From Occupied Palestine

Children of war
GIDEON LEVY
Ha'aretz, 2 September 2007

Prison within a prison
GIDEON LEVY
Ha'aretz Magazine, 31 August 2007

Synthetic grass symbolizes the good earth; red bathroom tiles represent the blood that has been shed; the six scarred concrete pillars stand for the walls and fences. It's naive to the point of being pathetic. But why six pillars? "Six is many," explains the director and curator, Fahed Abu al-Haj, a former prisoner himself, ignoring other possible associations Israelis might have in this part of the exhibit.

The greatest settler
GIDEON LEVY
Ha'aretz, 6 January 2006

Among the many obituary notices published by various groups after the death of Teddy Kollek, one group's notice was conspicuous in its absence: the Yesha Council of Jewish Settlements. It is a bit difficult to comprehend this ingratitude by the settlers toward the person who brought approximately 200,000 Jews to the occupied territories - perhaps more than any other person. The settlement enterprise owes a great historic debt to Kollek. Neither Rabbi Moshe Levinger nor Hanan Porat nor Aharon Domb nor Ze'ev "Zambish" Hever are responsible for settling so many Israelis beyond the Green Line as Kollek, the enlightened Viennese liberal.

The boy who was buried twice
GIDEON LEVY
Ha'aretz, 9 September 2006

Saja'iya, Gaza City -- Abdullah a-Zakh identified his son's body by the belt. The shoes and socks also looked familiar, irrefutable proof that he had lost his son. In the morgue of Shifa Hospital, after hours of searching, he found the bottom part of the boy's body. The next day, when Operation "Gan Na'ul" - "Locked Kindergarten" - ended and the Israel Defense Forces exited the Saja'iya neighborhood of Gaza, leaving behind 22 dead and large-scale destruction, the other body parts were found.

There is no hunger in Gaza
GIDEON LEVY
Ha'aretz, 9 April 2006

For the information of all the anxious: There is no hunger in the territories. No baby has died of malnutrition; no child is walking around with a swollen belly. There is no lack of flour, and from Rafah to Jenin rice is available. Let the tongue-cluckers relax: The talk about a "humanitarian disaster" is exaggerated. The international relief and aid organizations are trying in despair to cry "wolf," to alert the Israelis and the world and enlist them in the cause to save the Palestinian people, knowing that only exaggerated talk might move anyone. They might be right, but their calls are coming too soon, and also much too late.

Theater of the absurd
GIDEON LEVY
Ha'aretz Magazine, 17 December 2005

Irja. The time has come for all of us to become familiar with this word. There is no checkpoint soldier who doesn't know it, there is no Palestinian who hasn't heard it. "Irja!" roars the soldier at the person whom he is preventing from crossing the checkpoint - i.e., go back, get out of here. "Irja" to the man carrying the injured child, who wants to bring him home. "Irja" to the construction engineer who wants to get to work. "Irja" to the mother carrying her baby on the way to visiting her parents. "Irja" to the old man who wants to visit his grandchildren.

Ratings bombshell
GIDEON LEVY
Ha'aretz, 8 September 2005

"The unit" has done it again. Another graduate of the Israeli "Harvard" is making his way to the top. In a country where there will never be a military coup, one has existed for years, with too many generals in politics and too many politicians in the General Staff, where concepts like "success," "hope" and "promise" are nearly always

There is something to talk about
GIDEON LEVY
Ha'aretz, 6 August 2005

He's not what you would think: In a polo shirt, two designer silver rings, a muscular body, a neat black beard, almost a Palestinian metrosexual. Meet Abdel Halim Izzedine, known as "Abu Qassam," one of the leaders of Islamic Jihad in the West Bank, a member of the political arm "without blood on his hands," a representative of his organization in talks with the Palestinian Authority (PA), and a spokesman for the organization.

They broke the public's heart
GIDEON LEVY
Ha'aretz, 3 July 2005

The media is to blame: For months, it portrayed the story of the "great sacrifice" the evacuated settlers must make.

For years, it ignored the injustices they inflicted on their neighbors and thus helped portray the settlers in a false light. The result: broad public sympathy for their bitter fate and shock over their brutal behavior, as if blocking roads or even the lynching of a Palestinian teenager is something new or unusual. But in the territories, the settlers have been violently blocking roads for years, and harsh brutality toward Palestinians is also nothing new. The only novelty is that suddenly they are showing this on television.

Shards of memory
GIDEON LEVY
Ha'aretz Magazine, 3 June 2005

This is the most Arab-free area in Israel. It was the scene of total ethnic cleansing, which left not a vestige apart from the heaps of ruins and the sabra bushes. On the coastal plain, between Jaffa and Gaza, not one Palestinian village remains intact. Now the settlers of the Gush Katif bloc from the Gaza Strip are to be brought here. In a bitterly ironic jest of fate, the settlers who sowed ruin and destruction in the Gaza Strip will now live on the ruins of the homes of the residents who were their invisible neighbors in the refugee camps.