From Occupied Palestine

An army in power
AMNON KAPELIOUK
Le Monde diplomatique, November 2007

Israel’s army no longer represents the Israeli people (religious exemptions have narrowed its conscript basis), while the people have lost confidence in the army. It has grown used to being an army of occupation and a police force for the settler movement, not to fighting wars – especially unwarranted wars

The Sharon plan: Why Israel wants to leave Gaza
AMNON KAPELIOUK
Le Monde diplomatique, December 2004

Israel

Israel: politics beyond Sharon
Why the Left is Israel's only hope for peace
AMNON KAPELIOUK
Le Monde diplomatique, January 2003

There is huge paradox over the campaigning for Israel's parliamentary elections, scheduled for 28 January. Israel's security, economy and morale is at an all-time low. Negotiations on any sort of settlement have failed; repression of the Palestinians and assaults on their institutions through the West Bank and Gaza Strip continue, countered by the intifada and suicide attacks on Israelis.

First gains of the intifada: Flight or fight for settlers
AMNON KAPELIOUK
Le Monde diplomatique, January 2001

"You thorns in our side, your colonial enterprise is coming to an end and you can all go back to Israel". Palestinian officials say this is the message of the Aqsa intifada to the 200,000 Jewish settlers living in the West Bank and Gaza. They should not be under any illusion that the Palestinians would agree to Israel annexing the settlements that are ruining the territorial continuity of their future state (1).

Camp David dialogues
AMNON KAPELIOUK
Le Monde diplomatique, September 2000

Camp David was the most important meeting between the Israelis and Palestinians since the 1993 Oslo accords. The crucial questions of refugees and Jerusalem, as well as settlements and land, were debated. But the meeting was always doomed to failure

"In this same room, not long before the Camp David invitations were issued, I told Madeleine Albright in the clearest possible terms that such an important meeting was doomed to failure without proper preparation." Speaking in his Ramallah office the day after he got back from the 11-25 July summit, Yasser Arafat was adamant. He thought he had convinced the United States secretary of state of the need to take more time preparing the groundwork. But Albright allowed herself to be persuaded by the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, and advised Clinton to get the parties together quickly.

Israel on Kosovo
AMNON KAPELIOUK
Le Monde diplomatique, May 1999

"The Kosovo tragedy has already taken place [in Palestine] and it could happen again here" (1), writes Gideon Levy, one the best Israeli journalists covering the Palestinian territories. He recalls the expulsion and exodus of up to a quarter of a million Palestinians in 1948, turning them into refugees overnight. "They were just like the Kosovo refugees. There was not much difference between the ethnic cleansing there [in Palestine] in those days and that in Kosovo today and the results are identical: 419 villages were seized and most of them razed to the ground. Hundreds of thousands of people have been living in refugee camps ever since. It was our Kosovo. Only the TV cameras were missing." Levy is one of the only Israelis commentators to dare make the comparison.

The changing pattern of Israeli immigration
AMNON KAPELIOUK
Le Monde diplomatique, November 1997