Madison-Rafah Journal

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008
7:30 pm
Pyle Center, UW Campus

Amira Hass is a world-renowned Israeli journalist, and the only one who actually lives among the Palestinians that she reports on. She is a courageous and articulate voice on the Israeli occupation and oppression of the Palestinians.

Hass covers Palestinian affairs for the Israeli daily Haaretz. She is the author of Drinking the Sea at Gaza and Reporting from Ramallah. Known for her honest and often brutal portrayals of the impact of Israeli occupation on the lives of ordinary Palestinians, she received the 1999 International World Press Freedom Award in recognition of her work in the Gaza Strip. She gave this talk as part of the "Reporting the Middle East" lecture series at UW-Madison in October 2003.

Hass will also be a guest on A Public Affair on Friday, April 4th from noon to 1:00 p.m. on WORT 89.9 FM with host Judith Siers-Poisson.

Sponsored by the UW Middle East Studies Program. Co-sponsors include the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project and Playgrounds for Palestine — Madison.

Thursday, April 3rd, 2008
7:30 pm
Pyle Center, UW Campus

Amira Hass is a world-renowned Israeli journalist, and the only one who actually lives among the Palestinians that she reports on. She is a courageous and articulate voice on the Israeli occupation and oppression of the Palestinians.

Hass covers Palestinian affairs for the Israeli daily Haaretz. She is the author of Drinking the Sea at Gaza and Reporting from Ramallah. Known for her honest and often brutal portrayals of the impact of Israeli occupation on the lives of ordinary Palestinians, she received the 1999 International World Press Freedom Award in recognition of her work in the Gaza Strip. She gave this talk as part of the "Reporting the Middle East" lecture series at UW-Madison in October 2003.

Hass will also be a guest on A Public Affair on Friday, April 4th from noon to 1:00 p.m. on WORT 89.9 FM with host Judith Siers-Poisson.

Sponsored by the UW Middle East Studies Program. Co-sponsors include the Madison-Rafah Sister City Project and Playgrounds for Palestine — Madison.

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Amira Hass, 13 Mar 2008

Senior Palestinian Authority officials can justifiably say that settlement construction continues despite everyone's protests and condemnations - not only theirs. Europe is protesting, Peace Now is protesting, the United Nations is protesting and even Condoleezza Rice protests occasionally, not to mention Israel's literary elite.

The settlements continue to expand, along with the number of roads closed to Palestinians.

PA officials will say that the antithetical tactics to negotiations and protests - the Qassam rockets, guerrilla operations and suicide attacks - have not helped matters. In fact, they have only provided Israel with more excuses to confiscate land.

The evacuation of the settlements in the Gaza Strip, it should be said again, was a brilliant move by Israel to speed up the political separation between the West Bank and Gaza; it all the while masqueraded as "the beginning of the pullout."

(Read on …)

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Amira Hass, 07 Nov 2007

Alan Johnston, the BBC corresponded kidnapped in Gaza, related in an interview that at a relatively early stage, he started suffering from all kinds of aches because of the water he drank. This was the same water that the kidnappers drank, but Johnston's unaccustomed body sent warning signals: This is not water that is fit for drinking. And this is the water that reaches most of the taps in the Gaza Strip. Salty, in a few places brackish to contaminated, with an oily consistency. That is clearly felt when bathing.

The reason is an ancient one: overpumping because Gaza must make do with the waters from its aquifer alone. It is as if we were to say to the residents of Be'er Sheva: make do with the water that flows nearby. The water sources in the rest of the country are not for you.

Over the last few years, there have been some improvised private and public solutions. Private water purification plants in homes and commercial companies that sell purified water.

The municipalities, for their part, set up large brackish water desalination facilities and several central taps. Thousands of people go there daily to fill up jerry-cans with water that will not taste like it came from a puddle and will not cause diarrhea, infections, kidney problems and who knows what else.

(Read on …)

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Amira Hass, 14 June 2007

Fifth column, traitors, collaborators - this is what Hamas spokesmen call those whom they hold responsible for the civil war in the Gaza Strip. They point to a "treacherous stream in the Fatah movement," warning that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is "incapable of taking control of it." They are referring to Mohammed Dahlan and his associates.

Abbas' associates have a similar argument: A subversive stream in Hamas is revolting against the PA's legitimate institutions, they say.

Each side accuses the other's "treacherous stream" of being the puppet of foreign powers that dictate its actions. Iran and Islamic fundamentalists are cited as the influence driving Hamas, while the United States and Israel are said to be behind Fatah.

Each side is accusing the other of a half-overt plot. Hamas says Fatah tried to sabotage the elected Hamas government, and then the Palestinian unity government. Fatah says Hamas is holding on to its control in the Gaza Strip, and ignoring the acute economic, social and political deterioration this has caused, in order to take over the PLO.

(Read on …)

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Amira Hass, 31 May 2007

The air is one escape route from the roadblocks and the separation regime that Israel imposes on the Palestinians. But Israel catches up with them even in the air. Israel does not allocate cellular frequencies to the Palestinians that answer their modern technological, economic, social and personal needs. More precisely, Israel refuses to coordinate with the Palestinians so they can use the cellcom frequencies they should have according to the International Telecommunications Union.

The Communications Ministry claims there is no coordination because we are not speaking to the Hamas government. A convenient excuse, but flawed, because even before the Hamas government arose, Palestinian requests to coordinate additional frequencies went unanswered. The Palestinian cellphone company Jawwal received the frequencies it should have had only in 1999, two years after it was founded. In March this year, Jawwal got a competitor: Al-Wataniya. The Kuwaiti company Wataniya International won the Palestinian Authority tender at the end of 2006. Ownership is to be shared between the international company, the Palestinian Investment Fund (PIF) and the public. A professional British management team was appointed, 500 jobs were promised, but no frequencies were allocated.

The importance of the air is reflected in the following data: Jawwal has about 800,000 subscribers, about 60 percent of the Palestinian cellphone market. Economists estimate that Israeli companies have about a 40-percent share of the market. The approximately 4 million Palestinians have more than 1.3 million cellphones. Some people have two - a Palestinian one and an Israeli one. The Palestinians come in third in the Arab world in the number of people connected to the fast data transmission system ADSL. They are also frequent users of video-conferencing services at their parliament - the Palestinian Legislative Council - at government ministries and at private businesses.

That is how they overcome the severing of Gaza from the West Bank and the roadblocks between Jenin and Ramallah. Families who live a few dozen kilometers apart and who have not seen each other for five years or more have learned how to make do with phones, Skype, and e-mails. No wonder Paltel (the Palestinian telecoms company, of which Jawwal is a subsidiary) is the most profitable Palestinian firm.

(Read on …)

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Amira Hass, 18 May 2007

Every few weeks some international body issues a report directly linking the policy of restricted movement imposed by Israel on the occupied territories and the state of economic deterioration there. The report is often accompanied by a warning that the situation cannot persist. Last week it was the turn of the World Bank to issue a cautionary report, entitled "Movement and Access Restrictions in the West Bank: Uncertainty and Inefficiency in the Palestinian Economy."

Dozens of international researchers and economic attaches are busy researching the Palestinians' economic deterioration, and many more similar reports will yet be written, as long as the countries that finance them settle for words and do not take steps to halt the policy of social and economic destruction that Israel is imposing on the Palestinians. The newest report is comprehensive, but there is nothing new in it and it stresses what has been written and said for years: Israel is inflicting enormous damage on the Palestinian economy and on its private sector.

In 2002, following the release of a report on the impact of Israel's closure policy, the previous World Bank representative in the occupied territories, Nigel Roberts, praised the Palestinian society's endurance and suggested that any Western society would have collapsed had it undergone an economic disaster similar to that experienced in the territories. Today, five years after that report's warnings and pleas, Palestinian society's collapse is more worrying than ever - primarily in the Gaza Strip and Nablus, which not coincidentally are the areas facing the harshest Israeli siege.

And why should Israel take into consideration the warnings of the World Bank when they have no teeth? It is not enough to mention the apartheid roads in connection with the expansion of the settlements, or the fact that around 50 percent of West Bank territory is not accessible to Palestinians. It is not enough to count the trucks at the Karni crossing that do not enter and exit, or to calculate the small number of days when the Rafah terminal is open. It is not enough to adorn the reports with scholarly charts presenting the Palestinian territories as a perpetual disaster area.

(Read on …)