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US maps out ambitious Middle East deal
By Emad Mekay
Shuneh, Jordan, June 23 (IPS)— The United States said Monday it
will negotiate free trade agreements separately with Arab countries as
a first step towards setting up a US- Middle East Free Trade Agreement
(MEFTA) by 2013 that would include up to 20 of the region’s nations.
“Our vision is to foster the revival of a prosperous region once
again united by culture, commerce and goodwill among nations,” said
US Trade Representative Robert Zoellick in a speech on the last day of
the high-profile World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in this resort town
on the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea.
Zoellick and US Secretary of State Colin Powell met government ministers
from Jordan, Bahrain, Qatar, Egypt, Oman, Morocco, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia,
Yemen and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Monday to discuss steps towards
negotiating MEFTA, first announced by US President George W. Bush on May
9.
Powell told reporters that the effort would help create a more stable
Middle East based on the strong links between trade and peace in the troubled
region.
But many local and international observers view the plans as part of Washington’s
economic imperialism in the region, which they say is being revealed in
the US-led occupation of Iraq, where former President Saddam Hussein’s
regime fell in April after a three-week invasion.
US multinationals, many with links to the administration of President
George W. Bush, are making millions of dollars in contracts to rebuild
Iraq under the direction of a US interim authority and, critics say, at
the expense of the United Nations, whose traditional post-crisis development
role was usurped by Washington.
Arab businessmen were quick to welcome details of the proposed free trade
deal.
“This initiative offers potentially huge rewards. But our public
and private sectors will need to work together to secure these benefits,”
said Shafiq Gabr, an Egyptian businessman attending the forum.
But many Arabs here do not see the US trade offer as promising, and view
the plan as Washington’s attempt to sugar-coat its invasion of neighboring
Iraq, which cost Arab countries billions of dollars in lost trade and
potential tourism revenues.
“This [MEFTA] is to get Arab countries to swallow the occupation,
the killings, and the devastation in Iraq that the United States caused,”
wrote Fahed el-Fanek, a columnist with the Jordanian daily al-Rai.
US Undersecretary of State Alan Larson said Sunday that Arab countries
that want to participate in the free trade agreement would be expected
to consider business relations with neighboring countries, including Israel,
whose government still occupies Arab land and is a nation that many people
here view with great suspicion.
“If one is aiming to have a region in which there’s a great
deal of trade and investment across the borders, then it is important
to have a region that is not carved into separate little areas. It is
important that there’ll be trade not only between the Palestinians
and the Israelis and between the Jordanians and the Israelis, but with
other countries,” Larson said.
According to the US plan, Washington will first negotiate treaties with
individual countries, to “obligate governments to treat foreign investors
fairly and offer legal protection equal to domestic investors.”
This, officials say, will demonstrate that these nations are safe places
for multinationals to do business.
“If countries want to attract investors, they have to make sure those
investors are fairly treated,” said Zoellick.
The next step would be sub-regional free trade agreements (FTAs) grouping,
for instance, the five Gulf council countries — Qatar, Bahrain, Oman,
UAE and Saudi Arabia — or the Maghreb countries, which include Tunisia,
Algeria and Morocco.
The final stage would be a single deal that would likely also include
Israel.
Already Washington allows goods from certain parts of Jordan to enter
the United States duty free as long as they contain Israeli components.
Washington already has FTAs with the Jewish state and with Jordan, and
is negotiating an agreement with Morocco, expected to be concluded by
year’s end.
Zoellick said the administration was consulting with Congress to launch
trade talks with the tiny Gulf state of Bahrain.
To lubricate the negotiating process, officials said Washington would
invest one billion dollars in “trade capacity-building” in the
Arab countries, a term that refers to building institutions and training
officials to support the so-called free trade agreements, which have been
widely criticized for benefiting Washington more than their partner nations.
Zoellick also said he is offering to work with Saudi Arabia, Lebanon,
Algeria, Yemen and other Arab countries that want to join the World Trade
Organization (WTO) to “gain full advantage of open global markets.”
Ibrahim Alloush, a Jordanian intellectual and activist, said the proposed
Middle East agreement would subordinate Arab economies to major US companies
and Washington’s policies.
“The agreement uses conditions like ‘fighting terrorism’
and ‘improving investment climate’.” This means tailoring
our local world to the tastes and whims of American companies and interests,”
said Alloush, who also edits the online publication www.freearabvoice.org.
Jehad Mjahd, a 38-year old agriculture engineer reading news of the agreement
at a newsstand in the capital Amman, said the United States will stand
to gain more than Arab countries.
“They always attach conditions to anything,” he said. “If
it is not forcing us into deal with Israel, it’s buying American
products. And if it’s not buying American products, it’s about
changing our laws or customs. I see no benefit in that.”
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Evidence of state-sponsored terrorism in
N. Ireland increases
By Dale Mills
June 18— There have been more sensational revelations about British
state-sponsored terrorism in Northern Ireland following the publication
on Apr. 17 of an official report — by Metropolitan Police chief Sir
John Stevens — that found that British army agents were directly
involved in the killing of civil rights lawyer Patrick Finucane in 1989.
More evidence has come to light which shows that the level of British
security service infiltration and dominance within Loyalist terrorist
groups in Northern Ireland was of staggering proportions. Stevens’
revelations prompted Tom McGurk, writing in the Apr. 20 Irish Sunday Business
Post, to conclude that “almost all of the Loyalist paramilitary activity
over the last 30 years was largely, secretly and carefully controlled
and organized by British intelligence.” The Stevens’ Report
identified a man called Brian Nelson as being instrumental in the killing
of Finucane in 1989. Nelson was an agent for British intelligence.
On Apr. 20, the British Observer named Ned Greer as another British spy
who was “at the helm of a death squad.” Greer was a member of
the army’s Force Research Unit (FRU) operating within the terrorist
Ulster Defense Association. Greer passed information to the UDA that was
used to select leading republicans to be killed. These killings included
local councilor Eddie Fullerton in May 1991 and Padraig O’Seanachain
in August 1991.
‘Stakeknife’
Following the Greer revelation, several reputable Irish newspapers in
late April named Northern Ireland resident Alfredo Scappaticci as being
a British agent within the Irish Republican Army, codenamed “Stakeknife.”
Scappaticci, who rose to the top echelons of the IRA in his 25-year career,
is accused of being involved in the killing of up to 40 people, all with
British government approval. This included the assassination of three
unarmed republicans in 1988 by an undercover SAS hit squad in Gibraltar
(a British protectorate).
Stakeknife’s victims are said to have included civilians and members
of the British Army, killed to protect his cover. There is no 007-like
“license to kill” in British or Irish law which allows British
agents to kill like this. Stakeknife was a state-sponsored serial murderer.
However, Scappaticci’s identification as Stakeknife may be an elaborate
British counter-intelligence propaganda operation. Anonymous British “officials”
have “confirmed” that Scappaticci is Stakeknife. However, the
May 15 British Guardian reported that the journalists who first identified
Stakeknife are now saying that there have been so many conflicting stories
“riddled with spin and black propaganda” from so many official
sources that it is now difficult to know who is telling the truth. Scappaticci
denies that he is Stakeknife.
The timing of the identification of Stakeknife by British authorities
came within days of the unilateral cancellation by the British government
of elections to the fixed-term Northern Ireland assembly and in the wake
of the findings of the Stevens report. The cancellation of the elections
was opposed by all parties, north and south, except for David Trimble’s
Ulster Unionist Party.
Bloody Sunday
Meanwhile, the inquiry into Bloody Sunday is continuing to reveal human
rights abuses. On Bloody Sunday – Jan. 30, 1972 — British troops
shot dead 13 unarmed protesters in the Northern Ireland city of Derry
during a civil rights march.
Eileen Doherty, whose husband Paddy was killed on Bloody Sunday, walked
out of the inquiry on May 13 in protest at the measures being taken to
conceal the identity of the former MI5 director of intelligence for Northern
Ireland. Doherty has said that the inquiry has become a “farce.”
It emerged during evidence that the former MI5 director had not given
evidence according to his own memory, but had received “help”
from MI5 to draw up his statement.
Despite the revelations, the state structures responsible for the murders
and human rights abuses are still in place. The FRU, which is at the center
of the British state’s collusion with loyalist terrorists, continues
to exist as the Joint Services Group.
Many of the killings and abuses cannot be investigated by the Policing
Board, as it has no powers to investigate MI5/British army/Special Branch
incidents prior to 1999. The Ombudsman cannot investigate either, as she
has stated publicly that her office doesn’t have the financial resources.
Even where investigations are a possibility, much evidence has been destroyed.
For example, the weapons used by soldiers during the Bloody Sunday shootings
can’t be forensically examined as the weapons have been destroyed.
Nevertheless, as a result of Stevens’ revelations, nine members of
the FRU, including Brigadier Gordon Kerr, the army officer who led the
unit, could face prosecution.
Pat Finucane’s murder
On May 29, Ken Barrett was arrested for the murder of Pat Finucane. He
was also charged with two attempted murders. Barrett denied all charges
and has been remanded in custody until June 27. Barrett previously confessed
to the murder of Finucane but later retracted his statement. The original
tape recording of his confession has either been destroyed or gone “missing.”
The Stevens report found that Finucane’s murder was planned by using
intelligence gathered by the FRU. Barrett was supplied with an intelligence
file, including a photograph, by FRU agent Brian Nelson. Nelson possessed
files on at least 80 other people, 29 of whom have been shot dead. No
member of the FRU or the Special Branch in Northern Ireland has been charged
with an offense relating to the files and the subsequent attacks. Prime
Minister Tony Blair’s Labour government continues to refuse to allow
a public inquiry into Finucane’s assassination or the security services’
systematic collusion with loyalist terrorists.
[Comprehensive coverage of Britain’s collusion with terrorists in
Northern Ireland is available at http://britcollusion.cjb.net/.]
Source: Green Left Weekly
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Former rebel FMLN has real chance of winning
By Néfer Muñoz
San Jose, June 19 (IPS)— El Salvador’s Farabundo Marti National
Liberation Front (FMLN), one of the most famous guerrilla movements in
the history of Latin America, is now the political party with the greatest
chance of winning the March 2004 presidential elections, according to
the latest opinion polls.
Eleven years ago, the insurgent movement stopped engaging in firefights
in the tropical jungles of this Central American nation and, as a legal
political party, began to battle for votes instead.
As this Central American nation of 6.2 million begins to set its sights
on next year’s elections, the former guerrilla fighters are trying
to convince the nation and the world that they are a reliable and trustworthy
democratic option.
“We have matured and are ready to govern, but our big challenge will
be to demonstrate that we will provide change with stability,” said
Julio Hernández, one of the party’s top leaders, in a telephone
interview with IPS.
The political campaign does not officially begin until Nov. 21, but the
main parties have already begun to campaign.
El Salvador’s 1980-1992 armed conflict between the army, right-wing
paramilitaries and leftist FMLN left a death toll of 80,000, mainly civilians,
hundreds of thousands maimed, and nearly two million displaced, besides
destroying the local economy.
Hernández, 39, a former guerrilla who is today the FMLN representative
on the Supreme Electoral Court, said that if his party wins next year,
it would be confirmation that the peace deal signed in Mexico in 1992
had worked.
“Now we are focused on discussing development policies and our plans
for governing,” he said. “We are not interested in removing
the phantoms of the past. Our rivals are trying to awaken unfounded fears.”
The FMLN acquired new strength after its unexpected success in the municipal
and legislative elections held last March.
The former insurgent group won the city government in 76 of the country’s
262 towns and cities, including the capital and the other leading cities.
Today, 48 percent of Salvadorans are governed at the local level by FMLN
mayors.
The FMLN also took 31 of 84 seats in the country’s single-chamber
legislature, and its influence was further buoyed by the alliances it
has forged.
“The new panorama generates fears, because the Salvadoran right is
rabidly anti-left,” said Marco Tulio Ramos, the FMLN press spokesman.
“El Frente” — as the party is generally called here —
has evolved from its Marxist past, and is now a leftist movement with
modern ideas of how to insert itself into today’s world, he said.
The FMLN’s growth at the polls worries its main rival, the rightist
governing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), which won the last
three presidential elections and has been in power since June 1989.
ARENA is undergoing an internal reorganization, and is seeking a presidential
candidate who can revitalize it and restore its support base.
“It seems to me that the primaries are going to produce a candidate
who not only has the support of the party, but who will have a winning
ticket as well,” Salvadoran President Francisco Flores told the local
press, referring to the ruling party’s upcoming internal elections.
In a survey conducted in May by the Jesuit-affiliated Central American
University, 40.6 percent of respondents said they would vote for the FMLN,
23.9 percent said they would cast their ballots for ARENA, and 10.6 percent
said they had no party preference. The rest of those interviewed either
did not respond or said they supported one of El Salvador’s smaller
parties.
In a CID-Gallup poll carried out between June 7 and 11, 28 percent of
the 1,208 people surveyed said they planned to vote for the FMLN, 25 percent
said they would vote for ARENA, seven percent expressed support for the
United Democratic Center, and the rest backed smaller parties or gave
no response.
But political scientist Rubén Zamora commented to IPS that “a
political party that has always been in the opposition is never ready
to govern.
“However, we have to analyze what it offers, and for the moment,
what we have seen is not very satisfactory,” he said.
Although the FMLN no longer advances Marxist-Leninist ideas or talks about
the appropriation of the means of production by the state, the discourse
that replaced those concepts is fairly vague and confusing, according
to Zamora.
“At times it looks like a moderate social democratic party, and at
others it shifts way to the left; it all depends on which political leader
is talking,” he said.
The US Embassy in El Salvador recently said the FMLN could jeopardize
the country’s stability, if it makes it to power.
At any rate, it has yet to be seen whether the FMLN will remain ahead
in the polls after it chooses a presidential candidate in the July 27
primaries.
The more than 95,000 members qualified to vote in the internal elections
are expected to choose one of two potential candidates: one of the party’s
long-time leaders, Shafik Handal, or the mayor of the southwestern city
of Nueva San Salvador, Oscar Ortiz.
The big challenge facing the FMLN, which was founded in 1980 as an insurgent
movement made up of an alliance of five different parties, will be to
overcome the internal differences that have traditionally weakened it.
“I believe that on one hand, ARENA’s right-wing platform is
wearing thin, while on the other, the FMLN’s left-wing platform is
not viable,” said political analyst Alberto Arene.
The FMLN awakens great fears among some sectors, especially the business
community, he said.
The apprehension mainly focuses on Handal, who is considered the most
likely to win the party nomination. Handal, a former guerrilla commander,
was the founder of El Salvador’s Communist Party.
“He symbolizes a more traditional leadership, that of the old-style
communists. There are many doubts about how he would handle the economy
and the interconnectedness of the markets. Shafik is not Lula da Silva,”
said Arene, referring to Brazil’s new left-wing president, who has
even won the support of Washington.
But both the right and the left may yet be in for a surprise, if an attempt
by centrist parties to form an alliance is fruitful, he said.
According to official statistics, nearly half of the population of El
Salvador lives below the poverty line, although non- governmental organizations
put the proportion much higher. The country’s acute social problems
have driven many to emigrate to the United States, where an estimated
two million Salvadorans now live.
The ARENA administrations have privatized a number of public enterprises,
and dollarized the economy in January 2001.
Some economic analysts and business and industrial leaders have wondered
whether the FMLN would re-nationalize privatized companies if elected.
“No, under no circumstances,” San Salvador Mayor Carlos Rivas
told IPS when asked about such concerns. “We would not confiscate
or nationalize banks. That forms no part of our plans.”
Rivas, a 44-year-old lawyer, said the FMLN’s right-wing rivals are
spreading rumors to damage his party’s credibility both at home and
abroad.
“We are a leftist party within a democratic framework. We respect
private property, and we want to insert El Salvador into the international
market with a human face,” he said.
With regards to relations with the United States, he said the FMLN sees
the superpower as a partner, not an enemy, with whom strong ties are necessary
in order to boost El Salvador’s prospects for social and economic
development.
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EU leaders behind barricades, Greek city
‘war zone’
Compiled by Seán Marquis
June 25 (AGR)— More than 100 protesters were detained in Thessaloniki,
Greece on Sat., June 21, the final day of a three-day European Union (EU)
summit, when the most serious clashes broke out between police and people
engaging in property destruction. The street battles between police and
anarchists left the city’s main Egnatia Avenue looking like a war
zone. According to the Independent, a British daily, one activist said:
“We believe destroying the property of exploitative corporations
like McDonald’s is an acceptable protest.”
Away from the chaos, 50,000 marchers called for democracy, social justice,
open borders and protection of the rights of immigrants.
On Saturday night more than 2,000 anarchists barricaded themselves inside
the campus at the Aristotle University after rampaging through the city
center, smashing corporate franchises and fighting with police. Under
Greek law, police cannot enter the campus, but a large force of riot police
surrounded it while police helicopters hovered overhead.
The city’s streets were carpeted with rocks and broken glass as fire
crews toiled to put out fires and thousands of spent tear gas canisters
mingled with trampled protest placards calling on people to “Stop
NATO, US, and EU.”
Late in the afternoon the anarchists broke from the main block of protesters,
throwing petrol bombs and starting fires, while riot police responded
with volleys of tear gas that filled the city center with acrid smoke.
The first major attack was against a McDonald’s on main Avenue. The
steel shutters were torn and petrol bombs thrown inside.
“They threw petrol bombs into the McDonald’s and planted anarchist
black flags on the footpath outside,” Reuters correspondent Phillip
Pangalos said. “Others attacked nearby shops with axes and sticks.”
Riot police rounded up small groups of demonstrators, beating them with
sticks and spraying tear gas.
“The situation is out of control,” local resident Maria Hounda
said. “This is like an urban war zone, everything is on fire.”
Activists, dressed in black, many wearing gas masks, body armor, and carrying
sticks and metal bars fought a running battle with riot police, setting
alight cars and targeting outlets of banks and international corporations
– which the activists say are exploitative of basic human rights
— like Vodafone which also had a store torched.
About 30 shops as well as three branches of Greek banks were badly damaged
with windows smashed and petrol bombs thrown inside.
Riot police used baton charges and teargas to drive the activists away
from an area about half a kilometer from the US consulate.
Reuters correspondent Michele Kambas said the anarchists, most of them
wearing ski and gas masks, were “very well equipped.”
“They used crow bars to tear off aluminium sheeting that many shopkeepers
and banks had erected days ago,” Kambas said.
In the worst of the clashes, hooded Black Bloc anarchists and members
of Salonika Action Group wheeled supermarket carts filled with rocks into
Aristotle Square to throw at police. Thousands of protesters from Greece’s
General Workers’ Union were caught in the crossfire and had to run
for cover under a hail of gas canisters, petrol bombs, and rocks.
Controlling the crowds was made more difficult by the organizers’
decision to stage five separate and simultaneous marches, with thousands
of demonstrators spread across the whole city, a police official said.
The main bloc of peaceful demonstrators converged on the American and
British consulates, both protected by a huge security force. Marchers
carried banners denouncing British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President
George W. Bush, as “Imperialist Murderers.”
June 19, the first day of protests, consisted of a march of about 5,000
people held by anarchists and antiauthoritarians in support of immigrants’
and refugees’ rights and a rally and actions by Greek communist groups
in support of workers.
As part of the communist actions, black coffins symbolizing dead workers,
victims of capitalism and government policies, were placed outside the
Ministry of Macedonia and Thrace by members of All Workers’ Militant
Front (PAME).
The afternoon motorcade started with a big black banner at the forefront
bearing the slogan: “with profits soaked in workers’ blood”
followed by demonstrators and motor cars covered with black fabric on
which there were inscribed the names of firms in which workers’ lives
were lost.
On June 20, protesters engaged in serious clashes with police outside
the Porto Carras resort complex, the location of the EU summit, after
trying to break through a high-security cordon.
Several hundred demonstrators, led by masked anarchists, broke away from
about 10,000 peaceful marchers and pelted the police with firebombs, rocks,
and bottles.
The crowd then retreated from the eye-stinging clouds of tear gas at the
“red zone” about five kilometers (three miles) from the meeting
site.
More than 15,000 offices were involved in the summit security operation,
unprecedented in Greece, with authorities deploying surface-to-air missiles
and naval ships as well. The resort itself was sealed off by huge shipping
containers, barbed wire, and a floating barricade in the sea.
“These guys are hiding behind security forces. If they had anything
good to tell us they would come out here so we could applaud them,”
said Cedric Dumonceau, 22, from Brussels.
Three main spaces were used for gathering and organizing for the protests:
anarchists squatted the Theological School of the Aristotle University;
the social forum, a grouping of trade unions, used a section of a hall
that hosts the international trade fair of Thessaloniki; others occupied
a mountain camping site.
All the groups agreed the EU has turned into a neo-liberal monolith, subservient
to big money business and not concerned about the needs of citizens.
“This summit is a talking shop,” said Terry Hughes, 42, from
Armagh in Northern Ireland. “The majority of people back home don’t
even know this is going on.”
Authorities in Thessaloniki made seafront parks available to demonstrators
for rallying points and open air stages for a variety of rock concerts.
At the Theological School, whose roots are where Aristotle first taught,
stray dogs slept under trees and inhabitants baked bread on open fires.
The university cafeteria offerings were replaced by a hastily drawn-up
list scrawled on cardboard of the traditional Greek aperitif ouzo, beer,
juice, or water.
EU targets illegal immigrants
Inside the summit, European Union leaders agreed to spend more money to
protect the bloc’s expanding external frontiers against illegal immigrants.
Hailing a decision to spend 140 million euros on external borders, European
Commission President Romano Prodi said: “Public opinion now can be
really tranquilized by the action we have taken...We have put our money
where our mouth is.”
“The Commission has made an effort to find extra money because our
borders are very, very long and difficult to guard,” he told a news
conference on June.
After eastern enlargement next year, the EU will have much longer borders
with the ex-Soviet Union and the Balkans, bringing the bloc’s total
population to about 450 million.
Britain, backed by Denmark and the Netherlands, had proposed that the
bloc launch an EU-funded pilot project on so-called “protection zones”
for refugees in areas of conflict, with Africa as the test ground for
the plan.
But Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson said: “Ideas to set up special
zones outside the EU are not something we are up for. Not with support
from the EU, and not with the EU’s money.”
The summit also raised the prospect of the EU, due to enlarge to 25 nations
next May and then to admit Romania and Bulgaria in 2007, embarking on
further waves of expansion.
Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, and Serbia and Montenegro
are now in the queue to become candidates for EU membership.
Sources: Associated Press, Independent (UK), Macedonian Press Agency,
Reuters, Indymedia (UK)
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Venezuela moves to replace US dollar with
Euro
Analysis by Roy S. Carson
June 18— A move by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to replace the
US dollar with the Euro is seen as upsetting Washington more than when
Iraq’s Saddam Hussein started using the Euro for oil transactions
last November.
The US is now said to be angered by Venezuela’s decision to barter
oil with thirteen other Latin American countries, dealing moves to dollarize
South America currencies.
International finance experts see how the US dollar has been devaluing
against the Euro, as important players on the international scene convert
to the European currency for more stable transactions ... Russia, China,
North Korea, and Malaysia have begun holding Euros as important hedgings
in their foreign exchange reserves as faith in American greenbacks dissolves.
The CIA and other intelligence organizations, including Britain’s
MI5, now fear that the next step is that the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries (OPEC) is about to switch to Euros. The immediate
effect would be a massive devaluation, perhaps sparking domino-effect
devaluations worldwide in US dollar-related foreign reserves and foreign
debt calculations.
With a massive budget deficit, the United States could have cause for
concern over recent intelligence that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is on
the brink of converting to the Euro, and the opinion held by many OPEC
ministers is that the conversion is an inevitability; the only question
left is: when?
Arab sources claim that Euro conversion across the Middle and Far East
is a rational step to counteract the United States’ capacity to “wage
further illegal wars” around the world and that any prolonged occupation
of Iraq by US/British forces and any move towards withdrawal of Iraq from
the OPEC cartel will only precipitate “remedial action” by like-minded
Arab nations to protect their own best interests over Washington’s.
Source: VHeadline.com (Venezuela)
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Settling down to a confrontation
By Peter Hirschberg
Jerusalem, June 21 (IPS)— Already, a group of settlers are preparing
to rebuild Mitzpeh Yitzhar, the settler outpost on the West Bank taken
down before television cameras earlier in the week.
Settlers have resumed their cat-and-mouse games with the Israeli army
on hilltops to resurrect this and other outposts dismantled in recent
days. The move to dismantle the outpost could have been just an act. But
hardcore settlers are determined to take an equally symbolic stand against
demolition.
“We will wage a battle even over a tent,” said Yehoshua Mor-Yosef,
spokesman for the local settler movement. “Because if you take down
an outpost, then you create a precedent for the uprooting of settlements.”
Many of the 61 hilltop outposts that have sprung up across the West Bank
without government authorization since Prime Minister Ariel Sharon took
office in March 2001 are not even inhabited. The upheaval over removing
them will be dwarfed by a showdown that would come if an Israeli government
attempts to evacuate any of the 144 established settlements in the West
Bank and the Gaza Strip.
A total of 220,000 settlers now live in the West Bank and Gaza. The presence
in the Gaza Strip, which does not hold the same biblical significance
for religious Jews, is much smaller, numbering only 7,000 in 19 settlements.
The dispute over settlements has been raging since the first was established
in 1968 — a year after Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan
— and it goes to the very heart of the battle over the future of
the country as a Jewish and democratic state. If Israel clings to the
territories, where over three million Palestinians live, there will be
a Jewish minority ruling over an Arab majority between the Jordan River
and the Mediterranean Sea.
Left-wing Israelis see the settlements as an obstacle to peace. On the
moderate right, many see the settlements as a security asset, ensuring
that Israel does not return to 1967 borders, which they see as dangerously
narrow and not defendable.
For the settler hardcore, occupying Judea and Samaria — the biblical
names they use for the West Bank — is a divine mission that will
hasten the coming of the messiah.
“The Jewish nation was born in Judea and Samaria,” says Mor-
Yosef. “If we don’t have the right to build in Beit El and Ofra
[two settlements deep inside the West Bank], then we have no right to
Tel Aviv.”
Palestinians point to expansion of the settlements as the root cause of
the Intifada. Since the Oslo peace accords were signed in 1993, the settler
population has risen 80 percent.
The international community says the settlements violate international
resolutions that forbid the movement of civilians to land seized in war.
All Mideast peace initiatives over the last decade, including the road
map, call for a freeze on settlement building.
Mor-Yosef and other settler leaders say they have been caught off-guard
by the man they revered as the architect of the settlements. As housing
minister in the late eighties and early nineties, Ariel Sharon spearheaded
a massive construction drive in the occupied territories.
Now, Sharon could be on the verge of taking a wrecking ball to his own
handiwork, or at least to some of it. But evacuating outposts is a far
cry from dismantling an established settlement. Many in the Israeli left
are still doubtful he will do this, but Mor-Yosef is convinced that when
Sharon talks of “painful compromises” for peace, he means uprooting
settlers from their homes.
Settler leaders emerged shocked and angry from a meeting with Sharon this
week. Sharon told them of his commitment to the road map and to dismantling
the outposts. “Sharon is confused,” says Mor-Yosef. “He
has grown weary.”
Sharon has, at least for now, placed Israel’s relationship with the
United States above his commitment to the settlements. Dror Etkes, a member
of Peace Now, the leading peace movement in Israel, believes Sharon will
ultimately take down some established settlements. “Israel is in
deep economic crisis and Sharon understands that this is the result of
the occupation,” he said.
The word “settlement” may conjure up the image of a tiny and
undeveloped community. But many of the settlements today resemble small
towns, often with rows of red-roofed homes connected by tarred roads,
and kitted out with an array of public buildings and services.
Ma’aleh Adumim, located just 10 minutes drive east of Jerusalem,
has 25,000 inhabitants. Ariel, further to the north in the West Bank,
has 19,000. There are many settlements with several thousand inhabitants.
In the years leading up to the Intifada, the settler population was growing
at a rate of eight percent per year. Since the uprising erupted in September
2000, and attacks by Palestinian militants made life in the West Bank
precarious, that figure is down to five percent.
Traveling along the roads of the West Bank is something of a game of Russian
roulette for the settlers, who are exposed to ambushes and drive-by shootings
by Palestinian militants. In the type of roadside ambush that has become
typical, a settler was shot dead June 20 by Palestinian gunmen near the
West Bank city Ramallah. The army has now barred Palestinian vehicles
from certain roads used by settlers.
A disproportionate number of settlers have been killed since the start
of the Intifada. The settlers make three percent of the Israeli population
(five million Jews and one million Israeli Arabs), but Mor-Yosef says
they account for a quarter of the Israelis killed since the fighting began.
But the attacks, many settlers say, have steeled their resolve not to
leave.
The Intifada has also brought more violence from settlers against Palestinians.
Palestinian property has been vandalized, and in some areas settlers have
prevented Palestinians from harvesting their olives. A group of settlers
are on trial for trying to blow up a girls’ school in East Jerusalem.
Not all settlers moved to the West Bank for religious reasons. They were
drawn by the middle-class dream of an affordable house with a garden in
a small community. A Peace Now survey conducted last year found that more
than 70 percent of the settlers are secular Jews living close to the 1967
border, not deep inside the West Bank.
These soft-core settlers are unlikely to be at the barricades if they
are forced to leave their homes as part of a future peace agreement. The
same Peace Now survey found that 70 percent would be ready to accept compensation
and leave.
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French judge rails at ‘censoring’
of her book on corruption
By John Lichfield
Paris, France, June 20— Eva Joly, one of the most feared and tenacious
investigating magistrates in France until she retired last year, has provoked
a political and legal storm by writing a book describing the death threats
and other pressures she says she endured while investigating the pillaging
of billions of francs from the Elf oil company.
This week her book was banned for three weeks by a French court (which
was chaired by a judge whom she criticizes in the text).
Yesterday, Mme Joly, 59, led a group of 14 judges and corruption investigators
from around the world in making a “Declaration of Paris,” which
accuses Western banks and multinational companies of being “at the
heart of” an international network of “grand corruption.”
Her book, Est-ce dans ce monde là que nous voulons vivre? (Is this
the world in which we want to live?), has been banned until July 7, when
the Elf trial in Paris will end. More than a score of former Elf executives
and their business associates are accused of embezzling at least 2 billion
Euros from the company when it was owned by the state in the late 1980s
and early 1990s. The evidence against them was largely unearthed by Mme
Joly and two other investigating magistrates in a long inquiry, marked,
she says, by political obstruction and death threats.
Mme Joly, who arrived in France as a Norwegian au pair in 1964, married
a French doctor and then trained as a lawyer in her forties. She says
she was frequently impeded by other members of the French judiciary. One
of the judges she criticized was the chairman of the court that delayed
publication of her book.
The court accepted the argument put forward by the French government and
by lawyers’ associations that the book’s publication would prejudice
the Elf trial. Lawyers’ groups — with whom Mme Joly has often
quarrelled — accused her of trying to “profit” from the
trial and of posing as a “Joan of Arc of anti-corruption.”
Mme Joly, who returned to Norway after retiring, is crying “censorship.”
She protests that there is no evidence in the book against the Elf defendants
that has not already been presented at the trial.
The point of the book, she says, is to place the Elf affair within the
context of a web of high-level corruption in the world and the unwillingness
of the French state apparatus to come to terms with corruption among the
nation’s elite. Defendants in the trial have alleged that the French
state used Elf over many years to finance client politicians in Africa
and elsewhere.
The French justice system is under attack on several fronts. Another court
decided on June 18 to abandon all criminal investigation of a dozen senior
officials accused of covering up, for commercial reasons, in the the fact
that blood banks were tainted by the AIDS virus in the late 1980s. Relatives
of those who caught HIV from blood transfusions complained, in anguished
terms, that the legal system had taken almost 20 years to decide to do
nothing.
There has also been criticism of a court decision, also on June 18, to
clear the central bank governor, Jean-Claude Trichet, of approving falsified
accounts for the struggling state-owned bank, Crédit Lyonnais,
in the early 1990s.
Although press commentators agreed that there was no evidence against
M. Trichet, they said the French state, both politicians and officials,
had now been exonerated of all responsibility for the €31 billion
debacle at Crédit Lyonnais. What was clear, however, was that the
bank’s imprudent loans and acquisitions had largely been willed by
the government, which was led by the Socialists at the time.
Mme Joly now heads an anti-corruption campaign in Norway. In her “Declaration
of Paris,” joined by investigators from Italy, Switzerland, Spain,
Canada, and other countries, she called on Western governments to take
more seriously their declared commitment to root out high-level corruption
and money laundering.
Source: Independent (UK)
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