One Palestinian family’s story illustrates the absurdity, and intention, of Israeli policy
By Mohammad Alsaafin | December 20, 2009
I am a Palestinian refugee, from the village of Fallujah which lies between Gaza, Hebron and Asqalan. I’ve never been allowed to visit Fallujah; my grandparents were exiled from there in 1949 (a year after the founding of Israel) and took refuge in the Gaza Strip. My father and I were both born in the Khan Younis refugee camp-he a few years before Gaza was occupied by Israel, and I in 1988, a month after the outbreak of the first intifada. My dad married a woman from the West Bank-they had met and fallen in love while they were both studying at Birzeit University, and when I was two years old we emigrated to the UK where he received his Phd.
Fourteen years later, in 2004, we all returned to Palestine to live in Ramallah. Now British citizens, my parents were determined that my three siblings and I would forge a stronger connection to our homeland than we ever could living abroad. At first, the transition was made easier by the fact that our foreign passports gave us the freedom of movement that was denied to other Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. For me, this reality was shattered when in late 2005 I attempted to cross the River Jordan from the West Bank to visit my aunt in Amman. The Israeli border agents told me that I could not pass, because I had an Israeli issued Gaza ID. Under Israeli military rules, this meant that I could not ‘legally’ be present in the West Bank because the Israeli occupation had mandated that Palestinians from Gaza could not enter the West Bank, and Palestinians from the West Bank could not enter Gaza. This policy had been in force since the early 1990’s, but was applied with increasing severity after the outbreak of the second intifada.
I lived the next four years under constant fear of arrest by the Israeli military, because that would have resulted in almost certain deportation to Gaza, and isolation from my family. For those four years, I never left the confines of Ramallah, so as to avoid the Israeli checkpoints on every one of the town’s entrances-but even this couldn’t give me a sense of security because I had to commute daily to Birzeit University, on a route frequently patrolled by Israeli forces from the nearby settlement of Bet El.
In July of this year, after many pleas for assistance from the hapless Palestinian Authority, I asked the Israeli NGO Gisha to help me obtain permission from the Israeli occupation to leave the West Bank. I wanted to take part in an internship in the United States, but I would only be granted the permission to exit on the condition that I only return to the Gaza Strip, which had been under siege and total closure for the better of two years then. I accepted this impossible choice-after four years of imprisonment in Ramallah, I wanted to see the outside world and look for a job abroad.
During this entire period, my family had more or less been saved the travel restrictions imposed on me. As a foreign journalist, my dad frequently traveled between the West Bank, Gaza and inside the Green Line, and my mother and siblings would join him on day trips to Jerusalem, Umm al-Fahem, Acca and Haifa. But that all changed this August when he was entering Gaza through the Erez crossing as he had done many times before. On this day however, he was arrested by the Israeli military and had his press credentials revoked. He was told his British passport was worthless, because they had made a frightening discovery: My dad had been born and raised in a refugee camp in Gaza, and had a Gaza ID. They told him he would henceforth be treated not as a foreigner, but as a Gazan-he was sent into Gaza and told he could never cross the Green Line or enter the West Bank again.
My mother and siblings back in Ramallah were also informed that their British passports were worthless and that they would be issued Palestinian IDs by Israel. Despite being raised in the West Bank and still owning a copy of her old West Bank ID, my mother was actually issued with a Gaza ID. We assume this is because she married a Gazan 22 years ago, but nobody has given us a clear answer. This has put her in the same quandary I was in for the last four years. She cannot leave Ramallah for fear of arrest and deportation to Gaza, away from her children, her sister’s and the young children of her recently deceased brother. This situation was compounded by another perplexing development; my brother and sisters, all of whom were born in the UK, and whose parents and older brother had been issued Gaza ID’s, were issued West Bank IDs.
My dad spent the last few months trying to get permission to go back to the West Bank to see his wife and kids-even for a day to pick up his clothes. But whether it was through the British consulate or Israeli NGO’s, the Israeli occupation was adamant that he would not be allowed out of Gaza, unless it was to be deported from Ben Gurion airport. Eventually, in order to save his job, he left Gaza when Egypt opened the Rafah crossing in early December.
Now, my father is in one country and I am in another, while my mother is trapped in the West Bank, unable to travel for fear of never being allowed back. Thankfully, my brother and sisters are able to cross into Jordan, where we may see each other, but our family has been torn apart and separated under the most arbitrary occupation laws imaginable. Despite the continued attempts of Israeli and Palestinian NGO’s, we have found no recourse with the Israeli authorities, and the British consulate has proved useless. We even sent a letter to Tony Blair, the representative of the Quartet, imploring him to intervene on our behalf as British citizens (the letter is included below). Unsurprisingly, we were ignored.
I believe this story needs to be told not because our situation is so unique, but precisely because it isn’t; this is the result of a deliberate Israeli policy, one that has been in place since the early days of the Nakba and has been evolving ever since. It is a policy that has led to the dispossession of millions of Palestinians, and the separation and breakup of tens of thousands of families. The forcibly imposed separation between the West Bank and Gaza is illegal under international law, and through it Israel is succeeding in separating the Palestinian people, one family at a time.
This is the letter my father sent Tony Blair:
Dear Mr. Blair,
I write to you as a British citizen who has exhausted most of the options available to him in the pursuit of a basic human right – the right to see and be with my own family.
I was born in the Gaza Strip in 1962 and left to the UK in 1990 to pursue my PhD at the University of Bradford. In 2004, I moved with my wife and four children to the West Bank town of Ramallah. I was working as a foreign journalist, licensed by the Israeli Government Press Office and staying in the country along with my family on one year renewable work visas. In 2005 my eldest son Mohammad was turned back by Israel border agents as he attempted to cross into Jordan to visit his aunt. The agents told Mohammad that since he was born in the Gaza Strip in 1988, he had been issued a Gaza ID by the Israeli occupation, that his British passport was worthless and that he was not allowed to legally reside in the West Bank as per the Israeli occupation authority’s rules. For the next four years, he risked daily arrest by Israeli troops to get his university education at Birzeit University. This summer, he left the West Bank to find work abroad, and was told by the Israelis that once he left he would not be allowed to go back home.
Despite this clearly reprehensible situation, I and the rest of the family were thankfully spared such hardship. I was able to pursue my professional duties relatively unhindered in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. This all changed very suddenly in August of this year when, on a routine trip to Gaza where I had several assignments and where I wanted to visit my ailing father, Israeli security detained me at the Erez checkpoint, harassed me, stripped me of my press credentials and told me that my British passport was worthless to them. I was told that I too have an Israeli-issued Gaza ID and thus would be treated as a Gazan; deprived of the most basic freedom of choice and movement. I was sent into Gaza and have not been allowed out since.
At the same time, my wife Manal and our children Linah and Ahmad, all still in Ramallah, were forced to accept their own Israeli-issued ID cards. Incredibly, Manal was given a Gaza ID despite being born abroad, raised in the West Bank and still owning a copy of her original West Bank ID. Like Mohammad before her, she has been told that Israel dictates that she cannot change her ID and lives in constant fear of arrest and deportation by Israeli troops. If she were to leave the country she would also be banned from returning to our family and home in Ramallah.
Meanwhile, Ahmad and Linah, who were both born in the UK and are new university students, have bizarrely been issued with West Bank ID cards, even though their parents and older brother were given Gaza IDs.
As a result of all of this, our family has been torn apart. I am stuck in Gaza, unable to travel freely between my sick father and wife and children. They are stuck in the West Bank, with my wife living in constant fear of deportation, while my oldest son is abroad, barred from entering the West Bank to see his mother, sisters and brother.
Israel has treated us like criminals for being Palestinians. We have been punished, displaced and deprived from each other’s company. The British Consulate has been trying to mediate with the Israeli authorities, but all it has managed to achieve is an Israeli offer to deport me if I decide to leave Gaza through Erez. I refuse to be a party to my own deportation, yet my livelihood is at stake, as is my children’s education. We cannot go on like this, and I appeal to your humanity to intervene and render this nightmare over.
Abdullah Alsaafin
Mohammad Alsaafin was born in the Khan Younis refugee camp and grew up in the UK and the US, before going back to Palestine for college at Birzeit.
Nuoviso: “9/11 False Flag”
Purchase DVD: http://www.nuoviso.com
The world has changed after September 11th. Its changed because were no longer safe.
These words were used by the George W. Bush, elected President of the United States in 2000, to dictate the political direction for the 21st Century.
Whereas Americans launch attacks relatively quickly, first on Afghanistan and later on Iraq, using falsified evidence, doubts about the official version of the events of September 11th grows.
The speculations that surfaced on the internet directly after the attacks were considered to be just wild conspiracy theories until this now. Yet the circumstantial evidence and even the substantial evidence itself paints a clear picture. The responsibility for the terrible attacks seems to lie not with Islamic Terrorists but with several high-ranking members of the military and administration of the U.S. Government.
This documentary focuses on the inconsistencies in the official version of the events as well as on the evidence which has been suppressed regarding September 11th. In addition, it answers the questions of why we still know nothing about it to this day and why we are being deceived also in european countries.
911-War Promises
Millions of people believe that evidence proves that Western intelligence services organized the hideous attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001. Even the mainstream media have stopped defending the official version and now prefer to ignore the issue altogether.
Distrust in Western governments grows as the wars of aggression waged by the USA and NATO continue to be justified with these “false flag” operations. Ever harsher domestic laws are being passed to crush all outrage and resistance in Western populations; at the end of the day they aim to unleash the German military on German civilians, instead of allowing morality and ethics to flow into day-by-day policy-making.
That morality and ethics long ago stopped playing a part in political decision-making is shown by the use of internationally outlawed weapons in all the wars NATO has started. At best, one has heard of “depleted uranium” after seeing the film “Deadly Dust” by award-winning Frieder Wagner. But even that film is systemically blocked out and banished, although, or perhaps because, it shows the horrific consequences of the use of these uranium weapons.
Among those aghast at the actions of NATO and the complicity of Germany in such internationally illegal wars of aggression is Christoph Hörstel, for many years foreign correspondent and editorial head of the German public broadcasting network ARD. Of like mind is Giullietto Chiesa, a Member of the European Parliament, who slams the ignorance and disinterest of most of his fellow Members.
What they don’t know is explained in the film “War promises” by insiders and whistleblowers. Annie Machon was a spy with the British MI5 and reports on false flag operations, as do Andreas von Bülow and Jürgen Elsässer, who possess enormous insider knowledge from their membership of the parliamentary committee supervising the secret services, and want to bring it to the public.
Eight years after 9/11 millions of people have linked up through the Internet to jointly rebel against this criminal system. What was still dismissed as a wild conspiracy theory until just a few month ago is now regarded as proven, raising the question how we, the people, handle this situation, in which those who govern us have on their minds anything but our well-being.
Even in cases the U.S. wins, Guantanamo evidence is suspect
By Carol Rosenberg | Miami Herald | December 16, 2009
A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the United States is unlawfully imprisoning at Guantanamo a Yemeni once accused of training at an al Qaeda camp, just days after a different U.S. judge upheld the detention of another Guantanamo detainee who trained at the same camp.
But even in that order, the judge found the U.S. evidence was the result of coercion and abuse and should not be used “in any fashion, in any court.” The judge ruled that while the detention may have been legal, the government’s own records “do not give any evidence for his continued detention.”
Judge Ricardo Urbina’s ruling on Wednesday, still sealed at the U.S. District Court in Washington D.C., brought the so-called habeas corpus scorecard to 32 losses and nine victories for the Pentagon in its defense against challenges from detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Because the order was sealed, lawyers declined to explain Urbina’s order to free Saeed Hatim, 33, who had been held at Guantanamo since June 2002.
“We are reviewing the decision and considering options,” said Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd.
Long-time Guantanamo defense attorney David Remes, who argued for release in August based on the Pentagon record, and called no witnesses, said the ruling “once more demonstrates the thinness of the government’s evidence against these men.”
Of the Guantanamo detainees, Remes said, “That’s why they’ve won four out of five cases that have been decided so far.”
Defense Department documents alleged that Hatim left his native Yemen before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, was inspired to join Muslims waging a jihad in Chechnya and trained at the al Farouq paramilitary camp in Afghanistan.
The ruling followed by two days Judge Thomas F. Hogan’s finding that another Yemeni, Musa’ab al Madhwani, 29, was lawfully detained as “part of a member of al Qaeda or related terrorist groups.”
Hogan ruled in favor of the Pentagon, but sounded reluctant to do so. He said Madhwani was no longer a threat to the United States and that some of the evidence against him came from triple hearsay and coerced confessions.
He said the government built its case on documents it discovered only at the last minute.
“As the law’s written I have no choice” but to uphold Madhwani’s continued detention, Hogan said. But Hogan quickly pointed out that that doesn’t mean he thinks Madhwani should continue to be detained. In fact, he said, the government’s records “do not give any basis for his continued detention.”
“I see nothing in the record that the petitioner poses any greater threat than the dozens of detainees . . . who have been transferred or cleared for transfer. In fact, his record is a lot less threatening,” he said in a ruling from the bench, according to a transcript of the hearing.
Hogan said he heard four days of testimony this fall, including Madhwani himself, who testified by a closed-circuit television feed in a closed-door hearing.
The judge admitted 260 exhibits to the record to conclude that the captive traveled to train and have “some association to alleged al Qaeda operatives.”
He called Madhwani a young, under-educated religiously vulnerable “hapless individual” but said the grounds for continued detention amount to this: “[He] voluntarily trained with al Qaeda for 25 days, and then traveled, associated and lived with members of al Qaeda for an entire year.”
Hogan also recited, for the record, what has become a familiar narrative of physical and mental abuse, solitary confinement and sensory deprivation in U.S. detention, notably at the Dark Prison in Afghanistan, adding that Justice Department attorneys did not refute the claims.
Madhwani was captured Sept. 11, 2002 in Pakistan, the judge said, noting his interrogations in Pakistan and Afghanistan “were coerced and should not be admitted — in any fashion in any court.”
Steal this Film
THERE HAVE BEEN A FEW DOCUMENTARIES BY ‘OLD MEDIA’ CREWS WHO DON’T UNDERSTAND THE NET AND SEE PEER-TO-PEER ORGANISATION AS A THREAT TO THEIR LIVELIHOODS. THEY HAVE NO REASON TO REPRESENT THE FILESHARING MOVEMENT POSITIVELY, AND NO CAPACITY TO REPRESENT IT LUCIDLY. WE WANTED TO MAKE A FILM THAT WOULD EXPLORE THIS HUGE POPULAR MOVEMENT IN A WAY THAT EXCITED US, ENGAGED US, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, FOCUSSED ON WHAT WE KNOW TO BE THE POSITIVE AND OPTIMISTIC VISION MANY FILESHARERS AND ARTISTS (THEY ARE OFTEN ONE) HAVE FOR THE FUTURE OF CREATIVITY.
From stealthisfilm.com
Guantanamo Prisoners Not ”Persons”
By William Fisher
NEW YORK, Dec 15 (IPS) – In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal Monday to review a lower court’s dismissal of a case brought by four British former Guantanamo prisoners against former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the detainees’ lawyers charged Tuesday that the country’s highest court evidently believes that ”torture and religious humiliation are permissible tools for a government to use”.
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, DC had ruled that government officials were immune from suit because at that time it was unclear whether abusing prisoners at Guantanamo was illegal.
Channeling their predecessors in the George W. Bush administration, Obama Justice Department lawyers argued in this case that there is no constitutional right not to be tortured or otherwise abused in a U.S. prison abroad.
The Obama administration had asked the court not to hear the case. By agreeing, the court let stand an earlier opinion by the D.C. Circuit Court, which found that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act – a statute that applies by its terms to all ”persons” – did not apply to detainees at Guantanamo, effectively ruling that the detainees are not persons at all for purposes of U.S. law.
The lower court also dismissed the detainees’ claims under the Alien Tort Statute and the Geneva Conventions, finding defendants immune on the basis that ”torture is a foreseeable consequence of the military’s detention of suspected enemy combatants”.
Finally, the circuit court found that, even if torture and religious abuse were illegal, defendants were immune under the constitution because they could not have reasonably known that detainees at Guantanamo had any Constitutional rights.
The circuit court ruled that ”torture is a foreseeable consequence of the military’s detention of suspected enemy combatants”.
That opinion was written by Judge Karen Lecraft Henderson, who was appointed to the federal circuit court by President Ronald Reagan in 1986 and to the Appeals Court in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush.
The British detainees spent more than two years in Guantanamo and were repatriated to Britain in 2004 with no charges ever having been filed against them.
Eric Lewis, lead attorney for the detainees, said, ”It is an awful day for the rule of law and common decency when the Supreme Court lets stand such an inhuman decision. The final word on whether these men had a right not to be tortured or a right to practice their religion free from abuse is that they did not.”
”The lower court found that torture is all in a days’ work for the Secretary of Defense and senior generals,” he added. ”That violates the president’s stated policy, our treaty obligations and universal legal norms. Yet the Obama administration, in its rush to protect executive power, lost its moral compass and persuaded the Supreme Court to avoid a central moral challenge. Today our standing in the world has suffered a further great loss.”
Center for Constitutional Rights Senior Attorney Shayana Kadidal, co-counsel on the case, told IPS, ”In many ways the opinion the Supreme Court left standing today is worse when one gets past the bottom line û no accountability for torture and religious abuse û and digs into the legal reasoning.”
”One set of claims are dismissed because torture is said to be a foreseeable consequence of military detention,” he said. ”How will the parents of our troops captured in future foreign wars react to that?”
”Another set of claims are dismissed because Guantanamo detainees are not ‘persons’ within the scope of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act – an argument that was too close to Dred Scott v. Sanford for one of the judges on the court of appeals to swallow,” he added.
The Dred Scott case was a decision by the United States Supreme Court in 1857. It ruled that people of African descent imported into the United States and held as slaves, or their descendants, whether or not they were slaves, were not protected by the Constitution and could never be citizens of the United States… Full article
In Alarming Step Obama Creates Gitmo North
ACLU Press Release
December 15, 2009
NEW YORK – The Obama administration announced today that it will purchase the Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois for the purpose of holding some of the detainees currently remaining at Guantánamo. Though the administration is leaving unsaid which detainees will be moved there and for what purposes, the information it has provided indicates that some detainees might be held for military commission proceedings in Illinois while others might be held at Thomson indefinitely without charge or trial.
The administration has stated that “any detainees at Guantánamo who continue to be held, and for whom no prosecution is planned, will be held only under authority granted by Congress in 2001 under the Authorization for Use of Military Force, as informed by the law of war.” However, the so-called war on terrorism is not a traditional war, having no temporal or geographical boundaries.
The following can be attributed to Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU:
“The creation of a ‘Gitmo North’ in Illinois is hardly a meaningful step forward. Shutting down Guantánamo will be nothing more than a symbolic gesture if we continue its lawless policies onshore.
“Alarmingly, all indications are that the administration plans to continue its predecessor’s policy of indefinite detention without charge or trial for some detainees, with only a change of location. Such a policy is completely at odds with our democratic commitment to due process and human rights whether it’s occurring in Cuba or in Illinois. In fact, while the Obama administration inherited the Guantánamo debacle, this current move is its own affirmative adoption of those policies. It is unimaginable that the Obama administration is using the same justification as the Bush administration used to undercut centuries of legal jurisprudence and the principle of innocent until proven guilty and the right to confront one’s accusers.
“It is also greatly disturbing that the administration will continue the use of military commissions, which are no more acceptable in Illinois or any other U.S. state than in Guantánamo. Despite some improvements, the commissions still fall far short of the legal standards necessary to comply with constitutional and international standards, allowing, for example, the use of coerced and hearsay evidence that would not be allowed in federal court. The proceedings will achieve neither reliable justice nor a restoration of America’s credibility around the world.
“The administration must also make very clear what category of detainee will be transferred to Thomson in the future and what kind of prison conditions will apply. Detainees not charged with a crime should not be subject to punitive conditions meant for sentenced prisoners who have been found guilty in a court of law, and all conditions must comply with the Geneva Conventions.
“The administration will no doubt be looking to Congress for legislative buy-in for this facility, and as both branches work together, we strongly urge lawmakers to legislate responsibly and not set any policies or precedents for indefinite detention on U.S. soil, or create any violation of the Geneva Conventions.
“The Obama administration’s announcement today contradicts everything the president has said about the need for America to return to leading with its values. American values do not contemplate disregarding our Constitution and skirting the criminal justice system. After detaining hundreds of individuals without the basic due process rights that define our justice system for almost eight years, it is time to charge suspects where evidence exists and repatriate and transfer the rest to countries where they won’t be tortured.”
CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org
Australia: Internet censorship plan gets the green light
ASHER MOSES
Sydney Morning Herald
December 15, 2009 – 11:13PM
The Federal Government has announced it will proceed with controversial plans to censor the internet after Government-commissioned trials found filtering a blacklist of banned sites was accurate and would not slow down the internet.
But critics, including the online users’ lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia and the Greens communications spokesman Scott Ludlam, said the trial results were not surprising and the policy was still fundamentally flawed.
The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, said today he would introduce legislation just before next year’s elections to force ISPs to block a blacklist of “refused classification” (RC) websites for all Australian internet users.
The blacklist, featuring material such as child sex abuse, sexual violence and instructions on crime, would be compiled using a public complaints mechanism, Government censors and URLs provided by international agencies.
Senator Conroy also released results from a pilot trial of ISP-level internet filters, conducted by Enex Testlab, which he said found that blocking banned material “can be done with 100 per cent accuracy and negligible impact on internet speed”.
“Most Australians acknowledge that there is some internet material which is not acceptable in any civilised society,” he said.
“It is important that all Australians, particularly young children, are protected from this material.”
He said about 15 western countries had encouraged or enforced internet filtering, and there was no reason why Australians should not have similar protection.
It is not clear how – or if – the filters will distinguish between illegal RC material and that which is perfectly legal to view.
An earlier version of the Government’s top-secret list of banned sites was leaked on to the web in March, revealing the scope of the filtering could extend significantly beyond child porn.
About half of the sites on the list were not related to child porn and included a slew of online poker sites, YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites, fetish sites, Christian sites, the website of a tour operator and even a Queensland dentist.
“Given the pilot’s modest goals, it was designed from the beginning to pass,” said EFA spokesman Colin Jacobs.
“Although it may address some technical issues, what it leaves out is far more important – exactly what will be blocked, who will decide, and why is it being attempted in the first place?”
Similarly, Senator Ludlam said: “Nobody said that filtering from a static list of URLs was going to slow things down too much unless the list gets huge, so I don’t think they’ve already proven anything that we don’t already know.”
The pilot trial report also noted that motivated people could circumvent any internet filters with ease, which Senator Ludlam and Jacobs said called the effectiveness of the proposal into question.
Ludlam said proving a technical case was not the same as proving the wisdom of going down the internet censorship track in the first place, which he said had always been two separate discussions.
“While the Government says that they will be relying on an evidence-based policy, we still haven’t seen evidence that this is going to play any meaningful role in preventing children from accessing harmful material online,” Senator Ludlam said.
Jacobs said: “Successful technology isn’t necessarily successful policy. We’re still yet to hear a sensible explanation of what this policy is for, who it will help and why it is worth spending so much taxpayer money on.”
Peter Coroneos, chief executive of the Internet Industry Association, said he would be meeting with his members tonight to discuss the report before formulating a response.
Senator Conroy said the Government would immediately undertake public consultations, starting today with the release of a discussion paper on additional measures to improve the accountability and transparency of processes that lead to sites being placed on the blacklist.
Some of the options raised include appeal mechanisms, notification to website owners of RC content and the review by an independent expert.
No freeze on Palestinian suffering
Seth Freedman | guardian.co.uk
14 December 2009
Within minutes of our arrival in Tuwani, in the south Hebron hills of the West Bank, an army Jeep rolled into the village and shattered the mid-morning tranquillity. “We’re turning this place into a closed military zone,” announced the stern-faced commander to anyone within earshot. Brandishing his rifle in one hand and a military document in the other, he proceeded to explain that “I decide who can be here and who can’t, and anyone who isn’t a resident has to leave immediately”.
That meant us – me, my friend and our three guides from the Villages Group – as well as the other activists who maintain a permanent presence in Tuwani assisting the locals in their struggle to survive. The timing of the closure was no accident: earlier in the morning NGO workers and locals had taken part in a solidarity march to highlight the hardships suffered by the village children who run the gauntlet of the neighbouring settlement every time they walk to and from their school.
Anything the activists could do the soldiers could do better, it seemed. “The IDF [Israel Defence Forces] don’t like us coming to support the residents of Tuwani,” said one volunteer, “so they make it their mission to make everyone’s lives uncomfortable as a result.”
The shutdown of the village and the surrounding farmland was only the latest in a long line of attempts by the Israeli authorities to break the will of the Palestinians living in the area. As we drove out of Tuwani, we were shown the stump of an electricity pylon sawn down by the army after attempts by villagers to connect themselves to the national grid. Elsewhere, dirt mounds and locked gates stopped locals driving to the nearby city of Ya’ta, thus preventing them taking their produce to sell at market, and severely impairing their economic prospects.
Thanks to the army’s exclusion orders, we were forced to walk a treacherous and convoluted route through the rocky scrubland to visit communities living in even deeper seclusion beyond Tuwani. In Tu’ba, the cave-dwelling residents of the village are under no illusion about what the future holds for them, despite all the hype surrounding the much-vaunted settlement freeze.
“The freeze will have no effect round here,” the father of the household told us bitterly. Our guide expanded on the theme, telling us that the “real freeze is on Palestinian construction: 95% of Palestinian applications for building permits in Area C are denied by the civil administration, and for communities in this area they are not allowed to build above ground whatsoever”.
Those people living in caves are, it seems, tolerated by the authorities while they remain underground, but as soon as they put their heads above the surface and attempt to build rudimentary shacks and outhouses, demolition orders are served and the army are quick to enforce the letter of the law with gusto.
Meanwhile, in the neighbouring settlements of Carmel and Ma’on, building work was going on in earnest, and defiant banners on bus stops and fence posts declared the settlers’ intention to “smash the freeze”, and denounced the incumbent government as traitors to the Zionist cause. While government inspectors have been attacked during their attempts to bring settlement construction to a halt, the full force of the settlers’ wrath has – as ever – been meted out against the Palestinians.
The sickening desecration of a mosque on Friday in the village of Yasuf, near Nablus, appears to be the opening salvo in the settlers’ latest battle to force the government to back down over the building freeze, and those we met in the south Hebron hills were wary of similar reprisal attacks being carried out against their communities. “Our children are still attacked on a regular basis,” one local told us, “as well as our shepherds and farmers. Even if we call the police, we know justice will never be done, and the situation is only getting worse now that the settlers are furious about Netanyahu’s decision.”
Ehud Krinis, one of the Villages Group activists, believes that the freeze is “just an act” on the part of the government; having worked in the area for almost eight years and seen the settlers’ above-the-law behaviour first hand, he maintains “there is no effective force that can stop the settlers building more. In fact, as we can see in Susiya and elsewhere, the settlers simply see the freeze as a challenge to construct [at an even faster rate], which is what will happen over the next 10 months.”
As we sat with the head of the Bedouin clan living in Um al-Kheir – a collection of tumble-down tents and shacks literally touching the perimeter fence of the Carmel settlement – the mood of resignation engulfing the encampment’s residents was suffocating. We were shown aerial photos of Um al-Kheir’s gradual demise over the past 30 years, a situation attributable to the encroachment of the settlers and the military on to their ancestral land. It was clear that for those forced to endure the humiliation and hardship on a daily basis, the politicians’ upbeat talk was at best cheap, and at worst a flagrant denial of the facts.
For those Palestinians living under military rule, coupled with indiscriminate and incessant settler attacks against them, their children and their flocks, there is no end in sight to the suffering. While the world might have been convinced that the worm is about to turn in the Israeli political arena, a quick glance at the fevered construction still taking place in the settlements, the oppressive military activity against the Palestinian villagers and the overarching penury in which the Palestinians are forced to subsist should give onlookers food for thought about the true situation on the ground.
Freeze or no freeze, the future looks no brighter for the Palestinian locals today than it has during any of the bitter years and decades gone by.
Obama snubs UK freedom request
Last Briton in Guantanamo Bay has been held eight years without charges
By Robert Verkaik, Law editor
The Independent
December 12, 2009
The government has clashed with the Obama administration over the return of the last UK resident to be held at Guantanamo Bay.
Foreign Office officials yesterday confirmed that Foreign Secretary David Miliband last month made an “exceptional” request to the US for the release of Shaker Aamer, but that his appeal has been rejected.
Mr Aamer, 42, who lived with his British wife and four children in London for five years after arriving in Britain in 1996, has been detained at the prison camp in Cuba since February 2002 after his capture in Afghanistan in December 2001. He was later handed over to American forces and held at Bagram prison, where he claims he was subjected to torture during interrogations.
Britain made its first request for the release of Mr Aamer to representatives of the Bush administration in August 2007. Mr Miliband was known to have discussed Mr Aamer’s release with Hillary Clinton after President Obama’s election victory, but it was not known until yesterday that a second request had been made.
A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “We have made an exceptional request for the release and return of Shaker Aamer, a Saudi national, to the UK.
“This is because of the exceptional nature of the Guantanamo facility and our sustained efforts to see it closed. Though we were successful with securing the return of four other non-UK nationals, we have not been able yet to do so with Shaker.”
Mr Aamer has never been charged with an offence.
This week the High Court in London ruled that there was evidence of wrong-doing in Mr Aamer’s case and ordered the UK Government to disclose secret documents that Mr Aamer alleges prove Britain was complicit in his torture.
The case is potentially more damaging to Britain than that of former Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed because British agents are accused of being present during Mr Aamer’s alleged torture. In one allegation an MI5 agent is said to have been present when Mr Aamer’s US interrogators banged his head against a wall, although the agent did not intervene.
In his court victory on Tuesday two judges ruled that Mr Aamer was entitled to see UK Government documents relating to his detention. His lawyers say they contain evidence supporting his claims that confessions he made were obtained through torture.
Lord Justice Sullivan said: “Our present view is that this matter is clearly very urgent. If this information is to be of any use it has to be put in the claimant’s hands as soon as possible.”
Later Mr Aamer’s solicitor, Irene Nembhard, said: “It is the first ray of light for Shaker and his family. [They] will be overjoyed and they will be expecting that the British Government will give their lawyers the documents to assist them in persuading the Americans to release Shaker.” President Obama made the closure of the US naval base a key priority when he was elected last year. He set himself a deadline of one year but has since admitted that he will not be able to meet this target.
Clive Stafford Smith, the director of UK legal charity Reprieve, has represented Mr Aamer in the US. He said that the British and American governments seem to working in unison to keep information about Mr Aamer’s treatment from being made public. “It seems to be another big example of the British government working with the US to hide their mutual wrongdoing,” he said.
The US have told the UK that they believe Mr Aamer represents a security risk.
House chairman Brad Sherman calls on UC Irvine to throw out Muslim Student Union for raising money for Gaza
By Philip Weiss – December 11, 2009
Your Israel lobby at work. Brad Sherman is a liberal Democratic congressman from California and populist on Wall Street issues. He is also chairman of a House subcommittee on terrorism. With the applause (and likely the urging) of the Zionist Organization of America, he has sent out three letters to federal officials, urging investigations directed at Viva Palestina, the George Galloway group that is devoted to bringing aid to besieged people of Gaza– for allegedly supporting a terrorist organization, Hamas. The letters are to the IRS, to the Justice Department, and to Hillary Clinton.
In a fourth letter, written last week to the chancellor of the University of California at Irvine, Sherman accuses the Muslim Student Union at UC Irvine of soliciting funds for a terrorist organization because it hosted Galloway last May. Once you have determined these facts in your internal investigation, Sherman says, you should bar the Muslim Student Union from the campus.
The ZOA, a right-wing pro-settlers group, says that it brought the Galloway event to Sherman’s attention earlier this fall and pressed for an investigation. Here, the Muslim Student Union at Irvine describes how it has been harassed by the ZOA:
The truth of the matter is that ZOA has been attempting to defame, censor and essentially eradicate the MSU for years now. This is only the most recent attempt to silence the MSU and restrict its constitutional right to freedom of speech, religion and association. Although this is not the first time the organization has made such claims against the MSU, the complaints continue to receive attention. This is surprising, considering all previous claims the organization made against MSU have been proven to be groundless. In 2004, ZOA claimed that the green stoles MSU members wear during graduation were a symbol of support for Hamas.
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