Every clipping in this archive printed between 1990 and 1999: 91 of them, oldest first, as plain text that can be read, searched and quoted without running any code. Each entry links to its own record, where the scan is.
· estimated · (newspaper unidentified) · page 1
Israel censoring news of Soviet immigrants
Allyn Fisher, Associated Press, Jerusalem
“Israeli leaders fail to agree on U.S. plan. JERUSALEM — Israel’s four top leaders yesterday debated U.S. proposals for opening Middle East peace talks, but they failed to bridge differences blocking a response to the plan… Shamir rejected domestic and international pressure for a quick decision… In remarks bound to further strain relations with the United States, Shamir also said the government would direct Soviet Jewish immigrants to Jerusalem, including Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem. The United States opposes such a policy. Without mentioning his name, Shamir criticized President Bush for saying there should be no new settlements in East Jerusalem, captured in the 1967 Six-Day War. ‘There are no settlements in Jerusalem,’ Shamir told foreign Jewish fund-raisers in a statement that an aide said was pointedly added to a prepared speech to counter Bush’s comment. He reiterated his opposition to any proposal that deviated from Israel’s elections plan and rejected any role in peace talks for the Palestine Liberation Organization and any negotiations on Jerusalem, Israel’s declared eternal and indivisible capital… Baker has been trying to bring together Israelis and Palestinians for preliminary talks in Cairo on Israel’s plan for elections in the occupied West Bank and Gaza strip. The elections would be a step toward limited autonomy for the territories, which Israel has occupied since 1967… Those proposals were intended to meet PLO demands to include outside Palestinians in the talks but still meet Israel’s demand to talk only to residents of the territories… In the Gaza strip yesterday, two Arab teen-agers were wounded by army gunfire during clashes, Palestinian sources said. An army spokesman reported that one Palestinian was wounded. A curfew in the Rafah camp and town was lifted after seven days. Rafah schools remained closed by military order to prevent disturbances. Israel censoring news of Soviet immigrants. Israeli military censors made deletions from this article. JERUSALEM — Israel said yesterday it was censoring news reports about Soviet Jewish immigrants to protect them from Arab attacks and denied trying to muzzle criticism of the immigrants’ settlement in occupied territories. ‘It is not our aim to use the censor for political purposes or for any reason other than security,’ Avi Pazner, media adviser to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, told Israel Radio. ‘There were a number of threats by terrorist organizations, Palestinian and otherwise, to strike at immigration, to strike at immigrants,’ he said. Israel’s military censors, in a one-line statement issued Friday, ordered local and foreign journalists to submit all stories on Soviet Jewish immigration to censorship before publication. They offered no reasons. Pazner said Israel would bar three elements from stories — how the Soviet immigrants traveled to Israel, their numbers and the names of people dealing with the matter. ‘We can’t and don’t want to censor the entire subject of immigration from the Soviet Union. It would be ludicrous,’ he said. Arab states and the United States, Israel’s closest ally, have objected to the prospect of the current wave of Soviet immigrants settling in the occupied West Bank and Gaza strip. The future of lands that were seized in the 1967 Six-Day War and are home to 1.75 million Palestinians is at the center of U.S. efforts to convene Israeli-Palestinian peace talks… ‘No one can check the behavior of the Palestinian citizen in the occupied territories,’ Mahmoud Abbas, a member of the PLO executive committee, told London’s Asharq al-Awsat newspaper.”
“Shamir (left) and Peres in Jerusalem shortly before meeting on peace plan.” Associated Press
The sidebar carries its own warning in italics: Israeli military censors made deletions from this article. On the clipping, two phrases about the occupied West Bank and Gaza are underlined by hand where the censor’s deletions fell.
Correction: {'note': 'arrived captioned Philadelphia Inquirer 1918; names Shamir, Baker and Soviet Jewish immigration, placing it in 1990'}
“JERUSALEM — The leaders of the Christian churches in Israel announced Monday that they would close all their shrines for a day to protest the Israeli government’s support for a new Jewish settlement in the Christian quarter of the Old City. The announcement was made in an angry statement signed by the 10 heads of the Latin, Greek, Armenian, Coptic, Lutheran, Anglican, Ethiopian and other Christian demoninations with offices or sites in Israel. It comes one day after the government acknowledged that it had secretly donated $1.8 million in public funds so 150 Jewish settlers could lease the St. John’s Hospice.”
The Palestinians in this story are Christian, and the objection is theirs. “Demoninations” is the paper’s.
A woman uses a Palestinian flag to taunt Israeli border guards Monday in Jerusalem
“A woman uses a Palestinian flag to taunt Israeli border guards Monday in Jerusalem. Israel sent soldiers to Gaza and the West Bank to quell rioting over the slayings of Palestinians.”
“A woman uses a Palestinian flag to taunt Israeli border guards Monday in Jerusalem. Israel sent soldiers to Gaza and the West Bank to quell rioting over the slayings of Palestinians.” Agence France-Presse photo
A photograph and its caption. The flag was outlawed at the time. Neither woman in the picture is named, and the slayings that caused the rioting are not explained.
“JERUSALEM — Israel today urged the United States to end all contacts with the PLO after seaborne Palestinian guerrillas loyal to a top PLO official tried to attack crowded beaches and hotels on a Jewish holiday. Four guerrillas were killed and 12 captured by Israeli forces in yesterday’s Libyan-sponsored infiltration. No Israelis were harmed in the attack, even though tens of thousands were on beaches for Shavuot, the Jewish holiday that marks the giving of the Ten Commandments. The Palestine Liberation Front, headed by Mohammed Abbas, claimed responsibility. Abbas, known as Abul Abbas, is a member of the PLO Executive Committee and loyal to PLO chief Yasser Arafat. He planned the 1985 hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro. Israel radio said today the government had sent Washington details of the interrogations of the 12 captured PLO guerrillas. Israeli leaders called yesterday’s attack proof that Arafat had violated his December 1988 pledge to renounce terror. It was Arafat’s pledge that led the United States to open a dialogue with the PLO. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Motti Amihai claimed today that Abbas and Arafat met in Tunis, Tunisia, five days before the attack. ‘We believe that Abul Abbas at that time knew for sure that this operation was going to take place,’ Amihai said. ‘I think there is little doubt that Arafat personally, and also probably (Libyan leader Moammar) Ghadafi, knew beforehand about this operation.’ The PLO is an umbrella group for several factions. The smaller groups sometimes fight among themselves or launch independent attacks on Israel. Foreign Minister Moshe Arens said Israel would try to persuade the United States to abandon contacts with the PLO. ‘If we can convince them there that the basic assumption for dialogue no longer exists, then it’s possible that the United States will decide to cease the dialogue,’ he said on Israel radio. ‘The only question is whether they (the Americans) will see reality as it is,’ said Deputy Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In Washington, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler said it was too early to say whether the attack would affect the 17-month dialogue, but added that ‘we would view this as a very serious matter.’ She said the United States was ‘horrified at this terrorist attack’ and was ‘pleased that all terrorists were apprehended or killed in action.’”
A map marks “Second boat captured” off the coast and “Boat attack on Israelis” near Nizzanim, with the Gaza Strip, West Bank and Dead Sea labelled. Associated Press
The attack that ended the American dialogue with the PLO, reported the day after. The paper notes in its own voice that no Israelis were harmed.
Six-panel editorial cartoon: 'REVENGE FOR A PALESTINIAN KILLED' / 'REVENGE FOR THE REVENGE OF A PALESTINIAN KILLED' / ... each panel adding to a growing mound of bodies until the caption itself runs off the frame
Gary Markstein
A six-panel editorial cartoon. Panel one is captioned REVENGE FOR A PALESTINIAN KILLED. Each following panel adds another REVENGE FOR THE to the front of the same sentence, until the words no longer fit the frame. Beneath each caption the pile of bodies grows.
A 1990 cartoon that states this project’s thesis directly. The page itself is dated: Saturday, June 2, 1990, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Section 1, Page 27.
Inquiry: The Middle East. Printed beside it, ‘Israel must be pressured to move toward peace’
Netanyahu interviewed by Mary-Ann Bendel; Talhami interviewed by Wendy Buchert
“Benjamin Netanyahu, 40, is Israel’s deputy foreign minister and a member of the Knesset, its parliament… NETANYAHU: In the Middle East, the only kind of peace that can survive is a peace that can be defended. So we will continue to seek a peace that will enable Israel to change the status quo with its Arab neighbors and the Palestinian Arabs living among us while being able to defend ourselves… USA TODAY: You have often stated that Arafat is locked in a ‘circle of blood.’ Why do you say that? NETANYAHU: Arafat, himself, preaches peace in the West and practices terror in the East. If he were to genuinely disengage from terrorism and the larger goal of eradicating Israel, he probably would be a dead man. So whether by inclination or whether by intimidation, all the PLO leadership is locked into perpetual war with Israel. If it’s going to be up to the PLO, there will never be peace. We’ve advocated all along that we should put the PLO aside and move on to more constructive paths where we can find genuine partners for political progress… ‘Israel must be pressured to move toward peace.’ Yitzhak Shamir’s newly organized government is seen as a setback to the peace process by Ghada Talhami, vice chair of Palestine Human Rights Campaign, a national organization in Chicago. ‘This cabinet has been a great disappointment,’ she said. ‘The press has described it as the most right-wing government in the history of Israel, which includes all the religious and far-right political parties, most of which apparently want more Israeli settlements in the West Bank. And some are even advocates of a policy of eviction of Palestinians to Jordan.’ Talhami, also associate professor of politics and a specialist in Mideast politics at Lake Forest College, added: ‘That is not going to be a cabinet that’s really interested in peace.’… What the USA should be doing: ‘Putting Secretary of State James Baker’s peace plan on the table,’ she said. ‘Baker proposed this a long time ago. The Israelis haven’t moved on it. Nothing will happen at all if the USA refuses to pressure Israel in order to make it accept this kind of a peace plan.’ What would Talhami say to Benjamin Netanyahu? ‘Israel is throwing away the peace and security of future generations of Israelis. It is condemning Israel to more years of strife with the Arab states, with the Palestinians.’”
One page, two interviews, two headlines that answer each other. The Palestinian is an academic in Chicago and the paper gives her a column of her own.
“JERUSALEM — Israeli police and the Shin Bet security service routinely use violence while interrogating Palestinian minors, an Israeli human rights group said in a report released Monday. The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, known as Betselem, also cited other abuses, such as overcrowded cells, a lack of proper medical attention and delays in investigating complaints of police brutality. Police said in response that they were investigating every complaint of brutality. A spokeswoman acknowledged that prison conditions need to be improved. ‘Police treat complaints of brutality by officers with special seriousness. An investigation has been launched into every complaint submitted to police,’ said Elinoar Mazoz, who deals with public complaints. Her statement was attached to the Betselem report. National police spokesman Adi Gonen said Monday he had nothing to add. The report focused on the treatment of Palestinians ages 12 to 18 from Israeli-annexed Arab east Jerusalem and nearby villages, who were held at police headquarters in downtown Jerusalem. All were detained during the 30-month Palestinian uprising on suspicion of stone-throwing, torching cars and anti-Israeli violence. Betselem said its report was not based on a representative survey, but that the findings indicated a ‘widespread phenomenon that should be viewed seriously.’ The report includes affidavits from nine minors. They were not identified by name, in keeping with Israeli law. A 12-year-old said he was placed inside a bag by interrogators. ‘They put the lights out, and I felt it being closed above my head. Then they began to beat me with a stick,’ he said. A 16-year-old said an interrogator ‘beat me with the end of a plastic ruler on the arms, the back and all parts of the body. Then he grabbed a metal bar and hit me on the head. I was handcuffed all the time.’ Another 16-year-old said he was pushed against a hot-water tank and suffered burns when water spilled on his right leg. The report also described the interrogation methods of the Shin Bet, which deals with those over 16. Betselem said the Shin Bet used a square punishment cell measuring about 4½ feet a side. It described it as a ‘dark, smelly and suffocating room where prisoners are often kept for days.’ Shin Bet interrogators also handcuff prisoners in distorted poses or place them in the so-called ‘grave,’ a small underground cell in which prisoners can only crouch, it said.”
The children are quoted and unnamed, and the paper says why: Israeli law. The police response is printed with them. The findings are an Israeli organization’s.
The 80-year-old Mufti of Jerusalem, Saad Al-Din Al-Alami, is carried to a hospital by aides after he was overcome by tear gas fired by riot police
“The 80-year-old Mufti of Jerusalem, Saad Al-Din Al-Alami, is carried to a hospital by aides yesterday after he was overcome by tear gas fired by riot police. The Mufti led about 200 Moslems to the Temple Mount the day after 19 Palestinians were killed.”
Correction: {'note': 'The clipping carries the caption but no date. The caption places it the day after 19 Palestinians were killed at the Temple Mount, which dates it to October 1990.'}
GRIEVING MOTHER, Mrs. Kefiya Jihad Hamide, 32, weeps with family members at their Jerusalem home over the death of her son, among 19 Palestinians shot to death by Israeli troops
‘Administrative detention’: Israelis skip due process
Doug Struck, Sun staff correspondent
“JERUSALEM — He still does not know the crime that sent him to a prison camp in the desert, said Jad Isaac. He is Palestinian, and that is offense enough, he said. Dr. Isaac is a professor of biochemistry at Bethlehem University and was placed under ‘administrative detention’ by Israeli authorities in 1988. His case is strikingly similar to that of Sari Nusseibeh, another professor and moderate supporter of the Palestine Liberation Organization, who was arrested by Israeli authorities last week, accused of spying for Iraq during the Persian Gulf war. Mr. Nusseibeh was ordered held under administrative detention. Mr. Nusseibeh’s arrest has again drawn attention to the detention procedure that has been used by Israeli authorities to imprison 14,000 Palestinians or their supporters in the past three years, according to the military’s own count. An arrest under administrative detention requires little more than the signature of a military officer. There are no charges. There is no trial. The person detained may appear with a lawyer before a judge,—” (See DETAIN, 9A, Col. 3)
The pull-quote set beside the story reads: “An arrest requires little more than the signature of a military officer. There are no charges. There is no trial.”
The paper puts the term in quotation marks and calls it what it is in the same line. The figure of fourteen thousand is attributed to the military’s own count.
“‘Palace of Desires,’ just out in hardcover from Doubleday, is the second volume in Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy… ‘Season of Migration to the North’ and ‘The Wedding of Zein’ (Heinemann or Three Continents), both by the highly recommended Sudanese writer Tayeb Salih. ‘Cities of Salt’ (Vintage), a recent novel by Abdel Rahman Munif… ‘Woman at Point Zero’ (Zed Press), and two other novels, all by Egyptian feminist Nawal al Saadawi… ‘Men in the Sun’ and ‘Palestine’s Children’ (both Three Continents), both by Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani. ‘Wild Thorns’ (Interlink), by Sahar Khalifeh, a Palestinian woman. ‘Days of Dust’ (Three Continents), by the Lebanese novelist Halim Barakat. ‘Secret Life of Saeed the Ill-Fated Pessoptimist’ (Readers International), by the Palestinian writer Emile Habiby. ‘Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writing’ (Indiana University Press), an anthology mixing fiction and non-fiction, edited by Margo Badran and Miriam Cooke.”
Nineteen years after five American papers reported his killing as the death of a militant, a guerrilla chief and a terrorist leader, Ghassan Kanafani is on a books page in Syracuse as “Palestinian writer.” Emile Habiby is “the Palestinian writer.” Sahar Khalifeh, who has three clippings of her own in this archive, is “a Palestinian woman.”
Walkathon contributions targeted medical programs, kindergartens and family support networks in Israel's occupied territories.
Sharon McBreen, of the Sentinel staff
“About 150 Palestinian supporters demonstrated Saturday in downtown Orlando, hoping their call for peace here will win the same freedom of expression for their relatives in the Middle East. In one of several walkathons nationwide, families, teen-agers and senior citizens paraded from Lake Eola, where they rallied, to the federal building on Hughey Avenue and back to the park. They carried signs demanding a Palestinian state and called for Israel to follow United Nations resolutions to leave the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in return for recognition by the Arab countries. ‘We need a Palestinian homeland,’ shouted Mohammad Abuasba, who led the ceremonies organized by the Arab-American Community Center for the second year. ‘[Secretary of State James] Baker, Baker, go for peace. Occupation must cease.’ Walkathon contributions targeted medical programs, kindergartens and family support networks in the occupied territories. Violence has flared in the region, killing both Palestinians and Jews, since intifada, a Palestinian uprising against Israeli rule, began in December 1987. Israel has said it needs the territories, which it seized in a 1967 war with Egypt and Syria, for border security and to resettle Jewish immigrants from other countries, including the Soviet Union and Ethiopia. Israeli leaders have been hesitant to trade land for peace. The Persian Gulf War also ‘created a whole new set of hostilities’ in the territories, said Catherine Price, Middle East task force coordinator for the Florida Coalition for Peace and Justice, a co-sponsor of Saturday’s march. Many Palestinians used to work in Kuwait and send money to their families in the territories, Price said. In the territories, about 1.5 million Arabs have been under curfew since the war began. ‘We as Americans should stand against aggressions,’ said Dr. Talal E. Hilal, a Bethlehem native whose relatives still live there. He compared aggres…”
“Walkathon in downtown Orlando was 1 of several in nation. Rally started and ended at Lake Eola.” Bobby Coker / Sentinel. Placards in the photograph read “STOP GENOCIDE IN THE WEST BANK AND GAZA,” “JERUSALEM IS THE CAPITAL OF PALESTINE” and “PALESTINIAN WOMEN NEED FREEDOM TOO.”
Two Palestinians named in Orlando, one of them a doctor from Bethlehem. The story continues on B-4, which is not on this clipping.
William C. Mann, Associated Press, Camp Canada, Egypt
“CAMP CANADA, Egypt — Sitting in the ruin of what was his home for 15 years, Mustafa Kamel el-Hawi spoke of jumbled emotions as he prepared to leave for a new world. It’s a world three miles away, across a frontier of barbed wire, in Israeli-occupied Gaza… ‘I feel confused, like I still need something from Egypt, but I must make a statement for Palestine,’ said el-Hawi, a 33-year-old civil engineer educated in Houston. ‘Everybody in the camp feels the same way.’ The forgotten families are going home from scruffy Camp Canada, named for Canadian peacekeepers who, in the 1950s, used it to watch over the area where the Sinai Peninsula meets the Gaza Strip. The 560 families, about 6,000 people in all, were stranded in Egypt in 1982 when Israel ended 15 years of occupation in Sinai but kept control of Gaza… It was a 70-mile trip, along a border fence of steel mesh and barbed wire, across a no man’s land 135 feet wide into Israel, then back along the fence to Tel Sultan and a two-bedroom house of concrete blocks el-Hawi built. He stripped his Camp Canada house for construction materials, so the family left a shell of roofless rooms behind. ‘We call it our new life,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be difficult to begin the new life on the outside… We’ll have to make new friends. We’ll be meeting Jews in the street.’… The afternoon before a move to Tel Sultan, singing young men on flatbed trucks moved through the dusty streets to the three houseshells where belongings are stacked or heaped on dirt floors. They work like wreckers, sweating and laughing as they manhandle mattresses and tables and carpets into the trucks. El-Hawi said the young men serve as moving crews ‘just for friendship. They’re just happy to work, instead of sitting here with nothing to do.’… Tamraz, 42, sat on the floor of his concrete-block house with his youngest daughter, 4-year-old Heba. ‘Heba,’ he asked, ‘do you like Egypt better, or Palestine?’ She grinned and said, ‘Palestine.’ As Tuesdays are for moving, Mondays are for reflection. The el-Hawis chatted under a lemon tree in what used to be their interior courtyard. Neighbors dropped by to wish them well. Sitting on the sand outside her kitchen, el-Hawi’s mother began sobbing, wiping tears from wrinkled cheeks with her orange scarf. She wept because of the intefadeh, the anti-Israel uprising now in its fourth year, during which Israeli soldiers have killed at least 830 Palestinians. She worries about Mustafa and about his four sons, aged 6 to 16 months. ‘She told me that if she’s with us on the outside, then she’ll know we’re all right,’ el-Hawi said.”
A moving day, reported as a moving day. Six Palestinians are named, including a four-year-old who is asked a question and answers it, and an eighteen-year-old sitting her final exams. The casualty figure appears once, near the end, as the reason an old woman is crying in her own courtyard. The paper’s spelling, intefadeh, is kept.
Bush to U.N.: Repeal resolution equating Zionism with racism
Associated Press and Gannett News Service
“President Bush called Monday for the United Nations to stop equating Zionism to racism. Bush, addressing the opening session of the U.N. in New York, said that its 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism needs to be repealed because it mocks the organization’s pledge to practice tolerance and live together in peace. ‘To equate Zionism with racism is to reject Israel itself,’ Bush said in his speech to the General Assembly of representatives from 166 nations. ‘This body cannot claim to seek peace and at the same time challenge Israel’s right to exist.’ ‘By repealing this resolution unconditionally,’ he said, ‘the United Nations will enhance its credibility and serve the cause of peace.’ The United States has long deplored the resolution but Bush had postponed a campaign to repeal it out of a desire to maintain Arab support for the effort against Iraq in the Persian Gulf. John Bolton, State Department assistant secretary for international organizations, said, ‘We think we have a majority in favor of repeal.’”
The repeal is asked for in public, and the same paragraph explains why it had waited two years: the United States wanted Arab support against Iraq first. The sidebar of quotations from the speech has three headings, on free markets, on international cooperation, and on Zionism.
“At a time when bold new Mideast peace talks offer Palestinians the first (albeit muffled) voice that they have ever been allowed in discussions of their own bleak future, it is disappointing to find ‘Israel right or wrong’ zealots such as Martin Spechler and Hans Tischler trotting out the same old tired ‘mis-truths’ used to legitimate the silencing and oppression of the Palestinians for over 40 years. Three of the more glaring of these demand a quick correction. Palestinians are not simply generic Arabs who can or want to be absorbed into Jordan, and Jordan has no more reason or capacity to adopt the Palestinians than France would to adopt millions of Spaniards suddenly evicted from their homeland. Secondly, even the dullest student of logic can see that the wrongs of certain undemocratic regimes in the area do not justify what Israel has done to the Palestinians (and, for that matter, to the Lebanese)… And finally, yes, the U.S. does have a grave responsibility in dragging Israel to the negotiating table: had the U.S. insisted from the start on Israeli decency as a pre-requisite for our annual billions of aid dollars, Israel would long ago have had to behave like one nation among many rather than a nuclear-backed law unto itself. Far too many ‘friends of Israel’ have likewise surrounded themselves with a comfortable ‘fortress of the mind’ of rationalizations and distorted history to justify Israel’s exemption from international standards of conduct. One would hope that now, 50 years after the holocaust, they could acknowledge that while the victimization of the Jews does accord them special status in the eyes of the world, it does not bestow the right to inflict the same on others.”
A reader answering two named correspondents in the same paper, at the opening of the Madrid talks.
Susan Warren, Jabalia Refugee Camp, Occupied Gaza Strip
“A small metal sign nailed high on a post marks the rutted, unpaved road as the Street of the Martyr… Hatem was the first to die in the Palestinian uprising… Hatem’s family still lives in the same four rooms along the Street of the Martyr, named after the dead teen… ‘If there is peace, the olive branch will be raised for the Palestinian state. But if there is no peace, the olive branch will be put in the pocket, and we will continue to carry the stone.’”
The same family as the Morning News clipping of December 1987, four years on, in a different paper — and it supplies what the first story could not: that Hatem Abu Sisi was the first person killed in the First Intifada, and that the street his family lives on is named for him.
U.N. General Assembly overturns 1975 Zionism-is-racism resolution
Israel scores a victory as Arabs say the 111-25 vote would hurt the peace talks
Associated Press, United Nations
“The United Nations on Monday voted 111-25 to repeal the 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism. Thirteen members abstained and 17 did not take part. In favor of the repeal: Albania, Antigua-Barbuda, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium… India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya… Ukraine, U.S.S.R, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Venezuela, Yugoslavia, Zaire, Zambia. Against repeal: Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Brunei, Cuba, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritania, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Syria, United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, Yemen. Abstaining: Angola, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Laos, Maldives, Mauritius, Myanmar (Burma), Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Uganda, Tanzania, Zimbabwe. Absent from the vote: Bahrain, Chad, China, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Equitorial Guinea, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Kuwait, Morocco, Niger, Oman, Senegal, South Africa, Tunisia, Vanuatu.… Arab moderates did not participate. That was seen as an effort not to antagonize the United States, which pressured them to support the measure. Non-participation is considered a weaker statement than abstention.”
The only printing here that runs the whole roll call, every country in all four columns. Read it against the interviews a New York Times correspondent did in 1980 and three names change meaning. Sri Lanka introduced the original resolution and its delegate had said he never worked out what it meant; in 1991 Sri Lanka voted against repealing it. Nigeria, which had called the formula a good abstraction, voted for repeal. Tunisia, which had wanted it kept as a negotiating asset, did not vote. The page also carries a mission appeal: thirteen dollars and ninety cents will feed ten hungry people.
“The General Assembly on Monday rescinded its 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism by a 111-25 vote… The 25 negative votes mostly came from Arab and Islamic states, but Arab moderates, including Bahrain, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman, Tunisia and Egypt — the only Arab nation to make peace with Israel — did not participate. Voting against were Algeria, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Malaysia, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates and Yemen… David Levy: ‘The international community has transmitted a loud and clear message that all expressions of hatred and intolerance are unacceptable to the enlightened nations’… Abdalla al-Ashtal of Yemen: ‘We hope that this will not be another sign for the Israelis to do more of the same.’”
Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy, left, embraces Israel’s United Nations ambassador Yoram Aridor after the U.N. General Assembly voted Monday to repeal its 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism.
The same dispatch in South Carolina, with a different photograph and two extra sentences: one more line from the Israeli foreign minister and one more from the Yemeni ambassador. It shares the page with an advertisement for hashed pork barbecue with cole slaw at a dollar ten.
“UNITED NATIONS — The General Assembly yesterday rescinded its 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism by a 111-25 vote, giving a major boost to Israel’s global stature as it pursues peace talks with its Arab neighbors. It was only the second time that the assembly had overturned one of its own resolutions. There were 13 abstentions, and 17 members of the assembly didn’t participate in the vote. All former Soviet Bloc countries and many Third World states voted yesterday to overturn the Zionism-is-racism resolution, a reflection of how the collapse of Communism has altered the Mideast equation. In 1975, only 35 nations ventured to oppose the measure. Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger, who introduced the resolution, told the assembly, ‘It is more than time to consign one of the last relics of the Cold War to the dustbin of history.’ Israeli Foreign Minister David Levy called the vote ‘the victory of morality over injustice, truth over falsehood and courage over cowardice’… At the United Nations, Arab opponents of repeal said it would impede peace efforts, inflame extremists on both sides and justify what they said were discriminatory laws against Palestinians in Israel and the territories. ‘This resolution is like saying everything is OK,’ said Abdalla al-Ashtal, Yemen’s U.N. ambassador and the Arab representative on the Security Council.… Zionism is the ideology of reconstituting the Jewish nation in its biblical homeland. Arabs said that since Zionism calls only for Jews to return to a land also claimed by Palestinians, it is exclusionary and therefore racist.”
Israeli envoys celebrate yesterday at the United Nations after a resolution equating Zionism with racism is repealed. From left, Foreign Minister David Levy, Ambassador to the U.N. Yoram Aridor and Deputy Ambassador Ephraim Tari. Man standing is unidentified.
Sixteen years and a month after the vote. The photograph is of three Israeli diplomats celebrating, and the caption names all three and then says the fourth man standing with them is unidentified.
“Your Dec. 18 column dismissing the 1975 U.N. ‘Zionism is racism’ resolution as simply a product of the Cold War shows that, despite the Bill of Rights, there are some topics too sensitive for meaningful discussion in the Star-Telegram. It’s OK to consider whether President Bush conspired with Iran to delay the release of American hostages, to publish a comic strip suggesting that Vice President Dan Quayle used cocaine and to print photos of ‘Mapplethorpe art.’ But the charge that Israel, to which we give $4 billion a year, is founded upon the racist principle that Jews have the right to the land of Palestine, but Christian or Moslem Arabs do not, is somehow off limits. In 1948, more than 300 Arab villages were destroyed by Israel, and their inhabitants were expelled. After the 1967 war, some villages were razed, including Emmaus, mentioned in Luke 24 as the place where Christ appeared to his disciples after the resurrection. Is Zionism a form of racism? The Star-Telegram and President Bush don’t think so, and the United Nations has changed its mind. But if something walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, it’s a duck, no matter what anyone says.”
Three weeks after the repeal, a reader in Fort Worth writes to say the vote settled nothing. The paper prints him on a page that also carries letters about the Internal Revenue Service and Japanese business books, under a standing box inviting readers to provoke thought and inquiry.
Two panels. The left is boxed and labeled Repealed: a figure labeled YASSER, in keffiyeh and wearing a button reading NO ISRAEL, holds a placard reading ZIONISM IS RACISM. The right is boxed and labeled Pending: a figure labeled YITZHAK stands at a bank of microphones holding a placard reading ARABISM IS TERRORISM.
Drawn one month after the repeal, and the cartoonist has already worked out what comes next. The word he chose for the second panel was Pending. It runs above a syndicated column about the State Department deciding to strongly condemn rather than strongly deplore Israel, in which the Democratic front-runner, Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas, is quoted calling the language a mistake.
“Let’s get the facts straight. The Soviet Union put forth the infamous 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism to appease Arab allies and frustrate the United States. It was not introduced, as suggested by a Press-Citizen editorial (Dec. 30), to ‘deter Israel from putting the establishment of the nation above human rights’… In 1975, 72 countries voted in favor of ‘Zionism equals racism.’ Of these, 18 permitted slavery, child slavery and debt bondage; 17 were rated worst in human rights violations in the World Human Rights Guide; and 15 restricted free practice of religion. Israel did not.… It is precisely the freedom of the press in Israel that allows us media access to the difficult situation in the administered territories. Repeal of the 1975 resolution merely rights a wrong committed by the United Nations two decades ago and exposes a new form of anti-Semitism.”
A reader answering his paper’s editorial, six weeks after the repeal, and arriving at the sentence that the rest of this section is about: that repeal exposes a new form of anti-Semitism. He closes by quoting a line on Zionism and anti-Semitism attributed to Martin Luther King Jr. That attribution is disputed: it circulates from a letter and a secondhand dinner anecdote, and it has never been traced to a documented King text or recording. The letter is printed here as the paper printed it.
“Palestinian boys displayed toy guns yesterday while playing in Gaza City in the occupied Gaza Strip, where a research group says nearly 60 percent of the 750,000 Palestinians are under age 19.” Associated Press.
The headline counts four dead. The photograph under it is of boys with toy guns, and the caption gives a population figure.
Dispossessed Palestinians Gain Attention For Their Demands to Be Emancipated
Harry E. Fuller Jr.
“A dusty street in Palestinian refugee camp, Jabalia. Some 42,000 Palestinians live in Jabalia, which is three square kilometers in size. It and other refugee camps in the Gaza Strip, on the Mediterranean Sea, are operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency.” Harry E. Fuller Jr.
The headline and the photograph; the story under them is not part of this clipping.
Deaths: 988 Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers or civilians, including 110 by undercover units; 678 Palestinians killed by fellow Arabs, most on suspicion of collaboration; 109 Israelis, including 21 soldiers. Deportations of Palestinians: 73. Palestinian houses: 301 sealed, 434 demolished. Arrests and detentions: More than 80,000 Palestinians detained; 6,830 Palestinians in jail as of Nov. 1, including 223 held without charge or trial. Soldiers court-martialed: 236 cases brought; 191 convicted. The Gaza Strip, home to 800,000 Palestinians, covers 140 square miles - slightly smaller than Rockwall County, Texas' smallest.
Lebanon thwarts Israel’s expulsion of Palestinians
Troops set up blockade and order buses to return
Associated Press, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM (AP) — Lebanese troops early today blocked a convoy of buses carrying Palestinians deported by Israel in a move to strike back at mounting violence by Muslim fundamentalists. The deportations of about 400 Palestinians, which began Thursday, drew widespread condemnation and raised fears the fragile Middle East peace process could shatter. The Lebanese army used earthen mounds to halt the first group of six buses and ordered them to return to Israel’s self-declared ‘security zone’ in South Lebanon about 3:15 a.m. (7:15 p.m. San Antonio time Thursday), said Lebanese security sources. The Lebanese then reinforced the blockade with tanks and armored vehicles. It was not immediately known if the Israeli-allied forces permitted the buses back into the zone. Earlier, Israel radio reported that an additional 34 fundamentalists were taken from an Israeli detention center and flown to South Lebanon. The army refused to comment on the report. Palestinians said the moves jeopardize the future of U.S.-brokered peace talks. But Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said swift retaliation was needed to protect the Arab-Israeli negotiations from the rise of Muslim fundamentalist power. The United States regards deportations as illegal, and President Bush urged Israel to stop them. Israel radio said Washington told Jerusalem that it would not block a U.N. resolution today denouncing Israel. A police source in the security zone said 22 buses, carrying 350 to 400 Palestinians, were in the area early today. Israel’s surrogate militia, the South Lebanon Army, took charge of the red-and-white buses in Zommaraya, on the edge of the zone. Sources in Lebanon saw this as a bid by Israel to avoid confrontation with Lebanon’s army. The expulsions Thursday, the most sweeping since the early 1970s, were delayed for 15 hours by the Supreme Court, leaving the Palestinians in buses on the cold, rainy frontier, handcuffed, blindfolded and pounding windows in frustration. Fundamentalists killed six Israeli troops this month in eight days, climaxing their actions this week by kidnapping and killing a border policeman. Initially, Israel singled out 418 people for two-year periods of exile. Deportations complicate peace talks. WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush, echoing warnings from outraged Arab negotiators, said Thursday that Israel’s deportations of Palestinians ‘risk complicating’ the Middle East peace talks he helped orchestrate. In Tunisia, the Palestine Liberation Organization said that Palestinian participation in peace talks with Israel will be suspended until the return of about 400 Palestinians deported to Lebanon… But the State Department said the United States ‘strongly condemns the action of deportation.’ At the United Nations, U.S. officials were attending informal consultations of the Security Council to discuss a proposed resolution ordering Israel to reverse its deportation of 383 suspected Muslim fundamentalists. Chief Palestinian negotiator Haidar Abdel Shafi said Bush expressed anger about the deportations during his meeting with the joint Palestinian-Jordanian delegation, calling them a violation of the Geneva Conventions governing international human rights. But Israeli officials said Bush barely raised the matter with them at their 20-minute meeting.”
“EXPULSIONS: An Israeli soldier, above, aboard a bus in Metulla, Israel, adjusts the blindfold of one the Palestinians being deported into Lebanon on Thursday. At right, an Israeli human rights supporter scuffles with a policeman inside the Supreme Court building in Jerusalem on Thursday. The Palestine Liberation Organization said Thursday that Palestinian participation in peace talks with Israel will be suspended until the Palestinians are returned to Israel. European and Arab countries have called the latest deportations of Palestinians a breach of international law.” Photos by the Associated Press
Four hundred men deported into a country that would not take them, and left on the frontier in the cold. The number changes down the page: 418 singled out, about 400 deported, 383 in the draft resolution.
“CORVALLIS — Emily Shihadeh will present a one-woman performance at Oregon State University on Sunday, March 7, that looks at her life growing up in Jerusalem and the Israeli-occupied West Bank and her subsequent move to America. The performance, ‘Grapes and Figs are in Season: A Palestinian Woman’s Story,’ will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Engineering Auditorium of the LaSells Stewart Center, 26th and Western in Corvallis. It is free and open to the public. Shihadeh, a Palestinian-American, blends comedy, storytelling and songs to tell her personal story of how she ‘found beauty within, then opened to the beauty of the other, including her enemy.’ ‘Grapes and Figs’ interweaves Shihadeh’s experiences with politics, history, love, violent death, the loneliness of refugees, and interpersonal relationships with family.”
Four inches in an Oregon daily, announcing a Palestinian woman performing her own life in an engineering auditorium in Corvallis, free, with comedy and songs in it.
“JABALYA, Gaza Strip — The Israeli army shot and killed four Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip on Tuesday, and a fifth Arab died of wounds, Palestinian witnesses and hospitals said. Troops shot dead at least three Palestinians and wounded at least 35 in a single incident in the Gaza town of Jabalya, witnesses said.”
Everything in the headline is attributed to witnesses. The clipping is two paragraphs long.
Karin Laub, Associated Press, Jebaliya, Occupied Gaza Strip
“232 Palestinian minors have been killed by troops in occupied lands since 1987… JEBALIYA, Occupied Gaza Strip — Ten-year-old Issat Matar was flying a homemade kite on a dusty square when a playmate threw a stone at two passing Israeli army jeeps. Palestinian witnesses say the jeeps stopped, a soldier climbed down and fired at the fleeing boys, wounding Issat in the back of the head. Issat died Tuesday, two days later, becoming the 41st Palestinian under age 16 to be shot dead in the occupied lands since December. The sharp increase in shooting deaths of Palestinian minors is fueling mutual distrust at a time when Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations are at a deadlock. Each side on Wednesday accused the other of using children as a tool to heat up the atmosphere in the talks. Deputy Defense Minister Motta Gur, defending the army actions against left-wing critics in Parliament, claimed the Palestinians were intentionally sending their children to the front lines of Palestinian protests. He bristled at suggestions that soldiers deliberately shot at children. ‘It’s a blood libel,’ Gur said. The Israeli human rights organization Betselem said last week that, until June 8, 232 Palestinian minors have been killed by troops in occupied lands since the Palestinian uprising began in this refugee camp on Dec. 9, 1987. Betselem said troops increasingly use live ammunition, even when children are present. It said that of 38 children killed between December and June 8, only six were shot dead in situations that posed a danger to soldiers’ lives. The army doesn’t dispute the death toll. But an army statement said soldiers are not permitted to shoot at anyone under 15 and that most children killed were in ‘large rioting crowds, near armed terrorists . . . or in circumstances where soldiers didn’t know children were there.’… ‘I want to be like the masked men, but I’m also afraid of them,’ said 13-year-old Khalil Madhoun. Among the adults, there is great bitterness. ‘I cannot forgive the Israelis for what they have done, even if there will be peace,’ said Issat’s aunt… On top of the closet in Issat’s room stood the octagonal skeleton of a kite that Issat was making. It was like the light blue and pink one he was flying on Sunday.”
“Eight-year-old Maha Al-Haweiti screams in pain as her mother lifts her to a hospital bed in Gaza City in the Occupied Gaza Strip Wednesday. Maha was shot by Israeli soldiers Sunday. Forty-one Palestinian children under the age of 16 have been shot by the Israelis since December, prompting Palestinian spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi to say ‘Israel . . . persists in human rights abuses as a means of exacting a political price.’” Associated Press
The figures are an Israeli human rights organization’s and the army does not dispute the toll. The army’s own explanation is printed beside them.
TERROR: Soldier shoots a woman who stabbed him in the face; bomb victims presumed to have been building a device
Associated Press
“JERUSALEM — Seven Palestinians were killed in the occupied lands, including four who died in an explosion in the West Bank, the army and Palestinian reporters said today. In the Gaza Strip town of Rafah, an Israeli soldier shot and killed an Arab woman after she attacked him with a knife… The victims were identified as Mazouz Balouneh, 27; Faisal Balouneh, 28; Naim Balouneh, 18; and Khaled Ramadin, 25… The Rafah incident started when a woman standing in front of the military government pretended to faint, a Palestinian reporter said. When a soldier approached to help her, she pulled a knife and stabbed him in the face. The soldier fired, killing her. The soldier suffered minor injuries, the army said. The death brought to 850 the number of Palestinians slain by Israelis during the Palestinian uprising that erupted in December 1987… The deaths brought to 431 the number of Palestinians slain by fellow Arabs during the uprising, most on suspicion of helping Israel.”
The kicker over this story is TERROR, and the story it sits over includes an Israeli soldier shooting a Palestinian woman. The four men killed in the blast are named. She is not.
Palestinian women hopeful self-rule will bring greater freedom for them
Karin Laub, Associated Press, Gaza City
“GAZA CITY, Occupied Gaza Strip — After commanding an underground PLO cell in the Palestinian uprising, Ayshe Abu Maghaseeb is not interested in sitting at home. But she’s afraid it may come to that. During the six-year revolt against Israeli occupation, Abu Maghaseeb stoned and firebombed soldiers, smuggled messages from PLO leaders abroad and was interrogated by Israeli agents. She says they tried to make her talk by threatening rape and public humiliation. Many other Palestinian women were on the front lines. Fifty were killed and about 3,000 detained… ‘Arab men don’t believe women should be in positions of responsibility,’ said Abu Maghaseeb, 30. Her face framed by a black head scarf she wears reluctantly to escape harassment by Muslim militants. In the Algerian guerrilla war against the French in 1954-62, ‘Algerian women took part in all parts of the revolution,’ she said. ‘But after achieving independence, they ended up sitting at home. We want to make sure this experience will not be repeated in Palestine.’… There are signs Palestinian self-rule will break down at least some traditional barriers. Hanan Ashrawi, who became known in the West as the eloquent spokeswoman of the Palestinian cause, has been named by Yasser Arafat as the Palestine Liberation Organization’s ‘ambassador’ to Washington. Eighty-five women have joined the new Palestinian police force… ‘Men have an old boys’ network, but women don’t, so we are trying to beat them to it this time,’ said Zuheira Kamal, leader of the women’s federations… Only about 30,000 of the more than 900,000 women in the West Bank and Gaza work outside the home, most of them as factory hands or domestics. Anam Tawil, a 29-year-old architect, won a contract sought by 21 established Gaza firms to design four eight-story apartment houses to be built in the Khan Yunis refugee camp… In the Shati refugee camp, just a five-minute drive from Tawil’s office, Ibtissam Badri Tahan, 33, hoped life would somehow improve under a PLO government. Her parents took her out of school at 15 to marry Mohammed, then 24, and she has borne him eight children. She works from 4 a.m. until evening making hummus sandwiches for the family’s small stand, then does the family cooking, cleaning and laundry. ‘The house is like a prison,’ she said carefully, watching her husband across the table for any sign of disapproval. ‘I hope my girls will have a better life.’”
Five Palestinian women named, with ages, jobs and arguments. The last of them says her line while watching her husband’s face.
“ISRAELI soldiers shot dead a 12-year-old Palestinian boy at the Jabalia camp in the Gaza Strip yesterday during a stone-throwing incident and killed a driver who violated the curfew at Balaa, in the West Bank. — AFP”
A two-sentence brief. Two people killed, neither named, and the whole item is one paragraph.
“GAZA CITY, Occupied Gaza Strip — For Palestinian artists, it was inevitable that the first movie premiered here in recent memory would deal with Gaza under occupation. As Israeli jeeps burst across the screen, the audience backed up the soundtrack with the echoing whistles used throughout the occupied territories to warn of soldiers approaching. Those watching ‘Curfew,’ which premiered during the winter in the territories and Israel, wanted their art that way — a reflection of reality. But for Palestinian painters, writers, and filmmakers, realism is becoming an artistic burden. The artists, ignored unless they pay homage to Palestinian causes, find that occupation themes stamp their work with an unremitting sameness. They are especially eager for peace, hoping it will liberate them from the obligations of political correctness, but fear the Palestine Liberation Organization won’t let that happen. ‘A painting without a reference to Jerusalem, a painting without a Palestinian flag, without any symbol of the cause, would be rejected as not Palestinian art,’ said painter Fayez Sirsawi. ‘People want art to reflect their daily lives. Otherwise they don’t understand it.’ In addition to politics, Muslim artists must deal with religious codes that declare representations of the human figure to be shameful because only God can create humans. Sometimes when the two issues seem at odds, politics wins. Artists in Gaza tell of a religious leader connected to the fundamentalist Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, who visited an exhibition of work by art students. He was especially incensed by sculpted abstract human figures. After the artist explained that the figures represented youths pelting Israeli soldiers with stones, the cleric gave it his blessing. ‘The themes of the struggle have dominated our cultural life for the past 50 years or so, maybe to the point of total preoccupation, to the point of obsession,’ said Eyad Sarraj, a psychologist. ‘It has stunted creativity and smothered freedom of expression. It has made art and culture run in circles. There isn’t the courage to challenge the taboos.’ The uprising against occupation that began in December 1987 has put especially tight reins on artists… But change may be on the way; Palestinians are beginning to find the old themes dull. Teachers of children’s art classes say the youngsters are using more colors, that the sun is getting bigger while the Palestinian flags shrink. In ‘Curfew,’ director Rashid Masharawi, a Gazan, depicts the deadening effect of having to stay inside day after day. Risky art, especially poetry, does have an audience. Well-known poet Mahmoud Darwish, who resigned from the PLO executive committee to protest the autonomy agreement with Israel, wrote a long work laced with sarcasm about Palestinian leaders handing over their people’s birthright to Israel.”
One Associated Press dispatch, four papers, four headlines. The Record: “Political correctness stifles Palestinian artists.” The Houston Post: “Palestinian artists hope peace will liberate them.” The Sun: “Palestinian artists bound by their own politics.” The Kalamazoo Gazette: “Palestinian artists wonder how free new state would be.” The Record and the Kalamazoo Gazette also ran different lengths of it: Kalamazoo cut the Hamas cleric, Mahmoud Darwish’s resignation and Masharawi’s name from the body. All four scans are held.
A Palestinian woman interrupts an Israeli soldier aiming at stone-throwers to request safe passage in the Gaza town of Deir El Balah
“A Palestinian woman interrupts an Israeli soldier aiming at stone-throwers Monday to request safe passage in the Gaza town of Deir El Balah.” AP photo.
· The Philadelphia Inquirer · Philadelphia · page 1
Joyful Gazans anticipate era of peace
“…and hope to the people of Gaza and Jericho,’ Jabali said, but he indicated changes would take time. He told reporters the initial force of 1,500 Palestinian police officers would arrive in a week with uniforms and arms. Jabali also said the nightly curfew, one of the most hated aspects of Israel’s occupation, would not be lifted immediately. ‘We are not in control yet,’ he said. Three of the police commanders traveled in Israeli military jeeps to Jericho, expected to be the government center for Palestinian self-rule. The phased transfer of authority is largely hinged on the arrival of 7,000 policemen from outside and training 2,000 locally. Palestinians, still doubtful about the degree of control Israel will have over their lives, did not make the signing ceremony a holiday. But the effects of the signing were immediately visible in Gaza with the start of the 11 a.m. ceremony in Cairo. At the Rafah crossing in southern Gaza, Palestinian officials and Israeli officers watched television together as they waited for the Palestinian police commanders. An hour after the signing, the first of 600 Palestinian prisoners, including four belonging to factions opposed to the PLO-Israel accord, got off buses on the outskirts of Gaza City to the ululations of welcoming relatives. The four, two of them members of the militant Islamic group Hamas, which has vowed to continue attacking Israelis, had to sign a statement condemning violence and terror. As part of the PLO-Israel agreement, Israel is to free 5,000 Palestinian inmates over the next three weeks — about half those held in Israeli jails. Israel also allowed 14 Palestinian deportees and 10 dependents to enter Israel yesterday, bringing to about 150 the number allowed back since negotiations started. Most were members of PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat’s Fatah faction who are expected to take on administrative roles. The army sealed off Jericho early in the day, and soldiers dragged dozens of Jewish settlers out of an ancient synagogue nearby, where they had gathered to protest the autonomy agreement. Organizers said soldiers took settlers from the synagogue while they were still praying and wearing prayer shawls. Israeli officials said about 100 settlers were detained, but settlers said 400 were taken to a nearby army camp. Right-wing Israeli leaders vowed to stage demonstrations and fight to keep autonomy from being extended to other areas of the occupied territories. On the Palestinian side, Hamas supporters oppose the self-rule plan for not meeting Palestinian demands for an independent state. ‘We are against such agreement, and we will remain so. It is a sad day for the Palestinian people,’ said Mahmoud Zahar, a Hamas leader. Some Palestinians expressed hope that self-rule will bring security and economic well-being, but others were skeptical. ‘I doubt that Yasir Arafat will be able to provide me with a good education and good living conditions,’ said Khaled Hussein, 19, a resident of Beach Refugee Camp in Gaza. Awad Abd-Al, 55, sounded more hopeful. ‘We hope there will be peace so that I can stop worrying about my boys getting shot by the Israelis,’ he said.”
“An Israeli soldier watches celebrants in Gaza City. The PLO’s Yasir Arafat expressed hope that violence will subside as the talks bear fruit.” Associated Press / Gavin Smith
The jump page of a front-page story. Two ordinary Gazans are named and quoted at the end, one doubtful and one hopeful, and the paper gives both of them the last word.
Correction: {'note': 'Headline corrected on re-read: the record carried “Celebration”, which is not printed on this page.'}
Trudy Rubin, Philadelphia Inquirer editorial board, Gaza City
“GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — On Wednesday, the day that Israel turned over control of the occupied Gaza Strip to the Palestinians who live there, I saw something that summed up the hopes and fears invested in this dramatic step toward peace. The leading Israeli peace group, Peace Now, started a demonstration just outside the entrance to Gaza in support of Palestinian self-rule and mutual co-existence. Several hundred Israelis of all ages showed up, though Gaza is a good distance from central Israel… Gaza — a tiny, impoverished dot of land crammed with 800,000 Palestinians — was a hotbed of fevered resistance to Israeli rule. However, two leading Gaza activists from Yasir Arafat’s Fatah group circulated among the demonstrators, shaking Israeli hands and making brief remarks. Both had been recently released from Israeli prisons after serving, respectively, 21 and 24 years for organizing armed resistance to the occupation. One, Hishm Abdul Razk, insisted to me, ‘I really believe there can be peace between an Israeli and a Palestinian state.’… A small group of Palestinian farmers — mostly men but with three women, two small children and a donkey — had gathered on the other side. One of them was waving a flagpole bearing both an Israeli and a Palestinian flag… The rest of the Palestinians were waving their arms and shouting ‘salaam’ (peace) while the women ululated… One man tied a Palestinian flag to the Israeli banner he had been carrying. A woman beside me wept, saying over and over again ‘It’s beautiful.’ Some Israeli teenagers started chanting ‘Israel-Palestine, Two countries for two peoples’ and both sides waved madly at each other… Latif Dori, a well-known Israeli peace activist, shouted furiously, ‘Rabin and Arafat meet in Cairo and we can’t meet those people’… A Palestinian woman beside me nodded, adding, with a glance toward a raucous Israeli counter-demonstrator, ‘There are maniacs on both sides who can cause hurt.’… So Zucker began urging the angry Israeli crowd to move back. But as he did, he grabbed an Israeli flag and walked deliberately toward the fence. Cutting through the police line — with legislative immunity — and dodging the police cars, he reached the barrier and passed the flag across the barbed wire and was given a Palestinian flag in return… all around I heard Israelis saying, ‘We have waited for this for so many years.’… But in the meantime, as the Israelis pull out, Arafat has failed to assign Palestinians to positions of authority to keep services and security in Gaza in operation… uncertainty breeds grumbling, or jokes, about Arafat’s theatrical performance at Wednesday’s signing ceremony in Cairo and his autocratic ways. And more serious complaints can be heard widely about the Palestinian leader’s effort to exert control over every charitable or social or educational institution in Gaza. Many Gazans worry that international donations to build the infrastructure will disappear into private Fatah hands… Ex-prisoner Abdul Razk tells me firmly, ‘I don’t believe Arafat will press unfairly on local Palestinian leaders. But any undemocratic action will cause a reaction from us.’… As I leave Gaza, an Israeli soldier checking cars entering his country asks me anxiously what I have seen in Gaza. When I tell him people are celebrating, he smiles and says, ‘This has to be good for both sides.’”
The paper spells him Hishm Abdul Razk. It says the two released men served “respectively, 21 and 24 years” and names only one of them, so which term is his is not on the page.
Constitution draft refers to Jerusalem as Palestine capital
The Associated Press, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM — A constitution for the Palestinian governing council — drafted by senior PLO figures — declares Jerusalem the capital of a future state of Palestine, a move likely to further upset PLO-Israel relations. Sources close to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin told the newspaper Haaretz that the document was the ‘most serious violation of the Gaza-Jericho (autonomy) agreement to date.’ The PLO’s London-based legal committee faxed a copy of the 21-page draft to the Associated Press in Jerusalem on Friday. Article 5, on the first page, unequivocally declares Jerusalem as ‘the capital of Palestine.’ It adds that ‘during the transitional period, the Palestinian authorities may set up the Government Headquarters in any other place in Palestine.’… ‘Just as the Israelis have repeatedly declared Jerusalem their own eternal capital, we have the right to declare it our own capital,’ the PLO legal committee’s chairman, Anis Qassem, said by telephone from London… Rabin is adamant about maintaining Israeli sovereignty over Arab-populated east Jerusalem, which was captured in the 1967 war, and is said to be considering banning a visit by Arafat to the city’s Islamic holy sites.”
The pull-quote on the page reads “We have the right to declare it our own capital.” — Anis Qassem, PLO legal committee chairman.
By Judith Colp Rubin, Special to The News, Shati Refugee Camp
“SHATI REFUGEE CAMP, Gaza Strip — Gaza resident Jamil Saadoun is a long-time supporter of Yassir Arafat who was caught up in the emotional whirl of the PLO chairman’s return to his native soil this weekend after 30 years in exile. But the 38-year-old translator and father of three also considers himself a realist about the man who has led the political struggle for the Palestinian people… ‘He makes decisions by asking his companions around him and then just decides himself,’ said Saadoun. ‘He must make decisions more democratically.’… ‘He didn’t speak about what he would do in the meantime, about finding housing and jobs for people of Gaza,’ said Saadoun… ‘He needs financial help from the Arabs, Europeans and American world,’ said Mahmoud Abu Kahr, who was sitting outside his small convenience store near the camp… Nearby, pharmacist Mahmoud Taleb, standing behind a counter filled primarily with Israeli medicines, said he thought Arafat would be a better leader than the heads of such Arab nations as Libya, Jordan and Syria… ‘If Arafat will be good for the people, so we will love him; if not, the elections will change that,’ shrugged Nazan Nabhaa, a student.… ‘Arafat is not a good leader, because he does not adhere to the Islamic principles,’ said a member of the Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas who would identify himself only as Abu Khalid… ‘Hamas is too young,’ argued fisherman Abu Kahr.”
PLO CHAIRMAN Yasser Arafat hugs disabled Palestinian man who was one of about 20 in wheelchairs who welcomed Arafat to the Gaza self-rule area yesterday.
Twenty disabled Palestinians were assembled to welcome Arafat home, and the man he embraces in the photograph is the only person on this page who is not named. Six ordinary Gazans are: a translator, a shopkeeper, a pharmacist standing behind a counter of Israeli medicines, a student, a fisherman, and a Hamas member who would give only a first name. All six are criticizing Arafat, four days into his return.
“Jerusalem. IT WAS one of those days when what is sometimes called ‘the Israeli reality’ hit me with the full impact of its desperation. As a foreign correspondent I am among the first to be notified whenever an Israeli soldier is killed or wounded in southern Lebanon. Notification is a service of the government press office. But I am never the very first; the first to know is always the bereaved family. So I shouldn’t have been so panicky when the routine message from the military spokesman came over the telephone: ‘RPG fired against an Israeli patrol. One soldier killed.’ No name was given. It usually isn’t to correspondents. My son, who chose to be an Israeli citizen, is a conscript in the Army and is doing his stint in southern Lebanon. Like thousands of other parents in this country I jump every time the doorbell rings unexpectedly. What will I find when I open the door? Three people in uniform: the commander of my son’s unit, an Army doctor and a girl soldier? I have been told that this is the procedure when parents are notified. The angels of death are three. Later that day I heard that Moshe Zar would be released on bail. Moshe Zar is one of the defendants in the Jewish terror trial. He is accused of attempted murder. He is also known as one of the biggest land dealers on the occupied West Bank and his name has been linked not only to several cases of fraudulent land transactions, but also to many cases of harassment of West Bank Palestinians in order to force them to sell privately owned land. Please, the Palestinian Arabs his name is mentioned with fear and hate. Mr. Zar lost an arm during one of Israel’s wars and his release on bail was motivated by ‘health reasons.’ There is a connection between the situation in southern Lebanon, with bitter irony also called the ‘North Bank,’ and the Jewish terror gang on the West Bank. An occupation is an occupation is an occupation. Occupations breed bitterness and hatred among the occupied and violence and moral rot among the occupiers. Stones are thrown on the West Bank and rocket propelled grenades (RPGs) are fired on the North Bank. In retaliation, houses are blown up and orchards are uprooted on the West Bank and on the North Bank (though not always for the same reasons). Israeli families whose sons are serving in southern Lebanon fear the knock on the door that heralds the message of death or injury to one of their loved ones. Palestinians on the West Bank and Shi’ites on the North Bank dread the sound in the middle of the night when a nailed boot kicks the door and the butt of a rifle simultaneously bangs on it. Israeli soldiers are searching for ‘terrorists.’ Maybe they will take away the father, the husband, the son or brother. He will be taken for ‘interrogation’ and for a long time there will be neither trial nor sentence. Maybe he will come back, and maybe not. In a village on the West Bank or the North Bank a hand grenade is thrown, a rifle fired, and a curfew is clamped down. Israeli soldiers patrol the empty lanes, and from behind windowpanes eyes watch them, eyes filled with fear and hatred. This is the climate that fosters and nourishes terrorism — on both sides. This is the climate created by the mistaken belief in force instead of political compromise. The belief of the present Israeli leadership which tells the people that they have to live and act like a garrison state for the next hundred years. The root of this dreadful situation is the government’s conviction that the Israeli Army has to stay put on the North Bank for ‘security reasons,’ and that the Jewish settlers on the West Bank, protected by the Army, should settle all over the place, both for security and ideological reasons. ‘Judea and Samaria are an inseparable part of the Land of Israel,’ as the slogan goes… Security means not only military might and force; security is also, and more so, the result of national consensus about life and death issues like war and peace. In Israel this consensus doesn’t exist any more. Furthermore, security is contained in the moral fabric of a nation. But military occupation, however moral it tries to be, is based, ultimately, on the immoral idea that might is right. There is no such thing as a benevolent occupation, and the brutal force and disregard of basic human rights now used to ‘pacify’ the population in the occupied territories will not stop at the Green Line, Israel’s border before 1967. The moral cancer of the occupation has grown deep inside the body of Israeli society, and the present government doesn’t seem to know that only a healthy society can, in the long run, be secure… I firmly believe in the message of my dream. I am convinced that the forces which are now trying to destroy the Zionist dream of justice for all and peace with Israel’s neighbors will not succeed. I know that their weapons, the blunt instrument of brutal force, will be overcome in the end by the voice of reason. The day will come when Israel has left both the West Bank and the North Bank, and what the popular movement, Peace Now, calls ‘sane Zionism’ will be victorious over messianic fantasies, false prophets and wildly nationalistic aspirations. The Jewish people in its own independent state will live peacefully side by side with the Palestinian people in their state. Both peoples will enjoy the security of peace, the only true security there is.”
An illustration accompanies the piece: a soldier with a rifle standing at the foot of an enormous dark house marked with a Star of David, its roof looming over him. Signed Jean-Francois Allaux.
A foreign correspondent for a Swedish newspaper, writing from Jerusalem, whose own son is an Israeli conscript in Lebanon. She uses the phrase the archive is named for in its official sense — “security reasons” — and turns it around.
“JERICHO, West Bank — The top Palestinian architect of the autonomy accord with Israel, unhappy over its implementation, entered the self-rule areas Friday for the first time since Palestinians took them over. Mahmoud Abbas, a frontrunner for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, said he didn’t think he would be involved with the council dominated by Yasser Arafat that administers the autonomous Gaza Strip and West Bank town of Jericho. ‘I want to be a regular person with a Palestinian identity after being away for such a long time,’ Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, told reporters after crossing the Allenby Bridge from Jordan into Jericho. He said it was his first time back in a quarter of a century. Abbas, 59, was a key negotiator at the talks in Oslo, Norway, that led to the self-rule accord he and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres of Israel signed on the White House lawn Sept. 13. In negotiations on implementing the agreement, he became estranged from Arafat after accusing him of making too many concessions to the Israelis. He also urged the older leadership in the Palestine Liberation Organization to make way for younger men, a dig at Arafat’s refusal to delegate authority.”
A man who negotiated the agreement, crossing a bridge home after twenty-five years, asking to be ordinary. The Pueblo Chieftain ran the same dispatch as “Top Palestinian negotiator returns after years.”
“Said Foreign Minister Shimon Peres earlier this week: ‘Netzarim is a thorn that should be torn out’… ‘What the hell do you need it for, anyway?’ … Today, 5,000 Jews live in 19 cordoned-off settlements among Gaza’s nearly 1 million Palestinians… ‘Let a thousand mothers cry so long as your mother doesn’t. Shoot and be blamed. Just don’t come home in a coffin.’”
The story runs as a band across the top of the page. The other four-fifths is a Black Friday jewelry sale — diamond studs at $699, thirty dollars a month, stores open at eight. Nobody did anything wrong: the news hole is what is left after the advertising, and the advertising paid for the correspondent in Gaza City. That is the economics of every clipping in this archive, visible in one glance.
“AL-KHADER, West Bank — A protest against the expansion of a Jewish settlement turned violent yesterday. Up to 11 Palestinians, an Israeli peace activist and six Israeli soldiers were injured during exchanges of tear gas and rocks, according to the army and Palestinian medical workers. The clash occurred on the ninth day of protests over plans by the Jewish settlement of Efrat to expand onto land claimed by the Palestinian village of Al-Khader. Police detained about 25 protesters, most of them Israeli peace activists opposed to the construction of a new Jewish neighborhood on the land, 10 miles south of Jerusalem near Bethlehem. The construction threatens to disrupt negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization as they struggle to hammer out an agreement on an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat called the settlement a ‘flagrant violation’ of the 1993 peace accord. He said Palestinians would not accept the new building in an area slated to come under their rule. ‘They don’t know that the Palestinian people [are] not affected by injuries and by clashes,’ he told a crowd at a Gaza rally for the 30th anniversary of his Fatah organization. Several hundred Palestinians and left-wing Israeli activists had gathered peacefully about 200 yards from the designated site of the new neighborhood after the army banned them from demonstrating at the site itself. Witnesses said demonstrators charged scores of Israeli troops guarding the site. Demonstrators also threw stones at border police troops, knocking one unconscious. Troops pushed back the protesters, in some cases clubbing them. The youths continued to throw stones and the soldiers responded with tear gas. A curfew was imposed on Al-Khader. Ahmed Tibi, an Arafat adviser, said troops provoked the clash. ‘I am sorry to say maybe there were instructions to do so. Soldiers invaded 200 meters inside the demonstration and started to hit people, and this is the reason why the situation exploded,’ he said. Israel’s Supreme Court has rejected a petition by activists to reverse the army order outlawing demonstrations at the site. Palestinians claim the rocky, 150-acre plot was confiscated from them illegally. Settlers claim they purchased it privately after a previous Israeli government earmarked the land for their use… Knesset passes law to tighten grip on Jerusalem. Limits Palestinian political activity. JERUSALEM — Israeli officials are starting the new year armed with a new law, one that they say will put an end to Palestinian political activity in the Holy City… The legislation, which takes effect Monday, restricts activities of the self-governing Palestinian Authority to the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho — areas that Israel handed over to the Palestinians in May. It bars the Palestine Liberation Organization from carrying out any activity in Jerusalem without Israeli government permission… ‘Passing a law like this puts pressure on the Palestinian Authority and reduces the credibility of the peace process and the Palestinian leadership,’ said Ghassan Khatib, a former Palestinian negotiator who often criticizes implementation of the Israeli-Palestinian peace accord… In a statement issued after the legislation was enacted, Mr. Husseini said the law restricting Palestinian political activity ‘represents a serious violation of the Palestinian-Israeli accords and international resolutions.’ ‘Orient House confirms that its political activities will continue unabated as they always have been since 1992. The new Israeli law will not hinder nor stop any of these activities,’ he said.”
“Israeli soldiers tend to comrade hurt when Palestinians and Jewish peace activists stormed an army blockade at the disputed site.” Associated Press
Most of the twenty-five people detained at a protest against a settlement were Israeli peace activists. The caption names the Israeli casualty and not the eleven Palestinian ones.
· San Francisco Chronicle · San Francisco · page 1
Israeli Opposition Goes Back to Attacking Peace Process
Netanyahu ends post-assassination political truce
Dina Shiloh, Chronicle foreign service, Tel Aviv
“Tel Aviv — Barely two weeks after Yitzhak Rabin was buried, opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu already is firing the first shots of Israel’s 1996 election campaign. ‘We will win the next election,’ he told several hundred top members of his Likud Party at a meeting Sunday night. ‘We will win because we are right.’ Yesterday, after declining to block parliamentary approval of the replacement government of Shimon Peres, Netanyahu sharply attacked Peres in the Knesset, saying that there are clear signals that without Rabin serving as a restraining force, Israel’s new prime minister ‘is running to make concessions’ to the Arabs. Netanyahu’s rhetoric and public statements were restrained after the assassination. During Rabin’s funeral, when the fruits of peace — the presence of Jordan’s King Hussein, Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak and other Arab leaders — were clear to all Israelis, Netanyahu looked uncomfortable. Yigal Amir, Rabin’s confessed killer, was the product of right-wing extremist ideology, and Netanyahu was held responsible by many on the left — including Rabin’s widow, Leah — for having done little to discourage the violence on the far right… As the Likud drew closer to the National Religious Party… and even Moledet — an extremist party that advocates ‘transferring’ Arabs out of Israel and the West Bank — anti-government rallies became the scene of some of the worst excesses of anti-Rabin incitement. Netanyahu was often the chief speaker, though he claims not to have been aware of some of the most inflammatory placards held up and not to have seen a coffin with ‘Rabin, killer of Zionism’ written on it at a demonstration last year near Tel Aviv.”
“Israeli opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu (left) spoke with newly appointed Foreign Minister Ehud Barak.” By Associated Press
Seven months before Netanyahu first became prime minister. The word for what Moledet wanted is the paper’s own, in its own quotation marks: “transferring.”
First Palestinian police open office in Bethlehem area
Nasser Shioukhi, Of The Associated Press, Beit Jala
“BEIT JALA, West Bank — The first Palestinian police who will take control of Bethlehem from Israeli troops by Christmas raised the Palestinian flag on a hill overlooking the biblical city yesterday. About 400 people turned out to welcome the 12 officers who opened the Israel-Palestinian liaison office in this neighboring village. They raised the red, green, black and white Palestinian flag over the office. Residents clapped and chanted ‘We will sacrifice soul and blood for Palestine’ when the officers marched in, carrying handguns, flags and pictures of PLO leader Yasser Arafat. ‘This is the sweetest moment in my life,’ said Khalil Dakadeka from the nearby village of Beit Fajjar. ‘We have waited for this moment for many years,’ said Bethlehem merchant Nader Hidweh. As he raised the flag, Brig. Gen. Ziad Atrash, a senior police commander, announced: ‘Christmas will be under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority, and Arafat will attend the ceremonies.’ Thirty thousand people are expected to attend Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem’s Manger Square, the traditional birthplace of Jesus, for the first Christmas under Palestinian control. In past years, visitors passed through Israeli metal detectors to reach Manger Square and the Church of the Nativity, and Israeli army snipers were posted on rooftops… Earlier yesterday, dozens of Palestinians tried in vain to block bulldozers clearing land for a bypass road around Hebron, 12 miles south of Bethlehem. The road cuts through cultivated olive groves and grape vineyards in Halhoul, a Palestinian village outside of Hebron. ‘This is my land, and it is the only thing I have,’ said Ali Akel, 45. ‘I understand that this peace is a peace for land, but the Israeli government has both the peace and the land.’ Soldiers pushed the protesters back and kept them from blocking the bulldozers.”
Three named Palestinians in one column: a man having the sweetest moment of his life, a merchant who waited, and a man watching bulldozers take his olive groves the same morning. The archive also holds the Jamestown Sun’s printing of this dispatch.
“BETHLEHEM, West Bank — Palestinian activists strung a banner proclaiming ‘Jesus, the First Palestinian Revolutionary’ in Manger Square on Wednesday, preparing for the Christmas Eve arrival of Yasser Arafat in the city of Jesus’ birth. The square was festooned with a two-story portrait of the PLO chairman and Palestinian flags for Bethlehem’s first Christmas celebration under Palestinian rule. Some foreign Christians said they were offended by the display linking Christ with Palestinian national symbols, and accused Arafat of hijacking Christmas for political gain ahead of Jan. 20 elections. ‘The whole world is allowing Arafat to use the birthplace of the Lord of our church for propaganda,’ said Jan Willem van der Hoeven, spokesman of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem. He says his group represents millions of evangelical Christians around the world. But the top Roman Catholic clergyman in the Holy Land, Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, said a dose of politics was justified as Bethlehem celebrates an end to 28 years of Israeli occupation. ‘This year we will have a special Christmas,’ said Sabbah, a Palestinian. ‘This is the first time in history the Palestinian people are free and able to decide for themselves.’ Israeli troops are to withdraw from Bethlehem, a town of 15,000 Christians and 35,000 Muslims, by early Friday… ‘It’s impossible to tell whose birthday it is, but no one has the guts to say it,’ said van der Hoeven, the evangelical Christian. ‘Arafat is not a Christian and he has an abominable record against Christians in Lebanon. He is going to misuse Bethlehem.’ Van der Hoeven’s group has urged Christians to boycott the Bethlehem celebrations and instead spend Christmas at the nearby Jewish West Bank settlement of Efrat. The group believes Israel should not return the West Bank to the Palestinians because it is part of the biblical land of Israel.”
A city handed back after twenty-eight years, and the headline verb is “take over.” The Latin Patriarch gets two sentences; the spokesman who objects to him gets four and the last word.
“Israeli leaders decided Wednesday against blanket compensation for Arabs claiming damages from Israeli army actions during the Palestinian uprising in the occupied West Bank and Gaza… Government officials said Prime Minister Shimon Peres and the ministers of justice and finance met to discuss the issue and decided legislation should be proposed in parliament giving the state blanket immunity to the claims. But they accepted a compromise proposal by Justice Minister David Libai for the establishment of a special committee to deal with exceptional cases.… Israelis killed more than 1,000 Palestinians between the start of the uprising on Dec 9, 1987, and the end of the official government tally on Nov. 2, 1994. In that same period, Palestinians killed more than 100 Israelis. According to Israeli army figures, 17,987 Palestinians and 7,137 Israelis were injured… But Leah Tsemel, an Israeli lawyer who represents several Arab claimants, said travesties had been committed against Palestinians, beyond what courts would consider a legal armed response by soldiers or police to anti-Israeli violence.”
Palestinian Ali Fanoun, 20, who was paralyzed when Israeli troops opened fire on rioters six years ago and a bullet smashed his spine, is suing Israel for $1.7 million. Fanoun is one of more than 1,000 disabled Palestinians who have filed suit in the last two years.
The answer, the same morning, in a different paper: no blanket compensation, a bill offering the state blanket immunity, and a committee for exceptional cases. The body of the story calls him Palestinian Ali Fanoun. The headline printed over his photograph calls him a paralyzed Arab.
“Jerusalem (AP) — Ali Fanoun was leaving his West Bank mosque after dawn prayers when Israeli troops opened fire at Palestinian rioters. A bullet smashed his spine, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. Six years later, he’s suing Israel for $1.7 million. ‘I didn’t do anything to deserve this,’ said Fanoun, a computer science student who was 14 at the time and insists he was never involved in clashes with the Israeli army. More than 1,000 Palestinians disabled during the 1987-93 uprising against Israeli rule have filed suit since Israel and the PLO signed a peace treaty two years ago… According to the newspaper Haaretz, pending claims against Israel’s government total about $180 million… But Prime Minister Shimon Peres says he won’t consider paying compensation unless the Palestinians pay damages to the hundreds of Israelis also hurt during the uprising. ‘If it is mutual, I am prepared to consider compensation. If not, each side must bear its own costs.’ Most Palestinians object to the idea of equal blame. ‘Fighting occupiers is legitimate in international law. But the Israelis violated the international law because they did not have a legitimate right to kill or injure people,’ said Mohammed Ayyoub, a Palestinian lawyer… According to Israeli army figures, a total of 1,067 Palestinians were killed by Israelis and 17,987 were injured between the start of the uprising on Dec. 9, 1987, and Nov. 2, 1994. During the same period, 52 Israeli soldiers were killed and 5,037 injured in Palestinian attacks, while 62 Israeli civilians were killed and 2,100 injured.”
GOING TO COURT: Ali Fanoun motions for his father to bring him a wheelchair at the home they share in the West Bank village of Nahaleen. He is suing Israel for $1.7 million after soldiers shot him six years ago.
Where the disabled came from, counted by the army that made them: 17,987 Palestinians injured in six years. More than a thousand of them sued, and the prime minister answered that he would pay only if the Palestinians paid for injured Israelis too. The San Francisco Examiner ran the same story the same day and carried what happened next.
1,246 Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces, 102 Palestinians killed by Israeli civilians, including Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein, who massacred 29 Muslim worshippers at a mosque in Hebron in February 1994. 28 Palestinians killed by Arab collaborators with the Israeli Government.
“GAZA CITY (AP) — Majed Abu Marahil sighed as he pulled his police uniform from a khaki duffel bag. His afternoon training for the Olympics was over. Now it was time to work the night shift as a guard at Yasser Arafat’s headquarters. Abu Marahil will compete in the 10,000 meters at the Atlanta Games this summer, part of Palestine’s first Olympic team, but he can’t afford to quit his $300-a-month job. Arafat’s fledgling government has no money to spare for athletes’ stipends. The 32-year-old father of five is one, and perhaps the only, member of the team. The Palestinians were admitted to the Olympic movement as a result of their 1993 peace agreement with Israel. Abu Marahil has little chance of winning a medal. His best time in the 10,000 is about 30 minutes, almost 3½ minutes slower than the world record of 26:43.53 by Ethiopia’s Haile Gebrselassie. But his goal is not to win — it is to help change the negative association his people have had with the games since the massacre of Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Eleven Israeli athletes and coaches were killed in the attack that ended in a shootout between German commandos and the hostage-takers. ‘I know the world remembers us as terrorists,’ Abu Marahil said, a dark blue track suit covering his lean 6-foot frame. ‘I hope I can change this picture.’… Abu Marahil is on his own in preparing for the Olympics. With no doctors or dieticians to advise him, he has designed a simple plan. He runs about two hours every day, stays away from cigarettes and alcohol, eats a lot of fruit and vegetables and tries to get as much sleep as possible. Some days, he runs from his small house in Gaza City’s Zaytoun neighborhood to work at Arafat’s seaside compound and back. The 2½-mile route takes him through potholed streets crowded with cars, donkey carts and street vendors. Most times, Abu Marahil trains at Yarmouk Stadium, the city’s only sports arena. Built by the Egyptians in the 1960s, Yarmouk’s track has long since been pockmarked by holes and covered by the sand that is so abundant in the coastal strip… Abu Marahil has been promised a $10,000 reward and a promotion in the police force if he brings home Palestine’s first Olympic medal. But he dismissed the money. ‘It is enough for me to raise the flag of Palestine,’ he said.”
A sports story that routes through Munich by the fifth paragraph. The reward he turned down was worth nearly three years of his wages. This paper spells him Abu Marahil; the Atlanta Constitution spells him Abu Maraheel four months later.
Palestinians erasing doubts about sincerity in ending Israeli struggle
News analysis
Karin Laub, Associated Press, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM (AP) — By formally ending their armed struggle against Israel, the Palestinians have gone a long way toward erasing doubts about Yasser Arafat’s sincerity and restarted a peace process stalled by deadly suicide bombings. The decision to delete anti-Israel clauses from the Palestine Liberation Organization’s charter also provided a major boost for Prime Minister Shimon Peres of Israel in his quest to retain his job in May 29 elections. Right-wing Israelis had made much of the fact that the charter advocated armed struggle to establish a Palestinian state in all of what is now Israel. But with the vote Wednesday to formally end that struggle, their objections to peacemaking lost steam. ‘This is a meaningful change with historic dimensions, the greatest ideological change of this century,’ said Peres, who called Arafat on the telephone to congratulate him. ‘It seems that it is possible to trust Arafat.’ Israel is also expected to remove troops from most of Hebron — the last West Bank city it occupies — and go ahead with talks next month with the PLO on explosive issues including Palestinian refugees and the future of disputed Jerusalem. Arafat, in turn, solidified his rule when the Palestinians’ highest body voted overwhelmingly to amend the charter. The sweeping 504-54 victory gives the Palestinian leader greater leverage in confronting the Islamic militant groups that sent out suicide bombers in an effort to wreck peace. Arafat said the decision was a victory for the nascent Palestinian democracy and for peacemaking. ‘This is a success for the peace process,’ he told CNN. The vote in the Palestine National Council — tantamount to a formal recognition of the state of Israel — takes the Palestinians themselves a step closer to statehood. Peres had said that if Arafat met his promise to have the charter amended, Israel would start negotiating a final peace agreement with the Palestinians on May 4. Under their peace accord, the two sides have three years to reach agreement on the future of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Jerusalem. The Palestinians hope the outcome of the talks will be a Palestinian state. If Peres is re-elected, that may very well be the case. In a sign that it was softening its position, Peres’ Labor Party prepared to vote today on a new platform that would scrap a clause opposing the establishment of a Palestinian state. Arafat himself presented that simple choice to Palestine National Council delegates this week. Yelling at hard-liners poised to vote ‘no,’ Arafat said that if the charter was not amended, the Palestinians would miss their last real hope for independence. Peres, meanwhile, faces several difficult decisions in the weeks leading up to the elections… The Palestinians have sent a clear message that they are serious about peace. That message may win over centrist swing voters who favor peacemaking, but don’t want to put their security at risk. In a sign of how widely the Palestinian vote was welcomed in Israel, Netanyahu, the opposition leader, called it a positive step. Yet Netanyahu has moved steadily toward the political center as the election draws near, saying for the first time this week that he would consider meeting with Arafat.”
An editorial cartoon runs above: two men under an umbrella in a downpour of blood drops, one saying “DO YOU THINK THIS BLOOD IS EVER GOING TO LET UP?” Signed Edstein ’96, Rocky Mtn. News / NEA.
The vote to amend the PLO charter, 504 to 54, reported as a news analysis. The correspondent is identified at the foot as having covered Israel and the Palestinian areas since 1987.
“KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — The young man left his family in February, advising his new wife to mind her studies and telling his mother he was going away to work in a plastics factory. Within weeks, a series of suicide bombings shook Israel. On Friday, Hassan Salameh was shot and arrested by Israeli troops in the West Bank — accused by Israel of organizing three bombings this year that killed 43 people and wounded 91. In their home in a squalid Gaza Strip refugee camp near Khan Younis, Salameh’s family members said Sunday that they had no idea about the activities of the devout, hot-tempered 25-year-old — and seemed divided on the wisdom of his ways. Samir Salameh, 33, said he knew his brother was a member of the military wing of the Islamic militant Hamas group, but was still surprised. The family had expected Hassan to ‘settle down and put his life in order,’ he said. Younger brother Mohammed defended Hassan’s actions as ‘a legitimate kind of self-defense’ resulting from ‘years of oppression and injustice.’ Their mother, Khadija Hourani, said she just wanted peace. ‘I don’t want bombings anywhere — here or in Israel. I don’t want people to die,’ she said. Still, she warned that if any harm befell her son during interrogation, ‘worse things will happen — more bloodshed, revenge and killings.’ Salameh was a teenager when the Palestinian uprising against Israel broke out in December 1987. Like many boys, he threw stones at Israeli soldiers. A year later, he was shot in the pelvis and seriously wounded. He spent the next few years in and out of Israeli jails… Salameh entered Gaza illegally in December 1994 and was promptly arrested by Arafat’s security forces and held for five months, Samir Salameh said. ‘They told him they were protecting him from the Israelis because he was wanted by them,’ he said. After his release, he enrolled in a computer course in the mornings and worked in a plastic factory at night. A devout Muslim, he spent most of his free time in mosques teaching children the Koran. Salameh left his mother, six brothers, sister and wife on Feb. 2 after breaking his daylong fast at sunset during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan. ‘He said, “Mother, I’m going away to work in a plastic factory in Gaza and may be away for a while. I don’t want you to worry about me. I may phone you,”’ Hourani said. He told his 18-year-old bride Maryam, to whom he had been married only four months, to concentrate on her high school studies. ‘He said he was going away for work and God willing, will come back soon,’ she said… But, he said of his brother, ‘I wish he had died a martyr and was not arrested.’”
The Birmingham Post Herald ran the same dispatch the same day as “Militant’s relatives surprised by his actions,” and kept the mother’s appeal for peace word for word. What it cut was the man: the uprising, the bullet in his pelvis, the Israeli jails, the five months in Arafat’s prison, the Koran classes, the wife of four months. The short version keeps the mother and deletes the son. Both scans are held. This Samir Salameh is a third man of that name in this material and is linked to none of the others.
Competing in the Olympics for the first time, Palestinians hope to erase some of the negative images from the past.
Mark Sherman, Staff Writer
“Majed Abu Maraheel is not worried about medals. He could not care less about the track conditions. He has no problems with the heat. The Palestinian flagbearer in last week’s Opening Ceremony holds no illusions about his ability to compete with the world’s best 10,000-meter runners. Maraheel’s only concern was making it to the Olympic stadium in time for his qualifying heat Friday, when he became the first Palestinian to compete in the Olympics under his own flag. ‘We already won the gold medal by being here,’ he said.… Maraheel is a member of Force 17, the security unit that guards Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. The group also has been identified by the CIA and State Department as being responsible for terrorist activities in the occupied territories, and one in Cyprus, since 1985. Maraheel rolls up the right sleeve of his T-shirt to reveal a 3-inch scar that he said came from an Israeli bullet. Yet the Palestinian presence in Atlanta ‘will help heal wounds and erase some of the sour images of the past,’ he said… Added his Israeli counterpart, Efraim Zinger, ‘We hope we’ll be able to contribute something to relations in our region.’… Maraheel and Ehab Salama, a 5,000-meter runner from Gaza, are the team’s only athletes in Atlanta. Palestinian officials said a third athlete, boxer Rashid Judeh, was barred from competing here by boxing officials who said he lacked sufficient international experience. The size of the first Palestinian squad is due in equal parts to the virtual lack of athletic facilities in the West Bank and Gaza and to Israel’s refusal to allow Palestinians who claim Jerusalem as their address to compete in the Olympics… They put on spiked track shoes for the first time 15 days ago. ‘In Gaza, we ran either in sneakers or barefoot,’ Salama said. Describing the difference between practice facilities in Atlanta and the Gaza Strip, Maraheel said, ‘It’s like from heaven to Earth.’ Salama, wearing sandals to an interview, nursed a painful-looking sore on his left foot. But his teammate said the wound would not keep him out of the race. Said Maraheel, ‘Even if it was amputated, he would run.’”
The same runner as the Index Journal four months earlier, spelled Maraheel here and Abu Marahil there. Both spellings stand as printed. The section header reads PALESTINIAN DELEGATION and the paragraph about Force 17 and the CIA sits between the scar and the healing. Photo credit: Rich Addicks / Staff.
‘When I First Got My Legs, I Had to Practice Every Day’
Making a Difference
Interviewed by Kate Seelye
“YOSHIO SETIGUCHI, pediatrician and prosthetics specialist: ‘The biggest problem for Nizar initially was adapting to this country. Here was a 10-year-old from a refugee camp. Suddenly he was here in sunny Southern California… There is no question that Nizar is a fortunate kid, but this always raises the question of why he was selected and what about the others that didn’t get selected.’ LEILA BROOKS, businesswoman and host mother: ‘I’ll never forget what he told me a few years ago when he was 12 or 13. His family is very poor. He said the first money he makes, he’s going to buy his dad a new donkey. He didn’t want to buy a game or a computer.’ NIZAR EL-BARKY: ‘I have been coming to the States since I was 10. It’s fun going to places like Disneyland. I can’t have this kind of fun in Gaza… When I first got my legs, I had to practice walking every day in the hospital for many months… There’s a woman at the hospital with no legs and no arms, and she drives a van. I look at her and think if she can drive, I can do anything.’ [El Barky was injured when he was 9. He said he reached for something that dropped from an Israeli helicopter that he thought was a toy. It exploded.] ‘It was pretty bad. Sometimes I say, why me, why Nizar, but it could happen to anyone. At least I have my mind, I have my brain… I got a letter from Bill Clinton. It made me feel good. I know there’s a lot of other kids that didn’t have this chance. Many wonderful people have helped me to come here. If they hadn’t, I’d still be in a wheelchair in Palestine.’”
Nizar El-Barky after getting his new prosthetics.
Three people are given headed sections of their own: a surgeon, a host mother, and a fifteen-year-old from Gaza who lost both legs and an arm at nine. He gets the longest. He talks about Disneyland, a donkey he means to buy his father, an award he won for learning to read, a letter from a president, and a woman at the hospital who drives a van. How he was injured is printed in square brackets.
Concern for future of settlers stalls withdrawal from Hebron
The Associated Press, Hebron
“HEBRON, West Bank — When 4-year-old Yiska Federman wanders out to play, Israeli soldiers keep watch from a sandbagged guard post on her doorstep and from a nearby rooftop… Yiska and the rest of Hebron’s 450 Jews are the ‘security reasons’ Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cites when he balks at fulfilling Israel’s promise to withdraw from most of this West Bank town, where 94,000 Palestinians wait impatiently for self-rule… ‘They live in ghettos, and they don’t want any relations with Arabs,’ said Samira Sarabateh, a Palestinian mother of nine. ‘We don’t want any relations with them either, because they came and stole our land and our houses and attacked us… I don’t believe there’s going to be any peace with these settlers. At the end, it’s just us or them.’… Under the existing agreements, Israel was supposed to pull its troops out of 80 percent of Hebron by last March… Soldiers would remain to protect the 52 Jewish families who live in six tiny enclaves in the city… In Hebron, normal means buses with bulletproof windows and guns tucked in the waistband of most male settlers’ pants. It means a maze of cement blocks and strips of metal spikes put up by the army in an attempt to separate Jews and Arabs in the wake of the 1994 massacre of 29 Palestinian worshipers by a settler at the Tomb of the Patriarchs… ‘I think there should be no Palestinian weapons in Hebron at all — not one,’ said settler Orit Strook… At age 3, Yiska saw a Palestinian stab and wound a settler and another settler shoot the Palestinian dead. ‘Since then, she knows that the Arabs are our enemies,’ her mother said.”
“For young West Bank settlers, like David Federman, 2, and his sister, Sapir, 3, a soldier is a more familiar figure than an ice-cream man. The children, and their elder sister, Yiska, 4, play under the watchful eye of Israeli soldiers every day.” (Will Yurman/Associated Press)
Back in quotation marks, attached to a name, with a number on it. The settlers are given as much room on the page as the Palestinians, and the record now holds both.
“BEIT EL, West Bank — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Jewish settlers today as ‘heroes’ and promised to strengthen settlements in the West Bank after a woman and her 12-year-old son were killed in a drive-by shooting. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a radical Palestinian group opposed to the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreements, claimed responsibility for the shootings and linked them to Israel’s settlement policies. Eeta Tzur, 42, and her son Efraim were killed Wednesday evening when gunmen sprayed bullets at their car near the Jewish settlement of Beit El, then sped into the Palestinian-controlled town of Ramallah. ‘The roots of the Jewish people are rooted in the land of Beit El,’ Netanyahu, his voice shaking with emotion, said at their funeral today. ‘These roots not only will not be uprooted, they will be deepened.’ ‘Our answer to these murderers … is that we are staying here,’ he said. ‘We are building here. We live here. You will not uproot us from here.’ Netanyahu also demanded the Palestinians help catch the gunmen. Israeli troops clamped a closure on Ramallah, barring anyone from leaving or entering… Palestinian sources said Palestinian police arrested seven PFLP activists in Ramallah today. Israel’s Army radio said 15 activists were arrested. Thousands of people attended the Tzurs’ funeral in Beit El. Netanyahu praised them as ‘pioneers, heroes of our time.’ He denounced the ‘campaign of slander’ against settlers in Israel and abroad, and said: ‘It is time to say that there is no one better than them.’ Tzur’s husband, Yoel, and four of their children were injured in the shooting. Yoel Tzur, one of the founders of the Beit El settlement, told Israel radio the family was attacked as they returned home from visiting relatives. Tzur said he saw a car turn around and a man take out a Kalashnikov rifle and start firing. Tzur then waved down a passing Palestinian who drove him to get help. Tzur blamed the shooting on the ‘stupid autonomy accord’ with the Palestinians and urged Netanyahu to respond to every attack by expanding Jewish settlements. Arafat did not respond to reporters’ questions today on the slaying, but his Palestinian Authority condemned the attack, saying it will ‘give the Israeli government a pretext to delay the implementation of the peace process.’”
“Israeli police examine a bullet-riddled car Wednesday after gunmen shot at the vehicle carrying an Israeli family near the Beit El settlement. A woman and her 12-year-old son were killed in the shooting. A radical Palestinian group claimed responsibility for the attack.” AP
An Israeli mother and her twelve-year-old son killed, named and mourned at length. The same column records that the wounded father was driven to get help by a Palestinian who stopped for him.
Israeli soldier shoots into a crowd in Hebron, injuring six Palestinians
“Zuhair Muhtasseh was among them. He saw an Israeli soldier in green fatigues and a black skullcap standing before an army watchtower on the edge of the market. The soldier suddenly aimed his M16 rifle at the crowd. ‘He stood there and started shooting,’ said the 32-year-old Palestinian painter. ‘He finished the first clip. He was about to put in the second one [when Israeli soldiers] jumped him.’ Struck by the spray of 10 to 16 rounds, some Palestinians fell to the ground. Others clutched their wounds and raced for cover. Muhtasseh heard many cry ‘Allahu Akbar’ — Arabic for ‘God is great’ — and ‘The settlers are shooting us.’… Muhtasseh, the Palestinian painter, said he wasn’t expecting bloodshed. ‘We were hoping that they would hand over Hebron today,’ he said, standing not far from a marketplace stand that bore bullet holes from the gunman’s rifle. But Said Abu Sneineh, 22, was not surprised that a religious Jewish settler would attack Palestinians. It was another religious Jew, physician Baruch Goldstein, who, wearing an army uniform and carrying a machine gun, killed 29 Muslim worshipers at the tomb of the biblical Abraham in 1994… ‘This is not the first [incident]. This is not the last,’ said Sneineh… At a police barricade in Hebron, a young Palestinian and an Israeli soldier stood face to face. ‘This is peace?’ 15-year-old Omar Shahin asked the soldier. ‘There can be peace,’ the soldier replied. ‘There is peace in Tel Aviv,’ said the teen-ager. ‘But not here.’ ‘Not yet,’ said the soldier. ‘It takes time. I have a kid your age. Maybe when you’re both older, maybe there will be peace.’”
A printed exchange in which a named Palestinian teenager and an Israeli soldier are both given their own words, and neither is characterized. The headline names the shooter, which most of the death headlines in this archive do not. The eyewitness is a painter.
“HEBRON, West Bank — Hundreds of Palestinian school children waving flags and posters of Yasser Arafat marched through Hebron yesterday to celebrate the start of self-rule… ‘It was a dream and now we are realizing some of our hopes,’ said a smiling Fathi Jarradat as he watched the parade go by. ‘What you see here is the foundation of a Palestinian state. I hope now my children will have a better chance than I ever did.’”
The dateline is HEBRON, West Bank. Occupied has gone. Two other things happen on this page: the headline says Arabs while the story says Palestinian six times, and Jibril Rajoub is quoted on the 500 Jewish settlers living amid Hebron's 140,000 Palestinians.
“JALAZOUN, West Bank — An army truck carrying Israeli soldiers plunged off an embankment, overturned and burned Wednesday near this Palestinian refugee camp after a firebomb was thrown through its windshield. The driver and 12 soldiers were hurt in the attack… A firetruck from Ramallah was the first to arrive at the scene after it was called by Palestinians, and its crew extinguished the flames… At the neighboring Jewish settlement of Itamar, two residents were arrested after they were accused of beating a disabled Palestinian after their car was stoned. The stone-throwers fled, leaving behind the disabled man, who complained that he was beaten, and later identified the two residents to Israeli police.… Israeli Channel 2 television reported on Wednesday that Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai had approved plans to build thousands of apartments in Jewish settlements in the West Bank.”
Israeli soldiers investigate the hulk of an army truck that was firebombed on Wednesday near a Palestinian refugee camp.
One sentence, in the middle of a story about a burned army truck: the stone-throwers ran and left behind the one man who could not, and he is the only witness who could identify anybody. He is not named. The same page carries an Associated Press story about a joint Israeli-Palestinian Sesame Street, in which two puppets shout the names of hummus and falafel at each other.
· South Florida Sun Sentinel · Fort Lauderdale · page 1
Israeli soldiers and Palestinian protesters clash at close range in Hebron, West Bank. The clash occurred after the funeral of a Palestinian killed Tuesday.
“Israeli soldiers and Palestinian protesters clash at close range on Wednesday in Hebron, West Bank. The clash occurred after the funeral of a Palestinian killed Tuesday.” AP photo / Sharon Abady
A photograph and its caption; no body text on the clipping. The man whose funeral it was is not named.
Murders linked to land sales reopen an ugly chapter in Israeli-Palestinian history
Trouble in Palestine
Barbara Demick, Knight-Ridder News Service, Jerusalem
“JERUSALEM — Ali Jumhour kissed his wife goodbye at 9 a.m. Saturday and headed off to driving school. A few hours later, the 34-year-old waiter was found on a roadside, where he had been unceremoniously dumped with two bullet wounds through the neck. ‘God only knows who killed him,’ said his widow, Layla, as she sat with grieving family members at the Shofat refugee camp the next day. ‘If my husband was involved with some kind of illegal deals, I, as his wife, would surely have known.’ But Israeli authorities insist they’ve unraveled the mystery of Jumhour’s murder: They say he fell prey to Palestinian vigilantes who executed him for selling Arab land to Jews. Jumhour is the third suspected land dealer to be murdered in the past month… Palestinian officials adamantly deny involvement. Nevertheless, the murders have become a cause celebre in Israel, adding fresh venom to the increasingly poisonous relationship between Israeli and Palestinian leaders… ‘Senior officials of the Palestinian Authority … openly encouraged these murders,’ Netanyahu said later on Israel’s army radio. ‘This is simply standing the peace process on its head. There cannot be a situation in which residents of Jerusalem are being murdered, and we go on as though nothing had happened.’ At the least, Israeli officials have said, the Palestinian Authority is guilty of creating a climate in which vigilantes are encouraged to summarily execute any Arab suspected of selling land to Jews… Just four days later, the body of 79-year-old Farid Bishiti, a Jerusalem real estate broker, was found bound and gagged, his head split open, near the police station in the West Bank city of Ramallah… The murders reopen a particularly ugly chapter in Jewish-Palestinian relations that dates to the 1930s. Then, as now, a number of Arabs who sold land to Jews were deemed traitors and summarily murdered… ‘I can’t believe he was involved in any land sales. They wouldn’t have released him if he’d done anything wrong,’ insisted Jumhour’s 27-year-old widow, Layla. ‘I never heard about him doing anything out of the ordinary. He went to work. He came home. That was his whole life.’… ‘I have no problem accepting the death penalty for the one who sells land to the enemy,’ Layla Jumhour said.”
“Palestinian children join a protest Tuesday against the confiscation of Palestinian land at an Israeli settlement in the southern Gaza Strip. Land disputes are a sore point that have stalled the peace process, and three Palestinian land dealers suspected of selling land to Jews have been killed.” Adel Hana / Associated Press
The page runs four boxes beside the story — U.S. Aid, Marked for Death, Arrest Warrant, Fight Over Schools — and a second article by Karin Laub on corruption in the Palestinian Authority. The widow is quoted three times and named.
West Bank experience opens young eyes to the world of their ancestors
By Samar Assad, Associated Press, Ramallah
“RAMALLAH, West Bank — Rose Haddad turned heads and triggered sarcastic remarks when she and her American friends got down on their knees in downtown Ramallah to plant flowers and pick up garbage. Haddad, an 18-year-old from Saginaw, this month was making her first visit to the homeland of her parents and grandparents, along with 13 other young Palestinian Americans… Another day, sitting with new friends from Ramallah, some of the Americans suggested a visit to Jerusalem, 15 minutes away. ‘I was surprised to hear the guys sitting with us say they could not go — they needed a permit from Israel,’ Haddad said. ‘Wow,’ I thought.’… ‘The project is an attempt to get American-born Palestinians acquainted with their roots,’ said Samir Mashni… ‘If they don’t feel part of the city, they will lose their whole culture.’ The project is similar to the hundreds of long-established programs that bring young American Jews to Israel to volunteer and study… Palestinian officials blamed the lack of investment on Israeli restrictions — including closures of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, restricted visas and border controls… ‘I plan to return and work for a couple of years in Ramallah,’ said Mashni, a distant relation of Samir Mashni. ‘Definitely.’”
Far from home: Rose Haddad (center) and her colleagues, Arab Americans volunteering in “Project Hope,” speak with a disabled Palestinian recently at the Abu Rayeh rehabilitation center in the West Bank town of Ramallah.
Three Americans are named in the caption. The Palestinian they have come to meet is not. The culture shock the story records is not the one its headline expects: an eighteen-year-old from Saginaw discovers that her new friends cannot travel fifteen minutes to Jerusalem.
“Two Palestinian boys relax recently on a cart in the crowded Khan Younis refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.” Photo for the Tribune by Will Yurman.
The clipping is the photograph and its caption; the story it belonged to is not on this scan. Arabic graffiti and a Star of David are painted on the wall behind the two boys.
Palestinians confront past, betrayals on path to statehood
By Laura King, The Associated Press, Gaza City, Gaza Strip
“GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — His memories are scraps torn from childhood’s fabric: a peacock’s jewel-toned tail feathers. Town streets abruptly giving way to the desert’s bleak beauty. And his mother’s sewing machine. Palestinian psychiatrist Eyad Sarraj was 4 when his family hastily left their home in what is now the Israeli town of Beersheba. And the clearest image he can call up from that spring day in 1948 is the sight of his mother trying to lug her prized machine — a wondrous contraption of heavy-wrought metal — to a waiting truck. Stop, his father told her. Don’t be silly. You don’t need to bring that. We’ll be back in two weeks. For the Sarraj family — and some three-quarters of a million other Palestinians who fled or were driven out when the British withdrew and the land was partitioned — those weeks somehow expanded into half a century. Today, the Palestinian people — some 8 million worldwide, by United Nations count — remain scattered and stateless… Almost from the beginning, Israelis and Palestinians denied one another’s very existence as a people… And the late Israeli prime minister, Golda Meir, once said there was no such thing as a Palestinian. Palestinians fared little better at Arab hands. After partition, neighboring states grabbed chunks of land; Jordan annexed the West Bank, and Egypt seized the Gaza Strip. It was the kind of betrayal the Palestinians would experience again and again… If 1948 marked the original catastrophe — ‘al-nakba,’ in Arabic — for Palestinians, its echo came in 1967, when Israel and its Arab neighbors again went to war. It was a rout. Israel captured the West Bank and east Jerusalem from Jordan, the Gaza Strip from Egypt and the Golan Heights from Syria. Another 300,000 Palestinians became refugees — and lost hope that the Arab world would be their savior… ‘It’s fine to talk about the end of occupation, but if I walk to the end of this road, I see Israeli soldiers,’ said Gaza merchant Salim Kamal. ‘So it’s ours, this land? It doesn’t look like ours.’”
“A Palestinian man hurries past Israeli soldiers aiming their rifles — equipped with rubber bullets — at Palestinians throwing stones in the West Bank Town of Hebron in March.” Eyal Warshavsky, Associated Press.
The word in Arabic, glossed, in an American daily in April 1998, in a piece that also prints Golda Meir on there being no such thing as a Palestinian and then spends a page disproving her with named people. The subheadings are “Existence denied,” “Routs and catastrophes,” “Ragtag band,” “Lost and found,” “Vast chasms” and “Sum of its grief.”
Samar Assad, Associated Press, Ramallah, West Bank
“RAMALLAH, West Bank — Israel unexpectedly released a leader of a radical Palestine Liberation Organization faction today after holding him nearly six years without charges or trial. Ahmed Qatamesh, 46, was the longest-held prisoner in so-called administrative detention and was at the center of a campaign by human rights activists trying to end the practice. Dozens of friends and relatives showered Qatamesh with yellow flower petals as he entered his home in the West Bank town of Ramallah. Clutching a bouquet of flowers, Qatamesh hugged his wife and 8-year-old daughter. Qatamesh, a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a radical PLO faction, said he was happy to be home, but also felt ‘extreme anger and frustration’ over the five years and eight months he spent in prison. A second PFLP activist, Hassan [—]afafta, 35, was also released today after serving four years in administrative detention, said Qatamesh’s lawyer, Jawad Boulos. In all, about 200 Palestinians and Lebanese are currently held without charges, some imprisoned for several years. Israel says administrative detentions are an important tool in the fight against terrorism. However, human rights groups say imprisonment without due process can never be justified. Qatamesh was never convicted of a crime, said his wife, Soha Barghouti. On Sept. 1, 1992, he was placed in administrative detention, and earlier this month, his term was extended for a 10th time for a period of six months. David Bar-Illan, a senior adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said he did not know why Qatamesh won early release. The Israeli daily Haaretz said that while still in prison, Qatamesh granted interviews to two Israeli TV stations in which he spoke out against terrorism… Qatamesh was released early today from Damoun prison in northern Israel. On the way home to Ramallah, he stopped at a West Bank cemetery where his mother and father are buried. Dozens of friends and relatives awaited his arrival in Ramallah. ‘We welcome the leader, teacher and comrade,’ read a banner outside his home signed by the PFLP… Mrs. Barghouti said that in recent months, eight of the longest-held administrative detainees had been freed, and suggested that the Israeli government was beginning to respond to the human rights campaign being waged inside Israel and abroad. Administrative detentions were first used by the British during their rule of pre-state Palestine, and one of those held by the British at the time, former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, said today the practice would be phased out.”
Five years and eight months without charge, and the detail the paper puts last: the practice was inherited from the British, and one of the men they had held that way was a later Israeli prime minister. The advertisement under it is for a hair salon in Biddeford. The first letter of the second man’s surname falls off the left edge of the clipping and is not supplied here.
“JERUSALEM — Saying Israel could not accept a ‘new Iraq or Iran’ on its doorstep, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Monday that Israel would retaliate if Palestinians declare a state before reaching a peace agreement. The Israeli leader, in one of his toughest statements yet on Palestinian statehood, refused to say what steps might be taken. The most likely option would be the annexation of disputed West Bank land by Israel. ‘We cannot accept and mustn’t accept the formation of a new Iraq or Iran next to our doorstep,’ Netanyahu told the Foreign Press Association. ‘If the Palestinians react with unilateral actions, so will we.’ The statement came in reaction to a warning from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who told reporters in the autonomous Gaza Strip over the weekend that he would press ahead with a declaration of statehood if there was no peace settlement by May 4, 1999, the deadline set in the Oslo accords. ‘It’s our right, and we’re going to declare it,’ Arafat said. He has made similar assertions before… ‘We hope there will be progress, but I cannot guarantee that,’ said Netanyahu, adding that Israel was trying to be ‘flexible’ but it would take an equal effort from the Palestinians. Palestinians have accused Netanyahu of foot-dragging and warned that a failure in London could lead to an explosion of violence.”
Annexation, named as the threatened answer to a declaration of statehood, in 1998 — in the reporter’s own sentence, not in a quotation. The word Jerusalem is set as a drop-in label beside the second paragraph.
“Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, ever the courtly hard-liner, mixed a gentle manner with firm words on a CNN broadcast Thursday to rebuff U.S. first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s call for the creation of a Palestinian state in the Middle East. ‘I have a different view,’ said Netanyahu, who did not mention President Clinton’s wife by name. He said he would never accept what he called an ‘unbridled’ state, in which the Palestinians could field an army and form military alliances, perhaps with countries such as Iran and Iraq. ‘I am opposed to a Palestinian state,’ Netanyahu said. ‘I am not opposed to the Palestinians governing themselves.’”
· San Francisco Chronicle · San Francisco · page 1
Arab Protests Erupt in Violence
9 people die in riots over Israel’s birth
Serge Schmemann, New York Times, Jerusalem
“Palestinians yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of the creation of Israel, an event they call the ‘catastrophe,’ with two minutes of silence and several hours of violence in which nine were left dead… In the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces opened fire with live ammunition on Palestinians pressing in toward Jewish settlements, killing eight Palestinians, two of them 8-year-old boys. Another man was killed by a rubber-coated bullet in the West Bank in Ramallah. Exactly what led to the shooting is not clear, but the Israeli army said that it fired at rioters at three locations, and that Israeli forces were fired on at two of them… In Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron, Israeli forces seemed to exercise greater restraint, and there was evidence of coordination with Palestinian police to let Palestinian passions play out without inflaming them further… For every poster and slogan commemorating a village or a home lost in ‘al nakba,’ the catastrophe, there was another with a current grievance… ‘The nakba has thrown us out of homes and dispersed us around the globe. Historians may search, but they will not find any nation subjugated to as much torture as ours.’”
“Israeli police officers with batons charged Palestinians protesting Israel’s 50th anniversary.” Associated Press. And: “Israeli police fired at stone-throwing Arabs in East Jerusalem; nine people were killed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.” Reuters.
The headline calls it Israel’s birth. The Palestinian name appears further down, in quotation marks and glossed as “the catastrophe,” and then unquoted in Arafat’s speech.
Netanyahu vows he won't establish Palestine state, redivide Jerusalem
Associated Press, Washington
“WASHINGTON (AP) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he probably will make concessions to reach an agreement with the Palestinians over the West Bank, but not at the risk of his country’s security. Netanyahu, taking a hard line Thursday night after his two-day talks with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright ended without a breakthrough, pledged never to agree to establish a Palestinian state or to redivide Jerusalem. With Israeli officials saying no agreement was reached on any of the difficult issues, including how much territory Israel would relinquish on the West Bank, the Clinton administration seemed to have suffered a foreign policy setback. ‘The Palestinians should have all of the powers to run their lives, but not the powers of statehood,’ Netanyahu told an American Jewish Committee dinner. He said Israel had determined which areas of the West Bank that it could withdraw its troops from safely and that peace was ‘within our reach.’ But an agreement to reopen negotiations with the Palestinian Authority after 15 months of stalemate continued to elude the Israeli leader and Albright, although they directed aides to keep meeting in the search for an acceptable formula. ‘There is no agreement yet on the issues that were discussed,’ said Gadi Baltiansky, the Israeli Embassy spokesman. ‘But they continue to be discussed.’ Albright’s spokesman, James P. Rubin, said: ‘We do have sufficient reason to continue serious work.’ But he added: ‘It is hard to be optimistic.’”
“Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli prime minister”
The formula printed plainly in 1998: all the powers to run their lives, but not the powers of statehood. No Palestinian is quoted in the story.
“Palestinian residents of Arab East Jerusalem struggle with Israeli police officers yesterday after the officers tried to break up a Palestinian march commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, their uprooting after Israel’s creation 50 years ago. Clashes erupted as Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza commemorated the Nakba. Below, marchers shout at police and hold up signs reading ‘Despite the Nakba, hope remains.’” AP photos
A picture page. The caption gives the word, translates it, and quotes what the marchers had written on their signs. Most of the faces in the photograph are young women.
Israelis, Palestinians clash on the 4th day of unrest over ‘al nakba’
Associated Press, Hebron, West Bank
“HEBRON, West Bank (AP) — Palestinian youths threw stones and bottles Sunday at Israeli troops who responded with rubber bullets, wounding six Palestinians in a fourth day of West Bank clashes. The latest round of violence began Thursday with mass Palestinian demonstrations to mark al nakba, or the catastrophe — which is what Palestinians consider Israel’s founding 50 years ago. Five Palestinians were killed in the clashes, the worst in nearly two years. On Sunday, six Palestinians received medical treatment for injuries from rubber-coated metal bullets, Hebron hospital officials said. No Israeli soldiers were hurt, according to an Israeli army statement. The violence continued as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was scheduled to meet in Washington on Sunday with U.S. officials for talks on a delayed Israeli troop withdrawal from the West Bank. The Clinton administration backed away from a threat to suspend its mediation of peace talks, even though Netanyahu did not accept a U.S. proposal for territorial compromise… ‘If you ask me, as the prime minister of Israel, to sign a peace treaty in which we somehow erode Israel’s defenses, that won’t hold,’ Netanyahu said on ABC-TV’s This Week with Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts. Israel has signaled it could give up 11 percent of the West Bank in addition to the 27 percent it agreed previously to relinquish, but only 3 percent of which is fully under Palestinian control… Among his themes were allegations that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is violating his agreements with Israel by vowing to establish a Palestinian state if he could not attain one through negotiations, and that the Palestinian police force far exceeds agreed limits… In Jericho on Sunday, about 150 new Palestinian police cadets were graduated, increasing the force to more than 30,000 — far beyond its authorized strength of 24,000.”
Two portraits run side by side, captioned “Netanyahu” and “Arafat.”
The fiftieth anniversary, and the paper prints the Arabic word in italics with a translation. Five Palestinians killed; no Israeli soldiers hurt.
“Palestinian crafts and traditional dresses embroidered in bright reds, pinks and oranges decorated the vast room at the Ramada Hotel-Camelback. Photographs of men, women and children dominated much of the exhibit — photos of old family portraits, of people posing in front of homes, of kneeling worshipers in temples. One picture was of a young girl crying over the death of her father, an image that reflected the agony and pain of the Palestinians’ war against the Israelis. The exhibit, sponsored by a group of Palestinians living in the Valley, was titled ‘Nakba,’ which translates to ‘The Year of the Tragedy.’ ‘(We) did this to create memory of the tragedy that happened to Palestinians in Israel,’ said Marwan Ahmad, coordinator of the event and one of an estimated 10,000 Palestinians who call the Valley home. ‘Americans know there is a problem in the Mideast, but they don’t know the details.’ Ahmad said there were two major events that reshaped Palestinian history: In 1948, Nakba, which is used to refer to the birth of Israel, and in 1967, when Israel occupied the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, where many Palestinians have lived for centuries. For 50 years, Israelis and Palestinians have been in war over land they both live on. They both believe they have a legitimate claim to the land and use their respective religious beliefs to back their positions. The celebration earlier this year of Israel’s 50th anniversary inspired the exhibit, Ahmad said. Some Palestinians wanted to raise awareness of their culture and to shed a more sympathetic light on their struggle, he said. ‘We are a people of culture,’ Ahmad said. ‘Palestinians are normal people who want to live in peace.’ Dana Waken, a 35-year-old Phoenix resident, said she attended the exhibit because she wanted to learn more about the Palestinian culture. She said it’s unfortunate that such events fail to draw more people. About 2,000 people attended the three-day event at the central Phoenix hotel. ‘The world is so small (and) we’re still isolationists,’ Waken said. Ahmad Aljallad, 34, a former resident of Damascus who stays aware of Palestinian issues, said he appreciated that the exhibit focused more on culture than politics. ‘It showed the history of the conflict, a picture of life of a Palestinian for the past 50 years and their future hope in Palestine,’ he said. Dorothy Sima, of Mesa, said she sees similarities between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Native American experience. ‘It makes me angry. They are being denied their basic human rights,’ she said. ‘If I was in their situation I would fight too.’ She said the exhibit gave her a different perspective on the Middle East issue because the media doesn’t present both sides. ‘This is something all people should see,’ Sima said.”
“Traditional items of Palestinian culture, such as these miniature nargilehs (water pipes), are part of the ‘Nakba’ exhibit sponsored by a group of Valley Palestinians.” Mark Schiefelbein / The Arizona Republic
Ten thousand Palestinians in the Phoenix valley, putting on an exhibition about 1948 for the fiftieth anniversary, and a local paper covering it as a community story.
U.N. General Assembly lists anti-Semitism as form of racism
N.Y. Times News Service, United Nations
“UNITED NATIONS — For the first time in more than half a century, the U.N. General Assembly decided Wednesday to list anti-Semitism as a form of racism. The resolution was adopted by consensus on the 50th anniversary of the international convention against genocide and a day before the United Nations celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In a resolution introduced by Indonesia on behalf of more than 100 developing nations, the Assembly also warned against new avenues for disseminating the ‘repugnant views’ of racist organizations… General Assembly resolutions do not carry the force of Security Council resolutions, but they reflect world opinion. In the past, the Assembly had voted to equate Zionism with racism.… This year the Clinton administration lobbied hard to include a condemnation of anti-Semitism in the resolution, titled Measures to Combat Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. ‘The U.N. is about tolerance and inclusion,’ said Felice Gaer, director of Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights, at the American Jewish Committee. ‘But this is the first time that the U.N. has used the phrase ‘anti-Semitism,’ which has been fought over for years and kept out of any resolutions.’… The monitor, known as a special rapporteur, was asked to examine racist incidents ‘against blacks, Arabs and Muslims’ and ‘xenophobia, Negrophobia, anti-Semitism and related intolerance.’ Secretary General Kofi Annan… said he was aware that ‘the United Nations is regarded by many as biased against the State of Israel.’ ‘I know that Israelis are offended when other nations’ delegates leave the room as Israelis rise to speak,’ he said.”
Seven years after the repeal the same body names antisemitism as a form of racism for the first time in its history, and the wire story explains it by reminding readers what the Assembly used to say instead. Three years later the parallel forum at Durban voted to put the old formula back.
Hugh Dellios, Tribune Foreign Correspondent, Bidu, West Bank
“BIDU, West Bank — Behind the tears in Beyan Mansur’s eyes was barely restrained joy as she and other Palestinians on Thursday tasted the first fruits of peace in the Ehud Barak era. For the first time in eight years, the 10-year-old Palestinian girl clambered into the lap of her father, Samir, and kissed him on the cheeks. Well-wishers streamed through the family’s home to embrace him. On the porch, women wailed and beat drums in bittersweet celebration, awaiting their turn to smother Samir in hugs as friends sent fireworks bursting over the village. Samir Mansur was among 199 Palestinian security prisoners freed Thursday by Israel in the first step of implementing the peace treaty signed Sunday between Barak, the new Israeli prime minister, and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. Hours later, Israel gave Arafat maps delineating another 7 percent of the occupied West Bank to be returned to the Palestinians. While Israeli soldiers retain ultimate authority over the land and few Palestinians will benefit directly, Arafat’s police will control civilian affairs and no Jewish settlements will be allowed there… Although the Palestinians celebrated, they also expressed deep disappointment that 1,800 prisoners remain behind bars in Israel, where Israelis victimized by past terror attacks accused Barak of jeopardizing the nation’s security by freeing detainees who had murdered Palestinian collaborators… ‘What is going on here now symbolizes the victory of terrorism,’ said Meir Indor, chairman of the Terror Victims Association, displaying wounds from two attacks by Palestinians, one when he was a soldier. The bus then headed into the Palestinian city of Ramallah, where it was mobbed by well-wishers grabbing at the prisoners’ hands and tossing cigarettes into the open windows. At the central police station, the freed men received a heroes’ welcome. ‘I think this gives us hope that the new government in Israel will go ahead and implement agreements,’ said Marwan Barghouti, head of Arafat’s Fatah faction in the West Bank. ‘People were frustrated to see that every year we have a treaty without any change on the ground. I think this is an important day.’”
“An unidentified Palestinian makes a victory sign with still-bound hands while being driven to freedom Thursday from an Israeli prison.” AP photo by Nasser Isstayeh
A ten-year-old girl who had not sat in her father’s lap for eight years, named in the first sentence of a Chicago Tribune story. The Israeli objection to the release is printed in the same column.
Part of Covering Palestine, an archive of 1262 newspaper clippings about Palestinians printed in 512 papers between 1799 and 2023. Researched and assembled by Maria Robles. Nothing here was printed after 6 October 2023.