UNESCO should cry no tears over Israel’s departure
By Dr Daud Abdullah | MEMO | January 2, 2019
There will be no tears now Israel and the US have withdrawn from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). Both countries have undermined the organisation’s credibility and brought it into disrepute – UNESCO will be better off without them.
UNESCO is governed by several international accords, to which all members are treaty-bound to adhere. The 1954 “Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict” is arguably the most important international instrument for the protection of cultural property – defined as monuments of architecture, art or history; archaeological sites; buildings of historical or artistic interest; works of art; manuscripts, important books and archives, as well as scientific collections.
Both The Hague Convention and its Protocol have been incorporated into international customary law; their provisions are, therefore, binding on all parties to conflict, regardless of whether or not they are signatories to these instruments. In recent years, the protection of cultural heritage has been deemed so important that the Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has recognised the destruction and seizure of buildings dedicated to religion, education, arts, science or charitable purposes, as well as historic monuments, a war crime.
Yet throughout its 70-year history, Israel has shown an alarming disregard for UNESCO’s rules and ideals, seeking exemptions and privileges not granted to any other member state. Its real grievance with UNESCO is that it wants the organisation to remain silent and, in doing so, endorse its theft and destruction of Palestinian cultural heritage.
Israeli soldiers and civilians have stolen innumerable objects of historical, cultural and archaeological importance to Palestine. Bizarrely, on the same day that Israel announced its withdrawal from UNESCO, one of the country’s leading daily newspapers, Haaretz, published an article under the title “Israel Displays Archaeological Finds Looted from West Bank”. This was in reference to a Civil Administration exhibition currently being held at the Bible Land Museum in Jerusalem.
As a contracting party to The Hague Convention, Israel is obliged “to prohibit, prevent and, if necessary, put a stop to any form of theft, pillage or misappropriation of, and any acts of vandalism directed against, cultural property”. Yet, with the backing of the US, it chooses to do just the opposite.
The theft of archaeological items is bad enough, but their wilful destruction is far worse. Israel’s construction of the Separation Wall – which encircles its settlements across the occupied West Bank – has often required large-scale archaeological excavation. Palestinian officials believe that an estimated 1,100 archaeological landmarks have been ruined or destroyed by the construction of the wall.
Furthermore, as a matter of policy Israel refuses to share with Palestinian researchers the data and objects obtained from its excavations in the occupied territories. Although Israel signed the UNESCO “Recommendation on International Principles Applicable to Archaeological Excavations” in 1956, it has refused to ratify the 1970 “UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property”. Instead, it continues to argue that international law does not prohibit excavation in occupied territories.
Around 53 per cent of the archaeological sites in the occupied West Bank are located in Area C, in which Palestinians are prohibited from conducting exploration, restoration and development. Unsurprisingly, during the first five years of the Oslo Accords (1993-98), only nine out of the 171 excavation permits issued by the Israeli Staff of Antiquities were granted to Palestinian academic institutions.
All told Israel has, for its own partisan reasons, never been a committed member of UNESCO. Its discomfort always lay in the fact that it could not persuade the organisation’s members to acquiesce to its theft and destruction of Palestinian cultural heritage. Disagreement and divorce seemed inevitable, given that UNESCO has declared some of the sites affected by Israel’s occupation as World Heritage sites.
Contrary to the Israeli-US claim, UNESCO has never adopted a policy of singling-out Israel for criticism or censure – the only reason it has been subjected to scrutiny is because it has, for decades, refused to act in accordance with UNESCO’s rules.
Were UNESCO to turn a blind eye to Israel’s looting and vandalising of Palestinian cultural heritage, this would be nothing less than a dereliction of duty. Furthermore, to appease Israel would set a dangerous precedent for rogue states and non-state actors to act with similar impunity. Instead of weeping over their departure, UNESCO must now feel deeply relieved that it will no longer be called upon to act against its principles, values and interests.
Thousands of West Bank farmers denied access to their lands in 2018
Palestine Information Center | January 3, 2019
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM – Israel has drastically reduced the number of Palestinian farmers who are allowed to work their lands located between the separation barrier or wall and the Green Line, according to Israeli official data.
According to Haaretz newspaper, in 2018, 72 percent of Palestinian requests for farming permits were rejected, compared to 24 percent in 2014.
There are also very few permits issued for relatives of the plot owner who work with him and paid laborers.
This information was sent by the Israeli army’s civil administration to Hamoked—the center for the defense of individual human rights—in response to a freedom of information law request, according to the newspaper.
However, that information lacks valuable data concerning, for example, the number of seasonal, short term permits which Hamoked believes often replace the long term permits.
The statistics correspond to reports submitted by farmers to Hamoked, to Machsom Watch activists and to Haaretz about bureaucratic obstacles that have been added over the past four years to get the permits to cultivate their land.
The land between the barrier and the Green Line, which Israel refers to as the “seam zone,” totals 137,000 dunums (33,853 acres), a report released by Haaretz pointed out.
Since the start of 2018 through November 25, the civil administration approved only 1,876 requests for farming permits of the 7,187 requests submitted, which constitutes an unprecedented refusal rate of 72 percent. This compares to a refusal rate of 24 percent in 2014, when the number of requests totaled 4,288, and the number of permits issued was 3,221.
Hamoked, has been assisting farmers who are denied permits since 2009, said the obtained data confirm that “contrary to the high court of justice ruling that recognizes the residents’ right to work their lands with their families and employees, the army is acting systematically to deprive the Palestinians of this basic right, to restrict the entry of Palestinian farmers into the seam zone and to gradually dispossess them of their land.”
PA bows to US, Israel pressure to extradite Palestinian who sold land to Jews
MEMO | January 3, 2019
The Palestinian Authority (PA) plans to extradite a Palestinian-American it convicted for selling Jerusalem land to Israeli Jews, bowing to US and Israeli pressure.
Issam Aqel, a resident of the Beit Hanina neighbourhood of Jerusalem, was sentenced earlier this week to life imprisonment for selling land to Israeli Jews without the permission of Palestinian authorities. The Higher Offences Court in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, convicted Aqel of “attempting to sever parts of Palestinian land and annex it to a foreign state,” handing him a “life sentence with hard labour”.
Yet today the PA appears to have bowed to months of US pressure to extradite Aqel – who is a dual Palestinian-American national – with the US and the PA agreeing Aqel will be sent to America at the end of legal proceedings. His lawyer is expected to file an appeal against the court’s ruling, the Times of Israel reported, citing a senior Palestinian official who spoke to Israel’s public broadcaster Kan on condition of anonymity.
The Israeli daily added that though many details of Aqel’s extradition have yet to be finalised, the Palestinian official claimed the PA was eager to get Aqel “off its hands”, saying: “We want to finish this saga. He has become a burden upon us.”
The US has put pressure on the PA to release Aqel since he was first arrested in October. In November, US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman took to Twitter to condemn Aqel’s imprisonment, saying: “Akel’s [sic] incarceration is antithetical to the values of the US & to all who advocate the cause of peaceful coexistence, we demand his immediate release.”
According to conservative US news site CNSNews, Israel lobby groups have also pushed the US to pressure the PA, with one group – the National Council of Young Israel – urging the US to suspend aid to the PA until Aqel was freed. The group’s president, Farley Weiss, said that “[PA President] Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority cannot expect handouts from the US while they exploit an American by locking him up and throwing away the key”.
Israel has supported the US in this pressure, with the Israeli Civil Administration – which administers the occupied Palestinian territories – in November freezing security coordination with the PA in Jerusalem in protest against Aqel’s detention. A week previously, Israel had withdrawn the VIP travel card of Palestinian Attorney General Ahmed Barrak, after he ordered an amendment to Aqel’s detention. Israel also detained the PA’s Jerusalem governor, Adnan Ghaith, over his efforts to combat the transfer of Jerusalem properties to Israeli Jews. Ghaith was eventually released on 2 December but was banned from entering the occupied West Bank for six months.
Relations between the US and the PA grew increasingly strained in 2018 after a string of punitive measures taken by the US administration under President Donald Trump, including cutting funding to UNRWA, threatening to withhold aid unless a peace deal with Israel is agreed, downgrading its Jerusalem Consulate and unilaterally declaring the city Israel’s capital.
Israel arrested 175 Palestinian women, girls in 2018
Israeli soldiers arrest a woman protester during a demonstration against Israel’s controversial separation barrier which crosses the Palestinian territories in the West Bank town of Beit Jala, near the town of Bethlehem, on 27 June 2010 [Mamoun Wazwaz/Apaimages]
MEMO | January 2, 2019
Israeli occupation forces arrested 175 Palestinian women and girls in 2018 and summoned hundreds in for interrogation, the Palestine Prisoners’ Centre for Studies said yesterday.
In a statement reported by the Safa News Agency, the Director of the centre Riyadh Al-Ashqar said that the Israeli occupation escalated its aggression on Palestinian women and girls this year in order to punish them for their participation in anti-occupation activities.
He also said that the Israeli occupation arrested female relatives of male prisoners, describing this as a “form of illegal punishment”.
Al-Ashqar documented the detention of 15 females who’s male relatives are being held in Israeli detention including Bayan Faroun. The twenty-four-year-old was handed a 40 months prison term. She is the fiancé of Ahmed Azzam who was sentenced to six-years in jail.
Female prisoners face harsh conditions in jail, Al-Ashqar said, including violation of their rights, humiliation and a lack of access to health care.
Nineteen Palestinian Journalists Are Still Imprisoned By Israel
IMEMC News – December 31, 2018
The Palestinian Information Ministry has reported that there are nineteen Palestinian journalists who are still imprisoned by Israel, in direct violation of various treaties and International Law.
In a press statement Monday, the Ministry said that the Israeli occupation and its military courts are ongoing with their serious violations against the journalists and various media outlets in occupied Palestine.
It said that many journalists have also been forced under house arrest, others were forced out of their towns, in addition to facing high fines by the Israeli military courts for performing their duties.
The Ministry also said that some of the abducted journalists were shot and injured, while others are sick, in need of specialized medical treatment but are denied that right.
The soldiers also invaded and violently searched many media outlets across the West Bank, and confiscated equipment.
The Information Ministry stated that Israel’s violations are ongoing attempts to silence the Palestinian media outlets and the journalists, and urged the International Federation of Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, and various related organizations around the world to intervene and stop the escalating abuses against the media and the Freedom of the Press in occupied Palestine.
It is worth mentioning that the soldiers have also killed Palestinian Photojournalist Yasser Mortaja, and journalist Ahmad Abu Hussein, in the Gaza Strip, in addition to wounding dozens of journalists, during the Great Return March processions.
Israeli Settler Drives into Sheep near Ramallah, Kills 12
IMEMC News & Agencies – January 1, 2019
In what appears as a premeditated terror attack, an Israeli settler rammed his vehicle into a herd of sheep in the village of al-Mughayyer, to the east of Ramallah, on Monday, killing 12 and injuring 18 others.
Local sources told WAFA correspondence that the settler rammed into the herd on purpose and with full force, to cause as much damage as possible. They said he ran over 30 sheep, killing 12 and injuring the others, of which six were in critical condition.
The attack happened on what is known as Alon settlement road.
Raising sheep is the only source of income for Khaled Abu Illia, victim of the premeditated terror attack.
Shepherds are often seen in the open pastures during this season, when the fields are covered with green grass.
Majority of UN condemnations directed at Israeli crimes
Palestine Information Center – January 1, 2018
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM – Over the course of 2018, the United Nations has voted to adopt some 27 condemnations — the vast majority of which were directed at Israel.
According to Hillel Neuer, executive director of United Nations Watch, 21 of the 27 condemnations were aimed at Israel.
Iran, Syria, North Korea, Russia, Myanmar and the United States each received one.
The Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas had none.
Weeks ago, the UN refused to pass a U.S.-led resolution that would have condemned Hamas for allegedly firing on Israel.
The UN’s vision of ‘peace’ for Palestine excludes ordinary Palestinians
By Ramona Wadi | MEMO | December 27, 2018
The UN is now adamant that the Palestinian Authority should return to govern the Gaza Strip. In the aftermath of Israel’s 2014 Operation Protective Edge, this hypothesis was raised by the US and has seldom been questioned, ostensibly due to other pressing factors such as delivering the necessary humanitarian aid to displaced and injured Palestinians in the besieged enclave.
Since the Palestinian cause has become fragmented into separate issues to prevent national unity, the PA — through decisions taken by its leader Mahmoud Abbas — has slowly imposed its own sanctions on Gaza, bizarrely in the name of unity. This facade was dropped swiftly, though, to reveal the real reason for the sanctions; the Fatah-led PA wants to force Hamas to relinquish its political power in the enclave. Hamas, remember, won the last Palestinian elections in 2006, but has never been allowed to govern both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as it was entitled to.
Protests in the occupied West Bank expressing solidarity with Gaza have been met with excessive violence from the PA’s security forces, which basically exist to protect Israel, not the people of Palestine. Criticising Abbas’s collaboration with Israel and the international community is a dangerous endeavour for ordinary Palestinians.
None of this is of any concern to the UN. In the past months, the organisation’s officials have specifically expressed a preference for the PA under Abbas to return to Gaza. It was UN Special Coordinator Nickolay Mladenov who reiterated this demand in his briefing to the UN Security Council: “Ultimately, reuniting Gaza and the West Bank under a single, legitimate and democratic Palestinian Authority and putting an end to the occupation will ensure long-term peace.” Abbas’s own term of office as President was supposed to end in 2009, by the way; he has refused to hold a presidential election that he knows he will lose.
Mladenov also attempted to conflate resistance in Gaza and the occupied West Bank. “It is critical that events in the West Bank do not lead to reigniting the Gaza fuse,” he insisted. “The people in Gaza have suffered enough and must not be made to pay the price for violence elsewhere.”
Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are suffering varying degrees of oppression, yet there is one consistent omission from the narrative: both civilian populations are victims of collaboration between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. If the people of Gaza have “suffered enough”, to quote Mladenov, why is the UN insisting that the instigator of a large part of their oppression return to the enclave as part of a solution that is nowhere in sight?
How long will it take, I wonder, for the UN to move from expressing opinions about its preferred Palestinian government, to imposing yet another demand upon the Palestinians in Gaza which will also be detrimental to those in the occupied West Bank?
If the UN really wishes the PA to return to Gaza, and there is no reason to doubt its officials’ statements, it is advocating the elimination of Gaza’s elected political representation — albeit with an expired term in office — in favour of a hierarchy that was created and backed to implement the international plan for Palestine’s destruction.
The UN is implementing a new degree of impunity allocated exclusively to the PA. There will be no voices at an international level clamouring against this human rights violation, though. On the contrary, a future collective chorus seeking PA rule in Gaza will do so from within the loose interpretation of human rights advocated by the UN. There is no logic in seeking the return of an entity that has itself contributed to crippling Gaza as a step towards peace. If this is what the UN wants, then it must be clear that the international community’s vision of peace excludes ordinary Palestinians, which is tantamount to supporting Israel’s plans for a complete colonial takeover of historic Palestine.
Stolen West Bank artefacts displayed at Israel museum
MEMO | December 31, 2018
Israel has exhibited artefacts stolen from the occupied West Bank at a Jerusalem museum, an Israeli newspaper reported Monday.
Twenty artefacts – out of an estimated 40,000 confiscated in 1967 – are currently on display, Israeli daily Haaretz reported.
The purloined artefacts reportedly include a number of ancient coins and bowls.
For the last four decades, the artefacts remained in the Israeli authorities’ possession “with no means of ascertaining their provenance”, the paper reported.
Palestine’s official WAFA news agency condemned the looting of Palestinian antiquities.
The display of stolen artefacts, the news agency asserted today, “violates international law… which prohibits an occupying power from… carrying out archaeological excavations in occupied territory”.
Palestine urges international probe into Jerusalem excavations
MEMO | December 30, 2018
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry has called for forming an international commission to investigate Israeli excavations in the occupied city of East Jerusalem and beneath the flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.
In a statement on Saturday, the ministry warned that the Israeli diggings pose a major threat to Palestinian houses in the occupied city.
“These excavations aim to cause cracks in Palestinian houses, with Israeli authorities ordering residents to leave these houses on the ground that they are not fit for living,” the ministry said.
The ministry went on to describe the Israeli eviction of Palestinians from their homes as a “large-scale, systematic ethnic cleansing”.
There was no comment from Israeli authorities on the ministry’s statement.
Israel refuses to allow access to UNESCO to examine the holy sites in East Jerusalem.
In July 2017, the UNESCO executive board adopted a resolution that slammed “the failure of the Israeli occupying authorities to cease the persistent excavations, tunneling, works, projects and other illegal practices in East Jerusalem, particularly in and around the Old City of Jerusalem, which are illegal under international law”.
The resolution further stated that “legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by Israel, the occupying power, which have altered – or purport to alter – the character and status of the holy city of Jerusalem… are null and void and must be rescinded forthwith”.
In 2016, UNESCO passed a resolution describing Jerusalem as an “occupied” city and Israel as an “occupying power”, which, under international law, has no sovereignty over the historic city.
The same resolution stated that Jerusalem’s Old City was “entirely Palestinian”, going on to emphasise its historical “Muslim and Christian” identity and heritage.
Israel occupied East Jerusalem during the 1967 Arab-Israeli War. In a move never recognised by the international community, it unilaterally annexed the entire city in 1980, claiming it as its “eternal and undivided” capital.
Read also:
Israel to spend $16.6 million on excavations under Al-Aqsa Mosque
Israel arrested 5,700 Palestinians, 980 children in 2018
MEMO | December 29, 2018
Israel arrested 5,700 Palestinians in 2018, including 980 children and 175 women, the Palestine Prisoners’ Centre for Studies announced yesterday.
Director of the centre Riyadh Al-Ashqar said that the Israeli occupation continued its violations against Palestinian prisoners in clear violation of international law, Quds Net News reported. As evidence of this violation, Al-Ashqar cited Israel’s daily detention campaigns, severe torture – including beating prisoners with batons and rifle butts – as well as raiding prisoners’ cells, confiscating their belongings, isolating them under harsh conditions and issuing vengeful sentences against them.
Al-Ashqar noted that Israeli occupation forces this year detained several children under the age of ten, including 3-year-old Durgham Maswada who in March was detained in the Old City of Hebron, in the south of the occupied West Bank.
He also noted that the 175 women detained, including the elderly, wounded, journalists, academics and university professors, as well as 14 female minors. In addition, Al-Ashqar said that 1,300 of the imprisoned men were ex-detainees, while 150 were disabled – including 53-year-old Ali Hannoun who is blind.
In addition, Israel’s military courts issued 920 administrative detention orders against women, children and politicians, Al-Ashqar said. One of the most prominent detainees was 92-year-old Ali Al-Haj who was arrested from his home earlier this year.
Israel demolished 538 homes, facilities in West Bank in 2018
Palestinian boys watch Israeli excavators demolish an allegedly unauthorised Palestinian apartment block in E. Jerusalem, 1 May 2018 [Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu Agency]
MEMO | December 29, 2018
Israel demolished 538 Palestinian homes and facilities across the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem in 2018, leaving 1,300 Palestinians and 225 children homeless.
A report issued yesterday by the Abdullah Al-Hurani Centre – an affiliate of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) – stressed that these demolitions were carried out in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention and other international laws.
In the report, the centre said that Israel “continues its policy of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Jerusalem,” pointing out that, in addition to the demolitions, Israel had issued 460 “stop-building orders” during the same period.
Israel’s Civil Administration – which carries out Israeli policy in the occupied West Bank – issued a military order to demolish all the targeted buildings less than 30 days before the demolition was carried out, a move the centre sees as aiming to cut short the possibility of appealing such orders.
The report also documented the demolition or closure of 12 Palestinian schools and kindergartens built by the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank.
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Bum Rap for the Rapa Nui
By Thomas Riggins | Dissident Voice | February 5, 2014
A new report in Science News Magazine (1-25-2014) by Bruce Bower details a reevaluation of the view that the Rapa Nuians, the native inhabitants of Easter Island (Rapa Nui), were responsible for the collapse of their population and society due to over exploitation of natural resources and the destruction of the rain forest on their island, a view recently popularized by Jared Diamond in his book Collapse (2005).
As Bower reports, the anthropologist Maria Mulrooney has published the results of her studies of the Rapa Nui culture (Journal of Archeological Science, December 2013) based on new radiocarbon dates from archeological sites on the island. She has concluded that after the clear cutting of the forest in the 1500s, to make room for agricultural production, the population of Rapa Nui remained sufficiently vibrant to carry on food production and continue their cultural development.
Exactly when the Rapa Nui arrived on Easter Island is unknown but it was on or before 1200 A.D. or so. Mulrooney maintains they had a thriving culture which was still going strong even after their “discovery” by the Dutch explorer Jacob Roggeveen on Easter Sunday 1722. This would indicate that they had not suffered “collapse” as a result of forest clearance. … continue
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