Mindless violence or endless cycle?

In Israel Husam Dwayat is almost solely being referred to as “the terrorist”. The term has an intriguing linguistic pedigree. A terrorist has no name, no gender, no history. A terrorist is but a one-dimensional character, the one who terrorises. But what if we unmasked this terrorist, what if we recognised his acts for the crimes that they are? A criminal has the capacity for everything that is human. He can also be a victim or a father. Husam Dwayat was both of these things.

Online Opinion, Wednesday 9 July 2008.

Guilt by association

Only two months ago former US President Jimmy Carter called for the international community to normalise relations with Hamas. The declaration coincided with Carter meeting Hamas leaders in Syria, a move that helped precipitate the current ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. Even hardened enemies like Israel and Hamas have the capacity to negotiate and, in the process, legitimate each other's existence.

Here is my latest piece, it's on the problems inherent in preventing humanitarian agencies from working with proscribed terrorist organisations when such cooperation is often necessary to help those who require the most humanitarian assistance.

Israel's new wave of refugees

"I experienced a lot of torture, bad experiences in my country," recalls Gabriel, a young but weathered representative of Tel Aviv's Eritrean community. "After my education they put me in the prison and sent me to the army. They did it to humiliate and degrade me. There was a protest from the university students and because of that they take revenge and put us all in prison and then send us to the army to harm us."

Last Friday two refugees were shot dead by Egyptian border police while attempting to cross into Israel. The experiences of African refugees seeking asylum in Israel is an oft-neglected story in the Western media.

I recently interviewed African refugees in Tel Aviv, Israel, on their experiences and aspirations. You can read the story here.

A nation imprisoned

THIS month marks the 41st year of Israel’s continued occupation of the Palestinian territories. For ordinary Palestinians the occupation has turned Gaza and the West Bank into a giant prison. “[This] occupation put[s] you in a cage, a cage on your life and on your mind so you never feel safe,” says Mahmoud, an activist with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Mustafa Qadri, Dawn Newspaper (Pakistan), 20 June 2006.

The Rural Frontline

In all the villages I visited the one common feature was the constant sense of insecurity, something Jamal constantly pointed out during our conversation. "Life is very difficult and I am always worried that one of my children will wander near the settlement and I will never seem them again."

Another of my pieces on settler violence in the Occupied Territories has just been published by NewMatilda.com.

Shooting back at the settlers

The Guardian has just posted one of my reports on Jewish Settler violence in the occupied West Bank:

As I saw with my own eyes three weeks ago, Susia is now a collection of tents and partially-built structures surrounded on three sides by Israeli settlements and a military outpost. Where once there were 800 families living in Susia, today there are only 26 left.

Interviews with Palestinian fighters

When I arranged to meet Palestinian fighters I expected to meet larger than life characters, fearsome men not unlike the Special Forces of Israeli folklore with a cavalier attitude to life and death. Instead I found broken men trying to piece their lives back together. I spoke to fighters from the PLO's Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Islamic Jihad's Al Quds Brigades and the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. All were in their 20s, all had been abused in an Israeli jail, and all were seeking qualifications or employment.

Over the past two weeks I've been interviewing Palestinian fighters from a range of militant groups. My first article based on these interviews was published in NewMatilda.com today. You can read it here.

The suburban frontline

"The house right across the street was hit. It's not like World War II but it's a long term, ongoing kind of action that is causing a lot of insecurity and tension and anxiety. So people are traumatised even though there's no colossal damage ... of course [there's] the bombs that Israel sends to Gaza. But that doesn't change the fact that you can't find one person in Sderot who's not been traumatised in one way or another by this endless conflict."

I recently visited Sderot, the Israeli town one kilometre from Gaza that is routinely targeted in rocket attacks. You can read the entire report here.

US aid to the Middle East

The relative lack of critical analysis of the United States' military aid package to favoured Middle East nations reveals a great deal about contemporary measures of peace and security (Report, August 1). How, exactly, does a $20bn military aid package foment peace? The US offers yet another golden handshake to regimes, Jewish and Arab alike, with questionable human rights records and we are meant to understand that this is in the interests of peace.

What is clear is that the military aid continues the long tradition of US-funded militarism in the Middle East, a militarism expressly forbidden under international law, including under several UN security council resolutions which have called for the demilitarisation of the Middle East. It is high time we were honest; the US itself is the greatest threat to peace and security in the Middle East.

Mustafa Qadri
London

Published in today's Guardian newspaper and online.

A letter from Gaza

My most recent piece is an interview with a friend from Gaza:

The situation we Palestinians are in, whether economically due to the recurrent closures, lack of payments for the public sector employees, shortage of medicines in hospital, or socially and politically, all make life harsh and the conditions bad. Our people are losing hope in life as the days go by. Since the beginning of the current Intifada [in September 2000], our people haven’t been able to live a safe or dignified life because of the Israeli occupation. Many Palestinians today are asking questions and getting no answers.

You can read the entire piece here if you subscribe to New Matilda. A one year subscription costs AUD88 or AUD44 for concessions, which is pretty good value for a quality progressive magazine.

British Sailors in Iran revisited

In June of this year I had a letter published in The Guardian regarding the British sailors caught by Iran in disputed waters. A friend has just told me that the letter was also published in The Australian. The version in The Australian goes like this:

SOME much needed perspective is necessary to understand the current crisis over Iran’s capture of the British naval personnel. Perhaps the best way to begin to understand it is to reverse the roles. Imagine if a bunch of Iranian sailors were captured somewhere between the high seas and British territorial waters. What would the media’s response be? The obvious answer is that they had no right to be there in the first place. They would most certainly be paraded on international television. The British Prime Minister would condemn this latest act of aggression by Iran. And Iran would profess that it’s quite unlawful for Britain to detain sailors who were merely undertaking a routine exercise on the high seas.

Now this scenario immediately appears absurd because one cannot think of a circumstance where Iranian military assets would be roaming around the waters surrounding Western urope. And that absurdity is at the heart of the present situation.

Lost in the present debate is the simple question: what right does Britain have to be in the Persian Gulf in the first place? Please, spare me the patronising and naive talk about UN Security Council resolutions, of maintaining international peace and security, or even that the Iraqi Government, which was installed by the Americans and the British, invited the British into their waters. None of this would have happened if Western nations had not interfered in the geopolitics of the region.
Mustafa Qadri
London, UK

This version is a little different to the one in The Guardian. For example, my reference to the European powers drawing up the map of the Middle East after the First World War has been omitted. Still it's nice to know I got my two-cents in.

Anyway, looking through The Australian's blog for this topic I noticed there were quite a few responses to my letter, all of them quite opposed to my position. Below are a few samples but before you read them I should note mine was the only letter published by the newspaper that was critical of the American presence in the Middle East:

Samantha Jones of Fremantle Aus (04 April at 12:47 AM)

Excuse me, Mustaf Qadri??

None of this would have happened if Iran hadn’t - without any provocation - invaded sovereign US territory via it’s embassy and held it’s staff hostages. None of this would have happened if Middle Eastern Muslims - with the apparant approval and support of Iran - not invaded US sovereign territory and murdered close to 3000 people. None of this would have happened had Saddam been prepared to do what all other nations do, and submit to UN weapons inspections, thus relieving the world of the fear of an insane murdering tyrant having something horrible and nuclear.

Iran needs to do what it most obviously wont - excercise a little humility and acknowledge its own contribution to why UN and western forces are in the region.

A little historical context is needed. The past casts a long shadow.

Hozchelaga of Sydney (04 April at 08:34 AM)

Mustafa Qadri, as long as apologists for Islamic fundamentalists continue to live and breathe in London, United Kingdom, there will be no need for Iranian military assets in Western Europe.

Jack Bauer of Brisbane (04 April at 08:55 AM)

Mustafa Qadri’s letter reinforces why muslims can never be a part of western nations. His logic is that the middle east is surrounded by muslims therefore it is muslim and outside the realm of the rest of the world. Sorry Mustafa but UN resolutions, an invitation from the Iraq government (that 72% of the population decided to vote for freely and fairly - its called democracy but you cant have that can you!) and the fact the British were in Iraqi not Irananian waters (proven conclusively) are all legitimate reasons for British presence. What Iran has done is an act of war. Your attitude reinforces the belief of many westerners that Islam is incompatible with our society. I hope to see a political party raise this in the coming election.
As for Iran the response is simply - Britain/US/rest of the west should tell Iran what you have done is an act of war. There will be no sanctions, no diplomacy. You have 48 hours to release our sailors unharmed or we will launch repeated missle strikes on your country and bomb you back to the stone age. See the thing about a bully is once pushed they never fight back. The problem with Iraq was we stuck around to take part in the mess - should have topeled Saddam and then left them to fight amongst themselves. Lets not make the same mistake with Iran - remove the government so they are no longer a threat to the west and then let muslims do one of the few things they know how to do well - blow each other up! It is about time people removed the veil of political correctness and started to speak up!

Alice of Sydney (04 April at 09:59 AM)

When have Western govts ever paraded prisoners of war on tv Mustafa Qadri? As I recall, even when Iraqi soldiers surrendered in droves in the first days of the Iraq war, the Americans wanted to cease showing images of them on tv as it is indecent and humiliating.
Dont try to turn this into a ‘American/British- foreign- policy-backlash’ case. It is actually quite simple...as the letter writer before you says, rogue states such as Iran are just thugs.
Tony Letford, as ideal as it would be to be able to deal with the Iranians for the release of the sailors, George Greenberg is right. These people only understand the language of violence, they dont understand diplomacy.
Mike Carrette sums it all up nicely with one sentence.

Christian (04 April at 01:13 PM)

Sorry Mustafa but being there under a UN sanction is the end of it. If you feel patronised by being confronted with a truism, so be it.

As for the rather naive rhetorical question about why western navies are floating around the Gulf whereas the Iranian navy would never be in the North Sea. Western nations have centuries of history in empre building, exploring, projecting power, whatever you want to call it. In the past century, the same western nations have fought major wars to keep themselves and others free. They liberated large tracts of the middle east from Axis hands. On the other hand, I struggle to identify much of any use to the world at large that has been contributed to by any middle eastern country in modern history. So, assuming the Iranian navy found their way to the North Sea, they wouldn’t know what to do once they got there!

Diplomacy in uncharted waters

The Guardian

Imagine if a bunch of Iranian sailors were captured between the high seas and British territorial waters (A peculiar outrage, March 30). The media would say they had no right to be there in the first place. They would certainly be paraded on TV. The prime minister would condemn this act of aggression by Iran. And Iran would profess that it was unlawful for Britain to detain its sailors, who were merely undertaking a routine exercise on the high seas. This scenario appears absurd because one cannot think of a circumstance where the Iranian military would be roaming around waters in western Europe. And that absurdity is at the heart of the present situation.

What right does Britain have to be in the Persian gulf in the first place? Please, spare me the patronising talk about UN security council resolutions, of maintaining international peace, or even that the Iraqi government, which was installed by the US and Britain, invited the British into its waters. And don't even mention the matter of US designs over Iran; how Pentagon planners are drawing up targets for a possible US invasion.

None of this would have happened if western nations did not interfere in the geopolitics of the region. Let us not forget that most of the borders and nation states of the modern Middle East were created by the British, with some help from the French, after the first world war.

Mustafa Qadri
London