Dr. Mustafa Barghouti Calls Sharon’s Wall “An Instrument for Land Appropriation”

By Elaine Pasquini


Dr. Mustafa Barghouti (staff photo E. Pasquini).

DR. MUSTAFA Barghouti, director of the Health Policy Institute in Ramallah and president of the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees, a grassroots community-based Palestinian health care organization, spoke March 7 at San Francisco’s Arab Cultural and Community Center. Barghouti gave an update on the situation in the occupied territories and explained the objectives of the Palestinian National Initiative, an organization he co-founded in June 2002 with Haidar Abdel-Shafi, Ibrahim Dakak and the late Edward Said.

Using charts in a Power Point presentation, Barghouti showed the diminution of Palestinian territory from 1947 to 2003. According to Barghouti, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon now is planning to annex 58 percent of the West Bank, leaving only 42 percent for a Palestinian state. “There has been a full reoccupation of Palestinian land, in addition to sieges, closures and settlement expansion,” the doctor lamented.By these illegal actions, including the construction of a 400-mile separation wall on Palestinian property, “Sharon is trying to destroy the potential for an independent Palestinian state,” Barghouti argued. “The wall is not about security, but is an instrument for land appropriation.”

Barghouti attended the Feb. 23 hearing at the International Court of Justice in The Hague on the wall’s legality. “This hearing was very important,” he enthused, describing it as “a turning point in the Palestinian struggle.”

Although the Court cannot enforce its ultimate ruling, Barghouti noted, its findings are incontrovertible declarations of international law and “carry huge symbolic meaning” for Palestinians and the international community.

Turning to Israel’s looming demographic problem, Barghouti noted there are 4.8 million Palestinians living within Israel, the West Bank, Gaza and Arab East Jerusalem—a number equal to Israel’s Jewish population.Although the Palestinian birth rate is 4.1 percent, compared to the Israeli birth rate of 1.7 percent, the doctor warned that, because of the 734 Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank, one-fifth of Palestinian children will die trying to reach hospitals and clinics.

Lastly, Barghouti outlined the goals of the Palestinian National Initiative, a new political and social movement. “Our main goal is the re-establishment of our Palestinian identity,” he said. “We must have a unified strategy.”

Emphasizing the need for Palestinians to build a democratic country, he insisted, “It’s time for free, democratic elections. People need hope, vision and leadership.”

Palestinian Olive Oil Available in Bay Area


Hurriya olive oil (staff photo E. Pasquini).

Delicious Palestinian olive oil is now available in the San Francisco Bay Area. Made from olives grown near the West Bank town of Jenin, the extra virgin-grade oil is imported in bulk and bottled locally in El Cerrito. Proceeds from the sales—a 375 ml bottle sells for $10—benefit the International Solidarity Movement, an organization engaged in non-violent resistance to the illegal Israeli occupation of Gaza, the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem. ISM members assist Palestinian farmers during the harvest of their olives and protect them from Jewish settlers who regularly disrupt the harvest. The volunteers also protest the demolition by the Israel Defense Force of Palestinian homes and orchards. American ISM volunteer Rachel Corrie, 23, was killed by an Israeli army bulldozer while trying to protect a home in Gaza on March 16, 2003.On April 11, 2003, as he was escorting children out of the path of an Israeli army tank in the Gaza Strip, British ISM member Tom Hurndall was shot in the head by an Israeli sniper. Hurndall died in London this past Jan. 13.

To purchase olive oil, or for more information, call (510) 236-4250 or e-mail <info@norcalism.org>.

Counting Coalition Casualties

“My taxes paid for this war and I have an obligation to do something about it,” said Patricia Kneisler on March 11, as she stood in Benicia’s City Park, where she has stood every Thursday evening at 5:00 p.m. since the U.S.-led war on Iraq began last year. Holding one sign giving the current coalition force death count and another the Iraqi civilian death count, the 51-year-old self-employed civil engineer told the Washington Report how she became involved in tracking the deaths resulting from the war.

“I had to do something,” Kneisler explained. “I knew that what my government was doing was wrong, and it was doing it with my tax dollars!” A latecomer to anti-war activism, she attended her first demonstration March 20, 2003—the day after the war was launched. “There were 30 to 40 demonstrators on that day,” she recalled, “but the numbers gradually diminished.”

Two or three weeks later, Kneisler noted that people were asking, “How many soldiers have died?” and that there never seemed to be an accurate number. As a designer of piping layouts for jet-fueling facilities, she has a natural interest in numbers, Kneisler explained, and began searching on the Internet “so people could get some solid information of what was going on.”She initially searched the Army Times, CNN, and a Russian Web site, but found so many discrepancies that she started her own investigation. By May, Kneisler had formed her own database and posted it on <http://www.dailykos.com/>, a political commentary Web site.

On the other side of the country, data analyst and software engineer Michael White was searching the Internet from his home in Stone Mountain, Georgia, for his own information on the war deaths when he discovered Kneisler’s information. White e-mailed the Californian, suggested they join forces, and offered to set up and maintain a Web site, which they named the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, at <http://lunaville.org>.The two comb the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), Central Command (CENTCOM) and the British Military Defense Web sites for information—always crosschecking with two sources—and communicate with each other by e-mail.


	Antiwar protesters in front of San Francisco City Hall (staff photo E. Pasquini).

“We started the site to bring attention to the number of troops dying,” White told the Washington Report in a telephone interview. “I’m tired of people dying and the civilians, too.It makes me really mad.”

Noting that 80 percent of the feedback is positive, White said parents and family members of troops continually tell him, “Thank you, thank you, thank you very much!” Like Kneisler, White opposed the war. “I wanted to do something,” he explained, “and this is it.”

Veterans, and even a professor from an American military school, have praised <lunaville.org> for its accuracy and comprehensiveness. Several news organizations, including The New York Review of Books, the National Review, U.S. News and World Report, Newsweek, National Public Radio (NPR), the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), and NBC News rely on the Web site. “They say it’s the only one with this information,” Kneisler explained.

The San Francisco Chronicle used Kneisler and White’s statistics for a special eight-page “Portraits of Sacrifice” section on March 14 commemorating the deaths of 556 service members with photos, ages and dates of death.

The site provides an abundance of information and provides a number of methods to sort data, including by age and cause of death. A chilling statistic is the number of deaths by “non-hostile weapon discharge,” which, Kneisler suggested, is possibly military jargon for suicide. One such tragedy was the death of Private First Class Matthew G. Milczark, 18, in Camp Victory, Kuwait, on March 8. According to military reports, Milczark’s death is “under investigation.”

Because Kneisler and White currently do not track Iraqi civilian deaths, Kneisler relies on research and figures from London-based Hamit Dardagan and his research team at Iraq Body Count, <http://www.iraqbodycount.org/>, to update her placard for each weekly vigil. With the death toll rising daily—more than 8,500 Iraqis have died since the invasion—Kneisler updates her 11-by-17 placards weekly using AutoCAD software.

Although the weekly Solano Peace and Justice-sponsored peace vigil usually draws two to six people, occasionally Kneisler has stood alone for the hour-long vigil. She has vowed to return to her usual spot at City Park week after week until the troops come home and the U.S. occupation of Iraq has ended.

Thousands Rally to End Iraq War

Anti-war protesters took to the streets of San Francisco in record numbers March 20 in the Bay Area’s largest protest since the war on Iraq began one year ago. Demanding an end to the U.S. occupation of Iraq, some 50,000 people marched from Dolores Park to a rally at Civic Center Plaza, according to organizers International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) and United for Peace and Justice. Californians of all economic, ethnic and age groups—united in an anti-Bush sentiment and angry about Washington’s foreign policy—participated in the two-mile procession.

Several marchers from the local Korean community banged drums, while others carried signs reading, “Koreans for Peace.” Reacting to recent cuts in California’s education budget, one student’s placard stated, “Student 4 Books, Not Bombs.” Another student’s sign protested loss of privacy under the PATRIOT Act, demanding “U.S. out of Iraq—U.S. out of my library records.”

While Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich marched in New York, several Bay Area demonstrators sported “Dennis Kucinich for President” T-shirts. Echoing the concerns of protesters across America, one marcher’s sign called for “Healthcare, not Warfare.” Although the marchers shared the same sentiment: “Oust Bush and Cheney,” not all were Greens, Democrats or Independents—as evidenced by one woman’s sign, “Republican Mother Against Bush.”

The array of speakers included Middle East Children’s Alliance executive director Barbara Lubin, California State Assemblyman Mark Leno, United Farm Workers of America co-founder Dolores Huerta, actor Woody Harrelson, activist Tammy Aranki and war resister Steven Funk, among others.

Elaine Pasquini is a free-lance photojournalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area.