VIDEO- Israeli Army demolishes Palestinian homes in South Hebron

Related
Wadi Joz home saved from bulldozers for five days
The policy of destroying Palestinian property in East Jerusalem is ongoing in the Israeli campaign to overtake the city. Israeli forces are confiscating land and building settlements and the Wall. One of the most common methods employed to drive out Palestinians is to demolish their homes under the pretext that they have been built without an Israeli-issued license. (Occupier-issued license?!)
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April 11th, 2007

VIDEO- IOF demolishes Palestinian homes in South Hebron

Video taken by Tayyush

On Wednesday 14th February Israeli Occupation Forces demolished a large number of houses and agricultural structures in four different villages in the South Hebron Hills - Qwawis, M’nezel, Um-Elhe’r and the Abu-Kbeita family near Yatir settlement. The villagers in this area struggle to stay on their land despite ongoing home demolitions, violent attacks and constant settler and military harassment.

Read full story HERE

Israeli forces deliver notices of destruction to Palestinian refugees

Israeli forces deliver notices of destruction to Palestinian refugees in Shu'fat

(Jerusalem) Maisa Abu Ghazaleh
Tuesday, 03 April 2007

Ringing in the Jewish Passover found Israeli forces storming East Jerusalem's Shu'fat Refugee Camp in the middle of the night and telling families at gunpoint that they would again be refugees.

At dawn in the Ras Al Shahadah neighborhood in the southern part of Shu'fat Camp, Israeli soldiers told the families that they have two weeks to leave their homes, claiming the refugees were the ones living illegally on lands occupied by the Israelis.

Israeli lawyer Eitan Gabay, and translator to Arabic, said that the owners of plot number 116 30571 had constructed their homes in the refugee camp illegally, and therefore must evacuate within 14 days. The issuing date was on 29 March, and withheld due to closed Israeli offices for the Jewish Passover.

Israeli forces chose 3:00 am to invade the refugee camp while residents were sleeping. Israeli soldiers went so far as to videotape the homes and terrified families. They caused fear and panic among the population, particularly the children. Citizens Housing reported that 300 Palestinians would be thrown out of their apartments.

Resident Abu Ayyash told PNN, “I was surprised after my husband had already gone to work for the early shift when the occupation forces surrounded the house and behaved violently while my children and I were sleeping. We were dismayed, afraid. A number of soldiers wearing black clothing, the special forces, and intelligence officers burst in with a video camera and were screaming that they would destroy our home.”

The family, whose eldest child is five years old, has already paid 18,000 Jordanian Dinars for the housing. They live on the third floor of the apartment building, all of which covers 135 square meters. They have three rooms.

She said, “We continue to work day and night to pay for this house. We pay in installments. This is a completely unjust situation.”

Sixty-three year old Mahmoud Srnedeh paid 4,000 JD over the past four years after buying his home for an initial price of 20,000 JD. He is married with five children. His youngest is 16.

“I was surprised at the danger I found at my door. We went with the lawyer, Majid Ghnaim, to prove ownership of our house.”

A 50 year old resident on the third floor said that he bought his house for 26,000 JD. “When I heard the sound, the pounding on the doors, and saw the soldiers asking for identification, it was strange. They were videotaping and did not raid the house.” His children range in age from five years to 16.

Another woman in the building on the second floor with seven children found an eviction notice on the door. “We have been saving for years to pay for this house. No one will leave. We are already refugees, where else can we go?"

The lawyers point out the Israeli violations of human rights, international law and United Nations resolutions, but this does not change the situation.

Everyday life under occupation in the West Bank

By Ryan Sweeny

Posted: 3/20/07

Over winter break, I met a man whose home had been demolished twice by American-made Caterpillar brand armored bulldozers. Not because the structures were unsafe or because the man is a terrorist, but simply because those were the orders of the soldiers who are occupying his country with arms, helicopter gunships and other equipment provided by the United States.

Yet this same man, against whom people have inflicted so much groundless cruelty, showed more hospitality toward me than anyone else I've known, even people in much richer parts of the world than the West Bank. His family served us an enormous dinner of maqlubeh (a dish of chicken, rice and cauliflower), gave five foreigners beds to sleep in, served us another enormous breakfast the next morning and even rode with us in our taxi until we arrived back in downtown Hebron. Three of us were from the country that provided the bulldozers that had destroyed his home twice.

The hospitality of this man and his family was one of the highlights of the time I spent in Israel and Palestine with Christian Peacemaker Teams, which promote nonviolence and mutual dialogue in conflict areas around the world.

On another day, we visited Bethlehem, also located within the occupied West Bank. To enter the town where Jesus was supposedly born, we had to walk past soldiers carrying American M-16 machine guns, through an inspection facility and through a 25-foot-tall guard tower-laden "security wall" with an enormous sign proclaiming "Peace Be With You."

A few days later, in Hebron, I saw Israeli soldiers arresting a Palestinian man at gunpoint for walking on Shuhada Street, a street built with American aid money for the use of everyone in Hebron. This street may be legally open to anyone, but in practice, only soldiers, Israelis living in illegal settlements and foreigners can use Shuhada Street without risking arrest.

One morning, I watched children pass through military checkpoints and metal detectors on their way to school. Are these children going to grow up believing that it's entirely normal to see soldiers and machine guns every day on the way to and from school, or to arrive at school only to learn that the soldiers haven't allowed the teachers to pass through the checkpoint?

Israel has as much of a right to existence and security as any other nation, but its policies in the West Bank are both illegal under international law and immoral. The U.S. government gives Israel billions of dollars in military aid, allowing these policies to continue. There's nothing wrong with giving aid to Israel, but our country must stop aiding this illegal occupation.

If you agree, call our senators and let them know. Every time a Congressperson hears from a constituent, he or she assumes that 10 more constituents feel the same way but simply haven't spoken up. Small steps like those are part of the path to peace.

Ryan Sweeney is a German studies graduate student.

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© Copyright 2007 Daily 49er

Talking About Israel: NICHOLAS KRISTOF

THE COMPLETE ARTICLE
THE NEW YOR TIMES
OP-ED COLUMNIST

Talking About Israel

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: March 18, 2007

The lack of serious political debate about our policy toward Israelis and Palestinians harms America, Middle East peace prospects and Israel itself.

Democrats are railing at just about everything President Bush does, with one prominent exception: Mr. Bush’s crushing embrace of Israel.

There is no serious political debate among either Democrats or Republicans about our policy toward Israelis and Palestinians. And that silence harms America, Middle East peace prospects and Israel itself.

Within Israel, you hear vitriolic debates in politics and the news media about the use of force and the occupation of Palestinian territories. Yet no major American candidate is willing today to be half as critical of hard-line Israeli government policies as, say, Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper.

Three years ago, Israel’s minister of justice spoke publicly of photos of an elderly Palestinian woman beside the ruins of her home, after it had been destroyed by the Israeli army. He said that they reminded him of his own grandmother, who had been dispossessed by the Nazis. Can you imagine an American cabinet secretary ever saying such a thing?

--MORE--

Jerusalem home demolitions: by 2020, 240,000 Palestinians will be 40,000

Editor's note: I am moving to post at the other blog(also see new articles below).
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(Jerusalem) Maisa Abu Ghazaleh

Wednesday, 14 March 2007

The wintry weather did not prevent the Israeli-controlled Jerusalem Municipality bulldozers from traveling to the Hummos Valley in the village of Sur Baher. They demolished two of the homes in southeastern Jerusalem under the pretext of not being licensed.

Since this morning the bulldozers have been active, demolishing the house belonging to Ali Abu Sarhan where he and his 10 member family have lived since 2002. The home is approximately 100 square meters with a construction cost of approximately 130,000 shekels, in addition to the 50,000 shekels given to the Israelis for the Municipal Court to issue a license.

Abu Sarhan said he was surprised to find a large presence of police and border guards, along with the municipal crews who began removing furniture from the house while the bulldozers got started on the other side.

A residential building not yet inhabited belonging to the Tun family was also destroyed. The house was constructed, but Tun was awaiting a building permit to move in since 2003 from the Jerusalem municipality which refused to grant it.

He said, “When I saw the police and bulldozers I went to the Jerusalem municipality to again postpone, but they would not. I spent half a million shekels building this home.” He noted that he and his children all must rent.

In the meantime, Israeli forces imposed a closed military zone on the Hummos Valley while distributing demolition orders to approximately 50 families under the pretext of licensing. The demolitions are slated for June, although the Israelis generally accept large sums of money to postpone.

Director of the Jerusalem Center for Economic and Social Rights, Ziad Al Hamori, said that demolition in Jerusalem for this year has been extensive and brutal, pointing out that during the first three months of 2007, Jerusalem Municipality bulldozers demolished 20 houses.

Al Hamori told PNN, “The continuation of the campaign to demolish homes aims to drive the people from the city, in addition to solving the Israeli concern over demographics.” He pointed out the ease with which Jewish builders are granted permits in settlements or in other parts of Jerusalem. “Israel is distorting and changing the features and history of the Old City and its surroundings.” According to the Israeli plan for 2020, 240,000 Palestinians in Jerusalem must be reduced to 40 or 50 thousand, concluded Al Hamori.

'To all those for whom these villages were home and to their descendants'

Sunday, February 04, 2007

Amr Abu Daeb and family. Israelis demolished their house in East Jerusalem two weeks ago.

According to Ma'an News: "The director of the cartographic department in the society for Arab Studies, Khalil Toufakji, has warned of an ethnic cleansing operation against some 24,000 Palestinians in the old city of Jerusalem."

"Rubble from village houses" in Al-Mansura. Al-Mansura was ethnically cleansed in mid-November, 1948 when "Israel decided to empty the Israeli side of the Israeli-Lebanese border of its Arab villages." According to Walid Khalidi in All That Remains, "The people of al-Mansura were ordered to leave; some crossed into Lebanon but most were taken in trucks to the village of al-Rama, to the south." The villagers have sought to return home to Al-Mansura for many years, but to no avail, as Israel, in violation of UN Resolution 194 and Article 13, Section 2, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, refuses their inalienable right to return home because they are not Jewish.

The Zionists have razed all the houses in the village. In 1944/45, 26,619 dunums of land were owned by Arabs. Jews owned nothing. "The only village structure that still stands is the church of Mari Yohanna."

Khalidi, Walid. All That Remains: The Palestinan Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948. Institute for Palestine Studies: Washington, D.C., 1991.

Khalidi's Dedication: "To all those for whom these villages were home and to their descendents."

# posted by umkahlil @ 9:10 PM

Israeli NGO vows Amazon boycott over Carter review

Related
Carter's book is long overdue
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Jonny Paul Jerusalem Post correspondent, THE JERUSALEM POST

Jan. 18, 2007

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LONDON - The Israeli Committee against House Demolitions (ICAHD) has opened a campaign to censor on-line retailer Amazon.com following the posting of a critical review of former US president Jimmy Carter's book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.

The group said the article, written by a customer, was "hostile" to Carter's viewpoint and had been placed in the wrong section of the Web page on the book.

In an e-mail, ICAHD said it was "deeply disturbed" by the treatment of Carter's "important new book" and had issued an ultimatum demanding Amazon move the negative review and "restore a semblance of balance" by giving "comparable space and prominence to a more positive evaluation" of the book.

The group is asking people to write to Jeff Bezos, Amazon's CEO, and to boycott the company. The e-mail says: "You insist on running the complete, 20-paragraph, 1,636-word text of a review unabashedly hostile to Carter's viewpoint.

"You have refused to add information shoppers should have in evaluating this review: the fact that the reviewer, Jeffrey Goldberg, is a citizen of Israel as well as the US, and that he volunteered to serve in the Israeli Defense Forces, for which he worked as a guard at a prison for Palestinian detainees.

"And you have refused to balance his negative review by giving comparable space to a favorable assessment of the book, even though positive reviews by qualified experts have appeared in many reputable publications."

The ICAHD said it was "not interested in supporting a corporation that uses its power in the marketplace in such a biased and unconstructive way on such an important issue."

An ultimatum is then delivered: "If you do not, by January 22, remove the Goldberg review, move it to the more appropriate 'See all Editorial Reviews' page, or restore a semblance of balance by giving comparable space and prominence to a more positive evaluation of Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, we... pledge to stop shopping at Amazon... and encourage our friends, family and associates to do likewise."

In a March 2005 brief, NGO Monitor, part of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, described the Committee against House Demolitions as "a well-funded, blatantly political and ideological one-man NGO, which couches its radical anti-Israel agenda and demonization in the rhetoric of human rights."

The brief continues: ICAHD coordinator Jeff "Halper routinely uses terms such as 'apartheid' and 'war crimes' to refer to Israeli policy against Palestinian terror, supports a 'one state solution,' and advocates sanctions and boycotts."

Demolishing houses, would any American accept this?

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Destruction of homes by an occupying force is unequivocally wrong under international law; but so is building settlement/cities on land that is occupied, as is the imprisonment of 10,000 Palestinian prisoners that are held in administrative detention without due process.

How bitterly ironic it is that in the country which values "home ownership" as the epitome of the "American Dream," the United States allows (Caterpillar is also a US company) the wanton destruction of family houses. No American would allow this to occur in this country, at least not without a tremendous fight which would be supported by both the media and the population. Not so in Palestine where correspondent M. Abu Ghazaleh writes:

The husband, wife and 10 children had lived in the 100 square meter home house just six months after building it for 200,000 shekels. Neighbors called on the Red Cross and human rights organizations to assist the newly homeless family.

As for today's demolitions, the Jerusalem Municipal Court postponed demolishing Ghadir Abu Ghalia's Issariya neighborhood home for 24 hours yesterday after he paid 60,000 shekels to obtain a stay. Early last month Israeli forces demolished part of the house where Ghalia lived with his wife and four young children. At that time he paid 40,000 shekels to stop the demolition. His family built the 150 square meter three bedroom home for 350,000 shekels just four months ago. Israeli forces did demolish the home on Tuesday. [rest of report]

For a salutory exposure of Israeli war crimes, reported and publicized BY ISRAELI (!) visit the website of the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions (ICAHD).

DEMAND A STOP TO ETHNIC CLEANSING IN THE NAQAB

ACTION ALERT

For Immediate Release
December 7, 2006

According to recent reports, Israeli interior minister, Roni Bar-On,
declared that his ministry has planned the demolition of more than 42,000
Palestinian homes in the Naqab (Negev) region of Palestine, inside the
borders of present-day Israel. Reports this morning indicate that the
village of Twail Abu-Jarwal has been demolished by the Zionist occupation.
This barbaric escalation against the Palestinians of the Naqab region is a
continuation of the ongoing Zionist project to remove from Palestine its
indigenous inhabitants, and that Israel has practiced since its inception
since 1948.

The Palestinians in the Naqab region carry "Israeli citizenship". This
latest act of destruction once again shows that, like their fellow
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the over six million
exiled from their homeland and denied their right to return, Palestinians
inside Israel who carry "Israeli citizenship" remain less than second-class
citizens, subject to the same policies of ethnic cleansing.

Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, calls on its members,
supporters and all people of conscience to protest the ongoing
home demolitions and ethnic cleansing of Palestinian civilians at the hands
of the Israeli occupation forces by:

1. Organizing demonstrations in front of Israeli embassies and consulates.

2. Staging street theatre in major cities and towns dramatizing house
demolitions.

3. Organizing protests in front of the offices of the Caterpillar
Corporation and demanding that Caterpillar immediately stop
supplying Israel bulldozers it uses to demolish Palestinian homes. See
http://www.caterpillar.com/ for information on company locations throughout
North America.

4. Writing your Representatives and Senators to stop immediately all funding
and military supplies and shipments to Israel. Remind them that ethnic
cleansing is a war crime and constitutes a grave violation of international
law. For contact information, go to
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/home/ .

5. Writing to the media. Go to http://newslink.org/ for contact information.

6. Making a donation to help the people whose homes have been demolished by
Israel in the Naqab. To do so please go to
http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html and simply follow the instructions.
Please indicate that your donation is for Al-Awda's Naqab Emergency Fund.


Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition
PO Box 131352
Carlsbad, CA 92013, USA
Tel: 760-685-3243
Fax: 360-933-3568
E-mail: info@al-awda.org
WWW: http://al-awda.org