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Gaza imports held at port for 4 years

Israeli occupation authority still holding hundreds of cargo containers belonging to Palestinian traders

Ma’an – 18/07/2010

Gaza – Israeli authorities have yet to release Gaza-bound goods sequestered at Israeli seaports for over four years despite reportedly easing the terms of its blockade, independent lawmaker Jamal Al-Khoudary said Sunday.

Al-Khoudary, who also heads the Popular Committee Against the Siege, issued a statement saying containers imported by Palestinian merchants since Israel imposed its blockade have yet to receive their goods.

Detained at Israeli ports, merchants are forced to pay considerable fines despite legally importing the goods, the lawmaker said.

Israel continues to ban the entry of raw materials, Al-Khoudary added, leading to the continued closure of Gaza’s factories and forcing thousands into unemployment.

The legislator described Israel’s change in its siege policy as “nothing more than propaganda” and “marginal steps which do not have any positive influence on Gaza’s population.”

Al-Khoudary called for the opening of all crossings into Gaza, the free flow of goods, raw and for construction, the opening of a sea passage, and safe passage for Palestinians traveling between Gaza and the West Bank.

Following international pressure to lift its blockade of after six aid vessels were raided by navy forces on May 31, the Israeli cabinet published a list of banned goods for import and said it would be allowing previously barred items in.

EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, who arrived in Gaza on Sunday, called on Israel for a “full and effective implementation of the new Israeli policy to improve the lives of the people of Gaza and meet their needs for humanitarian and commercial goods.”

The EU official further said improving the economic situation in Gaza “is not simply a matter of letting in aid – it is a matter of revitalizing the local economy.”

“For a fundamental change, private sector development and commercial activity, including exports, will be crucial,” Ashton said, expressing hope that the crossings’ capacity would be expanded.

July 18, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | Leave a comment

How Netanyahu wrecked the peace process

By Paul Woodward on July 16, 2010

When Barack Obama said last week, “I believe Prime Minister Netanyahu wants peace,” the president either revealed himself to be a much bigger fool than he is generally regarded, or, thought he must be addressing fools if he imagined his declaration would be taken seriously, or and most likely, assumed everyone reporting his words would know they were horse shit yet no one would be so rude as to point out the fact.

When Netanyahu in 2001 said, “America is a thing you can move very easily,” he was speaking the plain truth that every Israeli leader knows and every American president is ashamed to admit.

Liel Leibovitz at Tablet Magazine reports:

A newly revealed tape of Netanyahu in 2001, being interviewed while he thinks the cameras are off, shows him in a radically different light [from the way he recently presented himself at the White House]. In it, Netanyahu dismisses American foreign policy as easy to maneuver, boasts of having derailed the Oslo accords with political trickery, and suggests that the only way to deal with the Palestinians is to “beat them up, not once but repeatedly, beat them up so it hurts so badly, until it’s unbearable” (all translations are mine).

According to Haaretz’s Gideon Levy, the video should be “Banned for viewing by children so as not to corrupt them, and distributed around the country and the world so that everyone will know who leads the government of Israel.”

Netanyahu is speaking to a small group of terror victims in the West Bank settlement of Ofra two years after stepping down as prime minister in 1999. He appears laid-back. After claiming that the only way to deal with the Palestinian Authority was a large-scale attack, Netanyahu was asked by one of the participants whether or not the United States would let such an attack come to fruition.

“I know what America is,” Netanyahu replied. “America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction. They won’t get in their way.” He then called former president Bill Clinton “radically pro-Palestinian,” and went on to belittle the Oslo peace accords as vulnerable to manipulation. Since the accords state that Israel would be allowed to hang on to pre-defined military zones in the West Bank, Netanyahu told his hosts that he could torpedo the accords by defining vast swaths of land as just that.

“They asked me before the election if I’d honor [the Oslo accords],” Netanyahu said. “I said I would, but … I’m going to interpret the accords in such a way that would allow me to put an end to this galloping forward to the ’67 borders. How did we do it? Nobody said what defined military zones were. Defined military zones are security zones; as far as I’m concerned, the entire Jordan Valley is a defined military zone. Go argue.”

July 16, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

‘No comment’ on arbitrary treatment

Ma’an – 16/07/2010

Qalqiliya: A father of five from Azzun Atma village in the northern West Bank was told by Israeli soldiers manning the single civilian crossing into the area that on Tuesday, 50kgs of flour was too much and he could not bring it home.

Hassen Mahmoud Qadus was also told to leave two kilograms of meat, purchased for his family, at the checkpoint to rot. The quantity of meat, a soldier told him, was above what was permitted for personal consumption.

“There are such regulations in place,” a representative for the Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories told Ma’an on Wednesday, explaining that if residents of the Qalqiliya-area village want to bring goods into their village to sell, they must get a permit, bring them in via a crossing linking the village with Israel, and pay taxes on the goods.

Azzun Atma, with a population of 1,670, is trapped on the west side of Israel’s separation wall, but residents are prohibited from accessing Israel. Road barriers were constructed to the south of the village, and the illegal Israeli settlements to the east – Sha’are Tiqwa – and to the west – Oranit – constructed perimeter fences blocking movement from all access points except the Azzun Atma checkpoint pierced into the separation wall to the north of the village.

“You will have to ask the army,” the COGAT representative told Ma’an, when asked about the decision to prevent Qadus from bringing home the quantities of flour and meat.

When distributing aid to Palestinian refugees, who make up 4% of the residents in Azzun Atma, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East distributes 50-kilogram bags of flour, five kilograms of rice, five kilograms of sugar, two liters of cooking oil, one kilogram of powdered milk and five kilograms of lentils. The quantities are distributed to families every three months for personal consumption.

An Israeli military source explained that the decision to deny Qadus permission to bring in the food “could have been the independent decision of a soldier based on the situation,” but directed the question to the military’s Central Command.

On Thursday, a second source said the matter was “more complicated” than it appeared, and came back with “no comment” on the situation of Qadus.

Asked if the military could provide the guidelines set out for villagers delineating amounts of goods for personal consumption versus for commercial use, the military took 24-hours to return with an official statement of “no comment.”

Speaking with Ma’an’s reporter in the village, residents of Azzun Attma appealed for international intervention, asking that they be permitted to move freely in and out of their village and to transport food supplies from the city of Qalqiliya and neighboring towns back to their homes without harassment.

July 16, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Israel imprisoned my father for nonviolently resisting the occupation

Saeed Amireh writing from Nilin, occupied West Bank, Live from Palestine, 16 July 2010

On 12 January 2010 my father Ibrahim was arrested by the Israeli army and sentenced to two years in prison for organizing and participating in nonviolent protests against the Israel’s wall in the occupied West Bank. The wall cuts us off from our land and our olive groves, robbing our family of its livelihood.

To date there have already been 15 court hearings. We feel the Israeli occupation bureaucracy is deliberately delaying court proceedings. This creates an additional layer of punishment for my father and for his family. At each hearing, he must wait from 6am to 2pm in a hot room without food or water. Once each hearing begins he is tired, hungry and thirsty.

My father has been charged with the following offenses:

Being present in a declared military zone. The “military zone” is actually our olive groves, which Israel declared a military zone, once they started building the wall. The continued construction of the wall is a clear violation of the July 2004 International Court of Justice ruling declaring it illegal under international law.

Organizing illegal and violent demonstrations. My father is a strong opponent to violence and in fact has discouraged others from reacting violently whenever we have been attacked by the Israeli military.

Incitement to throw stones and use other means of violence. The Israeli authorities claim that my father paid money to demonstrators to throw stones at soldiers, their jeeps and the wall. This charge is completely absurd. After my father first got involved with the nonviolent protests in 2008, the Israeli authorities revoked his work permit. Since then he has been unemployed and struggles to put enough food on the table for my six siblings, our mother and myself. To claim that he was paying others to throw stones or cause damage to the wall mocks the terrible daily reality our life and the lives of other Palestinians living under occupation.

All of these charges are based on the forced confessions of two young men from Nilin, one of them mentally ill.

Mostly, my father is worried about us, his family. Not only because it is even harder now, without him, to cover our bare necessities, but also because our family is being intimidated regularly by the Israeli military. They have raided our house already 25 times in the middle of the night, eight times after my father was arrested. Sometimes they just come to harass, mock and threaten us. Other times they come with dogs, unleash them inside the house, rummage through the house and cause a great deal of damage. Due to the repeated abuse we have endured, both of my five-year-old twin brothers are terrified and suffer from nightmares.

My father wishes for nothing but peace and freedom and he believes that a lasting peace can only be reached with peaceful methods. In his opinion, violence will only add to the hatred and confusion and further worsen the situation of Palestinians living under occupation. This is why he taught us not to consider violence a solution in our struggle to restore our rights.

However, he does believe that it is our duty to protest a terrible wrong that destroys the very existence of the inhabitants of Nilin village. Hence, when Israel started marking the course of the wall that led straight through our olive groves in May 2008 stealing a third of the village’s land, the inhabitants came together and formed the Nilin Popular Committee Against The Wall. The Popular Committee nonviolently resists the construction of the wall.

The Popular Committee chose my father to be part of the leadership as well as its official representative, because they want the world to see the truth about us: we are peaceful people who reject violence and we do not intend to harm anybody. We believe in freedom, peace and justice for every human being on earth and we dream to spread it from Nilin throughout the entire world.

We started with our protests on 27 May 2008, walking toward the bulldozers that were uprooting our olive trees. We walked with our hands raised, so that the Israeli soldiers could see that we were unarmed. Initially, our protests were successful and we managed to delay the construction. Soon Israeli forces started to shoot sound bombs, tear gas canisters, rubber bullets and even live ammunition to disperse our peaceful demonstrations.

Since the protests started, five persons have been killed by Israeli soldiers, including a 10-year-old child, Ahmed Moussa, and more than 500 individuals have been detained. We have endured curfews, destruction of our property, snipers shooting demonstrators in their legs from the roofs of houses in Nilin. All of these acts of repression are intended to to discourage villagers from participating in the nonviolent protests. My 12-year-old sister Sammer has been shot in her hand with live ammunition simply for participating in the protests. My 10-year-old sister Rajaa was hit in her leg by a sound bomb when she tried to prevent snipers from climbing on our rooftop to shoot at other villagers.

Nilin, our village, our home, is being turned into an open-air prison. The current entrance to the village will be closed, and will be replaced by a tunnel that will be built under Route 446 — a road which only Jewish settlers are allowed to use. The tunnel will not only divide Nilin into two parts. It will also give the Israeli military the power to decide when and if they will open or close the gate, and therefore cut us all off from the outside world.

On Monday 12 July, my father appeared in court again. The Ofer Military Court sentenced my father to 11 months and 15 days in prison and a fine of 9,000 shekels ($2,330) with a prohibition from joining future protests. To avoid staying in prison my father pleaded guilty, otherwise he would stay in jail longer and the authorities would continue to postpone the hearing. We have been given two months to pay the 9000 shekels, but have no means to pay this amount. If we do not pay the fine then my father’s sentence will increase to 20 months and 15 days.

Together with my father, two more members of the Popular Committee, Hassan Mousa and Zaydoon Srour, each received the same sentence as my father. Their families are undergoing the same ordeal that we are.

We always try to be strong in the face of the oppressor. However, when they read the sentences, my mother started crying. We had to watch as my father, Hassan and Zaydoon and left the court room in shackles. When my father was asked if he wanted to say something, he stated that this ruling is against humanity and that we all suffer from the occupation and can’t do anything about it.

We are all very upset and worried about my father. He is sick and he doesn’t even get the medication he needs while in jail. We are also very sad, because only my mother can visit him in jail, and only after he had been in prison for four months. Still, my father maintains that nonviolent protests are the only solution. Please show your support for Ibrahim Amireh and your objection to his illegal imprisonment; for more information join the Facebook group “Support My Father: Peace & Freedom Activist Ibrahim Amireh.”

Saeed Amireh is from the occupied West Bank village of Nilin.

July 16, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

“They want us to be loyal to the occupation”

Muhammad Totah interviewed

Max Blumenthal, The Electronic Intifada, 15 July 2010

On 9 July, as Israeli Border Police officers brutalized demonstrators at the weekly protest in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem, forcing them away from a street where several homes had been seized by radical right-wing Jewish settlers, I visited the Jerusalem International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) headquarters just a few hundred meters away.

Though the din of protest chants and police megaphones could not be heard from the ICRC center, the three Palestinian legislators who had staged a sit-in there for more than a week to protest their forced expulsion from Jerusalem insisted that their plight was the same as the families forced from their homes down the street.

“All the Israeli steps in East Jerusalem are designed to evacuate Jerusalem of its Palestinian heritage,” remarked Muhammad Totah, an elected Palestinian Legislative Council member who has been ordered to permanently leave Jerusalem by the Israeli government. “Whether it’s through home demolition, taking homes or deporting us, the goal is the same.”

According to Israel’s Ministry of the Interior, the three legislators are guilty of a vaguely defined “breach of trust,” ostensibly for their membership in a foreign government. The charge leveled against them recalls nothing more than the campaign platform of the far-right Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, which demanded the mass expulsion of “disloyal” Palestinian citizens of Israel.

For this reason, the Israel-based legal advocacy group Adalah described the Israeli government’s actions as “characteristic of dark and totalitarian regimes” (“Motion for Injunction filed to Israeli Supreme Court to Stop Imminent Deportation Process of Palestinian Legislative Council Members from Jerusalem,” 15 June 2010).

The lawmakers’ problems began in 2006 when they ran for the Palestinian Legislative Council in the West Bank as members of the Change and Reform list, an offshoot of Hamas. Though the Israeli government allowed the men to campaign for office and vote for the Chairman of the Palestinian Legislative Council, as soon as they were elected, Israel warned them to resign from office or face the cancellation of their status as residents of Jerusalem.

When they failed to heed the Israeli government’s demand, in June 2006, the men were arrested and sentenced to two to four years in prison. Two days after they were released, the Israeli police confiscated their identification cards and ordered them to leave Jerusalem for another part of the West Bank.

As a result of the expulsion orders, the first of their kind since 1967, the three lawmakers are virtual hostages in the city their families have lived in for generations — if they leave the Red Cross center they will be immediately arrested. Their colleague, Muhammad Abu Tir, is already in an Israeli jail cell. Despite having been separated from their families for years, they remain steadfast in their rejection of the government’s orders, fearing that their expulsion will open the door for mass deportations of Palestinians from East Jerusalem.

Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, along with the rest of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Syrian Golan Heights and the Sinai peninsula, which was returned to Egypt in a peace deal a decade later. No country recognizes Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem, and the UN Security Council has declared repeatedly that Israel’s occupation of all the territories it seized in 1967 is governed by the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, a treaty Israel was compelled to sign which specifically forbids an occupying power from expelling civilians from the territory it occupies. Thus the legislators’ expulsion has been issued in explicit violation of binding international law.

Totah told me that the Israeli interior ministry has a list of 315 members of Palestinian civil society in East Jerusalem — academics, lawmakers, activists — whom it plans to expel in the near future on charges of disloyalty to the Jewish state. “They are trying to legalize the Nakba,” Totah remarked, using the Arabic word Palestinians use to describe their mass expulsion from their homeland in 1948.

I talked with the 42-year-old Totah for a half hour in the leafy courtyard of the ICRC headquarters. He was visibly tired, having spent the past two days in meetings with British parliamentarians, the head of Jerusalem’s Greek Orthodox Church and left-wing Israeli groups ranging from Anarchists Against The Wall to Gush Shalom. While a wiry young boy rushed around the yard, serving us a seemingly endless stream of Turkish coffee shots, Totah described to me his experience as a prisoner in his hometown.

Max Blumenthal: The Israeli government says you are guilty of a “breach of trust.” Does this mean they are accusing you of disloyalty to the state?

Muhammad Totah: The main reason they are expelling us is that we are accused of disloyalty. And every one on the list [of 315 Palestinian civil society members Israel seeks to expel] is accused of disloyalty. They want us to be loyal to the occupation. This is insane! So they are seeking any excuse to get rid of us. They want us to leave at any price. Basically, they want to finish the project that they began in 1948 because it has taken too long.

MB: Why did you decide to conduct a sit-in inside the Red Cross headquarters?

MT: We are determined to prevent the occupation from coming and taking us away. Beyond that, we are using our time here to make sure the international community hears our case. The occupation is against all international laws and we believe if the door of deportation is open in Jerusalem, it means that hundreds or even thousands will be deported. Right now, we are in danger of being arrested at any time. In fact, our colleague Abu Tir was arrested last month. So they could come at any time for us.

MB: Do you believe the Israelis would go as far as raiding a Red Cross center in Jerusalem to carry out your expulsion?

MT: The occupation will do anything. They are killing people constantly, demolishing buildings and doing what they have done for years. Ten thousand Palestinians are currently in prison. So yes, we would not be surprised by such an action.

MB: Has the international community responded to your protest?

MT: We sent a letter to [US] President [Barack] Obama and asked him to interfere and to put pressure on the Israeli side to cancel this illegal decision. So far, we have not heard a response. We have sat with [Palestinian Authority] President [Mahmoud] Abbas two times and he said that he had sent my letters to all the human rights organization and USAID [the US Agency for International Development] and sent letters to the occupation authorities and he said they’re making communications all the time time. But until now nothing on the ground. We have put out a call for international human rights organizations as well. And we have sent letters to all the leaders of Islamic and Arab states.

Our letters stress that our protest is not about our case in particular, but that it is about all the Palestinians living in Jerusalem. We believe that this decision is designed to begin a process that will empty Jerusalem of Palestinian people. The UN and international community admits that East Jerusalem is occupied by Israel, so clearly this is an illegal decision under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

MB: How much of Israel’s decision is motivated by your affiliation with Hamas and how does the tension between Hamas and Fatah effect the Palestinian Authority’s involvement in the case?

MT: This is an international case. It has nothing to do with Fatah and Hamas. There is a list of over 300 people who will be deported after us — the heart of Palestinian civil society in East Jerusalem — and for this reason all the parties in Jerusalem are united against this decision. They feel that we are the first and they will be the second. We know that the occupation doesn’t discriminate between political parties.

MB: How has your predicament affected your family?

MT: My son who is six years old does not want to leave the house anymore. He said, “I will not leave the house until my father comes back!” As soon as I was released from prison I was sent to so many meetings right away and couldn’t see my family, who I had hardly seen for four years. Now he’s having his own protest at home. “I will not leave home!” he says. This is a very big problem for me because I don’t want to break his heart. One of my children who is even younger wakes up every night screaming and crying with terrible nightmares. “Why are you crying?” my wife says. He says, “The soldiers are coming to throw me in jail!” My wife is suffering because of course we have been split for a very long time. The occupation wants to scare my family and if any information gets to my wife or children about what is happening to me they become extremely upset. This is not just my problem, though. All my colleagues are suffering this same way.

MB: How much of a burden has been placed on you by the Palestinian community in Jerusalem to resist your expulsion?

MT: The fact is that if we accept the deportation it means we accept deportation for thousand of Palestinians in Jerusalem. Even as hard as it is to be here without our families for so long we think that is the only means we have to declare that [our expulsion] is illegal and is against all international laws. We have nowhere else to go. This is our original country and our original city. My father was born here; my grandfather was born here so we have been here hundreds of years. All we are demanding is to stay in our homes and we are sure that we will get it because it’s our right and the deportation is against all international laws.

MB: If deporting you is the first step in a plan for mass deportations, what do you think Israel’s end game is?

MT: We think that there is a plan from the Israeli side to make East Jerusalem Jewish and they have many practices to do so. One of them that is the most dangerous is our deportation. If they demolish your house, you can always build another building. But deporting people — how can you talk about a city without people? What they want is to legalize the Nakba.

Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and bestselling author working in Israel-Palestine. His articles and video documentaries have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Daily Beast, The Nation, The Huffington Post, Salon.com, Al-Jazeera English and many other publications. He is a writing fellow for the Nation Institute. His book, Republican Gomorrah: Inside The Movement That Shattered The Party, is a New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller.

July 15, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

The Dwindling of Afghanistan’s Coalition of the Willing

By DEEPAK TRIPATHI | July 13, 2010

The British government’s decision to withdraw troops from Sangin in Helmand province marks a watershed in the relentless conflict in Afghanistan. The military mission has been very costly for the United Kingdom, with a third of the total casualties sustained in one district alone. More than a hundred lives of soldiers lost and many more wounded coming home is a sign of how difficult the mission has been. In a classic display of guerrilla tactics of asymmetrical warfare, the armed opposition has refused to fight a modern army equipped with high-tech weaponry on its enemy’s terms. Instead, the insurgents have fought on their terms, using rudimentary explosive devices and small weapons with devastating effect. Reaction of Afghans in Sangin will shock many in Britain.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph (July 7, 2010), Ben Farmer reported local residents saying little that is complimentary about the British. One resident openly complained that, in their four-year deployment in Sangin, the British brought only fighting and too little development. The previous Anglo-Afghan wars have left a particularly bitter legacy, although there is also a tendency that things look far better on the other side. Afghanistan remains a fragmented country like it has been for centuries. Rubbing salt in British wounds, an Afghan from a small neighboring settlement said that areas under American control had done better. Ask people in US-controlled areas and their reaction would likely be the opposite. Afghans regularly protest against civilian deaths at the hands of US-led occupation forces all over the country, although many die in suicide attacks directed against people supposed to be cooperating with NATO and the US-installed government in Kabul. Among the latest this month were anti-US and anti-government demonstrations in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif. Residents come out to protest against civilians killings in the south and the east. News travels fast in that devastated country.

‘Afghanistan: Now It’s America’s War,’ said the Independent newspaper’s front-page story loudly in black. For eight years, the British people’s growing unease had been ignored. The United Kingdom, with a population of 62 million and fewer than 200000 regulars (and 42000 volunteers) in the armed forces, had been punching way above its weight. Former prime minister Tony Blair’s personal kinship with George W Bush in his ‘war on terror’ cost the United Kingdom dearly, in economic, political, moral terms. With Blair’s New Labour losing the May 2010 general election, it was relatively easier for the emerging Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government to face up to the reality of the Afghan conflict. The inevitable was bound to happen.

There has been a distinct cooling in the relationship between London and Washington since President Obama’s inauguration. Partly it is because President Bush and Prime Minister Blair are no longer in power. But equally significant, Britain’s new prime minister, David Cameron, and Obama have not made a good start. The Conservative Party is generally pro-military and, in opposition in parliament, voted for war against Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. The Liberal Democratic Party, with a much more democratic structure, has significant sections in its membership opposed to, or circumspect about, war. The overall effect of a coalition between the two parties now runs counter to Britain’s continuing involvement in the Afghan conflict that has taken a heavy toll. The rhetoric about continued military involvement in Afghanistan is gloomy. Official statements emphasize the need for British troops to come home as soon as Afghanistan is ‘stable’. What it means remains undefined. The timescale often mentioned is 3-4 years, meaning before the next election.

Initial encounters have a determining effect on relations between leaders. From this perspective, Obama and Cameron did not appear to connect well. Of course, diplomatic niceties were maintained. The British are particularly adept at that. But the difference of emphasis in Washington and London over Afghanistan cannot be hidden. And the megaphone diplomacy over the BP oil spill laid bare the reality that the days of ‘special relationship’ – an exaggerated claim – were decidedly over. President Obama did not hesitate to resort to raw nationalism undermining that ‘special relationship’ to deflect domestic criticism of his handling of the environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

In doing so, Obama stepped back a decade into the past before British Petroleum and Amoco merged to form an international oil giant that was regarded as much American as it was British until the accident. He resorted to new rhetoric, way below his previous standards, to speak of an assault on US shores (not true because the rig that broke down was extracting oil within US continental waters). The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig leased by BP was owned by Transocean, a company that traces its origins to Alabama in the 1950s. With its headquarters now based in Switzerland and offices in the United States and other countries, Transocean quenches the business ethos of ‘drill baby drill’ very well. And Obama’s ‘kicking ass’ remark was not the sort of political language heard in Europe. Senior figures, including ex-diplomats and politicians, began to react publicly, calling for the need to ‘send a message’ to the Americans. A telephone call from the British prime minister David Cameron followed. The conversation was courteous, the message clear. The oil disaster was saddening and frustrating. But it would be in no one’s interest to crush BP and to let the temperature rise any further. Obama responded that he had no interest in undermining the value of BP, but that was precisely the result. Obama was accused of holding ‘his boot on the throat’ of pensioners whose incomes depended on investments in the company.

Expediency, always a strong motive, propels political leaders to do the unexpected. They are not averse to injecting political venom into the body of an ally when they want to deflect domestic criticism. Eight years on, the ‘coalition of the willing’ President George W Bush assembled following his infamous threat ‘you’re either with us, or against us’ to invade Afghanistan and then Iraq, that alliance is unraveling. And we may be witnessing the beginning of the end of yet another phase of great power adventurism in Afghanistan.

Deepak Tripathi set up the BBC Bureau in Afghanistan in the early 1990s and was the resident correspondent in Kabul. His latest book Overcoming the Bush Legacy in Iraq and Afghanistan is available from Amazon.com. He can be reached at: DandATripathi@gmail.com.

July 13, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | Leave a comment

Israeli forces confiscate land near Hebron

Ma’an – 11/07/2010

Hebron: Israeli soldiers issued orders barring residents of four small villages in the southern West Bank from their land, mayor Suleiman Al-Adam said Sunday.

The orders declared the agricultural land a closed military zone, and ordered farmers and others working on the land to evacuate. The soldiers also confiscated farming equipment, a statement by Beit Ula’s mayor said.

The villagers stand to lose more than 5,000 dunums (five square kilometers) of land, on which more than 60 Palestinian families from the villages west of Hebron depend for their livelihood, the mayor said.

The mayor said farmers were given 45 days to submit an appeal to the Israeli military court, adding that Beit Ula municipal council would help residents with this.

A spokesman for the Israeli Civil Administration said he was not familiar with the reports.

The village land lies on the proposed route of the separation wall.

A recent report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs found that once completed, the wall will annex 9.5 percent of Palestinian land.

Only 15 percent of the wall’s projected route is on the Green Line, the 1967 border with Israel, with the remaining 85 percent cutting inside the West Bank.

Six years ago, the International Court of Justice ruled the wall a violation of international humanitarian and human rights law, and called on Israel to cease construction, dismantle constructed parts and pay reparations to those already materially damaged by it.

Since the ruling, Israel has added approximately 200 kilometers to the wall, OCHA reported.

July 11, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Documentary: “The Rooftops of Hebron”

A day in the life of a Palestinian

By Jasmin | Pulse Media | July 11, 2010

In Hebron, Israel’s continued colonialist expansion on Palestinian land is accompanied by constant verbal, physical and psychological harassment perpetuated by Israeli ‘settlers’ against local Palestinians and human rights activists. Mainstream media has constructed an image of Palestinians as violent and hateful in comparison to Israelis who are almost always portrayed as victims, but the actions of Israeli settlers are rarely reported and provide a different view of the reality on the ground.

In the clip below, an old Palestinian woman shows a documentary crew from the Israeli NGO B’Tselem how she leaves her house each day — by climbing through the rooftops of neighbors’ houses. In 2000 the Israeli army closed the Palestinian populated a-Shahada Street where she lives to Palestinians and sealed the entrances to their homes. Malka Kafisha has likely lived in Hebron all her life but states that “If this continues, we may have to leave this house.”

If Kafisha and her family were to leave their home, the Israelis would get exactly what they want, which is why it requires courage and determination for Palestinians to remain in Hebron with all the obstacles Israeli settlers and the Israeli government put in their way.

According to the Israeli scholar Ilan Pappe, author of The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, in all dominant definitions of ethnic cleansing there are certain constants, most importantly, the desire of one ethnic group to force another ethnic group to leave an area permanently. Methods vary, all the way from prolonged psychological abuse, to violent, murderous assaults, but the end goal of mass expulsion leading to ethnic homogeneity is the same. Indeed, if intimidation does not force a population to leave, then forced death will.

To get an idea of the kind of intimidation Palestinians are forced to endure, watch the B’Tselem clip below. Note that this is by no means the worst of it.

Documentary: “The Rooftops of Hebron”

Documentary: The Actions of Settlers in Hebron (Tel Rumeida)

Paul Woodward writes:

The settlers, who are quite explicit about their intent to drive their neighbors out, treat them worse than animals — and yet the Palestinians retain their dignity.

The undiluted contempt and arrogance displayed by both settlers and Israeli soldiers reveals their own lack of self-respect. It exudes an utter indifference to how they will be perceived outside their own small tribe. They have, in short, cut themselves off from humanity. They enjoy the comfort of the pariah who has abandoned any hope for human embrace.

July 11, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Costa Rica’s Opposition Rejects Entry Of US Naval Forces

Inside Costa Rica | July 3, 2010

As is customary, the US asks for authorization of Costa Rica’s legislature before entry of any US warship and soldiers in Costa Rican waters. And as customary, the Costa Rica legislature grants its permission, as was the case on Friday.

The permission allows the entry of 46 US war ships and 7.000 Marines for the balance of the year (July 1 to December 31, 2010).


The permission granted by the Costa Rica legislature could include docking of the USS Freedom (pictured above) on Costa Rica’s shores. Opposition parties say the decade old agreement was to allow entry of US coast guard vessels and not war ships.

Costa Rica’s opposition, however, see it different, describing the permission as illegal and in violation of national sovereignty.

The main opponents to the granting of the authority is the Partido Acción Cuidadana (PAC), the Frente Amplio (FA) and the Partido Unidad Social Cristiana (PUSC), arguing that the destructive force of the ships and manpower, that includes helicopters, is disproportianate to the threat caused by drug traffickers.

The 46 ships carry some 200 helicopters and war planes and includes the USS Freedom, combat submarines and a hospital ship.

Luis Fishman, head of the PUSC party and presidential candidate in the past elections, said the legislative approval was like handing over a “blank cheque”.

“We cannot support the illegal, we cannot allow our Constitution to be trampled”, said Fishman.

The PAC and the FA recalled that the bilateral agreement signed 10 years ago allowed the entry of coast guard vessels, but not war ships that have the capacity for military confrontations and war.

FA legislator José María Villalta questioned the conditions under which the permission was granted, since US personnel “will enjoy freedom of movement and the right to carry out the activities needed to fulfill their mission”.

The FA also urged consideration of the geopolitical situation in which naval forces will be allowed to enter a region considered by Washington as part of its sphere of influence.

The legislator recalled that the US applies in the region a “strategy of complete dominance”, which includes offensive actions such as the coup d’etat in Honduras and the installation of military bases in Colombia.

Opposition Deputies said they may take action, that could include an appeal with the Constitutional Court, against the decision of the Legislative Assembly since the permission for the ships, airships, helicopters and marines to enter the country violates the agreement reached a decade ago.

July 8, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism | Leave a comment

Physicians For Human Rights – Israel: End Gaza Siege

By Circarre Parrhesia – IMEMC News – July 07, 2010

Physicians For Human Rights – Israel has released a report, on Wednesday, detailing the progressive degradation of the medical situation in the Gaza Strip as a result of the ongoing siege upon the coastal enclave. The report comes as a response to the Israeli cabinet decision of June 20, 2010, to ease the blockade.

PHR – Israel’s report calls for a complete end to the siege on Gaza and the end of practices by the Israeli government that restrict full access to proper healthcare for the inhabitants of Gaza.

The report considers three major areas in which the residents of the Gaza Strip suffer from inadequate healthcare due to Israel’s ongoing siege.

(1) Preventing the development of the healthcare system in the Gaza Strip while restricting patients’ exit for medical treatment including:

the restriction of medical equipment from passing into Gaza; restriction of training for the medical professionals of Gaza and; prevention of patients access to medical treatment outside of Gaza, despite inadequate facilities, whilst simultaneously preventing medical delegations from entering the Strip.

(2) Shin Bet uses unacceptable methods towards patients in need of medical treatment including:

summoning patients for interrogation before allowing them to exit Gaza for treatment, including scheduling interrogation after the patient’s date for treatment causing them to miss much needed medical care, and summoning patients who have applied for exit visas due to medical conditions only to arrest them, or place them in detention.

(3) Israel’s policy towards patients’ access to medical treatment involves extraneous considerations including:

tending to refuse exit visas to those who are not in a life threatening situations, a criteria that violates both international and Israeli human rights law; prevention of access to highest quality medical care due to prevention of development in Gaza, and refusal of travel; prevention of travel to patients who require follow up medical care; denying patients’ requests to travel, including critical cases, through fear that the patient will use the permit to unite with their families in the West Bank and; confiscation of patients personal belongings when returning to Gaza following medical care.

The report concludes that the actions of the Israeli government towards the Gaza Strip has a profound impact of the lives of the civilian population requiring medical care, leaving thousands suffering, and it should be noted that hundreds of Gazans have died since the beginning of the siege, in June 2007, due to inadequate or incomplete medical care.

The full report can be found at the following link:
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900sid/FERB-874JAL/

July 7, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

By Hook and By Crook: Israel’s Settlement Policy in the West Bank

B’Tselem | July 2010

Some half a million Israelis are now living over the Green Line: more than 300,000 in 121 settlements and about one hundred outposts, which control 42 percent of the land area of the West Bank, and the rest in twelve neighborhoods that Israel established on land it annexed to the Jerusalem Municipality. The report analyzes the means employed by Israel to gain control of land for building the settlements. In preparing the report, B’Tselem relied on official state data and documents, among them Attorney Talia Sasson’s report on the outposts, the database produced by Brigadier General Baruch Spiegel, reports of the state comptroller, and maps of the Civil Administration.

The settlement enterprise has been characterized, since its inception, by an instrumental, cynical, and even criminal approach to international law, local legislation, Israeli military orders, and Israeli law, which has enabled the continuous pilfering of land from Palestinians in the West Bank.

The principal means Israel used for this purpose was declaration of “state land,” a mechanism that resulted in the seizure of more than 900,000 dunams of land (sixteen percent of the West Bank), with most of the declarations being made in 1979-1992. The interpretation that the State Attorney’s Office gave to the concept “state land” in the Ottoman Land Law contradicted explicit statutory provisions and judgments of the Mandatory Supreme Court. Without this distorted interpretation, Israel would not have been able to allocate such extensive areas of land for the settlements.
In addition, the settlements seized control of private Palestinian land. By cross-checking data of the Civil Administration, the settlements’ jurisdictional area, and aerial photos of the settlements taken in 2009, B’Tselem found that 21 percent of the built-up area of the settlements is land that Israel recognizes as private property, owned by Palestinians.

To encourage Israelis to move to the settlements, Israel created a mechanism for providing benefits and incentives to settlements and settlers, regardless of their economic condition, which often was financially secure. Most of the settlements in the West Bank hold the status of National Priority Area A, which entitles them to a number of benefits: in housing, by enabling settlers to purchase quality, inexpensive apartments, with an automatic grant of a subsidized mortgage; wide-ranging benefits in education, such as free education from age three, extended school days, free transportation to schools, and higher teachers’ salaries; for industry and agriculture, by grants and subsidies, and indemnification for the taxes imposed on their produce by the European Union; in taxation, by imposing taxes significantly lower than in communities inside the Green Line, and by providing larger balancing grants to the settlements, to aid in covering deficits.

Establishment of the settlements violates international humanitarian law. Israel has ignored the relevant rules of law, adopting its own interpretation, which is not accepted by almost all leading jurists around the world and by the international community.
The settlement enterprise has caused continuing, cumulative infringement of the Palestinians’ human rights, as follows:

  • the right of property, by seizing control of extensive stretches of West Bank land in favor of the settlements;
  • the right to equality and due process, by establishing separate legal systems, in which the person’s rights are based on his national origin, the settlers being subject to Israel’s legal system, which is based on human rights and democratic values, while the Palestinians are subject to the military legal system, which systematically deprives them of their rights;
  • the right to an adequate standard of living, since the settlements were intentionally established in a way that prevents urban development of Palestinian communities, and Israel’s control of the water sources prevents the development of Palestinian agriculture;
  • the right to freedom of movement, by means of the checkpoints and other obstructions on Palestinian movement in the West Bank, which are intended to protect the settlements and the settler’s traffic arteries;
  • the right to self-determination, by severing Palestinian territorial contiguity and creating dozens of enclaves that prevent the establishment of an independent and viable Palestinian state.

The cloak of legality that Israel has sought to give to the settlement enterprise is aimed at covering the ongoing theft of West Bank land, thereby removing the basic values of legality and justice from Israel’s system of law enforcement in the West Bank. The report exposes the system Israel has adopted as a tool to advance political objectives, enabling the systematic infringement of the Palestinians’ human rights.

The extensive geographic-spatial changes that Israel has made in the landscape of the West Bank undermine the negotiations that Israel has conducted for eighteen years with the Palestinians and breach its international obligations. The settlement enterprise, being based on discrimination against the Palestinians living in the West Bank, also weakens the pillars of the State of Israel as a democratic country and diminishes its status among the nations of the world.

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July 6, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

World tired of us: Israeli minister

Press TV – July 1, 2010

Israeli Minister of Trade, Industry and Labor, Binyamin Ben-Elezier

Israeli Minister of Trade, Industry and Labor, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, says the world is tired of Israel and that Israel, rather than the Gaza Strip, is actually blockaded.

“We’re not the ones maintaining a blockade. We’re blockaded, utterly isolated. We’re in a situation where the world is tired of us,” the Jewish Daily quoted Ben-Elezier as saying in an interview in the Yediot Ahronot Friday supplement.

“They’re tired of hearing our explanations, of showing empathy for our troubles, even if they’re real troubles. (The world is) Tired of understanding us. This business just isn’t working anymore. After 43 years, nobody wants to hear any more explanations about why this occupation is continuing and how we have nobody to talk to.” Elezier continued.

Born in 1936 in Basra in southern Iraq, Binyamin “Fuad” Ben-Eliezer is the senior leader of the Labor Party’s hawkish wing, a tough-as-nails ex-general and currently the party’s grand old man.

July 2, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

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