MERIP Media Resource List, July 21, 2005

AVAILABLE FOR INTERVIEWS on the following topics:
- Gaza disengagement: Sharon and the settlers, situation for Palestinians, impact on Bedouin in the Negev

PERETZ KIDRON
Peretz Kidron is an Israeli writer, journalist and translator. He recently wrote for Middle East Report Online (http://www.merip.org/mero/mero071505.html ): "The wiliest element of Sharon's disengagement plan actually relies on the very opponents who campaign so vigorously to halt it. Television viewers worldwide are to be riveted by heart-rending footage of entire settler families being dragged from their homes. The denouement to this saga will be a tearjerker on a scale to make Hollywood green with envy, and the message will go out loud and clear: if this is the price Israel has to pay to remove 8,000 settlers, who would dare to demand the displacement of the quarter million residing in the West Bank?"  

JOEL BEININ
Joel Beinin teaches Middle East history at Stanford University and is on the editorial committee of Middle East Report . He said today: "On July 18 some 20,000 Israelis demonstrated to oppose the evacuation of 8,000 Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip scheduled to begin in one month. One protester said, 'We have to try to stop this crime of pulling thousands of people out of their homes.' Why don't most Americans consider this statement absurd? Under Israeli occupation thousands of Palestinian families have been uprooted (and rarely compensated) by practices such as home demolition and land confiscation for the purposes of building the security barrier, settlements, settler-only roads and military buffer zones. Gross inequalities in the presentation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict make it very difficult for many Americans to figure out what the conflict is about."

OREN YIFTACHEL
http://www.geog.bgu.ac.il/members/yiftachel/yiftachel.html
Oren Yiftachel teaches political geography, urban planning and public policy at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheva, Israel. He said today: "W hile Israel is showering the Gaza settlers with land, housing and huge compensation packages, it continues to deny many of the Negev Bedouins basic services such as roads, electricity, water and medical clinics. While building new villages and neighborhoods for the settlers, Israel is demolishing Bedouin homes. The disengagement should be seen in context of its long-term impact and contribution to long-standing practices of discrimination against Israel's Arab citizens."

Background :

+ Peretz Kidron, "Orange Rampant," Middle East Report Online , July 15, 2005. http://www.merip.org/mero/mero071505.html

+ Gary Sussman, "Ariel Sharon and the Jordan Option," Middle East Report Online, March 2005. http://www.merip.org/mero/interventions/sussman_interv.html

+ Neve Gordon, "The Militarist and Messianic Ideologies," Middle East Report Online , July 8, 2004 ( on the split between Sharon and his erstwhile supporters in the settler movement).
http://www.merip.org/mero/mero070804.html

+ Crisis Group Report, "Disengagement and Its Discontents: What Will the Israeli Settlers Do?" July 7, 2005. http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=3550&l=1

+ Oren Yiftachel, "The Shrinking Space of Citizenship: Ethnocratic Politics in Israel," Middle East Report 223 , Summer 2002.
http://www.merip.org/mer/mer223/223_yiftachel.html

+ Oren Yiftachel, "Democracy or Ethnocracy: Territory and Settler Politics in Israel/Palestine," Middle East Report 207, Summer 1998.
http://www.merip.org/mer/mer207/yift.htm

-------------

Return to archive index

For more information, contact Michelle Woodward, MERIP Media Coordinator, at (202) 223-3677, or merip.media@merip.org.  Media Resource Lists are an initiative of the MERIP Media Outreach Program.

The Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), 1500 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Suite 119, Washington, DC 20005, Tel: (202) 223 3677, Fax: (202) 223 3604, www.merip.org