Saturday, April 7, 2018

PAFFREL urges EC to take legal action on LG polls violations

2018-04-07

The People's Action for Free & Fair Elections (PAFFREL) yesterday urged the Election Commission (EC) to take legal action on reported election law violations during the last Local Government (LG) Elections.

PAFFREL Executive Director Rohana Hettiarachchi in a letter sent to the Chairman of the Election Commission Mahinda Deshapriya had stated that although due to immediate intervention of relevant authorities most of shortcomings were prevented it was appropriate to probe and take legal action over the complaints received.

It further said though the LG election ended as a comparatively free and fair election it had received several complaints over candidates who sealed the victory via inappropriate election campaigns.

“PAFFREL forwarded such complaints to the Election Commission. Accordingly we believe that the EC and Police also received complaints on election law violations. Therefore we request the commission to seek swift legal action over the received complaints,” he added. (Thilanka Kanakarathna)

After the No-confidence Motion: Regeneration or Death by Suicide?

April 7, 2018, 9:59 pm

"A Lion used to prowl about a field in which Four Oxen dwelt. Many a time he tried to attack them; but they turned their tails to one another, so that whichever way he approached them he was met by the horns of one of them. At last, however, they fell a-quarrelling among themselves, and each went off to pasture alone. The Lion attacked them one by one and soon made an end of all four.
"Aesop (The four oxen and the lion)

Tisaranee Gunasekara

A stable and safe democracy requires a democratic government and a democratic opposition. Sans either, a democracy is never stable, never safe.

Before the Presidential election of 2015, Sri Lanka had a strong anti-democratic government and a weak democratic opposition. After the electoral upheaval of January 2015, Sri Lanka got a weak democratic government but its oppositional space fell under the thrall of anti-democratic forces, unrelenting and virulent in their pursuit of power.

The potency of that anti-democratic opposition would have waned, had the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration fulfilled its main electoral promises. Mahinda Rajapaksa’s hunger for power is a visceral thing; he wouldn’t have retired irrespective of how many times the electorate rejected him. But with good and effective governance, his capacity to dominate the oppositional space and dictate the terms of Southern political engagement could have been negated. From being a game-changer, the Rajapaksa factor in Lankan politics could have been reduced to a minor – albeit vocal – irritant.

But the Rajapaksas were not defanged and the guilt belongs to both Maithripala Sirisena and Ranil Wickremesinghe. Mr. Wickremesinghe is the guiltier one since he protected the Rajapaksas from prosecution in the hope of dividing the SLFP and benefitting from that division. His tactic backfired. Mahinda Rajapaksa’s SLPP did what the SLMP of Vijaya Kumaratunga and Chandrika Bandaranaike and the DUNF of Lalith Athulathmudali and Gamini Dissanayake tried to do and failed – overtake and replace the parent party. The SLPP did not divide the SLFP; it decimated the SLFP and reduced it to the status of a politico-electoral featherweight.

Sri Lanka still has a two-party system, but the two parties are the SLPP and the UNP. The best the SLFP can hope for, if it contests alone, is to gain the third place, ahead of the TNA and the JVP.

The UNP’s position is only marginally better. It cannot hope to defeat the SLPP on its own, be it at a provincial, presidential or a parliamentary election. It can defeat the SLPP only in alliance with the SLFP.

So the lesson of 2015 is valid still and will be valid in 2020. Only the broadest possible unity of all anti-Rajapaksa forces could defeat the Rajapaksa project in 2015. Once that unity fractured, once the UNP and the SLFP turned on each other, the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe government became existentially threatened. Today the question is not whether the government can prevail in 2020 but whether it can survive until then.

The Owl, Pussycat and the

Pea green Boat

The No Confidence Motion, like the defeat of February 2018, was a self-inflicted wound. It happened because Ranil Wickremesinghe and Maithripala Sirisena forgot that the victories of 2015 turned them into conjoined twins. Neither can survive alone, let alone in opposition to each other. If one fell, the other would fall too.

Mr. Sirisena can never form an unadulterated SLFP government; the numbers simply do not add up. The SLPP will not ally with him. If he hopes to create dissension in the Rajapaksa family by protecting Gotabhaya Rajapaksa, any such effort will be an exercise in futility. Eventually, he will find himself derided in the anti-Rajapaksa camp and friendless in the Rajapaksa camp, facing the wrath of the Rajapaksas alone.

Mr. Wickremesinghe can form an unadulterated UNP government but it will be neither stable nor enduring. It will last for a short while, make too many mistakes by succumbing to partisan short-sightedness and be pummelled by the electorate at provincial and national level elections.

The only government that can survive until 2020 is a Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration. And if the two leaders are willing to put aside their differences and work together to fulfil their 2015 mandate, they have a fair chance of prevailing in 2020. But if they continue with their infantile squabbling, they will be defeated by the electorate and destroyed by the incoming Rajapaksas, together with Sri Lanka’s still fragile democracy.

The victory of 2015 was made possible by activists hoping for a new beginning for the country and ordinary voters hoping for marginal and lasting improvements in their lives. The government has failed to live up to both sets of expectations. Instead of focusing on its mandate it focused on helping kith and kin in a distressing replay of Rajapaksa governance. Mr. Sirisena placed the mega-profits of his rice-miller brother above the basic needs of millions of rice-eating Lankans, not to mention the poor peasantry. Mr. Wickremesinghe elevated his friends to great heights and was let down by most of them. His rank favouritism has caused irreparable damage to his Mr. Clean image.

The defeat at the LG polls should have brought the government to its senses. It didn’t. Instead the president plunged the government and himself into the No Confidence mire. Had President Sirisena thrown his weight behind his prime minister even at the eleventh hour, he could have claimed a slice of the final victory. Instead he dithered, turning his stance on the No Confidence Motion into a farcical guessing game. As a result he lost the respect of his supporters without gaining the support of his enemies. He is being flayed by the JO and derided by the UNP. His supposed warning to the UNP against seeking TNA support has caused serious damage to his image as an anti-racist leader.

The No Confidence motion was supposed to break up the UNP. The UNP did seesaw wildly in the run up to the debate. But when it came to voting, the party stuck together. The SLFP, on the other hand, suffered a yet another fracture, with a majority of its parliamentarians abstaining and a minority voting with the SLPP. Those SLFP ministers who voted for the No Confidence Motion intend to cling to their posts. If the President allows them to do so, he will bring further disrepute to his party and himself, turning both into a comedic spectacle.

Is the president capable of learning from his multiple mistakes? Will he realise that his political legacy and his future depend on making a success of the remaining eighteen months of his presidency, a goal which requires the cooperation of the UNP? Will Mr. Wickremesinghe be mature and magnanimous, and make a sincere effort to mend fences with the President and regenerate their once productive working relationship? Or will he lose his head and give into euphoria and arrogance, mistaking a tactical victory for a strategic one?

Public memory is an ephemeral thing. If Mr. Sirisena and Mr. Wickremesinghe can patch up their relationship and return to the agenda of 2015, by 2020, the wasted years will be largely forgotten. As Opposition Leader R Sampanthan pointed out in his speech at the No Confidence Motion, "At the Local Authorities Elections held in February, 2018, a new political formation, Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna, has done better than the President’s SLFP or the UPFA or the Prime Minister’s UNP or the UNF. It is our view that inadequate performance by the Government in the first half of their term was the cause of that result. If they performed better in the remaining two-and-a-half years, public disenchantment can change. Unfortunately, the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna does not want that to happen. They want to first defeat the Prime Minister and the next target will be the President. They want the Government brought down. We want the Government to implement the mandate given to it by the country in January and August, 2015."

The SLPP won the local government election not because the Rajapaksa vote base increased between 2015 and 2018. There was no growth in the support for the Rajapaksas either in absolute or in relative terms. The SLPP victory was due in the main to the Rajapaksa ability to maintain its vote base and the acrimonious disunity in the anti-Rajapaksa camp.

So death by suicide is not the fate of the government. Regeneration is possible. But regeneration presupposes a willingness on the part of the president and the prime minister to realise the commonality of their interests, recreate a working-relationship and move fast to fulfil their joint-mandate. If they fail to do so, if they embrace vituperation and inimical competition, they will drown themselves and Lankan democracy in the swelling Rajapaksa seas.

The SLPP’s Project Chaos

The outcome of the No Confidence Motion is a defeat for the SLPP and for the Rajapaksa project; a tactical defeat, one that is easily overcome, but a defeat nevertheless.

The SLPP was confident of winning the vote. It was confident of pushing the government and the country into an existential crisis. It expected the UNP to fracture and the SLFP legislators to vote for the motion en bloc (barring a couple of recalcitrants).

But those plans backfired. The UNP didn’t split. The SLFP did, with a majority of legislators opting to abstain (which, given the nature of the number’s game, was a way of helping not the SLPP but the UNP). The SLPP’s plan of wreaking havoc on the government and the country failed. Instead it imposed an unnecessary defeat on itself, thereby dimming the glory of its recent electoral victory.

In the aftermath of that unexpected and humiliating defeat, the Rajapaksas have returned to what they do in the aftermath of any defeat – depict the outcome as the result of a Tamil-Muslim-Western conspiracy. This was how they interpreted their defeat at the 2015 Presidential election. Having conceded the presidency, Mr. Rajapaksa flew to Hambantota and informed an adoring crowd that Mr. Sirisena’s victory was not a legitimate one as it was achieved with the help of Tamils and Muslims.

The attempt to explain away the defeat of the No Confidence Motion by inciting anti-minority hysteria will intensify in the coming weeks. There will be screams about sell-outs and betrayals. Whether these efforts to exacerbate racial and religious animosities gain traction depend on the government’s performance, particularly on the economic front.

The link between economic injustice and extremism is a proven one from the Germany of 1933 to the United States of 2016. As Tony Judt pointed out, in France a segment of the working class and the poor, disproportionately affected by economic austerity, became the vehicle of growth for the right wing National Front of Le Pens (father and daughter). These people were "looking for someone to blame and someone to follow" and found a home in the neo Fascist right, "whose programme consists of one long scream of resentment."i This is the SLPP’s way and it will cleave to it with renewed vigour post-No Confidence Motion.

Debunking myths which breed conflict was one of the tasks the Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration was supposed to undertake as a key pillar of its reconciliation effort. Unfortunately the government has failed to fulfil this promise. That failure, together with its dismal performance on the economic front, has recreated an environment conducive to extremism and intolerance. It has also enabled the Rajapaksas to define Lanka’s political centre in Sinhala-Buddhist supremacist terms and render ethno-religious racism respectable, again.

The Sirisena-Wickremesinghe administration’s inability to comprehend the economics of democracy is imperilling Lankan democracy. Its inability to comprehend the politics of racism is imperilling civil peace and societal stability. The victory at the No Confidence Motion gives the government a chance to see these mistakes in retrospect and an opportunity to correct the worst of them before the first round of provincial council polls later this year (or the next Kandy). But for that to happen, the President and the Prime Minister must recreate their working relationship and reaffirm their commitment to the agenda of 2015. That and that alone will determine whether the beating back of the No Confidence motion amounts to a lasting victory or an ephemeral one. Death by suicide is not inevitable. But it is still very possible.

i Reappraisals – Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century.

UN Feature: Three herbs that saved hundreds of lives in Sri Lanka

Sat, Apr 7, 2018, 07:20 pm SL Time, ColomboPage News Desk, Sri Lanka.

At the height of the war in Sri Lanka, Dr Kurunathan Srigananathan realized they were running short on medicines in Jaffna. With local pharmacies sold out of vital drugs, the population were struggling. Malaria, in particular, was a huge problem.
Sriganananthan had a solution. Since 1993, he had been part of a producer group called the Siddha Medicine Production Sales and Service Cooperative Society. Better known simply as COPHARM, the society produced indigenous medicines based on recipes that were centuries old. One of these was a treatment for malaria that utilized just three local herbs.

"We made it fully available to all and saved hundreds of lives," Srigananathan claims. As the fighting escalated, more and more people turned to Siddha for relief from the ailments that beset them.
Siddha has a long history in these parts. The earliest practitioners came from South India, and the medicines they created were designed to offer holistic solutions to disease. Some treatments were prophylactic-intended to be preventative-and diet and lifestyle were key to healing.
Sriganananthan -the 'healer'
Sriganananthan himself came from a family of such healers. While his grandfather and father were self-taught, Srigananathan was the first in his family to study the subject at the Lanka Siddha Ayurvedic Medical College. "I felt compelled," he remembers now, "I believed that if I did not carry on the family tradition, it would be lost."
He used what he had learned to inform COPHARM's efforts to produce a range of medicines that included infused oils, kalippu or paste-based remedies and sooranai or powders, among others. Even though they enjoyed some successes, the society also faced significant challenges over the years, not least because of the conflict: their operations were interrupted more than once due to the conflict, and their members were displaced. But in post-war Sri Lanka, COPHARM found challenges of a different sort altogether.
Reinventing COPHARM- Post war years
There were serious issues related to production, including lack of critical equipment and less-than-stringent hygiene standards. The packaging, which did not matter quite as much during the war years, now did little to attract customers. Perhaps most critically, COPHARM had to face competition from better established companies coming in from the south of the island. They found a new generation of customers was unwilling to put work into preparing finicky and time consuming medicines-what everyone wanted was a tablet or a syrup that took no effort. COPHARM found they were out of step with the times.

Determined to reinvent themselves, they sought outside help. They became one of several cooperatives supported by the United Nations Development Programme in Sri Lanka (UNDP) through funding from the Government of Canada under the Agro-Economic Development Project (ADP). The project's goal was to strengthen the agro-economic sector in the North of Sri Lanka, benefitting over 22,000 households across the Jaffna, Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu Districts. Of these, COPHARM would account for over 1000 direct beneficiaries and over 3000 of indirect beneficiaries in the Jaffna Peninsula.
'Trust' is Key
Today, the society is ensconced in a spacious new production and sales center some twenty minutes away from the main Jaffna town. The center not only has all the new equipment they need, but also better packaging and distribution facilities. It is the focal point for the delivery of some 1,000 raw ingredients drawn from 75 direct local suppliers, and over 200 indirect suppliers. These include producers of sesame or gingelly oil, as well as farmers who bring the medicinal herbs growing in their fields to the center.
"I am happy that we can support so many families," says Suppan Sinnarasa, the president of COPHARM. He highlights the role their medicines have played in supporting the population here through thick and thin. "We managed to survive it all," he says.

Now, as COPHARM looks to building a future in a post-war society, he believes customers will stay loyal. "Because of that history, we have the trust of the people."
( UN feature story to mark the World Health Day on 7th April 2018)

'We won’t give up': Anger and grief over Israeli killing of Gazan video journalist

Yasser Murtaja was one of nine Palestinians shot dead during 'March of Return' protests on Gaza-Israeli border

Yasser Murtaja's body is carried through the streets of Gaza (Mohammed Asad)

Hind Khoudary-Saturday 7 April 2018

Anger greeted the killing of nine unarmed protesters on the second Friday of Gaza's "March of Return" demonstrations, including Yasser Murtaja, a Palestinian video journalist who was shot dead by an Israeli sniper despite the clearly visible "Press" sign on his jacket.

Holding Palestinian flags and playing Palestinian national songs from speakers, thousands of Palestinians gathered in the five locations along the borders demanding the right of return for those Palestinians expelled during the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. The second Friday was called the "Friday of Tyres" where protesters used tyres and mirrors to block the vision of the Israeli snipers.

Murtaja, who works for Ein Media, had been covering all the protests at the border fence.

"After prayer time, protesters started to burn tyres, the Israelis started to randomly shoot, and Yasser was filming the injuries next to me. Suddenly the Israeli snipers targeted him. He fell on the ground and started calling for me to rescue him," said Hosam Salem, one of Yasser’s best friends and a photographer at the scene.

(Mohammed Asad)

He wanted to travel, I was sad he wanted to leave Gaza Strip. Now he's left Gaza for the sky

- Hanaa Al-Hendi, Yasser Murtaja's wife

"He was wearing the flak jacket with the 'Press' label, he was holding his Canon 5D camera - it was obvious he was a journalist, not a protester."

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, Murtaja died from the wounds he sustained on Friday. Murtaja was injured in his stomach, one of 79 people who suffered critical injuries.

His mother told Middle East Eye that Yasser, who was one of Gaza's best known journalists, was in a "better place".

"He is a journalist, he was doing his job. I never imagined I would lose him," she said, with tears filling her eyes. "He is always smiling, the smile never left his beautiful face.

"I'm going to miss his beautiful soul, I'm very proud of him. I'm sure he is in a better place now."

Yasser was father to a two-year-old boy with his wife Hanaa Al-Hendi, whom he married in 2014.

"He wanted to travel. I was sad he wanted to leave Gaza Strip. Now he's left Gaza for the sky," she told MEE.

Use of force

Since the beginning of the March of Return protests on 30 March, 10 journalists have been injured by live ammunition and 18 have been injured by teargas canisters.

In addition to the nine Palestinians killed on Friday, at least 491 were wounded by Israeli gunfire, the health ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip said.

Israeli source said there were around 20,000 protesters and that they had been seeking to breach the border.

UN chief Antonio Guterres urged Israel to "exercise extreme caution with the use of force" ahead of the latest clashes, and on Friday Kuwait called on the Security Council to investigate the deaths.

Israel has rebuffed international calls for a probe into last Friday's killings.

The Israeli army said its troops opened fire "in accordance with the rules of engagement".

The military said "attempts were made to infiltrate into Israel under the cover of a smokescreen" and that firebombs and explosive devices were thrown at the soldiers.

Press watchdog Reporters Without Borders said in a tweet it was "saddened to learn" that Murtaja had died after being "shot while covering Gaza demonstrations".

Ibraheem Zaaneen, a 22-year-old freelance photographer, was also injured by the Israeli snipers on Friday.

"I was 150 metres away, I was wearing the press jacket. A sniper wanted to kill me, he wanted to shoot me in the chest, but it hit me in the hand," said Zaneen.

"I was about to hold my camera to capture a photo of an injury right beside me - the minute I held the camera, I was shot. Before being shot, I was on the ground suffocating [from] the teargas inhalation; they were throwing a lot of teargas on the journalists."

Translation: I wish I could take this picture from the air. My name is Yasser. I am 30 years old. I live in Gaza. I have never travelled.

Zaneen said he would undergo surgery in the upcoming week because there were still parts of the bullets inside his hand.

"They killed Yasser and injured my hand. They are violating us. They don't want us to transfer the truth on the field, they wanted to kill the people without anyone knowing. But we won't give up. We will keep covering the Israeli violations against the Palestinian protests," he said.

"The world has to know the truth and what happens during the protests."

Additional reporting by AFP

Calling on world conscience

Palestinians take part in a tent city protest demanding the right to return to their homeland, east of Jabaliya, northern Gaza, on 30 March.Mahmoud AjourAPA images

Hamza Abu Eltarabesh-7 April 2018

Much has already been written and said about the bloody events of the first Great March of Return protest on 30 March.

Some of it will be forgotten in the bloodshed of the second march, on 6 April, which predictably saw Israel respond in the same brutal manner to popular unarmed demonstrations that it simply won’t countenance.

Indeed, the date of the first protest coincided with the commemoration of Land Day, when Palestinians protesting land confiscation inside Israel in 1976 were also subjected to lethal crowd control tactics and six unarmed demonstrators were shot and killed.

On 30 March 2018 the result was even more bloody. Fourteen protesters died on the day, and others succumbed to their injuries over the following week, bringing the total fatalities to 17.
Human Rights Watch found no evidence of any credible threat to Israeli soldiers, operating under a shoot-to-kill policy, posed by demonstrators.

After nine were killed during protests on 6 April, including a journalist, and another protester was shot dead earlier in the week, the total number Great March of Return fatalities has reached 27. Nearly 2,000 Palestinians have been injured – more than half of them by live fire – since the launch of the protests.

The Great March of Return demonstrations – which are set to run until 15 May, when Palestinians commemorate the anniversary of the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine – have been called to restate demands for the right of return of refugees.

The right of return is an issue that, if it is broached at all, only receives the most cursory of attention from non-Palestinians and in the foreign and Israeli media and then only to be brushed aside.
And yet, it is an issue that lies at the very heart of the Palestine question.

A right to pass down the generations

It was this that motivated Halima Aqel, 76, to come to one of the gatherings of protesters on 30 March.

She had brought her seven granddaughters to an area on the eastern edge of the Zaytoun neighborhood, on the edge of Gaza City and in between the Nahal Oz and Karni commercial crossings – both long underutilized because of Israel’s 10-year-old blockade on Gaza – and not 900 meters from the barbed wire fence and concrete wall Israel has erected around the impoverished coastal strip of land.

“I still dream of returning to my village,” said Aqel, after taking a selfie with her granddaughters.
Aqel was six when she and her family had to leave the village of Burayr, and, like so many of her generation, she still carries the key to the family home, a key her father passed to her when he died and that she will pass to one of her sons.

“My participation today is to express this hope of return. And if I am not of the generation who will return, I’m here to instill the necessity of returning in my granddaughters’ minds and hearts,” she said. “They can complete the journey after us.”

It is 70 years now since the Nakba or catastrophe in 1948, when more than 750,000 Palestinians fled or were forced to flee their homes and lands in what was to become Israel.

They were never allowed to return to reclaim their possessions or properties which were instead either confiscated by the new state and doled out to Jewish-only arrivals, or, as in the case of some 500 villages, destroyed and left to disappear.

A little further toward the boundary with Israel, in the Malaka area, now just some 700 meters from the edge of Gaza, 22 tents had been erected, each carrying the name of a village or town those inside had left in 1948.

One of these was filled with members of the Labad family and bore the name Ashkelon, an ancient city, now one Israel’s main cities in the south, where al-Majadal Asqalan was once home to more than 10,000 Palestinians.

A note to the world

Ismail Labad, 58, told The Electronic Intifada that the tents were erected in an attempt to raise awareness internationally and “guarantee that out right of return is recognized by the international community.”

Labad, a clothes merchant, was speaking while preparing lunch with a dozen members of his family in front of the white tent that bore the name of the place they think of as home and next to which one of his children, Ibrahim, 12, was busy raising the Palestinian flag.

Hundreds of similar tents were erected from south to north in Gaza, both on 30 March and 6 April, and thousands of men, women and children took part. The crowds were not deterred by the violent response to the first protest and turned out again in their thousands for the second week.

They will turn out for the third too. The protest represents a sense of unity among Palestinians around a core cause that supersedes factional differences. Demonstrators held the Palestinian flag aloft, not their factional colors.

Organizers say the series of protests is an attempt at reminding the world of its responsibilities to Palestinian refugees, whose right of return is not only mandated by UN General Assembly Resolution 194, but in Article 13of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

“The mass return march is a message from Palestinians to the world to reconsider our cause,” Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza, told journalists at the start of the protest on 30 March.

“The activities of the march will not stop until we’re back to our lands occupied by Israel 70 years ago.”

Hamza Abu Eltarabesh is a journalist from Gaza.

Time for peaceful resistance, says Gaza's new movement

Israel calls them riots, but the man at the centre of recent protests sees them as a rejection of violence

A protest on 4 April in the Gaza Strip near the border with Israel, seeking the right of return for Palestinian refugees. Photograph: Said Khatib/AFP/Getty Images

Oliver Holmesand Hazem Balousha in Gaza City-Fri 6 Apr 2018 05.00 BST

Sipping mint lemonade while looking out at the Mediterranean, the man credited with instigating a demonstration movement that has rocked Gaza is at odds with the image of the protests that has been put forward by Israel.

Israel has described the recent demonstrations on the Gaza frontier as “riots” and a ploy to “camouflage terror attacks” led by Hamas, a militant group founded on the idea that Israel has no right to exist.

Yet Ahmad Abu Artema, who claims no Hamas affiliation, holds an ideology more often attributed to that of Israel’s president: he says he wants to see Palestinians and Israelis living in one country as equal citizens.

“If you want my personal opinion, I don’t believe in liberation [of land in Israel]. I believe in ending the apartheid system in Israel like the end of the apartheid system in South Africa, and we live all in one democratic state,” Artema said in an interview in Gaza City. “I want to live with Israelis.”

Cities at war: how Gaza is bracing for the next blow – video

Following three wars during the past 10 years, Palestinian action in Gaza against Israel has overwhelmingly been seen as an armed fight. But Abu Artema hopes a new peaceful protest movement, widely supported by thousands of demonstrators including elderly people, women and children, will skew that image.

Groups of young men at the front of the demonstration last Friday threw rocks, burned tyres and in some cases tried to damage a border fence on the first day of the planned six-week demonstration demanding the right of return for refugees. Yet most participants simply turned up and stayed hundreds of metres back, away from an Israel-ordered no-go area.

A Palestinian dabka band perform during the protest. Photograph: APAImages/REX/Shutterstock

Israel’s response to the protests, however, has been widely criticised. The UN and EU have called for independent investigations after soldiers were accused of killing more than 16 people and shooting hundreds of others, mostly in the legs.

The movement has put both societies on edge. Many are now anxiously waiting to see how protests this Friday proceed.

A leading Israeli human rights group called B’Tselem made the rare move oftelling soldiers they were “duty-bound” to disobey live fire orders on unarmed civilians.

In Gaza, there have been calls on social media for participants to use tyres to create a wall of black smoke to blind the Israeli snipers, although Abu Artema has warned against this, saying it will exacerbate tensions. An organising committee on which he sits has called for people not to approach the perimeter, to avoid a repeat of last week’s bloodshed.

Many attribute the new movement to a viral Facebook post, written by Abu Artema, which pondered what would happen if thousands of Gazans, the vast majority of whom are refugees and their descendants, attempted to peacefully cross the frontier to reach their ancestral homes.

Palestinian protesters and Israeli troops at Khan Yunis in the Gaza Strip, on 4 April. Photograph: Nidal Alwaheidi/Pacific Press/Zuma/Rex/Shutterstock

But as the idea turned into a real plan, organisers modified it to avoid danger at the border and agreed they would pitch tents and have meals, traditional dabke dancing, football games and even weddings hundreds of metres from the perimeter. “We are looking for a new culture,” he said, showing a video on his phone of a marriage at the protest camp last weekend.

Abu Artema, born in 1984, is an activist and journalist who has spent his entire life in Gaza, except for two trips to Egypt to visit his mother on the Sinai side of the border. His family were refugees from the city of Ramla, having fled in 1948 around the time of the creation of Israel.

He says he represents a rejection of armed resistance, in part because he believes that strategy has failed. “It’s not necessary to resist the occupation with bullets. You can resist the occupation with dabke, or by just sitting there.”

Political parties, most notably Hamas, openly support the movement and have sent members and fighters to participate, a decision Abu Artema says he accepts. “I’m not a spokesman for Hamas,” he said. “It’s positive that those people started to believe in peaceful struggle. [Israel] wanted to drag it to violence, they don’t want to confront people. They want to be confronted by a rocket or a missile.” Just because a small number of people threw stones, he said, that did not warrant live fire.

The Israeli military, which disputes last Friday’s casualty count, said it used bullets only when necessary, although videos appeared to show people shot while running away. It also pointed to an attempted gun attack on soldiers along the border.

Does Abu Artema feel the movement can avoid spiralling out of control? “Personally, I believe in peaceful protest. There is a dream and there is reality, and there is a difference between them.”

One Year Ago, Pundits Welcomed a Turning Point in Syria. They Were Wrong.

U.S. policy in the Middle East is being guided by Trump's doctrine of incoherent chaos. And it's only getting worse.

A U.S. Tomahawk missile flies toward Syria on April 7, 2017. (Ford Williams/U.S. Navy via Getty Images)

BY DEREK CHOLLET, ILAN GOLDENBERG

| APRIL 6, 2018, 5:51 PM

A year ago, 59 U.S. Tomahawk cruise missiles hit Syria’s Sharyrat airbase in response to a chemical weapons attack perpetrated by the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. This was supposed to usher in a new era of U.S. leadership in the Middle East. It didn’t.

From the moment the missiles flew, pundits and lawmakers across the political spectrum swooned at U.S. President Donald Trump’s decisiveness. They were giddy the United States was finally flexing its muscles after years of former President Barack Obama’s supposed fecklessness, and asserted that Trump would oversee a broader shift to a more vigorous U.S. military role in the Middle East.

America’s regional partners, who had long wanted U.S. military action against Assad — and eventually, Iran — heaped praise on the new president. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke for many when he said, “this message of resolve in the face of the Assad regime’s horrific actions will resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang, and elsewhere.”
Well, so much for that. Instead of a message of resolve, let alone a cohesive strategy, what we have is an incoherent jumble.

Instead of a message of resolve, let alone a cohesive strategy, what we have is an incoherent jumble.

Trump’s approach to the Middle East is an unusual patchwork, combining Obama’s policies (especially the military’s fight against the Islamic State and reluctance to use force against Assad), Republican foreign policy shibboleths (such as undoing the Iran nuclear deal), standard campaign promises on which previous presidents were smart enough to not follow through (moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem), and political rants (such as claims that the United States has gotten “nothing out of $7 trillion [spent] in the Middle East over the last 17 years”).

Where are all these contradictions and disjointed impulses leading? Nowhere good.

In Syria, Trump’s desire to withdraw troops and withhold stabilization support is a manifestly bad idea. The United States learned this the hard way when it left Iraq in 2011. If U.S. forces depart, Washington loses influence and creates a security vacuum.

The United States should not leave tens of thousands of troops in Iraq and Syria. But a modest force of several thousand focused mainly on training, combined with a meaningful reconstruction and stabilization program, could make a difference. The U.S. military can resource and sustain such a mission with acceptable risk — and it wants to. Moreover, the administration could use its control of territory inside Syria as leverage against Damascus, Moscow, and Tehran in a diplomatic effort to end the Syrian civil war.

If the United States pulls the plug, don’t expect its partners to step into the breach (believe us, it’s been tried). In the short term, Russia, Iran, and the Syrian regime would all benefit. In the long term, expect a reconstituted and rebranded Islamic states that would only draw the United States back in.
Perhaps Trump will get talked out of withdrawal. After pushback from the military, he seems to have delayed his demand for leaving Syria, just as he acquiesced to his military commanders’ advice when it came to arming the Kurds and waging military campaigns in Mosul and Raqqa, executing plans put in place by the Obama administration.

But don’t bet on such deference to last.

For example, last December the president disregarded his team’s warnings and recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital — fulfilling a campaign promise that many presidential candidates have made but on which none had previously dared to follow through. This came on the heels of months of reasonable and balanced talks with all sides as the administration attempted to develop a peace plan. Jerusalem will certainly be Israel’s capital in any two-state agreement, but it will also be the capital of a Palestinian state. A much smarter approach would have been to recognize two capitals in Jerusalem and try to extract comitments from both sides for this major step. Instead, in the art of Trump’s deal, the United States got nothing.

The White House said that after a “cooling off period,” the Palestinians would be willing to negotiate, and that negotiations would be easier with Jerusalem “off the table.” But four months later there have still been no meetings between senior U.S. officials and Palestinians. The Palestinian leadership is saying that the United States is no longer a credible mediator in the conflict — and much of the world seems to agree.

And as major protests in Gaza continue, the administration is inexplicably throwing fuel on the fire by moving up the date of an initial symbolic embassy move to Jerusalem to next month, on the 70th anniversary of Israel’s independence — a day that is known by Palestinians the Nakba — the catastrophe.

We see the same pattern with Iran. For months Trump heeded those who urged him to stay in the Iran nuclear deal, even if they believed the agreement was problematic and needed fixing. But last fall things began to change, and now, with newly named U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo, both anti-deal hawks, ascendant, the United States will likely pull out as early as next month, with little sense of what will happen next.

The result won’t be increased pressure on Iran. It will be a weakened sanctions regime that will not achieve the same type of pressure that led Tehran to agree to significant restraints on its nuclear program. With a major split between the United States and the other parties to the agreement (Europe, Russia, and China), sanctions and diplomatic pressure won’t have the same punch. Most importantly, the United States will not be able to take half of Iran’s oil sales off of the international market as it did five years ago, because two major purchasers — China and India — are unlikely to cooperate as they did back then.

Iran may try to stay in the nuclear agreement for a while and negotiate with Europe, Russia, and China while isolating the United States. But political pressure in Tehran to walk away will prove overwhelming. So expect Tehran to violate the agreement by restricting access to international inspectors and restarting parts of its nuclear program.

Eventually, the United States and its partners will likely be left with a terrible choice — allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon, or take military action against a country with the population three times the size of Iraq. How Trump squares his rants about taxpayer dollars being wasted in the Middle East and the tremendous costs of war with Iran is anybody’s guess.

There’s tremendous irony in all this. In the Middle East, more than anywhere else, U.S. partners are thrilled with Trump. Leaders in the Gulf states and Israel express relief that they have a true friend in the White House who understands what it takes to exercise power.

Yet like so much else with Trump, this is an illusion. So let’s stop pretending that the “adults” are in charge, or that there is a regional strategy, or that last year’s Syria strike was anything other than a one-off response. Trump is the one in charge, and U.S. policy in the Middle East is being guided by his doctrine of incoherent chaos.

Man drives van into restaurant in Germany, killing at least two plus himself

Elke Ahlswede-APRIL 7, 2018

The Sueddeutsche Zeitung said the man was a German with psychological problems who had no terrorist background. The Interior Ministry in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, home to Muenster, would neither confirm nor deny the report.

Bode said the identity of the perpetrator was not yet clear. Investigators were looking at the possibility that other suspects fled the scene, though they had no evidence that this was the case, he added.

Police stands guard in a street near a place where a man drove a van into a group of people sitting outside a popular restaurant in the old city centre of Muenster, Germany, April 7, 2018.

REUTERS/Leon Kuegeler

“It is far too early to speak of an attack,” Bode said. “We have cordoned off the area widely. The crime scene investigators are checking out the crime scene, trying to identify, investigate and secure traces. That is our current task.”

The police spokeswoman said: “The danger is over.”

The incident came one year to the day after a truck attack in Stockholm that killed five people.

Slideshow (6 Images)

It also evoked memories of a December 2016 truck attack in Berlin that killed 12 people. In that attack, Anis Amri, a failed Tunisian asylum seeker with Islamist links, hijacked a truck, killed the driver and then ploughed into a crowded marketplace, killing 11 more people and injuring dozens of others.

“I am shocked by the news from Muenster,” said Andrea Nahles, parliamentary leader of the Social Democrats, junior partner in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling coalition.

“My thoughts are with the victims and their relatives,” she added. “I hope that our authorities can quickly clarify the background to this incident and wish the local forces much strength for their work.”

Government spokeswoman Ulrike Demmer tweeted: “Awful news from Muenster. Our thoughts are with the victims and their relatives.”

Mueller is planning a report on Trump. Here’s what happens next.

Special counsel Robert Mueller told the president's lawyers that Trump's a subject in his probe, not a target. The Post's Carol Leonnig explains the difference. (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post)

THE MORNING PLUM:

By Greg Sargent April 4

The big news in this Post story is not that President Trump isn’t a “target” of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation. Rather, it’s that Mueller is planning a report on Trump’s conduct, particularly as it relates to actions on his part that could constitute obstruction of justice.

Will Mueller’s findings ever get released in some form? Most likely, yes. But there are some very unpleasant scenarios that could intervene — including the very real possibility that congressional Republicans will do all they can to keep Mueller’s report under wraps. This is something they can try to do, it turns out.

The Post report notes that Mueller has informed Trump’s lawyers that he doesn’t consider him a criminal target at this point. But it says Trump is still a subject of the investigation, which means his conduct is still being scrutinized, even if there aren’t grounds for criminal charges.

It has always seemed unlikely that Trump would be indicted, particularly for obstruction of justice, as there’s a spirited debate over whether the executive branch’s constitutional authority even allows for a president to be held criminally liable for such conduct. Rather, the question has been how serioushis misconduct was, and we might find out soon enough:

The special counsel also told Trump’s lawyers that he is preparing a report about the president’s actions while in office and potential obstruction of justice, according to two people with knowledge of the conversations. …

Mueller’s investigators have indicated to the president’s legal team that they are considering writing reports on their findings in stages — with the first report focused on the obstruction issue, according to two people briefed on the discussions.

What happens then? Under the regulations that govern appointment of the special counsel, Mueller is supposed to provide a “confidential” report explaining his conclusions to the attorney general — or, in this case, to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, since Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself. Rosenstein is then supposed to provide the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate judiciary committees with an “explanation” for any decision to conclude the investigation. This explanation can be released if he decides it would be “in the public interest.”

Opinion | If President Trump fires the bane of his legal troubles, he could spark a legal and constitutional crisis. (Adriana Usero/The Washington Post)

There has been a robust debate over what these regulations really mean. One convincing interpretation is that Mueller himself probably wouldn’t produce an exposé in the tradition of the Kenneth W. Starr report and likely would stick to a more orthodox prosecutorial role. His report probably would remain confidential, barring some sort of extraordinary actions.

But the real question may be whether Rosenstein’s report will ever come out — and what it might look like. According to legal experts I spoke with today, the regulations appear to give Rosenstein room to decide what his “explanation” to the judiciary committees will entail in detail and scope.

“He could write a two-sentence explanation — or he could write something very detailed,” Andrew Kent, a professor at Fordham University School of Law, told me today. “There appears to be a great deal of discretion vested by the regulations to determine how detailed a report to write. The regulations don’t limit that.”

Rosenstein would likely come under great pressure to produce something detailed to Congress, provided it remained within secrecy constraints, Kent continued. At that point, Rosenstein could release it himself. Or, if not, the report could leak, or portions could be described to reporters. Or, Kent said, Congress could even consider trying to legislate for its partial or complete public release.

And that raises a host of other possibilities. Republicans — who, you may recall, are in the majority — could block a vote on whether to release Rosenstein’s report, or could vote against it. If you don’t think those are real possibilities, you haven’t been paying attention. Republicans have blocked transparency on Trump’s tax returns and have perverted the oversight process into a counter-investigation that is grounded in alternate reality and is designed to frustrate accountability. So nothing should be deemed off limits.

If Republicans did block its release, Democrats could campaign against that in the midterm elections, says Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “If Democrats take the House, the report would still be sitting there when they took control in January,” Vladeck said. “If the report is not shared with the public, that could just be temporary.”

Trump could respond to a congressional vote to release the report with a veto. But Congress could override that, particularly if Democrats win big this fall. Or Trump might try some kind of executive action to block release. It seems likely some sort of showdown is coming.

Striving for the correct balance will be critical. On one hand, it is important, as Jack Goldsmith and Maddie McMahon say, that the process behind the release be “legally uncontroversial.” On the other, there is great public interest in learning the findings, since that could illuminate answers to big questions involving presidential conduct and help mitigate the damage Trump has already done to the rule of law. Getting both right, if possible, is crucial to avoiding deep civic damage. But Republicans and/or Trump could still try to block any release from happening. So we may have yet to see just how muchdamage they might do in that regard.

* DEMS NOTCH BIG WIN IN WISCONSIN: Dem-backed candidate Rebecca Dallet last night won a seat on the Wisconsin state Supreme Court after comfortably defeating conservative Michael Screnock. David Weigel comments:

Both candidates and their supporters turned the race, which is technically nonpartisan, into a political referendum. Dallet ran early ads that accused President Trump of “attack[ing] our civil rights and our values,” while Screnock portrayed himself as a “rule of law” conservative endorsed by the National Rifle Association.

This is a swing state that Trump won — and there is a big gubernatorial contest there this fall.

* SCOTT WALKER WARNS OF ‘BLUE WAVE’: After last night’s results, the Wisconsin governor sounds the alarm:

Talk more about the GOP tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefited the rich and corporations! There’s a “positive story” for you.

* ABOUT THAT ‘CARAVAN’ OF MIGRANTS: The Post reports on the “caravan” of migrants making their way towards the border that has so enraged Trump:

While the numbers of border crossers are down compared with past years, the hunger to reach the United States — still more than 800 miles from this encampment — is as acute as ever for many Central Americans. They face unceasing danger in gang-controlled neighborhoods; they search fruitlessly for low-paying jobs; they yearn to be with relatives who have been living for decades in the United States; they want better lives for their children.

But conservative media is hyping this to the skies as a dire threat, and the only thing Trump evidently cares about here is that this makes him look weak.

* TRADE WAR IS SET TO ESCALATE: China just announced a range of new tariffs on U.S. products, including soybeans, some airplanes and cars, and The Post reports that this is “deepening fears of a rapid escalation.” Note this:

The focus on U.S. soybean exports by China could have a particularly severe impact on the United States. Soybeans are the top U.S. agricultural export to China and U.S. soybean farmers and their allies fought hard to prevent the tariffs … Farm states generally backed Trump in the 2016 election, and their exports could be hurt.

No worries — just tell Trump country that these policies are “good for the market.”

* TRUMP’S TRADE POLICIES ARE ‘GOOD FOR THE MARKET’:Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro tells John Harwood that people should stop freaking out about Trump’s trade war:

“Everybody needs to relax,” Navarro told CNBC. Trump’s trade policy is “good for the market,” he insisted, adding: “I teach that stuff. I mean, let’s remember – if anybody knows what goes wrong with these models, it’s the guy who knows how to teach them.”

The markets have slid. That aside, many of the jobs targeted by China’s retaliatory tariffs are in Trump counties. Maybe telling Trump voters this is “good for the market” isn’t a great idea.

* TRUMP AGAIN CATCHES ADVISERS OFF GUARD: Trump yesterday said he wants to send the National Guard to the southern border. The New York Times reports that this “caught some of his top advisers by surprise,” and adds:

After the president’s remarks, White House aides struggled for hours to decipher his intentions.

We all know Trump has no idea of the details and challenges involved, but those who work for him are required to at least make a game effort to translate every impulse into policy.

* ON BORDER, TRUMP IS ‘CONCERNED ABOUT HIS BASE’: The Post’s Seung Min Kim reports on why Trump might be talking about sending the National Guard to the border:

One adviser who speaks often to Trump said that the president has been concerned about his political base since he signed into law last month a spending bill that did not fund the wall or some of his other immigration plans and that he has carefully monitored recent criticism, particularly on Fox News. Since then, the adviser said, he has been trying to appeal to his supporters through tougher rhetoric on border security and pushing protectionist trade policies.

It’s striking that it barely creates a ripple anymore that Trump makes decisions based on whims controlled by what Fox News tells him.