Palestinian stone-throwers face up to 20 years in Israel prison
Al-Akhbar | November 3, 2014
Israeli cabinet on Sunday approved an amendment to the Israeli penal code to enable more severe punishment against Palestinians convicted of involvement in “stone-throwing” attacks against Israeli targets.
The new sections, which will be added to the Israeli penal code, would allow the imposition of a prison sentence up to 20 years for those convicted of throwing stones or other objects at Israeli vehicles.
“Israel is strongly acting against terrorists, against who throw stones, Molotov cocktails and fireworks,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at the weekly cabinet meeting.
Netanyahu went on to say that the new legislation aims to restore what he called “peace to all parts of Jerusalem.”
“We will dedicate massive force and an aggressive legislation to restore quiet and security to every part of our capital,” he added.
The new code would slap an imprisonment sentence of ten years against whoever throws stones or other objects at vehicles and 20 years for doing so with the view of exposing passengers to danger. Whoever throws rocks at police cars in order to obstruct the work of Israeli police will be jailed for up to five years.
Moreover, the law would also allow Israeli forces to imprison Palestinian minors under the pretext of allegedly endangering the lives of Israelis by throwing stones.
On Friday, Israeli Occupation Forces in occupied East Jerusalem attempted to detain two Palestinian children, a two-year-old and a nine-year old, on suspicion of throwing stones.
Last week, Israeli forces detained four Palestinian children, aged 13 to 16, for allegedly throwing stones at Israeli cars.
In 2013, a group of seven Israeli soldiers and an officer detained 5-year old Wadi’a Maswadeh after the boy allegedly threw a stone at a Zionist settler’s car at a checkpoint near Hebron.
According to a 2013 UN children’s fund’s report, over the past decade, Israeli forces have arrested, interrogated and prosecuted around 7,000 children between 12 and 17, mostly boys, noting the rate was equivalent to “an average of two children each day.”
A report by Defense for Children International (DCI) published in May 2014 said Israeli jails 20 percent of Palestinian children prisoners in solitary confinement. … Full article
SodaStream closes illegal settlement factory but remains actively complicit in the displacement of Palestinians
Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel | October 30, 2014
Palestinian boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) activists today welcomed the news that SodaStream has announced it is to close its factory in the illegal Israeli settlement of Mishor Adumim following a high profile boycott campaign against the company.
“SodaStream’s announcement today shows that the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement is increasingly capable of holding corporate criminals to account for their participation in Israeli apartheid and colonialism,” said Rafeef Ziadah, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC), the broad coalition of Palestinian civil society organisations that leads and supports the BDS movement.
“BDS campaign pressure has forced retailers across Europe and North America to drop SodaStream, and the company’s share price has tumbled in recent months as our movement has caused increasing reputational damage to the SodaStream brand,” she added.
The news of this major success against a company famed for its role in illegal Israeli settlements broke amidst intensifying demonstrations against Israel’s policies of colonisation in Jerusalem.
Grassroots boycott activism saw SodaStream dropped by major retailers across North America and Europe including Macy’s in the US and John Lewis in the UK.
SodaStream was forced to close its flagship store in Brighton in the UK as a result of regular pickets of the store.
Soros Fund Management, the family office of the billionaire investor George Soros, sold its stake in SodaStream following BDS pressure.
SodaStream’s share price fell dramatically in recent months as sales dried up, particularly in North America.
After reaching a high of $64 per share in October 2013, the stock fell to around $20 per share this month. SodaStream has estimated its third quarter revenue will be $125 million, down almost 14 percent from the same period last year.
But Ziadah warned that SodaStream will still remain actively complicit in the displacement of Palestinians and will remain a focus of boycott campaigning.
“Even if this announced closure goes ahead, SodaStream will remain implicated in the displacement of Palestinians. Its new Lehavim factory is close to Rahat, a planned township in the Naqab (Negev) desert, where Palestinian Bedouins are being forcefully transferred against their will. Sodastream, as a beneficiary of this plan, is complicit with this violation of human rights,” she said.
SodaStream’s participation in Israel’s forced displacement of Palestinians gained international notoriety when A-list celebrity Scarlett Johansson signed up to be a brand ambassador for the company. Following an international campaign urging Oxfam end its relationship with Johansson for endorsing SodaStream, the actor decided to quit Oxfam.
SodaStream has also come under fire for its treatment of Palestinian workers in its West Bank factory, as Ziadah explains:
“Any suggestion that SodaStream is employing Palestinians in an illegal Israeli settlement on stolen Palestinian land out of the kindness of its heart is ludicrous.”
“Palestinian workers are paid far less than their Israeli counterparts and SodaStream recently fired 60 Palestinians following a dispute over food for the breaking of the Ramadan fast. Workers have previously said they are treated ‘like slaves’”.
“Palestinians are forced to work inside settlements in sub-standard conditions because of Israel’s deliberate destruction of the Palestinian economy. There’s an urgent need for the creation of decent and dignified jobs within the Palestinian economy.”
SodaStream have said all workers will be offered jobs at its new plant, although Israel’s apartheid wall and severe restrictions on movement will make the commute to the new plant difficult for its Palestinian workers.
All of the main Palestinian trade unions have called for boycott and are members of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, the civil society coalition that leads the BDS movement and helped to initiate the campaign against SodaStream.
The BNC quotes included in this release can be found in the following coverage of this story:
New York Times : http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/world/middleeast/sodastream-to-close-factory-in-west-bank.html?_r=0
International Business Times : http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/israel-bds-movement-scores-victory-sodastream-close-controversial-factory-west-bank-settlement-1472320
Israel closes al-Aqsa to all visitors after the shooting of a right-wing rabbi
Al-Akhbar | October 30, 2014
Israeli Occupation Forces on Thursday closed the al-Aqsa Mosque compound to all visitors after an overnight shooting incident in which a man on a motorbike tried to gun down an Israeli hardliner.
“This dangerous Israeli escalation is a declaration of war on the Palestinian people and its sacred places and on the Arab and Islamic nation,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina quoted him as saying on Thursday.
“We hold the Israeli government responsible for this dangerous escalation in Jerusalem that has reached its peak through the closure of the al-Aqsa mosque this morning,” he told AFP.
“The state of Palestine will take all legal measures to hold Israel accountable and to stop these ongoing attacks,” he added.
Earlier on Thursday, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian man suspected of the shooting attack on the Israeli hardliner, a spokesman said.
“The Palestinian, who was the main suspect in the Wednesday night attack, was eliminated at his home in Jerusalem’s Abu Tor neighborhood by special police forces,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP.
Abu Tor straddles the seam line between west Jerusalem and the occupied eastern sector, which was occupied by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War.
The suspect’s death took place just hours after a gunman on a motorcycle had opened fire at a right-wing Zionist Rabbi called Yehuda Glick at a rally in Jerusalem, leaving him critically wounded.
Glick was reportedly shot in his upper body at “close range” at an event outside the Menachem Begin Heritage Center in Jerusalem, where a number of Israeli members of Knesset and right-wing activists were in attendance, Israeli news site Ynet said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday ordered a “significant increase” in police deployments in Jerusalem following the shooting.
“I have ordered a significant increase in forces as well as in means (available to them) so we can both ensure security in Jerusalem and also maintain the status quo in the holy places,” he said in a statement released by his office.
The attack was reported after a conference focused on the reconstruction of a Jewish temple on top of the al-Aqsa mosque was concluded at the center, with top right-wing Zionist officials and activists in attendance.
The incident comes amid increasing tension in Jerusalem over an expected Knesset vote to potentially divide the al-Aqsa mosque compound — the third-holiest site in Islam — between Muslims and Jews, or else restrict Muslim worship at the site.
The Israeli army radio announced early October that the ministry of tourism was working on a plan to allow Jews to enter the al-Aqsa compound through the Cotton Merchants Gate, in addition to the Moroccan Gate which is already used as an entrance for non-Muslims.
Although mainstream Jewish leaders consider it forbidden for Jews to enter the area, right-wing nationalist activists have increasingly called for Jewish prayer to be allowed on the site.
Since Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, an agreement with Jordan has maintained that Jewish prayer be allowed at the Western Wall plaza — built on the site of a Palestinian neighborhood of 800 that was destroyed immediately following the conquest — but not inside the al-Aqsa mosque compound itself.
Yehuda Glick is an American-born Israeli and the chairman of the Temple Mount Heritage Fund, a Zionist organization focused on “strengthening the relationship between Israel and the Temple Mount.”
Critics charge that the Fund actually leads Jewish tours to the site with the intention of leading Jewish prayer there — currently banned under Israeli agreements — and encouraging Jews to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque and build a Jewish temple there.
He has been previously banned by Israeli authorities from entering the compound due to provocations while on the site.
For Muslims, al-Aqsa represents the world’s third holiest site.
Al-Aqsa restrictions, violations
Israel continues to restrict the entry of Palestinian worshipers into al-Aqsa for the fifth week in a row.
In an urgent message to the US administration on Sunday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas warned that Israel’s continued provocations at the mosque complex would lead to a “wide-reaching explosion.”
Israeli authorities have imposed restrictions on Palestinians seeking to enter the al-Aqsa Mosque compound, denying Muslim men under 40 access to the holy site while facilitating the entry of Zionist settlers of all ages.
In recent months, hundreds of extremist Zionist settlers – often accompanied by Israeli security forces – have repeatedly forced their way into East Jerusalem’s flashpoint al-Aqsa Mosque complex.
The frequent violations anger Palestinians who fear Zionist presence on the al-Aqsa is aimed at usurping the site.
Abbas said Saturday legal measures would be taken to prevent Zionist settlers from attacking Jerusalem’s flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound.
“The Palestinian leadership will be taking the necessary legal measures, at the international level, regarding the aggression of settlers on the Al-Aqsa mosque,” Abbas said in a speech to the Revolutionary Council of his Fatah party.
“We will not allow settlers to attack the mosque,” he added, referring to the entire compound, which is the third holiest site in Islam.
A Palestinian official last week called for holding an emergency Arab and Islamic summit to discuss Israeli plans to divide the al-Aqsa Mosque compound between Palestinians and Israelis.
“Israel is racing against time to legitimize storming of the al-Aqsa Mosque compound by herds of extremist settlers,” Ahmed Qurei, a member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), said in a statement.
Earlier this month, UN chief Ban Ki-moon said he was “deeply concerned by repeated provocations at the holy sites in Jerusalem,” saying that such actions “only inflame tensions and must stop.”
Meanwhile, Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement condemned the “Israeli aggressions within the al-Aqsa Mosque compound” and slammed “Arab silence” and “international complicity.”
The resistance group called on “directing all efforts to protect al-Aqsa and the Islamic and Christian holy sites.”
Israel occupied East Jerusalem during the 1967 Middle East War. It later annexed the holy city in 1980, claiming it as the capital of the self-proclaimed Zionist state – a move never recognized by the international community.
In September 2000, a visit to the site by controversial Israeli leader Ariel Sharon sparked what later became known as the “Second Intifada” – a popular uprising against the Israeli occupation in which thousands of Palestinians were killed.
(Ma’an, AFP, Al-Akhbar)
Sweden recognizes Palestinian state as UN fails to condemn Israeli settlements
Al-Akhbar | October 30, 2014
Sweden on Thursday officially recognized the state of Palestine, Stockholm’s foreign minister said, less than a month after the government announced its intention to make the move and one day after UN Security Council failed to condemn Israeli settlement plans.
“Our decision comes at a critical time because over the last year we have seen how the peace talks have stalled, how decisions over new settlements on occupied Palestinian land have complicated a two-state solution and how violence has returned to Gaza,” Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom told reporters.
“By making our decision we want to bring a new dynamic to the stalled peace process.”
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas hailed the decision, his spokesman told AFP.
“President Abbas welcomes Sweden’s decision,” Nabil Abu Rudeina told AFP, saying the Palestinian leader described the move as “brave and historic.”
Sweden is the first EU member state in western Europe to recognize Palestine.
European countries are stepping up the pressure on Israel to seek a peace deal, with the British and Irish parliament recently holding a non-binding vote on recognizing statehood.
Abu Rudeina claimed that Sweden’s recognition was linked to months of soaring tensions in occupied East Jerusalem, where Palestinians have clashed almost daily with Israeli Occupation Forces and where Israel has recently pushed ahead with plans to build another 3,600 settler homes.
“This decision comes as a response to Israeli measures in Jerusalem,” he said.
Meanwhile, Israel’s Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Thursday denounced the Swedish government’s recognition of a Palestinian state as “deplorable”, saying it would undermine efforts to resolve the conflict.
“The decision of the Swedish government to recognize a Palestinian state is a deplorable decision which only strengthens extremist elements,” he claimed in a statement.
“It is a shame that the Swedish government chose to take this declarative step which causes a lot of harm and offers no advantage,” he said.
“The Swedish government must understand that relations in the Middle East are a lot more complex than the self-assembly furniture of IKEA and that they have to act with responsibility and sensitivity.”
Wallstrom rejected accusations that Sweden was taking sides and she hoped other EU countries would follow Sweden’s lead.
No Security Council statement condemning Israel
The Palestinians urged the UN Security Council on Wednesday to demand that Israel immediately reverse plans to build more Zionist settlements, at an emergency meeting called to address tensions in occupied East Jerusalem.
The 15-nation council met for urgent talks at Jordan’s and Palestine’s request after Israel announced plans on Monday to build 1,000 new settler homes in East Jerusalem.
However, no resolution was adopted and there was no Security Council statement condemning Israel.
“Israel, the occupying power, must be demanded to cease immediately and completely its illegal settlement activities throughout the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem,” Palestinian ambassador Riyad Mansour told the council.
Mansour said he was disappointed that the council had failed to issue a statement but praised members for speaking forcefully against Israeli settlements.
Speaking to the council, top UN official Jeffrey Feltman said the Israeli practice of moving settlers to Palestinian territories was “in violation of international law” and runs counter to a two-state solution of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is “alarmed” by the latest plans for new Israeli settlements which “once again raise grave doubts about Israel’s commitment to achieving durable peace,” Feltman told the council.
Israel’s ambassador Ron Prosor shot back, rejecting suggestions that settlement building jeopardized peace and accusing the UN of “playing second fiddle” to a Palestinian “campaign to vilify” his country.
“There are many threats in the Middle East, but the presence of Jewish homes is not one of them,” Prosor told the council.
Speaking to reporters outside council chambers, Prosor insisted the settlements were “not illegal” and that “building housing units in Jerusalem for children in places where there are Jewish neighborhoods is something that we will continue to do.”
Besides the 1,000 new settler homes, Israel has recently approved the construction of more than 2,600 settler homes in East Jerusalem.
More than 500,000 Israeli settlers live in settlements across the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, in contravention of international law.
Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank during the 1967 Six-Day War. It later annexed the city of Jerusalem in 1980, claiming it as the capital of the self-proclaimed Zionist state – a move never recognized by the international community.
US, European countries “condemn” Israeli settlements
Even though there was no Security Council statement condemning the Israeli violations, Israel came under strong criticism from several countries, which called for an end to unilateral actions including settlement expansions.
The US representative David Pressman told the council “settlement activity will only further escalate tensions at a time that is already tense enough.”
British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant warned that ongoing construction of Zionist settlements in Palestinian territories “makes it much more difficult for Israel’s friends to defend it against accusations that it is not serious about peace.”
French Ambassador Francois Delattre said “the risk of an explosion of uncontrolled violence in Jerusalem and the West Bank cannot be ignored” and called on Israel to drop the planned settlement.
Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said the plan should be “frozen” and urged the council to play a more pro-active role to jump-start Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
On Wednesday, the Spanish government expressed its regret at the settlements plan. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that the decision “does not reflect the formally accepted target of negotiating with the Palestinians to seek a peaceful, global and lasting solution based on two states.”
The ministry also reiterated its position, shared by the international community, that all forms of Israeli settlement construction in occupied Palestinian territories are illegal.
Israel’s latest push for settlements followed weeks of clashes between Palestinian youths and police in East Jerusalem over fears that Israel wanted to restrict access to the al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third holiest site.
Feltman called for a de-escalation, saying that both sides “can ill-afford” to inflame tensions so soon after the devastating Gaza war, which left more than 2,000 Palestinians dead.
In a draft resolution circulated, the Palestinian Authority set November 2016 as the deadline for ending the Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied by Israel during the Six-Day War in 1967 and establishing a two-state solution.
It is worth noting that numerous pro-Palestine activists argue in favor of a one-state solution, arguing that the creation of a Palestinian state beside Israel would not be sustainable. They add that the two-state solution, which is the only option considered by international actors, won’t solve existing discrimination, nor erase economic and military tensions.
(AFP, Ma’an, Al-Akhbar)
Denied land access, Palestinians miss olive harvest
Ma’an – 29/10/2014
AL-JANIYA (AFP) — Abbas Yousef points wistfully towards his olive trees, which are bearing their annual fruit. Yet again, the 70-year-old Palestinian farmer will be unable to make the autumn harvest.
Yousef’s olive groves lie on land either side of an Israeli settlement in the northern occupied West Bank. For years, he has been denied access by the army, and the settlers have plowed it, uprooting many of his trees.
For the 1,400 residents of al-Janiya — Yousef’s village — attacks by settlers who have uprooted trees and burnt Palestinian farmland have become a daily occurrence, he says.
“Each time I try to get to my olive groves, an Israeli soldier tells me I can’t go, because it’s been designated a ‘closed military zone,'” Yousef says.
“My father planted those trees, seed by seed, and I toiled over the land,” he sighs, pointing to one section of his land, now farmed by settlers.
This year, for the first time since 2000, Yousef was allowed access to his land, but only for two days — not nearly enough time to gather all the olives during the harvest that begins in early October.
When he got there, he found 400 of his trees had been uprooted.
UN figures show that since the start of the year, around 7,500 trees have been damaged or uprooted across the West Bank.
‘Now it’s my land’
Arik Ascherman, president of Israeli rights group Rabbis for Human Rights, says Yousef’s experience is common and in danger of becoming the norm in the West Bank.
“They start by preventing Palestinians from accessing their land, then they cultivate it themselves, and then they say ‘Now it’s my land,'” he explains.
Since Israel took over the West Bank in 1967, 135 Jewish settlements have been built there as well as around 100 unauthorized outposts, which are considered illegal even under Israeli law, UN figures show.
All settlements built on occupied territory are illegal under international law.
Figures compiled by the Yesha Settlers Council show there are some 380,000 Israelis living in the West Bank — a number which has more than tripled in the two decades since the Oslo peace accords were signed in 1993.
The attacks against olive groves, which make up half of all cultivated Palestinian farmland, threaten a crucial source of livelihood.
Olive farming and olive oil production bring in around a quarter of Palestinian agricultural revenue, according to the UN’s top humanitarian official for the occupied territories, James Rawley.
The harvest is increasingly threatened by both settlement building and by Israel’s vast separation barrier — in some parts an eight-meter-high (25 foot) concrete wall — whose construction began in 2002.
Some 85 percent of the barrier’s route runs inside the West Bank, rather than along the internationally recognized Green Line, cutting off Palestinians from 30 percent of their land, according to a UN spokeswoman.
For Ahmed Diwan, a farmer who lives in Biddu village east of Ramallah, the problem is not limited to olives.
He says he has also missed the grape harvest, the almonds, the apples, and vine leaves — “a symbol of Palestinian cuisine” — due to a lack of access to his land.
Diwan holds out little hope for this year’s olive harvest as he packs his farming equipment into his car.
“We’re only allowed access to our olive groves two days this year. We can’t maintain the trees or harvest in that time!”
End of an era?
Israel has granted access to farmers for a total of 37 days so far this year, the UN says.
Even those who do have limited access to their farmland are subjected to violent attacks by settlers, who are often armed.
So far this year, 88 attacks have been recorded and 142 farmers injured, according to the UN.
The elderly Yousef was one of the victims.
“About 50 settlers turned up. We were four farmers, people of around my age. We were no match for them,” he recalls.
“In the end it was the Israeli soldiers who got us out to protect us from the settlers.”
The violence is making “entire villages” which had been self-sufficient for decades dependent on international aid, the UN says.
A disillusioned younger generation is turning away from the age-old family tradition.
“Farming is finished. The young people don’t want to work on the land. They’re scared of being killed by settlers,” Yousef says.
Settler violence against Palestinians and their property is a regular occurrence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, but settlers are rarely held accountable by Israeli law enforcement.
Ma’an staff contributed to this report.
Natural resource exploitation in the Dead Sea area – The case of Ahava
Alhaqhr | October 28, 2014
This is the first in a series of new Virtual Field Visits focusing on the topic of business and human rights. This video will highlight corporate complicity in the exploitation of natural resources in the Dead Sea area of the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Report: Last Wednesday’s ‘light rail attack’ by Palestinian driver was a car accident
By Celine Hagbard | IMEMC News | October 26, 2014
As Israeli right-wingers continue to gather at the site of the death of a 3-month old baby on Wednesday, reports from the police investigating the incident and eyewitnesses on the scene indicate that the incident was a hit-and-run car accident, not a deliberate attack.
21-year old Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi had been at the clinic earlier on Wednesday complaining of a fever and illness. He had returned home and gone to bed, but then went back out and was driving too fast on a Jerusalem road when he ran into a group of pedestrians with his car.
He tried to flee the scene of the crash, but was shot dead by Israeli police.
While this incident has made media headlines throughout the world, a similar incident this past Sunday, in which two five-year old Palestinian girls walking home from school were hit by an Israeli settler vehicle, killing one and critically wounding the other, has not received much press.
The settler who killed the 5-year old girl also fled the scene of the crash – he was later apprehended by Israeli police, but was not charged with any crime. Israeli police determined (without interviewing any of the numerous Palestinian witnesses who were on the scene) that it was an accident, and no charges were filed.
Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi’s cousin Abed al-Shaludi told reporters with the Israeli paper Ha’aretz, “We believe that he was shot and killed in cold blood and there was no attempt to question him, and hear his side of the story, and that he deserves a funeral like everyone else.” The body of Abdel Rahman al-Shaludi remains in Israeli police custody, and the family has not been able to hold the funeral yet.
The cousin of the deceased man added, “ I still believe that he had an accident. If he wanted to carry out an attack, why did he wait until he got there? The videos don’t show that it was definitely an attack, and he might have lost control of his vehicle. For the Israelis, that’s an attack, and they shoot him to death.”
A video posted on social media, filmed from an angle above the highway, shows the car crossing the center line and hitting pedestrians who were walking in the median.
A statement by the family of the driver, published on the Israeli news website Ynetnews, states, “We are certain that this was a regular car accident. Over the past few days he did not feel well and it could be due to his illness that he lost control of the wheel. Many similar accidents have occurred in many places and there was no suspicion of a terrorist attack.”
“A few days ago a Jewish settler knocked over two girls near Ramallah. He killed one and the other is in serious condition. The police immediately said it was a car accident. In our case they said the opposite in seconds. This is because the driver was an Arab driver. When a Jewish driver was involved in an accident the attitude was different and no one shot him.”
The U.S. government immediately labeled the incident a ‘terrorist attack’, with State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki saying, “The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms today’s terrorist attack in Jerusalem.” She said that the baby who died in the incident was reportedly a U.S. citizen.
In the clashes that have followed Wednesday’s incident, another U.S. citizen child, 14-year old Orwah Hammad from New Orleans, was killed. He was shot in the head by Israeli forces on Friday. … Full article
Coca Cola’s involvement in the Occupation of Palestine
Who Profits | October 26, 2014
The Central Bottling Company (CBC) or Coca Cola Israel is a manufacturer and distributor of soft drinks, dairy products and alcoholic beverages. CBC began its operation in 1967 upon receiving the Israeli franchise of Coca Cola products from Coca Cola International.
Through its fully owned subsidiary – The Central Company for Sales and Distribution, CBC holds a regional distribution center in the Atarot settlement industrial zone. The Atarot distribution center is responsible for marketing the company’s beverages to the Palestinian population of East Jerusalem. Simultaneously, the Palestinian franchisee – The National Beverages Company (NBC) is denied access to East Jerusalem, which therefore constitutes a captive market for the Israeli distributor.
In 2006 CBC purchased Tabor Winery – an Israeli winery that owns vineyards near mount Shifon in the occupied Golan Heights. Grapes from the Shifon vineyards are used in Tabor’s white wines.
CBC also owns Tara (Milco Industries), whose subsidiary, Meshek Zuriel Dairy (81%), holds a dairy farm and a head office in the settlement of Shadmot Mehola in the Jordan Valley.
Israel bans Palestinians from settlers’ buses in West Bank
MEMO | October 26, 2014
Israeli authorities have bowed to pressure from Jewish settlers and ordered a ban on Palestinians from using Israeli-run buses in the West Bank, Israeli daily Haaretz reported Sunday.
According to the paper, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon has issued instructions to the civil administration in the Israeli army to ban Palestinian workers from traveling by Israeli-run buses upon their return from their work places inside Israel to the West Bank.
The ban will go into effect at the beginning of next month, the paper said, noting that it came following intensive pressures from the settlers in the northern West Bank.
The paper said the settlers sought for the past year to prevent Palestinians from travelling in their buses for security reasons.
It noted that the decision contradicts the stance of the Israeli army leadership which asserted that the Palestinian workers do not pose any security risk because they already go through a security check before being given permits to enter Israel.
Palestinians in northern West Bank who work inside Israel need to pass through the Eyal checkpoint near Qalqilya city, where they are subject to security screening.
“Every day in the morning, we pass through Eyal checkpoint for security check, which takes more than two hours,” Ahmad al-Toor, 44, told Anadolu Agency.
“Upon our return, we use settlers’ buses in the West Bank, which pass near our villages,” he added.
“During our return trips, we are subject to frequent harassments by the settlers,” he added. “But standing for additional two hours under security pretexts when we return is too exhausting.”
The Israeli authorities has issued permits to nearly 150,000 Palestinian workers from the West Bank to work inside Israel.
About 500,000 Israelis now live in more than one hundred Jewish-only settlements built since Israel occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967. The Palestinians want these areas, along with the Gaza Strip, to establish their future state.
International law views the West Bank and East Jerusalem as “occupied territories,” considering all Jewish settlement building on the land illegal.
Israeli forces detain Palestinian man who removed settler tent
Ma’an | October 25, 2014
HEBRON – Israeli forces detained a Palestinian from the village of Susiya south of Hebron after residents took down a tent set up by Israeli settlers on land belonging to a Palestinian family in the area, a local official said.
Jihad al-Nawajaa, the head of a local village council, told Ma’an that Israeli forces detained Ahmad Muhammad Mahmoud al-Hadar, 35, after he took down a tent set up by settlers on the al-Hadar family’s property.
He said that soldiers “assaulted” Palestinian villagers at the same time.
The tent was set up as an outpost to expand the illegal Israeli settlement of Susiya, al-Nawajaa said.
Al-Hadar took down the tent in order to “save our lands from Judaization and settlement.”
Some settlers act without approval to expand settlements or create new ones in the West Bank, building outposts that are illegal even by Israeli government standards.
In some cases, these settlement outposts are “legalized” by Israel, and in rare cases they are dismantled.
Meanwhile, Palestinians are rarely granted permission to build in the 60 percent of the West Bank under full Israeli military control, or in East Jerusalem.
Human Rights Defender Abdallah Abu Rahma receives guilty verdict from military court
International Solidarity Movement | October 21, 2014
Bil’in, Occupied Palestine – On October 21st, Human Rights Defender Abdallah Abu Rahma was found guilty by an Israeli military court of “disturbing a soldier”.
“Demonstrating against the occupation cannot be a criminal offence. Finding Abdallah guilty only shows that the [Israeli] military force is a tool to perpetuate the occupation.” Stated Gabi Lasky, lawyer of Abdallah Abu Rahma, to the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).
Abdallah spoke to the ISM about his recent conviction. “Yesterday the military court ruled that I was guilty, showing once again that they stand on the side of the occupation, and not that of truth and justice.
I was arrested on the 13th of May 2012 in front of Ofer Military prison at a demonstration commemorating the Nakba and in solidarity with the prisoners, many of whom were on hunger strike. I was imprisoned in Ofer for 16 months a year earlier, for my role in the non-violent demonstrations in my village, Bil’in, against the Apartheid wall and settlements built on our land.
This time when I was arrested I was held for a few hours and released on bail, I was not summoned to court until the beginning of 2013, following the success of the popular committees in the construction of the Palestinians villages Bab Al Shams and Bab Al Manatir.”
Abdallah Abu Rahmah is the coordinator of the Bil’in popular committee, which began popular demonstrations against the Apartheid wall and settlements in January 2005. The route of the Apartheid wall originally planned to separate the village form 50% of its agricultural land. As a result of the village’s continued popular struggle, the route was changed and 25% of the village land was effectively annexed by the wall to the illegal settlement of Modiin Elite.
Hundreds of protesters have been arrested and injured by Israeli forces in Bil’in since the popular struggle in the village began. In 2009 during a demonstration, Bassam Abu Rahmah was shot directly in the chest with a high velocity tear-gas projectile, dying of his wounds minutes later. On Januray 1st 2011, Jawaher Abu Rahmah died of poisoning after inhaling excessive amounts of tear gas during the weekly demonstration the previous day.
Ben & Jerry’s is Selling Ice Cream in Illegal Israeli Settlements
Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel
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This photo was taken in a supermarket in Gilo – an illegal Israeli settlement in occupied East Jerusalem – by an activist who documented the sale of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in the settlements of Gilo (pop. 28,980), Pisgat Ze’ev (pop. 39,748) and Ma’ale Adumim (pop. 35,673), and in the industrial park of Mishor Edomim, which services Ma’ale Adumim. |
Ben & Jerry’s Caters to Illegal Israeli Settlements
In August, 2011, an Israeli Jewish activist working with us contacted Ben & Jerry’s factory in Israel, by e-mail and telephone, and confirmed that the company delivers ice cream to Israeli settlements in the occupied territory. Here is an e-mail communication, translated into English, between an employee at the factory and the Israeli activist, discussing arrangements for an ice cream cart to travel to the Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim:
B&J Employee: Thanks for writing. Our ice cream cart comes with 5 flavors to choose from, glasses, wafers, ice cream toppings, 2 stewards and all accessories. The cost for 250 people (free distribution); 3,500 [NIS (Israeli Shekels), or $919 US] including VAT. Attached is a list of flavors. I’ll be happy to answer any questions.
Activist: Is there an extra cost that relates to the distance of your factory to the location of the party? i.e., is there an extra cost because the event is held in Ma’ale Adumin? I’m sorry about the need for detail but it’s necessary for our accounting department.
B&J Employee: Yes, the cost of transportation is 250 [NIS (Israeli Shekels), $65 US]. This is because we come from Be’er Tuvia (near Kiryat Malachi) to Ma’ale Adumim.
Israeli Settlements are Illegal Under International Law
Israel’s settlements in the Palestinian Territory violate Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which declares that “the Occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” The commentary to the Convention states that this provision was intended “to prevent a practice adopted during the Second World War by certain powers, which transferred portions of their own population to occupied territory for political and racial reasons or in order, as they claimed, to colonize those territory. Such transfers worsened the economic situation of the native population and endangered their separate existence as a race.”
Transfer of settlers to occupied territory by an occupying power is also an international war crime under Article 8(2)(b)(viii) of the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Moreover, the UN Security Council and General Assembly, the High Contracting Parties to the Geneva Conventions, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and most legal scholars have concluded that Israel’s settlements in the oPt contravene international law. The International Court of Justice declared in a 2004 decision that “the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (including East Jerusalem) have been established in breach of international law.”
Ben & Jerry’s business in illegal Israeli settlements also violates its obligations under the U.N.’s “Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises,” which asserts that corporations “shall not engage in nor benefit from war crimes, [or] crimes against humanity…” nor take actions that obstruct or impede economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights.
[Citations for the references above are in Our Report on Ben & Jerry’s business practices in the occupied Palestinian Territory.]
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The Israeli supermarket chain Shufersal distributes Ben & Jerry’s ice cream at stores both in Israel and in illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian Territory.
The map at left, with dots denoting the locations of their stores, was displayed in their store in Mishor Adumim (an industrial zone that services one of Israel’s largest settlements, Ma’ale Adumim). Notice that it depicts Israel and occupied Palestine as one state. Palestinians under occupation are not allowed to enter most Israeli settlements, so the supermarkets in those places only sell Ben & Jerry’s ice cream to Jewish settlers. |
Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel Calls on Ben & Jerry’s to:
Until Israel ends its occupation and colonization of Palestinian lands in compliance with international law:
- End the marketing, catering and sales of Ben & Jerry’s products in Israel and Jewish-only settlements in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
- Stop manufacturing ice cream in Israel.
- Issue a statement (a) calling on Israel to end its occupation and settlement enterprise and (b) appealing directly to other socially responsible companies to do likewise and to cease business operations in Israel and its illegal settlements.
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Click here to send a message to Ben & Jerry’s headquarters in Vermont. Tell Ben & Jerry’s that its complicity in Israel’s military occupation and illegal settlements is wrong and must stop! |
Boycott Divestment & Sanctions:
In Solidarity with the Palestinian People
Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel’s opposition to Ben & Jerry’s business practices in Israel and occupied Palestine is motivated by the grave human rights abuses being committed by the State of Israel. We are are also aware that in 2005 Palestinian civil society called for an international campaign of boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it complies with three rights codified in international law.
- End Israel’s occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantle its separation wall;
- Recognize the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and
- Respect, protect and promote the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in United Nations Resolution 194.
| Ben & Jerry’s CEO, Jostein Solheim, said in an interview:
“My mantra that I’ve repeated a hundred times since starting at Ben & Jerry’s is: ‘Change is a wonderful thing,’…. The world needs dramatic change to address the social and environmental challenges we are facing. Values led businesses can play a critical role in driving that positive change. We need to lead by example, and prove to the world that this is the best way to run a business. Historically, this company has been and must continue to be a pioneer to continually challenge how business can be a force for good and address inequities inherent in global business.” Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel agrees: The world – including Israel-Palestine |
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