Both Bush and Sharon wanted the moderate Abbas as leader of the
Palestinians. They will now put pressure on him to curb the more
radical elements in the occupied territories, but so long as the
Palestinians are denied their basic rights the conflict will continue
to fester.
It is common among some groups on the left to portray Israel as not
being a “democracy”. Bourgeois politicians on the other hand say that
Israel is the only “true democracy” in the Middle East. None of this
serves to understand the real nature of Israel. The Middle East
Panorama show on Resonance FM radio (London) sent Yossi Schwartz in
Israel a list of questions relating to this issue. Some parts of this
were read out on the show. Here we provide the full interview. See also in Arabic: هل إسرائيل دولة ديمقراطية؟
The media around the world made a big deal out of yesterday’s summit,
saying this time there is a real chance for peace in the Middle East.
But everything which was said and agreed to yesterday was more or less
the same as the agreements of the past, none of which worked. This
summit will end like the others, in failure. It is a film we have seen
before.
As we approach the second anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, the US
and British led occupation of the country is falling apart. Some 1500
US soldiers have been killed in the conflict, and tens of thousands of
Iraqis. Everything that the Bush administration said about the war has
been exposed as a lie. Far from improving the lives of Iraqis, things
are even worse than under the hated regime of Saddam Hussein.
This is the translation of an appeal (1 Aralikta Alanlara!) published by the Turkish Marxist website Marksist Tutum for the forthcoming antiwar demo in Istanbul on December 1. The original Turkish version is also available in pdf format to be downloaded and printed out.