Voice for the Voiceless

Sheikh Jarrah

2010-05-18T17:18:00.001-04:00

To those of you with whom I've shared my experiences, you already understand my connection and eternal love for Sheikh Jarrah! For those of you who don't, this is for you. Although you might find some new thoughts because I'm sure this will not be my last post about SJ.

First, here is some contextual background on Sheikh Jarrah:

Approximately 475 Palestinian residents living in the Karm Al-Ja’ouni neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, located directly north of the Old City, face imminent eviction from their homes. All 28 families are refugees from 1948, primarily from West Jerusalem and Haifa, whose houses in Sheikh Jarrah were built and given to them through a joint project between the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and the Jordanian government in 1956.

Facing systematic ethnic cleansing through the Israeli judicial system, all 28 families of the neighborhood ultimately await eviction. The violent eviction of the Kamel al-Kurd family, by Israeli police and settlers in November of 2008, resulted in the death of ailing Abu Kamel (Mohammad) al Kurd, 61. The August 2009 evictions of the Gawi and Hannoun extended families and December 2009 occupation of Rifqa al Kurd’s front addition followed, beginning a visible trend of ethnic cleansing in Sheikh Jarrah. Over 60 residents, including 20 children, have now been displaced.

The evicted families established protest tents near their homes, many of which were repeatedly demolished by the Jerusalem Municipality. As a result, only the Rifqa al Kurd tent remains standing. Members of the Gawi, Hannoun and Kamel al Kurd families continue a daily presence outside of the occupied Gawi home. The Palestinians and their international and Israeli supporters face continual harassment from Israeli settlers. Police presence in the community is almost entirely directed at prosecuting Palestinians, and not in neutrally protecting residents from harassment and violence.

Constructing new Jewish settlements and/or occupying Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem and the West Bank is illegal under many international laws, including Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The plight of the Gawi, al-Kurd and Hannoun families is just a small part of Israel’s ongoing campaign of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from East Jerusalem, the capital of a hypothetical independent state.

Legal Background

The eviction orders, issued by Israeli courts, are a result of claims made in 1967 by the Sephardic Community Committee and the Knesseth Yisrael Association (who since sold their claim to the area to Nahalat Shimon) – settler organizations whose aim is to take over the whole area using falsified deeds for the land dating back to 1875. In 1972, these two settler organizations applied to have the land registered in their names with the Israel Lands Administration (ILA). Their claim to ownership was noted in the Land Registry; however, it was never made into an official registry of title. The first Palestinian property in the area was taken over at this time.

The case continued in the courts for another 37 years. Amongst other developments, the first lawyer of the Palestinian residents reached an agreement with the settler organizations in 1982 (without the knowledge or consent of the Palestinian families) in which he recognized the settlers’ ownership in return for granting the families the legal status of protected tenants. This affected 23 families and served as a basis for future court and eviction orders (including theal -Kurd family house take-over in December 2009), despite the immediate appeal filed by the families’ new lawyer. Furthermore, a Palestinian landowner, Suleiman Darwish Hijazi , has legally challenged the settlers’ claims. In 1994 he presented documents certifying his ownership of the land to the courts, including tax receipts from 1927. In addition, the new lawyer of the Palestinian residents located a document, proving the land in Sheikh Jarrah had never been under Jewish ownership. The Israeli courts rejected these documents.

The first eviction orders were issued in 1999 based on the (still disputed) agreement from 1982 and, as a result, two Palestinian families (Hannoun and Gawi) were evicted in February 2002. After the 2006 Israeli Supreme Court finding that the settler committees’ ownership of the lands was uncertain, and the Lands Settlement officer of the court requesting that the ILA remove their names from the Lands Registrar, the Palestinian families returned back to their homes. The courts, however, failed to recognize new evidence presented to them and continued to issue eviction orders based on decisions from 1982 and 1999 respectively. Further evictions followed in November 2008 (Kamel al-Kurd family) and August 2009 (Hannoun and Gawi families for the second time). An uninhabited section of a house belonging to the al-Kurd family was taken over by settlers on 1 December 2009.

The ultimate aim of the Zionist organizations is to convert Sheikh Jarrah into a new Jewish settlement and to create a Jewish continuum that will effectively cut off the Old City from the northern Palestinian neighborhoods. On 28 August 2008, Nahalat Shimon International filed a plan to build a series of five and six-story apartment blocks – Town Plan Scheme (TPS) 12705 – in the Jerusalem Local Planning Commission. If TPS 12705 comes to pass, the existing Palestinian houses in this key area would be demolished, about 500 Palestinians would be evicted, and 200 new settler units would be built for a new settlement: Shimon HaTzadik

To put this into perspective, what is happening in SJ is very basic. The Israeli government organizes and pays for ideological settlers to do their dirty work in the name of Religion.

Imagine one night at 2am, you and your entire family are sleeping, BANG BANG, loud knocks on your door, the person on the other side screaming for you to exit the house or your door will come down, waking everyone in the household up. You're so scared and want to protect your family, so you wait...hoping it will stop and the person on the other side will go away. BAM!! In comes your door, followed by AK-47's and army in full gear. "Get out this is no longer your property"...what would you do!? To top the whole night off, your entire family is physically removed from your home and are forced to watch everything inside be destroyed.

This is what happened to the al-Kurd, Hannoun, and Gawi families in SJ, not once but TWICE and they are just 3 of the families in Palestine. I speak of them because I know them personally. I slept outside in tents to protest the taking of their homes and the horrendous occupation. I played with their children in hopes of bringing a moment of happiness and normalcy.

This is Sara Gawi. She is the youngest child of Nasser Gawi. She was present the night they were evicted from their home. Do you know what she said to the army as they raided her house? "Get out...This is MY house!! MY house...Get out!!" Sara is 4 years old.

Four Months and counting...

2010-05-15T10:09:00.000-04:00

Today marks the 62nd anniversary of Nabka (catastrophe) where many Palestinians became refugees and were displaced from their homes, still without the right to return.

Today I realized it has been four months since I returned from Palestine. While I think of Palestine everyday and dream of Palestine every night, I still feel I am not doing my short time spent there justice. I feel more at home sleeping on the floor then in a bed, taking cold showers, and drinking as much tea as possible. Yet I know it is not enough.

How do you explain that a few months can change your life!?

How do you explain the will of Palestinian's in the face of events you know everyday American's can't imagine!?

My only excuse, for not writing about my everyday experiences in Palestine, is that I feel my words will not adequately explain the truth. From here on out I refuse to let my shortcomings be an excuse. I will do my best to explain how, four months later, I can still remember every single day spent in Palestine.

Day in the life of an activist - Entry from a friends blog: West Coast to West Bank

2010-03-10T11:05:00.000-05:00

Hello family and friends! I’ve been promising myself and many of you that I would send out meaningful updates on my travels. I’ve pretty well failed at this. I apologize, and offer the following 24hours of events to sum up my life for the past few months.

I arrived in Palestine in December and have been working with the International Solidarity Movement since. It has been amazing and very very difficult. The following is not an abnormal 24hours, but it is an average active one. I’ve written the background on Sheikh Jarrah for those who I haven’t told about it yet as well as some background on the wall. Here goes:

Sheikh Jarrah – A neighborhood of East Jerusalem that I’ve spent most of my time in since arriving in the middle east. 28 families were relocated here by the UN and Jordan after being kicked out of their homes which were in what is now Israel in 1948 when the Israeli state was created. In August three families were kicked out of their homes again on the basis that Jews owned this land before 1948. Some of the family members are staying with relatives while others live in a tent on the street outside their house. Ultra-orthodox Jewish settlers now occupy all three homes in an attempt to change the ethnic balance of the neighborhood (ethnic cleansing) to establish a Jewish stronghold around the old city (holiest part of Jerusalem) and connect Jewish West Jerusalem to a Jewish settlement east of the city. This is all on the Palestinian side of the green line and therefore the settlements are illegal under international law. I have been staying with the family on, living on the street, documenting settler violence and aggression, supporting the families, holding night watch. By staying on the street in protest they are the front lines fighting against ethnic cleansing in one of the holiest cities in the world.

The Wall – The wall has many names. Separation fence, separation wall, apartheid wall, etc. It separates people who live on the Israeli side from people who live on the Palestinian side. It steals Palestinian land and cuts through people’s fields, separates people from their olive orchards and their communities and it is a constant reminder of the racist occupation. In some places it dips 5 to 10 kilometers into the West Bank, stealing thousands of hectares of land which Palestinians used for their lively hood. As a result, it is illegal under international law.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010:

6:30PM Dinner is served on the street in Sheikh Jarrah. I’ve been making lasagna all afternoon for the community dinner that Jasmine and I started two months ago to bring Israeli, Palestinian and international activists together. There are 30 or more people here with a mix of dishes from all over the world. Food is delicious and this is the one time each week when everyone smiles for a couple of hours. I love it. It makes me very happy.

7:15PM A car pulls up and plays Palestinian music. People are dabke dancing and a game of hand ball breaks out. Five year olds and 30 year olds play side by side. A few settlers come and go from the Ghawi house but there is little tension. Spirits are high.

7:45PM Settlers are seen on cell phones at the gate of the Ghawi house. This usually means they are calling the police. Fun and games continue.

8:00PM Police arrive and announce on a loud speaker that there is to be no more ball played in the street. People argue with them. The game almost continues but the police arrest a neighborhood teenager. Seriously? It’s illegal to play ball if you’re Palestinian? Have these children not suffered enough, kicked out of their homes, living on the street while ultraorthodox jewish settlers live in the houses they were born in? A cop tells us that this dead end road is a “highway” and no ball is to be played.

8:10PM A neighborhood teenager sets the ball down but before kicking off he is grabbed by two soldiers who walk him towards their car. I am irate. I run in front of them and snap a photo but can’t bare the thought of writing one more report about one more arrest. They’re holding my friend. I loose control; I snap. This is unusual. I jump in front of the soldiers and let out a string of profanity that would make any sailor proud. Jasmine stands by. The soldiers stop and a small crowd gathers. An argument breaks out. I’m bear hugging the 19 year old they want to arrest. Jasmine is picking apart the soldiers grip one finger at a time. A few seconds later we’re walking briskly with our friend towards… anywhere there aren’t cops. He disappears.

8:30PM I’m so angry I’m still shaking, taking deep breaths to calm down, pacing. Kids are crying. How can they understand? Seeing this every day here has gotten to me. I sit around the fire barrel and smoke a cigarette. The occupation has gotten to me.

9:00PM All is quiet. This is normal. This is an improvement from the years of the second intifada, much less violence. We drink tea.

9:15AM Daniel, an Israeli activist arrives and asks us to come to a place where they’ve started construction on a new section of the wall for a demonstration the next morning at 7:30AM. Here, the wall goes through people’s yards. It separates houses from their olive trees, children from their swing sets. Here the wall is a few kilometers from the green line. This means it confiscates hundreds of acres of Palestinian land and is illegal under international law. We’re already planning on going and make plans to meet at 6AM.

10:30PM We go to sleep behind the protest tent. The cops confiscated the tent where the Ghawi family lived making them refugees for a third time. Now, there’s no separate covered space for those who stay up for night watch and those who catch a few hours of sleep before their shift begins. We sleep poorly; young Palestinians are loud.

5:30AM Brush teeth and go. It’s a long walk to the meeting spot.

6:15AM Downtown in the holy city. That means we’re on the Jewish side, west Jerusalem. We meet Daniel and joke about what the popular committee could have meant when they said a “creative” action was planned for this morning. We never know until we get there.

7:30AM The crew coalesces. A mix of Palestinians, some leaders of the non-violent movement, some supporters, a handful of Israelis and eight internationals. We discuss who can and cannot get arrested. A bulldozer is scheduled to uproot dozens of olive trees today. 100 year old trees that will die before they are replanted, roots torn out of the ground. Volunteers are requested to lock down to the trees. More creative than we expected.

8:00AM I’m chained to an olive tree. Two close friends hold sets of keys. The plan is to create a giant bear hug around the tree until I am eventually alone. Seems reasonable.

9:00AM Soldiers gather on all sides. They load tear gas canisters. I laugh about the witty comments I’ll try to make as they try to get me to unlock. I’ll tell them that they’re committing war crimes, that I’ll see them in the Hague, that they’ll come for the soldiers, not the presidents when everyone is tried by the war crimes tribunal. I don’t believe any of this, but I’m not planning on unlocking so I may as well think about something that will make me feel good. Cameras click everywhere. Video cameras roll.

9:30AM We get a call that the municipality has gotten the construction delayed. The bulldozers are called off. This makes me happy because my laptop power chord died and I have to find a mac store. That could take the rest of the day if I have to go to Tel Aviv. I’m glad this action ended earlier than expected.

12:00PM Back in Jerusalem and exhausted. Jasmine and I find a park and lay down in the sunny grass for a nap.

1:00PM We hear children… recess maybe? Roll over. Too tired.

1:30PM Children are too loud… must be surrounding us. Time to sit up. Eyes adjust to the light and HOLY SHIT! Javelin practice. There are 15 12 year olds with Olympic sized spears in front of us and we’re uncomfortably close to their target. We move. This place is crazy.

3:00PM Almost back in Sheikh Jarrah, I eat my daily falafel. I eat two every day, one at breakfast with sweet bread and an egg, one at lunch in a sandwich with veggies and hummus.

3:10PM We are recognized by a journalist from Turkey that I met 4 weeks ago. He and his camera man jump out of a car, they say they’ve been looking for us all week. They want to do a story on us staying in Sheikh Jarrah and supporting the struggle. They think people in Turkey will be inspired. I’m sad to learn that he means now… I’m still exhausted. I finish a coke and realize he’s already filming. Very embarrassing. Occupation makes us do things we wouldn’t normally… like drink coke products.

3:20PM Game on – be charming, convincing, focus on the children, hit all the buzz words – convince the world that the ethnic cleansing in Sheikh Jarrah is worth paying attention to.

3:30PM Interview over, journalist gone. Damn, it’s getting late and I still don’t have a charger.

3:40PM Charger located by another journalist who knew of the only mac store around but it’s on the West Bank side of the wall. That means I’ll have to wait through the line at Qalandiya checkpoint. I hate the checkpoint.

5:00PM I have the charger and I’m waiting in line at Qalandiya. This could take 20 minutes but if the soldiers decide to go on break or mop the floors they could close the checkpoint for hours. What if you have work to get to? Doesn’t matter. This is occupation. There are two kids (6 years old?) that latch on to every white person. If I don’t buy gum they’ll grab my water bottle from my backpack, maybe my cell phone from my pocket. Their parents won’t let them come home until they’ve sold all their gum.

5:15PM I buy “cola” flavored gum. They don’t leave. The others in line help me shoe them away. I hate the occupation.

5:20PM Qalandiya is fast today. The bus leaves.

6:00PM Off the bus, I turn off the main road to Sheikh Jarrah excited about another dinner invitation by a neighborhood activist. There is a TV truck in front of me. This is bad. Something is happening. Something big enough to warrant a live broadcast. Shit shit shit. I’m running.

6:01PM I arrive at Sheikh Jarrah in time to see 40 or 60 Muslim men finish praying. This is odd. People I know usher me into a friend’s yard where everyone has just sat down to dinner. What? Who are these people? I thought there would be 6 or 8 people talking about the demonstration scheduled for this weekend. I’m confused and happy. I eat a ton of food. Muslim leaders from all over Jerusalem have come tonight to support the families of Sheikh Jarrah. A prayer and dabke dancing followed.

VOV on Facebook

2010-03-10T10:53:00.002-05:00

Check me out on Facebook. Join, invite friends, & discuss!

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?topic=15009&uid=387278985991#!/group.php?gid=387278985991

The Trial for Rachel Begins

2010-03-10T10:17:00.000-05:00

The trail for Rachel Corrie's death begins today. For those of you who don't know, Rachel, 23, was murdered in 2003 by a CAT bulldozer, which crushed her to death, as she was nonviolently protesting Palestinian home demolitions. Rachel was a member of ISM.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/03/201031042646747585.html

IDF raids Ramallah office of pro-Palestinian group, confiscating computers and T-shirts

2010-02-10T21:25:00.001-05:00

Israel Defense Forces soldiers raided the International Solidarity Movement's Ramallah office yesterday for the second time this week, confiscating computers, T-shirts and bracelets engraved with the word "Palestine."

On Sunday, soldiers arrested Ariadna Jove Marti of Spain and Bridgette Chappell of Australia at the Ramallah office. The High Court of Justice ordered the two women freed on Monday.

Yesterday's raid took place at 3 A.M. Hours later, the ISM held a press conference, in conjunction with other pro-Palestinian organizations, at which they lashed out at the IDF's behavior. According to the ISM, the army launched an organized campaign in mid-December, the goal of which was to break up the popular protests against the separation fence in the West Bank villages of Bili'in and Na'alin. This campaign has included arrests and other forms of harassment, the activists charged.

Chappell said the IDF apparently sees the ISM as a "challenge" to Israel, and is therefore taking action against it. She added that the army would not find anything incriminating in the group's computers, as all its activities are strictly legal.

According to the Israeli organization Anarchists Against the Wall, the IDF has conducted no fewer than 18 nighttime raids in Na'alin alone since December, during which time it has arrested 25 people. Bili'in was subject to five raids and eight arrests.

"I don't think there were even that many army raids in Nablus in 2002, at the height of the intifada," claimed Jonathan Pollack of the anarchist group.

In addition to its two raids on the ISM office, the IDF also raided the offices of two other groups - Stop the Wall and the Palestinian Communist Party - this week. The activists claim that none of these groups are involved in terrorist activities; they merely organize demonstrations.

ISM, founded soon after the second intifada began in September 2000, is a very small group. It usually has less than 20 activists in the West Bank at any one time. Nevertheless, it has been heavily involved in anti-Israel protests, and is currently active in the demonstrations against house demolitions in East Jerusalem as well as the protests in Bili'in and Na'alin. It also has four activists located in the Gaza Strip.

Two ISM activists have been killed while protesting, Rachel Corrie in 2003 and Tom Hurndall in 2004; two others have been seriously wounded.

12 arrested for disrupting Israeli ambassador

2010-02-09T11:39:00.000-05:00

Please go to the link for the article & video.

http://collegelife.freedomblogging.com/2010/02/08/israeli-ambassador-xxxx-at-uci/15647/

Australian activist released on bail in Israel

2010-02-09T11:02:00.000-05:00

By Middle East correspondent Anne Barker, staff

Posted Tue Feb 9, 2010 7:04am AEDT

Released on bail: Bridgette Chappell from Canberra (APTN)

Israel's Supreme Court has ordered the release of an Australian woman who was arrested during a pre-dawn military raid in the West Bank.

Bridgette Chappell, 22, from Canberra, was arrested with a Spanish woman after Israeli soldiers burst into the apartment they shared in Ramallah.

The Israeli government says Ms Chappell, who was studying Arabic and politics at Birzeit University in the West Bank, was arrested for overstaying her visa.

But she was also active in the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) - a pro-Palestinian organisation committed to resisting Israel's occupation of the West Bank.

Israel alleged Ms Chappell had taken part in illegal protests against Israel's occupation of the West Bank.

But Ms Chappell's lawyer argued in court that Israel had no jurisdiction in Ramallah on matters unrelated to security.

Ms Chappell lashed out at Israel from the dock before being led away.

"It's completely illegal what they're doing. They're trying to crush the popular resistance in Palestine," she said.

The court has ordered the women's release on bail until it can consider their appeals against deportation.
They have been ordered not to return to the West Bank.

Ms Chapell says she is currently in Tel Aviv and has been in touch with the Australian consulate.

"It's still pretty up in the air. I was released but I also have to appear in court again," she said.

"I can stay as long as the trial continues but we'll see what happens. I'm really going to try and fight to stay as long as I can."

She said that on the night of the raid she woke up at 3am to heavy banging on her door at the headquarters of the ISM in Ramallah.

"I looked out the window and I could see a line of army jeeps outside in the street. The next thing I knew about 15 soldiers came bursting into the house pointing their guns at us," she told ABC radio.

"The soldiers barged in, pointed their guns at us and asked us for our passports, which is actually illegal.

"IDF (Israel Defence Force) soldiers don't have the jurisdiction to ask you for your passports.

"It was ridiculous. It was a complete military operation. The IDF can say it was to do with our visas all they like but we know that's not the real reason. It was a very convenient excuse for them to take us."

Foreign activists released from detention

2010-02-09T10:59:00.000-05:00

High Court discussion reveals two Spanish, Australian women were detained near Ramallah in improper procedure

Aviad Glickman
Published: 02.08.10, 12:31 / Israel News

The Supreme Court ordered the release of two foreign left-wing activists Ariadna Jove Marti and Bridgette Chappell in exchange for NIS 3,000 each (about $800). In addition, they were banned from the West Bank.

It was also decided that the two must submit an administrative petitions on their stay in Israel within five days. In addition, the judges ruled that the State must issue affidavits regarding the jurisdiction of Oz unit inspectors in the territories.

The State Prosecutor's Office admitted that the arrest of the two near Ramallah on Sunday by members of the Interior Ministry's Oz unit was conducted in an improper procedure.

During a High Court discussion Monday, the State agreed to release the two women on bail, under the condition that they would be released into Israeli territories only.

The women, Ariadna Jove Marti of Spain and Bridgette Chappell of Australia, petitioned the High Court of Justice, claiming that their arrest was illegal as it was conducted in Area A, which is under full Palestinian control and not under the jurisdiction of the Israel Police.

The State's response revealed that the Israel Defense Forces handed the two women over to the Oz unit in the territories, rather than in Israel's sovereign territory, as it should have.

The State representative, Attorney Ilil Amir, said that despite the mishap, the two should be released as they were not allowed to enter the territories in the first place.

After the discussion ended, the State representative reconsidered and said that the detainees could be released.

'Army persecuting people'

During the discussion, the judges criticized the arrest procedure. Judge Asher Grunis asked the State representative whether her people took any action aimed at regulating the authority issues. She replied, "It has become clear that not all elements understand all the instructions."

Judge Grunis added, "If the two women are staying in Israel illegally, you must act in accordance with Israel's entry law. Why keep them in custody? In light of the circumstances, you should consider releasing them under conditions."

Judge Uzi Vogelman asked the State representative, "If we decide to release them, are there any special conditions under which you would want to release them?"

Following a consultation between the State Prosecutor's Office and the Interior Ministry, the State representative told the judges that there would be no problem releasing the two women into Israel only and on bail of NIS 25,000 (about $6,685).

The women's lawyer, Attorney Omer Shatz, said: "We're asking ourselves why the army is motivated to arrest these two peace activists of all people. The army's motivation is to persecute people based on their political opinions. I ask the court not to lend a hand to this illegality."

According to the lawyer, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos has become involved in the matter, asking the Israeli ambassador in Spain not to deport Marti.

Stop the Wall offices hit in late night raid

2010-02-09T10:52:00.002-05:00

Late last night Occupation forces raided the Stop the Wall offices in Ramallah. Some 10 military jeeps, hummers and an armoured bus surrounded the building as soldiers searched rooms, turning the office upside down and confiscating computer hard disks, laptops, and video cameras along with paper documents, CDs, and video cassettes.

Part of the mounting repression of the anti-Wall movement, this attack on the Campaign offices comes after the arrests of Jamal Juma’ and Mohammed Othman, who were both were later released after significant international pressure. Other arrest operations are ongoing, and currently some 40 anti-Wall activists are held for their grassroots mobilizing and international advocacy efforts in Israeli jails.

Many of those arrested are residents of Ni’lin, a village known for its fierce protests against the Wall. As part of an intensifying arrest campaign, 20 people were arrested last month in what has been the most serious campaign of arrests targeting the grassroots anti-Wall movement in the village.

Occupation forces have also been targeting international activists. Two foreign nationals working with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) were arrested in Ramallah several nights ago after Occupation forces raided the apartment where they were staying. Last month, another activist with the same organization was also arrested during a Ramallah night raid and deported.

The continuous targeting of the popular grassroots movement will not intimidate Palestinians struggling against the Wall. Resistance on the ground and on the international stage will continue will only cease once the decision of the International Court of Justice, which calls for the Wall to be torn down, is implemented.

Israeli forces arrest two foreigners in West Bank

2010-02-07T14:27:00.000-05:00

Israeli forces arrest two foreigners in West Bank

Posted using ShareThis

Israel detains 2 internationals in overnight raid

2010-02-07T09:32:00.002-05:00

Bethlehem - Ma'an - Israeli soldiers raided a Ramallah apartment early Sunday morning and detained a Spanish and Australian nationals over expired visas, the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee said in a statement.

The Israeli army forcefully entered an apartment in the Area A city of Ramallah at 3am and arrested two activists from the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) on suspicion of overstaying their visas. The two, Ariadna Jove Marti, a Spanish journalist, and Bridgette Chappell, an Australian student at Birzeit University, were then taken to the Ofer military prison located inside the occupied territories, where they were handed over to the Israeli immigration police unit "Oz," The PSCC said

"The raid and detention of the two is in direct violation of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which clearly forbids any Israeli incursion into Area A for reasons not directly and urgently related to security. Even the conduct of 'hot pursuit' is disallowed in non-security related matters, which overstayed visas are," the statement read.

In January, Czech national Eva Nováková was detained and deported to Prague under similar circumstances.

An Israeli military spokesman told Ma'an that the women were in Israel illegally and the arrests were executed by the army, adding that one woman was in possession of "fake documents" while the other had an expired visa. "Both were involved in illegal riots and in interferring with IDF activity," he said.

According to the spokesman, the two women were transferred to the Ministry of the Interior.

Ryan Olander, an American solidarity activist who was at the scene during the raid, told the PSCC that around ten soldiers forcefully entered the apartment and demanded to see the passports of everyone who was present and informed the two of their detention on the grounds of overstayed visas.

The soldiers confiscated cameras, a computer, pro-Palestinian banners and ISM volunteers' registration forms, Orlander said.

Orlander has been arrested twice by the Oz Immigration Unit but his deportation was stayed after a judge ruled his detention illegal, the PSCC said.

Army raids Ramallah to arrest international activists in violation of Oslo Accords

2010-02-07T09:29:00.003-05:00

Israeli soldiers raided a Ramallah apartment around 3AM to arrest a Spanish and an Australian activist over expired visas in direct violation of the Oslo Accords.

At three in the morning, the Israeli army forcefully entered an apartment in the Area A city of Ramallah and arrested two activists from the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) on suspicion of overstaying their visas. The two, Ariadna Jove Marti, a Spanish journalist, and Bridgette Chappell, an Australian student in the Beir Zeit university, were then taken to the Ofer military prison located inside the Occupied Territories, where they were handed over to the Israeli immigration police unit “Oz”.

The raid and detention of the two is in direct violation of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which clearly forbids any Israeli incursion into Area A for reasons not directly and urgently related to security. Even the conduct of “hot pursuit” is disallowed in non-security related matters, which overstayed visas are.

The arrests tonight follow the unlawful detention and deportation of Czech citizen Eva Nováková under similar circumstances last month. Her arrest stirred controversy over the misuse of the “Oz” unit inside the Occupied Territories, despite them having no authority in the area.

According to Ryan Olander, an American solidarity activist who was at the scene during the raid, around ten soldiers forcefully entered the apartment and demanded to see the passports of everyone who was present and informed the two of their detention on the grounds of overstayed visas. The soldiers confiscated cameras, a computer, pro-Palestinian banners and ISM volunteers’ registration forms.

Following the arrests Olander said that, “This raid is a continuation of Israel’s attempts to quash the grassroots movement against the Occupation. This is a cynical and unjust attempt to hide the reality of the Occupation and further bar access to information from the international community”.

Israeli attempts to deport foreigners involved with Palestinian solidarity work are part of a recent campaign to end Palestinian grassroots demonstrations, which involves mass arrests of Palestinian protesters and organizers. Over the last ten months, the “Oz” immigration unit illegally arrested and attempted to deport four other international activists.

Eva Nováková, a Czech national and former ISM media coordinator, was arrested in Ramallah on January 11th, 2010, and deported the next day, before the deportation could be appealed. Nováková’s lawyer is currently in the process of preparing an appeal to the Israeli High Court to challenge the legality of her arrest.

Additionally, American solidarity activist, Ryan Olander, was twice arrested illegally by the “Oz” Immigration unit, but his deportation was prevented after a judge ruled his detention illegal. Similar appeals to the court have also annulled the deportations of other American and British activists in recent months.

IOF raids ISM-Media Office in Ramallah

2010-02-06T23:57:00.001-05:00

Israeli Occupation Forces have raided the ISM-Media Office in Ramallah and arrested 3 of our activists. Bridgette (Ausi) & Ari (Spain) were two of them, we are unsure of third. I worked with them both in December-January. Bridgette is one of my very best friends & one of the best activists I have met. She replaced Eva, who was deported from Ramallah in the beginning of January, as the media coordinator & has written many articles speaking against the occupation. Unfortunately the role of ISM-Media Coordinator is played out by being arrested, harassed, & finally deported. I remember after Eva was deported, Bridgette saying "I wonder when my time will come?"

Ramallah is Area A, which means the IOF can't enter without military coordination from the Palestinian Authority. This raid follows an extensive arrest wave targeting grassroots activists and oragnizers throughout the West Bank. Such raids have been conducted in the villages of Bil’in – where 32 residents have been arrested in the past six month, Ni’ilin – where 94 residents have been arrested in the past 18 months, the cities of Nablus and Ramallah and East Jerusalem. The past three weeks have seen raids on ex-ISM bases in both Bil’in and Ni’lin also.

Israel’s tactic of repressing nonviolent international Palestinian solidarity activists is a true detriment to the nonviolent movement. We recognize the targeting of international nonviolent activists as part of a greater campaign against all nonviolent activists in Palestine (e.g. Wa’el A- Faqeeh and Abdallah Abu Rahmah). We will not, however, let their force deter us from standing with the Palestinian people and continuing to support the nonviolent struggle for freedom.

Palestinian Christians urge nonviolent resistance

2010-02-04T13:31:00.000-05:00

The leaders of the thirteen Christian communities serving in the Palestinian territories -- including Latin and Orthodox patriarchs -- have declared the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories a “sin against God and humanity” and urged Christians everywhere to nonviolently intervene to end its injustices.

“Today, we have reached a dead end in the tragedy of the Palestinian people,” wrote the authors of the Kairos Palestine Document, which was issued last month.

“The decision-makers content themselves with managing the crisis rather than committing themselves to the serious task of resolving it," the document says. "The problem is not just a political one. It is a policy in which human beings are destroyed, and this must be of concern to the church.”

The prelates of all thirteen Christian communities in the Palestinian territories endorsed the document. The co-authors of the statement include Patriarch Emeritus Michel Sabbah from the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, Lutheran Bishop of Jerusalem Munib Younan, and Archbishop Theodosius Attallah Hannah of Sebastian from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

The 12-page call-to-action details the consequences of the Israeli occupation for Palestinians and advocates for a Christian response that reflects the church’s universal mission “to bear witness to God and the dignity of human beings.” Such a response, the authors wrote, includes civil disobedience, boycotts, and divestment campaigns.

“Resistance is a right and duty for Christians. But it is resistance with love as its logic,” they said.

A year and a half in the making, “Kairos Palestine” represents “an unprecedented collaboration” among Palestinian Christians, said Rifat Kassis, a Palestinian Christian who coordinated the “Kairos” initiative. While church leaders have issued ecumenical statements on the future of Jerusalem, this marks the first time they have written on the occupation, “so thoroughly and with such wide representation,” he said.

The statement is primarily intended to encourage and motivate Palestinian Christians. A small minority in the region, many are emigrating because of the hardships of the Israeli occupation.

But Kassis said the document is also addressed to the universal church, encouraging its members “to not be passive but to look with compassion on the conflict, to help the two nations. They should exercise as much intervention and pressure in order to bring a just peace.”

“Kairos Palestine” opens with a bleak assessment of the Palestinian experience under Israeli occupation. The separation wall, the expansion of settlements and their acquisition of natural resources, the closure of Gaza, the imprisonment of thousands of Palestinians, and the emptying of Jerusalem of its Palestinian residents impede fair political solutions and contradict “the will of God for this land,” the authors wrote.

In contrast to the sectionalism that plagues the region, the statement emphasizes the land’s “universal mission” to be a place of “reconciliation, peace, and love” and the church’s prophetic mission to stand with the oppressed. Pointed words of criticism are levied at western theologians who give “theological legitimacy to the infringement” of Palestinian rights.

Publicly launched Dec. 11 at a gathering of religious leaders in Bethlehem, “Kairos Palestine” received coverage in the Arab media but scant attention, so far, in the Western press. The document did, however, evoke commentary from Christians for Fair Witness on the Middle East, a pro-Israel, ecumenical organization based in New York city.

A member of that group's executive committee, Msgr. Dennis Mikulanis, said the Palestinian appeal failed to “acknowledge some fundamental truths.”

“I understand that it comes from a place of deep Palestinian suffering. But we will not advance peace by placing all the blame on Israel’s shoulders, or by promoting the false idea that boycotting Israel will solve this conflict,” said Mikulanis, who is also vicar for ecumenical and interreligious affairs for the San Diego, Calif., diocese.

Others have lauded the Christian statement for championing specific action. The national committee for the Palestinian Boycott and Divestment and Sanctions campaign said it “saluted the moral clarity, courage, and principled position conveyed in this new document which emphasizes that resisting injustice should ‘concern the church.’ ”

Several mainline Protestant churches have already begun to consider divestment from companies directly involved in the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.

In 2004, the Presbyterian Church USA passed a resolution calling for “phased divestment” from companies profiting from the occupation. In 2007, the New England Conference of the United Methodist Church identified 20 such companies and recommended individuals divest from them. Included in the list were Lockheed Martin, the biggest overseas supplier for Israel’s armament industry, General Electric, provider of parts for Israel’s AH-64 Apache Assault Helicopter, and Caterpillar, manufacturer of militarized bulldozers and mining equipment used to demolish Palestinian homes.

David Hosey, media coordinator for the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and a missionary with the United Methodist Church, said members of the New England conference of that church are in correspondence with the targeted companies, the first step in “phased divestment.” The Methodists adopted a resolution in 2004 opposing the Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territories. Various regional conferences are now debating whether or not to express that opposition with divestment campaigns.

In December 2008, the Church of England divested 3.3 million dollars from Caterpillar. Church officials said the withdrawal was purely for economic reasons. But it was not publicly announced until February 2009, a month after the Israeli invasion of Gaza and a day before the British newspaper The Guardian was scheduled to publish a letter signed by twenty-three Anglican clergy condemning the Church’s “unethical” investment policy.

As for action from the Roman Catholic Church, Hosey said members of the Sisters of Loretto, a U.S. order of Catholic women religious, were pushing for shareholder resolutions urging Caterpillar to stop its sale of militarized bulldozers to Israel.

Christian calls for divestment have sparked criticism from various Jewish organizations and, at times, strained inter-religious dialogue. But Hosey thinks that could change as more Jewish and Israeli groups endorse using economic pressure to change Israeli action in the Occupied Territories.

Among the religious leaders who spoke at the Bethlehem launch of the Kairos document were American Rabbi Brian Walt, a member of Rabbis for Human Rights and co-founder of the Jewish Fast for Gaza, and Dr. Mark Braverman, executive director of the Holy Land Peace Project. Both praised the Palestinian statement for its call to action. Braverman likened it to Martin Luther King Jr’s, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

“The bold claim in the document that action for justice for the Palestinian people will also bring liberation for the Jewish people struck me as particularly important,” Walt said.

Kassis has created a Web site for the ongoing collection of endorsements. He said the document is being circulated among the member churches of the World Council of Churches, and has also been sent to regional ecumenical bodies, Pax Christi, and Caritas International.

“Soon we are going to ask them about action,” Kassis said.

Hope for Middle East peace talks?

2010-02-04T09:47:00.001-05:00

Please Watch:
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/insidestory/2010/02/201023132631822538.html

Until now, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has resolutely refused all negotiations with Israel until it stops building Jewish settlements for 12 months, including in East Jerusalem.

But Abbas seems to have lowered his ceiling of demands for resuming peace talks with Israel under the current situation.

He told a British newspaper that he would return to direct talks if Israel halted building for three months.
He repeated his new position at a press conference in Berlin, adding that he was also against armed resistance.

But why is Abbas backtracking now? And will it get results?

Inside Story presenter Shiulie Ghosh is joined by Manuel Hassassian, the PLO's ambassador to the UK, Professor Shmuel Sandler, the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at Bar Ilan University, and Ali Abunimah, the co-founder of electronicintifada.net, and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.

Scattered Palestinian protests reflect a fractured struggle

2010-02-04T08:39:00.000-05:00

Scattered Palestinian protests reflect a fractured struggle

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Gathering to rebuild Gawi tent creates air of solidarity and support in the face of police repression and settler violence

2010-02-03T17:42:00.002-05:00

Gathering to rebuild Gawi tent creates air of solidarity and support in the face of police repression and settler violence

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The 'summary' of the week

2010-02-02T08:29:00.002-05:00

Israeli attacks on Palestinians this week

West Bank, February 01, 2010 (Pal Telegraph) -This week, Israeli forces injured 12 Palestinians throughout the West Bank, compared to the 2009 weekly average of 17. This week's injuries bring the total number of Palestinians injured in Israeli‐Palestinian violence since the beginning of 2010 to 53.

Eight of this week's injuries were sustained in non-violent demonstrations throughout the West Bank: Ni'lin, where the apartheid wall is being built (two), Tuwani, where Israeli forces and settlers entered the village (one); and the Ramallah area, where locals and internationals were protesting the expansion of Hallamish settlement (five, see below). Three international activists and one Israeli soldier were also wounded in the latter. In a separate incident, Israeli forces physically assaulted and injured four Palestinians who were trying to enter East Jerusalem without the Israeli‐required permit.

Meanwhile, in two separate incidents that occurred at the checkpoints of Az Zayem and Jaba' (Jerusalem), Israeli forces arrested two Palestinians after allegedly attempting to cross with a weapon.

On one occasion, Palestinians threw a pipe bomb towards Israeli forces at Qalandiya checkpoint, the main entrance for Palestinians through the barrier into East Jerusalem from the north, known for its long lines and heavy security checks. While no injuries were reported, Israeli forces partially closed the checkpoint for almost eight hours (from 8:30 p.m. until 5 a.m.).

During the week, Israeli forces conducted 102 search operations inside Palestinian villages, the majority of which took place in the northern West Bank (68), slightly below the weekly average during 2009 (103). Media reports indicated that Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces arrested six men who work as aides to Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) Speaker Aziz Dwaik.

Israeli settler-related incidents

During the week, there were 10 settler‐related incidents, resulting in injury to five Palestinians; three settlers were also injured in the clashes, after they attacked a Palestinian community. A further six incidents affecting Israeli settlers occurred during the week, resulting in no injuries.

In the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem, where Israeli settlers have evicted 53 Palestinian residents and moved into their homes, Israeli settlers physically assaulted five Palestinians, injuring two of them. Clashes subsequently took place between the settlers and Palestinians. Israeli forces arrested two of the Palestinians; both were later released. In the same area, more than 400 Israeli, Palestinian and international activists held a demonstration against the eviction of Palestinian families from their homes. During the demonstration, Israeli forces blocked all entrances leading to the scene of the demonstration and arrested 20 activists; all were later released. These protests are now taking place on a weekly basis.

Price-tag strategy

One of the incidents reported this week stemmed from the "price tag" strategy, in which settlers attack Palestinians after attempts to dismantle a settlement outpost. Settlers entered the village of Beitillu (Ramallah) and clashed with the residents after the Israeli authorities dismantled a structure serving as a synagogue in the Givat Menachem outpost. Two Palestinians and three settlers were injured by stones, and one house and two vehicles sustained damage. Israeli army and police evacuated the settlers from the area and conducted an investigation. In a report issued in November, OCHA identified Beitillu as one of the Palestinian communities vulnerable to settler violence in the context of the "price tag" strategy.

In a separate incident, settlers from Bracha settlement (Nablus) entered the nearby village of Iraq Burin and clashed with the residents, after which Israeli forces arrived and fired tear gas and rubber‐coated metal bullets to disperse the settlers and the Palestinians; one Palestinian was treated for tear gas inhalation. During the week, settlers from Hallamish settlement also cut down 20 olive trees belonging to a Palestinian farmer from Deir Nidham village (Ramallah). In recent weeks, there have been regular demonstrations protesting the expansion of Hallamish settlement on Deir Nidham lands that have resulted in clashes between Palestinians, Israeli settlers and the Israeli army.

Also during the week, there were four incidents of stone‐throwing by Israeli settlers at Palestinians driving vehicles on roads near settlements in the Ramallah, Nablus and Hebron areas, resulting in no injuries or damage to vehicles. In addition, there were five incidents affecting Israeli settlers, in which Palestinians threw stones and Molotov cocktails towards Israeli vehicles driving near Palestinian villages in the Ramallah and Hebron areas. No injuries were reported, but the vehicles sustained some damage. In an additional incident, Palestinians threw stones at a vehicle carrying an Israeli minister who was visiting settlers in East Jerusalem; no injuries were reported.

Following last week's arrests of a number of Israeli settlers on suspicion of setting fire to and vandalizing a mosque in the village of Yasuf (Salfit) in December 2009, the Israeli police arrested a rabbi suspected of involvement in the incident. However, he, along with a number of those arrested, was subsequently released.

The lack of adequate law enforcement against violent Israeli settlers remains an issue of concern; during the reporting period, the Israeli human rights group, Yesh Din, demanded indictments of four settlers who were filmed by the police attacking Bedouins in the West Bank in the summer of 2008. However, the cases for all four settlers were subsequently closed without charge.

Palestinian cemetery vandalized in 'Awarta (Nablus)

During the week, a Palestinian graveyard was vandalized in 'Awarta (Nablus) and offensive graffiti was sprayed in Hebrew, English and Russian inside the village. The incidents happened while a group of settlers, under the protection of the Israeli army, were visiting a nearby site. Palestinians accuse the settlers and Israeli soldiers of being responsible for the damage; the Israeli army has started to investigate the incident.

New demolition orders issued

The Israeli Civil Administration (ICA) distributed demolition and stop-work orders against 17 Palestinian‐owned structures in Area C of the West Bank, due to the lack of required building permits. Three are in Beitillu (Ramallah), seven in Al Ka'abna (Jericho), two in Qizoon in Hebron City, three in Kerzliyeh (Aqraba‐Nablus) and two in Burin (Nablus). The orders include five residences in Kerzliyeh and Qizoon, placing 39 persons at risk of displacement; five structures under construction, two of which are planned for a mosque; a clinic; a two‐story building in Burin village; three residences in Beitillu; and seven structures in Al Ka'abneh, including five caravans belonging to the community's school, a mosque and a restroom. In 2009 and 2010, 226 Palestinian‐owned structures have been demolished in Area C to date, due to a lack of building permits, resulting in the displacement of 431 people and affecting an additional 554 people.

Also in Area C, the ICA delivered an eviction order targeting five tents and two animal shelters belonging to three families in Fasayil Al Fauqa area (Jericho), due to its location in a closed military zone for military training ("firing zone"). The order indicates that the family should evacuate their residence within 72 hours, placing 18 persons, including 11 children, at risk of displacement. Over 80 percent of the Area C demolitions in 2009 occurred in areas declared "firing zones". Since 1967, Israel has designated some 18 percent of the West Bank as a "firing zone". Many residents, however, report that they have never seen the Israeli military training in their vicinity.

Gaza Strip

No Palestinian direct conflict casualties for the second week in a row

For the second week in a row, there were no Palestinian casualties recorded in the Gaza Strip in the context of the Palestinian‐Israeli conflict. This period follows a significant escalation in violence during the first two weeks of 2010, which resulted in nine Palestinians killed and five others injured. This week only one land‐leveling operation by Israeli forces along the Gazan side of the border was reported, compared to a weekly average of three during the previous four weeks. Palestinian armed factions have continued to fire rudimentary rockets and mortars towards southern Israel, including military bases, resulting in no injuries or damage to property; a number of rockets reportedly landed inside the Gaza Strip or exploded prematurely.

Gaza floods update: 800 people affected

During the week, humanitarian organizations carried out damage assessments of homes, livelihoods and agricultural lands caused by the heavy rain and flooding that occurred on 18 January in the Wadi Gaza/Al Mughraqa area of central Gaza. The total number of people affected by the floods is estimated at approximately 140 households or 800 persons, who have since received basic emergency assistance including food and non‐food items from various agencies, including the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, the Ministry of Social Affairs in Gaza, UNRWA, UNICEF and several NGOs and local associations. An estimated 500 sheep and some goats, as well as hundreds of chickens, including those on two poultry farms, have perished, and many bee hives have been destroyed, as a result of the floods. Following health concerns, the carcasses of many these animals have now been cleared from the area and disposed of by the municipality; further clean up and repair to the area continues. A number of families are still living with host families, while waiting for their houses to dry out and subsequently be cleaned.

Gaza power plant partially shut down due to fuel shortage; up to 12-hour blackouts

On Jan. 23, Gaza's powerpPlant (GPP) had to shut down one of its two operating turbines and reduce its output from 65 to 30 megawatts (MW), due to a shortage of industrial fuel. The supply of industrial fuel, which is imported only from Israel, has been reduced since the beginning of 2010 from an average of 2.2 to 1.5 million liters a week, following a cut in the funds allocated by the Palestinian Authority, due to alleged financial constraints. Since the European Union's commitment to fund fuel for the GPP expired in November 2009, the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah has assumed responsibility for funding.

This week's reduction in the electricity output by the GPP has triggered long rolling scheduled blackouts, which reached 10‐12 hours, 4‐5 days per week in Gaza City, northern Gaza and middle area and 6‐8 hours, 3‐4 days per week in Khan Younis and Rafah, as indicated by the Gaza Electricity Distribution Company (GEDCO). There are also some 40,000 people, who remain without electricity at all times due to damage incurred to electricity networks during the "Cast Lead" offensive. The GPP authority indicated that fuel reserves are available for a few additional days and, if no more fuel is delivered in the next days, the GPP will completely shut down.

According to GEDCO, the overall supply of electricity to the Gaza Strip stands now at approximately 167 MW (120 MW purchased from Israel, 30 MW produced by the GPP and 17 MW delivered by Egypt), some 60 percent of the estimated electricity demand (280 MW). Electricity cuts are directly affecting refrigerated food, water pumping and air conditioning supply in individual households, as well as the provision of essential services, including water supply, sewage removal and treatment and medical treatment. As a result, public institutions are forced to rely extensively on backup generators and other alternative devices, which are extremely vulnerable due to the inconsistent supply of spare parts. WHO warned that the continued power cuts and blackouts not only put the life of hundreds of patients at risk but also may damage hospital equipment.

Exports of flowers and strawberries continue

Despite the ongoing prohibition of exports from Gaza, Israel agreed to allow four truckloads of cut flowers and two truckloads of strawberries to be exported via Kerem Shalom this week. Since 10
December 2009, 39 truckloads exited Gaza, including 15 truckloads of cut flowers (1,674,840 stems) and 24 truckloads of strawberries These shipments took place after the intervention of the Dutch government and are limited to the two types of goods. The Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee (PARC) indicated that 300 tonnes of strawberries and 30 million cut flowers are slated for export during this season (ending on 15 February for strawberries and 20 May 2010 for cut flowers)

after the intervention of the Dutch government and are limited to the two types of goods. The Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee (PARC) indicated that 300 tons of strawberries and 30 million cut flowers are slated for export during this season (ending on Feb. 15 for strawberries and May 20 for cut flowers).

There was a 34 percent increase in the amount of cooking gas that entered this week compared to last week (764.5 tonnes vs. 571 tonnes).* The Gas Stations Owners Association (GSOA), however, indicated that at least 2,000 tonnes of cooking gas needs to be transferred into Gaza, in addition to an uninterrupted transfer of at least 250 tonnes each day to overcome the ongoing shortfall. Since November 2009, the shortfall has led to a gas rationing scheme throughout the Gaza Strip, in which quantities of gas available at the Palestinian General Petroleum Corporation (PPC) are being distributed to bakeries and hospitals first, as a priority.

* The actual amount of cooking gas that entered last week was 571 tons during Jan. 10-16, while the amount reported in the previous weekly report was 914 tons, which includes quantities that entered via Kerem Shalom and Nahal Oz crossings, when both opened on Jan. 19.

Ref: OCHAOPT.

Press briefing: Case closed on shooting of American citizen Tristan Anderson

2010-02-01T08:32:00.000-05:00

Press briefing: Case closed on shooting of American citizen Tristan Anderson

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Nasser Gawi expelled from Sheikh Jarrah

2010-02-01T08:31:00.000-05:00

Nasser Gawi expelled from Sheikh Jarrah – settler detained, weapon seized

Again this is the family I stayed with in SJ.

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“We must transfer our anger to the brutalities of our time.” Howard Zinn dies at age 87

2010-01-30T10:21:00.001-05:00

Personal Thoughts: This is one of the greatest speech's I have heard. The points Zinn makes are revolutionary but yet so simple. THINK!!

From the Blog: The Politics of Hope by Mark Braverman

I graduated from Columbia in 1970. Students had closed down the campus that Spring over the U.S. bombing of Cambodia. Two years earlier the campus was in turmoil when students and faculty occupied several buildings in protest over the University’s plans to take over a chunk of the local neighborhood in upper Manhattan to build a gym. The President of Columbia had sent in NY riot police to break heads and drag out the protesters. So when that President took the podium at our graduation, several hundred of us ceremoniously walked out and held a counter-commencement. The speaker was Howard Zinn.

This week’s blog posting is a speech Zinn gave on October 10, 1999. You won’t be able to stop reading until you reach the end.

Some years ago, when I was teaching at Boston University, I was asked by a Jewish group to give a talk on the Holocaust. I spoke that evening, but not about the Holocaust of World War II, not about the genocide of six million Jews. It was the mid-Eighties, and the United States government was supporting death squad governments in Central America, so I spoke of the deaths of hundreds of thousands of peasants in Guatemala and El Salvador, victims of American policy. My point was that the memory of the Jewish Holocaust should not be encircled by barbed wire, morally ghettoized, kept isolated from other genocides in history. It seemed to me that to remember what happened to Jews served no important purpose unless it aroused indignation, anger, action against all atrocities, anywhere in the world.

A few days later, in the campus newspaper, there was a letter from a faculty member who had heard me speak—a Jewish refugee who had left Europe for Argentina, and then the United States. He objected strenuously to my extending the moral issue from Jews in Europe in the 1940s to people in other parts of the world, in our time. The Holocaust was a sacred memory. It was a unique event, not to be compared to other events. He was outraged that, invited to speak on the Jewish Holocaust, I had chosen to speak about other matters.

I was reminded of this experience when I recently read a book by Peter Novick, THE HOLOCAUST IN AMERICAN LIFE. Novick’s starting point is the question: why, fifty years after the event, does the Holocaust play a more prominent role in this country—the Holocaust Museum in Washington, hundreds of Holocaust programs in schools—than it did in the first decades after the second World War? Surely at the core of the memory is a horror that should not be forgotten. But around that core, whose integrity needs no enhancement, there has grown up an industry of memorialists who have labored to keep that memory alive for purposes of their own.

Some Jews have used the Holocaust as a way of preserving a unique identity, which they see threatened by intermarriage and assimilation. Zionists have used the Holocaust, since the 1967 war, to justify further Israeli expansion into Palestinian land, and to build support for a beleaguered Israel (more beleaguered, as David Ben-Gurion had predicted, once it occupied the West Bank and Gaza). And non-Jewish politicians have used the Holocaust to build political support among the numerically small but influential Jewish voters—note the solemn pronouncements of Presidents wearing yarmulkas to underline their anguished sympathy.

I would never have become a historian if I thought that it would become my professional duty to go into the past and never emerge, to study long-gone events and remember them only for their uniqueness, not connecting them to events going on in my time. If the Holocaust was to have any meaning, I thought, we must transfer our anger to the brutalities of our time. We must atone for our allowing the Jewish Holocaust to happen by refusing to allow similar atrocities to take place now—yes, to use the Day of Atonement not to pray for the dead but to act for the living, to rescue those about to die.

When Jews turn inward to concentrate on their own history, and look away from the ordeal of others, they are, with terrible irony, doing exactly what the rest of the world did in allowing the genocide to happen. There were shameful moments, travesties of Jewish humanism, as when Jewish organizations lobbied against a Congressional recognition of the Armenian Holocaust of 1915 on the ground that it diluted the memory of the Jewish Holocaust. Or when the designers of the Holocaust Museum dropped the idea of mentioning the Armenian genocide after lobbying by the Israeli government. (Turkey was the only Moslem government with which Israel had diplomatic relations.)

Another such moment came when Elie Wiesel, chair of President Carter’s Commission on the Holocaust, refused to include in a description of the Holocaust Hitler’s killing of millions of non-Jews. That would be, he said, to falsify the reality in the name of misguided universalism. Novick quotes Wiesel as saying They are stealing the Holocaust from us. As a result the Holocaust Museum gave only passing attention to the five million or more non-Jews who died in the Nazi camps. To build a wall around the uniqueness of the Jewish Holocaust is to abandon the idea that humankind is all one, that we are all, of whatever color, nationality, religion, deserving of equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What happened to the Jews under Hitler is unique in its details but it shares universal characteristics with many other events in human history: the Atlantic slave trade, the genocide against native Americans, the injuries and deaths to millions of working people, victims of the capitalist ethos that put profit before human life.

In recent years, while paying more and more homage to the Holocaust as a central symbol of man’s cruelty to man, we have, by silence and inaction, collaborated in an endless chain of cruelties. Hiroshima and My Lai are the most dramatic symbols—and did we hear from Wiesel and other keepers of the Holocaust flame outrage against those atrocities? Countee Cullen once wrote, in his poem Scottsboro, Too, Is Worth Its Song (after the sentencing to death of the Scottsboro Boys): Surely, I said/ Now will the poets sing/ But they have raised no cry/I wonder why.

There have been the massacres of Rwanda, and the starvation in Somalia, with our government watching and doing nothing. There were the death squads in Latin America, and the decimation of the population of East Timor, with our government actively collaborating. Our church-going Christian presidents, so pious in their references to the genocide against the Jews, kept supplying the instruments of death to the perpetrators of other genocides.

True there are some horrors which seem beyond our powers. But there is an ongoing atrocity which is within our power to bring to an end. Novick points to it, and physician-anthropologist Paul Farmer describes it in detail in his remarkable new book INFECTIONS AND INEQUALITIES. That is: the deaths of ten million children all over the world who die every year of malnutrition and preventable diseases. The World Health Organization estimates three million people died last year of tuberculosis, which is preventable and curable, as Farmer has proved in his medical work in Haiti. With a small portion of our military budget we could wipe out tuberculosis.

The point of all this is not to diminish the experience of the Jewish Holocaust, but to enlarge it. For Jews it means to reclaim the tradition of Jewish universal humanism against an Israel-centered nationalism. Or, as Novick puts it, to go back to that larger social consciousness that was the hallmark of the American Jewry of my youth. That larger consciousness was displayed in recent years by those Israelis who protested the beating of Palestinians in the Intifada, who demonstrated against the invasion of Lebanon.

For others—whether Armenians or Native Americans or Africans or Bosnians or whatever—it means to use their own bloody histories, not to set themselves against others, but to create a larger solidarity against the holders of wealth and power, the perpetrators and ongoing horrors of our time.

The Holocaust might serve a powerful purpose if it led us to think of the world today as wartime Germany—where millions die while the rest of the population obediently goes about its business. It is a frightening thought that the Nazis, in defeat, were victorious: today Germany, tomorrow the world. That is, until we withdraw our obedience.

Israel keeps up Palestinian evictions

2010-01-29T15:54:00.001-05:00

Videos from AlJazeeraEnglish.

Nasser Al Ghawi's tent demolished:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-Rcp3vWNUs&feature=channel

Qassem family eviction:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EISikrLcSw8&NR=1&feature=fvwp

I know this is somewhat backdated but it gives a good idea of what Palestinian families go through. These are the same families I slept outside in a tent with for the first 2 weeks of my journey. I saw those same settlers every night causing issues. It is still going on today!!!

Gaza from above

2010-01-29T09:26:00.002-05:00

This is an aerial photo of Gaza, where a 200 foot wide star of David was carved into farmland by Israeli tanks.

It's one of the images contained in the Goldstone Report.

Justice Goldstone himself spoke to students at Yale University this week, and though press coverage of the event is scant, Mondoweiss blog tells the story:

though he said he would not be talking about Gaza, his report came up again and again, and in fact the anti-Goldstoners tried to turn the event into a circus.

The hostility to his presence also made it into the pages of the Yale student newspaper .

The two student authors of the piece attack the report as "riddled with factual errors and twisted accounts of the war", but instead of providing any reasoned argument in support of their accusation, they paint the Judge as the biased puppet of the United Nations Human Rights Council, which, again without any supporting argument or evidence, they write off as:

"...a body that is used by some of the world’s worst human rights abusers to deflect attention from their own authoritarianism and brutality.

Now the distinguished and experienced Goldstone has been savaged by plenty of much more heavyweight critics, so the shallow attacks of a couple of students is unlikely to register on his consciousness; nonetheless the piece does tend to illustrate how the narrative and techniques of the anti-Goldstone crowd have been absorbed at many levels.

B'Tselem calls for investigation into Nablus executions

2010-01-29T08:48:00.000-05:00

Bethlehem - Ma'an - The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem requested Major General Avichai Mandelblit investigate the execution-style deaths of three men in Nablus on 26 December, a report from the group said Wednesday.

The men, allegedly suspects in the death of a settler rabbi days earlier, were shot dead at close range in their homes, in two cases as their families watched. Detention raids are a regular part of the Israeli occupation, particularly in the north recently.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, there are on average 103 search and arrest operations conducted each week in the West Bank; only three in the past three years have resulted in the death of the "wanted" individuals. All three deaths occurred during the 26 December raids.

At the time, Israeli forces said they were killed during an "attempt to locate and arrest" the men. Reports indicated that the men were all shot because they presented a security risk.

According to B'Tselem, the "killing of the three Fatah activists in Nablus was unlawful," and "the soldiers' violence against the families of the three men and the damage caused to their property" were matters that warranted investigation.

The organization investigated the reports, according to its statement, including interviews with nine relatives of the men who were killed. "Examination of the findings at the scene and of medical reports, revealed a different version" of events than those presented by the military, B'Tselem said.

"The investigation raises a grave suspicion that the soldiers acted unlawfully and, at least in the cases of Ghassan Abu Sharakh and Nader As-Sarkaji, made no attempt to arrest them before shooting them to death. This, in spite of the fact that the two had obeyed the order to exit their home, and were not carrying arms.

"As there were no eyewitnesses to the killing of Anan Subuh, B'Tselem cannot ascertain the circumstances in which he was shot by soldiers. However, B'Tselem's investigation indicates that, although a weapon was found in his hiding place, 'Anan Subuh did not fire at the soldiers. The IDF's Spokesperson's announcements regarding this incident did not mention an exchange of gunfire that night."

Moreover, the organization stated, as the men were "merely suspects," the army's duty was to arrest them and bring them to trial. Israel denies that it carries out assassinations in the West Bank, yet B'Tselem's investigation raise a grave suspicion that the soldiers acted as if they were on an assassination mission, not an arrest operation.

Background: This is one of the first experiences I had in Nablus. Please look back to the report about three men in Nablus who were murdered. I took those pictures.

Latest wave of Israeli repression against Palestinian popular resistance in the occupied West Bank makes the NYT

2010-01-29T08:40:00.003-05:00

Israel Signals Tougher Line on West Bank Protests

NILIN, West Bank — For more than a year, this village has been a focus of weekly protests against the Israeli security barrier, which cuts through its lands. Now, the village appears to be at the center of an intensifying Israeli arrest campaign.

Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times

Israeli troops and Palestinians from Nabi Saleh scuffled on Jan. 15 as the group tried to reach farmland.

Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times

Palestinian women tried to avoid tear gas during clashes with members of the Israeli security forces in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh on Jan. 22.

The New York Times

Nilin has been the focus of protests against the barrier.

Apparently concerned that the protests could spread, the Israeli Army and security forces have recently begun clamping down, arresting scores of local organizers and activists here and conducting nighttime raids on the homes of others.

Muhammad Amira, a schoolteacher and a member of Nilin’s popular committee, the group that organizes the protests, said his home was raided by the army in the early hours of Jan. 10. The soldiers checked his identity papers, poked around the house and looked in on his sleeping children, Mr. Amira said.

He added, “They came to say, ‘We know who you are.’ ”

Each Friday for the last five years, Palestinians have demonstrated against the barrier, bolstered by Israeli sympathizers and foreign volunteers who document the ensuing clashes with video cameras, often posting the most dramatic footage on YouTube.

Israel says the barrier, under construction since 2002, is essential to prevent suicide bombers from reaching its cities; the Palestinians oppose it on grounds that much of it runs through the territory of the West Bank.

While the weekly protests are billed as nonviolent resistance, they usually end in violent confrontations between the Israeli security forces and masked, stone-throwing Palestinian youths. “These are not sit-ins with people singing ‘We Shall Overcome,’ ” said Maj. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli Army’s Central Command, which controls the West Bank. “These are violent, illegal, dangerous riots.”

Other Palestinians are “jumping on the bandwagon,” he said, and the protests “could slip out of control.”
The protests first took hold in the nearby village of Bilin, which became a symbol of Palestinian defiance after winning a ruling in the Israeli Supreme Court stipulating that the barrier must be rerouted to take in less agricultural land. According to military officials, work to move the barrier will start next month.

Like a creeping, part-time intifada, the Friday protests have been gaining ground. Nabi Saleh, another village near Ramallah, has become the newest focus of clashes, after Jewish settlers took over a natural spring on village land.

One recent Friday, a group of older villagers marched toward the spring. They were met with tear gas and stun grenades, and scuffled with soldiers on the road. Other villagers spilled down the hillsides swinging slingshots and pelted the Israelis with stones.

“Israel recognizes the threat of the popular movement and its potential for expanding,” said Jonathan Pollak, an Israeli anarchist and spokesman of the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee, which is based in Ramallah. “I think the goal is to quash it before it gets out of hand.”

In recent months the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, and other leaders of the mainstream Fatah Party have adopted Bilin as a model of legitimate resistance.

The movement has also begun to attract international support. The Popular Struggle Coordination Committee receives financing from a Spanish governmental agency, according to the committee’s coordinator, Mohammed Khatib of Bilin.

“Bilin is no longer about the struggle for Bilin,” said Mr. Khatib, who was arrested in August and has been awaiting trial on an incitement charge. “This is part of a national struggle,” he said, adding that ending the Israeli occupation was the ultimate goal. Before dawn on Thursday soldiers came to Mr. Khatib’s home in Bilin and took him away again.

Israel security officials vehemently deny that they are acting to suppress civil disobedience, saying that security is their only concern. Among other things, they argue that the popular committees encourage demonstrators to sabotage the barrier, which Israel sees as a vital security tool.

The Israeli authorities have also turned their attention to the foreign activists, deporting those who have overstayed visas or violated their terms. In one case soldiers conducted a raid in the center of Ramallah, where the Palestinian Authority has its headquarters, to remove a Czech woman who had been working for the International Solidarity Movement, a pro-Palestinian group.

Israeli human rights groups like B’Tselem and Yesh Din have long complained of harsh measures used to quell the protests, including rubber bullets and .22-caliber live ammunition. The Israeli authorities say the live fire is meant to be used only in dangerous situations, and not for crowd control. But the human rights groups say that weapons are sometimes misused, apparently with impunity, with members of the security forces rarely held to account.

About a hundred soldiers and border police officers have been wounded in the clashes since 2008, according to the military. But the protesters are unarmed, their advocates argue, while the Israelis sometimes respond with potentially lethal force.

Tristan Anderson, 38, an American activist from Oakland, Calif., was severely wounded when he was struck in the forehead by a high-velocity tear-gas canister during a confrontation in Nilin last March.

After months in an Israeli hospital, Mr. Anderson has regained some movement on one side, and has started to talk. But he has serious brain damage, according to his mother, Nancy, and the prognosis is unclear.

The Andersons’ Israeli lawyer, Michael Sfard, is convinced that the tear-gas projectile was fired directly at the protesters, contrary to regulations. Yet the Israeli authorities who investigated the episode recently decided to close the case without filing charges.

The investigation found that the Israeli security forces had acted in line with regulations, according to Israeli officials. But witnesses insist the projectile was fired from a rise only about 60 yards from where Mr. Anderson stood. If it had been fired properly, in an arc, they contend, it would have flown hundreds of yards.

Nineteen Palestinians have been killed in confrontations over the barrier since 2004. A month after Mr. Anderson was wounded, Bassem Abu Rahmah, a well-known Bilin activist, was killed when a similar type of tear-gas projectile struck him in the chest.

Aqel Srur, of Nilin, one of three Palestinians who gave testimony to the Israeli police in the Anderson case, was killed by a .22-caliber bullet in June.

So far, the activists seem undeterred. Salah Muhammad Khawajeh, a Nilin popular committee member and another local witness in the Anderson case, related that when he was summoned for questioning two months ago, he was warned that he could end up like Mr. Srur.

Mr. Khawajeh’s son, 9, was wounded in the back of the head by a rubber bullet at a protest this month.

But as Mr. Khawajeh put it, “We still come.”

'Avatar' and the Palestinian blues

2010-01-29T08:32:00.001-05:00

ISRAEL: 'Avatar' and the Palestinian blues

Posted using ShareThis

Obama answers a question on Palestine...

2010-01-28T18:01:00.000-05:00

One day after The State of the Union Address Obama answers a question on Palestine. This is in Tampa, Florida at a town hall meeting. The question was asked by a University of South Florida student.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qhhrz2OqEx0

The two main accusations Palestinian governments renounced years ago. Give us another excuse. What about Israeli's excessive force or Palestinians right to a state!? In case you didn't realize he, a black man, supports apartheid.

Animating the lost Palestinian Film Archive

2010-01-28T10:48:00.000-05:00

An experimental film essay investigating the cultural importance of cinema.

http://www.animateprojects.org/films/by_date/2009/for_cultural

Mohammed Khatib, coordinator of West Bank Coordination Committee arrested

2010-01-28T08:23:00.002-05:00

Mohammed Khatib, coordinator of West Bank Coordination Committee arrested

Posted using ShareThis

Capital Murder

2010-01-27T12:41:00.001-05:00

Written by benwhite

The current consensus in the international community is that East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel since 1967, is the capital of a future Palestinian state. Israel’s unilateral annexation of territory to create expanded municipal boundaries for a ‘reunited’ Jerusalem was never recognised.

Over the last forty-three years, Israel has created so-called ‘facts on the ground’ in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), in defiance of international law. Since the Madrid/Oslo peace process, successive Israeli governments have continued to colonise Palestinian land at the same time as conducting negotiations.

The extent and scale of Israel’s illegal settlement project across the West Bank, as well as the road network, the Separation Wall, and other ways in which Israel maintains its rule over the OPT, has led some to believe that the creation of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state is impossible.

Perhaps one of the clearest indicators that there is no Palestinian state-in-waiting under Israel’s regime of control is East Jerusalem.

Israel has three, inter-related strategic goals for East Jerusalem:

To make the claim that Jerusalem is the ‘eternal, undivided Jewish capital’ a physical reality.
Increase the Jewish presence/decrease the Palestinian presence (‘the demographic battle’).
Cut off East Jerusalem from the West Bank.

These are not new, but over two decades – and perhaps especially in the last few years – there has been an acceleration of the tactics being used to realise these goals. The rest of this article will provide a simple, by no means comprehensive, overview of Israel’s policies in East Jerusalem that have effectively killed the possibility of establishing a Palestinian capital.

Mapping the land and creating colonies

Since 1967, Israel has created a number of settlements in the unilaterally expanded city boundaries, with a current population of over 180,000. This represents an expansion of 65% since 1987, while the land taken up by the East Jerusalem colonies went up by 143% in the same time frame (OCHA, opens as PDF).

The purpose of the settlements, both those close to the Old City, as well as the ‘outer ring’ (or Jerusalem ‘envelope’) has been to make the annexation of East Jerusalem a fait accompli. As ex-deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Meron Benvenisti commented, the aim of the expropriation of land around Jerusalem just three years into the post-’67 occupation was “to encircle the city with huge dormitory suburbs ‘that would obviate any possibility of the redivision of Jerusalem’”.

Israel’s annexation of land around Jerusalem almost tripled (PDF) the land under the city’s municipal authority. A third of the annexed land was expropriated for settlements, and over forty years, more than 50,000 housing units were built for the Jewish population on this land; none, of course, for Palestinians.

From 2000 to 2009, Israel confiscated PDF) over 40,000 dunams in Jerusalem; just under two-thirds of that total was taken in the last five years (’05-’09). In April last year, the UN OCHA reported (PDF) that only 13% of the Israeli-annexed area of East Jerusalem is ‘zoned’ for Palestinian construction (if permission is obtained).

‘Zoning’ land in East Jerusalem for particular purposes is an important way that Israel limits the natural growth of the Palestinian population. Some areas are declared ‘Green’, meaning no building is permitted there. In Jabal Mukaber, for example, 15,000 Palestinian residents are kept to 20% of the neighbourhood’s land, with the rest marked ‘Green’. However, there are a number of settlements that were built on land previously zoned as ‘Green’.

Targeting Palestinian neighbourhoods

Another strategy that has recently come under the spotlight is the targeting of Palestinian communities in East Jerusalem by extremist religious settler movements. In Sheikh Jarrah, Palestinians are being evicted from their homes in order for religious Jews to move in, a phenomenon described by ex-Tourism Minister – and supporter of the settlers – Benny Elon as “a microcosm of the entire story of Jerusalem”.

(Elon has highlighted Jewish settlement in Sheikh Jarrah as part of a plan “to create a Jewish continuum surrounding the Old City”, with other methods including “declaring open areas to be national parks and placing state property back-to-back with lands under Jewish ownership”.)

The irony about the Sheikh Jarrah evictions is that the settlers are making their case in the courts based on a claim of pre-1948 ownership. Palestinians dispossessed in the Nakba would not be hopeful of regaining their property on the same basis – whether in West Jerusalem or elsewhere.

Is not it absurd that the very same Palestinian whose property was confiscated in 1948 finds that his new home is confiscated on the grounds that it was owned previously to 1948 by Jews? What is it precisely that distinguishes the claim of the Jew from that of the Palestinian?

Uri Bank, a political activist for the extreme-right Moledet party, described the process and objective in comments made in 2003: “We break up Arab continuity and their claim to East Jerusalem by putting in isolated islands of Jewish presence in areas of Arab population…Our eventual goal is Jewish continuity in all of Jerusalem.” Ariel Sharon once boasted that the “goal” was “not leaving one neighbourhood in East Jerusalem without Jews”.

Meanwhile, archaeological excavations are delegated by Israeli authorities to ideologically-driven right-wing Jewish groups. Silwan is home to the ‘City of David’ project, a tourism-oriented initiative of the settler group Elad. Dozens of Palestinian homes in Silwan are threatened with demolition, while Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat hopes to develop the area “in terms of historical and religious tourism”.

In May 2009, Ha’aretz revealed that the Israeli Prime Minister’s office and Jerusalem municipality were working with settler groups to “surround the Old City of Jerusalem with nine national parks, pathways and sites”. The Jerusalem Development Authority said the aim was “to strengthen Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel”.

The Israel Lands Administration works “together with the [settlement-promoting] Ateret Cohanim association”, while the new “Samaria and Judea District Police” headquarters in the strategic E1 area received funding from both the state and right-wing Jewish groups. It is little wonder that EU consuls in East Jerusalem felt moved to accuse “the Israeli government and the Jerusalem municipality” of assisting right-wing groups in “their efforts to implement this ‘strategic vision’ [of altering the city’s demographic balance and severing East Jerusalem from the West Bank].

The road network

Planning transportation links, and particularly road networks, is a vital part of shaping the nature of how a city develops. The Jerusalem municipality understands this, and thus the roads that go through and around occupied East Jerusalem are another part of Israel’s strategy.

One particularly key project is the Eastern Ring Road, the idea of which is to ‘join the dots’ between Israeli colonies in East Jerusalem, and West Jerusalem. A proposed 11km section of the route goes through numerous Palestinian villages and neighbourhoods of Jerusalem, meaning the confiscation of over 1,000 dunams of land. According to a report in the Jerusalem Post in 2006, the idea of the ring road goes back some years, “and was first sketched onto maps by Ariel Sharon during his tenure as a Likud minister and planner of construction efforts designed to erase Israel’s Green Line boundary with the West Bank”.

Palestinians, meanwhile, are being built ‘alternative’ roads, in order to link up different enclaves. When serving as the UN’s Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the OPT, South African legal professor John Dugard described what he called “Israel’s broader plan to replace territorial contiguity with ‘transportational contiguity’ by artificially connecting Palestinian population centres through an elaborate network of alternate roads and tunnels and creating segregated road networks, one for Palestinians and another for Israeli settlers, in the West Bank”.

It is also important to mention the Jerusalem Light Rail, a project that has suffered setbacks on account of the international BDS movement. Once again, while the public, official purpose of the rail line is “relieving traffic congestion and renewal of the city centre”, the map of the route confirms that is another way of the Jerusalem municipality consolidating the colonisation of the eastern half of the city.

The dividing Wall

Israel’s Separation Wall cuts through occupied East Jerusalem, dividing neighbourhoods, villages, families, and streets:

The wall epitomises all the tactics of domination. It more than doubles the area of East Jerusalem, creating a clover shape to include the new settlements and their development zones: Bet Horon, Givat Zeev, Givon Hadasha and the future Nabi Samuel park; Har Gilo, Betar Ilit and the Etzion Bloc; Maale Adumim.

OCHA describes the Wall’s deliberate function of inclusion/exclusion:

The route runs deep into the West Bank to encircle the large settlements of Giv’at Zeev (pop. 11,000) and Ma’ale Adummim (pop. 28,000). These settlements currently lie outside the municipal boundary but will be physically connected to Jerusalem by the Barrier. By contrast, densely populated Palestinian areas – Shu’fat Camp, Kafr ‘Aqab, and Samiramees with a total population of over 30,000 – which are currently inside the municipal boundary, are separated from East Jerusalem by the Barrier.

The Wall has created an enclave in Bir Nabala, where 15,000 Palestinians are surrounded. There are now some 50,000 Palestinians with Jerusalem residency who find themselves on the wrong side of the Wall.

Palestinians: immigrants in their own city

The Palestinians of East Jerusalem have ‘permanent residency’ status from the Israeli authorities. They are not citizens. In fact, as Attorney Yotam Ben-Hillel put it, Palestinians of East Jerusalem “are treated as if they were immigrants to Israel, despite the fact that it is Israel that came to them in 1967”.

The next time someone tells you that Israel is the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’, ask them why there are over 100,000 children in Jerusalem who were born without citizenship.

A Palestinian ‘resident’ does not need a permit to live and work in Israel, and is also entitled to health insurance and other social rights. However, ‘residents’ do not have the right to vote in national elections, can not automatically pass this status on to their children, and, are liable to having their ‘permanent residency’ revoked – which can happen without appeal or even notification.

In 2008, Israel stripped over 4,500 Palestinians in East Jerusalem of their residency status, which is a third of the total revocations since 1967. A leaked EU Heads of Mission report in 2005 observed that when it comes to the residency status policy, “Israel’s main motivation is almost certainly demographic”.

Restricting home construction

A fundamental part of Israel’s strategy in East Jerusalem is to restrict the ability for Palestinians to build or expand their houses, which restricts the growth of the community and also makes for conditions in which normal life becomes increasingly untenable.

The Jerusalem municipality’s discriminatory approach to housing means that as many as 40% of houses in East Jerusalem are ‘illegal’, because they were built without having received the proper building permit.

Permits, like in ‘Area C’ of the West Bank, are routinely denied – an EU report last year noted that Silwan had received only 20 building permits since 1967. The process of applying is also highly – often prohibitively – costly: over $25,000 for a 200 sq metre building. In 2009, over 900 demolition orders for Palestinian houses were issued by the Jerusalem municipality, with dozens carried out.

The Israeli newspaper Yediot Yerushaliyim reported in April of last year that the Jerusalem municipality “intends to spend 1.2 million shekels on aerial photographing to track building offenders, in the eastern part of the city in particular”. Earlier this month, Ha’aretz referred to the existence of a NIS 2 million budget “for demolishing and sealing off illegal structures”.

While encouraging and facilitating intensified colonisation of East Jerusalem, Mayor Nir Barkat sometimes feels compelled to make positive noises about providing solutions to the ‘Arab housing shortage’. Yet even when Barkat announced plans for new houses, over two-thirds of the units will take 20 years to complete – by which time, there will be a 74% shortfall in Palestinian housing needs.

The death of Palestinian East Jerusalem and Israeli ‘democracy’

It is not difficult to understand the rationale behind the outworking of the permit system and the demolitions, or to see the vision at work behind all the various policies covered briefly here. Teddy Kollek, mayor of Jerusalem from 1965 to 1993, quotes government officials in his 1994 book as saying that, “[It is necessary] to make life difficult for the Arabs, not to allow them to build…” An engineer and chief planner for the municipality once confirmed that the “only way to manage” the ratio between the Palestinian and Jewish population is “[through manipulation] of housing potential]”.

Amir Cheshin served as senior advisor on ‘Arab Affairs’ for ten years under Kollek and then Ehud Olmert. The book he went on to co-author does not shy away from the reality of Israel’s policies in East Jerusalem:

Kollek spearheaded the effort by Israel to settle east Jerusalem with Jewish families. In 1970 Kollek coauthored the proposal for development in east Jerusalem that became the basis for Israeli policy for the next decade. Indeed, the 1970 Kollek plan contains the principles upon which Israeli housing policy in east Jerusalem is based to this day – expropriation of Arab-owned land, development of large Jewish neighbourhoods in east Jerusalem, and limitations on development in Arab neighbourhoods.

This month, Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat described the Palestinians in East Jerusalem as a “strategic threat”, at a meeting of a Knesset lobby group. Barkat worried about the percentages, and the difficulty of keeping the Palestinians at 30% of Jerusalem’s population, the apparent goal. As ex-deputy mayor Benvenisti says, “It’s pure racism. We live in the only city in the world where an ethnic population ratio serves as a philosophy”.

In the words of the director of Israel’s Macro Centre for Political Economics, in order “to try to guarantee a Jewish majority and generate Jewish hegemony in Jerusalem”, Israel “has annexed huge parts of Jerusalem, enlarged the boundaries of the municipality, taken lots of land in the eastern part of the city and built more than 50,000 housing units on this land exclusively for Jews”.

This overview of Israel’s deliberate colonisation of East Jerusalem in defiance of international law only begins to scratch the surface. In the international ‘peace process’ and associated media reports, Jerusalem is typically presented as a ‘final status’ issue in the negotiations to establish a Palestinian state. Through policies going back 40 years, Israel’s leaders from across the political spectrum have made it clear that as far as they are concerned, Jerusalem’s ‘status’ is already final.

Auschwitz survivor: ‘Israel acts like Nazis’

2010-01-27T11:56:00.000-05:00

Exclusive: Graeme Murray and Chris Watt

One of the last remaining Auschwitz survivors has launched a blistering attack on Israel over its occupation of Palestine as he began a lecture tour of Scotland.

Dr Hajo Meyer, 86, who survived 10 months in the Nazi death camp, spoke out as his 10-day tour of the UK and Ireland – taking in three Scottish venues – got under way. His comments sparked a furious reaction from hardline Jewish lobby groups, with Dr Meyer branded an “anti-Semite” and accused of abusing his position as a Holocaust survivor.

Dr Meyer also attended hearings at Edinburgh Sheriff Court on Thursday, where five pro-Palestine campaigners are accused of racially aggravated conduct after disrupting a concert by the Jerusalem Quartet at the city’s Queen’s Hall.

Speaking as his tour got under way, Dr Meyer said there were parallels between the treatment of Jews by Germans in the Second World War and the current treatment of Palestinians by Israelis.

He said: “The Israelis tried to dehumanise the Palestinians, just like the Nazis tried to dehumanise me. Nobody should dehumanise any other and those who try to dehumanise another are not human.

“It may be that Israel is not the most cruel country in the world … but one thing I know for sure is that Israel is the world champion in pretending to be civilised and cultured.”

Dr Meyer was born in 1924 in Bielefeld, Germany. He was not allowed to attend school there after November 1938. He then fled to the Netherlands, alone. In 1944, after a year in the underground, he was caught by the Gestapo and survived 10 months at Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.

He now lives in the Netherlands, and is the author of three books on Judaism, the Holocaust and Zionism.

Dr Meyer also insisted the definition of “anti-Semitic” had now changed, saying: “Formerly an anti-Semite was somebody who hated Jews because they were Jews and had a Jewish soul. But nowadays an anti-Semite is somebody who is hated by Jews.”

A spokesman for the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, of which Dr Meyer is a member, said criticising Israel was “not the same” as criticising Jews.

Mick Napier, Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign chairman and one of the five demonstrators facing charges when the court case continues in March, said: “Palestinians are happy to have him as an ally in their cause.

“Hajo knows that Israel has a long history of abusing the tragic history of the Holocaust in order to suppress legitimate criticism of its own crimes.

“Especially since Gaza, people are no longer taken in by their claim that anyone that criticises Israel is anti-Semitic.”

Dr Meyer’s claims met with a furious reaction from pro-Israel groups, who branded him “a disgrace”.

Jonathan Hoffman, co-vice-chairman of the Zionist Federation, said: “I shall be telling him he is abusing his status as a survivor, and I shall be telling him that if Israel had been created 10 years earlier, millions of lives might have been saved.

“Whether he is a survivor or not, to use Nazi comparisons in relation to Israel’s policies is anti-Semitic, unquestionably.”

The tour was cynically timed, Mr Hoffman added, to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day on January 27.
Dr Ezra Golombok, Scottish spokesman for the Israel Information Office, accused the anti-zionist lobby of “exploiting” Dr Meyer, who he described as someone “who’s got into a situation he doesn’t understand”.

“This is a propaganda exercise by Mick Napier and his friends, and nothing more. It’s preposterous to compare Israel with Nazi tactics.”

The lecture series, entitled Never Again – For Anyone, continues until January 30.

Holocaust Survivor Protests Israeli Massacre in Gaza - 2009

2010-01-27T11:25:00.000-05:00

Elderly Holocaust Survivor protests Israel's response to Hamas rocket attacks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1NWucpa9Nc

Israeli forces detain 5 teens near Nablus

2010-01-27T10:18:00.002-05:00

Nablus – Ma’an – Israeli forces seized five Palestinian teens from the northern West Bank village of Burqa during early morning raids Wednesday, officials said.

Ghassan Daghlas, a Palestinian Authority official responsible for monitoring settlement activities in the northern West Bank, told Ma’an that several Israeli military vehicles stormed the village at midnight, and seized five young men after ransacking their homes.

He identified the detainees as 18-year-old Muhannad Seif, 17-year-old Yafi’ Suheil, 17-year-old Ashraf Hajja, 15-year-old Walid Daghlas, and 16-year-old Fadi Abu Omar.

Background: I stayed in this village for a week keeping night vigils. These boys were our friends. We played table tennis with them almost every night. Muhannad will spend at least 3 years in prison. The other 4 boys, since they are under age, will serve a lesser sentence of 1 to 1 1/2 years. What are they charged with you might ask...stone throwing & they will not be aloud to see their families. It is very frustrating. Where is the justice!?

Dr. Norman G. Finkelstein - University of Waterloo

2010-01-27T09:53:00.005-05:00

Dr. Norman Finkelstein debunks a holocaust card thrown by a Jewish girl, having crocodile tears in her eyes, with a holocaust card of his own but of different nature.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B7ijMjc2Js

Palestinians prepare to enter record books with longest caricature

2010-01-27T09:14:00.000-05:00

Gaza – Ma’an – Palestinians are hoping to enter the Guinness Book of World Records for the third time for drawing the longest caricature in the world.

Muhammad An-Nimnim, known as Abu Noon, the director of Artists for Freedom in Palestine and a Palestinian cartoonist, told Ma’an that the participants are in preparation and making the necessary arrangements to enter the record books with the longest caricature in 2010.

Abu Noon said he hopes that the picture will be drawn on the separation wall in Bethlehem in the West Bank, to boost tourism to the city. International artists will also participate in the caricature's creation, in support of peace, he said.

Coordination with a consulate is underway to complete the necessary procedures to allow the artists to begin drawing on the wall in Bethlehem, he added.

The caricature, he said, will express peace and the universal language of art. "Everyone talks about peace but no one listens, but today we will express our will, strengthen our steadfastness, and prove to the world that we want peace," said Abu Noon.

Abu Noon said that he has received over 45 applications from artists in the Palestinian territories and around the world, including international artists.

An-Nimnim called on President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority to facilitate the provision of legal and operational procedures to allow the event to take place on the part of the wall that closes off Bethlehem.

Palestinians have previously entered the Guinness Book of World Records for the world's largest plate of Kanafeh (a dessert made with semolina and white cheese) and the longest traditional dress.

Deir Yassin Massacre Documentary

2010-01-27T09:11:00.003-05:00

Video about the Deir Yassin Massacre committed by the Zionist terrorists in 1948.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prLPvqttW9c&feature=related

Israel uses depleted uranium against Palestinians in Gaza

2010-01-26T20:44:00.000-05:00

London, January 26, 2010 (Pal Telegraph) - A London-based Palestinian activist announced that the buildings damaged in the Gaza Strip after the Israeli onslaught last year all showed signs of contamination with depleted uranium.

"The ruined buildings and debris left after the Israeli attack on Gaza are contaminated with depleted uranium and similar types of weapons," said Sameh Habeeb, spokesperson for the Palestinian Return Center in London.

The activist quoted international nuclear experts as saying that the contaminated materials will be severely destructive and hazardous to Palestinian residents in the long run.

Habeeb criticized the United Nations for its inefficiency in providing the Palestinian people with proper services, saying that the international body has avoided proper measures to clean the contaminated areas.

The activist called on the UN to launch a probe into the type of weapons used by the Israeli troops during the 22-day war on Gaza last year.

Israel began waging war on the Gaza Strip on Dec. 27, 2008, and managed to kill a total 95 resistance fighters. Its major targets, however, were residential areas, mosques and medical centers.

The full-scale offensive led to the death of at least 1,400 Palestinian civilians, many of them women and children. Officials from various international bodies have confirmed that Tel Aviv resorted to unconventional weapons and terror tactics. Israel's casualties in the conflict were estimated at 13, including 10 military personnel.

The Israeli attack on Gaza is estimated by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics to have caused nearly $2 billion worth of damage.

The (Sheikh Jarrah) revolution won't be televised... it'll be YouTubed

2010-01-26T13:41:00.001-05:00

By Abe Selig, The Jerusalem Post

Sheikh Jarrah protest as shown on YouTube - Jan 2010

Social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, along with a slew of blogs, are playing an increasing role in the growing participation of young Israelis in protest rallies in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, activists and journalists familiar with the situation there told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

Activists and journalists both described a situation in which protesters were relying on the Internet to try and affect change on the ground and raise awareness of the arrests made during demonstrations in the neighborhood.

“It’s all Facebook, e-mails and Twitter,” said Didi Remez, a human rights activist, who has become noticeably involved in the Sheikh Jarrah protests as of late. Remez was arrested during a protest there last Friday.
Remez also said that distant audiences, like American Jews, who might be deprived of Sheikh Jarrah coverage due to the mainstream media’s lack of interest, were instead staying abreast of the situation via social networking sites.

“The American media is for some reason refusing to cover this,” he said. “Even though it’s becoming a major issue in Israel. And still, despite that, there’s a lot of awareness [of this issue] among Jewish Americans, the reason being that they are increasingly connected through Facebook, Twitter, blogs and so on.”

“They’re getting information on this without The New York Times,” Remez continued. “So, something that hasn’t been covered at all by the [American] mainstream media, is still getting coverage through new media, and I think that’s a statement about the decline of the mainstream media and maybe a larger comment on the shift away from it.”

Others echoed Remez’s comments, but added that another advantage of social media was its ability to counter police statements about Sheikh Jarrah they said the mainstream media often parroted.

“This is an issue that the media hasn’t really been covering, and when they have, they’ve mostly relied on police statements that portrayed the protesters as a handful of extreme leftists or anarchists, which is simply not true,” said Lisa Goldman, a Tel-Aviv based freelance journalist who has used Facebook, Twitter and blogs to follow the Sheikh Jarrah protests.

“What the social media outlets have been able to provide is a direct source of information that isn’t filtered through the mainstream media,” she said, adding that in this vein, the use of new media had been “absolutely crucial.”

Additionally, Goldman added, social media outlets had also served as a tool to awaken the mainstream Left to the goings-on in Sheikh Jarrah, including, but not limited to, the emerging issue of police behavior towards protesters there, which the Jerusalem Magistrate Court has even censured – ruling last week that the arrests of 17 protesters during a rally two weeks ago was illegal.

“The silent Israeli Left is finally waking up,” she said. “And it’s a result of the way some young people are using social media. It’s been very effective in raising awareness among the moderate Left, who are seeing that the police are suppressing free speech.”

Goldman also pointed to the participation in last Friday’s rally of Prof. Moshe Halbertal, who helped draft the IDF code of ethics and who has been active in disputing the United Nation’s Goldstone Report, as an example of figures who would certainly not be considered extreme, but who have joined the Sheikh Jarrah fray.

Hagai El-Ad, the director of the Association for Human Rights in Israel and one of the 17 protesters arrested two weeks ago, added that the use of new media to circumvent the mainstream media, which, he said, was often “reluctant to cover hard issues, or blatantly hostile,” was spreading rapidly.

“However, it’s not just new media [at play in Sheikh Jarrah],” he said. “I think there’s a need to [step back] from the tactics being used there, and zoom in on the core issue, which is the moral outrage of Jerusalemite families being thrown out of their homes and living in tents in the street. That’s the essential injustice here, and I think it’s a fuel of its own.”

Yet El-Ad did concede that the use of new media was a driving force behind the success of the Sheikh Jarrah protest organizers.

“They are a courageous group of young people, who are functioning without any real budget or resources,” he said. “But they are cleverly online, and they’ve been able to translate that into real movement on the ground – it’s not just a Facebook group that people add their names too.”

“Yes, the mobilization happens online,” El-Ad added, “but the end result is the most classic form of civil protest.”

Nil'in supporters plan fact-finding visit

2010-01-26T08:21:00.000-05:00

An urgent fact-finding mission to Ni'lin has been launched after the Israeli military began what activists termed an escalation of repression against human rights defenders in the village.

Nil'in representatives will welcome delegations of political leaders and journalists to the Ramallah-area village on Tuesday.

The visit aims to raise awareness about "the gravity of the attack on the village and the people's fundamental rights of freedom of expression, assembly and association" and, in turn, to extend protection to Ni'lin.

Arrests of human rights defenders in Ni'lin have lead to the detention of 11 people in less than one week, residents reported, and during night raids by the Israeli military in the village inhabitants are subjected to harassment, intimidation and destruction of property. In at least one case, the army arrested the father of a targeted human rights defender to press him to hand himself over.

Palestinian political leaders and eleven European diplomats have responded to the invitation to learn more about the ongoing arrests of human rights defenders active against the wall.

"I myself have been arrested for a month as part of this repressive campaign to stop mobilization against the illegal wall. I know that it was the international support from civil society and governments that achieved my release," said Jamal Juma', coordinator of the Stop the Wall campaign.

He added: "The day I was released, Israel changed tactics and targets now the grassroots. I am happy to see that pressure continues and the diplomatic representation of the European governments look for ways to effecitvely protect Palestinian human rights defenders. International pressure stopped the attack on the internationally known figures, now we need to stop the mass arrests of grassroots activists against the wall and ensure that the decision of the International Court of Justice to tear down the wall is implemented."

Ni'lin, located west of Ramallah in the West Bank, has lost over the last 60 years 48,000 of its original 58,000 dunum of land. The wall on the western side, and a military base on the southern side, will strip Ni'lin of a further 2,500 dunums of land.

Israelis, Palestinians point fingers after Mitchell failure

2010-01-26T08:17:00.000-05:00

Bethlehem - Ma’an/Agencies - Finger pointing over which side sets more preconditions for peace talks continues after US special envoy for the Middle East George Mitchell returns to Washington.

Following a series of meetings in the region, President Mahmoud Abbas refused Mitchell’s request to return to peace talks without the guarantee of a meaningful settlement construction halt, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed Abbas for a failure to move forward.

"The Palestinian Authority are the ones that are preventing the re-launch of the peace process with their preconditions that they have never asked before from any previous Israeli government," a statement from Netanyahu’s office said, adding, "The Prime Minister calls on the Palestinian Authority to sit at the negotiating table and discuss ways to promote security, peace, and prosperity for the two people."

Erekat, however, in a statement released on Saturday, blamed Netanyahu and his government for putting more conditions on negotiations. By continuing to build settlements, the statement said, Israel has announced its “intention to continue its occupation irrespective of [the] outcome [of peace talks], [and constitute] a direct challenge to the international community… [settlements and their construction] cast Israel’s readiness for peace further into doubt.”

Nil'in photo takes top prize at Dutch contest

2010-01-25T21:34:00.001-05:00

A Dutch photographer has won the Silver Camera Award in the foreign news category for his shot during a weekly demonstration against Israel's separation barrier in the West Bank village of Nil'in.

The award is widely considered the foremost prize for press photography in the Netherlands.

The photographer, Cris Toala Olivares, took the shot in October 2009 when he was in the West Bank for its annual olive harvest. He captured this moment when dozens of tear-gas canisters were shot at Palestinians in an olive grove in Nil'in.

Olivares, a Dutch citizen originally from Ecuador, also visited the Gaza Strip in January 2009 and produced a series of photos during Israel's assault on the coastal enclave over the winter.

Gaza's thin red line one year later

2010-01-24T18:54:00.000-05:00

Eva Bartlett, The Electronic Intifada

"The last Israeli attacks were the hardest, the most dangerous. It wasn't a war, it was a massacre. They shot anyone walking, anyone outside of their home, in their home ... it didn't matter. And it didn't matter if the victims were children or adults; there was no difference."

Ali Khalil, 47, has served as a medic with the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) and private hospitals in Gaza for more than 20 years. He has seen some of the worst atrocities committed by the Israeli army. During Israel's war on Gaza last winter, Khalil worked in Gaza's northern region, venturing repeatedly into high-risk areas bombarded by Israeli tanks, helicopters and warplanes to rescue the injured and retrieve the dead.

During the 23-day invasion, the Israeli army warplanes, drones, warships, tanks and snipers rendered entire areas off-limits and impossible for ambulances and civil defense fire and rescue trucks to reach. In the north, Ezbet Abed Rabbo and Attatra, east and northwest of Jabaliya, respectively, were among the districts occupied by the Israeli army.

Through the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Palestinian rescuers were sometimes able to coordinate with the Israeli army to gain access to areas they controlled.

"We'd wait five hours, even over 30 hours, for coordination from the Israelis to enter the area to retrieve wounded or martyred," says Khalil. "And much of the time, we wouldn't get it."

Even coordination, however, did not ensure access or safety.

"On 9 January, we went to retrieve wounded and martyred. There were three ambulances, and one ICRC jeep in front. We had coordination via the ICRC," says Khalil.

Marwan Hammouda, 33, a PRCS medic for the last 10 years, was on the same call. "We were driving to the area, speaking with the Israelis on the phone. They'd tell us which way to drive, what road to take. When we got near the wounded, Israeli soldiers started firing. I told them, 'We have coordination' and they said to wait. Then they began firing at us again."

Emergency workers under fire

According to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), that same day, 9 January, Israeli soldiers fired on a convoy of 11 ambulances led by a clearly marked ICRC vehicle in central Gaza, injuring an ICRC staff member and damaging the vehicle.

This was not the only that occasion emergency medics came under fire. During the invasion, Israeli forces killed 16 medical rescuers, four in one day alone. Another 57 were injured. At least 16 ambulances were damaged with at least nine completely destroyed.

Although the Geneva Conventions explicitly state that "medical personnel searching, collecting, transporting or treating the wounded should be protected and respected in all circumstances," throughout Israel's invasion this was not the case. Indeed, as the injured and emergency workers testify, Israeli forces targeted and prevented medical workers from reaching the wounded.

"If we can't even access areas with ICRC coordination, how are we supposed to help people?" asks Khalil.

Without coordination, many ambulances did not dare risk Israeli gunfire and shelling, meaning hundreds of calls went unanswered, according to PCHR. Denied medical care, many victims succumbed to their wounds.

It was days before ambulances could reach the bodies of at least five members of the Abu Halima family who were killed when Israeli shelling and white phosphorous struck their home. In addition, two young male cousins, Matar and Muhammad, were shot dead by Israeli soldiers as they tried to drive a tractor-pulled wagon carrying the injured and martyred.

Ambulances trying to answer the calls were fired upon by machine guns and further shelling. Ali Khalil is still traumatized by what he and other emergency workers finally found days later.

"I brought back baby Shahed's burned, gnawed corpse."

The infant body that Khalil carried out, burned by white phosphorous, left in the tractor wagon, had been partially eaten by stray dogs.

"For the rest of my life I'll remember that day. I'll never get over it."

Khalil is among many veteran medics who feel all the emergency workers need counseling for the stresses and traumas endured in their work.

Ahmed Abu Foul in the destroyed Palestine Red Crescent Society station, Ezbet Abed Rabbo.

The ambulance which Arafa Abd al-Dayem was loading when he was fatally struck by an Israeli-fired dart bomb.

Ahmed Abu Foul, 26, works as a medic and coordinator of all the PRCS volunteers in northern Gaza. He also works as a medic and coordinator with the Civil Defense, Gaza's fire and rescue services. He is newly a father of a baby girl.

Abu Foul has narrowly escaped death while working on many occasions, and his body bears the scars of Israeli-fired bullet, shrapnel and flechette (dart bomb) injuries. In the last invasion alone, Abu Foul was twice targeted by snipers, was at the Fakhoura school when it was hit by white phosphorous shells on 6 January, and was in a building that was being bombed while emergency workers tried to evacuate the victims. In the latter incident, Abu Foul's colleague was killed and Abu Foul was lacerated with shrapnel to the leg and head.

Despite his many close calls, Abu Foul maintains a convincingly cheerful attitude, and continues to work full time for both the Civil Defense and the PRCS. However, he admits the psychological and physical pain have not abated since the last Israeli attacks.

"My left leg is useless. When I walk too much, the pain becomes unbearable and my leg won't support me. There's still shrapnel in it, and the nerves were badly damaged by the shrapnel."

It's the same leg that was shot in May 2008 while Abu Foul was on a mission for PRCS, he says. Just above the support bandage around his calf, a hollow in his leg above his kneecap shows where the bullet bored straight through.

"A doctor here said he could remove the shrapnel and repair the nerves, but wanted to open it up from my foot all the way to my thigh," he says of his recent injury.

"I have pain in my head also, especially when it is sunny," he adds. "There's still shrapnel in it from the shelling, although doctors already removed three pieces."

He endures both injuries, waiting for specialists and the means outside of Gaza to remove the shrapnel. "It's too dangerous here; we don't have the means nor the medical equipment to locate the shrapnel before removing it."

Medical shortages under siege

Under siege since after Hamas' election in early 2006, Gaza is still not receiving all the necessary medical supplies needed, nor the spare parts to repair aged machinery. Doctors, unable to leave Gaza, cannot obtain advanced and specialized training. The health care system, post-invasion and under siege, is in more dire condition than before the Israeli attacks one year ago. According to Gaza's Ministry of Health, stocks of 141 types of medicines are depleted, as are 116 types of essential medical supplies.

Aside from Abu Foul's very present physical pain, it is memories of the wounded, the martyred, and the loss of his colleagues that still troubles him.

"I was with Dr. Issa Saleh coming down the stairs from the sixth floor of an apartment building in Jabaliya, evacuating a martyr, when the Israelis again shelled the building. They knew there were medics inside. They could see our uniforms and the ambulances outside. Dr. Saleh was hit by the missile."

Abu Foul describes in testimony to the al-Mezan Center for Human Rights how he believed he'd been mortally wounded.

"I put my hand on the back of my head and I found blood and brain. I then saw Dr. Issa had been decapitated and realized it must have been his head hitting my head and his brain on the back of my head."

Just days earlier, Abu Foul and other medics came under heavy Israeli fire for several minutes as they attempted to reach the injured.

The extreme stress and loss have manifested in Abu Foul's daily life. "I feel as though I don't care about anything now. Now, when I get angry I find myself hitting and throwing things. I feel nervous and I shout a lot now," he told al-Mezan.

Yet Abu Foul takes his role as an emergency rescuer seriously and is not daunted in his work, in spite of how it has affected his personal life. Abu Foul now continues to seek replacement equipment, requesting delegations visiting Gaza to bring any sort of emergency equipment.

"Ten out of sixteen fire engines are functional. We need fire hoses, spotlights for the trucks, handheld spotlights for searching in the dark, chemical extinguishing spray, electric saws for cutting through wreckage ..." The list is long and seems impossible when the Israeli siege on Gaza is tighter than ever.

A Palestine Red Crescent Society ambulance, destroyed by Israeli bombing at the al-Quds hospital and PRCS station, Tel al-Hawa, Gaza City.

Duty calls

"Each invasion becomes harder than the last," says Marwan Hammouda. Like his colleagues, Hammouda has no fear of death, and like them he has a history of injuries in the line of work, the latest being a gunshot to his left foot when the ambulance he was driving came under Israeli fire in Jabaliya.

Since Israel's invasion, Hammouda has developed a thyroid disorder, a condition doctors say is a result of post-traumatic stress.

"You saw the last war," he says. "There was nowhere safe, not homes, not schools, not kindergartens, not media buildings." And not ambulances.

"So do I want to die in my home, or in my work, at least helping people who have been injured?" Hammouda asks. "The Israelis don't have any respect for international law. And I have absolutely no confidence that things will change because American politicians give sweet speeches."

"My children got used to the idea that I could die at any moment in our work," says the father of six. "During the Israeli attacks, I only saw them for five or ten minutes a day. Some days I didn't see them at all because I was always with the ambulances."

Hassan al-Attal, 35, a father of three, was shot by an Israeli sniper while carrying a body from Zimmo crossroads east of Jabaliya back towards the wailing, flashing ambulance.

Since the Israeli tanks rolled in with the land invasion after the first week of aerial bombardment, injured and trapped residents of Ezbet Abed Rabbo -- one of the hardest-hit areas during the Israeli attacks -- had been calling for ambulances to evacuate the wounded and the dead. In almost all cases, emergency rescuers were unable to reach these calls, hindered by Israeli army shooting and shelling.

A medic for ten years, Attal has on many occasions come under Israeli fire and aggression while working.

His gunshot injury during the 7 January mission at 1:30pm came during Israel's self-declared "humanitarian cease-fire hours," when civilians were told they could safely walk the streets to buy food supplies or otherwise leave their homes.

After carrying the corpse only a few meters, Israeli sniper fire broke out on Attal and Jamal Said, 21, the volunteer with him.

"We came under heavy fire, around 20 shots. I was shot in the left thigh," says Attal.

Hazem Graith, 35, a father of four and a medic with the PRCS since 1999, worked in Gaza's north during the Israeli attacks.

Like most medics, Graith came to the profession out of a sense of obligation to his community. "Because I love to help people," he says.

Graith too has come under Israeli fire on many occasions. However, he is quick to emphasize that while the Israeli attacks on rescuers during last winter's invasion were the most savage and numerous yet, they were not isolated incidents. Rather, they were part of a larger Israeli policy of denying access of emergency personnel to the wounded which dates back to the beginning of the second Palestinian intifada in September 2000.

Targeting hospitals and medical facilities

In addition to attacking rescuers, Israeli warplanes and tanks attacked medical facilities and clinics during the Israeli war on Gaza. An investigative report published by the Guardian in March 2009 found that 15 of Gaza's 27 hospitals were bombed, and another 44 clinics were damaged -- two destroyed completely -- although the Israeli military knew the coordinates of all the facilities.

On 15 January, the al-Quds hospital complex in Tel al-Hawa was shelled repeatedly, including with white phosphorous, causing fires to break out, extensive damage and forced the evacuation of all patients from the hospital.

The al-Wafa rehabilitation hospital in eastern Gaza -- the only one of its kind in the entire territory -- was attacked on the night of 15 January by tank shelling, including with phosphorous, and machine gun fire. Hospital residents included the disabled and immobile patients, as well as the elderly. Fire broke out on the roof of the hospital, and most buildings in the complex sustained extensive damage.

When medics were forced to evacuate the Ezbet Abed Rabbo PRCS station on the second day of the land invasion, the small band of ambulances temporarily stationed outside of Hamid's home in Jabaliya. Days later, they moved to Beit Lahia's al-Awda hospital, where they were based for the rest of the Israeli attacks.

"It was the most dangerous invasion we faced. Everywhere was dangerous, there was no safe place. Especially after 4pm it was extremely dangerous to be on the streets. But if we didn't go out, who would help the people?"

Dodging missiles and gunfire on the streets and at attack sites, medics were further hounded at their temporary station at al-Awda hospital.

"The Israelis launched missiles on al-Awda, a hospital. Fortunately no one was killed in that attack, but it's a hospital, and our ambulance base," says Hamid.

Lost colleagues

Khaled Abu Sada, 43, another long-term medic, will never forget the Israeli attack that savagely martyred his colleague Arafa Abd al-Dayem.

On 4 January, at around 10am, medics Sada, Abd al-Dayem and PRCS volunteer Ala Sarhan, 23, answered the call of civilians targeted by Israeli tank shelling in northern Gaza's Beit Lahiya.

As they brought the injured and martyred to the ambulance, the medic team was struck by an Israeli tank-fired dart bomb. The flechettes, just two inches long and dart-shaped, are designed to bore through anything, to break apart upon impact, to ensure maximum damage. Arafa Abd al-Dayem, 35, a father of four and volunteer medic for eight years, was shredded by the darts.

Abu Sada testified to the Guardian: "I came round here and found Arafa kneeling down with his hands in the air and praying to God. They found his body full of these nails. The guy that had been brought to the ambulance was in pieces. He was now missing his head and both his legs."

Arafa Abd al-Dayem went into shock and died an hour or so after the attack, while Ala Sarhan was paralyzed by the injuries sustained in the attack.

Arafa Abd al-Dayem, the night before he was killed by Israeli fire while on duty.

The first night of Israel's land invasion during last winter's attacks; the Ezbet Abed Rabbo PRCS station had to be evacuated because of Israeli shelling.

Powerless to help

Ashraf al-Khatib has been a medic for 11 years. During the Israeli attacks, he worked at Rafah's PRCS station. "On 15 January we got a call from a man who said his brother was dead and he was injured by multiple Israeli gunshots. Ahmed and Ibrahim Thabet didn't know the Israeli army were nearby when they rode their motorcycle through a district of eastern Rafah."

Called at 11am, al-Khatib attempted to get Israeli coordination via the ICRC to reach the injured man.

"We tried for hours. Ibrahim kept calling us, crying, panicked. We explained we couldn't reach the area because of the Israeli army. We told him how to stop his bleeding to his chest and leg until we arrived."

Unable to wait any longer, al-Khatib and colleagues made the decision to risk going without Israeli coordination.

"I told them, we may die. But we agreed to go."

Two ambulances reached the area and brought out the dead and injured men.

"We had snipers trained on us, lasers on our foreheads and chest," he says.

Having reached the Thabet brothers, the medics saw more victims.

"It was a busy area. People didn't know there were Israeli snipers nearby."

But because of renewed Israeli firing, al-Khatib's ambulances were forced to retreat, leaving the victims behind.

Al-Khatib recalls another well-known case in Gaza, that of the Shurrab family in Rafah.

"We got a call from Muhammad Shurrab saying he and his sons had been evicted from their home by Israeli soldiers, then shot. They were all living but injured," he explained.

The family waited, trapped between an Israeli tank and their home, bleeding of their injuries, he says.

"We went, when we tried to reach them Israeli soldiers fired on us, so we retreated and tried to get coordination. Shurrab would call every so often; I'd tell him to be patient while we tried. It was winter, so in addition to their injuries, they were freezing."

Al-Khatib relates the saga which went on through the night.

"Later, the father called to say one son had died. We called Al-Jazeera television and told them the Israelis were preventing us from reaching Shurrab. Al-Jazeera took his mobile number and interviewed him live on the air. By that time his second son had died. Twelve hours later the Israelis finally allowed us to reach him, but his sons were both dead."

Al-Khatib says this was the worst challenge he has faced as a medic.

"I knew they were injured but there was no way to reach them, then the kids died. The Israeli army was playing with us," he says.

Muhammad, who declined to give his last name, 30, a volunteer medic and ambulance driver at the Tel al-Hawa PRCS station, was among the team sent to retrieve injured from the Samouni neighborhood in Zaytoun, eastern Gaza, while the attacks were still raging.

"When we arrived, we saw two tanks and a bulldozer between the trees. The tanks aimed their machine guns at the ambulance and the Israelis told us to continue forward. We went about 500 meters. Suddenly 20 or 30 soldiers appeared on foot and surrounded the ambulance, pointing their guns at us. They told me to get out of the ambulance, slowly. I did. They told me to take off my clothes. I did, at the same time telling them we'd come to bring out injured."

They ordered his colleague Rami, a volunteer medic, to get out and strip his clothes.

"They forced us to lie on the ground."

For the next 30 minutes, Muhammad says, they lay on the cold ground in their underwear, soldiers sitting on their backs, guns trained on them.

"Finally, after maybe 30 minutes, they let us go. But they didn't let us retrieve the injured or the children."

"Why shoot at ambulances?"

Throughout Gaza, during and before Israel's latest invasion there, stories of detention, attack, delay and bombardment of stations of both medic rescuers and the Civil Defense abound. Despite the scale of the aggression, the last Israeli war on Gaza was not a precedent for emergency workers, but the continuation of a deeply-entrenched Israeli policy violating international law.

In April 2009, journalist Amira Hass reported in the Israeli daily Haaretz finding a note in Gaza ordering soldiers to "open fire also upon rescue." Written in Hebrew, Hass reports that the note was found in a home occupied by Israeli forces during the war on Gaza. A military spokesperson, she writes, denied the note represents official Israeli army policy. But the facts on the ground and bodies in the graveyard point to a different conclusion.

Although one year has passed since the Israeli invasion, throughout Gaza the psychological wounds are still wide open. For the emergency rescuers, the prospect of the next Israeli attack is all too real and all too routine.

"Nothing is forbidden here, there is no international law where Israel is concerned. Even though the Geneva Conventions say we have the right to reach the wounded, Israel does not pay attention to international law," says medic Hazem Graith.

Like Hammouda, Graith speaks wryly of the Israeli explanation for such attacks.

"Why shoot at ambulances? Why destroy them? Why kill medics?" he asks. "The Israelis say we are militants or are carrying militants, that's the reason they give for targeting medics. Lies, all lies. In our ambulances there are only ever wounded or martyred."

While the destruction of ambulances is a major obstacle to medics' work, Graith calls for more than mere aid.

"We don't want new ambulances from the international community. We want you to see what Israel does and apply pressure to stop Israel from firing on ambulances."

He emphasizes, "Go to the root of the problem."

Sheikh Jarrah: Settlers throw urine bottles, activists arrested

2010-01-24T18:39:00.001-05:00

Thursday, January 22nd, settlers occupying the Gawi and Al-Kurd family’s homes were reported to be harassing and attempting to provoke the evicted Palestinians and solidarity activists to a violent response. Other settlers stood by with film equipment, ready to record any response to their provocation. The evening’s heckling resulted in the arrest of Marwan Abu al Saber. Al Saber was released later that night.

Settler harassment of neighborhood residents continued and during the night four chairs were stolen by settlers from the Al-Kurd tent. In the last two weeks they have also stolen an ISM”ers shoes and a shelf from the tent. Thursday night’s theft was reported to the police but no action was taken.

Friday morning a young settler boy in the Al-Kurd home threw bottles from the home towards the Al-Kurd tent. One bottle, directed at a solidarity activist who was filming nearby, contained urine.

The rest of the day was quiet and the weekly, nonviolent demonstration began as usual. Police closed the street and when demonstrators tried to enter the area, they were arrested. 15 Israeli activists were arrested as they tried to reach the Gawi and Al-Kurd tents. Access to the nearby Orthodox Jewish tomb was also restricted however access was granted for settlers and Jewish Israelis. At the barrier to the tomb, a few young orthodox Jewish boys began throwing stones at a Palestinian woman from the neighborhood. When it became apparent that the police were condoning these actions, neighborhood men tried to prevent the boys from throwing stones by pushing the boys away. Police reacted immediately to the Palestinian men and arrested Muhamad Zamamiri and Muhand Jalejel. Zamamiri was released Saturday without conditions but Jalajel stayed in jail until Sunday evening, was given a 1.500 Shekel fine and one month of house arrest. One ISM activist was also arrested while filming.

Arrestees were taken to the Russian Compound where most were detained for 24 hours. ISM actvist Kim Reis Jenson from Denmark was seen by a judge at 8pm on Saturday night and charged with attacking a police officer and disturbing police officer’s work. Later in the evening Jenson was released without being charged however the police still have his passport. It is unusual for police to withhold passports and when he will get it back remains unclear. Israeli activists were also released with their trial set for Tuesday January 26, 2010. Palestinian Muhand Jalejel was held for 48 hours.

Israeli forces detain 20 in East Jerusalem

2010-01-23T23:37:00.001-05:00

Jerusalem - Ma'an - Israeli forces detained 20 protesters during a demonstration in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah early Friday evening, onlookers said.

Among the eight arrestees was Yossi Sarid, former head of the Israeli Metetz Party.

The protesters were accused of attempting to break into Palestinian houses taken over by Israeli settlers in the past few months, the Hebrew-language daily Yedioth Ahronoth reported.

Last Friday, Israeli police violently suppressed a demonstration against the eviction of Palestinian families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah. Seventeen of them spent the weekend in jail but were released after the Magistrate Court in Jerusalem ruled there were no legal grounds for the arrests.

"The police are misusing their power and distorting the law so as to collaborate with the dangerous project of Judaicizing East Jerusalem," said the Israeli peace group Anarchists Against the Wall.

"Together we will show the Jerusalem Police that they cannot silence a legitimate protest with obstruction and false arrests," the group said in a statement.

In response to last week's violence, demonstrators said they planned to make Friday's protest "the largest in the history of the struggle in Sheikh Jarrah." Under the banner, "No to Eviction, No to Suppression," the activists protested against what they termed "the settler enterprise in the neighborhood."

Activist Ryan Olander Released from Immigration Detention

2010-01-23T23:33:00.000-05:00

As the sun set behind watchtowers and barbed wire fences at Ramle prison Thursday January 15th, Ryan Olander emerged from the steel auto locking door and into the unrestricted air. Ryan had just spent 29 days locked in the Givon immigration detention center located in Ramle, Israel following his illegal arrest on December 18, 2009 in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Shekih Jarrah.

On principle and with solidarity for other nonviolent Palestinian activists working to end the illegal occupation of Palestine, Ryan chose to take his charges and deportation warrant to court. This decision to fight for justice in a country where basic human rights are so obviously denied to those seeking to challenge Israeli empire, either by speaking out or by simply existing, was made by Ryan for the greater struggle of the resistance movement. At his initial hearing shortly after his arrest, Ryan was denied bail. It was not for another three weeks that a bail offer was provided. Bail was set at 10,000 NIS ($2,700 USD) bail with conditions such as not to return to the Shekih Jarrah neighborhood.

On Monday January 12th the incredulous charges brought forth by the State of Israel against Ryan were seen in the District Court in Tel-Aviv. According to Ryan’s attorney, Omer Shatz, “the judge accepted all of our arguments about the illegality of Olander’s detention and deportation.” Shatz further states that the judge was unfamiliar with the term “illegal detention” which government prosecutors were using against Ryan. Lastly, the judge ordered the Ministry of Interior to rescind Ryan’s deportation warrant and gave the government 30 days to notify the court of their position. Until then, Ryan remains free on bail in both Israel and Palestine.

Ryan is elated to be out of Givon, a place he describes as “hopeless…catching only a few minutes of sunlight each day that filtered through the razor wire and rebar above our heads.” However, after spending one month in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood and resistance community helping as a community organizer and solidarity activist, it is upsetting and unfortunate that he will not be able to continue working closely with the families of Sheikh Jarrah. His presence in the tents and around the evening fires is greatly missed.

Targeting international activists is becoming more commonplace in Israel. Amazing Palestinian solidarity activist, Eva Novakova, was also targeted for her activism in Palestine by the Israeli government. At 3am on Monday January 11th 20 Israeli soldiers and immigration police raided the private residence of ISM media coordinator Eva Novakova citing “expired warrant” as the reason for the full military operation in Palestinian-controlled Area A in which soldiers kicked down the door to her apartment and occupied nearby rooftops. The force used to apprehend Eva was unequivocally excessive considering her crime. Eva is now in her home country of Czech Republic. She was deported without the opportunity to contest her apprehension by Israeli forces in the Palestinian-controlled Area A which is illegal by the Oslo Accords.

Israel’s tactic of repressing nonviolent international Palestinian solidarity activists is a true detriment to the nonviolent movement. We recognize the targeting of international nonviolent activists as part of a greater campaign against all nonviolent activists in Palestine (e.g. Wa’el A- Faqeeh and Abdallah Abu Rahmah). We will not, however, let their force deter us from standing with the Palestinian people and continuing to support the nonviolent struggle for freedom.

CJPME: Canada to withdraw its funding to UNRWA

2010-01-23T23:29:00.001-05:00

Last week, the government of Canada quietly announced it would discontinue its long-standing financial contributions to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), and redirect the monies to strengthen the judicial system of the Palestinian Authority and other food assistance programs. The news came out as UNRWA launched a special fundraising campaign to collect millions of dollars needed to support programs in the occupied Palestinian territories.

UNRWA provides assistance to 4.67 million Palestinian refugees scattered throughout the Middle East and administers programs in the areas of education, health and other social services in 59 Palestinian refugee camps. The agency operates solely through donations from various organizations and governments. It is currently under severe financial duress due to the increasing number of Palestinian refugees, the deterioration of their socio-economic level, unemployment and food insecurity.

“Canada’s decision to cut funds to UNRWA and its essential programs is very worrying and could have important consequences for Palestinian refugees,” stated Thomas Woodley, President of CJPME. “Reducing the capacity of UNRWA will terribly undermine the quality of life for these people. Canadians must respond to this announcement and protest against this radical break from traditional Canadian values of compassion and humanitarian concerns,” added Woodley.

Canada is the seventh largest donor to UNRWA and contributes on average 15 million dollars annually via the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), which is currently overseen by the Minister of International Cooperation Beverley Oda. Several groups believe that the decision of the Canadian authorities to stop its support for UNRWA is more than just a desire to reallocate the money more effectively. It could reflect an intention to have the UN agency completely disappear. “There are groups who seem to think that if UNRWA were de-funded and disappeared, the refugees would disappear too. This is a deluded fiction,” said UNRWA spokesman, Chris Gunness.

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) is a non-profit and secular organization bringing together men and women of all backgrounds who labour to see justice and peace take root again in the Middle East. Its mission is to empower decision-makers to view all sides with fairness and to promote the equitable and sustainable development of the region.

A Day Of Destruction in Khirbet Tana

2010-01-23T23:24:00.002-05:00

The Israeli army rolled into Khirbet Tana, a village east of Nablus with a population of about 300, in the morning hours on January 10, 2010. They then destroyed about thirty structures, including a school, homes, and shelter for farm animals. This destruction stems from a court ruling issued in February 2009 that cannot be appealed, stating that all structures in Khirbet Tana must be demolished, and the farmers removed from their land. The Palestine Monitor takes a look at the situation that Khirbet Tana faces, and how the villagers are trying to rebuild their lives.

The villagers of Khirbet Tana told the photographer that officials from the Palestinian Authority have visited them, but did nothing to improve their living conditions. To the minimum, Tana requires a good road, tractors (four were confiscated and are being kept at Ariel settlement; the photographer spotted one tractor in the whole village during his visit), a new school, and a popular committee or village leadership. Unlike the villages in, for example, the Hebron area, there is no permanent international presence in Khirbet Tana and the neighboring villages.

All photographs were taken by Brady Ng.

: The first sight seen by the photographer as he entered Khirbet Tana was the remains of a tin-roofed home.

: The demolished school.

: Surveying what’s left of the school.

: With the original school destroyed, villagers put up a tent to be used as a classroom. The desks, chairs, and blackboard were salvaged from the remains of the school.

: Student worksheets, torn up and strewn about.

: The mosque is one of the few buildings in Tana that was left untouched.

: Another destroyed shelter.

: The residents of Tana say that they face demolitions nearly every week. Some have become quite adept at collecting bits and pieces from destroyed homes and rebuilding their tents.

: A home that faces demolition, with a tent already put in place beside it. Whenever Israeli soldiers enter the village, the family that owns the house removes all of their belongings from it and places them in the tent, accepting the fact that they may lose their home, but can still survive as long as they retain their property.

: The new “homes” can be easliy spotted — they are the white tents.

: Some people in Tana choose to live in caves, with a little more protection against the elements.

: Tanans claim that this stone foundation is 3000 years old, laid there by their ancestors.

: With no electricity in the village, illumination at night is provided by gas or oil lamps.

: The well in Khirbet Tana, with water drawn from a spring up the hill in the background.

: The hose connects the well to the water spring, which is the village’s only source of water aside from rain.

: The well used to be uncovered. The villagers decided to build a cover over it three years ago because Jewish settlers came and swam in the well, a common tactic used by settlers to pollute water collected by Palestinians.

: Goats and sheep strolling over the demolished school.

: Khirbet Tana’s farmers work for self-sufficiency. The vast majority of their crops are consumed by their families or farm animals. Very little is left to be sold to other villages or cities.

: With no trash collection service in Tana, heaps of refuse are left along the road.

: The road leading in and out of Tana is steep and unpaved, and villagers have trouble traveling to other villages for trade. When the photographer visited Tana on a rainy day, the dirt road became a stream of mud, and it took multiple attempts for his vehicle to climb each hill.

Panorama: A Walk in the Park

2010-01-21T21:53:00.000-05:00

This is where I spent most of my time in Palestine. The families from SJ are people I have come to love. No one in the world deserves this...especially them. Where is the justice?

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIZMOEtS7j0&feature=related

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyyfpfQKjsc&feature=related

Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WupPheoviKk&feature=related

Malsin: No such thing as voluntary deportation

2010-01-21T07:34:00.000-05:00

Ma'an - Upon landing in New York on Thursday, Ma'an News Agency's Jared Malsin, a US citizen, said Interior Ministry staff pressured him into dropping a legal challenge against his deportation order just two hours after his lawyer left for the day.

After signing a hand-written letter that Malsin said he believed was a "formality," ministry staff sent the paper to District Judge Kobi Vardi, who presided over Malsin's case, and the judge decided to lift the stay of deportation order.

A motion from Ma'an attorney Castro Daoud, requesting that his client's hearing continue in his absence, was filed and pending decision as the ruling to expel the journalist was made.

Malsin was subsequently placed onto an El Al flight to New York.

"I had no idea I was waving anything, no clue," he said, explaining Israeli officials asked him to create a legal document to withdraw his case without an attorney present, and offered a misleading explanation over what he was signing. Malsin said he wrote a note indicating that he was leaving the facility "without personal coercion."

Speaking as he was transported to the plane, however, Malsin said he had no idea there were legal implications to the paper. "I'm just so relieved to be out," he said.

"None of this was my decision," he emphasized in a phone interview minutes after arriving at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York early Thursday morning local time, rejecting reports that he left Israel voluntarily. "There's no such thing as a voluntary deportation. I was deported, period."

Malsin said he was under the impression that the papers he signed would allow him to leave the airport while his case continued. Indeed, Daoud, had filed the motion in Tel Aviv shortly before Malsin was instructed to sign the papers.

Justice Vardi had called for a hearing on Malsin's case on Tuesday, and when no date was set for the proceedings by the afternoon, Malsin and Daoud decided to seek permission for him to leave the detention center as the hearing went forward. Daoud had previously indicated concern that Malsin's case was being dragged out, putting pressure on the journalist to leave before a legal decision was made.

In an e-mail from Malsin to Ma'an staff sent upon his arrival to his parent's home in New Hampshire, he said, about the paper, "I thought it was a formality. In retrospect I wish I hadn't signed it. I believe the prison guards were extremely manipulative, misleading, mendacious in the way they dealt with me."

Israeli explanations

Malsin's deportation was met with mixed reactions for Israeli officials.

Interior Ministry spokeswoman Sabine Hadad told The Associated Press that Malsin raised security suspicions during an investigation upon his arrival. Hadad told AP it was for these reasons that Malsin was being deported.

She told Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth that he had voluntarily left Israel, adding, "I guess he didn't like it [detention] and chose to leave the country."

Allegations of Malsin being a security risk were made even at the start of the deportation process, with documents alleging Malsin's failure to cooperate with Israeli intelligence officers constituting such a threat.

The same day Hadad told AP Malsin was a security threat, however, she was quoted by Reuters and the Washington post as denying Malsin was refused a visa for political or security reasons.

Both rationales fit with some of the allegations in the court documents filed by the Ministry of the Interior, but neither explanation took the full range of charges into account.

Among the Interior Ministry's complaints, were that Malsin had authored articles "inside the [Palestinian] territories," including some "criticizing the State of Israel."

Early in Malsin's detention, Government Spokesman Mark Regev said charges that Malsin was being held because of his status as a journalist were "absurd."

Support for Malsin's case

While the government spokesman denied Malsin's deportation had anything to do with journalism, international press associations condemned the detention as a violation of press freedom from his second day in detention.

"We condemn this intolerable violation of press freedom," said Aidan White, the head of the International Federation of Journalists, the largest union of media professionals worldwide. "The ban of entry in this case appears to be as a reprisal measure for the journalist's independent reporting and that is unacceptable.

"This kind of interference has no place in a democracy," he added.

Israel expels top Ma’an journalist - Jared Malsin

2010-01-21T07:18:00.000-05:00

For the first time in a week, American journalist Jared Malsin was allowed to use his mobile phone on Wednesday morning to inform Ma’an that he was being placed onto an El Al flight bound for New York.
He sounded shaken and confused. He said he did not know why he was not being flown to Prague, where he was expected to be sent, saying only that flying there “would create problems.” He said he was in an armored vehicle en route to the airport gate.

On Tuesday, Tel Aviv District Judge Kobi Vardi ordered that a hearing be scheduled to consider the Israeli Ministry of the Interior’s decision to deport the journalist. Following the call, lawyer Castro Daoud went to the airport detention facility where Malsin has been kept for the past week to deliver the news.

At about 2:30 pm, Daoud left the detention center and filed a motion requesting that Jared be permitted to leave the country while the hearing and case proceed in his absence. As the Attorney General’s Office insisted that Malsin not be permitted to attend his hearing, Daoud argued that it was no longer necessary to keep him confined to his cell in the detention center.

At about 4:30pm, staff from the US Embassy in Tel Aviv notified Malsin’s parents in the US state of New Hampshire that he would be on the next flight to Prague, even though Justice Vardi had not ruled on Daoud’s motion to let Malsin travel and still pursue the case.

At about 7:30pm, Daoud expressed shock after he received notification that a motion was signed by Malsin requesting his deportation challenge be annulled. Justice Vardi has closed the case on Malsin’s deportation order one week after it was filed.

Ma’an is deeply concerned that there was no lawyer present when Malsin apparently filed this independent motion, which was sent from the Ministry of the Interior and not his legal representative, who had just left. It is inexplicable that Malsin would knowingly drop the legal challenge after his first major success.

Without jumping to conclusions, Ma’an wants to be sure these events did not take place under duress, and is consequently concerned that Malsin’s lawyer and parents were prevented from reaching him during the 24 hours before the deportation to clarify what happened between 2:30 and 4:30pm on Tuesday afternoon.

Israel withholding NGO employees' work permits

2010-01-20T08:39:00.002-05:00

The Interior Ministry has stopped granting work permits to foreign nationals working in most international nongovernmental organizations operating in the Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem, Haaretz has learned.

In an apparent overhaul of regulations that have been in place since 1967, the ministry is now granting the NGO employees tourist visas only, which bar them from working.

Organizations affected by the apparent policy change include Oxfam, Save the Children, Doctors Without Borders, Terre des Hommes, Handicap International and the Religious Society of Friends (a Quaker organization).

Until recently, the workers would register with the international relations department at the Social Affairs Ministry, which would recommend the Interior Ministry to issue them B1 work permits. Although the foreign nationals are still required to approach the Social Affairs Ministry to receive recommendations to obtain a tourist visa, the Interior Ministry is aiming to make the Ministry of Defense responsible for those international NGOs and also requiring them to register with the coordinator of government activities in the territories (COGAT), which is subordinate to the Ministry of Defense.

Foreign nationals working for NGOs had understood they would receive a stamp or handwritten note alongside their tourist visa, permitting them to work "in the Palestinian Authority." Israel is refusing work visas to most foreign nationals who state that they wish to work within the Palestinian territories, such as foreign lecturers for Palestinian universities and businessmen.

Israel does not recognize Palestinian Authority rule in East Jerusalem or in Area C, which comprises some 60 percent of the West Bank. The NGO workers say they've come to believe that the new policy is intended to force them to close their Jerusalem offices and relocate to West Bank cities. This move would prevent them from working among the Palestinian population of East Jerusalem, defined by the international community as occupied territory.

The organizations fear the new policy will impede their ability to work in Area C, whether because Israel doesn't see it as part of the Palestinian Authority or because they will eventually be subjected to the restrictions of movement imposed on the Palestinians. Such restrictions include the prohibition to enter East Jerusalem and Gaza via Israel, except with specific and rarely obtained permits; and prohibition to enter areas west of the separation fence, except for village residents who hold special residency permits and Israeli citizens.

One NGO worker told Haaretz that the policy was reminiscent of the travel constraints imposed by Burmese authorities on humanitarian organizations, albeit presented in a subtler manner.

NGO workers told Haaretz that they had been informed by the COGAT official that a policy change was forthcoming, as early as July 2009. When a number of them approached the Interior Ministry in August to renew their visas, they found that their applications had been submitted to a "special committee." They were not told who constituted this committee, and had to make do with a "receipt" confirming that they had submitted the request. The workers said the tourist visas they received differed from each other in duration and travel limitations, and surmised from this that the policy has not been entirely fleshed out.

Latest in a series of steps

A number of NGO workers who spoke with Haaretz voiced deep apprehensions about having to submit to the authority of the Defense Ministry. The groups are committed to the Red Cross code of ethics, and therefore see being subjugated to the ministry directly in charge of the occupation as problematic and contradictory to the very essence of their work.

Between 140 and 150 NGOs operate among the Palestinian population. Haaretz could not obtain the exact number of foreign nationals they employ.

The new limitations do not apply to the 12 organizations that have been active in the West Bank prior to 1967. Those groups, which include the Red Cross and several Christian organizations, were registered with the Jordanian authorities.

The new move by the Interior Ministry is the latest in a series of steps taken in the last few years to constrain the movement of foreign nationals in the West Bank and Gaza, including Palestinians with family and property in the occupied territories. Most of those who have been effected are nationals of countries with which Israel has diplomatic relations, especially Western states. Israel does not apply any similar constraints on citizens of the same countries traveling within Israel and West Bank settlements.

The Interior Ministry said in a statement that the only relevant authority empowered to approve the stay of foreign citizens in the Palestinian Authority is the coordinator of government activities in the territories. "The Interior Ministry is entrusted with granting visas and work permits within the State of Israel. Those staying within both the boundaries of Israel and the Palestinian Authority are required to secure their permits accordingly," the ministry said.

"Recently, a question was raised on the issue of visas granted to those staying in the Palestinian Authority and in Israel, as it transpired that they spend most of their time in the PA despite having been provided with Israeli work permits," the statement continued. "The matter is under intense discussions, with the active participation of the relevant military authorities, with a view to finding the right and appropriate solution as soon as possible."

Update: Jared Malsin - expelled by Israel

2010-01-20T08:00:00.006-05:00

It may has not made the headlines in most press around the world, but Israel has recently decided to expel an American journalist working in the Palestinian territories.

It probably has not made the headlines in most press around the world, but Israel has recently decided to expel an American journalist working for the respected Ma'an News Agency, based out of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

For the first time in a week, journalist Jared Malsin was allowed to use his mobile phone on Wednesday morning to inform Ma'an that he was being placed onto an El Al flight to Prague.

The case of Jared Malsin has implications for foreign journalists who work in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). When the story of his detention first emerged, I spoke to a diplomatic source with knowledge of the case. He told me, Jared's deportation was politically motivated based on his work.

Israeli officials I have called regarding this case have provided any explanation regarding the deportation. From court documents attributed to the Ma'an News Agency, Israel is deporting Jared on "security" grounds that stem from his political beliefs.

Interrogators gathered online research into [Jared's] writing history, which the transcripts indicate included news stories, "criticizing the State of Israel" among other allegations that he "authored articles inside the territories"

This could have serious ramifications for journalists who work and cover the OPT, and who are sometimes critical of the policies carried out against Palestinians by the self-proclaimed Jewish State. International journalists have come to Jared's defense.

As if the daily physical risks of working in Israel/Palestine were not hard enough, now the Israeli government is willing to go to greater lengths to silence those who are critical of its Occupation.

Israel accused of silencing political protest

2010-01-19T15:49:00.001-05:00

By BEN HUBBARD

The Associated Press

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/19/AR2010011901657.html

Gaza in Plain Language

2010-01-19T12:12:00.001-05:00

by Joe Mowrey

In articles acknowledging the one year anniversary of the assault on Gaza, blunt and unsparing language about what really happened is often avoided. Despite sympathy for and support of the Palestinian people in their struggle against dispossession and oppression, the description of what took place in January 2009 is sometimes buffered by a misguided sense of political correctness. Yes, it’s terrible. Yes, it is unjust. But we don’t want to be inflammatory or risk offending the sensitivities of those who through their own willful ignorance cling to the notion that Israel is a victim state, fighting for its very survival. The argument is that we should reach out to them and attempt to educate them and win them over.

I’ll be more forthright in this commentary.

The sociopathic Zionist administration of Israel, as part of its continuing brutal colonization of Palestine, set out to deliberately devastate the already nearly-incapacitated infrastructure which supports the existence of one and a half million human refugees. The people of Gaza, second-, third-, and fourth-generation dispossessed Palestinians, are living in forced exile from land their families inhabited and cultivated for generations. Half of them are children under the age of fifteen. Their culture and their economy has been systematically ravaged by Israel for decades and since 2006 a criminal siege supported by the United States, as well as much of the international community, has deprived them of all but the most minimal resources for subsistence. This oppressed and brutalized population was then bombed, bulldozed and terrorized mercilessly for twenty-three days.

Below is a small sampling of facts concerning what the fourth largest military in the world did to a captive and defenseless population. The source materials used to substantiate these statistics are available on request. If the reality presented here goes beyond the stretch of your imagination, you can verify the data yourself. Though you’d better hurry. Much of this information appears to be disappearing down Google’s memory hole, just as is the fate of the people of Gaza. A source referencing the percentage of agricultural land destroyed in the onslaught which was used for a shorter version of this article just a few weeks ago is no longer archived in Google’s cache. Surprise, surprise.

You will also find that exact figures vary somewhat depending on the source. But whether it was 21,000 structures or 22,000 structures destroyed, whether 280 schools were destroyed or badly damaged verses 230, the overwhelming truth of the physical devastation which took place in Gaza and the fact that this destruction was deliberate and premeditated is irrefutable. Even the Goldstone Report, itself a document with severe pro-Zionist overtones issued by a declared Zionist and a supporter of Israel, states unequivocally, “…[the] deliberate actions of the Israeli forces and the declared policies of the Government of Israel … cumulatively indicate the intention to inflict collective punishment on the people of the Gaza Strip in violation of international humanitarian law.”

We’ve heard time and again that more than 1400 Palestinians were killed, over 80% of them civilians, including 342 children. It has become a familiar talking point in discussions of last year’s assault, so much so that it may have lost its impact on our consciousness. But what we often aren’t reminded of is the horrific level of carefully-planned destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza orchestrated by Israel during Operation Cast Lead.

Financed and armed by the United States, the Israeli military destroyed fifteen percent of the structures in Gaza, approximately 22,000 buildings, including 5300 housing units destroyed or subject to major damage. Another 52,000 homes received some form of structural damage. Over 200 factories and 700 stores and businesses were destroyed or badly damaged. Of the residences, factories and businesses completely destroyed, 1300 of the homes and approximately 25% of the commercial property was deliberately and painstakingly bulldozed or exploded by Israeli ground forces. Eight hospitals and 26 primary health care clinics were damaged or destroyed. More than 280 schools were damaged or destroyed.

Water and sewage treatment facilities as well as electricity infrastructure were deliberately targeted leaving vast segments of the population with little or no power or clean water for the duration of the assault and for weeks and months to follow. Massive amounts of agricultural lands were systematically bombed or bulldozed. Some estimates suggest that as much as 80% of the arable land in Gaza has been ruined or declared off-limits to the people of Gaza over the last decade. Two million litres of wastewater at Gaza City’s sewage treatment plant, bombed during the assault, leaked into surrounding agricultural land making it unusable.

An Israeli television station boasted that Israeli war planes alone, without accounting for tank, ground troop and warship ammunition, dropped approximately one thousand tons of bombs on Gaza during Operation Cast Lead. The effort involved months, if not years, of carefully-considered target selection, giving lie to any claim that the devastation was incidental. It requires a stunning level of denial and self-delusion to pretend the destruction which was achieved in Gaza had anything to do with Israel’s “security” or the targeting of Hamas militants. This was savage and barbaric collective punishment unleashed on a civilian population, nothing more. Any suggestion to the contrary must be sharply and immediately ridiculed as absurd.

This was arguably the first aerial bombing campaign ever conducted on a defenseless civilian population held captive within a fenced enclosure and not allowed to escape the assault. It is a measure of the cynical mindset of the Israeli military that leaflets were sometimes dropped in neighborhoods about to be bombed suggesting the residents flee. We are about to destroy your home; you had better get out. Flee to where? Gazans are not allowed to leave their open-air prison, not even when under attack. This tactic on the part of Israel also gives lie to the claim that homes and buildings were targeted because there were Hamas militants “hiding” inside. Why then warn them to leave before destroying the structures?

Given this litany of horror and the coldly premeditated nature of its execution, we need to ask what kind of society condones this level of savagery on the part of their government? What precedent is there for such monstrous disregard for even the most basic tenets of human decency? We need look no further than the behavior of our very own United States, of course. In Iraq, the toll of our psychotic militarism is well over a million human beings (not counting the years of punishing economic sanctions) and a large part of the infrastructure of an entire nation of more than 26 million people has been obliterated. Let’s not even begin to tally up the deaths resulting from U.S. imperialism around the globe in the last sixty years alone. It would put the Zionists to shame–mere pikers in the annals of human slaughter.

And what of Gaza today, one year later? Israel’s continued illegal siege, enabled by the U.S., Egypt (a U.S. client state) and the international community has prevented any substantial amount of building materials from entering Gaza. Essentially, no reconstruction has been possible. The people of Gaza live amongst the rubble left to them by Israeli hatred and aggression. They are attempting to rebuild their society using mud bricks and materials salvaged from the wreckage.

The next time someone attempts to argue, “Israel has a right to defend itself,” or uses what I call the abusive spouse defense, ”Look what you made me do,” tell them, “No.” Tell them there is and can never be any acceptable justification for the deliberate devastation of entire societies, no matter what political, ideological or “security” issues, real or imagined, may be at stake. It is unconscionable. It is wrong. Plainly put, there is no sane argument in favor of such behavior. Those who believe there is must be contradicted and opposed at every available opportunity.

Gazans raise money for Haiti

2010-01-19T11:11:00.003-05:00

Palestinians in Gaza set off for the Red Cross headquarters on Monday to offer donations and financial support for the victims of Haiti’s devastating earthquake on Tuesday.

Relatives of Palestinian prisoners also participated in the drive, with many offering financial donations and goods including blankets and covers, as well as food and milk for children.

The report comes after the Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank, said that it intended send humanitarian to Haiti in the wake of the devastating earthquake which all but leveled the island's capital city, adding that it was working to ensure the safety of members of the Palestinian community residing on the island.

Head of the Committee to Break the Siege Jamal Al-Khudary said "people may be astonished at our ability to collect donations from our people [in Gaza]; we tell them that this is a humanitarian campaign and our people love life and peace …"

"We are here today supporting the victims of Haiti … we feel for them the most because we were exposed to our own earthquake during Israel’s war on Gaza."

The Red Cross director was only able to accept financial donations as transferring goods out of the Strip is near impossible, Al-Khudary added.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Haitians were still struggling on Monday to find food and shelter in the wake of last week's earthquake, as international aid agencies reported a severe lack in supplies despite the overwhelming demand.

"There is little sign of significant aid distribution," said a representative of the Geneva-based Doctors Without Borders.

The aid group also complained of skewed priorities and a supply bottleneck at the U.S.-controlled airport, and urged the U.S. military to be clear on its prioritization of medical supplies and equipment.

American journalist enters week 2 in detention

2010-01-19T11:01:00.002-05:00

American journalist Jared Malsin will wrap up his first week of detention at Israel's Ben Gurion International Airport tomorrow.

At the request of Justice Kobi Vardi, Ma'an lawyer Castro Daoud filed additional information in response to allegations by the Israeli Attorney General's Office, and insisted that Jared be brought out of the airport to attend a hearing on the matter.

The attorney general had requested that no hearing be scheduled, saying Malsin's presence in court would complicate efforts by the Ministry of the Interior to deport the journalist, since moving him off airport property requires a change in visa status.

"We are alarmed by these arguments. In the view of Ma'an, they attempt to legitimize a continued policy of isolation for Jared for which the legal rationale is foggy at best," said network spokesman George Hale.

"However, we are confident that Justice Vardi is as concerned as we are with the Interior Ministry's lack of transparency, evidenced by its objections to Jared addressing these allegations in a court of law," he added.

Daoud argued that Malsin has a right to a full defense and, at the least, to be present at his own hearing. Daoud further contested the attorney general's rebuttal, arguing the listed reasons for denial of entry do not constitute valid legal justifications, and that they certainly do not trump the unprecedented violation of press freedom that would accompany Malsin's deportation.

According to court documents filed on Thursday evening, signed by an Israeli interrogator, Malsin was denied entry for "refusing to cooperate" and for violating visa terms.

Disturbingly, the documents also reveal that interrogators had gathered online research into the journalist's writing history, which transcripts indicate included news stories "criticizing the State of Israel," among other allegations he authored articles "inside the [Palestinian] territories."

Trafalgar Square: Gaza 1417 Remembrance Die-In

2010-01-19T10:55:00.000-05:00

ISM – London

1417 is not just a number: it’s the men, women and children who died during Israel’s 23-day assault in 2008-2009.

This event marked the anniversary of the atrocities committed in Gaza and called for the state of Israel to be brought to justice for its illegal actions and for those responsible to face trial for war crimes.

Heavy rain meant that instead of staging a “Die-in”, with people lying on the ground to represent those killed in the attack, those present decided to observe a minute’s silence for the victims. Approximatly 200 people participated with each being given the name of one of the dead to hold aloft. After a perfectly observed silence, three speakers with direct connections to the attack on Gaza addressed the crowd – Sameh Habeeb, a Gazan journalist; Natalie Abou Shakrah, a Gaza survivor; and Manal Timraz, who lost fifteen members of her family in the attack, eleven of whom were children.

Manal Timraz’s speech proved to be one of the most emotional moments of the day. People in the crowd had tears in their eyes as she told the crowd: “When I saw you all holding the names of the victims I was looking around for the names of my family members… the youngest was 2 and the eldest of the children was just twelve. Can you imagine…these are children who were not allowed to grow up.”

“Equality for all citizens on the historic land of Palestine, no matter what religion or gender or race or colour or ethnicity, justice through accountability. Just like people of conscience managed to isolate the apartheid state in South Africa we can isolate the apartheid state of Israel.” Natalie Abou Shakra.

“But we are not only here to commemorate the dead. We are here to highlight the injustice of Israel’s brutal occupation, besiegement and oppression of Gaza and its population. We – civil society – will not accept Israel’s crimes and war mongering, and we will not accept our government’s continued sponsoring of Israel’s terror tactics.” One of the event organisers said in speech.

After the speeches, some participants initiated their own die in with some lying on the ground covered in fake blood with others burning the Israeli flag in protest against the Israel state, with many others joining in chanting and calling for Freedom for Palestine.

Sheikh Jarrah court case delayed until April: Settler heckling continues

2010-01-19T10:49:00.000-05:00

On Monday January 18th, a Jerusalem court case over the legal ownership of a Palestinian owned house in the Sheik Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem was postponed until April. The hearing against the Husseini family was delayed because the prosecution, who claims the Palestinian family does not have legal ownership over their house, needed more time to build a case.

This case comes in the wake of two other neighborhood houses being occupied by Jewish settlers since late 2009 and constant settler heckling.

On Saturday, January 16, 2010 at 4:45PM a settler girl attacked a Palestinian girl in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheik Jarrah. The incident took place on the street between two houses occupied by Jewish settlers, which belong to the Palestinian Gawi and Al-Kurds families.

A large group of settlers, largely young men, boys and one girl began to gather and walked back forth and back between the two occupied houses.

Between 4:15 and 4:30PM the group gathered on the roof the Gawi family’s occupied house and began yelling and laughing at the Palestinians. The yelling continued and until the settlers left the house to confront the Palestinians on the street where one settler girl hit a Palestinian girl before the police separated the two groups. Shortly after, the settlers left the area.

This is just one of many instances of settlers harassing Palestinians in the Sheik Jarrah neighborhood. The harassment and violence has increased significantly since the occupation of the Gawi and Al-Kurds residences.

The Gawi house was taken over 5 months ago and the family, led by Nasser Gawi has lived in a tent on the street since. The Al-Kurds family, where the front half of the house was taken in December, still lives in the back of the house.

In Lebanon refugee camp, "hip-hop is a school"

2010-01-19T05:35:00.002-05:00

Rasmus Bogeskov Larsen

It doesn't take a long walk from Yasin's little, ingenious studio for him to make his point. Three teenage boys strolling up a narrow alley, cell phones in hand, share some scratchy beats.

"That is one of our songs", Yasin points out.

Inside the dimly lit 10 square meter ground floor room of his family's house, he had just been relating how it has become a common experience for him to be able to pick out his own music from the soundscape of the crowded Burj al-Barajne Palestinian refugee camp on the outskirts of Beirut.

When Yasin began writing down his thoughts as rap lyrics some eight years ago, hip-hop to most people was the realm seen in videos of bling-bling, women and fast cars -- a world remote from the realities of camp life. But Yasin had traveled back to the roots of the genre in the impoverished black neighborhoods of the American metropolis where he discovered angry voices of disillusionment that resonated well with his own life.

At the age of just 12, when most boys are still boys, "but not so in the camps" according to Yasin, he began channeling his frustrations through rap. He entered into what he refers to as a school, a musical pathway that was to give him valuable lessons in the life of deprivation and how not to succumb to it.

Further down the street, another group of boys, older than the beat-sharing trio who passed earlier, sits on plastic chairs on the pavement smoking argileh, a tobacco water pipe. Had it not been for hip-hop, Yasin imagines he would have been sitting right next to them. At 20, he is part of the duo I-Voice, currently working on a second album and which has just returned from playing concerts in Spain.

"If I didn't have hip-hop, I would only be thinking about having fun and in the camps where there is often no electricity, where there is no library, and no money to go somewhere else, I would most likely sit with my friends in the street smoking argileh all day wasting my time. Hip-hop made me. If you want to be a good rapper, you need to write good lyrics, and so you need to read and get an education. I know so much more about life, because I have been expressing my self and writing. Hip-hop is a school," he explains.

Rap music remains in its infancy in the camps of Lebanon. But according to its pioneers it is slowly proving to have the same appeal among young people as among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and within Israel where rap has been gaining popularity for some time now.

Palestinian rap often expresses strong themes of resistance, a verbal intifada ignited by repression and discrimination, by corruption and betrayal.

In the camps the barrage of words targets everyone from political leaders, supposed to represent their people, to humanitarian organizations, supposed to provide much needed assistance, to the Lebanese, supposed to be the hosts and brothers of the Palestinians.

In one of I-voice most prominent tracks, the constant promises of revolution, inqilab, is chided as inkilab, which might translate as something akin to the ravings of a mad dog. In a new song, Katibe 5, another crew from Burj al-Barajneh, lambastes the UN agency working in the camps for pocketing funds while pretending to be the world's benevolent hand for the uprooted Palestinians.

"When people hear our music they might find it loud and aggressive, but for us its normal, it's made up of the noises and the oppression around us. You can hear the feelings in every word, the feelings of poverty and fighting and being caught in a box," explains Osloub from Katibe 5, which means Battalion 5.

Katibe 5 (Courtesy of the artists)

But as the rappers stress, hip-hop to them is much more than expressing anger and frustration. Resistance can take on many forms in the camps where apathy and submission can be the most forceful enemy. One of them is by instilling hope.

"I can say that everything is fucked up, because it is. I can mention the 70 jobs Palestinians are not allowed to take, I can mention the electricity that comes and goes, I can mention how our political leaders are all corrupt. And we did that on our first record. But I don't want to sound just like the news. I want my lyrics to reflect how I experience life, and you know, if you go to the camps you see the miserable surroundings people live in, but you will also see people smiling and having a good time. Palestinians have been placed all over the world and they have always found ways to be happy. We cannot resist without hope," explains Yasin, who together with TNT, his partner in I-Voice, puts a particular emphasis on education.

"When I graduated from school we were only 12 left out of the 40 who began in first grade. TNT had to leave school at 13 to help support his family as he was the oldest one and today he really regrets that and tries to keep his siblings in school. We try to say to kids that it is not Israel or the United States that is the enemy. Ignorance is your enemy."

And the youngsters seem to listen to the likes of Yasin, who are often approached by kids who want to get into hip-hop. By speaking about issues close to the heart of their peers and by incorporating traditional Arabic instruments and beats in their music, the rappers have succeeded in overcoming the initial suspicions towards hip-hop.

Today they play at schools and social events and have become acutely aware that they have a unique chance at fostering change through their music.

"Kids listen to us because we speak directly to their hearts. And so we feel we have a responsibility to bring back faith in our people, to continue to resist the oppression and not to give up," says Osloub.

To him, hip-hop is therefore about more than just music.

"We don't just see ourselves as rappers but more as community activists. If we were only musicians, we could not help solve problems. Classical music is great, you know, and it fits in great with a nice house and a glass of red wine. But we need to get the piano out on the streets, and be with the people, and make the piano talk to the people," he continues with a big laugh.

"This is life:" remembering earlier massacres in Gaza

2010-01-19T05:24:00.000-05:00

Ahmad Hammad (Eva Bartlett)

It's a sunny day in the border region east of Beit Hanoun. Aside from a glaring absence of the citrus and olive trees which for decades abounded on this fertile land, finally razed by Israeli military bulldozers, all seems idyllic.

"This is the first time I've returned here since my friends were killed," Ahmad Hammad says. He stands at the edge of a vacant plot and gestures to its far end which lies over 1 km from the border separating Israel and the Gaza Strip. "They were over there, I was standing here," he explains.

Hammad, 24, recalls the day two years ago when three of his friends, all in their early twenties, were torn apart by an Israeli-fired surface-to-surface missile.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights reported that an Israeli military spokesman claimed that the Israeli army "targeted Palestinian gunmen accused of launching home-made rockets at Israeli towns."

But Hammad remembers differently.

"They were all sitting over there, beside a small concrete hut. We used to come here all the time, to relax, drink tea, talk of our hopes and dreams. I was late that day."

The date -- 23 February 2008 -- is etched in Hammad's memory. His is a story of seeking a sanctuary where politics, occupation, siege and Israeli attacks didn't exist. Just friends, tea, tobacco water pipe and talk.

"I left home around 2pm when they called me. They were already here, preparing the tea, relaxing. When I arrived to this spot, Muhammad stood up and began dancing around, joking, waving me to come over."

He relives the next painful minutes in slow motion:

Then -- it was exactly 2:28pm -- there was a huge explosion and much smoke. I couldn't see the area where they'd been standing, the smoke was so thick. When I finally got through the smoke and reached where they'd been standing, I found only pieces of my friends. I couldn't even identify them by their faces, they were so destroyed.

I couldn't think straight, couldn't talk. I cried and cried, for maybe half an hour. Then I tried to call an ambulance, but I was still crying so hard the dispatcher couldn't understand me. I called a friend instead and told him to bring a car and come here. He asked why, and I just told him to come here, still crying.

We collected my friends in pieces and took them to the hospital.

Hammad walks now, venturing to the site where his best friends were martyred. He sits near a water pipe leading from the ground and explains the area. "That was the hut, it was just a single room. We'd prepare tea and heat coals [for the water pipe] here."

Pointing beyond the flat space where the hut stood, he notes a pile of rubble. "The room was destroyed in the last Israeli attacks on Gaza."

The land is parched and cracked from want of rain or irrigation. "All the water pumps and wells in this area have been destroyed," Hammad says, diverting to the troubles which now plague the region. "My own father's well, over there, just 700 meters from the border, was destroyed. It must have cost him at least $10,000 to build, and now he can't water his citrus trees."

The Hammad family is not alone in repeatedly losing trees, crops and wells to Israeli bulldozers. Throughout the border region, wells, cisterns, piping, houses, farm equipment, and crops have been destroyed over the last decade, the most thorough destruction being during Israel's invasion of Gaza last winter.

This dry, flat plot of land once sprouted onions. "Some of our other friends rented the land. They wanted to earn some money, so they planted onions and worked the land together. But they always let us come here to relax, whenever we wanted. That's why we came here that day."

He points up, over the border region where a fat white blimp hangs in the sky, surveying the land below with great accuracy. "These blimps are along the border. They can see everything with great detail, including my clothes and face."

What the blimp misses, the drone hovering above sees. During Israel's invasion, drones clouded Gaza's skies and accounted for 519 of the 1,419 Palestinian civilians murdered during the Israeli massacre, according to the al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights. Often, the first drone-fired missile would be pointedly followed minutes later by a second or third, striking those who came to rescue the injured.

Earlier this day, Israeli warplanes leafleted the border regions, again declaring the 300 meters from the border mortally off-limits to anyone on the Gaza side. The Israeli-imposed "buffer zone" goes back a decade. And although the current limit is 300 meters, in practice Israeli soldiers target Palestinians up to nearly 2km away.

"They were young, were still dreaming and planning their lives," says Hammad.

Muhammad al-Zaniin was from Beit Hanoun. He was still in school, studying business and English at al-Azhar University.

"He was an over-achiever, always wanted to get the highest marks possible. His goal was to be first in his class throughout university, and to finish early. He was always studying. Just before he was killed, he had learned the results of some of his exams: 97 percent, 95 percent. But he was killed before he knew the rest. He wasn't asking for much from life, just to do well in school, get a job, and marry a girl he loved."

Ibrahim Abu Jarrad was also from Beit Hanoun.

"He was the quietest of us all. He was very thoughtful and a mediator, always solving problems between people. His hopes were very simple: to build a home and marry the girl he loved."

Muhammad Hassanain was from Jabaliya. His father was dead and Muhammed had taken on the role of providing for the family.

"He dreamed of building a new home, large enough to house the family comfortably. He was such a responsible guy -- as paying the university tuition of his younger brother. He just wanted to marry and take care of his family."

It was the same week that the Israeli military killed another six civilians in Gaza and wounded 16. Among the martyred were an elderly shepherd and a farmer in his thirties, both nearly 3 km from the border when shelled by an Israeli surface-to-surface missile east of Gaza City. A 12-year-old and two 10-year-olds were killed later the same day west of Jabaliya, targeted by Israeli air strikes. An infant was killed by shrapnel to his head and chest after Israeli aircraft bombed a government building surrounded by houses in the center of Gaza City. A 31-year-old in the east Khan Younis region was killed by indiscriminate Israeli fire the day earlier.

"After I saw my friends torn to pieces, I kept thinking, 'I wish I had been with them.' I saw part of the missile that looked like it hadn't exploded, and I wished that it would now explode with me," Hammad says. "It was the end of the life I had, the end of my dreams."

The killing of Hammad's three friends wasn't his first personal loss, but it hit him the hardest.

"I'd seen my cousins killed, in 2004. But that was nothing. This was the most difficult thing for me, it still haunts me."

While Hammad no longer visits places that remind him of his martyred friends, he does still regularly visit their families.

"Of course, they are like my own families. But even though I know they love me, I always feel that they blame me, think I was the reason their sons were killed. I see it in their eyes."

Like most Palestinians who've suffered the loss of their loved ones, or suffer from the grinding, nearly four-year-long siege on Gaza, Hammad hides his pain behind smiles and laughter.

"I told my friends that I'd never laugh again after my best friends were killed. But we go on. And my laughter is hollow."

Fluent in English, Hebrew and his native Arabic, Hammad is educated and employed. But not happy.

"I also had many dreams. I used to dream of doing a Masters degree abroad. Now I just live day to day, continue because everyone tells me I must. This is life. It comes and takes everything you want."

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian human rights advocate and freelancer who arrived in Gaza in November 2008 on the third Free Gaza Movement boat. She has been volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement and documenting Israel's ongoing attacks on Palestinians in Gaza. During Israel's recent assault on Gaza, she and other ISM volunteers accompanied ambulances and documenting the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.

The United States, Israel and the retreat of freedom

2010-01-19T05:12:00.000-05:00

Ali Abunimah

The world is suffering from a "freedom recession" according to a new report from the American think tank Freedom House ("Freedom in the World 2010," 12 January 2010).

Established in 1941, Freedom House markets itself as "an independent watchdog organization that supports democratic change, monitors the status of freedom around the world, and advocates for democracy and human rights." Its board of directors, chaired by a former US deputy secretary of defense, is a who's who of Democratic and Republican former US government officials, prominent neoconservatives and Israel lobby stalwarts such as Tom Dine, former executive director of AIPAC. In 2007, more than two-thirds of its $16 million budget came directly from the United States government.

Not surprisingly then, Freedom House's report reveals more about the groupthink of the US establishment -- especially with respect to its continued efforts to dominate the Middle East and ensure Israel's supremacy -- than it does about the countries surveyed.

Focusing on two categories of "freedom" -- "civil liberties" and "political rights" -- the report divides the world's 194 countries into three groups: "free" (89), "partly free" (58), and "not free" (47).

Interestingly, Freedom House records "declines in freedom" in "countries that had registered positive trends in previous years, including Bahrain, Jordan, Kenya and Kyrgyzstan." Jordan was one of only six countries to move from the "partly free" category to "not free." What does it say about US "democracy promotion" that Jordan, Bahrain and Kyrgyzstan -- major political and military operating bases for the "war on terror" and US-led occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan -- have become less free as their dependence on the US has increased?

Sadly, while the report frets that "the most powerful authoritarian regimes [such as Russia and China] have become more repressive, more influential in the international arena, and more uncompromising," it has nothing at all to say about the US role in restricting freedom and spreading mayhem around the world. Sometimes this is truly absurd as the report points to "continued terrorist and insurgent violence in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Yemen," but fails to note that two of these countries are under direct US military occupation (Afghanistan and Iraq) while the US is intervening militarily in the other three. (The report presents a mixed picture for the US-occupied countries; both are "Not Free" but Iraq allegedly became more free during 2009 and Afghanistan less free.)

Rather than offer any introspection on the inverse relationship between US efforts at global domination on the one hand, and the spread of freedom on the other, the report's overview essay concludes with a call for more vigorous intervention: "The United States and other democracies should take the initiative to meet the authoritarian challenge ..."

Freedom House's approach to Israel provides the starkest example of the abyss into which liberal thinking has fallen on the relationship between colonialism and freedom. Israel, we are told, "remains the only country in the [Middle East] region to hold a Freedom in the World designation of Free." We are informed euphemistically that "The beginning of the year [2009] was marred by fierce fighting between the Israeli military and the Hamas movement in the Gaza Strip."

There is no mention of the deliberate targeting by Israel of Gaza's civilian infrastructure and the resulting massive destruction, and death and injury to thousands of Palestinian civilians. Nothing is said of the denial of fundamental political, civil and human rights, or freedom of movement, association and education to four million Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation and siege in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. There is no mention of the systematic discrimination, and social and political exclusion faced by 1.5 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, nor of the denial of the right of return of millions of Palestinian refugees.

There is an acknowledgment that "Hundreds of people were arrested during demonstrations against the Gaza conflict, and the parliamentary elections committee passed a measure banning two political parties from national elections, though the ban was quickly overturned by the Supreme Court."

Despite this, on the tables accompanying the report, "Israel" receives the highest score of "1" for political rights, and a very respectable "2" for civil liberties -- on a par with Italy and Japan. The overall impression is of minor glitches that could occur in any exemplary "Western" democracy.

Then on a separate table of "Disputed Territories" we find "Israeli-occupied territories" and "Palestinian Authority-administered territories" both listed. Both are given the designation "Not Free" and nearly the lowest scores for political rights and civil liberties. There is no narrative to explain who is responsible for this dire state of affairs. This convenient separation allows for all the ugly realities of what "free" Israel does in the occupied territories to be pushed out of sight and ignored.

But in what scheme can Israel be awarded freest of the free status when for two-thirds of its existence, since 1967, it has ruled directly over millions of disenfranchised Palestinians through violence and repression? The idea that the political regime in Israel's pre-1967 boundaries can be looked at as a "democracy" even while the situation in the occupied territories can be criticized as undemocratic is very widespread among Israelis and American liberals.

Former US President Jimmy Carter has been excoriated (and recently forced to apologize) by the Israel lobby for calling the situation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip "apartheid." Yet even he had simultaneously claimed that within its pre-1967 boundaries, "Israel is a wonderful democracy with equal treatment of all citizens whether Arab or Jew." True, Palestinian citizens of Israel can vote and are accorded civil rights far wider than their Palestinian counterparts in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But even Israeli Jews commonly concede that Palestinian citizens suffer systematic and severe disadvantage and total exclusion from key political decisions about the country.

Israeli Jewish leftists (a rapidly dwindling group) and Western liberal sympathizers tend to view Israel within its 1967 boundaries as a flawed democracy -- perfectible with a reallocation of resources and less discrimination against non-Jews, even as they remain fully invested in maintaining Israel as a "Jewish state" with a Jewish demographic majority.

They view the 1967 occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip as the original sin that corrupted a purer Zionist vision, and thus remain fixated on the chimera of "ending the occupation" through a "two-state solution." Once this nirvana is reached, so they believe, Israel can resume its destiny as a liberal democratic state among others.

But it is not just the discrimination and limited rights of Palestinian citizens and other non-Jews that undermine the claim that Israel -- considered separately from the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- is a democracy. Nor is it even that Israeli settler-citizens in the West Bank have full voting rights for the Israeli parliament while Palestinians in the same territory have none. It is that "Israel" and the "occupied territories" are two sides of the same coin.

Israel's 1948 and subsequent ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and ongoing repressive rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are not exceptional or temporary conditions. They are constitutive of the situation that allows Israeli Jews to currently claim they live in a (flawed) liberal democracy.

To be clear, the argument is not that conditions in Israel and the occupied territories are indistinguishable; rather it is that they form a single interdependent system. Israeli Jews can "freely" elect a Jewish government in Israel only because most Palestinians have already been ethnically cleansed. Thus the maintenance of this "liberal democratic" Jewish space depends directly on the permanent denial of fundamental rights to Palestinians.

Palestinian citizens of Israel -- who form 20 percent of the population within Israel's pre-1967 boundaries -- are, as noted, accorded limited liberal rights. This helps boost Israel's external image as a "wonderful democracy," but if the exercise of these rights ever threatens Jewish domination, they are curtailed. Examples include the constant legal harassment of Palestinian members of the Knesset, and various legislative projects for loyalty oaths or to ban commemoration of the Nakba, the 1948 ethnic cleansing of 750,000 Palestinians. Overwhelming Israeli Jewish opposition to calls by Palestinians in Israel for the country to be a "state of all its citizens" is an indication that Israeli Jews value their own supremacy over democracy.

Israel has sometimes been described as an "ethnocracy" -- a state where one ethnic group dominates and enjoys a wide range of liberal rights which are denied to others. But these liberal rights depend directly on the successful repression of the non-privileged ethnic group(s). As rebellions by the disenfranchised require ever greater levels of repression and violence to control, the repression must also be turned inwards.

In recent days, Israel extended for six months a ban on Sheikh Raed Salah, an Israeli citizen, and leader of the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, from traveling to Jerusalem, Israel's ostensible capital, where he had been exercising his civil rights to campaign against Israeli efforts to "Judaize" the city. (Separately Salah was also sentenced to nine months in prison for allegedly assaulting a police officer during a 2007 demonstration; a conviction condemned as political persecution by other Palestinian leaders inside Israel.)

Such repression does not only affect non-Jews. The United Nations-commissioned Goldstone report noted "that actions of the Israeli government" within Israel, during and after Israel's invasion of Gaza last winter, "including interrogation of political activists, repression of criticism and sources of potential criticism of Israeli military actions, in particular nongovernmental organizations, have contributed significantly to a political climate in which dissent with the government and its actions in the Occupied Territories is not tolerated."

These means of "internal" repression resemble the movement bans, censorship and other forms of harassment that the South African apartheid regime began to deploy in its late stages against dissenting whites, eroding the "liberal democratic" space they had for so long enjoyed at the expense of the country's black majority.

Maintaining a Jewish-controlled "liberal democratic" regime in Palestine/Israel is incompatible with the exercise of the inalienable rights of Palestinians. It emphatically depends on their permanent violation, especially the right of return. But the exercise of the inalienable rights of Palestinians -- an end to discrimination against Palestinian citizens, dismantling the 1967 occupation regime, and the right of return for refugees -- is fully compatible with Israeli Jews exercising the human, civil, political and cultural rights to which they are unquestionably entitled.

As a first step toward imagining and creating such a framework, we have to ditch the absurd idea reproduced by Freedom House, that Israeli Jews can epitomize perfect freedom while imposing perfect tyranny and dispossession on a greater number of human beings who belong to the same country.

Who is Handala?

2010-01-18T19:14:00.001-05:00

From approximately 1975 through 1987 Naji Al-Ali created cartoons that depict the complexities of the plight of Palestinian refugees. These cartoons are still relevant today and Handala, the refugee child who is present in every cartoon, remains a potent symbol of the struggle of the Palestinian people for justice and self-determination.

Naji Al-Ali wrote: “The child Handala is my signature, everyone asks me about him wherever I go. I gave birth to this child in the Gulf and I presented him to the people. His name is Handala and he has promised the people that he will remain true to himself. I drew him as a child who is not beautiful; his hair is like the hair of a hedgehog who uses his thorns as a weapon. Handala is not a fat, happy, relaxed, or pampered child. He is barefooted like the refugee camp children, and he is an icon that protects me from making mistakes. Even though he is rough, he smells of amber. His hands are clasped behind his back as a sign of rejection at a time when solutions are presented to us the American way."

Handala was born ten years old, and he will always be ten years old. At that age, I left my homeland, and when he returns, Handala will still be ten, and then he will start growing up. The laws of nature do not apply to him. He is unique. Things will become normal again when the homeland returns.

I presented him to the poor and named him Handala as a symbol of bitterness. At first, he was a Palestinian child, but his consciousness developed to have a national and then a global and human horizon. He is a simple yet tough child, and this is why people adopted him and felt that he represents their consciousness."

Israeli excavations blamed for latest Silwan collapse

2010-01-18T16:34:00.000-05:00

Jerusalem – Ma’an

The Wadi Hilwah Information Centre reported another collapse in the Silwan neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem on Monday, south of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City, creating a 12 meter square hole in the middle of Wadi Hilwah street.

Jawad Siam, head of the information centre, said that the latest collapse in Wadi Hilwah took place over a 10 meter deep tunnel and is a few meters from the previous cave in at the beginning of January, as a result of Israeli excavations in the area.

A child was injured and a vehicle fell ithrough the site, Siam said, adding that the local Al-Ein mosque, where Israeli excavation has intensified, was flooded as rainwater seeped into the collapsed site.

The Al-Quds Centre for Economic and Social rights said that this incident follows a number of similar collapses in Silwan recently, pointing out that last year, a collapse occurred in a girls’ school, injuring 17 students.

On 2 January 2010 The Al-Aqsa Foundation for Endowment and Heritage reported another street collapse on the main road of Silwan.

"The collapse created a hole, two meters long and one and a half meters deep," according to a statement from the foundation, which oversees the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.

According to the foundation, the collapse was related to ongoing excavations by Israeli authorities in the vicinity, apparently on tunnels extending underneath the neighborhood about 700 meters from the mosque compound. Authorities recently removed quantities of dirt and rocks from under Silwan to undisclosed locations, the statement said.

Sheikh Tamimi warns of Al-Aqsa mosque collapsing

2010-01-18T16:32:00.000-05:00

Jerusalem – Ma’an

Sheikh Tayseer Tamimi, chief Islamic judge for the Palestinian Authority, warned that the Al-Aqsa Mosque suffers from cracks and fissures in the walls, a sign of its impending collapse, as a result of Israeli excavations below it, he said on Monday.

Sheikh Tamimi further warned that houses in the surround neighborhood are at risk resulting from the Israeli Antiquities Authority working a night and removing dozens of bags with stones from the excavation site south of the mosque.

He further spoke of the rise in extremist Jewish, as well as military intrusion into the compound, including the entry of 50 students from various departments of archeology in Israeli universities to undertake research and of settlers while women prayed, he said.

The Sheikh held the Israeli government responsible for the collapses and deterioration around the Al-Aqsa Mosque and its surrounding environs and cautioned that Islamic and Christian sites are in jeopardy.

Sheikh Tamimi further called on Arabs and Muslims throughout the world to assist in halting the on-going Israeli excavations near the holy site.

His comments follow the another collapse in the Silwan neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem on Monday, creating a 12 meter square hole in the middle of Wadi Hilwah street.

Building a different Middle East

2010-01-18T16:26:00.002-05:00

Ma'asara, West Bank, December 2009- Joel Beinin

Like every other woman in her village Umm Hasan wears a headscarf. Her husband and other male relatives are not on the scene. But this is not an obstacle to her animated interactions with the sixteen Israelis and foreigners she has never previously met but welcomes into her home. Among the visitors are a German and a Serb who are making a film about Palestinian hip-hop. Everyone has come to participate in the weekly demonstration against the separation barrier organized by the local Popular Committee.

While the Israelis make preparations for the demonstration, Umm Hasan tells the filmmakers about the current situation in the village. Neria, a young Israeli woman who attended a bilingual primary school, makes a poster in Arabic and Hebrew, “so the [Israeli] soldiers will know what it means” with the slogan: “They destroyed the wall in Berlin; tomorrow we’ll destroy it in Palestine.”

As the visitors arrive, Umm Hasan’s oldest son, Hasan, from whom her name is derived, is leading Friday prayers for a “dissident” congregation. His congregants support the weekly protests. The imam of the “official” village mosque does not. The consensus is that the imam and his followers fear that if they join in they will lose their permits to work in Israel or in the nearby quarry owned by a rich Palestinian who sells stone to Israeli contractors.

Hasan and his brother Muhammad are leaders of the Popular Committee of Ma’asara. Another leader, Mahmud, is currently in France on a political mission. Hasan is a supporter of Fatah, Muhammad supports the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Mahmud supports the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. But these differences are of little consequence, because the Popular Committee includes all the factions in the village.

When Hasan returns from prayers, he serves tea to the guests. There is barely enough time to finish drinking before the guests depart to join about two dozen villagers for the demonstration. Muhammad stays behind because he is under a military court order that forbids him from participating. If Israeli authorities saw him attending a demonstration, he would forfeit a bond of 15,000 Israeli shekels (about $3,950).

The demonstrators march through neighboring villages, with a total population of about 10,000, to Umm Salamuna. There, several kilometers away from the separation barrier, twenty Israeli soldiers in full battle gear stand behind a razor wire, which they have stretched across the road to block the protesters’ advance. Haggai, a young Israeli man who was jailed for two years for refusing to be drafted into the army, addresses the soldiers in Hebrew. Showing them a hand-drawn poster-board map of the area, he explains, “You are not in the territory of the state of Israel and you could not do what you are now doing inside Israel. We are demonstrating peacefully on Palestinian land. You are violating international law. Don’t be surprised if, when you repress peaceful demonstrations, some Palestinians resort to violence. You can choose not to obey your orders.” Jum’a, a member of the Popular Committee, addresses the crowd in Arabic and English, emphasizing that this is a nonviolent demonstration.

Nonetheless, Rami, one of the villagers, is arrested. His apparent offense was stepping on the razor wire. Umm ‘Iyad, an older woman wearing a headscarf and a shawl in the colors of the Palestinian flag, crosses over the razor wire, undisturbed by the soldiers, and proceeds to negotiate for Rami’s release. During the negotiations a drum corps of five young Israeli women and one man and the Palestinian boys they have been teaching to drum sustains a steady succession of beats punctuated by chants in Arabic, Hebrew and English.
The soldiers do not deny that they are holding Rami hostage to force the demonstration to end. Eventually, an arrangement is reached. The soldiers release Rami with his ID card, which he must have to cross any of the more than 500 barriers and checkpoints the army maintains in the West Bank. The demonstration ends.

***

In mid-2002 Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon authorized the construction of a separation barrier (known in Israeli parlance as the “fence” and in Palestinian parlance as the “apartheid wall”). About 85 percent of the barrier’s trajectory is to the east of the Green Line that marked the border between Israel and the West Bank from 1949 to 1967–i.e., inside the West Bank. The construction of the barrier is incomplete and its final trajectory is still contested. But if there is ever a negotiated resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Israeli consensus supports annexing Palestinian agricultural lands and Jewish settlements lying to the west of the barrier. This region is now designated as “the seam zone” (kav ha-tefer)–an indeterminate area that is not (yet) legally in Israel proper, but which has been effectively detached from the West Bank.

On July 9, 2004, the International Court of Justice ruled that “the construction by Israel of the wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and its associated regime are contrary to international law.” In Israel this was widely considered yet another confirmation that “the whole world is against us” and that Israel “shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations.” Most Israelis do not care to know what happens on the other side of the barrier.

There are currently also weekly demonstrations in the villages of Bil’in and Ni’ilin. There, the demonstrators can actually reach the separation barrier, climb on it or open the gate to it. These actions are “illegal,” so the army uses considerably more force to disperse them than in Ma’asara, firing volleys of high-velocity tear gas canisters, percussion grenades, stink bombs, rubber-coated metal bullets and live 22-caliber ammunition. While the demonstrations are nonviolent, in some villages youths throw stones at the Israeli soldiers after the official demonstration is over.

Bil’in (pop. 1,800) has held weekly demonstrations against the separation barrier since March 2005, the longest continuous nonviolent popular mobilization in Palestinian history. Bil’in has achieved international renown and is the subject of a film, Bil’in, My Love, made by Shai Carmeli Pollak, one of the regular Israeli demonstrators. Since 2006 the village has hosted annual solidarity conferences attended by luminaries who also participate in the Friday demonstrations. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Corrigan was shot by a rubber-coated steel bullet at a demonstration during the April 2007 solidarity conference. European Parliament vice president Luisa Morgantini and other dignitaries were injured in a demonstration in June 2008. In August 2009 six members of “The Elders,” a group of widely respected, retired political figures–Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Ela Bhatt, Gro Brundtland, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Jimmy Carter and Mary Robinson–visited Bil’in.

Bil’in is also the symbol of a certain victory for popular struggle against the separation barrier. On September 4, 2007, the Israeli Supreme Court ordered that the barrier, whose current trajectory cuts the village off from about one-quarter of its remaining agricultural lands, must be redirected. Chief Justice Dorit Beinish’s opinion stated that the court was “not convinced that it is necessary for security-military reasons to retain the current route that passes on Bil’in’s lands.” Despite this unequivocal ruling, the Israeli army has failed to implement the court’s order. The barrier remains, and hundreds of olive trees uprooted to make way for it have not been replaced.

Therefore, the weekly demonstrations have continued, and the Israeli reaction to the mobilization at Bil’in has become more fierce. In April 2009 a tear gas canister shot by the army during a demonstration killed Basim Ibrahim Abu Rahmah. In December 2009 Basim’s cousin and the coordinator of the Bil’in Popular Committee against the Wall, Abdallah Abu Rahmah, was arrested. He was charged with possession of weapons because he maintains a “museum” in his home displaying spent tear gas canisters, percussion grenades and bullets fired by the Israeli army at unarmed demonstrators. In response, the Elders’ chair, Desmond Tutu, released a statement saying, “My fellow Elders and I met Abu Rahmah and his colleague Mohammad Khatib in August when we visited Bil’in…. We were impressed by their commitment to peaceful political action, and their success in challenging the wall that unjustly separates the people of Bil’in from their land and their olive trees. I call on Israeli officials to release Abu Rahmah immediately and unconditionally.”

On November 6, 2009, to mark the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, some 300 demonstrators at Ni’ilin (pop. 4,600) toppled a section of the eight-meter-high wall that separates the village from part of its lands. The demonstrations have been particularly violent there during the past year. Five residents have been killed and dozens have been wounded. In March 2009 an American, Tristan Anderson, was severely injured at Ni’ilin. In late 2009 he was still hospitalized with brain damage and a fractured skull.

During 2009 Bil’in, Ni’ilin, and Ma’asara were the most visible part of the story. But there is much more. Village-based Palestinian popular resistance supported by Israelis and internationals began in the fall of 2003, when local Palestinians and Israelis stood together against the separation barrier in the villages of Jayyus and Mas’ha.

On November 9, 2003, Budrus (pop. 1,400) became the first village to organize a formal weekly march from the village center to the site of the construction of the barrier. Two soldiers were wounded by stones in a demonstration at which there were no Israelis and foreigners. Wounded soldiers make news in Israel, so the Palestinian struggle against the separation barrier also received publicity.

Jonathan Pollak, a young Israeli activist, came to Budrus and asked ‘Ayid Mrar, a leader of the recently formed Popular Committee, “How can we help?” ‘Ayid replied, “It’s very important that you come and participate with us.” Relating the story later ‘Ayid recalls, “When foreigners and Israelis began coming to my house, people didn’t like it at first. People had never seen the other face of Israelis. They thought Jews are either soldiers or settlers. Then Israelis started to come to demonstrations. Now people accept and welcome it.”

During one of the weekly demonstrations Iltizam, ‘Ayid’s teenage daughter, organized a women’s contingent, which broke through the army lines and stopped the bulldozers from working. Women in Ma’asara did the same, under the leadership of Umm Hasan. Budrus too, is the subject of a film. Budrus, directed and written by Julia Bacha, held its world premier at the December 2009 Dubai International Film Festival, with ‘Ayid and Iltizam in attendance.

There have also been demonstrations in many other villages whose lands have been confiscated due to the construction of the separation barrier. The Israeli army and border police have killed some twenty Palestinians (six in 2009 alone) while attempting to disperse these protests. Hundreds have been injured and arrested. Many of the organizers are under military orders banning them from participating in the weekly demonstrations.

Israelis have joined the demonstrations, in large numbers on special occasions, and in smaller numbers on a regular basis. The most persistent Israelis have been associated with Anarchists against the Wall, a name given to the group by the Israeli media but which they accepted for its provocative character. A good number of the anarchists and other younger Israeli activists have learned Arabic as a result of their extensive stays in West Bank villages or through study motivated by political commitment. They have the wounds to prove that commitment. Jonathan Pollak was hit by a tear gas canister at one of the Bil’in demonstrations and suffered two brain hemorrhages and a wound requiring twenty-three stitches. Matan Cohen was shot in the head with a rubber-coated steel bullet at a demonstration at Beit Sira. He later enrolled in Hampshire College and became a prominent organizer of the campaign there that culminated in the college endowment fund divesting from six companies doing business in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. An Israeli court recently accepted the contention of the border police who shot Matan that his wound could have been caused by a stone with the exact dimensions of a bullet.

Internationals, many organized by the International Solidarity Movement, have spent time in the villages, eaten and slept in local homes and participated in the weekly demonstrations. They have been tear gassed, wounded and killed, most famously Rachel Corrie, who was crushed to death by a Caterpillar bulldozer in March 2003 while trying to prevent it from demolishing a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip city of Rafah.
Palestinians, Israelis and foreigners jointly confronting the Israeli army; locally organized and led protests, substantially nonviolent and uniting adherents of all the Palestinian factions; peacefully demonstrating Palestinians, Israelis and foreigners tear gassed, severely wounded and killed by the Israeli army; women wearing headscarves playing an active and independent political role: these are not the common images of Israeli occupation and Palestinian resistance in North American journalistic, diplomatic and scholarly discourse. But they are central components of an ongoing movement deeply rooted in the social fabric of the West Bank. While not necessarily opposed to existing political parties or urban-based elites, this movement has been organized by local forces seeking to unite all the elements of village communities in order to protect their lands from the encroachments of the separation barrier.

Despite its peasant base and leadership, the movement is extremely sophisticated. ‘Ayid Mrar says, “If we resist a bulldozer we aren’t opposing the Israeli soldier. We are opposing the bulldozer [coming to destroy our land.] We are resisting the wall. If the Israeli soldier puts himself between us and the bulldozer, he is putting himself in danger. But we have no weapons, and there is no violence or fighting on our part…. Our problem is not with Israel and not with Jews. Jonathan is a Jew. Our problem is with the occupation. If we want to have a developed, peaceful region, we have to work together. We can have peace on the basis of equality.”

Toward the end of 2009 a national coordinating committee of the local popular committees was being formed. Jonathan Pollak is the media coordinator for Israel and international media and webmaster. His first effort in this capacity was an op-ed on the Huffington Post blog about the arrest of Abdallah Abu Rahmah. Jonathan believes that the wave of recent arrests (over thirty in Bil’in alone since last June) and the escalation of violence against demonstrators are due to Israel’s fear of “a paradigm shift to grassroots resistance.”

The mobilizations are rooted in the particular dynamics of each village and depend on the balance of local political forces, family dynamics and economic factors like the possibility of obtaining permits to work in Israel. Together they form a peasant-based social movement that is becoming increasingly conscious of its political significance and filling the void in Palestinian leadership created by the futile struggle between the Palestinian Authority, dominated by Fatah, and Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip.

Is this movement likely to contribute to a resolution of the conflict anytime soon? ‘Ayid Mrar is doubtful. “I don’t know when the occupation will end,” he says. “Not in one or two years. Maybe in a hundred. If the Palestinian people achieve their freedom, we don’t want relations of enmity with Israel. We want to build a different Middle East.”

Real per capita income of Palestine plunges

2010-01-18T16:17:00.001-05:00

Nadim Kawach

Armed with growing global financial aid, the Palestinians in the occupied territories struggled to alleviate years of poverty, unemployment and other economic woes but their efforts have been ruined by Israel’s hostility. In such conditions, the aid was only helpful in preventing a human disaster in 2008.

While their economy recorded modest growth rates in 2008, the per capita income has steadily eroded over the past decade, investment has dived, unemployment deteriorated and the farming sector continued to shrink. Several years of concerted peace moves and international promises of a better life for the Palestinians have failed to produce any results, with their economic problems only getting worse and hopes for a recovery continuing to fade away.

Persistent blockades, destruction of trees, closure of factories and other repressive and punitive measures by Israel in the occupied territories have massacred the Palestinian economy, widened unemployment and poverty, and killed hopes of the young generation of any recovery under Israel.

Economic indicators

“The suffering of the Palestinian people and economy continued in 2008 mainly because of the Israeli policies and practices. Development in the West Bank suffered from continued Israeli settlements and destruction of its geographic and economic scene. In Gaza, which contributes around 44 per cent of the Palestinian GDP, all economic indicators recorded a sharp decline because of the sustained Israeli siege,” the Arab League said in its 2009 economic report.

“Towards the end of 2008, tragedy struck Gaza when Israel launched its aggression against the Palestinians, killing and wounding 6,815 people, including 415 children and 110 women. This led to a serious deterioration in the economy and destroyed all efforts to achieve any quick recovery,” the report added.

“Through 2008, Palestinian economic indicators showed further deterioration. The GDP was no longer able to cover domestic demand and the public revenues [excluding foreign aid] could not cover budgetary spending… inflation rates soared and the economy became more fragile. But the intensifying flow of aid from Arabs and other countries largely contributed to preventing a human and economic catastrophe in the occupied territories.”

The report showed since 1999, the Palestinian gross domestic product has steadily eroded. Against the backdrop of a rapid population growth, worsening poverty and unemployment, the per capita income shrank and key sectors deteriorated, mainly farming, the backbone of the Palestinian economy.

Weak dollar

“What complicated the situation is the split within the Palestinian government, the weakening in the US dollar and the sub-prime crisis given the strong link between the Israeli and US economies. As a result, the real value of global aid to the Palestinians receded since it consists mostly of US dollar, which has declined against the Israeli currency. All these developments have inflicted massive losses on the Palestinian economy over the past years and severely hit the Palestinian private sector, the main driver of growth and employment.”

While the GDP in the West Bank and Gaza Strip recorded a growth of around 2.3 per cent in 2008, the real per capita income declined because of high growth in the population and contraction in key productive sectors, the report said.

Real per capita income plunged from about $1,621 in 1999 to nearly $1,284 in 2008 while the per capita of the gross national product dived from nearly $1,959 to about $1,690. Real GNP per capita dipped from $1,707 to $1,108. “Sector-wise, the agricultural sector which is a key component of the Palestinian economy and a major job provider has been severely hit because of the Israeli measures. In nominal terms, it recorded modest growth but real growth was negative mainly because of a sharp decline in olive production. Its contribution to the GDP shrank from about $294.5 in 2007 to $235 in 2008, depressing it share from 6.3 to 4.6 per cent,” the report said.

“From 160,000 tonnes in 2007, olive output in the territories dived to only 34,000 tonnes in 2008 as Israel pushed ahead with its policy of land confiscation, uprooting of trees, devastation of farmlands, and closure of export outlets.”

The report said closure of factories and workshops within Israel’s collective punitive measures also wrecked the Palestinian industrial sector
Although it grew in current prices in 2008, this sector’s contribution to the GDP retreated to about 13.6 per cent from nearly 14.8 per cent in 1999.

“Israel has also confiscated factory equipment and spare parts and this has further aggravated the problem in the industrial sector.”

The report showed while the construction sector edged up by about 2.2 per cent in 2008 compared with 2007, it was down by nearly 18.4 per cent from 1999. It said the decline was a result of growing investment risks in this sector because of direct Israeli attacks on buildings and other facilities.

Productive sectors

As for services, it grew by around 2.8 per cent in 2008 to hit a record 76.8 per cent of the GDP compared with around 61 per cent in 1999.

“This increase was at the expense of productive sectors in the Palestinian areas. It has been a general trend since Israel occupied the Palestinian territories in 1967. While the growth reflects the steadfastness of the Palestinian services sector against Israeli policies, it also illustrates the difficulties faced by the Palestinian productive sectors because of Israel,” the report said.

“As a result of the Israeli recent escalation against the Palestinians, mainly in Gaza Strip, international aid gained momentum and this has only prevented a human catastrophe. But the general economic and social situation has remained tragic and there are no hopes for an early recovery thanks to the continuous Israeli repressive and hostile policies, which have aggravated poverty and unemployment problems in the Palestinian areas.”

From 11.8 per cent in 1999, the Palestinian unemployment rate surged to 23.8 per cent in 2001 and hit a record high of 31.3 per cent in 2002. It slipped to 25.6 per cent in 2003 and mildly fluctuated to reach 28.5 per cent in 2008.

The report showed Israel’s decision to deprive thousands of Palestinians from their jobs in its areas was the main contributor to the worsening unemployment problem. From 117,000 in 1999, the number of Palestinian workers in Israel recorded a sharp fall in the following years to reach one of its lowest levels of around 67,000 at the end of 2008.

“Jobless Palestinians in the occupied territories rose to one of its highest levels of about 249,000. This constitutes the main cause for the poverty problem in Palestine and it illustrates the inability of the Palestinian economy from absorbing its own manpower.”

Unemployment high

The report showed the unemployment problem was more underscored in Gaza, which has remained under tight Israeli siege for many years. “Unemployment stood at 16 per cent in the West Bank but as high as 49 per cent in Gaza at the end of 2008. The more serious phenomenon is that unemployment is as high as 62 per cent among the youth in Gaza and 27 per cent in the West Bank.”

According to the report, the Palestinian nominal GDP steadily shrank between 2000 and 2003 before it started to climb slowly in the following years to reach $5,099 in 2008 compared to nearly $4,178 in 1999. The report showed persistent tensions and Israel’s repressive policies have also hurt investments, which plunged from about $1,806 million in 1999 to $1,497 in 2008. Private investment was the main victim as it tumbled from nearly $1,143m to about $809 in the same period.

The decline depressed the share of total investments from 43.2 per cent to 29.4 per cent of the GDP, according to the report.

Turning to trade, the report said the erosion in the farming and industrial sectors pushed down Palestine’s exports from $683m in 1999 to about $500m in 2007. Although they recovered to about $737 in 2008, Palestine’s trade deficit largely widened from around $2.66bn in 1999 to $3.032bn in 2008 as a result of sharp increase in imports.

Global aid

The report showed while there was a sharp rise in revenue due to the surge in global aid, spending also recorded a large increase because of government commitments to civil servants, compensations and reconstruction of facilities damaged by Israel attacks and punitive measures.

From about $1.36bn in 1999, public revenue soared to $3.52bn in 2008 while expenditure also leaped from about $1.19bn to nearly $3.13bn in the same period. The bulk of the revenue increase came from international aid, which swelled from $235m to about $1.76bn in 2008. As a result, the budget deficit turned into a surplus of about $393m in 2008 after years of painful deficits. But the Palestinian public debt continued to grow during that period because of previous shortfalls to reach a record $1.439bn at the end of 2008 compared with $391.5bn at the end of 1999.

As for global financial aid, the report showed it exceeded $2bn in 2008, including about $526m from Arab countries, $651m from the European Union, $300m from the US, about $283m from the World Bank and the rest from other sources.

Don’t be Complicit in Israel’s Apartheid: Boycott the 2010 Tel Aviv International Student Film Festival

2010-01-18T16:09:00.002-05:00

A Joint Statement by PACBI and PSCABI

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and the Palestinian Students‘ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel (PSCABI) call on students, lecturers and film-makers to boycott the 13th International Student Film Festival, scheduled for June 2010 in the city of Tel Aviv. PACBI and PSCABI believe that this festival, as with similar cultural initiatives supported by the Israeli government, is openly designed to whitewash the crimes of Israeli apartheid.

Festival organizers have highlighted the aim of the festival, noting that it is “a unique cultural and social means to presenting a different Israel to the world, [an] Israel which supports and invests in pluralism, culture and equal opportunity.” This language reveals – as did similar endeavors by the South African Apartheid regime – a cynical and systematic attempt at manipulating world opinion. It aims to obfuscate the real nature of Israeli military occupation and apartheid, and to divert attention from its ongoing war crimes by portraying Israel as a vibrant, cultural and artistic hub. It is for this reason that the festival is heavily funded and supported by the Israeli government.

In 2009, this policy of using culture to whitewash Israeli violations of international law was openly confirmed by the Israeli government with the launch of a global ‘Brand Israel’ campaign. According to an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesperson, the objective of this rebranding campaign, which “could include organizing film festivals” is to convey the message that “a better image for Israel and a better performance of that image is part and parcel [of] Israel‘s national security. Contrary to popular belief, national security is not just based on military power, it‘s also a strong economy and a strong image.”

This attempt to create a ‘better image for Israel’ through film, dance, music and literary events is all the more horrendous given the bloody military assault conducted in 2009 against the occupied Gaza Strip which left over 1,440 Palestinians dead, of whom 431 were children, and 5380 injured. The 1.5 million Palestinians in the besieged Gaza Strip, the overwhelming majority of whom are refugees who were expelled from their homes by Zionist forces in 1948, were subjected to three weeks of relentless Israeli state terror, whereby Israeli warplanes systematically targeted civilian areas, reducing whole neighborhoods and vital civilian infrastructure to rubble and partially destroying Gaza’s leading university and scores of schools, including several run by the UN, where civilians were taking shelter. A UN Fact Finding Mission headed by the prominent South African judge, Richard Goldstone, accused Israel of deliberately and indiscriminately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure and committing war crimes in this war of aggression.

The orders for this assault came from Tel Aviv, a place the festival organizers hope to honour as “the city that never sleeps – an even more turbulent, energetic and lively place. Could we ask for a warmer home for a Festival dedicated to young artists, to young art?” Moreover, this offensive hubris ignores the fact that the city itself is built on the remains of the homes of Palestinian refugees expelled in 1948, and to which any Palestinian ‘young artist’ from Gaza or the West Bank, let alone from the large Palestinian refugee community in exile, is barred from visiting.

Today, the siege on Gaza continues, and the festival organizers are apparently oblivious to these war crimes – preferring to pretend that a festival supported by the Israeli government can “bridg[e] cultural gaps and develop tolerance through cinema”.

It should be noted that in the lead up to the previous Tel Aviv festival in 2008, the renowned French film-maker Jean-Luc Godard canceled his participation following PACBI’s request to boycott the event. He had been due to participate as an honorary guest and to hold master classes with Israeli film students.[vi]

Because of the Festival’s open ties with the Israeli state, and its clear aim to normalize Israeli apartheid and whitewash Israel‘s persistent violations of international law and human rights in the minds of filmmakers, students and other cultural workers, PACBI and PSCABI view any participation in this event as a form of immoral complicity and call for a its complete boycott. We urge filmmakers, lectures and students to heed the Palestinian civil society call for a boycott of Israel and its complicit institutions, as they did in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. This is the bare minimal form of solidarity that we expect from any people of conscience around the world to support our struggle for freedom, justice and a meaningful peace in our region.

Bil'in protests against CRH & Egypt's Wall of Death

2010-01-12T02:44:00.000-05:00

Guess who's in the first 3 seconds of this one... Oh well. My first time on YouTube!! :o)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Hrv0hBrp6o

Israel stages night-time Ramallah raid to arrest an international solidarity activist

2010-01-12T02:36:00.002-05:00

A raid was conducted in Ramallah’s city centre tonight to apprehend Eva Nováková, a Czech citizen, who took on the role of the International Solidarity Movement’s media coordinator three weeks ago.
Israeli soldiers raided the Ramallah home of Eva Nováková tonight at 3 am near the Manara square. The operation to apprehend Nováková, the ISM’s new media coordinator since three weeks ago, was carried out by a force of both soldiers and members of the “Oz” immigration police unit. During the raid, the army occupied a number of rooftops at a location adjacent to the Palestinian Police Ramallah headquarters. She is currently being held in Givon detention center awaiting deportation to the Czech Republic.

This recent military raid into Palestinian-controlled Area A comes amidst Palestinian discontent over continued incursions and arrests. Nováková’s Attoreny Omer Shatz stated: “The Israeli immigration police work under the authority of the Israeli ministry of the interior, and as such have no jurisdiction in the Occupied Palestinian territories. This arrest is part of the continued and illegal use of the immigration police against activists, for political purposes”

This raid follows an extensive arrest wave targeting grassroots activists and oragnizers throughout the West Bank. Such raids have been conducted in the villages of Bil’in – where 32 residents have been arrested in the past six month, Ni’ilin – where 94 residents have been arrested in the past 18 months, the cities of Nablus and Ramallah and East Jerusalem. The past three weeks have seen raids on ex-ISM bases in both Bil’in and Ni’lin also.

Among those arrested in this recent campaign are five members of the Bil’in Popular Committee have been arrested in suspicion of incitement, including Adeeb Abu Rahmah, who has already been held in detention for almost six months and Bil’in’s Popular Committee coordinator, Abdallah Abu Rahmah.

Prominent Nablus grassroots activists, Wael al-Faqeeh (Nablus) as well as Jamal Juma (East Jerusalem) and Mohammed Othman (Jayyous) of the Stop the Wall NGO, involved in anti-Wall and boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigning have also been arrested recently. All three are currently being held on secret evidence and with no charges brought against them.

Israel plans settlement expansion

2009-12-28T12:23:00.001-05:00

Israel housing ministry has approved plans to build almost 700 new apartments in three Jewish settlements in east Jerusalem.

Palestinian officials were quick to condemn Monday's move as incompatible with efforts to restart the stalled peace process. East Jerusalem was annexed after the 1967 Middle East war, a move not recognised by the international community.

"The Palestinian Authority strongly condemns the new decision to build in east Jerusalem and wonders whether there is a freeze of settlement activity or an intensification of it," Saeb Erakat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said.

"The American administration needs to realise that the policies of the Israeli government embody settlements and not peace and that their choice is settlements and not peace."

Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, declared a 10-month suspension of settlement construction in the occupied West Bank earlier this month but the temporary halt does not include east Jerusalem.

"We make a distinction between the West Bank and Jerusalem. Jerusalem is our capital and remains such,'' Mark Regev, a government spokesman, said on Monday.

Palestinian demands

The Palestinians have refused to reopen peace talks, which broke down a year ago, until Netanyahu halts all settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

Palestinians claim east Jerusalem as the capital of any future state and consider Jewish neighbourhoods there to be settlements.
Monday's announcement invited construction companies to bid to build 198 housing units in Pisgat Zeev, 377 homes in Neve Yaakov and 117 dwellings in Har Homa.

The United States has been trying to bring together Palestinian and Israeli leaders to resume their negotiations in recent months.

A US official said the approval of new apartments in east Jerusalem was another blow to peace efforts.

"We feel that unilateral actions make it harder for people to get back together at the table, and that's what our goals are," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"We also have mentioned in the past, and Secretary [of state Hillary] Clinton has mentioned, that we consider all the Israeli settlements to be beyond the pale of what we wish to see going on, and are not helpful, again, to getting the two sides back to the table," he said.

On November 16, Israel gave its approval for 900 new housing units in another east Jerusalem settlement.
Israel's 10-month moratorium on construction in the West Bank, which Netanyahu said was to encourage the resumption of the peace talks, excludes public buildings and building on 3,000 settlement homes already under way.

About 190,000 Israelis live in east Jerusalem and another 290,000 settlers currently live in the occupied West Bank.

Netanyahu was due to travel to Egypt on Tuesday to meet Hosni Mubarak, the president, to discuss Middle East peacemaking.

'Israel resembles a failed state'

2009-12-28T12:17:00.001-05:00

By Ali Abunimah

More than 1,400 Palestinians were killed in Operation Cast Lead, but author says the war damaged Israel's standing in international public opinion [EPA]

One year has passed since the savage Israeli attack on the Gaza Strip, but for the people there time might as well have stood still. Since Palestinians in Gaza buried their loved ones - more than 1,400 people, almost 400 of them children - there has been little healing and virtually no reconstruction.

According to international aid agencies, only 41 trucks of building supplies have been allowed into Gaza during the year.

Promises of billions made at a donors' conference in Egypt last March attended by luminaries of the so-called "international community" and the Middle East peace process industry are unfulfilled, and the Israeli siege, supported by the US, the European Union, Arab states, and tacitly by the Palestinian Authority (PA) in Ramallah, continues.

Policy of destruction

Amid the endless, horrifying statistics a few stand out: Of Gaza's 640 schools, 18 were completely destroyed and 280 damaged in Israeli attacks. Two-hundred-and-fifty students and 15 teachers were killed.

Of 122 health facilities assessed by the World Health Organization, 48 per cent were damaged or destroyed. Ninety per cent of households in Gaza still experience power cuts for 4 to 8 hours per day due to Israeli attacks on the power grid and degradation caused by the blockade.

Forty-six per cent of Gaza's once productive agricultural land is out of use due to Israeli damage to farms and Israeli-declared free fire zones. Gaza's exports of more than 130,000 tonnes per year of tomatoes, flowers, strawberries and other fruit have fallen to zero.

That "much of Gaza still lies in ruins," a coalition of international aid agencies stated recently, "is not an accident; it is a matter of policy".
This policy has been clear all along and it has nothing to do with Israeli "security".

Destroying resistance

From June 19, 2008, to November 4, 2008, calm prevailed between Israel and Gaza, as Hamas adhered strictly - as even Israel has acknowledged - to a negotiated ceasefire.

That ceasefire collapsed when Israel launched a surprise attack on Gaza killing six people, after which Hamas and other resistance factions retaliated.

Even so, Palestinian factions were still willing to renew the ceasefire, but it was Israel that refused, choosing instead to launch a premeditated, systematic attack on the foundations of civilised life in the Gaza Strip.

Author says the war aimed to erode support for Hamas but failed to do so [GALLO/GETTY]

Operation Cast Lead, as Israel dubbed it, was an attempt to destroy once and for all Palestinian resistance in general, and Hamas in particular, which had won the 2006 election and survived the blockade and numerous US-sponsored attempts to undermine and overthrow it in cooperation with US-backed Palestinian militias.

Like the murderous sanctions on Iraq throughout the 1990s, the blockade of Gaza was calculated to deprive civilians of basic necessities, rights and dignity in the hope that their suffering might force their leadership to surrender or collapse.

In many respects things may seem more dire than a year ago.

Barack Obama, the US president, whom many hoped would change the vicious anti-Palestinian policies of his predecessor, George Bush, has instead entrenched them as even the pretense of a serious peace effort has vanished.

According to media reports, the US Army Corps of Engineers is assisting Egypt in building an underground wall on its border with Gaza to block the tunnels which act as a lifeline for the besieged territory [resources and efforts that ought to go into rebuilding still hurricane-devastated New Orleans], and American weapons continue to flow to West Bank militias engaged in a US- and Israeli-sponsored civil war against Hamas and anyone else who might resist Israeli occupation and colonisation.

Shifting public opinion

These facts are inescapable and bleak.

However, to focus on them alone would be to miss a much more dynamic situation that suggests Israel's power and impunity are not as invulnerable as they appear from this snapshot.

A year after Israel's attack and after more than two-and-a-half years of blockade, the Palestinian people in Gaza have not surrendered. Instead they have offered the world lessons in steadfastness and dignity, even at an appalling, unimaginable cost.

It is true that the European Union leaders who came to occupied Jerusalem last January to publicly embrace Ehud Olmert, the then Israeli prime minister, - while white phosphorus seared the flesh of Gazan children and bodies lay under the rubble - still cower before their respective Israel lobbies, as do American and Canadian politicians.

But the shift in public opinion is palpable as Israel's own actions transform it into a pariah whose driving forces are not the liberal democratic values with which it claims to identify, but ultra-nationalism, racism, religious fanaticism, settler-colonialism and a Jewish supremacist order maintained by frequent massacres.
The universalist cause of justice and liberation for Palestinians is gaining adherents and momentum especially among the young.

I witnessed it, for example, among Malaysian students I met at a Palestine solidarity conference held by the Union of NGOs of The Islamic World in Istanbul last May.
And again in November, as hundreds of student organisers from across the US and Canada converged to plan their participation in the global Palestinian-led campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions modeled on the successful struggle against South African apartheid in the 1980s.

'Bankrupt' state

This week, thousands of people from dozens of countries are attempting to reach Gaza to break the siege and march alongside Palestinians who have been organising inside the territory.

Each of the individuals traveling with the Gaza Freedom March, Viva Palestina, or other delegations represents perhaps hundreds of others who could not make the journey in person, and who are marking the event with demonstrations and commemorations, visits to their elected officials, and media campaigns.
Against this flowering of activism, Zionism is struggling to rejuvenate its dwindling base of support.

Multi-million dollar programmes aimed at recruiting and Zionising young American Jews are struggling to compete against organisations like the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, which run not on money but principled commitment to human equality.

Increasingly, we see that Israel's hasbara [propaganda] efforts have no positive message, offer no plausible case for maintaining a status quo of unspeakable repression and violence, and rely instead on racist demonisation and dehumanisation of Arabs and Muslims to justify Israel's actions and even its very existence.
Faced with growing global recognition and support for the courageous non-violent struggle against continued land theft in the West Bank, Israel is escalating its violence and kidnapping of leaders of the movement in Bil'in and other villages [Muhammad Othman, Jamal Juma and Abdallah Abu Rahmeh are among the leaders of this movement recently arrested].

Travel fears

In acting this way, Israel increasingly resembles a bankrupt failed state, not a regime confident about its legitimacy and longevity.
And despite the failed peace process industry's efforts to ridicule, suppress and marginalise it, there is a growing debate among Palestinians and even among Israelis about a shared future in Palestine/Israel based on equality and decolonisation, rather than ethno-national segregation and forced repartition.
Last, but certainly not least, in the shadow of the Goldstone report, Israeli leaders travel around the world fearing arrest for their crimes.

For now, they can rely on the impunity that high-level international complicity and their inertial power and influence still afford them.

But the question for the real international community - made up of people and movements - is whether we want to continue to see the still very incomplete system of international law and justice painstakingly built since the horrors of the Second World War and the Nazi holocaust dismantled and corrupted all for the sake of one rogue state.
What we have done in solidarity with the Palestinian people in Gaza and the rest of Palestine is not yet enough. But our movement is growing, it cannot be stopped, and we will reach our destination.

Settlers’ ‘Price Tag’ campaign hits Sheikh Jarrah

2009-12-28T09:32:00.002-05:00

Slogan saying 'Price Tag' spray-painted on a car belonging to Palestinian family by settlers

"The settlers yelled: Come out, this is our house”
Nadine Sabbagh 15-years-old, attacked in her home by settlers.

Just before midnight, on Christmas Day, 25 December 2009, the Sabbagh family was attacked by around 30 settlers. The settlers knocked at their door and told the family that they should come out of the house because it belongs to the settlers. They then broke in and injured 7 family members. Two were cut with a knife, two had their arm stretched and a pregnant woman was kicked in her stomach. She was taken to hospital where she remained at the time of writing this report. Another family member was hit in the face and had a gun pointed at her. She was threatened with being by the attackers.

The settlers continued their campaign of violence and intimidation on 26 December, when they attacked Palestinians from the neighbourhood with stones. Three children and one adult Palestinian were injured as result, and a French man who took pictures of the episode was attacked by a settler.

Palestinian resident of Sheikh Jarrah who was injured during a settler attack

Both attacks happened only days after settlers sprayed a car belonging to a Palestinian family from the neighbourhood with a slogan associated with the ‘Price Tag’ campaign.

Nadine Sabbagh told us the day after her and her family’s home got attacked by settlers that the attack started at around midnight and continued for around three hours. After the settlers broke into her house they kicked her pregnant aunt in her stomach and cut her brother in the neck with a knife. The attack continued as the settlers cut Nadine’s cousin in his arm with a knife while they were violently pushing her mother and another aunt. Her aunt told us that she stretched her shoulder in the attack and it will take at least two weeks for it to fully recover.

One settler brought a gun and used it to threaten Nadine: “He told me; if you will not stop talking I will kill you.” At that point Nadine attempted to push the gun out of the settlers hand, but he avoided her and hit her in the face.

This is the first time the Sabbagh family home has been directly attacked by settlers.

The wave of settler violence continued throughout the day, when a group of 20 young settlers attacked a group f Palestinians in front of the occupied Gawi family home with stones. At first, the Palestinians managed to push the attackers out of the neighbourhood, only for them to return shortly after, in even bigger numbers, attacking again, this time more intensively. Four Palestinians, three of them children, were hit by stones thrown by settlers and a French man was attacked by a settler beating him in the head. When an Israeli ambulance arrived to the neighbourhood, the medics refused to treat the injured children and transport them to the hospital. An ambulance from the Red Crescent had to be called in order for the injured to receive necessary treatment.

Israeli and Red Crescent ambulances that arrived at Sheikh Jarrah after Palestinians were injured during a settler attack.

Four settlers were taken by the police for questioning in connection with the two attacks. According to the UN, settlers use the ‘Price Tag’ campaign to exercise systematic violence against Palestinian civilians where there have been attempts to evacuate settlement outposts. However, it seems that recently it is also being used as intimidation strategy in response to the Israeli government’s announcement of a partial freeze of settlement construction.

The strategy emerged due to the decreasing support of unauthorized outposts and is launched by radical settler groups in order for the Palestinians all over the Occupied Territories to pay the price in form of attacks every time the settlers feel they are being mistreated by the Israeli authorities. The strategic attacks have contributed to the displacement of entire Palestinian neighbourhoods, both temporary and permanent.

Three Palestinian men executed by Israeli military during Nablus night invasion, several wounded

2009-12-28T09:26:00.001-05:00

The Israeli army invaded the Palestinian city of Nablus shortly after midnight, Saturday 26 December, raided three houses and executed three men. Several family members have been injured and houses, where families of the three killed men lived, have been left completely destroyed. The army used live ammunition against the men, at least two of whom were unarmed and fired rockets at the houses, while their residents were still inside.

The Israeli military claims the men were wanted for their involvement in the recent West Bank killing of an Israeli settler near Tulkarem, for which a group associated with the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade claimed responsibility. The killings are, however, in flagrant breach of international law and represent assassinations without trial.

The human rights organization B’Tselem, who collected testimonies from family members of the three killed men, issued a statement condemning these killings. According to B’tselem, evidence gathered in the houses suggests that the Israeli military acted as if they were carrying out executions, rather than arrests. Eyewitnesses and relatives told the organization that at least two of the three men were unarmed and did not attempt to escape. This was confirmed by a senior IDF official, who told Israel Radio that the three men had not fired at the Israeli soldiers and that two of them were unarmed. B’Tselem also stated that, according to eyewitnesses, the soldiers did not try to stop or arrest the men, but simply shot them from a close range after discovering their identities.

First house the Israeli army invaded was the house of Gassan Abu Sharkh in the Old City of Nablus. Just after midnight, the military forced open the entrance door and ordered twenty members of Ghassan’s extended family to leave the house. Ghassan, who remained in the hallway, was shot several times from a short distance in his head. Ghassan’s family reported to ISM activists, who visited the scene in the morning, that the army fire was so intense that his head was split in half as result and the room was covered in blood and remains of his brain. Windows, doors, furniture were all destroyed by the soldiers. Ghassan (38), who worked as an electrician, left behind a wife, three sons and one daughter.

Second invaded house was also in the Old City and belonged to the family of Nadar Sarakji. Israeli soldiers blew the door open with explosives at about 2.30am, entered the house and forced the entire family of twenty out of their home. They then opened fire on Nadar as he was coming down the stairs. He was left to bleed to death in front of his family. His pregnant wife was shot in her foot. The military destroyed furniture in the house and broke many windows and doors.

The third house was raided at 3am, when the Israeli military in the force of approximately 180 soldiers (30 army jeeps) entered the Rasalayn neighbourhood, close to the Old City, and occupied several houses surrounding the Subih family house. From the roofs of an adjacent house soldiers then fired several rockets at upper levels of the Subih house, leaving huge cavities in the walls and blowing a hole between the third and fourth levels of the house. The soldiers on the ground then blew open the door and entered the whole house, forcing the families one by one out into the street and firing live ammunition inside the house. The soldiers found and executed Anan Subih inside of the house, while members of his family were all detained outside. Anan was married and left behind five daughters and two sons. ISM activists reported bullet holes everywhere in the house, which was left ransacked and partially flooded after the army shot at the water tanks on its roof.

After the killings children gathered in the streets of Nablus throwing rocks at jeeps, to which the army responded by firing sound bombs and live ammunition. They left the city at 8am. Residents say Israeli spotter planes had been flying low over Nablus for the last two days, conducting reconnaissance missions.

Background

According to B’Tselem, during the second intifada, Israel formally adopted a policy of assassinating Palestinians suspected of membership in armed organizations. At least seventeen of the eighty-nine Palestinians killed by Israeli forces between 2004 and 2005, during arrest operations, were not wanted by Israel and were not suspected by Israel of having committed any offense. In addition, at least forty-three of those killed were unarmed, or were not attempting to use their arms against Israeli security forces at the time they were killed.

B’Tselem has documented cases in which Israeli soldiers besieged a house in which they claimed a wanted person was present, and then fired at another occupant of the house when he opened the door, without prior warning and without offering them a chance to surrender. In other cases, the security forces disarmed the wanted persons, but then shot and killed them. In all these cases, the security forces acted as if they were carrying out an assassination and not an arrest, in flagrant breach of international humanitarian law.

Based on the report’s findings, there is a grave suspicion that execution of Palestinians has become a norm among the Israeli forces. Since the beginning of the second intifada, only a few cases in which Palestinians were shot and killed by soldiers have been investigated and members of the security forces were not held accountable for their actions.

Israeli forces kill six Palestinians in West Bank, Gaza

2009-12-28T08:26:00.000-05:00

Press release, Palestinian Centre for Human Rights

On Saturday morning, 26 December 2009, Israeli occupation forces killed six Palestinians in two separate attacks in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In the northern Gaza Strip, Israeli occupation forces employed excessive lethal force and killed three Palestinians, and Israeli undercover units extrajudicially executed three members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades (the armed wing of Fatah movement) in Nablus. The three victims in Nablus had been granted amnesty, in coordination with the Palestinian National Authority, and had been allowed to freely move and live normally. Israeli occupation forces claimed that undercover unit fired at the three victims "as they refused to surrender." However, investigations conducted by the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) conclude that the three victims were executed in cold blood.

PCHR strongly condemns these latest crimes, and reiterates the call for the international community to prosecute Israeli political and military officials suspected of committing such crimes. PCHR notes that these latest crimes occurred on the eve of the first anniversary of Israel's offensive on the Gaza Strip. To date, none of those suspected of committing war crimes during the offensive have been prosecuted; this impunity serves to encourage further violations of international law. It is Palestinian civilians who suffer the consequences.

In the Gaza Strip, at approximately 00:30 on Saturday, 26 December 2009, Israeli troops stationed on observation towards along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel to the north of Beit Hanoun town in the northern Gaza Strip opened fire at a number of Palestinians who got close to the border. The Israeli gunfire lasted for approximately 20 minutes, after which an Israeli aircraft fired a missile at the Palestinians. As a result, three Palestinians were killed:

1. Basheer Suleiman Mousa Abu Duhail, 20;
2. Mahmoud Jom'a Ibrahim al-Sharat'ha, 19; and
3. Hani Salem Ibrahim Abu Ghazal, 20.

The victims are all from al-Nasser village (the Bedouin village) to the north of Beit Lahia. They were unarmed and were apparently attempting to infiltrate into Israel to search for jobs. A fourth Palestinian survived the attack.

In the West Bank, at approximately 02:00 on Saturday, 26 December 2009, Israeli occupation forces, including undercover units, moved into Nablus. They positioned themselves near al-Nasser Mosque in the old town, where they surrounded and opened fire at a house belonging to the family of Ra'ed 'Abdul Jabbar Mohammed al-Sarkaji, 40. Using megaphones, they ordered al-Sarkaji out of the house. As soon as he opened the door, Israeli troops opened fired at him. He was hit by a gunshot to the forehead and fell down. Soon after, Israeli occupation forces fired at him from a very close range. He was killed by six gunshots to the head, the chest, the left forearm, the pelvis and the left leg. His wife, 32-year-old Tahani Farouq Ja'ara, was wounded by shrapnel to the leg.

At the same time, other Israeli units besieged a house belonging to the family of Ghassan Fat'hi Abu Sharekh, 38, near Qaderi fish market in the old town. Through megaphones they ordered residents of the house to get out. All the inhabitants left the building, Ghassan was the last to leave. Once he appeared, Israeli occupation forces opened fire at him. He was killed by sevem gunshots to the neck, the chest, the abdomen, the back and the left leg.

At approximately 02:30, Israeli occupation forces besieged the Sobeh five-story apartment building in Kshaika Street in Ras al-'Ein neighborhood in the southeast of Nablus. They called through megaphones on 'Anan Suleiman Mustafa Sobeh, 36, who lives on the second floor, to get out and surrender to them. They opened fire at the building. At approximately 08:00, Israeli occupation forces withdrew from the area, and residents of the area found 'Anan's body on the roof of a car washing yard near the building. He was hit by several gunshots to the chest, the right shoulder, the neck and the lower jaw.

PCHR strongly condemns crimes committed by Israeli occupation forces in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), and:

1) Asserts that these latest crimes are ones in a series of continuous crimes committed by Israeli occupation forces in the OPT in disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians.

2) Reiterates condemnation for the policy of extra-judicial executions adopted by Israeli occupation forces against Palestinian activists, and asserts that this policy serves to increase tension in the region and threatens the lives of Palestinian civilians.

3) Calls upon the international community to immediately intervene to stop such crimes, and calls upon the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War to fulfill their obligation under article 1 of the Convention to ensure respect for the Convention in all circumstances, and their obligation under article 146 to search for and prosecute those who are responsible for perpetrating grave breaches of the Convention, as such breaches constitute war crimes according to article 147 of the Convention and the Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I).

Settlers attack Palestinian family in Sheikh Jarrah

2009-12-24T15:02:00.002-05:00

This is in the same area I have been.

Settlers attack Palestinian family in Sheikh Jarrah

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Residents of Sheikh Jarrah celebrate Christmas despite ongoing settler expansion

2009-12-24T14:27:00.000-05:00

Another report I worked on & the second picture.

Residents of Sheikh Jarrah celebrate Christmas despite ongoing settler expansion

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Settlers attempt to destroy Christmas tree following Palestinian celebration in Sheikh Jarrah

2009-12-24T14:25:00.000-05:00

This is what I have been working on all day!

Settlers attempt to destroy Christmas tree following Palestinian celebration in Sheikh Jarrah

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Egypt tells Freedom march Gaza border shut due to tensions

2009-12-24T12:43:00.000-05:00

Bethlehem - Ma'an - Delegates with the Gaza Freedom March were told by Egyptian authorities they would be unable to enter Gaza via the Rafah crossing since the terminal will be closed due to continuing border tension, a statement said.

According to march organizers, on 20 December officials from the Egyptian Foreign Ministry cited "escalating tensions on the Gaza-Egypt border" for the closure of the Rafah crossing from earlier in the week on through to January.

Responding to the announcement, the delegation noted, "No delegation, large or small, that has entered Gaza over the past 12 months has received a final OK before arriving at the Rafah border. Most delegations were discouraged from even heading out of Cairo to Rafah. Some had their buses stopped on the way. Some have been told outright that they could not go into Gaza. But after public and political pressure, the Egyptian government changed its position and let them pass."

The group, of more than 1,300 individuals, says it will "continue the journey."

This is very common now because of all the campaigns heading to Gaza. The need for people in the West bank is dire so I will be unable to join CodePink next week in their efforts to cross. There is not a high percentage of them getting though. I will keep up with the travelers by email & phone, while providing updates here.

Israeli settler killed in West Bank

2009-12-24T12:37:00.000-05:00

An Israeli settler has been shot dead when gunmen opened fire on his vehicle in the West Bank, medics and police said.

The man in his 40s was found shot in the head in a bullet-riddled car on the road between the Jewish settlements of Einav and Shavei Shomron in the northern West Bank on Thursday, the head of Magen David Adom emergency services told AFP news agency.

He died of his wounds shortly after the attack, he said.

Micky Rosenfeld, an Israeli police spokesman, said the assailants have not been caught but that security forces were combing the area near the site of the shooting in the northern West Bank.

The West Bank has seen little violence in recent years as Palestinian security forces have deployed in cities across the Israeli-occupied territory.

Nearly a half million Israelis live in dozens of illegal settlements scattered across the West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories occupied in the 1967 Six Day War that the Palestinians have demanded as part of their future state.

The fate of the settlements has been one of the thorniest issues in past rounds of Middle East peace talks, and the Palestinians have demanded a complete halt to settlement building ahead of any new round of negotiations.

We are doing research into this now and hopefully I will have updates soon.

Bethlehem's Christmas Blues

2009-12-24T12:30:00.000-05:00

As Christians around the world prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus, owners of tourism shops in Bethlehem are not seeing booming business they would expect this time of the year.

Nour Odeh reports on how Israel's illegal occupation may be keeping the West Bank's tourism industry from thriving.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/12/2009122461113232638.html

Ma'an News

2009-12-24T12:24:00.000-05:00

This website is very good for updates in Palestine. If there are not any post here please check it out.

http://www.maannews.net/eng/Default.aspx

Check me out on Columbus Peace Network

2009-12-24T12:22:00.001-05:00

A little bit of selfishness, which I would like to thank Connie for, please check out my listing on CPN!! :o)

http://www.columbuspeacenetwork.org/

Israel admits to organ thefts

2009-12-22T04:16:00.000-05:00

Israel has admitted that it harvested organs from the dead bodies of Palestinians and Israelis in the 1990s, without permission from their families

ImageThe admission follows the release of an interview with Jehuda Hiss, the former head of Israel's forensic institute, in which he said that workers at the institute had harvested skin, corneas, heart valves and bones from Israelis, Palestinians and foreign workers.

In the interview, which was conducted in 2000 when Hiss was head of Tel Aviv's Abu Kabir forensic institute, he said: "We started to harvest corneas ... Whatever was done was highly informal. No permission was asked from the family."

Nancy Scheper-Hughes, who conducted the interview, told Al Jazeera on Monday that Hiss had said the "body parts were used by hospitals for transplant purposes - cornea transplants. They were sent to public hospitals [for use on citizens].

"And the skin went to a special skin bank, founded by the military, for their uses", such as for burns victims.

The practice is said to have ended in 2000.

Guidelines 'not clear'

The interview was also reported on Israel's Channel 2 television, which quoted an Israeli military statement that said: "This activity ended a decade ago and does not happen any longer."

Israel's health ministry said in the Channel 2 report that at the time the guidelines for transplants "were not clear" and that for the last 10 years "Abu Kabir has been working according to ethics and Jewish law".

Scheper-Hughes, who is a professor of anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley, said that she made the interview public because of the controversy last summer over allegations of organ harvesting made by a Swedish newspaper.

In August the Aftonbladet newspaper ran an article alleging that the Israeli army had stolen body organs from Palestinian men after killing them.

Israel denied the claims, calling them anti-Semitic, and the incident raised tensions when Sweden refused to apologise for the article, saying that press freedom prevented it from intervening.

'Technically illegal'

Scheper-Hughes said that some of the dead Palestinians from whom organs were harvested were killed during military raids.

"Some of the bodies were definitely Palestinians who were killed in conflicts," she told Al Jazeera.

"Their organs were taken without consent of families and were used to serve the needs of the country in terms of hospitals as well as the army's needs."

She said that Hiss told her "that the people who did the harvesting were sent by the military. They were often medical students".

"He did it informally and without permission, and it was technically illegal," she said.

The military establishment gave their "sanction and approval" to the procedures, according to Scheper-Hughes.

During his interview with Scheper-Hughes, Hiss said that the eyelids of bodies were glued shut to prevent the removal of corneas being found out.

Hiss was dismissed as head of Abu Kabir in 2004 over irregularities in the use of organs, but charges against him were eventually dropped. He still holds the position of chief pathologist at the institute.

Palestine News Network

New York carolers sing for boycott of Leviev while Israel jails protesters’ Palestinian allies

2009-12-22T04:13:00.000-05:00

New York carolers sing for boycott of Leviev while Israel jails protesters’ Palestinian allies

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The Settlement Freeze That Isn't

2009-12-22T03:51:00.001-05:00

Please read:

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_settlement_freeze_that_isnt

Ramallah

2009-12-21T15:08:00.000-05:00

Just a quick update on the situation in East Jerusalem. The neighborhood where the Settlers have taken over the houses is called Sheikh Jarrah. Three of the people I trained with have gone there tonight to keep watch IF the situation turns ugly they will call for more activists, the main ISM hostel in Jerusalem being pretty close by. The tents erected have been destroyed 5 times already by the settlers. The situation here is slightly more complex than the outright theft that’s occurred elsewhere. There is a Jewish holy site in the area, and the settlers claim that the land was owned by Jews prior to the short period of Jordanian rule (the houses themselves were only built in the 1950s). This has been ongoing since the 1970s and the area of land covers a population of approx 2,700 Palestinians. Several houses in the area have been taken over for some time now. The settler claim is flimsy, as they have no documentary proof to back it up, but it is a better effort that just saying that God promised them the land. Anyone interested in the details can read the UN factsheet here: http://unispal.un.org/UNISPAL.NSF/0/62542A1C86A18E5A852576150064C414

I however, am staying in Ramallah, where we completed training, as they have enough people there tonight. It was a 45 minute bus journey, and we breezed through the checkpoint, but I’m told it’s harder getting back in. Today we learnt that the army and Boarder Police have immense power over the lives of the Palestinians but all they can do to us is hold us for three hours until the regular Police with powers of Arrest arrive. We were briefed on how to avoid and resist arrest, and what to do if it happens. We can only be held for 24 hours by the Police before being bought before a civilian judge. The ISM operates within the law so generally they have to let you go after that. We do have slightly fewer rights than Israeli citizens under their civil code, as the Israelis bought in a second legal system to cover the immigrant workers (Philippinoes etc…) who replaced the Palestinians banned from coming in to Israel to work when the second Intifada Broke out in 2002 and this covers all foreigners.

The Palestinians are barely under a legal system at all, the Israelis basically kept the worst and most repressive elements of Ottoman (land uncultivated for three years can be confiscated), British Mandate (administrative detention, meaning they can hold people without charge for six months and then just roll it over for another six if they choose) and Jordanian laws, and then added some of their own to the mix. Palestinians can be held without charge for years, ans some are.
We also had a slightly worrying briefing on the weapons the Israeli military uses against protests, violent or otherwise. I now know what a rubber coated steel bullet lookes like (two types, on cylindrical with a heavy rubber casing and a heavy block of steel inside, one spherical and looking like an old fashioned musket ball with a very thin coating of rubber. We were also told how best to deal with tear gas and sound bombs, as well as various other weapons occasionally used.
I feel rather better prepared now.

I’m hoping to go deeper into the West Bank over the next few days, although Sheikh Jarrah is the main priority for the organization at the moment so if I’m asked I’ll stay of course. I think if I want to see Bethlehem at Christmas I’ll need to take a day off as it’s not a hotspot at the moment.

Incidentally one of our activists is being deported, which is the worst case scenario if you are arrested.

Heading to Ramallah

2009-12-20T15:38:00.000-05:00

I had a wonderful day in Jerusalem today. I went on a free Old City tour & it was amazing. I should have pictures uploaded very soon. There are a ton so it might be better if you checked them out on facebook until I have a chance to upload them here. :o)

I also found out that I'm heading to Ramallah at 8:30am tomorrow (Monday) morning. I'm going for training with 2 other guys and Hashim, the trainer. I do not have my luggage yet but Hashim assured me that I would be able to go back through security to pick it up at the hostel. I have talked with the managers & they will hold it for me until I am able to pick it up. I will do my best to advise when I am in but it might be a few days before I am able to contact everyone.

Please pray as this is what I'm here to do & have been looking forward to for months!!

Finally in Jerusalem

2009-12-19T14:57:00.000-05:00

It has been quite a trip so far but I am here. I have only had good personal experiences so that is helping the time pass. I know I have updated most of you who are following my wonderful trip so I will work on finding more important topics to write about.

I have heard a few stories of internationals who went to a peaceful protest of the third arrest of Shministim's (seniors refusing to serve in the IDF) that were brutally beaten and then taken to jail themselves. They were staging a peaceful sit in when the IDF started randomly beating the protesters and dragging them to jail. As far as we know they are still there and probably heading back to their home countries very soon.

For me hearing this made what I am about to do more real. Anything can happen at any time, so I just ask for continued prayers, not only for me but for all the internationals working for the same cause.