Statehood requires more than status update

Will this be the new state of Palestine?

Just days away from what is arguably Palestine’s most momentous day, the declaration of statehood, the Palestinian street feels at a loss.

This is supposedly what Palestinians have been literally dying for since their systematic ethnic cleansing and the start of the brutal Israeli occupation spanning over decades. But talking to ordinary Palestinians, I have yet to meet one who believes the way the Palestine Liberation Organisation is pushing forward the statehood bid at the United Nations will improve life on the ground.

“Look at us – our souk is dead, our streets and houses taken over by settlers, to move out I need a permit to show at the Israeli checkpoints, which I never get,” a baker in Hebron’s old city said. “What kind of state will this be if our lives will remain ruled by the Israeli occupation?”

His sentiment is echoed in varying tones across the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza – from cynical shrugs to downright anger at feeling totally excluded, especially in the blockaded enclave ruled by Hamas.

Despite this momentous event, the PLO has done a terrible job at informing, let alone consulting, the people it is meant to represent. For months, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was lost in testing the grounds in diplomatic circles, checking how far he could go in calling America’s bluff while forgetting that this was about the millions of people living under occupation or as refugees abroad.

Some of the Palestinians’ most crucial questions, on the eve of the UN Security Council vote, remain without clear answers, with even conflicting legal opinions and no leadership that, at such a crucial moment, is so terribly needed. Reports from international agencies have multiplied in the past days, but nobody is talking to the Palestinians. What happens to the refugees’ right of return? How will the Palestinian state function under occupation? What will the state of Palestine look like? What about Gaza?

The idea of declaring statehood while effectively having two governments ruling the territory in question is a recipe for a failed state. Despite the signed reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas last April, the two parties have kept behaving like two separate governments, ignoring the overwhelming calls from the street and civil society to form a unity government. That Abbas forged ahead with the statehood bid without involving Hamas leaves him with even less legitimacy than he already had. Hamas cannot oppose statehood, but it did criticise the unilateral move that seems to have taken nobody’s concerns into account. It is now waiting for the day after the vote to be proven right.

On the other hand, watching Israel’s frantic diplomatic race against the PLO’s initiative and its clear threats against this “unilateral” move has a tinge of historical justice. Israel can never be taken seriously when it tells Palestinians that they are breaching past agreements and commitments to bilateral negotiations for peace, when the world now knows – thanks to the leaked Palestine Papers earlier this year – the details of Israel’s intransigence even when Palestinian negotiators were willing to sell their souls for some peace agreement.

Israel is terrified of the legal prospects that would come out of all this, but it shouldn’t. Legally, every settler and soldier present in the new state of Palestine would be an act of war, subject to the International Criminal Court, but Israel has gotten away with so many human rights and international law violations for the last six decades that very few Palestinians see this as relevant to their cause. Only two days ago, the UK bended its laws of universal jurisdiction to make prosecution of war criminals even harder than it already was, giving Tzipi Livni and Ehud Olmert’s regime all the reassurances that they can travel freely to London despite showering indiscriminately the 1.6 million population of Gaza with white phosphorus.

One good thing that comes out of this is America’s embarrassing situation, just when it preaches democracy and liberty in the wake of the Arab Spring and after years of channelling funds to the PA for supposed state building. Never mind the politicisation of that aid that has entrenched the divisions between the West Bank and Gaza, the stubborn refusal to engage with Hamas when they were democratically elected, never mind the millions of dollars of “humanitarian aid” that went to train and equip Abbas’s forces to do the policing for Israel: By vetoing the vote for statehood at the UN, the US administration will be putting its priorities “on the record” and Abbas, for once, would be calling America’s bluff. What happens next is the big question.

Blaming Gaza, Israel bombs the enclave

The Gaza sky is once again host to Israeli fighter jets, helicopters, drones, missiles and rockets. Even before the exact toll of Israeli victims in the Eilat attack on Thursday was known, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak was quick to point his finger at Gaza, vowing a harsh response.

“Soon enough they will blame Gaza for global warming,” a colleague told me exasperatedly.

Very few here believe Gaza had anything to do with the daring attacks that killed eight Israelis in the Red Sea holiday town. Until now, no evidence has been presented implicating Gaza. Hamas denied involvement immediately, and the Popular Resistance Committees – whose top military commander and other fighters were killed in targeted airstrikes later – applauded the operation but also said they did not commit it.

Yet the blaming of Gaza was prompt and unequivocal even though everything pointed at the rapidly deteriorating context of the Sinai Peninsula since the fall of Mubarak’s regime. In stating that the attacks – which all came from the Egyptian border – originated in Gaza and would be responded to in Gaza, Barak swayed Israeli and international public opinion away from the troublesome desert to the easy target that is Gaza, paving the way for a weekend of deadly airstrikes.

In the ensuing bombardment of Gaza that is now in its third day, 14 Palestinians were killed and 44 wounded, including women, children and elderly people. That is besides the five Egyptian border police killed by Israeli forces on Egyptian soil as they allegedly pursued the Eilat fighters.

Among the civilian areas targeted in Gaza there was a carwash facility, a detergents factory and a concrete factory. By Friday night, Hamas’s armed wing could no longer stay idle, declaring an end to the ceasefire and calling on all Palestinian militants to retaliate at Israel. Interestingly, the Hamas political wing was warning against an escalation at the same time the Izz Al Deen Al Qassam Brigades were calling an end to the truce, exposing Hamas’s internal dilemma.

In calling off the ceasefire, Hamas has played along and provided Israel with a further pretext to increase the escalation further, just when Netanyahu was plagued by massive internal protests. Those sushi-eating protestors clamouring for “social justice” have now all packed up their tents and went back to their army uniforms. This is also happening just weeks away from the pending bid at the United Nations to recognise the Palestinian state – an event which Israel has been staunchly opposing in the most violent of terms.

The Israeli media is sticking to the establishment’s narrative. By reporting only about the rockets fired towards Israel it raises expectations for more bloodshed on Palestinian soil, and obliterating any analysis of the real story unfolding in the Sinai. It is there, in that vast Egyptian desert, that groups have five times exploded the gas pipeline from Egypt to Israel this year.

Only last week, Egyptian forces entered the demilitarised zone – with Israel’s permission – to sweep the area of saboteurs and radicals that started coming out of the woodwork since the fall of Mubarak’s regime. At least two were killed and several were injured as a result of the operation.

Seen in this context, the Eilat battle takes a different possible explanation, a sort of predictable retaliation by the rogue elements ruling the Sinai under the new regime. According to several sources, Israel requested permission to respond on Egyptian soil within 7km around Taba but Egypt refused, despite US insistence. Israel launched its airstrikes anyway, killing the Egyptian security officers.

In blaming Gaza, the Israeli government has found a convenient way of sweeping its internal mess under the carpet, but it is also ignoring the stark new realities staring it in the eye since the beginning of the Arab spring. Even as the unnecessary civilian deaths in Gaza keep increasing, it is only a matter of time until Israel will be forced to face the full impact of the rapidly changing landscape around it, where its neighbours are not as forgiving as the friendly former dictators.

Gaza wakes up to the scent of freedom

When Gaza celebrates, it is usually to champion others’ victories. Most often it’s football: Barcelona or Real Madrid drawing the crowds and the car cades, Egypt at the World Cup, and outside the football grounds, Egypt on the day it got rid of Mubarak.

Not last Wednesday. As Palestinians awaited in front of TV screens, ears stuck to radios, to see and hear the news they wanted to hear from Cairo, Gaza’s streets were full of expectation, waiting for the moment to burst. After so many ups and downs, highs and lows, dashed hopes and shattered expectations, Palestinians were to witness the closing of the unity deal between Hamas and Fatah and all of the Palestinian factions.

The scenes on TV were moving: Seeing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the same room with exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshal for the first time in four years; hearing Abbas speaking clearly about putting the division behind to confront the real problems ahead, united.

What followed on the streets of Gaza is hard to understand unless you have witnessed daily harassment, arrests, beatings, slander and accusations of “collaborating with the Palestinian Authority” by none other than your Palestinian brothers – only of a different faction. 

For the last four years, Hamas has been suppressing all forms of political and civil expression that had any hint of not towing its own line. Anything related to Fatah had no chance of even making it to the public. Journalists, NGOs, authors and independent youth have been caught in the quagmire that polarised Palestinian society so devastatingly.

In the West Bank, Abbas’s forces have been similarly arresting, torturing, killing and suppressing anything that had to do with Hamas, only that the PA had the American and European funding to torture people more sweetly.

The division between Hamas and Fatah goes way beyond the immediate political and civil freedoms – that is only the tip of the iceberg but perhaps also the most visible one. That is why last Wednesday night, seeing Gaza City flooded with Fatah’s yellow flags side by side with Hamas’s green flags, and even more Palestinian colours, was a touching moment for anyone who has been here in the last four years.

Of course it would have been nicer if people came out with the Palestinian national flag, but one also has to understand the significance of the moment of freedom for every individual to come out with any flag he or she liked. At the end of the day, Palestinian unity is a victory for democracy, the same democracy other Arab brothers are dying for as we speak.

To think that less than two months ago Palestinian youth in Gaza were being beaten up and arrested by Hamas forces for merely calling for Palestinian reconciliation, that walking around with the traditional kufiyeh was interpreted by Hamas people as support for Fatah, that waving a Fatah flag in Gaza was as taboo as giving the Nazi salute in Israel.

Beyond the big words, the Palestinian division has all but crippled society, over and above the Israeli occupation and the blockade of Gaza. Ultimately, it is the very product of the Israeli occupation and blockade which Palestinian leaders were entrapped into by the international community, starting off with the geographic isolation of Gaza to the political boycott of democratically-elected Hamas and the collective punishment of 1.5 million people.

What the division has meant for ordinary Palestinians trapped in Gaza ranges from finding no essential medicines at the government clinics because the Ramallah government did not coordinate with the Gaza one; to having no electricity because the two government can’t agree on a solution to pay old bills just when the blockade plunges the enclave into total darkness.

It has meant that only those very close to the Ramallah government could have the privilege to travel to the West Bank (same country, by the way) – all the rest had to wait in Gaza for Israel’s “security clearance” which rules you out just because you are from Gaza.

It has meant that thousands of professionals, highly trained and skilled people employed with the government – from helicopter pilots to gynaecologists to teachers and diplomats – have been told to stay at home or go on strike while receiving their US and EU-funded salaries, others were downgraded to make space for less competent friends of the government. The result is a total mess of politicised international aid and money down the drain, not to mention the chronic depression all of this has brought to the Palestinian household.

For entire years, these people have stared at the walls of their houses in a complete state of depression while their wives took over control of the family. The more enterprising ones – and there are many – found other things to do. A gynaecologist I know has been doing private practice while receiving the PA salary.  He knows it’s wrong, Hamas have been trying to stop double salaries, but that is the situation that the European and American governments have been financing to keep in place: total dependence on humanitarian aid, fragmentation, no economic development for Gaza, keeping Palestinians fed but jobless.

It is perhaps the Gazans, more than the other Palestinians, the ones who can appreciate most this moment of reconciliation. Questions abound, of course. Will it last? Will the security forces really work together? Will Hamas really go for another election?

There are also the anxious Gazans who are now under a lot of stress wondering how they will be re-integrated into the government. The husband of a colleague of mine is a lawyer who hasn’t reported to work since four years ago, after the bloody battles that routed Fatah out of Gaza. He cannot sleep at night and behaving very strangely, my colleague tells me.

The psychological effects of the division will take long to heal, but for the moment, judging by the first steps since last Wednesday, Gaza already feels freer, waving a flag is no longer an act of defiance but looking more like normality. With self-declared statehood set for September, Palestinian leaders need to keep focused with the bigger picture in mind before screwing it all up. But from Gaza, for the moment, if things keep going on at this pace, it looks as if they can only get better.

Now here’s a real rocket to make Israel shake

“I won’t be celebrating until I see it happening,” a colleague told me looking me in the eye as he drove me home, ignoring the Gaza City traffic in front of us. “We’ve done it before, we had barely finished celebrating, when Hamas and Fatah started killing each other.”

I feel we all need something to believe in, though I do not blame my Palestinian friends’ caution, and downright cynicism. More than six decades of ethnic cleansing, occupation, dashed hopes and deadly infighting are bound to leave their toll on a nation that is still struggling for statehood. Who am I to expect them to be optimistic when time and again they have been let down, by the world and by their leaders?

But when last Wednesday, news of the Fatah-Hamas agreement started coming out, even some of my most cynical Palestinian friends were stunned. A bolt out of the blue, without any hint of fanfare and pomposity, and with no advance invitation to the party, Hamas and Fatah declared they had agreed. Just like that. After four of the bloodiest years in Palestine’s internal history.

Of course the devil is in the detail – we have yet to see all the commas and dashes and brackets in the final document and how they will be put into practice. We have yet to see how the security apparatus will be managed on the ground, how the militias will be kept under check and how the families still aggrieved by the bloodbath in Gaza when Hamas ousted Fatah forces will be pacified.

But here’s the first detail that struck me: This announcement had no prelude, unlike the hundreds of others when Palestinians were told by their leaders dining in Cairo that they were just a corner away from reconciliation, and everyone would go back home with nothing but more bitterness and divisions.

The respected Ha’aretz columnist Akiva Eldar said on Al Jazeera this was the worst timing possible for Palestinians, as Netanyahu was addressing the US Congress and getting Americans panicking about Abbas sitting with “the terrorists”.

I could not disagree more. With the September plan for Palestinians to declare an independent state, things could not be worse than having a Palestinian state without Gaza. The context to this announcement is much wider than Bibi licking his wounds at his lapdog superpower’s lawn. It comes at a time of newfound Arab dignity, an awakening of the masses that keeps only getting bigger, the assertion of modern Arab identities in one region-wide revolution for freedom that is changing everything.

With Syria’s Bashar al Asad in deeply troubled waters as the revolution there keeps spreading, the exiled Hamas leadership can no longer take its status for granted. The treasure trove of Hamas’s most militant elements is running out, forcing Khaled Meshal to return to the path of sensibility and pragmatism. It is a cautionary tale to all the war mongers and sanctions-huggers that have been ostracising Hamas, Syria and Iran for the last decade – real change comes from the people, from the streets.

The streets of Gaza and Ramallah have also been flooded with the people. The youth have taken on the Arab revolutionary spirit to call for an end to the division. In Gaza, they were brutally repressed by the Hamas forces since 15 March, but none of the youth have given up on their commitment to see change.

Calling America’s bluff
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has been calling on America’s bluff over the last month. The day after the announcement last week, he said, in English, to international journalists, in the serenest way possible: “Hamas are part of us. I cannot keep them out. Just like Netanyahu is our partner for negotiations.”

In reality, Abbas and all the Palestinians know Israel is no partner for peace. Even when Palestinian negotiators offered everything on a silver plate to their counterparts, Israel shunned peace while it expanded its illegal settlements, bombed civilians in Gaza and enforced some of the most racist laws ever against the people it was meant to be “seeking peace” with.

The Arab awakening, from a Palestinian perspective, means acknowledging that Israel’s and the world’s opinion is irrelevant to shape their future according to their own aspirations. It’s the common denominator linking ordinary Palestinians to the Tunisians, the Egyptians, the Libyans, the Syrians and the Yemenis who realised change can only be brought about by them. In Palestine, however, Abbas is not the regime that has to fall down, but the figure called on by his citizens to be a leader and forge real reconciliation. The more Netanyahu urges him to “choose between peace with Israel or government with Hamas”, the more obvious his choice becomes, because there isn’t any. Israel has made the first impossible and the second inevitable.

Hamas’s charter – anti-Zionist and rhetorically problematic as it is for the moral crusaders – has been proved out of date through Hamas’s own behaviour on Israel’s doorstep. In total control of the Gaza Strip, Hamas has policed its borders, controlled cease fire agreements and clamped down on the extremists more or less in the same way Netanyahu has to deal with Lieberman and the loony settlers.

It has been a steep learning for the Islamist movement that found itself overwhelmingly voted into power five years ago, against its own expectations. The more ostracised it was by the world community, the more it had to learn by experience, making some serious blunders along the way. From resistance to government is more of a radical move than the mere changing of sides from opposition to the government benches in a normal parliament. Four years of official blockade and many more before of demonisation and all sorts of obstacles, the Hamas movement has stood up to the test of survival. It now collects taxes and duty on items imported through the tunnels; it employs unarmed traffic police in impeccable new uniforms in the main junctions; its social services ministry runs an internet registration service for people wishing to exit through Rafah; and it has started registering taxis and issuing special drivers’ permits. In short, despite the rusty kalashnikovs in the background and the occasional rocket launch into nothingness, Hamas is behaving like a government – even when it clamps down on civil liberties.

To question whether Hamas can be in a Palestinian unity government would not only disregard all of that, but it would be yet another nail in the coffin of the world community’s relevance. The point is, whether the US and the EU will accept Hamas in government or not, the Palestinians will forge ahead. It is their revolution.

It is the Palestinians themselves who are the real teachers of resilience. Close the borders, they will dig tunnels. Cut off the fuel, they will run cars on cooking oil. Marginalise them, and they will build the strongest bridges to the world of ordinary human people, fed up with the world community’s double standards and Israel’s impunity.

If the American Congress decides yet again to cut off all funding to the Palestinian Authority, effectively stopping all salaried government employees, security forces and major infrastructural works, it is not unity that will be compromised. Abbas seems eager to get it right this time, and the people will not hold that against him; they will start the Third Intifada.

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To kill a brother

Gaza outraged at Italian brother’s murder

Gaza woke up shell-shocked on Friday when 36-year-old Italian activist and writer, Vittorio Arrigoni, was found murdered hours after he was kidnapped by a radical Salafist group.

The brutal assassination of a man loved by many Palestinians as one of their own shocked the blockaded enclave. Not only because no foreigner had been kidnapped since 2007, and no abducted foreigners were ever killed before on Palestinian territory, but especially because Vittorio exceptionally embodied the commitment to the Palestinian cause through peaceful resistance.

Since he reached the coastal strip on board the Free Gaza boat in August 2008, Arrigoni has been living and working with farmers, fishermen, rubble workers and young people as a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement.

His charismatic presence – always wearing black, a captain’s hat and carrying a pipe with “Al Muqawama” (the resistance) tattooed in incisive Arabic script on his muscular arms – was a reference point to locals and foreigners alike living under the Israeli siege. Whether discussing tactics and strategies with comrades, dancing late at night with friends or facing the full might of Israel’s military power with farmers on their land or at sea, Vittorio was the man who would unquestioningly stand side by side with his Palestinian brothers.

Besides writing regular reports and blogging from Gaza, Vittorio wrote a book of his first hand testimony of the Israeli 22-day assault on the strip called ‘Operation Cast Lead’. At that time, Vittorio volunteered with ambulances to rescue thousands of civilians who were targeted by the Israeli military with indiscriminate bombing and use of white phosphorus that killed 1,400 Palestinians.

Vittorio would bravely board the ambulances as they zig-zagged through the bombs falling down all over Gaza, witnessing all sorts of casualties and even targeting of paramedics he worked with.

His graphic diary entries of those days, dispatched to newspapers and through his own blog, always ended with his trademark call that ended up becoming the title of his book, touching on the common denominator that transcends race, religion, politics and culture: “Let’s stay human”.

Human, fearless and free perhaps best describe Vittorio, the son of anti-Fascist Italian partisans with a committed love to life, Gaza and the sea. The very qualities he shared with the Palestinians he lived with in Gaza, who greeted him at the harbour two and a half years ago, and every morning ever since.

This is not Afghanistan

When on Thursday evening, rumours of his kidnapping started trickling in, the initial reaction was that this was either a sick joke or some misunderstanding. Hamas would not comment on his abduction even after a group calling itself “The Brigade of the Gallant Companion of the Prophet Mohammed bin Muslima” posted a video clip on youtube threatening to kill Vittorio unless Hamas released Salafist prisoners by 5pm Friday.

Vittorio looked in bad shape in that video clip. His face looks bruised – suggesting he was either beaten or else he tried resisting his abductors when they assaulted him. In any case, I told my journalist friend with whom I was trying to figure out what was going on, this could all be the clichéd theatrics which Islamist kidnappers are so fond of – put your hostage in a humiliating position in front of a camera, show he’s shaken, up the stakes, etc etc.

Every Palestinian I spoke to was sure he would be released unharmed by Friday. “This is not Iraq or Afghanistan,” was the line we all wanted to believe. We’ve all seen this before, although nobody dared touch a foreigner since BBC journalist Alan Johnston was kidnapped, and released after four months, in 2007.

“Look, what these guys did is crazy,” Sami, a journalist friend told me late Thursday night. “Kidnapping a foreigner after Johnston is a no-go area. You’d be inviting total war with Hamas. Hamas is not going to tolerate any messing around. These must have been Hamas defectors who joined the Salafists and want to highly embarrass the movement. To kidnap a foreigner is crazy – they would only do it because they were close to Hamas and are seriously pissed off at what they believe is the movement’s sell-out on the resistance and Islam.”

That seemed pretty rational at the time. These guys crossed a red line, but it wouldn’t take long until Hamas will force them back to their place. They would release Vittorio and then make a show out of these rebels. Like they did in Rafah in the summer of 2009 when the sheikh of the Jihadi-Salafist group Jund Ansar Allah declared, in an explosives-laden mosque, that Gaza was an Islamic caliphate, effectively challenging Hamas’s rule on the territory. Hamas responded with a bloody raid that ended up in a full-blown battle with more than 20 killed.

The only other little tremors happened last year when some fringe elements among the militants targeted an International Red Cross convoy with an improvised explosive device, resulting in minor damage to the jeeps and a short period of panic among the international agencies operating in the Gaza Strip.

Nevertheless, it was always clearly understood that foreigners were mere instruments at the Jihadi-Salafis’ disposal that could only be used sparingly and lightly. Their final target was Hamas.

While since it has taken full control of the strip Hamas has always clamped down heavily on the Jihadi-Salaifsts with its Kalashnikovs and hand grenades, the movement has also been trying to appease the hard-liners – including some of its own – by adopting sometimes bizarre laws in the name of Islam, tradition and morality, and some embarrassing U-turns. Deep down, Hamas classifies the Jihadi-Salafist presence in Gaza as its biggest existential threat – way above Israel and Fatah. It knows that, given the radicals’ stubbornness and uncompromising stand, it can never reach political agreement with elements who are not interested in a political solution. Jihad is their only agenda, against Israel, the Jews and the infidels – Al Qaeda style but lacking the global attention and sophistication. In fact, much as they are literally dying to be endorsed by Al Qaeda, they remain too parochial for the global Jihadist cause, and too amateurish in their tactics. Gaza’s Jihadi-Salafists are to Al Qaeda the equivalent of the drop-out seminarian posing as chaplain on an uninhabited island.

The Israeli establishment knows this too – particularly the military and intelligence – and has only recently started acknowledging Hamas’s genuine efforts at clamping down on the Jihadi-Salafist threat. In the wake of the latest escalation last week, the army’ top southern command officer said publicly that Hamas was split between the political moderates who wanted to restore calm, and its militant commanders who are bent on resuming attacks.

"The diplomatic leadership wants to stop the fire, while the military commanders seek to send out attacks and stir things up,” GOC Southern Command Tal Russo said.

Israel has traditionally blamed Hamas as one bloc for all the woes, and has repeatedly assassinated political leaders who were known to be pragmatic and somewhat flexible. In distinguishing between the currents that are for a truce against those that aren't it will be hard for them to justify the killing of political figures, and might pave the way for some working relationship between Hamas and Israel.

Vittorio’s last march

The question as to why Vittorio was targeted could be possibly answered in the fact that, unlike the hundreds of foreigners working in Gaza with humanitarian agencies, he moved and walked freely alone at all times without any security arrangements. While abroad this might sound risky given Gaza’s wild image, international agencies in Gaza themselves acknowledge that internal security was never an issue bar for the exceptional week when some individuals bomb a cafeteria or scratch a Red Cross land rover.

According to testimonies relayed to me second-hand by reliable sources, Vittorio’s last known location was Wednesday night at the Dugmush Gym in Tel Al Hawa, where he used to work out regularly.

At around 10.30pm, he was meant to meet friends at the Gallery Cafe, nearby – Vittorio’s favourite hangout with friends and comrades. He would have walked in the dark-lit dirt roads, or in complete darkness if it was blackout night depending on the power plant’s rationalisation of fuel schedule.

He never turned up for the meeting. From then onwards, his mobile was switched off.

In their video clip, the abductors said they were giving Hamas a 30-hour deadline starting from 11am on Thursday.

Italians were meanwhile contacted by their embassy and advised to leave Gaza.

Still, the conviction that Vittorio would be released unharmed carried over till the early hours of Friday, until that fateful phone call to journalists from the internal affairs ministry at 3am. It was urgent. A press conference.

Full statement by the (Hamas) Ministry of Interior Affairs and National Security – Friday 15 April 2010, 3am, on the abduction of Vittorio Arrigoni

Since the first news of the abduction of the Italian solidarity activist Vittorio Arrigoni, the security apparatus acted quickly toward conducting a full search and investigation. They identified and arrested one of the criminals, who admitted to being involved in the kidnapping. This individual informed the police about the hideout of the abducted solidarity activist. Police moved in a wise and quick manner toward the place and found that Mr. Arrigoni had been killed.

According to the forensic report, he had been killed hours before the police raid on the location. In light of this situation, the Ministry affirms the following:

First: The Palestinian Government sends its condolences to the family of the innocent Italian martyr, to the Italian Government, and to all the Italian people. We grieve for the loss of such an honorable man, who stood steadfast and in solidarity with the Palestinian people, braving the conditions imposed upon the besieged Strip and the violent campaign waged by the Apartheid Entity.

Second: The Palestinian Government condemns in the strongest terms the heinous crime carried out by the criminals and confirms that it will hunt down the remaining members of the gang so that justice can be served and the violators punished. The actions taken by these criminals do not reflect Palestinian values, customs and traditions, or religion

Third: The Ministry emphasizes that this crime does not reflect the true state of security and order in the Gaza Strip. This hideous crime also does not imply a retreat from security and safety. The Government is keen to promote stability, security and safety, as this incident is the first of its kind in years. Security and safety will always remain stable and firm.

Fourth: The initial findings of the investigation indicate that the intention of the kidnappers was to murder in the first place, and that it was carried out shortly after the abduction. 

Fifth: The motives behind this outrageous crime demonstrate and indicate that some hands and minds are still plotting against the Palestinian people in Gaza, and want to undermine the security and steadfastness of the Palestinians and their supporters; and, to spread a state of terror and intimidation among the worldwide solidarity movement with the Gaza Strip. 

The Apartheid Zionist Entity is looking at ways to hinder and prevent the upcoming freedom flotilla from reaching the Gaza Strip, particularly after the great momentum gained from the solidarity activists such as Mr. Arrigoni aiming to loosen and end the unjust and criminal siege imposed on Gaza. The Ministry of Interior Affairs and National Security and all Palestinians highly appreciate the efforts of all foreign friends. We assure the internationals living in and those heading to Gaza that it is safe for all and will always be their second home. It is together that the Palestinians and the solidarity activists worldwide will carve from the mountains of despair, a stone of hope so that justice may be preserved and injustice overturned.

We are all Vittorio

The incredulity and the outrage was immediately clear on the streets of Gaza City on Friday, when after midday prayers, a symbolic funeral march paraded across the city centre to the Square of the Unknown Soldier. Young people, farmers, fishermen and many of Arrigoni’s friends marched together denouncing the brutal murder in the most categorical of terms, followed by condemnations from all Palestinian factions.

“Terrorism belongs to no religion,” they chanted, urging the murderers to get out of the woodwork and face Palestinians’ popular outrage.

 “We are all Vittorio,” they said. “From Gaza to Jenin, Victor’s a son of Palestine.”

A night vigil, more marches on Saturday, the end of the traditional three-day mourning on Sunday, a visit to his flat overlooking the breezy Mediterranean Sea that he loved – Vittorio will be sorely missed as a great friend to all Palestinians.

On Friday, Vittorio’s closest Palestinian friends were in tears, apologetic to foreigners, feeling almost guilty that one who loved Gaza so openly could suffer such a tragic fate in their midst.

That someone dared touched him while in Gaza is incredible enough for his hundreds of immediate friends here. That he was beaten and killed even before their own deadline just condemns his killers in the court of public opinion to a unilateral guilty verdict with the harshest possible sentence. Other Salafist groups have already disowned the arrested suspects, claiming what they did went against Islam

Gaza – where rumours shape daily reality and old mukhtars mediate in bloody family disputes – remains the land of the old adage of “an eye for an eye”. When the entire strip is mourning its beloved adopted son, murdered barbarically, no mukhtar would bother intervening on behalf of the suspects.

The challenge, at this point, is to keep Vittorio’s spirit alive. To stay human.

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‘This one was playing football, that one’s headless...’

Israeli escalation against Gaza

Death looms ominously once again over the blockaded Gaza Strip, and innocent blood is once again falling down like rain. The sound of Israeli drones buzzing high above 24 hours a day set the scene the tremors every 30 minutes or so.

Since Palestinian militants struck an Israeli school bus on Thursday afternoon, injuring critically a child and the driver, the spectre of another war on Gaza became frighteningly real again, just over two years since Israel’s aggression that left 1,400 Palestinians dead.

The morgues are back in business – in just two days, at least 18 Palestinians have been killed, 10 of them civilians – women, elderly and children, and more than 50 injured.

The numbers alone are shocking and rising by the minute – the deadliest escalation since Israel’s last war on Gaza. Until early Saturday afternoon we have witnessed the launching of 56 home-made rockets into Israel, another 17 longer-range Grad missiles and two type 107mm rockets and 66 mortars. Israel responded with 36 air-to-ground missiles, 57 mortars and tank shells and repeated naval fire.

But it is the clanking sound of Al Shifa Hospital morgue’s iron door, on Friday around midnight, that brought me to my senses.

“We’ve got two martyrs,” the watchman told me. “Why did you come so late? We had another two earlier from Beach Camp. These two are from Shajaiya.”

Civilians?

“A 12-year-old and a 22-year-old student,” he tells me as he opens the first compartment. The corpse is completely rapped around a shroud full of blood. As the watchman moves forward to uncover him, he makes a sign to me to tell me he is headless.

Hell no, I scream. Leave him covered. I take a shot. Just one. His name is Bilel Al Areir, he was walking down the street when the F-16 dropped the missile.

“And this one was playing football in the same street,” the watchman tells me, opening the next cold steel container.

His chest and face scarred by the deadly shrapnel, Mahmoud Al Jerou was, until Friday night, the latest civilian victim of Israel’s military assault. Before him, a mother and her daughter, an elderly man and more than half of the total of Palestinians killed were the new “martyrs” in the long Palestinian tragic address book.

These are not victims of human error or collateral damage. Israel’s highly sophisticated weaponry make its killings religiously accurate, whether they’re targeting a militant on a motorbike, an operative in Sudan or an underground fuel pipe in Rafah.

Just as it is inconceivable to think of the Sammouni family massacre two years ago – when an entire extended family was made to gather into one house in Zeitoun only to be shelled soon after leaving 29 dead – as a mistake, irrespective of whether or not the judge appointed by the UN to investigate this war crime and others has had a change of heart.

What Goldstone did this week was to legitimise Israel in responding in whatever way it felt fit, guaranteeing its long-standing impunity. Because while the Palestinian militants targeting Israel with their rockets are undoubtedly committing war crimes, those pulling the trigger from the remote-controlled drones have been told it’s OK to bomb children to pieces.

“I’m not afraid to die, I’m just worried for my children,” Mohammed Khdeir, a gardener selling plants in Gaza City, told me today. “Whenever they hear the drones and the fighter jets they just panic. I don’t know what to do to protect them.”

Hamas has meanwhile called for a ceasefire, convening all factions and asking for restraint. But the Islamist movement’s own military wing, the Al Qassam Brigades, was lobbing more of its rockets towards Israel, saying it could not let its enemy’s assault go unpunished. Netanyahu replied Israel would “step up” its attacks.

“Have they ever stepped down their attacks,” my grocer, a refugee from Beersheba where some of the rockets tend to land nowadays, told me. “Have we ever stopped dying in vain since we’ve been chucked out of our land?”

As the escalation enters its fourth day, desperation, cynicism and the terrifying feeling that ordinary civilians have nowhere to hide are slowly sinking in. Cast Lead II is in the making.

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In Gaza it’s calm on Saturday but feels like no end in sight

It’s been an eventful week here. The sheer number of rockets and mortars launched by Palestinian militants last Sunday put Gaza back in the headlines, but the real headline grabber was the bomb that exploded outside the central bus station in West Jerusalem on Wednesday. The first one of its kind in ages. A 60-year-old woman was killed. A British one.

Israel was quick to enforce a gag order on all investigations and proceedings linked to this case. That means none of the Israeli media can report any of the truth – or conjecture – that is presented in court when the suspect is prosecuted. Isn’t that suspicious? How come they didn’t jump on this act of terrorism in the heart of Israel? Shouldn’t the entire West Bank and East Jerusalem be under total curfew with tanks parked outside their houses and Apaches hunting down the terrorists?

And why did Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and prime minister Salam Fayyad almost beg for forgiveness – followed by Obama’s condemnation (no condemnation of the killing of four innocent Gazans playing football that same day, just condolences to their families) when Israel doesn’t even want us to know who the suspect is?

The only conceivable probability right now is that the attacker was not Palestinian after all. None of the Palestinian factions, brigades, parties, and fronts, popular or otherwise, claimed responsibility, and that’s something. Sometimes we get press releases from four different brigades saying they fired the same rocket. A bomb in Jerusalem would be probably televised live on Al Aqsa TV- the Hamas mouthpiece on satellite – if only they could do it. The truth is, they don’t want to.

Hamas not only disowned the attack, but it has also been calling on all factions to stop rocket fire, calling on Israel for a hudna – truce. How do you reconcile that with Hamas’s own Izz Al Deen AL Qassam brigades claimed responsibility for shooting at least 30 mortars (Israeli media said 50!) in one day last Sunday? Two Israelis were reportedly injured together with some damage to buildings. Israel replied with an entire week air raids, incursions, and deadly fire that killed innocent civilians. On 22 March, the Israeli army fired high-precision Keshet mortar shells at the Shajaiya neighbourhood, east of Gaza City. Those shells killed four Palestinian civilians, three of them from the same family, including two children.

The Hamas militant wing claiming responsibility is in itself a rare event, as the movement in government has been keen on policing the buffer zone to avoid a repeat of Operation Cast Lead. This has, over the last two years, led to disenfranchisement by hardline militants who are known to have defected to Salafi-Jihadist groups who accuse Hamas of selling out to the occupation, being un-Islamic and corrupt just like the Palestinian Authority and Fatah.

In fact, since the end of the aggression against Gaza, the Hamas movement has repeatedly convened all the factions in the enclave to ensure an unofficial cease-fire, with prime minister Ismayil Haniye appealing publicly to all brigades to refrain from their rocket and mortar launching operations at the buffer zone. The most to come out against this - through their declarations and actual reported operations - have been the armed Popular Resistance Committee and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), whose military brigades have claimed responsibility for several attacks, sometimes on the same day in which Hamas would have declared its instructions to the factions. Israel always responds that Hamas remains responsible for all attacks coming out of Gaza and normally launches its own air raids on tunnels, empty areas and vacated government buildings. In contrast, the previous Wednesday 16 March, Israel had responded to a Qassam rocket falling near Sderot with the bombing of a Hamas training camp in Netzarim, killing two Palestinians.

Sunday's barrage of mortars and, more importantly, the Hamas militant group's claim of responsibility, preceded by Israel's Netzarim training camp bombing, opened a bracket in the unstated rules between Hamas and Israel. Prior to this, however, there was a sporadic escalation of rocket attacks and Israeli attacks on farmers and fishermen at the bufferzone and at sea starting last December. While 2010 is classified by Israeli intelligence with just 28 total injuries on the Israeli side out of 8,000 conflict-related injuries since the 2000 Al Aqsa Intifada was launched. Palestinian casualties nevertheless soared as Israel stepped up its attacks, leading to speculation about whether or not another Israel was about to wage another war on Gaza, including public statements in this regard by the Israeli establishment.

According to the Israeli military, prior to the 19 March attack, over 30 Grad missiles, Qassam rockets and mortar shells landed in Israeli territory. Grad missiles and a mortar shell landed in southern Israel on 31 January, damaging a vehicle and causing four people "to be treated for shock". The first two months also witnessed more than 12 explosive attacks along the buffer zone and a total of 83 attacks.

The question as to why Al Qassam brigades launched the barrage of mortars into Israel last Sunday is perplexing given that prior to the attack, Hamas had given every indication it had no intention of upsetting the status quo with Israel despite enormous Salafi-Jihadist pressures. It must be seen in the context of the ongoing grassroots calls for unity, taken up a notch by President Mahmoud Abbas when he declared the previous Tuesday that he was ready to come to Gaza "tomorrow" for reconciliation and unity among the factions after he was invited to Gaza by Hamas prime minister Haniye. They might have been calling each others’ bluff, but Al Qassam were not amused.

Al Qassam being directly answerable to and funded by the Syrian exiled leadership of Hamas, one possibility is that the militants and hardliners did not approve of Haniye's invitation to Abbas, exposing once again the currents and counter-currents between the Gaza-based political circles and the hardline Al Qassam elements under the patronage of Khaled Meshal in Damascus. Palestinian nationl unity and reconciliation for these elements has always been viewed highly problematic as they are the ones who stand most to lose if Hamas had to give up total control of the Gaza Strip, mainly because of fears of reprisals of executions carried out in the 2007 coup.

At the same time, the Hamas government has shown to be incapable of dealing with peaceful demonstrations from students for unity launched on 15 March and has been suppressing them brutally ever since. An unprecedented mortar attack on Israel could serve to deflect attention and make Abbas's trip to Gaza unfeasible. Israel would be more than willing to make unity harder than it already is as it has already taken a strong stand against it, telling Abbas he could not push for peace while forming a government of terrorists.

On Thursday night, F-16s bombarded buildings in Gaza City, rocking the entire Gaza Strip.  A couple of injuries reported, but turns out it was only on empty, abandoned buildings, one of them – Safeena Building – built by the US to house the Palestinian Authority’s then secret services in Gaza.

Neither Israel nor Hamas want a war, but the real one who can afford to be the brinksman right now is Israel. In killing civilians, it told Hamas it can also raise its drum beating by a notch. Most of the rockets fired since the Al Qassam barrage have been amateurish home-made rockets, with some of them exploding prematurely or falling in Gaza itself. Very depressing stuff – nothing compared to the Grad rockets fired by the Hamas guys. Only problem is, if one of these stray rockets kills and Israeli, or wipe out an Israeli family, then we’re in for trouble. Netanyahu will have to respond to public anger while avoiding another Goldstone report and all that bad publiclity.

Israel and Hamas are like two lovers. They need each other just like the Church needs Satan, McCarthy needed Communism and George Bush needed Bin Laden. And it’s a long love story full of drama, backstabbing, flings and love affairs, the raw material for an epic tragedy.

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Where is the film?

Hamas violent crackdown on pro-unity Gaza youth and journalists
19 March 2011, 3pm

How can you ever respect a Hamas police officer who tries to “open” your digital camera in the hope that he will find “the film”?

Forget for a second the shameless beating of secondary school girls I had just witnessed from my balcony.

Forget that they broke into my house carrying sticks and guns, manhandled my landlady, her son and daughter.

Forget also, for a second, that a journalist friend of mine was stabbed in her back by a police officer four days ago while walking back home from the Al Kateeba demonstrations – dispersed violently by Hamas mobs and police with sticks and live machine gun fire in the sky.

But when the uniformed thug leading his eight or so juniors presented himself rudely at my door this afternoon, it was just a scene out of Blackadder. Or Mr Bean. With guns.

Just minutes before, at around 11.30am, I was clicking with my camera from my balcony on the 14th floor as around 100 secondary school girls were chanting against the division, for Palestinian unity, just opposite my flat. These brave girls had just finished school (there are not enough classes for Gaza’s children so students attend schools in two shifts). The demonstrations were expected to start at noon, but the free, independent Gaza youth are impatient. Standing in one of the corners in Omar Al Mukhtar Street – Gaza City’s major boulevard leading to Al Jundi Square – they start chanting. And chanting. Other students start arriving. I keep clicking.

My landlady – a strong, secular Marxist who has argued and had fist fights with some of the most heavily armed Israeli commandos in her family home in Beit Hanoun – is excited. Her daughter – wearing the same school uniform as the girls opposite – is dying to go down, but tells me she’ll wait for some more people to gather.

Policemen are still at a distance in the main square, until we hear police car sirens. Trouble is on the way. A white van rams straight into the group of girls. I’m still clicking, can’t confirm if anyone was hit. Apparently not. Police officers storm out of the van – some carrying AK47s, others wooden sticks. Another van comes from the opposite direction. The girls flee, and with them a crowd that was on its way. Police chase the students, beating whoever is in front of them. More police vans turn up, chasing everyone from the main street.

Then, an officer on the street spots me. He points towards me with his baton as his peers raise their heads towards me. I’m fucked. Might as well keep clicking. They rush to one of the vans and head off somewhere. My landlady tells me to go into my flat and store my pictures somewhere safe. Wise advice. Her son is guarding the main door to our floor. I dash to my flat and frantically copy everything on every possible disk available. Until, as expected, they arrived. Later I would learn that at the same time other security officers were storming into news agencies’ offices here, breaking equipment and arresting staff from NHK, AP, Al Arabiya and Mayadeen, among others.

I’m still upstairs in my flat when they knock on the main door. My landlady and her son and some other friends open. I can hear the commotion. All my photos are saved. I put the card back in one of the cameras and go to meet my visitors.

“Are you the one taking photos,” the leader, armed with a revolver in his holster, tells me trying to grab my camera.

Yes.

“Why are you taking photos?”

Why not?

“Why are you taking photos from up here?”

Let me come with you in your cars to photograph you on the beat.

“Where is your film?”

It’s digital.

“Where is your film?”

Leave my camera.

“Open the camera.”

You can’t open a digital camera.

“So where’s the film?”

There is no film. I can show you the pictures.

“Show me the pictures.”

I can’t show you the pictures if you break my camera.

“What’s your name?”

You tell me your name. You’re in my house. Who are you?

“What’s your name?”

Write me down your name. (Landlady brings paper and pen. The idiot is trying to open the digital camera to rip out the ‘film’).

Since when is it illegal to take photos?

“Where’s the film?”

There is no film. It’s digital. Show me the law stating photography is forbidden.

“Where is the film?”

Which law states that photography is forbidden?

“Open the camera”

You’re worse than the Israelis.

“What’s your name?”

Write me down yours. Where are you going with my camera? You can’t leave without giving me a receipt. Write down your name and state that you confiscated my camera.

(He is calling someone from his mobile, then grabs pen and writes down a note stating that my camera was confiscated, but does not sign it).

Why are you afraid of telling me your name?

What’s your name?

Write down your name.

My landlady is meanwhile arguing with the rest of the thugs.

“What’s your problem?” she keeps telling them. “Why are you in my house? Since when can’t we photograph you doing your job? Since when can’t I take pictures from my balcony? Didn’t you like being photographed in Rantissi’s time (Hamas leader killed by Israel when the movement was not in government)? Do you think that I, as Palestinian, like seeing these pictures? You’re the shame of our country and our cause. ”

The commotion drags on a bit more, until the only one of them who is not wearing a uniform tries to restore some calm, respectfully, for a change.

“It’s OK,” he said. “You’ll have your camera back. Stay calm.”

What do you mean stay calm, I ask him.

“Write down my name. It’s Ihab Al Baz. You can come and pick it up from the police station in half an hour.”

And they left. With my camera.

When tested, Hamas have shown they are not any different from the Mubaraks, Ben Alis, Gaddafis and Ali Abdallah Salehs of this side of the world. They just don’t have the tanks, the fighter jets and the tear gas.

And they’ve learnt all their lessons from the occupier, just in a more primitive style.

At a press conference given by Hamas spokesmen Sami Abu Zuhri and Fawzi Barhoum later, a journalist asked: “Abu Zuhri how do you explain the attack on the Reuters news agency’s offices happening as we speak? How do you explain it?”

Abu Zuhri was speechless, so Barhoum butted in. “Al Salam Aleikum”. Bye.


Latest: Meanwhile between 30 and 50 mortars have been fired from Gaza into Israel – the highest ever mortar fire from here since the war two years ago. In an equally unprecedented move, Hamas’s military wing Izz Al Deen Al Qassam claimed it had fired 30 of the mortars. Israel has already sent fighter jets bombing parts of Gaza, many more are expected after dusk.