Peace activist held as ‘danger to Israel’

By Chris McGreal

Jerusalem, Israel, Sept. 7— Tali Fahima served her time in the Israeli army, voted for Ariel Sharon as prime minister, and took it as given that her country was struggling for survival against terrorism.

Then last year, the 29-year-old legal secretary from Tel Aviv picked up a newspaper and read about Zakariya Zubeidi, the Jenin leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the group responsible for killing hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings and shootings. Fahima decided she would ask Zubeidi why he killed Jews.

On Sept. 5, the military placed Fahima in detention without trial using a law applied to thousands of Palestinians over the past four years of intifada but rarely to Israelis.

The authorities declined to reveal the precise reasons but the defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, who signed the order, described her as “a clear and present danger to all Israelis.”

Intelligence sources told the Israeli press that Fahima had a hand in bombing an army checkpoint last month, and that she was planning attacks inside Israel.

But Fahima’s lawyers and friends accuse the government of using draconian security laws to silence her because she has broken a taboo against befriending and explaining the enemy.

Fahima started visiting Zubeidi in Jenin a little more than a year ago, despite an Israeli ban on its citizens traveling to Palestinian towns. She said she wanted to find out what motivated him to kill.

“I had to ask why a man goes ahead and does this,” she told Israeli television this year. “There is a reason for this. A man doesn’t wake up one morning and decide, ‘OK, I’m going to carry out an attack.’”

The army describes Zubeidi as one of its most-wanted terrorists. It has tried in vain to kill him five times.

After several meetings with the al-Aqsa brigade’s commander, Fahima described him as a freedom fighter and “a kindhearted person whom I was lucky to meet.” She said she would be a human shield to protect him from Israeli assassination attempts.

“It is hard for a 28-year-old girl who was brought up on certain values to find out one day that they are all wrong,” she told the Jerusalem Post in June. “Who causes the occupation? The Palestinians? No. It is the Israelis and who am I? A Jew and an Israeli and by sitting at home and doing nothing I am also responsible.

“Zubeidi is not a terrorist, rather he is fighting against the occupation. Suicide bombers are also fighting the occupation. Put yourself in their place and see what happens. They are denied basic rights and freedom.”

Those views have infuriated many Israelis who have denounced Fahima as a traitor and terrorist sympathizer. Her religious parents refuse to speak to her, and she was sacked from her job.

Fahima’s lawyers say that if there were evidence she was involved in violence, the authorities would have laid charges, not place her in the limbo of administrative detention.

The justice minister, Yosef Lapid, said the activist has not been charged due to the need to protect intelligence sources.

“There is very, very concrete evidence in the material indicating that she acted in a manner that endangers the security of Israel. Until there is a trial, the relevant officials believe that it would be better from the point of view of the security of Israel that she remain in detention,” he said.

But Fahima’s lawyer, Smadar Ben-Natan, says her client was detained last month after refusing to inform for the Shin Bet.

“[The intelligence services] are attempting to prove to her that she is politically mistaken, they are giving her history lessons, debating with her whether this should be described as occupation, whether Palestinian fighters should be defined as freedom fighters or as terrorists,” she said.

One of Fahima’s friends, Lin Dovrat, a peace activist, said the political motives behind her detention were clear from the authorities’ claim that information against her was too sensitive to be made public in court while the Shin Bet leaked accusations to the press.

“They tried to kill Zubeidi five times and failed and she got to him and was able to talk to him and was able to connect with him on a very basic human level and I think that drives them nuts,” she said.

Ben-Natan says that when Fahima refused to collaborate with the Shin Bet, it sought to discredit her by telling journalists she was sleeping with Zubeidi, who is married. It is an accusation widely given credibility in the Israeli press, and denied by Fahima.

Source: Guardian (UK)

School atrocity may reignite conflict in Russian republics

By Carolynne Wheeler

Prigorodny, Russia, Sept. 10— On the surface it is an unlikely battleground: fields dotted with broken-down buildings, cows and chickens surrounding a sleepy town with faded brick buildings and dusty streets.

But Prigorodny, where neighboring Russian republics fought in 1992, is preparing for another conflict, this time provoked by the school hostage-taking in nearby Beslan. It is the Muslim Ingush here who fear reprisals, and they would be easy targets for the mainly Christian Ossetians, who seem determined on avenging the more than 350 people killed and 700 wounded last week.

Some have already fled; others are digging in, saying that they will fight if needs be.

“[The terrorists] shouldn’t have done that,” said Alekhan Akhilgov, 27, an ethnic Ingush living on the edge of Prigorodny district. “They’ve got lots of people of different nationalities in trouble, including Ingush. Those that are guilty, they should suffer the revenge.”

Zena Doskieva, 50, said: “When we walk out of our houses people stare at us strangely. People say there were Ingush terrorists among them.

“We’ve lived our whole life here. Our children go to school here. The terrorists should run away. They are not Ingush or Ossetian; they are terrorists.”

Angry young Ossetian men loitering on a street corner did not seem to see it that way.

“What would you do if this happened to your child? You would do the same. It’s been the same here for ages,” said Alan, a boxer, who gave his age as 29, though he looked much younger. “The patience of the people is going to run out one day ... I think there will be war, not a large-scale war but war will happen.”

Many families fled across the border to Ingushetia as soon as they heard about the occupation of the school, not even waiting for the end of the siege, expecting the backlash which began at the weekend.

The Russian media reported that as many as 1,000 Ossetians surrounded Prigorodny on the night of Sept. 5, though the attack was thwarted by police blockades.

“The situation is very tense. People are really upset; the whole area is basically in shock and also very scared because the situation is so uncertain,” said Ekaterina Sokirianskaya of the human rights group Memorial in the Ingushetian capital, Nazran.

There are other signs of trouble: many Ingush patients in Ossetian hospitals have transferred themselves to Nazran hospitals.

Kazbek Sultygov, head of the Ingushetian state commission on refugees and displaced persons, said: “They didn’t feel comfortable after what happened. They were afraid that some anti-Ingush movement might start. That’s why people don’t want to provoke anything, and they behave in a very cautious way.”

Ingush students at medical and agricultural colleges in the North Ossetian capital, Vladikavkaz, were asked by the university rector to take indefinite academic leave, and there were buses ready to take them, Memorial said.

“It is very dangerous to stay here. The situation is very dangerous and very flammable,” said Madina, a young English teacher with a three-year-old son, who said she and her husband were making plans to leave the small Ossetian town of Maysky to stay with her parents in Nazran. “People’s moods are very bad. They are very cruel; I don’t know what they will do with us.” Kartsa, on the border, was set upon by about 200 Ossetian men on the night of Sept. 4, although local police stopped the attack.

Bad blood between the Ossetians and the Ingush dates back centuries, but in modern times the tension in the area between Vladikavkaz and the Ingushetian border has been rooted in Stalin’s forced deportation of the Ingush during the second world war, and their return a decade later to homes which had been given over to Ossetians.

During the fighting of 12 years ago, 50,000 or so Ingush fled the district. About 20,000 have returned, and many are now rebuilding their houses with the help of government compensation. But the resentment has been quietly growing, fed by the Ossetians’ fear that Ingush militants were aiding the separatists in Chechnya.

The police have seized caches of weapons in the area in recent months, and ethnic Ingush and Chechen fighters were reported to be among those who attacked Russian government buildings in Nazran in June.

If war begins, it may ignite the Caucasus, Sergei Artuniov, head of the Caucasus department of the Moscow institute of ethnology, said.

Ruslan, 45, an Ossetian driver living in Prigorodny, agreed. “[The Ingush] should have the conscience to understand that Ossetians would never live with them together. If they don’t leave themselves, we will ask them to, as in 1992.”

Source: Guardian (UK)

Housing revolution attempted in Venezuela

By Robin Nieto

Caracas, Venezuela, Sept. 2 — Across the country, the Venezuelan government, via the Ministry of Infrastructure (MINFRA) and other housing institutions, is opening new housing projects, providing homes for the poorest of Venezuelans.

Housing projects to benefit the poor are not new in Venezuela and not restricted to President Hugo Chavez’s government. In the state of Miranda, adjacent to the district of Caracas, opposition Governor Enrique Mendoza also provides homes for Venezuela’s poor. Both leaders have been accused of political grandstanding by using housing projects and social programs as a method to win votes during election periods.

However, unlike Mendoza, Chavez has based his political platform on his Bolivarian Revolution, which is essentially a “new deal” for an estimated 80 percent of Venezuelans who live in poverty. His social revolution is comprised of new social programs in health, education, and housing, fueled by the country’s oil income. Venezuela is the 5th largest exporter of oil in the world.

Tapping into the country’s previously impenetrable oil fund, which was once controlled by a tiny “oiligarchy,” has made Chavez’s social programs possible. Recently, the Chavez government dedicated more than $500 million for what he calls a “revolutionary mission” to deal with the housing crisis in Venezuela. There is a deficit of almost 1,800,000 houses in the country, according to MINFRA, and the ministry in charge of housing has set a goal to build 130,000 houses before the end of the year.

Chavez recently appointed a new housing minister and announced by Dec. 31 the new housing mission will become its own ministry. While details of how the new mission and the new ministry will be organized or why the new ministry is necessary have not been provided, it is clear that the current government system, based on the pre-Chavez era of providing housing through a complex system of numerous semi-independent housing institutions, has been less than effective in many parts of the country.

In Miranda state, on the outskirts of a beachside town called Higuerote, two hours northwest of Caracas, MINFRA, along with housing institute Fundabarrios, teamed up to build a housing community from scratch in a place ironically called Isla Fantasia, or Fantasy Island.

The project started more than a year ago, providing brand new three bedroom bungalow homes for people who lived in dirt floor shacks that were regularly flooded during the rainy season by surrounding creeks and rivers.

A year later there are mixed reactions among residents who are still grateful to Chavez for the houses they have received, but are also asking what happened to the supporting infrastructure and the landfill for their most pressing problem, flooding.

Romulo Salas, president of the residents’ association, says that the government has built homes, but that infrastructure problems persist. “Thirty-four houses have been built during the past year along with four housing foundations,” Salas said. “But our biggest problem is the rain. When it rains, the area is flooded and the resources we need to resolve the problem have not arrived.” While the community struggles to deal with constant flooding with little in the way of resources, Salas said there are 500 children who live in Isla Fantasia. “We hope President Chavez will build a school for us soon,” Salas said. He also explained that the town electricity system has been extended to Isla Fantasia, but that payment methods have yet to be formalized. This means that people are living in a permanent blackout under brand new power lines until that issue is resolved.

43-year-old Zoraida Camacho has piled up landfill in large mounds in front of her shack made of corrugated steel sheets. “We are missing everything here,” Camacho says. “We need sewage lines, potable water, pavement for the street. When it rains here this place is a mud puddle. We can’t keep waiting [for the government] to come, so we do what we can to get by, but we are in a critical condition here,” Camacho said, adding that she is waiting for her own house that she applied for last year. Her shelter stands less than three yards from one of the creeks that floods the area. She has lived this way for the last 12 years.

Along with missing infrastructure, residents agree that the grim reality they face is unemployment. “Here we do not have employment,” says Luis Alvarez, president of a local cooperative that wants to provide services for the neighborhood. “What we have here is survival,” says Alvarez, adding that people in Isla Fantasia are not waiting for the government to provide them with everything but rather they are asking to participate in the development of their neighborhood. “We have skilled workers here who can build the infrastructure we need,” Alvarez says. “So why did the government send in outside private contractors that did a poor job, at least on my house, and who we have never seen again?” Alvarez asked.

Through the local co-op, Alvarez and eleven others presented a community work plan to the national government and to the previous Minister of Infrastructure, Diosdado Cabello, (now running for governor against Enrique Mendoza), which outlined how the community can participate in building the roads, the sewage lines, the potable water system, the houses, and filling in the creeks, to alleviate unemployment in the neighborhood. The co-op submitted the proposal a year ago and to date they have not received a word from the national government. “We do not know why,” Alvarez said.

Calls to both MINFRA and to Fundabarrios at their headquarters in Caracas revealed that both government institutes had no information on the housing development at Isla Fantasia — this despite a large sign at the entrance to the neighborhood that says “Fundabarrios” in large print across a three meter wide sign, as well as the blue MINFRA logo that designates the housing project as their program.

President Chavez said that while government housing institutions have done a good job, they have to “deepen.” He added that housing projects will include integration with supporting infrastructure such as schools, medical clinics, green spaces, and even small industry created by cooperatives. For the residents of Isla Fantasia, Chavez’s vision is exactly what they are missing and exactly what they are calling for.

With upcoming elections for state governors and mayors, the race in Miranda state will be close, since the state was almost equally divided during the presidential referendum last August 15, between those who wanted to end Chavez’s term in office at and those wanted him to continue as president.

Source: Venezuelanalysis