Palestinian Man Prevented By Jewish Municipality From Building On His Own Land
December 15, 2009 03:23 – by Saed Bannoura – IMEMC News
Aadel Suad, a Palestinian resident of the town of Mitzpe Ramon in southern Israel, has been prevented for twelve years from building on his own land, and continues to live in a temporary shack with his family.
When Suad first applied for a permit to build a home in 1997, he says a senior official told him “Don’t waste your time. We’ll keep you waiting for 30 years.”
He said that they made the reason very clear: they do not want Palestinians in their otherwise all-Jewish town.
According to Suad, “”We didn’t invade the plot and we didn’t take over the land. My grandfather has been here since the Turks. We have a land registry document proving ownership of three acres.”
The Israeli town of Mitzpe Ramon was founded in 1979 on formerly Palestinian land. Most of the former Palestinian residents were displaced, but Aadel Suad managed to hold onto the land that had been in his family for generations. The new municipality then redefined his land as a ‘development area’, and split his plot into two parts.
He was allowed to remain on his land with his family, but prevented him from building a home. The municipality repeatedly attempted to push him off his land and into another area of southern Israel, but he refused to accept the illegal confiscation of his land.
Now, after finally receiving his construction permit in 2007, he has again been refused the ability to build on his land, with the excuse that there is no sewage line in the area.
Suad told reporters of the most recent denial, “It’s clear that the threat I heard in 1997 is coming true. They don’t want us here. But I’ll keep fighting until my children and I live on our private land.”
No freeze on Palestinian suffering
Seth Freedman | guardian.co.uk
14 December 2009
Within minutes of our arrival in Tuwani, in the south Hebron hills of the West Bank, an army Jeep rolled into the village and shattered the mid-morning tranquillity. “We’re turning this place into a closed military zone,” announced the stern-faced commander to anyone within earshot. Brandishing his rifle in one hand and a military document in the other, he proceeded to explain that “I decide who can be here and who can’t, and anyone who isn’t a resident has to leave immediately”.
That meant us – me, my friend and our three guides from the Villages Group – as well as the other activists who maintain a permanent presence in Tuwani assisting the locals in their struggle to survive. The timing of the closure was no accident: earlier in the morning NGO workers and locals had taken part in a solidarity march to highlight the hardships suffered by the village children who run the gauntlet of the neighbouring settlement every time they walk to and from their school.
Anything the activists could do the soldiers could do better, it seemed. “The IDF [Israel Defence Forces] don’t like us coming to support the residents of Tuwani,” said one volunteer, “so they make it their mission to make everyone’s lives uncomfortable as a result.”
The shutdown of the village and the surrounding farmland was only the latest in a long line of attempts by the Israeli authorities to break the will of the Palestinians living in the area. As we drove out of Tuwani, we were shown the stump of an electricity pylon sawn down by the army after attempts by villagers to connect themselves to the national grid. Elsewhere, dirt mounds and locked gates stopped locals driving to the nearby city of Ya’ta, thus preventing them taking their produce to sell at market, and severely impairing their economic prospects.
Thanks to the army’s exclusion orders, we were forced to walk a treacherous and convoluted route through the rocky scrubland to visit communities living in even deeper seclusion beyond Tuwani. In Tu’ba, the cave-dwelling residents of the village are under no illusion about what the future holds for them, despite all the hype surrounding the much-vaunted settlement freeze.
“The freeze will have no effect round here,” the father of the household told us bitterly. Our guide expanded on the theme, telling us that the “real freeze is on Palestinian construction: 95% of Palestinian applications for building permits in Area C are denied by the civil administration, and for communities in this area they are not allowed to build above ground whatsoever”.
Those people living in caves are, it seems, tolerated by the authorities while they remain underground, but as soon as they put their heads above the surface and attempt to build rudimentary shacks and outhouses, demolition orders are served and the army are quick to enforce the letter of the law with gusto.
Meanwhile, in the neighbouring settlements of Carmel and Ma’on, building work was going on in earnest, and defiant banners on bus stops and fence posts declared the settlers’ intention to “smash the freeze”, and denounced the incumbent government as traitors to the Zionist cause. While government inspectors have been attacked during their attempts to bring settlement construction to a halt, the full force of the settlers’ wrath has – as ever – been meted out against the Palestinians.
The sickening desecration of a mosque on Friday in the village of Yasuf, near Nablus, appears to be the opening salvo in the settlers’ latest battle to force the government to back down over the building freeze, and those we met in the south Hebron hills were wary of similar reprisal attacks being carried out against their communities. “Our children are still attacked on a regular basis,” one local told us, “as well as our shepherds and farmers. Even if we call the police, we know justice will never be done, and the situation is only getting worse now that the settlers are furious about Netanyahu’s decision.”
Ehud Krinis, one of the Villages Group activists, believes that the freeze is “just an act” on the part of the government; having worked in the area for almost eight years and seen the settlers’ above-the-law behaviour first hand, he maintains “there is no effective force that can stop the settlers building more. In fact, as we can see in Susiya and elsewhere, the settlers simply see the freeze as a challenge to construct [at an even faster rate], which is what will happen over the next 10 months.”
As we sat with the head of the Bedouin clan living in Um al-Kheir – a collection of tumble-down tents and shacks literally touching the perimeter fence of the Carmel settlement – the mood of resignation engulfing the encampment’s residents was suffocating. We were shown aerial photos of Um al-Kheir’s gradual demise over the past 30 years, a situation attributable to the encroachment of the settlers and the military on to their ancestral land. It was clear that for those forced to endure the humiliation and hardship on a daily basis, the politicians’ upbeat talk was at best cheap, and at worst a flagrant denial of the facts.
For those Palestinians living under military rule, coupled with indiscriminate and incessant settler attacks against them, their children and their flocks, there is no end in sight to the suffering. While the world might have been convinced that the worm is about to turn in the Israeli political arena, a quick glance at the fevered construction still taking place in the settlements, the oppressive military activity against the Palestinian villagers and the overarching penury in which the Palestinians are forced to subsist should give onlookers food for thought about the true situation on the ground.
Freeze or no freeze, the future looks no brighter for the Palestinian locals today than it has during any of the bitter years and decades gone by.
Israeli soldiers kill Palestinian citizen in central Gaza
| 12/12/2009 – 10:06 AM |
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BREIJ, (PIC)– A Palestinian man was shot and killed by the Israeli occupation forces (IOF) east of Breij refugee camp in central Gaza Strip on Saturday, medical sources reported. They told the PIC that Sami Abu Khosa, 45, was hit with several bullets in the abdomen and other parts of his body and his condition was critical. The citizen was admitted into ICU but died of his wounds shortly afterwards, the sources said. IOF soldiers opened machinegun fire at the area east of Breij hitting and killing Abu Khosa. |
Blogger: US air strikes kill ‘exactly 30′ enemies every time
By Daniel Tencer –The Raw Story – December 11th, 2009
When it comes to air strikes against the Taliban, there’s something about the number 30, says the Security Crank blog. The unnamed military affairs blogger has published a list of recent air strikes against militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and an amazing pattern has emerged: It seems that just about every time an air strike is reported in the news, the Taliban casualty figure cited is 30. Citing the Moon of Alabama blog, which made a similar argument this spring, Security Crank linked to 12 news reports of separate air strike incidents since the start of the year in which the number of Taliban or insurgent casualties was reported to be 30, in most cases citing US military officials. Not 29, not 31. Thirty. What does this mean? For the Security Crank, it means we just shouldn’t believe the numbers.
How could we possibly have any idea how the war is going, here or anywhere else, when the bad guys seem only to die in groups of 30? The sheer ubiquity of that number in fatality and casualty counts is astounding, to the point where I don’t even pay attention to a story anymore when they use that magic number 30. It is an indicator either of ignorance or deliberate spin … but no matter the case, whenever you see the number 30 used in reference to the Taliban, you should probably close the tab and move onto something else, because you just won’t get a good sense of what happened there.
Megan Carpentier, writing at Air America, believes there’s more to this than just fudged numbers. Carpentier points to a story in the Los Angeles Times this past summer that reports that the US has, or at least had, during the Bush administration, a policy of requiring the secretary of defense to sign off on any air strike that was likely to kill more than 30 civilians.
The Times reported:
In a grisly calculus known as the “collateral damage estimate,” US military commanders and lawyers often work together in advance of a military strike, using very specific, Pentagon-imposed protocols to determine whether the good that will come of it outweighs the cost.
We don’t know much about how it works, but in 2007, Marc Garlasco, the Pentagon’s former chief of high-value targeting, offered a glimpse when he told Salon magazine that in 2003, “the magic number was 30.” That meant that if an attack was anticipated to kill more than 30 civilians, it needed the explicit approval of then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld or President George W. Bush. If the expected civilian death toll was less than 30, the strike could be OKd by the legal and military commanders on the ground.
Carpentier posits that 30 remains the magic casualty number for the Pentagon to this day, and implies that the casualty numbers are being fudged so that they are “acceptable” to the public.
“That PR calculus of how many deaths matter to the average American has apparently carried over from the Bush Administration to the Obama Adminstration, at least insofar as ground commanders are concerned,” she writes.
But Carpentier’s argument raises as many questions as it answers. For one, the Rumsfeld-era casualty policy applied to civilian casualties, not insurgent casualties. Yet the series of news reports this year cite the 30 number for Taliban casualties, and cite varying figures for civilian casualties, if any are cited at all. It would be hard to argue that the Pentagon believes the American public can only stomach 30 Taliban casualties at a time.
So the likelier explanation is that the Pentagon doesn’t know how many insurgents were killed — perhaps because distinguishing insurgents from civilians is no easy task. And the 30 number seems like a safe bet: High enough to justify the air strike, but not so high as to seem suspicious or overblown.
Of course, that’s all just speculation. So long as military officials continue to insist that it’s destroying the Taliban exactly 30 insurgents at a time, there won’t be much the public will be able to glean from the gory reports of death and destruction in Central Asia.
Rules of human decency apply to Israelis too
A dose of Israel’s own (academic) medicine might help the message sink in
By Stuart Littlewood
The People’s Voice
12 December 2009
Stuart Littlewood argues that an academic boycott of Israel is now urgent in the light of an Israeli High Court ruling that the Israel occupation forces acted within their rights when they abducted, blindfolded, handcuffed and dumped in Gaza 21-year-old Palestinian student Berlanty Azzam just weeks before she was due to complete her degree at Bethlehem University in the occupied West Bank.
Poor Berlanty. What did she do to deserve this crushing blow to her hopes and life chances?
The Israeli High Court has denied Berlanty Azzam justice – again – and prevented her returning to Bethlehem University for the final few weeks to complete her degree.
On 28 October this Christian student at the Vatican-sponsored Bethlehem University was abducted by the “Israel Defence Forces”, “the world’s most moral army”, after attending a job interview in Ramallah, then blindfolded and handcuffed and dumped in Gaza. She had lived in the West Bank since 2005 after being granted a permit.
There was only one kind of permit available in 2005 – an entry permit to Israel. But the Israeli state claimed that this permit was insufficient and Berlanty should have obtained some other permit, even though the state admits that none existed at the time.
State representatives took her permit, a key piece of evidence, and never produced it to the court. After six weeks of double-talk the court accepted the state’s claim that Berlanty entered the West Bank illegally. We hear a lot about how independent Israel’s justice system is. Here’s proof, if any were needed, that it is simply a tool of the military.
To avoid accusations that her residence was not Bethlehem, Berlanty had for the last four years resisted the temptation to return to Gaza and visit her folks. She and her parents submitted numerous applications to change the Gaza address recorded on her identity card to her actual place of residence, Bethlehem, but to no avail. Israel controls the Palestinian population registry and refuses to register changes in address from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank – another example of how Gazans are effectively imprisoned.
This, of course, is in breach of her human rights. The West Bank and the Gaza Strip are internationally recognized as one integral territory and under international law everyone has the right to freely choose their place of residence within a single territory. In 1999 Israel and the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) signed an agreement establishing a 28-mile road corridor giving Palestinians safe passage between the two parts of Palestine – yet another empty gesture.
“We are disappointed that the Israeli military and High Court have interfered with the Church’s educational mission at Bethlehem University by denying Berlanty to be brought back to Bethlehem to complete her studies,” said Brother Peter Bray, the vice chancellor, on hearing the court ruling. “We realize that Berlanty is one of the many people in Gaza who suffer so unjustly.”
Indeed. Since 2000 Israel has implemented a sweeping ban, preventing youngsters from Gaza from studying at Palestinian universities in the West Bank. A 2007 High Court decision determined that students from Gaza wishing to study in the West Bank should be allowed to do so “in cases that would have positive humanitarian implications”.
However, to the best of her legal team’s knowledge, since that judgment was handed down Israel hasn’t issued a single entry permit. Only last summer 12 students from Gaza were refused permits to study at Bethlehem University. Back in the late 1990s, about 1,000 students from Gaza studied in the West Bank, most of them in disciplines that are not offered in the Gaza Strip.
Like Berlanty, an estimated 25,000 people currently living in the West Bank have been declared “illegal” by Israel solely because the address on their identity card is in the Gaza Strip. Some of them have lived in the West Bank for decades but Israel simply does not recognize their right to be there. They are extremely limited in their daily movements and live in fear of being detained and “deported”, just as Berlanty was. Consequently they have very limited opportunities for employment, business and studies. This policy not only breaches Israel’s obligations under international to treat the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as a “single territorial entity”, but it also chokes any prospect of healthy development in Palestinian society.
It is no use pretending that things will change – unless other countries give Israel a dose of its own medicine. How does the Berlanty case and the thousands like it sit with the great and the good who piously reject the idea of an academic boycott against Israel?
All political parties fight against such a boycott for muddle-headed reasons. The recent Channel 4 Dispatches programme uncovered the influence of the Israel lobby and its money on the Conservative Party. Another particularly obnoxious group that’s hopelessly out of touch with reality is the Liberal Democrat Friends of Israel (LDFI). At their party’s conference they tabled a motion squashing an academic boycott, saying that “Israeli universities are centres of free debate and discussion and that the universities contain Jews, Muslims, Christians, Israelis and Palestinians. Furthermore, a boycott does nothing to resolve a negotiated solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict and is indeed counter-productive as it discourages dialogue.” This motion against the boycott was passed with an overwhelming majority.
The aim of the Liberal Democrats Friends of Israel is to “maximize support for the State of Israel within the party and Parliament” and “encourage a broad understanding of Israel’s unique political position as the only democracy in the Middle East”.
Their stated purpose is:
- To influence the party’s Middle East policy so it places a high priority on Israel’s right to peace and security.
- To provide parliamentarians with briefing material for parliamentary debates, questions to ministers and public appearances.
- To rebut attacks on Israel in the media, Parliament and the party.
- To liaise with Israeli politicians and government.
- To arrange and accompany LDFI delegations to Israel.
- To keep in regular contact with the embassy of Israel.
In other words, they act as a prop within the British Parliament for this racist military regime.
Such blind allegiance and bizarre conduct contribute to the tragedy of Berlanty and countless other Palestinian youngsters. Without these beacons of misplaced support across the Western world lawless Israel would be sunk.
House chairman Brad Sherman calls on UC Irvine to throw out Muslim Student Union for raising money for Gaza
By Philip Weiss – December 11, 2009
Your Israel lobby at work. Brad Sherman is a liberal Democratic congressman from California and populist on Wall Street issues. He is also chairman of a House subcommittee on terrorism. With the applause (and likely the urging) of the Zionist Organization of America, he has sent out three letters to federal officials, urging investigations directed at Viva Palestina, the George Galloway group that is devoted to bringing aid to besieged people of Gaza– for allegedly supporting a terrorist organization, Hamas. The letters are to the IRS, to the Justice Department, and to Hillary Clinton.
In a fourth letter, written last week to the chancellor of the University of California at Irvine, Sherman accuses the Muslim Student Union at UC Irvine of soliciting funds for a terrorist organization because it hosted Galloway last May. Once you have determined these facts in your internal investigation, Sherman says, you should bar the Muslim Student Union from the campus.
The ZOA, a right-wing pro-settlers group, says that it brought the Galloway event to Sherman’s attention earlier this fall and pressed for an investigation. Here, the Muslim Student Union at Irvine describes how it has been harassed by the ZOA:
The truth of the matter is that ZOA has been attempting to defame, censor and essentially eradicate the MSU for years now. This is only the most recent attempt to silence the MSU and restrict its constitutional right to freedom of speech, religion and association. Although this is not the first time the organization has made such claims against the MSU, the complaints continue to receive attention. This is surprising, considering all previous claims the organization made against MSU have been proven to be groundless. In 2004, ZOA claimed that the green stoles MSU members wear during graduation were a symbol of support for Hamas.
Outdoing the Kafkaesque: Egypt’s new US designed underground Gaza wall
December 11, 2009 — People’s Geography
Just when you thought things could not become more Kafkaesque comes apparent confirmation that the US-backed Egyptian government is building an underground steel barrier designed to cut off one of the few lifelines sustaining the Gaza Ghetto, the tunnel economy. The BBC reports that the huge underground wall will be 10-11km (6-7 miles) long, will extend 18 metres below the surface and will take 18 months to complete. The project has been shrouded in secrecy with no official confirmation from the Egyptian government, but it is understood that the design is commissioned by US army engineers, at the behest of Israel, Ann Wright surmises.
The ‘impenetrable’ barrier is made of super-strength steel manufactured in the US, according to the BBC. It will likely not succeed in halting all smuggling but will force Palestinians to dig deeper.
Conditions are worsening in this nightmare siege. The Israeli regime has prevented EU officials from entering the besieged strip, Gaza’s water is contaminated and creating a public health disaster and the israeli blockade that prevents vital reconstruction continues unabated.
This is a new low in the levels of inhumanity, absurdity and wretchedness to which the Israeli regime, with active Egyptian and US ZOG complicity, are subjecting the beleaguered Palestinians of Gaza. Only a just political resolution will put an end to the tunnels.
On a note of black humour, Gilad Atzmon wrote a great satirical piece a few years ago, Operation Security Roof which is relevant here.
Retired US Army Reserve Colonel and former diplomat Ann Wright rightly castigates this development and calls it a laughing stock:
Just as the steel walls of the US Army Corps of Engineers at the base of the levees of New Orleans were unable to contain Hurricane Katrina, the US Army Corps of Engineers’ underground steel walls that will attempt to build an underground cage of Gaza will not be able to contain the survival spirit of the people of Gaza.
America’s super technology will again be laughed at by the world, as young men dedicated to the survival of their people, will again outwit technology by digging deeper, and most likely penetrating the “impenetrable” in some novel, simple, low-tech way.
See also:
What is to blame for the stalled peace talks?
by Adam Horowitz on December 10, 2009
Israeli officials blame a Palestinian Authority diplomatic campaign orchestrated “to coerce Israel into accepting statehood.”
The US State Department blames the Goldstone report.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will seek cabinet approval on Sunday for a new map of national priority zones that will grant 110,000 settlers – most of whom live outside the major settlement blocs – the economic benefits conferred on residents of these zones. . .
Designation as a national priority zone entitles a town to additional state funding, which can be spent on programs ranging from professional retraining courses to extra classroom hours and cultural activities. Netanyahu’s proposal allots a budget of about NIS 1,000 per person for these benefits, meaning his government will be earmarking an additional NIS 110 million for the settlements.
The proposal the cabinet will be asked to approve on Sunday states that its main purpose is “to encourage population dispersal in the State of Israel and increase the population of the periphery and of areas near the border.” Another goal is to “preserve and bolster Israel’s national security stamina.”
Some settlement freeze. The best comment on the proposed new “priority zones” comes from Israeli Knesset member and National Union Party member Michael Ben-Ari:
“The message from here is very clear. . .The Jews have been exiled enough. If there is a people that has to be evacuated and should not be here, it is not the Jewish people.”
Who will save Gaza’s children?
Never mind Copenhagen, an environmental catastrophe is going on right now – contaminated water is poisoning babies in Gaza
By Victoria Brittain
The Guardian
December 9, 2009
Among all the complex and long-term solutions being sought in Copenhagen for averting environmental catastrophe across the world, there is one place where the catastrophe has already happened, but could be immediately ameliorated with one simple political act.
In Gaza there is now no uncontaminated water; of the 40,000 or so newborn babies, at least half are at immediate risk of nitrate poisoning – incidence of “blue baby syndrome”, methaemoglobinaemia, is exceptionally high; an unprecedented number of people have been exposed to nitrate poisoning over 10 years; in some places the nitrate content in water is 300 times World Health Organisation standards; the agricultural economy is dying from the contamination and salinated water; the underground aquifer is stressed to the point of collapse; and sewage and waste water flows into public spaces and the aquifer.
The blockade of Gaza has gone on for nearly four years, and the vital water and sanitation infrastructure went past creaking to virtual collapse during the three-week assault on the territory almost a year ago.
What would it take to start the two UN sewerage repair projects approved by Israel; a UN water and sanitation project, not yet approved; and two more UN internal sewage networks, not yet approved? Right now just one corner of the blockade could be lifted for these building materials and equipment to enter Gaza, to let water works begin and to give infant lives a chance. Just one telephone call from the Israeli defence ministry could do it – an early Christmas present to the UN staff on the ground who have been ready to act for months and have grown desperate on this front, as on so many others.
Earlier this year, just one question face to face to the Israeli government, from Senator John Kerry after he visited Gaza, allowed pasta into Gaza. Who from Europe or the US will ask the Israeli defence minister the face-to-face question for the blue babies? Sarah Brown, the British prime minister’s wife, would be the perfect candidate – an independent person who has the ear of the powerful, a mother who knows something about grief for babies. And she could be accompanied by Lord Mandelson in case there was any bullying.
The science on all this is unchallenged. Last September a UN report spelled it out in stark detail, including the regional implications for Israel and Egypt if the shared aquifer is not “rested” and alternative water sources found. The United Nations Environment Programme estimated that $1.5bn could be needed over 20 years to restore the aquifer, including the establishment of desalination plants to take the pressure off the underground water supplies.
Gaza’s huge pale sandy beaches used to be society’s playground and reassurance of happiness and normality, with families picnicking, horses exercising, fishermen mending their nets, children swimming and boys exercising in the early morning, but these days they are mainly empty, and not just because it is winter. Between 50m and 60m litres of untreated sewage have flowed into the Mediterranean every day this year since the end of the Israeli invasion in January, the sea smells bad and few fish are available in the three nautical mile area Palestinians are allowed in. This resource seems as ruined as the rubble of Gaza’s parliament and ministries.
A visitor to Gaza could miss this underground disaster, seeing what the surreal economy of the tunnels from Egypt has brought in: a chic new coffee house, with new furniture and prints on the wall, which would not be out of place in Piccadilly, fish from Oman for restaurants, fat sheep and goats for the Eid feast, new cars reassembled after being cut into four, huge motorbikes straight out of Easy Rider, bustling markets full of foods, clothes, fridges, washing machines, pharmaceuticals, some brought in to order, and much more. Some people are getting very rich on both sides of the Rafah border.
But the tunnels are a small slice of the reality. “We have run out of words to describe how bad it is here,” says John Ging, director of operations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Gaza. Ging heads a team of 10,000 mainly Palestinian workers who run the aid supplies that are all that stand between the vast majority of Gazans and destitution. “We have 80% unemployment, an economy at subsistence level, infrastructure destroyed, etc, but even worse than the humanitarian plight is the destruction of civil society.”
Ging’s great preoccupation is “the 750,000 children susceptible to an environment where things are moving rapidly in the wrong direction, where the injustice is bewildering, and every day worse”.
There is a big problem of insecurity and violence here, and it is getting worse. Most adults display stoic resilience, and cling to a belief in traditional values, but there is a compelling narrative by extremists which becomes ever more difficult to combat. Only lifting the siege would change the dynamic.
An international community that has accepted the “normalcy” of the degrading tunnel economy for Gaza, shames us all. Ending the water emergency should be the first step to breaking the blockade.
Twilight Zone /The third blow
By Gideon Levy – December 9, 2009
A few days before the prime minister promised to suspend construction in the territories, the orders had already been issued: Buildings, tin shacks and tents in the tiny Bedouin hamlet of Hirbet Um al-Hir, adjacent to the settlement of Carmel in the south Hebron hills, were to be demolished.
This week, representatives from the U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem visited the site. A kitten lay on the rocky, arid ground, slowly dying. No one in the place gave a thought to rescuing it. Helpless, the kitten cast a desperate gaze at its surroundings. Not even the lean Shepherd dogs approached it. In another hour, maybe another day, the kitten will breathe its last anguished breath. The residents of the tiny village are helpless, too. With their last remaining strength they are clinging to the fence of the settlement of Carmel, part of which lies on their private land; clinging to the soil their father and grandfather bought after the family was forced to flee from the Negev in 1948; clinging in their tents and their tin huts and with their animals to the remainder of their land, from which Israel has for some time been threatening to evict them.
Who was here first? To whom has this private land belonged for many decades? Who was already expelled once by Israel? Whose structures are demolished if they are built without a permit? And who do you suppose can even get a permit? Questions that are as pointless as they are irrelevant here, in this obscure community in the south Hebron hills. On Monday of this week the diplomats from the U.S. consulate were struck by the injustice. They promised to help. Who knows? Maybe salvation for the residents of the hirbeh – the word means ruin – will come from them.
Alongside the yellow homes of the “southern neighborhood” the settlers have laid the foundations for another group of homes. These of course will not be included in the “freeze,” because they are “building starts.” Parked next to them are an army Jeep and a settlers’ security Jeep. According to Id Hadalin, a fine-looking young Bedouin of 24 who speaks fluent, up-to-date Hebrew and also English (which he says he learned “from life”), the residents of the new neighborhood are worse than their predecessors.
How so?
“Because they are young. Because they sabotage our property and steal our animals.” Id tells of shepherds being attacked and sheep stolen, of people being struck and harassed. Complaints submitted to the Hebron police usually result in a visit by a team of police, but no one is brought to trial. And now have come the freeze orders, which Id calls “a big, big problem.”
The bleached-out land is covered with cracks. Last week there were flash floods here and farming equipment donated by the International Red Cross to till the soil and plant wheat and olives in the wadi was destroyed. The seeds were washed away. One blow after another.
Id was born here. “My head fell forward from this tent. That is what my parents told me. Most of us were born naturally, without a hospital.” Eighty-four souls live in this compound and another 70 in the expansion of the hirbeh a few hundred meters to the north. All of them are from the same family, the same tribe, the Jahalin, which lived in the Negev and was scattered to the four winds in 1948. Id’s grandfather arrived here at the beginning of the 1950s with his family and bought this land, on the remnants of which we now sit, from people in the town of Yatta.
Id’s father, Suleiman, who also speaks a good contemporary Hebrew, is far more distraught than his son. “Three times you did us bad,” he says. “The first time, in 1948. Everything went. No refugee camps were established for the Bedouin, and every tribe went its own way. We started to wander in the hills, until we got here. The Bedouin wander with their camels and everyone chases them away. Get out, get out. Even the people of Yatta are bad. They will kill for a meter of land. My father bought the whole hill from them, and now Carmel is perched on it. The second time: the Six-Day War. We all became refugees. Both in the West Bank and in Gaza, and Musa, too [Musa Abu Hashhash, a fieldworker for the human rights organization B’Tselem, who accompanied us on the visit.] At first the Israeli army was good to us and didn’t do anything to us. We stayed here and enjoyed life.
“Then, in November 1980, the first Jewish National Fund tractor entered along with a high army officer, who said: We have to cut a road to Be’er Sheva here. Everyone will benefit from the road, he said. Then they put an army base on the hill and the base stood there for five months and the first bachelor came. Actually, it was one couple and two bachelors. They started to settle and we did not say a word. The big military governor came to my father and told us: This is a military area. My father went to the mayor of Hebron, Samir Shamsh, of blessed memory, and brought the deeds that proved that this land belongs to us.
“We are stupid Bedouin. We thought the settlers would not harm us. They did groundwork here, groundwork there, Carmel grew and expanded onto our land and we said nothing. In 1992 it snowed and we saw our situation, we were totally finished, and then we started to build with cinderblocks. The settlers called in the Civil Administration and they wanted to demolish our cinderblock structures. We were served demolition orders. I went to the Civil Administration in Beit El and there they told me: Aren’t you ashamed? They are sitting on my land and building two-story homes and I will not build. That is what they said to me. I went to Faisal Husseini, of blessed memory, and he hired a lawyer for us who helped see to it that the two homes were not demolished. Afterward they demolished the two homes, one time and another time, and now they want to do it again.
“Three weeks ago, on November 11, a Civil Administration officer came with an inspector. He came to this tent where we are now sitting – this tent also exists in the pictures taken by your plane – and told us that the tent has to be demolished. This tent has been here since the 1960s. I have a transistor radio and I hear that there is a tsunami in Asia or an earthquake in Russia. From Allah. And what happens? All the countries help. And how do they help? They bring tents to rescue the people. You are a wise nation. I ask you: What kind of law tears down a tent? What kind of law issues a demolition order for a tent? What happened to this world? This world has turned completely upside down here. Tents are brought to the refugees from all the wars, and here they come to demolish the tent. To Benjamin Netanyahu I say: I am not afraid. I told the officer: If you take down the tent we will sleep on the earth and the sky will be our blanket. We will not leave. How many times does a person have to flee in his life? Carmel is on my land. They were not ashamed, and we were silent.
“They started with these orders in 1995. This is our third blow. I have more than 60 orders and it’s not finished yet. My father said: Even if this is my hill, the settlers will live here. I also am not against the army. But a civilian person like myself – will they throw me out? But the settlers are above the law. Their homes say that they are above the law. You see our distance from their fence, and now they want to throw us out completely. Is that what we deserve? A kick in the ass? But we will not budge from here. Only if there will be a massacre here like in Kafr Qasem or in Kibiya. If they take down our tent, we will put up a new one. We are Bedouin.
“We have no objection to Carmel. In the 1980s we were friends. They knew all our children. At that time they were good people. Now they want to move us. You are wiser than us. You know that everything is in the hands of the settlers. And who guards them? The army and the Civil Administration. They do the work for them. The whole nation of Israel works for the settlers.
“I heard that Netanyahu has stopped the construction now, but I don’t think they listen to Netanyahu. But only God will help us. How far will you push the Bedouin? To what abyss? To the Dead Sea? To the Red Sea?”
Twice in the past two years a few structures and tents have been demolished by the authorities. Several months ago the villagers tried to build 11 gray-brick toilets; only two remain that were not demolished, one in this compound and one in the compound opposite. They are left with one toilet for 86 people. Using old plastic boxes and tin cans, they build dovecotes, whose denizens flutter whenever a donkey snorts, a dog barks or a car passes in Carmel. Of the friendships with the settlers there remains only one righteous man in Sodom, Ron Tsurel by name, who has come to their aid. His home abuts the fence that separates the Bedouin from Carmel and they have only good things to say about him. They remember him from when he was still a bachelor. They are not even on speaking terms with all the other uninvited neighbors.
Now they know what will happen: after the stop-work orders will come the second order and then the third and then the demolition. “We are already used to it,” they say, laconically yet sadly.
A response by the Civil Administration was not available at the time of going to press.
Israel bans EU MPs from Gaza
09/12/2009
Gaza – Ma’an – Israel banned a delegation of European members of parliament from entering the Gaza Strip through the Erez crossing on Wednesday, despite previously approving the visit, the EU said.
“Israel had yesterday afternoon granted final permission for all members of our delegation to travel,” the European Parliament group said in a statement.
“However, some three hours later entry for all members of the delegation was rescinded ’on security grounds,’ without further explanation,”
“We insist on a full explanation of the security risks claimed by Israel,” the statement continued. “We received the news of the cancellation with bewilderment and dismay.”
“It is extremely curious that the cancellation came within a few hours of the announcement of the EU Council statement re-affirming Europe’s strong position in favor of an independent Palestinian state based on 1967 borders and an end to settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem,” the statement added.
They were referring to a statement issued on Tuesday by the EU’s foreign ministers calling for Jerusalem to become the capital of both Israel and a future Palestinian state.
The European delegation said it planned to check on humanitarian conditions in Gaza, meet with UNRWA operations director John Ging, and hold talks with members of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC).
They said they intended to urge PLC members to reconcile with their colleagues in the rival Palestinian administration in Ramallah.
Palestinian sources confirmed that the delegation was scheduled to cross into Gaza at 8am on Wednesday for meetings with UNRWA and PLC officials.
A spokesman for Israel’s Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
The delegation included Prosinsias De Rossa of Ireland, Kyriacos Triantaphyllides of Cyprus, Potit Salatto of Italy, Rosario Crocetta of Italy, Alexandra Thein of Germany, Nicole Kiil Neilsen of France, Robert Atkins of Britain, and Georgios Toussas of Greece.
Palestinian lawmaker Jamal Al-Khudari, who heads the Popular Committee Against the Israeli Siege of Gaza, said that prohibiting the entry of the delegation was the latest in a string of incidents where top European government officials were banned from Gaza.
Last week Irish Foreign Minister Michel Martin said he had been denied a request to enter Gaza.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davuto’lu and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner were also barred from Gaza recently.
The European delegation also said that the denial of access into Gaza was minor compared to Israeli violations of Palestinians’ rights: “The inconvenience caused to our delegation is minor compared to the constant tension and harassment to which Palestinians live with in the occupied territories including house demolitions and evictions in East Jerusalem, and the appalling conditions under which the people are living in Gaza as reported to us by ECHO, the European Commission Humanitarian Aid office.”
They added that the ban “does not improve the relationship between this Israeli government and the European Parliament.”
“By denying elected members of the European Parliament the opportunity to meet our democratically-elected counterparts of the PLC is an unacceptable interference in the democratic process, and is contrary to international law,” the statement added.
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From the Archives
A sample of vaccine and injectable medication tragedies during my lifetime
This is what happens when you demand speedy production in an era of politicized regulation
By Meryl Nass, MD | February 12, 2022
All these tragedies have been due to failures of testing or failures in manufacturing processes. Most occurred before vaccine manufacturers were given virtually complete protection from liability in 1987.
With the duration of patent exclusivity determining how much new products earn, products are rushed to market as quickly as possible, most using a shortened path for FDA review. Recalls and market removals of approved products are much more common than they used to be. We can only expect more of these disasters in the future, especially if the products are mandated for everyone. … continue
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