Occupied Lives: They terrorize us in our homes
PCHR | October 3, 2012
Haniya, in her home in al Nussairat.
On Monday, 10 September, 2012, Israeli warplanes launched 2 missiles at a vast tract of land in the west of al-Nussairat refugee camp in the Middle Area of the Gaza Strip. As a result, 2 rooms and a container on the land were destroyed. 10 olive trees and 23 houses were also damaged. Additionally, 7 Palestinian civilians, including 4 children and 2 women, were wounded. This attack targeted civilian objects which is a violation of international law.
Haniya Abdul Hadi Kabaja (60) is one of the women who sustained minor injuries on the night of the attack. She recounts that: “At around 2.00am in the night, we woke up to the sound of shelling. We were all very scared but we went back to sleep. 15 or so minutes later, we heard more shelling and shrapnel hitting surfaces outside. Something hit my face and, when I touched it, I felt myself bleeding. My son, Anas, saw this and he started screaming for his brothers to come and help me. After they offered me first aid, we heard my ten-year-old granddaughter, Reema, crying, and that is when we noticed that she had also been wounded, in her leg.”
An ambulance arrived after a while, and Haniya and her granddaughter were taken to Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital. Their wounds were moderate and they were discharged soon after.
Until now, Haniya and her family have unanswered questions with regard to the attack. They do not know what the exact target was: “All of us were terrified, because the missiles were launched about 100m from where we live. Other people in the neighborhood also got injured by the shrapnel from the missiles. Some windows were smashed and there is clear damage to some of the asbestos roofs. In this area, there have been no incidents since Cast Lead. Nobody really knows why they launched missiles on an empty piece of land, and so close to where people live.”
Since the attack, Haniya’s family has been living in constant fear of further attack. This has had a particularly negative impact on the children: “The attack has really frightened the children. They used to go out after dark to play or to visit relatives who live in neighboring houses. Now, they do not even step outside after darkness falls because they are too scared. They are not the only ones who are scared. Even we, the adults, feel the same way. At the same time, we know that there is nothing we can say against the Israeli occupation. We cannot do anything about it either.”
Haniya’s son, Mohammed (32), hopes to see an end to the attacks on unarmed civilians and calls for the respect of everyone’s rights. “I just want to see the situation change and an end to the Israeli occupation. We are unarmed civilians, yet they follow us and continue to attack and terrorize us in our homes. They hurt my mother and my daughter, yet they had not even done anything. We have not caused problems for anyone and the only thing we demand is our rights, our land and our freedom. We are peaceful people and we want it to remain that way. After all these years of being attacked, we will not stop demanding our rights. Even if they kill all of us and only 10 people remain, we will still demand for those rights.”
The direct targeting of a civilian object constitutes a war crime, as codified in Article 8(2) (b) (ii) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Similarly, under Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the destruction of private property is prohibited unless rendered absolutely necessary by military operations. Intentionally launching an indiscriminate attack constitutes a war crime as defined in Article 8 (2) (b) of the Rome Statute of the ICC. Furthermore, according to the principle of proportionality, which is codified in Article 51 (5) (b) of Additional Protocol 1 to the Geneva Conventions, an attack that may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects or a combination thereof is considered excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.
Related articles
- Occupied Lives: I have no future (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- OCHA: Israeli occupation destroys 13 houses weekly in West Bank (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- PCHR Weekly Report: 2 Palestinians executed; 3 wounded by Israeli forces this week (imemc.org)
- Occupied Lives: Nothing Left To Hope For (imemc.org)
Interfaith dialogue is no answer to Israel’s racist bullying
By Stuart Littlewood | My Catbird Seat | October 3, 2012
So the Albuquerque Episcopalians got jumpy and ‘disinvited’ the Friends of Sabeel who had booked their cathedral for a conference.
Sabeel is an international peace movement which calls itself the Voice of Palestinian Christians.
Why would one Christian group snub another? The excuse for turning away the conference was concocted by the Dean of the Cathedral, the Very Rev. J. Mark Goodman. “We said our prayers and deliberated thoughtfully and purposefully,” he explained.
It seems he and his Episcopalian colleagues didn’t like the way the conference would be dealing with “a political issue that has polarized people in ways that we felt were unhelpful. We did not want to introduce a polarized issue into the life of the Cathedral that would have the potential to divide rather than unite. Our decision was not based upon anti-Palestinian positions. In fact, many on the Vestry [i.e. the church directors] are very sympathetic to the plight of the Palestinian people, yet they were concerned about the rhetoric of the literature from Sabeel.”
He denied they were put under pressure from Zionists. Nevertheless they had invited a local rabbi to come and speak to the Vestry, a rather odd thing to do when, presumably, they were all acquainted with the endless crimes committed by the Jewish State against the Christian communities in the Holy Land. Do they usually turn to rabbis for advice?
Goodman also said Vestry members had attended his recent Forum classes, after which they had misgivings about serving as conference hosts.
“This summer at General Convention, I served on a committee that dealt in a focused way with resolutions about the conflict between Israel and Palestinians,” he went on. “It was my personal prayer that we would craft resolutions that were balanced and offered a way forward with positive engagement with each side, seeking a way forward that would bring security, dignity and peace to a region that has known strife for too long. I believe we succeeded.”
Note the reliance on “positive engagement”. What exactly does that mean – more interfaith dialogue? “We succeeded”, he says. But how does he measure success? And why is he not pressing for the enforcement of international and humanitarian law and the implementation of UN resolutions, the only route to justice? The Episcopalian approach implies that some sort of equivalence, or level playing field, already exists between the powerful aggressor and the weak victim, the robber and the robbed, the armed occupier and his unarmed dispossessed prisoner.
How did these churchmen, far removed from the rotten reality, become experts on “security, dignity and peace” in the Palestinians’ struggle for freedom? Have they been there, rolled up their sleeves and immersed themselves in the snake pit that the Holy Land has been allowed to become? What makes him and his mates think they’ve found a way forward while Palestine remains under brutal occupation?
The mission statement provided by Goodman’s church says: “The Cathedral continues to honor its responsibility to be a good steward and shepherd in the community and the world.” A huge and worthy commitment indeed. However, the cathedral’s own relatively peaceful community and inconsequential little world have been rudely rocked by scandal following claims that it was headed for bankruptcy and members were deserting. The cathedral accountant blew the whistle and allegations were made about the misuse of collection money, liberal imbibing of expensive wine and Vestry members “trashing the cathedral’s endowment by $2 million through complacency, and of not disciplining the dean”.
The regional bishop moved quickly to hush it up in an operation that local church workers said was “like a quiet version of the Spanish Inquisition”. There’s more about it here.
If only this sort of tomfoolery were all that Christian churches in the Holy Land had to worry about. Unfortunately the Episcopalians seem pretty confused, or downright ignorant, about the depths of evil to which the Israeli occupation has sunk. This is from their official report Israel-Palestine: Convention supports positive investment – Bishops agree to postpone indefinitely debate on corporate engagement ….
Bishop John Tarrant of South Dakota urged opposition to Resolution C060 [which calls on the church to engage “in corporate social responsibility by more vigorous and public corporate engagement with companies in the church’s investment portfolio that contribute to the infrastructure of the Occupation”]. He spoke about the town of Rawabi, currently under construction north of Ramallah in the West Bank, that will provide opportunities for affordable home ownership, employment and education. Tarrant said that the project, envisioned by a group of Palestinian businessmen, would inject about $80 million into the Israeli economy.
“It gave me the sense that there are Palestinians that understand the importance of mutuality if the two states are going to exist side by side,” he said.
He reminded the house of Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori’s charge for Episcopalians ‘to go as emissaries…to go into the world of God’s dream’. “I believe there are Palestinians and Israelis now that are going into the world with God’s dream.”
Has Bishop Schori been to the world of God’s dream and seen what’s there?
And why would Bishop Tarrant want to inject all those $millions into the Israeli economy when Israel has been strangling the Palestinian economy to death, seizing its land and water and withholding Palestine’s tax revenues?
Bishop Charles Bennison of Pennsylvania said the movement to support boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel was unwise. “We need more, not fewer, economic ties to Israel. The more isolated Israel becomes the more dangerous the situation becomes.”
It turns out that Episcopalians are against boycott and divestment. Instead the bishops have supported a resolution on positive investment in the Palestinian Territories, as if that will do the slightest good while the illegal occupation and blockade continue. Meanwhile they agreed to postpone indefinitely the conversation on corporate engagement.
To them, it seems, going as emissaries into God’s dream involves kicking the can down the road like the rest of wretched Christendom (with a few honourable exceptions). Was anybody at the Convention truly concerned with right versus wrong, good versus evil, the rule of international law versus the rule of the gun-butt, the F-16, the helicopter gun-ship, the tank shell, illegal detention and the hard-to-get permit to go anywhere.
Their own Bishop is a victim of Israel’s apartheid policies
The Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem himself is a classic victim of the machinations of the cruel occupation. Suheil Dawani is Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem, which is a part of the Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and The Middle East. This covers Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. He was installed in April 2007, but in March 2011 Israel cancelled his residency permit making it well nigh impossible for him to carry out his duties. As a non-Israeli he needs a temporary residence permit. The Israelis played fast and loose, granting a permit initially then turning him down.
Here’s the explanation. “The bishop is a native of the Holy Land and has spent most of his life and ministry there, but cannot obtain either citizenship or legal residence in Israel, since he was born in Nablus, in the West Bank, which has been under Israeli occupation since 1967, but has not been annexed to Israel. East Jerusalem, on the other hand, where the Anglican Cathedral and Diocesan offices are situated, was also occupied at the same time, but Israel annexed it and considers it part of its national territory (although no other country in the world recognizes this annexation). Therefore, Bishop Dawani is considered by Israel to be a foreigner who can only visit – let alone live in – East Jerusalem with a special permit, which the Israeli authorities can either grant or deny at their sole discretion.”
Get it?
There’s a religious war going on in the Holy Land and Dawani was wide open to this sort of dirty trick. After six months of aggravation and international pressure, during which Israel’s Interior Ministry accused him of “improper” land dealings on behalf of the church and the Palestinian Authority, the illegal occupiers granted residency permits to the bishop and his family.
But here’s the catch… those permits will have to be renewed when they expire, whenever that may be or whenever the Israelis choose.
So the Israelis have the bishop’s balls in a vice. Keep quiet Dawani and all you Anglicans/Episcopalians while we carry on with our ethnic cleansing. Keep quiet while we trash the Palestinian economy, confiscate their lands and water resources, continue the blockade, erase their culture and humiliate their families, drive out the Christians and Muslims and disrupt the religious life of those who stubbornly remain.
Keep quiet or we’ll revoke your permit again.
The Catholics similarly walk on eggshells and are mercilessly bullied in their homeland. Their priests are harassed and obstructed and often prevented from going about their pastoral duties. Many are ‘imprisoned’ in their parish – if they leave it to visit relatives or holiday in another part of the Occupied Territories or in neighbouring countries like Jordan and Lebanon, the Israelis may not let them back in.
So imagine what it’s like for the Muslims.
The simple truth is that the Jewish State is the world leader in rampant lawlessness and interfaith bullying, while the wet and wimpish Anglicans respond with their clapped-out formula of interfaith dialogue and other verbal diarrhoea. For 64 years it has got us and our Palestinian brothers and sisters precisely nowhere.
The good folks of Sabeel must now be wondering what they’ve done to deserve same-faith friends like the Albuquerque Episcopalians.
Stuart Littlewood’s book Radio Free Palestine, with Foreword by Jeff Halper, can now be read on the internet by visiting www.radiofreepalestine.org.uk.
‘West wants end of Syria as a functioning independent state’
RT | September 30, 2012
The Syrian insurgency will never win its war because its means are unsupported even among the opposition, political analyst Dan Glazebrook told RT. But thanks to a flood of weapons from the West, they will continue to destabilize the country.
Syria, Glazebrook says, is the only link keeping Western powers from dominating the region, which is why the anti-Assad coalition is sending weapons and funding the “proxy war” through Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Western governments, he says, support the rebels because once Syria falls, they hope to “roll out the program of a final solution” for the Palestinians, Southern Lebanon and Iran.
RT: Russia has reiterated calls for what it calls a balanced solution to the Syrian conflict – why aren’t more countries supporting Moscow’s proposals?
Dan Glazebrook: Well, it is a good question. In fact it is not only Moscow that is making these proposals. A week ago in Damascus, the National Coordination Committee, which is the main organization behind the initial outbreak of peaceful protests in Syria, actually had their own conference where they also called for a cease fire on both sides. They’ve criticized the militarization of the conflict. They’ve criticized the countries that have been arming the rebels.
We see how the Western-trained and sponsored militia on the ground in Syria has responded. They’ve responded with a wave of bomb attacks over two days in Damascus. The crucial point is that the West does not want to see a peaceful resolution to this conflict. It wants to destabilize, that is the name of the game. They do not want a peaceful resolution.
They don’t want any compromise, because what are their main strategic aims? Remember, their main strategic aim is to destroy Syria as a functioning independent state, because at the moment Syria is part of the alliance with Iran and Hezbollah. Now, Hezbollah’s independent existence, which was shown by Hezbollah’s defeat of Israel in 2006, that is the one thing protecting the Palestinians from Israel just unilaterally imposing some kind of once-and-for-all ‘peace deals’ on the Palestinians that would condemn them forever to living in little cantons in a sea of Israeli settlements – the one thing preventing Israel from doing that is the existence of Hezbollah, the arming of Hezbollah by Iran and Syria. Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah himself, said that Syria was crucial in the 2006 victory by Hezbollah against Israel.
So the West is determined to keep this war going, to destabilize Syria, to make sure that they cannot any longer play the role that it has been playing in supporting the Palestinians and preventing a successful Israeli attack on the Palestinians, on Lebanon and on Iran. Once Syria falls, the hope is for the West and for the Zionists that they will then have a free hand to go and implement, to go ahead and roll out, that program of a final solution for the Palestinians, destruction of Southern Lebanon, destruction of Iran. Syria is a kind of link that so far is preventing that. They do not want a peaceful solution.
RT: With Washington now pledging $45 million worth of extra support to the rebels, how much longer can the opposition keep up the fight without direct foreign intervention?
DZ: We have to get over the idea that there is no foreign direct intervention. There is a foreign direct intervention already now – and there has been for many, many months. There were groups on the ground calling themselves part of the Free Syrian Army, but there are entire units made up of Libyans, of Lebanese, of people from Jordan, of people from Saudi Arabia. They have been armed and also equipped and trained by the SAS and by the CIA, at camps in Turkey.
In fact if the situation in Libya – the war in Libya last year – is anything to go on, from what we know happened there, they were probably under the direct command of British and US Army officers. So I do not think it’s true to say that the current situation is one without direct foreign intervention.
The other thing to bear in mind, the $45 million of aid from the US is just the tip of the iceberg. Most of the weapons and the funding for the West’s proxy war against Syria is being channeled through Saudi Arabia and through Qatar. Now, just Britain alone for example, last year provided £1.75 billion worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia, and much of it is now ending up in the hands of these proxy militias. So that $45 million figure is actually just the tip of the iceberg.
And it is very tricky that the US and Britain, and Britain in particular, often says it is just providing non-lethal equipment: communications equipment, night vision goggles, this kind of thing. But it is providing weapons, but it’s just doing it through third parties.
The question of how long this war can go on is a good question. It is not clear. They can’t really win these rebel groups, because they don’t have the support of even most of the anti-Assad forces. As I have mentioned, the main peaceful opposition group does not really support the strategy of the Free Syrian Army, does not support the Syrian National Council and in the key cities of Aleppo and Damascus, which is where more than half of the Syrian population live. Most of the population is behind the government, supports the government. A couple of weeks ago, a Free Syrian Army Officer admitted it himself, saying that ‘the problem for us here in Aleppo is that 70 per cent of the population supports Assad,’ and it has always been that way. So they can’t win with that lack of popular support.
Unfortunately, because they’re getting this huge flood of weapons from the outside, they can continue to destabilize. That is, unfortunately, they may be able to keep the war going for some time. It does not mean that they’re actually going to be able to win.
Related articles
- Syrian opposition provokes Hezbollah (english.ruvr.ru)
Israeli Occupation seizes land from Bab al-Rahma Cemetery in Jerusalem
Palestine Information Center – 30/09/2012
OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — A Palestinian committee in occupied Jerusalem warned against the decision by the Israeli municipality of West Jerusalem to confiscate 1,800 meters of the southern land of the Bab al-Rahma Cemetery in Jerusalem, and considered it a new aggression on Waqf and holy sites.
The Committee of Bab al-Rahma Cemetery in Silwan in occupied Jerusalem stated in a press statement that the Israeli occupation is violating the sanctity of Muslim and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem through attacking mosques, churches and other places of worship, as well as through attacking the dead in their graves.
It said the confiscation of the cemetery’s land is an attempt to Judiaze it and establish tourist pathways and “Talmudic landmarks”, aiming to establish their alleged temple, preventing the Palestinian residents from burying their dead in this historic cemetery.
The committee warned against the danger on the holy city and towns and Al Aqsa Mosque especially after the escalating Israeli Judaization plans that aim to erase its Islamic and Christian Arab character.
The Committee criticized the passive attitude of Arabs and Muslims toward the Israeli Judaization’s systematic plans that could encourage Israeli greed in the area.
Related articles
- OCHA: Israeli occupation destroys 13 houses weekly in West Bank (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Palestinian young man electrocuted, brutally beaten in Silwan (occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com)
- Israeli settlers move into Silwan home (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Settlers break into al-Aqsa, sing and perform Talmudic rituals… Again (occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com)
- Aqsa Foundation: Israeli intents to establish Talmudic prayers in al-Aqsa (occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com)
Israeli occupation forces arrest Palestinian Football player in West Bank, deport him to Gaza
Palestine Information Center – 30/09/2012
BETHLEHEM — The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) arrested at dawn on Saturday, a Palestinian football player from the Gaza Strip, who plays with Jerusalem’s Mount Scopus.
The occupation arrested the football player Ibrahim Wadi at Container checkpoint near Bethlehem in the southern West Bank while returning from a Football match in the city of Jenin northern West Bank, Amjad Jaffal, an official in the Mount Scopus club told Quds Press.
Jaffal stated that the Israeli soldiers detained a number of Football players and administrators, early Saturday morning, before being released and arrested the player Wadi, informing him that he will be deported to the Gaza Strip, noting that it was not known yet if he is already deported or still detained.
It is noted that the occupation prevents Palestinian players from the Gaza Strip from joining sports teams in the West Bank, where many of them were arrested and deported to Gaza, such as Mahmoud Sarsak, who tried to travel to the West Bank to join the national football team, and was detained administratively without charge or trial, and fought a hunger strike which lasted more than three months to be released to the Gaza Strip.
Related articles
- OCHA: Israeli occupation destroys 13 houses weekly in West Bank (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Gaza footballers to FC Barcelona: don’t host Shalit! (bdsmovement.net)
- Report: “More Than 75.000 Arrests Made By Army Since Sep. 2000” (imemc.org)
- Israel upholds ban on Gaza students in West Bank (dailystar.com.lb)
Norway: Organizations supporting settlements no longer tax-deductible
Ma’an – 26/09/2012
BETHLEHEM – Donations to a Norwegian organization that funds illegal Israeli settlements will no longer be tax-deductible following a decision by the Norwegian government.
The Norwegian Ministry of Finance announced the decision to remove Karmel-instituttet from the list of organizations eligible for tax-deductible donations on Thursday under pressure from Norwegian People’s Aid and the Norwegian Union of Municipal and General Employees, NPA said in a statement.
“We are very pleased that the Ministry of Finance has made this decision, based on the fact that Karmel provides funds to the illegal Israeli settlements,” said Liv Tørres, the secretary-general of NPA.
The Norwegian Ministry of Finance said they intended to ensure the system of tax deductions did not benefit organizations that actively support or contribute to acts that are in contravention of international law, NPA added.
According to the groups, Karmel-instittuttet had funded three study centers and around half the homes in the illegal Alonei Shilo settlement.
That settlement is illegal under both international and Israeli law.
Israeli forces detain 2 Palestinians ‘attacked by settler mob’
Ma’an – 27/09/2012
NABLUS – Israeli forces on Wednesday detained two Palestinians who were attacked by a mob of settlers south of Nablus, locals said.
Iyad Rashdan and Muhammad Allan were picking olives in fields of Einabus village when a group of settlers attacked them.
Israeli forces arrived and detained the two Palestinians, locals told Ma’an.
An Israeli military spokeswoman was not familiar with the incident.
Earlier dozens of settlers from Migron outpost assaulted a farmer north of Jerusalem, leaving him with multiple injuries, local officials said.
“Dozens of settlers chased the farmer, Abed al-Kareem Maikel Abu Ali, 57, for about 500 meters and beat him with iron bars, stones and sticks,” activist Saed Allah Khaled Abu Ali told Ma’an.
Four farmers had gone to check their lands near Mikhmas village after reports that settlers had cut down around 150 olive trees, village council official Muhammad Kanan said.
The farmers were attacked as they arrived at their land, with 30 settlers lying in wait. They all managed to escape apart from Abed al-Kareem Maikel Abu Ali, who was subsequently beaten by the group of settlers for around 40 minutes, Kanan said.
Related articles
- 8 injured as settlers stone bus carrying worshipers (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- PCHR Weekly Report: 2 Palestinians executed; 3 wounded by Israeli forces this week (imemc.org)
- Nablus olive harvest to start Oct. 9 in restricted areas (occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com)
- More orchards set ablaze by Israeli Settlers in Nablus (windowintopalestine.blogspot.com)
- Jewish Settlers Invade Palestinian Home In Hebron, Attack Family Members (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- UNHRC: “Israel Fails To Prosecute Soldiers, Settlers, Who Attack Palestinians” (occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com)
Abla Saadat: A Palestinian Stateswoman marked by “Terrorism”
By Christof Lehmann | No Spin News | September 24, 2012
Abla Sa’adat, the Chairwoman of the Palestinian Women Organizations and wife of the Secretary General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) visited Denmark. I met Abla Sa’adat at a meeting where she told a group of mostly young Danes about Palestine. Had one expected an Abla Sa’adat who conforms with the dehumanizing stereotyping of Palestinians by Israeli and western politicians and main stream media, one would have been surprised by the depth and complexity of Abla Sa ‘adat, her perception of the Palestinian problems and possible solutions.
Behind the veil of the “terrorist” stereotype one discovers an Abla Sa’adat who is a true stateswoman, humanist, human rights advocate, an advocate for international law, justice and peace, the wife of a long term prisoner of war and political prisoner, as well as a mother and grandmother who puts the systematic dehumanization and stereotyping of Palestinians to shame.
In spite of the Hamas – Israeli negotiated prisoner exchange earlier this year, Abla Sa’adat states, more than 5.000 Palestinians remain in prison under administrative detention. She is active in organizations which advocate Palestinian prisoners rights. It is not for personal reasons, so she states, that she is using her husband, PFLP Secretary General Ahmad Sa’adat as an example for how Israel systematically terrorizes politically active Palestinians and their families, but because due to her own experience she knows his case best and because his case is representative of those of thousands of other prisoners and their families.
On the other hand, who would blame Abla Sa’adat for wanting to advocate for her illegally detained husband, the father of her children and grandfather to her grandchildren. At a recent appearance of Ahmad Sa’adat in an Israeli court he was denied physical contact with Abla and his newborn granddaughter Mayar. The destruction of politically active Palestinian families family ties and the destruction of Palestinians’ family systems is systemic and systematic.
After the PLO signed the Oslo Accords and the Palestinian Authority (PA) was established, the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories within the 1967 borders has not improved and the Israeli governments have systematically avoided adhering to the provisions of the Oslo Accords. Contrary to improvements, the reality of the matter is that: Israel has confiscated more land, increased its infringements on Palestinians’ water rights, built more settlements and settler only roads and railways, built the so called “security wall” which isolates Palestinian West Bank villages in micro enclaves, continued a policy that devastates Palestine’s economy; Israel continues to illegally arrest and detain Palestinians under illegal forms of imprisonment, the use of torture is endemic, the use of disproportionate military force is well documented, and these items only touch the surface of the daily violations of the Oslo Accords. According to the Oslo Accords Palestinian prisoners should have been released from prison. Israel did not adhere to this provision either.
What Palestinians gained by signing the Oslo Accords can be described with a few words. The right to establish a Palestinian Authority, which is utterly dependent on the goodwill of Israel. The political factions have gained the privilege to compete with each other for the Presidency over the self-administrated Zionist genocide on themselves while splitting the PLO, rendering it in a state of internal conflict rather than fighting for the liberation of Palestine. In other words, the PLO was entrapped in the glory of Presidency over its own destruction and the destruction of Palestine.
It is within this context one has to understand the arrest and detainment of Ahmad Sa’adat. Israel demanded that the Palestinian Authority arrest him for “terrorism,” and the Fatah led PA made sure that he was arrested and detained. The tragic irony of the situation is that the Oslo Accords resulted in the Palestinian Authority arresting and detaining the Secretary General of the PFLP Ahmad Sa’adat on behalf of Israel, and that Israeli pressure and US and British complicity since have resulted in Sa’adat being imprisoned in an Israeli prison and not, as initially, in a Palestinian prison with US and UK military guards. In fact each and every detail of Ahmed Sa’adat’s imprisonment is in violation of the Geneva Conventions, the Conventions against the use of Torture and other bodies of international law. Ahmed Sa’adat was sentenced to thirty years in prison for being the Secretary General of the PFLP, which is designated as a “terrorist organization” by the USA, Israel and the E.U. He has spent years on end in isolation.
Prior to his arrest Ahmed Sa’adat was elected to the Palestinian parliament. Abla Sa’adat explained that 22 members of parliament are currently imprisoned in Israeli prisons, many of them in isolation. The occupation is in fact preventing the functioning of Palestine’s democratic institutions.
Isolated prisoners are locked up for 23 hours a day. For one hour they can leave their cells and spend their time in an indoor yard, in shackles and hand-cuffs, without the possibility to exercise. There is absolutely no contact to other prisoners. Ahmed Sa’adat was isolated for three years before he was granted ” the privilege” to have his first visitor. Other families, Abla Sa’adat said, have been waiting ten years before they could see their imprisoned husband or father for the first time. Many can not even visit their relatives even if they are granted permission because road blocks and bureaucracy make it impossible to get to the prison and back.
Both Amnesty International, the Red Cross and lawyers complained that this form for imprisonment constitutes torture as well as a breach of the Geneva Conventions, but to no avail. Israel disregards these organizations and laws as well as it has disregarded almost any of the UN Resolutions pertaining Israel, Palestine or the Situation in the Middle East. Ironically, Israel is claiming the legitimacy of the state of Israel from the very organization whose resolutions it systematically disregards.
The impact of isolation and sensory deprivation on prisoners is well documented in numerous and comprehensive scientific studies. Even short term isolation for one to two weeks has a significant impact on a prisoners ability to concentrate, on memory, and general psychological well-being. Longer term and long term isolation for months to years on end have a devastating effect on the human being. Already after a few weeks most isolated prisoners experience several of the following symptoms.
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Loss of the ability to concentrate
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Loss of the ability to think coherent thoughts.
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Loss of short and long-term memory.
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Visual, auditory and tactile hallucinations, such as the sensation that the entire cell is driving like a train carriage or rotating.
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Severe mood disorders.
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Severe dissociative symptoms or dissociative disorders.
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Suicidal ideas and increased prevalence of suicide attempts and death due to suicide compared to non-isolated prisoner populations.
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Symptoms of learned helplessness.
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Inability to participate as an active part of a legal defense.
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And a cohort of other, severe symptoms.
It is for very good, science-based reasons that long term isolation is internationally recognized as torture. Israel is systematically using isolation to psychologically and physically destroy politically active Palestinian prisoners.
While the systematic and wide spread use of long-term isolation has a devastating effect on the prisoners themselves has a devastating effect on the isolated prisoners family systems as well. Spouses who have not seen one another for years on end risk growing strangers to one another. Children who are infants when a parent is imprisoned often see their father or mother for the first time when they are teens. It is impossible to remedy the lack of early attachment and the lack of a possibility to to know ones parents or ones children intimately or at least to such a degree as a normal imprisonment allows, which is devastating enough.
One of the long term prisoners, Nabeel Barghouti was imprisoned for 30 years. His wife who was pregnant when he was imprisoned gave birth to a son, Fahdi. At the age of 16 his son decided that the only way to see his father was to become a prisoner. After his arrest and imprisonment he fought for the right to be imprisoned under conditions that made it possible for him to see his father. Incidents like these are not extraordinary, although they are extraordinarily tragic.
At a visit, Ahmad Sa’adat would have been unable to recognize his own son on a photograph had it not been for the fact that the boy held a trumpet and that he knew that his son is playing the trumpet. Abla Sa’adat’s worst concern about her husband, she said, is not that he is breaking down mentally. Naturally the long term isolation has set its marks but he is determined in his struggle for liberation. What concerns her most is that she can see, that her husband is suffering the physical effects on the body which long term prisoners in Israel are suffering.
It took a months long hunger strike of Palestinian prisoners to finally end all long-term isolation of Palestinian prisoners in Israel’s prison industry; and it is a prison industry, in the literal sense of the word. E.U. Subsidies per prisoner exceed Israel’s costs per prisoner per day, and there are other methods such as fines which make it a lucrative business for Israel to hold as many prisoners as possible.
Years ago, Abla Sa’adat recalled, she was arrested while her husband already was imprisoned. Who would take care of the children? Israel is systematically using illegal forms of arrest and imprisonment to terrorize and destroy politically active families, and those who help targeted families in coping risk being targeted too.
The Stateswoman in Abla Sa’adat came out when she raised concerns about the targeting and imprisonment of Palestinian children. Stateswoman in the true sense of the word, as a politician, a revolutionary, as well as a mother for her own children, and a politician who has a motherly love for the plight of the children of Palestine and families with children.
Children are regularly arrested, beaten, shot at and killed for protesting the occupation. Many of them are provoked into conflicts with the occupation forces. Tanks rattling near school buildings for hours, stressing the children and making it impossible for them to follow a normal schedule are just one of hundreds of ways to provoke the throwing of a stone. The response can be everything from being beaten, arrested and imprisoned, injured or killed.
Abla Sa’adat draws attention to the fact that the international conventions and laws which regulate the rights of imprisoned children are also systematically circumvented or ignored by Israel. Besides that the child prisoners have become a lucrative form of income for Israel. The fines are high and children are often not released before the fine is paid.
Another way of destroying Palestinian family systems is the placement of children who are sentenced to house arrest with family members so far away from their parents that road blocks and daily chicane makes it impossible for the parents to maintain contact with the children.
Abla Sa’adat is drawing attention to the fact that the prevalence of psychological disorders among Palestinian children is extremely high. In fact, the prevalence of psychological disorders is extremely high in the general Palestinian population, regardless which age group one studies. Many of these psychological problems are caused by the occupation, and the prevalence of trauma-related problems is staggering.
A 1996 Study by Save the Child documented that most children internalize the conflict with the occupation. The violent problem-solving models are then transferred into the family system and into school teacher relations, leading to immense pedagogical problems. The violent problem solving models are also transferred to child on child relations. Children growing up under such conditions are, as adults, prone to use violent problem solving models. The effect is not only felt in the resistance against the occupation. In fact, the effect is more likely to manifest in spousal abuse, child abuse, proneness to the use of violence to settle family disputes, political disputes, financial disputes, and so forth. This internalization during childhood has an all pervasive and devastating effect on all levels, individual, family, community level, and in the halls of government.
The Oslo Accords, says Abla Sa’adat, have not brought any improvements for Palestinians and the debate among Palestinian factions to abandon the Oslo Accords and all subsequent agreements is finally being seriously debated among the factions.
Abla Sa’adat made a point of clarifying that she has nothing against Jews in Palestine or anywhere else. Jewish, Christian, Muslim and Secular people have been living in Palestine for centuries. The often used propaganda, that Palestinians want to drive the Jews back into the sea, she states, has nothing to do with reality. Her cause and the cause of the Palestinian liberation is not directed against Jews but against Zionism and Zionists. There is a difference, she states, between Jewish families who have been living in Palestine for centuries, and those who came and still are coming to Palestine to steal Palestinian land and evict or murder Palestinians.
A two State solution, says Abla Sa’adat, is the very minimum and it would be difficult to implement. She asks, if a Palestinian state should be established within the borders of 1967, what about those families who have been refugees since 1948? The most realistic solution would be, she said, to establish one secular state in all of Palestine. One secular, democratic state for Jews, Christians, Muslims and Secularists within all of the Palestinian territories. The greatest obstacle to the establishment of such a state is, that Zionists insist on a Jewish State, where Muslims, Christians and Secularists alike have no place, and if at all, then as second class citizens.
With a Middle East on fire, with a Libya that has fallen into the hands of Islamic extremism, and with Syria under attack from western sponsored extremists and Al Qaeda associated organizations from throughout the world, with Qatar, Jordan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., the USA, NATO member states and Israel sponsoring and backing the extremists’ subversion of Syria, Abla Sa’adat, who is widely decried as “terrorist,” sounds like one of the most reasonable Middle Eastern voices of moderation I have heard since the onset of the so-called Arab Spring. If Abla Sa’adat is marked by terrorism, it is because a lifetime of enduring the terror of the Zionist occupation is as imprinted in her as it is in every Palestinian.
* Dr. Christof Lehmann, a life time peace activist, psychologist, and advisor in behavior, finance, economics and politics.
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Jewish Settlers Deface Mosque Near Hebron
By Saed Bannoura | IMEMC & Agencies | September 12, 2012
A group of extremist Israeli settlers defaced, on Tuesday at dawn, a mosque in Emresh village, south of Doura town, near the southern West Bank city of Hebron.
The settlers came from Etnael illegal settlement, built on privately-owned lands that belong to the residents in the area.
The settlers wrote racist graffiti that read “Death to Arabs”, “Price Tag”, and several other racist graffiti.
Extremist settlers are behind hundreds of attacks that not only target the residents and their lands, but also have targeted graveyards, mosques and churches in different parts of Palestine.
Last week, a group of extremist Israeli settlers attacked the Latrun Christian Monastery in occupied Jerusalem, and wrote racist graffiti describing Jesus as a “Monkey”, and other graffiti against the Christian religion in general.
Last month, several extremist Israeli settlers invaded the Awarta village, east of the northern West Bank city of Nablus, and wrote racist graffiti on the walls of several homes, and the deface the local mosque.
Earlier in February this year, extremist Israelis wrote “Death to Christians” on the walls of a Jerusalem church, and slashed the tires of vehicles parked in the area.
The attacks fall under the “Price Tag” attacks carried out by extremist Israeli settlers against the Palestinian people, their lands and property, such attacks have been carried out against several mosques, including some that were completely burnt, and several churches.
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- Soldiers Physically Attack Palestinian Youth In Hebron (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Hebron man walks down street for first time in years (alethonews.wordpress.com)
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