Ongoing Reports On Escalating Events in Yemen . . . (This Weekend)

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Jun 4, 2011 Yemen
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Ongoing Reports On Escalating Events in Yemen . . . (This Weekend)

By : Jadaliyya Reports

Follow our ongoing reports from San`a, Yemen on our Twitter feed here (hashtag: #JadYemen) or in the right column of our homepage. For historical and contemporary background to today`s event, visit Jadaliyya`s Yemen Page.

Here`s what we have so far on the feed from both yesterday (June 3) and today (June 4). If electricity holds where our reports are coming from, we`ll keep at it.

Jadaliyya Tweets from San`a, Yemen

Friday June 3

[10:15 AM EST]

  • Conflicting reports of Saleh`s injury/death during an attack on mosque within presidential palace.
  • Suheil TV in Yemen reported Saleh dead. AP reports he has a head wound. GPC (ruling party) claims he is fine and will be on tv within hour.
  • Saleh was in presidential palace mosque with circle . Attack might have been retaliation for that on homes of Ali Muhsin and Hamid al-Ahmar
  • In mosque with Saleh: PM Mujawar, Speaker of Parliament al-Raei, two Deputy PMs, and son of San`a Governor. All reportedly injured.
     

[2:00 PM EST]

  • Streets are empty. Those who have left for other countries or for village probably already left; everyone is staying in their homes.
  • On way out of neighborhood saw armed men setting blockades & standing guard. Hoping neighborhood watch, not GPC or tribesmen staking claim.
  • Houses that are being attacked now are empty, the occupants have long ago fled to safer parts. So it`s only the residents who are suffering.
  • Correction: Mohsen`s house was not attacked. Hamid al-Ahmar`s house in Hadda was hit after the attack on the mosque of presidential palace.
  • They may play recorded message instead of live one, but this is all rumor. Regardless, long time and no Saleh appearance. A bit suspicious.
  • More news of armed men in other neighborhoods blocking movement. People don`t recognize them. Maybe residents or waiting to make their move.


[2:10 PM EST]

  • First implication of Ali Mohsen responding: military infighting and thus lots of people, lots of big guns, lots of blood.
  • Second implication of Ali Mohsen responding: rest of Hashed tribe will be pulled into the war.
  • Right now, the al-Ahmars managed to pull in the Osaimat tribe from the Hashed confederation, but rest of Hashed is sitting the fight out.
  • Saleh probably assured rest of Hashed that he wouldn`t kill al-Ahmar boys.  If Ali Mohsen drawn in, Hashed will likely need to choose sides.


[3:00 PM EST]

  • Unconfirmed rumors of injuries sustained in mosque within presidential palace.
  • President Ali Abdullah Saleh burned on face; Deputy Prime Minister for Internal Affairs Abu Ras burned on face with one/both legs amputated.
  • Former Prime Minister and Speaker of Shura Council Abdul Aziz Abdul Ghani burned on face.
  • Deputy Prime Minister for Security and Defense Affairs Rashad al-Alimi burned and maybe suffered broken legs.
  • Speaker of Parliament Yahya al-Raiee and Prime Minister Ali Mujawar both injured.
  • Saleh never spoke. Instead, the Deputy Minister of Information delivered some speech; said Saleh can`t come b/c he is "too scratched up."
  • Deputy Minister of Information confirmed in his statement that three guards were killed.
  • We heard (unconfirmed) that the Imam of the mosque was killed or critically injured. Presumably, the big guys were praying up front.
  • Governor of Sana`a Duade is in critical condition.
  • Fighting near Kentucky Roundabout outside Change Square. Riot police always posted there. Reports water cannons being used re protesters.


[3:20 PM EST]

  • Saleh blames al-Ahmar for today`s attack on Presidential Palace.
  • Hadda district in total darkness with power cut after long day of fighting. Neighborhood watches set up in most neighborhoods.


[3:25 PM EST]

  • Kentcky Roundabout is at cross street of Zubeiry St. and Ring Rd. and is at the border of Saleh territory and Mohsen territory.
  • In phone call Saleh didn`t wish hasty recovery to 3 injured: al-Alimi, Abu Ras (both Deputy PMs) & Duaid (Governor of Sana`a). Dead?


[3:45 PM EST]

  • Saleh says that the attack on the Palace today has nothing to do with the protesters.

 
[3:55 PM EST]

  • Suhail TV (run by al-Ahmar) claims that three explosions rock Special Forces right now.


[4:15 PM EST]

  • Hadda district generally quiet (eerily quiet). Rumor of ceasefire.
  • Suhail TV (al-Ahmar) announces 2 regiments from 4th Brigade defecting & joining 1st Armored Division (General Ali Mohsen).


[6:10 PM EST]

  • We`re ending today`s live updates from Yemen. Depending on developments and access to our affiliate, we hope to resume when appropriate.
     

[6:30 PM EST]

  • Protesters in Taiz retook Freedom Square and took up arms. Yemen protests no longer just peaceful but also part armed rebellion.


Saturday, June 4

[8:35 AM EST]

  • Taiz Chief of Police responsible for Taiz massacre Abdullah Gayran dead or critical after assassination attempt yesterday.
  • Top govt officials injured in yesterday`s palace attack are in Saudi for medical treatment.
  • Rumors that Saleh is with govt officials in Saudi for medical treatment, Saudi and Yemeni officials deny.
  • Reports of fighting inside the Prez Palace last night, increasingly looking like blast was an inside job.
  • People out in Hadda, lots of noise yesterday, little apparent damage. Mohsen`s buildings seem unharmed, windows intact.
  • Marib Press (opposition paper) reporting Saleh has severe burns on his face, shrapnel in his chest and burns on his feet.
  • Saleh has bad burns and broken rib but nothing life threatening. None of his Saleh sons or nephews were badly injured.
  • Ali Saleh al-Ahmar still in Prez Palace with Saleh, so rumors that he planned blast unlikely.
  • Saleh talking about signing GCC Initiative (yet again).


[7:45 PM EST]

What we know for sure is that President Ali Abdallah Saleh is in Saudi Arabia and VP Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi is in charge (AJ reports he is currently both Acting President and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces). Unconfirmed reports (though likely) are that the VP has convened a meeting with certain ruling party officials to discuss next steps. Unconfirmed rumors that Ali Mohsen has submitted his resignation to the VP as per the "if you go I go" agreement he had with Saleh. Al-Arabiya reported that the President Saleh has suffered injuries but walked off the plane himself. Reports are that he was accompanied by 35 people on his plane and that a second plane with 24 members of his family is following behind.

Otherwise, fighting is still ongoing in Hasaba District in Sana`a and in Taiz. Yemen TV is still reporting their usual stuff.  Sana`a is still pretty tense. Many roads are blocked, with armed soldiers and tribesmen still maintain a heavy presence. I know of one reported looting in Sana`a (a friend`s house was looted) but no other reports of looting in Sana`a. So it may be isolated incident.

While people in Change Square are celebrating, it`s also very confusing. Saleh the man may be gone but what about Saleh the regime? And what`s next? On the bright side, since the bombing yesterday, we`ve had uncharacteristically long periods of uninterrupted electricity.

In Taiz, the Khalid Bin Walid barracks, the largest barracks in Taiz, defected today. Central Security forces have also completely pulled out of the city`s streets, though the Republican Guard still maintains a presence. After news of Saleh`s departure, Taiz broke out in celebrations and fireworks. There are reports of looting in Taiz and that the protesters are now organizing committees to address security issues.

With respect to the bombing of the mosque in the Presidential Palace, it is unconfirmed but likely that it was planted rather than projectiled into the mosque. I don`t know the level of sophistication of the bomb, but understand that when it exploded it released nails and other shrapnel. Many of the injuries sustained are a result of these projectiles, including the rumored shrapnel that is lodged near Saleh`s heart.  Supposedly, that`s the reason he needed to leave to Saudi Arabia for medical treatment (as opposed to plastic surgery for his disfigured face; or someone sticking a gun to his head and making him leave).

[To be updated . . . ]
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Jadaliyya Reports

Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412