From: Sid Shniad Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2008 2:24 PM
Uri Avnery 26.7.08 "If I Forget Thee, Umm Touba…" IN ONE of the most beautiful songs in the Bible, the poet vows: "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, / Let my right hand forget her cunning. / If I do not remember thee, / Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; / If I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy!" (Psalms 137:5) For some reason, the poet did not write: "If I forget thee, O Umm Touba!" nor "If I forget thee, O Sur Baher!" nor "If I forget thee, O Jabal Mukaber!" nor even "If I forget thee, O Ein Karem!" A fact that should be remembered in any discussion about Jerusalem: there is no resemblance between the Jerusalem of the Bible and the "Jerusalem" of the current Israeli map. The object of the yearning of the exiles who wept by the rivers of Babylon was the real Jerusalem - more or less within the boundaries of the Old City, whose center is the Temple Mount. One square kilometer, that's all. The redefined municipality of Jerusalem after the 1967 annexation comprises a vast area, some 126 square kilometers, from Bethlehem in the south to Ramallah in the north. This area has been clothed with the name of "Jerusalem" in order to bestow a religious-national-historic aura to what was nothing but an act of land-grabbing and settlement. The planners of this map, including the late General Rehavam Ze'evi, nicknamed "Gandhi", the most far-right officer in the Israeli army, had a simple purpose: to annex to Jerusalem as many areas as possible that were free of Arabs, in order to set up Jewish settlements there. They were haunted by the demographic phantom that is still terrorizing us today: they aimed to expand the Jewish and to reduce the Arab population - in Jerusalem and throughout the country. In order to achieve this, the planners were compelled to add some nearby Arab villages. Not only the Arab neighborhoods near the Old City, like the Mount of Olives, Silwan and Ras-al-Amud, but also villages located at some distance - such as Umm Touba, Sur Baher and Jabal Mukaber in the east, Beit Hanina and Kafr Aka in the north, Sharafat and Beit Safafa in the south. The demographic phantom that haunted "Gandhi" then is now pursuing us through the streets of Jerusalem, riding a deadly bulldozer. UNTIL THE 1949 war, Jerusalem was indeed a mixed city. Jewish and Arab neighborhoods were interwoven. The demographic map of Jerusalem became engraved in my memory during a personal experience. A year or so before the war, some of us, young men and women of the Bama'avak group in Tel-Aviv, decided to make a trip to Hebron. At the time, only very few Jews went to the southern town, which was known as a nationalist and religious Muslim stronghold. We took the Arab bus from Jerusalem and went to the town, walked around its alleyways, bought the blue glass for which Hebron is famous, visited the Gush Etzion kibbutzim on the way and returned to Jerusalem. But in the meantime something had happened: one of the "dissident" underground organizations had carried out an especially serious attack (I think it was the bombing of the officers' club in Jerusalem) and the British had imposed a general curfew on all Jewish neighborhoods throughout the country. At the entrance of Jerusalem we alighted from the bus and crossed the city on foot from one end to the other, taking care to move only in the Arab neighborhoods. From there we took an Arab bus to Ramle, and another one to Jaffa, and then found our way to our homes in Tel Aviv through backyards and side streets. Not one of us was caught. Thus I became acquainted with the Arab neighborhoods, among them elegant quarters like Talbieh and Bakaa, which became the centers of Jewish Jerusalem after the 1948 war. In that war, the inhabitants fled/were driven to East Jerusalem and settled there - until these neighborhoods, too, were conquered by the Israeli army and annexed to Israel. THE ANNEXATION of East JerusTo demolish their homes. To take away their social insurance benefits, even if they have paid for them. All these "solutions" have one thing in common - they have been tried in the past, here and in other places, and found wanting. Except one, clear solution: to turn East Jerusalem into the capital of the State of Palestine, to enable its inhabitants to set up their own municipality, while keeping the whole city as an urban entity united under one super-municipality in which the Arabs will be equal to the Jews. I am glad that during his visit with us this week, Barack Obama repeated almost word for word this plan, which Gush Shalom published some ten years ago in cooperation with Feisal Husseini, the late leader of the Jerusalem Arab community. The attacks are the result of despair, frustration, hatred and the sense that there is no way out. Only a solution that will remove these feelings can bring security to both parts of Jerusalem. *** ----- Original Message ----- From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2008 7:05 PM: <http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iRqjZV1Meppj40hTs8IBOv4DdsQwD928FS5O2> Nonaligned countries back Iran's nuclear program By GEORGE JAHN – 2 hours ago TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — More than 100 nonaligned nations backed Iran's right to peaceful uses of nuclear power on Wednesday, an endorsement sought by Tehran in its standoff with the U.N. Security Council over its refusal to freeze uranium enrichment. The decision came as supreme Iranian leader Ayatolla Ali Khamenei pledged to continue the country's nuclear program. Senior Iranian officials depicted the support from a high-level conference of the Nonaligned Movement as deflating claims by the U.S. and its allies that most of the international community wanted Iran to stop enrichment. The conference's backing, which echoes the group's previous declarations, acts to "remove this notion that the international community opposes the nuclear activities of Iran," said Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki. Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, Iran's top representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency, said the endorsement from the 115 countries present at the Tehran conference sends a "strong positive signal that the only way is negotiation and dialogue" over the nuclear standoff. "Get the message," he said, in blunt comments indirectly aimed at the U.S. and its Western allies, the nations at the forefront of accusations that Tehran wants to build nuclear arms. "Come to the negotiating table." Support was expressed in a three-page declaration in Farsi, translated by The Associated Press. It said the conference "reaffirmed the basic and inalienable right of all states, to develop research, production and use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes." The West is seeking an agreement for Iran to curb uranium enrichment, a process that can be use to generate nuclear power or build a weapon. The U.S. and its allies say Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons, while Iran maintains its program is aimed at harnessing nuclear energy. The Security Council has slapped three sets of sanctions on the Islamic Republic. And a fourth set looms. Only days remain until a deadline expires for Tehran to show it will stop expanding its enrichment program, at least temporarily, or face the threat of new U.N. sanctions. The offer is meant to create space for the start of in-depth negotiations that the West hopes will end in Iran agreeing to permanently mothball its enrichment program in exchange for a package of economic and political concessions. But there was no sign Wednesday that Tehran was willing to bend. Khamenei said that backing down on enrichment in the face of "arrogant powers" would only benefit those six nations — the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany. That message was enforced later both by Mottaki, the foreign minister and Soltanieh, Iran's chief IAEA representative. "We are not giving up our nuclear activities, including enrichment," Soltanieh said. The Nonaligned Movement is made up of such diverse members as communist Cuba, Jamaica and India, but most members share a critical view of the U.S and the developed world in general. In a keynote speech Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, "The big powers are going down. "They have come to the end of their power, and the world is on the verge of entering a new, promising era." A separate closing document took the International Criminal Court's prosecutor to task for indicting Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir by an international prosecutor on charges of genocide in Darfur. It also harshly criticized Israel on a broad range of issues. Iran assumed the chairmanship of the conference this week. 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