Saree Makdisi

No peace for Israel without justice for the Palestinians

Saree Makdisi — 2006-07-16T23:23:00Z

The civilian infrastructure - notably Beirut International Airport - was the first target of the attack that Israel unleashed on Lebanon in response to the capture of two Israeli soldiers this week.

This mimicks Israel's earlier assaults on the essentially defenseless population of the Gaza Strip. Israeli missiles destroyed Gaza's only power plant, depriving half the population of electricity for the hot summer months (no fans, no fridges, no light after sunset). Israeli interdictions severely disrupted supplies of food, fuel, medicines and water. Midnight air raids, artillery bombardments, and sleep deprivation are taking a psychological toll, particularly on young children.

Israel is, in short, now punishing more than a million men, women and children in Gaza for a Palestinian guerrilla attack on an Israeli army post (an obviously military target), and the entire population of Lebanon for a Hezbollah attack on Israeli troops on its northern border. (...)

Withdrawal from Gaza: Closed off, Walled in

Saree Makdisi — 2005-09-01T11:35:00Z

Palestinians celebrated as Israel began to withdraw its soldiers and settlers from the Gaza Strip (and from a handful of small and isolated colonies in the northern West Bank). The withdrawal will, it's true, offer some immediate relief after 38 years of military occupation. At the same time, however, it's clear that it is designed to serve Israel's interests, not those of the Palestinians. It will allow the Palestinians of Gaza greater freedom to move about internally, but it will do nothing to resolve their long-term problems; on the contrary, it will leave the territory just as isolated from the outside world - including the West Bank and east Jerusalem, which, with Gaza, were supposed to form the basis of a Palestinian state - and just as much subject to Israeli power. (...)

[Vol. 27 | No. 17 | page 11]

- / London Review of Books

Brutality That Boomerangs

Saree Makdisi — 2005-07-30T01:33:00Z

I am angered and sickened by the bombings here in London on July 7, but I am equally angered by the unthinking reactions in the United States and Britain to those disgusting attacks."

The usual self-congratulatory contrast between "our" civilization and "their" barbarism has set the stage for a cycle of moralistic inquiries into the motivations of suicide bombers and the supposed duty of "good" Muslims to restrain "bad" ones.

Few have noticed that suicide bombing is merely a tactic used by those who lack other means of delivering explosives. Fewer still seem to notice that what happened in London is what occurs every time a U.S. or British warplane unloads its bombs on an Iraqi village.

But, you may say, our forces don't deliberately target civilians. Perhaps not. But they have consistently shown themselves to be indifferent to the civilian casualties produced by their operations. (...)

- / Los Angeles Times

Diary: Living with the Wall

Saree Makdisi — 2005-03-02T19:11:09Z

"In October 2003, soon after the erection of the barrier began, the army declared the land between the barrier in the east and the Green Line in the west a 'closed military area'. The declaration states explicitly that no one can enter the closed area other than Israeli citizens and anyone to whom Israel's Basic Law of Return applies (that is, anyone of Jewish extraction from anywhere in the world). 'No one, in other words, means those Palestinians whose land has been - or is about to be - taken from them. The inhabitants of the villages in the 'closed area' have to apply for a 'permanent resident permit' from the army. As its name suggests, this is something like a US Green Card, except that in this case the person applying for the permit wants only to be allowed to stay where he has lived all his life." (...)

[Vol. 27, No. 5, dated 3 March, 2005 | pages 34-35]

- / London Review of Books

An Iron Wall of Colonization

Saree Makdisi — 2005-01-27T04:41:00Z

The recent election of Mahmoud Abbas as the new President of the Palestinian Authority has renewed speculation that 2005 will bring genuine peace between Palestinians and Israelis. Insofar as it depends on Israel's own intentions, however, such hope is entirely misplaced.

Israel has made it clear that the first thing it expects of the new Palestinian leader is for him to bring the Palestinian population under control: a mission that, in order to demonstrate his good behavior, he has already zealously taken up by deploying his security forces in order to protect Israel from attack by Palestinians (rather than the other way around). If he is successful in that mission, Abbas will likely be invited to agree to a political settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle whose terms will be essentially dictated by Israel. Such an arrangement would allow Palestinians a severely limited form of self-rule in those (disconnected) parts of the territories occupied in 1967 that Israel no longer intends to keep for itself. The rest of the West Bank would be dominated by Israeli colonies, bypass roads, and military outposts. Even in the unlikely event that the colonies there would actually be dismantled, Gaza would become-even more than it is now-essentially a gigantic open-air prison, as would large areas in the West Bank, which would be encircled and completely cut off by the various layers of Israel's separation barrier, much as the city of Qalqilya (population 60,000) already is today. The process of Judaizing Jerusalem would continue, and the city itself would be encircled by an iron wall of Jewish colonization extending toward the Dead Sea. (...)

- / CounterPunch