Madison Rafah Journal

Nadeem, KABOBfest, June 28, 2007

A good friend of mine recently moved back to her hometown of Rafah in the Gaza Strip, Palestine in order to implement a sustainable development project that she, along with Save Gaza, designed to assist the hardest hit of Israel's illegal military occupation. Since arriving in Gaza, she's kept her friends and family updated with candid eyewitness accounts of the region's dire situation. Below is an email I received from her this morning:

Dear All,

I hope you are all well. I'm doing very well, and still glad to be here. Unfortunately I cant say the same for the people of Gaza. We're all listening to the radio and watching the news every hour (our only way of knowing what's happening in the outside world), waiting to see what Abu Mazan, Israel and the US are planning for us, and where our fate will take us.

This has become more than a prison for the people of Gaza. Its hard not to feel like animals in a zoo, where we are caged and have enough food for two weeks at a time to keep us alive, but not well or free while someone decides what to do with us. At least in a zoo, if an animal gets sick, its taken out of the zoo and taken to a hospital. Here in Gaza, God forbid you get sick or injured, hospitals are packed and one can't go to Egypt or the West Bank for medical attention. So one is at the mercy of those few people that run this gated zoo, Mr. Abbas, Israel, and the Quartet.

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A crackdown on Hamas in the West Bank has led to concerns that all religious activities and institutions like this soup kitchen in Hebron will face higher scrutiny and more difficulties. (Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times)

“Look at the irony here,” the restaurant owner said. “Abu Mazen says he rejects talks with Hamas but he sits down with Olmert. And Olmert isn’t going to give him anything! Then Hamas leaders appear on TV and say, ‘Fatah negotiated for 15 years with Israel and nothing happened. Israel didn’t give us anything for 15 years. Why now?’ “And people are listening.”

IAN FISHER, The New York Times, June 28, 2007

HAWARA, West Bank, June 26 — A new code was born here overnight. No one, it seems, belongs to Hamas in the West Bank anymore. Everyone now is an “Islamist,” a word that neatly, and maybe more safely, shears the religious from party affiliation amid the uncertainty of a Palestinian people newly divided.

“I don’t want to spend my life in jail!” a 35-year-old restaurant owner said, refusing to give his name after expressing pro-Hamas sentiments in an interview here.

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Stephen Zunes, Foreign Policy In Focus, June 26, 2007

In light of Hamas’ seizure of the Gaza Strip, it is worthwhile to understand how this radical Islamist organization came to play such a major role in Palestinian political life and how Israel and the United States contributed to making that possible.

Ironically, it was Israel which encouraged the rise of the Palestinian Islamist movement as a counter to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the secular coalition composed of Fatah and various leftist and other nationalist movements. Beginning in the early 1980s, with generous funding from the U.S.-backed family dictatorship in Saudi Arabia, the antecedents of Hamas began to emerge through the establishment of schools, health care clinics, social service organizations and other entities which stressed an ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam which up to that point had not been very common among the Palestinian population. The hope was that if people spent more time praying in mosques, they would be less prone to enlist in left-wing nationalist movements challenging the Israeli occupation.

While supporters of the secular PLO were denied their own media or right to hold political gatherings, the Israeli occupation authorities allowed radical Islamic groups to hold rallies, publish uncensored newspapers and even have their own radio station. For example, in the occupied Palestinian city of Gaza in 1981, Israeli soldiers—who had shown no hesitation in brutally suppressing peaceful pro-PLO demonstrations—stood by when a group of Islamic extremists attacked and burned a PLO-affiliated health clinic in Gaza for offering family planning services for women.

Hamas, an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya (Islamic Resistance Movement), was founded in 1987 by Sheik Ahmed Yassin, who had been freed from prison when Israel conquered the Gaza Strip 20 years earlier. Israel’s priorities in suppressing Palestinian dissent during this period were revealing: In 1988, Israel forcibly exiled Palestinian activist Mubarak Awad, a Christian pacifist who advocated the use of Gandhian-style resistance to the Israeli occupation and Israeli-Palestinian peace while allowing Sheik Yassin to circulate anti-Jewish hate literature and publicly call for the destruction of Israel by force of arms.

American policy was not much different: Up until 1993, U.S. officials in the consular office in Jerusalem met periodically with Hamas leaders while they were barred from meeting with anyone from the PLO. This policy continued despite the fact that the PLO had renounced terrorism and unilaterally recognized Israel as far back as 1988.

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Sakher Abu El Oun, Agence France Presse, 27 June 2007

Twelve Palestinians died on Wednesday as Israel launched twin offensives in the Gaza Strip, triggering the deadliest violence since Hamas fighters overran the territory 12 days ago.

The violence came amid a renewed push for peace and the naming of outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair as the special envoy of the four major powers mediating Middle East peace.

Israeli tanks and bulldozers rolled into Gaza City and the southern town of Khan Yunis in incursions launched overnight that swiftly sparked clashes with Palestinian fighters armed with guns and rocket-propelled grenades.

An air strike was called in near the Karni crossing between Gaza and Israel after gunmen were spotted approaching Israeli forces.

The army said the activity was against "terror threats" in Gaza, where Hamas fighters overran security forces loyal to Western-backed Palestinian president Abbas on June 15, effectively creating an Islamic enclave on Israel's doorstep.

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IRIN, 24 Jun 2007

CAIRO – Up to 2,500 residents of the Gaza Strip are stranded on the Egyptian side of the border crossing at Rafah and in the towns of el-Arish and Rafah in the North Sinai governorate, aid agencies say.

The border area between Egypt and the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt), which has been sealed off to media and tourists following an escalation in violence in Gaza, is continuing to host Palestinians unable either to cross to their home territory or return to Cairo. Many of the travellers are attempting to return following medical treatment in the Egyptian capital.

Rula Khalafawi, spokeswoman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in Cairo, said that around 1,000 people are stranded at the border checkpoint itself, without means to afford accommodation in the nearby towns of Rafah or el-Arish.

"They are afraid to leave the border in case it opens and also do not have the money for hotels. They are out there by themselves in the desert," Khalafawi said.

The Rafah border has been frequently closed by Israeli authorities since violence in the Gaza Strip flared in the summer of 2006. Recent factional fighting has led to the pedestrian border crossing – which is a vital link for Gazans seeking employment, medical treatment and education outside the territory – being closed since 9 June.

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Adam Entous, Reuters, 24 Jun 2007

JERUSALEM – Israel will use small border passages to bring basic supplies into the Hamas-held Gaza Strip, leaving the main Karni crossing that is the territory's economic lifeline closed for security reasons, officials said on Sunday.

Instead of reopening Karni as the United Nations and other aid groups had hoped, Israel will allow around 3,000 tonnes of emergency food and medicine to enter the Gaza Strip through the much smaller Kerem Shalom and Sufa passages five days per week.

Israel believes this amount will be enough to avert a humanitarian crisis in the impoverished coastal strip.

Some aid groups said the plan may head off a food shortage, but cautioned that the closure of Karni would cripple the moribund Gaza economy. Karni is the only functioning passage for Palestinian exports from the territory of 1.5 million people.

Oxfam International Director Jeremy Hobbs said Karni's closure could cause a health disaster by preventing companies from bringing in water treatment equipment and chemicals.

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Jeffrey Heller, Reuters, 24 Jun 2007

JERUSALEM – Israel agreed on Sunday to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's new government, a move Hamas dismissed as "bribery" to fuel tensions with Islamists controlling Gaza.

The money, some of the Palestinian tax revenues withheld by Israel since Hamas won election in 2006, is part of an initial package of benefits to bolster Abbas that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is likely to announce at a summit in Egypt on Monday.

Israel wants to isolate Hamas economically, diplomatically and militarily in the Gaza Strip, where the Islamist group seized control more than a week ago, while allowing funds to flow to Abbas's emergency administration in the West Bank.

Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of the Hamas-led government that was dismissed by Abbas, called Israel's release of the tax money "financial bribery" and "political blackmail" aimed at "deepening the crisis and divisions" between Fatah and Hamas.

Haniyeh accused Abbas, the Fatah leader, of violating Palestinian law by appointing an emergency administration after his forces were routed in Gaza.

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