MAGUIRE-SHOT Apr-23-2007 (420 words) xxxi
By Judith Sudilovsky
Catholic News Service
JERUSALEM (CNS) -- Northern Ireland's 1976 Noble Peace Prize laureate, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, was injured in the leg by a rubber bullet while taking part in a nonviolent demonstration against the Israeli separation wall.
Maguire, a Catholic, required medical treatment for her injury and also for tear-gas inhalation. She remained in the hospital for a few hours, then returned to the demonstration. She left the country the following day, April 21, as planned.
Maguire had been attending the Second Bil'in International Conference on Nonviolence in the West Bank village of Bil'in, where Palestinians and international and Israeli peace activists have held such protests against the wall since February 2005. The conference was sponsored by the International Solidarity Movement.
Movement activist Jonas Martinez, an American Catholic who said he did not want to give more details about where he was from, said conference participants joined the weekly demonstration against the wall and were met by Israeli soldiers armed with rubber bullets, tear gas and water cannons.
Demonstrators, including Maguire, covered their faces with bandannas and onion slices to dilute the tear gas, he said, and after each lob of tear gas they would regroup and continue forward toward the wall. He said demonstrators shouted in various languages: "Don't shoot, we are nonviolent."
In addition to Maguire, eight demonstrators were hit by rubber bullets, he said, and numerous demonstrators were beaten by soldiers. Three demonstrators were arrested but later released, he said. Some of the more than two dozen injuries came from tear gas, he said.
One demonstrator, Tito Kayak of Puerto Rico, managed to climb a nearby military tower and hang a Palestinian flag on the top; he was arrested. He was to remain under house arrest until the end of the Israeli Independence Day holiday, which begins the evening of April 24, said Martinez.
Israel says the separation wall is necessary to prevent suicide attacks against Israeli civilians and notes that the number of attacks has decreased significantly since the wall was built.
At a press conference before being injured, Maguire told about 500 participants in the nonviolence conference that the wall was an "insult to the human family" and must come down.
"Nonviolence will solve the problems here in Israel and Palestine," Maguire said in a statement issued by the International Solidarity Movement. "Often, the world sees only violence. But Palestinians are a good people, working toward nonviolence. This wall must fall."
Showing posts with label West Bank. Show all posts
Showing posts with label West Bank. Show all posts
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Israeli troops kill Palestinian policeman
Last update - 15:14 21/04/2007
Palestinians: IDF troops kill policeman in West Bank raid
By News Agencies
Israel Defense Forces troops operating in a village outside the West Bank town of Jenin shot dead a Palestinian policeman, Palestinian security sources said on Saturday.
Palestinian sources said that an IDF army force operating in the village of Kafr Dan had surrounded the family home of Muhammad Abed before breaking into the home and shooting in all directions.
Witnesses said the man was not involved in the fighting and he was shot through the window of his house.
The soldiers killed Abed, 23, a member of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military wing of the mainstream Fatah movement, the sources said, and later left the village taking five people with them.
An IDF spokeswoman said troops operating in the village had come under attack from Palestinian militants.
"(The troops) shot at an armed militant," the spokeswoman said, adding they saw he had been hit.
Palestinians: IDF troops kill policeman in West Bank raid
By News Agencies
Israel Defense Forces troops operating in a village outside the West Bank town of Jenin shot dead a Palestinian policeman, Palestinian security sources said on Saturday.
Palestinian sources said that an IDF army force operating in the village of Kafr Dan had surrounded the family home of Muhammad Abed before breaking into the home and shooting in all directions.
Witnesses said the man was not involved in the fighting and he was shot through the window of his house.
The soldiers killed Abed, 23, a member of al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military wing of the mainstream Fatah movement, the sources said, and later left the village taking five people with them.
An IDF spokeswoman said troops operating in the village had come under attack from Palestinian militants.
"(The troops) shot at an armed militant," the spokeswoman said, adding they saw he had been hit.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Highway 90 reveals West Bank situation
It's an Israeli road in a Palestinian area
April 8, 2007
BY ELLEN CREAGER
FREE PRESS TRAVEL WRITER
JERICHO, West Bank -- There is not much traffic on Highway 90 through the West Bank. That's because only Israelis can drive on it, with the exception of a few Palestinians with special permits.
But, I don't get it. What is an Israeli road doing in Palestinian territory?
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Stupid me. Like many Americans, I always somehow pictured the West Bank as entirely Palestinian. Actually, about 60% of it, including the eastern border area near Jordan, is controlled by Israel's military. That's why there are lots of checkpoints. And certain roads only for Israelis. And certain military areas nobody can enter.
For an American traveler, it's one confusing, educational ride.
The route north and south
Highway 90 is the longest north-south highway in Israel, running from Eliat in the south to the Lebanese border in the north. It's the most direct route for tourists between the Dead Sea and the Galilee region.
But about 75 miles of the road cuts right through the West Bank along this eastern edge, called the Jordan River Valley.
Driving north from Ein Gedi, Israel, you pass an Israeli military checkpoint as you cross into the West Bank. You need to show a passport. Farther north, the road jogs and becomes the Jericho Bypass, entirely avoiding the Palestinian city to the west (even the exit off Highway 90 to Jericho is blocked by cement barriers and an Israeli army outpost). There is no place to go but east to the Allenby Bridge, which crosses into Jordan, or north, which is restricted to Israeli vehicles and Palestinians with passes.
We stay north. As Highway 90 meanders north through the Jordan Valley, it passes many Israeli settlements. The first is No'omi. Like most small settlements, it is fenced, the interior not visible from the road. A few miles beyond is a small Palestinian town called Uja-el-Tachta, where children with backpacks are coming home from school and dogs trot across the road.
We pass another fenced Israeli settlement called Niran, which grows lush groves of dates and bananas, then another and another and another.
Strange. I thought Israel settlements in the West Bank were tiny temporary outposts. But some of the 19 or 20 along Route 90 have been there since 1968. They look awfully permanent.
Borders all around
We drive on. To the right runs an electronic security fence that goes on for miles, marking the border with Jordan.
We pass blooming wild sage, fields of tomatoes and potatoes; green mountains, flocks of sheep, wild mustard, then another big fenced settlement called Shadmot Mehola. There are a handful of vehicles on the road. All have Israeli license plates.
Finally, we come to another, bigger checkpoint, and I show my passport again to the Israeli soldier, and my guide talks to the guards, and we cross back into Israel proper.
It is a strange feeling to realize there are two sets of roads inside the West Bank.
It is strange that even educated Americans picture the situation so simply -- hey, just declare the West Bank a Palestinian state and make a country out of it.
But it is not that simple.
Drive Highway 90 and see.
Contact ELLEN CREAGER at 313-222-6498 or ecreager@freepress.com.
April 8, 2007
BY ELLEN CREAGER
FREE PRESS TRAVEL WRITER
JERICHO, West Bank -- There is not much traffic on Highway 90 through the West Bank. That's because only Israelis can drive on it, with the exception of a few Palestinians with special permits.
But, I don't get it. What is an Israeli road doing in Palestinian territory?
Advertisement
Stupid me. Like many Americans, I always somehow pictured the West Bank as entirely Palestinian. Actually, about 60% of it, including the eastern border area near Jordan, is controlled by Israel's military. That's why there are lots of checkpoints. And certain roads only for Israelis. And certain military areas nobody can enter.
For an American traveler, it's one confusing, educational ride.
The route north and south
Highway 90 is the longest north-south highway in Israel, running from Eliat in the south to the Lebanese border in the north. It's the most direct route for tourists between the Dead Sea and the Galilee region.
But about 75 miles of the road cuts right through the West Bank along this eastern edge, called the Jordan River Valley.
Driving north from Ein Gedi, Israel, you pass an Israeli military checkpoint as you cross into the West Bank. You need to show a passport. Farther north, the road jogs and becomes the Jericho Bypass, entirely avoiding the Palestinian city to the west (even the exit off Highway 90 to Jericho is blocked by cement barriers and an Israeli army outpost). There is no place to go but east to the Allenby Bridge, which crosses into Jordan, or north, which is restricted to Israeli vehicles and Palestinians with passes.
We stay north. As Highway 90 meanders north through the Jordan Valley, it passes many Israeli settlements. The first is No'omi. Like most small settlements, it is fenced, the interior not visible from the road. A few miles beyond is a small Palestinian town called Uja-el-Tachta, where children with backpacks are coming home from school and dogs trot across the road.
We pass another fenced Israeli settlement called Niran, which grows lush groves of dates and bananas, then another and another and another.
Strange. I thought Israel settlements in the West Bank were tiny temporary outposts. But some of the 19 or 20 along Route 90 have been there since 1968. They look awfully permanent.
Borders all around
We drive on. To the right runs an electronic security fence that goes on for miles, marking the border with Jordan.
We pass blooming wild sage, fields of tomatoes and potatoes; green mountains, flocks of sheep, wild mustard, then another big fenced settlement called Shadmot Mehola. There are a handful of vehicles on the road. All have Israeli license plates.
Finally, we come to another, bigger checkpoint, and I show my passport again to the Israeli soldier, and my guide talks to the guards, and we cross back into Israel proper.
It is a strange feeling to realize there are two sets of roads inside the West Bank.
It is strange that even educated Americans picture the situation so simply -- hey, just declare the West Bank a Palestinian state and make a country out of it.
But it is not that simple.
Drive Highway 90 and see.
Contact ELLEN CREAGER at 313-222-6498 or ecreager@freepress.com.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Everyday life under occupation in the West Bank
By Ryan Sweeny
Yet this same man, against whom people have inflicted so much groundless cruelty, showed more hospitality toward me than anyone else I've known, even people in much richer parts of the world than the West Bank. His family served us an enormous dinner of maqlubeh (a dish of chicken, rice and cauliflower), gave five foreigners beds to sleep in, served us another enormous breakfast the next morning and even rode with us in our taxi until we arrived back in downtown Hebron. Three of us were from the country that provided the bulldozers that had destroyed his home twice.
The hospitality of this man and his family was one of the highlights of the time I spent in Israel and Palestine with Christian Peacemaker Teams, which promote nonviolence and mutual dialogue in conflict areas around the world.
On another day, we visited Bethlehem, also located within the occupied West Bank. To enter the town where Jesus was supposedly born, we had to walk past soldiers carrying American M-16 machine guns, through an inspection facility and through a 25-foot-tall guard tower-laden "security wall" with an enormous sign proclaiming "Peace Be With You."
A few days later, in Hebron, I saw Israeli soldiers arresting a Palestinian man at gunpoint for walking on Shuhada Street, a street built with American aid money for the use of everyone in Hebron. This street may be legally open to anyone, but in practice, only soldiers, Israelis living in illegal settlements and foreigners can use Shuhada Street without risking arrest.
One morning, I watched children pass through military checkpoints and metal detectors on their way to school. Are these children going to grow up believing that it's entirely normal to see soldiers and machine guns every day on the way to and from school, or to arrive at school only to learn that the soldiers haven't allowed the teachers to pass through the checkpoint?
Israel has as much of a right to existence and security as any other nation, but its policies in the West Bank are both illegal under international law and immoral. The U.S. government gives Israel billions of dollars in military aid, allowing these policies to continue. There's nothing wrong with giving aid to Israel, but our country must stop aiding this illegal occupation.
If you agree, call our senators and let them know. Every time a Congressperson hears from a constituent, he or she assumes that 10 more constituents feel the same way but simply haven't spoken up. Small steps like those are part of the path to peace.
Ryan Sweeney is a German studies graduate student.
© Copyright 2007 Daily 49er
Posted: 3/20/07
Over winter break, I met a man whose home had been demolished twice by American-made Caterpillar brand armored bulldozers. Not because the structures were unsafe or because the man is a terrorist, but simply because those were the orders of the soldiers who are occupying his country with arms, helicopter gunships and other equipment provided by the United States.Yet this same man, against whom people have inflicted so much groundless cruelty, showed more hospitality toward me than anyone else I've known, even people in much richer parts of the world than the West Bank. His family served us an enormous dinner of maqlubeh (a dish of chicken, rice and cauliflower), gave five foreigners beds to sleep in, served us another enormous breakfast the next morning and even rode with us in our taxi until we arrived back in downtown Hebron. Three of us were from the country that provided the bulldozers that had destroyed his home twice.
The hospitality of this man and his family was one of the highlights of the time I spent in Israel and Palestine with Christian Peacemaker Teams, which promote nonviolence and mutual dialogue in conflict areas around the world.
On another day, we visited Bethlehem, also located within the occupied West Bank. To enter the town where Jesus was supposedly born, we had to walk past soldiers carrying American M-16 machine guns, through an inspection facility and through a 25-foot-tall guard tower-laden "security wall" with an enormous sign proclaiming "Peace Be With You."
A few days later, in Hebron, I saw Israeli soldiers arresting a Palestinian man at gunpoint for walking on Shuhada Street, a street built with American aid money for the use of everyone in Hebron. This street may be legally open to anyone, but in practice, only soldiers, Israelis living in illegal settlements and foreigners can use Shuhada Street without risking arrest.
One morning, I watched children pass through military checkpoints and metal detectors on their way to school. Are these children going to grow up believing that it's entirely normal to see soldiers and machine guns every day on the way to and from school, or to arrive at school only to learn that the soldiers haven't allowed the teachers to pass through the checkpoint?
Israel has as much of a right to existence and security as any other nation, but its policies in the West Bank are both illegal under international law and immoral. The U.S. government gives Israel billions of dollars in military aid, allowing these policies to continue. There's nothing wrong with giving aid to Israel, but our country must stop aiding this illegal occupation.
If you agree, call our senators and let them know. Every time a Congressperson hears from a constituent, he or she assumes that 10 more constituents feel the same way but simply haven't spoken up. Small steps like those are part of the path to peace.
Ryan Sweeney is a German studies graduate student.
© Copyright 2007 Daily 49er
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Israeli Troops Raid Nablus, Start Curfew
Sunday February 25, 2007 12:01 PM
By ALI DARAGHMEH
Associated Press Writer
NABLUS, West Bank (AP) - Dozens of Israeli jeeps and armored vehicles poured into Nablus overnight Sunday, placing large areas of the city under curfew and conducting house-to-house arrest raids in one of the largest West Bank military operations in months.
The army also took over local television and radio stations, ordering people to remain indoors and warning residents that the clampdown would remain in effect for several days, Palestinian residents said. Two soldiers and several Palestinians were lightly wounded in clashes, officials said.
An Israeli military spokesman said the operation was aimed at countering ``terrorist threats'' in Nablus. The raid came a day after Israeli troops discovered an explosives laboratory in the city. Nablus, the West Bank's largest city and commercial center, is known as a stronghold of Palestinian militants.
Palestinian officials condemned the raid, saying it threatened President Mahmoud Abbas' efforts to restart peace talks with Israel.
Abbas held a rare meeting last week with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Although little progress was made at the meeting, participants said they discussed the possibility of extending a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip to the West Bank.
``We condemn this military incursion,'' said Saeb Erekat, a confidant to Abbas. ``This will undermine the efforts that are being made to sustain the cease-fire with Israel.''
The Israeli forces began moving into Nablus about 3 a.m. and continued to move in for several hours, Palestinian witnesses said. They said about 80 military vehicles, along with several bulldozers, were in the city.
The bulldozers erected huge piles of rubble to block movement on main roads, witnesses said. The main entrance to the city also was closed.
The operation was focused on Nablus' Old City, or casbah, a densely populated area of narrow alleyways, apartment buildings and markets. About 50,000 people were placed under curfew, residents said.
Soldiers moved from door to door, entering homes in search of suspects.
At one point, nervous soldiers forced a Palestinian youth to lead a small group of soldiers up some stairs and into a home ahead of the forces. The soldiers then took the youth, along with several young Palestinian men, into a military vehicle. A group of young boys peeked out from the window of a neighboring building.
Israel's Supreme Court in 2005 banned the practice of using Palestinian civilians as ``human shields,'' though the army challenged the decision. The army had no immediate comment on Sunday's incident, which was filmed by AP Television News.
While the operation largely shut down Nablus, sporadic clashes were reported. Soldiers were pelted with stones and cement blocks, and exchanged fire with Palestinian gunmen, the army said, adding that two soldiers were lightly wounded by a Palestinian bomb.
The army responded to the protests with rubber bullets and stun grenades, witnesses said. In one incident, soldiers entered a cemetery to search for Palestinians who had pelted their vehicle with stones.
Palestinian medical officials said four Palestinians were wounded by rubber bullets during Sunday's unrest.
The raid came at a sensitive time for Abbas, a political moderate who is trying to cobble together a unity government with the radical Hamas movement.
Hamas and Abbas' Fatah party reached a power-sharing deal earlier this month in the Muslim holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, though a new government has not yet been formed.
Abbas says the arrangement has forced Hamas to moderate its violently anti-Israel ideology and should pave the way for the lifting of international sanctions imposed on the current Hamas-led government.
Israel and Western donor nations have not yet made a decision on lifting the sanctions, but they have warned the agreement falls short of international demands to renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist.
In the Gaza Strip, Hamas officials said the Israeli raid was undermining the Palestinian unity efforts.
``We question why these military campaigns are increasing now,'' said Ghazi Hamad, spokesman for the Hamas-led government. ``This indicates the Israeli government is trying to turn what was agreed upon in Mecca into a failure.''Thursday, January 11, 2007
Palestine 2007: Genocide in Gaza, Ethnic Cleansing in the West Bank
Ilan Pappe, The Electronic Intifada, 11 January 2007
On this stage, not so long ago, I claimed that Israel is conducting genocidal policies in the Gaza Strip. I hesitated a lot before using this very charged term and yet decided to adopt it. Indeed, the responses I received, including from some leading human rights activists, indicated a certain unease over the usage of such a term. I was inclined to rethink the term for a while, but came back to employing it today with even stronger conviction: it is the only appropriate way to describe what the Israeli army is doing in the Gaza Strip.
On 28 December 2006, the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem published its annual report about the Israeli atrocities in the occupied territories. Israeli forces killed this last year six hundred and sixty citizens. The number of Palestinians killed by Israel last year tripled in comparison to the previous year (around two hundred). According to B'Tselem, the Israelis killed one hundred and forty one children in the last year. Most of the dead are from the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli forces demolished almost 300 houses and slew entire families. This means that since 2000, Israeli forces killed almost four thousand Palestinians, half of them children; more than twenty thousand were wounded.
B'Tselem is a conservative organization, and the numbers may be higher. But the point is not just about the escalating intentional killing, it is about the trend and the strategy. As 2007 commences, Israeli policymakers are facing two very different realities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In the former, they are closer than ever to finishing the construction of their eastern border. Their internal ideological debate is over and their master plan for annexing half of the West Bank is being implemented at an ever-growing speed. The last phase was delayed due to the promises made by Israel, under the Road Map, not to build new settlements. Israel found two ways of circumventing this alleged prohibition. First, it defined a third of the West Bank as Greater Jerusalem, which allowed it to build within this new annexed area towns and community centers. Secondly, it expanded old settlements to such proportions so that there was no need to build new ones. This trend was given an additional push in 2006 (hundreds of caravans were installed to mark the border of the expansions, the planning schemes for the new towns and neighborhoods were finalized and the apartheid bypass roads and highway system completed). In all, the settlements, the army bases, the roads and the wall will allow Israel to annex almost half of the West Bank by 2010. Within these territories there will be a considerable number of Palestinians, against whom the Israeli authorities will continue to implement slow and creeping transfer policies -- too boring as a subject for the western media to bother with and too elusive for human rights organizations to make a general point about them. There is no rush; as far as the Israelis are concerned, they have the upper hand there: the daily abusive and dehumanizing mixed mechanisms of army and bureaucracy is as effective as ever in contributing its own share to the dispossession process.
The strategic thinking of Ariel Sharon that this policy is far better than the one offered by the blunt 'transferists' or ethnic cleansers, such as Avigdor Liberman's advocacy, is accepted by everyone in the government, from Labor to Kadima. The petit crimes of state terrorism are also effective as they enable liberal Zionists around the world to softly condemn Israel and yet categorize any genuine criticism on Israel's criminal policies as anti-Semitism.
On the other hand, there is no clear Israeli strategy as yet for the Gaza Strip; but there is a daily experiment with one. Gaza, in the eyes of the Israelis, is a very different geo-political entity from that of the West Bank. Hamas controls Gaza, while Abu Mazen seems to run the fragmented West Bank with Israeli and American blessing. There is no chunk of land in Gaza that Israel covets and there is no hinterland, like Jordan, to which the Palestinians of Gaza can be expelled. Ethnic cleansing is ineffective here.
The earlier strategy in Gaza was ghettoizing the Palestinians there, but this is not working. The ghettoized community continues to express its will for life by firing primitive missiles into Israel. Ghettoizing or quarantining unwanted communities, even if they were regarded as sub-human or dangerous, never worked in history as a solution. The Jews know it best from their own history. The next stages against such communities in the past were even more horrific and barbaric. It is difficult to tell what the future holds for the Gaza population, ghettoized, quarantined, unwanted and demonized. Will it be a repeat of the ominous historical examples or is a better fate still possible?
Creating the prison and throwing the key to the sea, as UN Special Reporter John Dugard has put it, was an option the Palestinians in Gaza reacted against with force as soon as September 2005. They were determined to show at the very least that they were still part of the West Bank and Palestine. In that month, they launched the first significant, in number and not quality, barrage of missiles into the Western Negev. The shelling was a response to an Israeli campaign of mass arrests of Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists in the Tul Karem area. The Israelis responded with operation 'First Rain'. It is worth dwelling for a moment on the nature of that operation. It was inspired by the punitive measures inflicted first by colonialist powers, and then by dictatorships, against rebellious imprisoned or banished communities. A frightening show of the oppressor's power to intimidate preceded all kind of collective and brutal punishments, ending with a large number of dead and wounded among the victims. In 'First Rain', supersonic flights were flown over Gaza to terrorize the entire population, succeeded by the heavy bombardment of vast areas from the sea, sky and land. The logic, the Israeli army explained, was to create pressure so as to weaken the Gaza community's support for the rocket launchers. As was expected, by the Israelis as well, the operation only increased the support for the rocket launchers and gave impetus to their next attempt. The real purpose of that particular operation was experimental. The Israeli generals wished to know how such operations would be received at home, in the region and in the world. And it seems that instantly the answer was 'very well'; namely, no one took an interest in the scores of dead and hundreds of wounded Palestinians left behind after the 'First Rain' subsided.
And hence since 'First Rain' and until June 2006, all the following operations were similarly modeled. The difference was in their escalation: more firepower, more causalities and more collateral damage and, as to be expected, more Qassam missiles in response. Accompanying measures in 2006 were more sinister means of ensuring the full imprisonment of the people of Gaza through boycott and blockade, with which the EU is still shamefully collaborating.
The capture of Gilad Shalit in June 2006 was irrelevant in the general scheme of things, but nonetheless provided an opportunity for the Israelis to escalate even more the components of the tactical and allegedly punitive missions. After all, there was still no strategy that followed the tactical decision of Ariel Sharon to take out 8,000 settlers whose presence complicated 'punitive' missions and whose eviction made him almost a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. Since then, the 'punitive' actions continue and become themselves a strategy.
The Israeli army loves drama and therefore also escalated the language. 'First Rain' was replaced by 'Summer Rains', a general name that was given to the 'punitive' operations since June 2006 (in a country where there is no rain in the summer, the only precipitation that one can expect are showers of F-16 bombs and artillery shells hitting people of Gaza).
'Summer Rains' brought a novel component: the land invasion into parts of the Gaza Strip. This enabled the army to kill citizens even more effectively and to present it as a result of heavy fighting within dense populated areas, an inevitable result of the circumstances and not of Israeli policies. With the close of summer came operation 'Autumn Clouds' which was even more efficient: on 1 November 2006, in less than 48 hours, the Israelis killed seventy civilians; by the end of that month, with additional mini operations accompanying it, almost two hundred were killed, half of them children and women. As one can see from the dates, some of the activity was parallel to the Israeli attacks on Lebanon, making it easier to complete the operations without much external attention, let alone criticism.
From 'First Rain' to 'Autumn Clouds' one can see escalation in every parameter. The first is the disappearance of the distinction between civilian and non-civilian targets: the senseless killing has turned the population at large to the main target for the army's operation. The second one is the escalation in the means: employment of every possible killing machines the Israeli army possesses. Thirdly, the escalation is conspicuous in the number of casualties: with each operation, and each future operation, a much larger number of people are likely to be killed and wounded. Finally, and most importantly, the operations become a strategy -- the way Israel intends to solve the problem of the Gaza Strip.
A creeping transfer in the West Bank and a measured genocidal policy in the Gaza Strip are the two strategies Israel employs today. From an electoral point of view, the one in Gaza is problematic as it does not reap any tangible results; the West Bank under Abu Mazen is yielding to Israeli pressure and there is no significant force that arrests the Israeli strategy of annexation and dispossession. But Gaza continues to fire back. On the one hand, this would enable the Israeli army to initiate more massive genocidal operations in the future. But there is also the great danger, on the other, that as happened in 1948, the army would demand a more drastic and systematic 'punitive' and collateral action against the besieged people of the Gaza Strip.
Ironically, the Israeli killing machine has rested lately. Even relatively large number of Qassam missiles, including one or two quite deadly ones, did not stir the army to action. Though the army's spokesmen say it shows 'restraint', it never did in the past and is not likely to do so in the future. The army rests, as its generals are content with the internal killing that rages on in Gaza and does the job for them. They watch with satisfaction the emerging civil war in Gaza, which Israel foments and encourages. From Israel's point of view it does not really mater how Gaza would eventually be demographically downsized, be it by internal or Israeli slaying. The responsibility of ending the internal fighting lies of course with the Palestinian groups themselves, but the American and Israeli interference, the continued imprisonment, the starvation and strangulation of Gaza are all factors that make such an internal peace process very difficult. But it will take place soon and then with the first early sign that it subsided, the Israeli 'Summer Rains' will fall down again on the people of Gaza, wreaking havoc and death.
And one should never tire of stating the inevitable political conclusions from this dismal reality of the year we left behind and in the face of the one that awaits us. There is still no other way of stopping Israel than besides boycott, divestment and sanctions. We should all support it clearly, openly, unconditionally, regardless of what the gurus of our world tell us about the efficiency or raison d'etre of such actions. The UN would not intervene in Gaza as it does in Africa; the peace noble laureates would not enlist to its defense as they do for causes in Southeast Asia. The numbers of people killed there are not staggering as far as other calamities are concerned, and it is not a new story -- it is dangerously old and troubling. The only soft point of this killing machine is its oxygen lines to 'western' civilization and public opinion. It is still possible to puncture them and make it at least more difficult for the Israelis to implement their future strategy of eliminating the Palestinian people either by cleansing them in the West Bank or genociding them in the Gaza Strip.
Ilan Pappe is senior lecturer in the University of Haifa Department of political Science and Chair of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian Studies in Haifa. His books include, among others, The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (London and New York 1992), The Israel/Palestine Question (London and New York 1999), A History of Modern Palestine (Cambridge 2003), The Modern Middle East (London and New York 2005) and his latest, Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006).
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Related Links
BY TOPIC: Israel attacks Gaza: "Operation Autumn Clouds" (1 Nov 2006- ) BY TOPIC: Massacre in Beit Hanoun (8 November 2006) BY TOPIC: Israel invades Gaza: "Operation Summer Rain" (27 June 2006)
BY TOPIC: Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions
A rare voice: An interview with author Ilan Pappe, Christopher Brown (11 December 2006)
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| A general view of Har Homa settlement, built on the land of West Bank city of Bethlehem, and considered by Israel to be part of 'Greater Jerusalem', 29 November 2006. (MaanImages/Magnus Johansson) |
On this stage, not so long ago, I claimed that Israel is conducting genocidal policies in the Gaza Strip. I hesitated a lot before using this very charged term and yet decided to adopt it. Indeed, the responses I received, including from some leading human rights activists, indicated a certain unease over the usage of such a term. I was inclined to rethink the term for a while, but came back to employing it today with even stronger conviction: it is the only appropriate way to describe what the Israeli army is doing in the Gaza Strip.
On 28 December 2006, the Israeli human rights organization B'Tselem published its annual report about the Israeli atrocities in the occupied territories. Israeli forces killed this last year six hundred and sixty citizens. The number of Palestinians killed by Israel last year tripled in comparison to the previous year (around two hundred). According to B'Tselem, the Israelis killed one hundred and forty one children in the last year. Most of the dead are from the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli forces demolished almost 300 houses and slew entire families. This means that since 2000, Israeli forces killed almost four thousand Palestinians, half of them children; more than twenty thousand were wounded.
B'Tselem is a conservative organization, and the numbers may be higher. But the point is not just about the escalating intentional killing, it is about the trend and the strategy. As 2007 commences, Israeli policymakers are facing two very different realities in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In the former, they are closer than ever to finishing the construction of their eastern border. Their internal ideological debate is over and their master plan for annexing half of the West Bank is being implemented at an ever-growing speed. The last phase was delayed due to the promises made by Israel, under the Road Map, not to build new settlements. Israel found two ways of circumventing this alleged prohibition. First, it defined a third of the West Bank as Greater Jerusalem, which allowed it to build within this new annexed area towns and community centers. Secondly, it expanded old settlements to such proportions so that there was no need to build new ones. This trend was given an additional push in 2006 (hundreds of caravans were installed to mark the border of the expansions, the planning schemes for the new towns and neighborhoods were finalized and the apartheid bypass roads and highway system completed). In all, the settlements, the army bases, the roads and the wall will allow Israel to annex almost half of the West Bank by 2010. Within these territories there will be a considerable number of Palestinians, against whom the Israeli authorities will continue to implement slow and creeping transfer policies -- too boring as a subject for the western media to bother with and too elusive for human rights organizations to make a general point about them. There is no rush; as far as the Israelis are concerned, they have the upper hand there: the daily abusive and dehumanizing mixed mechanisms of army and bureaucracy is as effective as ever in contributing its own share to the dispossession process.
The strategic thinking of Ariel Sharon that this policy is far better than the one offered by the blunt 'transferists' or ethnic cleansers, such as Avigdor Liberman's advocacy, is accepted by everyone in the government, from Labor to Kadima. The petit crimes of state terrorism are also effective as they enable liberal Zionists around the world to softly condemn Israel and yet categorize any genuine criticism on Israel's criminal policies as anti-Semitism.
On the other hand, there is no clear Israeli strategy as yet for the Gaza Strip; but there is a daily experiment with one. Gaza, in the eyes of the Israelis, is a very different geo-political entity from that of the West Bank. Hamas controls Gaza, while Abu Mazen seems to run the fragmented West Bank with Israeli and American blessing. There is no chunk of land in Gaza that Israel covets and there is no hinterland, like Jordan, to which the Palestinians of Gaza can be expelled. Ethnic cleansing is ineffective here.
The earlier strategy in Gaza was ghettoizing the Palestinians there, but this is not working. The ghettoized community continues to express its will for life by firing primitive missiles into Israel. Ghettoizing or quarantining unwanted communities, even if they were regarded as sub-human or dangerous, never worked in history as a solution. The Jews know it best from their own history. The next stages against such communities in the past were even more horrific and barbaric. It is difficult to tell what the future holds for the Gaza population, ghettoized, quarantined, unwanted and demonized. Will it be a repeat of the ominous historical examples or is a better fate still possible?
Creating the prison and throwing the key to the sea, as UN Special Reporter John Dugard has put it, was an option the Palestinians in Gaza reacted against with force as soon as September 2005. They were determined to show at the very least that they were still part of the West Bank and Palestine. In that month, they launched the first significant, in number and not quality, barrage of missiles into the Western Negev. The shelling was a response to an Israeli campaign of mass arrests of Hamas and Islamic Jihad activists in the Tul Karem area. The Israelis responded with operation 'First Rain'. It is worth dwelling for a moment on the nature of that operation. It was inspired by the punitive measures inflicted first by colonialist powers, and then by dictatorships, against rebellious imprisoned or banished communities. A frightening show of the oppressor's power to intimidate preceded all kind of collective and brutal punishments, ending with a large number of dead and wounded among the victims. In 'First Rain', supersonic flights were flown over Gaza to terrorize the entire population, succeeded by the heavy bombardment of vast areas from the sea, sky and land. The logic, the Israeli army explained, was to create pressure so as to weaken the Gaza community's support for the rocket launchers. As was expected, by the Israelis as well, the operation only increased the support for the rocket launchers and gave impetus to their next attempt. The real purpose of that particular operation was experimental. The Israeli generals wished to know how such operations would be received at home, in the region and in the world. And it seems that instantly the answer was 'very well'; namely, no one took an interest in the scores of dead and hundreds of wounded Palestinians left behind after the 'First Rain' subsided.
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| The bar set continually higher: Palestinians pass by a pool of blood after the Israeli shelling of a residential area in Beit Hanoun in the northern of Gaza Strip in which at least 18 people were killed, 8 November 2006. (MaanImages/Wesam Saleh) |
And hence since 'First Rain' and until June 2006, all the following operations were similarly modeled. The difference was in their escalation: more firepower, more causalities and more collateral damage and, as to be expected, more Qassam missiles in response. Accompanying measures in 2006 were more sinister means of ensuring the full imprisonment of the people of Gaza through boycott and blockade, with which the EU is still shamefully collaborating.
The capture of Gilad Shalit in June 2006 was irrelevant in the general scheme of things, but nonetheless provided an opportunity for the Israelis to escalate even more the components of the tactical and allegedly punitive missions. After all, there was still no strategy that followed the tactical decision of Ariel Sharon to take out 8,000 settlers whose presence complicated 'punitive' missions and whose eviction made him almost a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. Since then, the 'punitive' actions continue and become themselves a strategy.
The Israeli army loves drama and therefore also escalated the language. 'First Rain' was replaced by 'Summer Rains', a general name that was given to the 'punitive' operations since June 2006 (in a country where there is no rain in the summer, the only precipitation that one can expect are showers of F-16 bombs and artillery shells hitting people of Gaza).
'Summer Rains' brought a novel component: the land invasion into parts of the Gaza Strip. This enabled the army to kill citizens even more effectively and to present it as a result of heavy fighting within dense populated areas, an inevitable result of the circumstances and not of Israeli policies. With the close of summer came operation 'Autumn Clouds' which was even more efficient: on 1 November 2006, in less than 48 hours, the Israelis killed seventy civilians; by the end of that month, with additional mini operations accompanying it, almost two hundred were killed, half of them children and women. As one can see from the dates, some of the activity was parallel to the Israeli attacks on Lebanon, making it easier to complete the operations without much external attention, let alone criticism.
From 'First Rain' to 'Autumn Clouds' one can see escalation in every parameter. The first is the disappearance of the distinction between civilian and non-civilian targets: the senseless killing has turned the population at large to the main target for the army's operation. The second one is the escalation in the means: employment of every possible killing machines the Israeli army possesses. Thirdly, the escalation is conspicuous in the number of casualties: with each operation, and each future operation, a much larger number of people are likely to be killed and wounded. Finally, and most importantly, the operations become a strategy -- the way Israel intends to solve the problem of the Gaza Strip.
A creeping transfer in the West Bank and a measured genocidal policy in the Gaza Strip are the two strategies Israel employs today. From an electoral point of view, the one in Gaza is problematic as it does not reap any tangible results; the West Bank under Abu Mazen is yielding to Israeli pressure and there is no significant force that arrests the Israeli strategy of annexation and dispossession. But Gaza continues to fire back. On the one hand, this would enable the Israeli army to initiate more massive genocidal operations in the future. But there is also the great danger, on the other, that as happened in 1948, the army would demand a more drastic and systematic 'punitive' and collateral action against the besieged people of the Gaza Strip.
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| A source of satisfaction for Israel: Palestinians inspect a burnt vehicle belonging to Colonel Mohammad Ghareeb, the deputy chief of preventive security in Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip. The vehicle was burnt during factional clashes between Fatah and Hamas. (MaanImages/Wesam Saleh) |
Ironically, the Israeli killing machine has rested lately. Even relatively large number of Qassam missiles, including one or two quite deadly ones, did not stir the army to action. Though the army's spokesmen say it shows 'restraint', it never did in the past and is not likely to do so in the future. The army rests, as its generals are content with the internal killing that rages on in Gaza and does the job for them. They watch with satisfaction the emerging civil war in Gaza, which Israel foments and encourages. From Israel's point of view it does not really mater how Gaza would eventually be demographically downsized, be it by internal or Israeli slaying. The responsibility of ending the internal fighting lies of course with the Palestinian groups themselves, but the American and Israeli interference, the continued imprisonment, the starvation and strangulation of Gaza are all factors that make such an internal peace process very difficult. But it will take place soon and then with the first early sign that it subsided, the Israeli 'Summer Rains' will fall down again on the people of Gaza, wreaking havoc and death.
And one should never tire of stating the inevitable political conclusions from this dismal reality of the year we left behind and in the face of the one that awaits us. There is still no other way of stopping Israel than besides boycott, divestment and sanctions. We should all support it clearly, openly, unconditionally, regardless of what the gurus of our world tell us about the efficiency or raison d'etre of such actions. The UN would not intervene in Gaza as it does in Africa; the peace noble laureates would not enlist to its defense as they do for causes in Southeast Asia. The numbers of people killed there are not staggering as far as other calamities are concerned, and it is not a new story -- it is dangerously old and troubling. The only soft point of this killing machine is its oxygen lines to 'western' civilization and public opinion. It is still possible to puncture them and make it at least more difficult for the Israelis to implement their future strategy of eliminating the Palestinian people either by cleansing them in the West Bank or genociding them in the Gaza Strip.
Ilan Pappe is senior lecturer in the University of Haifa Department of political Science and Chair of the Emil Touma Institute for Palestinian Studies in Haifa. His books include, among others, The Making of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (London and New York 1992), The Israel/Palestine Question (London and New York 1999), A History of Modern Palestine (Cambridge 2003), The Modern Middle East (London and New York 2005) and his latest, Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006).
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Ilan Pappé - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Saturday, December 23, 2006
'What would happen if the Virgin Mary came to Bethlehem today?'
Independent Appeal
Johann Hari on the plight of pregnant women in the West Bank, where babies are dying needlessly
Published: 23 December 2006
In two days, a third of humanity will gather to celebrate the birth pains of a Palestinian refugee in Bethlehem - but two millennia later, another mother in another glorified stable in this rubble-strewn, locked-down town is trying not to howl.
Fadia Jemal is a gap-toothed 27-year-old with a weary, watery smile. "What would happen if the Virgin Mary came to Bethlehem today? She would endure what I have endured," she says.
Fadia clutches a set of keys tightly, digging hard into her skin as she describes in broken, jagged sentences what happened. "It was 5pm when I started to feel the contractions coming on," she says. She was already nervous about the birth - her first, and twins - so she told her husband to grab her hospital bag and get her straight into the car.
They stopped to collect her sister and mother and set out for the Hussein Hospital, 20 minutes away. But the road had been blocked by Israeli soldiers, who said nobody was allowed to pass until morning. "Obviously, we told them we couldn't wait until the morning. I was bleeding very heavily on the back seat. One of the soldiers looked down at the blood and laughed. I still wake up in the night hearing that laugh. It was such a shock to me. I couldn't understand."
Her family begged the soldiers to let them through, but they would not relent. So at 1am, on the back seat next to a chilly checkpoint with no doctors and no nurses, Fadia delivered a tiny boy called Mahmoud and a tiny girl called Mariam. "I don't remember anything else until I woke up in the hospital," she says now. For two days, her family hid it from her that Mahmoud had died, and doctors said they could "certainly" have saved his life by getting him to an incubator.
"Now Mariam is at an age when she asks me where her brother is," Fadia says. "She wants to know what happened to him. But how do I explain it?" She looks down. "Sometimes at night I scream and scream." In the years since, she has been pregnant four times, but she keeps miscarrying. "I couldn't bear to make another baby. I was convinced the same thing would happen to me again," she explains. "When I see the [Israeli] soldiers I keep thinking - what did my baby do to Israel?"
Since Fadia's delivery, in 2002, the United Nations confirms that a total of 36 babies have died because their mothers were detained during labour at Israeli checkpoints. All across Bethlehem - all across the West Bank - there are women whose pregnancies are being disturbed, or worse, by the military occupation of their land.
In Salfit, on the other side of the West Bank, Jamilla Alahad Naim, 29, is waiting for the first medical check-up of her five-month pregnancy. "I am frightened all the time," she says. "I am frightened for my baby because I have had very little medical treatment and I cannot afford good food ... I know I will give birth at home with no help, like I did with Mohammed [her last child]. I am too frightened to go to hospital because there are two checkpoints between our home [and there] and I know if you are detained by the soldiers, the mother or the baby can die out there in the cold. But giving birth at home is very dangerous too."
Hindia Abu Nabah - a steely 31-year-old staff nurse at Al Zawya Clinic, in Salfit district - says it is "a nightmare" to be pregnant in the West Bank today. "Recently, two of our pregnant patients here were tear-gassed in their homes ... The women couldn't breathe and went into premature labour. By the time we got there, the babies had been delivered stillborn."
Many of the medical problems afflicting pregnant women here are more mundane than Jamilla's darkest fears: 30 per cent of pregnant Palestinians suffer from anaemia, a lack of red blood cells. The extreme poverty caused by the siege and now the international boycott seems to be a key factor. The doctors here warn grimly that as ordinary Palestinians' income evaporates, they eat more staples and fewer proteins - a recipe for anaemia. There is some evidence, they add, that women are giving the best food to their husbands and children, and subsisting on gristle and scraps. The anaemia leaves women at increased risk of bleeding heavily and contracting an infection during childbirth.
Earlier this year, conditions for pregnant women on the West Bank - already poor - fell off a cliff. Following the election of Hamas, the world choked off funding for the Palestinian Authority, which suddenly found itself unable to pay its doctors and nurses. After several months medical staff went on strike, refusing to take anything but emergency cases. For more than three months, the maternity wards of the West Bank were empty and echoing. Beds lay, perfectly made, waiting for patients who could not come.
In all this time, there were no vitamins handed out, no ultrasound scans, no detection of congenital abnormalities. Imagine that the NHS had simply packed up and stopped one day and did not reopen for 12 weeks, and you get a sense of the scale of the medical disaster.
Some women were wealthy enough to go to the few private hospitals scattered across the West Bank. Most were not. So because of the international boycott of the Palestinians, every hospital warns there has been an unseen, unreported increase in home births on the West Bank.
I found Dr Hamdan Hamdan, the head of maternity services at Hussein Hospital, Bethlehem, pacing around an empty ward, chain-smoking. "This ward is usually full," he said. "The women who should be in this hospital - what is happening to them?"
They have been giving birth in startlingly similar conditions to those suffered by Mary 2,000 years ago. They have delivered their babies with no doctors, no sterilised equipment, no back-up if there are complications. They have been boycotted back into the Stone Age. The strike ended this month after the PA raised funds from Muslim countries - but the effects of stopping maternity services are only now becoming clear. Hindia Abu Nabah says: "There is a clear link between the deteriorating health situation and the international boycott.
Amid this horror, one charity has been supporting pregnant Palestinian women even as their medical services fell apart.
Merlin - one of the three charities being supported by the Independent Christmas Appeal - has set up two mobile teams, with a full-time gynaecologist and a paediatrician, to take medical services to the parts of the West Bank cut off by the Israeli occupation. They provide lab technicians and ultrasound machines - the fruits of the 21st century.
I travelled with the team to the Salfit region - scarred by Israeli settlements pumping out raw sewage on to Palestinian land - to see women and children desperately congregating around them seeking help. Amid the dozens of nervous women and swarms of sickly children, Rahme Jima, 29, is sitting with her hands folded neatly in her lap. She is in the last month of her pregnancy, and this is the first time she has seen a doctor since she conceived.
"The nearest hospital is in Nablus, and we can't afford to pay for the transport to get there through all the checkpoints," she says, revealing she is planning - in despair - to give birth at home. Even if she had the cash, she says she is "too frightened of being detained at the checkpoint and being forced to give birth there". She sighs, and adds: "I will be so relieved to finally be seen by a doctor, I have been so worried." But when she returns from seeing the doctor, she says: "I have anaemia, and they have given me iron supplements," supplied by Merlin. She can't afford to eat well; she lives with her husband and four children in a room in her mother-in-law's house, and her husband, Joseph, has been unemployed since his permit to move through the checkpoints expired. "The doctor says I should have been seen much earlier in my pregnancy. My baby will probably be born too small."
All the problems afflicting these 21st century Marys are paraded in Merlin's clinic. One terrified, terrorised mother after another presents herself to the specialists here, and leaves clutching packs of folic acid, calcium, iron and medicine. Dr Bassam Said Nadi, the senior medical officer for this area, says: "I thank Merlin for the specialist care they have brought. Not long ago, we didn't even have petrol in our cars. Alongside other organisations, they are helping us survive this terrible period in our country's history."
Merlin can only maintain these mobile clinics with your help. Leaning in the doorway of her bare clinic, Hindia Abu Nabah says: "Tell your readers that we need their help. There are no Hamas or Fatah foetuses. They don't deserve to be punished. I couldn't stand to look another anaemic woman in the eye and tell her that her baby will be underweight or malformed and we don't have iron supplements to give her. I can't go back to that. I can't."
Sunday, December 3, 2006
UN calls for Israel to pull out from West Bank, Golan
Last update - 01:47 03/12/2006
By Shlomo Shamir , Haaretz Correspondent and AP
NEW YORK - The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution Friday calling for the withdrawal of Israel from the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. As expected, the resolution passed by a large majority of 157. Seven countries voted against: Israel, the U.S., Australia, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru and Palau. Ten members abstained.
The resolution is one of a series passed Friday in an annual debate that has been held for many years in the General Assembly. The debate, consisting of three days of meetings, began on November 29, the date in 1947 on which the U.N. approved the Partition Plan.
The Palestinian U.N. observer, Riyad Mansour, praised the resolution and said the large majority was an expression of the support of the international community to advance the peace process.
Israel did not take part in the debate Friday, and as its custom in previous years, ignored the outcome of the vote. The deputy head of the Israeli delegation to the U.N., Daniel Carmon, told Haaretz yesterday, "Palestine Day at the U.N. has crystalized as a process that has repeated itself for dozens of years in which the Arab and Muslim bloc raises anew unilateral anti-Israeli resolutions, leaning on an assured automatic majority."
"The Arabs feel this yearly debate is their finest hour," he added.
A related resolution calling for Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights passed by a majority of 107, with 60 abstentions.
A majority of 157, with 10 abstentions, also voted to call any attempt by Israel to extend Israeli jurisdiction and law on Jerusalem illegal.
New this year was the resolution welcoming the cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and urging both sides to maintain the truce.
The General Assembly has no enforcement powers, and its resolutions have declarative significance only.
Until the General Assembly ends its session at the end of December, which is known in the U.N. as "Israeli month," another 14 anti-Israel resolutions are expected to pass, traditionally ensured a majority of the support of the world body's 192 members.
However three new resolutions will be added to the series this year regarding the outcome of the war in Lebanon. One slams Israel for the impact of the war on human rights.
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Anan, who is concluding his term of office at the end of the month, took advantage of the Palestine Day debate to urge the member states to resuscitate the peace process, noting that negotiations were the only way out of the conflict.
Meanwhile, Haaretz has learned that in a meeting Friday in New York between the incoming Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and deputy premier Shimon Peres, Ban told Peres he planned to visit the region and added that the Middle East would be a high priority for him.
He also pledged to work to free Israel's kidnapped soldiers.
By Shlomo Shamir , Haaretz Correspondent and AP
NEW YORK - The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution Friday calling for the withdrawal of Israel from the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. As expected, the resolution passed by a large majority of 157. Seven countries voted against: Israel, the U.S., Australia, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru and Palau. Ten members abstained.
The resolution is one of a series passed Friday in an annual debate that has been held for many years in the General Assembly. The debate, consisting of three days of meetings, began on November 29, the date in 1947 on which the U.N. approved the Partition Plan.
The Palestinian U.N. observer, Riyad Mansour, praised the resolution and said the large majority was an expression of the support of the international community to advance the peace process.
Israel did not take part in the debate Friday, and as its custom in previous years, ignored the outcome of the vote. The deputy head of the Israeli delegation to the U.N., Daniel Carmon, told Haaretz yesterday, "Palestine Day at the U.N. has crystalized as a process that has repeated itself for dozens of years in which the Arab and Muslim bloc raises anew unilateral anti-Israeli resolutions, leaning on an assured automatic majority."
"The Arabs feel this yearly debate is their finest hour," he added.
A related resolution calling for Israel to withdraw from the Golan Heights passed by a majority of 107, with 60 abstentions.
A majority of 157, with 10 abstentions, also voted to call any attempt by Israel to extend Israeli jurisdiction and law on Jerusalem illegal.
New this year was the resolution welcoming the cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and urging both sides to maintain the truce.
The General Assembly has no enforcement powers, and its resolutions have declarative significance only.
Until the General Assembly ends its session at the end of December, which is known in the U.N. as "Israeli month," another 14 anti-Israel resolutions are expected to pass, traditionally ensured a majority of the support of the world body's 192 members.
However three new resolutions will be added to the series this year regarding the outcome of the war in Lebanon. One slams Israel for the impact of the war on human rights.
U.N. Secretary General Kofi Anan, who is concluding his term of office at the end of the month, took advantage of the Palestine Day debate to urge the member states to resuscitate the peace process, noting that negotiations were the only way out of the conflict.
Meanwhile, Haaretz has learned that in a meeting Friday in New York between the incoming Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and deputy premier Shimon Peres, Ban told Peres he planned to visit the region and added that the Middle East would be a high priority for him.
He also pledged to work to free Israel's kidnapped soldiers.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Breaking the Law in the West Bank - One Violation Leads to Another: Israeli Settlement Building on Private Palestinian Property
Abstract
Peace Now’s Settlement Watch team has compiled precise information regarding the legal status of the land on which Israeli settlements have been constructed in the West Bank over the last four decades. The data, which is compiled and made public here for the first time, has enormous significance. It indicates the direct violation of Israeli law carried out by the State itself, driven by the architects and leaders of the settlement movement. Israel never annexed the territories in the West Bank conquered in the war of June 1967, leaving the status of this land as "spoils of war". During the past forty years of occupation, Israel has ruled the territories through military orders and the laws of the State. In so doing, Israel has ignored international laws and agreements, such as the 4th Geneva Accords and the Hague Agreement, which define and limit changes the occupier may make in occupied territory during the period of occupation. This report demonstrates that, in addition to ignoring international laws and agreements, Israel has violated even its own norms and laws in the West Bank, through the confiscation of private Palestinian property and the building of settlements upon them. Data which its source is the Civil Administration, applied to each and every settlement by the Peace Now Settlement Watch team, indicate that a large proportion of the settlements built on the West Bank are built on privately owned Palestinian land. This, despite the fact that Israeli law guarantees the protection of the private property of the civil population resident on the West Bank. The data presented in this report demonstrate that the property rights of many Palestinians have been systematically violated in the course of settlement building. The government's own information confirms this contravention of Israeli law - law, defined precisely in the landmark Elon More decision of the Israeli High Court of Justice in 1979 (discussed in detail, below). Peace Now condemns the violation of Israeli law carried out over the past forty years by the State of Israel. We condemn the efforts of politicians and bureaucrats to launder the land grab, which deprived thousands of Palestinians of the basic human right of possession, on the individual and collective levels. We demand that the present Israeli Government rectify the situation, which means returning the private land to its owners. Key findings include: > Palestinians privately own nearly 40% of the land on which the settlements have been built; > Palestinians privately own over 40% of the land in settlements located in "settlement blocs," west of the fence being constructed by Israel, including 86.4% of Ma’ale Adumim, 44.3% of Giv'at Ze'ev, 47.7% of Kedumim, and 35.1% of Ariel; > More than 3,400 buildings in settlements are constructed on land that is privately owned by Palestinians; > “Survey lands” are areas whose ownership has yet to be determined and on which development is not legal, yet 5.7% of settlement territory is “survey land” and 2.5% of the “settlement blocs” are on “survey lands;” > Only a small percentage of settlement land was purchased by Jews; and > Over 50% of the land on which settlements have been constructed has been declared “State land,” often through controversial means and mostly for the benefit of settlements.
Full report
http://www.peacenow.org.il/data/SIP_STORAGE/files/9/2569.pdf
Peace Now’s Settlement Watch team has compiled precise information regarding the legal status of the land on which Israeli settlements have been constructed in the West Bank over the last four decades. The data, which is compiled and made public here for the first time, has enormous significance. It indicates the direct violation of Israeli law carried out by the State itself, driven by the architects and leaders of the settlement movement. Israel never annexed the territories in the West Bank conquered in the war of June 1967, leaving the status of this land as "spoils of war". During the past forty years of occupation, Israel has ruled the territories through military orders and the laws of the State. In so doing, Israel has ignored international laws and agreements, such as the 4th Geneva Accords and the Hague Agreement, which define and limit changes the occupier may make in occupied territory during the period of occupation. This report demonstrates that, in addition to ignoring international laws and agreements, Israel has violated even its own norms and laws in the West Bank, through the confiscation of private Palestinian property and the building of settlements upon them. Data which its source is the Civil Administration, applied to each and every settlement by the Peace Now Settlement Watch team, indicate that a large proportion of the settlements built on the West Bank are built on privately owned Palestinian land. This, despite the fact that Israeli law guarantees the protection of the private property of the civil population resident on the West Bank. The data presented in this report demonstrate that the property rights of many Palestinians have been systematically violated in the course of settlement building. The government's own information confirms this contravention of Israeli law - law, defined precisely in the landmark Elon More decision of the Israeli High Court of Justice in 1979 (discussed in detail, below). Peace Now condemns the violation of Israeli law carried out over the past forty years by the State of Israel. We condemn the efforts of politicians and bureaucrats to launder the land grab, which deprived thousands of Palestinians of the basic human right of possession, on the individual and collective levels. We demand that the present Israeli Government rectify the situation, which means returning the private land to its owners. Key findings include: > Palestinians privately own nearly 40% of the land on which the settlements have been built; > Palestinians privately own over 40% of the land in settlements located in "settlement blocs," west of the fence being constructed by Israel, including 86.4% of Ma’ale Adumim, 44.3% of Giv'at Ze'ev, 47.7% of Kedumim, and 35.1% of Ariel; > More than 3,400 buildings in settlements are constructed on land that is privately owned by Palestinians; > “Survey lands” are areas whose ownership has yet to be determined and on which development is not legal, yet 5.7% of settlement territory is “survey land” and 2.5% of the “settlement blocs” are on “survey lands;” > Only a small percentage of settlement land was purchased by Jews; and > Over 50% of the land on which settlements have been constructed has been declared “State land,” often through controversial means and mostly for the benefit of settlements.
Full report
http://www.peacenow.org.il/data/SIP_STORAGE/files/9/2569.pdf
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
University students targeted for arrest in northern West Bank
(Jenin) Ali Samoudi
Tuesday, 21 November 2006
“My son was arrested without reason and has lost his academic future,” Salah Tawfiq Zaid said of his son. Israeli forces detained the western Jenin village university student on 14 November.
He explained on Tuesday that Israeli forces have recently stepped up the campaign against students in the northern West Bank, subjecting them to detention, beatings, and interrogation. Sources in the Palestinian Prisoner Society reported today that Israeli forces arrested 20 university students in November.
They were taken to the Israeli military installation in the northern West Bank's Salem without disclosing a reason for the arrests.
Nineteen year old Zaid was arrested at the Zatara Checkpoint without cause, reports his father. In the presence of eyewitnesses Israeli forces took the Ramallah Teacher's College student. “He was in a car, which the soldiers stopped. They inspected it, checked identities, and then detained my son. They searched and questioned him, and then took him to a nearby military camp,” Zaid's father told PNN.
“We learned from the Palestinian Prisoner Society lawyer that Zaid was transferred to the Salem detention center in western Jenin where he is currently languishing. The Israeli police and investigators told the lawyer that Zaid will be held without charge.”
Zaid's story is representative of those of northern West Bank students in the past weeks. His father continued, “The occupation forces will not release him despite the fact that his arrest was based on nothing other than wrong place at the wrong time. There are no charges and he does not belong to any political party. His academic future is at risk.”
Nablus' An Najah University student Mahmoud Rushdie was arrested at a flying checkpoint on the road between the northern West Bank cities of Nablus and Jenin. He was not charged with anything but still the Israeli forces refuse to release him. Instead he joins the hundreds of Palestinian political prisoners being held without charge or trial in Israeli prisons.
The Palestinian Prisoner Society is calling for international intervention as more students fear the trip to universities.
http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1050&Itemid=30
Tuesday, 21 November 2006
“My son was arrested without reason and has lost his academic future,” Salah Tawfiq Zaid said of his son. Israeli forces detained the western Jenin village university student on 14 November.
He explained on Tuesday that Israeli forces have recently stepped up the campaign against students in the northern West Bank, subjecting them to detention, beatings, and interrogation. Sources in the Palestinian Prisoner Society reported today that Israeli forces arrested 20 university students in November.
They were taken to the Israeli military installation in the northern West Bank's Salem without disclosing a reason for the arrests.
Nineteen year old Zaid was arrested at the Zatara Checkpoint without cause, reports his father. In the presence of eyewitnesses Israeli forces took the Ramallah Teacher's College student. “He was in a car, which the soldiers stopped. They inspected it, checked identities, and then detained my son. They searched and questioned him, and then took him to a nearby military camp,” Zaid's father told PNN.
“We learned from the Palestinian Prisoner Society lawyer that Zaid was transferred to the Salem detention center in western Jenin where he is currently languishing. The Israeli police and investigators told the lawyer that Zaid will be held without charge.”
Zaid's story is representative of those of northern West Bank students in the past weeks. His father continued, “The occupation forces will not release him despite the fact that his arrest was based on nothing other than wrong place at the wrong time. There are no charges and he does not belong to any political party. His academic future is at risk.”
Nablus' An Najah University student Mahmoud Rushdie was arrested at a flying checkpoint on the road between the northern West Bank cities of Nablus and Jenin. He was not charged with anything but still the Israeli forces refuse to release him. Instead he joins the hundreds of Palestinian political prisoners being held without charge or trial in Israeli prisons.
The Palestinian Prisoner Society is calling for international intervention as more students fear the trip to universities.
http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1050&Itemid=30
Monday, November 20, 2006
For West Bank, It’s a Highway to Frustration
November 18, 2006
For West Bank, It’s a Highway to Frustration
By GREG MYRE
ROAD 60, West Bank, Nov. 14 — For four years, the separation barrier Israel has been building just inside the West Bank boundary has drawn protests from Palestinians and international censure for the hardship it imposes on their movement and access to jobs and land.
But getting much less notice have been parallel and perhaps even more restrictive measures imposed by the Israeli military much deeper inside the West Bank. The internal checkpoints and barriers on roads have increasingly limited movement, something Palestinians say they find especially grating, because they are not trying to enter Israel, only to go from one Palestinian area to another.
MORE
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/18/world/middleeast/18westbank.html?hp&ex=1163912400&en=1709ddf877576fb2&ei=5094&partner=homepage
I detest The NYT. Did you know Morgan Stanley recommends selling NYT stock?
For West Bank, It’s a Highway to Frustration
By GREG MYRE
ROAD 60, West Bank, Nov. 14 — For four years, the separation barrier Israel has been building just inside the West Bank boundary has drawn protests from Palestinians and international censure for the hardship it imposes on their movement and access to jobs and land.
But getting much less notice have been parallel and perhaps even more restrictive measures imposed by the Israeli military much deeper inside the West Bank. The internal checkpoints and barriers on roads have increasingly limited movement, something Palestinians say they find especially grating, because they are not trying to enter Israel, only to go from one Palestinian area to another.
MORE
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/18/world/middleeast/18westbank.html?hp&ex=1163912400&en=1709ddf877576fb2&ei=5094&partner=homepage
I detest The NYT. Did you know Morgan Stanley recommends selling NYT stock?
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