Israel urged the European Union on Friday to undo planned sanctions against it in the occupied West Bank and called for talks, a shift in tone from previous Israeli anger, retaliatory measures and threats.
Under guidelines adopted by the executive European Commission in June, Israeli “entities” operating in the West Bank and East Jerusalem will not be eligible for EU grants, prizes or loans from next year.
The move was deplored by Israel, which has constructed thousands of illegal settlement houses in the West Bank and claims all of Jerusalem as its undivided capital. Neither the settlements nor claims to Jerusalem are recognized internationally.
The right-wing Israeli government responded on July 26 by announcing curbs on EU aid projects for thousands of West Bank Palestinians. On Thursday it accused the Europeans of harming so-called Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts and said it would not sign new deals with the 28-nation bloc given the planned sanctions.
But Deputy Israeli Foreign Minister Zeev Elkin backed down a little on Friday, offering to negotiate with the European Union over the guidelines of the sanctions.
“We are ready to hold a creative dialogue with the Europeans. We understand their position. We reject it, we don’t like it, but it’s their right when it comes to using their money,” Elkin told Israel Radio.
A spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Aston, Michael Mann, said Brussels was willing to clarify the new guidelines in talks with Israel.
Some 500,000 Israelis live in illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem among 2.5 million Palestinians who own the land. Israel snatched those territories, along with the Palestinian Gaza Strip and Syrian Golan Heights, in the 1967 war.
Occupation forces left Gaza in 2005 but has annexed the Golan – another territory affected by the EU move.
Internationally, the settlements are considered illegal.
(Reuters, Al-Akhbar)
August 9, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | al-Akhbar, East Jerusalem, European Union, Israel, West Bank, Zionism |
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The critical issue of the ever expanding illegal Israeli colonial settlements on the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) in the West Bank (WB), which are peace killing in eastern Jerusalem in particular, will make or break the newly resumed Palestinian – Israeli negotiations.
On July 29, 2013, those negotiations were resumed in Washington, D.C.; they are scheduled to begin in earnest in mid-August. President Barak Obama hailed them as a “promising step forward.” However, in view of more than twenty years of failed U.S. – sponsored peace making, the new talks “promise” nothing more than being a new round of failure and “conflict management,” in spite of Obama’s belief that “peace is both possible and necessary.”
According to Albert Einstein, “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” is “insanity,” but that is exactly what John Kerry seems to have achieved after six tours of shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East since he was sworn in as the U.S. Secretary of State.
Unless the issue of settlements is addressed in accordance with international and humanitarian law as well as in compliance with the resolutions of the United Nations, Kerry will be shooting himself in the legs and his success in his peace mission would be worse than his failure. The EU’s recent anti-settlement move highlighted this fact.
However, Kerry seems and sounds determined to pursue his mission on the basis of contradictory terms of reference, laid down by the official letter sent by the former U.S. president George W. Bush to former Israeli premier Ariel Sharon in April 2004, whereby the United States pledged to annex the major Jewish settlements to Israel, to redraw its borders accordingly and to exclude the right of return of Palestinian refugees from any agreement in the future on solving the Arab – Israeli conflict in Palestine peacefully.
Top on the agenda of the resumed negotiations are borders and security; Israel has never defined its borders nor respected the borders set by the United Nations resolution No. 181 of 1947; in the name of security, it demands borders that compromise the viability of any independent Palestinian state on the WB.
From U.S. and Israeli perspectives, “the resumption of negotiations is seen as an objective in itself,” in the words of Ghassan al-Khatib, the former spokesman of the Palestinian Authority (PA).
David Ignatius on August 2 described kerry’s efforts as a “mission impossible,” which if it fails “this time, it will cost the parties dearly;” he described the ensuing negotiations as “a kind of a benign trap, once the prey have been lured inside, it’s difficult for them to escape without either accomplishing .. peace or damaging themselves.”
Indeed in the long run, success of the resumed negotiations warn of creating a political environment that would give “legitimacy” to a new Israeli military assault on the Gaza Strip to remove the “armed resistance” there to their outcome, with the overt blessing of the U,S. sponsor of the negotiations and the discreet blessing of the Arab “peace partners.”
However, the expected failure of kerry’s efforts could be worse than the failure of the Camp David summit meeting in September 2000 of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and U.S. former president Bill Clinton.
By sending his negotiators to Washington, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is again compromising his personal credibility, but worse still he risks a Palestinian implosion in the case of success, but in case the negotiations fail he risks a Palestinian explosion in rebellion against both his PA and the Israeli occupation.
Abbas has already antagonized his old allies among the members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) – including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which is considered the third influential Palestinian power after the two rivals of Fatah and Hamas – who accuse him of reneging on their consensus not to resume negotiations without a stop to the expansion of Israeli colonial settlements first.
National reconciliation between the PLO and Hamas will be put on hold for at least the nine months which the negotiators set as the time frame for their negotiations.
His decision put on hold as well any Palestinian new attempt to join international organizations to build on the UN General Assembly’s recognition of Palestine as a non-member state in September 2012.
The new talks are merely “the beginning of the beginning” of “a long process” in which “there is no guarantee” for success, according to former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
All this boils down to winning Israel more time to dictate whatever borders it deems “secured,” by creating more facts on the OPT. For Palestinians, this is a waste of time that makes their dream of a national homeland in an independent state more remote. No surprise then the Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu on July 27 saw in the resumption of negotiations “a vital strategic interest of the state of Israel.”
Kerry’s personal success seems to have pressured Palestinians into being fooled again into jumping to “final status” negotiations as the best way to absolve Israel from honoring its commitments in compliance with the “interim” accords it had signed with the PLO.
Bitter Past Experience
The Palestinian wide –spread opposition to the resumption of talks is accusing Abbas of being a “believer” in peace who is about to get “stung from the same hole twice,” in reference to the bloody outcome of the U.S. – hosted Camp David summit in September 2000.
Then, the U.S. administration of Clinton pressured Arafat into “final status” negotiations. Barak, then the Israeli prime minister, found in the Camp David final status talks a golden pretext not to implement the third stage of the Oslo accords, namely to withdraw the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) from about 95% of the West Bank (WB) area and hand it over to the PA.
Linking the WB and Gaza by a “corridor” that allows free movement of people and goods between them was another commitment that has yet to be honored by Israel.
“Trying” and failing is better than “doing nothing,” Kerry said, but the failure of the Camp David trilateral summit led to the second Palestinian Intifada (uprising); ever since both the failure and the uprising were additional pretexts for the successive Israeli governments not to honor both commitments; moreover, both pretexts were the justification they used to reoccupy militarily all the PA areas and to coordinate with the U.S. the “removal” of Arafat and the “change” of his regime.
The critical issue of the illegal Israeli colonial settlements on the WB will make or break the new Kerry – sponsored talks. On July 29, James M. Wall wrote: “Israel plays the peace process game not to give away ill-gotten gains, but to protect them;” settlements come on top of those “gains;” they were “gained” under the umbrella of the “peace process,” with the tacit blessing of the well – intentioned Palestinian negotiator who did not make their removal a precondition to the resumption of peace talks right from the start.
The 2000 summit collapsed because of the Israeli insistence on continued building of colonial settlements, especially in eastern Jerusalem, which doomed to failure the peace process launched in Madrid in 1991. kerry’s resumed negotiations opened while the settlement expansion continues unabated. Now Abbas seems too late to rectify this grave mistake. No surprise the failure of the negotiations seems inevitable and will only revive the Palestinian – Israeli stalemate.
Israel’s 2013 Herzliya Assessment concluded: “The status-quo in the Palestinian territories is not sustainable, and definitely not durable… the continuation of the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate is untenable. It will lead to a Palestinian mass public uprising with sporadic violence.”
Obama appealed to the negotiators to “approach these talks in good faith,” but the Secretary General of the PLO Executive Committee, Yasser Abed Rabbo, questioned the “good faith” of the U.S. and Israel who were “conferring about security” without the Palestinians, as if it was “their bilateral security,” although security is “a central and fundamental issue of ours and concerns our future as a whole.” Abed Rabbo’s Israeli partner in the Geneva Initiative, former cabinet minister Yossi Beilin, writing in The Jerusalem post on July 30, questioned the “good faith” of Netanyahu who “has reneged on all that he has said throughout his political career.”
Defying the bitter experience of twenty – year old peace process and strong opposition at home, Abbas seems voluntarily dragged into his last test of U.S. credibility as the peace broker, which will make or break his political career at the age of 76 years.
Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. nassernicola@ymail.com
August 7, 2013
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Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | Camp David, Israel, John Kerry, Middle East, Palestine, Palestine Liberation Organization, West Bank, Zionism |
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Fatma’s wrinkled face reveals the sorrow of a mother who has not seen her daughter for eleven years. Fatma Khalil Mubarak (78) lives in Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip. Her daughter, Lamees Ahmad Mubarak (44), has been living in Hebron in the West Bank since she got married in 1988. The last time Fatma saw her daughter was in 2002. Since then, Lamees has been trying to visit her family in Gaza, but she has been denied access every time she applied for a visitor permit to travel via Beit Hanoun (“Erez”) crossing. Beit Hanoun crossing is the only access point for people from Gaza to travel to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and/or Israel.
Fatma explains: “My daughter Lamees went to Hebron with her husband when she got married in the ‘80s. She used to visit me frequently, and I used to visit her as my health condition was much better and crossing to the West Bank was much easier. However, since the Second Intifada, we haven’t seen much of her. The last time she came was in 2002, but she has never been able to come back again since.”
Several attempts have been made by both Lamees and her family to reunite since 2002; however, Lamees’ applications for a visitor permit to the Gaza Strip have always been met with refusal. “This year, we have applied twice so far, but in vain. The permit was refused again. We have not given up yet. I will keep applying for a permit to see my daughter until the day I die.”
Fatma’s urge to see her daughter gets stronger every day, especially due to her deteriorating medical condition as she suffers from heart disease and hepatitis. “I do not know why I’m deprived of seeing my daughter,” she adds. “She is my daughter and she only wants to come and visit me as I am very ill. Why is she always refused entry? She is not a threat to their security. She only wants to come so I can see her.”
“We have tried everything. The last time we applied, we attached a copy of my medical report certified by the doctors to attest to how poor my condition is, but even that did not work. The Israeli authorities refused to give her a permit again. We all thought that it would work and that she would finally manage to come.”
“The last time I went to visit Lamees in Hebron was seventeen years ago. Since I became very ill, it is hard for me to travel on my own. I do not even leave this house. I know that I might get a permit if I applied for one, due to my age and my medical condition, but what would I do with a permit when I cannot move and cannot go anywhere alone? My health condition does not allow me to. What if I died on the way? The Israeli authorities won’t allow my children to accompany me to the West Bank.”
Israel imposes a policy of territorial fragmentation on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The separation of the territories has had grave consequences on the fabric of society. It has influenced every aspect of the social life of Palestinian people. Fatma explains how the Israeli closure of the Gaza Strip has further prevented her and her family from fulfilling her role as a mother and a grandmother. “Lamees got very sick recently. I could not go to visit her or look after her. None of her family could either. She is there on her own. Her father became very ill before he died in 2008. He wanted to see her, so we applied for a visitor permit, but the permit was refused. He died without seeing her, and she could not attend his funeral. Now, I have seven grandchildren whom I do not know. Two of my granddaughters got married, and I could not attend either of their weddings.”
The separation of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank has made the simplest family occasions very difficult. According to Fatma, Lamees was hoping to attend the wedding of her nephew in Gaza, which was planned for after Ramadan, in order to celebrate the happy occasion with her family. “We were getting ready to receive her at the wedding and we were expecting her. We were disappointed to hear that her permit had been refused again. No matter how many times she is denied permission to come, I am always hopeful that she will get the permit the next time and that I will see my daughter again. I cannot get used to the refusals. I will keep asking for permits again and again.”
Fatma recalls the days when Israeli restrictions on the movement of individual civilians via Beit Hanoun crossing were less strict: “In the past, when I applied for a permit, I would get it the next day. I would take a taxi from Gaza City to Hebron. We used to leave for Hebron in the morning and arrive before noon. It was only about an hour’s drive. Nowadays, it’s easier for me to see my daughter who lives in Norway than see my daughter who lives an hour away.”
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip remain denied of their right to freedom of movement, and suffer greatly due to the restraints imposed upon travel via Beit Hanoun crossing. The restrictions were first imposed in 1994 and have become increasingly strict since the al-Aqsa Intifada. Eventually, the crossing was completely closed on 16 February 2006. Since then, Palestinians have been prevented from travelling via the crossing unless they fall under certain specific categories.
As a result, civilians in the Gaza Strip have been denied access to holy places in Jerusalem and Bethlehem to perform religious rituals. Students have been prevented from travelling to attend universities in the West Bank. Families are prevented from visiting their relatives in the West Bank and vice versa. Since the Hamas takeover in June 2007, the Israeli authorities have only permitted limited categories of individuals to travel via the crossing: patients in a critical state; international journalists; employees of international organisations;. These groups are allowed to travel via the crossing under limited circumstances, via complicated procedures, and are often subjected to degrading treatment.
The closure of the Gaza Strip, which Israel has imposed for six consecutive years, constitutes a form of collective punishment, in violation of international humanitarian law. As a consequence of the continued closure, travelling between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank has been rendered virtually impossible for Palestinians, and entire families are now separated. The forced separation of families is in violation, inter alia, of Article 16 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and Article 23 of the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which obliges States to protect the right to marry and found a family.
Public Document
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For more information please call PCHR office in Gaza, Gaza Strip, on +972 8 2824776 – 2825893
August 2, 2013
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Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Gaza, Human rights, Israel, Palestine, West Bank, Zionism |
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Qalandiya, a village on the outskirts of occupied Jerusalem, has become a stark example of the crimes of the Israeli occupation. In the name of “security needs,” Israel has bisected the village, dividing both land and people, even splitting one family in two.
Ramallah – To the north of occupied Jerusalem, there is a small, isolated village with a population of no more than 1,100. But the village occupies a strategic position on the outskirts of Jerusalem, between several factories and vital installations, including Israeli military manufacturing sites.
The village is adjacent to the airport of Jerusalem known as Qalandiya Airport, which was built during the British Mandate. Today, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) wants the facility to become its official airport in a future Palestinian state.
The location of this village, like many others around Jerusalem, has made it vulnerable to Israeli military and settlement schemes, which always invoke the “security needs” of the Jewish state. Recently, Israel “annexed” the eastern part of Qalandiya into the areas falling behind the Green Line – the demarcation line marking the de facto border between Israel proper and the territories it captured in 1967.
But what Israel calls “annexation” is in fact a process to alter the route of the separation barrier, dividing the village in half – with only three homes in the eastern part annexed to the Jewish state and the remaining homes under PNA control. In other words, the village’s map changed overnight at the stroke of a pen. The village’s population, which has been living as a unified community for hundreds of years, is now subject to the whims of Israeli occupation officers.
Today, only three families live in the eastern part of the village, including two that carry the blue Israeli identity card, and one that carries the green Palestinian card, despite being related to one another. This is one of the many absurdities that come with the Israeli occupation, with members of the same family carrying different identification documents.
In the part of Qalandiya that has not been annexed, for example, some carry blue cards and others green cards, and though some are directly related to people in the eastern part, only blue card holders are allowed to go there to visit their relatives. “Even those who have permits to go to Jerusalem are not allowed to visit this area,” said Youssef Awadallah, head of Qalandiya’s village council.
In the annexed part of the village, the lives of the three resident families are now restricted by the occupation’s daily schedule. These residents are allowed to leave and return for only three hours each day through the checkpoint established by the occupation in the village, from 7 to 8:30 AM, then from 12:30 to 1 PM, and then from 4 to 5 PM.
But why did the Israelis sequester the eastern part of the village specifically?
Mahmoud Awadallah said, “The importance of this region has to do with its strategic position. The village is adjacent to the airport and the Atarot industrial park, as well as the strategic Route 443 and Atarot’s entrance. They did not want to put the wall directly along the route, and annexed this segment of the village to put the wall beyond it, in order to leave a buffer zone. The village is also close to a plant operated by Mata, an Israeli aerospace company that manufactures and upgrades helicopters.”
Curfews and Checkpoints
Among the families in the annexed part of Qalandiya, activist Mahmoud Awadallah’s family has the most intriguing circumstances, being the only family with Palestinian green ID cards. This means that the Awadallah family lives inside an Israeli “enclave,” in semi-isolation from the world.
This family cannot move freely within the Green Line, like the other two, or the West Bank, except during hours determined by the occupation. More often than not, the Israelis do not show any leniency for humanitarian or family emergencies. The Awadallah family embodies the occupation’s sharp disregard for the Palestinian lives.
Mahmoud Awadallah said, “One night, after the occupation authorities closed the village gates, my mother fell ill, but we were prevented from taking her to hospital. We had to wait until the next day before we could move her.”
Cars are not allowed to enter or leave the area, Awadallah added, and even those holding blue ID cards have to take a lengthy route to reach the second part of the village outside “visitation hours.” In other words, the occupation turns a five-minute journey between the two parts of the small village into a one-hour trek.
Even social relations between families now depend on the mood of Israeli occupation authorities. This includes marital relations, for instance, when one spouse carries an Israeli card and the other a Palestinian.
Youssef Awadallah said, “I carry the blue card, and I am forced to cross a large distance to get to the second part of the village. But what good is an ID card if I am isolated from my land and my relatives? I live in the eastern part, and my children and siblings live in the Arab part. Ever since the village was divided, our daily visits have stopped.”
Above all, what the area’s residents fear most is isolation from their families and surroundings in the event of a major escalation, when the entire region could be shut off.
Meanwhile, none of the petitions submitted by village residents to Israeli courts have borne fruit yet. Awadallah said, “So far, they have refused to respond or even consider the issue.” Now, the residents intend to go to the Israeli Supreme Court, to demand either full freedom of movement, or Jerusalem residence permits.
July 31, 2013
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Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | Jerusalem, Palestine, Qalandiya, West Bank, Zionism |
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Witnesses reported that Israeli forces raided the Cremisan Monastery in Bethlehem late on Sunday [July 28]. The witnesses told the Palestinian News and Info Agency (WAFA) that Israeli soldiers broke into the monastery, held the people who were inside, and inspected their personal documents.

The Cremisan Monastery, founded in 1885 (Photo courtesy of cremisan.org)
The raid was condemned as a violation of the sanctity of places of worship, and a violation of international law. Under Human Rights Law, Israel must “ensure that religious places, sites, shrines and symbols are fully respected and protected”, and “take additional measures in cases where they are vulnerable to desecration or destruction.”
The Cremisan Valley area has been a hotbed of resistance against Israel’s annexation wall, because the Salesian Sisters of Cremisan Convent and the Palestinians of Beit Jala will soon be the annexation wall’s latest victims. The planned route of the annexation wall will separate more than 50 Palestinian families of Beit Jala from their agricultural land, and they will have only limited access to the land via an agricultural gate. Furthermore, the wall will separate the Salesian Convent from 75% of its land. The convent’s land, along with the monastery, will be on the Israeli side, whereas the convent and primary school will be on the Palestinian side.
To fight the planned annexation of their land, the Palestinians of Beit Jala and the Salesian Sisters of Cremisan launched a seven-year-long legal appeal that was supported by the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary, William Hague, and the archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols. However, on April 26, 2013, the Special Appeals Committee of the Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court ruled in favour of the planned route of the annexation wall. The annexation wall is illegal according to international law and the fourth Geneva Convention, to which Israel is a signatory.
According to the United Nations, 85% of the annexation wall is built illegally inside the West Bank, thereby annexing roughly 10% of its land.
July 31, 2013
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Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | Beit Jala, Bethlehem, Cremisan, Palestine, WAFA, West Bank, Zionism |
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Hebron, Occupied Palestine – Stone and egg-throwing, beating and kicking, headscarves torn off and an arrest based on two soldiers lying. This sunny Saturday in Hebron (Al-Khalil) was all about settler youth attacking innocent Palestinians and internationals while soldiers looked the other way.
Today, 27th of July, the Shabbat started as usual in Hebron with the settler tour through the Old City. A group of settlers surrounded by soldiers entered the Old City through the Peace Garden and went through the streets, preventing Palestinians from passing. The soldiers invaded several Palestinian houses in order to access the roofs. After an hour, the “tour” left the Old City through the entrance to Beit Romano settlement.
Later, at around 4pm, whilst walking down Shuhada Street international activists had stones thrown at them by two settler teenage boys. When they returned an hour later, they were attacked again by settler youths who jumped at them and violently pulled off their headscarves outside Beit Hadassah settlement. When the internationals complained to the soldier stationed at the nearby checkpoint, he showed no sympathy and said his job was only to protect the Jews living in Hebron.
About half an hour later, three international activists were passing by the Qurtoba School when a masked settler ran up the hill towards them, throwing eggs. One activist was hit in the face with two eggs whilst soldiers looked on from the watchtower above the school – they took no action against the settlers saying only “What do you want us to do?”
At around 6pm some settlers – who had previously been bathing in the Abraham spring close to the Islamic cemetery next to Shuhada Street whilst being guarded by a group of soldiers – tried to steal a home-made kite off two Palestinian kids. A Palestinian teenager managed to prevent them from taking it.
At around 6.30pm, a group of about thirty settler youths entered the property of the Abu Shamsiya family in Tel Rumeida. They threw stones at the family who were outside on the veranda preparing food for the iftaar fast-breaking meal. They also beat the 11-year old son of the family, Muhammad. When his father, Abu Shamsiya, went to the soldier stationed at the checkpoint just outside his house to complain and ask for help, the soldier simply told the settlers to go ahead and continue attacking the family.
A settler youth then ran up to Abu Shamsiya and violently kneed him in the stomach right in front of the soldier. Another soldier grabbed Abu Shamsiya’s wife Fayseh, who was filming the incident, by her hair and pulled her to the ground. The police, who happened to be parked in their car just up the road, finally decided to intervene. Abu Shamsiya complained against the two soldiers who had attacked him and his family and were complicit in the settler violence.
In a rare turn of events, the police believed Abu Shamsiya’s story – although the soldiers denied it – and took these two soldiers to the police station for further questioning. However, they did not arrest any of the settlers, who escaped into the Tel Rumeida settlement and the police chose not to follow them. The group of settler youths returned soon after and although Abu Shamsiya and various other eyewitnesses clearly pointed out the attackers to the police, they took no action.
Abu Shamsiya himself was later taken to the police station in order to file an official complaint and so that the police could examine his video footage of the incident. The Abu Shamsiya family were initially hopeful that this might lead to some positive result, but two hours later they got a phone call that Abu Shamsiya was now being detained in the police station on the charge of spitting at soldiers. Clearly the two soldiers whom he complained against wanted revenge and made up this story to incriminate him. His family is deeply worried and hopes he will be released by tomorrow.
During the same incident, which attracted a lot of onlookers outside Abu Shamsiya’s house, Palestinians, settlers and internationals alike, a settler woman who is notorious for being extremely aggressive and has attacked internationals and Palestinians on several occasions, started pushing and shouting at an international activist as well as pulling at her scarf to strangle her. This happened right in front of a group of soldiers who chose to just stand by and watch, and even mocked the international activist when she complained and asked whether they thought it was okay for her to get strangled in the middle of the street.
Although the settler attacks in Hebron are not always as numerous and severe as they were on this particular day, none of what happened today is new or unusual to the residents of Hebron. Hebron is the only West Bank city that has settlers living inside the city itself. It is home to a particularly extreme and aggressive settler community, numbering about 500, that constantly harasses, intimidates and attacks Palestinians with near impunity and the protection of about 2,500 Israeli occupation soldiers stationed in Hebron.
Update 28th July: Israeli authorities are demanding 1000NIS on bail to release Abu Shamsiya. He will have a court hearing soon (exact day still unknown).
July 28, 2013
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Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | Abu Shamsiya, Hebron, International Solidarity Movement, Palestine, Tel Rumeida, West Bank, Zionism |
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Israel revealed on Wednesday plans for a sprawling railway system across occupied Palestinian territories, a move which has been rejected by the Palestinian Authority, local media reported.
According to Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the “grandiose” plan includes 473 kilometers of rail, 30 stations on 11 lines and dozens of bridges and tunnels in order to connect all West Bank cities.
The planned rail network – which could cost at least $27.8 billion according to media reports – would connect major Palestinian cities in the West Bank with the Gaza Strip and Israeli settlements beyond the Green Line. The trains would also link to border crossings into Jordan and Syria, The Times of Israel wrote, disregarding existing political demarcation lines.
The PA has officially refused to cooperate with Israel’s civil administration regarding the plan, as Palestinians eye the Israeli move with suspicion.
“The West Bank and Gaza are, by international law, occupied territories,” Salman Abu Sitta, a Palestinian researcher and author of the Atlas of Palestine, told Al-Akhbar.
“Any action by the occupying power is not allowed there, therefore this plan is expropriation of Palestinian land.”
“In normal circumstances, railways are a good thing, but this is a war crime under the Rome Statute,” just like the apartheid wall, Abu Sitta added.
Following the PA’s repeated refusal to collaborate on the project, Israel decided to proceed without Palestinian input and publicize the plan. Israeli officials said the railway initiative will be open for comments and objections from the public before its final validation.
The decision to push forward with the plan ignores the possible ramifications of US Secretary of State John Kerry’s efforts to revive peace talks between Palestinian and Israeli officials, Palestinian newspaper al-Hayat al-Jadida noted.
Should the railway plan materialize, the trains could facilitate movement of Israeli troops and settlers across the West Bank, Abu Sitta noted.
Abu Sitta dismissed Israeli media coverage of the railway plan which highlighted its benefits for commuting Palestinians.
“They (Israelis) always say that, just like they claim settlements are good for Palestinians,” he said. “But the good of the Palestinians is to be decided by the Palestinians themselves and their democratically elected government.”
Israeli Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz told The Times of Israel that the high cost of the plan meant that “there is no intention to advance the plan to the implementation stage at this time.”
“This is just on paper. It’s not going to be built for years,” Katz said, adding that construction in areas A and B of the West Bank could not take place without approval from the Palestinian Authority.
Even if funds for the costly project do not materialize, “the mere existence of the plan means that any construction program from now on will have to take the theoretical railway lines into account,”Haaretz wrote.
For Abu Sitta, the possibility that land would be reserved for the railway network, intentionally blocking future Palestinian construction in those areas, is a plausible theory.
“We have a long record of such deception,” he said.
July 25, 2013
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Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Timeless or most popular | Israel, Palestine, West Bank, Zionism |
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The Israeli regime has been accused of replicating the former South African Apartheid regime by the UN investigators, politicians and human rights groups.
Former South African leader Nelson Mandela once said “we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians”.
Last month, Ismail Coovadia, outgoing South African ambassador to Tel Aviv, said the regime is a “replication of apartheid” and built on “stolen land”.
The relation between Tel Aviv and the Apartheid regime in South Africa has even become the subject of a book — “Unspoken Alliance; Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa.
All these call for a look at the similarities between the two regimes and their cozy relations with Britain.
The Israeli regime is treating Palestinians, especially those living in the West Bank just like blacks, who were confined to Bantustans equal to West Bank enclaves and the besieged Gaza Strip by the Apartheid regime.
Palestinians are confined to security zones in the West Bank where they should have permits to pass military checkpoints while those in the Gaza Strip are under a military siege and have limited access to food, water, drugs and fuel, among others.
Palestinians are indeed under Israeli military occupation and face control of movement, physical separation from Zionists even on the roads and lack equal rights with them.
The physical separation, which is similar to the black Bantustans enforced by a variety of measures, is imposed on the Palestinians by creation of Israeli-only roads, limiting their access to lands and resources in the occupied territories and most recently by erecting of the separation barrier (otherwise known as the “Apartheid Wall”) in the West Bank.
Palestinians are also subjected to a totally different legal system than do Israeli occupiers to the extent that Palestinians are turned into secondary residents of their own lands by the occupiers, just like blacks versus white settlers during apartheid rule in South Africa.
In terms of equal rights, Palestinians also do not have the right to vote in the Israeli elections as was the case in the South African Apartheid regime.
They were given an illusion of a democracy by the Oslo Accords that enabled them to vote in the Palestinian Authority elections that brings to mind the local black polls for Bantustans, but that illusion was shattered in 2006 after Hamas won the PA elections but was not allowed to form a government.
The Israeli regime had also warm ties with the apartheid regime and the man behind the concept and implementation of apartheid, former South African Premier Hendrik Verwoerd, once said “Israel, like South Africa, is an apartheid state”.
The two regimes signed a military agreement in 1975 and the Zionist side helped the apartheid regime circumvent international sanctions until its end in the 1994, to the point that the UN General Assembly condemned Tel Aviv’s “collaboration with the racist regime of South Africa”.
The apartheid regime was also considered a close ally of Britain and London used its weight to prevent sanctions against the regime while maintaining extensive trade with South Africa especially by importing gold.
Later in the 1980’s, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher proved a staunch support of the racist regime describing the anti-apartheid Mandela as a terrorist in 1987.
Such a position is now clearly seen in the London-Tel Aviv ties and it goes without saying that Britain laid the cornerstone of a Zionist entity in the Palestinian lands in the first place.
In 2002, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote an article named “Apartheid in the Holy Land” that that his recent trip to Palestine had reminded him “so much of what happened to us black people in South Africa”.
He had earlier written in 1984 that the Bantustans, which were pretended to be self-governing homelands by the apartheid regime were deprived of “territorial integrity or any hope of economic viability”.
They were, he wrote, merely “fragmented and discontinuous territories, located in unproductive and marginal parts of the country” with “no control” over natural resources or access to “territorial waters”.
The description that appears to be a depiction of the occupied territories just now has been echoed by the UN Human Rights Rapporteur John Dugard, who is a South African legal professor and apartheid expert.
Dugard said “Israel’s laws and practices” in the Occupied Territories “certainly resemble aspects of apartheid”.
The analogy is also seen by British Labour MP Gerald Kaufman and former minister for international aid Clare Short who are pushing for sanctions against Tel Aviv.
The description of the situation in the occupied territories by Clare Short in the Commons back in June 26, 2007 is illuminating.
“I have followed developments in the Middle East carefully over many years, and I was well aware before my recent visit how bad things are for the Palestinian people. Nevertheless, I was deeply shocked by Israel’s blatant, brutal and systematic annexation of land, demolition of Palestinian homes, and deliberate creation of an apartheid system by which the Palestinians are enclosed in four Bantustans, surrounded by a wall, with massive checkpoints that control all Palestinian movements in and out of the ghettos,” she said.
A key difference, however, remains, that is apartheid rulers exploited blacks as cheap laborers while Zionists are ethnically cleansing Palestinians.
A South African newspaper editor, Mondli Makhanya, put it in a nutshell after a 2008 trip to the Middle East.
“It seems to me that the Israelis would like the Palestinians to disappear. There was never anything like that in our case. The whites did not want the blacks to disappear,” he said.
July 22, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Apartheid, Gaza Strip, Israel, Palestine, West Bank, Zionism |
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Israel’s Planning and Construction Committee has issued licenses for 165 settlement units in Nafea Yacob Settlement in occupied Jerusalem.
In a press release, researcher in settlement issues Ahmed Soblaban said that the new project is part of a bigger plan to connect Nafea Yacob and Bezgat Zeaf Settlements. The particular danger of this project, warned Soblaban, is that it separates North Jerusalem from its occupied West Bank hinterland.
The project was originally proposed and approved in 2008, when the green area between both settlements was turned into an area ready for building. According to Soblaban, this project reinforces Israel’s racism against Palestinian residents in Jerusalem, who are prevented from building to cater for their population increase. Although Palestinians are usually not given building permits, they are in any case forbidden from building anything more than four stories high. Jewish settlers can build as high as they want.
Soblaban pointed out that the Israeli authorities have also started the ground works for another new settlement near Bezgat Zeaf.
July 21, 2013
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Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | Israel, Jerusalem, Palestine, West Bank, Zionism |
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A recently uncovered government document confirms that Ottawa has delivered millions of dollars in aid to the Palestinian Authority in a bid to advance Israel’s interests. The internal memorandum also sheds light on Canada’s efforts to build a security apparatus to protect the Palestinian Authority from popular disgust over its compliance in the face of ongoing Israeli settlement building.
Last week Postmedia’s Lee Berthiaume reported on a Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) note outlining Israel’s desire for Canada to continue its $300 million five-year “aid” program to the Palestinians, which the Conservatives threatened to sever after the PA pursued UN statehood last fall.
“There have been increasing references in the past months during high-level bilateral meetings with the Israelis about the importance and value they place on Canada’s assistance to the Palestinian Authority, most notably in security/justice reform,” reads the November 2nd 2012 note signed by CIDA president Margaret Biggs. “The Israelis have noted the importance of Canada’s contribution to the relative stability achieved through extensive security co-operation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.”
The heavily censored note suggests the goal of the Canadian “aid” is to protect a corrupt PA from popular backlash. Biggs explains that “the emergence of popular protests on the Palestinian street against the Palestinian Authority is worrying and the Israelis have been imploring the international donor community to continue to support the Palestinian Authority.”
These recent revelations from CIDA confirm the highly politicized nature of Canadian aid to the Palestinians. After Hamas won legislative elections in January 2006 the Conservatives made Canada the first country (after Israel) to cut off funding to the PA.
When Hamas officials were ousted from the Palestinian unity government in June 2007, the Conservatives immediately contributed $8 million “in direct support to the new government.” Then in December 2007 the Conservatives announced a five-year $300 million aid program to the Palestinians, which was largely designed to serve Israel’s interests.
As a Saint John Telegraph-Journal headline explained at the time: “Canada’s aid to Palestine benefits Israel, foreign affairs minister says.”
In January 2008 Maxime Bernier, then Canada’s foreign minister, said: “We are doing that [providing aid to the PA] because we want Israel to be able to live in peace and security with its neighbors.”
Most of the Canadian aid money has gone to building up a Palestinian security force overseen by a US general. The immediate impetus of the Canadian aid was to create a Palestinian security force “to ensure that the PA maintains control of the West Bank against Hamas,” as Canadian Ambassador to Israel Jon Allen was quoted as saying by the Canadian Jewish News.
American General Keith Dayton, in charge of organizing a 10,000-member Palestinian security force, even admitted that he was strengthening Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah against Hamas, telling a US audience in May 2009 his force was “working against illegal Hamas activities.” According to Al Jazeera, between 2007 and early 2011 PA security forces arrested some 10,000 suspected Hamas supporters in the West Bank.
The broader aim of the US-Canada-Britain initiated Palestinian security reform was to build a force to patrol the West Bank and Gaza. In a 2011 profile of Canadian Lieutenant-Colonel Ron Allison, “Dayton’s chief of liaison in the West Bank” for a year, Allison’s hometown newspaper the Times & Transcript reported: “The Dayton team was concerned with enhancing security on the West Bank of Palestine and was all geared towards looking after and ensuring the security of Israel.”
“We don’t provide anything to the Palestinians,” Dayton told the Associated Press in June 2009, “unless it has been thoroughly coordinated with the State of Israel and they agree to it.” For instance, Israel’s notorious internal intelligence agency, the Shin Bet, vets all of the Palestinian recruits, according to US government reports.
The Israelis supported Dayton’s force as a way to keep the West Bank population under control. Like all colonial authorities throughout history, Israel looked to compliant locals to take up the occupation’s security burden.
Writing in the July 2011 London Review of Books, Adam Shatz detailed how “The PA already uses the American-trained National Security Force to undermine efforts by Palestinians to challenge the occupation.”
He continued: “It is an extraordinary arrangement: the security forces of a country under occupation are being subcontracted by third parties outside the region to prevent resistance to the occupying power, even as that power continues to grab more land. “This is, not surprisingly, a source of considerable anger and shame in the West Bank.”
The Palestinian security force is largely trained in Jordan at the U.S.-built International Police Training Center (established to train Iraqi security after the 2003 invasion). In October 2009, The Wall Street Journal reported: “[Palestinian] recruits are trained in Jordan by Jordanian police, under the supervision of American, Canadian and British officers. The number of military trainers in the West Bank varied slightly but in mid-2010, eighteen Canadian troops worked with six British and ten US soldiers under Dayton’s command.”
“The Canadian contribution is invaluable,” explained Dayton to The Maple Leaf, the monthly publication of the Canadian army. Canadians are particularly useful because, Dayton said, “US personnel have travel restrictions when operating in the West Bank. But, our British and Canadian members do not.”
Calling them his “eyes and ears” Dayton added: “The Canadians … are organized in teams we call road warriors, and they move around the West Bank daily visiting Palestinian security leaders, gauging local conditions.”
Part of the U.S. Security Coordinator office in Jerusalem, the Canadian military mission in the West Bank (dubbed Operation PROTEUS) includes Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers as well as officials from the foreign ministry, Justice Canada and the Canadian Border Services Agency.
In a September 2010 interview with The Jerusalem Post, Peter Kent, then Canada’s deputy foreign minister, said Operation PROTEUS was Canada’s “second largest deployment after Afghanistan” and it receives “most of the money” from the five-year $300 million Canadian “aid” program to the PA.
During a visit to the Middle East in January 2012, foreign minister John Baird told The Globe and Mail he was “incredibly thrilled” by the West Bank security situation, which he said benefited Israel.
In effect, Canada has helped to build a security apparatus to protect a corrupt PA led by Mahmoud Abbas, whose electoral mandate expired in January 2009, but whom the Israeli government prefers over Hamas.
– Yves Engler’s latest book is The Ugly Canadian: Stephen Harper’s foreign policy. He’s also the author of Canada and Israel: building apartheid.
July 20, 2013
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Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Canadian International Development Agency, Israel, Mahmoud Abbas, West Bank, Yves Engler |
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A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied Thursday previous reports stating that Israel had agreed to a proposed formula for new peace talks with the Palestinians under which the border of their future state would be along lines that existed before the 1967 Middle East war.
An Israeli official had previously said on Thursday that Israel was open to talks based on the 1967 borders, but with agreed land swaps and Palestine recognizing Israel as a “Jewish state.”
The denial comes as a blow to US Secretary of State John Kerry, who has been working for the past six months to restart peace talks between Israel and Palestine.
Kerry had urged Israel on Wednesday afternoon to carefully consider a 2002 peace initiative approved by the Arab League.
“Israel needs to look hard at this initiative, which promises Israel peace with 22 Arab nations and 35 Muslim nations – a total of 57 nations that are standing and waiting for the possibility of making peace with Israel,” he had said.
The plan, put forward by Saudi Arabia at an Arab League summit in Beirut in 2002, offered full recognition of Israel but only if it gave up all land seized in the 1967 Middle East war and agreed to a “just solution” for Palestinian refugees. Softening the plan three months ago, a top Qatari official raised the possibility of land swaps in setting future Israeli-Palestinian borders.
Speculation had been rife that Kerry, now in the region for his sixth time since March in an effort to revive peace talks that deadlocked in 2010, may be close to a breakthrough.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was conferring with Palestinian leaders on Thursday to decide whether to accept Kerry’s proposals for renewing talks with Israel.
Kerry said on Wednesday after talks with Abbas in neighboring Jordan that gaps between the sides had “very significantly” narrowed. An Arab League committee endorsed Kerry’s proposals for resuming peace talks, saying they “provide the ground and a suitable environment to start negotiations.”
However, the issue of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which are considered illegal under international law, is still to be resolved. Palestinians are refusing to return to negotiations without a freeze on settlement activity, as Israel has greenlighted the construction of hundreds of settlement homes in the past several months.
(Reuters, Al-Akhbar)
July 18, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Aletho News | Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel, John Kerry, Palestine, West Bank, Zionism |
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Were it not for the razor wire, giant concrete blocks, steel gates, watchtower and standard-issue surly teenage soldier, it would be impossible to tell at what point the barren uplands of Israel’s eastern Negev give way to the South Hebron Hills of the West Bank.
The military checkpoint of Shani vaguely marks the formal demarcation between Israel and occupied Palestinian territory, but in practical terms the distinction is meaningless. On either side of the Green Line, Israel is in charge.
In recent weeks it has been intensifying a campaign to evict Palestinian farming communities summarily from their ancestral lands to replace them with Jewish newcomers.
Israeli human rights lawyers, tired of the international community’s formulaic criticisms, say it is time to be more forthright. They call these “ethnic cleansing” zones – intended to drive off Palestinians irrespective of the provisions of international law and whether or not the Palestinians in question hold Israeli citizenship.
In the occupied South Hebron Hills, a dozen traditional communities – long ago denied by Israel the right to enjoy modern amenities such as electricity and running water – are struggling to remain in the cave-homes that sheltered them for centuries.
Israel has reclassified much of their land as a military firing range and demands that they leave for their own safety. An appeal to the Israeli courts, the latest installment in a 14-year saga to avoid eviction, is due in the next few days.
Israel’s concern for the villagers’ welfare might sound more convincing were it not encouraging Jews to live close by in illegal settlements.
Palestinians in other parts of the occupied territories coveted by Israel – such as villages next to Jerusalem and those in the fertile Jordan Valley, the territorial backbone of any future Palestinian state – are being squeezed too. Firing ranges, closed military zones and national parks are the pretexts for Israel to appropriate the farmland these rural communities need to survive.
As a result, Palestinian life is withering in the nearly two-thirds of the West Bank Israel was temporarily entrusted with – the so-called Area C – under the Oslo Accords. Endlessly harassed Palestinians have sought sanctuary in West Bank cities under Palestinian Authority control. Today the remnants in Area C, a population of about 100,000, are outnumbered three to one by Jewish settlers.
A discomfited European Union, normally mealy-mouthed on Israel’s occupation, has started to describe this as “forced transfer”. The term may sound ominous and reproving, but human rights groups say that, from a legal perspective, the terminology obscures rather than illuminates what is taking place.
“Forced transfer”, observes Suhad Bishara, a lawyer with Adalah, a legal centre for Israel’s minority of 1.5 million Palestinian citizens, usually describes uncoordinated and unofficial incidents of population displacement, often as an outcome of war.
Bishara and others argue that Israel is carrying out a systematic and intentional policy to drive Palestinians off their land to replace them with Jewish communities. This, they say, should be identified as “ethnic cleansing”, a term first given legal and moral weight in the Balkans conflict in the early 1990s.
As evidence, the lawyers point to recent developments inside Israel. The treatment of tens of thousands of Bedouin in the Negev, all of them Israeli citizens, is virtually identical to that of Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills.
The Bedouin too have faced a prolonged campaign to push them off their ancestral lands and into a series of “townships”, forcibly urbanising them in the country’s most deprived communities. In the disconcerting language of Israeli bureaucracy, the Bedouin need to be “concentrated”.
Israel has increased the pressure – as in the West Bank – by denying these Bedouin all public services, and demolishing any concrete homes they build. As with Palestinians under occupation, the Bedouin have found their communities reclassified as firing ranges, military zones or national forests.
The village of al-Araqib, near Beersheva, for example, has been demolished more than 50 times in recent years as Israel plants on its land – with a suitably sinister irony – the Ambassadors’ Forest, commemorating the help provided to Israel by the international community’s diplomatic corps.
Waiting in the wings are developers ready to build on the Bedouin’s land 10 new towns for Jews only. The rest of the territory is being eaten up by Jewish ranches, given swathes of land to create vineyards, offer camel rides and, in one case, provide a pet cemetery.
But, as in the West Bank, the Bedouin are refusing to budge, and pressing their historic land claims in the Israeli courts. Rather than wait for a verdict it may not like, the government of Benjamin Netanyahu is rewriting the Bedouin’s citizenship rights.
The Prawer plan, which passed its first reading in parliament last month, will force 40,000 Bedouin off their land – the largest expulsions inside Israel for decades. Unlike Jewish citizens, they will have no say over where they live; they will be forcibly assigned to a township.
For the first time, Israeli citizens – the Bedouin – are to be deprived of any recourse to the courts as they are harried from their homes. Instead Israel will resort to administrative procedures more familiar from the occupied territories.
The policy is clear: Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line are to be treated like sheep, fenced into ever-smaller areas, while Jews will have unrestrained access to a Greater Israel envisioned by Mr. Netanyahu.
The international community has long criticised Israel for the “discrimination” its Palestinian citizens face and for the “oppression” of Palestinians under occupation. This terminology needs overhauling too, say the human rights lawyers.
A system that treats one ethnic group as less human than another already has a legal name: it is called apartheid.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. He won this year’s Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism.
July 10, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Human rights, Israel, Jonathan Cook, Palestine, West Bank, Zionism |
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