ebrei contro l'occupazione

August 28, 2010

GEORGE J. MITCHELL, the United States Middle East envoy, tried to counter low expectations for renewed Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations by harking back to his experience as a mediator in Northern Ireland.

At an Aug. 20 news conference with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, announcing the talks that will begin this week, Mr. Mitchell reminded journalists that during difficult negotiations in Northern Ireland, “We had about 700 days of failure and one day of success” — the day in 1998 that the Belfast Agreement instituting power-sharing between pro-British unionists and Irish nationalists was signed.

Mr. Mitchell’s comparison is misleading at best. Success in the Irish talks was the result not just of determination and time, but also a very different United States approach to diplomacy.

The conflict in Northern Ireland had been intractable for decades. Unionists backed by the British government saw any political compromise with Irish nationalists as a danger, one that would lead to a united Ireland in which a Catholic majority would dominate minority Protestant unionists. The British government also refused to deal with the Irish nationalist party Sinn Fein, despite its significant electoral mandate, because of its close ties to the Irish Republican Army, which had carried out violent acts in the United Kingdom.

Mohammed Khatib's defense calls in its witnesses to testify at Ofer while controversial military trials against popular-struggle leaders advance

By ELENA ARANTES – Ramallah 1 September 2010 (photo: www.falafelcafe.wordpress.com), Nena News -  “Approaching Ofer is like taking a blow to the stomach,” attests Italian former Vice President of the European Parliament and acclaimed peace activist Luisa Morgantini*, describing her sobering return to the hulking gray walls and barbed wire of the Israeli military prison near Ramallah in the West Bank. First built in 1968 as a military base at the onset of the Israeli occupation, the structure was converted into an Israeli military incarceration facility for Palestinian political prisoners in 1988, shortly after the outbreak of the first Intifada.

“From the outside, the prison looks like a miniature version of the Wall around Qalqilya,” she continues, “and on the inside it looks like an agglomerate of large storage units. The prisoners are crowded into fenced-in tent-like structures, 22 men to a tent; many are being held solely under administrative detention. You see old mothers standing there, probably waiting to see their sons…anyone between the ages of 16 and 35 is not allowed to visit their family members here at all. It’s impossible for me to enter Ofer without thinking of all of this. I couldn’t help but think of the other trials I’ve witnessed here, the other prisoners that I know, like Adeeb and Abdallah [Abu Rahmah, editor's note] from Bil’in…Ibrahim Amira and Hassan Mousa from Ni’lin…,” she pauses.

“Then you walk into one of these storage units—it all seems like some sort of farce—but this is the military court room. Inside everyone plays at being very friendly and pleasant, and a couple of bored-looking soldiers are slouched over in the corner. There’s some sort of false aura of everyday normalcy; but underneath, there lies a tragedy, because Mohammed Khatib could well be condemned.”