[Peace] News notes for Jun 02, '02 [part 1 0f 2]

[C. G. Estabrook]

	NOTES ON THE WEEK'S "WAR ON TERRORISM" -- 
	FOR THE AWARE MEETING 02.06.02

White House Press Briefing with Ari Fleischer, Tuesday, May 21, 2002: 
	[Reporter R. Mokhiber] Ari, does Israel have nuclear weapons? 
	[Ari Fleischer] That's a question you'll have to ask to Israel. 
	[Reporter] Do you know, does the administration know, whether they
have...
	[Fleischer] I don't personally know. 

WARS AND RUMORS OF WAR. Summary of the week: Bush tells West Point
graduates that US needs to make pre-emptive strikes while the US, UK, & UN
pull people out of India (US dependednts were removed from Pakistan on
March 22) -- but not to worry: SOD D. Rumsfeld is going there to clear
things up, CIA Director George Tenet goes to the Mideast to rebuild
Palestinian security forces, and the well-named Asst. Sec'y of State, Otto
Riech, goes to Colombia to tell the government (with its new hard-line
president) to end peace talks.  Don't you feel better now?  Comments in
caps throughout and these are mine. --CGE]

SUNDAY, MAY 26, 2002

WHAT THE WOT DEFENDS. The 30 largest U.S. family and individual fortunes
in 1999 were roughly ten times as big as the 30 largest had been in 1982,
an increase greater than any comparable peacetime period during the 19th
century. In 1999, the single largest U.S. fortune, the $86 billion hoard
of Microsoft's Bill Gates, was 1.4 million times greater than the assets
of the median U.S. household; that exceeds the ratio attained by John D.
Rockefeller, whose early 1900s wealth was 1.25 million times larger than
the median household of that time.  Wealth during the Gilded Age, a phrase
taken from the title of an 1873 political satire by Mark Twain, had
multiplied on a scale never before seen in the United States and not
repeated until the past two decades. Late 19th century industrial momentum
produced new fortunes tied to railroads, steel, petroleum and investment
banking that by 1900 were fully 10 to 20 times what the largest holdings
had been at the start of the Civil War in 1861. We all know the names of
the people who piled up these fortunes: Vanderbilt, Astor, Carnegie,
Morgan, Rockefeller and company. Perhaps a century from now, people will
similarly know the names Gates, Buffett, Dell and Soros. [Kevin Phillips]

MAYBE THEY WEREN'T BEING LADIES AND LADDIES (OR MAYBE THEY WERE). An
anti-war protest on the Golden Gate Bridge turned ugly Saturday when
police stopped northbound traffic to arrest demonstrators, causing a
backup several miles long. Authorities arrested 30 of the approximately
150 participants in the march, organized by the All People's Coalition to
Stop U.S. Terror and Occupation. The coalition, which represents a variety
of ... causes -- including support for Palestinians and opposition to U.S.
policy in Afghanistan and the Mideast -- had a permit to march from Crissy
Field across the eastern walkway of the bridge and back between noon and 2
p.m. But before the marchers finished crossing the bridge, the California
Highway Patrol ordered them to turn around and leave the bridge or face
immediate arrest. When some of the demonstrators refused, the CHP began
making arrests and closed some or all northbound lanes for the next half
hour ... The march was allowed on the condition that activists would not
carry signs, banners or noisemakers such as bullhorns or drums, said
Currie. Officers stationed at the entrance to the bridge checked each
protester and removed such items from some of them. At 1:35 p.m., about 20
CHP officers clad in riot gear blocked the eastern walkway and told
demonstrators to turn around. When the 150 marchers did not immediately
obey, the CHP decided to force them to return. Many refused and sat down
while others chanted "Shame! Shame! Shame!" as officers moved in, carrying
batons and using pepper spray. Police arrested some protesters, shoving
others back ... CHP spokesman Sgt. Wayne Ziese said all but one of those
arrested were booked on misdemeanor charges, including obstructing a
walkway and resisting arrest. One girl, who told police she was 11 years
old, was booked on a felony charge of assaulting an officer, and taken to
juvenile hall, he said. Ziese said the arrests were necessary to ensure
that the protesters would be off the bridge by the 2 p.m. deadline ...
During the clash and the arrests that followed, traffic slowed
dramatically. Northbound traffic was stopped several times as the CHP
parked police vans on northbound lanes. For about 20 minutes only one
northbound lane was open, and for several minutes traffic in both
directions was stopped to allow a police bus filled with arrestees to turn
around on the bridge ... The arrests left many joggers and tourists
confused. Some found themselves trapped behind police lines. "I'm just
appalled by the number of police for this little protest," said jogger
Niki Chernin. "I don't think these demonstrators presented any threat to
anyone. The police are the ones who shut everything down. I would rather
see all of these officers looking for terrorists in airports." Until the
confrontation with the CHP, traffic on the bridge appeared to be running
smoothly, even though demonstrators chanted, waved and yelled slogans at
northbound drivers. "It looks like a normal busy weekend," said Sgt. Meg
Planka, a few minutes before the confrontation. "It's busy but it's
moving." Many motorists waved and honked to show support for the
demonstrators. Others were angered by the delays. One woman riding in a
Lexus SUV rolled down her window, screaming "Why did you do this? You
ruined my day. What was the point?" When demonstrators tried to talk to
her, she rolled up her window, folded her arms and shook her head from
side to side. Some media workers covering the event were also shoved by
police. Cameraman J.C. Lockhart of KTVU was knocked down when a CHP
officer shoved him as he tried to step around a cluster of demonstrators
during the confrontation. [SF CHRONICLE]

IT'S HAPPENING ALL OVER. Several thousand people marched through central
Paris on Sunday to protest President Bush's two-day visit to France and
denounce American domestic and foreign policy. Marchers shouted "Bush, you
are the terrorist" as they walked from the landmark Place de la Republique
to the Bastille, where they burned American flags. Some 4,500 people
attended the march, LCI television reported. Hours before, several dozen
death penalty opponents gathered near a replica of the Statue of Liberty
in Paris to denounce Bush's support for capital punishment. The statue is
located near a bridge were death-penalty opponents hung 152 cardboard
figures that dangled from string to denote each person executed in Texas
during Bush's nearly six years there as governor. Michel Taube, head of
France's "Together Against the Death Penalty" Association, said the grim
display was a message to "tell the United States to abolish the death
penalty, as European countries have done." Leftist and extreme left
organizations, ecologists and pro-Palestinian groups were involved in
Sunday's demonstration in Paris, where Bush met with French President
Jacques Chirac at the presidential palace. At a press conference
afterward, Chirac dismissed the protests against Bush as "marginal" and
said they did not represent a widespread feeling of antipathy toward the
United States or its president. "Relations between Europe and the United
States are not only a very old, not only essential to the world
equilibrium, but I would say, in reality, becoming more and more
important," he said. Another march took place in Caen in the Normandy
region, where Bush will travel on Monday to honor the thousands of U.S.
soldiers who died there during World War II. About 1,000 people attended.
French farmer Jose Bove, who shot to fame as an anti-globalization
activist after wrecking a McDonald's restaurant in southern France to show
his opposition to fast food, accused Bush of pursuing a policy that led to
U.S. domination of the world. Several protesters hoisted a large picture
of a pretzel, with a sign that said "Watch out, Bush!" The president
choked on a pretzel earlier this year while watching football, lost
consciousness for a few seconds and fell and hurt his head. Others taking
part in protests include Attac, a Paris-based anti-globalization
organization that helped organize mass protests at the Genoa G-8 meeting
in July 2001; and environmental groups, which have sharply criticized Bush
for rejecting the Kyoto Protocol that sets limits on greenhouse gas
emissions responsible for global warming. [AP]

CLINTON GANG STILL AT LARGE, STILL RIPPING OFF THE GULLIBLE. A rambling
and expensive speech by the former US president Bill Clinton in southern
China has gone down spectacularly badly, according to the Chinese press.
Many in the audience in Shenzhen, which comprised various dignitaries,
found it so hard to follow that they took off the headsets providing
simultaneous translation. Mr Clinton was supposed to speak on Thursday
about the "World Trade Organisation and the Chinese real estate economy,"
because a local property company was paying him $250,000 (£170,000) for
the speech. Instead he uttered platitudes about the need for "personal
understanding" between US and Chinese leaders and reminisced about his
first visit to China in 1998, when he held a successful summit with the
Chinese president, Jiang Zemin. Members of the audience, who had waited
for hours because his plane was delayed, then asked him about
international affairs and politics. "Although he had nothing worth saying,
he kept going on," the Yangcheng Evening News commented yesterday. Asked
to predict the outcome of the Middle East crisis, Mr Clinton smiled
ingenuously and confessed: "I don't know, I really don't know." The entire
audience, which included the mayor of Guangzhou and 300 invited foreign
and Chinese guests, burst out laughing. Mr Clinton's chutzpah in
collecting his fee without doing any homework has been widely noted. The
Chinese Communist party's official People's Daily website reported it
under the headline "Clinton reaps $250,000 in 30-minute speech in
Shenzhen." There was no apparent note of censure in the Chinese press
comment yesterday; instead, the response seemed to be a hint of admiration
that he could get away with. It was noted that Mr Clinton had earned only
$100,000 for a speech to the Fortune Forum in Hong Kong last year. He
arrived in China from Japan, where he received an honorary doctorate at
Nihon University and lectured on globalisation. Observers in Tokyo suggest
that the Japanese press would have been far too polite to say that his
speech there was less than riveting.

WOT, SOUTHERN FRONT. Right-wing candidate Alvaro Uribe has emerged as the
clear winner of Colombia's presidential election ... He has pledged to
take tough action against left-wing guerillas, with Colombia in the
bloodiest phase yet of its 38-year civil conflict ... The US Ambassador to
Colombia, Anne Patterson, went to Mr Uribe's campaign headquarters at a
Bogota hotel to congratulate him once the result became clear. "Colombia
and the US have many big issues to deal with - drug trafficking, human
rights and the fight against terrorism," she said. "We're ready to work
with the next government" ... Pedro Carmona, the Venezuelan businessman
who briefly replaced President Hugo Chavez during a failed coup last
month, has been granted political asylum by the Colombian Government. Mr
Carmona fled to the Colombian ambassador's residence in Caracas last week
after a court ordered him to be transferred to prison. [BBC]

ON THE ROAD. The clash of cultures as the playing fields of Eton play
hosts to a group of travellers provides the Guardian with a superb
photograph of caravans under the shadow of the spires of the exclusive
public school. The pupils have played the travellers at football several
times, allegedly, and the paper quotes William Price, one of the
travellers, as saying: "They [the Etonians] are crap at football to be
honest: we're fitter and stronger."

COL. LATERAL IN CHARGE. An airborne assault on the Afgan village of Bandi
Temur by United States-led troops three nights ago has raised
anti-American fury among villagers, who say soldiers shot several people,
killed the headman of the village and caused a 3-year-old girl to flee and
fall to her death down a well. About 50 men were arrested and taken away
in helicopters, they said ... The raid has caused Afghans here to compare
the tactics of the American-led coalition to brutal raids by the Soviet
Army in the 1980's. [NYT]

TUESDAY, MAY 28, 2002

BACK TO WHERE THEY ONCE BELONGED. Virtually the entire senior leadership
of Al Qaeda and the Taliban have been driven out of eastern Afghanistan
and are now operating with as many as 1,000 non-Afghan fighters in the
anarchic tribal areas of western Pakistan, the commander of American-led
forces in Afghanistan said on Monday. [NYT]

THE AMERICAN WAY. Convicted killer Napoleon Beazley, who was a juvenile
when he committed murder, was executed after the Texas Board of Pardons
and Paroles ignored pleas for clemency from around the world ... In his
final statement, Beazley called the murder "senseless" and said he was
"sorry" about the death of 63-year-old Texas businessman John Luttig.
Beazley had no criminal record before he was convicted in the 1994
shooting death of Luttig, who was the father of a judge ... Beazley's
execution was initially scheduled for last August, but was delayed by an
appeals court in Texas amid doubts about the quality of defense received
by Beazley while his appeal was being considered. In his statement,
Beazley criticized the state's use of capital punishment, saying,
"tonight, we tell our children that in some instances, in some cases,
killing is right." Beazley was the son of an alderman in Grapeland, Texas
and once president of his high school class. Rejecting calls from around
the world to spare his life, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted
earlier in the day to go ahead with the execution, clearing the way in a
10-7 vote. Because Beazley was 17 at the time, his case has drawn
international attention, and appeals to spare his life have poured in from
around the world. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, there
are currently 82 inmates on death row in the United States who were minors
at the time they committed their crimes. [AFP]

WEDNESDAY, MAY 29, 2002

OH NO, HE'S LOOSE AGAIN. For a moment it looked as if Jacques Chirac had
swallowed something unpleasant. The French president gazed
uncomprehendingly at George W. Bush, his lips pursing and then opening in
what looked like a Gallic gasp for air. It was halfway into a press
conference in the Elysée Palace on Sunday afternoon and Mr Bush had just
stumbled his way through another answer, forgetting part of the question
and joking at his own lack of focus. "That's what happens when you get
past 55," he cracked. Not only is Mr Chirac about to turn 70 but his
advanced age was, for a while, a sensitive issue in the presidential
election campaign just finished. It was as though Mr Chirac had gone to
Washington a few weeks after Mr Bush's inauguration and made flippant
remarks about the unreliability of recounts and the role of patrimony in
American presidential politics. Mr Bush's insult was unintentional, of
course, but it was not the only jaw-dropping moment in Sunday's
performance by the travelling American president. Earlier Mr Bush had said
he was looking forward to trying some French food, because "[Jacques] is
always telling me the food here is fantastic", apparently indicating that
he had not heard about the quality of French cuisine in his previous 54
years on the planet. [FT]

THE PRESIDENT OF THIS PLACE IS A CLINTONOID HACK. What's in a name? The
answer may be the last lesson Zayed Yasin learns as he wraps up four years
of higher education at Harvard University with a graduation speech about
"jihad" -- an Arabic term that manages to inspire and offend because of
its relationship to the Sept. 11 attacks. The Muslim-American student said
on Wednesday he has received insults and a death threat since the school
picked him to deliver a short address at next week's ceremony entitled "Of
Faith and Citizenship: My American Jihad." Yasin described the speech as
far from controversial but acknowledged the word "jihad" had taken on a
powerful aura after Islamic militants hijacked airplanes and crashed them
into U.S. landmarks, killing about 3,000 people. Some Islamic hard-liners
have justified the attacks, saying they were part of a "jihad" -- a word
they say means holy war -- against the United States. But 22-year-old
Yasin, a former president of the Harvard Islamic Society, said his speech
will address what he calls the true essence of the word: personal
struggle. "Some people have a misunderstanding of jihad, and that is wrong
but understandable given what has happened. I'm trying to reclaim the word
for its true meaning which is inner struggle, both for an individual to do
right within oneself and externally for social justice," he told Reuters.
Yasin, who was born in Chicago and grew up in the Boston suburb of
Scituate, said the response to his planned speech had been mostly positive
but that a smaller group of people were less open-minded about the use of
the word jihad. He said he received an e-mail message on Saturday saying
his life would be in danger if he spoke as planned at Harvard's
commencement exercises on June 6. "I expected some debate about the
speech; I didn't expect it to be as vitriolic and personal as it's been,"
he said Harvard President Lawrence Summers condemned the death threat
against Yasin over the speech, which the school's special graduation
committee chose as one of three to delivered by students on June 6.
"Especially in a university setting, it is important for people to keep
open minds, listen carefully to one another and react to the totality of
what each speaker has to say," Summers said in a statement. According to
the Harvard Crimson newspaper, however, some students at the oldest U.S.
university are so concerned by the speech that they want to read it first.
"When you say 'jihad' now you think of planes flying into a building," the
paper quoted student Hilary Levey as saying. "I don't know the context of
the speech, but I think the use of the word 'jihad' in its context now has
a lot of other meanings besides the religious meaning," she added. Other
students have criticized the university for picking a relatively touchy
topic as one of the graduation speeches, with student David Adelman
saying: "Using such a contentious issue is unnecessary at this time."
Yasin, a biomedical engineering student, said that other than a few school
officials and close acquaintances, no one had seen the speech -- and it
would probably stay that way. "It beats the point of delivering the speech
if everybody has already seen it. Some of this really smacks of censorship
-- that goes against everything I believe both as an American and
especially in the academic environment of Harvard," he said. One of those
who has taken a peek at the address is Yasin's father, Junaid, who called
it "plain vanilla." "It's trying to connect Islamic ideals with American
ideals, trying to put his perspective on his personal struggle," Junaid
Yasin told Reuters. "His choice of a title was controversial for some
people because unfortunately that word has been taken over by people who
have done some very bad things," he added. [REUTERS]

THEY HATE OUR FREEDOM.  Consider the realities that more than 21 million
people died in Third World countries after World War II. The Third World
debt is way over $1,000 billion today. Since World War II, governments
spent close to $10 trillion dollars on defense, an amount enough to feed
the entire world. Analyzing the lopsided policies of the global powers,
devised to keep the poor countries in perpetual cycle of poverty, Najma
Sadeque of Shirkat Gah, women's resource center, details the causes in
three publications titled "Why We Are Poverty Stricken," "How They Run
Pakistan," and "Debt by Entrapment: How Two UN Created Banks Recolonized
the South." In the chapter titled, "The Making of the Third World," the
author after probing the reader's mind with a question as to who eats the
world's grain, reveals that some 40 per cent of the world's food grain are
fed to Northern livestock. "In fact rich countries feed more grain to
their livestock than the people and animals of the poor countries combined
get to eat." Examining reasons for poverty entrapment of the poor
countries, Ms Sadeque says: "Over the past half century, thousands of
billions of dollars of foreign aid and investment have been poured into
over a hundred countries supposedly for development. It has only resulted
in greater impoverishment among poor people." She then discusses how the
perpetual cycle of debt strangles the economies of the poor countries.
Highlighting the consequences and effects of debt entrapment, she said
after over 50 years of loan taking the South was more debt-ridden and
poorer than ever before. "The visible affluence in our cities only
reflects elite monopoly and power." Many countries were incapable of
repaying their loans and neither were the masses uplifted nor had they
become self-reliant, the author said. In a comparative analysis of the
might of military industrial complex with the developmental priorities,
she said while the official aid given directly by one country to another
can sometimes be generous, developed countries on an average devote less
than one per cent of their budgets to development aid. "It is minuscule
compared to what is spent on arms and luxuries as the former Soviet Union
and the USA together spent over $500 billion annually or $1.54 billion
daily on their militaries and arms. Breaking the myths propagated by the
governments about the humane pro-poor policies of the World Bank and the
IMF, the author said the reality was far from truth. "Created by the
United Nations, the WB as the name suggests is there to help the world,
especially the poorest nations but it is far from true. The WB and IMF
operate like any commercial bank but with vast additional powers to
dictate governments. The Third World debt is way over $1000 billion
today." Terming the multinational and transnational corporations as the
global feudals, the author points out that four fifths of the world's top
200 multi-national corporations are based in just five countries with 40
per cent of these in the USA alone. "Less than a decade ago, their
combined sales were over $3,000 billion, an amount equivalent to one third
of the world's Gross Domestic Product. Since then their profits have
soared 350 per cent." Exploring the militarization of world society and
its effects, the author said there had been over 200 wars since 1945 with
almost all of them occurring in the third world as proxy wars for the
North. In 95 per cent conflicts, there have been outside interventions
fought with weapons supplied mainly by the great powers as in Korea,
Vietnam and Afghanistan. The total 21 million died in East and South Asia,
Africa, Middle East and Latin America, more than twice as many civilians
died as military personnel, the author pointed out. [DAWN (Karachi,
Pakistan)]

AND THE RICH GET RICHER.  The welfare measure signed into law by President
Bill Clinton in 1996 expires this year, so a new law is needed to extend
or modify it. The House of Representatives, acting mainly along party
lines, has passed a bill that is pretty much what President Bush asked
for; it will soon be taken up by the Senate. How have Americans been doing
under the 1996 law? Federal welfare money is given to states as a block
grant, so each state is different. Nonetheless, the broad story of
families who left welfare has two major variants. One story is of the
women who found jobs - the great majority of welfare payments go to single
mothers - and the other is about those who are worse off. The latter are a
remarkably large group; on any given day, something like 40 percent of
former welfare recipients, or well over a million women, have no job, an
indication of the 1996 law's failure as policy. The women who found work
are the basis for the claim that the 1996 law is a huge success, but even
there, one has to ask whether their families have escaped from poverty and
what will happen to them if the current recession lasts. [Peter Edelman
MYT]

OH NO, HE'S LOOSE AGAIN (II). During a conversation between the two
presidents, George W. Bush, 55, (USA) and Fernando Henrique Cardoso, 71,
(Brazil), Bush bewildered his colleague with the question "Do you have
blacks, too?" ... Later, the Brazilian president Cardoso said: regarding
Latin America, Bush was still in his "learning phase". [DER SPIEGEL] [Cf.
Bush's speech to the Japanese Diet on February 18: "My trip to Asia begins
here in Japan for an important reason. It begins here because for a
century and a half now, America and Japan have formed one of the great and
enduring alliances of modern times."]

BUSINESS OF AMERICA IS BUSINESS.  In the last two years, 433 public
companies -- including Enron, Global Crossing, and Kmart -- have declared
bankruptcy. Two million Americans have lost their jobs. Four trillion
dollars in market value has been lost on Wall Street. And each day brings
a fresh, stomach-turning revelation of the rampant corruption infecting
corporate America. Despite these ominous flashing red lights, it now
appears almost certain that no real reform legislation will come out of
Congress before the November elections. [A. HUFFINGTON]

WHO DO YOU TRUST? Public trust in government has declined in recent months
... Trust in government has been eroding since the 1960s. In the aftermath
of September 11, however, this long-term trend was sharply reversed, with
57 percent of Americans saying that they trusted the federal government to
do what is right just about always or most of the time. By May, this
number had dropped 17 percentage points, to 40 percent. [BROOKINGS]

US CONSTITUTION, ART. 1, SECT. 9: "THE PRIVILEGE OF THE WRIT OF HABEAS
CORPUS SHALL NOT BE SUSPENDED..." A federal judge rules that the
government's blanket policy of holding secret deportation hearings for
people detained in post-9/11 sweeps is unconstitutional and instead needs
to be done on a case-by-case basis. The Justice Deptartment is expected to
appeal.

FRIDAY, MAY 31, 2002

SO BE CAREFUL OF WHAT BUSHIES WILL DO NOW. Only 41 percent of Americans
say the United States is winning the WOT, down from a high of 66 percent
in January. [USA Today/CNN/Gallup]

OF COURSE IT'S NOT WHAT'S ILLEGAL, IT'S WHAT'S LEGAL. An eight-page memo
written by Enron lawyers in late October 2000 describing the company's
potential criminal liabilities. What makes this revelation front-page
material is that it means Enron was fully advised of the illegality of its
actions at least one month earlier than previously disclosed. [LAT]

CLINTON WAS JUST THROWING MISSILES AROUND; NO HARM MEANT. The Iraqis have
apparently convinced themselves that in 1993 the U.S. assassinated the
head of the nation's state institute for the arts because she was
responsible for an unflattering portrait of George Bush Sr. cut in Italian
marble on the floor of a Baghdad hotel lobby. In fact, artist Leila
al-Attar didn't even have anything to do with the marble caricature. And
her death was hardly targeted. She was killed in a cruise missile attack
that just missed her next-door neighbor, Iraq's foreign-intelligence
headquarters. [WSJ]

WHAT THEY CALL FACTS ON THE GROUND. In the past few months, Israeli
settlement agencies and settler organizations have set up the nuclei of
three dozen new settlements, according to two Israeli groups that monitor
construction and oppose the program. A Western diplomat estimated the
number at 40 ... The continued colonization builds on a 30-year-old
national project that has progressed without letup since Israel captured
the West Bank from Jordan and the Gaza Strip from Egypt in the 1967 Middle
East war. Land confiscations and construction have continued no matter who
ruled the country ... [Since the 1993 Oslo accords] the population of Jews
in the West Bank has grown by more than 70,000 as the settlements have
expanded, according to a recent report by B'Tselem, an Israeli human
rights group ... Avigail, the name of a collection of four mobile homes on
a hilltop about 10 miles southeast of Hebron, is typical of the new
thrust. Jewish settlers established Avigail on land claimed by a
Palestinian family. Three weeks ago, the Israeli Supreme Court ordered the
army to evacuate the settlers, but nothing has been done ... "If we don't
take this land now, it will be lost to the Arabs," said Ido Beckerman, an
employee in the Israeli government water department who moved to Avigail
from another West Bank settlement ... About 200,000 Israelis live among 2
million Palestinians in the West Bank, in addition to 175,000 who live on
West Bank territory annexed to the Jerusalem municipality after 1967. In
Gaza, a sandy coastal area, 1 million Palestinians are squeezed into about
60 percent of the land, while 3,000 [Jews] have settled on the rest in
heavily guarded communities ... Sharon has vowed never to withdraw from
any of the West Bank or Gaza Strip settlements ... "We're on the threshold
of something big. It is not clear what the final extent of settlements
will look like, but annexation of much of the West Bank seems certain,"
said Yehezkel Lein, a researcher at B'Tselem ... The [4th] Geneva
Convention forbids a country to transfer "parts of its own civilian
population into the territory it occupies" ... President Bush has followed
a pattern established under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush
and Bill Clinton, whose administrations referred to the settlements as an
obstacle to peace but not illegal. A freeze on settlement construction
formed part of a series of measures outlined by former senator George J.
Mitchell more than a year ago to ease tensions ... B'Tselem, in its
report, said the percentage of land that settlements occupy belies their
role in undermining the potential for a viable Palestinian state. In some
cases, settlement frontiers and connecting roads divide the West Bank into
enclaves, B'Tselem pointed out. For instance, Avigail, a half-dozen nearby
new outposts and 10 other older settlements complete a ring around the
Palestinian town of Yatta and its nearby villages. In other cases, oddly
shaped city limits separate large chunks of the West Bank from one
another. For instance, Maale Adumim, a community of 30,000 people just
east of Jerusalem, extends from just outside Israel's capital almost to
the Palestinian city of Jericho, 12 miles east. The finger of land
effectively separates the major Palestinian cities of Bethlehem in the
south and Ramallah in the north. [WASH POST]

[continued in part 2]