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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.

January 10, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Illegal Occupation, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

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.

January 8, 2011 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Israeli Soldier Killed Near Gaza Border

By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies – January 08, 2011

Israeli military sources reported that a soldier was killed by “friendly fire”, on Friday at night, during clashes that took place with Palestinian resistance fighters along the border with the Gaza Strip. Four soldiers were wounded, one seriously.

The sources stated that Israeli paratroopers exchanged fire with fighters who were trying to plant explosives on a border road used by the army, and that during the clashes, another military brigade accidentally fired rounds of live ammunition and mortars towards the soldiers killing one and wounding five others.

The wounded soldiers were airlifted to the Soroka Israeli hospital in Be’er Sheva. The extent of their wounds was not declared.

Following the clashes, Israeli soldiers and army choppers scouted the area searching for fighters and for explosives that could have been placed by the fighters.

The army also said that according to initial investigations, Palestinian fighters fired several mortars at soldiers, stationed at the Kissufim military base, and exchanged fire with them.

The National Resistance Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack, and said that the slain soldier and the four wounded were shot by Palestinian fire and not, as claimed by the army, by friendly fire.

Abu Khaled, spokesperson of the Brigades, said that the attack comes in retaliation to the ongoing Israeli aggression and the killing of Omar al-Qawasmy, 66 years old, who was killed while in his bed after being repeatedly shot by the army in al-Sheikh neighborhood in the southern West Bank city of Hebron.

On Friday evening, Israeli soldiers fired artillery shells into an area east of Al Buriej refugee camp in central Gaza. Israeli “Apache” helicopters also fired sounds of live ammunition into the area.

Palestinian sources reported that the attack targeted Juhr Ad Deek area causing excessive damage, no injuries.

Also, the Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, the armed wing of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), claimed responsibility for firing a mortar at soldiers invading Abu Al Ojein area, east of Khan Younis, in the southern part of the Gaza Strip.

January 7, 2011 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Security firm G4S confirms involvement in Israel’s occupation

Adri Nieuwhof, The Electronic Intifada, 7 January 2011

The Danish-British security firm G4S recently confirmed in a letter its involvement in the Israeli occupation and violations of international law — reported on last month by The Electronic Intifada.

After the publication of The Electronic Intifada’s report on 15 December 2010, the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre asked G4S to respond to the investigation as well as a 28 November 2010 article published by Press TV (“‘Firm sold torture instruments‘”).

Within a week G4S replied, confirming that it had withdrawn from contracts providing security officers to residential settlements in the West Bank in 2002. “However, we continue to serve major commercial customers, for instance supermarket chains, whose operations include the West Bank,” the company stated (the letter can be downloaded from the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre’s website).

G4S claims in its letter that the commercial clients in illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank serve the general public. The company wrote that contracts include the provision of security officers to protect the premises of “commercial clients who serve the general public” in the occupied West Bank. However, G4S fails to address that Israeli settlements serve an exclusively Jewish population and are built illegally on occupied Palestinian land.

By providing security services to illegal settlement businesses, G4S facilitates Israel’s violations of international law. In 2004, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) reaffirmed the illegality of the construction of the wall and settlement colonies in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem. According to the ICJ, construction activities should stop immediately and the wall and settlements be dismantled.

G4S tries to downplay its involvement by stating that the number of security officers deployed in the West Bank is “generally less than twenty and currently stands at eight.” However, violation of international law remains a violation, no matter the size.

G4S further attempts to evade responsibility by stating that it does “not carry out police or military-style patrols anywhere in the West Bank.” The company provides security officers to protect police facilities “from time to time,” but they do not perform any kind of law enforcement or public security role, the company stated. G4S also confirmed it provided security equipment, including X-ray machines and body scanners, with associated maintenance services, to the Israeli police, prison service and Ministry of Defense. In its letter the company adds, “We do not control, nor are we necessarily aware, where this equipment is deployed as it may be moved around the country.”

The feigned ignorance about where the equipment is deployed is contrary to the detailed information mentioned in a G4S promotional brochure it distributed this summer.

In the brochure, published by the Danish watchdog DanWatch, G4S describes the supply of a perimeter defense system for the walls around the Ofer prison compound and the installation of a central command room to monitor the entire Ofer compound. In addition, the company writes it also provided all the security systems in Ketziot prison and a central command room in Megiddo prison (G4S delivers technology to Israeli prisons,” DanWatch, 21 November 2010).

G4S boasts that the three prisons can detain 2,700-3,700 “security” prisoners — the majority of whom are Palestinians from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip illegally transferred to detention centers within Israel’s internationally-recognized boundary. International humanitarian law forbids an occupying power from transferring prisoners outside of the occupied territory and the conditions in Israeli prisons do not meet international legal standards. Accordingly, G4S’s involvement in the Israel Prison Service apparatus abets violations of international law.

G4S’s promotional material contradicts its claim that it does not know where its X-ray machines and body scanners are used. Who Profits? — a project of the Israeli Coalition of Women for Peace — has also documented that G4S luggage scanning equipment and full body scanners are used at checkpoints in the occupied West Bank towns of Qalandiya, Bethlehem and Irtah. G4S also provided full body scanners to the Erez checkpoint at Gaza. Who Profits? told The Electronic Intifada that this information is published in G4S’s own website and brochures.

The ICJ affirmed in 2004 that Israel’s wall and checkpoint regime in the West Bank impede Palestinians of “the right to work, to health, to education and to an adequate standard of living” and are contrary to international law.

G4S also revealed in its letter to the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre that it sells security equipment “with associated maintenance services.” In order to provide maintenance service, G4S presumably must know where the equipment is deployed. By providing maintenance service for years after the installment of the security equipment, G4S continues to facilitate Israel’s violations of international law.

Meanwhile, new research by Who Profits? shows that in 2009 G4S won a tender for providing central control rooms to all the prisons and detention facilities of the Israeli Prison Authority (“G4S Technologies will provide security systems for the prisons and the detention facilities of the Israeli Prison Authority,” G4S website). Therefore, G4S security equipment is deployed in every Israeli prison and detention facility.

G4S’s response to the revelations of its involvement in human rights violations shows the company is not heeding the responsibilities that come with its endorsement of the principles of the UN Global Compact. According to the first two principles of the compact — is a strategic policy initiative launched in 2000 for businesses that are committed to sustainability and responsible business practices — G4S should support and respect the protection of international human rights within its spheres of influence and make sure it is not complicit in human rights abuses.

G4S can expect to come under pressure from the growing boycott, divestment and sanctions movement until it untangles itself from Israel’s brutal occupation.

Adri Nieuwhof is a consultant and human rights advocate.

January 7, 2011 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Israel’s killing zone in Gaza

Max Ajl, The Electronic Intifada, 6 January 2011
Palestinian farmers in Gaza working in the area of Israel’s deadly “buffer zone.”

Ahmed Qudaih was skinny, in blue Converse sneakers and a black leather jacket, his mustache oddly making him look younger, not older, than his 27 years. His voice was even, his face rigidly composed, like human stone, as we sat down with him in the martyr’s tent in Khozaa, a rural village slightly to the east of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. Young men moved up and down the rows of plastic seats with brass coffee pots and tiny ceramic cups and platters of dates. Ahmed agreed to speak briefly about how the Israeli military had just murdered his 19-year-old brother Hassan Qudaih in the village’s borderlands.

Ahmed said that a few hours before sunset on 28 December, Hassan had entered the area where two nights before, there had been a firefight between the Palestinian resistance and Israeli soldiers, who were accompanied by several Apache helicopters and tanks. During the melee, the soldiers killed Issa Abu Rok and Muhammad al-Najjar, fighters from the al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. They were also members of Hassan and Ahmed’s extended family. Hassan entered the area to look around, to search through it for anything that had been left behind after the bodies had been removed.

Ahmed said that a sniper sitting in a jeep abutting the border shot Hassan in the leg. Hassan treated himself, partially stanching the blood flowing from the wound. And then, according to Ahmed, “the [Israeli army] let him bleed slowly for the subsequent two hours, preventing any emergency vehicles, or his friends, from reaching him.”

His friends made repeated attempts to get close to Hassan, but were repelled by shots from the Israeli border patrol, and eventually incapacitated by a sort of “gas, which made them unconscious,” Ahmed said. Emergency vehicles from the Palestinian emergency services also repeatedly attempted to coordinate with the Israeli army to evacuate Hassan, but they were denied permission to do so, while Hassan continued to bleed, Ahmed explained.

After some time, Ahmed said, a beleaguered Hassan “took out his phone and tried to call for help.” Ahmed said it was at that point that the Israeli military “shelled him from a border-area tank, decapitating him.” Ahmed speculated that perhaps they tracked Hassan’s phone signal to the body. Hassan died instantly, his head apparently severed from his body.

Ahmed explained that “The area where they killed my brother is flat, free of any obstacles that could have blocked their view. The soldiers must have clearly seen that Hassan was a civilian, without any weapons, and shot anyway.”

A family photograph of Qudaih Hassan.

Ahmed showed us a picture of Hassan, as well as his shrapnel-damaged money case. He looked in the picture precisely like the young man he was, barely out of boyhood — frighteningly young — a stand-in for the stunningly young population of Gaza, more than 50 percent of which is under 18, and a wrenching reminder that war and siege on Gaza has meant war and siege on children.

Initial press reports, repeating information issued by the Israeli military spokespersons’ office, put Hassan amongst four other youth “planting explosives at the security fence.” However, subsequent investigations showed otherwise.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights reports that the five youth were roughly 300 meters from the fence, just on the edge of the “buffer zone” — the no-go area imposed by Israel covering a wide swath of land on the Gaza side of the boundary with Israel, in the east and north — when Israeli firing began. Relatives and neighbors agree: Hassan was unarmed and shot without provocation other than his presence in Israel’s unilaterally-declared “buffer zone.”

That buffer zone ruinously affects Gaza residents living in areas like Khozaa. Khozaa, and the whole rural area east of Khan Younis — which includes the towns and villages of Abasan al-Kabir, Abasan al-Saghira and al-Farrahin — have been the subject of numerous incursions, demolitions, shelling and shootings over the past several years, occurring with an increasing frequency in recent months. Homes with any exposure to the boundary with Israel are pocked with hundreds of bullet holes, and children are barred by their parents from playing in areas which are within the line-of-sight to the boundary after dusk.

Officially, the buffer zone is 300 meters wide, at least according to the leaflets the Israeli military dropped on all of Gaza’s hinterlands on 19 May 2009, showing a map of the Gaza Strip with clearly demarcated no-go areas. Unofficially, however, it extends as far as the bullets from Israeli snipers fly before they hit something.

According to a report put out by the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 29 percent of Gaza’s arable farmland is inaccessible due to the belt of forbidden or dangerous land, which extends from 0.5-1 kilometer on the eastern frontier and 1.8 to 2 kilometers on the northern frontier.

In the southern governorates, the imposition of the buffer zone has hit agricultural production hard. For example, in the Khan Younis area, the administrative area of which includes the smaller zones to its east, agriculture and fishing-related activities plummeted from 24 percent of all jobs in the second quarter of 2007 to 7.2 percent in the third quarter of 2009.

If not enforced by physically present soldiers armed with sniper rifles, it is enforced by women soldiers manning remote-controlled motion-sensing machine gun turrets. The landscape there is marked by ditches, peppered by broken clumps of barbed wire. It’s a tableau of exposed dirt and sliced-off irrigation tubes. It looks like the war zone that it frequently is.

And soldiers often fire at anything that enters the buffer zone. Indeed, repeated calls to the Israeli military spokespersons’ office to ask how they made the determination that Hassan was a “militant” either were met with unfulfilled promises to call back shortly, or the response that “we can’t reveal that information for security reasons.” Nor has the Israeli military issued a correction in response to the repeated queries.

And the assault continues apace. Abd Alazeer Yousef Abu Rijla, Hassan’s uncle and the owner of the land where the young man was killed, described how on 29 December Israeli armor-plated bulldozers entered their farmland in Khozaa and ripped up the remainder of the crops growing there. The total area destroyed comes to about four dunums, or roughly 4,000 square meters. “We cannot go there anymore, even though we are three families that depend on that area,” Abu Rijla said. Although he said that he needed to return to his land, the area was far too dangerous for the time being.

Fifty-nine Palestinians were killed in Gaza by the Israeli military last year, 24 of them civilians, most in the buffer zone. The number of wounded — 220 — has been ten times that, with approximately forty of them occurring since the beginning of November. The tempo of rockets fired from Gaza has increased in response to ongoing Israeli provocations and pummeling, as well as the need to resist the 42-month-long siege.

Meanwhile, the next war slides in and out of view, as Israeli politicians and generals openly discuss timing and strategy. General Gabi Ashkenazi said that the Israeli military “holds the Hamas terrorist organization solely responsible for any terrorist activity emanating from the Gaza Strip. We hope that the security situation in the south does not deteriorate, however the IDF [Israeli army] is preparing for any scenario” (“Ashkenazi: We’ll be ready if Gaza tensions escalate,” The Jerusalem Post, 27 December 2010).

Indeed, a cable released by WikiLeaks, dated 15 November 2009, confirms that planning for the next incursion began even while the Palestinians of Gaza were still sifting through the rubble of the winter 2008-09 invasion. Ashkenazi told a visiting American Congressional delegation that “I am preparing the Israeli army for a large-scale war,” likely against Hamas and Hizballah (“Israeli army chief was preparing for ‘a large scale war’,” Agence France Presse, 2 January 2011).

A few think this is just posturing, meant to tamp down rocket fire to a more tolerable level and more importantly, to incite massive and paralyzing fear amongst Gaza’s population. If so, perhaps it has worked: the resistance groups recently agreed to cease rocket fire for the time being, while most everyone I talk to in the streets worries that Israel will commemorate the biennial of the 2008-09 Gaza invasion by repeating it, while they grow tortuously frustrated by the stalled peace process.

“We are trapped here, and upset … there is nothing,” a meat seller in the middle class Gaza City neighborhood of Tel al-Hawa told me, before giving me a ride home. Meanwhile, the subdued roar of F-16s is audible nearly daily here and there in the Gaza Strip, while on the horizon grey Israeli warships hulk in the steel blue sea and Israeli drones buzz overhead in the washed-out sky — watching, waiting, preparing and gathering information for the next massacre from the north.

All images by Max Ajl.

Max Ajl is a doctoral student in development sociology at Cornell, and was an International Solidarity Movement volunteer in the Gaza Strip. He has written for many outlets, including the Guardian and the New Statesman, and blogs on Israel-Palestine at www.maxajl.com.

January 6, 2011 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | Leave a comment

New Settlement Plan to Split Silwan in Two

By Alessandra Bajec – IMEMC & Agencies – January 06, 2011

A new settlement project in Silwan will see the Jerusalem neighborhood split in two parts, a Silwan committee official revealed to Ma’an News on Thursday.

The new development plan is set for 5 dunums of land, some of which incorporate the Silwan valley, a fertile area situated southeast of the Old City walls, a spokesman for the Land and Real Estate Defense Committee said.

Fakhri Abu Diab, head of the Committee, noted that the development for the zone would include the construction of public buildings, a complex of swimming pools and leisure areas. He also said he disclosed the new plan would involve the demolition of 30 homes, eight of which are in the Silwan area, and another 22 nearer the spring. Abu Diab warned saying after the demolitions “settlers will be in full control of the area.”

The area, also known as the Valley of Jehosaphat or Kideron Valley, includes a spring, identified as Job’s Well. Its name originates from a passage in the Quran stating that a spring burst forth where God commanded Job to stamp his foot. The spring is estimated to be over 100 meters deep.

Earlier in 2009, Jerusalem municipality announced plans to demolish more than 20 houses in Silwan, near Ayin Silwan, a spring and water resource for the community, transforming the neighborhood into a park, the King’s Garden.

January 6, 2011 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Israel Violated Lebanon’s Sovereignty 7,000 Times in 2010

Al-Manar – 06/01/2011

Lebanon Foreign Minister Ali Shami uncovered in remarks published Thursday by the Kuwaiti daily al-Anbaa that Israel had committed 7,000 violations of Lebanese sovereignty in 2010.

“Concerns in Lebanon today are due to Israeli intervention,” Shami said. Shami, nonetheless, voiced optimism over reaching a solution to the Lebanon crisis by Syria and Saudi Arabia.

The United Nations on Wednesday declined Lebanon’s request to protect the country’s natural gas reserves by demarcating its maritime border with Israel.

Shami sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon last Tuesday urging him to prevent Israel from exploiting Lebanon’s oil and maritime wealth. He presented the UN with maps to support Lebanon’s facts regarding these apparent borders.

But UN spokesman Martin Nesirsky said in response to the request that the international body was not prepared to intervene in the dispute. The United Nations demarcated the land border separating Israel and Lebanon in 2000, but there is no official naval border.

“Security Council Resolution 1701 does not include delineating the maritime border,” Nesirky said. “We are talking about two different things – coastal waters and a disputed maritime border.”

January 6, 2011 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | Leave a comment

Umm al-Fahm neighborhood organizes general strike in response to home demolitions

By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC News – January 06, 2011

After the Israeli government demolished a 3-story building Tuesday in the neighborhood of Umm al-Fahm in East Jerusalem, the residents of the neighborhood declared a general strike in protest of Israel’s demolition policy.

Umm al-Fahm has been at the center of a series of recent demolitions by Israeli authorities, as it is located in an area slated for takeover by the Israeli Jerusalem municipality as part of the ‘E1 Jerusalem Plan’ to ‘Judaize’ East Jerusalem.

All of the businesses in the neighborhood observed the general strike, which began Wednesday morning, and remained closed throughout the day in protest.

Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem have markedly increased over the last year, with Israeli settlers moving into the area after Palestinian residents have been forcibly removed in many cases.

In response to the ongoing demolitions, the residents of Umm al-Fahm organized non-violent demonstrations, protest tents and strikes to challenge the destruction of their homes.

The Palestinian Minister of Housing in the Gaza Strip, Dr. Yousef Al-Mansi, condemned the Israeli demolition policy in a statement issued after the latest home demolition in Umm al-Fahm on Tuesday — a demolition which left a dozen family members homeless.

January 6, 2011 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

Palestinian businesses demolished in East Jerusalem

Ma’an – 06/01/2011

JERUSALEM — Israeli authorities on Wednesday demolished the businesses of a Palestinian resident northeast of Jerusalem, witnesses said.

Forces destroyed two garages, a car wash and building materials belonging to Abed Al-Aziz Al-Khatib, a resident of Hizma.

The buildings provided the main source of income for Al-Khatib’s 50-member family, he said.

In a report released Tuesday, Israeli rights group Ir Amim noted a sharp increase in home demolitions in occupied East Jerusalem, a move it said was intended to drive Palestinian residents out.

Israel says it demolishes buildings constructed without a permit. But Palestinian residents say such permits are nearly impossible to obtain.

At the same time in the southern West Bank, Israeli forces handed a number of demolition orders to residents of the Ein Assy area in Halhul south of the West Bank city of Hebron, locals said.

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.

Locals said most of the homes to be demolished have been inhabited for many years, and that one of the buildings was a Palestinian Authority civil defense center.

Israel’s Civil Administration could not be reached for comment by phone.

January 6, 2011 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Israeli police raid leftist homes

By Mya Guarnieri | Ma’an | 05/01/2011

TEL AVIV, Israel — Israeli activists who participate in protests against their country’s separation barrier came under state attack on Wednesday, with special forces entering homes in Tel Aviv.

Israeli special police forces showed up outside one home in central Tel Aviv, shared by a number of left-wing activists. After spending some time outside the residence, forces attempted to enter and conduct a search. Activists said that they were not shown a search permit and refused to submit to the search.

A spokeswoman for the activists, who requested not to be identified, quoted a witness to the incident, who said “there was an aggressive attempt to do a search without a search warrant,” and speculated that the attempt may have been connected to those involved in a protest outside the residence of the US ambassador on 1 January. Protesters gathered outside the building in protest of what were reported to be US-made tear-gas canisters whose fumes killed a Palestinian protester the day before.

“It’s not clear whether it was in connection to the episode at the embassy or if it was the private initiative of the [israeli] police. Their excuse was that they suspected [someone in the house] of holding drugs,” the witness said.

The move comes amidst a general crackdown on left-wing activities. In recent weeks, the Shabak, Israel’s internal security service, has been calling protesters asking them to come in for “friendly chats.” All those who have reported receiving the calls have refused, since by law they are not required to comply with the requests unless they receive an official summons from the police.

Last week, a Tel Aviv court sentenced the prominent left-wing activist Johnathan Pollak to three months in jail for his role in a small, non-violent protest held in Tel Aviv against the Israeli siege on Gaza. Pollak was the only protester who was arrested for the demonstration, which was held in 2008, leading many observers to believe that Pollak is being singled out and punished for his continuing activism, and role as the spokesman for the West Bank’s Popular Organizing Committee, which issues news and testimony from the village of Bil’in.

Earlier in December 2010, Matan Cohen, an Israeli who is active in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and is studying in the United States, was detained for several hours in Ben Gurion International Airport upon return to Israel. His luggage was searched and officials told him he was suspected of being involved in “hostile terrorist activities.”

Cohen reported that while he has been questioned briefly upon leaving the country he has never been detained upon arrival.

“This is definitely a step up in the level of political repression against anti-apartheid activists in general, and BDS activists in particular,” Cohen remarked.

January 5, 2011 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

Will Zuma’s Foreign Policy on Palestine Take a Leap Forward?

By Iqbal Jassat – Palestine Chronicle – January 2, 2010

Pretoria – If Karima Brown is correct in her evaluation of President Jacob Zuma’s canny ability to gain ascendancy despite teetering on the brink, would it be an unreasonable expectation to have him propel South Africa to take a more hands-on approach regarding apartheid Israel?

I raise this question in respect of what is generally perceived to be South Africa’s weak and indecisive foreign policy that, barring occasional censure of Israeli conduct, seems to be largely silent and ineffective.

Brown, a highly respected journalist and commentator, in reviewing Zuma’s troubled past, points out how he bounces back to not only providing leadership to a fractured alliance, but also to effectively marginalize threats from a variety of internal threats.

Nevertheless, this otherwise fine analysis lacks a significant dimension: Zuma’s foreign policy!

Given that our advocacy work revolves around issues of Islamophobia and a number of themes related to the “war on terror” and the manner whereby rogue states such as Israel exploit these to shield their cowardly oppression from public scrutiny, the Media Review Network has always maintained that South Africa’s foreign policy initiatives to assist Palestine have been inadequate.

Current developments in the region along with the right-wing Netanyahu regime’s to scuttle America’s “peace” endeavours, makes an independent intervention by the Zuma presidency imperative and urgent.

Some cynics may think it ridiculous to imagine Zuma succeeding while powerful America cannot! Others may argue that it’s unthinkable for any developing country to arouse the wrath of Zionist lobbies that wield significant clout in the corporate environment. Yet other skeptics may wonder why on earth South Africa would venture into territory that may result in severe backlash not only from Israel, but also from so-called “frontline” Arab states whose frontline status derives from capitulating to the apartheid regime!

Notwithstanding the mythical creation of a wide array of convoluted and complex issues, I am convinced that a greater number of people require South Africa’s political, business and religious leadership – along with civil society and social movements – to reaffirm their collective moral authority by demanding the end of Israel. Indeed by being categorical in this demand insist too that all the inhabitants of Israel, the Occupied Territories and the millions of Palestinian refugees reclaim their right to live in equality and dignity within a single democratic state.

It’s a paradigm unique to South Africa and thus easier for leadership to undertake. After all it required the end of South Africa during the apartheid era for a new country to emerge wherein a Bill of Rights and Constitution guarantee life, liberty and more to all its citizens.

Demanding that Israel de-links from ideological values as abhorrent as apartheid and abandons Bantustan strategies whereby Palestinians are hostage to perpetual oppression could be an elementary, yet essential initial step. If it’s true that today one cannot find any South African who rationalizes apartheid’s legitimacy, then surely it ought not be difficult for Zuma to speak on behalf of the entire country in denouncing apartheid Israel and her repugnant human rights violations!

If anti-apartheid campaigns were initiated in Europe and elsewhere by the African National Congress [ANC] to successfully isolate racism and punish its perpetrators through sporting and cultural boycotts, it is nor far-fetched to advocate that similar campaigns be orchestrated and led against Israel today by the ruling party being the ANC.

During 1996, two years into the Nelson Mandela presidency, Edward Said expressed hope that the unworkability of Oslo embodied the end of the two-state solution. The challenge he identified was to find a peaceful way in which Jews, Muslims and Christians could coexist as equal citizens in the same land.

Fourteen years later, with Zuma having consolidated his leadership, it is an opportune time for him to chart a decisive foreign policy designed to urgently end repressive Israeli conduct and restore justice for Palestinians.

As Said would say: “The time has come to put Palestine back in the center as an ideal for individual action and individual commitment to principle in the same way that Mandela’s actions and principles inspired the anti-apartheid movement”.

Indeed, capitulation by the Obama administration has signaled that the time for South Africa to adopt a new policy towards Palestine has arrived.

– Iqbal Jassat is chairperson of the Media Review Network (MRN), an advocacy group based in Pretoria, South Africa. He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Visit: http://www.mediareviewnet.com.

January 5, 2011 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Progressive Hypocrite | Leave a comment

Israeli troops– which killed 176 students, teachers in Gaza war– now raid Jenin university dorms

Ma’an 03/01/2011

JENIN — Israeli forces briefly detained one man after they entered the a university residence in Jenin, telling students they were searching for wanted Palestinians.

Soldiers also erected checkpoints around the city, targeting three Jenin-area villages.

Eight military units entered a dorm housing students from the Arab American University, onlookers estimated, but a security guard said he would not allow soldiers to enter rooms in the female dormitory.

When the soldiers reached the women’s dorm, a security guard prevented their access, witnesses said, [the soldiers] then detained him for over an hour.

Residents said troops also raided Kafr Ra’i and Fahma villages southwest of Jenin. Further, the army installed two checkpoints – one between Rummana and Zububa villages west of the city and another between Zabda village and the university, locals said.

An army spokeswoman said one new checkpoint had been installed near Zububa, but that it was later removed. She was not immediately familiar with raids in the area but said she would look into it.

No further detentions were reported.

January 4, 2011 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

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