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Ron Jacobs
The
Darkening Tunnel
Recent
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August 21, 2003
Robert Fisk
The US
Needs to Blame Anyone But Locals for UN Bombing
Virginia Tilley
The Quisling Policies of the UN in Iraq: Toward a Permanent War?
Rep. Henry Waxman
Bush Owes the Public Some Serious Answers on Iraq
Ben Terrall
War Crimes and Punishment in Indonesia: Rapes, Murders and Slaps
on the Wrists
Elaine Cassel
Brother John Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Salvation Show
Christopher Brauchli
Getting Gouged by Banks
Marjorie Cohn
Sergio Vieira de Mello: Victim of Terrorism or US Policy in Iraq?
Vicente Navarro
Media
Double Standards: The Case of Mr. Aznar, Friend of Bush
Website of the Day
The Intelligence Squad
August 20, 2003
Robert Fisk
Now No
One Is Safe in Iraq
Caoimhe Butterly
Life and Death on the Frontlines of Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
UN Bombing: Act of Terrorism or Guerrilla War?
Michael Egan
Revisiting the Paranoid Style in the Dark
Ramzi Kysia
Peace
is not an Abstract Idea
Steven Higgs
NPR and the NAFTA Highway
John L. Hess
A Downside Day
Edward Said
The Imperial Bluster of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Gridlock at Path 15: the California Blackouts were the "Wake
Up Call"
Website of the Day
Ashcroft's Patriotic Hype
August 19, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Blackouts Happen
Gary Leupp
"Our Patch": Australia v. the Evil Doers of the South
Pacific
Sean Donahue
Uribe's Cruel Model: Colombia Moves Toward Totalitarianism
Matt Martin
Bush's Credibility Problem on Missile Defense
Juliana Fredman
Recipe for the Destruction of a Hudna
John Ross
Fox Government's Attack on Mexican Basques
Sasan Fayazmanesh
What Kermit Roosevelt Didn't Say
Website of the Day
Tom Delay's Dual Loyalities
August 18, 2003
Uri Avnery
Hero in War and Peace
Stan Goff
The Volunteer Military and the Wicked Adventure
Cathy Breen
Baghdad on the Hudson
Michael Kimaid
Fight the Power (Companies)!
Jason Leopold
The California Rip-Off Revisited: Arnold, Milken and Ken Lay
Matt Siegfried
The Bush Administration in Context
Elaine Cassel
At Last, A Judge Who Acts Like a Judge
Alexander Cockburn
Judy Miller's War
Harvey Wasserman
The Legacy of Blackout Pete Wilson
Website of the Day
Fire Griles!
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
August 16 / 17, 2003
Flavia Alaya
Bastille
New Jersey
Jeffrey St. Clair
War Pimps
Saul Landau
The Legacy of Moncada: the Cuban Revolution at 50
Brian Cloughley
What Has Happened to the US Army in Iraq?
William S. Lind
Coffins for the Crews: How Not to Use Light Armored Vehicles
Col. Dan Smith
Time for Straight Talk
Wenonah Hauter
Which
Electric System Do We Want?
David Lindorff
Where's Arnold When We Need Him?
Harvey Wasserman
This Grid Should Not Exist
Don Moniak
"Unusual Events" at Nuclear Power Plants: a Timeline
for August 14, 2003
David Vest
Rolling Blackout Revue
Merlin Chowkwanyun
An Interview with Sherman Austin
Adam Engel
The Loneliest Number
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Hamod & Albert
Book of the Weekend
Powerplay by Sharon Beder
August 14, 2003
Peter Phillips
Inside
Bohemian Grove: Where US Power Elites Party
Brian Cloughley
Charlie Wilson and Pakistan: the Strange Congressman Behind the
CIA's Most Expensive War
Linville and Ruder
Tyson
Strike Draws the Line
Jim Lobe
Bush Administration Divided Over Iran
Ramzy Baroud
Sharon Freezes the Road Map
Tom Turnipseed
Blowback in Iraq
Gary Leupp
Condi's
Speech: From Birgmingham to Baghdad, Imperialism's Freedom Ride
Website of the Day
Tony Benn's Greatest Hits
August 13, 2003
Joanne Mariner
A Wall of Separation Through the
Heart
Donald Worster
The Heavy Cost of Empire
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Elaine Cassel
Murderous Errors: Executing the Innocent
Ralph Nader
Make the Recall Count
Alexander Cockburn
Ted Honderich Hit with "Anti-Semitism" Slur
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August 12, 2003
Ron Jacobs
Revisionist History: the Bush Administration, Civil Rights and
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Josh Frank
Dean's Constitutional Hang-Up
Wayne Madsen
What's a Fifth Columnist? Well, Someone Like Hitchens
Ray McGovern
Relax,
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Hubris in the White House
Website of the Day
Black
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J.B.
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Uzma
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The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
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Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
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Gore Vidal
The
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Francis Boyle
Impeach
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August
21, 2003
Shikaki's Rigged Survey
Palestinians
and the Right of Return
By ISSAM MUFID NASHASHIBI
Last Friday Palestinian Minister for Planning
and International Cooperation, Nabil Shaath, told reporters in
Beirut that "politically, the only solution is through the
right to return," and that "there is place for all
the Palestinians of Lebanon in Gaza, Tulkarm or Qalqilya, but
their homes are elsewhere."
Shaath's statement may mollify his Lebanese
and Palestinian audience by saying what they wanted to hear.
That brought out Israel's ire and an
almost immediate reaction to it by Nabil Amr, Palestinian Information
Minister that a 'pragmatic solution' in negotiations with Israel
will have to be found. "The right of return issue will be
solved only in agreement with Israel. We will not harm the Jewish
character of the state of Israel and the solution will therefore
be pragmatic," Amr said to Israeli Army radio.
What Amr may be referring to is the Council
on Foreign Relations (CFR) solution for the Palestinian refugees
which was developed by Donna Arzt in her 1996 CFR-published book
"Refugees into Citizens: Palestinians and the End of the
Arab-Israeli Conflict." In it, Ms. Arzt proposes that Palestinians
be "absorbed" by the states in which they reside, except
for a maximum of 75,000 refugees from Lebanon to return to Israel
if they can prove that they resided there before 1948, still
have close relatives living in Israel and agree to live there
in peace: i.e. a few senior citizen who would not reproduce and
die within twenty years.
The book claims that Israel would accept
this "symbolic" return without having to admit responsibility
for the refugee problem because it will be positioned as part
of a "regional absorption" effort while giving the
Arab states the political cover to assert that Israel has already
complied with UN resolution 194.
CFR's Richard W. Murphy, found "empirical"
evidence to support this solution and thus enthusiastically endorsed
a recent opinion survey, conducted by Khalil Shikaki, on the
Palestinian right of return claiming that only 10% of the refugees
in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria would return to Israel.
Shikaki's survey seems to be the latest
attempt at managing the expectations of Palestinians about their
right of return; a basic human right guaranteed by international
law and UN resolution 194 that Israel had accepted as a condition
of its entry in the UN.
This expectation management effort appears
to be aimed at recovering from the failure of the two most recent
similar projects, which are the Ayalon-Nusseibeh agreement, and
a 2001 survey of Palestinian refugee attitudes on permanent status
by Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI).
In late 2001, the former head of the
infamous Israeli secret police, Ami Ayalon, and Sari Nusseibeh,
the past Palestinian Authority representative in Jerusalem agreed
to, and promoted, the notion that a two state solution denies
Palestinians the right to return to their homes within Israel.
Understandably, this individual agreement met refugee opposition
and failed to manage their expectations.
The IPCRI venture did not hide its objective
to "manage the expectations of Palestinian refugees."
IPCRI undertook a yearlong initiative including "48 Town
Meetings in nine refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza."
Instead of "managing" refugee expectations, the August
2001 survey results showed overwhelming support for international
legitimacy as the basis for negotiating the refugee problem and
that 'compensation' is not a substitute for the right of return.
As public opinions on such a basic issue
do not normally change to the extreme opposite in such a short
time and without a major political shock to society, Shikaki's
poll results are therefore rendered very unconvincing. No wonder
Palestinian refugee groups, including 95 refugee groups in Lebanon,
rejected the survey results vociferously.
As an individual who has commissioned
and designed market research surveys, it is obvious to me that
the purported poll outcome is a direct result of questions that
were composed to guide the respondent's answers towards a specific
outcome.
In defending his methodology, Mr. Shikaki
opined that although the respondents were not restricted to the
survey's prepared answers, they nevertheless chose to stay with
the pre-arranged answers, which did not offer the right of return
to Israel as an option. He should be the first to know that people
who chose to "cooperate" with a survey tend to respond
to questions and are not inclined to provide "creative"
answers, especially where declaring a politically charged opinion
may lead to an indictment for incitement.
Another indicator of the pre-judged survey
outcome is that the poll ignores the opinions of diaspora Palestinians
not living in refugee camps because the survey assumed they "self-absorbed"
in the societies in which they reside and would not wish to return.
To the Arab media, Mr. Shikaki justified
his survey design because it strictly measures refugee reactions
to the January 2001 tentative "Taba Agreement." between
Israel and the Palestinian Authority. An agreement that, like
Arzt's CFR solution, pays lip service to UN resolution 194 by
calling for Palestinian refugees to return to a Palestinian state,
while a nominal few return to Israel.
Contradicting himself, Mr. Shikaki wrote
in a July 30, 2003 Wall Street Journal opinion that his survey
indicates that Palestinians reject the right of return to their
homes in Israel and "favor identity over land and legacy."
His conclusion is based on a false premise that a two state solution
"logically" implies "a division of the people
[of mandatory Palestine] with some becoming Israeli and others
Palestinian."
The Shikaki survey is the latest inherently
racist effort at rejecting Palestinian rights in favor of an
exclusively Jewish state. It is destined to join its predecessors,
including denying the existence of Palestine or the Palestinians.
The demise of the right of return will prove to be, like the
premature report of Mark Twain's death, exaggerated.
Issam Mufid Nashashibi, US Director of Deir Yassin Remembered , is
a Palestinian-American freelance writer on Israel/Palestine issues
who can be reached at inashashibi@hotmail.com
Weekend
Edition Features for August 16 / 17, 2003
Flavia Alaya
Bastille
New Jersey
Jeffrey St. Clair
War Pimps
Saul Landau
The Legacy of Moncada: the Cuban Revolution at 50
Brian Cloughley
What Has Happened to the US Army in Iraq?
William S. Lind
Coffins for the Crews: How Not to Use Light Armored Vehicles
Col. Dan Smith
Time for Straight Talk
Wenonah Hauter
Which
Electric System Do We Want?
David Lindorff
Where's Arnold When We Need Him?
Harvey Wasserman
This Grid Should Not Exist
Don Moniak
"Unusual Events" at Nuclear Power Plants: a Timeline
for August 14, 2003
David Vest
Rolling Blackout Revue
Merlin Chowkwanyun
An Interview with Sherman Austin
Adam Engel
The Loneliest Number
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Hamod & Albert
Book of the Weekend
Powerplay by Sharon Beder
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