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Gaza condemns Israel’s interception of Dignity as act of ‘piracy’

Palestine Information Center – 19/07/2011

GAZA — The government in Gaza has expressed strong condemnation after Israeli naval forces surrounded the lone vessel that slipped past Greece’s Gaza flotilla ban, calling the move a ”new Zionist maritime piracy”, and placing some of the blame on the United Nations.

Three naval ships have intercepted the French yacht, dubbed Dignite – Al-Karama, and towed it into Israel’s Ashdod port with 16 activists and several journalists on board.

Tahir al-Nunu, a spokesman for the government in Gaza, has told the AFP that the UN must take some of the responsibility as it has yet to take sanctions against Israel over its lethal attack on the Mavi Marmara ship that joined the first Freedom Flotilla last year, which has emboldened Israel into continuing the same ”illegal and aggressive approach”.

Israeli soldiers intercepted the first Freedom Flotilla in late May 2010 and attacked the Mavi Marmara ship, killing nine and injuring many on board.

Nunu called on the international community to take a ”a clear position”.

He wondered: ”Is the Gaza siege legal and moral or not? The answer is certainly that it is neither legal nor moral.”

He said the matter calls for ”a serious stand against Israel, away from political hypocrisy and double standards”.

July 19, 2011 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

The Method in Netanyahu’s Madness

Israel Rules Out Non-Violence

By Jonathan Cook | Dissident Voice | July 18th, 2011

It was an Arab legislator who made the most telling comment to the Israeli parliament last week as it passed the boycott law, which outlaws calls to boycott Israel or its settlements in the occupied territories. Ahmed Tibi asked: “What is a peace activist or Palestinian allowed to do to oppose the occupation? Is there anything you agree to?”

The boycott law is the latest in a series of ever-more draconian laws being introduced by the far-right. The legislation’s goal is to intimidate those Israeli citizens, Jews and Palestinians, who have yet to bow down before the majority-rule mob.

Look out in the coming days and weeks for a bill to block the work of Israeli human rights organisations trying to protect Palestinians in the occupied territories from abuses by the Israeli army and settlers; and a draft law investing a parliamentary committee, headed by the far-right, with the power to veto appointments to the supreme court. The court is the only, and already enfeebled, bulwark against the right’s absolute ascendancy.

The boycott law, backed by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, marks a watershed in this legislative assault in two respects.

First, it knocks out the keystone of any democratic system: the right to free speech. The new law makes it illegal for Israelis and Palestinians to advocate a non-violent political programme — boycott — to counter the ever-growing power of the half a million Jewish settlers living on stolen Palestinian land.

As the Israeli commentator Gideon Levy observed, the floodgates are now open: “Tomorrow it will be forbidden to call for an end to the occupation [or for] brotherhood between Jews and Arabs.”

Equally of concern is that the law creates a new type of civil, rather than criminal, offence. The state will not be initiating prosecutions. Instead, the job of enforcing the boycott law is being outsourced to the settlers and their lawyers. Anyone backing a boycott can be sued for compensation by the settlers themselves, who — again uniquely — need not prove they suffered actual harm.

Under this law, opponents of the occupation will not even be dignified with jail sentences and the chance to become prisoners of conscience. Rather, they will be quietly bankrupted in private actions, their assets seized either to cover legal costs or as punitive damages.

Human rights lawyers point out that there is no law like this anywhere in the democratic world. Even Eyal Yinon, the naturally conservative legal adviser to the parliament, assessed the law’s aim as stopping a “discussion that has been at the heart of political debate in Israel for more than 40 years”. But more than half of Israelis back it, with only 31 per cent opposed.

The delusional, self-pitying world view that spawned the boycott law was neatly illustrated this month in a short video “ad” that is supported, and possibly financed, by Israel’s hasbara, or propaganda, ministry. Fittingly, it is set in a psychiatrist’s office.

A young, traumatised woman deciphers the images concealed in the famous Rorschach test. As she is shown the ink-splodges, her panic and anger grow. Gradually, we come to realise, she represents vulnerable modern Israel, abandoned by friends and still in profound shock at the attack on her navy’s commandos by the “terrorist” passengers aboard last year’s aid flotilla to Gaza.

Immune to reality — that the ships were trying to break Israel’s punitive siege of Gaza, that the commandos illegally boarded the ships in international waters, and that they shot dead nine activists execution-style — Miss Israel tearfully recounts that the world is “forever trying to torment and harm [us] for no reason”. Finally she storms out, saying: “What do you want – for [Israel] to disappear off the map?”

The video — released under the banner “Stop the provocation against Israel” — was part of a campaign to discredit the recent follow-up flotilla from Greece. The aid mission was abandoned after Greek authorities, under Israeli pressure, refused to let the convoy sail for Gaza.

Israel’s siege mentality asserted itself again days later as international activists staged another show of solidarity — this one nicknamed the “flytilla”. Hundreds tried to fly to Israel on the same day, declaring their intention to travel to the West Bank. The goal was to highlight that Israel both controls and severely restricts access to the occupied territories and to Palestinians.

Proving precisely the protesters’ point, Israel threatened airlines with retaliation if they carried the activists and it massed hundreds of soldiers at Ben Gurion airport to greet arrivals. Some 150 peaceful protesters who reached Israel were arrested moments after landing.

Echoing the deranged sentiments of the woman in the video, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, denounced the various flotillas as “denying Israel’s right to exist” and a threat to its security.

In reality, however, the surge in flotilla activity reflects not an attack on Israel but a growing appreciation by international groups that Israel is successfully sealing off from the world the small areas of the occupied territories left to Palestinians. The flotillas are a rebellion against the Palestinians’ rapid ghettoisation.

Although Netanyahu’s comments sound delusional, there may be a method to the madness of measures like the boycott law and the hysterical overreaction to the flotillas.

These initiatives, as Tibi points out, leave no room for non-violent opposition to the occupation. Arundhati Roy, the award-winning Indian writer, has noted that non-violence is essentially “a piece of theatre. [It] needs an audience. What can you do when you have no audience?”

Netanyahu and the Israeli right understand this point. They are carefully dismantling every platform on which dissident Israelis, Palestinians and international activists hope to stage their protests. They are making it impossible to organise joint peaceful and non-violent resistance, whether in the form of boycotts or solidarity visits. The only way being left open is violence.

Is this what the Israeli right wants, believing both that it will confirm to Israelis’ their paranoid fantasies as well as offering a justification to the world for entrenching the occupation?

Netanyahu appears to believe that, by generating the very terror he claims to be trying to defeat, he can safeguard the legitimacy of the Jewish state — and destroy any hope of a Palestinian state being created.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. He won this year’s Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism.

July 18, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Settlers Bulldoze Farmlands near Hebron

By Saed Bannoura | IMEMC & Agencies | July 18, 2011

Israeli settlers uprooted on Tuesday Palestinian farmlands in Sair town, north of the southern West Bank city of Hebron; Israeli soldiers were present but did not attempt to stop the settlers.

The Land Research Center in Hebron reported that four bulldozers driven by fundamentalist settlers bulldozed vast areas of farmlands close to the “Asiar” illegal settlement outpost. The settlers came from Asfrat illegal settlement.

Resident Mustafa Ash-Shalalda told the Land Research Center that the lands in question are not within the boundaries of the illegal settlement, and that they belong to members of his family.

Ash-Shalalda voiced an appeal to the International Community and human rights groups to intervene, and also called on local and international media agencies to document the ongoing violations carried out by the settlers and the soldiers.

Israeli settlers are carrying out constant attacks against the residents and their lands, in an attempt to force them out of their homes and lands, in order to control more privately-owned Palestinian property.

July 18, 2011 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Hamas Perspectives on September, Unity Government: Interview with PLC Member Totah

Mark West for the Alternative Information Center | 17 July 2011

Negotiations for a Palestinian unity government are seemingly at an impasse and new questions rise daily concerning the “September initiative” to request full United Nations membership for Palestine. What are the perspectives of Hamas leadership concerning these issues, and possible developments in the Palestinian struggle for liberation? Mark West interviews Palestinian Legislative Council Member Mohammad Totah.

What are your thoughts on the Hamas-Fatah unity deal? What are the main points of disagreement between Fatah and Hamas concerning the agreement?

Totah: Hamas were hoping for a successful reconciliation as both sides are under occupation and will be more powerful when united. The central problem at the moment is Fatah’s choice of Salam Fayyad as the current Prime Minister. When we signed the reconciliation agreement with Fatah in Egypt, it was stated that both factions will agree on the PM and ministers of the government.

In fact, we agreed on two things: first of all, to rebuild Gaza and secondly, to prepare the ground for new elections. That means both sides had to agree on the PM and ministers. Unfortunately, Abbas wants to impose his decision to keep Salam Fayyad as PM, which does not adhere to the reconciliation agreement signed by both sides.

Fayyad’s main achievement has been to build institutions in Palestine. Nonetheless, while some institutions are ready for statehood, we are still under occupation. Hamas thinks that we have to achieve the freedom of our land and people before we build national institutions. Let me tell you, any country or people that is under occupation has to confront the occupation, to resist, until they get their freedom and then start building organizations. It is futile to construct organizations and institutions under occupation because the Israelis can come at any time and destroy everything that was built.

Last of all, two years ago, Fayyad promised that by September 2011 Palestinians would no longer need to depend financially on any external donor. Yet, the PLO is currently unable to pay its salaries because they are still dependent on foreign aid. How can you say you are ready to be a state when you cannot pay for that same state without foreign aid?

How do the methods of Hamas to resist occupation differ from Fatah? Do you think Hamas has a stronger hand in eventual negotiations with Israel?

Totah: Hamas and Fatah employ two innately different strategies. Fatah’s plan is to get peace for our people and land through negotiations and the renunciation of violence. However, over the last 20 years Fatah has continuously been negotiating with Israel, but on the ground nothing has changed, no rights have been gained. That can only mean their strategy has failed to return any rights to the Palestinian people.

Our approach differs fundamentally. Palestinians have the right, under international law, to resist the occupier by any means as an occupied people. As a result, Hamas keeps resisting the occupation in various forms, violent and non-violent. But resistance does not always mean the use of military force; there are many alternate means to resist occupation. My fellow parliamentary members and I who are residing in the ICRC tent while Israel wants to deport us are an example of an alternative method to resist the occupation.

Ultimately, Hamas prefers a peaceful solution: to live in our homes peacefully and freely. But when they occupy us, what should we do? Look at the history, all over the world those who lived under occupation have resisted by all means. Without resistance you will never attain the right to be free. What will force the occupier to listen when there is no resistance? If we don’t resist, the Israelis will live freely, and we will live like slaves. Instead, we refuse to be slaves of the occupation and we choose to live with dignity.

Last of all, let’s not forget that in 2006 the Palestinian people chose to give 59 percent of all parliamentary seats to Hamas because they realized Israelis are not going to give them their land peacefully.

If it disagrees fundamentally with Fatah’s strategy, will Hamas eventually engage in direct negotiations with Israel?

Totah: We are not against negotiations. If you want to achieve anything, you will have to negotiate. But there are two prerequisites: to negotiate, you need have good cards on the table, and secondly, Israel will have to agree on several fundamental Palestinian rights before any negotiations can take place.

In 2006, Hamas and other factions agreed on the borders of 1967 as the basis for negotiations, the right of return for Palestinian refugees, and a truce for ten to fifteen years. Before any negotiations can take place, Israel will have to agree on this framework and discuss how they will withdraw from the occupied territories and allow Palestinians to return to their land.

And if there are no strong cards to play, if you don’t have force in one hand and peace in the other, you will not be able to negotiate successfully. Our experience as Palestinians has shown that to be true.

Then what does Hamas think of plan to submit to the UN secretary general an official request for Palestine to be accepted as a full member of UN by the PLO?

Totah: Palestine already gained recognition in 1988, so the appeal for UN membership does not add anything new to the cause. But why not go for it? Why should Hamas create obstacles for Fatah to reach its goal to attain international recognition? If they want to go to the UN, let’s go, but we know the Palestinian people will not gain their sovereign rights this way. At the same time, Hamas also knows we have nothing left to lose, so let them go and we will see what happens. The good thing is that it will show the world what Israel stands for and that the Palestinians are fighting for their rights.

Did Fatah communicate their intentions to go to the UN during the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation talks?

Totah: During the reconciliation talks it was not mentioned by Fatah. But when they discussed it with Hamas at a later date, Hamas agreed not to block the procedure. At the same time, we made it clear that we are convinced the appeal for full UN membership will not return Palestinian rights to its people. But as we cannot see any negative consequences, we will do nothing to obstruct the move.

Some say that, in case the Palestinian people do not attain any actual gains through the UN process this September, there is a chance of a third Palestinian wave of resistance against Israel. What are your thoughts on that?

Totah: Fatah and Abbas believe in peace through negotiations, not resistance. After September, Fatah will continue with negotiations as usual, with no deadline in sight. Abbas has also stated that he will reject any form of violent intifada, and confront any instigator of violence. Hamas, on the other hand, does believe in resistance.

Everywhere in the world, people who are under occupation have other choices than negotiations. The truth is that if your only choice is peaceful negotiations, then the occupier does not care about your cause. But if we resist the occupation in other ways, then Israel knows we hold other cards. That’s when concessions can be made from both sides. But when only peaceful resistance is used, all concessions will be from our side and the occupation will never end.

In case a truly autonomous Palestinian state is declared in the coming years, what kind of political system does Hamas envision for Palestine?

Totah: Ultimately, we want to live peacefully in a democratic state with human rights and the rule of law. Look at me, as a member of the Palestinian parliament I have been in prison for three and a half years. Now I’ve been living in the ICRC compound for 1 year, a place from which I cannot leave because they want me to resign from parliament and revoke my residency.

The reason I refuse to leave is that I believe in democracy, and that only the Palestinian people have the right to ask me to resign, not the Israeli government.

July 17, 2011 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

UNESCO criticized after declaring Jerusalem as Israeli capital

Palestine Information Center – 14/07/2011

CAIRO — The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has received strong criticism after naming Jerusalem the capital of Israel.

In closing statements, the administrators of Palestinian affairs conference in Cairo addressed UNESCO’s calling Jerusalem Israel’s capital on its website, declaring it a violation of international law and the UN General Assembly’s decision declaring the city a part of the occupied Palestinian territories.

The conference, which stretched over four days, recommended that the Arab League general secretariat follow the situation and try to reverse it. It suggested sending a letter to the UN general secretariat and UNESCO discussing the seriousness of the situation.

It also called for twinning Arab capitals with the holy city and called on educational and cultural organizations to twin with Jerusalem organizations to ensure support for the city and its Palestinian natives.

In addition, the conference called on the Arab League to continue discussing the possibility of prosecuting Israel in national and international courts for its violations against Jerusalem and its people.

The conference also made a focus of the affairs of Palestinian refugees and addressed the UN Relief Works Agency’s removal of the words “relief works” from its title. It said that recent calls for recognition of Israel as a Jewish state were aimed at relinquishing the refugees’ right of return.

The hosting Arab states called on donor states to fulfill obligations concerning UNRWA’s budget, emphasizing the need to cover the agency’s 2010-11 deficit to ensure that it can execute its programs according to previous budgets.

July 14, 2011 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Israel navy attacks international boat in Gaza

Ma’an – 14/07/2011

BETHLEHEM — Israeli naval forces attacked an international third party monitor on Wednesday in Gazan territorial waters.

Civil Peace Service Gaza works as part of a non-violent initiative to monitor human rights abuses in Gaza.

Israeli forces fired at the CPS Gaza monitoring boat, the Oliva, with water cannons on Wednesday at 12.05 p.m local time, a statement by the organization said.

There were four people aboard at the time, two CPS Gaza members, the captain and a journalist.

“We were fewer than two miles away from the Gaza coast when they fired at us. We saw them firing water at some fishing boats so we headed to the area. When we got close, the warships left the fishing boats, and turned on us.

“They attacked us for about ten minutes, following us as we tried to head to shore and eventually lagged when we reached about one mile off the Gaza coast,” British human rights worker Ruqaya Al-Samarrai said.

A fishing boat was also fired at and damaged with live rounds.

An Israeli army spokesman said he was unaware of the incident.

The Gazan fishing community is often similarly targeted and the fishing limit is enforced with comparable aggression, with boats shot at or rammed as near as 2 nautical miles to the coast by Israeli gunboats, CBS Gaza added.

A marine blockade imposed by Israel restricts Gazan fisherman from accessing eighty five percent of Gaza’s fishing waters as agreed upon under the Oslo agreements.

Following the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2006 the Israeli navy imposed a complete sea blockade on the Gaza Strip for several months.

After Hamas took control of the coastal enclave in 2007, Israel limited fishing access to 3 nautical miles from the coast.

During the Oslo accords negotiators had agreed upon 20 nautical miles of fishing access along Gaza’s coastline.

Rights groups have condemned the blockade of Gaza as a form of collective punishment of the 1.6 million residents.

July 14, 2011 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | Leave a comment

Israeli Authorities Uproot, Confiscate 450 Olive Trees in Salfit

WAFA – July 11, 2011

SALFIT – Israeli authorities Monday uprooted and confiscated 450 olive trees in Wadi Qana, an area west of Deir Estia near Salfit in the northern West Bank, according to Nazmi Salman, mayor of Deir Estia.

Israeli soldiers prevented Palestinian farmers from reaching their land in Wadi Qana under the pretext of it being classified as a closed military area, said Salman.

He added that an Israeli bulldozer accompanied by officers in the civil administration and soldiers uprooted 450 olive trees and destroyed land that belongs to a Palestinian resident in Deir Estia.

He said that Israeli forces confiscated the olive trees and the fence that surrounds the lands. It is believed that they took the trees to the nearby settlements of Karnei Shomron, Yakir and Nofim.

The mayor condemned the continuous Israeli attacks against Palestinians, targeting the area of Wadi Qana, uprooting olive trees and destroying land reclamation projects in the area without any justification.

He pointed out that these measures are for the benefit of settlements and settlers who aim to control the water-rich area of Wadi Qana.

Salman stressed that Wadi Qana is witnessing an unprecedented campaign of occupation to make its residents’ lives difficult in order to pressure them to leave the area, as a prelude for Israel to judaize it.

He said these measures are taken on grounds of protecting nature and said, ‘Does uprooting trees protect nature?’

Israeli authorities had uprooted and confiscated 300 olive trees in the same area in late June.

July 11, 2011 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

The Zionist Entity Seeks a U.N. Opinion on Maritime Borders with Lebanon

Al-Manar – July 10, 2011

The Zionist entity is to seek a U.N. opinion on its maritime borders with Lebanon in the Mediterranean, where lucrative offshore gas fields have been found, Zionist Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Sunday.

“We will soon be presenting the United Nations headquarters in New York with our position on our maritime borders,” Lieberman told Zionist public radio.

“We have already concluded an agreement on this issue with Cyprus… Lebanon, under pressure from Hezbollah, is looking for friction, but we will not give up any part of what is rightfully ours,” he added.

The occupying entity has been moving to develop several large offshore natural gas fields in the Mediterranean that it hopes could help it to become an energy exporter.

Those development plans have stirred controversy with Lebanon, which argues the gas fields lie inside its territorial waters.

Israeli entity does not have officially demarcated maritime borders with Lebanon since IOF had been forcibly withdrawn from part of the Lebanese land, occupied since 1982.

A senior Zionist official told AFP that their regular cabinet meeting will be held on Sunday, where ministers would endorse a map of Israel’s maritime borders in the Mediterranean to be presented to the U.N.

The two biggest known offshore fields, Tamar and Leviathan, lie off Occupied Palestine’s northern city of Haifa.

Tamar is believed to hold at least 8.4 trillion cubic feet of gas (238 billion cubic meters), while Leviathan is believed to have reserves of 16 trillion cubic feet (450 billion cubic meters).

In recent weeks, a Zionist company has also announced the discovery of two new natural gas fields, Sarah and Mira, around 70 kilometers (45 miles) off the city of Hadera further south.

July 10, 2011 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Israel Marks New Path of Apartheid Wall

WAFA – July 9, 2011

BETHLEHEM – Israeli forces Saturday marked Palestinian land in al-Walaja, a village northwest of Bethlehem, to draw a new path of the Apartheid Wall, said a Palestinian official.

Deputy Head of Walaja village council, Adel al-Atrash, said that the Israeli forces marked the land to raze the land and to uproot olive trees to complete the construction of a section of the wall.

He added that the six-kilometer Wall will take over 500 dunums (1 dunum = 1000 square meters) and isolate another 1958 dunums, including an ancient olive tree called ‘Zytonet al-Badawi’ (Bedouin Olive Tree), which is estimated to be 1500 years old.
The Israeli measure coincides with the seventh anniversary of the International Court of Justice advisory opinion that found the construction by Israel of a wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and its associated régime are contrary to international law in 2004.

July 9, 2011 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

NYT coverage of ‘fly-in’ protest masks nature of Israeli control over Palestinian lives

By Adam Horowitz | Mondoweiss | July 8, 2011

A friend writes:

Isabel Kershner has some useful information about Israel’s hysterical response to the fly-in today, though she leaves out the frightening scenes of angry crowds at the airport.

But she obfuscates the basic reality that the fly-in was mean to underline, that Israel controls all borders and entry and exit of Palestinians and foreigners into and out of the West Bank, and cuts Palestinians off from the outside world. Readers won’t learn these very basic facts about Israeli control over Palestinian lives in the NY Times.

Instead, this is how Kershner describes the initiative to fly-in via Israel’s Ben Gurion airport:

There were persistent reports that the foreign visitors would try to create chaos and paralyze Ben-Gurion Airport, despite strenuous denials from the organizers of the campaign, who advocate nonviolence. They insisted that the foreigners only wanted to transit the airport and “go to Palestine.” (The West Bank has no airport of its own.)

A less knowledgeable reader might ask, “Well why didn’t they just cross a land border to visit the West Bank?” (Kershner didn’t tell you that Israel similarly controls the land borders).

Another reader might ask, “Why don’t the Palestinians just build their own airport rather than using Israel’s? Don’t they get enough foreign aid?” (The NY Times didn’t explain that Israel won’t allow Palestinians to have their own airport).

This is how AP has described Israeli control of the borders in it’s reporting on the fly-in:

Visitors can reach the West Bank only through Israeli-controlled crossings, either through international airports or the land border with Jordan. Citing security concerns, Israel bars most Palestinians from entering Israel or using its airport, meaning they must travel to neighboring Jordan to fly out.

Why can’t the NY Times describe these basic structural realities?

July 8, 2011 Posted by | Deception, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Israel Confiscates Palestinian Land For Hayovel Settlement Outpost

By Kevin Murphy | IMEMC and Agencies | July 08, 2011

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week approved the confiscation of private Palestinian land in the Palestinian village of Karyut in the Occupied West Bank for Israeli settlement activity. The move is the first of its kind in three years and the first during Netanyahu’s current term. The confiscation breaks the terms of the agreement with the United States not to confiscate land for settlement expansion.

The Israeli Civil Administration last week declared the confiscation of 189 dunams of private Palestinian land for the Hayovel neighbourhood in the Israeli settlement of Eli, according to Haaretz. The Administration cited Ottoman Law from 1858 in justifying the expropriation.

The move will contribute to retroactively legalising Hayovel which was judged to be private Palestinian land in a 2005 Israeli report. Hayoyel was built in 1998 as a settler outpost after which permenant structures, including a road, were built.

Netanyahu had repeated guarantees made by his predecessors Arial Sharon and Ehud Barrack to the US that private land would not be confiscated in the territories to expand settlement activity. “We have no intention to build new settlements or set aside land for new settlements. But there is a need to have people live normal lives and let mothers and fathers raise their children like everyone in the world”, he stated.

Israel uses a mix of British, Ottoman and Israeli military law when dealing with Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. The 1858 Ottoman Land Law states that working and cultivating land for 10 years results in ownership of the land irrespective of how it was acquired. The law has been used extensively to expand existing Israeli settlements as well as create new ones.

Palestinian negotiators have demanded an end to Israeli settlement expansion as a precondition for peace talks. The International Court of Justice has ruled that Israeli settlement in the Palestinian territories is illegal under international law.

Palestinians now have 45 days to appeal the ruling.

July 8, 2011 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Palestine’s “Last Village” Faces the Bulldozers

Lifta to Make Way for Jewish Vacation Homes

By Jonathan Cook | Dissident Voice | July 5th, 2011

On a rocky slope dropping steeply away from the busy main road at the entrance to West Jerusalem is to be found a scattering of ancient stone houses, empty and clinging precariously to terraces hewn from the hillside centuries ago.

Although most Israeli drivers barely notice the buildings, this small ghost town — neglected for the past six decades — is at the centre of a legal battle fuelling nationalist sentiments on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide.

Picking his way through the cluster of 55 surviving houses, their stone walls invaded by weeds and shrubs, Yacoub Odeh, 71, slipped easily into reminiscences about the halcyon days in Lifta.

He was only eight years old in January 1948 when the advancing Jewish forces put his family and the 3,000 other Palestinian villagers to flight.

Over the coming months, as the Jewish state was born, they would be joined by 750,000 others forced into exile in an event that is known by Palestinians as the “nakba”, or catastrophe.

Despite the passage of time, Lifta’s chief landmarks are still clear to Mr Odeh: the remains of his own family’s home, an olive press, the village oven, a spring, the mosque, the cemetery and the courtyard where the villagers once congregated.

“Life was wonderful for a small child here,” he said, closing his eyes. “We were like one large family. We played in the spring’s waters, we picked the delicious strawberries growing next to the pool.

“I can still remember the taste of the bread freshly baked by my mother and coated with olive oil and thyme.”

The village not only occupies a unique place in Mr Odeh’s affections. It has also come to symbolise a hope of eventual return for many of the nearly five million Palestinian refugees around the world.

In the words of Ghada Karmi, a British academic whose own family was forced from their home close by, in the Jerusalem suburb of Katamon, Lifta “remains a physical memorial of injustice and survival”.

The reason is that Lifta is the last deserted village from 1948 still standing in modern-day Israel.

More than 400 other villages seized by Israel war were razed during and after the war of 1948 in what historians have described as a systematic plan to make sure the refugees had no homes to return to.

Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian who examined the 1948 war in his book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, has termed the villages’ destruction an act of “memoricide” — erasing for Israelis all troubling reminders of an earlier Palestinian presence.

The destroyed villages’ lands were used by the new state either to build communities for Jewish immigrants or to plant national forests, said Eitan Bronstein, spokesman for Zochrot, an Israeli group dedicated to teaching Israelis about the nakba.

A handful of other Palestinian communities, such as the old city of Jaffa and Ein Hod near Haifa, survived the wave of demolitions but were quickly passed on to new Jewish owners to be reinvented as artists’ colonies.

Only Lifta was neither destroyed nor reinhabited, its homes standing as a solitary, silent testament to a vanished way of life, said Mr Bronstein.

But even that small legacy is under imminent threat from the bulldozers.

In January the Israel Lands Authority, a government body responsible for Lifta’s lands, announced a plan to build a luxury housing project over the village, including more than 200 apartments, a hotel and shops.

The project, said Meir Margalit, a Jerusalem city councillor, would be targeted at wealthy foreign Jews, mainly from the United States and France, looking for summer vacation homes in Israel.

The developers have promised to incorporate some of the old buildings into the complex, although most observers — including leading architects — say that little of the original Palestinian village will be recognisable after the project is completed.

Instead, according to Mr Bronstein, Lifta will belatedly suffer the same fate as the hundreds of villages destroyed by Israel decades ago. “The message is that we are finishing what we started in 1948,” he said.

Esther Zandberg, a commentator on architecture for the Israeli Haaretz daily, agreed: “Although it is termed a preservation effort, it is in effect, paradoxically, an erasure of all memory of the original village.”

Critics have been joined by Shmuel Groag, one of the project’s original architects, who has accused the developers of failing to respect the basic rules of conservation in their treatment of Lifta.

Lifta’s families, backed by several Israeli groups, including Rabbis for Human Rights, petitioned the courts to stop the project, saying the site should be preserved in its existing state.

The Jerusalem district court temporarily froze the development in March, and is expected to issue a ruling in the coming days.

The families have also appealed to Unesco, the United Nations organisation in charge of educational, scientific and cultural matters, to declare Lifta a world heritage site.

The development, however, is backed by the leading conservation bodies in Israel, including the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel and the Council for the Preservation of Historic Sites. The council’s director, Isaac Shewky, said the costs of a proper restoration would be “astronomical”.

Unlike most of the other 20,000 refugees and their descendants from Lifta, many of whom live in the West Bank and Jordan, Mr Odeh is able to visit his former village because he lives a few kilometres away in East Jerusalem.

He said he would ultimately like to see the families offered a chance to reclaim their former homes. “We will never forget Lifta. Our dream is to come back.”

Few observers expect such a scenario in the current political climate. The Palestinian right of return is widely seen by Israeli Jews as spelling doom for Israel’s continued existence as a Jewish state.

That fear was only accentuated by the images of refugees in Syria storming border fences in the Golan Heights in May and June, in what was widely seen in Israel as an attempted return to their former homes.

Mr Bronstein said: “Lifta poses such a threat to Israelis because it offers a starting point for imagining how the right of return might be implemented. It offers a model for the refugees.”

Mr Odeh, who offers guided tours of Lifta, has to share the site with many Israeli visitors. Young religious boys have turned the still-functioning village pool into a mikveh, or ritual immersion bath. Other Israelis use the site as a favourite hiking spot. And in the evenings, drug-users take shelter in the homes.

Lifta is also facing rapid encroachment from West Jerusalem. It is ringed by major roads linking Jerusalem to the West Bank settlements; on the ridge above, a high-speed rail link to Tel Aviv is being built; and in the valley below a military complex is believed to house the government’s underground nuclear bunker.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. He won this year’s Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism.

July 5, 2011 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

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