4 - The Michigan Daily - Monday, September 27, 1993
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420 Maynard
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Edited and managed
by students at the
University of Michigan
JOSH DUBOW
Editor in Chief
ANDREW LEVY
Editorial Page Editor
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Unless otherwise noted, unsigned editorials reflect the majority opinion of the Daily editorial board.
All other cartoons, articles and letters do not necessarily represent the opinion of the Daily.
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Insight
By KATHERINE METRES
"They have healed... my people
slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when
there is no peace."
- Jeremiah 6:14
Now that Israeli Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO) Chair
Yasser Arafat have come to terms, a
lot of Americans feel relieved that
the conflict in the Middle East seems
to be drawing to a close. Hopefully,
Palestinians will use this tiny
opening to organize for their
freedom and for a better life.
Still, it helps no one to deceive
ourselves about the nature of the
Rabin-Arafat agreement. Because
international law has been shelved in
favor of realpolitik, Americans still
need to call upon their leaders to
work for peace with justice - now,
and in the final status negotiations
three to five years hence.
The principles Arafat accepted
surrender the Palestinian position
that "autonomy" is only a liberalized
form of occupation. Lest anyone
forget, U.N. Resolution 242
demands an end to the occupation of
not only the Gaza Strip, but also the
entire West Bank, including East
Jerusalem.
Instead of evacuating the Israeli
military from the Palestinian
territories, the agreement will only
pull the troops back from major
population centers. The army will
wait on the outskirts, ready to rush in
again to enforce "order" any time the
Israeli government says so.
What is the Israeli brand of order
in the territories? It consists of
extrajudicial executions, massive
arrests of political prisoners,
administrative detention without
trial, expulsions, and torture in
custody. Amnesty International and
the Israeli human rights organization
B'Tselem have determined that the
situation has gotten worse rather than
Metres is an LSA senior and a
member of the Palestine Solidarity
Committee.
Regents should have
given better notice
To the Daily:
Once again the Regents have
attempted to suppress debate on this
campus in their recent attempt to
amend Regents' Bylaw 14.06 to add
sexual orientation to the list of
characteristics against which
discrimination will not be permitted.
This change has been debated on
campus and among the regents for
the nine years that I have been on
campus, and stirs strong emotions on
both sides. But the regents have
attempted to pass this change
without the benefit of public debate.
The amendment appeared on a
supplemental agenda to this month's
regents' meeting. The official text of
the amendment was not publically
available until the day of the public
comments session. But in order to
speak at the public comments
session, one must sign ,p by 4 p.m.
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better since the peace process began
and Rabin took office.
The agreement neither addresses
the fate of the 13,000 Palestinian
political prisoners, nor does it grant
the refugees their right of return. The
vast majority of the Palestinian
people were forced into exile when
their villages were destroyed by
Israeli forces in 194849 and 1967.
For the Palestinians, there still is no
Israeli democracy.
The Rabin-Arafat accord allows
another provocation of the
indigenous people to remain. In
violation of the fourth Geneva
Convention's prohibition on moving
part of an occupier's population into
occupied areas, the Israeli
government has allowed and even
encouraged its citizens to move into
the occupied territories.
The heavily-armed settlers
employ terroristic methods of
punishing the nearest Palestinians
when a soldier is attacked. The
current agreement allows the settlers
to stay and to continue receiving
army protection when they provoke
the Palestinians too far.
Furthermore, the agreement
allows the continued confiscation of
scarce cultivable land and water
resources. The result is that the
people who were 95 percent of the
Holy Land's population a century
ago today control only 40 percent of
the land and water in the occupied
territories. The territories themselves
comprise only 20 percent of the pre-
1948 Palestinian homeland.
And with no let-up in the
restrictions on the movement of
Palestinians between the territories
and Israel, the economic
strangulation of workers promises to
continue.
All of this is supported by $11.3
billion of U.S. taxpayer money
annually, when you count outright
grants, loans Congress always
forgives, and interest on those loans.
Unless the public demands change,
the aid will continue unabated.
The United States will allocate
little to Palestinian recovery. And no
amendment by Tuesday morning: a
full 48 hours before the official text
was released. Had it not been for
some extraordinary maneuvering and
a little luck, the regents would not
have heard any opposition at all.
Why are the regents attempting to
suppress debate on this issue? I call
on the regents to explain their
conduct in this matter, and for the
Michigan Student Assembly and the
Daily to press the regents until
satisfactory answers are received.
JIM HUGGINS
Rackham student
Athletic Dept. should
open golf course
To the Daily:
Upon reading your recent article
about the status of the golf course, it
struck me that there exists at this
University two classes of students:
athletes and the rest. It is quite
one is even talking about
compensating the 300,000 people in
Lebanon whose villages and refugee@
camps Rabin destroyed this summer
-just over a month before his
media transformation into a
harbinger of peace.
Apologists will say that Rabin
went as far in making peace as the
Israeli public would allow him to.
That, unfortunately, is true.
Why? Zionist ideologues have
revised Palestinian demographic
history to hide the truth from the
Jewish people - a people who,
through their own experiences of
persecution, had learned to value
justice and oppose racism.
Zionism has always played on
Jews' fears of annihilation if they
remained in Europe. At the height of
the Holocaust, Zionist leaders
concentrated their efforts not on
rescue, but on creating a "Jewish
national museum" in Palestine. Since
then, they have continued to
subordinate human life - Jewish
and Arab - to their agenda of
militant nationalism.
In spite of the propaganda, a
rising number (40 percent) of Israeli
Jews are willing to contemplate the
creation of a Palestinian state
alongside Israel. This position, while
more generous than either the Israeli
or American governments', has
always enjoyed broad support
around the world.
The Israeli public is tired of
having its resources and moral
credibility spent on patrolling a
people longing for freedom. Most
Americans still don't realize what's
going on.
For their part, the Palestinians
simply want to exercise fully their
right to national self-determination
in all of the occupied territory,
including East Jerusalem. Only when
Israel is finally persuaded to accept
Palestinian independence and let the
refugees come home will there be
real peace in the Middle East.
Until that day, the Zionist dream
continues to be built on a Palestinian
nightmare.
If Chaddock had the benevolence
to open up the course for the
remaining few weeks of the golf
season, it might help the Athletic
Department's tarnished image: one
that give perks, graft, and everything
to athletes while disregarding
courtesy to the rest of the student
body.
JEREMY FOWLER
LSA sophomore
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Carter takes on 'demagogue' Perot
Ross Perot, in his inimitable way,
teas dominated the airwaves in a mind-
rumbing crusade against the North
American Free Trade Agreement. Tune
into CNN, C-SPAN, CNBC or any of
the three major networks and before
too long there he'll be:
"You see, what you're gonna get is
this giant sucking sound of American
jobs going down to Mexico," says the
ranting one. "They don't pay them
workers anything down there, and all
our jobs are just going to scoot across
the border." Then Perot will take out
pictures of Mexican cardboard houses
hahind A marirn fwtnriP c nnth nftha
Perot foolishly tried to
moralize with Carter, a
man who has devoted
his post-presidential life
to improving the lot of
those around the world.
unabated.It would be unwise for Presi-
dent Clinton to get in a hissing match
with the Texas bobcat, and Vice Presi-
dent Al Gore has the charisma of That
Wal Tn Tenn Meadow Tnne nf the
Americanpublic," saidformer presi-
dent Jimmy Carter at the White
House last Tuesday.
That said, Perot takes to NBC's
"The Today Show," saying "Here's
a guy who spends his spare time
building houses forpoorpeople, and
I'd like to invite him down to see the
shacks these Mexican workers live
in. .
Perot foolishly tried to moralize
with Carter, a man who has devoted
his post-presidential life to improv-
ing the lot of those around the world,
especially those in countries in the
Western Hemisnhere The notion nf