‘We want to work without being treated as slaves’
By Tom Anderson and Therezia Cooper | Corporate Watch | June 27, 2014
During January 2013, Corporate Watch conducted interviews with Palestinians who work in the illegal Israeli settlements in the Jordan Valley. Part one to three of our findings can be read here, here and here.
We met 44 year old Rashid* and 38 year old Zaid* in their hometown of Tammoun in the northern West Bank. They both work in the illegal Israeli settlement of Beqa’ot. A colony with 171 residents situated close to the Palestinian community of Al Hadidya in the Jordan Valley.
Palestinian bedouin close to Beqa’ot are prevented from building permanent structures by the Israeli military, photo taken by Corporate Watch in February 2013
Tammoun is situated just outside the Jordan Valley. Like thousands of other Palestinian workers Zaid and Rashid travel into the Jordan Valley in search of work on a daily basis. To cross into the valley they have to pass through the Israeli military checkpoint at Tayasir or Al Hamra.
Rashid has worked in Beqa’ot since the early ’90s whereas Zaid worked in Israel until 5 years ago. Zaid tells us: “Now it is impossible for me to get a permit to work outside the West Bank.”
For Israeli companies, sourcing their goods from the settlements in the Jordan Valley allows them to circumvent workers rights and health and safety regulations. According to Zaid: “Inside Israel the workers have contracts and the conditions are better. This is because in Israel there are some controls on companies, unlike in the West Bank.”
Both men work all year round except for September-November when there is no work available. They have no contracts and tell us that none of their workmates do either. Their job is to plant grapes and tend to the vines, pruning them and spraying them with fertilisers and chemicals. At harvest time they cut and collect the grapes.
Grapevines in the settlement of Beqa’ot, photo taken by Corporate Watch, February 2013
Zaid and Rashid both work in the fields outside the boundaries of Beqa’ot. They do not have a permit to enter the settlement itself.
Paid below the minimum wage
Palestinian workers in Israeli settlements have been entitled to the Israeli minimum wage since an Israeli Supreme Court ruling in 2007 (see here). In 2010 Corporate Watch conducted over 40 interviews with settlement workers showing that Palestinians are consistently paid as little as half the minimum wage. These conditions remained largely unchanged when we returned in 2014.
The current hourly minimum wage is 23.12, NIS (New Israeli Shekels),the equivalent of 184.96 NIS for an eight hour working day, having risen from 20.70 NIS in 2009. However, for Palestinian workers on Israeli settlements in the Jordan Valley these conditions seem an impossible dream.
Zaid and Rashid are employed directly by the settlers in Beqa’ot and speak to them directly to arrange their work. Both get paid 82 New Israeli Shekels (NIS), 18 of which goes towards daily transport.
They have no insurance provided by their employer. Rashid explains: “Last year one of the workers died, but the settlers did not help his family at all.
The men do not receive any paid holiday, even for religious holidays. This is despite the fact that an Israeli government website advises that workers are entitled to 14 days paid holiday and must receive a written contract and payslips from their employer (see here).
Both men are members of the General Palestinian Workers Union (GPWU). However, they are unable to represent workers in Beqa’ot or negotiate with their bosses. According to Rashid: “We organise trainings for agricultural workers but we are not recognised by the settlers, we do not receive any representation from Histradrut”.
Histradrut is the Israeli trade union organisation. Many campaigners for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israeli apartheid have called for a boycott of the Histradrut because of its failure to represent Palestinian workers and its overt support of Israeli state policies. For example, in 2010 the British University and College Union broke ties with the Histradrut; a UCU spokesperson said the Histradrut, “supported the Israeli assault on civilians in Gaza” and “did not deserve the name of a trade union”.
Companies sourcing produce from Beqa’ot
Mehadrin Tnuport boxes ready to be packed with grapes, photo taken by Corporate Watch in February 2013
Carmel Agrexco boxes ready to be packed with grapes, photo taken by Corporate Watch in February 2013
STM boxes ready to be packed with grapes, photo taken by Corporate Watch in February 2013
Export label on a box in Beqa’ot statying that these grapes are shipped by Carmel agrexco, Photo taken in Febuary 2013 by Corporate Watch
Rashid tells us: “We label the grapes ‘Made in the Jordan Valley’ and mark them with the name and phone number of the Israeli settler.
“Each of the settler has his own packing house. When we harvest the grapes they are taken first of all to packing houses in Beqa’ot owned by individual settler, then transported to a central refrigeration unit owned by the Moshav [a Hebrew word for a cooperative farm]. Then a refrigeration truck takes them to be exported.”
The men tell us that the majority of the grapes they harvest are exported through Mehadrin.
Corporate Watch visited Beqa’Ot in February 2013 and photographed several packing houses displaying Mehadrin signage. Israeli company Mehadrin Tnuport Export (MTEX) is a part of the huge Mehadrin Group which owns a 50% of STM Agricultural Exports Ltd – another Israeli company dealing in vegetables. MTEX export around 70% of all their produce to outside Israel and are one of the largest suppliers for the Jaffa brand world wide. Sainsburys confirmed to Corporate Watch in August 2013 that the supermarket sourced fresh vegetables from Mehadrin. Mehadrin is also certified to supply fresh produce to Tesco (see here).
Corporate Watch also photographed boxes and export labels for Carmel Agrexco in Beqa’ot. Carmel Agrexco was the Israeli state owned fresh produce export company. In 2011 the company went into liquidation, due in part to the international boycott movement. The brand has since been bought by Gideon Bickel of Israeli firm Bickel Flowers and has been fighting to regain lost contracts.
Working for poverty wages on land stolen from their families
Rashid and Zaid refer to Beqa’ot by its Palestinian name, Libqya. Rashid tells us: “Before the occupation in 1967 Libqya was owned by Palestinians who used it for planting crops and raising animals. All of the families around here owned land in Libqya.
“I remember when my mother passed Libqya when I was young she told us how she used to play there with her brothers and sisters. Our family owned 70 dunums of land there.
“This reality is too painful. When I was older I tried to reach the land my mother told me about. But a settler told me I was forbidden to go there.”
‘We will get back our land’
Both men are supportive of the call for a boycott of Israeli agricultural companies. When it was pointed out that if the boycott was successful then their employers would not be able to pay them a wage any longer Zaid responded: “We support the boycott even if we lose our work. We might lose our jobs but we will get back our land. We will be able to work without being treated as slaves.”
* Names have been changed at the authors’ discretion
Language, like land, under assault in Palestine
By Jamal Sweid | Al-Akhbar | June 27, 2014
Haifa – “Land, akin to language, is inherited,” Mahmoud Darwish once said. In the occupied territories, however, language is pillaged, appropriated, violated, and surrounded by barbed wire, just like the land.
Under the policy of increasingly exploiting interconnected events to cover up dangerous plans, the Israeli Ministry of Education recently struck a blow to Palestinians living in occupied Palestine. The ministry announced a decision to stop teaching Arabic grammar in preparatory and secondary schools. The alternative was what the ministry called “functional principles in teaching grammar,” which it claimed will allow students to comprehend the functions of grammar, based on understanding a text.
The decision provoked widespread concern and calls for its rejection. However, the ministry stuck to its position and issued a statement explaining its decision. It maintained that it aimed at “bridging the gap between the language and its speakers in the era of technology and outburst of information.”
Palestinians of all segments, including teachers and parents, expressed rejection of the decision to Al-Akhbar as “a disguised attempt to tear away students from their language, and thus their belonging and cause.” They called for the widest protests possible to force the ministry to repeal the decision, which has been approved by the authorities.
The decision comes as students and graduates in occupied Palestine are facing a clear weakness in grammar and conjugation. According to experts, this deficiency is higher than in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It requires enhancing the grammar curriculum to help the students, instead of its removal and replacement under the guise of “advancement and the technological gap.” Several experts told Al-Akhbar that the technological gap claimed by Israel will not be solved by cancelling the curriculum, but by its modernization.
“In this situation, we need to look for ways to strengthen student bonds to their language and its rules,” explained Murad Ali, an Arabic teacher from Acre. “Students are already facing difficulties in grammar, although it is taught in the curriculum. What will be the case when it gets cancelled?” In a few years, high school graduates in the 1948 territories will be unable to formulate a proper sentence.
This prediction, however, had been a reality for years, according to other experts. Their evidence is based on the fact that many graduates lack the most basic command of Arabic and commit several errors, which is inappropriate at their educational level.
Ibrahim Shehade, a retired school principal from Acre, said that students welcomed the ministry’s decision. “For them, Arabic grammar is one of the most difficult subjects of the language curriculum. But they do not understand the future risks,” he explained to Al-Akhbar. “Grades in literature and expression subjects are relatively high, compared to grammar. Some students believe that by removing grammar, they will improve their grade average.”
Samer Khoury, from Shafa Amr, agreed, saying “grammar is the graveyard of grades,” explaining that he received a low score in Arabic because of grammar.
Yet, the students are not completely comfortable with the decision. Some believe that it targets their language and bonds. Despite the difficulty of learning grammar and conjugation, they are willing to find alternatives to improve their proficiency, “without touching our language.”
In the Israeli Knesset, Arab politicians and MPs are yet to take up the question because of the weight of other issues. However, Arab Knesset member from the Democratic Front and the Communist Party, Mohammed Baraka, spoke about the decision in the press. After mentioning the questions of land, housing, and health, he said he will be focusing more on the issue of grammar.
The more direct position was taken by Knesset member from the United Arab List, Masoud Ghanayem, who called for a hearing on the issue. He received a reply from the minister of education stating that “the decision does not mean abandoning the teaching of Arabic grammar, but its enhancement.”
“The new curriculum was created by Arab supervisors and academics, in cooperation with the Arabic Language Academy in Haifa,” the minister added. His statement shed light on a sensitive issue. Most teachers who spoke to Al-Akhbar maintained that it was false. But many refused to be named, “out of fear of the supervisors and higher authorities.”
The boldest academic objection was made by Dr. Mohammed Khalil, a well-known Palestinian academic and one of the first people to warn about the decision. “The issue clearly aims to get schools to dispense of Arabic grammar books altogether, imposing a curriculum where grammar is taught at the spur of the moment,” he exclaimed.
Khalil was not surprised about the “unjust decision of the [Israeli] authorities.” However, he was dismayed by “the presence of Arab Palestinians in the committee, which agreed on the new curriculum.” Several teachers who spoke to Al-Akhbar also mentioned the issue.
Ultimately, the decision will not be limited to the schools, in the midst of an Israeli campaign to replace the names of Palestinian landmarks with ones in Hebrew. In opposition, Palestinians are actively campaigning to promote the Arabic names and preserving them.
“But what kind of impact will this have if our sons and daughters are ignorant of the principles of their language and its lifeline?” asked Marwan Barieh, a university student studying the Arabic language. “Undermining a fundamental pillar of any language will lead to its total collapse. This applies to grammar and its relationship with the Arabic language in general.”
Despite the angry reactions to the decision, language is being pillaged just like [Palestinian] land. The process reproduces itself in the same manner: statements and more statements are issued, then comes the implementation of the appropriation and each party reverts to its original position. They might declare a position to outmaneuver the others, but the loss of land and language is unlike any other loss.
This article is an edited translation from the Arabic Edition.
Family of kidnap suspect deny Israeli accusations
Ma’an – 27/06/2014
HEBRON – The father of one of the suspects named by Israel as being behind the disappearance of three Israeli youths has denied that his son was involved in the suspected kidnapping.
On Thursday, Israel named Marwan al-Qawasmeh, 29, and Amer Abu Eisha, 33, as the two main suspects behind the kidnapping of three Israeli youths on June 12.
Israel’s Shin Bet said they had been jailed in the past for taking part in “terrorist activity on behalf of Hamas.”
Speaking to Ma’an, Abu Eisha’s father denied the allegations and said the family is worried that he has been detained and is being tortured by Israeli security forces.
“The occupation kidnapped my son Amer and I’m afraid they will kill him and say that they killed the terrorist and saved the settlers,” Omar Abu Eisha said.
“I have not yet grasped that Amer and Marwan could kidnap three settlers from the most dangerous security square in Etzion. These are Israeli fabrications, whose goal could be is to strike Hamas in the West Bank and strike the national reconciliation,” he added.
Omar Abu Eisha said that he was with his son Amer at a social event the night the three Israelis went missing, but said that later on in the night he could not find his son and he has been missing ever since.
“He told his wife that he might be away for two days for work in al-Eizariya, but he has not called and I am certain that Israel has kidnapped and hid him,” he said.
Omar Abu Eisha told Ma’an that his son was “working hard and saving money” to build a new house.
The family of Marwan al-Qawasmeh refused to be interviewed or comment on the Israeli accusations.
Eisha was first arrested in Nov. 2005 and was held without trial or charge by Israeli forces until June 2006. He was re-arrested in April 2007 for a short period of time.
Eisha’s brother was shot dead by Israeli forces in Nov. 2005 while ostensibly trying to “throw an explosive” at them, and his father had been arrested by Israel multiple times.
After the Israeli teens disappeared while hitchhiking in the West Bank, the army launched a vast hunt for them focusing on the Hebron area.
Israeli forces initially accused Hamas of the kidnapping, which it vigorously denied, and authorities vowed to “crush” the Palestinian political and militant group.
More than 120 Palestinians have been injured in the military operation, which Israel dubbed “Brother’s Keeper,” and more than 1,350 homes and offices, including numerous universities, have been raided.
The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said on Thursday that 566 Palestinians have been detained in the campaign, including 12 members of parliament.
Israeli forces invade Madama
International Solidarity Movement | June 25, 2014
Madama, Occupied Palestine – At 12:30 a.m. on June 22, 2014, approximately 50 Israeli soldiers invaded the village of Madama.
Madama, which is located 10 km southwest of Nablus, in the northern part of the West Bank, has approximately 2000 residents. The soldiers raided close to 100 homes and took 80 men to the local elementary school, where they held them for several hours. The men were blindfolded, and their arms were tied behind their backs with handcuffs.
The soldiers released all of the men at 5 a.m.
At 1:00 a.m., the soldiers invaded the house of Nizar Abdullah Sadaq Ziyaada in Madama. They asked Ziyaada about the whereabouts of his money and proceeded to ransack the house. They drilled holes into the walls and threatened to destroy his home. They found a total of roughly 200,000 shekels underneath a cupboard and in various hiding places throughout the house. Finally, the soldiers took all of the money, two laptops, and several mobile phones before leaving.
The reasons for the theft of Ziyaada’s money are unclear.
Ziyaada had worked in Israel until the year 2000 and kept all of his earnings from that time in his house in Madama. It is likely that the Israelis knew about this money, as they asked him about it as soon as they entered his house.
Hany Ziyaada’s house was invaded by 15 Israeli soldiers the same night at 1 a.m. They broke down the door, but Hany asked them to wait a few minutes, so that the women of the house could get dressed. The soldiers swore at him, and he responded in kind. They proceeded to kick him in the back and stomach for several minutes and dragged him to their jeep, where they continued to beat him. They blindfolded and handcuffed him and took him to the school, where they held him by the throat, forced his arms back and drove their knees into his back. At 4 a.m. they allowed him to go home.
“Why do they not respect human rights?,” Hany asked an ISM activist. “I’m a policeman, and I know about human rights. Why don’t they?”
AIPAC urges US lawmakers not to cut Egypt aid
Press TV – June 25, 2014
American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the pro-Israel lobby which is based in Washington, has begun a lobbying campaign to stop US lawmakers from cutting military aid to Egypt.
The group already said in public that it wanted aid to Egypt to continue flowing.
“In light of the treaty’s achievements and resilience,” AIPAC said in a March 27 memorandum, “The United States should continue its strong support for the treaty and back Egypt as it works with Israel to combat the threats of extremists within its borders who would seek to undermine it.”
On Tuesday, an amendment from Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. was defeated in the House of Representatives. The amendment called for a cut in US military assistance to Egypt by $300 million – from $1.3 billion down to $1 billion.
Tuesday’s vote was partly due to pressure by AIPAC, Schiff said as reported by Al-Monitor.
“I didn’t know that AIPAC was weighing in at all on this until after the vote,” Schiff said. “But members did communicate to me after the vote that they had been persuaded by AIPAC not to support this.”
According to the report, Israel was a main topic of discussion during the debate of Schiff’s amendment as part of Tuesday’s markup of the State and Foreign Operations spending bill for FY2015.
Pro-Israel representatives argued the new government of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi was doing a better job fighting Israel’s “enemies,” the report said.
“The aid we provide for the military also provides for Israel’s security,” said Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas, the chairwoman of the State and Foreign Operations panel.
Israel Can’t Force-feed Occupation to Those Who Hunger for Freedom
By Jonathan Cook | Dissident Voice | June 24, 2014
For more than a month Israel sought to wriggle off a hook that should have snared it from the start. Two children, 17 and 16, were shot dead during Nakba Day protests near Ramallah, in which youths threw stones ineffectually at well-protected and distant Israeli military positions.
Hundreds of Palestinian children have lost their lives over the years at the end of a sharpshooter’s sights, but the deaths of Nadim Nuwara and Mohammed Abu Al Thahir in Beitunia were not easily forgotten. Israel was quickly cornered by an accumulation of physical and visual evidence.
Israel’s usual denials – the deaths were faked, video footage was doctored, Israeli soldiers were not responsible, the youths provoked the soldiers, no live ammunition was used – have been discredited one by one. Slowly Israel conceded responsibility, if only by falling into a grudging silence.
A CCTV camera mounted on the outer wall of a carpentry shop provided the most damning evidence: it captured the moments when the two unarmed boys were each hit with a live round, in one case as the youth can be seen walking away from the protest area.
But rather than come to terms with the world as it now is, Israel wants to preserve the way it once was. It believes that through force of will it can keep the tide of accountability at bay in the occupied territories.
There has been no admission of guilt, no search for the guilty soldiers and no reassessment of its policies on crowd control or the use of live fire – let alone on the continuation of the occupation. Instead, 20 soldiers arrived last week at the store in Beitunia, threatened to burn it down, arrested the owner, Fakher Zayed, and ordered he remove the camera that caused so much embarrassment.
According to Israel, the fault lies not with a society where teenage soldiers can choose to swat a Palestinian child as casually as a fly. The problem is with a Palestinian storekeeper, who assumed he could join the modern world.
The nostalgia for a “golden era” of occupation was evident, too, last week in a policy change. Israel has rounded up hundreds of Palestinians in the hunt for three Israeli teenagers missing since June 12. Palestinian cities like Hebron have been under lockdown for days, and several Palestinians youths killed, while soldiers scour the West Bank.
But with the search proving fruitless, Israel’s attorney general approved the reintroduction of the notorious “ticking bomb” procedure.
In doing so, he turned the clock back 15 years to a time when Israel routinely used torture against prisoners. Israel may not have been alone then in using torture, but it was exceptional in flaunting its torture dungeons alongside claims to democratic conduct.
Only in 1999 did the country’s supreme court severely limit the practice, allowing interrogators one exemption – a suspect could be tortured only if he was a ticking bomb, hiding information of an attack whose immediate extraction could save lives.
Now Israel’s law chief has agreed that the Palestinian politicians, journalists and activists swept up in the latest mass arrests will be treated as “ticking bombs”. Israel’s torture cells are back in business.
Israelis have been lulled into a false sense of security by the promise of endless and simple technical solutions to the ever-mounting problems caused by the occupation.
This week, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, hoped to find another “fix” for Palestinians who refuse to remain supine in the face of their oppression.
Netanyahu is racing through a law to force-feed more than 100 Palestinian prisoners who are two months’ into a hunger strike. The inmates demand that Israel end the common practice of holding prisoners for months and sometimes years without charge, in what is blandly termed “administrative detention”.
Such prisoners, ignorant of their offence, are unable to mount a defence. And as it becomes ever clearer to Palestinian society that Israel is never going to concede Palestinian statehood, things that were once barely tolerated are now seen as unendurable.
Last week, the heads of the World Medical Association urged Israel to halt the legislation, which in a double bill of compulsion will require doctors to sedate and force-feed prisoners to break their hunger strike.
The WMA called the practice “tantamount to torture”. The legislation violates not only the autonomy of the prisoners but the oaths taken by the doctors to work for their patients’ benefit.
The liberal Haaretz newspaper warned that Israel was rushing headlong towards “a new abyss in terms of human rights violations”. And all this to prevent reality pricking the Israeli conscience: that Palestinians would rather risk death than endure the constant indignities of a life under belligerent occupation.
Israelis have yet to realise the dam is soon to burst. They still believe a technical fix is the way to solve ethical dilemmas continuously thrown up by the longest occupation in modern times.
Israel’s technical solutions work to an extent. They confine Palestinians to ever smaller spaces: the prison of Gaza, the city under lockdown, the torture cell, or the doctor’s surgery where a feeding tube can be inserted.
But the craving for self-determination and dignity are more than technical problems. You cannot force-feed a people to still their hunger for freedom.
Belligerent occupations – especially ones where no hope or end is in sight – engender evermore creative and costly forms of resistance, as the hunger strike demonstrates. A physical act of resistance can be temporarily foiled. But the spirit behind it cannot be so easily subdued.
~
Palestinian prisoners assaulted before being detained
Ma’an – 24/06/2014
RAMALLAH – A Palestinian Prisoner’s Society lawyer reported Monday from Palestinian detainees at Etzion detention center that many of them were assaulted and beaten before they were detained.
Prisoner Faraj Ghaith, 57, told the lawyer that three settlers raided his house, assaulted him and his family before the Israeli police detained him and his two sons Ahmad and Omar.
Ghaith lives near the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arbaa.
Jaclyn Fararjeh said that bruises were still clear on the prisoners’ bodies.
Prisoner Ashraf al-Jaaidi, 30, from Bethlehem, said that he threw up blood since he was detained, and that he was beaten with butts of the riffles when he was detained from his house in Duheisha refugee camp last Friday.
Farajeh highlighted that al-Jaaidi requested to be examined by a doctor but the prison service refused.
PPS’ lawyer Fararjeh visited prisoners Yasser Banat, Muhammad al-Hreini, Taha al-Hur, Bassam al-Natsheh, Ismail Jabariya, Muath Muhammad, Rabee Izriqat, Issa Shalaldeh, Yahya al-Huroub, Munthir al-Shurouf, Youssif Tartour, Tariq Gharib, Muhammad Hmeideh, Youssif Awawdeh and Murad Abu Muhye.
Missing Israeli settlers: Al Jazeera English’s distorted reporting
By Orouba Othman | Al-Akhbar | June 23, 2014
Gaza – Al Jazeera English’s reporting on the missing Israeli settlers was not naive and it is rather impossible to classify it as part of the rhetoric of neutrality and objective reporting on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
It is simply deliberate coverage that targets the Palestinians’ presence on their own land and their just cause, while giving leverage to the “perseverance” of the Israeli society living in a jungle of “barbaric” Palestinians. Al Jazeera English correspondent Jane Ferguson started her report a few days ago by focusing on the feelings of Israelis and specifically their shock following the [alleged] capture of three Israelis about 10 days ago.
This shock, of course, did not not originate from the Palestinians’ right to face their enemies, but was ignited due to the Palestinians’ insensitivity, which was displayed through their “kidnapping of three teenagers” who could be robbed of their lives with a fatal bullet, or rather “a deceiving” bullet in the words of the Qatari channel.
Certainly, all the misery the Palestinians have suffered for 66 years at the hands of those expressing their shock is insignificant. Today, the only thing that matters is the sorrow of the Israeli people. Ferguson began her report with images of a tent erected by residents of Nof Ayalon village to pray for the safe return of Naftali Fraenkel, a town native and one of the three [allegedly] kidnapped individuals.
Ferguson did not miss the opportunity to remind viewers that the three Israelis (Naftali Frenkel, Gil-ad Shaer and Eyal Yifrach) were teenagers, further seeking the viewers’ compassion by stating that they were all under the age of 19. The reporter did not stop there, but gave Fraenkel’s aunt a platform to express her feelings on air, saying “I am still in shock, it is hitting me repeatedly, Fraenkel went to school and didn’t come back. It is really difficult, and the whole family is crushed.”
The correspondent’s report does not mention neither the suffering of over 5,700 Palestinians held in the occupation’s prisons, nor the fact that four of those prisoners died under physical and psychological torture in the past year.
“Not only in this small village are people waiting anxiously to hear news about the missing teenagers, but across the entire nation, everyone is gripped by this story,” Ferguson commented in her report, adding that Israeli channels have been in the village for days to cover the incident.
The scene displaying solidarity with the town’s locals is later taken off screen to be replaced with images of a street populated by Israeli settlers. The channel then sheds light on the challenges faced by Israelis to strengthen their “perseverance” on a land that is not theirs, saying that they are not scared and that they are going on with their lives as usual.
To give more credibility to her short analysis, Ferguson gives a female settler the opportunity to explain whether or not the “kidnapping incident” had negatively affected her life. The settler confirms Ferguson’s view by saying, “there is nothing to be afraid of. If there was a bombing on a bus, does it means we should not catch buses? This is the same for me, this is our lifestyle.”
The reporter seemed to have forgotten how Palestinians resist death and how much they love life even though they are besieged by their enemy’s weapons from the front, its tanks from behind and its planes from above.
Perhaps, Palestinian viewers would have better received the report if Ferguson had also visited towns and refugee camps in the West Bank, and had broadcast live images of the arrest campaigns and the raids on Palestinian homes, as well as Israel’s policy of systematic killing, as reflected by the fact that four Palestinians have already been killed since the beginning of the operation.
Meanwhile, Al Jazeera English’s Gaza correspondent Charles Stratford started his report by linking the operation in Hebron to the Gaza Strip by showing two Palestinian boys from Gaza training on how to use weapons and participate in combat missions at a camp affiliated to Hamas.
Stratford then commented that “these are the children of people who believe, like the majority of Gaza residents, that Hamas represents the future of Palestine and is a part of the unity government rejected by Israel.”
The correspondent sought to differentiate between “terrorist” boys following Hamas’ path and other “innocents” that fall in the hands of the group that is training droves of “terrorists.”
The English-language Qatari channel claims to have been launched to change the stereotype about the Middle East. However, today it has become another burden on Palestinians, promoting the Israeli side of the story in the West while disregarding the real narrative.
Is Israel’s ongoing terror campaign punishment for Palestinian unity?
By Chloé Benoist | Al-Akhbar | June 23, 2014
As Israel continues its crackdown on the West Bank in the wake of three Israeli teenagers’ disappearance, the unrestrained violence of the occupying forces has seemingly developed into retribution for the recent establishment of a Palestinian unity government.
In the 11 days since the three Israeli settlers went missing while hitchhiking near the illegal Zionist settlement bloc of Gush Etzion in the West Bank, Palestinians have paid a heavy toll as the Israeli manhunt quickly turned into collective punishment.
Israel Occupation Forces (IOF) have searched countless Palestinian homes, media offices and schools in extensive raids, confiscating universities’ computers, destroying furniture, firing tear gas and live bullets at protesting civilians, a move seemingly more intent on furthering the control of the Palestinian population than finding the Israeli teenagers.
At least 471 Palestinians have been arrested since June 12. At least 75 of those arrested are former prisoners who had been released in a 2011 prisoner swap, according to the Palestinian Authority’s former Minister of Prisoner Affairs Issa Qaraqe.
“Resentencing prisoners who were released in the [2011 Gilad] Shalit deal is a form of immoral and illegal revenge, an offense to Egypt who sponsored the deal, and collective punishment that is against the human and legal rights of prisoners,” he said on Saturday.
He added that 241 Palestinian minors were now locked up in Israeli jails, 45 more than in May according to statistics by prisoners’ rights NGO Addameer.
The prisoners have been placed in administrative detention, a practice whose excessive use by Israel has been denounced as being illegal under international law by rights groups. Israel has imposed a tight blockade on Hebron, and a curfew on the northern West Bank city of Nablus.
Meanwhile, the Gaza Strip has sustained nightly air raids for the past week. The already isolated enclave has been subjected to an even more stringent siege, as an Israeli Defense Ministry statement on June 15 declared that the Erez crossing would be limited to humanitarian cases, while only fuel would be allowed in through the southern goods crossing.
Operation “Brother’s Keeper” keeps claiming Palestinian lives
At least five Palestinians have died during Israeli military operations in the West Bank since June 12. All available information indicates that the victims were unrelated to the disappearance of Gilad Shaer, Eyal Ifrach and Naftali Frenkel.
The first casualty was Ahmad Arafat Sabarin, who was shot dead on Monday during a military raid in the Jalazoun refugee camp north of Ramallah. He was 19 years old.
On Friday, 14-year-old Mohammed Jihad Dudin was shot in the chest with live bullets in an Israeli raid on the village of Dura, near Hebron. Photos of Dudin show a skinny, smiling child.
In Nablus, Jamil Ali Abed Jaber, 60, died of a heart attack as Israeli troops searched his house on Saturday. Palestinian security sources reported that Abed Jaber’s family was prevented from taking him to the hospital, leading him to die inside his home.
Early on Sunday June 22, Israeli troops in Ein Beit al-Mai refugee camp in western Nablus shot dead 36-year-old Ahmad Fahnawi, who was on his way to morning prayers as clashes were taking place. Eyewitnesses told Ma’an news agency that a soldier shot Fahnawi several times from point-blank range.
The Israeli army confirmed firing at a “suspect,” claiming he had approached troops “in a threatening manner.” However, Fahnawi’s family told AFP that he suffered from mental health problems.
Israeli troops also killed 30-year-old Mohammed Mahmoud Atallah Tarifi on Sunday during a crackdown in central Ramallah, Palestinian medics reported.
An untold number of Palestinians have been injured so far in Operation “Brother’s Keeper.”
International and Arab silence
Most of the Israeli public was quick to support the army’s actions in the West Bank. The hashtag “BringBackOurBoys” rapidly made the rounds on Twitter, a move criticized by some as an insensitive appropriation of the #BringBackOurGirls campaign in Nigeria, where over 200 girls are still held captive by Boko Haram.
Meanwhile, a Facebook page titled “Until the boys are back, every hour we shoot a terrorist” has accumulated more than 20,700 likes since its creation on June 13. The page vocally supports widespread violence against Palestinians as ‘punishment’ for the disappearance of the three Israelis.
While several rights groups have condemned Israel’s violent policies and rhetoric, a significant portion of the international community has come out in support of Israel’s ‘search’ for the teenagers, justifying the Zionist state’s military actions without addressing their impact on Palestinians.
“The European Union has called for the immediate and unconditional release of these three boys – it is, frankly, despicable that children’s lives should be put in danger in this way,” EU Ambassador to Israel Lars Faaborg-Andersen said on Tuesday, referring only to Israeli children.
“Israeli suffering has to be understood,” the mayor of Buenos Aires, Mauricio Macri, said during a conference on Wednesday with 19 other world mayors standing in support of Israel.
While there has been no shortage of lamentations about Israelis’ shared pain over the missing teens, the international community has remained silent about the plight of Palestinians. Even supposedly pro-Palestinian Arab countries have so far failed to condemn the Israeli raids or express condolences for the loss of Palestinian lives.
The Palestinian Authority’s collaboration with Israel
Almost as soon as the three settlers went missing, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Hamas of being behind their disappearance, a charge Hamas dismissed immediately.
“Our young people have been kidnapped by a terror organization… there is no doubt about that,” Netanyahu told reporters in Tel Aviv on June 14.
The Israeli government has yet to provide any proof of its claims. On Tuesday, a spokesperson for United Nations leader Ban Ki-Moon, Farhan Haq, said that the UN had “no information to confirm an abduction.” This statement was quickly denounced by Israel as “out of touch, out of line and out of time.”
Downplaying the crackdown as “friction,” Netanyahu said on Sunday that evidence of Hamas’ involvement would be made public “soon,” the Jerusalem Post reported.
Meanwhile, the Israeli government has dismissed Palestinian casualties as a consequence of “necessary” Israeli “self-defense.”
Netanyahu has also targeted Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, holding him responsible despite the latter’s swiftness in condemning the alleged kidnapping.
The Israeli premier’s hostility towards the PA is all the more incomprehensible given the Palestinian Authority’s ongoing security coordination with Israel.
Palestinian police have worked with Israel intermittently since the Oslo Accords, but the security arrangement has been strengthened since Abbas came to power in 2005.
Palestinians have long been angered by the PA’s collaboration with the IOF, and Operation “Brother’s Keeper” has only exacerbated the perception of PA security acting as agents for Israel. Witnesses have seen PA forces arresting individuals in hospitals, and a demonstration by mothers of hunger striking prisoners on Friday was attacked by Palestinian police.
On Sunday night, PA security forces clashed with Palestinians protesting against their coordination with Israel. With support from the IOF, PA security shot in the direction of the crowd in Ramallah, injuring at least one person.
But it seems collaboration with Israeli brutality is not enough for Netanyahu.
“[Abbas’] words will not only be judged in terms of actions taken to bring the boys home, but also by his willingness to break up the unity government with Hamas,” he said.
Statements by IOF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz confirmed that undermining Hamas is a main goal of the Israeli military operation.
“We have a goal: to find these three boys and bring them home, and to damage Hamas as much as possible,” Gantz said on June 16.
The missing settlers: a pretext
Netanyahu’s demands support the idea that the ongoing brutal operation is not only intended to locate the three settlers, but to punish Palestinians after the recent reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas and to sabotage the newly-created unified Palestinian government.
In an interview with ultra-Orthodox news outlet Hadrei Haredim published on Thursday, an IOF officer revealed that parts of Operation “Brother’s Keeper” had been planned long before the teenagers went missing. Notably, he said that the Israeli army had already prepared for an operation in Jenin in which soldiers were to purposefully provoke residents into throwing stones, and then use the clashes as an excuse to kill Palestinians.
This disclosure — among other statements — backs the idea that Israel is knowingly creating an unlivable situation for Palestinians only to blame them for pushing back, perpetuating its myth of Palestinian aggression as it has many times before. Despite decades of occupation, Israel continues to frame Palestinian resistance as unprovoked aggression, breaches of international law as legitimate defense, and oppressors as victims.
These provocative Israeli tactics are not new. In 1976, then-Israeli Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan explained the 1967 military tactics to the New York Times:
”Along the Syria border there were no farms and no refugee camps — there was only the Syrian army… The kibbutzim saw the good agricultural land … and they dreamed about it… They didn’t even try to hide their greed for the land… We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn’t possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn’t shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that’s how it was… The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us.”
Lebanon has similarly suffered from Israel using flimsy pretexts to push forward ulterior plans against its enemies.
The notion of Palestinian unity is a threat to Israel, and it will do anything in its power to weaken it. A unified Palestinian political front, having somewhat resolved its internal conflicts, could make a stronger claim for self-determination, a scenario that would further expose Israel’s unreasonable demands for “peace” and its divide and conquer strategies.
Israel, therefore, uses any pretext to try to stifle Palestinian aspirations, attempting to reduce an entire population’s existence to a question of mere survival.
Many Palestinians – adults and children alike – will continue to suffer as long as Israel is allowed to act unabated, using the undetermined fate of the three Israelis until it finds another excuse to continue its policy of repression, injustice and divisiveness.
Jewish Settlers Attack Funeral Of Slain Palestinian In Ramallah
By Saed Bannoura | IMEMC & Agencies | June 22, 2014
Sunday evening a number of fanatic Israeli settlers attacked the funeral of a Palestinian, killed by the Israeli army in al-Biereh, near the central West Bank city of Ramallah, wounding one Palestinian.
The Palestinians were participating in the funeral procession of resident Mohammad at-Tareefi, 30, in Jabal at-Tawil neighborhood, when settlers of the Psagot illegitimate settlement opened fire on them, wounding one resident.
Several minutes later, dozens of soldiers arrived at the scene, and fired live ammunition at the residents, and several homes, in al-Biereh.
The Israeli military attack pushed dozens of residents to advance towards Psagot settlements, and hurl stones at it.
The soldiers chased the residents in Dahiat Jabal at-Tawil and al-Jinan area, while firing dozens of rounds of live ammunition, gas bombs, concussion grenades, and rubber-coated metal bullets.
The funeral procession started in front of the Palestine Medical Center in Ramallah, heading towards the home of the slain Palestinian in Betunia, before advancing towards the Jamal Abdul-Nasser Mosque in al-Biereh city.
At-Tareefy was shot by a live round in his chest during Sunday dawn clashes with Israeli soldiers invading Ramallah.
Israel’s military offensive in different parts of the occupied West Bank started ten days ago, following the disappearance of three Israeli settlers from Gush Etzion settlement, near Bethlehem.
Although Israel said Hamas is behind the “abduction”, Hamas denied the claim.
The ongoing Israeli military invasion led to the abduction of more than 400 Palestinians, many of them are children, and the soldiers invaded and searched more than 1000 areas in the West Bank.
The army alleged uncovering dozens of tunnels under Palestinian homes in the West Bank, and that the soldiers “located underground labs used for the production of explosives”.
The army said Israel had no prior information about the alleged labs and tunnels, but uncovered them during the extensive searches of homes and property.
In a Sunday report by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, the center said Israeli soldiers shot and killed four Palestinians in the last ten days. Two of them were killed Sunday.
At least 38 Palestinians have been kidnapped by the Israeli army on Sunday, in different parts of the occupied West Bank.
The army also shot and wounded dozens of Palestinians in the ongoing offensive.
Israeli settlers shoot at Palestinians near Ramallah
Ma’an – 22/06/2014
RAMALLAH – Israeli settlers opened fire at Palestinians northwest of Ramallah late Sunday in the second such incident in hours, locals said.
Two settlers shot at nine men who were working in a quarry near the village of al-Mazraa al-Gharbiya, without causing injuries, the workers told Ma’an.
They said they noticed the settlers sneaking into the quarry and fled the scene as settlers opened fire with an automatic rifle.
After being chased for nearly two miles, the workers reached al-Mazraa al-Gharabiya unscathed, they told Ma’an.
The Palestinians identified themselves as Ismail al-Rajabi, 25, Momen Idriss, 24, Anas Idriss, 18, Yacoub Idriss, 20, Bilal Idriss, 20, Ahmad Jaber, 27, Wael al-Shalaldeh, 32, Mohammad Jaber, 23, and 10-year-old Abd al-Rahman Jaber.
An Israeli army spokeswoman did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
Earlier, a Ma’an reporter said that Israeli settlers opened fire at Palestinians in al-Bireh near Ramallah, injuring one as mourners gathered for the funeral of Muhammad Tarifi.
Tarifi was one of two Palestinians killed by Israeli forces early Sunday.
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