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April 2, 2002
Steve
Perry
Let's
Roll! ®:
The Marketing of Lisa Beamer
April 1, 2002
Stanton / Madsen
America's War Inc.
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
Peace
and Nuclear Disarmament: a Call to Action
Bahour / Dahan
Bloodshed in Palestine:
A Way Out
Molly
Secours
Tennessee's
Kangaroo Court
Phyllis Pollack
The Making of Exile
on Main Street
Dave Marsh
DeskScan:
This Week's
Top 10 CDs
Francis Boyle
The Big Lie:
Palestine, Palestinians
and International Law
March 31, 2002
Jordan
Flaherty
Last
Night the Israeli
Military Tried to Kill Me
Kristen Schurr
Live from Bethlehem
Maha Sbitani
The
Israeli Army Took Over My House
Robert Fisk
Lies Leaders Tell When
They Want to Go to War
March 24/30, 2002
Alexander Cockburn
The Year
of the Yellow Notepad:
Plagiarism and History
Rep. Ron Paul
Slavery and the Draft
Fidel
Castro
A
Better World is Possible
Edward Said
What Price Oslo?
José
Saramago
Justice
and Democracy Denied
Azmi Bishara
Talking to Tanks
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Clearcutting
Montana
Alexander Cockburn
50 Years of James Bond
Wilhelm
Reich
Gethsemane
Claud Cockburn
The Horror of It All
Dave Marsh
What's
Playing at My Houe
David Vest
Remembering Tammy Wynette
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Waylon
Jennings:
an Honest Outlaw
March 23, 2002
Mokhiber/Weissman
A
Corporate Lawyer
Speaks Out
Saeed Vaseghi
The US and Iran's Quest
for Democracy
Brian
J. Foley
Does
Pedophilia Scandal Spell an Opportunity for Catholics?
Sheperd Bliss
American Soul and Empire
James
Packard Winkler
Occupation
and Terror:
Politics from a Gun Barrel
M. Shahid Alam
A New International Division
of Labor
T.W. Croft
Enron's
Attack on Our
Economic Security
March 22, 2002
Robert Jensen
Corporate Power is a
Threat to Democracy
Tommy
Ates
The
Future of Black Academia
Rep. Ron Paul
Why are We in Ukraine?
March 21, 2002
McQuinn,
Munson, & Wheeler
Stars
and Stripes:
Killing for the Flag?
John Chuckman
How Change is Wrought
David
Vest
Hail
to the Chaff
March 20, 2002
Kay Lee
Censorship at Angelfire
Robert
Jensen
The
Politics of Pain
and Pleasure
Sheperd Bliss
Notes from Hawai'i:
Trouble in Paradise
Rick Giambetti
Prozac
and Suicide:
an Interview with
Dr. David Healy
Philip Farruggio
Bullies
Lori Allen
Live
from Ramallah:
The Madness of Occupation
Resources:
100s of Links
About 9/11
CounterPunch:
Complete
Coverage of 9/11 and Its Aftermath
Five
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Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
Photos by Allan Sekula
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Robust Heroin Market and Helped to Finance the Rise of the Taliban
and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
A User's Manual
by Cockburn
and St. Clair
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Reviews of Gore:
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April 2, 2002
Farce and Terror in Ramallah
This
Ghost town has a climate of fear, as peace protesters put themselves
in the firing line and Bush policy shows a shift
By Robert Fisk
in Ramallah
The
Independent
Journalists were ordered out of Ramallah late
on Sunday night. It's an old trick. Whenever the Israeli army
wants to stop us seeing what they're up to, out comes that most
preposterous exercise in military law-on-the-hoof: the "Closed
Military Area''.
So yesterday was a good day to do the
opposite, to go look at what Israel's army was up to. And I
can well see why it didn't want reporters around.
A slog down a gravel-covered hillside
not far from an Israeli checkpoint, a clamber over rocks and
mud and a hitched ride to the Palestinian refugee camp of al-Amari
on the edge of Ramallah told its own story; a tale of terrified
civilians and roaring tanks and kids throwing stones at Israeli
Jeeps, just as they did before Oslo and all the other false
hopes which the Americans and the Israelis and Mr Y Arafat brought
to the region.
Rather than waging a "war on terror''
the Israeli soldiers looked as if they had entered the wilderness
of occupation, just as they did in Lebanon back in 1982, when
"Closed Military Areas'' were about as common - and worthless
- as confetti. The Palestinians hid in their homes, shutters
down, eyes peering from behind blinds, occasionally sneaking
on to a balcony to wave when they saw a Westerner in the street.
A few children could be seen running between houses. At what
age, I wonder, does war transmute itself from a game into a
tragedy?
It was a grey, cold, wet day for a "war
on terror'' and the first part of the journey followed the usual
pattern of farce and fear. There were Palestinians aplenty walking
down the track to the old quarry south of Ramallah. The Israelis
know all about this little by-pass, of course, but usually
can't be bothered to control it.
To tell the truth, it was an Israeli
officer at the nearby checkpoint at Kalandia on Easter Sunday
who smilingly advised me to enter Ramallah by this little track.
And beyond a pile of boulders and dirt and concrete blocks -
long ago piled up by the Israelis - was a minibus driver who
promised a trip to the Ramallah Hotel.
It was, of course, too good to be true.
No sooner had we reached the al-Amari refugee camp - home under
occupation of the Palestinians who originally fled their homes
in what is now Israel in 1948 - than the drivers' courage drained
away.
A woman called Nadia and her tiny son
offered me a guided tour through the camp. There were young
men in the streets, tough young men in parkas and jeans who
were watching every side road and alley. And there were children
around the camp, shrieking with excitement and fear every time
an Israeli border police Jeep drove towards them. Everyone was
waiting for the Israeli raid to begin.
It was a doctor who offered me a lift
to central Ramallah, a journey we accomplished with considerable
anxiety, driving slowly down the side roads, skidding to a halt
when we caught sight of a tank barrel poking from behind apartment
blocks, forever looking upwards at the wasp-like Apache helicopters
that flew in twos over the city. Our car bumped over the tank
tracks gouged into the tarred roads. The nearer we got to the
centre, the fewer people we saw. Downtown Ramallah was a ghost
town.
So Oslo has come to this. There were
the usual claims of house vandalisation and some rather more
disturbing allegations of theft by Israeli troops - "baseless
incitement whipped up by the Palestinian Authority,'' went
the Israeli reply, which might have been more impressive had
Israeli troops not stolen cars and vandalised homes during
their invasion of southern Lebanon in 1982.
Then, for the few journalists left at
the Ramallah Hotel - and a clutch of largely French and Italian
peace "activists" (earrings and Palestinian scarves,
and in one case a nose ring, being in profusion) - came the
moment of high drama and utter comedy.
A Merkava tank, roaring like a lion,
drove slowly to the front of the hotel and then, very slowly,
swivelled its barrel towards the front door. Peaceniks charged
back into the foyer, screaming at reporters to stand in the
road holding their passports above their heads.
And that, I suppose, is what the occupation
of Ramallah is all about. All day, the streets vibrated to the
sound of armour. Between apartment blocks and villas we could
watch the Merkavas clattering between trees or veering off the
highway into fields. On a hill above the city, another tank
sat hull down in the mud, its barrel pointing towards Arafat's
scorched headquarters prison. The matchstick snap of a rifle
would be followed by the bellow of a shell or the sound of a
heavy machine-gun. And then the empty world would return to
birdsong and the faint buzz of an Apache high above us.
With little time before dusk, leaving
Ramallah was even more farcical and dramatic than entering.
With a small group of French and Italian journalists, I slogged
through the afternoon sun for more than an hour before realising
we were lost.
True to its nature, war can be a surreal
creature and so there we were by late afternoon, marching -
all smiles - towards two Israeli tanks, whose frightened crews
were huddling between their vehicles, opening their ready-to-eat
ration packs. Less surreal - far more real, in fact, - was
the Merkava tank which came thrashing down a lane towards us
an hour later. There was much flourishing of European passports
and timid waving before the hatched-down beast passed us in
a blue fog of spitting stones at 30km an hour.
Yet the Palestinian families on our six-mile
journey out of town would creep from their front doors and wave
to us and offer us coffee. A child ran across a field, chasing
a horse, and a clutch of families walked gingerly between houses,
watching for the slightest glimpse of the Israelis. One old
man drove a mule up a side road with a broad smile.
And I realised then, I think, that it
was these ordinary people, the families and the old man and
the child with the horse, who are the real resistance to the
Israelis - those who refuse to be intimidated from their equally
ordinary lives.
So if this was a "war on terror'',
it was a little difficult to know who was the more terrorised
in Ramallah yesterday: the Palestinians, or the Israeli soldiers
who have gone to war for Mr Sharon.
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