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Walled Off Town Of Bethlehem's Struggles Continue

A normally empty Manger Square was filled beyond capacity on Christmas day as thousands of Palestinians, dignitaries and foreigners descended on the little town of Bethlehem to welcome Michel Sabah the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem.

The Patriarch's yearly visit was meant to kick off Christmas festivities but this year, as in others, the spirit of the festive season is uniquely intertwined with the fate of all Palestinians, who say the city has suffered from years of Israeli occupation.

And like previous years, despite a boost in tourism, celebrations in Bethlehem have been marred by a poor economic and security situation.

While Bethlehem is the traditional birthplace of Jesus Christ atop a hill just 10km away from Jerusalem, the site of Christ's crucifixion, a 10-meter high concrete wall put up by Israel and several military checkpoints keep the two cities very much apart.

Fairy tale Christmas

It is such barriers and restrictions borne of Israeli occupation that has made Christmas bittersweet for Palestinians.

Maxim Sansour, founding board member of Open Bethlehem, an international campaign to address the state of emergency facing Bethlehem, said the city's greatest problems largely go unaddressed every Christmas.

He said: "Christmas comes and goes, but our problems remain."

Issues of growing Israeli settlements which lie immediately on the border of Bethlehem and demolitions of Palestinian homes on the outskirts of the city have made life difficult for Palestinians.

Sansour says Bethlehem will always continue to struggle as long as such Palestinian issues of statehood, economic viability and sustenance under occupation remain unaddressed.

Sansour also believes that visitors and pilgrims who do come show support but at the same time many are also in Bethlehem as part of "the fairy-tale story of Christmas".

Father Garret Edmonds, a Franciscan monk from California who works with pilgrim groups in Palestine and is spending his fifth Christmas in Bethlehem, said: "There are moments of hope but then everything returns to the status quo. It goes on and off like this all the time."

Father Edmonds also highlighted the increasing erosion of the Church and the increasing number of Christians choosing to emigrate from in Palestine.

"It's important to have a viable, living Church, but if things continue the way they are in 25 years there might not be a living church. Bethlehem could become one giant museum," he said.

Life under occupation

In 2006, Open Bethlehem released the results of a questionnaire which examined the reasons behind the high rate of Christian emigration from Bethlehem.

Of 2000 Palestinians surveyed in Bethlehem, 76 per cent said Israeli occupation was the main reason for leaving.

Sixteen per cent of the Christians in the city said they are in the process of emigrating, compared to eight per cent of the Muslims.

Many Palestinians also said that foreigners and pilgrims coming to Bethlehem do not experience daily life under occupation.

Palestinians who have Israeli permission to travel between Bethlehem and the West Bank say they are subjected to fingerprint and document scanning, full body searches, and long waits before they are let through.

Some are not even allowed to visit friends and family simply because they live on the wrong side of the wall or in some cases the soldier manning a checkpoint might not feel like letting them through.

Brother Jack Curran, Vice President of Development for Bethlehem University, said: "I have colleagues who haven't been to Jerusalem in years and I can come and go as freely as I want. I feel ashamed of the privilege I have and it's easy to take for granted, I always have to remember that."

"But it is also a privilege that the Palestinians deserve."

Brother Curran, a member of the Lasallian order, felt that Christmas in Bethlehem is not truly reflected because of what he says are the injustices being heaped upon the Palestinians daily.

"The story can't be told without looking seriously at these things," he said.

"Without foreigners," Curran explained, "it would also be a lot worse. We must act as the witnesses and truth tellers, but not just once a year."

Sustain support

Christmas generates a great deal of positive media attention for both Bethlehem and Palestine every year. It is a chance for the world to show the Palestinians some sympathy and solidarity but Sansour said that it never carries on.

"We love good feelings and the Palestinian people deeply appreciate the show of support, but it must be a sustained kind of support."

Bethlehem is a small town; according to the Palestinian Central bureau of Statistics its population in 2006 stood just shy of 30000, and has a very small and localized economy which is dominated by the tourist industry.

According to Open Bethlehem, tourism accounts for 65 per cent of Bethlehem's economy. In November, 80,000 visitors arrived in the city. This was boosted by a further 20,000 in the days leading to Christmas.

Sansour said that while tourism represents a significant portion of Bethlehem's economy many of the tourist operators are Israeli which means that most of the tourists who do come stay for only a short time and promptly return to Jerusalem.

"They come here, take their Disneyland photos and drink some tea from a local shop and go back to Jerusalem," Sansour said.

"Maybe they'll stop by and buy some wood carvings from a shop where the Israeli operators get a commission, but that's about it," he added.

Christmas surge

Most of Bethlehem's local businessmen wait all year just for the Christmas season to come in hopes of boosting their incomes and providing for their families.

It's not surprising given that the poverty rate stands at 60 per cent while unemployment stands at 55 per cent, a slight increase from last year but not overly significant according to George Saadeh, Bethlehem's deputy mayor.

Abed Ibrahim, who works at a sweets shop, said: "Christmas [is] the only time of the year that anyone makes any money."

"It's good for now. But next year it will be bad again until the next Christmas. Nothing will change," he said

Ibrahim added: "Fast dollars won't solve our business problems."

Ameer Jaber, who operates a stall selling boiled corn and roasted peanuts, feels the Palestinians need the kind of media exposure they received for Christmas year-round and not just in Bethlehem, but all over Palestine.

He said: "You foreigners come and help us, but then you leave when you have your pictures and reports, but we're still here and you'll have the same story next year unless we get your help."

Israel Continues With Illegal Settlements

An Israeli building program planned for East Jerusalem is set to overshadow a meeting between Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

Thursday's summit between Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, is the first since the two agreed to renew peace talks at the US-sponsored Annapolis meeting last month.

The Jerusalem dispute has already clouded earlier meetings between negotiating teams.
Last month, Israel announced tenders for 307 new apartments in Har Homa, part of a ring of settlements built on confiscated Palestinian land in east Jerusalem.

Fighters captured

Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank, Israeli soldiers captured two senior members of the Islamic Jihad group in raids on Thursday, Palestinian security sources and witnesses said.
Israeli troops arrested Mohammad Assayda near Nablus, the Islamic Jihad said.

Assayda, who was released from Israeli jail in September, is a lecturer at al-Najah University.Samer al-Saadi, another Islamic Jihad fighter, was captured in a separate raid in a refugee camp in Jenin, a Palestinian security officer told Reuters news agency.

Demand for halt

The Palestinians are demanding that Israel halt the Har Home housing project, in line with the peace roadmap which committed Israel to freeze settlement activity.
Israel, which annexed east Jerusalem in 1967 after capturing it along with the West Bank, does not accept demands to limit its construction there.
Israel views the Har Homa building project as distinct from settlement activity because it takes place in "unified" Jerusalem, rather than in the occupied West Bank.
The distinction is not accepted by Palestinians.
Al Jazeera's Ayman Mohyeldin, reporting from east Jerusalem, said Israeli settlement construction shows no sign of slowing down.
"The Knesset later today [Thursday] is expected to vote on the 2008 budget and in that budget is approximately $25 million that will go to the building of new housing units in the illegal settlements of Maale Adumim and Har Homa."

Freeze demanded

Abu Rdeneh, an aide to Abbas, said the Palestinian leader will ask Olmert for "a clear cessation of settlement activities" at Thursday's talks.

He said joint committees would begin discussing the main issues for a peace agreement at the meeting, "but there is a need to freeze the settlement activities in order to create the appropriate atmosphere to bring progress in the peace process".

Mark Regev, an Israeli government spokesman, said that Israel is committed to trying for a peace treaty with the Palestinians in 2008, as decided at Annapolis.

"This is an ambitious goal. It will demand our tenacity, our determination and both sides coming to the table in the spirit of seriousness," he said.

But Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian negotiator, said Israel's construction plan "kills the credibility of the peace process".

Egypt meeting

Egypt also criticised the Israeli intention to build new homes in east Jerusalem at a meeting on Wednesday in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheik between Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, and Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister.

The talks focused on Israeli accusations that Egypt was not doing enough to prevent arms smuggling into Gaza, the Palestinian territory controlled by Hamas.

Barak said after the meeting that Israel and Egypt would continue to work together to resolve disagreements, but offered little evidence the sides had made progress on the issue.

Outcome at risk

Instead, Mubarak criticised the Israeli building programme as a threat to the Israeli-Palestinian process.

Suleiman Awwad, Mubarak's spokesman, said that "settlement activity will hijack the only outcome of the Annapolis conference".

Barak disagreed. "In our view, this is not part of the problem with the Palestinians," he said.

"We are not building new settlements."

Palestinians claim all of east Jerusalem as capital of a future state, while Israel claims all of the city as its capital.

Israel Kills At Least 6 During Raid Into The Gaza Strip

Israeli tanks and troops have raided the central Gaza Strip, killing at least six Palestinian fighters, hospital officials said.

Palestinian witnesses said the Israeli forces advanced nearly one kilometre into the Gaza Strip on Thursday, just east of the Maghazi refugee camp.
Hamas, which has de facto control of Gaza, said three of the men killed by the Israeli forces were from Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, its armed group.

Islamic Jihad also said three fighters from their armed wing died in the raids.
Another 20 people were wounded in the fighting, Muawiya Abu Hassanein, director of emergency services in Gaza, said.
He said that Palestinian ambulances were prevented from reaching the scene of the incident to attend to more casualties.

Rockets fired

An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed that a raid was undertaken, describing it as "a routine operation against terrorist threats".

Israel this week stepped up ground and air operations against Islamic Jihad, which has spearheaded cross-border rocket attacks from Gaza.

Hours after the Israel raid near Maghazi, three rockets were fired into the Israeli border town of Sderot, one of which landed 40m from a school, Israeli police said.

Twelve children were treated for shock, the police said.

Hamas said it fired 21 mortar bombs at Israeli border posts. There were no reports of casualties from those attacks.

Settlement Activity Endangers Mideast Talks

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Tuesday new Israeli settlement activity was posing an obstacle to revived Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts launched in the U.S. town of Annapolis last month.

Plans for new Israeli settlement building this month have drawn rare criticism from the United States, as well as the European Union, and raised fears of widening the rift in the first Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in seven years.

"I think the obstacle that hampers negotiations with the Israelis particularly concerns the construction of settlements. And we have said clearly that Israel must stop the construction and the expansion of settlements," Abbas told a news conference.

The first round of peace talks following Annapolis opened in discord last week after Palestinians demanded a halt to Israeli plans to build new homes at a settlement near Jerusalem known to Israelis as Har Homa and the Palestinians as Abu Ghneim.

One of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's closest confidants, Vice Premier Haim Ramon, told Army Radio that settlement growth was "largely limited" to the major settlement blocs, which Israel hopes to keep as part of any final peace deal with the Palestinians.

Ramon said Israel would compensate the Palestinians by giving them land in exchange for the settlement blocs, though he did not say how large these land swaps might be.

Abbas said some of Ramon's comments had not been helpful.

"What Ramon said on the continuation of the building of settlements is a declaration that does not serve the cause of peace. And if it's the official policy of Israel, I think we're heading towards real difficulties in the near future," Abbas said through a translator.

"Settlements must stop to prepare the path to proper talks, talks that can lead us to a definite solution to known questions such as Jerusalem, refugees, borders, security...to get to a real peace treaty between us and the Israelis," Abbas said.

"NO GUARANTEES"

Abbas was speaking in Paris the day after an international donors conference in the French capital raised pledges of $7.4 billion for the Palestinian Authority.

The Paris meeting was the financial sequel to the U.S.-sponsored conference in Annapolis last month, which relaunched formal peace talks with the goal of reaching an agreement on Palestinian statehood by the end of 2008.

Abbas was cautious on the likelihood of reaching the target. "We have no guarantee on this. It is possible that 2008 will be the year of peace and it's possible that it won't be."

"We have found agreement for the solution to come in 2008...If intentions are good, particularly from the Israeli side, I don't think there will be obstacles to realise this objective, the Palestinian state," he said.

Abbas said he supported a proposal French President Nicolas Sarkozy floated during the Paris conference to deploy an international force to help Palestinian security forces.

"We're very favourable to this idea launched by...Sarkozy. We hope it will soon be an international position," he said.

World Bank says that aid and investment will be pointless

International donors meeting in Paris on Monday have been asked to raise $5.6bn over the next three years in support of the Palestinian Authority.

This comes amid warnings about the deteriorating humanitarian conditions in the Palestinian territories and an irreversible unraveling of the economy unless Israel eases its restrictions on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

While Palestinian officials were optimistic that the 90 participant countries and organizations attending the one-day Conference of Donors for a Palestinian State would be generous, Israel indicated no major rethink on its closure policies.

Tzipi Livni, Israel's foreign minister, is expected to tell the donors that "we would like to support and bolster the Palestinian Authority, but not at the expense of the security of Israel", the Israeli media said on Sunday.

Samir Abdallah, the Palestinian planning minister, said that he expected "full support" for the Palestinians' $5.6bn aid request.

"I think that all signs coming from here and there tell us that we get full support," he told the AP news agency in Paris.

Promised funding

The German and the British governments have put aside a combined $780 million, while the US has raised its promised funding to $540m, pending a congressional clearance that ties its approval to guarantees on money not falling into the hands of "extremists".

The Palestinians will face a challenge convincing the West to provide aid to both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which is facing Israeli and international sanctions after Hamas took full control of the territory in June.

Meanwhile, the UN has urged donors to raise $462m to meet humanitarian needs in the Palestinian territories in 2008.

"In addition to continuing fatalities from direct Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 2007 saw a dramatic increase in deaths and injuries due to internal Palestinian violence," a statement released by about 40 UN organizations and non-governmental groups operating in the Gaza Strip and West Bank said.

"The poverty rate stands at 57 per cent and food insecurity affects 34 per cent of the population."

On Thursday, the World Bank asked Israel to reverse its closure policies, warning that increased aid money and economic investment in the Palestinian economy would be futile unless the restrictions are eased.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), on Friday, also condemned Israel, saying security concerns did not justify the severe restrictions.

"The Palestinian territories face a deep human crisis, where millions of people are denied their human dignity. Not once in a while, but every day," the ICRC said.

Israeli restrictions

Israel currently controls Gaza's borders along with its air and sea space.

In addition, more than 700 checkpoints and roadblocks cover all areas of the West Bank, preventing Palestinians' freedom of movement. All exits in and out of Gaza are blocked by Israeli forces.

So far only Britain has said it will link disbursement of aid to improved conditions on the ground, including an easing of Israeli restrictions and Palestinian government reform.

Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister and a former International Monetary Fund economist, has been actively campaigning to convince Palestinians at home and international donors that the government has established a transparent accountability system to stem mismanagement and corruption.

He says that he is doing his best not to disappoint the donors, who have seen more than $10bn in aid largely go to waste since 1993 because of mismanagement and Israeli attacks.

Fayyad has already won the support of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a three–year economic plan that includes promises to trim the oversized public payroll and reduce hundreds of millions of dollars in utility subsidies.

The IMF has said that the plan is ambitious, but achievable.

The plan being presented aims to assure donors that they are not expected to prop up the Palestinian Authority indefinitely, even though the bulk of the aid, $3.9 billion, would go towards the government's budget deficit.

The balance is to shift gradually to development projects, under a scenario that has Israel easing restrictions and enabling the Palestinian private sector to recover.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, however, would have to dispel fears among Palestinians about the Gaza Strip being excluded from getting aid.

In statements prior to their departure to Paris, Palestinian officials said they were seeking help for all Palestinians.

Jewish Right Wing Radicals Plant 'Symbolic' Outpost

Israeli right-wing activists have gathered outside the occupied West Bank's largest settlement to set up a symbolic outpost. About 200 protesters climbed a hill outside the walls of the Maale Adumim on Sunday, confronting Israeli police officers.

Israeli expansion in this area is particularly contentious due to its proximity to Jerusalem. Organizers said those attending the demonstration were sending a message to the Israeli government but that they would not stay there for any length of time. "We didn't come here to build, but to protest," Arieh Eldad, an MP from the right-wing National Union party, said. The Land of Israel Faithful, a far-right Israeli settler group which was involved in the demonstration, announced it would set up several new outposts throughout the West Bank.

Annapolis pledge

The demonstration comes three days before an Israeli and Palestinian steering committee is due to convene to oversee peace negotiations that were relaunched in the US in November. Before last month's conference in Annapolis, Maryland, Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister, pledged to dismantle settlement expansion.
More than 100 settlements already cover the occupied West Bank and are illegal under international law.

Baruch Marzel, an activist at the demonstration, told Al Jazeera's David Chater that the demonstrators would not observe any pledge by Olmert to dismantle settlements in the West Bank.
"Olmert and Abu Mazen [Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas] aren't relevant. They can't do anything, not for good or bad," he said.
"Today [Abbas] is collaborating, tomorrow he'll help Hamas and become an enemy. Olmert is so weak that he isn't able to move one outpost.
"After 35 years of building settlements, I can tell you that here - where we have built a very large Jewish neighbourhood - it will prevent a Palestinian state."

E1 corridor

Arieh Itzhaki, one of the event's organisers, said that the E1 corridor, which runs from Jerusalem to Maale Adumim through the occupied West Bank, should be retained by Israel.

"If E1 falls into Palestinian hands it will be dangerous for the future of the state of Israel," he said.

The Palestinians have said that if Israel begins construction in the mostly uninhabited E1 area and forms a link from Jerusalem to Maale Adumim, it would effectively split the West Bank in half.

If such contiguity along the corridor were to be established by Israel, the West Bank would be separated from east Jerusalem, which the PLO seeks as the capital of a future Palestinian state.

Yariv Oppenheimer, the head of Peace Now, Israel's anti-settlement group, said: "The settlers wish to isolate Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank and prevent Palestinians living in the north of the territory from travelling south in order to bury the vision of two states for two peoples."

Israel Continues To Build Illegal Settlements

Israel has approved plans to build more than 300 new homes on Jewish settlement sites in occupied east Jerusalem, drawing quick Palestinian condemnations that the move will undermine peace talks.

The new housing is to expand the Har Homa settlement, built on land Israel seized near Jerusalem 40 years ago.

Construction of new Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian territories was supposed to stop immediately as part of Israel's commitment to restarting peace efforts after the Annapolis conference.

Ahmed Qurei, the chief Palestinian negotiator, on Tuesday called it an "attempt to obstruct negotiations" after Israel's housing ministry said the government had invited construction firms to bid for contracts to build the dozens of houses and shops.

A spokesman for Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minster, insists the plan to build does not breach an undertaking at Annapolis to honour commitments under the 2003 "road map" to peace.

These include halting Jewish settlement on Arab land. But Israel does not view the site it calls Har Homa - and Palestinians call Abu Ghneim - as part of the West Bank territory Palestinians want for a state.

Saeb Erekat, a fellow Palestinian negotiator, said the administration of Mahmoud Abbas, the president, wrote to Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, and other capitals, noting that both sides agreed at Annapolis to US adjudication in disputes over the road map.

"This is a real test for all of us," he said. "We urge you to have the Israeli government revoke this order because it will be a severe blow to all those who took part in Annapolis."

A tender posted on the Israel Land Authority's website and dated December 2, invited firms to bid to build 307 "residential and/or commercial and/or hotels and/or leisure" units.

An Israeli housing ministry spokeswoman said it was part of a 20-year-old plan.

That annexation is not recognised internationally, but Israel has housed thousands of Jews in such developments, lying between East Jerusalem and Palestinian towns in the West Bank.

Abbas said at Annapolis he wanted East Jerusalem as capital of a state he hopes can be established by a treaty before Bush steps down.

Asked whether the new housing plan was a rebuff to Abbas's plans, Olmert's spokesman, Mark Regev, said: "Not at all.

"Israel makes a clear distinction between the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which falls under Israeli sovereignty."

But Nimer Hammad, an aide to Abbas, said: "It will undermine the credibility of the United States as a sponsor of the peace process and the effort of the Annapolis conference."

Bush hailed the success of the Annapolis meeting in seeing Abbas and Olmert agree to launch full peace negotiations after a seven-year stalemate. But few observers believe a deal can be clinched by the end-2008 target date embraced at the meeting.

Negotiators plan to meet in Jerusalem on December 12.

Core issues in dispute are the status of millions of Palestinian refugees, security, the borders of the new state and the fate of Jerusalem, which Israel wants, undivided, as its capital.

Addressing a sceptical domestic audience, Olmert has this week played down the importance of any deadline for ending talks and has stressed that Israel wants Abbas to make good on his road map commitments to curbing violence by Palestinian fighters before it signs any treaty.

Arafat as a hero

What is it about heroes that attracts and draws us? This week the Palestinians everywhere in their thousands remembered Yasser Arafat on his third death anniversary. Watching the milling crowds in the West Bank and elsewhere in the Occupied Territories, I ask myself this question.

Arafat was a hero and a great one at that. He was a giant among men. Abu Ammar, as he was popularly known, was the first and perhaps last Palestinian leader to unify and rally his people behind him like a rock-solid wall of resistance. It was his larger than life personality and unflinching idealism that helped turn Palestine into a global cause. Even those who did not agree with Arafat couldn’t help admire and respect him.

That includes the Islamists of Hamas, who were dead against the Oslo Peace Accord Arafat inked with the Israelis with the blessings of the Americans, but respected the late leader. It had less to do with the force of Arafat’s charismatic personality than the decisive role he had played in the Palestinian struggle. Like I wrote in an emotional full-page tribute three years ago the day Arafat died, the late leader was a Walking Palestine.

His whole life and struggle had been the chronicle of his people’s struggle during the past six decades. Few leaders, with the exception of Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, have so powerfully and eloquently epitomised their people’s aspirations and rights. If you ever saw any of those fiery speeches by Arafat on television, you’d know what I mean. It’s thanks to the sheer magnetism of his personality that people like me, growing up in distant India, identified with the Palestinian cause. Not because I happen to be a Muslim. Many of my friends who didn’t share my faith admired Arafat. He was very close to Indian leaders and boisterously embraced the late Indira Gandhi, (he called her sister) whenever he visited India, which was often.

Today, the United States, never a big supporter, seems to have dumped the Palestinian cause. Instead, it’s always and unquestioning, reaching out to Israel. But then, like someone argued, a nation has no permanent friends and foes; only permanent interests. Arafat lived dangerously all his life pursuing the impossible dream of freedom for his people, driven and chased all over the Middle East and the world, from Egypt to Lebanon and from Tunis to Ramallah. But he remained a fighter, a mujahid, to the very last — never giving up on hope and never giving in to the occupation and all that it represented. More importantly, he refused to sell and surrender what belonged to his people — their dreams, their hopes, their aspirations and their right to their land.

Even when Israel made him a prisoner in his Ramallah headquarters. Even when he was repeatedly attacked by the mighty forces of Israel and eventually became a victim of its conspiracies. In the end, Arafat died without realising his dream of an independent Palestine. But that can’t take away from him the glory of his achievements as a leader. Not only the history of Palestinian struggle will always revolve around Abu Ammar but wherever and whenever people fight for freedom, they will always look up to Arafat. Arafat’s stature as a leader is all the more augmented by the pygmies who have succeeded him. But then every pretender to the greatness can’t be great.

It is the ability of ordinary men and women to rise above their extraordinary circumstances that makes them great. They are ordinary people of flesh and blood like me and you. What makes them extraordinary is their ability to rise and respond to extraordinary situations and challenges. It’s this quality that turns ordinary people into Gandhi, Mandela, Arafat and Aung San Suu Kyi. It’s this power that enables a frail old man — or naked fakir as Churchill contemptuously called him — bring the British empire to its knees. I was very young when Mandela completed 25 years in prison, which was more than my life then on earth. It fascinated me no end then how one could spend all his life behind the bars for one’s beliefs. But then this is why Mandela is a hero. He spent a total of 27 years in the Robin Island prison. Suu Kyi has spent nearly two decades as a prisoner in her own home, cut off from her family and rest of the world.

Both Mandela and Suu Kyi need not have gone through all this. Mandela could have chosen to live in freedom by ignoring what went on around him. Suu Kyi could have gone back to UK where her husband and children lived (her husband died of cancer in 1999 and she couldn’t attend his funeral). They could have chosen to compromise with their circumstances and go with the tide, as most of us do. But then this is what distinguishes great men and women from the rest of us. They swim against the current! What adds to Mandela and Suu Kyi’s stature is the fact that both remain untouched by the bitterness and unpleasantness of it all.

After his release in 1990, Mandela not only forgave his tormentors, the ruthless apartheid regime, he went on to heal the divide between the black and white South Africans. And Suu Kyi remains the picture of hope and optimism for a new Burma despite what she has gone through. Just look at her face. God’s angels couldn’t be more serene and dignified. We all need our heroes. They appeal to our good side, persuading us a fairer and better world is possible. They offer us hope to go on when we are weighed down by our own cynicism and mundane, existential issues.

So Martin Luther King Jr was a hero when he refused to accept the indignities heaped on his people. Buddha was a hero when he dumped the kingdom he had inherited for the kingdom of heaven. Moses was a hero when he challenged the Pharaoh leading his people to the promised land. Jesus was a hero when he chose to say the truth as it is and pay the ultimate price for it. In fact, all the prophets had been heroes of their people and times. Whether they were chosen by God for their greatness or they were great because they were the chosen ones hardly matters. What matters is they left the world a better place than the one they had inherited.

This is why, I think, the greatest hero of them all was the Last Prophet. Not because I believe in him; but because he combined and epitomised all the great qualities that we so admire and love in heroes. He was a complete hero and leader of the world in every sense of the term. No other individual has influenced and changed the world in such a short time. Muhammad Bin Abdullah, peace be upon him, was born an orphan and never learned how to read and write. He was 40 when the Quran was first revealed to him.

And when he died at the age of 63, the whole of Arabia and the two great empires of the day, Persia and Rome, lay at his feet. This was the most peaceful revolution in the world and he accomplished all this within two decades. What makes the Prophet of Islam truly great is his incredibly multifaceted personality. He was a Messenger of God, philosopher, warrior, noble friend, ideal husband and father, gracious host and a great leader of men. This is why Michael Hart picked up the unlettered man from Makkah to lead his list of hundred individuals who scripted history and changed the world. As Hart says in his book: The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History. “He was the only man in history who was supremely successful on both the religious and secular levels. It is this unparalleled combination of secular and religious influence which I feel entitles Muhammad to be considered the most influential single figure in human history.”

A world without heroes would be so dull. That’s why every age gets its share of extraordinary men and women. And here’s a man who remains a hero for all times – past, present and future.

The siege of Gaza is going to lead to a violent escalation

Seumas Milne
Thursday November 1, 2007
The Guardian

There is, it seems, an unbridgeable gap between the western world's apparent recognition of the dangers of Palestinian suffering and its commitment to do anything whatever to stop it. This week the collective punishment of the people of Gaza reached a new level, as Israel began to choke off essential fuel supplies to its one and a half million people in retaliation for rockets fired by Palestinian resistance groups. A plan to cut power supplies has only been put on hold till the end of the week by the intervention of Israel's attorney general.

Both moves come on top of the existing blockade of Gaza imposed by Israel since last year's election of Hamas and the confiscation of hundreds of millions of dollars of taxes it is obliged to pass on as part of previous agreements. And instead of being restrained by the US or European Union, both have deepened the crisis by imposing their own sanctions and withdrawing aid. The result has, inevitably, been further huge increases in unemployment and poverty. But far from discouraging rocket attacks, they have risen sharply - though the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli deaths has been running at more than 30 to one, compared with four to one at the height of the intifada five years ago.

The UN's senior official in Gaza, Karen Koning-Abu Zayd, yesterday branded Israel's intensification of the Gaza siege as a violation of international law: despite its withdrawal two years ago, Israel continues to control all access to the Gaza Strip and remains the occupying power both legally and practically. Not that the situation is much better in the occupied West Bank. Despite the US and Israel's fatal backing for the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and his emergency government of a non-existent state, Israeli demolitions, land seizures, settlement expansion, assassinations, armed incursions, segregated road-building and construction of the land-grabbing separation wall continue apace in the territory where Abbas's nominal writ supposedly runs.

There are now 563 checkpoints in the West Bank, squeezing this already constricted piece of land into apartheid-style cantons, and making free movement or normal economic activity entirely impossible. All this is in contravention of international law; much of it directly violates UN security council resolutions, such as resolution 446 against Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. But, whereas the occupied people face sanctions and international isolation, the occupiers pay no penalty at all. On the contrary, they are aided and armed to the hilt by the US and its allies.

Given the speed at which Israel continues to create facts on the ground, it's no surprise that even Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, warned a few days ago that the "window for a two-state solution" could be closing. But it is of course her government that has underpinned this takeover at every stage. And having preached democracy as the salvation of the Middle East, the US and its allies demonstrated what that meant in practice when it greeted the winners of the Palestinian elections with a political and economic boycott.

Unless Hamas recognised Israel, renounced violence and signed up to agreements it had always opposed, the western powers insisted, the Palestinian electorate would be ignored. No such demands, needless to say, have been made of Israel. The US and Israel then went one step further, funding and arming a section of the defeated Fatah leadership in an attempt to overthrow Hamas's administration. When that failed, the US encouraged Abbas to impose an unconstitutional administration of his own and blocked any power-sharing with Hamas, which is the precondition for Palestinian advance.

Instead, the US is gearing up for a peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland, from which Hamas is excluded and which almost nobody believes offers any prospect of real progress towards a settlement. Its main appeal to the Bush administration is perhaps that it can be seen to be doing something about the Israel-Palestine conflict at a time when it needs to corral its Arab allies for the coming confrontation with Iran. For the Palestinians, it's maybe just as well that the Israeli government is resistant to any timetable for statehood - let alone serious negotiation on Jerusalem, refugees and final borders - as any agreement that such a weak leadership could now secure would not stand a chance of being accepted by its people.

Already, Hamas and the other non-Fatah Palestinian parties are preparing to stage their own conference in Damascus to coincide with the Annapolis jamboree. Their aim is to challenge the right of Abbas, who has never had any of the legitimacy of Yasser Arafat, to represent the Palestinian people in negotiations over its future. While they were prepared to accept him as a negotiator for a national unity government, there will be no acceptance of deals made by a figure many Palestinians now regard as simply operating under US and Israeli licence.

Nor should there be any interest in such a setup for anyone who wants to see a lasting settlement of the conflict. As in previous periods when political progress has been blocked, there are clear signs that pressures for a return to wider resistance are building up on the Palestinian side. The head of Israel's Shin Bet security service, Yuval Diskin, said on Monday that he did not expect a new intifada if Annapolis failed because the Palestinian public was "exhausted and lacks leadership". It's true that any new upsurge in violence is likely to be different from in the past. But Palestinians are also well aware that it was the first intifada that led to the Oslo agreement, for all its weaknesses, and the second intifada that triggered Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza.

Hamas has mostly held back from armed action against Israel in the past couple of years, though it has allowed attacks by others. That may be about to change. This week Israel's defence minister, Ehud Barak, declared that "every passing day brings us closer to a broad operation in Gaza", while Hamas leader Ahmad Nimr told a rally that the movement was now ready to "strike inside the heart of Israel, the occupation entity" if Israel did not stop its killings in Gaza. Hamas has a variety of options - including rocket attacks on Israeli cities from the West Bank over the much-vaunted security barrier - that could dramatically escalate the conflict. The wider international interest in a just settlement could not be more obvious.

Israel Escalates Threats To Invade Gaza

Israel has escalated threats to invade the Gaza Strip over Palestinian rocket fire after planned economic sanctions drew objections from legal experts and foreign powers.

Since occupation forces withdrew from Gaza in 2005, Israel has mounted regular raids and air strikes on the territory, but has failed to stop rocket fire over the border.

And Hamas's de facto rule of the strip since June, following infighting with rival Fatah, has only stoked calls in the Jewish state for a big military sweep.

Late on Tuesday, Israeli aircraft bombed a police station in southern Gaza, killing at least four Hamas policemen, hospital officials said.

The Israeli military confirmed its forces carried out the shelling in Abasan village, near the city of Khan Younis. An earlier air attack on the Jabalya refugee camp wounded six civilians, according to hospital sources.

Speaking to reporters earlier, Ehud Barak, Israel's defence minister, said: "Every passing day brings us closer to a broad operation in Gaza.

We are not looking forward to it [and] we would be happy if circumstances prevented it."

'Collective punishment'

Israel, which controls official Gazan border crossings, began reducing the amount of fuel pumped to Gaza this week. It also wants to reduce power supplies, but has put that on hold.

The sanctions, which were put together by Barak, prompted UN and EU delegates to urge Israel not to impose "collective punishment", illegal under international law, on Gaza's 1.5 million residents.

Israel's attorney-general also opposes cutting electricity supplies to Gaza on humanitarian grounds.

Britain said on Tuesday it was "deeply concerned" by reports that Israel had reduced Gaza's fuel supply and was considering electricity cuts, and had spoken to the Israeli government about the matter.

Makeshift Palestinian rockets have killed two Israelis this year.

Hamas has not claimed recent attacks, but Israel's military says Hamas is carrying out an arms build-up that will make it a serious fighting force.

Weighed against an invasion of Gaza is a US-organised peace conference in November between Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, who affectively only rules the occupied West Bank.

While Olmert may want calm, he is also under pressure from right-wing coalition partners to hit Hamas hard.

Haim Ramon, Israel's vice prime minister, when asked about a possible Gaza invasion, said: "The present situation will not last."

"I prefer that we use sanctions. I believe that the implementation of sanctions will be effective. But we have our doubts about it."

In the interview with Reuters news agency, he added: "If they stop sending rockets over, our need for the weapons of sanctions, or other weapons, will not be an issue."

Backlash Over Book on Policy For Israel

Backlash Over Book on Policy for Israel "The notion that pro-Israel groups 'have anything like a uniform agenda, and that U.S. policy on Israel and the Middle East is the result of their influence, is simply wrong,' George P. Shultz, a former secretary of state, says. 'This is a conspiracy theory pure and simple, and scholars at great universities should be ashamed to promulgate it.'"

Israel, U.S. formally sign new defense agreement "Israel and the United States signed Thursday a Memorandum of Understanding on the new American defense package for Israel. Under the new aid agreement, the U.S. will transfer $30 billion to Israel over 10 years, compared with $24 billion over the past decade. The aid deal signed at represents a 25 percent rise in U.S. military aid to Israel. " US and Israel agree $30bn arms deal "At a signing ceremony in Jerusalem on Thursday, Nicholas Burns, US undersecretary of state, said the US would help Israel to maintain a military advantage over its enemies." US offers Israel $30bn in military aid "The Bush administration must still receive congressional approval for the aid deals, but Mr Burns said he believed there would be little opposition in the Senate and house to the Israeli package."