Andra Jackson, The Age, 25 August 2008
Two peace ships organised by a Melbourne man, Michael Shaik, have broken through Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip.
The ships, the SS Free Gaza and the SS Liberty, set out from Cyprus on Friday with dozens of human rights activists from around the world, carrying children's hearing aids to the Palestinian territory.
Two years of planning went into running the blockade after Mr Shaik came up with the idea of challenging Israeli restrictions on Palestinian movement and access to basic services.
Israel, with US backing and Egyptian help, has controlled entry and exit from Gaza since its withdrawal in 2005, but virtually sealed off its 1.5 million people last summer after the militant Islamists Hamas put down a Fatah coup attempt.
Those on the Greek-flagged ships included Eliza Ernshire, 32, of Newcastle, NSW, Israeli human rights activist Jeff Halper and journalist Lauren Booth, the sister-in-law of former British prime minister and current Middle East envoy Tony Blair.
"We will surely try to bring the boats back again," activist Huwaida Arraf said. "The goal is to open a route between Cyprus and Gaza. People here are just ecstatic to see that someone cares."
At one stage on the 30-hour trip the navigation and communications systems on both ships failed. Some activists accused Israel of jamming the systems, which Israel denied.
But despite the Israeli authorities warning it would treat them as pirates, the ships were allowed to enter Gaza's harbour.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Aviv Shiron said: "They wanted provocation at sea, but they won't get it. We know who the passengers are and what they are bringing with them and so we have no problem letting them through."
A 2000-strong crowd turned out to greet the ships as they sailed into Gaza Port on Saturday night.
Speaking to London's Times , Ms Booth challenged Mr Blair to "show some guts" and visit Gaza to witness the suffering of its inhabitants.
Mr Shaik, 39, a former Defence Department employee and now a full-time advocate for the Melbourne-based lobby group Australians for Palestine, yesterday hailed the ships' arrival as "a great victory for human rights and international law".
"Israel's siege of the Gaza Strip is one of the great crimes of the 21st century, which the governments of the West and the Arab League are abetting by their silence," he said.
Thousands of activists from around the world have so far raised $70,000 towards the purchase of the ships, which would be retained to take goods to and from Gaza, Mr Shaik said.
With LOS ANGELES TIMES
Showing posts with label michael shaik. Show all posts
Showing posts with label michael shaik. Show all posts
Monday, 25 August 2008
Sunday, 27 January 2008
Palestinians suffer as the world fails Gaza
Michael Shaik - The Age - January 28, 2008
Talking is not enough to halt the colonisation of the West Bank.
ZIONIST colonisation, wrote the Zionist thinker Ze'ev Jabotinsky in 1923, can develop only "under the protection of a force independent of the local population — an iron wall which the native population cannot break through".
Before its "disengagement" from the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army decided to implement Jabotinsky's idea literally by erecting a six-metre-high concrete and steel wall across the Gaza's border with Egypt.
To prevent Palestinians from tunnelling under the wall, about 1800 houses in the Palestinian refugee camps alongside the wall were demolished. When American peace activist Rachel Corrie tried to save one such house, she was crushed under the blade of an Israeli bulldozer.
For the people of Rafah, the wall has been an ever-present reminder of Israeli power and the futility of resistance — a 21st century Berlin Wall amid the rubble of their ruined homes.
For Israel, the wall is the means by which it maintained control over Gaza Strip without having to garrison troops inside it. Since the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in June, Israel has used this control to place Gaza under siege. Imports and exports have been suspended.
The supply of food, medicine and fuel for cooking, transport and electricity generation has been alternately reduced to a trickle or cut off altogether.
According to the UN, 80% of Gaza's population now lives in a state of extreme poverty — 72 Gazans have died because they were unable to leave Gaza for medical treatment.
While cautiously criticising the more draconian aspects of the siege, the West has lent its consent to its underlying premise: that the people of the Gaza Strip would rid themselves of Hamas when they realised how much worse off they were than their compatriots in other parts the occupied territories.
Over the past weeks this premise has collapsed. The Palestinian militants' success in puncturing Israel's blockade of Gaza has underscored the value of armed resistance as a way to improve Palestinian welfare, and contrasts sharply with the Annapolis peace summit's failure to halt Israel's deepening colonisation of the West Bank.
This month the UN reported that, despite its promises, Israel had increased the number of checkpoints and roadblocks throughout the West Bank to 563. Last week Israel announced that it would build 2461 new housing units for Jewish settlers on confiscated Palestinian lands in East Jerusalem.
The collapse of its iron wall in Gaza presents Israel with an embarrassing dilemma. Invading Rafah again to rebuild the wall would belie its claim that it no longer occupies Gaza, and probably prove ineffective unless it leaves behind a permanent garrison. Now it is insisting that the Egyptians close the border, but the Egyptian Government's willingness to abet the collective punishment of Gaza's people is doubtful, to say the least.
Accepting Hamas' offer of a ceasefire to end Palestinian missile attacks on Sderot would seem its most promising alternative, but this is unlikely for a number of reasons.
First, having spent the past two years insisting that Hamas is a terrorist organisation with which it cannot negotiate, Israel's Government would find it difficult to explain the sudden change of policy. Second, the illusion that the intelligent application of punitive measures is the only lasting solution to Arab resistance is so prevalent among both Israel's leadership and public that it is unlikely to be dislodged by the mundane reality of failure.
Finally, diplomatic pressure to moderate its actions in the occupied territories is almost non-existent.
After hesitantly voicing their "concern" over Israel's post-Annapolis decision to expand Jewish settlements throughout East Jerusalem, both the United States and the European Union have lapsed into an embarrassed silence.
All the frontrunners in this year's US presidential campaign — Clinton, Obama, McCain, Giuliani — have expressed their uncritical support for Israel as they compete for Jewish campaign funding.
And Australia? In December 2006, Melbourne mining magnate Rabbi Joe Gutnick declared that members of Australia's Jewish community could not help but support John Howard unless they saw "something amazing from Kevin Rudd".
Over the following months, Rudd ran four pro-Israeli Labor candidates in the federal election, and declared to a private function of Melbourne's Jewish leaders that his support for Israel was "in his DNA".
This month, the Australian Government voted against funding the 2009 Durban Conference to review the UN's progress in combating racism, discrimination and xenophobia. No official reason was given, but the vote follows an Israeli campaign to de-fund the conference, which it expects will criticise what Noble laureates Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu have described as its regime of apartheid in the occupied territories.
"Israel," Henry Kissinger once quipped, "has no foreign policy, only domestic policy." In this respect, as in many others, it is certainly not alone.
Talking is not enough to halt the colonisation of the West Bank.
ZIONIST colonisation, wrote the Zionist thinker Ze'ev Jabotinsky in 1923, can develop only "under the protection of a force independent of the local population — an iron wall which the native population cannot break through".
Before its "disengagement" from the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army decided to implement Jabotinsky's idea literally by erecting a six-metre-high concrete and steel wall across the Gaza's border with Egypt.
To prevent Palestinians from tunnelling under the wall, about 1800 houses in the Palestinian refugee camps alongside the wall were demolished. When American peace activist Rachel Corrie tried to save one such house, she was crushed under the blade of an Israeli bulldozer.
For the people of Rafah, the wall has been an ever-present reminder of Israeli power and the futility of resistance — a 21st century Berlin Wall amid the rubble of their ruined homes.
For Israel, the wall is the means by which it maintained control over Gaza Strip without having to garrison troops inside it. Since the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in June, Israel has used this control to place Gaza under siege. Imports and exports have been suspended.
The supply of food, medicine and fuel for cooking, transport and electricity generation has been alternately reduced to a trickle or cut off altogether.
According to the UN, 80% of Gaza's population now lives in a state of extreme poverty — 72 Gazans have died because they were unable to leave Gaza for medical treatment.
While cautiously criticising the more draconian aspects of the siege, the West has lent its consent to its underlying premise: that the people of the Gaza Strip would rid themselves of Hamas when they realised how much worse off they were than their compatriots in other parts the occupied territories.
Over the past weeks this premise has collapsed. The Palestinian militants' success in puncturing Israel's blockade of Gaza has underscored the value of armed resistance as a way to improve Palestinian welfare, and contrasts sharply with the Annapolis peace summit's failure to halt Israel's deepening colonisation of the West Bank.
This month the UN reported that, despite its promises, Israel had increased the number of checkpoints and roadblocks throughout the West Bank to 563. Last week Israel announced that it would build 2461 new housing units for Jewish settlers on confiscated Palestinian lands in East Jerusalem.
The collapse of its iron wall in Gaza presents Israel with an embarrassing dilemma. Invading Rafah again to rebuild the wall would belie its claim that it no longer occupies Gaza, and probably prove ineffective unless it leaves behind a permanent garrison. Now it is insisting that the Egyptians close the border, but the Egyptian Government's willingness to abet the collective punishment of Gaza's people is doubtful, to say the least.
Accepting Hamas' offer of a ceasefire to end Palestinian missile attacks on Sderot would seem its most promising alternative, but this is unlikely for a number of reasons.
First, having spent the past two years insisting that Hamas is a terrorist organisation with which it cannot negotiate, Israel's Government would find it difficult to explain the sudden change of policy. Second, the illusion that the intelligent application of punitive measures is the only lasting solution to Arab resistance is so prevalent among both Israel's leadership and public that it is unlikely to be dislodged by the mundane reality of failure.
Finally, diplomatic pressure to moderate its actions in the occupied territories is almost non-existent.
After hesitantly voicing their "concern" over Israel's post-Annapolis decision to expand Jewish settlements throughout East Jerusalem, both the United States and the European Union have lapsed into an embarrassed silence.
All the frontrunners in this year's US presidential campaign — Clinton, Obama, McCain, Giuliani — have expressed their uncritical support for Israel as they compete for Jewish campaign funding.
And Australia? In December 2006, Melbourne mining magnate Rabbi Joe Gutnick declared that members of Australia's Jewish community could not help but support John Howard unless they saw "something amazing from Kevin Rudd".
Over the following months, Rudd ran four pro-Israeli Labor candidates in the federal election, and declared to a private function of Melbourne's Jewish leaders that his support for Israel was "in his DNA".
This month, the Australian Government voted against funding the 2009 Durban Conference to review the UN's progress in combating racism, discrimination and xenophobia. No official reason was given, but the vote follows an Israeli campaign to de-fund the conference, which it expects will criticise what Noble laureates Jimmy Carter and Desmond Tutu have described as its regime of apartheid in the occupied territories.
"Israel," Henry Kissinger once quipped, "has no foreign policy, only domestic policy." In this respect, as in many others, it is certainly not alone.
This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/01/27/1201368941248.html
Michael Shaik is the public advocate for Australians for Palestine
Tuesday, 11 December 2007
No peace in Israel-Palestine
Michael Shaik and Antony Loewenstein - The Age Online - 5 December 2007
It is difficult to overstate the lost opportunity that last week's Annapolis conference represents.
The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, had agreed to all of Israel's preconditions for negotiations by dissolving the Palestinian government of national unity, closing down more than 100 Hamas affiliated charities and sending Palestinian security forces into Nablus to liquidate the resistance cells that have held out against the Israeli army for the last seven years.
Having demonstrated his commitment to Israel's security, he needed to secure a reciprocal commitment from Israel that he can present to his people as a vindication of his policies. The peace conference at Annapolis, he was at pains to emphasise, had to produce a clear statement of principles on the core issues of the conflict (Jerusalem, borders, water and refugees) within clearly defined timeframes.
Instead he was forced to settle for an empty statement that heralded "a new era of peace, based on freedom, security, justice, dignity, respect and mutual recognition" and declared that both sides intended to reach an agreement before the end of 2008.
As with every other peace conference of the last 15 years, the statement bears little relation to reality.
In 2005 ambassadors representing 25 European nations with missions in Jerusalem, Ramallah and Tel Aviv submitted a joint report that Israel is deliberately violating both its obligations under the Roadmap for Peace and international law by working to make a viable Palestinian state impossible.
Specifically, the report warned that the completion of Israel's "Separation Barrier" and the new E1 settlement bloc in the centre of the West Bank would "complete the isolation of East Jerusalem - the political, commercial and infrastructural centre of Palestinian life".
More ominously still, the ambassadors noted that the demolition of Palestinian houses in Jerusalem and its discriminatory policies concerning Palestinian residence in the city are "almost certainly" intended "to reduce the Palestinian population of Jerusalem, while exerting efforts to boost the number of Israelis living in the city."
The former Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, once boasted that his strategy for peace negotiations was to drag them out for ten years, by which time Israel's annexation of the West Bank would have become an accomplished fact. Since his retirement, every Israeli-Palestinian "peace process" has taken place against a backdrop of Jewish settlement expansion.
Recently the Israeli NGO, Peace Now, reported that this year Israel has already built 762 settler housing units in the West Bank and had 602 under construction. On Tuesday the Israeli government announced its intention to expand the Har Homa settlement overlooking Bethlehem by 307 new homes.
Rather than confronting Israel over its colonisation of Palestinian land, the Bush administration has chosen to embrace Tony Blair's program of promoting Palestinian economic development, while ignoring Israel's deepening occupation.
The contradictions of such a policy are obvious. Factories throughout the Gaza Strip have been forced to close due to Israel's five month blockade, giving rise to an unemployment rate of 50%. According to the Israeli NGO Physicians for Human Rights, hospitals in Gaza are being forced to operate without essential medicines, medical equipment, electricity and even such basics as toilet paper and cleaning materials.
This month the UN noted the emergence of a new generation of Palestinian refugees who had been separated from their lands by the "Separation Barrier" that Israel is building through the West Bank. Last week, the UN Relief and Works Agency warned that Israel's tightening of movement restrictions throughout the Occupied Territories could lead to a threefold increase in the cost of providing food aid to Palestinians.
In their recently published book on the Israel Lobby, the American professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt hypothesise that pro-Israeli advocates have so thoroughly infiltrated the American body politic that the US government is no longer capable of recognising its national interests in the Middle East. On Friday Israeli diplomats demanded that the US withdraw a resolution to the UN Security Council endorsing the Annapolis summit on the grounds that the UN is insufficiently pro-Israeli to be involved in the peace process. The resolution was promptly withdrawn.
Since the invasion of Iraq, Israel's advocates around the world have relentlessly lobbied for a "pre-emptive" attack on Iran to stifle the country's alleged WMD program. Before such an attack could take place, America would wish to secure as much Arab support as possible by creating the impression of progress on a resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
This, regrettably, has become the primary function of the Israeli-Palestinian "peace process".
Peace is the absence of violence. In the Middle East the term "peace process" has become a euphemism for normalising the violent dispossession of an occupied population.
This year the entire Arab world restated its offer to fully normalise relations with Israel in return for its withdrawal form the Occupied Territories. At a time when the West's standing in the Middle East is already compromised by its refusal to recognise the outcome of last year's Palestinian elections, the United States will gain nothing from fighting a war with Iran to uphold Israel's regional monopoly on nuclear weapons.
Michael Shaik is the public advocate for Australians for Palestine. Antony Loewenstein is journalist and co-founder of Independent Australian Jewish Voices.
It is difficult to overstate the lost opportunity that last week's Annapolis conference represents.
The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, had agreed to all of Israel's preconditions for negotiations by dissolving the Palestinian government of national unity, closing down more than 100 Hamas affiliated charities and sending Palestinian security forces into Nablus to liquidate the resistance cells that have held out against the Israeli army for the last seven years.
Having demonstrated his commitment to Israel's security, he needed to secure a reciprocal commitment from Israel that he can present to his people as a vindication of his policies. The peace conference at Annapolis, he was at pains to emphasise, had to produce a clear statement of principles on the core issues of the conflict (Jerusalem, borders, water and refugees) within clearly defined timeframes.
Instead he was forced to settle for an empty statement that heralded "a new era of peace, based on freedom, security, justice, dignity, respect and mutual recognition" and declared that both sides intended to reach an agreement before the end of 2008.
As with every other peace conference of the last 15 years, the statement bears little relation to reality.
In 2005 ambassadors representing 25 European nations with missions in Jerusalem, Ramallah and Tel Aviv submitted a joint report that Israel is deliberately violating both its obligations under the Roadmap for Peace and international law by working to make a viable Palestinian state impossible.
Specifically, the report warned that the completion of Israel's "Separation Barrier" and the new E1 settlement bloc in the centre of the West Bank would "complete the isolation of East Jerusalem - the political, commercial and infrastructural centre of Palestinian life".
More ominously still, the ambassadors noted that the demolition of Palestinian houses in Jerusalem and its discriminatory policies concerning Palestinian residence in the city are "almost certainly" intended "to reduce the Palestinian population of Jerusalem, while exerting efforts to boost the number of Israelis living in the city."
The former Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir, once boasted that his strategy for peace negotiations was to drag them out for ten years, by which time Israel's annexation of the West Bank would have become an accomplished fact. Since his retirement, every Israeli-Palestinian "peace process" has taken place against a backdrop of Jewish settlement expansion.
Recently the Israeli NGO, Peace Now, reported that this year Israel has already built 762 settler housing units in the West Bank and had 602 under construction. On Tuesday the Israeli government announced its intention to expand the Har Homa settlement overlooking Bethlehem by 307 new homes.
Rather than confronting Israel over its colonisation of Palestinian land, the Bush administration has chosen to embrace Tony Blair's program of promoting Palestinian economic development, while ignoring Israel's deepening occupation.
The contradictions of such a policy are obvious. Factories throughout the Gaza Strip have been forced to close due to Israel's five month blockade, giving rise to an unemployment rate of 50%. According to the Israeli NGO Physicians for Human Rights, hospitals in Gaza are being forced to operate without essential medicines, medical equipment, electricity and even such basics as toilet paper and cleaning materials.
This month the UN noted the emergence of a new generation of Palestinian refugees who had been separated from their lands by the "Separation Barrier" that Israel is building through the West Bank. Last week, the UN Relief and Works Agency warned that Israel's tightening of movement restrictions throughout the Occupied Territories could lead to a threefold increase in the cost of providing food aid to Palestinians.
In their recently published book on the Israel Lobby, the American professors John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt hypothesise that pro-Israeli advocates have so thoroughly infiltrated the American body politic that the US government is no longer capable of recognising its national interests in the Middle East. On Friday Israeli diplomats demanded that the US withdraw a resolution to the UN Security Council endorsing the Annapolis summit on the grounds that the UN is insufficiently pro-Israeli to be involved in the peace process. The resolution was promptly withdrawn.
Since the invasion of Iraq, Israel's advocates around the world have relentlessly lobbied for a "pre-emptive" attack on Iran to stifle the country's alleged WMD program. Before such an attack could take place, America would wish to secure as much Arab support as possible by creating the impression of progress on a resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
This, regrettably, has become the primary function of the Israeli-Palestinian "peace process".
Peace is the absence of violence. In the Middle East the term "peace process" has become a euphemism for normalising the violent dispossession of an occupied population.
This year the entire Arab world restated its offer to fully normalise relations with Israel in return for its withdrawal form the Occupied Territories. At a time when the West's standing in the Middle East is already compromised by its refusal to recognise the outcome of last year's Palestinian elections, the United States will gain nothing from fighting a war with Iran to uphold Israel's regional monopoly on nuclear weapons.
Michael Shaik is the public advocate for Australians for Palestine. Antony Loewenstein is journalist and co-founder of Independent Australian Jewish Voices.
Monday, 13 August 2007
Peace in Iraq is inextricably linked to a Palestinian settlement
Michael Shaik - The Age - August 13, 2007
Should Israel's colonisation of the West Bank continue, the US will find itself defending what former US president Jimmy Carter has described as a regime of apartheid in which Jews and Palestinians living in the same area are subject to different laws and differential access to resources. Should America succumb to Israeli pressure to isolate Iran, it will lose the war in Iraq.
Should Israel's colonisation of the West Bank continue, the US will find itself defending what former US president Jimmy Carter has described as a regime of apartheid in which Jews and Palestinians living in the same area are subject to different laws and differential access to resources. Should America succumb to Israeli pressure to isolate Iran, it will lose the war in Iraq.
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