With Chemical Weapons...
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Last update - 08:13 16/04/2007
State ordered to stop spraying Bedouin land with chemicals
By Yuval Yoaz, Haaretz Correspondent
The High Court of Justice on Sunday ruled that the Israel Lands Administration is not allowed to spray chemicals on land farmed by Bedouin, a practice carried out in a bid to prevent the Bedouin from controlling those areas.
Justices Salim Joubran, Edna Arbel and Miriam Naor ruled that the spraying is not a proportionate means of achieving the stated goal because the chemicals endanger the lives and health of people and animals.
The court also required the state to pay NIS 20,000 in legal expenses to the Adala legal center for Arab rights in Israel, which filed the petition three years ago on behalf of the residents of the Negev villages of Al-Arakib and Wadi al-Bakar.
"Incursion into state land is indeed an illegal act," wrote Joubran. "And at the same time, coping with the phenomenon by aerial spraying is illegal."
Joubran said Israel's flora protection law was aimed at protecting health, sanitation and the environment, saying: "It is inconceivable that an authority would spray crops with a chemical substance to enforce the rights it claims to the land."
Although Arbel and Naor agreed with Joubran's conclusion that the ILA must stop spraying the land, they disagreed with his contention that the land administration did not have the right to do so in the first place.
As the landowner, wrote Arbel, the state is allowed to take steps to cope with a takeover of that land.
However, she said, the court is unable to accept that the spraying does not pose a health risk.
She said the chemicals' ability to cause breathing difficulties, nausea and vertigo are sufficient "to determine that the spray substance is liable, at the very least, to lead to damage to human health."
Arbel and Naor ruled that even though the spraying was carried out for the appropriate purpose of safeguarding state land, the method used was disproportionate and therefore unacceptable.
Showing posts with label land. Show all posts
Showing posts with label land. Show all posts
Monday, April 16, 2007
Thursday, March 29, 2007
This Land is Theirs
03/29/07
eileen fleming
Photo, weekly.ahram.org
This March 30th marks the 31st year Palestinians throughout the world remember Land Day or 'Youm al-Ard' in Arabic. On March 30, 1976, in the Galilee, during a peaceful protest, six unarmed Palestinians were killed by the Israeli army and police, who also injured 96 others and arrested over 300.
The demonstration was prompted after Israeli authorities announced the confiscation of a total of 5,500 acres of land from Palestinian villages in the Galilee , and classified them as "closed military zones."
On March 25, 2006 , while in Jerusalem, this reporter connected just after dawn with a wide awake group of Israeli Jews to travel north to the lower Galilee municipality of Sakhnin, an Arab village whose land continues to be grabbed and colonized by Israel .
Ronnie, a Canadian moved to Israel with the desire to help build a civil society. She is a co-founder of Women in Black and active with Machsom Watch/women at the checkpoints who watch for and report on human rights abuse.
We both laughed when she told me, "A friend told me that I am so Left that if I ever gets to heaven I will probably argue with God that those in hell just didn't get a fair deal…Religion is used as a cover, but it's all about the land! It's convenient to claim one is doing something for God but the laws are made to take the land. We don't have settlers in Israel -the common name for illegal colonists in the West Bank-we just take it! First it is claimed to be for military reasons then it'll become a park or agricultural land that the state has confiscated.
"The Palestinians who did not leave in '48 but remained here still have lost their land. They can't get permits to build... I am opposed to the occupation and as an Israeli Jew I want to see justice for all...and I refuse to be enemies with anyone."
We traveled three hours from Jerusalem to be in solidarity with over 100 progressive Israeli's, Arab Christians, Muslims, atheists and communists who attended a tour of the area and conference coordinated by Batshalom's and The Women's Coalition for Peace and Justice.
This reporter was informed that not only had Israel confiscated acres of the most fertile of Palestinian land they had also placed land mines on the land. Many farmers and other innocent ones had lost their lives or legs, so people had quit caring for their groves and the Israeli government declared the village of Sakhnin a military zone.
A few years prior, the President of Israel had declared that the people of Sakhnin, a municipality deserved to have their land back. But the Israeli county of Misgav, abetted by the Israeli Land Authority continues to collect taxes from them but still have not returned any land nor have they issued any permits for Palestinians to build.
Israeli peace activist's commented, "In 2000 during Land Day, hundred's of nonviolent protesters were arrested and we were hit with tear gas and rubber bullets. Name it and we have had it!"
"I am an Israeli Jew and I am responsible to change something about this situation. We all need to do this together."
The speakers all spoke in Arabic or Hebrew, and my interpreter was Aliyah [Hebrew for "Go Up"], who was born in St. Louis, grew up in Cleveland and moved to Israel in 1948.
"My Father was born in Jerusalem and I was a Zionist, but now I am not so sure. I still want the Jewish people to have a state but it must be honest and moral, I don't want a piranha state! Before 1967 I was euphoric! My husband and I began to learn that there were Israelis who you could call prophets, who said we must return the land and make peace. Then a fundamentalist Jewish group, The Gush Emunim began erecting the settlements in the newly possessed land.
"When Israel went into Lebanon I was infuriated! I demonstrated against the massacres at Shatila and Shabra. Eighteen years of Israel in Lebanon is what built up the Hezbollah! The Israelis supported the group at first because they hoped the Hezbollah would be against the Palestinian refugees in South Lebanon."
I inquired, "Isn't that what Israel did with Hamas? Didn't they originally support Hamas to be a wedge against the PLO?"
Aliyah replied, "Yes, stupidity repeats itself!"
In the Northern part of Israel 53% of the population are Jews who control 80% of the land. Palestinians are 47% of the population with only 20% of the land.
Sakhnin has 25,000 people and less than 10,000 dunums of land but they only control half of that. In 1948 they owned and controlled 170,000 dunums.
A Defense Industry and Army base complex a few miles from where we stood has a most mysterious warehouse. Aliyah remarked, "No one knows what is going on inside, but it may be a nuclear reactor. The municipality asked the army to develop in another direction for there is a school over there too. The Israelis are allowed to expand anywhere, but the people of Sakhnin are not allowed permits to builds on their own land.
"I really became aware of what was going on in the '80's. I had been invited to a meeting of The Bridge for Peace and Coexistence, which is a group of Arab and Jewish activists. A man asked me where I was living and when I answered Bneitz-ion. He calmly and politely told me "That is my Uncle's land."
Since 1967 Israel has confiscated more than 750,000 acres of land from the 1.5 million acres comprising the West Bank and Gaza. Most of the land has been confiscated to make space for illegal settlement expansions, and bypass roads that are for the exclusive use of the Israeli colonists. Since 1948, Israel has confiscated nearly 85 percent of the territory within the Green Line from Palestinians. Most of this land was taken from the 800,000 Palestinian refugees, who were evicted or fled for fear of massacres during the 1948 war.
Israel's illegal settlement expansion and land confiscation has continued unabated and the ongoing construction of the Israeli separation wall, which has been described by a UN report as a "creeping annexation", involves the confiscation of the most fertile of Palestinian land and water sources.
The Israeli Knesset (Israeli parliament) has passed dozens of laws in defiance of U.N. Resolutions and International Law, such as the The Absentee Property law and the Development Authority (Transfer of Property) Law.
This law, which in Arabic is called 'Qanoon Elhader/Gayeb', was adopted in March 1950, and classified anyone who was a citizen or resident of one of the Arab states or a Palestinian citizen on November 29, 1947, but had left his place of residence, even to take refuge within Palestine , as an 'absentee'. Absentee property was vested in the Custodian of Absentee Property who then 'sold' it to the Development Authority. This effectively authorized the theft of the property of a million Arabs, seized by Israel in 1948.
Adopted in July 1950, this law was devised as a legal ploy to shield the Israeli government from the accusation that it had confiscated abandoned property. The Development Authority is an independent body empowered to sell, buy, lease, exchange, repair, build, develop and cultivate Palestinian property. None of these transactions could take place except with a Jew or a Jewish entity!
United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 clearly asserts that the "occupying power cannot move segments of its own population to parts of the land it occupies," or make any demographic or territorial changes that are not in the interest of the occupied. Furthermore, provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention have unquestionably condemned Israel's settlement activities and demanded the ceasing of "all" settlement expansion by Israel.
UN Security Council Resolution 681 (1990) confirmed that the Forth Geneva Convention is applicable to the Occupied Territories and thus Israel's compliance is mandatory.
Yet, since 1992, settlement activity has increased 50% while the U.S.A. government has turned a blind eye and deaf ear to the cries for justice from the occupied and oppressed people of the Holy Land.
Hope lies in the international communities resolve to seek justice and compel Israel to abide by UN Security Council Resolutions and International Law, for the inalienable rights of a people have been denied for far too long, and:
"Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law... Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world."- PREAMBLE to the UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS
On May 14, 1948 The Declaration of the establishment of Israel affirmed:
"On the day of the termination of the British mandate and on the strength of the United Nations General Assembly declare The State of Israel will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion it will guarantee freedom of religion [and] conscience and will be faithful to the Charter of the United Nations."
Might Israel and America remember those words on Land Day 2007.
Source:
http://www.miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=3410&CategoryId=4
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March 29, 2007 © Copyright March 28, 2007 Eileen Fleming. Permission is granted for reprint in print, email, blog, or web media if this credit is attached and the title remains unchanged. WAWA@WeAreWideAwake.org
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Monday, March 19, 2007
LEST WE FORGET: ETHNIC CLEANSING AND LAND THEFT
PROLOGUE:
Creation of an exclusive Jewish State in Palestine meant importing of Jews from all corners of the globe to Palestine. Between 1882 and 1948, the number of Jews in Palestine increased from 7000 to about 700,000 forming no more than 35% of the total population of the country and owing no more than 7% of the total land.
This meant that creation of the state the Zionists had in mind required ethnic cleansing and land theft and this was the reason why they launched the war in 1948.
The British, who were still in Palestine and responsible for maintaining law and order, could have stepped in and avoided the catastrophe, they simply preferred to turn their backs to what was going on. The reason is that they were aware of the tacit agreement between King Abdullah, the appointed commander of all the Arab troops, and the Zionist leadership in Palestine and gave it their blessings. According to this agreement, Palestine would be divided between the Jews and Abdullah. Abdullah would take that part of Palestine allotted to the Arabs west of the Jordan Valley and the rest of Palestine would be left for the “Jewish State”. (For details, see: Avi Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan: King Abdullah, The Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988)
On 18 February 1947, the British submitted the Palestine problem to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). Resolution #181 was adopted on 29 November 1947 allocating 56.5% of Palestine to a Jewish state and 43% to an Arab state with an international enclave around Jerusalem.
On 10 March 1948, the British House of Commons voted to end Mandate on 15 May. On 20 March 1948, the U.S. delegate to the UN requested a special session to suspend action on partition and work on a trusteeship plan. On 1 April 1948, a UN Security Council resolution called for special session of the UNGA and agreed to U.S. proposal for truce to be arranged through the Jewish Agency (JA) and the Arab Higher Committee (AHC).
THE 1948 WAR:
To avoid trusteeship, the Haganah launched Operation “Nachshon” of Plan Dalet on 3 April 1948, which marked the starting point of the 1948 war.
As a result of the war, about 10,000 Palestinian Arabs were killed, about 30,000 were wounded, over 750,000 were ethnically cleansed and became refugees, and more than 400 Arab villages were bulldozed and used to build settlements for the influx of Jewish immigrants.
While Operation Nachson was going on, a brutal massacre was committed in Deir Yassin killing over 250 men, women and children. This massacre spread panic and many Palestinian Arabs began leaving the country seeking a safe shelter.
On the night of 16-17 April 1948, units of the Haganah attacked the Old City of Tiberias. The Arab notables sued for a truce but the Haganah commanders refused; they wanted surrender. The Arabs then appealed to the British to lift the Haganah siege on the Old City and to extend their protection to the Arab areas. The British said they intended to evacuate the city within a few days and hence could offer no protection to the Arabs beyond 22 April. The Arab notables then decided to evacuate the city. A truce was instituted. The British brought buses and trucks and took the Arabs to Nazareth and Transjordan. (Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947 – 1949, Cambridge, 1987, P. 71)
On 18 April 1948, Major General Hugh C. Stockwell, British Commander in Haifa, summoned to his headquarters Harry Beilin, the JA liaison officer with the British army in the city. Stockwell informed Beilin that he intended to begin withdrawing his forces from the borders and no-man’s-land between the Arab and Jewish quarters in Haifa and that the withdrawal would be completed by 20 April.
Noninterference of the British Army in the fighting in Tiberias, on the one hand, and the green light given by Stockwell, on the other hand, encouraged the Haganah into action in Haifa.
British withdrawal was completed by sunset on Tuesday, 20 April. At 10:30 A.M. on Wednesday, 21 April, the Haganah launched its offensive. The Arab crowds broke into the port and pushing aside the police who guarded the gate it stormed the boats and began to flee the city.” The scene at the port was described as follows: “Men stepped on their friends and women on their own children. The boats in the port were soon filled with living cargo. The overcrowding in them was horrible. Many turned over and sank with all their passengers.” (Details on the fall of Haifa, the military situation in Palestine on the eve of Plan Dalet, the fall of Qastel and the death of Abd al-Qadir Husseini, and the fall of Jaffa were selected and annotated by Walid Khalidi, Selected Documents on the 1948 War, Journal of Palestine Studies, 107, Volume XXVII, No. 3, Spring 1998, pp. 60-105)
Jaffa was the largest Arab City in Palestine. It was close to Tel Aviv but did not pose any strategic threat. According to Benny Morris “The Haganah siege would eventually bring the town to its knees; it would fall like a ripe plum when the British withdrew”. This did not save the city from attack, which started by an offensive launched on 25 April 1948 by the IZL (Irgun Tzeva'i le'umi).
While Jaffa was being attacked by the IZL, Operation Hametz (Mivtza Hametz) was launched by the Haganah against the Arab villages east of Jaffa in order to cut the city from all centers of Arab population and its rural hinterland.
On 13 May, with the final British evacuation, the Jaffa Arab Emergency Committee, representing the 4,000-5,000 remaining inhabitants, signed a formal surrender agreement with the Haganah. (Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949. Cambridge, 1987 pp. 95-101)
Beisan as well as Safad and surrounding villages were captured by the Zionist forces on 12 May, Acre was captured on 17 May, Lydd and Ramla were captured on 14 July 1948.
The town of Nazareth was captured on 16 July 1948. Only one Israeli was killed and one wounded in the attack. A delegation of Christian clerics came out to meet the conquerors. Their request that the civilian population should not be forced to evacuate was granted. When Abraham Yaffe, an Israeli officer, entered Nazareth, he met a man whom he had driven out of another town in the Galilee. “Have you come to turn us away again?” the Arab inquired. “No, not in Nazareth,” Yaffe answered, “Nazareth is a holy place, a holy town. The world is watching us. You are not going to be a victim here.” The Israeli behavior in Nazareth was different from their behavior in the other Palestinian towns and villages. They realized that expulsion of Christian Arabs in one of the holiest Christian locations would produce unfavorable headlines all over the world. “Nazareth was the exception that proved the rule”. (Michael Palumbo, The Palestinian Catastrophe: The 1948 Expulsion of a People from their Homeland, London/Boston: 1987, pp. 123-125)
LAND THEFT:
On 28 May, Yosef Weitz, Director of the Jewish National Fund Lands Dept., met with Moshe Sharrett, the newly appointed Foreign Minister, and proposed that the Cabinet appoint himself, Elias Sasson, head of the Foreign Ministry’s Middle East Affairs Department, and Ezra Danin “to hammer out a plan of action designed [to achieve] the goal of transfer”.
On 5 June 1948, Weitz met with Ben-Gurion and submitted to him a memorandum entitled “Retroactive Transfer, A Scheme for the Solution of the Arab Question in the State of Israel”. Weitz, Danin, and Sasson signed the memorandum.
Ben-Gurion devoted two paragraphs in his diary to the meeting. He proposed that a committee of three – composed of representatives of the JNF (Weitz), the Jewish Agency settlement department, and the Agency’s treasury department – be set up. The job of this committee was to oversee “the cleaning up of the [Arab] settlements, cultivation of their [fields] and their settlement [by Jews], and the creation of a labour battalion to carry out this work”. Ben-Gurion, like Weitz, stressed that it would not be the government carrying out these activities, but they would be carried out “with its knowledge, by the National Institutions”.
The next day, 6 June, Weitz sent Ben-Gurion a detailed list of the abandoned villages and towns, with the appropriate population figures. In a covering note, he confirmed the meeting held in the previous day as well as Ben-Gurion’s approval that the destruction of Arab villages and prevention of cultivation of Arab fields will begin immediately. Weitz continued: “In line with this, I have given an order to begin [these operations] in different parts of the Galilee, in the Beit Shean Valley, in the Hills of Ephraim and in Samaria [meaning the Hefer Valley].” In this way, Weitz was trying to cover himself and not to leave himself open to charges that he had acted on his own.
Weitz spent the following day [7 June] talking with Danin about how to go about destroying the abandoned villages – where would the money come from, the tractors, the dynamite, the manpower? And where was it best to begin?
COUNT FOLKE BERNADOTTE:
The UN appointed Count Folke Bernadotte as mediator to resolve conflict in Palestine. He managed to bring about a first truce in the war from 11 June – 8 July 1948 and a second truce from 18 July – 15 October 1948.
In his report submitted to the UN on 16 September 1948, referring to the Arab refugees, Bernadotte stated, “It would be an offence against elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right of return to their homes while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine and indeed, offer the threat of permanent replacement of the Arab refugees who have been rooted in the land for centuries.” The following day, Count Bernadotte was murdered in Jerusalem by the Stern Gang. (Michael Palumbo, The Palestinian Catastrophe: The 1948 Expulsion of a People from their Homeland. London/Boston: 1987, p. 159)
ARAB INTERVENTION:
Arab intervention in the war was bogus and shameful. The Zionist onslaught started in early April; Arab armies did not interfere until 15 May when it was too little and too late.
Jordanian King Abdullah, commander of the Arab troops, was in tacit agreement with the Zionists.
Iraqi general Sir Ismail Safwat, chairman of the Arab league’s military committee, who had been appointed to lead all Arab troops in Palestine, resigned on 13 May 1948 because he was “firmly convinced that the absence of agreement on a precise plan can only lead us to disaster”. (Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities. New York: 1987, p. 197)
ILLUSIONS OF PEACE:
For over fifty years, all efforts to end the Zionist-Arab conflict and bring peace have failed. The reason is simple: the Zionist mission had not been completed. Not all the areas coveted by the Zionists were occupied 1948 and ethnic cleansing was incomplete.
More lands were occupied in 1967 and another 250,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed. But all that was not good enough for the Zionist appetite.
Proposals for Arab population removal were outlined in an article entitled “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s”, which appeared in the World Zionist Organization’s periodical Kivunim in February 1982. Oded Yinon, a journalist and analyst of Middle Eastern affairs and former senior Foreign Ministry official wrote the article.
Yinon called for Israel to bring about the dissolution and fragmentation of the Arab states into a mosaic of ethnic groupings. He believed that “Israel has made a strategic mistake in not taking measures [of mass expulsion] towards the Arab population in the new territories during and shortly after the [1967] war...”
Moreover, Yinon suggested to encompass the whole Arab world, including the imposition of a Pax Israela on, and the determination of the destiny of, Arab societies: re invading Sinai and “breaking Egypt territorially into separate geographical districts”. As for the Arab East: “...the total disintegration of Lebanon into five regional, localized governments as the precedent for the entire Arab world...the dissolution of Syria, and later Iraq, into districts of ethnic and religious minorities...” (Nur Masalha, A Land Without a People: Israel, Transfer and the Palestinians 1949 – 96, London: Faber and Faber ltd., 1997, pp. 196 - 198, citing Oded Yinon, A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s, [Hebrew], Kivunim, Jerusalem, No. 14, February 1982, pp. 53 - 58)
Benjamin Netanyahu told Bar-Ilan University students on 16 November 1989 that the government had failed to exploit internationally favorable situations to carry out “large-scale” expulsions at a time when “the damage [to Israel’s public relations] would have been relatively small”. He was referring to the Tianamen Square massacre in June 1989 when world attention and the media were focused on China. Netanyahu added, “I still believe that there are opportunities to expel many people”. He later denied making the remarks but the Jerusalem Post presented a tape recording of his speech. (Ibid, p. 190; Michael Palumbo, Imperial Israel: The History of the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, London: Bloomsbury Publishing Ltd., 1990, pp. 302 - 303)
Nizar Sakhnini, 18 March 2007
Creation of an exclusive Jewish State in Palestine meant importing of Jews from all corners of the globe to Palestine. Between 1882 and 1948, the number of Jews in Palestine increased from 7000 to about 700,000 forming no more than 35% of the total population of the country and owing no more than 7% of the total land.
This meant that creation of the state the Zionists had in mind required ethnic cleansing and land theft and this was the reason why they launched the war in 1948.
The British, who were still in Palestine and responsible for maintaining law and order, could have stepped in and avoided the catastrophe, they simply preferred to turn their backs to what was going on. The reason is that they were aware of the tacit agreement between King Abdullah, the appointed commander of all the Arab troops, and the Zionist leadership in Palestine and gave it their blessings. According to this agreement, Palestine would be divided between the Jews and Abdullah. Abdullah would take that part of Palestine allotted to the Arabs west of the Jordan Valley and the rest of Palestine would be left for the “Jewish State”. (For details, see: Avi Shlaim, Collusion Across the Jordan: King Abdullah, The Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988)
On 18 February 1947, the British submitted the Palestine problem to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). Resolution #181 was adopted on 29 November 1947 allocating 56.5% of Palestine to a Jewish state and 43% to an Arab state with an international enclave around Jerusalem.
On 10 March 1948, the British House of Commons voted to end Mandate on 15 May. On 20 March 1948, the U.S. delegate to the UN requested a special session to suspend action on partition and work on a trusteeship plan. On 1 April 1948, a UN Security Council resolution called for special session of the UNGA and agreed to U.S. proposal for truce to be arranged through the Jewish Agency (JA) and the Arab Higher Committee (AHC).
THE 1948 WAR:
To avoid trusteeship, the Haganah launched Operation “Nachshon” of Plan Dalet on 3 April 1948, which marked the starting point of the 1948 war.
As a result of the war, about 10,000 Palestinian Arabs were killed, about 30,000 were wounded, over 750,000 were ethnically cleansed and became refugees, and more than 400 Arab villages were bulldozed and used to build settlements for the influx of Jewish immigrants.
While Operation Nachson was going on, a brutal massacre was committed in Deir Yassin killing over 250 men, women and children. This massacre spread panic and many Palestinian Arabs began leaving the country seeking a safe shelter.
On the night of 16-17 April 1948, units of the Haganah attacked the Old City of Tiberias. The Arab notables sued for a truce but the Haganah commanders refused; they wanted surrender. The Arabs then appealed to the British to lift the Haganah siege on the Old City and to extend their protection to the Arab areas. The British said they intended to evacuate the city within a few days and hence could offer no protection to the Arabs beyond 22 April. The Arab notables then decided to evacuate the city. A truce was instituted. The British brought buses and trucks and took the Arabs to Nazareth and Transjordan. (Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947 – 1949, Cambridge, 1987, P. 71)
On 18 April 1948, Major General Hugh C. Stockwell, British Commander in Haifa, summoned to his headquarters Harry Beilin, the JA liaison officer with the British army in the city. Stockwell informed Beilin that he intended to begin withdrawing his forces from the borders and no-man’s-land between the Arab and Jewish quarters in Haifa and that the withdrawal would be completed by 20 April.
Noninterference of the British Army in the fighting in Tiberias, on the one hand, and the green light given by Stockwell, on the other hand, encouraged the Haganah into action in Haifa.
British withdrawal was completed by sunset on Tuesday, 20 April. At 10:30 A.M. on Wednesday, 21 April, the Haganah launched its offensive. The Arab crowds broke into the port and pushing aside the police who guarded the gate it stormed the boats and began to flee the city.” The scene at the port was described as follows: “Men stepped on their friends and women on their own children. The boats in the port were soon filled with living cargo. The overcrowding in them was horrible. Many turned over and sank with all their passengers.” (Details on the fall of Haifa, the military situation in Palestine on the eve of Plan Dalet, the fall of Qastel and the death of Abd al-Qadir Husseini, and the fall of Jaffa were selected and annotated by Walid Khalidi, Selected Documents on the 1948 War, Journal of Palestine Studies, 107, Volume XXVII, No. 3, Spring 1998, pp. 60-105)
Jaffa was the largest Arab City in Palestine. It was close to Tel Aviv but did not pose any strategic threat. According to Benny Morris “The Haganah siege would eventually bring the town to its knees; it would fall like a ripe plum when the British withdrew”. This did not save the city from attack, which started by an offensive launched on 25 April 1948 by the IZL (Irgun Tzeva'i le'umi).
While Jaffa was being attacked by the IZL, Operation Hametz (Mivtza Hametz) was launched by the Haganah against the Arab villages east of Jaffa in order to cut the city from all centers of Arab population and its rural hinterland.
On 13 May, with the final British evacuation, the Jaffa Arab Emergency Committee, representing the 4,000-5,000 remaining inhabitants, signed a formal surrender agreement with the Haganah. (Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949. Cambridge, 1987 pp. 95-101)
Beisan as well as Safad and surrounding villages were captured by the Zionist forces on 12 May, Acre was captured on 17 May, Lydd and Ramla were captured on 14 July 1948.
The town of Nazareth was captured on 16 July 1948. Only one Israeli was killed and one wounded in the attack. A delegation of Christian clerics came out to meet the conquerors. Their request that the civilian population should not be forced to evacuate was granted. When Abraham Yaffe, an Israeli officer, entered Nazareth, he met a man whom he had driven out of another town in the Galilee. “Have you come to turn us away again?” the Arab inquired. “No, not in Nazareth,” Yaffe answered, “Nazareth is a holy place, a holy town. The world is watching us. You are not going to be a victim here.” The Israeli behavior in Nazareth was different from their behavior in the other Palestinian towns and villages. They realized that expulsion of Christian Arabs in one of the holiest Christian locations would produce unfavorable headlines all over the world. “Nazareth was the exception that proved the rule”. (Michael Palumbo, The Palestinian Catastrophe: The 1948 Expulsion of a People from their Homeland, London/Boston: 1987, pp. 123-125)
LAND THEFT:
On 28 May, Yosef Weitz, Director of the Jewish National Fund Lands Dept., met with Moshe Sharrett, the newly appointed Foreign Minister, and proposed that the Cabinet appoint himself, Elias Sasson, head of the Foreign Ministry’s Middle East Affairs Department, and Ezra Danin “to hammer out a plan of action designed [to achieve] the goal of transfer”.
On 5 June 1948, Weitz met with Ben-Gurion and submitted to him a memorandum entitled “Retroactive Transfer, A Scheme for the Solution of the Arab Question in the State of Israel”. Weitz, Danin, and Sasson signed the memorandum.
Ben-Gurion devoted two paragraphs in his diary to the meeting. He proposed that a committee of three – composed of representatives of the JNF (Weitz), the Jewish Agency settlement department, and the Agency’s treasury department – be set up. The job of this committee was to oversee “the cleaning up of the [Arab] settlements, cultivation of their [fields] and their settlement [by Jews], and the creation of a labour battalion to carry out this work”. Ben-Gurion, like Weitz, stressed that it would not be the government carrying out these activities, but they would be carried out “with its knowledge, by the National Institutions”.
The next day, 6 June, Weitz sent Ben-Gurion a detailed list of the abandoned villages and towns, with the appropriate population figures. In a covering note, he confirmed the meeting held in the previous day as well as Ben-Gurion’s approval that the destruction of Arab villages and prevention of cultivation of Arab fields will begin immediately. Weitz continued: “In line with this, I have given an order to begin [these operations] in different parts of the Galilee, in the Beit Shean Valley, in the Hills of Ephraim and in Samaria [meaning the Hefer Valley].” In this way, Weitz was trying to cover himself and not to leave himself open to charges that he had acted on his own.
Weitz spent the following day [7 June] talking with Danin about how to go about destroying the abandoned villages – where would the money come from, the tractors, the dynamite, the manpower? And where was it best to begin?
COUNT FOLKE BERNADOTTE:
The UN appointed Count Folke Bernadotte as mediator to resolve conflict in Palestine. He managed to bring about a first truce in the war from 11 June – 8 July 1948 and a second truce from 18 July – 15 October 1948.
In his report submitted to the UN on 16 September 1948, referring to the Arab refugees, Bernadotte stated, “It would be an offence against elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right of return to their homes while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine and indeed, offer the threat of permanent replacement of the Arab refugees who have been rooted in the land for centuries.” The following day, Count Bernadotte was murdered in Jerusalem by the Stern Gang. (Michael Palumbo, The Palestinian Catastrophe: The 1948 Expulsion of a People from their Homeland. London/Boston: 1987, p. 159)
ARAB INTERVENTION:
Arab intervention in the war was bogus and shameful. The Zionist onslaught started in early April; Arab armies did not interfere until 15 May when it was too little and too late.
Jordanian King Abdullah, commander of the Arab troops, was in tacit agreement with the Zionists.
Iraqi general Sir Ismail Safwat, chairman of the Arab league’s military committee, who had been appointed to lead all Arab troops in Palestine, resigned on 13 May 1948 because he was “firmly convinced that the absence of agreement on a precise plan can only lead us to disaster”. (Simha Flapan, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities. New York: 1987, p. 197)
ILLUSIONS OF PEACE:
For over fifty years, all efforts to end the Zionist-Arab conflict and bring peace have failed. The reason is simple: the Zionist mission had not been completed. Not all the areas coveted by the Zionists were occupied 1948 and ethnic cleansing was incomplete.
More lands were occupied in 1967 and another 250,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed. But all that was not good enough for the Zionist appetite.
Proposals for Arab population removal were outlined in an article entitled “A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s”, which appeared in the World Zionist Organization’s periodical Kivunim in February 1982. Oded Yinon, a journalist and analyst of Middle Eastern affairs and former senior Foreign Ministry official wrote the article.
Yinon called for Israel to bring about the dissolution and fragmentation of the Arab states into a mosaic of ethnic groupings. He believed that “Israel has made a strategic mistake in not taking measures [of mass expulsion] towards the Arab population in the new territories during and shortly after the [1967] war...”
Moreover, Yinon suggested to encompass the whole Arab world, including the imposition of a Pax Israela on, and the determination of the destiny of, Arab societies: re invading Sinai and “breaking Egypt territorially into separate geographical districts”. As for the Arab East: “...the total disintegration of Lebanon into five regional, localized governments as the precedent for the entire Arab world...the dissolution of Syria, and later Iraq, into districts of ethnic and religious minorities...” (Nur Masalha, A Land Without a People: Israel, Transfer and the Palestinians 1949 – 96, London: Faber and Faber ltd., 1997, pp. 196 - 198, citing Oded Yinon, A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s, [Hebrew], Kivunim, Jerusalem, No. 14, February 1982, pp. 53 - 58)
Benjamin Netanyahu told Bar-Ilan University students on 16 November 1989 that the government had failed to exploit internationally favorable situations to carry out “large-scale” expulsions at a time when “the damage [to Israel’s public relations] would have been relatively small”. He was referring to the Tianamen Square massacre in June 1989 when world attention and the media were focused on China. Netanyahu added, “I still believe that there are opportunities to expel many people”. He later denied making the remarks but the Jerusalem Post presented a tape recording of his speech. (Ibid, p. 190; Michael Palumbo, Imperial Israel: The History of the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, London: Bloomsbury Publishing Ltd., 1990, pp. 302 - 303)
Nizar Sakhnini, 18 March 2007
Friday, March 16, 2007
Don't you be my neighbor!
The Jewish families in east Jerusalem hope their Arab neighbors will eventually leave and be replaced by Jews. The Arabs hope the Jews will realize they are unwelcome and move back out
A few hundred meters from the Museum on the Seam, a sociopolitical art museum dedicated to coexistence located on the former border between Israeli and Jordanian Jerusalem, lies the mixed neighborhood of Shimon Hatzadik. According to tradition, the high priest, who was among the last members of the Great Assembly, was buried in a cave built into these sloping Sheikh Jarrah hills, where dozens of hassidim can be found praying and learning throughout the day.
Just a few meters away, in a smaller cave, is the traditional burial site of 23 former heads of the Sanhedrin. Here, a lone hassid sways back and forth as he prays in the dark, damp underground tomb.
The land surrounding the burial caves had lain barren of inhabitants for almost two millennia. The graves, however, were continuously visited by Jewish pilgrims.
In modern times, Jews started this neighborhood in 1895 and lived there until they were evicted by the British army during the Arab riots in 1947, says a source in Lomdei Shalem, an organization responsible for the renewed Jewish presence in the area. In the interim, he explains, the Jordanian government took over the land and permitted Arab families to move into the Jewish homes, where many still remain.
In 1998, a small group of men who went to pray at the ancient burial site reported that the synagogue there was being used as a goat shed and garbage dump by a local Arab family, which also was reportedly planning to build on top of the site, threatening to destroy the entire foundation.
After acquiring power of attorney from the Sephardi Community Council, the original owner of the property, MK Benny Elon shepherded a group of young yeshiva students to the old synagogue. They cleaned it up and began to study there regularly.
In the meantime, says the Lomdei Shalem source, apartments in the area "became available." Slowly, Jews began to move back in.
Today, seven Jewish families live in the Shimon Hatzadik neighborhood, interspersed among dozens of Arab families. Though they're living together, the neighborhood is far from a model for coexistence.
The old synagogue has been restored and is now a kollel, where men study Torah on a daily basis. On the grassy yard outside, Lomdei Shalem and the organizations responsible for supporting the Jewish neighborhood have built a small playground, which is often the site of nasty arguments with the Arabs, whose children also want to play on the new equipment.
"We don't hate them," says Bryna Segal, a resident of Shimon Hatzadik. "But the neighborhood decided not to let them play here so they'll know who's in charge and won't give us trouble."
Segal, her husband and two young children moved to Shimon Hatzadik a little over six months ago from the northern Samaria settlement of Ma'aleh Levona because they wanted to live in Jerusalem and in an ideologically meaningful place. She says the adjustment was difficult and that when they first moved in, she was afraid to let her children go out alone.
"In the beginning, the Arabs would curse at us when we would walk by them," says Segal, who has had rocks thrown at her car, her antennas stolen and her tires slashed.
The Dagan family, which moved in a year ago, recalls an outdoor community meal the Jewish families made one Shabbat that led to a violent encounter with their Arab neighbors.
"They threw feces on the tables we had set up," says Iska Dagan, "and after we started arguing with them, they stabbed my husband Emanuel three times in the back with a screwdriver."
The perpetrators were arrested, held for two days and released, she says. Although the government pays for two 24-hour security guards, the Jewish families complain that they don't get involved.
"One time an Arab threw a cinder block at us as the guard watched, and instead of doing something he told me I should learn to get along with the Arabs," says Dagan.
Now, the families "coexist" in an almost quiet denial of the other's presence.
Segal's next-door neighbors, the Kurds, ignore her completely, she says, because she lives in the home they had built for their son. One of the Jewish associations took the Kurds to court, claiming they built the home illegally.
As protected tenants (residents who cannot be evicted from an apartment that was built under the British Mandate) in a home originally owned by Jews that was later taken over by the Jordanians, the Kurds could not be evicted.
But according to the court, they were prohibited from building an addition to the home that they didn't own in the first place, and Jews were permitted to take it over.
"It's my house," says Fawziya Kurd angrily. "I built it, but Jews are living there. How am I supposed to feel?"
Segal says Fawziya yelled at her when her family put up a mezuza and when they built a succa, but that in recent months her neighbors won't even make eye contact with her.
"We don't talk to them and we don't like them," says Fawziya, "but we don't give each other problems. We both want to live in peace."
The Jewish families in Shimon Hatzadik hope their Arab neighbors will eventually leave and be replaced by Jews, to accelerate the fulfillment of the Jewish dream of Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel. The Arabs hope the Jews will realize they are unwelcome and move back out, enabling Jerusalem to be the capital of a future Palestinian state.
BUT SHIMON Hatzadik is not a singular phenomenon. Throughout east Jerusalem, similar Jewish enclaves are being zealously established with the goal of reigniting Jewish life in what is termed "the heart of Jerusalem" rather than "east Jerusalem," says Daniel Luria, spokesman for Ateret Cohanim, the organization championing the movement.
"Zionism didn't end in 1948 or 1967," he says. "The Jewish dream of having a safe, thriving Jewish community in the heart of Jerusalem hasn't been achieved yet."
Ateret Cohanim, not to be confused with the Old City yeshiva of the same name, was established in 1979, when it helped its first Jewish family move into the Muslim Quarter.
Now, says Luria, there are 800 Jews living in the Muslim and Christian quarters of the Old City, along with 50 families in Ma'aleh Hazetim - also known as Ras el-Amud - on the Mount of Olives. There are also plans for a new project on empty plots of Jewish-owned land on the Jerusalem side of Abu Dis, to be called Kidmat Zion.
Nine Jewish families are also living in the old Yemenite neighborhood of Shiloah, which the Arabs call Silwan, across from the City of David. Just a few weeks ago, however, they were ordered to evacuate by a Jerusalem court because the building they are residing in was built illegally.
The property on which the building sits was owned by Yemenite Jews who were expelled in Arab riots 70 years ago, explains Luria. Arabs built illegally on the property in the last few years, he says, and this specific building was purchased - and then populated - by Jews.
Though he admits there was a lack of adequate building permits for the project, Luria says they are fighting the eviction because of the fact that illegal building is rampant throughout east Jerusalem and the municipality does little to enforce the law on the Arabs living in hundreds of illegally built homes.
In fact, both Luria and Elon say that illegal building in Arab neighborhoods is one of the biggest problems facing the Jerusalem Municipality today.
"It's a very sensitive issue and the government is scared to put its foot down," says Luria. "It's scared CNN or BBC is going to show up and show an old woman crying and a little boy playing in the street outside an Arab home that was destroyed for being illegally built, so it only enforces the law with the Jews."
But Ateret Cohanim and Lomdei Shalem aren't acting alone in their fervent efforts to reestablish Jewish life in the disputed section of the city. Other organizations, the most popular of which are Elad, responsible for renewing Jewish life in the City of David, and Beit Orot, which operates a yeshiva of 10 families on the northern side of the Mount of Olives, are actively involved in bolstering the Jewish presence in these Arab-populated areas.
Supported by funds raised mostly from private donors here and abroad, these organizations work to acquire property from the Arab residents either by purchasing the title from the Arab owner or the protected tenancy right from the Arab resident.
"Contrary to what some may think, nobody is kicked off any land," Luria says. "There are Arabs ready to sell and we take the opportunity to buy. If they are protected tenants and they don't want to leave, we can't make them."
In many instances, he says, the land is in fact Jewish owned but has been occupied by Arabs for many years, rendering many of these residents protected tenants. As such, as Luria points out, they cannot be evicted - unless they sold the property without the permission of the original owner or built illegally on the premises, as occurred in the case of the Kurd family in Shimon Hatzadik. In such cases, or if the resident is not actually a protected tenant but an illegal squatter, the Arab family can be taken to court and evicted.
"Everything that's done is done legally," says Elon, who has pioneered this movement in order to "wipe out the Green Line in Jerusalem" by having a meaningful Jewish presence in the eastern part of the city.
"Everyone says don't worry about Jerusalem, it will be our capital forever and ever, but when [Ehud] Barak was prime minister, Jerusalem was on the table," he says. "We need to unite Jerusalem, not just on maps but on the ground, and the only way to do that is if Jews feel safe and secure there and know this is the only capital of the Jewish state."
While the stakes are high, Luria maintains that the process is simple - if an Arab wants to sell, a Jew should be able to buy. Indeed, 100 percent of Ateret Cohanim's activity is buying from the Arabs and does not involve the courts - unless the Arab himself requests a cover story.
"There have been many instances in which Arabs were killed for selling land to Jews," Luria says, clearly hinting at the highly-rumored notion that if an Arab wants to sell to Jews but is afraid for his life, he can be taken to court and go through the motions of being "evicted" so his Arab neighbors won't know he willingly sold to Jews. "We go to great lengths to protect the Arabs, even if it means looking bad in the eyes of the community."
For all the bad press it receives for its controversial activities, he says his organization shouldn't have to exist at all - it's really the responsibility of the government or the Jewish National Fund to act on behalf of Jewish landowners, research the old properties and synagogues and make sure the current Arab residents aren't destroying or defiling them.
"The whole world is talking about Jews as the occupiers of Arab land," he says. "But in Jerusalem, it's totally the opposite."
THE ARABS, of course, disagree.
Karim Arafat lives in Wadi Hilweh in Silwan, where he owns a tailor shop. When asked if there are Jews living in his neighborhood, he responds in the negative, saying that it's not Jews but "settlers" who have begun moving in.
"No one's happy they're here," he says. "We don't want them living in our neighborhood."
Arafat says his new neighbors aren't friendly and interfere with his lifestyle, explaining that on Jewish holidays, the streets are closed off and while he is trapped in his home, the "settlers are dancing in the streets."
He says he thinks it might be possible for Jews and Arabs to live together one day, but that "Jews and settlers are not the same thing. I can't live with settlers," he says. "And I don't think you could either."
Though he acknowledges their claim that the property in question was Jewish-owned, Arafat says that doesn't change the fact that they are kicking Arabs out of homes they've lived in for years.
"They say they owned it a hundred years ago," he says, "but if someone steals your house, or even your friend's house, how can you live with them?"
Correspondingly, dovish city councilman Pepe Allalo says every effort to bring Jewish families into east Jerusalem homes is a violent provocation against the Arabs and straddles the boundaries of what's legal and what's not.
"First of all, according to international law, nothing here is legal because the world considers east Jerusalem occupied land," he says. In Israel, he adds, it's also illegal because many of the homes being purchased by Jews are illegally built, and as an example he refers to the case of the Jewish families in Silwan recently given eviction notices.
But it's impossible to say whether all these transactions are legal or not, says attorney Daniel Seidman of Ir Amim, which describes itself as an organization that promotes Israeli-Palestinian coexistence in Jerusalem. Each house in east Jerusalem, he says, has its own, complicated story.
Seidman became involved in the issue in 1992, when he petitioned the High Court of Justice on behalf of former Meretz MK Haim Oron, arguing that Jews moving into east Jerusalem reflected a covert government policy to turn over Palestinian properties to extremist settlers. Seidman contends that "the settlers" have an "ambiguous relationship" with the rule of law and tons of political clout that they use to the utmost. The government, he says, has practiced a systematic policy of collusion with the settler organizations, with Ariel Sharon as their "patron saint."
There have been plenty of cases in east Jerusalem, he says, in which there are illegal allocations of government funds or in which "settlers" are given the inside track by government agencies. He says he has even witnessed situations in which land is declared "absentee property"(property in a captured territory that is managed by a government appointee), turned over to Jews and the Arabs living in the house find "their stuff being thrown out the window and themselves evicted."
Widespread illegality reigns, he alleges, but nevertheless admits that there are circumstances in which properties in east Jerusalem are turned over in a completely legal manner and by the consent of the Arab owner. He points out that Shimon Hatzadik is one distinct example.
"The property was owned by Jews prior to 1948 and the Jordanian custodian for enemy property built homes on this land to house refugees - so the title here clearly belongs to the Jews," he says. Confirming the Jewish claims, Seidman elaborates that Jews have been able to legally repopulate the area because Arabs sold to them or violated contract agreements and were evicted by a court.
But the bottom line is that both the Arabs and Jews, determined to force the other out of east Jerusalem, claim the other side is wrong, lying, cheating, stealing or forging documents. At the end of the day, says Seidman, "you'll never hear a settler say I've ripped off a Palestinian, and you'll never hear a Palestinian say anything but that he's been ripped off."
AT THE HEART of the issue is the controversial piece of land itself, over which Israelis and Palestinians have been competing for some 120 years, says Yisrael Kimche, a geographer at the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies and 70-year Jerusalem resident.
"Each side thinks that if it settles in this place, it will own it," he explains.
Documents clearly show that most of the land in question was owned by Jews many years ago, he says, similar to land in west Jerusalem that was once owned by Arabs but was turned over to the government after they left during the War of Independence.
It's difficult to examine whether all the transactions going on today are legal, he continues, because most of it is done in secret to protect the Arabs who are thought to be betraying their brethren by selling to Jews.
"The Jewish organizations try to do everything legally, but no one knows exactly what's happening there because everything is kept very quiet," he says.
But the phenomenon, he adds, is nothing new.
"Most of the Jewish neighborhoods in west Jerusalem were purchased from Arabs since the middle of the 19th century," he says. "It's just in the last couple of years that it's become a major political issue."
The issue itself has been greatly exaggerated, Kimche says, because the actual number of Jews moving into Arab areas of east Jerusalem is small and the number of Jews already living in what is considered east Jerusalem - in neighborhoods such as Pisgat Zeev built north, south and east of the Green Line - is more than 180,000, only slightly fewer than the number of Palestinians residing there.
The Arab population in east Jerusalem stands at about 240,000, 33% of the total population of Jerusalem, according to figures provided by Kimche.Of that, more than half are studying in the Israeli education system, and as such are considered by Kimche to be a population that Jews can enter and live with peacefully.
"I personally don't think it's a great idea for Jews to purchase land in the middle of Arab neighborhoods. I think it's better to live side by side but not to mingle." he says. "But there are hundreds of Arab families moving to Jewish neighborhoods because of housing shortages, so I don't think it's so problematic for a Jewish family to live in a Muslim area."
Kimche remains optimistic, pointing out that "there were times when Jews and Arabs lived together in peace."
"I think it's possible for us to live together," he continues. "So perhaps this [situation in east Jerusalem] could encourage peace because you already have Jews and Arabs living together."
From the hostility and tension tangible in the air around Shimon Hatzadik, it doesn't seem very likely.
"There is no chance for coexistence today," says Allalo. "They're living in a bad situation," he says of the Jews in Shimon Hatzadik. "There's violence, arguing, and two guards right next to them. If there was coexistence, we wouldn't need guards, but we do because each side doesn't want the other."
Today, Allalo determines that the only course of action is for Jews and Arabs to separate from each other completely and have two states. Only after friendly relations are established between the states can either side even consider living in the other's communities.
"We are at war now," he says. "Maybe one day when there's peace a Jew can buy a house in Silwan and an Arab can buy a house in Neveh Ya'acov. But it's not possible today."
Though they live mere meters apart and pass by each other morning and night, the two communities in Shimon Hatzadik continue to exist as if the other doesn't.
"We don't expect everyone to get along," says Luria, "just to be cordial and coexist."
Segal says she isn't scared anymore and now lets her children play freely in the plaza outside her home and feels comfortable walking around the area alone.
But perhaps it's just too soon to tell. In the home across the way from Segal's, an Arab woman smiles at Segal and her children as they walk by. They wave and smile back. Segal says the two women don't speak, but that she's always friendly.
"It would be interesting to speak to the Arabs, to find out about them, to learn who they are," says Segal, "but unfortunately, that's not the atmosphere here."
Saturday, March 10, 2007
The Israeil government erases the Bedouin Village of Twail again
Yeela Raanan, the Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Again, hundreds of police people congregated by the city of Rahat. Again, they accompanied the demolishing bulldozers. Again the drove by the train tracks on their way to the village of Twail Abu-Jarwal. And again – the destruction, the violence, and the pain they leave behind.
Is it not yet obvious that the villagers have no other options? Wouldn’t five waves of demolitions, two of the entire village, have convinced anyone who had options to leave? Evidently, the government is not yet sure that these people cannot still be convinced, so here is yet another lesson, maybe you will be convinced this time. Again the village was completely demolished: 15 structures, including the sheep dens, eleven tents. Everything was destroyed. The tents they took.
Aqil Talalqa, the village’s elected head, sat with governmental officials, in an attempt to find some kind of compromise for his tribe, about 500 people, who have no place to build a home. With lack of any other options they returned to their ancestral lands several years ago, and now are subject to the cruel repetitive demolitions. The compromise the government offered was a neighborhood in the Bedouin town of Laqia – on another family’s land. One wonders why would the government suggest such an impossible solution? Scores of years ago, the government confiscated land from Arabs in the Negev in order to sell it to other Arabs. For the scores of years that passed no Arab has been willing to build his house on another Arab’s confiscated land. And this is the land that is suggested to Talalqa. The Authority for the “Advancement” of the Bedouins knows well that building a home on another’s land brings about serious conflicts. Sadly, it seems Aqil’s answer makes sense: “They want to create conflict between families and tribes. All sorts of conflicts. For them this is fun.”
Tonight again over 100 people will be without a roof, in the cold desert night.
For more information: Yeela Raanan, RCUV. 054 7487005.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Again, hundreds of police people congregated by the city of Rahat. Again, they accompanied the demolishing bulldozers. Again the drove by the train tracks on their way to the village of Twail Abu-Jarwal. And again – the destruction, the violence, and the pain they leave behind.
Is it not yet obvious that the villagers have no other options? Wouldn’t five waves of demolitions, two of the entire village, have convinced anyone who had options to leave? Evidently, the government is not yet sure that these people cannot still be convinced, so here is yet another lesson, maybe you will be convinced this time. Again the village was completely demolished: 15 structures, including the sheep dens, eleven tents. Everything was destroyed. The tents they took.
Aqil Talalqa, the village’s elected head, sat with governmental officials, in an attempt to find some kind of compromise for his tribe, about 500 people, who have no place to build a home. With lack of any other options they returned to their ancestral lands several years ago, and now are subject to the cruel repetitive demolitions. The compromise the government offered was a neighborhood in the Bedouin town of Laqia – on another family’s land. One wonders why would the government suggest such an impossible solution? Scores of years ago, the government confiscated land from Arabs in the Negev in order to sell it to other Arabs. For the scores of years that passed no Arab has been willing to build his house on another Arab’s confiscated land. And this is the land that is suggested to Talalqa. The Authority for the “Advancement” of the Bedouins knows well that building a home on another’s land brings about serious conflicts. Sadly, it seems Aqil’s answer makes sense: “They want to create conflict between families and tribes. All sorts of conflicts. For them this is fun.”
Tonight again over 100 people will be without a roof, in the cold desert night.
For more information: Yeela Raanan, RCUV. 054 7487005.
Monday, February 5, 2007
Olmert rejects Peretz plan to evacuate illegal outposts
Last update - 07:54 05/02/2007
PM rejects Peretz plan to evacuate illegal outposts
By Aluf Benn and Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondents
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday rejected Defense Minister Amir
Peretz's proposal to evacuate several illegal West Bank outposts. In a routine work meeting between the two, Peretz suggested three or four possible outposts. Olmert replied that the timing is not right.
Sources in the Prime Minister's Office said Peretz proposed tiny outposts with just a few trailers. The sources say the premier is in favor of removing illegal outposts, but supports developing a comprehensive plan on the matter.
Olmert told Peretz they would determine the proper timing together.
Israel is committed to former prime minister Ariel Sharon's promise to the Washington administration to dismantle illegal outposts created since 2001. The cabinet has debated the matter several times, but not a single outpost has been dismantled in practice.
In December, Haaretz reported that civil administration figures showed 200 structures were erected in late 2006 at various outposts.
In the summer, Peretz promised U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that he would be receiving the army's plan for dismantling outposts after the Jewish holidays in the fall. The Israel Defense Forces has rejected recent Peretz initiatives to evacuate outposts, at one point because of the second Lebanon war and at another due to escalating terror.
The defense minister's office has launched negotiations with settler leaders in efforts to reach understandings and common language on voluntary evacuation, but has made little headway. The Bush administration has meanwhile lessened pressure to evacuate the illegal outposts in the West Bank.
PM rejects Peretz plan to evacuate illegal outposts
By Aluf Benn and Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondents
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday rejected Defense Minister Amir
Peretz's proposal to evacuate several illegal West Bank outposts. In a routine work meeting between the two, Peretz suggested three or four possible outposts. Olmert replied that the timing is not right.
Sources in the Prime Minister's Office said Peretz proposed tiny outposts with just a few trailers. The sources say the premier is in favor of removing illegal outposts, but supports developing a comprehensive plan on the matter.
Olmert told Peretz they would determine the proper timing together.
Israel is committed to former prime minister Ariel Sharon's promise to the Washington administration to dismantle illegal outposts created since 2001. The cabinet has debated the matter several times, but not a single outpost has been dismantled in practice.
In December, Haaretz reported that civil administration figures showed 200 structures were erected in late 2006 at various outposts.
In the summer, Peretz promised U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that he would be receiving the army's plan for dismantling outposts after the Jewish holidays in the fall. The Israel Defense Forces has rejected recent Peretz initiatives to evacuate outposts, at one point because of the second Lebanon war and at another due to escalating terror.
The defense minister's office has launched negotiations with settler leaders in efforts to reach understandings and common language on voluntary evacuation, but has made little headway. The Bush administration has meanwhile lessened pressure to evacuate the illegal outposts in the West Bank.
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Marking the territory
Militants giving Israel excuse to cancel easements
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By Amira Hass
At 6:30 last Friday morning, two cars waited for soldiers to open the checkpoint at the eastern entrance to Ramallah. This checkpoint is only for diplomats, Palestinian VIPs, journalists, employees of international organizations and anyone whose presence is welcomed by the military authorities. The checkpoint obligates thousands of villagers living in the vicinity to travel from 30 to 60 kilometers, instead of three to four km, so the settlers of Beit El and Psagot and of the outposts of Migron and Givat Asaf can exercise their landlordism.
The cars waited but the soldiers did not come, even though the checkpoint officially opens at 6 A.M. The iron gate was unlocked; one could have opened it and advanced toward the watchtower. Drivers began honking to attract the soldiers' attention, but if they were sleeping they did not wake up; if they were in the guard tower, they did not come out. Were they derelict in their duty to uphold national security?
Of course not. As in hundreds of other blockades and checkpoints, the security pretext serves consistent strategic aims. Their function is to mark territory, to distinguish between "territorial units" (in Israel Defense Forces lingo), into which the Palestinians will be restricted as part of the permanent arrangements that will be imposed upon them, and the area Israel intends to annex. The territorial marking took place before September 2000 as well: generous construction permits for the settlements, prohibitions against construction and the prevention of development for the Palestinians, and an expansion of the settlements' jurisdiction. The means change, the ends do not.
The declaration of "easements" helps to divert discussion from the real intentions. And still, if at a few checkpoints (out of about 80), people will wait for 20 minutes instead of three hours, they will feel some relief. If a few of the 400 obstructions between villages are removed, their residents can reach their plots of land by tractor rather than on foot. And if, in the third promised stage, Palestinians will be permitted to travel to the Jordan Valley, then that will be a real celebration.
But it is doubtful this stage will ever come. Sooner or later, a Palestinian carrying a rifle in his car will be detained at a checkpoint where "easements" were instituted. The military spokesmen will wave the rifle about as proof that the state's security is endangered. Or a teenager from Nablus will be found carrying an improvized, home-made, pistol or an explosives belt, and the security "ring" around Nablus will be drawn taut once more. The IDF will describe the boy's handlers as "senior commanders," and at some point they will be killed "in an exchange of gunfire" or an assassination that will not be termed as such.
The IDF is not the only one marking territory, after all. The armed Palestinian organizations are doing it as well. But the IDF marks territory as part of a strategic plan that unites parties such as Kadima, Yisrael Beiteinu and Labor. The Palestinian militants and their handlers mark territory in the absence of a united policy, as part of their infighting. They compete for admiration, for salaries from the Palestinian Authority and for foreign funding. They pretend that what they are doing, have done and promise to do brings their people closer to liberation.
From the first days of the second Palestinian popular uprising against the Israeli occupation, the militants have expropriated it and turned it into hopeless exchanges of fire with the military might of the IDF, and afterward to counting the Israeli dead as proof of its success. They provided, in some measure, the desire to avenge the many civilian deaths caused by the IDF. But they also provided Israel with an excuse to hew to its policy of continuing to expand its marked territory. The ritual of the "armed struggle" turned it into a target that needs no strategy.
The desire not to insult those who are liable to be killed, and fear of the hot-blooded militants, stifle the internal debate over the failure caused by the use of arms and the reinforcement it gave to Israel. And so, the militant organizations and their many offshoots are sure to provide, soon enough, the next pretext for canceling the "easements."
---
By Amira Hass
At 6:30 last Friday morning, two cars waited for soldiers to open the checkpoint at the eastern entrance to Ramallah. This checkpoint is only for diplomats, Palestinian VIPs, journalists, employees of international organizations and anyone whose presence is welcomed by the military authorities. The checkpoint obligates thousands of villagers living in the vicinity to travel from 30 to 60 kilometers, instead of three to four km, so the settlers of Beit El and Psagot and of the outposts of Migron and Givat Asaf can exercise their landlordism.
The cars waited but the soldiers did not come, even though the checkpoint officially opens at 6 A.M. The iron gate was unlocked; one could have opened it and advanced toward the watchtower. Drivers began honking to attract the soldiers' attention, but if they were sleeping they did not wake up; if they were in the guard tower, they did not come out. Were they derelict in their duty to uphold national security?
Of course not. As in hundreds of other blockades and checkpoints, the security pretext serves consistent strategic aims. Their function is to mark territory, to distinguish between "territorial units" (in Israel Defense Forces lingo), into which the Palestinians will be restricted as part of the permanent arrangements that will be imposed upon them, and the area Israel intends to annex. The territorial marking took place before September 2000 as well: generous construction permits for the settlements, prohibitions against construction and the prevention of development for the Palestinians, and an expansion of the settlements' jurisdiction. The means change, the ends do not.
The declaration of "easements" helps to divert discussion from the real intentions. And still, if at a few checkpoints (out of about 80), people will wait for 20 minutes instead of three hours, they will feel some relief. If a few of the 400 obstructions between villages are removed, their residents can reach their plots of land by tractor rather than on foot. And if, in the third promised stage, Palestinians will be permitted to travel to the Jordan Valley, then that will be a real celebration.
But it is doubtful this stage will ever come. Sooner or later, a Palestinian carrying a rifle in his car will be detained at a checkpoint where "easements" were instituted. The military spokesmen will wave the rifle about as proof that the state's security is endangered. Or a teenager from Nablus will be found carrying an improvized, home-made, pistol or an explosives belt, and the security "ring" around Nablus will be drawn taut once more. The IDF will describe the boy's handlers as "senior commanders," and at some point they will be killed "in an exchange of gunfire" or an assassination that will not be termed as such.
The IDF is not the only one marking territory, after all. The armed Palestinian organizations are doing it as well. But the IDF marks territory as part of a strategic plan that unites parties such as Kadima, Yisrael Beiteinu and Labor. The Palestinian militants and their handlers mark territory in the absence of a united policy, as part of their infighting. They compete for admiration, for salaries from the Palestinian Authority and for foreign funding. They pretend that what they are doing, have done and promise to do brings their people closer to liberation.
From the first days of the second Palestinian popular uprising against the Israeli occupation, the militants have expropriated it and turned it into hopeless exchanges of fire with the military might of the IDF, and afterward to counting the Israeli dead as proof of its success. They provided, in some measure, the desire to avenge the many civilian deaths caused by the IDF. But they also provided Israel with an excuse to hew to its policy of continuing to expand its marked territory. The ritual of the "armed struggle" turned it into a target that needs no strategy.
The desire not to insult those who are liable to be killed, and fear of the hot-blooded militants, stifle the internal debate over the failure caused by the use of arms and the reinforcement it gave to Israel. And so, the militant organizations and their many offshoots are sure to provide, soon enough, the next pretext for canceling the "easements."
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Israeli confiscation of Jerusalem includes 100,000 Jewish settlers per year
(Nablus) Amin Abu Wardeh
Thursday, 21 December 2006
The Israelis are bringing 100,000 Jewish settlers to Jerusalem every year. The Director of Mapping in Jerusalem's Arab Studies Society said that the Israeli plan to Judaize the city will accommodate 500,000 more settlers by 2010.
Part of that plan is Sharon's blueprint of imposing a settlement inside East Jerusalem's Old City. Before falling ill, Sharon spoke of the settlement project known as E1, which aims to impose an industrial zone , 3,500 housing units, and five hotels on a one kilometer area.
The placement will cut-off East Jerusalem entirely and make establishing the Palestinian capital an impossibility.
The area of “Greater Jerusalem” is 600 km and is becoming possible to access for Israelis-only through a system of streets and tunnels that connect to the settlements. The Wall, home demolitions, land and identification confiscation and settlement expansion are forcing out the original Palestinian population.
The Mapping Director said that the scheme aims to strengthen the presence of Israeli soldiers and settlers outside the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem and decrease the Palestinian population of Jerusalem. After the Palestinians are gone, East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem will be re-linked through a tunnel system.
Israeli planners visualize the city by 2020 to be the capital of Israel and the center of the Jewish people as its economic and social power increases. The Wall will ensure that Palestinians are not present, and therefore through the Israeli “Absentee Property Law,” the Israeli government will be able to confiscate Palestinian land in a manner it deems legal.
Thursday, 21 December 2006
The Israelis are bringing 100,000 Jewish settlers to Jerusalem every year. The Director of Mapping in Jerusalem's Arab Studies Society said that the Israeli plan to Judaize the city will accommodate 500,000 more settlers by 2010.
Part of that plan is Sharon's blueprint of imposing a settlement inside East Jerusalem's Old City. Before falling ill, Sharon spoke of the settlement project known as E1, which aims to impose an industrial zone , 3,500 housing units, and five hotels on a one kilometer area.
The placement will cut-off East Jerusalem entirely and make establishing the Palestinian capital an impossibility.
The area of “Greater Jerusalem” is 600 km and is becoming possible to access for Israelis-only through a system of streets and tunnels that connect to the settlements. The Wall, home demolitions, land and identification confiscation and settlement expansion are forcing out the original Palestinian population.
The Mapping Director said that the scheme aims to strengthen the presence of Israeli soldiers and settlers outside the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem and decrease the Palestinian population of Jerusalem. After the Palestinians are gone, East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem will be re-linked through a tunnel system.
Israeli planners visualize the city by 2020 to be the capital of Israel and the center of the Jewish people as its economic and social power increases. The Wall will ensure that Palestinians are not present, and therefore through the Israeli “Absentee Property Law,” the Israeli government will be able to confiscate Palestinian land in a manner it deems legal.
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Moving on to the next scandal...
By Uzi Benziman
A month ago, Haaretz ran a sensational story on its front page: Reporter Nadav Shragai gave a detailed description of the findings of a Peace Now report, which said that close to 40 percent of the land under the control of West Bank settlements is privately owned by Palestinians. The report was based on an official state database that Peace Now leaked.
Haaretz was the only Israeli media outlet that adequately covered the report. The Maariv daily gave a synopsis of the report on page six; Israel Radio announced it in its midday broadcast; and it stayed on various electronic news sites for about a day. The remaining media outlets, including Yedioth Ahronoth, the television stations and Army Radio, completely ignored it.
The media was not alone in underplaying the findings of the report and avoiding its implications (except for Haaretz, which ran follow-up analyses by Shragai, Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff). The key subjects of the report also adopted a tactic of minimizing it: No official government response was issued, the Civil Administration put out a statement saying, among other things, that "an initial review of the report shows that it suffers from serious inaccuracies," and the Yesha Council of settlements claimed that there was nothing new in the report and that Peace Now would use any means to fight Jewish settlement.
In contrast to the low-profile response to the report offered by the state and the Israeli media, it received a great deal of attention abroad: The New York Times published it as its lead story, and other large newspapers followed suit; and the report's authors, Dror Etkes and Hagit Ofran, were interviewed by dozens of radio and television stations throughout the world. Etkes and Ofran estimate that their findings were covered by hundreds of media outlets. Etkes was also interviewed by Israel Radio - along with Benny Kashriel, mayor of the Ma'aleh Adumim settlement - but only as a result of a report by the station's Washington correspondent, Yaron Dekel, about the buzz that the findings had produced in the United States.
What is more interesting than the extent of the coverage that the report received in Israel is the impression it left on Israeli public opinion: A day after the modest announcement of its findings, the report disappeared entirely from public discourse, except for one more announcement by the Yesha Council challenging its reliability. The parties on the left did not address it, the Knesset did not deliberate it, the press did not deal with it, the government ignored it, and the justice, defense and prime ministers were not asked to explain the findings that it exposed.
What the Peace Now researchers found is that state organs stole private lands from Palestinians living in the West Bank. The report found that state bodies broke the law, ignored Supreme Court decisions and behaved dishonestly, and certainly unethically. Peace Now claimed that 130 settlements were established, fully or partially, on private lands. Note: These are properties that the state recognized as private land, not private properties that were declared to be state land. This involved the systematic and blatant violation by state agencies of the property rights of thousands of Palestinians. This is the same repugnant, underhanded and apparently criminal modus operandi that attorney Talia Sasson detailed in the report she wrote on the establishment of the illegal outposts.
Israel's conscience is entirely black. Scandal follows scandal, and today's injustice wipes away yesterday's injustice in our consciousness. Israeli society's heart is so hard when it comes to Palestinians in the territories that it remains unmoved even when confronted with a scene of continuous injustice that strips individuals of their property.
The malice, deception and aggression embodied in the way the state took over lands belonging to private individuals, even if they are Palestinians, ought to stir up every honest person, even if he is a settler. This method has nothing to do with the ideological dispute over the establishment of the settlements: The issue at stake is that individuals have been stripped of their basic rights. The settlements could have been set up solely on state land. However, a society that is not shocked by the killing of innocent Palestinians will also not be moved even slightly by the sight of land stolen from any individual Palestinian.
A month ago, Haaretz ran a sensational story on its front page: Reporter Nadav Shragai gave a detailed description of the findings of a Peace Now report, which said that close to 40 percent of the land under the control of West Bank settlements is privately owned by Palestinians. The report was based on an official state database that Peace Now leaked.
Haaretz was the only Israeli media outlet that adequately covered the report. The Maariv daily gave a synopsis of the report on page six; Israel Radio announced it in its midday broadcast; and it stayed on various electronic news sites for about a day. The remaining media outlets, including Yedioth Ahronoth, the television stations and Army Radio, completely ignored it.
The media was not alone in underplaying the findings of the report and avoiding its implications (except for Haaretz, which ran follow-up analyses by Shragai, Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff). The key subjects of the report also adopted a tactic of minimizing it: No official government response was issued, the Civil Administration put out a statement saying, among other things, that "an initial review of the report shows that it suffers from serious inaccuracies," and the Yesha Council of settlements claimed that there was nothing new in the report and that Peace Now would use any means to fight Jewish settlement.
In contrast to the low-profile response to the report offered by the state and the Israeli media, it received a great deal of attention abroad: The New York Times published it as its lead story, and other large newspapers followed suit; and the report's authors, Dror Etkes and Hagit Ofran, were interviewed by dozens of radio and television stations throughout the world. Etkes and Ofran estimate that their findings were covered by hundreds of media outlets. Etkes was also interviewed by Israel Radio - along with Benny Kashriel, mayor of the Ma'aleh Adumim settlement - but only as a result of a report by the station's Washington correspondent, Yaron Dekel, about the buzz that the findings had produced in the United States.
What is more interesting than the extent of the coverage that the report received in Israel is the impression it left on Israeli public opinion: A day after the modest announcement of its findings, the report disappeared entirely from public discourse, except for one more announcement by the Yesha Council challenging its reliability. The parties on the left did not address it, the Knesset did not deliberate it, the press did not deal with it, the government ignored it, and the justice, defense and prime ministers were not asked to explain the findings that it exposed.
What the Peace Now researchers found is that state organs stole private lands from Palestinians living in the West Bank. The report found that state bodies broke the law, ignored Supreme Court decisions and behaved dishonestly, and certainly unethically. Peace Now claimed that 130 settlements were established, fully or partially, on private lands. Note: These are properties that the state recognized as private land, not private properties that were declared to be state land. This involved the systematic and blatant violation by state agencies of the property rights of thousands of Palestinians. This is the same repugnant, underhanded and apparently criminal modus operandi that attorney Talia Sasson detailed in the report she wrote on the establishment of the illegal outposts.
Israel's conscience is entirely black. Scandal follows scandal, and today's injustice wipes away yesterday's injustice in our consciousness. Israeli society's heart is so hard when it comes to Palestinians in the territories that it remains unmoved even when confronted with a scene of continuous injustice that strips individuals of their property.
The malice, deception and aggression embodied in the way the state took over lands belonging to private individuals, even if they are Palestinians, ought to stir up every honest person, even if he is a settler. This method has nothing to do with the ideological dispute over the establishment of the settlements: The issue at stake is that individuals have been stripped of their basic rights. The settlements could have been set up solely on state land. However, a society that is not shocked by the killing of innocent Palestinians will also not be moved even slightly by the sight of land stolen from any individual Palestinian.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Israeli court cites security fears to justify land grab
By Agence France Presse (AFP)
Thursday, December 14, 2006
JERUSALEM: Israel's Supreme Court Wednesday rejected an appeal by Palestinians over the route of the separation barrier in the suburbs of occupied East Jerusalem, court sources said.
Residents of Al-Ram had appealed the proposed route of the barrier, which will leave their West Bank town cut off from East Jerusalem. The justices rejected the appeal, saying the route did not violate "the balance between security concerns" and rights of Palestinian residents with Israeli ID cards.
"Defending Jerusalem from terrorist infiltrations constitutes a vital security interest," said the ruling.
It marked the latest in a series of rulings by the highest court on appeals against the planned route of the massive barrier of electric fencing, barbed wire and concrete wall that snakes across the occupied West Bank.
The Palestinians condemn the wall as an attempt to grab land and undermine the viability of their promised future state.
In October the high court rejected another petition lodged by Palestinian villagers saying a section of the barrier incorporating the Israeli West Bank settlements of Immanuel, Karnei Shomron and Maale Shomrom encroached on Palestinian land in northern West Bank.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb
The court ruled that Israeli security concerns were primary to losses endured by the plaintiffs and determined no alternative route other than the one outlined by the Israeli Army.
In June, the court ordered the state to dismantle a 5-kilometer section of the barrier in the northern West Bank following an appeal from two Palestinian villages.
The International Court of Justice issued a nonbinding ruling in 2004 that parts of the barrier in the West Bank are illegal and should be removed.
The UN humanitarian affairs coordinator's office says three-quarters of the barrier lies in the West Bank, while only 145 kilometers follows the "Green Line" separating Israel and the Palestinian territory. - AFP
Thursday, December 14, 2006
JERUSALEM: Israel's Supreme Court Wednesday rejected an appeal by Palestinians over the route of the separation barrier in the suburbs of occupied East Jerusalem, court sources said.
Residents of Al-Ram had appealed the proposed route of the barrier, which will leave their West Bank town cut off from East Jerusalem. The justices rejected the appeal, saying the route did not violate "the balance between security concerns" and rights of Palestinian residents with Israeli ID cards.
"Defending Jerusalem from terrorist infiltrations constitutes a vital security interest," said the ruling.
It marked the latest in a series of rulings by the highest court on appeals against the planned route of the massive barrier of electric fencing, barbed wire and concrete wall that snakes across the occupied West Bank.
The Palestinians condemn the wall as an attempt to grab land and undermine the viability of their promised future state.
In October the high court rejected another petition lodged by Palestinian villagers saying a section of the barrier incorporating the Israeli West Bank settlements of Immanuel, Karnei Shomron and Maale Shomrom encroached on Palestinian land in northern West Bank.
http://www.dailystar.com.lb
The court ruled that Israeli security concerns were primary to losses endured by the plaintiffs and determined no alternative route other than the one outlined by the Israeli Army.
In June, the court ordered the state to dismantle a 5-kilometer section of the barrier in the northern West Bank following an appeal from two Palestinian villages.
The International Court of Justice issued a nonbinding ruling in 2004 that parts of the barrier in the West Bank are illegal and should be removed.
The UN humanitarian affairs coordinator's office says three-quarters of the barrier lies in the West Bank, while only 145 kilometers follows the "Green Line" separating Israel and the Palestinian territory. - AFP
Friday, December 1, 2006
Bulldozing the rule of law
Related
Army levels several houses south of Bethlehem
Army levels a number of shops in Salfit
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Army levels several houses south of Bethlehem
Army levels a number of shops in Salfit
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At the West Bank settlement of Ofra, as seen from the ground, two-story suburban houses stand along quiet streets. Near the community's entry gate are a few prefab concrete structures - remains of the abandoned Jordanian army base where the first settlers lived in the mid-1970s, until they built their comfortable homes.
Here's another picture of Ofra, with color-coded data on land ownership superimposed on an aerial photo: Near the entrance are small brown splotches of state-owned land, the original Jordanian base. Almost all the rest of Ofra's area is marked in red, indicating that it is private Palestinian property. The data on which the map is based, apparently updated in 2004, comes from the Israeli government's civil administration in the West Bank. Leaked to researchers from the Peace Now movement, the information forms the basis for their stark report, published last week, on exploitation of private Palestinian land for Israeli settlement.
The report is deeply disturbing and curiously unsurprising. The public, in Israel and outside it, did not know previously that 38.8 percent of all settlement land is privately owned by Palestinians. Nor did we know that the proportion is actually slightly higher than this in the "settlement blocs'' that the Israeli government hopes to keep permanently as part of Israel. Settlements, the Israeli public presumed, stood on land owned by the state or by Jews.
Yet, the newly revealed figures fit into a known context: Israel rules the West Bank, but what happens there does not follow Israel's own rules. Since Israel's conquest of the territory in 1967, settlement has been a tool in the battle for permanent political control, and both officials and activists have been complicit in putting the cause above the law.
The result is injustice to the Palestinian residents and an undermining of Israel's legal institutions.
In the eyes of Israel's legal system, the West Bank - except for annexed east Jerusalem - is under military occupation. Israel's courts have avoided ruling on the broad issue of whether all settlement in occupied territory is illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. But they have acknowledged that the international laws of war codified in the 1907 Hague Convention apply. That includes Article 46, which forbids confiscating private property for use by the occupying power.
SO HOW did settlements, built with government support and often at government initiative, end up on private Palestinian land?
In the first years of the occupation, Israel regularly "requisitioned'' land, ostensibly to meet provisional military needs. Palestinian residents retained ownership, but not control, of their real estate. On some of that land, the government established settlements.
Facing court challenges in the 1970s, the state argued that the new communities served Israel's security and were not permanent. The officials who planned the settlements might have believed that they had military value. But they did not regard them as temporary. The settlements' underlying purpose, as shown by an extensive paper trail in Israeli archives, was to anchor a political claim to territory before any negotiations began.
In a landmark 1979 ruling, the Israeli Supreme Court overturned the requisition of land for one settlement, Elon Moreh, when the state abjectly failed to show military need. Elon Moreh was moved, and the government stopped requisitioning land. But it did not return property it had seized elsewhere to its owners or take down other settlements built on requisitioned land.
Officially, the policy since 1979 has been only to use state-owned real estate or land bought privately by Jews for new settlements. Last year, though, a government-commissioned report on small settlement "outposts" set up in the past decade showed that many stood on Palestinian property. That report apparently relied on the same data used by Peace Now.
The Peace Now research suggests that the practice of simply building Israeli homes on the land of others with no legal basis is much more widespread. The vast majority of settlements have been built since 1979. Because the government has refused to reveal what land is covered by old requisition orders, it is impossible to know how much land has simply been overrun.
At the new Elon Moreh, for instance, 65 percent of the land is Palestinian-owned, according to the Peace Now report. Was any of that land formally requisitioned before 1979? Actually, though, the distinction is not as significant as it seems. The requisitions before 1979 deliberately bent the law of occupation. In the case of private land overrun since then, the law has simply been broken. The government has not only shirked its responsibility as an occupying power to enforce the law, it also has planned and subsidized the settlement effort.
So the irony is this: The bulldozers used to build settlements have extended Israel's de facto control of territory. Yet, at the same time, they have weakened Israel as a state built on the rule of law - the kind of state that its truest patriots have sought to create.
The Peace Now report is certain to sharpen, not end, the arguments about who owns which specific pieces of real estate. But the overall lesson of history remains clear: Difficult as dismantling the settlement enterprise will be, it is essential not only for a diplomatic solution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is needed to restore Israel to itself.
The writer is the author of The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977. This essay first appeared in The Los Angeles Times.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
SECOND CLASS STATUS GOES BEYOND THE GRAVE FOR PALESTINIANS
November 27, 2006
The new Museum of Tolerance currently being built in Jerusalem has become one of the greatest examples of intolerance. Early in the excavation stage it was discovered that the site slated for construction was at one time used as the Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem. The Islamic movement appealed to the Supreme court requesting that an alternative site be found on the religious grounds that it was forbidden by Islamic Law to move the graves in question....
But, we are talking about Muslim graves, not Jewish ones... we are talking about the building of a Tolerance Museum.... in reality we are talking about just another example of why zionism is a racist ideology.
The following article from HaAretz talks about the case in question...
Islamic Movement rejects J'lem museum's plan to transfer Muslim graves By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent
The Islamic Movement on Monday informed the Supreme Court that it has rejected recommendations to move Muslim graves from the Jerusalem construction site slated to hold the new Museum of Tolerance.
The museum is to be constructed in the Mamila neighborhood of Jerusalem, where a number of Muslim graves were recently found. The museum's management recommended to the organization that it move the graves to a nearby cemetery, and volunteered to finance the renovations.
An Islamic Movement statement said the options presented are "against Islamic law" and constitute a "continuation of the violation of the sanctity of the graves."
The Supreme Court must rule on the petition presented by the movement against further excavations carried out at the site.
The site chosen for the museum, in central Jerusalem, served for decades as a public parking lot.
In recent years it was allocated to the city of Jerusalem for the construction of the Museum of Tolerance, and excavations have recently begun.
The graves were discovered after the upper layer of asphalt was removed, indicating that the area was once used as the Muslim cemetery of Mamila.
The Islamic Movement's Northern Branch and family members of those buried in the area, appealed to the High Court of Justice to stop the excavations. The court subsequently issued an interim order to stop the digging.
The museum management claims that it followed all of the legal processes demanded of it, and as such there is no reason to suspend the excavations.
Instead, it offered the Islamic Movement a number of alternatives, including transferring the graves to a nearby cemetery.
An additional recommendation included a change in the museum structure, and lowering the graves into underground cavities.
Sources close to the museum administration have said in the past that in similar situations throughout history, Muslim clerics have authorized the transfer of graves.
http://desertpeace.blogspot.com/2006/11/second-class-status-goes-beyond-grave.html
The new Museum of Tolerance currently being built in Jerusalem has become one of the greatest examples of intolerance. Early in the excavation stage it was discovered that the site slated for construction was at one time used as the Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem. The Islamic movement appealed to the Supreme court requesting that an alternative site be found on the religious grounds that it was forbidden by Islamic Law to move the graves in question....
But, we are talking about Muslim graves, not Jewish ones... we are talking about the building of a Tolerance Museum.... in reality we are talking about just another example of why zionism is a racist ideology.
The following article from HaAretz talks about the case in question...
Islamic Movement rejects J'lem museum's plan to transfer Muslim graves By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent
The Islamic Movement on Monday informed the Supreme Court that it has rejected recommendations to move Muslim graves from the Jerusalem construction site slated to hold the new Museum of Tolerance.
The museum is to be constructed in the Mamila neighborhood of Jerusalem, where a number of Muslim graves were recently found. The museum's management recommended to the organization that it move the graves to a nearby cemetery, and volunteered to finance the renovations.
An Islamic Movement statement said the options presented are "against Islamic law" and constitute a "continuation of the violation of the sanctity of the graves."
The Supreme Court must rule on the petition presented by the movement against further excavations carried out at the site.
The site chosen for the museum, in central Jerusalem, served for decades as a public parking lot.
In recent years it was allocated to the city of Jerusalem for the construction of the Museum of Tolerance, and excavations have recently begun.
The graves were discovered after the upper layer of asphalt was removed, indicating that the area was once used as the Muslim cemetery of Mamila.
The Islamic Movement's Northern Branch and family members of those buried in the area, appealed to the High Court of Justice to stop the excavations. The court subsequently issued an interim order to stop the digging.
The museum management claims that it followed all of the legal processes demanded of it, and as such there is no reason to suspend the excavations.
Instead, it offered the Islamic Movement a number of alternatives, including transferring the graves to a nearby cemetery.
An additional recommendation included a change in the museum structure, and lowering the graves into underground cavities.
Sources close to the museum administration have said in the past that in similar situations throughout history, Muslim clerics have authorized the transfer of graves.
http://desertpeace.blogspot.com/2006/11/second-class-status-goes-beyond-grave.html
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