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Israeli Incursions Focus of Conference
by Ayesha Ahmad
WASHINGTON, Nov. 3 (IslamOnline) - The subject of Israel's recent armed incursions into Palestinian-ruled towns in the West Bank was the focus Friday of a panel discussion at the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine (CPAP) in Washington.
Mustafa Barghouti, president of the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees, gave closing remarks by telephone from Ramallah in the West Bank to CPAP's conference at the National Press Club.
"This [Israeli] occupation is becoming the longest occupation in modern history," Barghouti said. "They must not be allowed to continue their unjustifiable violation of international law."
Barghouti, whose cousin, Marwan Barghouti, is the head of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, spoke to a spellbound audience as he detailed the losses incurred by the Palestinians as a result of Israeli policies dating back 14 months to the beginning of the al-Aqsa Intifada, or uprising.
"We are literally surrounded by tanks," said Barghouti, speaking from his home in Ramallah. "Like many other cities in the West Bank, we are completely under siege."
"What is happening in addition to incursions and invasions is a process of punishment," he said, describing how the eight-kilometer distance between two villages near Ramallah and Nablus takes nearly five hours to cross, "because the closure is cutting the country into pieces and creating a system of ghettos."
Barghouti also detailed the loss of human life - 802 Palestinians and 190 Israelis to date - which he said would proportionately reflect about 76,000 lives lost in the United States. With 24,000 injured and 1,500 permanently disabled, he said, the numbers killed, injured or disabled make up one percent of the entire population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Barghouti's description of the harsh realities of the Israeli occupation capped a day of political analyses and in-depth discussion of U.S. foreign policy regarding the Middle East.
Panelist Martha Kessler, a former political officer with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), said most of her colleagues at the conference were mostly "preaching to the choir." Among the participants were former government officials, professors and activists, who shared a great deal of information and analysis with the largely pro-Palestinian audience.
Kathleen Christison, who spent eight of her 16 years as a CIA political analyst on the Middle East, explained how continuity over past presidential administrations has contributed to a persistent pro-Israeli tilt in foreign policy and a refusal to address possible changes in policy.
Perceptions on the ground have "always been of Israelis as victims, peace-loving but determined to survive, and of Palestinians as hateful… with no legitimate grievances," she said. "Generations of policy-makers have grown up internalizing these images of Israelis and Palestinians."
Christison also mentioned the responsibility of the media in creating this atmosphere, an issue that was addressed in detail by panelist Edward Herman, Professor Emeritus of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania.
Herman commented on the massive presence throughout American media of columnists and editors "who are openly and sometimes passionately pro-Israeli."
He gave numerous examples of media bias, from the use of language in describing violence perpetrated by one side or deaths on the other - "the formulaic language of deep bias" - to the range of what is featured and what is suppressed by news reports.
"This bias has kept the U.S. public uninformed," Herman said, "and maintains the process of violence."
And panelist Richard Falk, a law professor at Princeton University, discussed the relevance and position of international law to the conflict. He said international humanitarian law was necessary at least "a minimum benchmark of an outcome that isn't completely dominated by geopolitics."
Falk addressed the ongoing neglect of U.N. resolutions 242 and 338, which mandate Israel's withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967 and the "flagrant violation" of international law made by the continuing existence and construction of Israeli settlements on Palestinian territories.
"If we seek a peace process that has some reasonable prospect of producing a viable Palestinian state," Falk said, "it must occur within a framework of international law."
Other speakers included former U.N. arms inspector Scott Ritter, Monterey Institute of International Studies professor Glynn Wood, Institute for Policy Studies fellow Phyllis Bennis and Middle East Children's Alliance director Barbara Lubin, among others.
In his closing remarks, Barghouti named four conditions that the U.S. would have to accept if it were to play a positive role in the peace process. First, he said, the world must realize that there is no equality between the occupier and the occupied.
"It is not acceptable to ask the Palestinian people not to resist occupation - this is like asking a woman [who is] being raped not to scream."
Also, the international community must recognize the "cancer" of Israel's military occupation in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem as the cause of the conflict that must be removed.
There should also be recognition, he said, of the historical compromise made by the Palestinians when they agreed to have a state within the borders of Israel that represented only 22 percent of their original lands. "You cannot compromise the compromise," he said.
Finally, he called for "an active, strong international intervention," saying that a true peace could not be left to be resolved by the two sides without an international presence.
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