kurdish areas, what, in fact, unfolded after 2003, Shahak noting that:

"The plan follows faithfully the geopolitical ideas current in Germany of 1890 - 1933, which were swallowed whole by Hitler and the Nazi movement, and determined their aims for East Europe." They were then implemented from 1939 - 1941, "and only (a global alliance) prevented their consolidation for a period of time."

Citing the "early stages of a new epoch," Yinon said "The existence, prosperity and steadfastness of (Israel) depend(s) upon its ability to adopt a new framework for its domestic and foreign affairs," based on securing its material needs through winnable resource wars and Arab world divisions.

"All the Arab States east of Israel are torn apart, broken up and riddled with inner conflicts even more than those of the Maghreb" (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania, and Western Sahara). All the Gulf states are "built upon a delicate house of sand in which there is only oil." Jordan is in reality Palestine, Amman the same as Nablus.

Other Muslim states are similar. Half of Iran's population is Persian speaking, the rest ethnically Turkish. Turkey is half Sunni Muslim, the rest Shi'ite Alawis and Sunni Kurds. Today, Afghanistan's divisions are clearer, including Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, Turkmen, and others. Pakistan also is comprised of Punjabis, Pashtuns, Sindhis, Seraikis, Muhajirs, Balochs and others.

From Morocco to India, Somalia to Turkey, stability is absent, "point(ing) to....a rapid degeneration in the entire region" to be exploited to Israel's advantage. Throughout the Middle East, depravation, including hunger and unemployment affect millions, potentially explosive problems only security forces can contain, giving Israel "far-reaching opportunities for the first time since 1967."

The Six Day War's strategic error was failing to give Jordan to the Palestinians, thereby "neutralizing" today's problem by removing them. "Today, we suddenly face immense opportunities for transforming the situation thoroughly and this we must do in the coming decade, otherwise we shall not survive as a state."

He recommended far-reaching foreign and domestic political and economic changes. He also called Israel's peace agreement with Egypt a mistake, said its economy depends on acquiring oil resources without which it could be destroyed, and named two ways to get them:

• directly by breaking the treaty; or
• regaining control of the Sinai indirectly, Egypt no military obstacle because of its internal conflicts.

In 1956, its myth as the Arab world's strong leader was revealed, reiterated in 1967. Its economy is also in crisis, making foreign help essential. Israel's strategic aim is to weaken it further by breaking it into distinct geographical regions. If accomplished, other countries may follow, including Libya and Sudan.

"The vision of a Christian Coptic State in Upper Egypt alongside a number of weak states with very localized power (and none centrally) is the key to a historical development which was only set back by the peace agreement but which seems inevitable in the long run."

Lebanon's division into five provinces is a precedent for the entire Arab world, including Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and the Arabian peninsula. Syria will divide into a Shi'ite Alawi coastal state, an Aleppo area Sunni one, another in Damascus, and the Druzes will set up their own. This outcome will guarantee peace and security in the long run, "and that aim is already within our reach today."

Oil rich/internally torn Iraq is a "guaranteed" Israeli target, more important than Syria. In the short run, it's Israel's greatest threat. A war with Iran will tear it apart, lead to its downfall, and perhaps fragment Iran, separating its oil rich Arab speaking province from the rest of the country. Confrontations elsewhere will cause further dissolutions.

Because of internal and external pressure, the entire Arabian peninsula is vulnerable, especially Saudi Arabia. Jordan won't threaten in the long run after dissolution. "There is no chance that (it) will continue to exist in its present structure for a long time." Thus, Israel's policy should be transferring Jordanian power to Palestinians, hastened by Occupied Territory emigration, resulting in "Arabs to Jordan and the Jews to the areas west of the river. Genuine coexistence and peace will reign over the land only when Arabs understand that without Jewish rule between Jordan and the sea they will have neither existence nor security." Jordan is their only alternative, giving Israel more land cleansed of Arabs.

Otherwise,

"we shall cease to exist within any borders. Judea, Samaria (the West Bank and Jerusalem) and the Galilee are our sole guarantee for national existence....Rebalancing the country demographically, strategically and economically is the highest and most central aim today."

Changes transforming world Jewry make Israel the only existential option. "Our existence is certain." Nothing can "remove us (either) forcefully or by treachery (Sadat's method)."

Three important points are stressed:

First, Israel's military alone can't occupy more territory. The solution - rule by "Haddad forces" or "Village Associations," controllable local authorities, dissociated from their populations, Israeli garrisons strategically positioned between the mini states. Making it feasible depends on keeping Arabs divided.

Second, Yinon's plan was published to win over Israeli society, especially its elites able to influence others. Problems about Arabs awareness are minimal, given their divisions and inability to understand Israeli society.

Neither is America of concern, its pro-Israeli media assumes "good intentions" regardless of policy, and the Israeli Lobby does the rest. As a result, Israel operates freely "because the world wants to close its eyes."

In 1985, Israeli President and Labor Party leader Chaim Herzog echoed the views of hardline extremists like Sharon and Netanyahu:

"We are certainly not willing to make partners of the Palestinians in any way in a land that was holy to our people for thousands of years. There can be no partner with the Jews of this land," leaving resettlement (expulsion) the only option, a favored policy today, the same one revisionist leader Ze've Jabotinsky advocated, including in a 1939 letter, saying:

"There is no choice: The Arabs must make room for the Jews in Eretz Israel. It was possible to transfer the Baltic peoples, it is also possible to move the Palestinian Arabs." Most was accomplished in Israel's 1948 "War of Independence," again in the 1967 Six Day War. Thereafter it continued, supported and funded by Israel's Washington paymaster/partner in crime. As a result, Palestinians have been on their own resisting for over six decades, their courage and determination unreported in the West, but global support builds and offers hope.

* Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon.

The Zionist Plan for the Middle East

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It seems that football fans might be able to do what Arab governments have miserably failed to achieve or even address: lifting the illegal inhuman Israeli siege off Gaza!

Players line up before a football match on the first day of Gaza's version of the World Cup, in Gaza City, on May 2, 2010. Photo Xinhua/Wissam Nassar

Get involved!

Efforts like the Gaza World Cup, as cliché as it sounds, are only as strong as those who choose to seize the opportunity and get involved. Some have joined because they live in Gaza and know what the siege is doing to the long-term hope for peace. Yet so have many foreigners, as, whether they live in Gaza or have never been here, they can identify with what it feels like to suffer. Many others of varying religions are getting involved because they believe that faith should steer us towards respecting each other's humanity, not discourage it. And finally, a lot of newcomers to the Middle East are taking an interest simply because they're dumbfounded that none of the traditional powers have made any progress in the region over the last 60 years - and they want to help try something new - anything new - in the hopes that we can finally start to change direction in the Middle East. So for whatever reasons you're interested in supporting the Gaza World Cup, your involvement is warmly welcomed.

BRIDGING THE GLOBAL GAPS

Forming the core of the Gaza World Cup will be a partnership between 16 professional football clubs in Gaza and an equal number of foreigner amateurs residing in Gaza for various humanitarian purposes. The 16 Gazan clubs include each of the 14 first-level teams, and, if needed, the two highest ranking second-level teams. The availability of these 352 players will provide the backbone to ensure that the tournament is successful in both the caliber of play, as well as ensuring the event retains a strong local character.

Balancing out the teams begins with 250 international humanitarian workers and journalists from primarily Western countries currently residing in Gaza. Non-regional internationals currently based in Gaza and participating in the tournament include citizens of Britain, France, Holland, Ireland, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States. Including these 125 potential players, along with encouraging outside journalists and other professionals with travel coordination residing abroad to journey to Gaza specifically to participate, the non-Arab participation goal is 100 players.

Regional participation will add a further layer of international solidarity to the tournament. With considerable numbers of Algerians, Egyptians, Jordanians, and Turks living in Gaza, a further six teams will play alongside the Palestinian team. The goal for regional participation, beyond Gazans, is 100 players.

In total, 400 players comprising 16 teams are planned, with 200 holding Palestinian nationality and 200 from other countries. And while a non-political event, it should be noted that a wide variety of Palestinian political factions are expected to join together and contribute players within the Palestinian half, promoting national unity over their own political agendas.

The teams involved are Algeria, Egypt, England, France, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Palestine, Russia, Serbia, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, and the USA.

COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT

Beyond direct player participation, the tournament will also extensively involve and unite many unique communities within the larger Gazan society. First off, each of the 15 matches will be free and open to the public, welcoming both men and women. And while all events will be confined to Gaza City for logistical reasons, it is widely believed that each of the 16 club teams from throughout Gaza will attract their own local fan base to the events.

A second goal of the tournament is to highlight the resilient strength and culture of Gaza, with a special focus on partnering art and technology with sport. Each aspect of the project, from designing logos, to billboards, to each of the 16 "national" jerseys, will be supported by local artists and graphic designers. And the winning team members will find themselves honored by a trophy hand-crafted from the reclaimed iron of Gazan wreckage, as well as intentionally celebrated by the skilled local tradition of urban graffiti. Each step will then subsequently be featured technologically, with a considerable effort to promote all aspects of the tournament online and in the media, supported extensively behind the scenes by local university students and recent technological graduates.

http://gazaworldcup.org/

Players of Palestine and a foreign team compete during the opening football match on the first day of Gazas version of the World Cup, in Gaza City, on May 2, 2010. The Gaza Strip kicked off its own version of the World Cup with teams of Palestinian footballers and foreigners representing foreign countries on Sunday. The trophy is made out of twisted metal and rubble from last year war with Israel. Photo Xinhua/Wissam Nassar

Related posts:

• Gaza Freedom March Set for Minneapolis on Dec. 30 and for Gaza on Dec. 31
• The World’s Betrayal of Gaza
• 15th birthday of the World Wide Web

Changes in Israeli Military Orders Effective Today Target Palestinians

By Yousef Munayyer* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Background

The West Bank has been occupied by Israel since 1967. Israel maintains authoritative jurisdiction over the happenings in the West Bank via its military apparatus. Decisions governing the simplest aspects of Palestinian life, from traveling from one area to another to building a home, ultimately lie under the jurisdiction of the Israeli Military's High Command in the West Bank. In October of 2009, amendments were made to military orders governing the legitimate presence of persons in Occupied Palestinian Territory. The changes, effective six months after the signing of the orders, are beginning to take effect. It is important to note that Palestinians are not in control of the Palestinian population registry. Israel maintains strict control over this database and continues to do so. It is because of this that Israeli authorities can determine the residencies of Palestinians and only through the Israelis can the Palestinian Authority issue identification documents.

Changes in Israeli Military Orders

The main changes come as amendments to the Israeli Military Order No. 329 titled "Order Regarding Prevention of Infiltration" (PDF) which was signed into effect two years after the occupation began in 1969. This order defines so-called "infiltrators" as persons who "enter the Area knowingly and unlawfully having been present in the east bank of the Jordan, Syria, Egypt or Lebanon." In 1969, prior to peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, infiltrators as defined by this order were persons entering the West Bank from enemy states. The amendment to this order, order number 1650, signed in late 2009 changes this definition to "a person who entered the Area unlawfully following the effective date, or a person who is present in the Area and does not lawfully hold a permit." [emphasis added]

The original order also defines a "resident of the Area" as a "person whose permanent residence is in the Area." The new order eliminates this definition, apparently leaving determination of residency in the hands of military commanders.

Further, the original order states that a person that is present in the West Bank without documentation of their residency bears the burden of proving that he did not infiltrate the area. The amendment changes this language significantly and simply states that any person present in the West Bank without a document or permit is "presumed to be an infiltrator." The amendment adds that a lawful document or permit is only one that is issued by the commander of the Israeli Military in the West bank or someone acting on his behalf.

Changes have also been made to the punishments levied against those considered so-called "infiltrators". The amendments to the order now specify that deportation orders can be carried out as early as 72 hours from the issuance of the order and in some cases even sooner. Further, the Palestinians targeted for deportation will be held liable for the expenses of their deportation up to 7,500 NIS. Under the amendment, a military commander is permitted to seize monies held by the deportee to cover the expenses.

The section of the order on the sentencing of an alleged "infiltrator" was also modified. The old statute condemned an "infiltrator" to "imprisonment of fifteen years or a fine of 10,000 Israeli Lira or both". The new order seems to condemn Palestinians to imprisonment regardless of their innocence. Read closely the section below:

A. "The infiltrator shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of seven years.
B. The provisions of Subsection (A) notwithstanding, where an infiltrator has proven his entry into the area was lawful-he shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of three years"

A second amendment issued at the same time, Order No. 1649, establishes a committee to review deportation orders. However, hearings before this committee are for those held in custody in the process of deportation and the order stipulates that they be allowed a hearing before the committee no later than eight days from the issuance of the deportation order. The obvious problem which arises is that when deportation orders are executable in 72 hours, a Palestinian may be deported before they have a chance to have a hearing.

The collective effects of the changes made by the new orders yields an increased ambiguity that can be dangerously exploited to target Palestinians and others in the West Bank.

Implications for Palestinians Residing in the West Bank

The changes made to these orders may lead to sweeping changes in the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank. Effectively, this order makes every resident of the West Bank subject to treatment as an alleged "infiltrator" and prosecution/deportation under this order for simply being unable to produce identification on the spot or not having the ambiguously defined and potentially unattainable identification mentioned in the amendments.

Two particular Palestinian communities will face increased difficulties because of these changes: Palestinians with Gaza Residencies and Palestinians with East Jerusalem Residencies.

Palestinians from Gaza - Palestinians which are either born in Gaza or maintain permanent residence in Gaza but reside in the West Bank are now subject to prosecution/deportation under this new order. This is a clear violation of the Oslo Accord agreements which stipulated that Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank would be treated as one nation and also a violation of international law which treats the peoples of the West Bank and Gaza as one nation under a single occupation. While it is unclear exactly how many Palestinians from Gaza are currently living in the West Bank, it is certain that this number is in the tens of thousands and possibly higher. This number has also increased in recent years as the prosperity gap between the West Bank and Gaza widened due to an Israeli siege leading many Palestinians in the Gaza Strip who were able to come to the West Bank to do so. Aside from families which may have moved from Gaza to the West Bank, many married couples in which one spouse is a resident of Gaza will face forced separation because of the change to this order. Students who have residency in Gaza but study in the West Bank are also vulnerable to prosecution/deportation under this order. While cases like this are not new, this new order will certainly expedite separation and make legal objections far more difficult, placing an insurmountable burden of proof upon Palestinians for the "crime" of living on their land.

Palestinians with Jerusalem IDs - Another group that may face difficulties because of this order are Palestinians with Jerusalem IDs. Palestinians who reside in the territory that Israel refers to as East Jerusalem number approximately 270,000. These Palestinians have Israeli issued residency cards, which gives them a status between Palestinian Citizens of Israel and Palestinian residents of the West Bank. In an attempt to annex Jerusalem's geography without its demography, Israel permits these Palestinians residency without citizenship. Should Palestinians with Jerusalem IDs be present in the West Bank where they may have numerous family members as well as commercial ties, they too may be treated as infiltrators under this ambiguous order. It is conceivable that Palestinians with Jerusalem IDs prosecuted under this category may eventually lose their residency rights as a result of prolonged incarceration preventing the renewal of their residency.

Implications for Foreign Born Residents in the West Bank

Another category which may be targeted under the changes to this order are foreign born residents of the West Bank. People in this category are most often the spouses of native born Palestinians who reside with their families in the West Bank. A Palestinian born in Jordan, for example, who married a West Bank Palestinian will not have an Israeli issued ID proving residency in the West Bank and will therefore be subject to prosecution/ deportation under these changes.

Implications for Foreign Born visitors in West Bank

The change in definition of "infiltrator" in the old order now seems to allow for the deportation of persons who are foreign born visitors in the West Bank as "infiltrators". Citizens of foreign countries, like the United States or the United Kingdom for example, who enter into Israel without permission to be in the West Bank can be deported. While this is not expressly stated, it is the clear outcome of the sum of the policies in place. This may be part of an ongoing Israeli effort to silence dissent and crack down on international solidarity members and activists who travel to Palestinian areas to support protests and rallies often bringing with them the eyes of the outside world. The broad language in these orders basically allow the military regime that governs the occupied West Bank to arbitrarily deport or incarcerate nearly anyone present in the area.

In sum, the changes to these orders create a dangerous ambiguity with little protection for the most vulnerable under occupation: the Palestinians. Increasingly, Palestinians find themselves in the cross hairs of policies designed to force them off their land. It is important to keep in mind that in recent years, Israel's altering of residency policy in Jerusalem has led to a dramatic spike in residency revocations. It happened in the mid-1990s and it culminated in 2008 with a record high 4,800 residency revocations of Palestinians in Jerusalem. There is little doubt that Israel has both the motive and the tendency to use these types of policies as tools for ethnic cleansing. With such ambiguity in these orders, a history of ethnic cleansing and the capacity to carry out such horrific acts, the world should be very wary of what is happening in the Israeli occupied West Bank where Israel is charged under international law with the protection of the native population and not its endangerment. At a time when the United States and the International community have asked Israel to do more to restart peace negotiations, this is a clear and significant step in the opposite direction.

* Yousef Munayyer is Executive Director of the Palestine Center.

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Enforcement started TODAY against:

* Gazans living or attending school in the West Bank (WB)-many of whom fled after Hamas assumed control of Gaza
* Jordanians (most of which are of Palestinian origins) living in the WB-many of whom are married to West Bankers
* Expats working with NGOs, especially advocacy groups
* Jerusalemites working in the WB-the IOF will force them to choose their "center of life"

Some court cases may be pending in the next few days to suspend implementation of the new law, the enforcement of which will likely be at checkpoints. The number of possible expulsions ranges from 70,000–125,000.

The new military order aimed at preventing "infiltration" into the West Bank will came into force today; it puts under the sole jurisdiction of Israeli military courts those who are likely to be targeted by the new order [i.e., those whose ID cards bear home addresses in the Gaza Strip-people born in Gaza and their West Bank-born children-or those born in the West Bank or abroad who for various reasons lost their residency status and also foreign-born spouses of Palestinians].

The new order defines anyone who enters the West Bank illegally as an infiltrator, as well as "a person who is present in the area and does not lawfully hold a permit." The order takes the original 1969 definition of infiltrator to the extreme, as the term originally applied only to those illegally staying in Israel after having passed through countries then classified as enemy states-Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria...The order's language is both general and ambiguous, stipulating that the term infiltrator will also be applied to Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, citizens of countries with which Israel has friendly ties (such as the United States) and Israeli citizens, whether Arab or Jewish. All this depends on the judgment of Israel Occupation Forces commanders in the field.

Islamic Jihad, Fatah, PLO condemn new military orders
Ma'an: http://bit.ly/ceCfnO

Chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat and Fatah Central Committee leader Nabil Sha'ath issued their own condemnations of the orders, with Erekat calling them "an assault on ordinary Palestinians, and an affront to the most fundamental principles of human rights," and the tools of an "apartheid state."

IDF order will enable mass deportation from West Bank
By Amira Hass: http://bit.ly/cE13SF

A new military order aimed at preventing infiltration will come into force this week, enabling the deportation of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank, or their indictment on charges carrying prison terms of up to seven years.

When the order comes into effect, tens of thousands of Palestinians will automatically become criminal offenders liable to be severely punished.

Given the security authorities' actions over the past decade, the first Palestinians likely to be targeted under the new rules will be those whose ID cards bear home addresses in the Gaza Strip - people born in Gaza and their West Bank-born children - or those born in the West Bank or abroad who for various reasons lost their residency status. Also likely to be targeted are foreign-born spouses of Palestinians.

Until now, Israeli civil courts have occasionally prevented the expulsion of these three groups from the West Bank. The new order, however, puts them under the sole jurisdiction of Israeli military courts.

The new order defines anyone who enters the West Bank illegally as an infiltrator, as well as "a person who is present in the area and does not lawfully hold a permit." The order takes the original 1969 definition of infiltrator to the extreme, as the term originally applied only to those illegally staying in Israel after having passed through countries then classified as enemy states - Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon and Syria.

The order's language is both general and ambiguous, stipulating that the term infiltrator will also be applied to Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, citizens of countries with which Israel has friendly ties (such as the United States) and Israeli citizens, whether Arab or Jewish. All this depends on the judgment of Israel Defense Forces commanders in the field.

The Hamoked Center for the Defense of the Individual was the first Israeli human rights to issue warnings against the order, signed six months ago by then-commander of IDF forces in Judea and Samaria Area Gadi Shamni.

Two weeks ago, Hamoked director Dalia Kerstein sent GOC Central Command Avi Mizrahi a request to delay the order, given "the dramatic change it causes in relation to the human rights of a tremendous number of people."

According to the provisions, "a person is presumed to be an infiltrator if he is present in the area without a document or permit which attest to his lawful presence in the area without reasonable justification." Such documentation, it says, must be "issued by the commander of IDF forces in the Judea and Samaria area or someone acting on his behalf."

The instructions, however, are unclear over whether the permits referred to are those currently in force, or also refer to new permits that military commanders might issue in the future. The provision are also unclear about the status of bearers of West Bank residency cards, and disregards the existence of the Palestinian Authority and the agreements Israel signed with it and the PLO.

The order stipulates that if a commander discovers that an infiltrator has recently entered a given area, he "may order his deportation before 72 hours elapse from the time he is served the written deportation order, provided the infiltrator is deported to the country or area from whence he infiltrated."

The order also allows for criminal proceedings against suspected infiltrators that could produce sentences of up to seven years. Individuals able to prove that they entered the West Bank legally but without permission to remain there will also be tried, on charges carrying a maximum sentence of three years. (According to current Israeli law, illegal residents typically receive one-year sentences.)

The new provision also allow the IDF commander in the area to require that the infiltrator pay for the cost of his own detention, custody and expulsion, up to a total of NIS 7,500.

The fear that Palestinians with Gaza addresses will be the first to be targeted by this order is based on measures that Israel has taken in recent years to curtail their right to live, work, study or even visit the West Bank. These measures violated the Oslo Accords.

According to a decision by the West Bank commander that was not backed by military legislation, since 2007, Palestinians with Gaza addresses must request a permit to stay in the West Bank. Since 2000, they have been defined as illegal sojourners if they have Gaza addresses, as if they were citizens of a foreign state. Many of them have been deported to Gaza, including those born in the West Bank.

Currently, Palestinians need special permits to enter areas near the separation fence, even if their homes are there, and Palestinians have long been barred from the Jordan Valley without special authorization. Until 2009, East Jerusalemites needed permission to enter Area A, territory under full PA control.

Another group expected to be particularly harmed by the new rules are Palestinians who moved to the West Bank under family reunification provisions, which Israel stopped granting for several years.

In 2007, amid a number of Hamoked petitions and as a goodwill gesture to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, tens of thousands of people received Palestinian residency cards. The PA distributed the cards, but Israel had exclusive control over who could receive them. Thousands of Palestinians, however, remained classified as "illegal sojourners," including many who are not citizens of any other country.

The new order is the latest step by the Israeli government in recent years to require permits that limit the freedom of movement and residency previously conferred by Palestinian ID cards. The new regulations are particularly sweeping, allowing for criminal measures and the mass expulsion of people from their homes.

The IDF Spokesman's Office said in response, "The amendments to the order on preventing infiltration, signed by GOC Central Command, were issued as part of a series of manifests, orders and appointments in Judea and Samaria, in Hebrew and Arabic as required, and will be posted in the offices of the Civil Administration and military courts' defense attorneys in Judea and Samaria. The IDF is ready to implement the order, which is not intended to apply to Israelis, but to illegal sojourners in Judea and Samaria."

TAKE ACTION:

Phone the White House to say this order will destroy any chances for peace and prevent charitable workers, teachers, and others from doing their jobs. (While you are at it, insist on a nuclear free Middle East-including Israel.) 202-456-1414 or 202-456-1111

Phone the U.S. State Department Public Information Line: 202-647-6575 ext 1

Phone the Israeli Embassy: 202-364-5500

Phone the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs: 011-972-2530-3111

Source: Washington Report

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A quick survey in Amman reveals some exciting but (not)surprising strong opinions on subjects such as Palestine, Israel, Iraq, Water, Oil, Economy, Nuclear Energy, Tourism, Honour Killing, Women and Tribal System.

Part 1/2:

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvWEvCl2iVA

Part 2/2:

Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocGz-EUt8Mo

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By Haitham Sabbah

Garment Factory In Jordan. Photo: Yahya Qawasmi, Al Tajamouat Industrial City

As mentioned here, the US Department of Labor released their long-awaited report (PDF) on goods produced by "Child Labor" and "Forced Labor".

The list is a huge boon for consumers who want to choose slave-free products. At least one can decisively take action to prevent slavery in the production of consumer goods by holding companies and countries accountable for the slavery they use in making the goods we buy.

On the other hand, I was surprised to see Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon among the list of countries who use Child Labor and Forced Labor in making some goods that we buy.

The list of good per country is as follows:

Egypt: Cotton and Stones (limestone) -- both Child Labor
Jordan: Garments -- Forced Labor
Lebanon: Tobacco -- Child Labor

Under international labor standards, Child Labor and Forced Labor are defined as:

"Child Labor" under international standards means all work performed by a person below the age of 15. It also includes all work performed by a person below the age of 18 in the following practices:

1. all forms of slavery or practices similar to slavery, such as the sale or trafficking of children, debt bondage and serfdom, or forced or compulsory labor, including forced or compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict;
2. the use, procuring, or offering of a child for prostitution, for the production of pornography or for pornographic purposes;
3. the use, procuring, or offering of a child for illicit activities in particular for the production and trafficking of drugs; and
4. work which, by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety, or morals of children.
The work referred to in subparagraph (4) is determined by the laws, regulations, or competent authority of the country involved.

"Forced Labor" under international standards means all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty for its non-performance and for which the worker does not offer himself voluntarily, and includes indentured labor. "Forced Labor" includes work provided or obtained by force, fraud, or coercion, including:

1. by threats of serious harm to, or physical restraint against any person;
2. by means of any scheme, plan, or pattern intended to cause the person to believe that, if the person did not perform such labor or services, that person or another person would suffer serious harm or physical restraint; or
3. by means of the abuse or threatened abuse of law or the legal process.

This even made me more worried. I can understand the "Child Labor" in some areas due to extreme poverty, although this can't serve as an excuse for child labor, but "Forced Labor" and having that in JORDAN, it sounds like a stereotypical Hollywood movie about Arabs.

While I tend to doubt most (if not all) reports by official US agencies because of their hidden agendas, which are usually written carefully to meet certain objectives, which at the very least can be described as "blackmailing" governments and countries, however, I also believe that "there is no smoke without fire".

Now some facts. Garment factories in Jordan are many and well known to have a good number of laborers working in them. Most products and goods are made for export to the US and European markets. However, what most non-Jordanians don't know is that this industry has grown rapidly after the peace agreement between Jordan and Israel. I don't know the exact number of these factories around Jordan, but I know for sure that Israeli businessmen own and run most of them. The reason why Israelis opened these factories in Jordan is the "Cheap Labor", which any businessman will be hunting for around the world. But to turn this "cheap labor" to "forced labor" is a dangerous factor if it is true.

Now this sounds conflicting. Is it the Israeli-owned garment factories in Jordan which flagged Jordan to be listed in this report, or the few other Jordanian-owned factories, or both? And if it is the Israeli factories, should we believe that the report is so unbiased to list Jordan while they know that the factories are run with Israeli money? Or is it a typographical mistake by the agent who wrote the report and missed this part intentionally or due to ignorance? I personally tend to believe the last one.

In Jordan, we got used to accepting the term "Cheap Labor", but to turn that to something worse than slavery and making it "Forced Labor"? This is the last thing one can imagine to hear. But look for the cause...

I hope I'm wrong, but I also hope this opens door for investigations to get to the bottom of it and I'm sure Jordan will not accept to be included in this shameful list due to a crime done on its soil by inhuman businessmen such as the Israeli Zionist Jews. I know this will not be easy, but I'm also sure Jordan and Jordanians will not accept that their people (and other nationalities) work in such conditions, which is worse than slavery.

Interested investigators can start with the list of references at the end of the report (page 118-119) which can be downloaded from here (PDF).

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At last, Palestinians now have a new way to express their national pride - through soccer.
The Palestinian team has existed for a decade, but until today the Palestinian squad played its "home games" in Arab countries, including Jordan and Qatar, although Palestine has been a FIFA member since 1998. The reason is simple: for years it has been denied a home ground and it was forced to train and play overseas due to Israeli occupation. Today is no different with Israel still occupying the Palestinian territories, however, as a form of resistance, Palestine’s football team decided to makes history with its first ever international game at home. Palestine - taking on Jordan in their first home game - will be the only team now with a ground, but without a country.

The Palestinian national football team prays before the start of a friendly football match against Jordan at the newly established stadium in the West Bank town of al-Ram, on the outskirts of Jerusalem on October 26, 2008. FIFA President Sepp Blatter was in the West Bank to attend the first Palestinian national soccer team match played on home soil. Palestine has been affiliated to FIFA since 1998 even though still under Israeli occupation.

But that's not the end of the dream. Although thousands watched the friendly game against Jordan, and the crowd roared as the Palestinians scored several minutes after kickoff (match result at bottom), however problems are still haunting sports in Palestine.

Professional players are not the only problem the team is facing (except for Robert Bishara, who plays for Palestine in Chile), Israel and occupation remains a nightmare. While they say that sport unites people, Israel has chosen to separate them. The Palestinian team includes players from Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, however, several players are unable to join team mates for training, let alone matches, because they are barred from traveling freely between Gaza and the West Bank by Israel. In fact for today's match the team's captain, Saeb Jundiyeh, was not allowed to travel to the West Bank and was forced to miss a historical moment. Another example is the World Cup, where the Palestine team could not travel to play for qualification matches in Singapore because many of its players and officials were banned from traveling by Israel.

Not to forget another powerful symbol of the ongoing problems the team faces traveling to games is the new stadium itself, which is only yards from a stretch of Israel's apartheid wall. The new stadium is at al-Ram near occupied Jerusalem.

Anyway, this is a historical day and we should build upon it. As Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said, we urge more foreign teams to play in the occupied Palestinian territories. "This is a sign of solidarity, it's a message of solidarity with the Palestinian people during a time of hardship.”

Match result: 1 Palestine - 1 Jordan

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