The Gaza “shopping mall”: reality and hasbara
By Ali Abunimah | July 25, 2010
When he came to Washington a few months ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was touting the multiplex cinemas and shopping malls that have supposedly sprouted up in the West Bank as evidence of the “economic renaissance” going on there. There is no such economic renaissance — it is a mirage promoted by Israel and its collaborators — under the rubric of “economic peace.” In fact, in large parts of the West Bank, people are poorer even than in Gaza, which is saying something given the wretched poverty and unemployment in Gaza.
Now, Israel’s supporters have leapt on a minor story — the opening of a shopping “mall” in Gaza — to perform a similar hasbara trick: ‘there is no poverty in Gaza, no siege, no hunger, no malnutrition. Just look at them, they are living better than we do!’ I have seen such messages on many right-wing and pro-Israel sites.
Israel’s Ynet reported:
While Hamas continues to demand a full lifting of the blockade, the Gaza market seems to be doing alright. Gaza Mall, the first ever shopping center in the Strip was opened last Saturday with masses storming the new attraction.
The two-floor compound, each stretching over roughly 9,700 sq. ft, offers international brands as well as much-needed air conditioning. Tens of thousands of shoppers from Rafah to Beit Hanoun have already visited the site within a matter of days, making the center Gaza’s new craze.
First, note that the reported size is about 20,000 square feet (1,850 square meters). To put this in perspective, the average size of a Wal-Mart store in the US is five times larger than the entire Gaza “mall”: 108,000 square feet (with the largest Wal-Mart stores going up to 185,000 square feet!).
Now I have received this eyewitness account from a source in Gaza:
“I found out about the Gaza mall. Yes it exists. The goods in there are very expensive and it’s not a real mall, barely bigger than a little supermarket. It has 4 sections, one sells vegetables grown in Gaza, the 2nd section sells clothes and shoes, a 3rd section is like a huge supermarket with things brought to Gaza through the tunnels, and the last sells electric materials, TVs, stereos… The owners are very rich people in the Gaza Strip. Most of the stuff being sold are either made in Gaza, or brought via tunnels. And there are no thousands visitors, when I went there, I saw about 15-20 people only.”
Gaza is a territory with 1.5 million people. They ought to have a normal life. That this small store is being celebrated as a major achievement shows just how hard the Israeli siege is biting. It also shows — as I reported in a previous blog post — that the siege is producing a small wealthy economic elite, while the vast majority suffers.
Suspect in murder of four Palestinians was Shin Bet agent
By Jonathan Cook | The National | July 24. 2010
NAZARETH // The arrest by the Israeli internal security service, the Shin Bet, of an Israeli Jew accused of killing at least four Palestinians has thrown a rare light on the secret police, including claims that it tried to enlist the accused to assassinate a Palestinian spiritual leader.
Chaim Pearlman, who was arrested on July 13, has been charged with murdering four Palestinians in Jerusalem and injuring at least seven others in a series of knife attacks that began more than a decade ago. Police are still investigating whether he was involved in additional attacks.
Although Mr Pearlman had been denied access to a lawyer until Friday, since his arrest far-right groups have rapidly come to his aid, waging what the Shin Bet officials have described as “psychological warfare” by releasing damaging details about the case.
Ties between the Shin Bet and illegal settler organisations have come to light after Mr Pearlman’s arrest. The Shin Bet have been cornered into admitting that they recruited Mr Pearlman as an agent in 2000, in the midst of his alleged stabbing spree, despite the fact that he was a known member of Kach, an outlawed group calling for the expulsion of Palestinians from “Greater Israel”.
In addition, Mr Pearlman has also released tape recordings he secretly made of recent conversations with an undercover Shin Bet agent who tried to get Mr Pearlman to incriminate himself.
The agent, who befriended Mr Pearlman and was known as “Dada”, can be heard exhorting him both to go to an “Arab village” to “turn it into a fireworks display” and to execute Sheikh Raed Salah, a leader of the Islamic Movement and a recent participant in the aid flotilla to Gaza that was attacked by Israel.
In the 20 hours of recordings with Dada, some of which have been broadcast on Israeli television, the undercover agent can be heard repeatedly inciting Mr Pearlman to kill Sheikh Salah,
Dada says: “Why haven’t soldiers killed Raed Salah, may he die? Someone should take care of him, send him to the next world.”
He then suggests Mr Pearlman shoot at the sheikh’s car or put a bomb under it. “That’s the classic one. Nothing’s left, everything goes everywhere,” he says on the recording.
Dada’s advice came after Sheikh Salah had stated that Israeli commandos aboard Mavi Marmara ship had tried to kill him. Mr Pearlman, who apparently suspected he was being investigated, sent the recorded conversations with Dada to local media to be broadcast in the event of his detention.
In another blow to the Shin Bet, Mr Pearlman’s supporters have released a secretly filmed video of the head of the agency’s Jewish division, which arrested Mr Pearlman, naming him and identifying where he lives.
Although the agent is in charge of handling “Jewish terror” cases, the video states that he lives in Kfar Adumim, a West Bank settlement.
It is a criminal offence to identify any employee of the Shin Bet, but the release of details about such a senior figure is certain to provoke fears among officials that he may be in danger, including revenge attacks or future prosecution in an international tribunal.
Mr Pearlman’s supporters have posted the video on YouTube and other overseas websites, making it difficult for the Shin Bet to remove.
Nadia Matar, the leader of the pro-settler group Women in Green, told the Jerusalem Post last week that the Shin Bet divisional head “has to know that there is a price to stabbing Jewish brothers in the back. People have to be loyal or bear the consequences.”
The Shin Bet’s modus operandi was exposed in part by a rare decision from the judge supervising the investigation to partially revoke a gag order immediately after Mr Pearlman’s arrest.
Abir Baker, a lawyer with Adalah, a legal centre that handles Palestinian security cases, said: “The Shin Bet is facing an internal crisis over this arrest and the settlers are trying to exploit that with their campaign.
“Many members of the Shin Bet are settlers themselves and think of these extremists as their colleagues, not as the enemy. The line between the Shin Bet and these extremist organisations is very blurred.”
Unlike in the case of Palestinian attacks on Israelis, attacks by Jews on Palestinians are rarely solved, leading to criticism that the Shin Bet is not serious about tackling the problem of Jewish terror.
Amir Oren, a columnist for the liberal Haaretz newspaper, accused the Shin Bet of having “chains on its feet and weights around its neck” when it investigated such cases.
Yaakov Teitel, a settler who was arrested by the Shin Bet last year, was accused of his first murder of a Palestinian 14 years ago. Some observers have suggested he was only arrested after he started attacking left-wing Jews, including placing a bomb at the home of a prominent academic in 2008.
Ms Baker said Jewish terrorists often found it easy to evade the Shin Bet because they had learnt about the organisation’s investigation techniques while working as agents.
Although Mr Pearlman, 30, was living in the Israeli town Yavne, north of Ashdod, at the time of his arrest, he was raised on a settlement and spent time living in Kfar Tapuach, which is closely identified with the Kach movement. Despite being illegal, Kach operates relatively openly in settlements and Mr Pearlman’s connections to the group may explain the well-organised campaign quickly mounted in his defence.
Itamar Ben Gvir, a parliamentary aide to Michael Ben Ari, an MP who has maintained ties to Kach, was reported by the Israeli press to be behind the media campaign against Shin Bet. Mr Pearlman is also being helped by Honenu, a legal organisation that defends Jews accused of attacking Palestinians.
Anonymous Shin Bet officials told Channel 2 television that the campaign being waged against them by the far-right was “a completely different game” from previous confrontations.
foreign.desk@thenational.ae
Gaza’s strawberries spoil under siege
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, 22 July 2010
The northern Gaza Strip area of Beit Lahiya is famous for its agriculture. The climate, the sandy clay soil and the fresh water supply create an ideal environment for growing fruit here, and the practice has become a deeply-engrained way of life for Beit Lahiya farmers like Abdulfattah al-Khateeb, who has been growing strawberries here for more than 25 years. Although the Gaza Strip is amongst the most densely-populated places on earth, here luscious green fields spread out in vast tracts. Yet it is clear that as Abdulfattah gazes out onto his land his minds is troubled: Abdulfattah’s concern is unique in that it is not with growing his crops, but rather whether his crops will be able to reach the market once they are grown.
In order to realize even a modest profit, Abdulfattah must sell his strawberries in the West Bank, Israel and Europe, as he did for over 20 years. Since 2007, however, Israel has enforced a complete and continuous closure of all border crossings into and out of the Gaza Strip, effectively cutting the coastal territory off from the rest of the world. Now, like the countless tons of his strawberries which have since been left to rot while waiting in vain at the Israeli border, he fears that his business and his livelihood may perish as a result of the closure.
Before the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip in 1967, this area was so renowned for its citrus production that the fruit produced here was known throughout Palestine as “yellow gold.” Under the control of Israel, however, itself a major citrus producer, farmers in Beit Lahiya and throughout Gaza were forced to abandon their crops — many orange groves were bulldozed by Israeli forces — and instead grow flowers and strawberries and other crops that adhere to Israel’s “security concerns.” The Beit Lahiya farmers adapted, and soon they were producing strawberries of such a high quality that their fruit was being exported to Israel, the West Bank and upscale retailers in Europe; they are “the best strawberries in the world,” according to Abdulfattah, who also used to head the Beit Lahiya Strawberry Farmers Society.
Now, however, Abdulfattah and other farmers in Gaza are being forced by Israel to abandon their crops yet again, although this time there is no recourse in shifting production to another, “safer,” fruit or vegetable. Under the current form of the illegal Israeli-imposed closure, farmers in Gaza can no longer export their produce outside the Gaza Strip, and they are facing further restrictions on the types and amounts of products they can grow. The effects have been disastrous. Before the imposition of the total closure of the Gaza Strip on 14 June 2007 — itself only a more stringent form of a closure policy in place since the early 1990s — the Gaza Strip produced almost 400,000 tons of agricultural products annually, one third of which was intended for export. Despite the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which set a target for exports for Gaza at 400 trucks per day, only 259 trucks have left the Gaza Strip with goods in the last three years. Accordingly, since 2007, farmers in Gaza have reported a 40 percent decrease in income: in 2008 alone, farmers in the Gaza Strip lost an estimated US $6.5 million.
Without the ability to export their products to markets in the West Bank, Israel and Europe, farmers like Abdulfattah face a domestic market for agriculture characterized by artificially inflated supply, which in turn drives prices so low that Abdulfattah says he cannot survive on them: “Before 2007, one kilogram of strawberries used to cost 24 shekels on the Gaza market; now it only costs three. I can hardly continue my life with prices so low. I have to live from season-to-season, hoping that I can get good prices or maybe export some goods, and since 2007 I am forced to rely on handouts and aid,” says Abdulfattah.
At the same time, Abdulfattah is facing greater restrictions imposed by the Israeli government on his farming operation in Beit Lahiya, which contribute to rising costs of production. “The Israelis tell us how and what to plant, what to use to plant it, and where the plants we use must come from,” explains Abdulfattah. “We are forced to use Israeli strawberry plants, even though they are more expensive [15 shekels as opposed to four shekels for Palestinian plants] and not as good [as the Palestinian plants which produced the famous Gazan strawberries]. But we use them anyways, and we even obtain the certificate that proves it, which is expensive. Even though we follow all the specifications, the Israelis don’t let our strawberries pass through the border.” Encapsulating the plight of all farmers in Gaza under Israeli occupation, Abdulfattah adds emphatically: “when we do what the Israelis want, they just create another problem.”
The consequences of the closure for farmers like Abdulfattah are more than just tough economic times: the closure threatens their livelihoods and way of life. Approximately 2,500 dunams (a dunam is the equivalent of 1,000 square meters) of land were planted with strawberry fields before 2007; this year some 1,500 remain unplanted, representing at least 300 families who will be without an income for the year. More than likely, these families will be forced to give up strawberry cultivation; half of all strawberry farmers in Gaza have already done so. Some of them will find other work, but — with unemployment in the Gaza Strip approaching 55 percent — others will surely not.
Indeed the Israel policy towards strawberry farming in Gaza, and particularly their exports, is a demonstration in the economics of occupation. The crops permitted to grow in Gaza are directly linked to the crops produced by Israel. Because of their quality — and the high consumer demand this quality creates — agricultural products from the Gaza Strip, like strawberries, are not allowed to compete with Israeli products in the Israeli markets or in markets abroad. At the same time, surplus agricultural goods produced in Israel are pushed onto the market in Gaza, further driving down prices for local farmers.
Making matters significantly worse for farmers in the Gaza Strip are the consequences of the latest Israeli military offensive, which destroyed approximately 46 percent of all agricultural lands in the Gaza Strip, estimated at approximately $269,000,000 in damages, and over $84,000,000 in damages to plant production, specifically. Not only have farmers received no compensation from the perpetrators of the damage, but Israel prevents the entry of farming equipment and machinery needed in order to rehabilitate the land.
On 4 July, the Israeli government formally announced an “easing” of the border crossings into the Gaza Strip in response to the international condemnation of the 31 May attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. While there will be an increase in the type and amount of goods that are allowed into Gaza under the new arrangement, the issue of exports remains ignored. For Abdulfattah, thus, the new restrictions represent only a marginal change in the modalities of the occupation that is suffocating his business and his way of life: “I expect nothing new [from the new Israeli policy]. Even if the Israelis decided to allow exports, I probably would not be able to follow the new restrictions they would invent for me to do so,” Abdulfattah explains, “but it won’t open anyways.”
This report is part of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights’ Narratives Under Siege series.
Reprieve Demands Resignation of “Fatally Compromised” Head of UK Torture Inquiry
By Andy Worthington | 20.7.10
In a detailed and strongly-worded letter to Sir Peter Gibson, chosen by Prime Minster David Cameron to lead an inquiry into British complicity in the torture of British nationals and residents abroad, Clive Stafford Smith, the director of the legal action charity Reprieve, has called on Gibson to step down from his role as the judge in charge of the inquiry, complaining that “his impartiality is fatally compromised.” A copy of the letter was also sent to 10 Downing Street.
Reprieve’s analysis is certainly accurate, given that, “As the Intelligence Services Commissioner (ISC), it has been Sir Peter’s job for more than four years to oversee the Security Services,” and “he cannot now be the judge whether his own work was effective.”
Reprieve identified three particular reasons why Gibson’s recusal is required. The first is because it appears that, in a recent interview with Andrew Neil, the Prime Minister admitted that Gibson had “already conducted a secret inquiry, at the previous government’s request, into allegations of misconduct,” but “because it is secret, none of us may know what his conclusions were.”
The second reason is because, in three annual reports (from 2006 to 2008), Gibson concluded that all members of the Security Services were “trustworthy, conscientious and dependable.” As a result, in Reprieve’s words, he was “entirely prejudging the issues before the inquiry.” Reprieve also contrasted Gibson’s analysis with that of Lord Neuberger, the Master of the Rolls, in February this year, when, in ordering the government to release US documents establishing that British resident Binyam Mohamed had been tortured while in custody in Pakistan in 2002, he asserted that MI5 did not respect human rights, had not renounced participation in “coercive interrogation” techniques, deliberately misled MPs and peers on the intelligence and security committee, which is supposed to be able to scrutinize its activities, and had a “culture of suppression” in its dealings with [former foreign secretary David] Miliband and the court.”
The third reason, as Reprieve explained, is that “part of Sir Peter’s job, as ISC, was to oversee ministerial authorizations that would allow the Security Services to violate the law abroad, including sanctioning British involvement in abusive interrogations. Since evidence will be presented that such interrogations have continued during Sir Peter’s tenure, he either validated these actions, or he has been hoodwinked as ISC. Either way, he should be a witness at the inquiry.”
This is a pretty devastating analysis of Sir Peter Gibson’s unsuitably for the job, although Reprieve’s press conference today to announce its very public and very vocal opposition to his appointment drew only a bland response from Downing Street, where a spokesman “said that the Prime Minister had full confidence in Gibson.”
In his letter, Clive Stafford Smith asked Gibson:
Please could you explain how you are able to preside over an inquiry about British complicity in torture during the time period in which you were responsible for the statutory oversight of the security and intelligence services? The allegation that you will have to rule on is (with apologies for putting it so frankly) that you were either asleep on your watch or were hoodwinked. Out of fairness to victims of torture, the security services and yourself, do you believe that you can rule fairly on such issues?
At today’s press conference he reiterated his complaints, stating, as the Guardian explained, that there was a “patently obvious basis for a judge to remove himself,” and adding that, given Gibson’s evident conflict of interest, the request for his recusal was “an incredibly uncontentious issue.”
Adding that he had not “received the first whisper of a response” from the Prime Minister regarding his complaints, Stafford Smith then threw down a gauntlet to the government, stating, “If they refuse to discuss this in private, then we will spend the rest of the summer discussing it in public.”
He also confirmed that Reprieve “would look at its legal options if Sir Peter refused to step down,” as the Guardian explained, and stated:
Welcome though the torture inquiry is, the current structure is a sham. Sir Peter Gibson was perhaps the least appropriate judge to evaluate the security services. The government must get serious about learning the mistakes of the past, rather than try to cover them up, or we are in for a long, hot summer.
Bring it on, Clive! Let’s have a proper inquiry under the Inquiries Act of 2005, with a judge able to “balance the need for national security against the need for transparency,” as Reprieve requested two weeks ago — and if David Cameron refuses, let’s rally some support for a long hot summer of protest. As I explained last week, when a series of damning documents regarding British complicity in torture were released by the High Court, in connection with an ongoing civil claim for damages filed by six former Guantánamo prisoners:
The time for silence, and the time for secrecy are over. To clear the air, and to draw a line under this most lamentable period in our recent history, we need an inquiry presided over by someone who is able to “balance the need for national security against the need for transparency.” For too long now — and with baleful results — the need for national security has been allowed to override everything else, inflicting grave damage on our claims to be a civilized country, and leading to devastating effects for those caught up in a “War on Terror” with few checks and balances.
Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK)
Israel releases British rapper detained at airport
Ma’an – 21/07/2010
Bethlehem – Israeli airport authorities have released a British-Iraqi rapper who was held for half a day at Ben Gurion International Airport, the musician’s fan page reported Wednesday.
Lowkey was detained Tuesday upon arrival in Tel Aviv en route to play a number of concerts and hold a series of musical workshops in refugee camps in the West Bank as part of the Hip Hop Bus Tour, composed of members from the Existence is Resistance, The South West Youth Collaborative, and the University of Hip Hop Chicago.
Fans started an online petition shortly after Lowkey’s detention calling on the Israeli government to release the musician and allow him to play in Palestine.
A spokeswoman for Israel’s Interior Ministry immigration department did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment. An email to Lowkey’s booking representative was not immediately returned.
In February 2009, Lowkey was detained at the airport en route to several Palestinian charity concerts to help raise funds to rebuild Gaza following the war.
Born Kareem Dennis to an Iraqi mother and English father in Tooting, London, Lowkey’s Gaza anti-war song reached number 1 in the UK charts in January.
Holy Land 5 case reveals double standard in enforcement of US law
The Electronic Intifada, 20 July 2010
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An US federal agent at the Holy Land Foundation in Bridgeview, Illinois, as the contents of the office are seized on 4 December 2001. (AFP PHOTO/Scott Olson) |
“I had no intention in my mind and my heart but to help the Palestinian indigenous people who are and have been facing unusual economic distress … nothing in my life was as satisfactory and as self-fulfilling as knowing that I could sign a check. It is the only evidence you have against me, signing the check.”
At a special session on Palestinian political prisoners at the US Social Forum in Detroit last month, Noor Elashi recited that statement given by her father, Ghassan, when he was sentenced by a federal court in May 2009. Ghassan Elashi is the co-founder of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF), which was the largest Muslim charity in the US before it was shut down by the Bush Administration in 2001.
Sending aid not just to Palestinians living under the thumb of Israel’s military occupation, but to people in Bosnia, Albania, Chechnya and Turkey, the HLF was also involved in local and national humanitarian relief. The organization set up food banks on the East Coast, helped victims of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and provided assistance to people after floods and tornadoes devastated parts of Iowa and Texas in the 1990s.
Three months after the 11 September 2001 attacks, the US Treasury department froze the HLF’s bank accounts as the Executive branch shut down the organization under the auspices of the PATRIOT Act. Using a new provision called the Material Support Law, the US State Department accused the five HLF founders — now dubbed the Holy Land Five — of providing “assistance” to designated “terrorist groups” (namely Hamas) in Palestine. The Bush Administration immediately closed the organization and launched aggressive charges against the charity workers. There was no hearing, and the prosecution was authorized to use secret evidence.
Several other American faith-based relief organizations were also caught in the post-11 September hysteria of charity closures under the same new laws and executive orders. The legislation has been challenged by civil rights groups in the US Supreme Court as unconstitutional, but was upheld and used to sentence Ghassan Elashi, a father of six who immigrated to the US in 1978, to 65 years in prison.
On 21 June 2010, the Supreme Court ruled to continue to authorize prosecutions of charities under the Material Support provision, disappointing families and supporters of the Holy Land Five and troubling US-based organizations that directly support grassroots humanitarian programs in the Middle East.
Noor Elashi, a 24-year-old master of fine arts candidate at the New School in New York City, told The Electronic Intifada that her father’s legal team is in the middle of appealing the entire HLF case. “The attorneys are working with the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights,” she said. “The overall impression is that the upholding of the Material Support Law is not the best thing that could happen regarding this case. It’s not the most positive step. But that said, there are so many other grounds for appeal, such as evidentiary issues and the prosecution’s use of an anonymous witness.”
Prosecutors working for the Bush Administration accused the HLF of supporting Hamas by trying to “win hearts and minds” of the Palestinian population through humanitarian assistance, and that the charities HLF worked with were “front groups” for the political party. But after several years of wiretapping phone lines, seizing documents and following money trails, the prosecution couldn’t support its allegations of an HLF-Hamas connection. Elashi said they then resorted to calling on an anonymous Israeli intelligence officer, who called himself “Avi,” as a key witness who told the jury he was an expert who could “smell Hamas.”
“It was the only time in the history of the United States that a witness inside a courtroom was allowed to remain anonymous, so the defense couldn’t cross-examine him,” Elashi said. “That in and of itself is huge grounds for appeal.”
In fact, Israeli intelligence officers, in an unprecendented move, were allowed to testify in secret using pseudonyms and disguises and without the defense being given a full opportunity to cross-examine them during the 2006 federal trial in Chicago of American citizen Muhammad Salah and stateless Palestinian Abdelhaleem Ashqar. Accused of “racketeering” charges related to fundraising for Hamas, both men were acquitted of all the terrorism-related charges, but each was found guilty on single counts of obstruction of justice; Salah for lying on a form in a civil case and Ashqar for refusing to testify before a grand jury.
Additionally, the US government infamously led a lengthy, repressive, and racist assault against the Palestinian-American professor and political activist Dr. Sami al-Arian. Al-Arian, who remains under house arrest following a six-year prison sentence — which included spending 43 months locked in solitary confinement — was also charged, as the HLF were, under the Material Support Law.
Elashi stressed that the HLF was never convicted of giving charity to designated “terrorist” groups, but in the end they were convicted of conspiring to give charity to zakat or charitable committees in Palestine.
“I feel like at this point, anybody is at risk,” Elashi said. “This is the time to be worried. What essentially can happen is that any American can be prosecuted for giving any type of charity, or any type of aid. Even a former president is at risk of being prosecuted,” she said, referring to how Jimmy Carter has helped train election workers in Lebanon.
“The problem with the law is that it’s way too vague,” Elashi added, “and because it’s way too vague, it really singles out groups from the rest of the population, and typically singles out Muslim charities as well as Arab-American individuals. And it’s all being done in the name of national security, but what it’s really doing is shredding the constitution and causing an economic chokehold on occupied Palestine.”
Elashi told The Electronic Intifada that despite the circumstances, her father is extremely hopeful about the appeals process. “Opening the charity was a form of optimism,” she said. “He knew from the first day that when he started the charity it was going to be a challenge. Soon after, he got attacked from pro-Israeli politicians and lobbyists, who tried to link the charity to Hamas and acts of violence. He continued to do everything possible to make sure that the charity kept running, and did pretty much what every other American aid organization did — USAID, the Red Cross, and the UN all gave money to the very same zakat committees that were listed in the HLF indictment.”
The Elashi family has not been allowed to visit Ghassan in prison, Noor Elashi said, for quite some time. In the fall of 2009, after one of the visits, a prison guard told the inmates and the families to disperse. But Noor’s younger brother Omar — who lives with Down’s Syndrome — ran to hug his father, and at that point the prison guard yelled at Ghassan, saying that he disobeyed orders. The guard filed a complaint that led to an internal investigation, and the prison ruled that there would be a six-month to one-year visitation ban.
Even after Ghassan was moved to another prison, the visitation ban moved with him. “We get two phone calls from him every month, which is significantly less than we would get from any other prison,” Elashi said. “We hope to finally see him in September or October.” Ghassan is currently being held inside a Communications Management Unit (CMU) in Illinois, a block within some prisons that are nicknamed “little Guantanamos” due to the overwhelming population of Muslims and people of Arab and Middle Eastern descent.
Defense Attorney Nancy Hollander, on behalf of the Holy Land Five, told The Electronic Intifada that the legal team is optimistic about the appeal. “We are currently working on our brief to the Fifth Circuit,” Hollander remarked. “The current deadline is 3 August, but that might get extended into September. All of our clients have been moved to other prisons. We are in contact with them regularly. We remain hopeful.”
Meanwhile, private, US-based, pro-Israel groups are currently sending millions of dollars every year to support illegal settlement colonies and right-wing Zionist settlers in the occupied West Bank. The New York Times reported on 5 July that at least 40 US-based organizations are actively donating more than $200 million in tax-deductible “gifts” to build and sustain illegal settlements. According to the Times, some of the donations also pay for “legally questionable” items such as bulletproof vests, guard dogs, weapon accessories and armored security vehicles (“Tax-Exempt Funds Aid Settlements in West Bank“).
Daniel C. Kurtzer, the former US ambassador to Israel, told the Times “a couple of hundred million dollars makes a huge difference” in terms of supporting the settlement industry, and if carefully focused, “helps to create a new reality on the ground.”
As of now, there is no indication that any of these faith-based, pro-settlement groups will face the kind of treatment and lengthy, expensive trials under the guise of the Material Support Law like those the Holy Land Five have faced. Noor Elashi told The Electronic Intifada that there is an obvious double standard being applied and enforced against her father and his colleagues.
However, she said that her father “feels his ordeal like he feels a fly on his shoe … He believes that it’s going to pass, and he’s still very proud of everything he’s accomplished. His work has been the most rewarding part of his life. He’s helped people rebuild homes and has given hungry people food. That’s what nourishes him. So he’s optimistic about the appeal.”
At the US Social Forum in Detroit, Elashi read the last part of her father’s statement upon his sentencing. “We helped Palestinian orphans and needy families, giving them hope and life,” he stated. “We gave them hope and life … And what was the occupation giving them? It was providing them with death and destruction. And then we are turned criminals. That is irony.”
Related:
Provocative marches in Jerusalem by Jewish groups
Palestine Information Center – 20/07/2010
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: A large number of Israeli policemen were deployed all over occupied Jerusalem Monday evening to provide protection for extremist Jewish groups that went on provocative marches inside the city on the anniversary of what they called the destruction of the temple.
The marchers gathered in the courtyard of Al-Amoud Gate, one of the gates of old Jerusalem, and the Buraq square chanting slogans calling for destroying the Aqsa Mosque, building the alleged temple of Solomon in its place and expelling all Palestinians from the holy city.
The Israeli police also closed the gates of the Aqsa Mosque before the Maghrib prayer (prayed by Muslims just before sunset everyday), except for Al-Ghawanimeh Gate, and barred the Jerusalemite citizens under age 50 from entering the Mosque.
The police detained three Palestinians from the Old City of Jerusalem during the marches alleging they attempted to attack the marchers.
Earlier on Sunday, the police summoned two of the Aqsa Mosque’s employees for interrogation and warned them of any acts disrupting the marches.
In a related context, senior Fatah official Hatem Abdelqader, the director of the Jerusalem affairs, accused on Monday Salam Fayyad’s government of seriously neglecting the issue of Jerusalem and not setting enough allocation for its protection.
Abdelqader pointed out that Fayyad’s government did not include Jerusalem in its plan for the establishment of the future Palestinian state.
The Fatah official also said that this lack of concern about Jerusalem encouraged the Israeli occupation state to go farther in its violations against it.
He stressed that Fayyad is fully responsible for all consequences arising from the serious situation in Jerusalem.
Guantánamo Bay detainee says interrogation record has been redacted
Prisoner says his complaints about Bagram detention centre were blacked out by British security service officers
Rajeev Syal and Owen Bowcott | The Guardian | 18 July 2010
A former Guantánamo Bay detainee says that key exchanges from his interrogation by British security service officers have been blacked out or deliberately omitted from the notes to hide the agents’ complicity in torture. Other exchanges, he says, have been removed simply to hide evidence of spurious and potentially embarrassing lines of questioning.
Omar Deghayes, one of six UK detainees suing the government over their clandestine removal to the US base in Cuba, was able for the first time to read notes from his interrogations after they were published by the Guardian last week. He alleges that they provide an inaccurate impression of what took place, and that a true record of his meetings with British security would have shown that he made specific allegations of ill-treatment, starvation and beatings to MI6 and MI5 officers.
One of the notes he has now been able to examine, released through the high court as part of his case against the government and the security services, blacks out, or redacts, repeated questions put to him about his involvement in the Chechen freedom movement, he says. This was a false allegation that, unbeknown to Deghayes, was the key reason for his being held by the US authorities for five years.
Deghayes says that other passages, if they had not been redacted, would have revealed that he was asked repeatedly to justify scuba-diving lessons taken at a Sussex swimming club, and that he was questioned about Britain’s immigrant community.
His allegations will increase pressure on the government to appoint an independent judge to decide whether the notes were redacted in a legitimate manner.
All these notes emerged last week from a court case brought by Deghayes and five other UK claimants over their removal to Guantánamo Bay. The files show the intricate involvement of British agents in the questioning and detention of young Muslims with connections to Britain.
Deghayes, a Libyan-born political refugee, had lived in Britain for many years before moving to Afghanistan. He fled to Pakistan after the US invasion but was was arrested in 2002 and handed over to the US authorities. He was then subjected to a sequence of interrogations in Islamabad and Bagram detention centre in Afghanistan, and eventually moved to Guantánamo Bay in 2002. He was released from detention in 2007.
What has been removed from the record of interrogations, Deghayes said after reading the notes, was almost as significant as what has actually been revealed. Before each session with MI6 officers, he said, he complained about the torture he was subjected to and his conditions.
“I told them about the treatment – the shackles, being beaten, lack of sleep, how sick I was. But these [comments] don’t appear. The national interest appears to have been used as a convenient shield for them,” said Deghayes, who now lives near Brighton. “Some of [their accounts are] reasonably accurate in terms of the conversations. What’s left in is to show me in a bad light. It’s highly selective. It’s censorship.”
Much of the material still withheld, he says, relates to lines of questioning pursued by the security services that would now show them in an embarrassing light. “They claimed I went to Iran to negotiate on behalf of Osama bin Laden but it was all part of their deception. I was never in Iran. In one of the first sessions, they asked me about Chechnya, and I told them I had never been there. But this question does not appear,” he said. Years after the interrogations took place, Deghayes discovered from his lawyer that this allegation had been central to his incarceration, because he had been wrongly identified. Sometimes, lines of questioning that were repeatedly fired at Deghayes over many months turned out to be completely spurious. These have been omitted or redacted from the British agents’ notes, he says. “There was a fat man from MI5 who kept asking me about scuba diving. I had been learning in Saltdean lido [before leaving Britain]. I hadn’t even passed my test. [Nonetheless] they kept asking me questions about it and showing me pictures from military manuals about scuba divers carrying mines. But there is no reference in the records here of my scuba diving – it is just too embarrassing [for them].”
There is a brief mention in one document, which has not been redacted, of his complaints about the “head-braces and lockdown positions” used by the Americans in Bagram. “I had complained at that point about being chained to wire mesh on the wall and having a hood drawn tightly round my neck when I was in Bagram. I don’t know what else they mean by ‘head-braces’,” he said.
“I was very sick in Bagram. I had serious malaria. They took my temperature and said it was dangerously high. They didn’t know what the problem was. [In the record of the interview] they are trying to say that everything was clear and I was fit. I wasn’t alert. I had had no food for 45 days. They interpreted [my condition] as me lying about how unwell I was. Whenever I was not co-operating, they decided I must be lying. I didn’t even have my wits about me then.
“They even imply that my ‘mumbling’ [referred to on one Bagram interview session] was proof that I was not being honest. What the documents don’t say is that it was such a relief to talk to anyone.”
His responses to questioning, as recorded in the notes, he says, have often been wilfully misinterpreted. In his first session in Islamabad in 2002, he was desperate to persuade the MI5 officer that he was a British national and therefore entitled to support from the embassy.
For that purpose, he initially pretended to be his elder brother, who held British nationality. “In the interview in Islamabad, I said I was my older brother, because he’s a British national. I said Omar had gone to Libya. I told ‘Andrew’, the MI5 interrogator, that I was a British national and he should help get me out of there. Eventually I admitted to being Omar.” That plea for help appears in the documents, he said, to be used as evidence of a more sinister type, to show that it was another terrorist deception.
On several occasions Deghayes was asked, in effect, to spy on his community and friends back in Britain. “They had books of hundreds of photographs of people. They wanted me to go through them and identify the people. I didn’t recognise anyone in the book, so they said: ‘You are not helping us. You will be sent back to Libya, where they will get tortured.’ I [tried not] to show my fear.”
Notes that record his last interrogation in Bagram before being transferred to Guantánamo in July 2002 do not show the dismissive way he was treated by Andrew, he said. This moment, Deghayes said, was devastating, because he felt abandoned by his adopted country.
According to the notes made by Andrew, he knew that Deghayes had previously lied and gave him one last chance to tell the truth. Deghayes said that the note failed to record the following exchange: “I told him that I had only ever told him the truth. He just turned to someone outside the door and said: ‘This bandit doesn’t want to talk.’ I thought he was saying what he really felt. He thought that we were bandits and deserved whatever we got,” he said.
The notes remain incomplete, he said, because they show only one record of an interview with UK agents in Guantánamo. Deghayes recalls three or four.
“Where are the notes for the other meetings?” he said.
Deghayes was to spend almost six years in Guantánamo before being released.
He told the Guardian in January this year how he was so brutally attacked by a guard during his time there that he was left blind in one eye.
Egypt Decides To Deny Entry To Jordanian Aid Convoy
By Saed Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies – July 19, 2010
The Egyptian Authorities prevented the “Ansar 1” Jordanian aid convoy from entering Egypt while on their way to deliver humanitarian supplies to the Gaza Strip.
The Egyptian Foreign Ministry issued an official decree preventing the convoy from entering the country by all means, the Qatar-based Al Jazeera reported.
Hussein Al Saoub, head of the “Al Jisr Al Araby”, the Arabic Bridge Company, phoned late on Sunday at night the head of the Jordanian convoy informing him that Egypt decided to prevent the convoy from entering Egypt.
There are 138 persons participating in the aid convoy. Al Sa’oub said that the Egyptian Authorities decided that each person on the convoy is a “Persona non grata”.
The aid was sent by a company owned by the governments in Iraq, Jordan and Egypt; the plan was to leave on Monday morning from Aqaba in Jordan to the Egyptian city Nweibi’.
Despite the Egyptian decision, convoy organizers decided to head to Aqaba in order to try to sail to Egypt before heading to Gaza.
Head of the Jordanian “Artery Of Life” committee, Wa’el Al Saqqa, said that the “Al Jisr Al Araby” company is the only company in charge of shipments between Aqaba and Nweibi’ on the Red Sea.
The company granted the participants all needed travel tickets and documents but Egypt officially decided to prevent them from entering.
Water restrictions in the occupied West Bank
IRIN Report, The Electronic Intifada, 18 July 2010
RAMALLAH: The worst place to be in the occupied West Bank in terms of water and sanitation facilities is an Israeli-controlled stretch of land known as Area C, where the Palestinian Authority (PA) is technically responsible for water services, but simply unable to deliver.
Cara Flowers, an officer with the Emergency Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Group (EWASH), said the health and livelihoods of communities living in Area C — covering 60 percent of land in the West Bank and home to some 60,000 of the West Bank’s 2.3 million Palestinians — were hardest hit as they have a severe lack of access to water and sanitation infrastructure.
“Many vulnerable communities are 40km from the nearest filling point,” said Flowers. “This makes drinking water less accessible and more costly during summer months.”
She said EWASH was struggling to implement emergency humanitarian water projects in Area C as it lacked the necessary permits from the Israeli authorities.
The 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and Gaza Strip (also known as Oslo II) categorized land in the West Bank into areas A, B and C.
According to the agreement, Area A is under the control of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Area B under the joint control of Israel and the PA. About 95 percent of the Palestinian population live in these two areas, though they make up only 40 percent of the land area.
In Area C, Israel has retained full control over security, while responsibility for the provision of services falls to the PA, according to EWASH.
But the Palestinian Water Authority says it has very limited control over water resources in the West Bank.
Rights body Amnesty International accuses Israel of denying Palestinians the right to access sufficient water supplies in the West Bank by maintaining total control over the shared water resources and preventing the development of adequate water infrastructure there.
The Mountain Aquifer is the only source of water for Palestinians in the West Bank, but one of several for Israel, which also has sole access to water available from the Jordan river.
Limited supplies, inflated prices
“Israel uses more than 80 percent of the water from the Mountain Aquifer, the main source of underground water in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory, while restricting Palestinian access to a mere 20 percent,” said Amnesty.
This is no clearer than to the more than 100 Bedouin families living in the water-stressed village of Ras al-Awja near Jericho in Area C. While they are forced to pay inflated prices for tanker water from the nearest filling point some seven kilometers away, nearby unlawful Israeli settlements have irrigated gardens and productive farmland, according to EWASH.
A water filling point that once served the Bedouin community has been welded shut by the Israeli authorities, causing a canal irrigation system to empty and stopping all piped water to Palestinians in the area. Without ample supplies of water, the existence of this livestock and subsistence farming-dependent community is under threat.
Israel says it has responded to the needs of the Palestinians and has increased the quantity of water provided to them far beyond that specified in the Interim Agreement.
Meanwhile, the West Bank’s water crisis is worsening, according to a March 2010 report by EWASH. Only 31 percent of communities in the West Bank are connected to a sewage network, it said.
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.
Israeli Border Police Demolish Cistern in Al Beqa’a Valley
Christian Peacemaker Team – July 16, 2010
Hebron: Israeli border police demolished a rainwater cistern and removed irrigation pipes from several Palestinian fields in Al Beqa’a Valley just east of Hebron on July 14, 2010, the second day of incidents in the area this month.
When international peace activists from Christian Peacemaker Teams arrived in the area at 9:30am, the large bagger that had been used to break up the concrete of the cistern was just leaving the site. The driver of a large tractor lifted scoops full of rocks and dumped them into the demolished cistern. Also, workers cut and disposed of irrigation pipes laid in two fields. The fields each measured 10 dunams (approximately 40 acres). One was a field of grape vines and the other field had tomatoes planted under grape vines. In addition to dismantling the irrigation pipes, the workers also cut the twines that were holding up tomato plants. At least seven families will be affected by this destruction, in total about 50 people.
A Palestinian friend of CPT who lives in Al Beqa’a Valley explained the difficulties residents have in accessing water. A water line has been install by the Palestinian Authority from a nearby village; however, there is no water in the line. There is a large aquiver of water in the Hebron region, and Mekorot, the Israeli water company, has a well along the Israeli bypass road Route 60 in Al Beqa’a Valley which draws from this aquiver (in Area C, which is under full Israeli military control). Palestinian residents in Al Beqa’a Valley had made arrangements to purchase water from Mekorot. However, they never received as much water as they paid for. With the demolition of several rainwater cisterns in the valley in the past year, the Palestinian residents felt that they had no other option but to tap into the Mekorot water line at the well site.
Palestinians alleged that some of the Israelis that were with the border police and DCO on July 14th were from the Mekorot Company. Rather than preventing Palestinians from taping into the well at the source, the Israeli authorities destroyed the irrigation pipes in the fields of several families. Each 200m roll of irrigation drip pipe costs about 370NIS (~100$US), and the connection piping costs about 2.5NIS for each inch. For each dunam of vegetables it takes about 2-3 days to put the irrigation drip piping in place. The cost of the materials and time that goes into growing produce is high. Rather than prevent the ‘theft’ of water (which is ironically from an aquiver under Palestine) earlier in the season, the Israeli authorities instead waited until crops were almost ready for market. Therefore this destruction is not meant to stop the ‘theft’ of water but to cause the highest impact on farmers in the region.
Leftist commentators consistently push a shallow and economically reductive narrative that frames American foreign policy as the sole domain of greedy White capitalists while choosing to ignore the obvious Jewish power structure directing these events. When the veneer of this supposed corporate imperialism is stripped away, it becomes clear that the United States has often served as a vehicle for the specific goals of organized Jewry. The life of Samuel Zemurray stands as prime evidence of this hidden mechanism.
Aletho News 