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US forces kill ‘eight bystanders’ in Iraq

Press TV – February 13, 2010

US forces have shot eight Iraqi people, most of them ‘innocent bystanders,’ in a raid in a village southeast of Baghdad, Iraqi provincial officials say.
Iraqi provincial council officials described the US raid as slaughter and demanded financial compensation for the relatives of the victims.

Maysan province governor Mohammed Shia al-Sudany told state-run television that eight people were killed, one wounded and 12 arrested in the village 75 km (46 miles) north of the provincial capital of Amara.

“What happened this morning was a massacre in every sense of the word. Eight people were killed. Most of them were innocent,” Reuters quoted Sudany as saying.

The US military, however, said the raid was against suspected members of what it called a terrorist Iran-backed group.

“The joint security team was fired upon by individuals dispersed in multiple residential buildings … members of the security team returned fire, killing individuals assessed to be enemy combatants,” the US military said in a statement on Friday.

“While the number of casualties has not yet been confirmed, initial reports indicate five individuals were killed,” the statement added.

This is while Iraqi officials have called on US troops to release all those arrested during the raid and to apologize for the attack.

Source

February 13, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | Leave a comment

Israeli occupation troops kidnap 150 Palestinians in two days

PIC | 12-02-2010

GAZA – The PA ministry of prisoners and ex-prisoners affairs in Gaza said on Thursday that the Israeli occupation authorities kidnapped 150 Palestinian citizens over the past two days, most of them from Jerusalem city.

According to Reyadh Al-Ashkar, the information officer in the ministry, the IOA rounded up nearly 100 Palestinian youths in the refugee camp of Shafat, north of the occupied city of Jerusalem during a military incursion described as the most violent in recent years.

Another 15 Palestinian civilians of one family, including children, were also kidnapped by the IOF troops after they swept into the northern borders of the Gaza Strip near the town of Beit Lahia. The whereabouts of the kidnapped Gazans is still unknown.

In the West Bank, the IOF troops kidnapped 38 Palestinian citizens, including at least 15 minors, over the past couple of days.

Meanwhile, the Israeli Salem military court extended the administrative detention of Palestinian female captive Sanabil Nabegh Brek, 19, for the 40th time successively. The Palestinian lady was kidnapped since September, 2008.

The court also extended the detention of Muntaha Al-Taweel, 45, wife of Al-Beireh mayor Jamal Al-Taweel, who was kidnapped from her house three days ago. Al-Taweel is a mother of five children, at least two of them need special care.

In this regard, the ministry appealed to international human rights and legal institutions to immediately intervene to protect the unarmed Palestinian civilians, and to pressure the IOA to halt the heinous practices against them.

The IOA is holding nearly 12,000 Palestinian citizens captives in its jails, many of them spent more than 20 years in jail so far. The issue of prisoners is considered one of the most crucial issues for the Palestinian people.



February 12, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Israeli forces demolish wells, sheds near Hebron

Ma’an | 11-02-2010

Hebron – Israeli bulldozers demolished five water wells and three small storerooms, confiscated electric generators and water pumps in Idhna, a town west of Hebron.

Abdullah Al-Asoud, whose irrigation systems were destroyed in the demolition raid, said the area affected was in agricultural lands near the separation wall.

The farmer noted that the other residents whose wells were affected, had filed petitions with the Israeli court challenging the demolition notices. Since the suits were in progress, Al-Asoud said, farmers were surprised to see demolition crews Thursday morning.

Al-Asoud noted that while the wells and irrigation systems were ripped up, fields planted with crops were destroyed.

The mayor of Idhna, Jamal At-Tamzi, said that the municipality will work in cooperation with the Palestinian Authority to reconstruct the agricultural projects and the wells in the area. He called the demolitions part of a continued attempt to displace farmers and discourage them from working and producing on Palestinian lands.

The affected farmers. At-Tamzi said, relied on the produce from the lands for their livelihoods and now have nothing with which to support their wives and children.

Source

February 12, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

The Netanyahu-Fayyad “economic peace” one year on

By Ziyaad Lunat, The Electronic Intifada, 10 February 2010

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was elected on a platform of “economic peace” with Palestinians in the West Bank. He contended that developing the Palestinian economy, by providing Palestinians with jobs and a better living standard, would render the “problems” between Israelis and Palestinians “more accessible for solutions.”

Salam Fayyad, the appointed Palestinian Authority (PA) prime minister in Ramallah and a former International Monetary Fund official, was quick to follow with his own complementary plan last August. His policies recently earned praise from Israeli President Shimon Peres who called Fayyad a Palestinian “Ben Gurionist,” in reference to Israel’s founding prime minister. Economic peace won broad backing from the UN, European leaders as well as the administration of US President Barack Obama — representatives of which form the self-appointed “Quartet” that dictates terms for the “peace process.

Tony Blair, the Quartet envoy for the Middle East peace process, characterized Fayyad as “absolutely first class — professional, courageous, intelligent.” Blair did not hold back praise for Netanyahu either, calling him a “peacemaker.”

A consensus has developed among the political elite, and even among Arab states, that improving Palestinians’ quality of life, even if under military occupation, is the long sought solution for Palestinian misfortunes. Netanyahu assigned Deputy Prime Minister Silvan Shalom to lead the economic peace task force and coordinate with both Blair and the PA.

The Netanyahu-Fayyad plan has been a magnet for foreign capital. The US Congress approved last July a deposit of $200 million into the PA treasury, under Fayyad’s direct control. In September donor countries pledged on the sidelines of the General Assembly $400 million to the PA by the end of 2009. Last month, the European Union transferred 21 million Euros to “help the Palestinian Authority pay the January salaries and pensions of 80,551 Palestinian public service providers and pensioners.”

This “West Bank First” policy of economic development replaced Bush’s failed policy of democracy promotion. In 2006, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip elected Hamas but Israel and its western allies boycotted the movement because it did not conform to the demands of the Quartet, much of them at odds with international law.

The Quartet switched strategies towards finding “moderate” partners that can implement their vision of “peace.” One such person is PA President Mahmoud Abbas, whose term in office expired for the second time last month (after being questionably extended for an additional year in early 2009).

Western donors also hand-picked Salam Fayyad for the post of prime minister despite his Third Way party obtaining less than three percent of the popular vote in the 2006 legislative elections. His exclusive control of the Palestinian coffers give him immense power to implement policies to his own credit as speculation — and in some PA circles fear — grows that he is being groomed by the West to replace Abbas.

“Economic peace,” coupled with the “West Bank First” policy of economic development serves too as warning to Palestinians. They either conform to a political program approved by Israel and Western donors or risk sharing the dire fate of Gaza, under a crippling siege since June 2007. Hamas, under intense pressure, is gradually softening its positions, with cautious overtures to Israel and the West with the hope of inclusion in the process and perhaps a slice of the monetary rewards.

The results of the first year of Netanyahu’s economic peace are visible. While there has been no progress on the political front, security and economic cooperation with the PA has never been better. The American-trained security forces have kept a tight grip over West Bank towns squashing dissent and keeping “order.” When the Israeli army invades during the night, Palestinian security forces swiftly retreat. Intelligence sharing has enabled joint campaigns of arrest against members of the resistance.

The Guardian newspaper reported that Palestinians security forces have been working closely with the CIA to torture Palestinian dissenters. When Palestinians killed a settler last December, Abbas’ forces worked “overtime” to find the culprits arresting hundreds in the process. A PA spokesperson described the security situation up to the attack as “nearly perfect,” in reference to the diligent job of Palestinian security forces in preventing attacks against Israelis but ignoring the daily attacks Palestinians are subjected to at the hands of the Israeli military and settlers. Abbas’ clampdown didn’t prevent an Israeli death-squad from invading Nablus and killing in cold blood three Palestinians as an act of revenge.

Israel deems the PA a trusted partner for its diligent efforts to provide security for Israelis including settlers actively engaged in colonizing the West Bank. This perception motivated Netanyahu to order the dismantlement of a few dozen roadblocks and the lifting of strategic checkpoints to ease movement between Palestinian cities. Over 578 “closure obstacles” remain in place inside the West Bank. According to the UN, “while some of these measures have contributed to the easing of movement, they exact a price from Palestinians in terms of land loss, disruption of traditional routes, and deepening fragmentation of West Bank territory.” These “goodwill gestures” help give the impression of improvements nonetheless.

Other policies targeting the 17 percent of the West Bank controlled by the PA, otherwise designated as Area A under the 1993 Oslo accords, include the opening of a shopping center in Jenin and a cinema in Nablus. Netanyahu plans 25 other economic initiatives in the West Bank including more shopping centers, a light industrial zone in the Bethlehem area, a major industrial zone in the Jenin area and an agricultural processing and export zone in Jericho. Each ribbon cutting ceremony Fayyad attends reinforces the normalcy discourse propagated by the PA and Fatah-affiliated media that contrast it to the destruction and despair of Israeli-blockaded, Hamas-controlled Gaza.

There are fears these projects are attracting foreign speculators. “My message is very clear: there is an economic prize before us, there is a double dividend for you as companies” said British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to a conference of investors in Bethlehem. One such “prize” is the creation of a Palestinian equity market. The Palestine Investment Fund (PIF), the body leading such effort, expects to deliver an annual return of 15 percent. PIF plans to use cash deposits in local banks as well as money from investors to encourage growth in consumer spending. “Our banks have cash deposits of $7 billion, and they are saying there are not enough opportunities to invest,” said Mohammad Mustafa, the Fund’s chief executive and a former World Bank official.

Real Estate is the main target for foreign corporate investment. Rawabi, the first Palestinian planned city, is Fayyad’s flagship project. The Washington Post reported that Rawabi “is specifically designed for upwardly mobile families of a sort that in the United States might gravitate to places such as Reston, VA. The developments are also relying on another American import, the home mortgage, including creation of a Fannie Mae-style institution for the West Bank.” USAID, a branch of the American government, is funneling funds through nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) for the promotion of a mortgage culture in Palestine to support these initiatives from bottom-up. One such example is CHF International, a corporate-led development NGO, which is organizing community level focus groups and technical training as part of their “homebuyer education” program.

A year on, the cost of the Netanyahu-Fayyad plan is becoming clear. Low-income Palestinian families and small business are being encouraged to borrow to fuel a high-risk economy. Israel has proven time again that it won’t hesitate to strike a blow against Palestinian infrastructure should they dissent from the current consensus in its favor. Families are risking their possessions as collateral for their debts. Corporations responsible for the global financial collapse are applying their failed models in Palestine. Abraaj Capital, a Dubai-based investment fund that recently sparked fears for debt default, announced a $50 million private equity fund dedicated to “raising standards of living,” mirroring the predatory behavior that led to the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage system in the US.

Investors, Palestinian and internationals, are leading in the efforts for normalization of economic relations with Israel in violation of the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) call of Palestinian civil society. There is concern about the growing power that the emerging Palestinian capitalist class can yield over the political process as the personal stakes rise as their economic relationships with Israel intensify. Abbas is said to have yielded to pressure from economic interests when he forfeited UN discussion of the Goldstone report last October causing popular outrage.

The economic peace model comes with a dose of cultural imperialism. Palestinians do not have basic freedoms but they are being told that they can enjoy the mundane and superfluous in cinemas and shopping centers. This is more vividly seen in wall-encircled Ramallah, the seat of the PA government. High-end clubs are appearing to cater for the western-oriented elite. These spaces draw invisible barriers of class and social status that the majority of people cannot relate to or simply cannot afford. This sort of social stratification inevitably leads to the creation of an individualist and self-interested culture and to contentment for the status quo. The availability of disposable income has even encouraged the presence of Russian chains of prostitution in the city. Fahmi Shabaneh, former head of the PA’s Anti-Corruption Department, was forced to quit from his position last year after uncovering a sex scandal involving one of Abbas’ top aides in Ramallah. As expected, the PA denies the accusations. Shabaneh said that “Abbas has surrounded himself with many of the thieves and officials who were involved in theft of public funds and who became icons of financial corruption.”

There is also a division being fostered between the urban and the rural populations. The Palestinians living in the 60 percent of the West Bank officially controlled by Israel, also known as Area C, are continuously dispossessed of their land and gradually being pushed to PA-controlled enclaves. The almost exclusive focus of Fayyad’s plan on the service sector, while ignoring the farming community, will inadvertently lead to acceleration of desertification of the rural areas as the young are pulled to new jobs in the city. The Bantustanization process is accelerating with the construction of Israel’s apartheid wall. The rural population, represented by the popular committees, is now leading resistance against Israel’s encroachment. They have been left without effective political representation, finding themselves in the front line of Israel’s annexationist policies. These two dichotomous realities, the urban and the rural, have left certain sectors of the population in urban centers like Ramallah to be completely oblivious to these struggles only a few miles away.

Hamas’ election in 2006 showed how vital is the Palestinian Authority’s dependence on foreign donors. It also showed how easily donors can turn off the money tap and cause the near destruction of the Palestinian social fabric as in Gaza. The plan that is being forged in the West Bank is fostering such dependence even more, raising the costs for sustaining the Palestinian struggle for liberation. Should the masses awaken from the current delusion, many of the rich elites would not hesitate to turn against their brethren to protect their status and power. Adding to the current political and territorial separation affecting Palestinians, the emerging economic stratification is yet another challenge in the way of Palestinian unity and liberation.

Ziyaad Lunat is an activist for Palestine.

February 10, 2010 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Israel to raze 200 Palestinian homes in Jerusalem

By Jonathan Cook – Jerusalem – February 9, 2010

Jerusalem’s mayor threatened last week to demolish 200 homes in Palestinian neighbourhoods of the city in an act even he conceded would probably bring long-simmering tensions over housing in East Jerusalem to a boil.

His uncompromising stance is the latest stage in a protracted legal battle over a single building towering above the jumble of modest homes of Silwan, a deprived and overcrowded Palestinian community lying just outside the Old City walls, in the shadow of the silver-topped al Aqsa mosque.

Beit Yehonatan, or Jonathan’s House, is distinctive not only for its height – at seven storeys, it is at least three floors taller than its neighbours – but also for the Israeli flag draped from the roof to the street.

The settlement outpost, named for Jonathan Pollard, serving a life sentence in the US for spying on Israel’s behalf in the 1980s, has been home to eight Jewish families since 2004, when it was built without a licence by an extremist settler organisation known as Ateret Cohanim.

Beit Yehonatan is one of dozens of settler-occupied homes springing up in Palestinian areas of East Jerusalem, most of them takeovers of Palestinian homes.

Critics say the intent of these “outposts”, together with the large settlements of East Jerusalem built by the state and home to nearly 200,000 Jews, is to foil any peace agreement that might one day offer the Palestinians a meaningful state with Jerusalem as its capital.

But exceptionally for the settlers, who are used to a mix of overt and covert assistance from officials, the inhabitants of Beit Yehonatan are at risk of being evicted from their home, two years after an “urgent” enforcement order was issued by the Israeli Supreme Court.

Last week Nir Barkat, Jerusalem’s mayor, finally agreed “under protest” to seal Beit Yehonatan amid mounting pressure from an array of legal officials. Mr Barkat had been fighting strenuously against implementing the court order, aided by senior members of the parliament, the police, and even Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, who opposed his own attorney general’s advice by declaring Beit Yehonatan’s future “a purely municipal matter”.

But the mayor has not simply capitulated. He warned that Beit Yehonatan would be evacuated only on condition that more than 200 demolition orders on Palestinian homes, most of them in Silwan, were carried out at the same time. He argued that he had to avoid any impression that the law was being enforced in a “discriminatory” manner against Jews.

Jeff Halper, head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, said Mr Barkat’s idea of fairness was “ridiculous”.

“In the past 15 years there have been more than a thousand Palestinian homes demolished in East Jerusalem versus absolutely no settler homes,” he said. “In fact, no settlers have ever lost their home in East Jerusalem.”

In making his announcement, Mr Barkat admitted that the 200 demolitions would trigger “a strong possibility for conflict”. Palestinians in East Jerusalem are already seething over decades of planning restrictions that have forced many of them to build or extend homes illegally because it is all but impossible to get permits from the Israeli authorities.

Mr Halper said the municipality had classified 22,000 Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem as illegal, even as it also assessed a shortage of 25,000 homes for the city’s 250,000-strong Palestinian population.

The homes targeted for demolition include Palestinian houses around Beit Yehonatan that violate planning restrictions that allow families to build only two floors; despite the restriction, many houses have four storeys and owners pay fines.

In addition, the city council wants to demolish 88 homes in a small area called Bustan that the municipality claims is in danger of flooding.

Zeinab Jaber lives next to Beit Yehonatan in the home she was born in 61 years ago. The building was declared illegal 20 years ago, after it was extended to four storeys to accommodate her growing family. Today she and her six grown-up sons pay monthly fines of more than $1,000 (Dh 3,672) in the hope of warding off destruction.

Her son Amjad, 32, married with two young sons, said he did not dare miss a payment. “It’s simple: if you don’t pay, you’ll end up in prison.”

“What is there for the settlers here?” Mrs Jaber asked. “They are only here because they want to take this place from us. They won’t be happy till we leave.”

On the opposite slope across the valley from Beit Yehonatan, Mohammed Jalajil, 48, said he did not doubt that the municipality would demolish the 200 homes. He, his wife and five children have been crammed into a room in a relative’s apartment since their own house was demolished seven years ago.

Mr Jalajil, 48, said: “It was only months after they took our house from us that I saw the settlers building theirs nearby. My lawyer tells me that, even though my house is gone, I won’t have paid off my fines for another 10 years.”

If Mr Barkat follows through with his threat, the demolitions will prompt a rebuke from the international community. Last month, France and the United States joined the UN in denouncing more than 100 demolitions in East Jerusalem over the past three months.

The mayor’s decision, warned Meir Margalit, a Jerusalem city councillor, was comparable to the “price tag” policy of the settlers in the West Bank, who have attacked Palestinian villages in retaliation against official attempts to dismantle a few of the settlement outposts dotting Palestinian territory.

“But the difference here is that the price tag is being levied not by the settlers themselves but by the municipality and the government on their behalf,” he said.

Yesterday the municipality was due to issue a seven-day evacuation notice to the inhabitants of Beit Yehonatan, but the operation was cancelled at the last minute when police refused to co-operate.

Frictions have been growing in Silwan for several years over the activities of another settler organisation, Elad, which, with official backing, has been building an archaeological park known as the City of David in the midst of the Palestinian neighbourhood. As Palestinians have been pushed out, at least 80 Jewish families have moved into homes nearby.

As Elad entrenches itself in Silwan, Beit Yehonatan has proved more difficult to secure. “Usually the settlers present a façade of legality to what they do,” Mr Halper said. “The problem here is that they built in an overtly illegal manner, without a permit and way over the building height restrictions.”

Mr Barkat’s resistance to evicting Beit Yehonatan’s inhabitants was highlighted last month when he tried to stave off legal pressure by proposing a new planning policy to legalise unlicensed buildings in Silwan. The mayor proposed that the rules limiting homes to two storeys be revised to four.

The reform would have applied to Beit Yehonatan first, sealing its top three storeys but allowing the Jewish families to inhabit the rest of the building.

Although Mr Barkat promised that illegal Palestinian buildings would also be saved, Ir Amim, an Israeli human rights groups, dismissed the mayor’s claim.

The overwhelming majority of Palestinian homes would fail to qualify because land registry documents are missing for the area and a range of requirements on car parking, access roads and sewerage connections are “impossible” to meet, Orly Noy, a spokeswoman, wrote in the Haaretz newspaper last month.

She added that Palestinian areas of East Jerusalem lacked 70km of sewage pipes and that not a single new road had been paved in their neighbourhoods since Israel’s occupation in 1967.

A planning map of East Jerusalem drawn up recently by the Jerusalem municipality came to light last month, as Mr Barkat was promising to legalise buildings, showing that more than 300 homes – most of them in Silwan – were facing imminent demolition.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

Source

February 9, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Unrest continues in Shu’fat; overnight raids, youth detained

09/02/2010

Jerusalem – Ma’an – Confrontations erupted between school children and border guards at the Shu’fat military checkpoint on Tuesday, leading to the detention of a 15-year-old and the injury of a soldier, witnesses said.

The clash followed a series of overnight raids where border guards handed out dozens of notices for residents to turn themselves in for questioning at Israeli intelligence compounds in Jerusalem. The raids came directly on the heels of an arrest campaign targeting dozens of Palestinian residents of the camp.

The teen detained in the most recent clashes was identified as Ahmad Jamil Abu Hamda, who was on his way to school when the clashes erupted.

Locals said soldiers used tear gas to disburse the crowds.

The secretary of Fatah in the camp, Khader Ad-Dibs, said that raids continued until 5am, and that more than a hundred soldiers guarded the entrances of the camp.

Ad-Dibs noted that some of the men and women detained Monday had already been transfered to the military court where their sentences were extended, and others who were released said they had been severely beaten.

February 9, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Ethnic Cleansing Escalation in Jerusalem

Aletho News | February 8, 2010

Israeli occupation forces manning a military checkpoint at the Shu’fat refugee camp in Jerusalem set off protests Saturday due to the humiliating conditions inflicted on Palestinians on a daily basis. The residents, whom were displaced from their homes across Jerusalem, have been denied access to the city by the apartheid wall as well as various military checkpoints.

There have also been recent protests against home demolitions in the area. Palestine Information Center reports:

In the city’s Sheikh Jarrah suburb, an armed Israeli settler wearing military uniform pointed his rifle at Palestinian lady Refqa Al-Kurd, 85, in a bid to frighten her and force her out of what is remained of her house after the settlers occupied most of it.

Refqa Al-Kurd, aged 85, after assault

The incident prompted clashes between the Palestinian neighbors, who rushed for the help of the elderly woman, and the settlers.

Another Israeli settler in the same suburb dropped a big stone at Palestinian teenager Murad Ateyyah, 14, prompting angry Palestinian citizens to intervene and clash with the settlers before the Israeli occupation police arrived and broke up the clashes.

Palestinian Jerusalemites asserted that attacks by Israeli settlers against them increased rapidly with the aim to force them out of the city.

Tensions were raised further by army raids on private residences in the Anata camp early on Monday. Packs of soldiers ransacked homes at daybreak in surrounding villages abducting residents for torture interrogations. House to house searches without search warrants resulted in the seizure of one homemade rifle.

File photo

Ma’an reports that over 60 Palestinians were seized in the raids. Young Palestinians confronted the intruding forces by throwing stones. Journalists that attempted to record the clashes were fired upon with tear gas, rubber-coated bullets and stun grenades. Eyewitnesses also report the use of live ammunition. Several journalists were injured.

Occupation forces then attacked the local clinic and detained the doctors working there, preventing them from attending to the injured. The camp is now under military control, curfew has been imposed.

February 8, 2010 Posted by | Author: Atheo, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Israeli forces detain wife of mayor in Ramallah

08/02/2010

Jerusalem – Ma’an – Israeli forces detained Muntaha Tawil, wife of Al-Bireh Mayor Jamal Tawil, on Monday, after searching their home in Ramallah.

“Heavily armed soldiers and large numbers of military vehicles raided the mayor’s home on Monday early morning breaking the doors and damaging the house’ interior before they detained Muntaha Tawil, the mayor’s wife,” an Al-Birreh Municipal Council statement said.

Mayor Tawil said his wife’s detention would not hinder his ability to provide his constituents with the services they need, adding that Israel often attempts to exert pressure on mayors of Palestinian villages through detentions, forced home searches and summons orders.

Tawil is the mother of four and her husband has been detained several time by Israeli forces. Mayor Tawil previously served 13 years in an Israeli prison.

An Israeli military spokesman said that Muntaha Tawil was detained overnight by Israeli forces operating in Ramallah because of her involvement in activities “in the Hamas terrorist organization.”

###

Editor’s note:

Muntaha Tawil is one of the most active women working in the prisoners’ solidarity movement.

February 8, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

Taliban say ready for Nato’s major surge in Helmand

The International | February 06, 2010

PESHAWAR: The Afghan Taliban have said that they have made preparations for a long battle in the southwestern Helmand province.

“Taliban are not afraid of the planned major offensive by foreign forces in Helmand. We are happy that foreigners would come out of their bases and our fighters would attack them,” Mulla Sharfuddin, Taliban commander in Helmand, told the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) by phone from an undisclosed location.

“Taliban are well aware of the enemies’ plan and they have already made preparations,” he claimed. Asked what kind of weapons the Taliban would use in the expected fighting, the Taliban commander said: “We have made all arrangements and divided the area under different commanders.

“We would use mines, heavy weapons and different military tactics in the fighting.” He said the people of Helmand were standing by the Taliban and foreign forces would not be able to force the Taliban out of the province.

He termed the foreign forces’ announcement of launching a major offensive in Helmand as a propaganda tactic and reminded that the foreigners had also mounted major attacks in the past but failed.

He maintained that the Taliban were very strong in the area and would defeat their enemy again. Asked whether Arab, Uzbek and other foreign fighters were present in the ranks of the Taliban, the commander insisted that all the fighters were Afghans.

He urged the Afghan police and soldiers to stop fighting against the Taliban. “I urge the Afghan National Army and the police not to fight against the Taliban. They should take part in Jihad along with the Taliban against the infidels. The foreigners have invaded Afghanistan and it is their duty to wage Jihad.”

About involvement in drug trade, Sharfuddin said the Taliban were not involved in poppy cultivation and drug trafficking. “The Taliban had banned drug cultivation during their rule,” he claimed. The commander said that most of the areas of Helmand, including Baghran, Baghni, Washer, Deshu, Brahmcha and Marja, were in the control of Taliban.

February 6, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

Israel to adjust wall’s route in Bil’in

February 6, 2010

Ramallah – Ma’an – Attorney of Bil’in local council, Michael Sfard, said on Saturday that Israeli authorities informed him of the new route of the separation wall, adjusted according to a decision by the Israeli Supreme Court of Justice in 2007.

“We were not convinced that it was vital for security reasons to maintain the existing route that passes through a topographically low area of Bil’in land and that there was no fitting security substitute to the construction of the barrier in order to protect the residents of Modi’in Illit,” Justice Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch wrote in her decision.

Once the adjusted route is implemented, residents of Bil’in are expected to restore almost half of their 2,300 donums confiscated during the construction of the wall’s original route.

However, as the portion of the wall already built will be removed, farmers will expect significant damage to their olive groves located in the area.

The local Popular Committee Against the Separation Wall in Bil’in said the decision to alter the wall’s route came too late, and would not change the fact that the wall in unacceptable, wherever it is, members said.

Member of the committee Muhammad Al-Khateib, who was recently released from Israeli custody on bail, said Israel had not respected the Supreme Court decision, nor did Israel respect international resolutions condemning the wall.

He added that hundreds of people have been injured or detained during peace protests against the wall, which have been brutally suppressed, he said. Last year, Basim Abu Raham was killed at one of the rallies.

Nonetheless, Al-Khateib said, the adjustment to the wall’s route is an accomplishment achieved by the village, pointing out that Israeli authorities had failed to stop international and Israeli solidarity groups from supporting Palestinians, adding that the popular campaign against the wall succeeded in retrieving part of the village’s land confiscated by Israel through the wall’s construction.

February 6, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | Leave a comment

Raze Illegal Buildings – Unless They Are Jewish

Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler

SILWAN, Occupied East Jerusalem, Feb 3 (IPS) – Backed by armed security men, the municipal inspectors race their jeeps through the narrow alleyways and up a hillside crowded with buildings.

Some of the homes are well-faced with stone; the naked concrete of others gives off something of a temporary air.

One block of flats stands out for its unusual seven-storey height in an area of the city where two or three storied buildings are the norm. And then there is the giant, blue-and-white Israeli national flag draped demonstratively over the front of the building, from the roof down to the ground.

This is the so-called ‘Beit Yehonatan’, the House of Yehonatan, where religious Jews have put down a nationalist marker in the heart of this Palestinian neighbourhood, part of a major effort to change the face of Arab East Jerusalem that has been under Israeli occupation since 1967.

The inspectors’ mission is to deliver demolition orders to owners of illegally-built homes, almost all of them Palestinians.

Beit Yehonatan is also exceptional in this respect. In July 2008, the Israeli Supreme Court ordered that it too was built “illegally” by the settlers and should be evacuated and sealed off.

When, for the umpteenth time, the inspectors arrive at the settlers’ building they find it shuttered. They are unable to gain access. It is not clear whether anybody is at home. Shrugging their shoulders the inspectors move on to deliver demolition orders on more accessible targets – Palestinian families.

Anyway, they know that there are powerful forces determined to ensure that this display of equal application of the law to Jews and Arabs remains precisely that – a demonstration.

The seven-story structure was built in Silwan by the religious nationalist association Ateret Cohanim in 2004 without the necessary permits. Several Jewish families from Ateret Cohanim – a lynchpin group in the Jewish colonisation endeavour in East Jerusalem – are known to live there.

Last week, Jerusalem’s Israeli mayor Nir Barkat launched a new legal maneuver in a bid to stave off implementation of the High Court order that the settlers be evacuated.

This, despite the fact that the municipality’s own legal advisor, Yosi Havilio, ruled that the court order issued two years ago be implemented immediately. Havilio said that the Mayor’s last-ditch attempt to bypass the court by appealing for an additional ruling from “an external legal authority” was “unacceptable”.

Faced by international opprobrium over the repeated cases of settlers moving more and more into Palestinian neighbourhoods, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu says blandly “it is a purely municipal matter”.

That has enabled the mayor to stand his ground. In a letter to Israel’s State Prosecutor Moshe Lador, Barkat insisted that he has police backing too. “The police believe there is serious concern that the day after Beit Yehonatan would be sealed off it would be invaded by Jews and/or Arabs and that could create an unnecessary point of friction,” he warned.

The mayor is also trying to push an alternative gambit to having the “illegal building” closed down. He is proposing to issue a new municipal by-law specifically for Silwan which will allow the construction of buildings there up to four stories high.

The motive is clear: Such a by-law would “whitewash” many of the illegal buildings in the area, including Beit Yehonatan.

Given the mayor’s record, however, this seems unlikely to ease the plight of the Palestinians of East Jerusalem whose homes are regularly pulled down on the grounds that they have not acquired the necessary building permits.

In other parts of East Jerusalem the mayor has indeed approved construction tenders for new Jewish building projects; he has yet, though, to extend such tenders to Palestinian applicants in spite of repeated pledges to do so on the grounds that all residents of Jerusalem, Jews and Arabs alike, be treated “equally” in respect of building applications. In the nearby Palestinian neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, Israeli and international demonstrators have been gathering weekly to protest the eviction of Palestinian families and their replacement by Jewish settlers.

At last Friday’s protest, a leftwing member of the Israeli parliament, Ilan Gilon, poured cold water on the settler claim of ownership over the houses they take over on the grounds that they rely on property titles held by Jews from early in the 20th century.

“If settlers can prove ownership of 28 buildings, Palestinians can prove ownership of 28,000,” he said.

“There are times when one cannot afford to sit quietly by,” the internationally-renowned Israeli novelist, David Grossman, told the gathering. “The settlers and the Right – with tremendous help from the government, the Israeli legal system and important business interests – continue to abuse Palestinian rights in a thousand ways.

“They are complicating the situation to such an extent as to make any peace agreement impossible. Basically, they are destroying our future – of Israelis and Palestinians alike,” Grossman warned.

Copyright © 2010 IPS-Inter Press Service. All rights reserved.

February 4, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | Leave a comment

American detained for `interfering` with Israeli military

03/02/2010

Ramallah – Ma’an – A 27-year-old American woman was detained along with two Palestinians by Israeli forces during a night raid in the village of Bil’in on Wednesday.

All three were taken to the border police station, an organizer said. An Israeli military spokesman confirmed the detentions.

Forces broke into the home of Abed Al-Fattah Burnat, 27, then surrounded the home of Ashraf Abu Rahma. International and Palestinian activists were alerted of the raid and went to the location to film the event.

Witnesses said the home was declared a closed military zone by army officials, who demanded reporters and activists stay 50 meters away from the door. Organizers said the group moved 50 meters back, but soldiers continued to harass photojournalist and B’Tselem volunteer Hamdi Abu Rahameh, 22.

The Israeli military said Rahameh is a Palestinian citizen of Israel, and said he was detained for failing to move back from the home after soldiers declared it a closed area.

As soldiers detained the young man, an American activist known locally as “Stormy” attempted to intervene.

The military said the American woman “interfered” in the work of the Israeli army and attempted to “prevent Israeli soldiers from carrying out their duty.” They also said the actions of the woman caused rioting in the area. They confirmed her arrest and transfer to the Israeli police.

US Consulate officials said they were looking into the incident.

Another Palestinian resident of Bil’in, Ashraf Abu Ramhe, was later detained near the village mosque. Upon his detention, Israeli soldiers handcuffed and blindfolded him, ushering him into a car with a gun pointed at his head, Popular Committee organizers said.

The army also confirmed the arrest of Ramhe.

International peace activists have been staying overnight in the village of Bil’in since the Israeli army began night raids into the village, initially following each Friday’s demonstration against the separation wall being constructed on village lands.

Night raids became more regular during the fall of 2009, and now occur almost nightly, villagers say. Activists and photojournalists work to document the raids and treatment of Palestinians at the hands of Israeli forces.

In January, a Czech woman working on solidarity projects with Palestinians via the International Solidarity Movement was detained from her home in Ramallah during a night raid and deported the following day.

Night raid in Nablus

In addition to the raids of Bil’in and Ni’lin, sources reported Israeli forces operating in Nablus, where they detained one man, identified as 22-year-old Shurahbil Awwad.

The young man was taken from his home in the Al-Makhfiyeh area in the west of Nablus before sunrise.

February 3, 2010 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | Leave a comment

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