Israel plans 1,400 new units in al-Quds
Press TV – January 16, 2011
An Israeli planning commission is set to give the green light to a new settlement project in East al-Quds (Jerusalem), despite global criticisms against Tel Aviv’s settlement activities.
The two-phase project aims to build 1,400 new housing units near the “Gilo” settlement, located beyond the Green Line, Israel’s Army Radio announced on Sunday.
This would expand Gilo’s borders toward the occupied West Bank.
The plan is one of the largest to be established across the Green Line, and is even bigger than the settlement plans which raised tensions in relations between Israel and the United States.
Jerusalem Council member Meir Margalit (Meretz) said that “the plan is a more serious and dangerous step than all the previous plans for construction beyond the Green Line.”
“This is a confirmation of the death of the peace process,” Margalit told the Army Radio.
Last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and acting Palestinian Authority Chief Mahmoud Abbas agreed to renew direct talks in order to reach a concession on the two-state solution roadmap, erected by the United States.
But the talks faded away after the Israeli regime refused to stop the construction and expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and East al-Quds.
In September 2, the talks were re-launched, but were stalled again only three weeks later when Tel Aviv refused to extend a partial 10-month freeze it had imposed on its illegal settlement activities.
The Palestinians say that the settlement construction aims at preventing the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.
Along with other Palestinian and Arab territories, Tel Aviv occupied East al-Quds during the Six-Day War in 1967.
The occupation and later annexation of the city — which the Palestinians have long been demanding as the capital of their future state — has never been recognized by the international community.
Israeli bulldozers do the talking
By Khaled Amayreh | Al-Ahram | January 13, 2011
Israel this week demonstrated once again its determination to scuttle any genuine peacemaking effort that might lead to the establishment of a viable Palestinian state based on 1967 borders.
Israeli bulldozers and huge hydraulic jackhammers descended on the Palestinian neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah to demolish the Shepherd Hotel, a huge complex dating back to the 1930s. Part of the structure served as home to the former grand mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin Al-Husseini. The doomed structure thus had a lot of historical significance related to the history of the Palestinian struggle.
The demolition was the latest step by Israel to consolidate Jewish hegemony over the occupied Arab town and obliterate its erstwhile Arab- Islamic identity. The forced Judaisation of the city — holy to Muslims, Christians and Jews — is done feverishly through shadowy deals and dubious expropriation practices in which deception, cheating and trickery loom large.
Moreover, Zionist circles in cooperation with the Israeli government and Jewish settler interests have allocated hundreds of million of dollars for the purpose of channelling Arab-owned property to Jewish interests all over East Jerusalem. The demolition of the Shepherd Hotel took place despite international — including American — objections.
However, given the generally ineffectual nature of these objections, the Israeli government has grown accustomed to taking them lightly, calculating that they are only meant for public relations consumption and that in no way do they constitute a credible challenge to Israel’s settlement policy.
According to reliable Israeli sources in Jerusalem, the Israeli municipal authorities are awaiting an opportune time to carry out further large-scale demolitions of Arab homes in the Silwan neighbourhood. “If the government finds out that international reactions, especially US reactions, are weak as usual, then it will mean a kind of go-ahead signal for the demolitions,” said the source that was not authorised to speak to the media.
“They [the pro-settler Municipal Council of the city] want to desensitise international public opinion to accept [their] reality and come to terms with the fact that Israel will have its way in Jerusalem.”
Reactions to the latest provocation in East Jerusalem have been “normal”, whether from the Palestinian Authority (PA) — which as usual appealed to “the international community” to pressure Israel — or from EU, UN and Arab states, which more or less repeated the same old platitudes pertaining to Israel’s settlement policy being unlawful and counterproductive to peace.
Saeb Ereikat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, urged the West to act on its condemnation of Israeli provocations. “The UN and governments around the world, including the US and the UK, have already condemned plans to demolish this particular hotel. We call on the world to take a strong stand in defence of their positions. This intransigent and illegal behaviour on behalf of Israel must not be allowed to proceed unchecked.”
Speaking in desperate tone, Ereikat said Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was undercutting and corroding international efforts to create a Palestinian state. “While Netanyahu continues his public relations campaign regarding the peace process, on the ground he is rapidly moving to prevent the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state.
“Israel continues to change the landscape of Jerusalem aiming to change its status and turn it into an exclusive Jewish city. This process of cleansing and colonisation must be stopped to change the dark reality of Israeli occupation into a free and sovereign Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.”
Meanwhile, the Israeli government has been trying to give the impression that diplomatic movement was underway, probably to create a public relations counterbalance to settlement expansion and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Netanyahu met with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo this week. He also asked for a meeting with King Abdullah of Jordan, ostensibly for the same reason. Mubarak did urge Netanyahu to reverse present Israeli policies vis-à-vis the Palestinians and the peace process. Netanyahu heard Mubarak’s appeal but didn’t listen to it. For as soon as he returned to Israel, the demolitions in East Jerusalem took place.
Meanwhile, Israel is about to dispatch an envoy to Washington to assure the Obama administration that the Netanyahu government is still committed to the peace process. This comes in the aftermath of the clarion failure of the Obama administration to convince Israel to freeze settlement expansion in the occupied Palestinian territories, even in exchange for huge diplomatic inducements and military incentives.
Some analysts believe that the obsequious American behaviour towards the Netanyahu government, especially the excessive patience displayed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has further emboldened Israel and encouraged the Israeli leadership to ignore US pressure. “I am sure that Mrs Clinton dreads Israeli wrath and displeasure more than the Israelis dread American wrath and displeasure,” said one veteran European journalist based in East Jerusalem.
The US reaction to the demolition of the Shepherd Hotel as well as the latest coldblooded killing of innocent Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, including farmers tilling their land and old men sleeping in their beds, has been characteristically hollow and wrapped in diplomatic jargon.
Meanwhile, Clinton put the peace process on the backburner as she toured Gulf Arab emirates and sheikhdoms, inciting them against Iran’s nuclear programme. Predictably, Clinton implied that Israel posed no threat to the Arabs and that the real common enemy of both Israel and the Arabs is Iran. Clinton went as far as discrediting statements by former Mossad chief Meir Dagan in which he said that Iran wouldn’t have nuclear weapons capability before 2015.
A few weeks ago, Clinton dismissed the charge that “unilateral Israel actions” were derailing the peace process. “Bilateral negotiations,” she said, “are the only way to reach peace between Israel and the Palestinians.” One PA cabinet minister commented on Clinton’s remarks, saying: “This is very much like telling a rapist and his victim to sort it out among themselves.”
Book review: Arafat’s ghost and the Palestinian national movement
Osamah Khalil, The Electronic Intifada, 13 January 2011
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November 2010 marked the sixth anniversary of the death of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat. For the last two years of his life, the once peripatetic leader who was a constant fixture on the world stage for almost four decades, was reduced to living in a small compound-cum-prison. Only after he became gravely ill did Israel permit Arafat to leave for medical treatment in France. Less than three weeks later, he returned to Ramallah in a coffin and was buried in a chaotic funeral. While the circumstances surrounding his death remain shrouded in controversy, its impact on the Palestinian national movement is indisputable.
Although As’ad Ghanem’s new book Palestinian Politics after Arafat: A Failed National Movement focuses on the post-Arafat era, the dead leader permeates the pages and his legacy hangs like a specter over the Palestinian body politic. As Ghanem documents, Arafat’s actions and decisions as chairman of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) (1969-2004) and as president of the Palestinian Authority (1996-2004) served not only to consolidate his rule, but were directly responsible for the current crisis in the Palestinian national movement and its inability to achieve its goals.
A senior lecturer in the School of Political Science at the University of Haifa, Ghanem is unsparing in his assessment of the current state of Palestinian politics and unsentimental in his analysis. The Palestinian national movement has not only failed as the book’s subtitle declares, but is “disintegrating.” What follows, Ghanem argues, is fratricidal chaos.
Ghanem’s main argument is bleak. “The crisis among the Palestinians is so severe,” he writes, “that the street fighting and confrontations covered by the media barely scratch the surface” (p. x). He adds that “the Palestinians have actually lost the ability to function efficiently, internally or externally, as a single national group” (p. 173).
Drawing on primary and secondary sources in English and Arabic, Ghanem identifies three internal and external indicators that demonstrate that the Palestinian movement has failed. Internally, he argues, the movement has descended into “internecine struggle and internal collapse” (p. 18). More importantly, he contends that the movement has not achieved a single goal in its conflict with Zionism: it has not liberated Palestine, established an independent state, or even achieved a stable peace with Israel. Nor has Zionism been rejected internationally as a colonial movement. Finally, the stature of the Palestinian national movement in the Arab and international arenas has “plummeted” (p. 18).
What is the cause of this failure? Ghanem argues that the seeds were planted during the Oslo period (1993-2000). He asserts that a combination of factors have led to the “political bankruptcy” of the PA and the PLO (p. 12). These include the PLO’s shift from pursuing a comprehensive solution to a partial resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict as embodied by the Oslo accords, Arafat’s dominance over the national movement and the increased corruption under his leadership.
Palestinian Politics after Arafat picks up where works by Yezid Sayigh and Rashid Khalidi left off. But while Ghanem cites and references Sayigh’s Armed Struggle and the Search for State (1997), Khalidi’s The Iron Cage (2007) is notably absent. Ghanem also benefits from and draws upon his earlier critical examination of the Palestinian national movement and the PA in The Palestinian Regime (2001). In both books Ghanem’s analysis echoes many of Edward Said’s criticisms of Arafat and the PA, particularly those discussed in his edited volumes Peace and its Discontents (1996), The End of the Peace Process (2001), and From Oslo to Iraq and the Road Map (2005). Indeed, Ghanem substantiates many of Said’s claims of the cronyism, corruption and authoritarianism that pervaded the PA and became synonymous with Arafat’s regime.
In chapter 1, Ghanem addresses the influence of external factors on the Palestinian national movement, offering a compelling analysis of Israel’s “post-Oslo strategy.” Adopted in the wake of the failed Camp David Summit in 2000, he argues that Israeli policy toward the Palestinians under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon shifted from conflict resolution to conflict management. The key element of this strategy was the separation of the two populations through the unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the construction of Israel’s “separation wall” in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the existence of the PA allowed Palestinians to retain some measure of limited self-governance. Ghanem convincingly demonstrates that Israel’s goal was the establishment of a “Palestinian entity,” offering “more than autonomy and less than a state” (p. 36).
The reorientation of Israeli policy was driven by two related factors: first, Israel’s preoccupation with the “demographic threat” — in other words, that Palestinians will become the majority within the boundaries of historic Palestine. And second, the fear that Israel will be transformed into a binational state. Ghanem argues that in spite of Israeli efforts to ensure a Jewish majority, the higher birth rate of Palestinians portends the opposite, creating a constant source of “concern among Jewish politicians and academics interested in the character and identity of the state, prompting many of them to seek new ways of guaranteeing a Jewish majority” (p. 23). He demonstrates that Israeli academia, think tanks and the government often worked closely in researching and assessing strategies to deal with this issue. However, Israel’s post-Oslo strategy has been complicated by the parallel policies of increased settlement activity and the annexation of the Jordan River Valley. As a result, Israel’s goal of separation from the Palestinians is undermined by the greater desire for Palestinian land and resources.
In chapter 2, Ghanem discusses recent Israeli public opinion polls to demonstrate that the shift in Israeli policy has benefited from broad-based support. More importantly, these polls reveal that the maximum the Israeli public would be willing to concede in any peace agreement does not meet the minimum of Palestinian demands or fulfill their rights under international law. Thus, barring a dramatic shift in Israeli public opinion, the strategy adopted by the Palestinian leadership of negotiations accompanied by attempts to convince Israelis of their willingness to achieve peace is bound to fail.
The core of Palestinian Politics after Arafat focuses on the internal causes for the current state of affairs and their implications. In chapter 3, Ghanem analyzes Arafat’s successful effort to consolidate power first within the PLO and then the PA. He convincingly argues that the failures of the PA were rooted in the structure of the PLO and Arafat’s leadership of the organization, which “provide a partial explanation for both Palestinian achievements since the 1950s and also for the Palestinians’ failure to attain their national goals” (p. 71). Indeed, as Sayigh demonstrates, after the assassinations of Fatah’s cofounders and his closest advisors, Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad) and Salah Khalaf (Abu Iyad) in 1988 and 1991, respectively, Arafat had few rivals within Fatah or the PLO with the authority to challenge his decision-making. Therefore, with the decline of the leftist wing of the PLO by the end of the Cold War and the predominance of Fatah within the organization, Arafat was able to consolidate his rule over both.
Building on Sayigh’s Armed Struggle and the Search for State, Ghanem demonstrates that the Oslo accords and creation of the PA represented the logical conclusion of Arafat’s leadership of the PLO. In other words, the agreement could not have been signed if the PLO were truly a democratic and representative organization with a leadership that was elected by and responsive to its constituency or with functional independent institutions. Instead, the PLO’s quota system was exploited by Arafat “to guarantee passage of the decisions he supported and the selection of his confidants to important posts” (p. 72). Meanwhile, it allowed for representation of the different Palestinian political groups and “independents” in the Palestinian National Council (i.e., the Palestinians’ “parliament in exile”) and the PLO’s Central and Executive Committees based largely on their size. In reality, the independents were largely aligned with Fatah, further bolstering its weight within the PLO and enhancing Arafat’s power. The end result was that the PLO’s different legislative and executive organs “had no real power, a vacuum was created at the top of the power structure — a vacuum that was filled by one man, a single individual who had replaced the institution” (p. 73).
The implications of Arafat’s control over the national movement were evidenced after his death with the scission of the Palestinian body politic. While the election of Mahmoud Abbas as Arafat’s successor in 2005 appeared to ensure Fatah’s hold on power, Hamas’s victory under a banner of “Reform and Change” in the parliamentary elections a year later represented the most significant threat to Fatah’s nearly forty years of dominance over the national movement. The ensuing clashes led to a rift between the two organizations as well as between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip that has yet to be resolved. Ghanem asserts that the conflict between Fatah and Hamas is “substantial in every respect” and that it “relates to deep and fundamental political, social and cultural differences in approach between the two movements.” Overcoming these differences, he argues, will require “great effort” to resolve the conflict between the two organizations based on their mutual embrace of “democratic principles” (p. 143-144).
However, Ghanem is pessimistic that such a rapprochement is possible. He concludes that “new thinking” is required by Palestinians “about all of the options available to them in their internal affairs and their relations with Israel, the West and the Arab world” (p. 182). While the current crisis in the national movement can be directly attributed to the “choice of Arafat and the PLO to guide Palestinian affairs,” Ghanem opines that “it is hard to envision the various factions and currents in the Palestinian national movement taking a consensual and logical step in this direction, and therefore it is improbable that it can extricate itself from the crisis” (p. 183).
Palestinian Politics after Arafat is a welcome addition to the literature on the Palestinian national movement, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the Middle East peace process. It is written in a clear style that makes it accessible to both specialized and general audiences. Although the text does suffer from repetition and would have benefited from closer and more thorough editing, these minor flaws do not diminish the overall work. It is highly recommended for readers seeking a better understanding of the history and current state of Palestinian politics.
Six years after his death, Arafat’s ghost still haunts the Palestinian national movement. From the cult of personality he constructed to the institutions he established and the agreements he signed, Arafat’s influence was not only profound but enduring. Indeed, the politics of divide and rule, and governance through intimidation, wasteful duplication and destructive rivalries that Ghanem describes have been adopted by Arafat’s children — his former supporters and associates who are ubiquitous inside and outside of government and who have chosen to mimic his style of leadership. Thus, Arafat’s specter is likely to hang over yet another generation of Palestinians. If Palestinians are to find a way out of this crisis, they must begin not by glorifying the national movement but by demystifying and demythologizing its history, and conducting a frank assessment of its successes and failures. Palestinian Politics after Arafat is an important step in that direction.
Osamah Khalil is a PhD candidate in US & Middle East History at the University of California, Berkeley. This essay was originally published by H-Net Reviews and is republished with the author’s permission.
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Canada’s double standards
Yves Engler, The Electronic Intifada, 13 January 2011
Canada’s tax system currently subsidizes Israeli settlements that Ottawa deems illegal, however, the Conservative government says there’s nothing that can be done about it.
In June of last year, Guelph activist Dan Maitland emailed Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon concerning Canada Park, a Jewish National Fund of Canada initiative built on land Israel occupied after the June 1967 War. Three Palestinian villages (Beit Nuba, Imwas and Yalu) were demolished to make way for the park.
A few weeks ago Maitland received a reply from Keith Ashfield, Minister of National Revenue, who refused to discuss the particulars of the case but provided “general information about registered charities and the occupied territories.” Ashfield wrote that “the fact that charitable activities take place in the occupied territories is not a barrier to acquiring or maintaining charitable status.”
This means Canadian organizations can openly fundraise for settlements Ottawa (officially) deems illegal under international law and get the government to pay up to a third of the cost through tax credits for donations. To justify the government’s position, Ashfield cited a September 2002 Federal Court of Appeal case (Canadian Magen David Adom for Israel v. Minister of National Revenue), which reversed the Canadian Revenue Agency’s previous position.
The exact amount is not known but it’s safe to assume that millions of Canadian dollars make their way to Israeli settlements every year. In 1997, when it was more of a legal grey area, tax lawyer David Drache claimed that “there are hundreds of [Canadian] organizations … supporting organizations directly or indirectly beyond the Green Line,” referring to the internationally-recognized armistice line between Israel and the occupied West Bank.
In the late 1990s, Israel’s largest settler group, Yesha, raised more than $700,000 a year in Canada. When former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon visited in the mid-1990s, the Canadian Arab Federation’s Jehad Aliweiwi said he “left with more than $1 million in tax-deductible funds, with no secret as to the destination.” Through the 1990s the Press Foundation was probably the largest known source of funds for settlements, raising as much as $5 million annually for settlers in the occupied West Bank town of Hebron and in the occupied Golan Heights, which was captured from Syria in 1967.
Illegal settlements are not the only questionable activities in Israel that Canadians subsidize through their tax system. A mid-1990s survey found more than 300 registered Canadian charities with ties to Israel, a relatively wealthy country. Every year Canadians send a few hundred million dollars worth of tax-deductible donations to Israeli universities, parks, immigration initiatives and, more controversially, “charities” that aid the Israeli army in one way or another.
One example is Aid to Disabled Veterans of Israel or Beit Halochem (Canada), which brings soldiers singled out as heroes by the Israeli military on trips to Canada. Many Canadians, including the Charles R. Bronfman Foundation, support the Libi Fund — “The Fund For Strengthening Israel’s Defense.” In early 2008, Major Gil Chemke, a member of the Israel’s elite search and rescue team, toured the country on behalf of the Canadian Magen David Adom for Israel (CMDAI), which operates in the occupied West Bank. Established to assist wounded soldiers and the population during disasters, CMDAI has raised millions of dollars. Chemke drummed up financial contributions for CMDAI by showing “behind-the-scenes video footage of a rescue operation in Lebanon for a female air crew member whose helicopter was shot down by Hizballah” during Israel’s 2006 invasion of Lebanon.
Established in 1971, the Association for the Soldiers of Israel in Canada (ASI) provides financial and moral support to active duty soldiers. In 2009, ASI (Canada) — which provides tax receipts through the Canadian Zionist Cultural Association — and El Al airlines granted a 50 percent discount on flights to Israel from Canada for families of “lone soldiers” who join the Israeli military.
While it’s legal — and government will foot part of the bill — to finance charities linked to a foreign army responsible for numerous war crimes and settlements that contravene international law, Ottawa has made it illegal for Canadians to aid a hospital operated by the elected Hamas government.
Ottawa’s post-11 September 2001 terrorist list makes it illegal to financially assist Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, the Abu Nidal Organization, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, the Palestine Liberation Front, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and groups associated with these organizations. Only one Israeli group, the marginal Kahane Chai, is on the list.
On 25 December, Hamas criticized Canada for re-listing it a “terrorist” entity. “The decision is a clear bias to Israel,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum told Xinhua. “This encourages Israel to commit more crimes against the Palestinian people.”
Ottawa makes it difficult for Canadians to support many Palestinian groups all the while subsidizing expansionist and militaristic Israeli institutions. Canadians of good conscience should protest and demand change.
Yves Engler’s most recent book is Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid.
Thirteen homes and three school buildings destroyed by Israeli forces
Dkaika children outside their destroyed classroom
More than 13 homes and three school buildings were bulldozed this morning by occupation forces in the small Bedouin village of Dkaika near Yatta south of Hebron. One eye witness – an English teacher at the school – said “the Israeli army arrived at the village at around 7:30am with over fifty military vehicles and at least six bulldozers before forcibly removing the children from the school and destroying three classrooms.” He went on, “the children, some of whom are as young as seven years old, were crying and shouting at the soldiers to stop.”
In addition to the destruction wrought upon the school, ISM representatives were led by the crushed earthen tracks and violent gouge marks left by bulldozers to the tell tale piles of rubble and twisted steel which littered the surrounding area. If there had been any doubt that each had once been a home, then the hurriedly assembled mounds of personal possessions, furniture, and children’s toys which accompanied each pile of rubble surely testified to the fact that these were dwellings.
Furniture from the destroyed classrom in front of a crushed building
As it was, there were plenty of family members eager to testify themselves, and in the moments following the re-opening of the village’s only road, EAPPI and ISM members– who had been prevented by road blocks from accessing the scene – moved in to speak to those left homeless by the action.
When asked what reason was given for the demolition, the above witness, visibly upset, replied “they do not want us to live here, that is the reason. I would like to tell you that this community has been here since before the establishment of the Israeli [state]. They took most of our land during the Nakba and they would like to dismiss us from here completely”.
Israeli troops cross into Lebanon
Press TV – January 12, 2011
Lebanon’s army say Israeli troops have once again breached the country’s sovereignty, crossing into the Lebanese territory and kidnapping a civilian.
A statement released by the Lebanese army on Wednesday said that an Israeli patrol has crossed into the southern village of Rmeish and abducted a Lebanese shepherd.
“In a flagrant assault on residents of southern Lebanon, enemy troops crossed the technical fence south of the village of Rmeish and kidnapped a Lebanese man, whom they took back into the occupied territories,” the statement said.
The army says it has contacted the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which is tasked with monitoring the disputed Lebanon-Israel border, to free the Lebanese national identified as Sharbel Khoury, AFP reported.
The Israeli military, which frequently violates Lebanon’s airspace, territorial waters and border, has not yet commented on the incident.
The violations contravene United Nations Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the Israeli war on Lebanon in 2006.
The Lebanese government has submitted documentation to the UN proving that Israel has breached the provisions of the resolution on more than 7,000 occasions.
Hundreds displaced in village demolition
Ma’an | January 12, 2011
HEBRON — Three-hundred Palestinians were displaced Wednesday afternoon when their homes outside a village were torn down by Israeli military order, and witnesses said parts of a schoolhouse were also destroyed.
Odeh An-Najada, a local councilman for the Dakika village, on the Green Line southeast of the Hebron district, said four Israeli bulldozers accompanied by 30 military vehicles entered the area and began taking down the brick and mortar homes.
“They demolished everything in the area, the whole thing, they left no building for people to live in,” An-Nahada said, adding that he had called on the International Red Cross to come and provide shelter for the families for the night.
The director of the office of the Palestinian Authority ministry of education in southern Hebron, Fawzi Abu Hlayyil, said parts of the village school were taken down. The building, used as a preparatory school, contained six classrooms. A space shortage prompted villagers to add an additional room for students, which was taken down.
Villagers protesting the demolitions, including teachers from the local school, were dispersed and four were detained.
Calls to Israel’s Civil Administration, the body which hands out demolition orders for homes deemed illegally built, were not returned.
Hebron district Governor Kamil Hmeid described the demolition as part of Israel’s “ongoing escalation in the Hebron district,” following a mass hand out of demolition orders in the Ein Assy area of Halhoul, a town north of Hebron city, which took place on Jan 5.
Residents said Israeli authorities told them the buildings were slated for demolition because they were built without permission in Area C, under full Israeli planning control.
Area C makes up 60 percent of the West Bank, and Palestinian building is rarely approved by Israeli authorities.
Governor Hmeid said that some of the infrastructure in Dakika was funded by international donors, and he called on the donor countries to protect the money they invested from being rendered useless by Israeli demolition crews.
“Come to Hebron, and see the mass scale of the demolitions,” he invited.
The PA ministry of education condemned the demolition as an “ugly crime.”
Subhi Al-Kayid, the assistant undersecretary to the PA’s education minister, said the demolition was part of a “series of Israeli crimes and violations against the ministry of education.”
European diplomats recommend punitive action against Israel
Palestine Information Center – 11/01/2011
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — European diplomats in Jerusalem have filed a report recommending that the EU take punitive measures against Israel and recognize east Jerusalem as a capital for the Palestinians.
The diplomats, mostly general consuls to Jerusalem, after assessing the situation in the eastern part of the holy city called developments in the last few years “negative” in light of continued Jewish settlement activity, Palestinian home demolitions and evictions, and inequality in educational and medical services provided to the Palestinian makeup of the city.
The document says that the government’s cooperation with such groups as the Elad settlement association in archaeological excavations in the Silwan district is conclusive evidence that Israel is backing settlement activity in east Jerusalem.
The European diplomats recommended that EU politicians boycott Israeli ministries beyond the Green Line and products from east Jerusalem and other settlements as well as blacklist “violent settlers” in European countries.
In a similar development, the EU consuls are proposing that international observers be assigned to monitor Israeli demolition operations targeting Palestinian-owned structures in east Jerusalem.
High-profile Israeli politicians have stated that Israel will not allow European observers to monitor demolitions in east Jerusalem.
The move came in the wake of the demolition of the Palestinian-owned Shepherd Hotel in Sheikh Jarrah.
After Israel conquered and annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, a government agency, the Custodian of Absentee Property, took possession of the building. In the mid-1980s, it was sold to a corporation owned by American millionaire Irving Moskowitz, the financial angel of far-right Israeli groups intent on settling Jews in Palestinian neighborhoods inside and encircling the Old City.
Occupation of Iraq destroys women’s lives
Serene Assir, The Electronic Intifada, 10 January 2011
More than seven years after the US- and UK-led invasion of their country, Iraqis continue to endure an occupation that has systematically violated their rights to life, dignity, self-determination and economic development. The occupation has been and continues to be so destructive and so violent that one in four Iraqis are estimated to be dead or displaced. One in five Iraqis has been made a refugee or an internally displaced person (IDP).
In particular, the role and situation of women and girls has declined precipitously compared to prior to the invasion. From torture to rape to assassination, from forced separation for mixed couples to women and their children enduring the death of their husbands and fathers, from a loss of educational rights to expulsion from the workplace and public life, and from sexual slavery to forced flight or enforced disappearance, for the past seven years Iraqi women and girls have endured the most terrifying of fates. They are living at the mercy of an occupation that both seeks to terrorize them into submission, and to use them as objects for the terrorization of the whole of Iraqi society.
No security
Dr. Souad al-Azzawi, who authored a study on Iraqi women entitled “Deterioration of Iraq women’s rights and living conditions under occupation,” published in January 2008, told The Electronic Intifada: “The most significant loss that Iraqi women have suffered is a complete and total loss of security.” She explained that the loss of security entails both the loss of physical security and “the economic, social and civil securities Iraqi women were so accustomed to prior to the occupation.”
In fact, it appears that the loss of physical and other aspects of security have a Catch-22 effect on the lives of women. The lack of legal and institutional support for women by an Iraqi puppet government which is at best ineffective has meant that in the vast majority of cases the criminals, mafias, militias, death squads, US occupation forces and Iraqi police and army forces committing crimes against women are not held accountable for their actions. This has in turn encouraged the development of a situation characterized by lawlessness and criminality, in which women are prime targets. As such, many women have been forced to leave their jobs and quit their education, for fear that they may be the next victim of rape or assassination.
According to al-Azzawi, Iraqi women have had to resort to “the relative security of their homes,” often taking their children out of school too if they were the only parent able to accompany them there and back.
Echoing al-Azzawi’s words, an Iraqi refugee speaking on condition of anonymity said that she was forced to leave Iraq precisely because of death threats issued against her by militias who had found out she was actively working as a journalist seeking to expose the injustices taking place against women. Had she stayed in Iraq, the threats likely would have been fulfilled.
“Not only was I being targeted, but I was also without protection, given that Iraq has no government to speak of,” she explained. She added that “I could have been killed at any moment, and no one would have been held accountable for it. It was for one reason alone that I fled: because I had no choice.”
Criminal levels of poverty
The figures speak for themselves. According to a dossier on Iraqi women published by the BRussells Tribunal, prior to the invasion 72 percent of working women were government employees. The dismantlement of state institutions immediately after the invasion meant that these women became unemployed. Instability and ineffective institutions in Iraq render it impossible to pinpoint the total rate of unemployment today, but estimates range from 15 percent to 70 percent. The few stable jobs that exist, according to the dossier, are usually given to men, though a growing number of female-headed households means that many women need to take extraordinary risks in order to try and cater for their children (“Iraqi Women Under Occupation” [PDF]).
The same economic insecurity affects Iraqi refugee families. Aseer al-Madaien, the Protection Officer for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) – Syria, says that out of 139,000 registered Iraqis in Syria, 28 percent are households headed by women. In total, estimates for the total number of displaced Iraqis, including both refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs), range up to almost five million, according to the international organization Medecins Sans Frontieres, which believes that there are 2.5 million Iraqi IDPs and 2.3 million refugees.
IDPs suffer both extreme vulnerability and insecurity, as they seek refuge in the homes of relatives and friends, said Hana Al Bayaty, member of the Executive Committee of the BRussells Tribunal. Many of them are the victims of ethnic cleansing, whereby a country once free of sectarianism is increasingly witnessing the targeting of persons on the basis of their religion or ethnicity. Mixed marriages in these conditions are all too often broken up by force, according to a report published by the UN-affiliated IRIN humanitarian news agency (“Mixed Marriages confront Sectarian Violence,” 6 April 2006).
The majority of Iraqi refugees have headed to neighboring countries Syria and Jordan, where they are not allowed to work, as they are legally considered “guests.” In 2007, the UNHCR reported that an estimated 40 percent of Iraq’s middle class had fled the country. Not only have almost half of those with the qualifications and experience to help rebuild Iraq left the country, but they are also suffering from the most extreme form of disempowerment, according to Al Bayaty.
Al-Azzawi explained that “For the educated middle class, this situation is shattering as everything we have worked so hard to earn and build up over decades of war and sanctions is being brought down by military force before our very eyes.”
Unable to work legally, it is often refugee women who take upon themselves the burden and the risk of working as they are less likely to be asked for documentation on the streets of Amman, Damascus and beyond, and they thereby hope to be less likely to be deported.
Unemployment levels in Syria and Jordan, however, mean that even illegal work is hard to come by. It is because of this that the phenomenon of forced prostitution is becoming increasingly rife. The growing problem of sex trafficking is partly caused by poverty.
According to al-Azzawi, the lack of work permits, qualifications and opportunities “leads some women to prostitution in order to feed their children and their families.” In other cases, the sheer lack of protection faced by some women push them into prostitution. Problems in such cases include threats of kidnapping issued against women should they not accept to prostitute themselves. These threats are issued especially against women whose husbands are dead or missing. “The women of Iraq live in a very fragile situation as a result of the American occupation’s crimes,” al-Azzawi said.
Death, torture and enforced disappearance
No statistical reference can adequately convey the sheer suffering experienced by the people of Iraq, as a whole, from the genocidal sanctions period through the invasion and ensuing occupation. Current estimates place the number of dead at anywhere between 1.5 million and 2.5 million.
According to Iraqi human rights analyst and advocate Asma al-Haidari, “Up to one million Iraqis have been forcibly disappeared.” Behind the enforced disappearances are the US army, Iraqi government forces including the army and police, and al-Qaeda and other militias that operate freely across the country, according to a presentation given by Dirk Adriaensens, member of the BRussells Tribunal Executive Committee, at a London conference organized by the International Committee Against Disappearances on 9-12 December 2010. According to calculations by Adriaensens, based on UNHCR statistics, 20 percent of internally displaced Iraqi families have reported cases of missing children (“Enforced Disappearance. The Missing Persons of Iraq” [PDF]).
It is also understood that, given that there is a very real and justified fear of retaliation against families who report the disappearances of their loved ones, many others suffer in silence. Thousands of detainees, some of them in secret, illegal prisons, according to al-Azzawi, are women. Estimates published in 2008 by the Iraqi Parliamentary Women’s Committee and the Iraqi Ministry of Women’s Affairs indicate that between one and two million Iraqi women are widows.
Inside Iraq’s jails, legal or not, cases of torture and sexual abuse have been widely reported. Revelations by WikiLeaks published on 22 October 2010 were described by Iraqi activists such as Sabah al-Mukhtar, president of the Arab Lawyers’ Union, as just “the tip of the iceberg,” as he said on an Al-Jazeera English interview on 24 October. According to al-Azzawi, women are usually jailed on trumped-up charges of terrorism, where there is no proof and while there is no adequate legal system to ensure their right to a fair trial. “Many are awaiting execution,” al-Azzawi added.
Further, when it is the man who disappears, whether he is dead or missing, women and their families have to fend for themselves in a hellish situation. Out of this horror comes forth one of the more obtuse trends, inexistent in Iraq up until 2003, of families giving their daughters away in early marriage for fear of being unable to adequately support them.
One immediate effect of this phenomenon is the fact that girls aged 13, 14 and 15 sold into early marriage lose their right to education. As figures currently stand, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report published on 1 September 2010, for every 100 boys in school, there are only 89 girls (“Girls Education in Iraq 2010” [PDF]).
“Lots of those little girls are very bright and are willing to finish their education if they are allowed to,” said al-Azzawi.
Worse still is the flourishing of what are known as “pleasure marriages.” These are short-term marriages conducted out of court, whereby separation is also very simple. It is a practice that Iraqi women’s rights advocates describe as linked to prostitution, because of the wrongful abuse of the practice by men in power, often blackmailing fathers into giving their daughters away in a “pleasure marriage,” and also because once a girl or a woman has married in this way and has received alimony for her short-term commitment, she will find it very difficult to reintegrate back into her family.
“Many girls are forced into prostitution and ultimately sex trafficking this way,” al-Azzawi added.
Forced Islamization of society
It is deeply telling that Iraqi society is becoming forcibly Islamized by militias tied to the Iraqi puppet government, which is dependent upon the United States for its survival. Meanwhile, Washington claims to be fighting a war on Islamic terrorism. The reality, as is frequently the case, is the precise opposite. Previously a secular state, Iraqi society is becoming forcibly transformed into a theocracy. In such systems, women and girls inevitably lose.
The results of the proliferation of fundamentalist militias are varied. While reports of Christian women veiling in order to avoid attacks are troubling in the Iraqi context, what is potentially much worse is that the notion of an Iraqi state for all its citizens is fast disappearing. Not only does this mean that Iraqi girls are no longer safe on the streets; it also means that if the occupation fulfills its goals, Iraqi “career women” may be a thing of the past.
Al-Azzawi notes that “Economically the country has lost a huge, skilled working force, which is exactly what the occupation planned to do, and the lives of millions of working women and families were shattered.”
Considering that there is not a single right enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that the US occupation has not violated — as the International Initiative to Prosecute US Genocide in Iraq team found when working in 2009 to bring a legal case for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide against four US presidents and four UK prime ministers — it is amazing yet encouraging that the US occupation’s goals have failed.
Not only is the US administration under President Barack Obama still battling to maintain control over a country whose people resist in the name of their dignity and their love for Iraq, but many of the most outspoken and brilliant advocates for Iraqis’ rights in general are in fact women.
“I have much hope for Iraq,” said human rights advocate Asma al-Haidari, “Nothing will make me lose hope.”
Serene Assir is a Lebanese independent writer and journalist based in Spain.
Israeli forces shoot Palestinian at checkpoint
Ma’an – 08/01/2011
NABLUS — Israeli troops stationed at Hamra checkpoint east of Nablus on Saturday shot and killed a Palestinian man, medics said.
Onlookers identified the victim as 25-year-old Khaldoun Sammoudi, of Al-Yamun village near Jenin.
Palestinian Red Crescent medics said forces initially declared the area a closed military zone and ordered ambulances to stay 300 meters away.
An Israeli military spokesman said a man approached the checkpoint in a taxi, then got out of the vehicle and ran towards forces holding a suspicious object and shouting “Allah Akbar.” He did not heed orders to stop and forces followed operational procedures and shot him, the army official said.
The spokesman said the man was carrying a pipe bomb, and that the area was declared a closed military zone while soldiers neutralized it.
Forces also found an explosive device and a knife on the man’s body, he added.
When the man left the taxi, all the other passengers fled the scene, the spokesman said.
An eyewitness told Ma’an’s correspondent that Sammoudi stepped out of a car and approached the checkpoint in a hurry. Some of the soldiers ran away while another soldier ordered Sammoudi to stop and then opened fire at him, the witness said.
He added that soldiers stripped the man of his clothes and left him to bleed to death.
Onlookers said forces also violently beat a Palestinian man identified as Amir Al-Kharraz at the checkpoint. Al-Kharraz is a guard at a nearby park, witnesses said.
A military spokesman was not aware of the incident.
Less than a week ago soldiers shot and killed a 21-year-old Palestinian at the same checkpoint. A military spokeswoman said Ahmad Maslamani approached soldiers in an unauthorized lane carrying a glass bottle and did not heed orders to stop. Soldiers followed operational procedure and opened fire, she said.
Witnesses said the victim approached the checkpoint carrying a coca-cola can, a female soldier shouted at him and two male soldiers immediately opened fire. Medics said Maslamani’s body was riddled with bullets.
Earlier on Saturday, soldiers closed the Container Checkpoint east of Bethlehem and inspected Palestinian cars.
Following the shooting, Israeli forces erected a flying checkpoint at the entrance to the northern West Bank village of Talluza and inspected all cars and passengers.
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Iran UN ambassador calls for destruction of all nuclear weapons
Iran’s ambassador to the UN Gholamali Khoshroo
Press TV – March 29, 2017
Iran’s ambassador to the UN Gholamali Khoshroo has called for the total eradication of nuclear weapons.
Khoshroo reiterated Iran’s call during a UN conference aimed at creating a nuclear weapons ban treaty in New York on Tuesday.
“Iran, as a victim of chemical weapons, strongly feels the danger posed by the existence of weapons of mass destruction and is determined to engage actively in international diplomatic efforts to save humanity from the menace of nuclear weapons,” he said.
Khoshroo stressed that Iran is committed to its Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) obligations, which include negotiations based on effective nuclear disarmament measures.
He added that several countries continue to ignore international calls and treaties for nuclear disarmament and even continue to increase their nuclear stockpiles. “They do not have political determination to abandon doctrines of nuclear deterrence and nuclear terror,” he went on to say.
Iran’s UN ambassador noted that boycotting the talks by many countries, including the US, shows that the world’s nuclear powers are by no means committed to the eradication of nuclear arms. Britain and France were also among the some 40 countries that did not join the talks.
“We note that prohibition of nuclear weapons must be accompanied by the elimination of such weapons. There can be no doubt that without complete abolition of nuclear weapons, there will be no absolute guarantee against the danger of nuclear war and the use of such weapons,” Khoshroo added.
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