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WaPSR Delegation Diary 1: Crossing Bantustans
Dr. Bill Dienst writing from occupied Palestine, Live from Palestine, 21 October 2005
Background
I am traveling to the Holy Land as part of a 19-member delegation being sent by Washington State Physician's for Social Responsibility (WaPSR). Physician's for Social Responsibility is a national organization concerned with fostering peace, especially in the prevention of nuclear war. It is affiliated internationally with the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW)
Our Washington State chapter has also taken on missions of "Citizen Diplomacy." Our goal for this trip will be to meet with various prominent Israelis and Palestinians, and write reports on, "The Effects of the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza on both the Occupiers and the Occupied."
Our group of 19 members are about half physicians. I'm a rurally based Family/ER physician, and I am accompanied by a Cardiologist, a Urologist, a Child Psychiatrist, a Pediatric Neuro-developmental Specialist, a General Pediatrician, an MD/PhD Medical Student, who is also the current President of WaPSR, and 2 Radiologists from Switzerland.
The remainder of our delegation includes a Hospice Nurse, a Rural Mental Health Counselor, a University based Nurse Practitioner, a Genetics Counselor, a Linguist who works for Microsoft, a Canadian Medical Information Technology Specialist, an Artist, a Filmmaker, a Baptist Minister, and a prominent Jewish-American Peace Activist who lived in Israel for 5 years during the 1980's. Our group collectively comes from Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Jewish backgrounds.
FROM THE SOUTHERN PALESTINIAN BANTUSTAN, ACROSS JERUSALEM TO THE NORTHERN PALESTINIAN BANTUSTAN
March 6, 2005, in Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Ramallah
The delegation landed at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv at 2 am this morning, and made it up the hill to Jerusalem, then South though our first Israeli military checkpoint, arriving at 4 am local time at the Casa Nova Hotel in Manger Square in Bethlehem, about 200 feet from the Church of the Nativity. We are allotted 3 hours rest, and then begin our first day in the Holy Land ten time zones ahead of our circadian rhythm, which we left back in Seattle. We're off!
Read More With Photos:
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4129.shtml
I am traveling to the Holy Land as part of a 19-member delegation being sent by Washington State Physician's for Social Responsibility (WaPSR). Physician's for Social Responsibility is a national organization concerned with fostering peace, especially in the prevention of nuclear war. It is affiliated internationally with the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW)
Our Washington State chapter has also taken on missions of "Citizen Diplomacy." Our goal for this trip will be to meet with various prominent Israelis and Palestinians, and write reports on, "The Effects of the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza on both the Occupiers and the Occupied."
Our group of 19 members are about half physicians. I'm a rurally based Family/ER physician, and I am accompanied by a Cardiologist, a Urologist, a Child Psychiatrist, a Pediatric Neuro-developmental Specialist, a General Pediatrician, an MD/PhD Medical Student, who is also the current President of WaPSR, and 2 Radiologists from Switzerland.
The remainder of our delegation includes a Hospice Nurse, a Rural Mental Health Counselor, a University based Nurse Practitioner, a Genetics Counselor, a Linguist who works for Microsoft, a Canadian Medical Information Technology Specialist, an Artist, a Filmmaker, a Baptist Minister, and a prominent Jewish-American Peace Activist who lived in Israel for 5 years during the 1980's. Our group collectively comes from Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Jewish backgrounds.
FROM THE SOUTHERN PALESTINIAN BANTUSTAN, ACROSS JERUSALEM TO THE NORTHERN PALESTINIAN BANTUSTAN
March 6, 2005, in Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Ramallah
The delegation landed at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv at 2 am this morning, and made it up the hill to Jerusalem, then South though our first Israeli military checkpoint, arriving at 4 am local time at the Casa Nova Hotel in Manger Square in Bethlehem, about 200 feet from the Church of the Nativity. We are allotted 3 hours rest, and then begin our first day in the Holy Land ten time zones ahead of our circadian rhythm, which we left back in Seattle. We're off!
Read More With Photos:
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article4129.shtml
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Caption for the photo:
"How do they expect us to send suicide bombers into Israel with a WALL in the way?"
"How do they expect us to send suicide bombers into Israel with a WALL in the way?"
"Mr. Schenker, who believes that the Israelis and Palestinians were only 2 weeks away from a final agreement in January, 2001 at the end of the Clinton and Barak administrations. Then Bush and Ariel Sharon came to power, and warm relations of the two sides deteriorated significantly."
BECKY: History tells a different story. Clinton and Barak were engaged in intense negotiations with Arafat and the PA.
They offered the most generous settlement ever offered to the Palestinian people since 1947. Arafat unilaterally refused to sign the agreement, saying at the time that it was because Barak had not agreed to allow 5 million Palestinian Arab refugees currently located in camps in other Arab countries to "return" (most of them have never lived a day in their lives in Israel or the PA).
He then returned to the West Bank and launched his intifada, which began on Sept 29, 2000, which was BEFORE the US November election.
Clinton was out of office in Jan. 2001. "Warm relations" didn't disintegrate---but rather Arafat chose war over peace.
So the failure of the peace process was all Arafat's, and had nothing to do with Bush's election or Sharon's.
In fact, Sharon was elected by a huge margin precisely BECAUSE the Israeli people were so enraged over Arafat's intransigence.
If this editor of a paper has this warped sense of recent history, the news found in the paper is suspect as well.
BECKY: History tells a different story. Clinton and Barak were engaged in intense negotiations with Arafat and the PA.
They offered the most generous settlement ever offered to the Palestinian people since 1947. Arafat unilaterally refused to sign the agreement, saying at the time that it was because Barak had not agreed to allow 5 million Palestinian Arab refugees currently located in camps in other Arab countries to "return" (most of them have never lived a day in their lives in Israel or the PA).
He then returned to the West Bank and launched his intifada, which began on Sept 29, 2000, which was BEFORE the US November election.
Clinton was out of office in Jan. 2001. "Warm relations" didn't disintegrate---but rather Arafat chose war over peace.
So the failure of the peace process was all Arafat's, and had nothing to do with Bush's election or Sharon's.
In fact, Sharon was elected by a huge margin precisely BECAUSE the Israeli people were so enraged over Arafat's intransigence.
If this editor of a paper has this warped sense of recent history, the news found in the paper is suspect as well.
" There are now more than 400,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank if you include the settlers in East Jerusalem. "
BECKY: And there are 1.2 million Palestinian Arabs who are Israeli citizens and living inside Israel and behind the Green Line. So what?
Is the author saying that NO JEW can live on the West Bank?
Currently the Jewish settlements on the West Bank are on 1.7% of the land. No Jewish settlement displaced any Arab/Palestinian settlement, since they were all built on empty land.
There are 2.4 million Palestinian Arabs living on the West Bank. Is the author saying that all Jews must be ethnically cleansed from the West Bank like they were from Gaza?
And why the term "settlers" to ONLY apply to Jews?
Aren't lots of recently arrived Arabs building settlements too?
Aren't there any Palestinian settlers?
I believe the term is part of a psychological campaign to imply that Jews who live in Israel/the West Bank are recent arrivals from somewhere else while the Palestinian Arabs are the indigenous "REAL" inhabitants, who deserve to have a land perfectly free of Jews, who they are taught to hate.
In reality, Jews lived on the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) continuously for 3,300 years until 1948 when Jordan occupied Judea and Samaria and ethnically cleansed the area of all Jews.
No wonder some Jews moved back after the 1967 Israeli victory.
BECKY: And there are 1.2 million Palestinian Arabs who are Israeli citizens and living inside Israel and behind the Green Line. So what?
Is the author saying that NO JEW can live on the West Bank?
Currently the Jewish settlements on the West Bank are on 1.7% of the land. No Jewish settlement displaced any Arab/Palestinian settlement, since they were all built on empty land.
There are 2.4 million Palestinian Arabs living on the West Bank. Is the author saying that all Jews must be ethnically cleansed from the West Bank like they were from Gaza?
And why the term "settlers" to ONLY apply to Jews?
Aren't lots of recently arrived Arabs building settlements too?
Aren't there any Palestinian settlers?
I believe the term is part of a psychological campaign to imply that Jews who live in Israel/the West Bank are recent arrivals from somewhere else while the Palestinian Arabs are the indigenous "REAL" inhabitants, who deserve to have a land perfectly free of Jews, who they are taught to hate.
In reality, Jews lived on the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) continuously for 3,300 years until 1948 when Jordan occupied Judea and Samaria and ethnically cleansed the area of all Jews.
No wonder some Jews moved back after the 1967 Israeli victory.
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