From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) Tany Reinhart, Translated from Hebrew by Netta Van Vliet | Yediot Aharonot | 20 April 2004 Amidst the political storm in Israel regarding the "Gaza disengagement" plan, only one really meaningful fact emerges: Sharon received Bush's approval to proceed with his plan for the wall in the West Bank. With regard to the Gaza strip, the disengagement plan published in the Israeli papers on Friday, April 16th specifies that within a year and a half, the Israeli occupation there should be declared to be over.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem | The Independent | 18 April 2004 Mordechai Vanunu, the man who first revealed that Israel had nuclear weapons, is "demoralised, worried and angry," as he finally prepares for the end of his 18-year prison sentence this week. In one of the more grudging and unusual prison releases of recent times, Mr Vanunu, 49, is due to walk out of jail on Wednesday at the southern Israeli town of Ashkelon and into a series of heavily confining restrictions, amounting to a form of internal exile.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) Akiva Eldar | Ha'aretz | 16 April 2004 South Africa will be very interested in the Israeli disengagement plan published yesterday. The political, military, and economic aspects of the plan for the Gaza Strip and the enclave in the northern West Bank are amazingly similar to the homelands, one of the last inventions of the white minority in South Africa to perpetuate its rule over the black majority.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) Khalid Kishtainy | openDemocracy.com | April 15, 2004 An American life is worth a thousand Iraqi lives. Iraqi satirist and author Khalid Kishtainy does the accounts for the recent fighting in Falluja. I don’t understand the reason for all this fuss and world condemnation of the Americans on the Falluja massacre. Only around 600 poor citizens were killed. In my opinion, this is a very modest price for the lives of the four US security men, so-called contractors, murdered by the Fallujis a few days ago.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) Lev Greenberg | Haaretz Daily | 9 February 2005 Yitzhak Laor argued that the demand for a referendum is not democratic but meant to consolidate an ethnocentric regime ("Referendum means apartheid," Haaretz, February 3). He also called on "doves" who support the disengagement to stop the formalist-legalist discussion and raise democratic arguments about the rights of the Palestinians. I agree with his criticism but the question is, why is there no real democratic discourse in Israel?
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) Amiram Barkat | Haaretz Daily | 20 February 2005 Fund used subsidiary Himnuta to acquire land near Green Line in the Jerusalem area Since 1967, tens of thousands of dunams of land have been purchased by the Jewish National Fund in areas of strategic importance in Judea and Samaria. The lands share a common location: They are all near the Green Line, in areas which will be up for negotiation in the event of an Israel withdrawal to the 1949-1967 armistice lines.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) Meron Benvenisti | Haaretz | 10 February 2005 It's been a long time since Zionism had such a revival. Everyone's joining in the cause to affirm their contradictory position on the issue that is the heart and soul of Zionism - "redemption of the land." The attorney general's decision to put an end to the Jewish National Fund's discrimination when it comes to leasing land to Arabs - and his finding of a way to perpetuate that discrimination through "
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) Paul Campos | Rocky Mountain News | 4 January 2005 Daniel Pipes, the well-known neoconservative intellectual and director of the Middle East Forum, has just published an opinion piece in which he implies that the wholesale relocation of American citizens of the Muslim faith to internment camps might be a good idea. Pipes doesn't actually come right out and support internment camps for American Muslims, but his article (published originally in The New York Sun and reprinted in various other papers) casts a nostalgic glance back at the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II and hints that we ought to consider similar steps in the context of the war on terrorism.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) Uri Avnery | December 2004 Uri Avnery deconstructs Sharon's recent speech to Israeli financial, political and academic leaders in which he painted a rosy picture of Israel's prospects. But "the most important part of the speech was the part that was not there. There was no peace offer to the Palestinians. He did not talk about peace at all." Ariel Sharon's speech at the Herzliya Conference, an annual gathering of Israel's financial, political and academic aristocracy, proved again his wondrous ability to conjure up an imaginary world and divert attention away from the real one.
From the www.monabaker.com archive (legacy material) Paul de Rooij | Counterpunch | 9 December 2004 Ariel Sharon is surrounded by a coterie of "advisors" who step in to develop, perfect and sell plans for the continued and inexorable dispossession of the Palestinians. What is surprising is that these advisors, the intellectual progenitors of continuing mass crimes, are an outspoken bunch; they don't shy away from revealing their latest fiendish plans or their true intent.