Building in East Jerusalem
Haaretz today ran an excellent editorial denouncing the eviction of two Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem. It makes the very critical point about how the whole dispute over building in East Jerusalem is an exercise in skillful duplicity on the part of the new Israeli government, and is worth quoting at length:
A Palestinian woman confronted Israeli riot police as she was evicted from her home in the Sheik Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem on Sunday. Abir Sultan/European Pressphoto Agency.
...The sight of the evicted Palestinian families, who had lived in these houses for decades, paints Israel in the world's eyes as a country that maintains a cruel regime of occupation, oppresses the weak and strives to create political facts in the disputed city under the guise of the "rule of law."
But for all its importance, this international criticism is not what makes the eviction of these families completely unacceptable. A democratic state that strives for peace and justice simply has no right to uproot families who became refugees in 1948. They left homes in West Jerusalem behind them, and were subsequently granted modest accommodations by the Jordanian government. The claim that the houses in Sheikh Jarrah were purchased by Jews in the early 1900s is a double-edged sword that opens a political and legal Pandora's box.
No thinking person will be persuaded that Jews have a sweeping right to return to their homes in East Jerusalem as long as Israeli law not only bars Palestinians from returning to their homes in West Jerusalem, but even evicts them from the houses where they have lived for the last 60 years. The Israel Lands Administration's regulations do not even allow Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem to buy land and houses in many parts of the city.
So for all of the Israeli government's complaints about American racism in demanding that Israel stop building housing complexes for Jews in occupied parts of the city, there is the trump card of Israel's own actions in its regulation of housing for Palestinians in Israel and in the West Bank. (Stay tuned for my eventual critique of a memo on "talking about Israel," which is relevant to this.)
Anyone who is not totally ignorant knows that while Israeli law doesn't forbid Palestinians from inhabiting West Jerusalem (for they live there), building codes and other smokescreens create a situation where Palestinians essentially cannot buy property there, and Jews can. The situation Netanyahu described is more true in West Jerusalem than in East Jerusalem:
We cannot accept the idea that Jews will not have the right to live and purchase in all parts of Jerusalem. I can only describe to myself what would happen if someone would propose that Jews could not live in certain neighborhoods in New York, London, Paris or Rome. There would certainly be a major international outcry. Accordingly, we cannot agree to such a decree in Jerusalem.
There should be little sympathy for Netanyahu's crackpot attempts to smear critics as racist or anti-semitic, when, to quote the New York Times, "[a]s soon as the Palestinians had been forcibly removed from the houses, Jewish nationalists moved in..."
A plantation to be proud of
This is by far the funniest and most satisfying op-ed I have read in some time. Sarah Vowell writes about the Rhode Island name change ballot proposition (an idiotic idea, by the way) with a tone and style that I wish I could muster:
...On the one hand, as a person who spends a minimum of 20 minutes a week furious with President William McKinley, I feel that these, the historically minded, bleeding-heart hand-wringers leading this movement, are my people.
On the other hand, as New York City’s biggest, or perhaps only, fan of the founding of Providence Plantations, I feel compelled to stick up for its noble legacy of religious freedom.
I strongly recommend that you read the whole article on the Times site.
Searching for the elusive Beirut connection
It's hard to keep yourself connected here. The power doesn't cooperate, the internet doesn't cooperate, the traffic doesn't cooperate, and the weather doesn't cooperate. Everything fails, shuts down, sputters back to life, and then dies again.
Many things about this country don't make a lot of sense. However, like it did for the interminable Doctor Samir Geagea - former warlord and current head of the Lebanese Forces - somehow, everything works out in the end. (Obviously, I eventually found a connection.)
With that I leave you with some quotes from his gem of a (auto?)biography, found on the Lebanese Forces website:
Strong and irresistible, Samir Geagea can be compared to the majestic cedars of Lebanon that have characterized the Lebanese Mountains since Biblical times. These trees, arguably the most beautiful in the world, growing for thousands of years on the pinnacles of his hometown Besharri, are not dissimilar to his robust physique and principles. ...
Dr. Geagea, stong like cedars.
Just as straight and haughty as the great Cedars of Lebanon against storms and attacks of the elements, he too resisted the obstacles of those that tried to derail and humiliate him. Samir Geagea, a true stalwart, maintained the true vision, the right vision for his country. ...
This man, the imposing stature, with black piercing eyes, bare forehead and moustache that crosses a constantly smiling face, has a faith that can move mountains. Able and determined, preferring occasionally to compromise to avoid the worst and achieve a positive result, Samir Geagea has never confused strategy with tactics. Before all political steps, he analyses local, regional and international factors with perspicacity and intelligence. He consults and works with others. Calm and serene, especially in moments of crisis and tensions, he is at the same time Cartesian and pragmatic. He reacts as an intellectual and thinks as a man of action. He hardly forgets the past but never takes refuge in it. He knows how to apply the past to present situations in such a way as to achieve a better future. His appreciation of silence stems from his belief that "silence is an element at the heart of all that is great". He loves and knows how to listen, he never ceases to repeat the proverb: "it is in listening and not through speaking that we learn."
Memo to Iraq
MEMO TO IRAQ
by Tim Fitzsimons
This month we celebrated the five-year anniversary of George W. Bush’s triumphant landing on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off of California, where, a mere six weeks into the War in Iraq, he declared in front of a staged rally of sailors that “[i]n the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”
Mr. Bush was correct; the goals had been realized: we had quickly toppled the government of Saddam Hussein, established control over the country, and few at home in America had been asked to do more than bat an eye.
Since we won that first fight, however, we have lost the war of words and images. In the wake of “Mission Accomplished,” we have seen the horrifying pictures from Abu Ghraib prison, a cell phone video of Saddam Hussein’s botched and barbaric hanging, and front page after front page plastered with images of decapitations and blood running through the streets of Baghdad.
Somehow, despite the fact that this war has gone on for longer than the Civil War and both World Wars, we as a nation have failed to seriously question its continuation. One of the two main candidates for president seeks simply to end American casualties, since he has rightly identified that as the only factor that concerns most of us. We have not been paying close enough attention to the war over the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, the one that we are losing most terribly. They will always remember.
But we won the War for Iraq. Mission accomplished.
***
Nine months ago, as I was rumbling down the "green tunnel," a tree-lined main throughway in the Kashmir valley, my translator Shabir pointed down a road that flicked by and told me that it led to his village.
I had heard about that village before. He had already explained to me what life was like when the Indian army would conduct a "crackdown," the English word that embodied the brutality of the conflict in that beautiful region of northwest India. In a crackdown, the army would surround a village, corral all of its residents, line up the men old enough to be "insurgents," blindfold them, and then walk down the line with an informer, who would silently finger the accused. Those unlucky enough to be chosen would be whisked away and “disappeared,” never to be seen again.
Recently, the BBC reported that mass graves had been discovered in the valley, suspected to be some of the sites where those disappeared people were finally put to rest.
Kashmir was my introduction to India. Before my flight from New Delhi even touched down on the tarmac at Srinagar airport, I could see hundreds of camouflaged tents behind tall fences surrounding the airport. When I stepped off of the plane, I saw military trucks and barbed wire, and men with machine guns in hand. We were frisked twice before we were permitted to leave the airport, and we were the only ones there. The height of the conflict has long since passed, but so much remains.
As we drove around Srinagar pursuing our story, our car would be pulled over every few hours by the Central Reserve Police Force, and we would both be frisked. Shabir would always get particularly incensed, but never to the police. He would wait until we were speeding away before letting slip some of the rare four letter words he reserved for the “occupiers.”
When Shabir and I would talk about the conflict between Kashmir, India, and Pakistan, he would gaze out of the car window and his mannerisms would change. His emotions would deaden, and he would speak in a sort of robotic way that showed he found the question too difficult to answer fully:
"I think Kashmir should be part of Pakistan," he would say, looking away.
"Why? You already said that you think being part of India makes Kashmir prosperous," I would ask, slowly.
"But you know," (and here he would begin to get especially uncomfortable), "I can't want to go to India. Pakistan is a country for Muslims, and we in Kashmir are Muslim."
But his true feelings shone through his explanation. A day or two before, when he had explained what a crackdown was, I had asked him if it had ever happened in his village when he was a kid. "Yes," he had said simply, "many times." His employer had told me that his village was a hotbed of insurgent activity in the 1990s, so I already knew. Shabir remembered the conflict well. India to him was forever seared into his mind as the force that disappeared all those people from his village, causing so much pain to so many people.
And with that, I learned that the cost of insurgency and counter-insurgency is not one that fades with age. Pay close attention.
This article was published on May 17, 2008 in the Tufts Daily.
Iraqi Refugees in Jordan
Iraq Refugees in Jordan from Institute For Global Leadership on Vimeo.
This video is a multimedia project I produced after participating in the Alliance Linking Leaders in Education and the Services (ALLIES) Joint Research Project to Jordan in June 2008.
This video was presented to the Tufts University ALLIES (Alliance Linking Leaders in Education and the Services) Second Annual Intellectual Roundtable on October 30, 2008.
As a postscript to the video, Asel and his family were resettled in Massachusetts in December 2008. Asel and his brothers are currently enrolled in school, and looking forward to applying to college.
Watching the World Change
This is a photo taken the moment that Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States.
Curiously, the expressions on the onlookers' faces were neither of joy nor fear, but rather studious observation, as if looking away would have revealed that the moment was just an illusion.
Straight from the Notebook
I've typed up some notes from an interview I conducted with a thorougly defeated man. He was an Iraqi refugee living in Amman, and he was a Sabean. His comments underscore the sectarian cleavages that have grown in Iraq, as well as the despair that has enveloped those who were chased from the country. These notes are fully unedited, from the original broken English and Arabic translation, but I think by reading them this way you get a better sense of how the interview went.
The man was short and had a sad, handsome face. His hair was graying and he was slight in size and stature. His young children darted in and out of the room as we conducted the interview. They inched along, backs to the wall, eyes fixed on me because I was an outsider.
--------------------------------------------
Back to Amman - 8/13/09
Before the war -
name-Nasser Mosat
AGE-45
When he came to Jordan...
he is Sabean
We are 18,000 in the whole world, because its few and theyre well-educated, education of children. "Our religion depends on peace + knowledge in life,"
They're an ancient religion, before Islam, Christianity, before Jews...
Iraq is their real country
John the Baptist - they baptized Jesus. Muslims don't accept anything different, anything diff. is wrong
Sheikhs are politicians, they want to control other people
Before 2003 before no tension - his opinion there was gvmt to protect them
-->more about muslims *how it changed how people
whole family killed in iraq. bro, sis, mother, killed by mehdi army, doesn't care about ngos
he doesn't like to ask
got $ from Care, never uses
he has bad things, missile killed his 13 other family members
"I'm not Iraqi anymore"
existed before war
"militias told me to leave iraq + i said i'm not iraqi anymore."
before the war a lot of missionaries tried to convert them to islam
-->palpable tension between the sects in iraq
"we leave death in iraq, to a slow death in jordan"
he never goes to ask for handouts because its not what i want "it's not who i am."
"my future is finished, i have just the future of my children."
made interview w/ aus. resettlement. waited 8 months for response from Australia.
Thinks it will be 1 year for Australia, even w/ answer they must wait one more year.
Doesn't understand why its so late. They must find some solution for us.
Muslims can go back to Iraq when better Sabeans must stay in Jordan or trans to another country. I hope there are some place for us to go, they must.
"I'm out of patience and out of money," just wants a peaceful place for kids and family
employment
When the UN called about resettlement@UNHCR, they sat for 5 hours and interviewer began to cry
she asked where does he want to go, australia
they asked w/ which party they worked w/
they bribed the un and if you work for someone big or bribe you get processed more quickly
all savings are gone. -now getting help, gets some help from relatives
spends $500/mo w/ good health
$600/mo 5 person family
prices of food have gone up. heard australia better than other countries
harder for him to move to australia than others
These people, our religion don't want material possession. Simple peaceful life
"I've lost most of my life and I can't make it up. I'm now just living for my kids."
Hezbollah’s New Face
BEIRUT – 16 July 2008
The media circus staged last week by Hezbollah is what should be remembered as their true victory from the prisoner swap.
Following closely on the heels of the Mediterranean love-fest with French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris, during which Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President Michel Sleiman were closer to each other than they will probably ever be again, this past week’s events show how much distance there really is between the two countries.
All of the important members of the Lebanese government were on hand at Beirut airport to laud the return of the prisoners – including a visibly unenthusiastic Prime Minister Siniora – as Hezbollah claimed victory and draped the day’s festivities in their flag. The images of the President giving a rousing speech praising the resistance contrasted sharply with the message from Paris, which was one of international cooperation.
Hezbollah’s motivation behind the theatrics was twofold: first, to give its supporters, still hurting from the 2006 war, an opportunity to thumb their noses at Israel; and second, to place into the news cycle the image of a nation rallying behind an event that was simultaneously Lebanon’s and Hezbollah’s.
Hezbollah had to make as much as possible out of the prisoner event, as its May campaign in Beirut and elsewhere left a negative image in the minds of Lebanese and people around the world. Their ability to stage the event and roll out all important members of government was largely based on the May events and the unity government that the resistance is now a part of.
It jumbled the party’s political imagery with that of the Lebanese state, further blurring the line between the two entities. The event’s posters and advertisements had a custom-made logo, the stage entrance of Kuntar and the others looked like they must have spent some time practicing in Israeli prison, and Nasrallah’s brief, security-blanketed appearance gave special weight to the day’s festivities. Their celebration was, by far, the most organized and well-executed enterprise to hit the streets of Beirut for some time.
Hezbollah’s tight visuals and sweeping camera montages held the attention of a news-addicted nation for an entire day, with everyone’s eyes fixed firmly on the pomp and symbol-laden circumstance of the party’s grand nationalization campaign. The degree to which Hezbollah endeavored – with success – to portray last week’s Hezbollah celebration as an event being celebrated by all Lebanese is impressive.
However, the fact remains that the prisoner swap was at least as much about Israeli domestic politics than it is about the strength of the weapons of the resistance. Ehud Olmert, buffeted by scandal and his botched handling of domestic and international affairs, has been grasping at anything to improve his image so that he can avoid the disintegration of his coalition. Israeli public opinion demanded from the unpopular Premier that the two soldiers be returned in accordance with Israeli military custom and Jewish tradition, and Hezbollah successfully kept silent about their deaths for nearly two years, so it had the upper hand in bargaining.
According to the posters strung up at the Naqoura border crossing, “Freedom is guaranteed by Nasrallah, and Humiliation is guaranteed by Olmert.” The words were in English, intended to be impress upon outside observers what a feat the group had accomplished. The various elements of the celebrations show that Hezbollah is intent on expanding beyond the hearts and the minds of the adoring supporters in the suburbs, who need no further proof. The next challenge for the group is bringing even broader support to their side. And with the possibility of peace between Israel and Syria hovering over the Levant, Hezbollah has to keep its image Lebanese.
Over the past few months, as rumblings of a Syrian-Israeli peace deal grew louder, Hezbollah greatly strengthened its presence in Lebanon. In May, the group demonstrated its military dominance when it took over West Beirut, and in July, its media advantage with the prisoner swap. Its events and coverage of the prisoner exchange were designed to reorient public opinion away from considering Hezbollah a fringe group and instead toward seeing it as a party that represents the Lebanese people.
Sabeans fleeing persecution in Iraq find cold refuge in reluctant Jordan
Asel recounts his story as an Iraqi refugee.
AMMAN -- Asel didn’t come to Jordan because he wanted to. Neither did his parents. They, like so many others, stole out of their native Iraq at the last minute, when word came that gangs were coming to kill their family.
Since that fateful morning in 2004, Asel, his two brothers, and his parents have been in Jordan passing time waiting for something that might enable them to end their limbo and move on. They won’t to go back to Iraq, so great was the trauma that caused them to leave.
They were targeted because they are Sabean, a small religious group in Iraq who trace their creed back to the teachings of St. John the Baptist. In the turbulent days years since the beginning of the US-led war in Iraq, Asel’s family and many Sabeans received death threats demanding ransom and conversion. His brother’s botched kidnapping shook his family, but not until the warnings of imminent death did they decide to flee. So sudden was their escape that the family brought no clothes and made no preparations for their arrival in Amman.
In Jordan’s capital, Asel’s family has made al-Hashemi al Shemali their home. There, in a neighborhood previously inhabited by poor Palestinians, countless Iraqi families live in what could best be described as impoverished purgatory. They fear that the simplest trouble could mean a one-way ticket back to Iraq, which for many would mean a death sentence. So they stay, silently.
Asel tried to convey the overwhelming boredom that has plagued his four-year stay in Amman. He and his other Iraqi friends described day after day of never leaving their apartments, unable to work, openly play, or even attend school. (Only last year, the Jordanian government opened public schools to Iraqi refugees, and many are unsure whether they will be able to return for the coming school year.) Books and television have been Asel’s sole sources of entertainment for four years, during which he has only been able to complete two years of schooling, one public, and one parochial.
But they do have satellite television. Holed up in their small apartment, the two eldest brothers have watched enough American movies to fill in their remaining gaps in English. Asel, with little formal English education, ably served as this reporter’s translator. Their family, though very poor, is not unique. According to a study of Iraqis in Jordan conducted in May 2007 by Fafo, a Norwegian research institute, nearly 95% of Iraqis in the country have access to satellite television in their homes. But day-to-day living expenses, exacerbated by recent inflation in food and fuel prices, are the most difficult ones for them to manage. TV, filled with hundreds more channels than the one Iraqis previously knew, has proven to be this family’s one escape.
Unlike other refugee crises of the past several decades, the plight of Iraqis in Jordan is not one characterized by starvation or widespread homelessness. Rather, it is a muffled crisis that involves political and economic insecurity of a large, previously middle class group that has been forced into the underbelly of an unwelcoming society, where they have no rights, and no guarantee that they will not be sent back to their homeland, where many of them fear death. Many watch silently as family members slowly expire, unable to obtain the medications that, lacking Jordanian citizenship, are too expensive for them to obtain.
This fear of deportation is what keeps people like Asel and his family inside, shying away from extended periods walking in the street. They do go out, but the slim chance that the police will stop them for some transgression is enough to keep them home most of the day. According to the UNHCR in Amman, there is an unspoken rule that Jordanian police ignore the status of Iraqis, but stories of forced deportation are rife among refugee communities.
Not all Iraqis in Jordan are like Asel’s family, however. One man who works in the main produce market near the King Hussein Mosque came during the first Iran-Iraq war and has stayed, unhindered, until 2003. The recent deluge of Iraqis from the new Gulf War, and the ensuing political pressures on Iraqi communities from the Jordanian government, forced him to obtain an asylum seeker certificate from the UNHCR. This man still sends money home to his two wives and family in Basra.
There is a movement to diagnose the problem of the Iraqi refugee crisis in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, with the intention of finding a silver bullet. With such a varied and unconventional refugee population, policymakers have struggled to find solutions. Their predicament is completely dependent on external factors, and few will consider returning before a significant improvement in the security situation. Others vow they will never return, because for them, Iraq will never be the same.
Their situation has been improved by some ad hoc measures, such as the Jordanian government’s decision to allow Iraqi children to attend public schools, but such changes do nothing to speed up the process of resettlement by foreign governments, or to bring increased stability to Iraq. One measure that would likely ease the strain on Iraqi families in Jordan, the provision of work permits, is met by universal condemnation by a government fearful of alienating a population facing high unemployment rates. Even the granting of official recognition is too much for the Jordanian government, who fear a repeat of the normalization of the Palestinian refugee population.
But aside from work, what most Sabeans hope most for is a way to leave Jordan, and to begin a new life in the US, Britain, Australia, or Sweden. Political forces have forced them out of Iraq, and political forces keep them in limbo, and so they continue to wait.