Palestine « Aletho News

Popular Committee Offices Raided by Israeli Military Forces, Ramallah

PNN | May 8, 2012

At 1.30 a.m. on Tuesday morning, 8th May, ten armored jeeps of the Israeli Occupation Forces surrounded and raided the offices of Stop the Wall in Ramallah. Israeli military stole 2 laptops, 3 hard drives and 10 memory cards containing files and photos as well as archive material relating to the work that the organisation does in opposition to Israel’s apartheid wall and the attack on Palestinian human rights that the wall and the settlements represent. This is yet another attack upon Palestinian civil society and their struggle against the physical and psychological oppression, land confiscation and ethnic cleansing policies of Israel.

Stop the Wall is one of the most vibrant organizations of human rights defenders in Palestine, and has been promoting, for almost ten years, civil resistance and advocacy campaigns against the Wall and in defense of Palestinian rights to self determination. Human Rights Defenders are internationally recognized as an essential element in political processes and their repression further underlines Israeli unwillingness to achieve a just peace.

Jamal Juma’, coordinator of the Stop the Wall Campaign, comments:

“It is not surprising that the Israeli authorities have chosen this moment to escalate their repression against the Stop the Wall grassroots network of civil resistance against the Wall and the settlements, choosing to act on the same day that the Israeli High Court rejected the appeals of Palestinian hunger strikers Bilal Diab and Tha”ir Halahleh, imprisoned without charge and without trial, effectively condemning them to death.

The courageous steadfastness of the more than 2000 hunger strikers in Israeli jails is underlining once more the power of civil resistance as part of the Palestinian struggle. Almost daily people are out in the streets to protest in solidarity with the Palestinian political prisoners, and the discontent with the fruitless and completely stalled diplomatic processes is growing stronger. At the same time, the Israeli authorities announced in 2011 to UN agencies that throughout 2012 year they will systematically displace the Palestinian population in area C. While the displacement drive is underway in the Jordan Valley, home demolitions are rising and the settlement construction is accelerated, the people across the West Bank are always more constraint behind the cantons of the wall.

This raid on the Stop the Wall offices is a clear message that the Israeli authorities are fearing widespread nonviolent action will challenge their policies effectively. Israel is preparing for confrontation and more repression, clearly showing that it is not ready to relinquish any of the international sanctioned rights the Palestinian people are struggling for.”

This is not the first time Stop the Wall has been the target of Israeli repression. In September 2009 Stop the Wall youth coordinator was arrested and the Stop the Wall coordinator, Jamal Juma’, was arrested a few months later, in December 2009. The Israeli authorities were not able to formulate any accusations against either of them and after a sustained international campaign, that saw the active involvement of the diplomatic missions in Palestine and European foreign ministries as well as countless human rights organizations around the world, both had to be freed in January 2010. This attack was followed only a few months later by an extensive office raid by the Israeli military on February 8 2010 and mass arrests of grassroots human rights defenders in the villages most actively protesting against the Wall.

For photos see: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stopthewall/sets/72157629631856082/

Background:

This raid on the Stop the Wall offices is a clear message that the Israeli authorities are fearing widespread nonviolent action will challenge their policies effectively.

The courageous steadfastness of the more than 2000 hunger strikers in Israeli jails is underlining once more the power of civil resistance as part of the Palestinian struggle. Almost daily people are out in the streets to protest in solidarity with the Palestinian political prisoners, and the discontent with the fruitless and completely stalled diplomatic processes is growing stronger. At the same time, the Israeli authorities announced in 2011 to UN agencies that throughout 2012 year they will systematically displace the Palestinian population in area C. While the displacement drive is underway in the Jordan Valley, home demolitions are rising and the settlement construction is accelerated, the people across the West Bank are always more constraint behind the cantons of the wall. Israel is preparing for confrontation and more repression, clearly showing that it is not ready to relinquish any of the international sanctioned rights the Palestinian people are struggling for.

Israeli military court sentences Palestinian journalist (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Israeli forces raid anti-wall campaign office in Ramallah (maannews.net)

May 8, 2012 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism | Israel, Israel Supreme Court, Palestine, Stop the Wall, West Bank | Leave a comment

European Politics on Palestine

By Dan Freeman-Maloy | Palestine Chronicle | May 7, 2012

David Cronin is one of the leading public critics of European policies on Palestine. He has written for a variety of publications across Europe, has served as European correspondent for the Sunday Tribune (Dublin) and as Brussels correspondent for the Inter Press Service news agency, and is the author of Europe’s Alliance with Israel: Aiding the Occupation (Pluto Press, 2011). His book is described by Ken Loach as “essential reading for all who care about justice and the rule of law.”

Dan Freeman-Maloy: In your book, you describe the determination of Israeli planners to develop closer ties with the European Union. Has Israel’s traditional policy of trying to limit European diplomatic involvement in the Middle East changed?

David Cronin: Yes and no.

In recent years, there has been quite a bit of strategic thinking undertaken by the Israeli foreign ministry. This was particularly the case when Tzipi Livni was in charge of that ministry.

One of the conclusions of that thinking was that Israel should not rely entirely on the US to defend its indefensible actions. There was a realisation that while the US remains the only superpower at the moment, other powers are emerging. The decision to “reach out” more to the EU was taken in that context. Israel is similarly seeking to engage more with China, India and Brazil, particularly with regard to sales of weaponry and surveillance technology.

There is a perception in some circles that European diplomats are hostile to Israel. In the first few months of this year, a series of leaked reports from EU representatives in East Jerusalem and Ramallah expressed frustration with the expansion of Israeli settlements. Yet it’s significant that these reports were drawn up by people who witness the results of Israel’s activities “on the ground”. The EU also has representatives in Tel Aviv and Brussels, who see things very differently and have been beavering away to increase cooperation between Israel and the Union.

We occasionally see newspaper articles in which Israeli ministers accuse the EU of meddling in Israel’s affairs or suggesting that the EU is biased towards the Palestinians. Yet if you dig even a tiny bit beneath the surface, you will see that this apparent tension is at odds with the real picture. The real picture is one where the EU has become so close to Israel that, I would argue, it has become complicit in Israel’s crimes against humanity.

DF: Not long after Operation Cast Lead, then NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer made a cordial visit to Israel (where his hosts drew a parallel between Israeli operations in Gaza and NATO operations in Afghanistan). You report that NATO-Israel relations may be set to deepen.

DC: We should never forget that in 2010, Israel killed eight Turkish citizens and one Turkish-American in international waters, while these activists were taking part in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. I’m not an expert on these matters but my understanding is that this attack was tantamount to an act of war against Turkey, a member of NATO.

I think it’s fair to say that if Iran had done something comparable, NATO would have reacted forcefully. Yet Israel has a so-called “individual cooperation programme” with NATO since 2006, under which both sides share sensitive information; the scope of the programme was extended in 2008. Israel’s relationship with NATO has remained strong despite how the alliance condemned the flotilla attack. Shortly before Gabi Ashkenazi stepped down as head of the Israeli military last year, he was treated to a farewell dinner by senior NATO officers in Brussels. He also was called in to give NATO advice on how to fight the war in Afghanistan.

And Israel is taking part in a NATO operation in the Mediterranean called Active Endeavour. Originally, this was supposed to be an “anti-terrorism” initiative in response to the 11 September 2001 atrocities. But it has subsequently been broadened to cover immigration. What this means is that Israel is helping Western governments, especially Greece, to prevent vulnerable people fleeing poverty and persecution from reaching Europe’s shores. It’s quite disgusting.

DF: Turning back to the EU specifically, where does the recent Conformity Assessment and Acceptance of Industrial Products (ACAA) agreement fit in the broader struggle around Europe’s preferential trade ties with Israel?

DC: ACAA sounds dull and technical. But it is deeply political.

This is an agreement reached between the EU and Israel, whereby quality checks carried out by the Israeli authorities on manufactured goods would have the same status as similar checks carried out by authorities within the EU. At the moment, it’s limited to pharmaceutical products but it could easily be extended to other goods.

This agreement is a top priority for the Israelis because once it enters into force, Israel would take an important step towards being integrated into the EU’s single market.

To their credit, some members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have been asking difficult questions about ACAA for a few years. And this has meant that the Parliament has not yet approved the agreement. It’s not clear when the Parliament will make a final decision about the matter. There was a discussion at the Parliament’s foreign affairs committee in the past couple of weeks, where it was decided to delay holding a vote on the dossier until legal assurances are provided on the question of whether or not the agreement would apply to Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

It’s significant that the Israelis have hired a top public relations firm, Kreab Gavin Anderson, to help with their efforts to break the deadlock on ACAA. Kreab’s Brussels office is headed by a guy who used to be the chief adviser to MEPs with the Swedish Conservative Party. It cannot be a coincidence that one of the MEPs most vocal in supporting ACAA, Christoffer Fjellner, belongs to that party. He is arguing that if the agreement is not approved, Europeans will have less access to medicines. This is scaremongering, in my view, and is hypocritical because Fjellner is very supportive of the big players in the global pharmaceutical industry, who are actively seeking to use intellectual property issues to prevent the poor in Africa, Asia and Latin America from having access to affordable medicines.

DF: Even people writing for quasi-official EU publications have felt compelled to question ‘the sincerity of repeated declarations encouraging Palestinian unity’ from official spokespeople. How have EU donor and diplomatic policies contributed to fragmenting Palestinian politics?

DC: Those declarations have zero credibility.

The EU always claims that it wishes to promote democracy around the world. In 2006, an election took place in Palestine. The EU’s own observation team found the election to be free and fair and something of a model for the Arab world. And then the EU decided to ignore that election because in its eyes the “wrong” party – namely Hamas – won.

I’m personally not a fan of either Hamas nor Fatah but if Hamas won a democratic mandate, that should be respected.

It’s a classical colonial attitude for an imperial power to show preference for one side in an occupied territory over another. Divide and rule. That’s exactly what’s been happening in recent years. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, and Salam Fayyad, the so-called prime minister, lack any democratic mandate. Yet they are treated as real darlings by the EU and US. Why? Because rather than resisting the occupation, they accommodate it.

In particular, they are also happy to pursue the kind of neo-liberal economic policies that are treated as sacrosanct in Brussels and Washington. Salam Fayyad used to work for the International Monetary Fund and has clearly been inculcated with its ideology.

DF: Can you describe the EUPOL COPPS programme and its relationship to the US training of PA forces in the West Bank?

DC: This is another “divide and rule” case.

The EU’s police mission for Palestine (COPPS) was originally supposed to apply to both the West Bank and Gaza. But in practice it only applies to the West Bank because the Union refuses to deal with the Hamas administration in Gaza.

What has happened is that the EU is in charge of training civil police and the US has been charged of training more militarised police units in areas under control of the Palestinian Authority. We are told that this is helping the Palestinian Authority get ready to assume the responsibilities of statehood. This is nonsense. One of the key aims of the these training missions is to boost cooperation between the PA police and Israeli forces. So the EU is really helping Palestinians to police their own occupation.

Worse again, it has been documented that police loyal to Fatah have used brutal methods – including torture – against their political rivals. Even though these police are trained by the EU, the Union says nothing about these human rights abuses. This silence is shameful.

DF: Germany is reportedly in the process of selling Israel a sixth partially subsidized ‘Dolphin’ submarine. What’s the significance of these sales?

DC: I’d put these sales in the context of wider military cooperation between the EU and Israel.

As well as helping to arm Israel, Europe is helping Israel to sell its weaponry abroad. The British Army has been using Israeli unmanned warplanes, or drones as they are generally called, in Afghanistan, for example. The ethical question of using weapons that have been “battle-tested” in an obscene manner isn’t even broached in “polite society”. Drones were used extensively to kill and maim innocent civilians during Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s attack on Gaza in 2008 and 2009.

What’s also significant is that Israeli arms companies are receiving scientific research grants from the Union. These include Elbit and Israel Aerospace Industries, the two suppliers of drones used in Cast Lead. At the moment, Israel is taking part in 800 EU-financed research projects, which have a total value of 4 billion euros. This means that my tax is helping to subsidise Israel’s war industry.

DF: Historically, France has been seen as the European power most likely to challenge the US monopoly on diplomatic initiative in the Middle East. Is this reputation still deserved?

DC: Definitely not.

Jacques Chirac demonstrated occasionally that he could be independent of the US when he was president. But Nicolas Sarkozy has been much more of an “Atlanticist” – for example, he decided that France should participate more fully in NATO than it has for a number of decades.

I’m answering this question a few days before the second round of voting in France’s presidential election. If Francois Hollande wins, then I don’t predict any major changes in terms of France’s policy on Israel-Palestine. I hope, however, that I am proved wrong.

Hollande has been quite happy to pander to the Zionist lobby in France. Both he and Sarkozy turned up at the annual dinner of CRIF, the biggest pro-Israel lobby group in Paris, earlier this year. It was clear that Hollande wasn’t there to denounce Israel’s crimes.

DF: The Greek government brazenly cooperated with Israel in blocking the ‘Freedom Flotilla II’ from challenging the Gaza blockade last summer. You’ve suggested that specific US-Israeli pressure (‘possibly even financial blackmail’) was at work, but that the incident was also a ‘logical consequence of a process that was already underway’.

DC: Yeah. This is quite closely connected to the question you asked about NATO. Greece and Israel have been working together in NATO operations a lot recently.

George Papandreou, the former Greek prime minister, was quite happy to court Israel. When it became clear that relations between Israel and Turkey had soured, Papandreou sniffed an opportunity for Greece to replace Turkey as Israel’s key ally in the Mediterranean.

Even though Greece has been going through an economic nightmare, the Athens authorities have decided to take part in a series of military operations with Israel over the past few years. Let’s not forget that Greece has been spending more on the military as a proportion of national income than most countries in Europe. You can see why the Israeli arms industry would be interested in cultivating stronger links with Greece because, even though Greece is in the doldrums financially, it’s still spending much more than it should be on weapons, while cutting back drastically on essential services like healthcare.

DF: One of your recent articles notes that many of the British officers deployed in post-WWI Palestine were veterans of the Black and Tans, the colonial force infamous for its brutality in Ireland. How has the Irish anti-colonial experience affected Irish politics on the Palestine question?

DC: Among the Irish public, there is a huge amount of sympathy for the Palestinians. The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign has been described by some Zionist watchdogs as the best organised Palestine solidarity group in the world. That’s very interesting because the IPSC relies almost entirely on volunteers.

The Dublin government is a different story. In the current Irish government, there are at least three strong supporters of Israel. These include the ministers for defence and education.

Last year, a number of Irish activists were abducted by Israel as they tried to sail to Gaza. The response of the Dublin government was extremely weak. The Irish foreign minister, Eamon Gilmore, even attended a ceremony film festival sponsored by the Israeli government soon after that incident. He appears to regard avoiding or minimising tension with Israel as a priority.

Furthermore, it should be borne in mind that it’s Ireland’s representative at the European Commission, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, who is administering the research grants to Israeli arms companies I mentioned earlier. She won’t even acknowledge that giving money to firms profiting from human rights abuses is problematic.

DF: In 2010, the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights issued a report criticizing EU maintenance of ‘anti-terrorist’ blacklists that effectively function ‘as ideological and political tools for undermining the right to popular resistance and self-determination.’ How do these lists constrain European politics on Palestine, and are there active campaigns to get them overturned?

DC: This is an important issue.

Israel has lobbied successfully over the past decade to have both the political and military wings of Hamas placed on the EU’s “anti-terrorist” blacklist. EU officials and governments have, as a result, been able to say “we don’t talk to terrorists”, even when the “terrorists” have a democratic mandate. I note, however, that there have been press reports lately indicating that Hamas has had some contacts with European governments. So perhaps this is changing a little bit. But in general, there is an enormous double standard, when the EU is happy to embrace Israel, a state that uses violence and intimidation against civilians on a daily basis, yet brands those who resist Israeli oppression as “terrorists”.

DF: Finally, in recent years the gap between European government support for Israel and public opinion has sometimes been so wide that the EU leadership has issued official apologies to Israel for polling results. What opportunities does this gap provide for strategic Palestine solidarity?

DC: The European public is way more critical of Israel than our governments are. This offers real hope.

The Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel was only launched in 2005. And it has made enormous progress. Veolia, the major French corporation, has ignominiously lost a number of major contracts around the world, for example. Why? Because of public outrage at how Veolia is involved in constructing a tramway that would effectively be reserved for Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem. This illustrates how supporting Israeli apartheid can prove bad for business if ordinary people monitor what corporations get up to and protest.

The BDS campaign is often compared to the one undertaken against South Africa. As it happens, the call for boycott was originally made by South African political activists in the 1950s. But it wasn’t until the 1980s that it had a major impact internationally. So the Palestinian BDS campaign has achieved in seven years what it took the South African campaign three decades to achieve.

The challenge now is to maintain the momentum – and intensify the pressure on Israel and its “corporate sponsors”.

Sarkozy and Hollande on Middle East: La Même Chose (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Demand that EU puts human rights law before trade privileges for Israel (jfjfp.com)

May 8, 2012 Posted by aletho | Book Review, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | European Union, Israel, Israeli settlement, Middle East, NATO, Palestine | Leave a comment

Solidarity and Realpolitik: My Response to Jeff Halper

By Susan Abulhawa | Palestine Chronicle | May 4, 2012

Some years ago, I was on a panel with three men, Jeff Halper among them, at a Sabeel conference in Pennsylvania. Each panelist was asked to give their vision for a solution to the ‘Palestine/Israel conflict’. Because I was sitting at the end of the table, I was the last to speak. I listened to each one of my fellow participants lay out different versions of a two-state solution, each more depressing than the other, each with irrelevant nuances (all previously articulated by Israel, by the way) on how to make the refugee problem just go away. They spoke the tired talk of land swaps, compromise, several surreal highways that bypass humanity for miles on end, and more creative solutions designed to circumvent the application of human rights where Palestinians are concerned.

When my turn came, I spoke of Palestinians being accorded the same basic rights that apply to the rest of humanity, including the right to return to one’s home after fleeing a conflict. I spoke of equality under the law regardless of religion. I spoke of a construct that would prevent one group from systematically oppressing another. I spoke of human dignity and the universal right to it. I spoke of equal access to resources, including water, regardless of religion.

I will never forget Jeff Halper’s response, which he was eager to voice even before I had finished speaking. He began with a smile, the way an adult might smile at the naive remarks of a small child. He needed to give me a lesson in reality, and proceeded to tell me, in the patronizing way of someone who knows best, that my vision lacked “how shall I say it… Realpolitik”.

I did not waiver then, nor have I since, on my position that Palestinians are not a lesser species who should be required to aspire to compromised human dignity in order to accommodate someone else’s racist notions of divine entitlement.

That said, I do not consider Jeff Halper racist and I acknowledge the mostly positive impact he has had in bringing attention to one of Israel’s enduring cruelties, namely the systematic demolition of Palestinian homes as a tool to effectuate ethnic cleansing of the native non-Jewish population. But in my view, that does not entitle him to speak of what Palestinians should or shouldn’t do. I also don’t think it qualifies him as an anti-zionist when he clearly accepts the privilege accorded to Jews only. After all, Jeff Halper is an American from Minnesota who made aliyah (Israel’s entitlement program that allows Jews from all over the world to take up residence in my homeland, ultimately in place of the expelled natives). Perhaps is it my lack of Realpolitik, but I cannot reconcile embracing the very foundation of zionism on one hand, and calling oneself an anti-zionist on the other.

In a recent interview on Al Jazeera’s website with Frank Barat, he did just that. He also laid out a dismal scenario for the future of Palestinians, based on what Israel is very likely plotting, namely the annexation of Area C and the pacifying of the Palestinian Authority (also likely) with economic incentives and mini Bantustans they can call a state. But he missed the mark, repeatedly, when it came to Palestinians themselves, as if he sized us all up with a glance and decided he was not impressed. Despite the burgeoning nonviolent resistance taking place all over Palestine, in various forms ranging from demonstrations, significant solidarity campaigns, hunger strikes, and more, he says that “[Palestinian] resistance is impossible” now. At best, he trivializes the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which is the first coordinated nonviolent movement of Palestinians inside and outside of Palestine that has also managed to inspire and capture imaginations of individuals and organizations all over the world to stand in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for freedom. Again, my lack of Realpolitik here, but to me, creating a situation where it is possible to force the implementation of human rights and restore dignity to Palestinian society is in itself an end. Jeff Halper seems unable to consider anything other than a negotiated agreement to be an end.

He enumerates all that is wrong with internal Palestinian issues. Of course there are problems. We know our leadership is doing little more than pick up the trash and keep people in line while Israel steals more and more of our land. We are not happy about it either. But he seems to suggest that he, along with other Israelis I presume, have been carrying the burden of resolving this conflict. In one instance he says:

“We’ve (I assume Israeli leftists?) brought this to governments, we’ve raised public awareness, we’ve had campaigns, we’ve done this for decades, we’ve made this collectively, one of two or three really global issues. But without Palestinians we can only take it so far.”

Then he adds:

“I am trying to challenge a little bit my Palestinian counterparts. Where are you guys?”

If I read this correctly (and I will grant the benefit of the doubt that it was not meant as it reads), then he clearly sees himself at the forefront of the Palestinian struggle where his Palestinian counterparts are disorganized, haphazard, or not present. He even suggests that at this crucial time, “Palestinians have to take over,” further supporting the suggestion that Palestinians are not at the helm of the resistance.

He also asserts that importing Jews from all over the world to live in colonies built on land confiscated from private Palestinian owners is “not settler colonialism”. What is it then?

But back to his strange assertion that Palestinians “should take over” (from whom?), he describes an instance where he refused to participate in the global march to Jerusalem because the Palestinian organizers (who took over?) did not want to include the world “Israel,” the name of the country that denies our very existence and seeks in every way to eradicate us. Is it that Jeff Halper wants “Palestinians to take over” as long as Palestinians do so in a way that does not offend the sensitivities of the very people deriving privilege at their expense? That is not how solidarity works.

I don’t presume to tell Israelis what they should or should not do but I would like to see Israelis concentrate on their own failures rather than ours. I would sure like to hear those who have made aliyah acknowledge that it was not their right to do so; that making aliyah is a crime against the native people who have been and continue to be forcibly expelled to make way for those making aliyah. I would like to hear an apology. The trauma that Palestinians feel is very much part of the Realpolitik and it is not unlike the trauma in the Jewish psyche. It comes from the same humiliation and anguish of not being considered fully human. Of being treated like vermin by those with the guns. If Halper truly understood that, perhaps dropping the word “Israel” – a word that hovers over the rubble of our destroyed homes and suffuses the pain at our collective core – would have been a no brainer expression of solidarity.

– Susan Abulhawa is the author of Mornings in Jenin (Bloomsbury 2010) and the founder of Playgrounds for Palestine (www.playgroundsforpalestine.org).

Revisiting the Palestine question: An interview with Ilan Pappe (alethonews.wordpress.com)
‘Not a country’: ICC blocks Palestine war crimes probe (rt.com)

May 5, 2012 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, Israel, Jeff Halper, Palestine, Palestinian National Authority, Realpolitik, Susan Abulhawa | Leave a comment

Israeli Hawkademia in Australian Universities

By Vacy Vlazna | Palestine Chronicle | May 2, 2012

The Israeli ‘defense’ industry is embedded in Israeli universities and in universities around the world including Australia. It plunders overseas intellectual property for Israel’s military research-and-development (R&D) programs while strategic bi-lateral research and exchange missions deliberately whitewash or ‘normalize’ the Zionist military occupation of Palestine and her people.

In Israel, Zionism and the military are undifferentiated. The IOF (Israeli Occupation Forces), the world’s fourth most powerful (nuclear) army, since the inception of the state of Israel, is duty bound to secure the fanatical Zionist goal of Eretz Yisrael or Greater Israel, which incorporates the whole of historic Palestine and beyond (from the Nile to the Euphrates).

The 1948 Nakba, the Catastrophe, which accounted for the destruction of 500 Palestinian villages and the forceful expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians by Israeli terrorist militia (Irgun, Lehi, and Haganah) that metamorphosed into the Israeli army, has never ended with Israel’s relentless policies of ethnic cleansing through the expansion of its illegal colonies and the illegal Annexation Wall on stolen Palestinian land perforated moreover by hundreds of checkpoints and roadblocks manned by belligerent IOF.

Under international law, Israel’s military occupation of Palestine is illegal and yet it has impunity to defy UN Resolutions and to daily commit war crimes because of US, EU, Canadian and Australian support as well as the $3.1 billion in Israeli military assistance granted annually from the US State Department budget.

“Israeli defense sales in 2010 totaled 7.2 billion U.S. dollars, making the small nation the world’s fourth largest exporter…Most of the sales are from four leading companies: Elbit Systems, Israeli Aerospace Industries (IAI), Rafael, and Israel Military Industries ..Strong points of Israel’s arms industry include unmanned aerial vehicles, armoured vehicles, smart munitions, military and civilian aircraft avionics, weapons platforms and structural upgrades for foreign governments and private clients.”

It is Palestinian men, women, teenagers and children who are the guinea pigs of Israel’s ‘battle-tested’ weaponry.

Israeli defense companies as well as their joint venture US/UK defense partners have subsidiaries in Australia- Elbit Australia, Oracle Australia, Thales Australia, Raytheon Australia and have footholds in and associations with Australian universities.

In November 2011, Elbit Systems joined the Australian Defense Department’s Rapid Prototyping, Development and Evaluation Program. The University of Western Australia and Edith Cowan University also joined. “Elbit Systems and its subsidiaries contribute directly to two of the most insidious facets of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory: the indiscriminate assaults on civilian populations, through the provision of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV’s or ‘drones’) and other military equipment to Occupation forces; and the ever-tightening ghettoization of the West Bank, through the provision of surveillance and electronics systems along the Apartheid Wall and settlements. During Israel’s 23-day assault in Gaza in 2008-09, missiles fired from drones were directly attributed to the killing of 78 Palestinians, including 29 children. Like all Israeli firms operating the military technology sector, endless war and occupation create valuable marketing opportunities. Elbit UAVs, for example, can be sold on the global market as ‘battle tested’ devices, significantly increasing their appeal and leading to their adoption by a number of militaries.”

The ZEN Entrepreneurs’ Challenge is a student business planning competition run by the Entrepreneurship, Commercialization and Innovation Centre at the University of Adelaide. ‘Participants work with dedicated mentors to cultivate their entrepreneurial plans including marketing thanks to Dr. Ben-Ari who joined Elbit Systems in 1978 and is, since 2001, Managing Director of Elbit Systems Singapore.

The Edith Cowan University’s Security Management program is offering academic credit to delegates on completion of the 2013 “Security Fundamentals Tour of Israel designed to provide a select group of security specialists and professionals with an insight into Israel’s critical infrastructure security and what continues to drive Israel to be one of the leading security technology providers.” The tour includes the euphemistically named ‘Separation’ Wall which is in fact an Apartheid/Annexation Wall deemed illegal by the International Court of Justice in 2004 and also includes the security, passenger screening and deterrence applications of Ben Gurion Airport which last month detained and deported volunteers invited to Palestine to help build a school for blind children. Last year, Australians Vivienne Porzsolt and Sylvia Hale were also arrested and detained at Ben Gurion for having the temerity of wanting to visit Marrickville’s sister city, Bethlehem.

In February, a guest speaker at Deakin University’s 7th Annual International Electromaterials Science Symposium was A/Prof. Yair Ein – Eli, He had been Director of Research and Battery Technology at Electric Fuel Ltd before joining the Department of Materials Engineering at the Technion. Electric Fuel Ltd is a subsidiary of the Arotech Corporation which has facilities in Israel and “operates through three major business divisions: High-level armoring for military and nonmilitary air and ground vehicles; interactive simulation for military, law enforcement and commercial markets, and batteries and charging systems for the military’.

Each Israeli university has societies worldwide that encourage and facilitate academic and scientific exchanges and collaboration. ‘Recent exchanges organized by The Technion Society of Australia have included Technion staff at Sydney University, University of NSW, University of Newcastle, Victoria University, University of Adelaide and Australian National University.’ On staff at the University of Western Sydney is a professor with Technion associations and experience in military and civilian R&D. Both Elbit and Rafael Advanced Systems (run by the Israeli Ministry for Defence)have long-standing partnerships with the hawkish Technion.

In May 2008 was the launch of the AICC s inaugural WA Innovation and Business Development Mission to Israel, supported by the WA State Governments Department of Industry and Resources and coordinated by the Australia Israel Chamber of Commerce (WA) Inc. (AICC). Among delegates were representatives from the University of Western Australia and Murdoch University. Mr R McCulloch representing Murdoch University’s interest in water research and renewable energy institutes praised Israel’s “immediate interest and openness to finding partners” though, of course this excludes Palestinians whose critical water resources are stolen, controlled and/or demolished by Israel.

The University of Johannesburg which had a joint water project with Ben Gurion University severed links in 2011 because it found “detailed, factual evidence and information regarding Ben Gurion’s direct and indirect role in further entrenching the violations of human rights and international law by the Israeli state”.

Innocuous academic interchange can promote normalization whereby Israeli oppression, racism and apartheid is accepted as the ‘normal’ status quo.

The Yachad Accelerated Learning Project designed to improve outcomes and address inequalities in Indigenous and Remote education was set up with the support of Melbourne and Monash Universities and The Hebrew University (Michael Federmann, the Chairman of Elbit Systems is a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Governors of Hebrew University). In 2007 an Australian Yachad delegation enthusiastically visited the Bedouin village of Kseyfeh aware or unaware that the per capita spending per Bedouin student is less than half Israel’s average and that 40% of indigenous Bedouins are threatened by forced transfer policies and live in Unrecognized Villages systematically deprived of water, electricity, health care, education yet not deprived of incessant home demolitions.

The information presented here about the relationship between Australian universities and the Israeli occupation of Palestine is merely the tip of a very grubby iceberg. Australian universities by their degrading prostration to funding donors associated with Zionist Israel have lost their moral equilibrium and the purpose and ideals of academia. Dissenting academics are rare. Few emulate Professor Jake Lynch’s protest of the 2011 Israel Research Forum at the University of Sydney with guest experts from the The Weizmann Institute of Science, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, and Tel Aviv University, all of which collaborate with the Israeli military industry.

Academics and students, concerned for the human rights of the people of Palestine, must investigate their university finances and demand divestment from and boycott of companies and Israeli universities that are implicated in the war crimes and crimes against humanity that Palestinians suffer daily.

– Dr. Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator of Justice for Palestine Matters. She was Human Rights Advisor to the GAM team in the second round of the Acheh peace talks, Helsinki, February 2005.

Lethal Hawkademia and BDS (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Lebanese Society in California Normalizes with Israelis (alethonews.wordpress.com)

May 3, 2012 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Militarism, War Crimes | Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Elbit Systems, Israel, Murdoch University, Palestine, University of Western Australia, West Bank | Leave a comment

Illegal Settlements Bonanza: Israel Plots an Endgame

By Ramzy Baroud | Palestine Chronicle | May 2, 2012

Israel’s colonization policies are entering an alarming new phase, comparable in historic magnitude to the original plans to colonize Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem following the war of 1967.

On April 24, an Israeli ministerial committee approved three settlement outposts – Bruchin and Rechelim in the northern part of the West Bank, and Sansana in the south. Although all settlement activities in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem are considered illegal by international law, Israeli law differentiates between sanctioned settlements and ‘illegal’ ones. This distinction has actually proved to be no more than a disingenuous attempt at conflating international law, which is applicable to occupied lands, and Israeli law, which is in no way relevant.

Since 1967, Israel placed occupied Palestinian land, privately owned or otherwise, into various categories. One of these categories is ‘state-owned’, as in obtained by virtue of military occupation. For many years, the ‘state-owned’ occupied land was allotted to various purposes. Since 1990, however, the Israeli government refrained from establishing settlements, at least formally. Now, according to the Israeli anti-settlement group, Peace Now, “instead of going to peace the government is announcing the establishment of three new settlements… this announcement is against the Israeli interest of achieving peace and a two states solution”

Although the group argues that the four-man committee did not have the authority to make such a decision, it actually matters little. Every physical space in the occupied territories – whether privately owned or ‘state owned’, ‘legally’ obtained or ‘illegally’ obtained – is free game. The extremist Jewish settlers, whose tentacles are reaching far and wide, chasing out Palestinians at every corner, haven’t received such empowering news since the heyday of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

The move regarding settlements is not an isolated one. The Israeli government is now challenging the very decisions made by the Israeli Supreme Court, which has been used as a legitimization platform for many illegal settlements that drove Palestinians from their land.

On April 27, the Israeli government reportedly asked the high court to delay the demolition of an ‘unauthorized’ West Bank outpost in the Beit El settlement which was scheduled to take place on May 1st. The land, even by Israeli legal standards, is considered private Palestinian land, and the Israeli government had committed to the court to take down the illegal outposts – again, per Israeli definition – on the specified date.

Now the rightwing Netanyahu government is having another change of heart. In its request to the court, the government argued: “The evacuation of the buildings could carry social, political and operational ramifications for construction in Beit El and other settlements.” Such an argument, if applied in the larger context of the occupied territories, could easily justify why no outposts should be taken down. It could eradicate, once and for all, such politically inconvenient terms such as ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’.

“Previous Israeli governments have pledged to demolish the unauthorized settler outposts in the West Bank, but only a handful have been removed,” according to CNN online. In fact, that ‘handful’ are likely to be rebuilt, amongst many more new outposts, now that the new legal precedence is underway.

Michael Sfard, an attorney with Yesh Din, which reportedly advocates Palestinian rights, described the request as “an announcement of war by the Israeli government against the rule of law.” More specifically, “they said clearly that they have reached a decision not to evacuate illegal construction on private Palestinian property.”

Some analysts suggested that Netanyahu was bowing down to the more rightwing elements in his cabinet – as if the man had, till now, been a peacemaker. The bottom line is that Israel has decided embark on a new and dangerous phase, one that violates not only international law, but Israel’s own self-tailored laws that were designed to colonize the occupied territories. It appears that even those precarious ‘laws’ are no longer capable of meeting the colonial appetite of Israeli settlers and the ruling class.

Israeli settlements have been contextualized through Israeli legal and political references, as opposed to references commonly accepted in international law. The emphasis on differences between Israeli governments, political parties and religious/ultra-nationalist settlement movements is distracting and misleading; colonizing the rest of historic Palestine has been and remains a national Israeli project.

An article in the rightwing Israeli Jerusalem Post agrees. “Support for settlement is not simply a program of right-of-center Likud. Its history has firm roots in Labor party activity during the periods of its governments, and activities by predecessors of the Labor party going back before the creation of the Israeli state” (April 27).

The only variable that might be worth examining is the purpose of the settlement, not the settlement itself. Following the war of 1967, the Allon plan sought to annex more than 30 percent of the West Bank and all of Gaza for security purposes. It stipulated the establishment of a “security corridor” along the Jordan River, as well outside the “Green Line”, a one-sided Israeli demarcation of its borders with the West Bank. Then, there was no Likud party to demonize, for that was the Labor party’s vision for the newly occupied territories.

While the Israeli settlement drive since then has swallowed much of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, populating them with over half a million Israelis, the international community’s response was as moot in 1967 as it is now in 2012. Responding to the latest sanctioning of illegal outposts, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon declared that he was “deeply troubled” by the news. Meanwhile, Russia was ‘deeply concerned’ and so was the EU’s Catherine Ashton. As for the US, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland insisted that the Israeli measure is not “helpful to the process.” What process?

While Israel has now showed all of its cards, and the international community declared its complacency or impotence, the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah continues to plan some kind of UN censure of the settlements. Even if a watered-down version of some UN draft managed to survive the US veto, what are the chances of Israel heeding the call of international community?

There is no doubt that Israel is plotting its version of the endgame in Palestine, which sees Palestinians continuing to subsist in physical fragmentation and permanent occupation. Unless a popular Palestinian uprising takes hold, no one is likely to challenge what is actually an Israeli declaration of war against the Palestinian people.

– Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London).

Knesset to discuss bill authorising settlers’ seizure of Palestinian land (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Israeli government confirms plan for segregated settler train system (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Study: Israeli ‘state land’ illegally taken from West Bank (alethonews.wordpress.com)

May 3, 2012 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | East Jerusalem, Israel, Israeli settlement, Palestine, West Bank | Leave a comment

Revisiting the Palestine question: An interview with Ilan Pappe

By Paul Weinberg | Rabble | April 30, 2012

Israeli historian Ilan Pappe begins a speaking tour across Canada tonight in Montreal. The theme of his talk is “The False Paradigm of Peace: Revisiting the Palestine Question.”

Based currently at the University of Exeter in the UK, Pappe will be discussing the history of failed negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. He is the author of nine books including The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, which is the definitive account of the expulsion of close to 800,000 Palestinians in 1948 upon the founding of the state of Israel.

Pappe’s tour is sponsored by the Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME). Freelance journalist Paul Weinberg interviewed Ilan Pappe for rabble.ca about some of the topics he will address on his tour. These questions and answers were conducted by email, just before Pappe boarded his flight to Canada.

Paul Weinberg: Do historians understand the entire story behind the events in 1948 involving the expulsion of the Palestinian residents from what now constitutes Israel? How open are the archives in Israel?

Ilan Pappe: Historians understand in different ways such a contested chapter in history. Much depends on their location of the ongoing conflict, because these events are part of our contemporary reality in Israel and Palestine. There were two basic conflicting understandings of the conflict: one Zionist and one Palestinian. What happened in the last 20 to 25 years is that most of the professional historians and with them large segments of the public tend to regard the Zionist understanding as a false attempt to cover for a crime committed against the Palestinians in 1948 when half of them were expelled by force from their homeland.

The most interesting development in this is the fact that quite a few Zionist historians, unlike their predecessors in the Zionist historiographical establishment, accept that half of Palestine’s native population was expelled, but they see this is a justified act of self defence. So the final stage in the historiographical attempt to understand, as you put it, is a moral debate of whether in the name of a perceived threat ethnic cleansing and massacres can be justified.

The archives in Israel used to be quite accessible. Material which is now considered as potentially damaging to the state’s image is now far more difficult to access. But there is still, for the time being, enough there to substantiate a better understanding of the 1948 situation and beyond.

PW: What are you working on now in your academic research?

IP: I’m working on several projects. One of them is called “the Idea of Israel”. This is a history of power and knowledge in Israel, and another is the early history of the 1967 occupation.

PW: Why are you living in the UK rather than Israel? Is it dangerous for you to live in Israel under the current political circumstances?

IP: I try and live both places in fact, but I have to work in the UK as I was ousted from the Israeli academia. I do not think the danger for people like me depends on where we are, but rather on how desperate the Israelis and their supporters inside and outside are and how far have they given up the charade of democracy.

PW: How do you envision a one-state solution? Is it possible for two hostile nations to live inside a single state? I speak of this as a Canadian living in a bi-national state that works by hook and crook.

IP: There is already a one-state solution in place – there is only one state and one regime controlling the land between the river Jordan and the Mediterranean. So the question is not getting hostile nations to live together but convincing oppressors to end the oppression. So one has to look for a combination of an outside pressure on the oppressor and an educational effort from within to change the power relations in the already existing one state.

PW: Norman Finklestein says that a two-state solution is still doable under international law even with the huge number of Jewish settlers on Palestinian land. He also suggests that the boycott and divestment campaign against Israel hasn’t really worked. What is your response?

IP: I think the two-states solutions are dead. Only someone who has not been for a while in the occupied territories can still think there is the ability to create a state of any kind there, even if the international will to impose this solution on Israel would have existed. If anything there is no such international will because the political elites are reluctant to do this. So the reality is of a one-state as I pointed out. The political elites in the west are also reluctant to stop the oppression on the ground, as they were in the heydays of apartheid in South Africa.

So you needed then, and you need now, a strong pressure from the civil society on the political elites to change course. And this is the essential role the BDS movement play and will play. The only real worry, and indeed the only remaining asset the Palestinians can still have vis-à-vis the Israelis is giving the presence of the Jews in Palestine moral and international legitimacy.

The BDS movement highlights that despite all its power, Israel will never receive legitimacy as long as the Palestinians do no grant it to them (this was understood very well by Netanyahu when he demanded that even the shamble of leadership of the PA would provide the state recognition as a Jewish State). Apart from the new efforts of Palestinian unity and re-arranging the issue of representation (resurrecting the PLO), the BDS is the most important development in Palestine in the last decade.

Paul Weinberg is a Toronto-based freelance writer and journalist. His website is www.paulweinberg.ca

Zionist group fails to disrupt Ilan Pappe’s tour at California state universities (alethonews.wordpress.com)
In Israel, democracy sprays you (occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com)

May 1, 2012 Posted by aletho | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, Ilan Pappé, Israel, Palestine, Zionism | Leave a comment

Palestine…. A Moment of Reflection

To Save Palestine is to Save the World

By Nahida | Uprooted Palestinians | April 28, 2012

I often pondered as to why the name Holy Land was given to Palestine?

What is it about this land that justifies or legitimizes such a description when in fact that land, through myriad of foreign invasions has witnessed some of the cruelest, most barbaric, most unholy, most immoral human behaviour?

My latest visit to my Home-Land Palestine was a heartrending experience with shocking reality; a roller-coaster, a volcano of paradoxical emotions, an extraordinary visual and sensual intensive course, with daily, if not hourly, spiritual lessons.

While the visit itself did not last more than ten days, I however travelled through time, standing on the terrace of my grandparents, I saw what was, what is and what could be.

As I stood on that old terrace of my grandfather’s house, facing the remains of the village of Lifta on one side and the construction of the Jewish colony Givat Shaul with its hideous buildings and eerie cemetery on the other, what I saw was indescribable: a vivid screen shot of two extremes of human existence and endeavour, a visual manifestation of a bizarre reality of two paradoxical worlds narrating the tragedy of what had happened and is still happening to Palestine and the world:

In the horizon, there before my eyes, was written the truth in plain indisputable language.

With poignant Lifta on my left I saw the past: organic, natural, native, rooted, sustainable, gentle, green, alive, flowing, timeless, tender, harmonious, modest, and exquisitely beautiful.

With Givat Shaul on my right I saw the present, violently constructed on the ruins of Deir Yassin by the Jewish-Zionist occupiers; artificial, implanted, pompous, forced, disconnected, rootless, harsh, malignant, cancerous, dead, offensive, aggressive, predatory, foreign, ruthless, and hideous beyond words.

On the terrace of my grandfather’s I saw a Civilization that lived by fostering life VS a Devilization that can only exist by destroying life.

On the terrace of my grandfather I saw a culture of Life being momentarily oppressed by a culture of Death.

On the terrace of my grandfather I understood that for us Palestinians if we are to make it into the future, all we need to do is to vehemently reject the poisonous glitter of the occupiers with all its multifaceted deception: where slavery is sugar-coated with slogans as “modern banking systems”, “global trade”, “free loans”, “buy now pay later” and “economic growth”.

On the terrace of my grandfather I understood that whatever we do we must vehemently oppose any attempt that aims to lure us to “learn” from or mimic the occupier in any shape or form:

Not in the way they run their society, where the selfish concept of “I” and “my interest” are promoted and admired while the foundation of civil human interaction and the altruistic concepts of “we” and the “communal interest” are frowned upon, despised and discouraged as irrelevant backwardness;

Not in the way they conduct business by the use of usury enriching the rich few and impoverishing the masses of poor;

Not in the way they use aggressive agriculture, under the veil of “increasing productivity” they kill the land with chemicals and over-irrigation and destroy the future with GMO sterile seedless uncontrollable crops, they farm animals in the most cruel conditions. Under the veil of modernity they inject seeds of death and un-sustainability, bleeding the land dry of its richness and natural resources;

Not in the way they model their pyramidic hierarchical systems of which millions who languish at the bottom are crushed by a handful who climb to the top.

Not in the way they build colonies brutally carving out the heart of our beautiful landscape, savagely slicing through our precious hills and butchering our millennia-old meadows and mountains only to replace it with prison boxes and creepy tombstones.

On the terrace of my grandfather I saw that a culture of death by its very nature is not sustainable, and cannot possibly survive let alone give birth to life.

On the terrace of my grandfather I saw the manifestation of an exemplary, sustainable, organic, cohesive, open and hospitable civilization, a World Heritage that learned how to peacefully and lovingly coexist and thrive with its neighbours, surroundings and environment.

On the terrace of my grandfather, I understood why and how a land can become Holy and from where the sanctity of this cherished Land emerged.

On the terrace of my grandfather I saw the hands of thousands upon thousands of men women and children tenderly attending the land, lovingly removing the stones from its fields and pathways, where in return I saw the stones write poetry of love and thankfulness with its poppies, daisies and bluebells.

On the terrace of my grandfather, I saw the attentive hearts of my people singing melodies of affection and adoration as they tenderly depicted their poetic verses in sublime harmony with their environment. Their little hand-picked stones thoughtfully arranged, perfectly in tune with the landscape around. Sensitively, compassionately and to the best of human endeavour, mimicking in fine details the Divine-artwork, without causing injury or harm to whatever lays in the way. Out of stones, rocks, flowers and trees they have created a timeless panorama of breathtaking beauty.

On the terrace of my grandfather, I saw the hands of generations of my ancestors patiently caressing its sleepy hills and artistically painting the landscape with the brush of pure love, swathing it with Holiness and Sacredness, preserving its Divine-given authenticity and protecting life that dwells on it.

On the terrace of my grandfather I saw breathing homes with flowery grassy roofs, I saw homes with eyes, homes with hearts, homes that smile and weep, homes that rejoice meeting her loved ones and that mourn those whom have been lost.

On the terrace of my grandfather I saw homes that welcome its dwellers with hugs and kisses and put its children to sleep by tales of love, magical bedtime stories and singing prophetic lullabies.

On the terrace of my grandfather, I finally understood the meaning of the name Holy Land, Blessed Land, Sacred Land and why that name was bestowed on our Palestine.

On the terrace of my grandfather, I saw Love of Life, Love of Land and Love of Humanity beautifully and supremely intertwined with spirituality, religiously protecting all that is around, thus creating a Holy Land, with excruciating beauty and dazzling glory, a Sacred Landscape, a Majestic Prayer and a Soul-Capturing Sanctuary with infinite charm and mesmerizing grace.

On the terrace of my grandfather, I saw how is it possible for humanity to be saved, to survive and thrive by saving and following the example of Palestine.

On the terrace of my grandfather I understood that the day of their demise is a stone throw away and the day of our Liberation is not far anymore.

On the terrace of my grandfather I realised that stopping and reversing the destruction of this land, and its inevitable Full Liberation, is not only necessary and urgent from the standpoint of Justice. Palestine is far more.

Palestine and its ominously peaceful and sustainable model is NOT a mere nostalgic ideal, but the most perfect source of inspiration and blueprint to design a futuristic, yet solidly rooted and time tested society, in which human interaction, environmental intervention, timeless architecture, agriculture, ethical commercial exchange and spiritual quest are the peak of human achievement. They are not incompatible with contemporary technology and population growth, they are the safeguards and KEY to a sustainable, peaceful and brighter future.

Whether some like it or not, in order to rescue this Sacred World Heritage, it will need a difficult surgery: the removal of the invading death culture that has shown its colossal failure to integrate the Land and its People.

Beauty and Humanity shall prevail.

I warmly invite the world along with my fellow Palestinians to rediscover and embrace our Palestinian culture of Life following the flowering footsteps of the Prophets of this Holy Land, Palestine.

Palestinians: The Forgotten People (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Deir Yassin: No passing over history (altahrir.wordpress.com)

April 28, 2012 Posted by aletho | Environmentalism, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Deir Yassin, Givat Shaul, Holy Land, Israel, Lifta, Palestine, Zionism | Leave a comment

Scottish TUC delegates join Palestine freedom struggle – unanimously!

Scottish PSC | April 25, 2012

The delegates to the Annual Conference of the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC), the umbrella group for every trade union in Scotland, today voted unanimously and repeatedly against Israeli apartheid. The 450 delegates voted to:

campaign to expose the role of the racist JNF (Jewish National Fund) in the Israeli apartheid system
support the participants in the Welcome to Palestine initiative who tried to travel peacefully to Palestine via Tel Aviv Airport
fully support the Palestinian-Brazilian call for the World Social Forum-Free Palestine in Brazil in November
support the Palestinian hunger strikers and the work of Addameer, the Palestinian prisoner support organisation.

Congress delegates congratulated the students for their work organising Israeli Apartheid Week 2012 events, who initiated action in support of the Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike and called for support for the Scottish demonstration this Saturday 28th April in Edinburgh.

These decisions of the Scottish TUC in support of the Palestinian freedom struggle, by a union confederation representing half a million organised workers in every sector of the economy, will be widely seen as a continuation of the international solidarity the STUC also provided to the liberation struggle in South Africa. Glasgow, Scotland’s biggest city, named a city centre street after Mandela in 1986 while he was still on Robben Island. How long till there is a Palestine Square or Palestine Street in our major cities?

The full text of the resolutions – all passed unanimously – is given below.

The Jewish National Fund

That this Congress notes that the Jewish National Fund acquisition and control of land in Israel and the occupied territories actively discriminates against Palestinians.

Congress calls on the General Council to:

endorse the international call for action against the Jewish National Fund;
campaign to expose the role of the Jewish National Fund in the oppression of Palestinians; and
campaign to have the charitable status of the Jewish National Fund revoked.

(Mover: Midlothian TUC)

Emergency Motion – Palestine

Congress:

notes that despite prisoner releases, over 4,600 Palestinian political prisoners remain in detention, including 203 children.
applauds the steadfastness of 1,200 Palestinian political prisoners who began an open-ended hunger strike on 17 April to protest against ‘administrative detention’, where detainees are held without charge or trial for up to six months and which can be renewed repeatedly.
congratulates the student Palestine solidarity network for organising the biggest ever ‘Israeli Apartheid Week’ of educational and solidarity events and for their mobilisation across Scotland in support of Palestinian political prisoners.
believes that the engagement of students, trade unionists and others with Palestinian civil society can only strengthen the current human-rights based approach to Palestinian self-determination and is essential to building a future of peace and democracy in the Middle East.
therefore welcomes the January call by the Palestinian National Committee and the Brazilian National preparatory committee for the 2012 ‘World Social Forum: Free Palestine’ to be held at Porto Alegre, Brazil in November. Conference believes that this “Global Meeting of Solidarity with Palestine” will underline the strength and diversity of the support for the Palestinian call for justice.
therefore instructs the General Council to:
- Support the work of Addameer, Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association, by distributing information and updates to affiliates and by supporting appeals for action where appropriate;
- Endorse the Scottish demonstration, called by students in support Palestinian political prisoners and the hunger strikers, taking place in Edinburgh on Saturday 28th April;
- Endorse the WSF Free Palestine as part of the internationalist activities promoted by the STUC and fully support the appeal from the Secretariat of the Palestinian National Committee for the World Social Forum “Free Palestine” to mobilise the Scottish trade union movement towards WSF Free Palestine.

(Mover: Dundee Trades Union Council)

Emergency Motion – ‘Welcome to Palestine 2012′

This Congress notes that there is no way into the Occupied Palestinian territories except through Israeli controlled airports or checkpoints.

Congress applauds the ‘Welcome to Palestine 2012′ initiative which highlighted Israel’s oppressive and abhorrent policy of restricting free and unopposed movement to, from and within the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Congress condemns:

the actions of the Israeli government in blacklisting activists from around the world and denying them access to the Palestinian territories.
the detention of those activists who reached Tel Aviv wishing to visit Bethlehem at the invitation of the Mayor in order to attend the launch of an educational project to build new schools.
Congress asks the General Council to call upon the Israeli government:
- to allow unrestricted passage to and from the Occupied Palestinian Territories for those wishing to visit.
- to end the continued, illegal siege by air, land and sea of the Palestinian Territories.

(Mover: Midlothian TUC)

Palestine

That this Congress applauds the successful delivery of humanitarian aid by the Scottish FBU to the Nablus Municipality Fire Department. Congress calls for continued trade union support for Palestinian projects, and for the exploration of a Scottish Trade Union Palestinian Support Group, and report back to Congress in 2013 any progress on this matter.

(Mover: Fire Brigades Union)

President’s Address to Congress (Mike Kirby, UNISON):

“There is a growing apartheid elsewhere, in Palestine. There have been many changes since my first official visit with Bill Speirs, Eddie Reilly and Malcolm Burns in 2001, during the Second Intifada. We were challenged by different militia, as we were escorted throughout the Occupied Lands by PGFTU, our hosts. On leaving, at the last stop at Jerusalem, we met members of the British Press Corps, who challenged us that we had only visited one place, met with one people. Eddie Reilly’s reply still pertains “We met many Israelis on our travels in Palestine. They were all armed and wearing uniforms.” Order may have been restored in many parts under the control of democratically elected representation of Fatah, democratically elected Hamas, and other political organisations. But that order is still enforced by a circle of unlawful Occupation, and the Apartheid Wall divides communities from their lands and work, and families are split apart.” Read full President’s address

Israel student society attacks peaceful Palestine protest with water bombs at London School of Economics (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Apartheid is a crime, not an analogy (alethonews.wordpress.com)
National Demonstration: March for the Hunger Strikers – March for Palestine (altahrir.wordpress.com)
Ex-Palestinian prisoner: captivity in Israel, living in graves (alethonews.wordpress.com)

April 27, 2012 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | Israel, Jewish National Fund, Palestine, Palestinian prisoners in Israel, Scottish Trades Union Congress | Leave a comment

Palestinians: The Forgotten People

By William James Martin | Palestine Chronicle | April 24th, 2012

It is impossible to understand the present Palestinian/Israeli conflict without understanding the past, in particular, the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine by Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe, who are not Semitic people, but indigenous to Eastern Europe.

In 1900, there were no Ashkenazi Jews living in Palestine; essentially none, that is, but a few, small mostly temporary Russian Jewish settlers, not totally unusual for various cults in the Holy Land at that time. Theodore Herzl, frequently designated ‘The Father of Modern Zionism’, because of the publication of his book, The Jewish State, in 1996, and because of the founding of the World Zionist Congress a year later, stated in 1897:

[We shall] spirit the penniless population across the frontier by denying it employment. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.

Thus the concept of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians was introduced.

By the 1930s, the ‘transfer’ of Arabs was the unanimous opinion of the founders of Israel. So-called transfer committees, headed by Joseph Weitz, Director of Land Management for the Jewish Agency, were set up explicitly for the purpose of studying ways of transferring Arabs out of Palestine.

At the beginning of 1948, despite 50 years of land purchases, Jews only owned 6% of the land of Palestine. By the year’s end, the Israeli army controlled 78% of Palestine in a process of ethnic cleansing that saw the destruction of 531 Arab cities or villages and 11 Arab urban areas, with massacres at almost all of those towns or villages, the almost complete looting of Palestinian property and wealth, including looting of banks, confiscation of Palestinian homes and property, businesses, fields and orchards.

The Palestinian people lost everything. Those who survived the massacres lost their careers, their means of livelihood, only to find refuge in tent cities set up by the United Nations which were later to become squalid refugee camps of cinder block buildings dotted around the Middle East.

By just checking the time line, one quickly disposes of the 60 year old Israeli propaganda myth that the state of Israel was innocently minding its own business when it was attacked by five armies of surrounding Arab states.

The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians began on November 30, 1947 in Haifa when the Jewish army under David Ben Gurion, along with the Jewish terrorist group, the Irgun, under Manachem Begin, began shelling the Arab sections of that city. In March of 1948, David Ben Gurion finalized and distributed Plan D to his officers, which was a program for destroying and depopulating Arab villages and eliminating any resistance. The massacre at the Arab village of Deir Yassin, only one of many, but possibly the most famous, occurred on April 9, 1948. Israel declared itself a state on May 14, 1948, and it was the next day, May 15, that the first regular soldier of an Arab army set foot in Palestine. By then, about half of the 800,000 Palestinian refugees had been generated and all of Palestine’s urban centers and been depopulated of Arabs.

One cannot understand the natural anger and resentment of the Arab people, and particularly the Palestinian people, toward Israel, and also to the West, for supporting their oppressors and for being blind to their own suffering, without coming to a full understanding of the catastrophe, which they call the Nakbah, that befell the Palestinian people in 1948.

Nor can one understand the futility of the exalted ‘peace process’, ongoing now for the last 22 years, concurrent with the further erosion of Palestinian rights and freedom, and migration of new Jewish settlers into the West Bank and East Jerusalem, without understanding that Israel acquired its present status as a state, not by negotiation with Palestinians, but by brute force and very much against the will of the indigenous people.

For the Arab people, Israel is an alien implant, imposed by western powers, in the heart of the Arab world against the will of the Arab people.

The Palestinians living under occupation have been living in that situation for 40 years, deprived of natural human rights, abused and, more often than not, humiliated, suffering degradation and humiliation on a daily basis, as their land and property and resources are daily confiscated by the state of Israel, who also winks at settler violence and looks the other way as settlers, who have built their settlement so hilltops, dump their sewage onto Palestinian farmland, as they also cut down their olive trees, burn their fields and poison or otherwise kill their livestock, in order to make way for more settlers and settlements as well as to make life as miserable as possible for the Palestinians.

Zionism is a political program of clearing Palestine of Palestinian Arabs in order to create the space for an exclusive Jewish state. As such, its goal is to destroy the Palestinians as a people with an identity as a people and with an attachment to the land of their births and the births of their ancestry. Such a project meets the definition of genocide in international law. Genocide is a crime against humanity as well as against its immediate victims. Genocide is a crime in which all of humanity is degraded.

William James Martin teaches in the Department of Mathematics at the University of New Orleans. He can be reached at: wjm20@caa.columbia.edu.

Thomas Friedman Exposes Peace Process as a Fraud and Himself a Con Man (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Knesset to discuss bill authorising settlers’ seizure of Palestinian land (alethonews.wordpress.com)

April 24, 2012 Posted by aletho | Aletho News | Ashkenazi Jews, David Ben Gurion, Israel, Palestine | Leave a comment

Khalil al-Wazir: Paving the Way of Armed Struggle

Abu Jihad coordinates with fedayeen (Palestinian guerrilla fighters) during the siege of Beirut in 1982. (Photo: Archive)

By Mohamad Bdeir | Al Akhbar | April 17, 2012

It took Israeli intelligence over two decades and many assassination attempts before they managed to hunt down the PLO’s military mastermind Khalil al-Wazir. On the 24th anniversary of his death, Al-Akhbar recounts his story.

When Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad) began his endeavor in the early 1950s, Israeli intelligence had no idea he existed. At the time, he was the twenty-something leader of the Palestinian al-Haq Brigade in Gaza. His family had been displaced from Ramleh in 1948.

Back then, the security establishment in Israel did not believe that Palestinians were capable of organizing a resistance movement. Operations by the fedayeen (Palestinian guerrilla fighters) were believed to be entirely orchestrated in Egypt.

It took Tel Aviv about 10 years to begin to know al-Wazir, who would go on to play a major role in establishing the first and largest Palestinian national liberation movement. Moreover, he would coin the idea of “armed struggle” as the only path to liberate Palestine.

News of Abu Jihad first reached Israel in 1964 through a secret Mossad unit named “Ulysses” whose mission was to spy on Palestinian refugee communities in Arab countries. Operatives spoke about the creation of a Palestinian national liberation movement led by Yasser Arafat and al-Wazir and sounded the alarm in Israeli security agencies.

According to the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot– which pieced together the story of the assassination of Abu Jihad based on public and private sources – the Mossad formed a secret unit in 1965. Its prime directive was to investigate methods of countering “Palestinian terrorism” and approve assassinations. It immediately suggested two primary targets: Abu Ammar (Arafat) and Abu Jihad.

The first assassination attempt was in Damascus when a planned car bomb operation was not executed properly. It was carried out by an agent of Unit 504 of the military intelligence, responsible for recruiting and running operatives.

Abu Jihad’s role in pushing for armed struggle against Israel became apparent, especially in the period following the naksah (the defeat of Arab armies in 1967). In 1970, Israeli prime minister Golda Meir retaliated by issuing him a “Red Card,” essentially a direct assassination order.

The Israeli secret service was adamant to settle scores with Abu Jihad and put an end to his dossier. In 1975, the Israeli air force raided a building in Beirut based on information of a Fatah movement meeting taking place there. In addition to Abu Jihad, Fatah leaders Arafat, Faruq Qaddumi, and Mahmoud Abbas were supposedly attending.

The Ben Hur operation missed the target and encouraged an escalation of attacks on Israel, coordinated by Abu Jihad, who was now the deputy chief commander of the Palestinian revolution.

On 11 March 1978, he planned the Kamal Adwan operation (named after a Fatah leader assassinated in Beirut in 1973), which was carried out by the Deir Yassin group led by Dalal Mughrabi.

The operation led to the death of 35 Israelis, with dozens more injured. It created a shock wave inside Israel especially following Abu Jihad’s announcement that the operation “demonstrated the ability of the revolution to reach Israel and carry out operations anywhere it wants.”

Following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the PLO’s relocation to Tunisia, Abu Jihad attempted to reverse the setback in armed struggle.

He visited various Arab countries, exposing himself to three assassination attempts, according to the Israeli account.

Abu Jihad, for his part, was planning an “unprecedented” operation that would strengthen the PLO’s position and impose new conditions on the struggle with the Israelis.

Twenty resistance fighters were supposed to reach Yafa by rubber dinghies, hijack a bus, drive it to the defense ministry in Tel Aviv, and attack the entrance known as Gate Victor. But the Israeli navy surprised their ship and sank it on 20 April 1985.

Abu Jihad did not hesitate and pressed on with plans for another major operation. In 1988, he picked Dimona, the location of Israel’s nuclear reactor.

On March 7, three Palestinian commandos captured a bus carrying workers from the nuclear facility. The fighters were consequently killed along with three of the workers in an exchange of fire with an Israeli army unit.

The Mossad concentrated its resources on the pursuit of Abu Jihad, by now the number one wanted person in Israel. Defense minister at the time, Yitzhak Rabin, ordered a direct operation that would not resort to remote targeting such as an air raid. He wanted to send a message to the Palestinian movement that Israel can reach its enemies in their homes.

The Mossad surveilled al-Wazir’s home in Tunis, 4km from the beach. It began planning an assassination attempt and sent a unit from Sayeret Matkal (General Staff Reconnaissance Unit) to the Tunisian shores.

It was to repeat the same scenario used successfully 15 years earlier against three Palestinian leaders in Beirut (know as the “Verdun Operation”).

On 13 April 1988, the quarter century chase after al-Wazir was almost over. Mossad agents carrying Lebanese passports arrived in Tunis and split into two groups.

The first group rented cars to transport the assassination unit from the beach to the targeted house, which was being closely watched by the second group.

In the meantime, Israeli navy vessels carrying the assassins were waiting at sea. In the evening, a unit of 26 Israeli commandos reached the beach and took the rented cars to al-Wazir’s home. After 23 years, they finally managed to assassinate him.

The next day, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir was asked about Israel’s involvement in the assassination. Scowling, he replied, “I just heard about it on the radio.”

From Ramleh to Yarmouk

Omar Nashabe

Khalil al-Wazir was born in 1935 in Ramleh and was expelled from Palestine along with his family in 1948. He studied in Alexandria University and then moved to Saudi Arabia.

Later, he went to Kuwait where he met with Yasser Arafat and joined him in creating the Fatah movement.

Leaving Kuwait in 1963, he founded the first Fatah office in Algeria, where he was allowed to establish the first Palestinian military camp.

He then moved on to Damascus in 1965 to establish the military command headquarters and coordinate with fedayeen cells inside Palestine.

During the 1967 war, he planned and executed operations in Upper Galilee, then became the head of the western sector of Fatah until 1982.

Abu Jihad strived to develop military capabilities throughout his struggle, playing a leading role in defending Beirut against the 1982 Israeli invasion.

In his meetings with the fedayeen, he would focus on tactics and also on ethics, telling them to save ammunition and explosives, not to be zealots, and not to steal.

One time, when he was ordering the fedayeen to avoid killing children, one of them replied, “Our children in Shatila and Sabra were the first to die… I lost 12 members of my family.”

Abu Jihad’s reply was clear, “In spite of this, we will not become like those fascists. We are not fascists. [The Prophet Muhammad’s second successor] Omar Bin Khattab commands us not to cut down trees or kill children.”

Memory of Resistance

Qassem Qassem

Those who knew Abu Jihad speak of his special relationship with Imad Mughniyeh. At the end of 1978, a 16-year-old Mughniyeh joined the Fatah cell in Chiyah.

Bassem Haidar, who was in charge of the cell between 1977 and 1979, says that the boy was always with another young man, Ali Khodor Salama (Abu Hassan), assassinated by Israel in 1999 in Abra, near Sidon.

The newcomer soon caught the attention of the higher command of the Palestinian revolution, specifically Abu Jihad, due to his skill in planning ambushes in the area between Tayouneh and Asaad al-Asaad street (south of Beirut).

He was none other than Mughniyeh, Hezbollah’s military commander who was assassinated in Damascus in 2008.

“Mughniyeh was the only person able to provide the cell with the weapons they needed. He would go to the Fakhani neighborhood (PLO headquarters in Beirut) and get it,” Haidar remembers.

“Once, we needed 3.5 inch anti-tank missiles, so he was sent to get them.” Haidar continues, “Had Mughniyeh’s relationship with Abu Jihad not been good, he would not have been able to get them, since they pass directly through the leadership.”

In 1978, Mughniyeh left the Chiyah cell after “he was summoned by the leadership in Fakhani and began clandestine work in a secret security unit. We never saw him again.”

Marwan Barghouti: A Decade of Defiance (alethonews.wordpress.com)
What Marwan Barghouti Really Means to Palestinians (alethonews.wordpress.com)

April 22, 2012 Posted by aletho | Timeless or most popular | Abu Jihad, Fatah, Israel, Khalil al-Wazir, Mossad, Palestine, Yasser Arafat | Leave a comment

Air France accused of racism after banning non-Jew from flight

Al Akhbar | April 17, 2012

French activists participating in the Welcome to Palestine campaign over the weekend accused Air France of racism on Tuesday after the airline asked passengers if they were Jewish as part of a strategy to prevent the activists from boarding.

“The racism of Israel and Air France was brought in plain light on Sunday…It was proven that one had to declare themselves Jewish or holder of an Israeli passport to have the right to travel,” the French contingent of Welcome to Palestine 2012 said in a press release on their website.

The activists noted the case of a passenger named as Horia, who had successfully boarded the plane, but was then asked by an air hostess whether she was Jewish before the flight had taken off.

An Air France employee signed Horia’s response on an official document (see below), and was then allegedly told by Air France personnel that she was prohibited to travel to Tel Aviv, according to activists.

Coordinator for the French chapter of Welcome to Palestine 2012, Maximilien Shahshahani, told Al-Akhbar that Air France was colluding with Israel’s secret service, Shin Bet, in determining which activists were not permitted to board Sunday’s flight to Tel Aviv.

“Shin Bit shared a blacklist of names with Air France, but told the airline to double check [others not blacklisted] with a series of questions,” he said.

The questions were also asked of other passengers, Shahshahani said, who were not participating in the Welcome to Palestine campaign.

“We saw another passenger, to which the same questions were asked. The response to the second question was that they were Jewish. The passenger was extremely shocked by the nature of the questions,” he said.

Air France in a statement issued on its website said Israeli authorities demanded that the airline question one of the passengers, without detailing what kind of questions were asked.

“The Israeli authorities requested that one of the passengers be questioned. The answers did not satisfy the Israeli authorities, the passenger had to disembark the flight at their demand,” Air France said.

Hundreds of activists, mostly from Europe, were due to fly into Tel Aviv international airport on Sunday as part of a global campaign to raise awareness of the restriction of movement and travel for Palestinians brought by Israel’s military occupation.

But, as in 2011, Israel threatened airlines that they faced sanctions if they did not prevent activists from boarding their flights, providing them with a list of names.

“You are ordered not to board them [activists] on your flights to Israel. Failure to comply with this directive will result in sanctions against the airlines,” a stern statement from Israel’s Ministry of Interior to airlines, obtained by activists, read.

Dozens still managed to board flights to Israel, with the official website for the French contingent of Welcome to Palestine saying that 40 French activists were detained upon arrival.

Preparations for legal proceedings against Air France are underway, Shahshahani said.

Welcome to Palestine has become an annual campaign, which is part of a growing international movement to highlight the continued suffering of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation and Israel’s apartheid policies.

An alleged Air France document showing questions asked of a passenger boarding a flight to Israel on Sunday 15 April 2012. (Photo: Handout – Welcome to Palestine 2012)

Israel and Air France racism overt (altahrir.wordpress.com)
Europe’s airlines enforce Israeli travel ban on activists hoping to repair Palestinian schools (altahrir.wordpress.com)
‘Flytilla’ for Palestine hit by arrests as Israel clamps down (alethonews.wordpress.com)

April 17, 2012 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | AirFrance, Ben Gurion International Airport, Israel, Palestine, Shin Bet, Welcome to Palestine | Leave a comment

‘Flytilla’ for Palestine hit by arrests as Israel clamps down

Al Akhbar | April 15, 2012

Dozens of activists were detained as they flew into Israel on Sunday, as part of a protest to highlight the continued oppression of Palestinians.

Hundreds more were prevented from flying by airlines working in conjunction with the Jewish state, being stopped while boarding in countries including Britain, France, Switzerland and Turkey.

Reports on Sunday morning also said right-wing Jewish settler groups had appeared at airports in a counter protest, sparking fears of confrontation.

Over a thousand people had bought tickets to fly to Israel as part of Welcome to Palestine 2012’s ‘Flytilla’ campaign, according to event organizers.

However it appeared on Sunday morning that the majority had been prevented from boarding, with others arrested on arrival in Ben Gurion airport.

Activists condemned international airlines and countries for preventing them from boarding, with many threatening to take legal action over the cancelled flights.

Particular fury was vented at Turkey, which worked in conjunction with Israel to prevent activists boarding flights despite claiming to support the Palestinian struggle.

Spokesman for the event Diana Alzeer said three people had reached the country and travelled to Bethlehem.

Event organizers said the protest aimed to show how Palestine had become a “prison.”

“There is no way into Palestine other than through Israeli control points. Israel has turned Palestine into a giant prison, but prisoners have a right to receive visitors,” the Palestine Justice Network said.

“Welcome to Palestine 2012 will again challenge Israel’s policy of isolating the West Bank while the settler paramilitaries and army commit brutal crimes against a virtually defenceless Palestinian civilian population.”

Israel continues to deny Palestinians equal rights and restricts their freedom of movement.

The country maintains a siege of Gaza and continues to occupy the West Bank while encouraging the rapid development of Jewish-only settlements, which have been declared illegal by the UN.

Bethlehem mayor to Israel: Allow our friends to visit (alethonews.wordpress.com)
Palestinian ‘fly-in’ activists stopped at Swiss airport | #Airflotilla2 (airflotilla2.wordpress.com)
Israel forces airlines to cancel tickets of Palestinian activists | #Airflotilla2 (airflotilla2.wordpress.com)
Israeli police await ‘Welcome to Palestine’ internationals at Ben Guriion airport | #Airflotilla2 (occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com)

April 15, 2012 Posted by aletho | Civil Liberties, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism | al-Akhbar, Ben Gurion International Airport, Israel, Palestine, Welcome to Palestine, West Bank | Leave a comment

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Abu Jihad coordinates with fedayeen (Palestinian guerrilla fighters) during the siege of Beirut in 1982. (Photo: Archive)

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