Middle East

By Kim Bullimore

Last November, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that his government would be implementing a 10 month “settlement freeze” as a supposed concession to calls by US President Barack Obama for a halt to the construction of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) so as to clear the way for a resumption of “peace” talks with the Palestinian Authority.

By John Pilger, in London

The farce of the climate-change summit in Copenhagen affirmed a world war waged by the rich against most of humanity. It also illuminated a resistance growing perhaps as never before: an internationalism linking justice for the planet Earth with universal human rights, and criminal justice for those who invade and dispossess with impunity. And the best news comes from Palestine.

By Dahr Jamail

With all attention on Afghanistan as violence and US troop commitment there surges, the occupation in Iraq has received less attention in recent months than it has since the invasion of Iraq took place in March 2003. However, national elections in Iraq, originally scheduled to take place in January, but postponed until March 7, rather than possibly bringing greater stability to war-torn Iraq, now threaten to reignite a powder keg of political tensions that has been simmering for years.

By Virginia Tilley, in Cape Town

From a rumour, to a rising murmur, the proposal floated by the Palestinian Authority’s (PA) Ramallah leadership to declare Palestinian statehood unilaterally has suddenly hit centre stage. The European Union, the United States and others have rejected it as “premature”, but endorsements are coming from all directions: journalists, academics, non-governmental organisation activists, Israeli right-wing leaders (more on that later). The catalyst appears to be a final expression of disgust and simple exhaustion with the fraudulent “peace process” and the argument goes something like this: if we can’t get a state through negotiations, we will simply declare statehood and let Israel deal with the consequences. But it’s no exaggeration to propose that this idea, although well-meant by some, raises the clearest danger to the Palestinian national movement in its entire history, threatening to wall Palestinian aspirations into a political cul-de-sac from which it may never emerge. The irony is indeed that, through this maneuver, the PA is seizing — even declaring as a right — precisely the same dead-end formula that the African National Congress (ANC) fought so bitterly for decades because the ANC leadership rightly saw it as disastrous. That formula can be summed up in one word: Bantustan.It has become increasingly dangerous for the Palestinian national movement that the South African bantustans remain so dimly understood. If Palestinians know about the bantustans at all, most imagine them as territorial enclaves in which black South Africans were forced to reside yet lacked political rights and lived miserably. This partial vision is suggested by Mustafa Barghouthi’s recent comments at the Wattan Media Centre in Ramallah, when he cautioned that Israel wanted to confine the Palestinians into “bantustans” but then argued for a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood within the 1967 boundaries — although nominal “states” without genuine sovereignty are precisely what the bantustans were designed to be.

By Hamish Chitts

For the past few years, private military contractors have out numbered US troops in Afghanistan despite a doubling in the size of the US occupation under the Obama administration. There were more contractors than US troops in Iraq a year ago, but the number of contractors dropped slightly this year to 120,000 — equal to the number of US troops. These contractors often provide “logistical” support as cooks, truck drivers, in warehouse workers, etc. Even the actual “guns for hire” are not often used in offensive operations but provide bodyguards, security for embassies and private businesses and even guards for military bases.

By Howard Zinn, in Auburndale, Massachusetts

I was dismayed when I heard Barack Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize. A shock, really, to think that a president carrying on wars in two countries and launching military action in a third country (Pakistan), would be given a peace prize. But then I recalled that Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Kissinger had all received Nobel peace prizes. The Nobel Committee is famous for its superficial estimates and for its susceptibility to rhetoric and empty gestures, while ignoring blatant violations of world peace.

By Kim Bullimore

A special session of the 47-member United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on October 16 voted for a resolution calling for the adoption of the “Goldstone report” on Israel’s December-January war on Gaza. The resolution, passed by 25 to six, with 11 abstentions, also called on Israel to cease illegal settlement building in occupied East Jerusalem and to allow Palestinians unhindered access to the Aqsa mosque. As a result of the vote, the Goldstone report will go to the UN General Assembly for discussion and vote.

By Van Thanh Rudd

Ramallah Underground is using music to spread the message that Palestinians have the strength to challenge Israel’s continuing brutal occupation of Palestine. Its members are Stormtrap (producer/MC), Boikutt (producer/MC) and Aswatt (producer/DJ), and the style is a fusion of Hip Hop with electronica and traditional Arab music. The band performed on October 23 at the Melbourne International Arts Festival.

By Hamish Chitts

October 7 marks eight years since the US-led coalition of imperialist powers and their client states invaded Afghanistan. Using the shock of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington as a smokescreen, the invasion of Afghanistan was the first major step in the US rulers’ “Global War on Terror” — the official name of a sustained campaign of Pentagon and CIA operations aimed at crushing all opposition in the Third World to US political and economic dominance.

By Kim Bullimore

On September 15, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) released a report it commissioned into Israel’s war on Gaza in December-January, during which some 1400 Palestinians were killed  by the Israeli military. Thirteen Israelis also died, including four civilians. The report found that Israel had committed war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity during its three-week assault on the 1.5 million Palestinians resident in the Gaza Strip.