Dear friends,
this week my good friend Bassem Tamimi was brought before Israel military occupation courts for organising non-violent demonstrations in opposition to Israel's occupation and apartheid policy and the on going stealing of his village's land by the illegal Israeli colony of Halamish.
Please find below a media release from the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee about Bassem's court appearance. The media release also includes, in full, Bassem's speech to the military court (one which he was not allowed to give in full).
The Real News have also put together an excellent news report on the struggle of An Nabi Saleh and the arrest of Bassem and Naji Tamimi.
You can keep up to date with the struggle of the people of An Nabi SAleh by visiting the Nabi Saleh Solidarity blog at: http://nabisalehsolidarity.wordpress.com/
Or you can join the Nabi Saleh Solidarity facebook page at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Nabi-Saleh-Solidarity/177013109017209
In solidarity,
Kim
***
Video story by Real News
West Bank Protest Organizer, Bassem Tamimi, to Judge: “Your Military Laws Are Non-Legit. Our Peaceful Protest is Just”
By Popular Struggle Coordination Committee
Press release: Monday, 6 June 2011
West Bank Protest Organizer, Bassem Tamimi, to Judge: “Your Military Laws Are Non-Legit. Our Peaceful Protest is Just”
Tamimi, who has been held in custody for over two months, pleaded not guilty to the charges against him and held a defiant speech explaining his motivation for organizing civil resistance to the Occupation. (See his full statement below)
After more than two months in custody, the trial of Bassem Tamimi, a 44 year-old protest organizer from the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, finally commenced yesterday. Tamimi, who is the coordinator for the Nabi Saleh popular committee, pleaded not guilty to the charges laid against him.
In a defiant speech handed before a crowded courtroom, Tamimi proudly owned up to organizing the protest in the village saying, “I organized these peaceful demonstrations to defend our land and our people.” Tamimi also challenged the legitimacy of the very system which trys him, saying that “Despite claiming to be the only democracy in the Middle East you are trying me under military laws [...] that are enacted by authorities which I haven’t elected and do not represent me.” (See Tamimi’s full statement at court bellow).
Tamimi was interrupted by the judge who warned him that it was not a political trial, and that such statements were out of place in a courtroom. Tamimi was cut short and not allowed to deliver his full statement.
After Tamimi finished reading his shortened statement, the judge announced that the hearing’s protocol has been erroneously deleted. However he refused to submit the full written statement to the stenographer. She went on to dictate a short summary in her own words for official record.
Media contact: Jonathan Pollak +972-54-632-7736
The indictment against Tamimi is based on questionable and coerced confessions of youth from the village. He is charged with’ incitement’, ‘organizing and participating in unauthorized processions’,’ solicitation to stone-throwing’, ‘failure to attend legal summons’, and a scandalous charge of ‘disruption of legal proceedings’, for allegedly giving youth advice on how to act during police interrogation in the event that they are arrested.
The transcript of Tamimi’s police interrogation further demonstrates the police and Military Prosecution’s political motivation and disregard for the suspect’s rights. During his questioning, Tamimi was accused by his interrogator of “consulting lawyers and foreigners to prepare for his interrogation”, an act that is in no way in breach of the law.
Tamimi’s full statement:
Your Honor,
I hold this speech out of belief in peace, justice, freedom, the right to live in dignity, and out of respect for free thought in the absence of Just Laws.
Every time I am called to appear before your courts, I become nervous and afraid. Eighteen years ago, my sister was killed by in a courtroom such as this, by a staff member. In my lifetime, I have been nine times imprisoned for an overall of almost 3 years, though I was never charged or convicted. During my imprisonment, I was paralyzed as a result of torture by your investigators. My wife was detained, my children were wounded, my land was stolen by settlers, and now my house is slated for demolition.
I was born at the same time as the Occupation and have been living under its inherent inhumanity, inequality, racism and lack of freedom ever since. Yet, despite all this, my belief in human values and the need for peace in this land have never been shaken. Suffering and oppression did not fill my heart with hatred for anyone, nor did they kindle feelings of revenge. To the contrary, they reinforced my belief in peace and national standing as an adequate response to the inhumanity of Occupation.
International law guarantees the right of occupied people to resist Occupation. In practicing my right, I have called for and organized peaceful popular demonstrations against the Occupation, settler attacks and the theft of more than half of the land of my village, Nabi Saleh, where the graves of my ancestors have lain since time immemorial.
I organized these peaceful demonstrations in order to defend our land and our people. I do not know if my actions violate your Occupation laws. As far as I am concerned, these laws do not apply to me and are devoid of meaning. Having been enacted by Occupation authorities, I reject them and cannot recognize their validity.
Despite claiming to be the only democracy in the Middle East you are trying me under military laws which lack any legitimacy; laws that are enacted by authorities that I have not elected and do not represent me. I am accused of organizing peaceful civil demonstrations that have no military aspects and are legal under international law.
We have the right to express our rejection of Occupation in all of its forms; to defend our freedom and dignity as a people and to seek justice and peace in our land in order to protect our children and secure their future.
The civil nature of our actions is the light that will overcome the darkness of the Occupation, bringing a dawn of freedom that will warm the cold wrists in chains, sweep despair from the soul and end decades of oppression.
These actions are what will expose the true face of the Occupation, where soldiers point their guns at a woman walking to her fields or at checkpoints; at a child who wants to drink from the sweet water of his ancestors’ fabled spring; against an old man who wants to sit in the shade of an olive tree, once mother to him, now burnt by settlers.
We have exhausted all possible actions to stop attacks by settlers, who refuse to adhere to your courts’ decisions, which time and again have confirmed that we are the owners of the land, ordering the removal of the fence erected by them.
Each time we tried to approach our land, implementing these decisions, we were attacked by settlers, who prevented us from reaching it as if it were their own.
Our demonstrations are in protest of injustice. We work hand in hand with Israeli and international activists who believe, like us, that had it not been for the Occupation, we could all live in peace on this land. I do not know which laws are upheld by generals who are inhibited by fear and insecurity, nor do I know their thoughts on the civil resistance of women, children and old men who carry hope and olive branches. But I know what justice and reason are. Land theft and tree-burning is unjust. Violent repression of our demonstrations and protests and your detention camps are not evidence of the illegality of our actions. It is unfair to be tryed under a law forced upon us. I know that I have rights and my actions are just.
The military prosecutor accuses me of inciting the protesters to throw stones at the soldiers. This is not true. What incites protesters to throw stones is the sound of bullets, the Occupation’s bulldozers as they destroy the land, the smell of teargas and the smoke coming from burnt houses. I did not incite anyone to throw stones, but I am not responsible for the security of your soldiers who invade my village and attack my people with all the weapons of death and the equipment of terror.
These demonstrations that I organize have had a positive influence over my beliefs; they allowed me to see people from the other side who believe in peace and share my struggle for freedom. Those freedom fighters have rid their conscious from the Occupation and put their hands in ours in peaceful demonstrations against our common enemy, the Occupation. They have become friends, sisters and brothers. We fight together for a better future for our children and theirs.
If released by the judge will I be convinced thereby that justice still prevails in your courts? Regardless of how just or unjust this ruling will be, and despite all your racist and inhumane practices and Occupation, we will continue to believe in peace, justice and human values. We will still raise our children to love; love the land and the people without discrimination of race, religion or ethnicity; embodying thus the message of the Messenger of Peace, Jesus Christ, who urged us to “love our enemy.” With love and justice, we make peace and build the future.
Background
Bassem Tamimi is a veteran Palestinian grassroots activist from the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, north of Ramallah. He is married to Nariman Tamimi, with whom he fathers four children – Wa’ed (14), Ahed (10), Mohammed (8) and Salam (5).
As a veteran activist, Tamimi has been arrested by the Israeli army 11 times to date and has spent roughly three years in Israeli jails, though he was never convicted of any offence. He spent roughly three years in administrative detention, with no charges brought against him. Furthermore, his attorney and he were denied access to “secret evidence” brought against him.
In 1993, Tamimi was falsely arrested on suspicion of having murdered an Israeli settler in Beit El – an allegation of which he was cleared entirely. During his weeks-long interrogation, he was severely tortured by the Israeli Shin Bet in order to draw a coerced confession from him. During his interrogation, and as a result of the torture he underwent, Tamimi collapsed and had to be evacuated to a hospital, where he laid unconscious for seven days.
As one of the organizers of the Nabi Saleh protests and coordinator of the village’s popular committee, Tamimi has been the target of harsh treatment by the Israeli army. Since demonstrations began in the village, his house has been raided and ransacked numerous times, his wife was twice arrested and two of his sons were injured; Wa’ed, 14, was hospitalized for five days when a rubber-coated bullet penetrated his leg and Mohammed, 8, was injured by a tear-gas projectile that was shot directly at him and hit him in the shoulder. Shortly after demonstrations in the village began, the Israeli Civil Administration served ten demolition orders to structures located in Area C, Tamimi’s house was one of them, despite the fact that it was built in 1965.
Legal background
On the March 24th, 2011, a massive contingent of Israeli Soldiers raided the Tamimi home at around noon, only minutes after he entered the house to prepare for a meeting with a European diplomat. He was arrested and subsequently charged.
The main evidence in Tamimi’s case is the testimony of 14 year-old Islam Dar Ayyoub, also from Nabi Saleh, who was taken from his bed at gunpoint on the night of January 23rd. In his interrogation the morning after his arrest, Islam alleged that Bassem and Naji Tamimi organized groups of youth into “brigades”, charged with different responsibilities during the demonstrations: some were allegedly in charge of stone-throwing, others of blocking roads, etc.
During a trial-within-a-trial procedure in Islam’s trial, motioning for his testimony to be ruled inadmissible, it was proven that his interrogation was fundamentally flawed and violated the rights set forth in the Israeli Youth Law in the following ways:
1.Despite being a minor, he was questioned in the morning following his arrest, having been denied sleep.
2.He was denied legal counsel, although his lawyer appeared at the police station requesting to see him.
3.He was denied his right to have a parent present during his questioning.
4.He was not informed of his right to remain silent, and was even told by his interrogators that he is “expected to tell the truth”.
5.Only one of four interrogators present was a qualified youth interrogator.
While the trial-within-a-trial procedure has not yet reached conclusion, the evidence already revealed has brought a Military Court of Appeals to revise its remand decision and order Islam’s release to house arrest.
Over the past two months, the army has arrested 24 of Nabi Saleh’s residents on protest related suspicions. Half of those arrested are minors, the youngest of whom is merely eleven.
Ever since the beginning of the village’s struggle against settler takeover of their lands in December of 2009, the army has conducted 71 protest related arrests. As the entire village numbers just over 500 residents, the number constitutes approximately 10% of its population.
Tamimi’s arrest corresponds to the systematic arrest of civil protest leaders all around the West Bank, as in the case of the villages Bil’in and Ni’ilin.
Only recently the Military Court of Appeals has aggravated the sentence of Abdallah Abu Rahmah from the village of Bilin, sending him to 16 months imprisonment on charges of incitement and organizing illegal demonstrations. Abu Rahmah was released on March 2011.
The arrest and trial of Abu Rahmah has been widely condemned by the international community, most notably by Britain and EU foreign minister, Catherin Ashton. Harsh criticism of the arrest has also been offered by leading human rights organizations in Israel and around the world, among them B’tselem, ACRI, as well as Human Rights Watch, which declared Abu Rahmah’s trial unfair, and Amnesty International, which declared Abu Rahmah a prisoner of conscience.
Showing posts with label illegal settlements. Show all posts
Showing posts with label illegal settlements. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Israel prepares for more West Bank ethnic cleansing
Dear friends,
I am a little late in posting this up, but please find below my article from the May Direct Action on Israel's preparation for further ethnic cleansing of the Occupied West Bank.
In solidarity,
Kim
***
Home » Issue 22: May 2010
Israel prepares for more West Bank ethnic cleansing
By Kim Bullimore
A new Israeli military order will enable the deportation of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the occupied West Bank or their imprisonment for up to seven years. Military order No. 1650, which was enacted on April 13, amends a 1969 military order known as the Order Regarding Prevention of Infiltration. This defined an “infiltrator” as anyone entering Israel from an “enemy state”, such as Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon or Syria.
The amended order defines an “infiltrator” as “a person who entered the area unlawfully ... or a person who is present in the area and does not lawfully hold a permit”. “Infiltrators” can either be deported from the West Bank after 72 hours or jailed for seven years. In addition, “infiltrators” who may have legally entered the area but did not have an approved “permit” from the Israeli military commander can still be jailed: “[W]here an infiltrator has proven his entry into the area was lawful — he shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of three years”.
Israeli Occupation Force's new "infiltrators" order
According to the Gisha Legal Centre for Freedom of Movement, one of 10 Israeli human rights organisatios that are challenging the new order, it creates a presumption that every person is an “infiltrator” unless he or she can prove that both his or her entrance to and presence in the West Bank were approved by the military commander or relevant Israeli authorities. A briefing paper issued by Gisha says the amended order “could seemingly apply to everyone: bearers of Palestinian identity cards, residents of east Jerusalem, Israeli citizens and foreigners”. However, Gisha notes that the order most likely will apply to three main groups: Palestinian residents who hold Palestinian ID cards with Gaza addresses; persons “without status” (mainly spouses of Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank) and non-Israeli foreign nationals working or living there.
Tens of thousands threatened
According to the Palestinian Office of Civilian Affairs in Ramallah, there are approximately 25,000 people with registered Gaza addresses living in the West Bank. In 2003, Israel began to prohibit Palestinians with Gaza addresses on their IDs from being in the occupied West Bank, even if they had been residents there for many years. It also began arresting Palestinians who had a Gaza address and removing them to Gaza against their will.
Gisha noted that Israel’s removals policy contradicts its obligations under the 1993 Oslo Accords, which recognised the Gaza Strip and the West Bank as a “single territorial unit”, where Palestinians listed in the Israeli-controlled Palestinian Population Registry may lawfully reside. Gisha’s executive director, Sari Bashi, told Aljazeera news agency on April 13 that the order was “part of a series of steps implemented by Israel to empty the West Bank of Palestinians, especially by removing them to Gaza … There are tens of thousands of people at risk, who pose no security threat whatsoever”, but the new order will “mak[e] it criminal for them to be present in their own home”.
A spokesperson for the Israeli government, Mark Regev, tried to present the amended military order as protecting Palestinian rights. Regev told Aljazeera on April 13: “What we’ve done here is we’ve strengthened the rights of people who face such deportation by creating ... an independent judicial oversight mechanism, which makes sure there are checks and balances and that the legal rights of people are protected”. Regev went on to say that, previously, people served with deportation orders could be deported the same day, but under the amended order they had a 72-hour appeal period.
Israeli human rights organisations have disputed Regev’s claims. According to an April 11 media release by the organisations challenging the order, there is a distinct “possibility that some of the deportees will not be given an opportunity for a hearing before being removed from the West Bank as, according to the orders, the deportation may be executed within 72 hours whereas it is possible to delay bringing a person before an appeals committee for up to eight days”.
History of ‘exclusivity’
The new order is the latest step in Israel’s attempt to ethnically cleanse the region of its indigenous population, the Palestinian people. According to the UN, the forcible transfer of a people so as to render an area “ethnically homogeneous” is illegal and constitutes “ethnic cleansing”. Under international law, ethnic cleansing is designated a crime against humanity.
Israeli historian Ilan Pappe notes in his 2006 book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine that the drive for “Jewish exclusivity” in Palestine has been a central tenet of the Zionism. Now known as “transfer” in Zionist terminology, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine was first advocated by the founder of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl. In 1895, Herzl wrote in his diary: “We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our own.”
Israeli Zionist historian Benny Morris notes in his 2004 book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited that Herzl and other Zionist leaders of his time did not discuss or write about “transfer” publicly. By 1936, however, Zionists leaders had become more publicly outspoken about the “transfer” or ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Speaking to the British Peel Commission in 1937, David Ben Gurion, head of the Jewish Agency and the Israeli state’s first prime minister, argued that Jordan (then known as Transjordan) should be opened up for the “transfer” of Palestinians in order to make way for Jewish settlement in Palestine. At the 20th Zionist Congress in 1937, he advocated the “transfer” of Palestinians from the Jezreel Valley (near Haifa), the Sharon Coastal Plains and other areas of Palestine, saying “Transfer is what will make possible a comprehensive settlement program”.
David Ben Gurion
In 1940, Yossef Weitz, the head of the “settlement department” of the Jewish National Fund in Palestine, wrote in his diary, which was published in 1965, that the “transfer” of the indigenous Palestinian population “does not serve only one aim — to reduce the Arab population — it also serves a second purpose by no means less important, which is: to evict land now cultivated by the Arabs and to free it for Jewish settlement”. According to Weitz, “the only solution is to transfer the Arabs from here to neighbouring countries. Not a single village or a single tribe must be let off.”
Plan Dalet
In 1948, in the months before the UN partition plan for Palestine was to be implemented, Plan Dalet was drawn up by Ben-Gurion and other Zionist leaders. According to Ilan Pappe, Plan Dalet was the “blueprint for ethnic cleansing”. It resulted in more than 500 Palestinian towns and villages being either destroyed or depopulated, in what became known to the Palestinian people as al Nakba (the Catastrophe). More than 1 million Palestinians were forced to flee their homes, with at least 750,000 being forcibly expelled to other countries (such as Lebanon and Jordan), while another 150,000 became internal refugees inside the borders of the newly formed Israeli state.
In a 2004 interview with Haaretz newspaper, Morris noted: “A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population. It was necessary to cleanse the hinterland and cleanse the border areas and cleanse the main roads. It was necessary to cleanse the villages from which our convoys and our settlements were fired on.”
In 1954, Israel enacted the Prevention of Infiltration Law, in order to prevent the Palestinian refugees in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria from re-entering Israel. The law allowed their re-expulsion, as well as the expulsion of the 150,000 internally displaced Palestinian refugees if they attempted to return to their villages or towns. The 1969 Order Regarding Prevention of Infiltration was an extension of the 1954 law. It was designed to prevent the return of Palestinians who had fled the West Bank at the time of its June 1967 conquest by Israel.
The new military order is a further indication that the Israeli rulers have no real intention of agreeing to an independent Palestinian state, that their ultimate objective remains Zionist control over the whole of historic Palestine, with the indigenous Palestinian population reduced to living in a series of isolated cantons surrounded by large-scale Israeli settlements and under continued Israeli military control.
I am a little late in posting this up, but please find below my article from the May Direct Action on Israel's preparation for further ethnic cleansing of the Occupied West Bank.
In solidarity,
Kim
***
Home » Issue 22: May 2010
Israel prepares for more West Bank ethnic cleansing
By Kim Bullimore
A new Israeli military order will enable the deportation of tens of thousands of Palestinians from the occupied West Bank or their imprisonment for up to seven years. Military order No. 1650, which was enacted on April 13, amends a 1969 military order known as the Order Regarding Prevention of Infiltration. This defined an “infiltrator” as anyone entering Israel from an “enemy state”, such as Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon or Syria.
The amended order defines an “infiltrator” as “a person who entered the area unlawfully ... or a person who is present in the area and does not lawfully hold a permit”. “Infiltrators” can either be deported from the West Bank after 72 hours or jailed for seven years. In addition, “infiltrators” who may have legally entered the area but did not have an approved “permit” from the Israeli military commander can still be jailed: “[W]here an infiltrator has proven his entry into the area was lawful — he shall be sentenced to a term of imprisonment of three years”.
Israeli Occupation Force's new "infiltrators" order
According to the Gisha Legal Centre for Freedom of Movement, one of 10 Israeli human rights organisatios that are challenging the new order, it creates a presumption that every person is an “infiltrator” unless he or she can prove that both his or her entrance to and presence in the West Bank were approved by the military commander or relevant Israeli authorities. A briefing paper issued by Gisha says the amended order “could seemingly apply to everyone: bearers of Palestinian identity cards, residents of east Jerusalem, Israeli citizens and foreigners”. However, Gisha notes that the order most likely will apply to three main groups: Palestinian residents who hold Palestinian ID cards with Gaza addresses; persons “without status” (mainly spouses of Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank) and non-Israeli foreign nationals working or living there.
Tens of thousands threatened
According to the Palestinian Office of Civilian Affairs in Ramallah, there are approximately 25,000 people with registered Gaza addresses living in the West Bank. In 2003, Israel began to prohibit Palestinians with Gaza addresses on their IDs from being in the occupied West Bank, even if they had been residents there for many years. It also began arresting Palestinians who had a Gaza address and removing them to Gaza against their will.
Gisha noted that Israel’s removals policy contradicts its obligations under the 1993 Oslo Accords, which recognised the Gaza Strip and the West Bank as a “single territorial unit”, where Palestinians listed in the Israeli-controlled Palestinian Population Registry may lawfully reside. Gisha’s executive director, Sari Bashi, told Aljazeera news agency on April 13 that the order was “part of a series of steps implemented by Israel to empty the West Bank of Palestinians, especially by removing them to Gaza … There are tens of thousands of people at risk, who pose no security threat whatsoever”, but the new order will “mak[e] it criminal for them to be present in their own home”.
A spokesperson for the Israeli government, Mark Regev, tried to present the amended military order as protecting Palestinian rights. Regev told Aljazeera on April 13: “What we’ve done here is we’ve strengthened the rights of people who face such deportation by creating ... an independent judicial oversight mechanism, which makes sure there are checks and balances and that the legal rights of people are protected”. Regev went on to say that, previously, people served with deportation orders could be deported the same day, but under the amended order they had a 72-hour appeal period.
Israeli human rights organisations have disputed Regev’s claims. According to an April 11 media release by the organisations challenging the order, there is a distinct “possibility that some of the deportees will not be given an opportunity for a hearing before being removed from the West Bank as, according to the orders, the deportation may be executed within 72 hours whereas it is possible to delay bringing a person before an appeals committee for up to eight days”.
History of ‘exclusivity’
The new order is the latest step in Israel’s attempt to ethnically cleanse the region of its indigenous population, the Palestinian people. According to the UN, the forcible transfer of a people so as to render an area “ethnically homogeneous” is illegal and constitutes “ethnic cleansing”. Under international law, ethnic cleansing is designated a crime against humanity.
Israeli historian Ilan Pappe notes in his 2006 book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine that the drive for “Jewish exclusivity” in Palestine has been a central tenet of the Zionism. Now known as “transfer” in Zionist terminology, the ethnic cleansing of Palestine was first advocated by the founder of political Zionism, Theodor Herzl. In 1895, Herzl wrote in his diary: “We shall try to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it employment in our own.”
Israeli Zionist historian Benny Morris notes in his 2004 book The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited that Herzl and other Zionist leaders of his time did not discuss or write about “transfer” publicly. By 1936, however, Zionists leaders had become more publicly outspoken about the “transfer” or ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Speaking to the British Peel Commission in 1937, David Ben Gurion, head of the Jewish Agency and the Israeli state’s first prime minister, argued that Jordan (then known as Transjordan) should be opened up for the “transfer” of Palestinians in order to make way for Jewish settlement in Palestine. At the 20th Zionist Congress in 1937, he advocated the “transfer” of Palestinians from the Jezreel Valley (near Haifa), the Sharon Coastal Plains and other areas of Palestine, saying “Transfer is what will make possible a comprehensive settlement program”.
David Ben Gurion
In 1940, Yossef Weitz, the head of the “settlement department” of the Jewish National Fund in Palestine, wrote in his diary, which was published in 1965, that the “transfer” of the indigenous Palestinian population “does not serve only one aim — to reduce the Arab population — it also serves a second purpose by no means less important, which is: to evict land now cultivated by the Arabs and to free it for Jewish settlement”. According to Weitz, “the only solution is to transfer the Arabs from here to neighbouring countries. Not a single village or a single tribe must be let off.”
Plan Dalet
In 1948, in the months before the UN partition plan for Palestine was to be implemented, Plan Dalet was drawn up by Ben-Gurion and other Zionist leaders. According to Ilan Pappe, Plan Dalet was the “blueprint for ethnic cleansing”. It resulted in more than 500 Palestinian towns and villages being either destroyed or depopulated, in what became known to the Palestinian people as al Nakba (the Catastrophe). More than 1 million Palestinians were forced to flee their homes, with at least 750,000 being forcibly expelled to other countries (such as Lebanon and Jordan), while another 150,000 became internal refugees inside the borders of the newly formed Israeli state.
In a 2004 interview with Haaretz newspaper, Morris noted: “A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population. It was necessary to cleanse the hinterland and cleanse the border areas and cleanse the main roads. It was necessary to cleanse the villages from which our convoys and our settlements were fired on.”
In 1954, Israel enacted the Prevention of Infiltration Law, in order to prevent the Palestinian refugees in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria from re-entering Israel. The law allowed their re-expulsion, as well as the expulsion of the 150,000 internally displaced Palestinian refugees if they attempted to return to their villages or towns. The 1969 Order Regarding Prevention of Infiltration was an extension of the 1954 law. It was designed to prevent the return of Palestinians who had fled the West Bank at the time of its June 1967 conquest by Israel.
The new military order is a further indication that the Israeli rulers have no real intention of agreeing to an independent Palestinian state, that their ultimate objective remains Zionist control over the whole of historic Palestine, with the indigenous Palestinian population reduced to living in a series of isolated cantons surrounded by large-scale Israeli settlements and under continued Israeli military control.
Friday, April 2, 2010
Israel continues illegal settlement building
Dear friends,
I have been a little slow in posting up my article from the March 2010 issue of Direct Action, due to be flat out since I returned from the Occupied West Bank.
The article looks at the issue of Israel's illegal settlement building, the Israel - Palestinian Authority "proximity talks" and Salam Fayyad's economic policies.
in solidarity, Kim
****
Direct Action Issue 20: March 2010
Israel continues illegal settlement building
By Kim Bullimore
http://directaction.org.au/issue20/israel_continues_illegal_settlement_building
Last November, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that his government would be implementing a 10 month “settlement freeze” as a supposed concession to calls by US President Barack Obama for a halt to the construction of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) so as to clear the way for a resumption of “peace” talks with the Palestinian Authority.
Construction of such settlements are illegal under international law because they violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, on protection of civilians in time of war. That document, adopted in 1949, specifies that the “Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies”. In May 28, 2009, Obama told Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas that his administration would press Israel to meet its obligations under a 2003 “road map for peace” endorsed by the UN, the US, the European Union and Russia, which included stopping the construction of new settlements and the expansion of existing settlements, which by that time housed close to 500,000 Israeli citizens in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.
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Non-violent demonstration by the villagers of An Nabi Saleh (Occupied West Bank) about creeping settlement expansion and stealing of their lands. The illegal colony of Halamish is in the background.
According to a Settlement Watch report published in February 2010 by the Israeli Peace Now group there have been repeated violations of the supposed settlement freeze announced by Netanyahi. The report noted that in response to a parliamentary question, “Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai admitted that 29 settlements [had] breached the settlement freeze order”. Peace Now noted that it had recorded at least another five settlements carrying out construction work. Peace Now, as well as international human rights organisations, such as the International Women’s Peace Service, which is located in the OPT, also noted that much of the illegal settlement activity was carried out under the cover of darkness.
Veteran Israeli journalist, Akiva Eldar, similarly noted his January 26 Tel Aviv Haaretz column that settlement construction had proceeded with little hindrance since Netanyahu announced the freeze. According to Eldar, “Two months after the government decision on November 26 to freeze construction in Jewish settlements for 10 months, you’d have to be blind, an idiot, or a member of the Yesha Council of settlements to use the term ‘freeze’ to describe the real estate situation in Judea and Samaria” (the Zionists’ name for the West Bank). Eldar went onto note that two days earlier, Netanyahu had planted a tree in the illegal Israeli settler-colony of Gush Etzion and promised to plant more trees in the illegal Ariel settlement block. Eldar pointed out that “in the case of Ariel, Netanyahu kept his word even before he gave it; as he was speaking yellow bulldozers were feverishly working on a new site for Ariel’s industrial zone”.
PA backdown imminent
Despite evidence that Israel has failed to halt settlement construction, the PA President Abbas and his unelected prime minister, Salam Fayyad, have made a number of public statements in recent weeks that indicate they are willing to succumb to pressure from Washington to resume the failed “peace” negotiations. On February 8, Haaretz reported that reliable sources in the PA had told it that Abbas had agreed to start “proximity” talks with Israel by the end of February. Such talks would mean that Israeli and Palestinian official negotiators would not meet face to face, but instead would engage in indirect talks with US officials acting as go-betweens.
Despite denials by Fatah and PA representatives that Abbas is prepared to renege on his previous stance that the PA would not engage with Israel until Netanyahu fully enacted a settlement freeze, Abbas has made a number of statements that indicate that he is prepared to return to the negotiating table without any preconditions. Thus, on February 9, while in Toyko, Abbas told the international news media that the “Palestinian side has not set any conditions in particular”, when he asked under what conditions he would accept the US proposal for “proximity” talks with Israel.
Appointed Palestinian Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad and Fatah leader, Mahmoud Abbas
The failure of the PA to set any conditions on a return to negotiations, either direct or indirect, was also highlighted the previous day when Abbas’ unelected PA foreign minister, Riyad al Malki, made no mention of conditions when discussing the possibility of proximity talks. Instead, he stated that such talks should simply focus on border issues and be limited to a four-month framework. In its February 11-17 edition, the Egyptian weekly, Al Ahram, argued that “Abbas wants to use the ‘indirect talks’ in order to be able to claim that he is still clinging to his earlier stance, which precludes any resumption of talks in the absence of a definitive freeze in Jewish settlement expansion”.
Al Ahram went on to correctly note that “Abbas’s willingness to resume the talks with Israel as Israel expands the pace of settlement construction in East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank constitutes a clear retreat and a de facto admission of weakness and defeat” by the PA. According to Ahmed Hamdan, an independent Palestinian political commentator quoted in the Al Ahram article, “This serious retreat sends a dangerous message to the Americans and the Zionists which states that the Palestinian side can be bullied into making more and more concessions on the fundamental issues, and that when the Palestinians say ‘no’ it doesn’t mean that this is their final position.” This message was being heard loud and clear by the Netanyahu government. In an interview with Haaretz, published on February 22, Netanyahu told journalist Ari Shavit that he believed that the Palestinians “may be backing down” as there was “signs that negotiations with them will begin in the foreseeable future”.
Fayyad’s ‘economic peace’ policies
Abbas’ imminent back down and return to the failed peace negotiations will do little to advance the Palestinian struggle for national sovereignty. Instead his retreat, along with the economic policies currently being pushed by the Fayyad-led PA, will simply result in a deepening entrenchment of Israel’s illegal occupation in the West Bank. With the endorsement of Israel, the US and the EU, over the past year Fayyad has sought to implement a policy that reflects the call by Netanyahu in June 2009 to create an “economic peace”, while allowing Israel’s colonisation of Palestinian lands to continue unabated.
In a February 10 article on the Electronic Intifada website, Ziyaad Lunat noted that Fayyad’s economic policies were resulting in “a division being fostered between the urban and the rural populations. The Palestinians living in the 60 percent of the West Bank officially controlled by Israel, also known as Area C, are continuously dispossessed of their land and gradually being pushed to PA-controlled enclaves. The almost exclusive focus of Fayyad’s plan on the service sector, while ignoring the farming community, will inadvertently lead to acceleration of desertification of the rural areas as the young are pulled to new jobs in the city. The Bantustanization process is accelerating with the construction of Israel’s apartheid wall. The rural population, represented by the popular committees, is now leading resistance against Israel’s encroachment. They have been left without effective political representation, finding themselves in the front line of Israel’s annexationist policies. These two dichotomous realities, the urban and the rural, have left certain sectors of the population in urban centers like Ramallah to be completely oblivious to these struggles only a few miles away.”
Furthermore, the Abbas-Fayyad-led PA security forces are assisting tighter control by Israel of the West Bank. Rather than opposing Israel’s occupation, the primary role of the PA security forces today is ensure that any resistance to Israel’s occupation is squashed. In a February 13 article in Haaretz, Professor Sari Nusseibeh, president of Jerusalem’s Al Quds University, contradicted the developing PA-Israeli-US promoted myth that Fayyad is a Palestinian “Ben Gurion”. Instead, Nusseibeh noted that Fayyad’s policies have done little to build an independent Palestinian state but also done little to challenge Israel’s control of the occupied West Bank. Nusseibeh argued that “the PA should shut its offices and demand Israel annex the territories and give civil rights to the Palestinians”.
PA Security Forces try to break up non-violent Palestinian demonsration in Occupied Bethlehem
Having successfully used the PA and its security forces to disarm and squash the Palestinian armed resistance in the West Bank, Israel is now stepping up its attacks on the Palestinian non-violent resistance, arresting many of its leaders in recent months. Those arrested include Jamal Juma from the Palestinian Stop the Wall campaign, Abdullah Abu Rahme, one of the leaders of the Bil’in non-violent popular struggle, as well as other leaders of the Bil’in struggle, including Mohammed Khatib and Adeb Abu Rahme. Also arrested have been leaders of the non-violent struggle in Nablus and Mohammad Othman, a leader of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli apartheid campaign.
In recent weeks, Israel has also staged three illegal raids into Ramallah, arresting three international activists, including Australian Bridget Chappell, who have been working with the International Solidarity Movement. In Occupied East Jerusalem, Israeli anti-occupation activists campaigning in solidarity with Palestinians who have been evicted from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood to make way for illegal Israel settlers, have also faced mass arrest at the weekly demonstrations in the neighbourhood.
Detained International Solidarity Movement activists:
Ari Jove Marti (from Spain) and Bridget Chappell (from Australia)
I have been a little slow in posting up my article from the March 2010 issue of Direct Action, due to be flat out since I returned from the Occupied West Bank.
The article looks at the issue of Israel's illegal settlement building, the Israel - Palestinian Authority "proximity talks" and Salam Fayyad's economic policies.
in solidarity, Kim
****
Direct Action Issue 20: March 2010
Israel continues illegal settlement building
By Kim Bullimore
http://directaction.org.au/issue20/israel_continues_illegal_settlement_building
Last November, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that his government would be implementing a 10 month “settlement freeze” as a supposed concession to calls by US President Barack Obama for a halt to the construction of Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) so as to clear the way for a resumption of “peace” talks with the Palestinian Authority.
Construction of such settlements are illegal under international law because they violate the Fourth Geneva Convention, on protection of civilians in time of war. That document, adopted in 1949, specifies that the “Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies”. In May 28, 2009, Obama told Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas that his administration would press Israel to meet its obligations under a 2003 “road map for peace” endorsed by the UN, the US, the European Union and Russia, which included stopping the construction of new settlements and the expansion of existing settlements, which by that time housed close to 500,000 Israeli citizens in the West Bank and occupied East Jerusalem.
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Non-violent demonstration by the villagers of An Nabi Saleh (Occupied West Bank) about creeping settlement expansion and stealing of their lands. The illegal colony of Halamish is in the background.
According to a Settlement Watch report published in February 2010 by the Israeli Peace Now group there have been repeated violations of the supposed settlement freeze announced by Netanyahi. The report noted that in response to a parliamentary question, “Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai admitted that 29 settlements [had] breached the settlement freeze order”. Peace Now noted that it had recorded at least another five settlements carrying out construction work. Peace Now, as well as international human rights organisations, such as the International Women’s Peace Service, which is located in the OPT, also noted that much of the illegal settlement activity was carried out under the cover of darkness.
Veteran Israeli journalist, Akiva Eldar, similarly noted his January 26 Tel Aviv Haaretz column that settlement construction had proceeded with little hindrance since Netanyahu announced the freeze. According to Eldar, “Two months after the government decision on November 26 to freeze construction in Jewish settlements for 10 months, you’d have to be blind, an idiot, or a member of the Yesha Council of settlements to use the term ‘freeze’ to describe the real estate situation in Judea and Samaria” (the Zionists’ name for the West Bank). Eldar went onto note that two days earlier, Netanyahu had planted a tree in the illegal Israeli settler-colony of Gush Etzion and promised to plant more trees in the illegal Ariel settlement block. Eldar pointed out that “in the case of Ariel, Netanyahu kept his word even before he gave it; as he was speaking yellow bulldozers were feverishly working on a new site for Ariel’s industrial zone”.
PA backdown imminent
Despite evidence that Israel has failed to halt settlement construction, the PA President Abbas and his unelected prime minister, Salam Fayyad, have made a number of public statements in recent weeks that indicate they are willing to succumb to pressure from Washington to resume the failed “peace” negotiations. On February 8, Haaretz reported that reliable sources in the PA had told it that Abbas had agreed to start “proximity” talks with Israel by the end of February. Such talks would mean that Israeli and Palestinian official negotiators would not meet face to face, but instead would engage in indirect talks with US officials acting as go-betweens.
Despite denials by Fatah and PA representatives that Abbas is prepared to renege on his previous stance that the PA would not engage with Israel until Netanyahu fully enacted a settlement freeze, Abbas has made a number of statements that indicate that he is prepared to return to the negotiating table without any preconditions. Thus, on February 9, while in Toyko, Abbas told the international news media that the “Palestinian side has not set any conditions in particular”, when he asked under what conditions he would accept the US proposal for “proximity” talks with Israel.
Appointed Palestinian Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad and Fatah leader, Mahmoud Abbas
The failure of the PA to set any conditions on a return to negotiations, either direct or indirect, was also highlighted the previous day when Abbas’ unelected PA foreign minister, Riyad al Malki, made no mention of conditions when discussing the possibility of proximity talks. Instead, he stated that such talks should simply focus on border issues and be limited to a four-month framework. In its February 11-17 edition, the Egyptian weekly, Al Ahram, argued that “Abbas wants to use the ‘indirect talks’ in order to be able to claim that he is still clinging to his earlier stance, which precludes any resumption of talks in the absence of a definitive freeze in Jewish settlement expansion”.
Al Ahram went on to correctly note that “Abbas’s willingness to resume the talks with Israel as Israel expands the pace of settlement construction in East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank constitutes a clear retreat and a de facto admission of weakness and defeat” by the PA. According to Ahmed Hamdan, an independent Palestinian political commentator quoted in the Al Ahram article, “This serious retreat sends a dangerous message to the Americans and the Zionists which states that the Palestinian side can be bullied into making more and more concessions on the fundamental issues, and that when the Palestinians say ‘no’ it doesn’t mean that this is their final position.” This message was being heard loud and clear by the Netanyahu government. In an interview with Haaretz, published on February 22, Netanyahu told journalist Ari Shavit that he believed that the Palestinians “may be backing down” as there was “signs that negotiations with them will begin in the foreseeable future”.
Fayyad’s ‘economic peace’ policies
Abbas’ imminent back down and return to the failed peace negotiations will do little to advance the Palestinian struggle for national sovereignty. Instead his retreat, along with the economic policies currently being pushed by the Fayyad-led PA, will simply result in a deepening entrenchment of Israel’s illegal occupation in the West Bank. With the endorsement of Israel, the US and the EU, over the past year Fayyad has sought to implement a policy that reflects the call by Netanyahu in June 2009 to create an “economic peace”, while allowing Israel’s colonisation of Palestinian lands to continue unabated.
In a February 10 article on the Electronic Intifada website, Ziyaad Lunat noted that Fayyad’s economic policies were resulting in “a division being fostered between the urban and the rural populations. The Palestinians living in the 60 percent of the West Bank officially controlled by Israel, also known as Area C, are continuously dispossessed of their land and gradually being pushed to PA-controlled enclaves. The almost exclusive focus of Fayyad’s plan on the service sector, while ignoring the farming community, will inadvertently lead to acceleration of desertification of the rural areas as the young are pulled to new jobs in the city. The Bantustanization process is accelerating with the construction of Israel’s apartheid wall. The rural population, represented by the popular committees, is now leading resistance against Israel’s encroachment. They have been left without effective political representation, finding themselves in the front line of Israel’s annexationist policies. These two dichotomous realities, the urban and the rural, have left certain sectors of the population in urban centers like Ramallah to be completely oblivious to these struggles only a few miles away.”
Furthermore, the Abbas-Fayyad-led PA security forces are assisting tighter control by Israel of the West Bank. Rather than opposing Israel’s occupation, the primary role of the PA security forces today is ensure that any resistance to Israel’s occupation is squashed. In a February 13 article in Haaretz, Professor Sari Nusseibeh, president of Jerusalem’s Al Quds University, contradicted the developing PA-Israeli-US promoted myth that Fayyad is a Palestinian “Ben Gurion”. Instead, Nusseibeh noted that Fayyad’s policies have done little to build an independent Palestinian state but also done little to challenge Israel’s control of the occupied West Bank. Nusseibeh argued that “the PA should shut its offices and demand Israel annex the territories and give civil rights to the Palestinians”.
PA Security Forces try to break up non-violent Palestinian demonsration in Occupied Bethlehem
Having successfully used the PA and its security forces to disarm and squash the Palestinian armed resistance in the West Bank, Israel is now stepping up its attacks on the Palestinian non-violent resistance, arresting many of its leaders in recent months. Those arrested include Jamal Juma from the Palestinian Stop the Wall campaign, Abdullah Abu Rahme, one of the leaders of the Bil’in non-violent popular struggle, as well as other leaders of the Bil’in struggle, including Mohammed Khatib and Adeb Abu Rahme. Also arrested have been leaders of the non-violent struggle in Nablus and Mohammad Othman, a leader of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli apartheid campaign.
In recent weeks, Israel has also staged three illegal raids into Ramallah, arresting three international activists, including Australian Bridget Chappell, who have been working with the International Solidarity Movement. In Occupied East Jerusalem, Israeli anti-occupation activists campaigning in solidarity with Palestinians who have been evicted from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood to make way for illegal Israel settlers, have also faced mass arrest at the weekly demonstrations in the neighbourhood.
Detained International Solidarity Movement activists:
Ari Jove Marti (from Spain) and Bridget Chappell (from Australia)
Saturday, October 17, 2009
Obama backs Netanyahu's position on 'peace negotiations'
By Kim Bullimore
Direct Action, Issue 16 October 2009
www.directaction.org.au
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed victory in the wake of US President Barak Obama’s first speech to the United Nations General Assembly and the September 22 meeting in New York between Netanyahu, Obama and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. In his September 23 UN speech, Obama confirmed that Washington had retreated on its previous demand that Israel halt building new illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, stating that “the time has come to re-launch [peace] negotiations — without preconditions”.
“I’m pleased that President Obama accepted my request that there should be no preconditions”, Netanyahu told Israel Radio in a telephone interview later that same day. He also said: “I commend this important speech of Obama’s and his call to renew the peace process without preconditions. I commend his unequivocal support of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.”
Obama’s accommodation to Netanyahu’s position, however, was not a surprise, as the previous day Obama’s special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, revealed that Washington was about to back down on the “demand” that Israel temporarily freeze settlement building. Mitchell told Reuters news agency: “Neither the president nor the Secretary [of State, Hillary Clinton] nor I have ever said of any one issue ... that it is a precondition to negotiation.” He went onto say, “we do not believe in preconditions. We do not impose them and we urge others not to impose preconditions.”
While both Mitchell and Obama claimed that there should be “no pre-conditions” on peace negotiations, both made it clear that this only applied to Israel and that the Palestinians were expected to meet a number of “pre-conditions”, including recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state”, thus negating the right of Palestinian refugees driven into exile by the Zionists in 1948 to return to their homeland, and ending armed resistance to Israel’s military occupation of the Palestinian territories seized in June 1967.
Despite claims by the Abbas and his team of negotiators that Obama had recognised the right of Palestinian state to exist in the territory seized in 1967, Obama did no such thing. Instead, while he noted that Palestinians needed a contiguous territory and that the 1967 occupation must end, he made no call for removal of all of the Israeli settlements from the occupied West Bank and East Jersusalem, nor for the dismantling of Israel’s apartheid wall. As a result, Obama has given Washington’s stamp of approval for Israel to retain some, if not all, of Israel’s illegal settlement infrastructure built on stolen Palestinian land. Ofir Akunis, an MP from Netanyahu’s Likud party told the September 24 Tel Aviv Haaretz daily that this means “construction in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] will continue alongside the diplomatic talks” with the Palestinian Authority.
With Obama’s tacit blessing, Israel will continue to create “facts on the ground”, ensuring that more and more Palestinian land is illegally annexed to Israel. Since 1993, when Israel agreed to begin peace negotiations with the Palestinians, Israel’s continued settlement construction in the occupied West Bank has resulted in the illegal Israeli settler population doubling to approximately 300,000, while the number of settlers living in occupied East Jerusalem is estimated to be around 180,000.
Prior to Obama’s UN speech, there had been much speculation in the corporate media that Obama would “pressure” Israel to stop settlement activity in order to clear the way for a resumption of peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, which has been under intense pressure from the Palestinian masses not to do so until this activity was halted. According to Paul Woodward, the editor of the well-respected web journal, War in Context, Obama’s UN speech revealed “that in the end, it turned out that ‘pressure’ from the Obama Administration amounts to strong words with no visible force behind them”. Woodward went onto point out that this “pressure” comes “in the form of sternness — no doubt quite effective when Obama insists to [his daughters] Malia and Natasha that it’s bedtime, but not very impressive when it’s directed at the likes of Benjamin Netanyahu”.
While Netanyahu has emerged in a much stronger position, the New York “tripartite summit” has resulted in the wholesale undermining of Abbas’ position. Previously Abbas had refused to meet with Netanyahu or restart negotiations without a clear commitment from Israel to halt settlement activity. Abbas has sought to salvage his reputation by claiming he was forced into the meeting by Obama, with one of his staffers telling the September 24 Jerusalem Post, Abbas “couldn’t resist the heavy pressure the Americans put on him. In fact, he went to the meeting with Netanyahu against his will.”
Abbas’ capitulation, however, reflects the fundamental flaw in the Fatah leadership’s whole strategy for advancing the Palestinian national liberation cause — reliance on getting Washington to pressure Israel to accede to Palestinian demands, rather than exerting pressure on the Israel rulers by mobilising the Palestinian masses to resist Israel’s illegal occupation. “In all honesty, we want to protect our relations with President Obama under any conditions”, Abbas told the London-based al-Hayat newspaper after the New York summit. “We don’t want to come out with a crisis with the Americans, or create a crisis.”
The assumption behind Abbas’ strategy is that Washington is a neutral mediator, when in reality it is Israel’s prime backer. And while the Israeli rulers pay lip-service to the idea of the Palestinians eventually having an independent state, their real goal, which they have continuously worked at since Israel was set up in 1948, is to assert Israeli control over the entirety of Palestine.
Since having colluded with Washington in the toppling of the popularly elected Hamas-led PA government, Abbas has increasingly lost credibility among the Palestinian masses as an effective leader of their struggle for their national rights. His capitulation on the conditions for restarting negotiations with Israel will only further erode his standing. Hamas denounced Abbas for attending the New York summit, with Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri saying, “the only person to benefit from the New York meeting is Netanyahu because it will improve his image and give him cover to continue building settlements”.
Direct Action, Issue 16 October 2009
www.directaction.org.au
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed victory in the wake of US President Barak Obama’s first speech to the United Nations General Assembly and the September 22 meeting in New York between Netanyahu, Obama and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. In his September 23 UN speech, Obama confirmed that Washington had retreated on its previous demand that Israel halt building new illegal settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, stating that “the time has come to re-launch [peace] negotiations — without preconditions”.
“I’m pleased that President Obama accepted my request that there should be no preconditions”, Netanyahu told Israel Radio in a telephone interview later that same day. He also said: “I commend this important speech of Obama’s and his call to renew the peace process without preconditions. I commend his unequivocal support of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.”
Obama’s accommodation to Netanyahu’s position, however, was not a surprise, as the previous day Obama’s special envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, revealed that Washington was about to back down on the “demand” that Israel temporarily freeze settlement building. Mitchell told Reuters news agency: “Neither the president nor the Secretary [of State, Hillary Clinton] nor I have ever said of any one issue ... that it is a precondition to negotiation.” He went onto say, “we do not believe in preconditions. We do not impose them and we urge others not to impose preconditions.”
While both Mitchell and Obama claimed that there should be “no pre-conditions” on peace negotiations, both made it clear that this only applied to Israel and that the Palestinians were expected to meet a number of “pre-conditions”, including recognition of Israel as a “Jewish state”, thus negating the right of Palestinian refugees driven into exile by the Zionists in 1948 to return to their homeland, and ending armed resistance to Israel’s military occupation of the Palestinian territories seized in June 1967.
Despite claims by the Abbas and his team of negotiators that Obama had recognised the right of Palestinian state to exist in the territory seized in 1967, Obama did no such thing. Instead, while he noted that Palestinians needed a contiguous territory and that the 1967 occupation must end, he made no call for removal of all of the Israeli settlements from the occupied West Bank and East Jersusalem, nor for the dismantling of Israel’s apartheid wall. As a result, Obama has given Washington’s stamp of approval for Israel to retain some, if not all, of Israel’s illegal settlement infrastructure built on stolen Palestinian land. Ofir Akunis, an MP from Netanyahu’s Likud party told the September 24 Tel Aviv Haaretz daily that this means “construction in Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] will continue alongside the diplomatic talks” with the Palestinian Authority.
With Obama’s tacit blessing, Israel will continue to create “facts on the ground”, ensuring that more and more Palestinian land is illegally annexed to Israel. Since 1993, when Israel agreed to begin peace negotiations with the Palestinians, Israel’s continued settlement construction in the occupied West Bank has resulted in the illegal Israeli settler population doubling to approximately 300,000, while the number of settlers living in occupied East Jerusalem is estimated to be around 180,000.
Prior to Obama’s UN speech, there had been much speculation in the corporate media that Obama would “pressure” Israel to stop settlement activity in order to clear the way for a resumption of peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, which has been under intense pressure from the Palestinian masses not to do so until this activity was halted. According to Paul Woodward, the editor of the well-respected web journal, War in Context, Obama’s UN speech revealed “that in the end, it turned out that ‘pressure’ from the Obama Administration amounts to strong words with no visible force behind them”. Woodward went onto point out that this “pressure” comes “in the form of sternness — no doubt quite effective when Obama insists to [his daughters] Malia and Natasha that it’s bedtime, but not very impressive when it’s directed at the likes of Benjamin Netanyahu”.
While Netanyahu has emerged in a much stronger position, the New York “tripartite summit” has resulted in the wholesale undermining of Abbas’ position. Previously Abbas had refused to meet with Netanyahu or restart negotiations without a clear commitment from Israel to halt settlement activity. Abbas has sought to salvage his reputation by claiming he was forced into the meeting by Obama, with one of his staffers telling the September 24 Jerusalem Post, Abbas “couldn’t resist the heavy pressure the Americans put on him. In fact, he went to the meeting with Netanyahu against his will.”
Abbas’ capitulation, however, reflects the fundamental flaw in the Fatah leadership’s whole strategy for advancing the Palestinian national liberation cause — reliance on getting Washington to pressure Israel to accede to Palestinian demands, rather than exerting pressure on the Israel rulers by mobilising the Palestinian masses to resist Israel’s illegal occupation. “In all honesty, we want to protect our relations with President Obama under any conditions”, Abbas told the London-based al-Hayat newspaper after the New York summit. “We don’t want to come out with a crisis with the Americans, or create a crisis.”
The assumption behind Abbas’ strategy is that Washington is a neutral mediator, when in reality it is Israel’s prime backer. And while the Israeli rulers pay lip-service to the idea of the Palestinians eventually having an independent state, their real goal, which they have continuously worked at since Israel was set up in 1948, is to assert Israeli control over the entirety of Palestine.
Since having colluded with Washington in the toppling of the popularly elected Hamas-led PA government, Abbas has increasingly lost credibility among the Palestinian masses as an effective leader of their struggle for their national rights. His capitulation on the conditions for restarting negotiations with Israel will only further erode his standing. Hamas denounced Abbas for attending the New York summit, with Hamas spokesperson Sami Abu Zuhri saying, “the only person to benefit from the New York meeting is Netanyahu because it will improve his image and give him cover to continue building settlements”.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Israel continues to steal Arab land
Direct Action Issue 15: September 2009
http://directaction.org.au/issue15/israel_continues_to_steal_arab_land
By Kim Bullimore
On August 26, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu offered to freeze the building of new Israeli settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank for nine months. Netanyahu’s announcement has been presented in the Western corporate media as a “victory” for US President Barack Obama, who has been pressing Israel to halt its illegal settlement activity in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in order to be able to get the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” restarted.
Obama’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, had been pressing for a 12-month freeze on illegal settlement activity in both the West Bank and East Jerusalem, both illegally occupied by Israel since June 1967. Netanyahu, however, has ruled out any halt to the Israeli takeover of Palestinian land in East Jerusalem, which Israel formally annexed in 1980 through its “Jerusalem Law”. This declared that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. This Israeli law was declared “null and void” and a violation of international law by UN Security Council Resolution 478, approved by 14-0 votes (with the US abstaining) in August 1980. A July 2004 statement of the International Court of Justice expressed the view that all countries are under an obligation not to recognise Israel’s illegal annexation of East Jerusalem.
According to the August 27 Tel Aviv Haaretz daily, Netanyahu’s settlement “freeze” offer excludes some 2500 housing units on which construction has already started and allows the erection of new “public buildings”, mainly schools, in existing settlements. Following the meeting with Mitchell, at which Netanyahu made his phony “freeze” settlement offer, the two issued a joint statement saying that “good progress” had been made in their discussions.
Writing in the August 12 Jordan Times, Hasan Abu Nimah, a former Jordanian ambassador to the UN, observed that “by demanding a temporary freeze [on Israel’s illegal settlements], the US is indirectly accepting what has been built so far, as well as the idea that Israel is entitled at the end of the agreed period to resume construction if its ever-escalating demands are not met”. He went on to argue that the notion of a “temporary freeze” allows Israel to shift the debate “from the illegality, under international law, of Israel’s settlements towards something totally superficial: the pace of construction”.
Israel soldiers on the outskirts of illegal Israeli colony
Jerusalem resident Joharah Baker, a regular writer for the Media and Information Program at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH), made a similar point two months ago. In a June 29 article on the Palestine Chronicle website, she argued that “a ‘temporary’ freeze is just that, temporary, which implies that later down the line Israel will not be obligated to maintain this offer and resume construction”. She correctly noted that the notion of a “temporary freeze” is simply part of Israel’s decades-long policy of trying “to stall a final agreement and permanent solution”, in order to allow the Israeli rulers to create “facts on the ground, which then must be negotiated”. Baker added that “today, instead of talking about a complete dismantlement of illegal settlements and outposts on occupied Palestinian land, we are talking about the minutest of details”, such as a “temporary freeze” of construction of illegal settlements.
Settler poster issued by illegal settlers in Binyamin colony opposing settlement freeze
Racist settler poster denouncing US President, Barak Obama
In 2003, as part of the US president George Bush’s “Road Map” for peace, Israel agreed to freeze settlement construction. However, the August 19 Washington Post noted that since then “the Jewish population in the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem, has increased from about 224,000 to about 290,000”. There are another estimated 180,000 Israelis living in illegal settlements built in East Jerusalem.
The Obama administration and the corporate media have also sought to play up Netanyahu’s pledge to remove 23 “illegal outposts” in the West Bank. However, very little has been said about the fact that most of these illegal outposts are not populated. As Khaled Amayreh noted in July 23-29 Egyptian Al Ahram weekly, these outposts are “merely used as rallying point[s] for settlers who are bent on preserving the occupation”.
Where illegal outposts are populated, the Israeli government has repeatedly dragged its feet on removing the settlers living there. A point in case is the illegal outpost of Migron, which was built in 2002 on privately owned Palestinian land. Despite Israel’s courts in 2006 recognising that the land is legally owned by Palestinians and that it should be evacuated, the Israel government has petitioned the Israeli courts to not be compelled to remove the illegal settlers until mid 2010. According to Amos Harel, writing in the July 7 Haaretz, when the settlers are removed from Migron, they will simply be transferred to the neighbouring illegal colony of Adam, where Israel is planning to build 50 new homes for the settlers.
Among the new illegal settlements in East Jerusalem that Israel is planning to build is Ma’aleh David, which is to be constructed in the middle of the Palestinian neighbourhood of Rasa al-Amud. According to the August 25 Haaretz, this new Israeli colony will consist of 104 “high-end” housing units, a swimming pool, a country club, library, synagogue, kindergarten and mikveh (a Jewish ritual purification bath). Haaretz noted that the new colony will be connected to the existing illegal colony of Ma’aleh Zeitem, which houses 51 settler families. Currently, Ma’aleh Zeitem is undergoing “natural growth” with another 66 housing units being built. The joint colony blocs will then form the largest Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem, with more than 1000 illegal settlers situated in the heart of the Ras al-Amud neighbourhood, home to 14,000 Palestinians.
Israeli settler children being taught how to use automatic weapons
Armed Israeli settlers
While the Netanyahu government has continued to build and expand illegal Israeli colonies on stolen Palestinian land in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, it has also continued to carry out, with impunity, other human rights abuses against the Palestinian people in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Figures from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights reveal that in the 11 weeks since Obama’s June 4 speech in Cairo, Israeli occupation forces have carried out at least 217 military incursions into the West Bank (an average of around three per day), plus several incursions into Gaza. In addition, at least 169 Palestinian civilians, including 40 children, were kidnapped by Israel and placed in Israeli detention without charge or trial in this same period, while dozens of hectares of Palestinian land was razed.
During the same period, Israel continued to build its apartheid wall, which has been ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice, while also continuing its collective punishment of the Palestinian people in Gaza by carrying out an illegal blockade of the tiny territory. Despite mounting evidence that Israel carried out a range of war crimes both during and after its war on Gaza in December-January, and the humanitarian crisis that has resulted from that war and the continuing siege of Gaza, Obama has continued to defend Israel’s “right” to blockade the Gaza Strip.
Illegal Israel settlers move into a Palestinian home in Sheik Jarreh (East Jerusalem) The Palestinian family was forcible evicted, along with their possessions which now lay on the street.
Campaign by Palestinian community in Sheik Jarreh to oppose illegal Israel settlers taking over Palestinian homes.
Israel’s continuing colonial drive to steal more and more Palestinian land and the unwillingness of both the US administration and other Western governments to do anything to stop it highlights the need for the continued support for and participation in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. The campaign, which was launched by more than 170 Palestinian organisations in 2005, is starting to have an impact, with more and more unions and other organisations around the world signing onto the campaign. This impact has not gone unnoticed by the Israeli government or its supporters. In a May 7 speech, Howard Kohr, executive director of American Israel Public Affairs Committee, said that the BDS campaign is now part of “ordinary political discourse on our TV and radio talk shows; in the pages of our major newspapers and in countless blogs, in town hall meetings, on campuses and city squares . . . More and more they are invading the mainstream discourse, becoming part of the constant and unrelenting drumbeat against Israel.”
http://directaction.org.au/issue15/israel_continues_to_steal_arab_land
By Kim Bullimore
On August 26, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu offered to freeze the building of new Israeli settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank for nine months. Netanyahu’s announcement has been presented in the Western corporate media as a “victory” for US President Barack Obama, who has been pressing Israel to halt its illegal settlement activity in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in order to be able to get the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” restarted.
Obama’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, had been pressing for a 12-month freeze on illegal settlement activity in both the West Bank and East Jerusalem, both illegally occupied by Israel since June 1967. Netanyahu, however, has ruled out any halt to the Israeli takeover of Palestinian land in East Jerusalem, which Israel formally annexed in 1980 through its “Jerusalem Law”. This declared that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. This Israeli law was declared “null and void” and a violation of international law by UN Security Council Resolution 478, approved by 14-0 votes (with the US abstaining) in August 1980. A July 2004 statement of the International Court of Justice expressed the view that all countries are under an obligation not to recognise Israel’s illegal annexation of East Jerusalem.
According to the August 27 Tel Aviv Haaretz daily, Netanyahu’s settlement “freeze” offer excludes some 2500 housing units on which construction has already started and allows the erection of new “public buildings”, mainly schools, in existing settlements. Following the meeting with Mitchell, at which Netanyahu made his phony “freeze” settlement offer, the two issued a joint statement saying that “good progress” had been made in their discussions.
Writing in the August 12 Jordan Times, Hasan Abu Nimah, a former Jordanian ambassador to the UN, observed that “by demanding a temporary freeze [on Israel’s illegal settlements], the US is indirectly accepting what has been built so far, as well as the idea that Israel is entitled at the end of the agreed period to resume construction if its ever-escalating demands are not met”. He went on to argue that the notion of a “temporary freeze” allows Israel to shift the debate “from the illegality, under international law, of Israel’s settlements towards something totally superficial: the pace of construction”.
Israel soldiers on the outskirts of illegal Israeli colony
Jerusalem resident Joharah Baker, a regular writer for the Media and Information Program at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH), made a similar point two months ago. In a June 29 article on the Palestine Chronicle website, she argued that “a ‘temporary’ freeze is just that, temporary, which implies that later down the line Israel will not be obligated to maintain this offer and resume construction”. She correctly noted that the notion of a “temporary freeze” is simply part of Israel’s decades-long policy of trying “to stall a final agreement and permanent solution”, in order to allow the Israeli rulers to create “facts on the ground, which then must be negotiated”. Baker added that “today, instead of talking about a complete dismantlement of illegal settlements and outposts on occupied Palestinian land, we are talking about the minutest of details”, such as a “temporary freeze” of construction of illegal settlements.
Settler poster issued by illegal settlers in Binyamin colony opposing settlement freeze
Racist settler poster denouncing US President, Barak Obama
In 2003, as part of the US president George Bush’s “Road Map” for peace, Israel agreed to freeze settlement construction. However, the August 19 Washington Post noted that since then “the Jewish population in the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem, has increased from about 224,000 to about 290,000”. There are another estimated 180,000 Israelis living in illegal settlements built in East Jerusalem.
The Obama administration and the corporate media have also sought to play up Netanyahu’s pledge to remove 23 “illegal outposts” in the West Bank. However, very little has been said about the fact that most of these illegal outposts are not populated. As Khaled Amayreh noted in July 23-29 Egyptian Al Ahram weekly, these outposts are “merely used as rallying point[s] for settlers who are bent on preserving the occupation”.
Where illegal outposts are populated, the Israeli government has repeatedly dragged its feet on removing the settlers living there. A point in case is the illegal outpost of Migron, which was built in 2002 on privately owned Palestinian land. Despite Israel’s courts in 2006 recognising that the land is legally owned by Palestinians and that it should be evacuated, the Israel government has petitioned the Israeli courts to not be compelled to remove the illegal settlers until mid 2010. According to Amos Harel, writing in the July 7 Haaretz, when the settlers are removed from Migron, they will simply be transferred to the neighbouring illegal colony of Adam, where Israel is planning to build 50 new homes for the settlers.
Among the new illegal settlements in East Jerusalem that Israel is planning to build is Ma’aleh David, which is to be constructed in the middle of the Palestinian neighbourhood of Rasa al-Amud. According to the August 25 Haaretz, this new Israeli colony will consist of 104 “high-end” housing units, a swimming pool, a country club, library, synagogue, kindergarten and mikveh (a Jewish ritual purification bath). Haaretz noted that the new colony will be connected to the existing illegal colony of Ma’aleh Zeitem, which houses 51 settler families. Currently, Ma’aleh Zeitem is undergoing “natural growth” with another 66 housing units being built. The joint colony blocs will then form the largest Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem, with more than 1000 illegal settlers situated in the heart of the Ras al-Amud neighbourhood, home to 14,000 Palestinians.
Israeli settler children being taught how to use automatic weapons
Armed Israeli settlers
While the Netanyahu government has continued to build and expand illegal Israeli colonies on stolen Palestinian land in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, it has also continued to carry out, with impunity, other human rights abuses against the Palestinian people in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Figures from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights reveal that in the 11 weeks since Obama’s June 4 speech in Cairo, Israeli occupation forces have carried out at least 217 military incursions into the West Bank (an average of around three per day), plus several incursions into Gaza. In addition, at least 169 Palestinian civilians, including 40 children, were kidnapped by Israel and placed in Israeli detention without charge or trial in this same period, while dozens of hectares of Palestinian land was razed.
During the same period, Israel continued to build its apartheid wall, which has been ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice, while also continuing its collective punishment of the Palestinian people in Gaza by carrying out an illegal blockade of the tiny territory. Despite mounting evidence that Israel carried out a range of war crimes both during and after its war on Gaza in December-January, and the humanitarian crisis that has resulted from that war and the continuing siege of Gaza, Obama has continued to defend Israel’s “right” to blockade the Gaza Strip.
Illegal Israel settlers move into a Palestinian home in Sheik Jarreh (East Jerusalem) The Palestinian family was forcible evicted, along with their possessions which now lay on the street.
Campaign by Palestinian community in Sheik Jarreh to oppose illegal Israel settlers taking over Palestinian homes.
Israel’s continuing colonial drive to steal more and more Palestinian land and the unwillingness of both the US administration and other Western governments to do anything to stop it highlights the need for the continued support for and participation in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign. The campaign, which was launched by more than 170 Palestinian organisations in 2005, is starting to have an impact, with more and more unions and other organisations around the world signing onto the campaign. This impact has not gone unnoticed by the Israeli government or its supporters. In a May 7 speech, Howard Kohr, executive director of American Israel Public Affairs Committee, said that the BDS campaign is now part of “ordinary political discourse on our TV and radio talk shows; in the pages of our major newspapers and in countless blogs, in town hall meetings, on campuses and city squares . . . More and more they are invading the mainstream discourse, becoming part of the constant and unrelenting drumbeat against Israel.”
Monday, June 9, 2008
Anti-wall demonstrations at Nil'in village
8 June, 2008
Nil’in village has become the latest village to begin organising demonstrations against the building of the apartheid wall and the stealing of their farm land by the Israeli state.
The village is located in the Ramallah district, approximately 10 kilometres from the village of Bil’in which has conducted a non-stop struggle against the confiscation of their land and the building of the apartheid wall on their land for the past three years.
In 2003, other villages in the region, including Budrus, Al Midya, Deir Qadddis and Kharbata led the struggle in non-violent resistance against the wall, holding daily and/or weekly demonstrations. Budrus became one of the first villages to successful win an Israeli court order for the aparthied wall to be pushed back to the Green Line.
In the last week of May 2008, construction began once again on the land belonging to Nil’in village in order to build the apartheid wall. Since construction began, the village has held large demonstrations nearly every second day. The village has been joined in their demonstrations by International solidarity activists and Israeli anti-occupation activists.
In response to the demonstrations, the Israel military have reacted with extreme violence, including firing massive amounts of teargas from new weaponry mounted on jeeps. The weaponry consists of cannons which are capable of firing between 10 and 15 teargas canisters simultaneously.
The biggest of the demonstrations, which happened last week, have involved around 500people, the majority from the village of Nil’in.
On Friday night, the village held an innovative protest in which they assembled close to the fence line of the illegal Israeli settlement of Hashmon’im with pots and pans banging them to signal the poverty that Palestinians were suffering. They were also “armed” with other noise makers such as whistles and sirens to represent they would not be quite and accept the stealing of their land.
On June 8, approximately 120 Palestinian, Israeli and International demonstrators marched to Nil’in’s fields in an attempt to stop the destruction of their land. The non-violent demonstration was met with force by the Israeli military, who opened fire on the unarmed demonstrators. The front line of the demonstration, which was made up of Israeli anti-occupation activists, many from the Israeli Anarchists Against the Wall, were less then 10 metres from the soldiers. The Israeli soldiers, in violation of their own military regulations, fired directly into the front line. An Israeli photojournalist activist was hit by a teargas canister at close range, inflicting a deep wound near his hip. A number of times during the demonstration, canisters in large numbers fired at waist level, whizzed by myself and other activists. A Palestinian activist and an Israeli anti-occupation from Anarchists Against the Wall were detained and arrested by the Israeli military.
Nil’in village has vowed to continue its demonstrations against the confiscation of their farm land and the building of the Apartheid Wall.
Non-violent anti-wall demonstrators march to Nil'in's farm land.
Israeli non-violent anti-occupation activists from Anarchists Against the Wall and media on front line of demonstration. The photo was taken just before the Israeli military opened fire with teargas canisters directly into the group.
Israeli soldier armed with a tear gas launcher
Teargas fired at unarmed, non-violent demonstrators by Israeli military.
Photograph by Oren Ziv, ActiveStills (published with permission from ActiveStills)
Teargas
Photograph by Oren Ziv, ActiveStills (published with permission from ActiveStills)
Teargas being fired by Israeli military
Photograph by Oren Ziv, ActiveStills (published with permission from ActiveStills)
Israeli military forces arrest Palestinian demonstrator
Photograph by Oren Ziv, ActiveStills (published with permission from ActiveStills)
Tear gas explodes, nears Palestinian demonstrators
Palestinian ambulance assists injured demonstrators who had been hit by teargas canisters or had been overcome with teargas inhilation
Israeli photojournalist injured by Israeli military, who fired directly into front line of demonstrators less then 10 metres away. This is illegal under the Israeli military's own operational regulations.
Close up of deep wound caused by tear gas canister fired directly into frontline of anti-wall demonstrators.
Two expended teargas cannisters fired at demonstrators in Nil'in by Israei military.
Palestinian children at Nil'in demonstration with banner. In the background is the illegal Israeli colony of Hashmon'im
Nil’in village has become the latest village to begin organising demonstrations against the building of the apartheid wall and the stealing of their farm land by the Israeli state.
The village is located in the Ramallah district, approximately 10 kilometres from the village of Bil’in which has conducted a non-stop struggle against the confiscation of their land and the building of the apartheid wall on their land for the past three years.
In 2003, other villages in the region, including Budrus, Al Midya, Deir Qadddis and Kharbata led the struggle in non-violent resistance against the wall, holding daily and/or weekly demonstrations. Budrus became one of the first villages to successful win an Israeli court order for the aparthied wall to be pushed back to the Green Line.
In the last week of May 2008, construction began once again on the land belonging to Nil’in village in order to build the apartheid wall. Since construction began, the village has held large demonstrations nearly every second day. The village has been joined in their demonstrations by International solidarity activists and Israeli anti-occupation activists.
In response to the demonstrations, the Israel military have reacted with extreme violence, including firing massive amounts of teargas from new weaponry mounted on jeeps. The weaponry consists of cannons which are capable of firing between 10 and 15 teargas canisters simultaneously.
The biggest of the demonstrations, which happened last week, have involved around 500people, the majority from the village of Nil’in.
On Friday night, the village held an innovative protest in which they assembled close to the fence line of the illegal Israeli settlement of Hashmon’im with pots and pans banging them to signal the poverty that Palestinians were suffering. They were also “armed” with other noise makers such as whistles and sirens to represent they would not be quite and accept the stealing of their land.
On June 8, approximately 120 Palestinian, Israeli and International demonstrators marched to Nil’in’s fields in an attempt to stop the destruction of their land. The non-violent demonstration was met with force by the Israeli military, who opened fire on the unarmed demonstrators. The front line of the demonstration, which was made up of Israeli anti-occupation activists, many from the Israeli Anarchists Against the Wall, were less then 10 metres from the soldiers. The Israeli soldiers, in violation of their own military regulations, fired directly into the front line. An Israeli photojournalist activist was hit by a teargas canister at close range, inflicting a deep wound near his hip. A number of times during the demonstration, canisters in large numbers fired at waist level, whizzed by myself and other activists. A Palestinian activist and an Israeli anti-occupation from Anarchists Against the Wall were detained and arrested by the Israeli military.
Nil’in village has vowed to continue its demonstrations against the confiscation of their farm land and the building of the Apartheid Wall.
Non-violent anti-wall demonstrators march to Nil'in's farm land.
Israeli non-violent anti-occupation activists from Anarchists Against the Wall and media on front line of demonstration. The photo was taken just before the Israeli military opened fire with teargas canisters directly into the group.
Israeli soldier armed with a tear gas launcher
Teargas fired at unarmed, non-violent demonstrators by Israeli military.
Photograph by Oren Ziv, ActiveStills (published with permission from ActiveStills)
Teargas
Photograph by Oren Ziv, ActiveStills (published with permission from ActiveStills)
Teargas being fired by Israeli military
Photograph by Oren Ziv, ActiveStills (published with permission from ActiveStills)
Israeli military forces arrest Palestinian demonstrator
Photograph by Oren Ziv, ActiveStills (published with permission from ActiveStills)
Tear gas explodes, nears Palestinian demonstrators
Palestinian ambulance assists injured demonstrators who had been hit by teargas canisters or had been overcome with teargas inhilation
Israeli photojournalist injured by Israeli military, who fired directly into front line of demonstrators less then 10 metres away. This is illegal under the Israeli military's own operational regulations.
Close up of deep wound caused by tear gas canister fired directly into frontline of anti-wall demonstrators.
Two expended teargas cannisters fired at demonstrators in Nil'in by Israei military.
Palestinian children at Nil'in demonstration with banner. In the background is the illegal Israeli colony of Hashmon'im
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