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cincinnatusvirtue · 4 years

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Alexander III “The Great” Part 2: Where one empire falls, so must a new one rise...

Alexander the Great and the Macedonian army crossed the Hellespont into Asia Minor in 334 BC. The composition of his army at this point was primarily Greek but did include some non-Greeks as well. It consisted of a mix of cavalry and infantry. His cavalry included light cavalry mixing Greek and Thracian horsemen. While his elite cavalry was the heavy cavalry known as the Companions of which Alexander always lead into battle personally, leading his royal contingent, it was made of the Macedonian landed nobility which was personally quite loyal to the king. This was combined with Thessalian heavy cavalry from Central Greece as well. His infantry included missle and melee infantry ranging from the phalanx or phalangists to his hoplites and hypaspists and various armed skirmishers both Greek and Thracians such as the peltasts.

The Macedonian army was faced by the Persians who called on forces from all across the empire. Persians, Bactrians, Scythians, Sogdians, Syrians, Indians and even Greeks as mercenaries. They too had infantry, cavalry, archers and even armed chariots. Memnon of Rhodes, a Greek mercenary commander in Persian service advocated for a strategic withdrawal and scorch and earth tactics which would stretch Alexander’s supply lines and deny his forces food and supplies to forage or “live off the land”. However, the Persian satraps of Anatolia saw this move as both undermining to morale and not worthwhile because the scorched earth would be their own fertile lands, hurting long term commerce. Their contention was to fight the Macedonians head on before they ventured too far into the Persian Empire.

The first major battle, was the Battle of Granicus fought in May 334 BC in what is now western Turkey along the Granicus river, as was often the case Alexander would fight many of his classic battles along rivers. For his part this was strategic, the Persian armed chariots could not be effective on muddy river banks where mobility was slowed. The Persians knew the Macedonians would attempt to cross the river and hoped to slow their advance their by bunching up the Macedonian forces. The battle started with a feint attack on the Macedonian left, commanded by a trusted general, Parmenion who commanded the Thracian and Thessalian cavalry. The Persians shifted many of their forces to meet this attack but in doing so weakened part of their line, Alexander personally lead his noble Companion cavalry into battle in a flying wedge formation. In the melee, Alexander personally killed a number of Persian nobles but was nearly killed himself by one until a timely intervention by a Greek general named, Cleitus the Black severed the Persian’s arm clean off with sword still in their hand, saving Alexander’s life. The Macedonian center now had time bought and moved its phalanxes into place across the river, supported by the bulk of the army now pushed back the Persians, the speed of their advance surprised the Persian forces who after some tough fighting retreated. The retreat happened before they could commit their forces, namely the Greek mercenaries to battle. This resulted in the Macedonians killing their fellow Greeks in a general massacre, viewing them as a traitors for having served the Persians. Granicus was a resounding Macedonian victory, their first major one over the Persians.

The battle opened up Anatolia to the Greeks who began conquering the lands. Some Persian satraps in the next several months surrendered their territory without a fight, hoping to spare their damage. Alexander sometimes let Persians stay in their positions of power so long as they supplied his army and swore loyalty to him. Gradually, Alexander worked his way along the coast to neutralize the Persian naval bases that could cut off supply lines back to Greece. He also visited the city of Gordium which contained the fabled Gordian Knot which presented a riddle to many in the ancient world, the complicated and varied tied knot was a puzzle that required challengers to unravel it, the one who solved the puzzle was said to be destined to rule all of Asia. Many had contemplated how to unravel the knot but failed. Alexander’s solution was simple, cut the knot with his sword.

From Anatolia, Alexander hoped to advance into Syria and threaten the Levant. It was at this point that the Persian Shah, Darius III personally lead an army to counter the Macedonian threat. Darius’s army actually ventured behind the Macedonian army hoping to cutoff its supply lines and trap it deep in Persian territory with no hope of reinforcement. Alexander did however rise to meet Darius. They did do along the Southern Anatolian coast along a small river called Issus. The Battle of Issus was fought in a narrow ground between the mountains and the sea, the ground was chosen by Darius to limit the mobility of the Macedonian cavalry which had been so effective at Granicus. Darius’s army was as typical of the Persian forces was multiethnic and once again they relied on Greek mercenaries, arguably their best troops which Darius placed at the center with his royal bodyguard. The Macedonian advance across the river was slowed by the river itself, the Persians fortifying their bank of the river and the Greek mercenaries hard fighting. However, Macedonian hypaspists, tasked with guarding the phalanxes weak and vulnerable flank and rear managed to break through a line in the Persian-Greek forces. This allowed Alexander to see an opportunity to strike unexpectedly at the heart of the Persians. Taking his Companion cavalry, Alexander drove his force on a right flank maneuver and then wheeled toward the Persian center, straight at Darius. The speed and fury of the Macedonian charge at the Persian King of Kings completely unnerved Darius and he fled in his chariot. This collapsed the morale of the Persian center which also fled. On the left flank of the Macedonians, Persian cavalry held back Parmenion’s left flank cavalry. Ever the observer and adapter to the situations on the battlefield, Alexander would wheel his forces to hit the Persians now exposed rear. This surprise attack combined with the holes being punched in their mercenary forces and the flight of their king lead to a rout of Persian forces. The Macedonians pursued and killed off many retreating Persians, gaining yet another decisive victory. In the wake of this, Alexander captured members of Darius’s family including his wife, mother and two daughters. Alexander held them as prisoners though they were by all accounts well treated during their captivity. Darius himself retreated to the Persian capital in Babylon.

Over the next year or two Alexander consolidated his gains in Anatolia and advanced down the Syrian coast, taking the Levantine cities either by surrender and sparing them destruction or in the case of Tyre and Gaza having to besiege them and after many months finally captured both. Alexander then advanced to Egypt where he was proclaimed Pharaoh. He also visited a temple where the Egyptian priests declared him the son of their supreme god, Amon Ra. He introduced the Greek presence into Egypt and the Levant, something that was to last for centuries with the Greeks serving as Pharaohs of Egypt until Roman rule, with a Greek-Egyptian named Cleopatra being their last famed ruler, a descendant of the Ptolemaic dynasty that was established by one of Alexander’ s general, Ptolemy in the wake of Alexander’s death. Something new was happening due to Alexander and the Hellenic presence in Egypt. Greek and Egyptian culture to a degree synthesized and Greek culture was being spread to Persia’s various provinces. He would also found the first of many cities bearing his name, Alexandria, now one of Egypt’s major cities. It would become a famed center of learning and culture throughout the ancient world, blending Greek, Egyptian, Persian and other traditions into one center. This was to become a hallmark of Alexander’s rule and legacy, as he would spread Hellenic culture to other parts of the world and increasingly it would blend with the local culture becoming a hybrid of East meets West. Reflected in art, religion, currency, governance, commerce, day to day life and military tradition.

Meanwhile, back in Greece the mighty Sparta which had remained silent during Alexander’s Asian and African adventures finally rose up to challenge the Macedonians, Alexander nor his father directly fought the legendary Spartans and the question was raised who was mightier Sparta or Macedon. Antipater, one of Alexander’s generals who stayed behind in Greece would answer that burning question. The Macedonian army crushed the Spartans at the Battle of Megalopolis virtually fighting to the last man, killing their king in battle too. This subdued the Spartan rebellion and Greek discontent over taxes and Alexander’s rule in general.

Darius III offered several attempts at negotiations with Alexander as all of Persia’s western provinces and African ones, namely Egypt, were being conquered, some without a fight which was a humbling experience for the Persian Shah. His last offer at peace was to offer half of the Persian Empire to Alexander, all the Western provinces, to become co-rulers of the empire, to taken several thousand pounds of silver and gold as payment and to arrange a marriage between Alexander and one of his daughters. Alexander did seriously consider the offer and all but one of his generals argued against it. Alexander, refused seeking to have all the empire and not just half. The war would continue.

Alexander now marched his forces into Mesopotamia or modern Iraq with the goal of taking the Persian political capital, Babylon. Darius is believed to have anticipated the Macedonians would take a more direct route through the deserts of central and southern Iraq which with extreme heat and lack of supplies would drain their army. Darius however, once again realized he was dealing with no ordinary for. Alexander ever the clever strategist took his army on an unexpected route through Northern Iraq instead, nearing mountains that would shade or cool his forces from the intense heat of the deserts to the south. This caught the Persians off guard and Darius was forced to instead move his own army northward. Some Persians figured the Tigris River which the Macedonians numbering shy of 50,000 men would have to ford was too deep and strong. However, Alexander’s army did cross and was now moving toward Babylon on the east side of the river. Darius decided to find ground of his own choosing to meet and defeat the Macedonians. He found it on a relatively flat plain east of modern Mosul, Iraq at a place called Gaugamela.

By choosing an open expansive battlefield, Darius hoped not to be boxed in the way he had at Issus, this would allow more room for his chariots and cavalry to maneuver. His force was estimated by modern scholars of being upwards of 100,000. It included Indian war elephants and various contingents and mercenaries from all over the Persian Empire as was usual. Alexander however as was often the case, took an unexpected maneuver and initiative which offset the Persians. He moved his Companion cavalry from their right flank far out on what appeared to be an outflanking maneuver which deceived the Persians into thinking this was an maneuver that needed to be countered and indeed they sent a large force of cavalry from their left to meet and clash with the Macedonians. As the Persians drew their forces to mirror and counter Alexander’s deep flank, they weakened their own center as was Alexander’s plan. The deep flank was joined by his phalanx and hypaspists infantry which Alexander had gradually disengaged them from the flanking maneuver to meet the Persians center which fixed them in place. Meanwhile, the Persian chariots armed with javelin throwers advanced only for the Macedonian regiments to part forming alleys for the chariots to pass through without causing damage, before the chariot riders were killed themselves. Parmenion and the Thracian-Thessalian cavalry on the left also fixed the Persian right flank in place. It was now time for Alexander’s decisive move. The deep flank and the fixing in place of the Persian forces effectively weakened the Persian center by creating a gap which like at Issus, Alexander could strike at Darius’s jugular once more by driving his flying wedge Companion heavy cavalry right at the Persian center and split it’s force into pieces. Darius, once again caught off guard by the Macedonian deception and fury fled the battlefield, causing panic and routing in his forces. Parmenion’s left flank however was in jeopardy and just like as Issus, Alexander had to lead a counter charge to save his left from being overwhelmed which was encircled by Persian cavalry on all sides. Darius fled and evaded capture or death as Alexander had hoped, but preservation of his army was more key to the long term goals of Alexander. He attacked the Persians in their rear with some breaking off to loot the Macedonian camp before they were dispatched themselves. The rest of the Persian army fled as the Macedonians shifted their forces to left to relieve Parmenion. It was another victory and ultimately the final blow needed to defeat Darius and the Achaemenid Persian Empire.

Alexander entered the Persian capital of Babylon which he claimed to enter as a liberator, he also went onto the cities of Susa and the ceremonial capital of Persepolis which was in the Persian heartlands of modern Iran, he burned Persepolis as payback for the Persians burning Athens 150 years earlier in the Persian invasion of Greece under Xerxes. Now he was declared by his new Persian nobility Persian Shah himself and Lord of Asia, in addition to his titles as King of Macedon, Hegemon of the Hellenic League and Pharaoh of Egypt. Effectively the Persian Empire ceased to be a real force at least in the western provinces. Darius gave an impassioned speech to carry on the war in the eastern half of the empire which remained unconquered. However, his satraps, especially one by the name of Bessus had enough of defeats and retreat by Darius, they took him prisoner and murdered their Shah. Bessus was then self-proclaimed Shah but Alexander viewed Bessus as little more than an impostor, with himself as the real Shah and he considered the act of murdering Darius, the rightful ancestral King of Persia as cowardly and little more than petty and unjust, a crime punishable by death.

Darius’s body would be recovered by Alexander as he set off in pursuit of Bessus. He gave him a proper burial in the ancestral tombs of his dynasty. Alexander had respect for Darius’s position and an appreciation of the Persian monarchy’s history even if they were enemies on the battlefield. He now set about trying to consolidate a hold on his conquests through a mix of his Macedonian generals and Persians who proclaimed loyalty to him, becoming his new nobility and serving as provincial administrators. He began to administer Persia, though largely as Persia had been run, seeing himself not as a new conqueror but as rightful inheritor to the prior Persian dynasty, this admiration for Persia along with the adoption of certain Persian customs and the maintenance of Persian governors and administrators by Alexander started to cause some resentment among his generals who unlike Alexander simply despised the Persians and felt Greek traditions superior. The first cracks in Alexander’s otherwise impenetrable self-armor were starting to appear. Yet, there was much work to do, such as the capture of Bessus and the conquest of the eastern remnants of the nominal Persian Empire. Alexander’s gaze was fixed to the east to the ends of Persia and beyond, to the edge of the known world...

#Alexander the Great #darius iii #macedonia #persian empire #ancient greece #military history #military tactics #ancient world #granicus #issus #gaugamela

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newstfionline · 4 years

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Headlines

WHO Issues Warning As Daily Caseload Grows (Foreign Policy) As dense crowds of protesters gather around the world, and New Zealand announces a return to life as usual, it’s easy to forget that a pandemic is still raging. On Monday, the WHO recorded the largest daily increase in new coronavirus cases since the pandemic began, 136,000 in total; 75 percent of new cases came from just ten countries, mostly in the Americas and South Asia.

Stress is skyrocketing among the middle-aged (Marketwatch) If you’re middle-aged and you’re thinking, “I don’t remember everyone being this angry and miserable 20 or 30 years ago,” you’re not wrong. A recent study confirms what many people in later middle age already feel: We really are much more stressed than middle-aged people were back in the 1990s. The good news? As we get older our levels of stress will go down again. We’ll be happier in retirement than we are in our 40s and 50s, even with health issues. Older people experience fewer stressors and are able to cope with them better, says David Almeida, a psychologist and professor of human development at Pennsylvania State University. Meanwhile, the simplest answer is to move more. “My advice to people is to move when you are exposed to stress,” he says. “Moving, physical activity, is probably the best stress reducer.”

After Protests, Politicians Reconsider Police Budgets and Discipline (NYT) In an abrupt change of course, the mayor of New York vowed to cut the budget of the nation’s largest police force. In Los Angeles, the mayor called for redirecting millions of dollars from policing after protesters gathered outside his home. And in Minneapolis, City Council members pledged to dismantle their police force and completely reinvent how public safety is handled. As tens of thousands of people have demonstrated against police violence over the past two weeks, calls have emerged in cities across the country for fundamental changes to American policing. The pleas for change have taken a variety of forms—including measures to restrict police use of military-style equipment and efforts to require officers to face strict discipline in cases of misconduct. Parks, universities and schools have distanced themselves from local police departments, severing contracts. In some places, the calls for change have gone still further, aiming to abolish police departments, shift police funds into social services or defund police departments partly or entirely.

U.N. General Assembly won’t meet in person for first time in 75-year history (Washington Post) For the first time in the United Nations’ 75-year history, world leaders won’t convene in New York for the annual U.N. General Assembly meeting this September. U.N. General Assembly President Tijjani Muhammad-Bande explained Monday that an in-person gathering during the coronavirus pandemic would be impossible because world leaders typically travel with large delegations of aides and security personnel, making it hard to keep the numbers of attendees at events low. “A president doesn’t travel alone, leaders don’t travel alone,” he said. The session will instead take place remotely, though U.N. officials have yet to say exactly what that might look like.

Mexico’s Leader Rejects Big Spending to Ease Virus’s Sting (NYT) Across the globe, governments have rushed to pump cash into flailing economies, hoping to stave off the pandemic’s worst financial fallout. They have mustered trillions of dollars for stimulus measures to keep companies afloat and employees on the payroll. The logic: When the pandemic finally passes, economies will not have to start from scratch to bounce back. In Mexico, no such rescue effort has come. The pandemic could lead to an economic reckoning worse than anything Mexico has seen in perhaps a century. More jobs were lost in April than were created in all of 2019. A recent report by a government agency said as many as 10 million people could fall into poverty this year. Yet most economists estimate that Mexico will increase spending only slightly. Hostile toward bailouts, loath to take on public debt and deeply mistrustful of most business leaders, Mexico’s president has opted largely to sit tight.

Cuba almost coronavirus free (Foreign Policy) Cuba—a country that prides itself on its health system—has almost vanquished its coronavirus epidemic, according to official data. It has recently averaged less than ten cases per day and on Monday went nine consecutive days without a reported death from COVID-19. “We could be shortly closing in on the tail end of the pandemic and entering the phase of recovery from COVID,” President Miguel Diaz-Canel said over the weekend.

Spain makes masks mandatory until coronavirus defeated (Reuters) Wearing masks in public will remain mandatory in Spain after the country’s state of emergency ends on June 21 until a cure or vaccine for the coronavirus is found, Health Minister Salvador Illa said on Tuesday.

This round’s on us, says Malta (Reuters) Residents of Malta will be given $112 vouchers by the government to spend in bars, hotels and restaurants in an effort to revitalize the tourist industry. Tourism accounts for a quarter of the Mediterranean island’s GDP but it has been at a standstill since mid-March when flights were stopped during the coronavirus emergency. Flights to a small number of countries will resume on July 1 but they exclude big tourism source markets Britain and Italy.

Russia rejects Iran embargo (Foreign Policy) Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov has called for “universal condemnation” of the U.S. campaign to pass a permanent arms embargo on Iran through the United Nations Security Council. In a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Lavrov called the U.S. attempt to hold Iran to the confines of the Iran deal while the United States had already broken the deal was “ridiculous and irresponsible.”

Moscow’s strict coronavirus lockdown turns lax overnight (Washington Post) In a sudden about-face from one of the world’s strictest coronavirus lockdowns, Moscow dramatically eased restrictions Tuesday, abolishing the city’s digital-pass system for travel and allowing salons and most other nonessential businesses to open. Schedules for when Muscovites were allowed outside based on their address have also been done away with after just one week. Restaurants and cafes will be allowed to serve people on verandas starting June 16 and nearly all restrictions will be lifted by June 23—the day before Russia’s rescheduled Victory Day parade on Moscow’s Red Square. The city’s walk schedules and requirements for wearing face masks outside have increasingly been ignored by residents, and Moscow authorities might have been feeling the pressure from small businesses that have been closed since late March with little government aid to sustain them.

Tracking the origin of the coronavirus outbreak (Daily Telegraph) Coronavirus may have broken out in the Chinese city of Wuhan much earlier than previously thought, according to a new US study looking at satellite imagery and internet searches. The Harvard Medical School research found that the number of cars parked at major Wuhan hospitals at points last autumn was much higher than the preceding year. It also found that searches from the Wuhan region for information on “cough” and “diarrhea”, known Covid-19 symptoms, on the Chinese search engine Baidu spiked around the same time. It has led researchers to suggest that the outbreak began much earlier than December 31, the date the Chinese government notified the World Health Organization of the outbreak.

North Korea cuts off all communication with South Korea (AP) North Korea said it was cutting off all communication channels with South Korea on Tuesday, a move experts say could signal Pyongyang has grown frustrated that Seoul has failed to revive lucrative inter-Korean economic projects and persuade the United States to ease sanctions. The North’s Korean Central News Agency said all cross-border communication lines would be cut off at noon in the “the first step of the determination to completely shut down all contact means with South Korea and get rid of unnecessary things.” North Korea has cut communications in the past—not replying to South Korean phone calls or faxes—and then restored those channels when tensions eased.

The Palestinian Plan to Stop Annexation: Remind Israel What Occupation Means (NYT) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is pressing for annexation in conjunction with the Trump administration’s peace plan, which at least ostensibly contemplates an autonomous Palestinian entity as part of what it calls a “realistic two-state solution.” Mr. Netanyahu has vowed to annex up to 30 percent of the West Bank, and could do so as early as next month. But to the Palestinians, annexation flouts the ban on unilateral land grabs agreed to in the Oslo Accords in the 1990s, and would steal much of the territory they have counted on for a state. For that reason, they say it would kill all hope of a two-state solution to the conflict. In response to the annexation plan, Mr. Abbas renounced the Palestinians’ commitments under the Oslo agreements last month, including on security cooperation with Israel. The strategy aims to remind the Israelis of the burdens they would assume if the Palestinian Authority disbanded, and to demonstrate that they are willing to let the authority collapse if annexation comes to pass. The Palestinian Authority says it will cut the salaries of tens of thousands of its own clerks and police officers. It will slash vital funding to the impoverished Gaza Strip. And it will try any Israeli citizens or Arab residents of Jerusalem arrested on the West Bank in Palestinian courts instead of handing them over to Israel.

#headlines #news

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workingontravel · 5 years

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If the borders refuse me, I refuse them

(You can read a Swedish translation of this text here.) I mentioned this project to a friend. She immediately said: You should talk to Ghayath Almadhoun. Ghayath Almadhoun is a poet whose poetry has touched me. He is also a poet working with several languages, living and writing in many places. Finding a time when we could meet was a challenge, due to his frequent travelling. I’m happy we managed. His account of travelling for work brings together the personal and the political, the funny and the sad, the historical and the present, in extraordinary ways.

Ghayath Almadhoun: I travel for many reasons that I hardly understand. Some of them started already in childhood. I was born in Damascus, with a Palestinian father and a Syrian mother, in the Yarmouk refugee camp for Palestinians. It was just tents when they founded it in 1948, but now it has become buildings, part of the city. The first questions in my life were: What are we? Why do they say that we are not Syrian but Palestinian? Why, then, am I not in Palestine?

It was very difficult for my father to explain to a six-year-old why land in Asia provided a solution for the antisemitism and racism against the Jews in Europe. But later, things became even more complicated. I discovered that I am not Palestinian-Syrian. I am a Palestinian from Syria. The Palestinian-Syrians are the Palestinians who arrived to Syria in 1948, when Israel occupied eighty per cent of Palestine. As the United States, the Soviet Union and Europe all accepted this, the Arabic governments understood that the land that was occupied had become Israel. As a solution, they gave the refugees all the papers they needed. So those who arrived from Palestine to Syria in 1948 have the same civil rights as the Syrian people. But our family came after the occupation of Gaza, in 1967. When Israel occupied the Gaza strip, the West Bank, the Golan Heights from Syria, Sinai from Egypt and some parts of Jordan, the international community said: “This is occupation, and Israel should leave.” The Arabic nations then decided to not give any papers to these Palestinians in order to not provide any solutions for Israel. I found myself growing up without civil rights. I was not allowed to work. I was not allowed to take driving lessons. I was not allowed to leave the country, and if I did leave for any reason, I would not be allowed back. As we were not allowed to own a house, the house is in the name of my mother, who is Syrian. But if she died, the government would take the house and sell it. This, that I couldn’t inherit, was the thing that hurt me the most.

When I understood that I was already born outside, in exile, as they say, I became fascinated by the idea that there are no borders. If the borders refuse me, I refuse them. When I began to study, I also understood that my father was a poet. I began to think about poetry. I felt connected to many Surahs in the Quran, such as The Poet’s Surah, Surah 26. At the end of the Surah, it says:

“And the poets – the deviators follow them; Do you not see that in every valley they roam And that they say what they do not do?” Travelling is the reality of Arab poets, and poetry is very much connected to travelling in the Arabic tradition. Take the most famous Arabic poet El Mutanabbi. In the 800th century, he travelled, but most of all, his poetry travelled. If El Mutanabbi said a poem in Bagdad, the people in Damascus got it in a matter of hours by pigeon. From there, it went everywhere. His poem would arrive in Andalusia within a week. He himself came two months later.

So, I began to write poetry. My friends all went to Beirut, to Jordan or anywhere. They got invitations to go and read there. But I couldn’t travel, because I didn’t have a passport, papers or even an ID. So, the pressure began to build inside. This continued until I turned thirty, in 2008. Then I left the country. I made a sort of fake passport and went to Sweden. After I got a real Swedish passport, it’s: “Catch me if you can!” The travelling is also connected to my writing. For example, I could visit a place, read about it, discuss it and then I write a poem. I did it for example when Assad used chemical weapons on the suburbs of Damascus. Many people got killed in the first attack with the nerve gas sarin. There were 1,400 deaths, out of which 900 were women and children. I saw these bodies shaking. The pupils of the eyes go small. I started to think about chemicals. And I found that the first chemical attack happened in the city of Ypres in Belgium, on 22 April,1915. I went there for the 100th anniversary of that event. I visited 170 cemeteries. They counted 600,000 graves, and I visited all of them in two weeks. At one gate, they have written the names of all the dead soldiers no matter where they came from – France, England, Canada. They play music in honour of one of them every day and speak about what they know about that specific soldier. They had done this for eighty years without stopping for one single day. Even during the Second World War, they played every day. The problem is that they need 600,000 days to finish the names. I listened to such concerts for fourteen days. Then I wrote a poem that moves between the past and the present, Ypres, Syria and Palestine. Another time, I went to Antwerp to do research about blood diamonds. But during that month, thousands of people started to drown in the Mediterranean. So, my poem started with blood diamonds and ended with Syrians drowning in the sea. By the way, this is not political poetry, this is my life.

So, all in all: I travel in order to write. I’m making up for what I missed when I was without papers. I’m a travelling poet like in the Quran. And I’m born in no country, so I don’t believe in borders. But the main reason why I’m travelling like I have been doing now, 345 days a year and not even staying in Sweden for a full week, is another. When I came to Sweden, I accepted Stockholm as my city because Damascus was in the background. Every time I felt tired of being a foreigner, I remembered that Damascus was there, that one day I could go back and feel relief. In 2011, the Syrian revolution began. I really supported it, and it made my hopes of going to Damascus grow. But people I knew got killed, family members, almost all my friends. Cities I knew were destroyed. And the dictatorship won. The country was destroyed. My hopes of ever going back were lower than ever. Damascus disappeared from my background. Everything was shaken. Also, Stockholm didn’t belong to me anymore. What broke me was my brother. I lost him on 2 April 2016, killed by Assad. I was on tour: I was supposed to spend fifteen days in Holland. The second gig was with Anne Vegter, the poet of the nation. We finished our discussion. I went outside and I put the mobile on. Then my other brother called and told me. I disappeared from the universe for two hours. I woke up with people around me. We went to our friend’s house and I asked him to book me a ticket to Stockholm. The coming twenty-four hours were the most difficult in my life. While the plane was over Denmark, I understood there was something wrong. I wanted to tell the pilot to stop and let me off. Why was I going to Stockholm and not Damascus? Stockholm is even further away from Damascus. What is the difference if I cry in Amsterdam or if I cry in Stockholm? So I started travelling this way. As I see it, the best way to survive trauma is to be on the road. When you arrive, the problems will come. I noticed this in someone I know who was in Syria for four years during the bombings. He lost all his friends. People died in his arms. ISIS arrested him before he left the country. His trip here took eight months. All that time, he was doing ok. But when he got here, it took forty days and then the post trauma hit him. That made me even more scared. So, I began to ask myself: What will happen if I begin to travel and never let myself arrive? The panic attacks will wait for me to be settled. But what if I don’t settle? After the death of my brother I wrote a poem. The writing took place in maybe sixty places, twenty countries. If I would sign it with the names of the cities, that would be as long as the poem. What held me in this is that somebody else paid most of my tickets and travels. In this sense, I survived through poetry twice. On one hand, it’s about writing for survival; writing what hurts me on a paper. But then there are the festivals and the residences and the scholarships bringing me from here to there. Many of these festivals were shocked that I only needed one ticket. Germany pays my ticket from France. Belgium pays my ticket from Germany. Everyone pays only to bring me.

It happens that there are holes in the schedule, maybe even seven days empty. I fill these holes in order to not stay. I ask the festival to make my ticket longer and I pay the hotel myself before I go to the next festival. Or, if the ticket can’t be changed, I book a flight to the Arabic book fairs. In Arabic countries, the book fairs are two to three weeks long. And they schedule them in a systematic way, so they cover the whole year. Any time you want to go to a book fair in an Arabic country, you can. There are around 540 million Arabic-speaking people in the world, in 22 countries with 22 totally different cultures. So, when you go there to sign your book, there will be completely different receptions. You’re a star in Kuwait, they hate you in Libya, and you’re a bestseller in Iraq…

I don’t even remember all the places I have been to, I mix them up. The security personnel in the airport know me and say hello to me. Sometimes I see them in the morning. I go home to throw out the summer clothes and throw in the winter clothes because I’m going to the other side of the planet. Then I see them again in the afternoon. People understand after a while that if they are trying to stop me, they will lose me. If the train is fast and heavy, you should go with it, not stand in front of it. But the routine with friends is you go to their house, bring wine and cook and they come to you next time. When you are travelling again and again and don't have dinner with them, they are not your friends anymore, in a way. You lose your roots.

It is so good when you arrive in places like sunny California, cornfields and wine. And meeting people, discussing with them, having good food, having intellectual exchanges about philosophy, life, racism, patriarchy, everything I’m interested in. But physically it’s tiring. I have a theory I call The Pillow Theory. There are problems in life such as patriarchy, occupation, capitalism and the differences in the shape of pillows in the hotels. I’m fighting for the right of every person to have a size that fits them. Because of pillows and tiredness and lost friends, I’ve started to think I need a strategy to travel less. Also, my girlfriend is involved in this. Our idea is to let my mind think that I’m travelling though I’m not, by taking long residencies outside Sweden. So now I have a five-month residency in Amsterdam and after that a whole year at the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin programme, a scholarship. It works, in a way. When I went to Amsterdam, I started longing for Sweden as my country. Because I understood I would be away for long, I became homesick for the first time. And when I feel the thirst for travel I can make it subtler, because technically, I am already travelling. Through this, I started travelling less. Now, I travel only twice a month.

When I travel, I bring my laptop. They asked me in India what I would bring if the house were on fire. I said my laptop, because there is another house inside it. What is a home for a Palestinian born in a refugee camp if not language? It’s something I inherited from my father. He told me about paradise, the land of milk and honey. When I got my Swedish passport, I went to Palestine. There was nothing. No milk and no honey. It’s only in the dream of the Palestinians. The first time I went there, I was held six and a half hours at the airport. With all the happiness and sadness that I had about being there, finally the Israeli let me in. To this day, I never spoke with my father about that, because they threw him out twice, once from Ashkelon to Gaza in 1948, then from Gaza to Egypt in 1967, and he left his mother there. Until 2012 when she died, he didn’t meet her.

Home is connected to the mother tongue. I miss hearing my name. I used to say to God all the time that I miss Syria and Damascus here in Sweden. But when I asked God to connect me with Syria, he must have misunderstood me. Instead of taking me to Syria, he sent the Syrians to me.

#ghayathalmadhoun #workingontravel #trainsandboatsandplanes #english

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omginstantpaperbouquetblr · 7 years

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By Gabriel Schivone. The Electronic Intifada

Israel’s well-documented role in Guatemala’s Dirty War that left more than 200,000 dead has not been met with justice. William Gularte Reuters

Last year was a busy one for Guatemala’s criminal justice system.

January 2016 saw the arrests of 18 former military officers for their alleged part in the country’s dirty war of the 1980s. In February last year, two ex-soldiers were convicted in an unprecedented wartime sexual slavery case from the same era.

Such legal proceedings represent further openings in the judicial system following the 2013 trial and conviction of former head of state General Efraín Ríos Montt for genocide and crimes against humanity. Although the Guatemalan Constitutional Court very quickly annulled the trial (finally restarted in March after fitful stops and starts, but currently stalled again), a global precedent has been set for holding national leaders accountable in the country where their crimes took place.

And in November, a Guatemalan judge allowed a separate case against Ríos Montt to proceed. The case relates to the 1982 massacre in the village of Dos Erres.

Ríos Montt was president from 1982 to 1983, a period marked by intense state violence against the indigenous Mayan peoples. The violence included the destruction of entire villages, resulting in mass displacement.

Mayans were repeatedly targeted during the period of repression that lasted from 1954 – when the US engineered a military coup – to 1996. More than 200,000 people were killed in Guatemala during that period, 83 percent of whom were Mayans.

The crimes committed by the Guatemalan state were carried out with foreign – particularly US – assistance. One key party to these crimes has so far eluded any mention inside the courts: Israel.

Proxy for US

From the 1980s to today, Israel’s extensive military role in Guatemala remains an open secret that is well-documented but receives scant criticism.

Discussing the military coup which installed him as president in 1982, Ríos Montt told an ABC News reporter that his regime takeover went so smoothly “because many of our soldiers were trained by Israelis.” In Israel, the press reported that 300 Israeli advisers were on the ground training Ríos Montt’s soldiers.

One Israeli adviser in Guatemala at the time, Lieutenant Colonel Amatzia Shuali, said: “I don’t care what the Gentiles do with the arms. The main thing is that the Jews profit,” as recounted in Dangerous Liaison by Andrew and Leslie Cockburn.

Some years earlier, when Congressional restrictions under the Carter administration limited US military aid to Guatemala due to human rights violations, Israeli economic and military technology leaders saw a golden opportunity to enter the market.

Yaakov Meridor, then an Israeli minister of economy, indicated in the early 1980s that Israel wished to be a proxy for the US in countries where it had decided not to openly sell weapons. Meridor said: “We will say to the Americans: Don’t compete with us in Taiwan; don’t compete with us in South Africa; don’t compete with us in the Caribbean or in other places where you cannot sell arms directly. Let us do it … Israel will be your intermediary.”

The CBS Evening News with Dan Rather program attempted to explain the source of Israel’s global expertise by noting in 1983 that the advanced weaponry and methods Israel peddled in Guatemala had been successfully “tried and tested on the West Bank and Gaza, designed simply to beat the guerrilla.”

Israel’s selling points for its weapons relied not only on their use in the occupied West Bank and Gaza but also in the wider region. Journalist George Black reported that Guatemalan military circles admired the Israeli army’s performance during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon. Their overseas admiration was so unabashed that rightists in Guatemala “spoke openly of the ‘Palestinianization’ of the nation’s rebellious Mayan Indians,” according to Black.

Military cooperation between Israel and Guatemala has been traced back to the 1960s. By the time of Ríos Montt’s rule, Israel had become Guatemala’s main provider of weapons, military training, surveillance technology and other vital assistance in the state’s war on urban leftists and rural indigenous Mayans.

In turn, many Guatemalans suffered the results of this special relationship and have connected Israel to their national tragedy.

Man of integrity?

One of the most haunting massacres committed during this period was the destruction of the El Petén district village named Dos Erres. Ríos Montt’s Israeli-trained soldiers burned Dos Erres to the ground. First, however, its inhabitants were shot. Those who survived the initial attack on the village had their skulls smashed with sledgehammers. The bodies of the dead were stuffed down the village well.

During a court-ordered exhumation in the village, investigators working for the 1999 UN Truth Commission cited the following in their forensics report: “All the ballistic evidence recovered corresponded to bullet fragments from firearms and pods of Galil rifles, made in Israel.”

Then US President Ronald Reagan – whose administration would later be implicated in the “Iran-Contra” scandal for running guns to Iran through Israel, in part to fund a paramilitary force aiming to topple Nicaragua’s Marxist government – visited Ríos Montt just days before the massacre.

Reagan praised Ríos Montt as “a man of great personal integrity” who “wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans and to promote social justice.” Reagan also assured the Guatemalan president that “the United States is committed to support his efforts to restore democracy and to address the root causes of this violent insurgency.” At one point in their conversation, Reagan is reported to have embraced Ríos Montt and told the Guatemalan president he was getting “a bum rap” on human rights.

In November 2016, however, judge Claudette Dominguez accepted the Guatemalan attorney general’s request to prosecute Ríos Montt as intellectual author of the Dos Erres massacre, pressing him with charges of aggravated homicide, crimes against humanity and genocide.

Among the 18 arrested this year was Benedicto Lucas García, former army chief of staff under his brother Romeo Lucas García’s military presidency. Benedicto, who was seen by some of his soldiers as an innovator of torture techniques for use on children, described “the Israeli soldier [as] a model and an example to us.”

In 1981, Benedicto headed the inauguration ceremony of an Israeli-designed and financed electronics school in Guatemala. Its purpose was to train the Guatemalan military on using so-called counterinsurgency technologies. Benedicto lauded the school’s establishment as a “positive step” in advancing the Guatemalan regime to world-class military efficiency “thanks to [Israel’s] advice and transfer of electronic technology.”

In its inaugural year alone, the school enabled the regime’s secret police, known as the G-2, to raid some 30 safe houses of the Revolutionary Organization of People in Arms (ORPA).

The G-2 coordinated the assassination, “disappearance” and torture of opponents to the Guatemalan government.

While Guatemalan governments frequently changed hands – through both coups and elections – during the 1980s, Israel remained Guatemala’s main source of weapons and military advice.

Belligerence at the border

The Israeli military-security complex casts a long, intercontinental shadow over Guatemalans who are still fleeing the consequences of the dirty war.

In some areas along the US-Mexico border, such as in Texas, the numbers of migrants hailing today from Central America (but only from the countries combusted by US intervention – Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras) – has begun to outpace the number coming from Mexico.

According to information provided to this author by the Pima County Medical Examiner’s office in Arizona, many Guatemalans who have perished while crossing these desert borderlands originated from among the indigenous Mayan areas hit hardest by the 1980s genocide: El Quiché, Huehuetenango, Chimaltenango.

Southern Arizona has also seen a spike in undocumented Guatemalan migration. US firms and institutions have been collaborating with Israeli security companies to up-armor Southern Arizona’s border zone.

The Israeli weapons firm Elbit won a major government contract to provide 52 surveillance towers in Southern Arizona’s desert borderlands, beginning with the pilot program of seven towers currently placed among the hills and valleys surrounding Nogales, a border town split by the wall.

More towers are slated to surround the Tohono O’odham Nation, the second largest Native American reservation in the US. Already the number of federal forces occupying permanent positions on Tohono O’odham lands is the largest in US history.

Alan Bersin, a senior figure in the US Department of Homeland Security, described Guatemala’s border with Chiapas, Mexico, as “now our southern border” in 2012. That “southern border” was heavily militarized during Barack Obama’s eight years as US president.

We can safely expect that militarization to continue during Donald Trump’s presidency. Trump’s anti-migrant rhetoric during the presidential election campaign suggests it is likely to be intensified.

During the dirty war, tens of thousands of Guatemalans fled over this border into Southern Mexico. Today, Israel assists the Mexican authorities in Chiapas with “counterinsurgency” activities largely targeting the indigenous Maya community.

Though media reporting on Guatemala’s connection with Israel has dissipated, Israel’s enterprising efforts in the country have never diminished. Today, Israel’s presence in Guatemala is especially pronounced in the private security industry which proliferated in the years following the so-called Guatemalan peace process of the mid-1990s.

Ohad Steinhart, an Israeli, relocated to Guatemala at this opportune moment, originally working as a weapons instructor. Roughly two years after his 1994 move to Guatemala, he founded his own security firm, Decision Ejecutiva.

Steinhart’s modest 300-employee company is small compared with the colossal Golan Group, Israel’s largest and oldest private security conglomerate in Guatemala.

Founded by ex-Israeli special forces officers, the Golan Group has also trained Department of Homeland Security immigration agents along the US-Mexico border. The Golan Group has employed thousands of agents in Guatemala, some of whom have been involved in repressing environmental and land rights protests against mining operations by Canadian firms. The company was named in a 2014 lawsuit by six Guatemalan farmers and a student who were all shot at close range by security agents during a protest the previous year.

Guatemala’s use of Israeli military trainers and advisers, just as in the 1980s, continues. Israeli advisers have, in recent years, been assisting the current “remilitarization” of Guatemala. Journalist Dawn Paley has reported that Israeli military trainers have shown up once again at an active military base in Coban, which is the site of mass graves from the 1980s. The remains of several hundred people have so far been uncovered there.

The mass graves at Coban serve as the legal basis for the January arrests of 14 former military officers. This past June a Guatemalan judge ruled that the evidence is sufficient for eight of those arrested to stand trial. Future arrests and trials are likely to follow.

Scholars Milton H. Jamail and Margo Gutierrez documented the Israeli arms trade in Central America, notably in Guatemala, in their 1986 book It’s No Secret: Israel’s Military Involvement in Latin America. They worded the title that way because the bulk of the information in the book came from mainstream media sources.

For now, Israel’s well-documented role in Guatemala’s dirty wars passes largely without comment. But Guatemalans know better than most that the long road to accountability begins with acknowledgment.

Yet it is unclear how long it will be before we hear of Israeli officials being called to Guatemala to be tried for the shadowy part they played in the country’s darkest hours.

Gabriel Schivone is writing a book on US policy towards Guatemala.

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palestine · 7 years

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Israeli soldier convicted for revenge killing

Israeli soldier convicted for revenge killing http://bit.ly/2ibZFs5

Charlotte Silver Rights and Accountability 4 January 2017

An Israeli military court has convicted Elor Azarya, the 20-year-old army medic who was caught on video executing an injured Palestinian man lying in the street last year, for manslaughter.

During the trial, Azarya’s lawyers argued that the soldier had fired at Abd al-Fattah Yusri al-Sharif in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron because he felt he was in danger.

But in their ruling on Wednesday, the judges found “beyond all reasonable doubt” that Azarya had acted in revenge.

Within hours, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for Azarya, who is seen as a national hero by many in Israel, to be pardoned.

Al-Sharif was shot dead along with Ramzi Aziz al-Qasrawi, both 21 years old, on 24 March last year. Israel alleges that they stabbed a soldier near the Tel Rumeida settlement in Hebron.

The killing of al-Qasrawi was not caught on video.

The verdict came shortly after Human Rights Watch said that senior Israeli officials have been “encouraging Israeli soldiers and police to kill Palestinians they suspect of attacking Israelis even when they are no longer a threat.”

“Perversion of justice”

Following the verdict, Azarya’s supporters staged protests, blocking traffic, clashing with police and shouting racist abuse at Palestinian workers.

Protestors stormed police barricade http://pic.twitter.com/FQHW8H4vcG

— Eliyahu Kamisher (@Eli_DovBear) January 4, 2017

Some Azaria protesters moved over to nearby building site, harassing Palestinian labourers - chanting "Mohammed is dead" etc http://bit.ly/2jb6CgV

— Natasha Roth (@NatashaRoth01) January 4, 2017

Some of the protesters carried banners in support of US President-elect Donald Trump:

המפגינים הניפו דגל של טראמפ http://pic.twitter.com/yPo1nRMACV

— צחי דבוש (@TsahiDabush) January 4, 2017

Lawmakers from Israel’s far-right and centrist political parties are calling for Azarya to be pardoned, a power that lies with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin.

Backing the calls, Netanyahu said, “This is a difficult and painful day for all of us – and first and foremost for Elor and his family, for [Israeli army] soldiers, for many soldiers and for the parents of our soldiers, and me among them.”

In Hebron, the family of al-Sharif expressed dissatisfaction that Azarya was only charged with manslaughter.

Relatives told Palestinians gathered at a vigil in Hebron on Wednesday that they would bring Israel to the International Criminal Court for what they see as cold-blooded murder.

“The fact that the soldier is convicted of manslaughter isn’t such an important development from our standpoint,” Fathi al-Sharif, an uncle of the slain man, told the Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz. “From the beginning, we stated that he had committed murder and needed to be convicted of murder. The fact that they changed the count of the indictment to manslaughter from our standpoint is a perversion of justice.”

Videotaped killing

Emad Abu Shamsiyya, the Palestinian field researcher with the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem who filmed the killing, has received hundreds of death threats.

He said members of Azarya’s family broke into his home and asked him to change his testimony to the court.

On the day of the shooting, Azarya was called onto the scene after al-Sharif and al-Qasrawi were shot and incapacitated, to give the moderately injured soldier medical assistance.

Video footage released by B’Tselem shows al-Sharif lying on the ground, slightly moving his head, while Israeli soldiers and medics work around him and load the injured soldier onto an ambulance.

The video shows no attempt to provide medical treatment to al-Sharif.

Settlers on the scene are heard shouting, “the terrorist is still alive,” and the “the dog is still alive.”

Azarya then aims his weapon, takes a few steps towards al-Sharif, and shoots him in the head. A stream of blood pours from the man’s head.

After the video was released, some Israeli politicians and military leaders condemned the shooting and the military announced it would charge the shooter with murder. But almost immediately Israeli leaders began to backtrack as they saw the swelling of popular support for Azarya.

Azarya was eventually indicted on the lesser manslaughter charge.

At the trial, Azarya claimed he had shot the incapacitated al-Sharif out of fear for his safety.

But Azarya’s company commander testified that al-Sharif posed no danger.

The judges’ verdict states that the reason Azarya shot al-Sharif “was not rooted in a sense of danger, but rather in the explanation he provided immediately upon completion of the shooting to the effect that ‘the terrorist deserved to die’ because he had stabbed a friend of his prior to that.”

Two months after the shooting, more video emerged suggesting the army tampered with evidence. The footage shows a person kicking a knife closer to the body of the slain man.

Shoot to kill policy

Azarya’s indictment is exceptional: scores of Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces over the last year, many in apparent extrajudicial executions, with impunity for their killers.

Last September, Amnesty International detailed 20 cases of killings of Palestinians by Israeli forces. In 15 of those cases, Amnesty said, “Palestinians were deliberately shot dead, despite posing no imminent threat to life, in what appear to be extrajudicial executions.”

Also in September, Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq found that “Since 1987, no Israeli soldier or commander has been convicted of willfully causing the death of a Palestinian in the [occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip].”

According to Haaretz, since 2000, in only a handful of cases were soldiers prosecuted for manslaughter for the killing of Palestinians. Of those, only one soldier was convicted. He received an eight-year sentence, though this was later reduced.

Human rights defenders are stressing that the killing of al-Sharif highlights a much broader problem.

“It’s not just about potentially rogue soldiers, but also about senior Israeli officials who publicly tell security forces to unlawfully shoot to kill,” Sari Bashi, Israel advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, said.

Human Rights Watch says that since October 2015, when an escalation in confrontations between Palestinians and Israeli occupation forces began, it has documented numerous statements “by senior Israeli politicians, including the police minister and defense minister, calling on police and soldiers to shoot to kill suspected attackers, irrespective of whether lethal force is actually strictly necessary to protect life.”

Indeed, one witness called by Azarya’s defense, a settler security chief, told the court that shooting at the heads of incapacitated alleged Palestinian attackers is a common practice by Israeli occupation forces.

In October, Azarya was named man of the year by Israel’s Channel 10 and by Makor Rishon, a publication owned by US billionaire Sheldon Adelson.

He is expected to be sentenced in coming weeks.

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Palestine via The Electronic Intifada http://bit.ly/2jba0s8 January 4, 2017 at 06:37AM

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keatingeconomics · 7 years

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Israel: A Nation Eluded By Peace

Many countries in the Far East have been ravaged by war for centuries now. Peace seems to elude them. The people learned to live a life that is always on the edge. Attempts of powerful western nations to restore peace in these nations seem futile and to no avail.

Israel is one of these countries that are always in the path of war and destruction. It had always been in conflict with its neighbor, Palestine. But so far, nobody has ever come up with a more lasting and positive solution. People died in the process of restoring peace in these countries and it seems like wishful thinking now.

Israel has issued 35 administrative detention orders against Palestinian prisoners, including one woman, within the last two weeks.

The Palestinian Prisoner’s Club said in a press statement that the orders were served to prisoners from across the occupied West Bank cities, including 11 to Palestinians from Bethlehem, eight to those from Hebron, six in Jenin and five in Ramallah.

It added that the orders were issued against first-time detainees as well as those who have been previously detailed.

(Via: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20170314-israel-issues-35-administrative-detentions-in-two-weeks/)

Many suggestions have been considered (with finger crossed – that is).

Israel has been a sovereign state, with all the trimmings, since 1948, including a government, an army, a seat in the UN and membership in the World Health Organization (WHO) and World Trade Organization (WTO), as well as many other international bodies. By now, 135 of the 193 member states of the UN have recognized “Palestine” as a sovereign state, plus the Holy See, which is not a full member state of the UN.

If all of these facts are taken into account, you would be forgiven for thinking that nothing could possibly stand in the way of the two-state-solution. But there are a few small matters that ought to be addressed before Jerusalem and Ramallah are to take up any diplomatic relationships. These are, namely, the issues of borders, the Jewish settlement in the West Bank, the “return policy,” which is non-negotiable for Palestinians, as well as the recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state,” a condition that Israel is not willing to forego.

And all of this is without mentioning the most important question of all: who will speak for the Palestinians? The local elections in the West Bank and Gaza, set for Oct. 8, 2016, had to be cancelled due to the fact that leaders of Fatah and Hamas could not reach an agreement.

The rules are basically the same: the first to move, loses.

(Via: http://www.worldcrunch.com/opinion-analysis/alternative-path-to-middle-east-peace-israel-should-join-eu)

Many people (Americans and non-Americans) may not like most of President Trump’s statement and policies so far but it appears that he is doing something right in this aspect after all.

To understand what President Trump has indeed achieved and undertaken – which although limited, does represent a strong foundation for a future Middle Eastern peace initiative – requires envisioning an alternate scenario. Envisage a Democratic American president who in his or her first two months of leadership has appointed two premier advisors to focus on the Israeli-Palestinian issue; called on the Israeli government to hold back on settlement construction; intimately engaged Palestinian and Arab leaders; and has avoided any notable scandals on this particular front.

The President helps negotiate peace among these troubled nations and extend a helping hand, so peace can finally be achieved if everything works in their favor.

Observers and commentators on the Israeli-Palestinian issue should do so by cautiously highlighting positive developments, which further incentivize a working, democratic relationship between the community and the White House. To continue on the current path would otherwise signal four complete years of partisanship and opposition that would dissuade progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front, which Israelis, Palestinians, and world interests simply cannot afford.

(Via: http://www.matzavblog.com/2017/03/trumps-israeli-palestinian-peace-efforts-not-getting-enough-credit/)

Life in a war-torn nation is something you would not wish on anybody. We all deserve to live in a society with established law and order, where the citizens are free to roam the streets and go after their pursuits in life. Children should enjoy a normal childhood that is not exposed to violence and various injustices.

It may not be the reality for countries like Palestine and Israel right now (and many other countries in the Middle East e.g. Syria and Iraq) but it is possible once the nations unite and look past each other’s difference. The bottom line is, the world will be a better place if everyone learns to love more and hate less.

Israel: A Nation Eluded By Peace Find more on: Keating Economics Blog

from https://www.keatingeconomics.com/israel-a-nation-eluded-by-peace/

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newstfionline · 7 years

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Trapped between Israel and Hamas, Gaza’s wasted generation is going nowhere

By William Booth and Hazem Balousha, Washington Post, August 6, 2017

They are the Hamas generation, raised under the firm hand of an Islamist militant movement. They are the survivors of three wars with Israel and a siege who find themselves as young adults going absolutely nowhere.

In many circles in Gaza, it is hard to find anyone in their 20s with real employment, with a monthly salary.

They call themselves a wasted generation.

Ten years after Hamas seized control of Gaza, the economy in the seaside strip of 2 million has been strangled by incompetence, war and blockade.

Gaza today lives off its wits and the recycled scraps donated by foreign governments. Seven in 10 people rely on humanitarian aid.

Young people say they are bored out of their minds.

They worry that too many of their friends are gobbling drugs, not drugs to experience ecstasy but pills used to tranquilize animals, smuggled across Sinai. They dose on Tramadol and smoke hashish. They numb.

Hamas has recently stepped up executions of drug traffickers.

Freedoms to express oneself are circumscribed. But the young people speak, a little bit. They say their leaders have failed them--and that the Israelis and Egyptians are crushing them.

Why not revolt? They laugh. It is very hard to vote the current government out--there are no elections.

“To be honest with you, we do nothing,” said Bilal Abusalah, 24, who trained to be a nurse but sometimes sells women’s clothing.

He has cool jeans, a Facebook page, a mobile phone and no money.

He and his friends get by with odd jobs, a few hours here and there. They worked at cafes during the busy evenings of Ramadan in June. They will help an uncle in his shoe shop as the school year approaches in August. They make $10 a day at these kinds of jobs, a few coins for coffee and cigarettes.

“We are the generation that waits,” Abusalah said.

Reporters asked a 25-year-old college graduate, who got his degree in public relations, what he did for a living.

He answered, “I stare into space.”

Raw sewage washes onto the beaches. The water looks blue at the horizon, where Israeli gunboats lurk, enforcing a six-mile blockade. But the surf line is a foamy brown.

The rappers of Gaza see this as a metaphor. They are literally trapped in their own excrement.

Most young people in Gaza have not been out, either through Israel, which is almost impossible, or through the Rafah crossing into Egypt, which has been mostly closed for the past four years.

Electricity service is down to four hours a day. The young activists in the refugee camps who dared in January to protest power cuts? They were hustled off to jail.

In the dusty gray cement-colored world of Gaza, now sputtering along on Chinese solar panels and Egyptian diesel, young people spend their days, day after day, playing with their phones, their worlds reduced to palm-size screens, to YouTube videos and endless chat.

Unemployment for Gaza’s young adults hovers around 60 percent. This is not just a dull World Bank number. This is a stunning number, the highest in the Middle East and among the worst rates in the world.

Think-tank scholars warn that Egypt’s youth unemployment rate of 30 percent is “a ticking time bomb.” In Gaza, the jobless rate for young people is double that.

The Israeli government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says what happens in Gaza is all the fault of Hamas, a terrorist organization. Hamas leaders traditionally blame the Israeli blockade for their problems. Gaza is allowed no seaport, no airport and limited exports, mostly fruits and vegetables, alongside some furniture and textiles. Lately the pressure on the strip has only gotten worse, as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas recently slashed payments for Gaza’s electricity, to squeeze people to reject Hamas.

Gaza’s young people describe their lives as a kind of sick experiment.

The literacy rate in Gaza is 96.8 percent, higher than in the West Bank. The “Palestinian engineer” was once the gold standard in the Middle East. In the past, immigration was the door to life. That door has slammed shut. Few get out of Gaza these days.

Yet the universities of Gaza are still pumping out graduates by the thousands, even though the least likely person to find work in Gaza today is a college graduate, especially a woman.

The most recent surveys reveal that half of the Gaza population would leave the enclave if given the chance.

“I don’t believe it,” said Mohammad Humaed, 24, who studied cinema at a university but works a couple of nights a week at a coffee shop in a refugee camp. “All the young people would leave.”

Economists use the term ”de-development” to describe what is happening.

Young people in Gaza have a joke to say the same thing.

They say their unemployed friends “are driving the mattress,” meaning they spend their daylight hours sprawled in bed.

Two years ago, the United Nations warned that Gaza could become “unlivable” by 2020. U.N. officials recently said they had been overly optimistic: The place could collapse next year.

This is the generation that grew up immersed in the rhetoric of the Hamas version of the Palestinian resistance, a moralistic message of piety and opposition to Israel hammered home in Hamas-controlled mosques and military-style summer camps for children and teens, who were taught first aid and how to throw a grenade.

But in many interviews, in their torn-just-so jeans and fresh white sneakers, Gaza’s young people today say they would rather fight for a job in Tel Aviv than fight Israelis.

“If the borders were open, I’d work in Israel in a minute. I got absolutely no problem with that. Everybody would work in Israel,” said Iyad Abu Heweila, 24, who graduated with a degree in English education two years ago but now spends his days hanging out.

“I have no achievements,” he said.

Heweila asked if he could make a confession.

“I know it’s bad, but sometimes I wonder, if there’s another war with Israel, maybe there would be work for translators?” Heweila asked.

“That is sick, I know. I tell you this to show how desperate we feel,” he said. “I want a job. I want money. I want to start my life.”

This summer the nights are inky dark, now that power service has been reduced to three or four hours a day.

Every evening a group of friends gather on a rooftop. They sit on cheap plastic chairs or pieces of cement block. It is cooler up there. The night sea breeze rattles the fronds of date palms, and you can hear some Hamas official on a radio program playing in a nearby apartment. Nobody on the roof pays any attention.

Asked what he did that day, Ahmed Abu Duhair, 25, said he slept until late afternoon.

He lives for the night. “Just talking, laughing, smoking on the roof to make us a little bit happy before we die,” Duhair said.

“We are closer than brothers,” he explained, as they passed the water pipe around and took deep huffs of apple-spiced tobacco. “We’re not lazy guys. We’ve been working since we were kids.”

They began to tell stories about their first jobs, selling cigarette lighters in traffic, helping vendors at the market. Asked how old they were then, they answered they were 8 or 9 or 10.

They were envious of their friend Tamer al-Bana, 23, the only one among them who was married. Bana has two young children and a third on the way. He had to borrow $7,000 from a relative to wed, a debt that would take him years to pay off.

If the young men on the roof are desperate, so too are college graduates. Mona Abu Shawareb, 24, graduated with a degree in psychology a year ago but hasn’t gotten her diploma yet because she owes the university money.

Shawareb tries hard to keep busy. She takes free English classes at a Turkish charity; she volunteers at an organization that works with street youth; she did an internship with the U.N. refugee agency and learned Microsoft Word and Excel.

But like many unemployed young people here, she lives on the Internet, feeding friends and followers a stream of updates on Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook and Snapchat.

Like most women in Gaza, Shawareb dresses conservatively when she leaves the house. But she confessed that when she looks at the Internet and sees women in the West running in athletic clothes, “I feel envious,” she said. “I want to jog.”

Mohammad al-Rayyas, 25, said his heart aches for Cairo, where he received a degree in accounting. In the two years he’s been back home in Gaza, his life has stalled.

“It is more than boring,” he said, struggling to find the words. “It is very slow. The time. It seems different here.”

He has tried to find work in his field--at businesses, banks, international aid agencies. No luck. “No wasta. You know what wasta is?”

It is an Arabic word that, loosely translated, means connections or clout, and it often underscores a system plagued by corruption or nepotism.

Rayyas is unique among his contemporaries. He’s traveled, he’s gotten a taste, he’s lived abroad.

It is a cliche to call Gaza an open-air prison, but to many people it feels not only as if there is no way out, but also that the walls are closing in.

Gaza is just 24 miles long on the coastline--less than the length of a marathon. At its narrowest it is just four miles, an hour’s walk.

The enclave is surrounded by Israeli perimeter fence, bristling with cameras, watch towers and remote-controlled machine guns. On the Egyptian border, once honeycombed with Hamas smuggling tunnels, there is now a broad buffer zone, scraped clean by bulldozers, as forbidding as a no man’s land.

And the sea? Gaza fishermen are blocked by Israeli gunboats and forbidden to venture beyond six miles. For young people, the sea that once brought relief is now so polluted by untreated human waste that the Health Ministry has warned bathers to stay away.

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