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.

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.

Israel at 60

Locked into the mantra of preserving its Jewish character, Israel refuses to comprehend the extent to which it has forsaken the memory of the oppressed for the fruits of the oppressor.

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the creation of Israel. Here is my take on what Israel represents in the 21st century.

But they're Arab!

"She told me, 'I don't want anyone to know you're Arab. I don't want anyone to know I rented the flat out to Arabs.' I told her, 'I'm not going to hide my identity.' She said, 'No, no you don't have to hide.' I said, 'Okay, I want to put my name on the door.' She said, 'No, no, not that.'"

NewMatilda.com has commissioned weekly pieces while I'm in Israel and Palestine over the next two months. Click this link to read my first entry.

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.