The news this week 10-16 February 2003:

 

the road to war

The IDF is looking forward to war with enthusiasm, according to Ha’aretz correspondent Aluf Benn. ‘There is also excitement in the IDF's planning department over the standoff between the U.S. and its NATO allies. A paper distributed to the army's upper echelons even spoke of an opportunity to remove the pro-Palestinian Europeans from the Middle East. A senior source said Saturday that the U.S. will punish the Europeans for their back-stabbing on the road to Baghdad, and will no longer ask them for input regarding Israeli concessions...But the conflict in the Security Council shows that the U.S. is having a hard time controlling the international community, and is still focused on transforming the Middle East into an area under U.S. protection, in which Israel will enjoy privileged status.’

Jeffrey Heller, reporting for Reuters, finds similar enthusiastic anticipation among the Israeli military and political establishment, but also some more cautious voices.

Meron Benvenisti delineates the near-messianic enthusiasm for war in some sectors of Israeli and US opinion, and compares it to the war fever of 1914.

A former senior State Department official on a return visit to Jerusalem expresses his scepticism and that of other Washington officials at the Administration’s drive to war.

From Beirut Rami Khoury, Executive Editor of the Daily Star, has some helpful advice for the young whizz-kids in Washington who will be drawing the new borders in the impending colonial carve-up of the Middle East.

The US-European split has even affected the Arab regimes, who can hardly be seen to be left behind by Europe in criticising the US. The demonstrations have also revitalised protest by the Arab masses.

Between two and three thousand Israeli Jews and Palestinians demonstrated in Tel Aviv against the war.

Dr Lev Grinberg of Ben Gurion University refers to figures showing Israelis evenly divided on a war fought without UN sanction, and argues that Israeli experience shows the pitfalls of pre-emptive wars.

Neve Gordon reports on a joint statement against the war by Israeli and Palestinian activists.

Uri Avinery states his view of the war, as a bid for US world domination at the expense of Europe.

A passionate and angry Robert Fisk states The Case Against War

Joseph Wilson, chargé d'affaires at the US Embassy in Baghdad during Desert Shield, was the last US diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein. He is an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC. In this article from The Nation he argues that ‘This war is not about weapons of mass destruction. The intrusive inspections are disrupting Saddam's programs, as even the Administration has acknowledged. Nor is it about terrorism. Virtually all agree war will spawn more terrorism, not less. It is not even about liberation of an oppressed people. Killing innocent Iraqi civilians in a full frontal assault is hardly the only or best way to liberate a people. The underlying objective of this war is the imposition of a Pax Americana on the region and installation of vassal regimes that will control restive populations’.

in israel

Sharon has been in secret talks with Palestinian officials. Some suspect a ruse to tempt Labour into a coalition - a view shared by Akiva Eldar in Ha’aretz, and Leslie Susser of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

From New York, Ori Nir reports in the Forward on divisions in Washington over whether to take an initiative on Palestine after the war. This he feels may explain talk of Sharon’s ‘peace initiative’.

Gideon Damet analyses Sharon’s problems in putting together a government

Labour leader Amram Mitzna set out his conditions for joining a Sharon government - conditions Sharon is still not prepared to meet.

David Kimche, former Director-General of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, argues that a US observer force in the Occupied Territories would be in Israel’s interests and would be acceped by the PA.

Akiva Eldar, in his weekly column in Ha’aretz, reports on the latest plan to expand the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem to bring in more Jews; on open admission of a war crime by IDF officers; and on secret London talks between Israeli and Palestinian doves.

Israel reacted with outrage to the ruling by Belgian courts that they did have jurisdiction to try Israelis and others for crimes against humanity. Joshua Brilliant for UPI describes Israel’s reaction as ‘livid’.

David Forman of Rabbis for Human Rights argues that Sharon should stand trial - in Israel.

Aviv Lavie reports on the discussion sparked off by the decision of a group of Israeli Palestinians to visit Auschwitz.

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel and the Palestine Red Crescent Society are petitioning the High Court to demand gas masks and kits for Palestinians, Bedouin residents of 'Unrecognized' Villages, prisoners and detainees and migrant workers.

under occupation

Four eyewitness reports, at once sobering and enraging, from international volunteers in Ramallah and Hebron.

Dolly Moore for the Washington Post, reconstructs step by step the progress of a battle in Gaza, and throws light on the disparity between Israeli and Palestinian casualties.

UNRWA’s emergency feeding programme in the West Bank and Gaza is about to run out of money.

‘Lawless thugs’; is how an Israeli soldier described the Hebron setlers. This report from the Alternative Information Centre describes how the IDF is helping them to destroy the basis of Palestinian life in Hebron.

Laura King in the Los Angeles Times, brings out the brutal reality of Israel’s illegal policy of house demolitions.

Amira Hass sets out the reasons for believing that no Israeli government has ever been genuinely in favour of a real two-state solution.

elsewhere

A call for a Palestinian state and a settlement freeze is to be debated by the top policy-making body of US Jewry.

Michael Neumann contests the view that Gandhian non-violence is the key to victory for the Palestinians; or that it ever was for anyone else.

Click here for past news roundups:

• week of 3-9 February
• week of 27 January-2 February
• week of 20-26 January
• week of 13-19 January
• week of 6-12 January
• week of 30 December-5 January
• week of 9-15 December
• week of 2-8 December
• week of 18-25 November
• week of 11-17 November
• week of 4-10 November
• week of 28 October-3 November
• week of 21-27 October
• week of 14-20 October
• week of 7-13 October.
• week of 30 September to 6 October.
• week of 23-29 September
• week of 16-22 September
• week of 5-11 August