Palestine is Still the Issue. Documentary directed by John Pilger
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Documentary directed by John Pilger regarding the Palestine / Israel conflict. This documentary has to be seen and is important in understanding the most important issue of the Middle East.
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The moment of truth has arrived, and it has to be said: Israel does not want peace. The arsenal of excuses has run out, and the chorus of Israeli rejection already rings hollow. Until recently, it was still possible to accept the Israeli refrain that "there is no partner" for peace and that "the time isn't right" to deal with our enemies. Today, the new reality before our eyes leaves no room for doubt and the tired refrain that "Israel supports peace" has been left shattered.
It's hard to determine when the breaking point occurred. Was it the absolute dismissal of the Saudi initiative? The refusal to acknowledge the Syrian initiative? Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's annual Passover interviews? The revulsion at the statements made by Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, in Damascus, alleging that Israel was ready to renew peace talks with Syria?
The world has been turned upside down and it is Israel that stands at the forefront of refusal. The policy of refusal of a select few, a vanguard of the extreme, has now become the official policy of Jerusalem. In his Passover interviews, Olmert will tell us that, "The Palestinians stand at the crossroads of a historic decision," but people stopped taking him seriously a long time ago. The historic decision is ours, and we are fleeing from this crossroads and from these initiatives as if from death itself.
Terror, used as the ultimate excuse for Israeli refusal, only helps Olmert keep reciting, ad nauseum, "If they [the Palestinians] don't change, don't fight terror and don't adhere to any of their obligations, then they will never extract themselves from their unending chaos." As though the Palestinians haven't taken measures against terrorism, as though Israel is the one to determine what their obligations are, as though Israel isn't to blame for the unending chaos Palestinians suffer under the occupation.
Israel makes a point of setting prerequisites and believes it has an exclusive right to do so. But, time and time again, Israel avoids the most basic prerequisite for any just peace - an end to the occupation. Of all the questions asked during his Passover interviews, no one bothered to ask Olmert why he didn't react with excitement to the recent Arab initiatives, without preconditions? The answer: real estate. The real estate of the settlements.
Not every day and not even in every generation do we encounter an opportunity like this. Although it's not for sure if the initiatives are completely solid and believable, or if they are based on trickery, no one has stepped up to challenge or acknowledge them. When Olmert is an elderly grandfather, what will he tell his grandchildren? That he turned over every stone in the name of peace? That there was no other choice? What will his grandchildren say?
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are suffering "devastating" humanitarian consequences as incomes plummet, debts mount and essential services face meltdown, Oxfam says in a report that calls for an immediate end to the international financial blockade of the Hamas-led government.
With poverty up by 30% in 2006 and previously unknown levels of factional violence on the streets, the Palestinian territories - occupied by Israel in the 1967 war - risk becoming "a failed state" if the punitive measures are not lifted, the charity warns.
Palestinians were already struggling to make ends meet when key donors, including the US, the EU and Canada, suspended direct aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) in April 2006. The move came in response to the victory of the Islamist movement Hamas in parliamentary elections. Israel halted the transfers of tax and customs revenue it owed to the PA shortly afterwards.
Hamas refuses to recognise Israel, to renounce violence or to accept existing peace agreements, but it has hinted recently at a more pragmatic approach and largely observed a ceasefire. Last month, in a deal brokered by Saudi Arabia, it agreed to form a national unity government under President Mahmoud Abbas, triggering new moves to ease the boycott.
The PA is now operating on a quarter of the $160m (£81m) a month it needs to finance its activities. The impact has been so severe because an estimated one million people depend on incomes paid to 160,000 government employees. Oxfam reports that 46% of Palestinians now do not have enough food to meet their needs; that the number of people in deep poverty (defined as those living on less than 50 cents a day) nearly doubled in 2006 to over one million; and that incomes of PA workers had fallen to 40% of their normal levels. A November 2006 poll of government workers showed an increase in poverty from 35% to 71%.
Salam Fayyad, the highly regarded Palestinian finance minister, said in Brussels on Wednesday that the boycott had "devastated" the Palestinian economy.
Norway has agreed to resume financial assistance to the PA , while Russia, France, and other EU governments are considering renewing transfers in order to improve the lives of Palestinians, beyond a "temporary international mechanism" designed to provide direct support to Palestinians without going through the PA.
The US and Israel have showed no sign of changing their positions despite repeated calls to accept that the blockade has proved counter-productive.
Oxfam argues that it is legitimate for donors to attach conditions to how their money is spent, but not to advance a political agenda. Aid could be suspended if money was used corruptly or to fund terrorism. "International aid should be provided impartially on the basis of need, not as a political tool to change the policies of a government," said Oxfam's international executive director, Jeremy Hobbs.
"Oxfam opposes violence against civilians and supports Israel's right to exist alongside a viable and independent Palestinian state. But suspending aid - and withholding tax revenue in violation of international agreements - is not an ethical or effective way to achieve these outcomes. And in this case, it hasn't worked. Instead, parents have been driven into debt, children taken out of classrooms and whole families deprived of access to medicine and healthcare."
Israeli Arabs are the minority that dare not speak their name.
For decades, the world's attention has dwelt on their Arab brothers and sisters who call themselves Palestinian and who live in the occupied territories or the refugee diaspora around the Middle East. But there is still a large number of Arabs who live as citizens of the Jewish state - approximately 1.4 million or 20 per cent of the overall seven million population - and it is possible to detect rumblings of their discontent.
In theory, they have exactly the same rights as Jewish Israelis. The Israeli government can point at a declaration of independence and a basic law that officially enshrines equality for all Israeli citizens, no matter their religion. But theory and reality rarely tally and you have only to pass through the terminal at Ben Gurion airport to notice how Israel's Arab population are subtly airbrushed out of the way. When the gleaming new building was opened, nobody thought to include signs in Israel's second language, Arabic.
And when you read the results of Israeli public opinion polls, it is possible to wonder how the Jewish state has any Arab citizens whatsoever. In a recent survey, more than half of those questioned said they believed a Jewish woman marrying an Arab man to be a "betrayal of the country and the Jewish people''. And 50.9 per cent agreed the state should encourage Arab Israelis to leave the country.
No wonder that fans supporting the country's league-leading soccer team, Beitar Jerusalem - the Manchester United of Israel - shout, "We hope you get cancer'' when an Israeli Arab player on the opposition team touches the ball. Beitar fans even threatened a season ticket boycott when the club considered hiring its first Israeli Arab player. While Israeli Arabs are meant to enjoy equal status, it took until this year - 59 years after the state was founded - for the first Israeli Arab Muslim to occupy a seat in cabinet.
"Arab citizens are growing as a proportion of our population, but are increasingly alienated," said Nadia Hilo, Israel's first female Arab MP, who was elected to the Knesset last year. "The discrimination is coming from the civil service and public sector in particular, where Arab Israelis find it much harder to find jobs than Jewish applicants."
"There's a definite problem of racism; there's more and more division," said Miss Hilo. "The real danger to Israel comes from inside if it does not give its Arab citizens equality and integration. This generation won't bow the head and be deferential like our parents were. They are well educated and will not tolerate discrimination."
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