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Hebron: Over 30 detained

27 July 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

On the evening of July 18, over 30 Palestinians were detained in Tel Rumeida of Hebron after being accused of attacking an Israeli settler from the illegal settlement in the city. The attack allegedly took place after the settler went to swim in Abraham’s spring, which is on Palestinian land, but has a history of being used by settlers from the local colony.

A number of houses nearby to the spring were raided, along with the headquarters of Youth Against Settlements (YAS).

One of the Palestinians detained lives with his family in a house overlooking the spring. Their house was raided by soldiers and a young man was taken.

About 70 Israeli soldiers and 35 settlers gathered at the spring. The settlers insisted that the soldiers arrest the Palestinians, and internationals were barred from approaching the site by soldiers and border police.

Several Palestinians were detained near the spring, while three others were detained separately near the YAS headquarters. They were not accused of the attack, but nevertheless had their ID’s confiscated. The reason behind their detention is still unknown.

After several hours of being detained near the spring, a few Palestinians were released and others were taken to the police station for questioning. The remaining were released shortly after midnight, none of them being charged with the attack.

Earlier that day, Israeli settlers tried for the third time to build a wall of rocks around the spring which lies on Palestinian-owned land. Around 10 Israeli settlers were building, while 15 soldiers guarded them.

According to soldiers, the settlers had a permit but it was not possible to see it. The Palestinian owners of the land thus had no choice but to watch as settlers continued building, and teenagers from the illegal settlements swam in the water.

This incident is symptomatic of the settler mentality as they steadily try to build into Palestinian-owned land and increase the size of their colonies in the West Bank.

Palestinian residents of Tel Rumeida say that the settlers are hoping to encroach upon the spring and the surrounding land, and thus connect two settlements located in the area.

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July 26, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

What Really Lies behind Israel’s ‘No Occupation’ Report

By Jonathan Cook | Middle East Online | July 18, 2012

The recently published report by an Israeli judge concluding that Israel is not in fact occupying the Palestinian territories – despite a well-established international consensus to the contrary – has provoked mostly incredulity or mirth in Israel and abroad.

Leftwing websites in Israel used comically captioned photographs to highlight Justice Edmond Levy’s preposterous finding. One shows an Israeli soldier pressing the barrel of a rifle to the forehead of a Palestinian pinned to the ground, saying: “You see – I told you there’s no occupation.”

Even Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, seemed a little discomfited by the coverage last week. He was handed the report more than a fortnight earlier but was apparently reluctant to make it public.

Downplaying the Levy report’s significance may prove unwise, however. If Netanyahu is embarrassed, it is only because of the timing of the report’s publication rather than its substance.

It was, after all, the Israeli prime minister himself who established the committee earlier this year to assess the legality of the Jewish settlers’ “outposts”, ostensibly unauthorised by the government, that have spread like wild seeds across the West Bank.

He hand-picked its three members, all diehard supporters of the settlements, and received the verdict he expected – that the settlements are legal. Certainly, Levy’s opinion should have come as no surprise. In 2005 he was the only Supreme Court judge to oppose the government’s decision to withdraw the settlers from Gaza.

Legal commentators too have been dismissive of the report. They have concentrated more on Levy’s dubious reasoning than on the report’s political significance.

They have noted that Theodor Meron, the foreign ministry’s legal adviser in 1967, expressly warned the government in the wake of the Six-Day War that settling civilians in the newly seized territory was a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Experts have also pointed to the difficulties Israel will face if it adopts Levy’s position.

Under international law, Israel’s rule in the West Bank and Gaza is considered “belligerent occupation” and, therefore, its actions must be justified by military necessity only. If there is no occupation, Israel has no military grounds to hold on to the territories. In that case, it must either return the land to the Palestinians, and move out the settlers, or defy international law by annexing the territories, as it did earlier with East Jerusalem, and establish a state of Greater Israel.

Annexation, however, poses its own dangers. Israel must either offer the Palestinians citizenship and wait for a non-Jewish majority to emerge in Greater Israel; or deny them citizenship and face pariah status as an apartheid state.

Just such concerns were raised on Sunday by 40 Jewish leaders in the United States, who called on Netanyahu to reject Levy’s “legal maneuverings” that, they said, threatened Israel’s “future as a Jewish and democratic state”.

But from Israel’s point of view, there may, in fact, be a way out of this conundrum.

In a 2003 interview, one of the other Levy committee members, Alan Baker, a settler who advised the foreign ministry for many years, explained Israel’s heterodox interpretation of the Oslo accords, signed a decade earlier.

The agreements were not, as most assumed, the basis for the creation of a Palestinian state in the territories, but a route to establish the legitimacy of the settlements. “We are no longer an occupying power, but we are instead present in the territories with their [the Palestinians’] consent and subject to the outcome of negotiations.”

On this view, the Oslo accords redesignated the 62 per cent of the West Bank assigned to Israel’s control – so-called Area C – from “occupied” to “disputed” territory. That explains why every Israeli administration since the mid-1990s has indulged in an orgy of settlement-building there.

According to Jeff Halper, head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, the Levy report is preparing the legal ground for Israel’s annexation of Area C. His disquiet is shared by others.

Recent European Union reports have used unprecedented language to criticise Israel for the “forced transfer” – diplomat-speak for ethnic cleansing – of Palestinians out of Area C into the West Bank’s cities, which fall under Palestinian control.

The EU notes that the numbers of Palestinians in Area C has shrunk dramatically under Israeli rule to fewer than 150,000, or no more than 6 per cent of the Palestinian population of the West Bank. Settlers now outnumber Palestinians more than two-to-one in Area C.

Israel could annex nearly two-thirds of the West Bank and still safely confer citizenship on Palestinians there. Adding 150,000 to the existing 1.5 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, a fifth of the population, would not erode the Jewish majority’s dominance.

If Netanyahu is hesitant, it is only because the time is not yet ripe for implementation. But over the weekend, there were indications of Israel’s next moves to strengthen its hold on Area C.

It was reported that Israel’s immigration police, which have been traditionally restricted to operating inside Israel, have been authorised to enter the West Bank and expel foreign activists. The new powers were on show the same day as foreigners, including a New York Times reporter, were arrested at one of the regular protests against the separation wall being built on Palestinian land. Such demonstrations are the chief expression of resistance to Israel’s takeover of Palestinian territory in Area C.

And on Sunday it emerged that Israel had begun a campaign against OCHA, the UN agency that focuses on humanitarian harm done to Palestinians from Israeli military and settlement activity, most of it in Area C. Israel has demanded details of where OCHA’s staff work and what projects it is planning, and is threatening to withdraw staff visas, apparently in the hope of limiting its activities in Area C.

There is a problem, nonetheless. If Israel takes Area C, it needs someone else responsible for the other 38 per cent of the West Bank – little more than 8 per cent of historic Palestine – to “fill the vacuum”, as Israeli commentators phrased it last week.

The obvious candidate is the Palestinian Authority, the Ramallah government-in-waiting led by Mahmoud Abbas. Its police forces already act as a security contractor for Israel, keeping in check Palestinians in the parts of the West Bank outside Area C. Also, as a recipient of endless international aid, the PA usefully removes the financial burden of the occupation from Israel.

But the PA’s weakness is evident on all fronts: it has lost credibility with ordinary Palestinians, it is impotent in international forums, and it is mired in financial crisis. In the long term, it looks doomed.

For the time being, though, Israel seems keen to keep the PA in place. Last month, for example, it was revealed that Israel had tried – even if unsuccessfully – to bail out the PA by requesting a $100 million loan from the International Monetary Fund on the PA’s behalf.

If the PA refuses to, or cannot, take on these remaining fragments of the West Bank, Israel may simply opt to turn back the clock and once again cultivate weak and isolated local leaders for each Palestinian city.

The question is whether the international community can first be made to swallow Levy’s absurd conclusion.

~

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website is http://www.jkcook.net.

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July 18, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

New Israeli colony in Abu al Ajaj

Jordan Valley Solidarity | July 12, 2012
Gadi military base (disused) - location of new settlement
Gadi military base (disused) – location of new settlement

Israeli settlers are establishing yet another new colony in the Jordan Valley. With the support of the Israeli Prime Minister, Netanyahu, they are taking over a disused army base close to two Palestinian communities and claiming the land for themselves, just as the notorious Maskiyyot settlers did in 2002.

In recent weeks the settlers’ contractors have started to renovate the buildings of the disused Gadi military base, in the Abu Al Ajaj area of Al Jiftlik village, in the heart of the Jordan Valley. These new colonialists are clearly working closely with the settlement run ‘Jordan Valley Regional Council’ and the neighbouring settlement of Massu’a. One of the most aggressive colonies in the Jordan Valley, Massu’a settlers are responsible for a series of land grabs whereby they have violently stolen land from Abu Al Ajaj on three separate occasions in recent years.

Gadi military base

Gadi military base

The establishment of a new settlement was announced on Israeli Army Radio on 10th March 2011, when Netanyahu visited Gadi base. At the time David Alhiani, head of the Jordan Valley Regional Council, said:“Neither the defense minister nor the prime minister will build a new settlement in the Jordan Valley, not now. Maybe later, when there’s sovereignty in the valley”.

Israel doesn’t have sovereignty of the Jordan Valley today, any more than they had a year ago. Their occupation is just as illegal as it was a year ago. But their attempts to take over the valley have become more aggressive and transparent. Thus, in September 2011 news broke of Israel’s plans to embark on the systematic removal of 27,000 Bedouin from East Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley, and the rest of Area C.

It has been reported that the new settlement will be run by the Israeli Bnei Hamoshavim youth organisation, and will specifically encourage young Israeli’s who have experienced poor mental health or addiction, to join in the Jordan Valley colonisation project.

Prior to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank in 1967 the Gadi military base was used by the Jordanian army, and around 10,000 Palestinians lived to the south and east in Abu Al Ajaj refugee camp. All that remains of the refugee camp today are the cemetery and  the UNWRA school. The mosque still stands on the hill, within the fence surrounding the new IOF (Israeli Occupation Force) base, and Palestinians have been prevented from using it for the last 45 years.

Mosque confiscated and within fence of IOF military base

Mosque confiscated and within fence of IOF military base

Since the refugee camp was destroyed, soon after the occupation, the Palestinian community of Abu Al Ajaj has eked out a living by farming a little land and grazing their sheep on the hillsides. There are around 120 families now living in the community, some originally from the Al Jiftlik area, and others who came as refugees from Yata’ near Hebron, when they were driven out by the settler’s there.

UN OCHA: Expansion of Massu'a settlement

UN OCHA: Expansion of Massu’a settlement

Over the last eight years the settlers of the nearby Massu’a settlement have worked hand-in-hand with the IOF to attempt the drive the Palestinians from the land. On three separate occasions (in 2004, 2008 and 2010) they have selected an area of land that they want, removed any Palestinian buildings or possessions that were there, and taken the land for their own use: They erected greenhouses to cultivate grapes in 2004, took a field to grow their crops in 2008, and in 2010 attacked local Palestinians when they came and fenced off yet more land, and later erected another row of greenhouses. See UN OCHA Humanitarian Report . On each occasion the IOF stood by and supported them. During the same period the community has received countless demolition orders, and been subjected to dawn raids, with many of their homes and animal shelters being demolished and destroyed by the IOF.

Demolitions in Abu Al Ajaj November 2010

Demolitions in Abu Al Ajaj November 2010

There are around 30 homes that have had demolition orders served against them. The families live with the fear that one day the IOF will arrive, and it will be their turn to have their home and livelihood destroyed. They have had their water pipes destroyed, their animals killed, and their access to grazing land stopped, and their land stolen in front of their eyes.

Other local farmers have also been harassed by the IOF. Waleed Abu Hania, living near the cemetery, has been uprooted from his farm three times by the IOF, each time attempting to claim that he’s using state land! A little further up the road, the Saaidh family have received a demolition order for the metal shipping container on their small farm of date trees.

The small nearby community of Koursiliyya, comprised of four families, is even more vulnerable. Tucked away in the valley to the west of Gadi military base, they have already been stopped from accessing water from a small nearby natural spring, and are under threat of forced transfer.

All these Palestinian families are continuing to live on their land against the odds. They are showing a steadfastness beyond belief, but also have nowhere else to go. This is their home. They are facing the concerted effort of the Israeli state to forcibly remove them from their land, and have experienced verbal abuse and physical assault from the illegal settlers from Massu’a. Now they face the prospect of another group of young settlers, given impunity by their government to use violence, aggression and harassment against their Palestinian neighbours.

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July 15, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Al-Walaja Village: The Impact of the Annexation Wall

By | July 9, 2012
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July 9, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Video, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel slams door on UN Human Rights Council over settlement row

RT | July 7, 2012

Israeli officials say a UN fact-finding mission “will not be allowed to enter” the country and its occupied territories. On Friday, the Geneva-based Human Rights Council appointed three officers to probe Israel’s West Bank settlement activity.

­The UN’s top human rights body has commissioned three jurists to find out how Israel’s West Bank settlements affect “the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of the Palestinian people.” The body called on Tel Aviv “not to obstruct the process of cooperation.”

This resonated harshly with Israel, who took no time to dub the mission “biased and flawed,” vowing not to support the officials.

“The fact-finding mission will find no cooperation in Israel, and its members will not be allowed to enter Israel and the territories,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor. “Its existence embodies the inherent distortion that typifies the UN Human Rights Council’s treatment of Israel and the hijacking of the important human rights agenda by non-democratic countries.”

Israel cut all ties with the council in March after the 47-nation body passed a resolution establishing the settlement probe. Israel accuses the commission of a “disproportionate focus” on Israel.

“The establishment of this mission is another blatant expression of the singling out of Israel in the UNHRC,” a Foreign Ministry statement said on Friday.

Now that the team is to be prohibited from Israel, it will have to gain evidence from second-hand sources, like local media.

But even if the mission finds that the settlements violate human rights, any attempts to punish Israel will most probably be defused by the US, Israel’s key ally.

The UN considers Israeli settlements illegal under international law. The Human Rights Council says Israel’s plans to build more houses in the West Bank and East Jerusalem undermine the peace process and pose a threat to the two-state solution.

The West Bank settlements are at the core of dispute between Israelis and Palestinians. Some 500,000 Israelis and 2.5 million Palestinians live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, a territory that Israel expropriated from Jordan in 1967. Palestinians claim the West Bank is part of their future state, and object to any settlements there.

Israel cites historical and biblical links to the West Bank, saying the status of the settlements should be decided in peace negotiations.

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July 8, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinian stabbed, shot in settler attack near Nablus

Ma’an – 07/07/2012

NABLUS – A Palestinian man was shot by Israeli forces in the northern West Bank on Saturday, after which a group of Israeli settlers stabbed him repeatedly, a Palestinian official said.

Jawdat Bani Jabir, 43, was shot in the face and the foot by soldiers in Yanun village, south of Nablus, governorate official Ghassan Daghlas told Ma’an.

A group of Israeli settlers who had descended into the village proceeded to stab him in several places, Daghlas added. Jabir’s condition could not be immediately confirmed.

An Israeli army spokesman said he was looking into the incident.

Daghlas said the settlers had entered Yanun village, and fatally stabbed five cattle. He pointed out that the village depends on agriculture and livestock.

Villagers came out to defend their homes, the official added.

Yanun is surrounded by Israeli settler outposts, illegal under both international and Israeli law.


Yanoun: Settlers and soldiers attack village, injuring 5

8th July 2012 | International Solidarity Movement, West Bank

On Saturday 7 July, 2012, the village of Yanoun, located 12km southeast of Nablus, was attacked by illegal settlers from the illegal Itamar settlement. Five Palestinians were injured in the attack and large sections of agricultural land were set ablaze.

The attack began at roughly 2pm. The illegal settlers descended on the village and began setting fire to sections of land and firing on sheep while they were grazing. In the course of the attack on Yanoun, 5 residents of Aqraba, (the neighbouring village) were injured to varying degrees. Two men, Ibrahim Hamid Ibrahim, and Adwan Rajih bini Naber were beaten by settlers, and another, Joudat Hamid Ibrahim was stabbed in the shoulder after being beaten as well. When the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) arrived, they joined in the attacks, injuring two more. Hakimun Ahmed Yusuf Bini Jaber, 42, was shot in the arm with live ammunition by an IOF soldier and Ashraf Adel Hamid Ibrahim, 29, was shot in the back with a tear gas canister when the soldiers attempted to scatter villagers who were aiding the injured.

The villagers who were aiding the injured attempted to carry the injured men to ambulances, but IOF soldiers blocked the roads and refused to let them through. The IOF and illegal settlers also stopped residents from putting out the fires. The first ambulance to leave was reportedly stopped at Huwwara checkpoint en route to a hospital in Nablus. Two of the injured men were taken from the ambulance and held in Israeli custody for an undetermined period of time. The second and third ambulance were not allowed to depart with those wounded for two hours.

After the attacks had stopped, IOF soldiers still held Adwan Rajih Bini Jaber captive, refusing to allow the ambulance carrying him to depart. Illegal settlers stood by heavily armed, protecting the fires that they had set to Palestinian land.

Nearing 6pm, illegal settlers and IOF soldiers once again advanced on the Palestinians, as internationals gathered to show solidarity, ending in the firing of tear gas canisters and live ammunition into the air.

Yanoun and its residents have been subject to terrorism by illegal settlers from Itamar for many years. On October 19, 2002, there was a temporary mass exodus due to the harassment, drawing parallels with the refugees created in 1948. The villagers returned little by little in the weeks following, with the help of peace activists from Ta’ayush & other groups but the village still suffers from violent attacks regardless.

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July 7, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Renegade Jewish Settlers

| July 2, 2012

Jewish settlers in Palestine: the most notorious squatters in the world.


Part 1

Israeli settlers have been slowly nibbling away at Palestine’s West Bank territory for four decades. 300,000 setllers now occupy outposts that range in size from plywood shacks to full-blown suburban housing complexes. Their abundance has grounded the much-ballyhooed two-state solution to a halt. VICE correspondent Simon Ostrovsky travels from Tel Aviv to the remote West Bank outposts where young Israelis squat for the sake of their heritage. But first, Simon pops in for some quick counter-terrorism training with a member of Israel’s Special Forces, just in case.

~


Part 2

Israeli settlers justify their expansion into the West Bank by digging up ancient artifacts that supposedly prove that they’ve occupied that patch of land for longer than the Palestinians. The twist is that the settlers have the Palestinians do the actual digging under the “supervision” of the Israeli army. Simon stumbles upon one of these infamous archaeological digs and finds that the Israelis are less than eager for their operation to be caught on camera.

~


Part 3

Meet Simcha and Yosef, a pair of teenage settlers at the Havat Gilad outpost in the West Bank doing what Israeli settlers do best: building and re-building houses without a permit.

~


Part 4

Simon gets mixed up in the West Bank Land Day protests, where Palestinians annually clash with the Israeli army.

~


Part 5

Simon travels to Asira al-Qibliya, a Palestinian town that is learning how to defend itself against attacks from the Israeli settlers one hill away.

~

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July 4, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Primer on Settler Colonialism

Five Dunams Confiscated in al-Khader

By JIMMY JOHNSON | CounterPunch | July 4, 2012

The Alternative Information Center on 12 June published a seventy word notice that five dunams of land belonging to Rana Talbieh were being confiscated in al-Khader, a village west of Bethlehem. It was something of a banal announcement expressing some expected difficulties for a few nearby farmers, but it is exemplary of the fundamental process beneath what is often misnomered the Israeli-Palestinian ‘conflict’. We can identify this process by distinguishing between two of the many ways that people relocate: immigration and settlement.

We discuss the arrival of Zionists to Palestine with the Hebrew term aliyah (ascend; plural: aliyot ). Aliyot are nearly always described as “waves of immigration”. This mischaracterizes things. When you immigrate someplace, you join or articulate to the sovereignty (the organized society; nation, tribe, kingdom, etc.) you find upon arrival. Settlers do not. Settlers carry their own sovereignty with them which challenges the indigenous sovereignty. Successful settler colonies displace or exterminate the indigenous sovereignty. Alternately put, when the British built colonies on Turtle Island*, they ‘brought Britain with them’, creating settler colonies and displacing the Powhatan sovereignty and Powhatan people they encountered in what the settler society calls Virginia. This simultaneous increase of British—later American—and decrease of indigenous sovereignty is how Turtle Island is transformed into ‘North America’ through the past 500 years. The processes of establishing, perpetuating and extending settler colonies is called settler colonialism.

Zionists did things differently than Britain but still established a settler colony. Unique amongst settler colonies, Israel did not have a primary nation-state from which it drew settler population and logistical support (this relatively minor detail is the traditional explanation for why Zionism is supposedly not colonial). Instead Zionists brought European capital and class privilege with them and established settler sovereignty on site, displacing the indigenous Palestinian sovereignty they encountered. Tel Aviv is not an outgrowth of Shayk Muwannis and the other Palestinian villages buried beneath it nor was it a suburb of neighboring Jaffa. Tel Aviv is the sovereignty that eliminated those villages and with them, Palestinian sovereignty there. Building Tel Aviv and the other Zionist settlements—’collectivish’ kibbutzim included—is settler colonialism, the process of creating Israel where Palestine was and is. Five more dunams of Israel are created now from al-Khader as five more dunams of Palestine are eliminated. This is the settler colonial equation.

The question of sovereignty not only distinguishes settlers from immigrants, but settler colonialism from more widely discussed and studied forms of colonialism. The British in India and Nigeria co-opted, exploited and reorganized the sovereignties and societies they encountered. The British in Turtle Island and Zionists in Palestine eliminated them. Settler displacement of indigenous sovereignty is a primary function of what Australian scholar Patrick Wolfe calls settler colonialism’s “logic of elimination.” There was and is elimination too by the British in India and Nigeria and co-optation, exploitation and reorganization by Zionists in Palestine, but not as the defining process. Wolfe’s seminal 2006 article “Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native” focuses primarily on settler elimination of indigenous people but the eliminationist logic he describes is equally applicable to the erasure of sovereignty.

Palestine and Palestinians are eliminated through death, displacement and stripping of identity. Hundreds of thousands were expelled in 1948 as the settler society became the State of Israel and again in 1967 when Israel expanded its control to all of historic Palestine. From 1967 to date, Israel has revoked residency rights of another 240,000 Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip condemning them to be ‘illegal’ in their homeland or to exile. The numerous Israeli massacres perpetrated between 1947-49 demonstrate this ‘logic of elimination’ in a most horribly clear manner. Another way to eliminate the indigenous population is to remove their indigeneity. Israel attempts to do this with the category of ‘Israeli Arabs’. Calling Palestinian citizens of Israel ‘Israeli Arabs’ removes their indigenous Palestinian identity and instead articulates them through the settler society. This is never more clear than in the Naqab (what the settler society calls the Negev) where Israel is trying to eliminate the Bedouin population not through killing them, but through preventing them from living as indigenous people. The Naqab Bedouins are not allowed to be pastoralists or otherwise define their relationship with their historical lands. When Naqab Bedouins try, the Israeli government demolishes their houses and fines and arrests them. This is also why the Naqab has to be called the Negev and Palestine must be called Israel. Indigenous peoples and sovereignties have no place inside settler societies.

There is of course, much more to the narrative. The particulars of Zionist colonization and Palestinian resistance are shaped, abetted and contested by numerous factors. These include: European anti-Semitism (including pogroms and the shoah), Ottoman land policies, British and French colonialism, capitalism, ‘Third World nationalism’, Islamism, U.S. and Soviet interventions and the Cold War, U.S. empire, the Egyptian, Iraqi, Libyan, Israeli, Saudi and Iranian quests for regional hegemony and the particulars of Zionist and Palestinian narratives and ideologies. All of these are direly important but we very often lose sight of the fundamental process of settler colonialism while discussing them. Five more dunams of Israel, five less dunams of Palestine.

The settler colonial process has been the same since the Second Aliya (1904-1914) when new Jewish arrivals definitively decided not to articulate to Palestinian society but to create their own, separate sovereignty in Palestine (see Gershon Shafir’s Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882-1914 for an in depth examination). Settler colonialism is the transformation of Palestine into Israel, the process of the settler eliminating the indigenous, and it is why Palestinians resist—as they have since the beginning—continued Israeli settlement construction. Israeli settlement construction is literally Palestinian destruction (see Walid Khalidi’s All That Remains and Raja Shehadeh’s Palestinian Walks, amongst other works for this narrative). This is why the confiscation of five more dunams, just one and one-quarter acre, in al-Khader tells us more about the fundamental process at work than 99% of all the discussion about the Israeli-Palestinian ‘conflict’.

* Turtle Island is one of numerous indigenous terms for what the settler society calls North America. I use it only as an example and not to privilege the term, used primarily by northeastern tribes, over others.

Jimmy Johnson can be reached at johnson [dot] jimmy [at] gmail [dot] com.

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July 4, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israel Planning A Military College In Mount Olive

By Saed Bannoura | IMEMC & Agencies | July 03, 2012

The Israeli Regional Planning and Construction Committee in Jerusalem approved, Monday, a plan to build a Military College near the Augusta Victoria Hospital in Mount Olive, in occupied East Jerusalem.

Palestinian researcher specialized in Israeli settlement affairs, Ahmad Sob-Laban, issued a press release revealing, that under this plan, Israel will be constructing a military college on nearly 14 Dunams (3.459 Acres) north east of the Old city.

He added that the college will be able to accommodate nearly 400 students and 130 academics, and aims at moving more government and military facilities into the eastern part of Jerusalem, as part of Israel’s plans and illegal settlement activities in the occupied city.

Sob-Laban further stated that the settler-led government of Benjamin Netanyahu, and several settlement organizations, heavily supported by Israel lobbies and some Jewish millionaires in the United States, is trying to create facts on the ground by creating this chain of settlements and military bases in and around the Old City, starting in Ath-Thoury neighborhood and Silwan in the south, going through Ras Al-Amoud and At-Tour areas, and ending in Sheikh Jarrah in the north.

The official said that constructing the new military college will be the beginning of a new settlement outpost in the area, adding that At-Tour neighborhood already has two illegal settlement outposts, and that the planned college is only a few dozen meters away from these outposts.

He said that the new plan was discussed by the regional committee in mid-April, and was approved less than three months after submission, an issue that indicates that the Israeli government is rushing to approve and construct more settlement and military facilities in occupied East Jerusalem.

Last week, Israel approved the construction of 180 units for Jewish settlers in east Talpiot settlement, and issued bids for the construction of 171 units in Abu Ghneim (Har Homa) illegal settlement, in addition to putting 24 units in Beit Orot illegal settlement for sale.

In the same time-frame, Israel demolished and evicted several Arab-owned stores in the Old City, and approved a plan to install a lift and a tunnel linking between the Jewish Quarter in the Old City with the Al-Boraq Wall (The Western Wall).

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July 2, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , | Leave a comment

Susiya: Another Casualty of Israeli Occupation?

By Patrick O. Strickland | Palestine Chronicle | June 18, 2012

Last week Israeli military forces delivered demolition orders to the residents of Susiya, a small village in the South Hebron Hills. The villagers were told that they have illegally erected over fifty buildings without the permission of the Israeli Defense Force.

The demolition order came a few short days after Regavim, a right-wing NGO dominated by Israeli settlers, filed a petition in Israel’s High Court, requesting that a building freeze be imposed on Susiya.

The village is situated, much to the dismay of its inhabitants, in Area C of the West Bank, the land which was designated for full Israeli administration after the Oslo Accords. It is nearly against the fence of a particularly hostile Israeli settlement, which is also named Susiya. Yatta, a much larger Palestinian village, is less than a kilometer, though there are several Israeli military outposts on the path there.

Allotted only three days to appeal, it appears that Susiya will be destroyed. The village’s legal representative intends to take the matter to Israel’s High Court.

The “illegal buildings” they have erected, in actuality, are tents which were hastily constructed from cinderblocks and rain tarps. For, this will be the sixth–not the first–time that Susiya will be demolished by the IDF. The village–which consists of Bedouins, cave-dwellers, and Palestinians who were displaced from the Negev Desert in the 1948 war–was razed in 1985, 1991, 1997, and twice in 2001.

Each time Susiya is destroyed, the neighboring settlement further usurps the land that legally belongs to its Palestinian owners. The villagers refuse to leave, and each time the village is crumbled, they resurrect it.

The villagers have been regular targets of attacks from the settlers next door. Their water wells have been poisoned on several occasions. Their sheep, on which they depend for butter and milk as their sole source of income, have frequently been slaughtered by their zealous neighbors. Settler attacks are generally treated with legal impunity, and this is to say nothing of the Israeli military’s repeated destruction of Susiya’s caves, in which Susiya’s residents have historically lived.

When I visited the village last fall, Nasser Nawajeh, a resident of Susiya and longtime activist, spoke of one occasion in which the IDF used a bulldozer to collapse his family’s water well. Under Israeli martial law, Palestinians in Area C of the West Bank are not allowed to dig deeper than three feet without a permit. After the well was destroyed, he recalled, they stuffed mangled car parts into its base in order to discourage them from rebuilding it.

In recent years, international activists and left-wing Israeli NGOs have helped draw attention to Susiya’s abysmal situation. Breaking the Silence, an organization of former IDF soldiers who have decided to speak out against the occupation, brings a regular tour of internationals to meet with the Nawajeh family in Susiya. Rabbis for Human Rights has also tried to raise awareness inside Israel of the struggle that Susiya faces at the hands of military occupation and continued settlement expansion.

Nonetheless, many international efforts to aid the residents of Susiya have been shortsighted and concerned more with the appearance of having helped, rather than fixing the roots of the problems. Little has been done, for instance, to help the villagers obtain water for their sheep. The Nawajeh family, because their wells are repeatedly destroyed, are expected to buy water from Yatta, which costs three times the price of water inside Israel, not including transportation fees.

The plight of Susiya is indicative of the larger dialectic of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israeli officials will continue to accuse the Palestinians of being unprepared for peace negotiations, while its military and settlement enterprise employ the force of arms to wrangle the West Bank from its native inhabitants. Western governments and the international community will continue to portray the situation in an absurd light: a fragile democracy attempting to quell restive “terrorists.”

However, Susiya’s struggle is of another stripe. The villagers, possessing none of the violent and fanatical traits of the settlers that so often attack them, are committed to living on their land. None of the colonial arguments to the contrary will persuade them otherwise.

Susiya, though facing another impeding annihilation, refuses to be the next casualty of Israel’s suffocating 45-year military occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

“We’ve been kicked displaced and kicked off our land five times,” Nasser Nawajeh told me. “We’re not leaving again.”

– Patrick O. Strickland is a freelance writer living and traveling on both sides of the ‘Green Line’ in Israel and the Palestinian territories. He is a weekly Israel-Palestine correspondent for Bikya Masr and writes regular dispatches on his blog, http://www.patrickostrickland.com.

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June 19, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , | Leave a comment

Palestinian target practice for US tourists in the West Bank

albawabaNEWS | June 19th, 2012

Stay in a kibbutz, go out clubbing in Tel Aviv, say a prayer at the Western Wall and then go to a settlement to practice killing Palestinians.

This is the new summer camp for American tourists keen to get shooting at ‘terrorists’ in illegal settlements in the West Bank. At Gush Etzion, Israeli residents, who run activities, offer the chance to hear tales of ‘battles’, watch simulated assassinations and fire guns.

At the end of the thrill-filled day, tourists get a certificate to record that they “completed a basic shooting course in Israel.”

“Suppose that the terrorist in front of me has an automatic weapon,” Shay, one of the guides, told Ynet. “He can spray a cartridge within 2.8 seconds, which means I have less than three seconds to take him down. And that is what I will do.”

The location of the course – over the green line and in Palestinian territory – is the main draw for the danger-seeking tourists. Although guides are clear that there is no actual threat.

Just outside the settlement, Palestinians who live in and around Bethlehem must go through checkpoints manned by Israeli soldiers. The security presence means gun-toting tourists would be unlikely to meet a ‘terrorist’.

Conversely, attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinians are on the increase. According to The Jerusalem Fund: “Israeli settler violence is growing and is a consistent threat to Palestinian livelihoods.” The attacks span from burning olive trees to breaking into Palestinian homes, carrying automatic weapons.

And it’s not just adult tourists who are taking part in the shooting practice course. According to an investigation by Ynet, children as young as five were allowed to shoot at the range:

Michel Brown, 40, a Miami banker, chose to take his wife and three children to the range with the purpose of “teaching them values.”

Upon entering the range, his five-year-old daughter, Tamara, bursts into tears. A half hour later, she is holding a gun and shooting clay bullets like a pro.

“This is part of their education,” Michel says as he proudly watches his daughter. “They should know where they come from and also feel some action.”

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June 19, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Isolation brought to Alramaden

June 19, 2012 by

June 19, 2012 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

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