I have lost count of how many times I have been warned by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) about how dangerous it for me and others to travel in the Occupied Palestinian Territories or to enter Palestinian cities.
On my first day in the OPT in 2004, myself and one of my team mates decided to take a walk down the settler road outside of our village to get an idea of our surroundings, including the illegal settlements. About one kilometre into our walk, an IOF jeep pulled over and the soldiers in it asked us what we were doing. We politely explained we were just going for a walk. The soldiers were clearly taken back and responded by saying but don’t you know that it’s dangerous and you should not be out walking. We responded that we were fine and after a few minutes the soldiers left, looking even more perplexed.
On another occasion, when I was leading a team of 15 internationals from Austria and Germany who had come to assist with the annual olive harvest, on a visit to Palestinian city of Qalqilya, the same thing happened. When we arrived at Qalqilya it was chaos, the whole city was locked down with only one entrance open for traffic in and out of the city which was home to 40,000 Palestinians. Palestinian cars, pedestrians, taxis, trucks carrying goods, furniture, as well as horses and carts with produce were banked up for hours as they waited to pass through the checkpoint, at the discretion of the occupation forces. As we piled out of the service (shared taxi) and lined up at the checkpoint to present our passports, the soldier on duty was clearly shocked to see so many foreigners wanting to enter the city. He looked at me incredulously and asked, “where are you going?” I responded that we were going to visit some Palestinian friends of mine (which was true).
He looked once again at my passport and then again at me and the 15 others internationals in line and then at my passport again. It was clear he could not quite get his head around that fact that we actually wanted to enter the city and we not frightened. After a minute or so, he paused and said, “you know it’s dangerous in there”. This exchange became a regular experience, as time after time both in 2004 and 2007, I had soldiers and occasionally illegal settlers tell me how dangerous it was to enter a Palestinian city or village.
During Ramadan this year, I was also told for the first time that it was dangerous to enter East Jerusalem. A friend and I had planned to take a tour of the old city offered by the Centre for Jerusalem Studies which explained the rituals and practices of Ramadan. However, when we arrived in the old city where the Centre was located, we were prevent by IOF from entering the souq (market area) that lead down to the Centre, which was located about 50 metres from one of the entrances to the Al Aqsa Mosque. According to the IOF soldiers we couldn't enter because "it was dangerous". I explained we were not going to the Mosque (although there was no danger even if we were); we just wanted to go to the Centre. The soldier refused to allow us or any other person who they thought was not Palestinian to enter the area. When I asked why, the soldier responded that it was against the law to allow non-Muslim/Arabs into the area. “No, its not”, I responded. When I asked him to cite which law or to produce a copy of it, he just repeated blank faced “it’s just against the law” (Two weeks later, I was able to pass freely into the area, past the barricade manned by IOF soldiers. Clearly “the law” had changed in that period of time).
On Friday, I was once again told that it was “dangerous” and “against the law” (but only if I was Jewish) to enter a Palestinian area. Myself, a Palestinian friend and another international friend on our day off decided we would make a day trip to Jericho in the Jordan Valley. I had never been and was keen to see the area. After 40 minutes we arrived at the checkpoint into the city and a young soldier asked to see the IDs of our Palestinian driver, my Palestinian friend, as well as my and my other friend’s passports. The soldier was clearly trying to be friendly and helpful, trying to put a human face on the occupation. He asked me to wind down the window and to my surprised asked me if I was Jewish or Christian (but didn't ask if I could have possibly also have been Muslim).
Although, I often describe myself as an agnostic leaning towards atheism, when I am asked in Palestine it usually just much easier to say I am a Christian because generally it would take to long to explain what an agnostic is and why I was one (perhaps it’s the Catholic upbringing/guilt that has prevent me from becoming a true atheist like other good socialists :)
So in response to the IOF soldier’s question, I said I was Christian but then asked him why it was relevant. The soldier responded that he could not let me enter Jericho if I was Jewish. When I asked why, he again responded with the familiar line of “it’s dangerous”. I responded saying, well even if I was Jewish it would not stop me from going to Jericho. No, he said, "you can’t it’s against the law". Once again, I responded "No, its not". After a few minute, the soldier responded with, "well its seems quite in there now but..." and then decided to wave us through.
While it is true there are laws that prevent Israelis from entering PA controlled areas, there are no official laws that prevent Internationals, Palestinians or Arabs who are Jewish from entering the West Bank or PA controlled area such as Jericho (in relation to the law prohibiting Israeli citizens entering the PA controlled areas, many Israeli Jewish solidarity activists defy this law and enter anyway, while in the case of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, the law is more often then not enforced).
The regular repetition of this fallacy by IOF soldiers and the constant refrain that "its dangerous" to enter Palestinian areas or zones is part of the politics of fear utilised by the Zionist state to advance the states interests and to justify and maintain the repressive occupation of 4 million Palestinians in the name of “security”. By promoting the idea the Israeli state (despite having the 4th strongest military in the world) is constantly in danger of being destroyed and is the perpetual victim rather then the oppressor, the Zionist state and their supporters are able to blur the line between reality and fiction and disguise its acts of aggression as defensive acts.
As veteran Israeli report, Amira Hass, noted last year in relation to the Lebanon war and the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine, “the purpose of instilling such fear in Israelis is to win ongoing support for the IDF's policy of constant escalation … They [the IDF] need public silence about the free use the IDF makes of the weapons and ammunition that it puts into its soldiers' hands. This serial intimidation is meant to give the IDF a free hand while it expands its operational infrastructure …”. In addition notes Hass “The military establishment in Israel is joined at the hip with the political decision-making establishment, and hyping the security threat facing Israelis, while completely disengaging from the reality of the Israeli occupation, assures continued Israeli support for the myth that there is a military "solution" but not a political one. This in turn provides support for the ongoing regime of occupation and dispossession and for the privileges that this bestows on Israelis”.
The politics of fear function in a manner so as to ensure that the source of the conflict becomes mystified and decontextualised. As Amira Hass notes in another of her articles published in 2001, most Israelis, including the young soldiers who serve in the IOF in the West Bank and Gaza, fail to make the connection that the ongoing Israeli occupation, which controls every facet of the lives of Palestinians, is the reason for the Palestinian resistance. Hass notes, that individual soldiers and most Israelis “can’t find any connection between the hundreds of Palestinians civilians who were killed by IDF fire in the last year and the widespread popular support for the terror attacks inside Israel”. They do not see the “connection between the expropriation of Palestinian land for expanding settlements for Jews only and the ban on Palestinian construction on their lands or even to install a water pipe, because it's in Area C, meaning under Israeli security and civil command - and the stone throwing at Israeli cars”. Israelis, including individual soldiers, fail to see the “connection between the green lawns of the settlements when there's not enough water to drink in Palestinian villages and refugee camps next door - and the Palestinian gunfire at settlements and Israeli civilians driving on roads that are forbidden to Palestinian drivers”.
In addition, notes Hass, they apparently “can't see that an assassination of Palestinian leaders is not only a successful military operation but a proven recipe for encouraging more Palestinians to choose the armed struggle”. Instead, individual soldiers, many Israelis and supporters of the Zionist state and its policy of occupation, as Hass notes, have convinced themselves that the “Arabs” (ie. Palestinians) simply hate all Jews. They convince themselves of the racist notion that Arabs must be an inherently violent race (or Islam is inherently violent), rather that they are an oppressed people who are resisting their occupiers.
By decontextualising the reason for the Palestinian resistance, the Israeli Zionist state and its supporters are able to demonise and present Palestinians as crazed psycho monsters who supposedly want to rip the heart out of any Jews that comes near them, who don’t love their children and enjoy seeing them die and who enjoy violence for the sake of violence. In doing so, they can also create and maintain the myth that Israeli is not the aggressor and is simply acting supposedly in self defense
By maintaining the politics of fear, the Zionist state is also able to erect a barrier, both physically and psychologically, which prevents the majority of Israelis and others from coming to the OPT to see the reality of the human suffering being experience by the Palestinians as a result of the occupation. Instead, Israeli citizens are told time and time again, how dangerous it is for them to come here (other then to go to the Illegal settlements). However, little by little more Israelis and more Jews and internationals are coming to the OPT. And when they do, they discover that the Palestinians aren’t as murderous or as dangerous as they have been told time and time again. They discover that the whatever real danger they themselves may face has been greatly exaggerated and that their fears have been feed on racism, in order to pit one people against another, ensuring perpetual conflict and violence.
By breaking through the politics of fear, Israelis and international peace activists, whether they are Jewish or non-Jewish, have discovered that the Palestinians are just like them and that they too aspire to live a decent life, free of war, free of injustice and filled with love, respect and dignity.
Breaking through the politics of fear, what they discover is that in reality the people most in danger in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is not in fact themselves. Instead they discovered that the people most in danger are the Palestinian people who are suffering under the brutal heal of the Israeli occupation: who endured home invasions, attacks on their villages with tanks and missiles, who endure repeated and ongoing artillery bombardment, aerial bombing, who endure house demolitions, abduction, detention without charge or trail and restriction of movement.
By breaking through the politics of fear, Israeli and international peace activists discover that the occupation and the injustices it perpetrates can not be whitewashed and that real peace can only be built when injustice, racism and oppression is opposed and the illegal Israeli occupation is brought to an end.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Sunday, October 14, 2007
"Peace" under Occupation
This weekend is Eid al-Fitr, the festival that marks the end of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan. Like Christmas for devote and not-so-devote Christians, it is not only a time for prayer, reflection, forgiveness and to be thankful, but it is also a time for family, joy and celebration. Over this weekend, my Palestinian friends, whether they be Muslim, Christian or secular in their beliefs will spend time visiting each other and their families and loved ones. They will share gifts, delicious food and each others company. They will give to the less fortunate and celebrate the joys of life. However, like so many Eid’s that have gone before in Palestine, this year’s Eid al-Fitr will be celebrated once again under the shadow of the illegal and sadistic Israeli occupation.
As a result, my friends and their families, along with hundreds of thousands of other Palestinian families in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, this Eid will also remember their loved ones who have died at the hands of the illegal Israeli occupation or can not be with them to celebrate the holiday because they are languishing, often with out charge or trail, in Israel’s prisons. Many others will have their festivities, family celebration and holiday time brought to an abrupt halt by an occupation force that has no respect for another peoples’ human, civil or democratic rights.
Already over the course of Eid al-Fitr, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) has conducted several missile strikes on Gaza, ensuring the Palestinian death toll increases once again. In the Occupied West Bank, the Israeli war machine has conducted a series of raids on a number of Palestinian communities, abducting and detaining more Palestinian civilians. In other parts of the Occupied West Bank, they have carried out other military operations, invading peaceful villages and terrorising the local population.
Today, on the third day of Eid, myself and another IWPS colleague were called to the village of Dier Istyia in Salfit. The IOF had once again invaded the village (a regular occurrence over the past two months) and took over one of the houses in the village. All of the family, except for the four youngest daughters aged between 6 and 16 years of age, were out of the house harvesting their olives (many of the rural family’s use the last day of the Eid holiday, when family members do not have to go to paid work, to go to their fields to harvest their trees).
According to the young girls and the neighbours who came to their aid, 8 Israel occupation soldiers forced their way into the house and then used the young girls as human shields, forcing them to accompany the invading soldiers to the roof where an illegal military observation and surveillance post was established (under international law, not only is the invasion of civilian property illegal, it is also illegal under international and Israeli law to use civilians as human shields).
Later as we sat with the family taking their testimonies, the two youngest girls, aged 6 and 9, kept shyly staring and smiling at me and my team mate. As I sat there, I could only imagine how scared these little girls must have been to have 8 huge men that they did not know, decked out with automatic rifles, grenades and other high grade weaponry burst into their home. How terrifying it must have been to be forced, against their will, to act as human shields. All I could think as I sat there was what sort of psychological damage must this do to a young, vulnerable and impressionable child.
Over the Eid al-Fitr festival, the brutal Israeli occupation will continue unabated. At the same time, Israel will continue to announce to the world that it a true seeker of peace.
As Israel speaks of peace, the “on-the-ground” content of Israel’s “peace package”, however, reveals the hollowness of its rhetoric. During the last month alone, before the festival of Eid, during the holy month of Ramadan (13 September to 11 October), Israel’s idea of “peace” saw its occupation forces claimed the lives of 24 Palestinians, 3 of them children.
During this holy month, the Israeli state and the “most moral army in the world”, also wounded another 95 Palestinians, 26 of whom were children. During this same month, when Israel had been telling the world it wanted peace (yet again), its government voted to illegally and collectively punish 1.4 million Palestinian civilians – men, women and children - in the Gaza by cutting of their electricity, their gas supplies, water and other basic amenities, thus breaching international law and the Fourth Geneva convention to which Israel is a signatory.
As part of Israel’s “peace package” during the holy month of Ramadan, Israel’s war machine carried out military assaults on 97 Palestinian communities in the West Bank, ensuring thousands of Palestinian families were terrorised and traumatised. And while Israel made a big deal on the world stage of releasing 92 Palestinian prisoners from its jails, supposedly as a Ramadan goodwill gesture and in order to bolster Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, its occupation forces kidnapped and detained almost twice that number (172 in total, mainly from the West Bank) during the holy month ensuring that there would be more Palestinians languish in Israel’s prisons at the end of the month of Ramadan than at the beginning (the current figure now exceeds 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners)
The month of Ramadan, also saw the so-called “peaceniks” of the Israeli Zionist state sanction the razing and destruction of 370 dunams of Palestinian agricultural land, destroying the livelihood of hundreds of Palestinian families, as part of Israel’s renewed “peace package”. They also authorised the expansion of the illegal Israeli settlements and continued to construct the Apartheid Wall and stole another 1,130 dunams of Palestinian land in Occupied East Jerusalem. During this same period, “the most moral army in the world” left hundreds of Palestinians homeless by demolishing 23 Palestinian homes and destroying two apartment blocks.
During the holy month of Ramadan, the “peaceniks” of the Israeli Zionist state fostered peaceful relationships with the Palestinian people by preventing tens of thousands of Palestinians from accessing their holy sites, including preventing them from praying at the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Temple Mount in Occupied East Jerusalem and forcibly closing the Ibrahim Mosque in Occupied Hebron for 9 days during the holy month.
During Ramadan, the Palestinian people also marked the 7th anniversary of the Al Aqsa Intifada, mourning the death of 4,329 Palestinians, of whom 3,413 were civilians, including 805 children. While Israel played pretend games of peace, Palestinians remember the 23,245 Palestinians, wounded by Israel’s war machine and that it had destroyed more than 38,350 dunams of Palestinian land, as well as 5861 Palestinian homes, either completely or partially, leaving thousands upon thousands of Palestinian men, women and children homeless.
As American academic and writer on the Middle East, Joseph Massad, noted in his March article, “Israel’s Right to Be Racist” (http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/836/op1.htm) which appeared in Egypt’s Ahram Weekly, Israel’s idea of peace is to be allowed, unchallenged, to impose apartheid in the West Bank and Gaza (as well as Occupied East Jerusalem) There can, however, never be “peace under occupation”, as the Palestinian people know from bitter experience.
As Eid al-Fitr draws to a close, I will marvel once again at the resilience of the Palestinian people and their ability to remain samoud (steadfast) in the face of such adversity. I will, once again, be inspired by the ability of so many Palestinians to open their hearts to others, to be able to love and forgive, despite all that has been done to them. And I will, once again, wonder if any of us had to endure what the Palestinian people have endured for so long, could we do the same?
As Eid al-Fitr draws to a close, the Palestinian people will continue in their struggle for justice and freedom and they will continue to demand an end to the Israeli occupation - as a real and lasting peace can only start to be built when an occupied people are no longer occupied.
Eid Marbarak to all...
(Happy Eid to all...)
As a result, my friends and their families, along with hundreds of thousands of other Palestinian families in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, this Eid will also remember their loved ones who have died at the hands of the illegal Israeli occupation or can not be with them to celebrate the holiday because they are languishing, often with out charge or trail, in Israel’s prisons. Many others will have their festivities, family celebration and holiday time brought to an abrupt halt by an occupation force that has no respect for another peoples’ human, civil or democratic rights.
Already over the course of Eid al-Fitr, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) has conducted several missile strikes on Gaza, ensuring the Palestinian death toll increases once again. In the Occupied West Bank, the Israeli war machine has conducted a series of raids on a number of Palestinian communities, abducting and detaining more Palestinian civilians. In other parts of the Occupied West Bank, they have carried out other military operations, invading peaceful villages and terrorising the local population.
Today, on the third day of Eid, myself and another IWPS colleague were called to the village of Dier Istyia in Salfit. The IOF had once again invaded the village (a regular occurrence over the past two months) and took over one of the houses in the village. All of the family, except for the four youngest daughters aged between 6 and 16 years of age, were out of the house harvesting their olives (many of the rural family’s use the last day of the Eid holiday, when family members do not have to go to paid work, to go to their fields to harvest their trees).
According to the young girls and the neighbours who came to their aid, 8 Israel occupation soldiers forced their way into the house and then used the young girls as human shields, forcing them to accompany the invading soldiers to the roof where an illegal military observation and surveillance post was established (under international law, not only is the invasion of civilian property illegal, it is also illegal under international and Israeli law to use civilians as human shields).
Later as we sat with the family taking their testimonies, the two youngest girls, aged 6 and 9, kept shyly staring and smiling at me and my team mate. As I sat there, I could only imagine how scared these little girls must have been to have 8 huge men that they did not know, decked out with automatic rifles, grenades and other high grade weaponry burst into their home. How terrifying it must have been to be forced, against their will, to act as human shields. All I could think as I sat there was what sort of psychological damage must this do to a young, vulnerable and impressionable child.
Over the Eid al-Fitr festival, the brutal Israeli occupation will continue unabated. At the same time, Israel will continue to announce to the world that it a true seeker of peace.
As Israel speaks of peace, the “on-the-ground” content of Israel’s “peace package”, however, reveals the hollowness of its rhetoric. During the last month alone, before the festival of Eid, during the holy month of Ramadan (13 September to 11 October), Israel’s idea of “peace” saw its occupation forces claimed the lives of 24 Palestinians, 3 of them children.
During this holy month, the Israeli state and the “most moral army in the world”, also wounded another 95 Palestinians, 26 of whom were children. During this same month, when Israel had been telling the world it wanted peace (yet again), its government voted to illegally and collectively punish 1.4 million Palestinian civilians – men, women and children - in the Gaza by cutting of their electricity, their gas supplies, water and other basic amenities, thus breaching international law and the Fourth Geneva convention to which Israel is a signatory.
As part of Israel’s “peace package” during the holy month of Ramadan, Israel’s war machine carried out military assaults on 97 Palestinian communities in the West Bank, ensuring thousands of Palestinian families were terrorised and traumatised. And while Israel made a big deal on the world stage of releasing 92 Palestinian prisoners from its jails, supposedly as a Ramadan goodwill gesture and in order to bolster Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, its occupation forces kidnapped and detained almost twice that number (172 in total, mainly from the West Bank) during the holy month ensuring that there would be more Palestinians languish in Israel’s prisons at the end of the month of Ramadan than at the beginning (the current figure now exceeds 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners)
The month of Ramadan, also saw the so-called “peaceniks” of the Israeli Zionist state sanction the razing and destruction of 370 dunams of Palestinian agricultural land, destroying the livelihood of hundreds of Palestinian families, as part of Israel’s renewed “peace package”. They also authorised the expansion of the illegal Israeli settlements and continued to construct the Apartheid Wall and stole another 1,130 dunams of Palestinian land in Occupied East Jerusalem. During this same period, “the most moral army in the world” left hundreds of Palestinians homeless by demolishing 23 Palestinian homes and destroying two apartment blocks.
During the holy month of Ramadan, the “peaceniks” of the Israeli Zionist state fostered peaceful relationships with the Palestinian people by preventing tens of thousands of Palestinians from accessing their holy sites, including preventing them from praying at the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Temple Mount in Occupied East Jerusalem and forcibly closing the Ibrahim Mosque in Occupied Hebron for 9 days during the holy month.
During Ramadan, the Palestinian people also marked the 7th anniversary of the Al Aqsa Intifada, mourning the death of 4,329 Palestinians, of whom 3,413 were civilians, including 805 children. While Israel played pretend games of peace, Palestinians remember the 23,245 Palestinians, wounded by Israel’s war machine and that it had destroyed more than 38,350 dunams of Palestinian land, as well as 5861 Palestinian homes, either completely or partially, leaving thousands upon thousands of Palestinian men, women and children homeless.
As American academic and writer on the Middle East, Joseph Massad, noted in his March article, “Israel’s Right to Be Racist” (http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/836/op1.htm) which appeared in Egypt’s Ahram Weekly, Israel’s idea of peace is to be allowed, unchallenged, to impose apartheid in the West Bank and Gaza (as well as Occupied East Jerusalem) There can, however, never be “peace under occupation”, as the Palestinian people know from bitter experience.
As Eid al-Fitr draws to a close, I will marvel once again at the resilience of the Palestinian people and their ability to remain samoud (steadfast) in the face of such adversity. I will, once again, be inspired by the ability of so many Palestinians to open their hearts to others, to be able to love and forgive, despite all that has been done to them. And I will, once again, wonder if any of us had to endure what the Palestinian people have endured for so long, could we do the same?
As Eid al-Fitr draws to a close, the Palestinian people will continue in their struggle for justice and freedom and they will continue to demand an end to the Israeli occupation - as a real and lasting peace can only start to be built when an occupied people are no longer occupied.
Eid Marbarak to all...
(Happy Eid to all...)
Gideon Levy: The Children of 5767
This article written by veteran Israeli journalist, Gideon Levy, first appeared in the Israeli daily, Ha'aretz.
The Children of 5767
By GIDEON LEVY
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/907708.html
29 September, 2007
It was a pretty quiet year, relatively speaking. Only 457 Palestinians and 10 Israelis were killed, according to the B'Tselem human rights organization, including the victims of Qassam rockets. Fewer casualties than in many previous years. However, it was still a terrible year: 92 Palestinian children were killed (fortunately, not a single Israeli child was killed by Palestinians, despite the Qassams). One-fifth of the Palestinians killed were children and teens - a disproportionate, almost unprecedented number. The Jewish year of 5767. Almost 100 children, who were alive and playing last New Year, didn't survive to see this one.
One year. Close to 8,000 kilometers were covered in the newspaper's small, armored Rover - not including the hundreds of kilometers in the old yellow Mercedes taxi belonging to Munir and Sa'id, our dedicated drivers in Gaza. This is how we celebrated the 40th anniversary of the occupation. No one can argue anymore that it's only a temporary, passing phenomenon. Israel is the occupation. The occupation is Israel.
We set out each week in the footsteps of the fighters, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, trying to document the deeds of Israel Defense Forces soldiers, Border Police officers, Shin Bet security service investigators and Civil Administration personnel - the mighty occupation army that leaves behind in its wake horrific killing and destruction, this year as every year, for four decades.
And this was the year of the children that were killed. We didn't get to all of their homes, only to some; homes of bereavement where parents weep bitterly over their children, who were climbing a fig tree in the yard, or sitting on a bench in the street, or preparing for an exam, or on their way home from school, or sleeping peacefully in the false security of their homes.
A few of them also threw a rock at an armored vehicle or touched a forbidden fence. All came under live fire, some of which was deliberately aimed at them, cutting them down in their youth. From Mohammed (al-Zakh) to Mahmoud (al-Qarinawi), from the boy who was buried twice in Gaza to the boy who was buried in Israel. These are the stories of the children of 5767.
The first of them was buried twice. Abdullah al-Zakh identified half of the body of his son Mahmoud, in the morgue refrigerator of Shifa Hospital in Gaza, by the boy's belt and the socks on his feet. This was shortly before last Rosh Hashanah. The next day, when the Israel Defense Forces "successfully" completed Operation Locked Kindergarten, as it was called, leaving behind 22 dead and a razed neighborhood, and left Sajiyeh in Gaza, the bereaved father found the remaining parts of the body and brought them for a belated burial.
Mahmoud was 14 when he died. He was killed three days before the start of the school year. Thus we ushered in Rosh Hashanah 5767. In Shifa we saw children whose legs were amputated, who were paralyzed or on respirators. Families were killed in their sleep, or while riding on donkeys, or working in the fields. Operation Locked Kindergarten and Operation Summer Rains. Remember? Five children were killed in the first operation, with the dreadful name. For a week, the people of Sajiyeh lived in fear the likes of which Sderot residents have never experienced - not to belittle their anxiety, that is.
The day after Rosh Hashanah we traveled to Rafah. Dam Hamad, 14, had been killed in her sleep, in her mother's arms, by an Israeli rocket strike that sent a concrete pillar crashing down on her head. She was the only daughter of her paralyzed mother, her whole world. In the family's impoverished home in the Brazil neighborhood, at the edge of Rafah, we met the mother who lay in a heap in bed; everything she had in the world was gone. Outside, I remarked to the reporter from French television who accompanied me that this was one of those moments when I felt ashamed to be an Israeli. The next day he called and said: "They didn't broadcast what you said, for fear of the Jewish viewers in France."
Soon afterward we went back to Jerusalem to visit Maria Aman, the amazing little girl from Gaza, who lost nearly everyone in her life to a missile strike gone awry that wiped out her innocent family, including her mother, while riding in their car. Her devoted father Hamdi remains by her side. For a year and a half, she has been cared for at the wonderful Alyn Hospital, where she has learned to feed a parrot with her mouth and to operate her wheelchair using her chin. All the rest of her limbs are paralyzed. She is connected day and night to a respirator. Still, she is a cheerful and neatly groomed child whose father fears the day they might be sent back to Gaza.
For now, they remain in Israel. Many Israelis have devoted themselves to Maria and come to visit her regularly. A few weeks ago, broadcast journalist Leah Lior took her in her car to see the sea in Tel Aviv. It was a Saturday night, and the area was crowded with people out for a good time, but the girl in the wheelchair attracted attention. Some people recognized her and stopped to say hello and wish her well. Who knows? Maybe the pilot who fired the missile at her car happened to be passing by, too.
Not everyone has been fortunate enough to receive the treatment that Maria has had. In mid- November, a few days after the bombardment of Beit Hanoun - remember that? - we arrived in the battered and bleeding town: 22 killed in a moment, 11 shells dropped on a densely packed town. Islam, 14, sat there dressed in black, grieving for her eight relatives that had been killed, including her mother and grandmother. Those disabled by this bombardment didn't get to go to Alyn.
Two days before the shelling of Beit Hanoun, our forces also fired a missile that hit the minibus transporting children to the Indira Gandhi kindergarten in Beit Lahia. Two kids, passersby, were killed on the spot. The teacher, Najwa Khalif, died a few days later. She was wounded in clear view of her 20 small pupils, who were sitting in the minibus. After her death, the children drew a picture: a row of children lying bleeding, their teacher in the front, and an Israeli plane bombing them. At the Indira Gandhi kindergarten, we had to bid good-bye to Gaza, too: Since then, we haven't been able to cross into the Strip.
But the children have come to us. In November, 31 children were killed in Gaza. One of them, Ayman al-Mahdi, died in Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, where he had been rushed in grave condition. Only his uncle was permitted to stay with him during his final days. A fifth-grader, Ayman had been sitting with friends on a bench on a street in Jabalya, right by his school. A bullet fired from a tank struck him. He was just 10 years old.
IDF troops killed children in the West Bank, too. Jamil Jabaji, a boy who tended horses in the new Askar refugee camp, was shot in the head. He was 14 when he was killed, last December. He and his friends were throwing rocks at the armored vehicle that passed by the camp, located near Nablus. The driver provoked the children, slowing down and speeding up, slowing down and speeding up, until finally a soldier got out, aimed at the boy's head and fired. Jamil's horses were left in their stable, and his family was left to mourn.
And what did 16-year-old Taha al-Jawi do to get himself killed? The IDF claimed that he tried to sabotage the barbed-wire fence surrounding the abandoned Atarot airport; his friends said he was just playing soccer and had gone to chase after the ball. Whatever the circumstances, the response from the soldiers was quick and decisive: a bullet in the leg that caused him to bleed to death, lying in a muddy ditch by the side of the road. Not a word of regret, not a word of condemnation from the IDF spokesman, when we asked for a comment. Live fire directed at unarmed children who weren't endangering anyone, with no prior warning.
Abir Aramin was even younger; she was just 11. The daughter of an activist in the Combatants for Peace organization, in January she left her school in Anata and was on the way to buy candy in a little shop. She was fired upon from a Border Police vehicle. Bassam, her father, told us back then with bloodshot eyes and in a strangled voice: "I told myself that I don't want to take revenge. Revenge will be for this 'hero,' who was so 'threatened' by my daughter that he shot and killed her, to stand trial for it." But just a few days ago the authorities announced that the case was being closed: The Border Police apparently acted appropriately.
"I'm not going to exploit my daughter's blood for political purposes. This is a human outcry. I'm not going to lose my mind just because I lost my heart," the grieving father, who has many Israeli friends, also told us.
In Nablus, we documented the use of children as human shields - the use of the so-called "neighbor procedure" - involving an 11-year-old girl, a 12-year-old boy and a 15-year-old boy. So what if the High Court of Justice has outlawed it? We also recorded the story of the death of baby Khaled, whose parents, Sana and Daoud Fakih, tried to rush him to the hospital in the middle of the night, a time when Palestinian babies apparently mustn't get sick: The baby died at the checkpoint.
In Kafr al-Shuhada (the "martyrs' village") south of Jenin, in March, 15-year-old Ahmed Asasa was fleeing from soldiers who had entered the village. A sniper's bullet caught him in the neck.
Bushra Bargis hadn't even left her home. In late April she was studying for a big test, notebooks in hand, pacing around her room in the Jenin refugee camp in the early evening, when a sniper shot her in the forehead from quite far away. Her bloodstained notebooks bore witness to her final moments.
And what about the unborn babies? They weren't safe either. A bullet in the back of Maha Qatuni, a woman who was seven months pregnant and got up during the night to protect her children in their home, struck her fetus in the womb, shattering its head. The wounded mother lay in the Rafidiya Hospital in Nablus, hooked up to numerous tubes. She was going to name the baby Daoud. Does killing a fetus count as murder? And how "old" was the deceased? He was certainly the youngest of the many children Israel killed in the past year.
Happy New Year.
Gideon Levy writes for Ha'aretz, where this column originally appeared.
The Children of 5767
By GIDEON LEVY
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/907708.html
29 September, 2007
It was a pretty quiet year, relatively speaking. Only 457 Palestinians and 10 Israelis were killed, according to the B'Tselem human rights organization, including the victims of Qassam rockets. Fewer casualties than in many previous years. However, it was still a terrible year: 92 Palestinian children were killed (fortunately, not a single Israeli child was killed by Palestinians, despite the Qassams). One-fifth of the Palestinians killed were children and teens - a disproportionate, almost unprecedented number. The Jewish year of 5767. Almost 100 children, who were alive and playing last New Year, didn't survive to see this one.
One year. Close to 8,000 kilometers were covered in the newspaper's small, armored Rover - not including the hundreds of kilometers in the old yellow Mercedes taxi belonging to Munir and Sa'id, our dedicated drivers in Gaza. This is how we celebrated the 40th anniversary of the occupation. No one can argue anymore that it's only a temporary, passing phenomenon. Israel is the occupation. The occupation is Israel.
We set out each week in the footsteps of the fighters, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, trying to document the deeds of Israel Defense Forces soldiers, Border Police officers, Shin Bet security service investigators and Civil Administration personnel - the mighty occupation army that leaves behind in its wake horrific killing and destruction, this year as every year, for four decades.
And this was the year of the children that were killed. We didn't get to all of their homes, only to some; homes of bereavement where parents weep bitterly over their children, who were climbing a fig tree in the yard, or sitting on a bench in the street, or preparing for an exam, or on their way home from school, or sleeping peacefully in the false security of their homes.
A few of them also threw a rock at an armored vehicle or touched a forbidden fence. All came under live fire, some of which was deliberately aimed at them, cutting them down in their youth. From Mohammed (al-Zakh) to Mahmoud (al-Qarinawi), from the boy who was buried twice in Gaza to the boy who was buried in Israel. These are the stories of the children of 5767.
The first of them was buried twice. Abdullah al-Zakh identified half of the body of his son Mahmoud, in the morgue refrigerator of Shifa Hospital in Gaza, by the boy's belt and the socks on his feet. This was shortly before last Rosh Hashanah. The next day, when the Israel Defense Forces "successfully" completed Operation Locked Kindergarten, as it was called, leaving behind 22 dead and a razed neighborhood, and left Sajiyeh in Gaza, the bereaved father found the remaining parts of the body and brought them for a belated burial.
Mahmoud was 14 when he died. He was killed three days before the start of the school year. Thus we ushered in Rosh Hashanah 5767. In Shifa we saw children whose legs were amputated, who were paralyzed or on respirators. Families were killed in their sleep, or while riding on donkeys, or working in the fields. Operation Locked Kindergarten and Operation Summer Rains. Remember? Five children were killed in the first operation, with the dreadful name. For a week, the people of Sajiyeh lived in fear the likes of which Sderot residents have never experienced - not to belittle their anxiety, that is.
The day after Rosh Hashanah we traveled to Rafah. Dam Hamad, 14, had been killed in her sleep, in her mother's arms, by an Israeli rocket strike that sent a concrete pillar crashing down on her head. She was the only daughter of her paralyzed mother, her whole world. In the family's impoverished home in the Brazil neighborhood, at the edge of Rafah, we met the mother who lay in a heap in bed; everything she had in the world was gone. Outside, I remarked to the reporter from French television who accompanied me that this was one of those moments when I felt ashamed to be an Israeli. The next day he called and said: "They didn't broadcast what you said, for fear of the Jewish viewers in France."
Soon afterward we went back to Jerusalem to visit Maria Aman, the amazing little girl from Gaza, who lost nearly everyone in her life to a missile strike gone awry that wiped out her innocent family, including her mother, while riding in their car. Her devoted father Hamdi remains by her side. For a year and a half, she has been cared for at the wonderful Alyn Hospital, where she has learned to feed a parrot with her mouth and to operate her wheelchair using her chin. All the rest of her limbs are paralyzed. She is connected day and night to a respirator. Still, she is a cheerful and neatly groomed child whose father fears the day they might be sent back to Gaza.
For now, they remain in Israel. Many Israelis have devoted themselves to Maria and come to visit her regularly. A few weeks ago, broadcast journalist Leah Lior took her in her car to see the sea in Tel Aviv. It was a Saturday night, and the area was crowded with people out for a good time, but the girl in the wheelchair attracted attention. Some people recognized her and stopped to say hello and wish her well. Who knows? Maybe the pilot who fired the missile at her car happened to be passing by, too.
Not everyone has been fortunate enough to receive the treatment that Maria has had. In mid- November, a few days after the bombardment of Beit Hanoun - remember that? - we arrived in the battered and bleeding town: 22 killed in a moment, 11 shells dropped on a densely packed town. Islam, 14, sat there dressed in black, grieving for her eight relatives that had been killed, including her mother and grandmother. Those disabled by this bombardment didn't get to go to Alyn.
Two days before the shelling of Beit Hanoun, our forces also fired a missile that hit the minibus transporting children to the Indira Gandhi kindergarten in Beit Lahia. Two kids, passersby, were killed on the spot. The teacher, Najwa Khalif, died a few days later. She was wounded in clear view of her 20 small pupils, who were sitting in the minibus. After her death, the children drew a picture: a row of children lying bleeding, their teacher in the front, and an Israeli plane bombing them. At the Indira Gandhi kindergarten, we had to bid good-bye to Gaza, too: Since then, we haven't been able to cross into the Strip.
But the children have come to us. In November, 31 children were killed in Gaza. One of them, Ayman al-Mahdi, died in Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, where he had been rushed in grave condition. Only his uncle was permitted to stay with him during his final days. A fifth-grader, Ayman had been sitting with friends on a bench on a street in Jabalya, right by his school. A bullet fired from a tank struck him. He was just 10 years old.
IDF troops killed children in the West Bank, too. Jamil Jabaji, a boy who tended horses in the new Askar refugee camp, was shot in the head. He was 14 when he was killed, last December. He and his friends were throwing rocks at the armored vehicle that passed by the camp, located near Nablus. The driver provoked the children, slowing down and speeding up, slowing down and speeding up, until finally a soldier got out, aimed at the boy's head and fired. Jamil's horses were left in their stable, and his family was left to mourn.
And what did 16-year-old Taha al-Jawi do to get himself killed? The IDF claimed that he tried to sabotage the barbed-wire fence surrounding the abandoned Atarot airport; his friends said he was just playing soccer and had gone to chase after the ball. Whatever the circumstances, the response from the soldiers was quick and decisive: a bullet in the leg that caused him to bleed to death, lying in a muddy ditch by the side of the road. Not a word of regret, not a word of condemnation from the IDF spokesman, when we asked for a comment. Live fire directed at unarmed children who weren't endangering anyone, with no prior warning.
Abir Aramin was even younger; she was just 11. The daughter of an activist in the Combatants for Peace organization, in January she left her school in Anata and was on the way to buy candy in a little shop. She was fired upon from a Border Police vehicle. Bassam, her father, told us back then with bloodshot eyes and in a strangled voice: "I told myself that I don't want to take revenge. Revenge will be for this 'hero,' who was so 'threatened' by my daughter that he shot and killed her, to stand trial for it." But just a few days ago the authorities announced that the case was being closed: The Border Police apparently acted appropriately.
"I'm not going to exploit my daughter's blood for political purposes. This is a human outcry. I'm not going to lose my mind just because I lost my heart," the grieving father, who has many Israeli friends, also told us.
In Nablus, we documented the use of children as human shields - the use of the so-called "neighbor procedure" - involving an 11-year-old girl, a 12-year-old boy and a 15-year-old boy. So what if the High Court of Justice has outlawed it? We also recorded the story of the death of baby Khaled, whose parents, Sana and Daoud Fakih, tried to rush him to the hospital in the middle of the night, a time when Palestinian babies apparently mustn't get sick: The baby died at the checkpoint.
In Kafr al-Shuhada (the "martyrs' village") south of Jenin, in March, 15-year-old Ahmed Asasa was fleeing from soldiers who had entered the village. A sniper's bullet caught him in the neck.
Bushra Bargis hadn't even left her home. In late April she was studying for a big test, notebooks in hand, pacing around her room in the Jenin refugee camp in the early evening, when a sniper shot her in the forehead from quite far away. Her bloodstained notebooks bore witness to her final moments.
And what about the unborn babies? They weren't safe either. A bullet in the back of Maha Qatuni, a woman who was seven months pregnant and got up during the night to protect her children in their home, struck her fetus in the womb, shattering its head. The wounded mother lay in the Rafidiya Hospital in Nablus, hooked up to numerous tubes. She was going to name the baby Daoud. Does killing a fetus count as murder? And how "old" was the deceased? He was certainly the youngest of the many children Israel killed in the past year.
Happy New Year.
Gideon Levy writes for Ha'aretz, where this column originally appeared.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Standing at Baruch Goldstein's grave: Breaking the Silence with Shovrim Shtika
A visit to Hebron:
A couple of weeks ago, I found myself in probably in the one place in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, I never thought I would ever be. But here I was standing at the graveside of the murder Baruch Goldstein in the illegal Israeli colony of Kiryat Arba, in the Palestinian Hebron hills. Goldstein, an American-Israeli doctor, illegal settler and devote Zionist follower of the racist religious fanatic Rabbi Meir Kahane in 1994 murdered 29 Palestinian men, women and children and wounded another 150, while they were at prayer in the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. It was his murderous act during the holy Jewish festival of Purim and the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, that triggered the first Palestinian suicide bombing against Israeli citizens.
So how did I get to be in the one place I never thought I would visit in the beautiful country that I have come to love? The visit to Goldstein’s grave was the first stop in a tour organised by Shovrim Shtika (Breaking the Silence), a group of ex- Israeli soldiers, many of whom served in Hebron. Shovrim Shtika, which formed in 2004 and which aims to “break the silence” about what actually happens in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and to lift the veil on the activities of the “most moral army in the world”.
Myself, my two housemates and another friend joined 45 other Israeli citizens and internationals on the twice monthly tour earlier that morning in Jerusalem. We were greeted warmly by Mikhael, former Israeli army commander who was wearing a yarmulke. For the next 40 minutes, as we drove to Hebron along the settler highways, Mikhael gave us a thumb nail sketch of the history of the holy land, Zionist colonisation, Palestinian resistance, as well as the religious significance of Hebron to Jews, Muslims and Christians. As we speed along the settler highway, I recalled how different and easy this journey was compared to my first trip to Hebron in 2004. In 2004, we had travelled from Haris to a demonstration just south of Hebron city. A journey that should have taken an hour and half was strung out to more than 5 hours. During the marathon journey (a regular occurrence for Palestinians), we were stopped at 8 checkpoints and we had no choice but to change vehicles 6 times, due to road blocks that prevented Palestinian vehicles from travelling extended distances. How different it was this time, sitting in an air condition Israeli number plated bus, hurtling down the settler freeway.
As we entered the illegal Israeli colony of Kiryat Arba, Mikhael explained Hebron is the only place in the OPT that has illegal Israeli settlements located in the centre of a Palestinian city. Mikael went on to explain how since 1997, Hebron has been divided into to two sectors, know as H1 and H2. Approximately 160,000 Palestinian residents live in H1, while around 40,000 live in H2. Also living in H2 are around 600 illegal Israeli settlers. H1 is supposedly under the control of the Palestinian Authority, while H2 – including Al Shuhada St and the Old City and Palestinian markets (Casbah or Souq area) - is under the control of the Israeli military. The reality, however, is that the Israeli military also control H1 and the illegal settlers are the real ones in control of H2, not the Israeli military or police.
Due to the location of the illegal settlers inside the city boundaries, the situation for Palestinian residents in both H1 and H2 is particularly horrendous as they are constantly under violent attack from the illegal Israeli settlers. According to the Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem “Over the years, settlers in the city have routinely abused the city's Palestinian residents, sometimes using extreme violence. Throughout the second intifada, settlers have committed physical assaults, including beatings, at times with clubs, stone throwing, and hurling of refuse, sand, water, chlorine, and empty bottles. Settlers have destroyed shops and doors, committed thefts, and chopped down fruit trees. Settlers have also been involved in gunfire, attempts to run people over, poisoning of a water well, breaking into homes, spilling of hot liquid on the face of a Palestinian, and the killing of a young Palestinian girl”.
B’Tselem notes that neither Israeli police nor soldiers do anything to protect Palestinians from illegal settler attacks and as a result, are in effect, sanctioning the violence of the illegal settlers. In addition, both Israeli police and soldiers are responsible for excessive violence against Palestinians carrying out arbitrary house searches, seize of Palestinian homes for observation points (often for years on end), detention, humiliation and beating of Palestinians. Both Israeli security forces and settler violence is designed, as B’Tselem notes, to force “a quite transfer” of Palestinian residents out of the old city.
I found it not a little disturbing as we made our way to the mass murder’s grave which was located in the park celebrating the life of another racist advocate of Palestinian and Arab genocide, Meir Kahane (the leader of the Kach movement which Goldstein was a member). More than anything else in Hebron and perhaps in the whole the occupied Palestinian territories, Goldstein’s grave represents clearly the racism of Zionist ideology. In the aftermath of his murderous act, Goldstein was and continues to be held up as a hero to be emulated by many illegal Israeli settlers and other Zionists. In the weeks and years after his death, a shrine had been erected around his grave celebrating him and the murder of 29 Palestinian men, women and children. The tiled shrine remained in existence for 6 years until 2000 when the Israeli government under intense pressure, finally forcibly dismantled it.
From where we stood near the murder’s grave, we could down into the hills and streets of Hebron city, where we would soon be visiting. From where we stood, the city looks so peaceful but for those of us who had been to Hebron before, including the former Israeli soldiers leading us, we knew we were about to enter a place which was, for the Palestinian residents who lived there, a veritable hell on earth.
When we reached the Tomb of the Patriarchs, which is sacred to all three faiths and where Goldstein carried out his massacre, we alighted from the bus. From here we would spend the next few hours on foot walking through the streets of Hebron city. Mikhael and Yehuda, the founder of Breaking the Silence, led us up Shuhada St, the main thoroughfare which ran though the city.
Anywhere else in the world, the main street of a city would be teeming with pedestrians, cars, shops and shop keepers hawking their wares. But the street in front of us was deathly silent. Except for an occasional army jeep or car belonging to an illegal Israeli settler passing by; the street was devoid of life. Mikhael explained to us that during the first three years of the intifada, the Israeli military imposed a round-the-clock curfew on the Palestinians in the city center of Hebron for more than a year (377 days in total), including a consecutive period of 182 days, with short breaks to obtain provisions.
Although, now not under around-the-clock closure, Israeli military restrictions are still severe with the many streets in Hebron city, including Shuhada St, being no-go zones for Palestinians residents. The Israeli military had created what B’Tselem calls a “contiguous strip of land in the City Center along which the movement of Palestinian vehicles is forbidden. The middle of the strip contains many sections of road that the army forbids even Palestinian pedestrians to use. The strip blocks the main north-south traffic artery in the city, and therefore affects the entire city”.
In 2000, in complete disregard for international law, the Israeli military forcible closed all Palestinian shops along the H2 section of Shuhada St and sealed the entrances of the Palestinians houses which opened on to the street, by soldering (welding) the doors closed. The purpose of the shop closures and the soldering (welding) of the residential doors were to ensure that only the illegal settlers had access to Shuhada St.
As we walked up the streets, we could see Palestinian children playing in caged balconies above us. The cages around every Palestinian balcony and window were to prevent the illegal settlers from throwing stones or rubbish at the Palestinian residents. As we stood outside the home of one family, we could hear them going about their daily routine inside. We could hear children playing and the parents busily doing household chores. As we stood there, looking at the bronzed lumps of solder which prevent the family inside from every being able to open the door to greet us, Mikhael told us how what we saw here had a profound effect on him as a soldier.
“What opened my eyes”, he said, “was that the people living in the house behind me have not been able to walk on the streets for years, but I as a Jew, I have the privilege to do that”.
As we stood outside the welded door, Mikhael asked us to image what it must be like for the Palestinian family we could not see. As he spoke, I no longer was standing with our group, instead, in my mind I was traversing the roofs of the houses behind us. Imagine, he said, to leave this house, the family must do so by the roof tops. It may not seem that arduous, he said, but imagine.
Imagine having to carry your groceries or one of the huge heavy gas bottles that all Palestinian homes used for cooking. Imagine having to carry that over the tiles of the roofs, the guttering and up and down make shift stairs made of rubble and brick.
Imagine, he said, if you were old and/or sick. Imagine trying to get to hospital. Imagine, he said, if your loved one had died and you must carry that person on your back, out of the house, across the roofs. Imagine, he said, to live your life like that every day.
Video: The Rooftops of Hebron
And as I visualised and put his words into images, how could I not want to cry and shout out at the injustice and the inhumanity and immorality of forcing another human being to live that way. But I bit down on my words and swallowed them whole
As our journey continued through out the day, this reaction was to take hold of me again and again – when we visited the once thriving meat and whole sale markets, now desolate, which had been destroyed by the illegal settlers and now lay in rubble, when we witnessed the illegal invasion of Palestinian homes and shops by the settlers and when we visited the homes of Palestinian families living under siege below the illegal Israeli colony of Tel Rumeida in the centre of Hebron city.
“There are lives at the end of this story”, said Mikhael. “People are caged because of me and every Israeli should see this and claim responsibility”, he said.
As we walked around the markets, we could see what looked like empty closed Palestinian shops, but upon further inspection we realised that in fact there were illegal Israeli settler families living in the shops. Yehuda, who guided us during this section of our tour, explained that the settler would keep the fronts of the shops in tact, while breaking into the shops from behind and quietly establishing residence in them. He explained while the Israeli army had finally moved to evict some illegal families from the market area a few weeks ago (after they had been there for over 5 years), this was pretty much a staged drama, as hundreds of other settler families remained illegal in Palestinian homes and residences. The IOF and the Israeli state, he explained, were quite aware of the settler’s illegal actions but nothing to prevent the settlers from continuing such actions.
Soon we were standing outside of Beit Hadassah, the first of the illegal Israeli settlements to be established in Hebron city itself. Here it was Silvana’s turn to guide us. A tiny blonde international human rights activist who works with Breaking the Silence, she explained to us the role of the international peace teams, such as the Christian Peace Makers, the Ecumenical Accompaniers and the International Solidarity Movement, who work in Hebron.
Silvana explained that the one of the main role of the international teams was to accompany Palestinian school children to and from schools and to try and prevent both settler adults and settler children from attacking the Palestinian school children.
She went onto tell with chilling factuality, how one day when she was standing duty at the bottom of the stairs that the children must walk down, a settler youth attacked her from behind with a brick. The youth hit her with such force that he not only knocked her unconscious but also severely fractured her skull. Hearing Silvana’s story, I recalled how when I was in Palestine last time, two members of the Christian Peacemaker teams were attacked by an armed group of illegal settlers wielding chains, steel pipes and guns. Kim Lamberty, a CPTer from the US had her leg and arm broken, while her team mate Chris Brown had his lung punctured and his skull fractured. They were not the first or the last peace activists to be brutalised by the illegal settlers.
Video: Settler children attacking Palestinian school girls and their teachers
Silvana, along with Mikhael and Yehuda, explained that attacks by both settler adults and children were not uncommon, as under the age of 12 years, Israeli children can not be held responsible criminally for their actions. As a result, settler adults often would encourage and direct their children to attack Palestinian children and adults. Yehuda and Mikhael explained that soldiers did nothing to stop the settler children in their attacks because the role of the IOF was to protect the illegal settlers, not to protect the Palestinians the settler youth were attacking.
When we reached the section of Shuhada Street, where the Israeli checkpoint between H1 and H2 was established, we could hear the hustle and bustle of the Palestinian community on the otherside. While H1 was only a few metres away, it in reality was in fact a different world compared to the one we were standing in. Not far from this checkpoint was the illegal settlement of Tel Rumeida, which was located directly in the heart of Hebron city.
Before walking to the streets that marked the beginning of Tel Rumeida, Mikhael and Yehuda introduced us to Hisham, a tall Palestinian man in his mid 40s, who welcomed us warmly into his home. As he showed us around his garden, he explained that the settlers above him regularly dumped their rubbish and threw rocks at his family. He explained the derelict washing machine in his garden was courtesy of settler neighbours, who had thrown it down deliberately one day when he was in the garden, narrowly missing him at the time. Like many other Palestinians, his family home had been shot at by the illegal settlers and it had been invaded and its contents destroyed. The illegal settlers had also cut the electricity, the phone line, and the water pipes, ensure that at times his family would have to go for months without water or electricity.
The worst times, however, Hisham explained was when his father died and when his wife was about to give birth to his son. When his father died, the illegal settlers and the IOF would not allow an ambulance to come to the house. So he had to carry the body of his deceased father several miles on his back, through fields and checkpoints. A harrowing journey for anyone in a time of grief.
Later that same year, Hisham was forced to carry his wife who was about to give birth to the hospital. When he reached the checkpoint, however, the Israeli soldiers on duty refused to let him pass, despite the fact he had medical documentation. Instead they told Hisham to take his wife back to his house and “let her die there”. Several hours later, they attempted the journey again. This time a new commander was on duty when Hisham and his wife reached the checkpoint. This solider was more compassionate and let them through, however, it still took Hisham 3 hours on foot to get his wife to hospital and to the medical attention she needed.
Before we left the house, Hisham and Mikhael screened a series of videos taken by Palestinian residents and human rights workers. One showed young settler girls, aged abut 12 years attacking terrified Palestinian school children and pushing a 70 year old human rights worker to the ground. Another showed a settler woman taunting and threatening a Palestinian family caged in their own home, calling the women “sharmouta” (whore) The video of the settler woman was screened across Israel, bring home for one of the first time the viciousness that Palestinians in Hebron have to endure on a daily basis.
Illegal settler woman attacking Palestinian family who are forced to live in a cage.
The final video was of the 2003 settler rampage, which saw hundreds
of settlers break into Palestinian homes, destroy them and attack the families inside. Just watching the video sent shivers down me not only as the terror of the family filming the settler actions was palpable but also because of the joyful singing and dancing of the settlers as they carried out their bloody rampage.
Upon reaching Tel Rumeida, the IOF refused to allow us to enter the colony, saying that there were new arbitrary laws in place which prevented us from doing so. As we walked around Tel Rumeida colony, Yehuda and Mikhael, who had avoided throughout most of the trip making the journey about themselves and their Break the Silence colleagues, gave us an insight into the minds of Israeli soldiers serving in Hebron and how they came to form Breaking the Silence. Yehuda told us how when he first arrived in Hebron as a grenade machine gunner, he was shocked to be ordered to fire indiscriminately into Palestinian civilian areas. A grenade machine gun, he explained has a kill range of 8 metres and an injury range of 16 metres, it was not an accurate weapon, so often you would have to fire it 5 or 6 times before you could get an accurate fix on your target. This meant, he said, that often they would hit Palestinian houses, schools and hospitals.
Yehuda went onto explain, how despite his initial shock, within a week he had grown comfortable with the morality of firing into civilian residential areas. After he finished his service, he and a number of his comrades realised that they all shared such a common experience and that they could not speak with their family or friends about what they had seen or done in Hebron and how they had all so quickly succumbed to be part of a campaign to terrorise and collectively punish a whole Palestinian city in the name of “security”.
Shovim Shtika, he said, was formed so that they could “break the silent agreement between Israeli soldiers and Israeli civil society that ‘we know something is going on but we don't want to know’”. They wanted to “tell our daily life, so that other Israelis would understand what happened in the occupied territories” and how they “had become part of it”.
Collecting photos that they had taken, the ex-soldiers decided to prepare a photo exhibition, which was to send shock waves through Israeli society. In 2005, when the soldiers first put their exhibition one display at a college in Tel Aviv, it was raided by the Israeli government and the military police. The soldiers were detained and interrogated for more than 7 hours. This, however, did not deter them and the soldiers have sought to repeat their exhibition throughout Israel, the West Bank and internationally. They have continued to speak out, collect testimonies from other soldiers serving in the OPT and to “break the silence” to expose what the “most moral army in the world” is really doing in the OPT and to the Palestinian people.
As we made our way back to the bus and I looked over the Hebron hills towards where early that day I had stood beside Goldstein’s grave, I tried to take in all that I had seen this day. As I stood there, the words of Malcolm X came to my mind, that you did not need anything else except the truth as “truth is on the side of the oppressed”.
In Hebron, as in every other place in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the truth is that the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian people is brutal, cruel, violent and racist. It is only in raising our voices and speaking the truth about the brutality and racism of the Israeli occupation, like the ex-soldiers of Shrovim Shitka, that we break the silence. In Hebron, as in every other place in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the truth is on the side of the Palestinian people and that its the duty of all of use who believe in freedom, justice and equality to raise our voices against the brutal and Israeli occupation and demand freedom, justice and equality for Palestine and the Palestinian people.
Video: (30 mins) Israeli soldiers talk about Breaking the Silence
To read the testimonies of the soldiers from Shovim Shtika and what really happens in the OPT: http://www.shovrimshtika.org/index_e.asp
To hear testimonies of soldiers from Shovim Shtika http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=breaking+the+silence%2C+hebron%2C+soldiers
A couple of weeks ago, I found myself in probably in the one place in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, I never thought I would ever be. But here I was standing at the graveside of the murder Baruch Goldstein in the illegal Israeli colony of Kiryat Arba, in the Palestinian Hebron hills. Goldstein, an American-Israeli doctor, illegal settler and devote Zionist follower of the racist religious fanatic Rabbi Meir Kahane in 1994 murdered 29 Palestinian men, women and children and wounded another 150, while they were at prayer in the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron. It was his murderous act during the holy Jewish festival of Purim and the holy Muslim month of Ramadan, that triggered the first Palestinian suicide bombing against Israeli citizens.
So how did I get to be in the one place I never thought I would visit in the beautiful country that I have come to love? The visit to Goldstein’s grave was the first stop in a tour organised by Shovrim Shtika (Breaking the Silence), a group of ex- Israeli soldiers, many of whom served in Hebron. Shovrim Shtika, which formed in 2004 and which aims to “break the silence” about what actually happens in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and to lift the veil on the activities of the “most moral army in the world”.
Myself, my two housemates and another friend joined 45 other Israeli citizens and internationals on the twice monthly tour earlier that morning in Jerusalem. We were greeted warmly by Mikhael, former Israeli army commander who was wearing a yarmulke. For the next 40 minutes, as we drove to Hebron along the settler highways, Mikhael gave us a thumb nail sketch of the history of the holy land, Zionist colonisation, Palestinian resistance, as well as the religious significance of Hebron to Jews, Muslims and Christians. As we speed along the settler highway, I recalled how different and easy this journey was compared to my first trip to Hebron in 2004. In 2004, we had travelled from Haris to a demonstration just south of Hebron city. A journey that should have taken an hour and half was strung out to more than 5 hours. During the marathon journey (a regular occurrence for Palestinians), we were stopped at 8 checkpoints and we had no choice but to change vehicles 6 times, due to road blocks that prevented Palestinian vehicles from travelling extended distances. How different it was this time, sitting in an air condition Israeli number plated bus, hurtling down the settler freeway.
As we entered the illegal Israeli colony of Kiryat Arba, Mikhael explained Hebron is the only place in the OPT that has illegal Israeli settlements located in the centre of a Palestinian city. Mikael went on to explain how since 1997, Hebron has been divided into to two sectors, know as H1 and H2. Approximately 160,000 Palestinian residents live in H1, while around 40,000 live in H2. Also living in H2 are around 600 illegal Israeli settlers. H1 is supposedly under the control of the Palestinian Authority, while H2 – including Al Shuhada St and the Old City and Palestinian markets (Casbah or Souq area) - is under the control of the Israeli military. The reality, however, is that the Israeli military also control H1 and the illegal settlers are the real ones in control of H2, not the Israeli military or police.
Due to the location of the illegal settlers inside the city boundaries, the situation for Palestinian residents in both H1 and H2 is particularly horrendous as they are constantly under violent attack from the illegal Israeli settlers. According to the Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem “Over the years, settlers in the city have routinely abused the city's Palestinian residents, sometimes using extreme violence. Throughout the second intifada, settlers have committed physical assaults, including beatings, at times with clubs, stone throwing, and hurling of refuse, sand, water, chlorine, and empty bottles. Settlers have destroyed shops and doors, committed thefts, and chopped down fruit trees. Settlers have also been involved in gunfire, attempts to run people over, poisoning of a water well, breaking into homes, spilling of hot liquid on the face of a Palestinian, and the killing of a young Palestinian girl”.
B’Tselem notes that neither Israeli police nor soldiers do anything to protect Palestinians from illegal settler attacks and as a result, are in effect, sanctioning the violence of the illegal settlers. In addition, both Israeli police and soldiers are responsible for excessive violence against Palestinians carrying out arbitrary house searches, seize of Palestinian homes for observation points (often for years on end), detention, humiliation and beating of Palestinians. Both Israeli security forces and settler violence is designed, as B’Tselem notes, to force “a quite transfer” of Palestinian residents out of the old city.
I found it not a little disturbing as we made our way to the mass murder’s grave which was located in the park celebrating the life of another racist advocate of Palestinian and Arab genocide, Meir Kahane (the leader of the Kach movement which Goldstein was a member). More than anything else in Hebron and perhaps in the whole the occupied Palestinian territories, Goldstein’s grave represents clearly the racism of Zionist ideology. In the aftermath of his murderous act, Goldstein was and continues to be held up as a hero to be emulated by many illegal Israeli settlers and other Zionists. In the weeks and years after his death, a shrine had been erected around his grave celebrating him and the murder of 29 Palestinian men, women and children. The tiled shrine remained in existence for 6 years until 2000 when the Israeli government under intense pressure, finally forcibly dismantled it.
From where we stood near the murder’s grave, we could down into the hills and streets of Hebron city, where we would soon be visiting. From where we stood, the city looks so peaceful but for those of us who had been to Hebron before, including the former Israeli soldiers leading us, we knew we were about to enter a place which was, for the Palestinian residents who lived there, a veritable hell on earth.
When we reached the Tomb of the Patriarchs, which is sacred to all three faiths and where Goldstein carried out his massacre, we alighted from the bus. From here we would spend the next few hours on foot walking through the streets of Hebron city. Mikhael and Yehuda, the founder of Breaking the Silence, led us up Shuhada St, the main thoroughfare which ran though the city.
Anywhere else in the world, the main street of a city would be teeming with pedestrians, cars, shops and shop keepers hawking their wares. But the street in front of us was deathly silent. Except for an occasional army jeep or car belonging to an illegal Israeli settler passing by; the street was devoid of life. Mikhael explained to us that during the first three years of the intifada, the Israeli military imposed a round-the-clock curfew on the Palestinians in the city center of Hebron for more than a year (377 days in total), including a consecutive period of 182 days, with short breaks to obtain provisions.
Although, now not under around-the-clock closure, Israeli military restrictions are still severe with the many streets in Hebron city, including Shuhada St, being no-go zones for Palestinians residents. The Israeli military had created what B’Tselem calls a “contiguous strip of land in the City Center along which the movement of Palestinian vehicles is forbidden. The middle of the strip contains many sections of road that the army forbids even Palestinian pedestrians to use. The strip blocks the main north-south traffic artery in the city, and therefore affects the entire city”.
In 2000, in complete disregard for international law, the Israeli military forcible closed all Palestinian shops along the H2 section of Shuhada St and sealed the entrances of the Palestinians houses which opened on to the street, by soldering (welding) the doors closed. The purpose of the shop closures and the soldering (welding) of the residential doors were to ensure that only the illegal settlers had access to Shuhada St.
As we walked up the streets, we could see Palestinian children playing in caged balconies above us. The cages around every Palestinian balcony and window were to prevent the illegal settlers from throwing stones or rubbish at the Palestinian residents. As we stood outside the home of one family, we could hear them going about their daily routine inside. We could hear children playing and the parents busily doing household chores. As we stood there, looking at the bronzed lumps of solder which prevent the family inside from every being able to open the door to greet us, Mikhael told us how what we saw here had a profound effect on him as a soldier.
“What opened my eyes”, he said, “was that the people living in the house behind me have not been able to walk on the streets for years, but I as a Jew, I have the privilege to do that”.
As we stood outside the welded door, Mikhael asked us to image what it must be like for the Palestinian family we could not see. As he spoke, I no longer was standing with our group, instead, in my mind I was traversing the roofs of the houses behind us. Imagine, he said, to leave this house, the family must do so by the roof tops. It may not seem that arduous, he said, but imagine.
Imagine having to carry your groceries or one of the huge heavy gas bottles that all Palestinian homes used for cooking. Imagine having to carry that over the tiles of the roofs, the guttering and up and down make shift stairs made of rubble and brick.
Imagine, he said, if you were old and/or sick. Imagine trying to get to hospital. Imagine, he said, if your loved one had died and you must carry that person on your back, out of the house, across the roofs. Imagine, he said, to live your life like that every day.
Video: The Rooftops of Hebron
And as I visualised and put his words into images, how could I not want to cry and shout out at the injustice and the inhumanity and immorality of forcing another human being to live that way. But I bit down on my words and swallowed them whole
As our journey continued through out the day, this reaction was to take hold of me again and again – when we visited the once thriving meat and whole sale markets, now desolate, which had been destroyed by the illegal settlers and now lay in rubble, when we witnessed the illegal invasion of Palestinian homes and shops by the settlers and when we visited the homes of Palestinian families living under siege below the illegal Israeli colony of Tel Rumeida in the centre of Hebron city.
“There are lives at the end of this story”, said Mikhael. “People are caged because of me and every Israeli should see this and claim responsibility”, he said.
As we walked around the markets, we could see what looked like empty closed Palestinian shops, but upon further inspection we realised that in fact there were illegal Israeli settler families living in the shops. Yehuda, who guided us during this section of our tour, explained that the settler would keep the fronts of the shops in tact, while breaking into the shops from behind and quietly establishing residence in them. He explained while the Israeli army had finally moved to evict some illegal families from the market area a few weeks ago (after they had been there for over 5 years), this was pretty much a staged drama, as hundreds of other settler families remained illegal in Palestinian homes and residences. The IOF and the Israeli state, he explained, were quite aware of the settler’s illegal actions but nothing to prevent the settlers from continuing such actions.
Soon we were standing outside of Beit Hadassah, the first of the illegal Israeli settlements to be established in Hebron city itself. Here it was Silvana’s turn to guide us. A tiny blonde international human rights activist who works with Breaking the Silence, she explained to us the role of the international peace teams, such as the Christian Peace Makers, the Ecumenical Accompaniers and the International Solidarity Movement, who work in Hebron.
Silvana explained that the one of the main role of the international teams was to accompany Palestinian school children to and from schools and to try and prevent both settler adults and settler children from attacking the Palestinian school children.
She went onto tell with chilling factuality, how one day when she was standing duty at the bottom of the stairs that the children must walk down, a settler youth attacked her from behind with a brick. The youth hit her with such force that he not only knocked her unconscious but also severely fractured her skull. Hearing Silvana’s story, I recalled how when I was in Palestine last time, two members of the Christian Peacemaker teams were attacked by an armed group of illegal settlers wielding chains, steel pipes and guns. Kim Lamberty, a CPTer from the US had her leg and arm broken, while her team mate Chris Brown had his lung punctured and his skull fractured. They were not the first or the last peace activists to be brutalised by the illegal settlers.
Video: Settler children attacking Palestinian school girls and their teachers
Silvana, along with Mikhael and Yehuda, explained that attacks by both settler adults and children were not uncommon, as under the age of 12 years, Israeli children can not be held responsible criminally for their actions. As a result, settler adults often would encourage and direct their children to attack Palestinian children and adults. Yehuda and Mikhael explained that soldiers did nothing to stop the settler children in their attacks because the role of the IOF was to protect the illegal settlers, not to protect the Palestinians the settler youth were attacking.
When we reached the section of Shuhada Street, where the Israeli checkpoint between H1 and H2 was established, we could hear the hustle and bustle of the Palestinian community on the otherside. While H1 was only a few metres away, it in reality was in fact a different world compared to the one we were standing in. Not far from this checkpoint was the illegal settlement of Tel Rumeida, which was located directly in the heart of Hebron city.
Before walking to the streets that marked the beginning of Tel Rumeida, Mikhael and Yehuda introduced us to Hisham, a tall Palestinian man in his mid 40s, who welcomed us warmly into his home. As he showed us around his garden, he explained that the settlers above him regularly dumped their rubbish and threw rocks at his family. He explained the derelict washing machine in his garden was courtesy of settler neighbours, who had thrown it down deliberately one day when he was in the garden, narrowly missing him at the time. Like many other Palestinians, his family home had been shot at by the illegal settlers and it had been invaded and its contents destroyed. The illegal settlers had also cut the electricity, the phone line, and the water pipes, ensure that at times his family would have to go for months without water or electricity.
The worst times, however, Hisham explained was when his father died and when his wife was about to give birth to his son. When his father died, the illegal settlers and the IOF would not allow an ambulance to come to the house. So he had to carry the body of his deceased father several miles on his back, through fields and checkpoints. A harrowing journey for anyone in a time of grief.
Later that same year, Hisham was forced to carry his wife who was about to give birth to the hospital. When he reached the checkpoint, however, the Israeli soldiers on duty refused to let him pass, despite the fact he had medical documentation. Instead they told Hisham to take his wife back to his house and “let her die there”. Several hours later, they attempted the journey again. This time a new commander was on duty when Hisham and his wife reached the checkpoint. This solider was more compassionate and let them through, however, it still took Hisham 3 hours on foot to get his wife to hospital and to the medical attention she needed.
Before we left the house, Hisham and Mikhael screened a series of videos taken by Palestinian residents and human rights workers. One showed young settler girls, aged abut 12 years attacking terrified Palestinian school children and pushing a 70 year old human rights worker to the ground. Another showed a settler woman taunting and threatening a Palestinian family caged in their own home, calling the women “sharmouta” (whore) The video of the settler woman was screened across Israel, bring home for one of the first time the viciousness that Palestinians in Hebron have to endure on a daily basis.
Illegal settler woman attacking Palestinian family who are forced to live in a cage.
The final video was of the 2003 settler rampage, which saw hundreds
of settlers break into Palestinian homes, destroy them and attack the families inside. Just watching the video sent shivers down me not only as the terror of the family filming the settler actions was palpable but also because of the joyful singing and dancing of the settlers as they carried out their bloody rampage.
Upon reaching Tel Rumeida, the IOF refused to allow us to enter the colony, saying that there were new arbitrary laws in place which prevented us from doing so. As we walked around Tel Rumeida colony, Yehuda and Mikhael, who had avoided throughout most of the trip making the journey about themselves and their Break the Silence colleagues, gave us an insight into the minds of Israeli soldiers serving in Hebron and how they came to form Breaking the Silence. Yehuda told us how when he first arrived in Hebron as a grenade machine gunner, he was shocked to be ordered to fire indiscriminately into Palestinian civilian areas. A grenade machine gun, he explained has a kill range of 8 metres and an injury range of 16 metres, it was not an accurate weapon, so often you would have to fire it 5 or 6 times before you could get an accurate fix on your target. This meant, he said, that often they would hit Palestinian houses, schools and hospitals.
Yehuda went onto explain, how despite his initial shock, within a week he had grown comfortable with the morality of firing into civilian residential areas. After he finished his service, he and a number of his comrades realised that they all shared such a common experience and that they could not speak with their family or friends about what they had seen or done in Hebron and how they had all so quickly succumbed to be part of a campaign to terrorise and collectively punish a whole Palestinian city in the name of “security”.
Shovim Shtika, he said, was formed so that they could “break the silent agreement between Israeli soldiers and Israeli civil society that ‘we know something is going on but we don't want to know’”. They wanted to “tell our daily life, so that other Israelis would understand what happened in the occupied territories” and how they “had become part of it”.
Collecting photos that they had taken, the ex-soldiers decided to prepare a photo exhibition, which was to send shock waves through Israeli society. In 2005, when the soldiers first put their exhibition one display at a college in Tel Aviv, it was raided by the Israeli government and the military police. The soldiers were detained and interrogated for more than 7 hours. This, however, did not deter them and the soldiers have sought to repeat their exhibition throughout Israel, the West Bank and internationally. They have continued to speak out, collect testimonies from other soldiers serving in the OPT and to “break the silence” to expose what the “most moral army in the world” is really doing in the OPT and to the Palestinian people.
As we made our way back to the bus and I looked over the Hebron hills towards where early that day I had stood beside Goldstein’s grave, I tried to take in all that I had seen this day. As I stood there, the words of Malcolm X came to my mind, that you did not need anything else except the truth as “truth is on the side of the oppressed”.
In Hebron, as in every other place in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the truth is that the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian people is brutal, cruel, violent and racist. It is only in raising our voices and speaking the truth about the brutality and racism of the Israeli occupation, like the ex-soldiers of Shrovim Shitka, that we break the silence. In Hebron, as in every other place in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the truth is on the side of the Palestinian people and that its the duty of all of use who believe in freedom, justice and equality to raise our voices against the brutal and Israeli occupation and demand freedom, justice and equality for Palestine and the Palestinian people.
Video: (30 mins) Israeli soldiers talk about Breaking the Silence
To read the testimonies of the soldiers from Shovim Shtika and what really happens in the OPT: http://www.shovrimshtika.org/index_e.asp
To hear testimonies of soldiers from Shovim Shtika http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=breaking+the+silence%2C+hebron%2C+soldiers
Saturday, September 15, 2007
War Crimes: From Sabra and Shatila to Gaza
16 September, 2007
Today marks 25 years. Twenty-five years since 3500 unarmed men, women and children were brutalised and massacred in cold blood in Lebanon in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. The massacre was carried out over three days in 1982 from September 16 to September 18 by the rightwing Lebanese Christian milita, the Phlangists, under the direction of the Israeli Defence Force headed by Ariel Sharon.
In the wake of the Nakba (the catastrophe) - the 1948 partition of their homeland - and the subsequent invasion and occupation of what was left of it in 1967, Palestinian refugees fled in fear of their lives to safety in Lebanon. It was in the refugees camps that Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) grew up, as the Palestinians - dispossessed, forgotten and abandoned by the world -no longer were content to remain silent. Instead, like so many other “un-people”, they began to fight back and demand not only the restoration of their homeland but justice and Al Awada (return).
In 1982, supposedly in retaliation for the attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador in London, Israel invade Lebanon. The assassination attempt, however, was not carried out by Arafat’s PLO but by a rival militant group. Israel, who wanted to oust the PLO from Lebanon, used the attempted assassination to launch an invasion supposedly in the name of destroying the PLO. On 6 June 1982, Israel began its invasion and occupation of Lebanon, sending in more than 60,000 troops.
On September 14, Bashir Gemayel, the President of Lebanon and leader of Kataeb - the right-wing Christian nationalist party, known as the Phalange - was assassinated. The assassination was carried out by a member of the Syrian Nationalist Party, however, Israel’s Defense Minister at the time, Ariel Sharon, decided to use the assassination attempt to make a push to occupy West Beirut.
On September 15, the Israeli occupying force surrounded the twin refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, with the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) command stationing itself in a number of highrise buildings, allowing them a panoramic view of the two camps for the next three days. From September 15 through to September 16, Israel carried out non-stop shelling of the two camps, which was home to 20,000 unarmed Palestinian refugees. On the afternoon of September 16, 150 Christian Phalangists, trained by and under the direction and control of the Israeli forces, entered the camps. The Israeli military cordoned off the camps ensuring no-one could escape. For the next 40 hours, with the full knowledge and cooperation of the Israel military, the Phalangist forces tortured, brutalised, raped and massacred the unarmed inhabitants of Sabra and Shatila.
On September 18, the first western journalists were able enter the camps. They saw first hand the tortured and mutilated bodies of the refugees. Robert Fisk, one of the first foreign journalists to enter Sabra and Shatila wrote that what he and his fellow journalists found what could only described as “a war crime”
In his book, Pity the Nation, Fisk recalled that:
“Jenkins and Tveit [fellow journalists] were so overwhelmed by what we found in Chatila that at first we were unable to register our own shock. Bill Foley of AP had come with us. All he could say as he walked round was "Jesus Christ" over and over again. We might have accepted evidence of a few murders; even dozens of bodies, killed in the heat of combat. But there were women lying in houses with their skirts torn up to their waists and their legs wide apart, children with their throats cut, rows of young men shot in the back after being lined up at an execution wall. There were babies - blackened babies because they had been slaughtered more than 24-hours earlier and their small bodies were already in a state of decomposition - tossed into rubbish heaps alongside discarded US army ration tins, Israeli army equipment and empty bottles of whiskey”.
Fisk went on to recounted how:
“Down a laneway to our right, no more than 50 yards from the entrance, there lay a pile of corpses. There were more than a dozen of them, young men whose arms and legs had been wrapped around each other in the agony of death. All had been shot point-blank range through the cheek, the bullet tearing away a line of flesh up to the ear and entering the brain. Some had vivid crimson or black scars down the left side of their throats. One had been castrated, his trousers torn open and a settlement of flies throbbing over his torn intestines”.
“The eyes of these young men were all open. The youngest was only 12 or 13 years old. They were dressed in jeans and coloured shirts, the material absurdly tight over their flesh now that their bodies had begun to bloat in the heat. They had not been robbed. On one blackened wrist a Swiss watch recorded the correct time, the second hand still ticking round uselessly, expending the last energies of its dead owner”.
“On the other side of the main road, up a track through the debris, we found the bodies of five women and several children. The women were middle-aged and their corpses lay draped over a pile of rubble. One lay on her back, her dress torn open and the head of a little girl emerging from behind her. The girl had short dark curly hair, her eyes were staring at us and there was a frown on her face. She was dead”.
“Another child lay on the roadway like a discarded doll, her white dress stained with mud and dust. She could have been no more than three years old. The back of her head had been blown away by a bullet fired into her brain. One of the women also held a tiny baby to her body. The bullet that had passed into her breast had killed the baby too. Someone had slit open the woman's stomach, cutting sideways and then upwards, perhaps trying to kill her unborn child. Her eyes were wide open, her dark face frozen in horror”.
According to Israeli journalist, Amnon Kapeliouk, in his investigative article, Sabra and Shatila: an inquiry into a massacre, in the days after the massacre, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Lebanese officials had counted and buried at 762 bodies in state graves and that 1200 other bodies were claimed by their families and buried in private graves. However, Kapeliouk noted that “there are three other categories of victims which must be added to the 2000 bodies recovered, buried and cremated after the massacre”.
These included (1) those who had been buried by the Phalangists in mass graves, which the Lebanese authorities prevented anyone from unearthing; (2) others who were buried in the ruins of 200 destroyed houses and whose bodies were unable to be recovered “because of the advance decomposition of the corpses” and; (3) up to 2000 other camp inhabitants had been taken alive to an unknown destination, many never to return (many of their bodies were later found on roadsides leading to the south of Lebanon). According to Kapeliouk, “if all these categories were added together, the number of victims reaches approximately 3000 people. Between 3,000-3,500 men, women and children were massacred within 48 hours between September 16 and 18, 1982”.
The massacre shocked the world. Israel’s Prime Minister Menachim Begin was forced to resign. In December 1982, the UN declared the massacre to be an act of genocide (despite the fact that all Western democracies abstained on the vote). An Israeli judicial commission found that the Israeli military had abandon its duty of care and that Ariel Sharon was “personally responsible” for the massacre. However, neither Sharon or any member of the Israeli military or the Christian Phalange were every punished for the war crimes they facilitated and carried out. In 2001, the Butcher of Sabra and Shatila, Ariel Sharon became the Prime Minister of Israel.
In Pity the Nation, Robert Fisk asked in relation to Sabra and Shatila, “When does a killing become an outrage? When does an atrocity become a massacre? Or, put another way, how many killings make a massacre? Thirty? A hundred? Three hundred? When is a massacre not a massacre? When the figures are too low? Or when the massacre is carried out by Israel’s friends rather than Israel's enemies?
In response to his own rhetorical questions, Fisk wrote that he suspected that the only reason that there was “debate” around whether or not Sabra and Shatila was a “massacre” was because “in Beirut, the victims were Palestinians”. Fisk noted that, however, “If Syrian troops had crossed into Israel, surrounded a Kibbutz and allowed their Palestinian allies to slaughter the Jewish inhabitants, no Western news agency would waste its time afterwards arguing about whether or not it should be called a massacre”.
Twenty-five years after Sabra and Shatila, Fisk’s observation continues to ring true. The Palestinian people, in the eyes of the western media and many so-called “western democracies”, continue to remain what British historian Mark Curtis calls a “un-people”. According to Curtis, “un-people” are those whose lives are deemed worthless and/or expendable. They are “the modern day equivalent of the ‘savages’ of colonial days, who could be mown down by British guns in virtual secrecy, or else in circumstances where the perpetrators were hailed as the upholders of civilisation”.
The concept of Un-people is central, notes Australian journalist and filmmaker, John Pilger, to the way the Palestinians (and Arabs and Muslim) are viewed by the Western world and how their plight and the war crimes against them are ignored by a silent media and international community.
As an occupied people, the Palestinian people should be protected by 149 articles of the Fourth Geneva Convention - a convention that Israel is a signatory too. However, since 1967, Israel has repeatedly violated every single one of these articles by indiscriminately shelling Palestinian civilian residential areas (using warplanes, tanks and machine guns), by using Palestinian civilians as human shields during military operations, by transferring sections of the Israeli civilian population into the occupied territories (ie. illegal settlers), by forcibly deporting and transferring sections of the Palestinian population - both in and out of the Palestinian occupied territories, by building illegal settlements, by carrying out arbitrary arrests and detention, by jailing Palestinians without trail, by refusing to allow Palestinian civilians to access medical and educational facilities, by carrying out extra-judicial executions, by restricting the freedom of movement of Palestinians via checkpoints, road blocks, curfews and closures.
In 2006 alone, Israel was accused repeatedly by international and Israeli human rights monitoring groups of violating the Fourth Geneva Convention and committing war crimes. In June 2006, Israel began– once again – bombarding the Gaza Strip as part of Operation Summer Rain. According to Amnesty International, deliberate attacks by Israeli forces against civilian property and infrastructure in the Gaza Strip violated international humanitarian law and constitute war crimes. On June 9, Israel’s bombing of civilian areas resulted in 7 members of the Ghalia family, including 5 children and their parents, being killed as they picnicked on the beach in Gaza. Over the next three months, Israel would continue to bombard the Gaza, killing more than 200 Palestinian civilians - a quarter of them children.
In November, after a brief lull, Israel began bombing the Gaza again as part of their Autumn Clouds military operation. In the first 48 hours, Israeli’s occupation forces killed 70 Palestinian civilians. On November 8, Israel shelled the Palestinian city of Beit Hanoun, killing 18 civilians, including 7 children - all from the Athamna family. Fifty other civilians were wounded. B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories accused Israel of carrying out a war crime. By the end of November, as part of Autumn Clouds, Israel had killed more than 200 Palestinians; half of those killed were women and children.
In August 2007, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) noted that since the beginning of the Al Aqsa intifada in September 2000, more than 3354 unarmed Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank and Gaza. According to the PCHR, of those killed, 23% or 788 were children. During the same period, PCHR noting that 24,350 Palestinian civilians were wounded by the IOF.
There has been little outcry or outrage, however, by the world media who salivate at every facet of Paris Hilton or Britney Spear’s inane lives. There was little outcry or condemnation from the leaders of the so-called “free world”, as the Israeli Zionist state systematically violated (and continues to violate) the Fourth Geneva Convention and uses state terrorism to kill thousands of unarmed civilians in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Why? Because in Gaza, as in Beirut, the victims were Palestinian – a “un-people” whose lives are expendable and not as worthy as other human beings. From Sabra and Shatila to Gaza and the West Bank today, the Israeli state and its occupation forces have continued to violate the political, civil, economic, social, cultural and human rights of the Palestinian people with impunity. They have been encouraged in this by the leaders of the “free world” who have looked on in silence, turning a blind eye to the war crimes being carried out by the Israeli state.
Despite the odds, the repression and Israel’s state terror, however, the Palestinian people refuse to be a “un-people” or to give up their struggle. Why? Because in the words of the late Palestinian academic, Edward Said, “it is a just cause, a noble ideal, a moral quest for equality and human rights”
On the anniversary of Sabra and Shatila, we remember the dead. But we also remember the living and stand in solidarity with their struggle for justice and equality and to end the brutal Israeli occupation.
Sabra and Shatila: inquiry into a massacre by Amnon Kapeliouk can be read at: www.geocities.com/indictsharon/Kapeliouk.doc
Today marks 25 years. Twenty-five years since 3500 unarmed men, women and children were brutalised and massacred in cold blood in Lebanon in the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. The massacre was carried out over three days in 1982 from September 16 to September 18 by the rightwing Lebanese Christian milita, the Phlangists, under the direction of the Israeli Defence Force headed by Ariel Sharon.
In the wake of the Nakba (the catastrophe) - the 1948 partition of their homeland - and the subsequent invasion and occupation of what was left of it in 1967, Palestinian refugees fled in fear of their lives to safety in Lebanon. It was in the refugees camps that Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) grew up, as the Palestinians - dispossessed, forgotten and abandoned by the world -no longer were content to remain silent. Instead, like so many other “un-people”, they began to fight back and demand not only the restoration of their homeland but justice and Al Awada (return).
In 1982, supposedly in retaliation for the attempted assassination of the Israeli ambassador in London, Israel invade Lebanon. The assassination attempt, however, was not carried out by Arafat’s PLO but by a rival militant group. Israel, who wanted to oust the PLO from Lebanon, used the attempted assassination to launch an invasion supposedly in the name of destroying the PLO. On 6 June 1982, Israel began its invasion and occupation of Lebanon, sending in more than 60,000 troops.
On September 14, Bashir Gemayel, the President of Lebanon and leader of Kataeb - the right-wing Christian nationalist party, known as the Phalange - was assassinated. The assassination was carried out by a member of the Syrian Nationalist Party, however, Israel’s Defense Minister at the time, Ariel Sharon, decided to use the assassination attempt to make a push to occupy West Beirut.
On September 15, the Israeli occupying force surrounded the twin refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, with the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) command stationing itself in a number of highrise buildings, allowing them a panoramic view of the two camps for the next three days. From September 15 through to September 16, Israel carried out non-stop shelling of the two camps, which was home to 20,000 unarmed Palestinian refugees. On the afternoon of September 16, 150 Christian Phalangists, trained by and under the direction and control of the Israeli forces, entered the camps. The Israeli military cordoned off the camps ensuring no-one could escape. For the next 40 hours, with the full knowledge and cooperation of the Israel military, the Phalangist forces tortured, brutalised, raped and massacred the unarmed inhabitants of Sabra and Shatila.
On September 18, the first western journalists were able enter the camps. They saw first hand the tortured and mutilated bodies of the refugees. Robert Fisk, one of the first foreign journalists to enter Sabra and Shatila wrote that what he and his fellow journalists found what could only described as “a war crime”
In his book, Pity the Nation, Fisk recalled that:
“Jenkins and Tveit [fellow journalists] were so overwhelmed by what we found in Chatila that at first we were unable to register our own shock. Bill Foley of AP had come with us. All he could say as he walked round was "Jesus Christ" over and over again. We might have accepted evidence of a few murders; even dozens of bodies, killed in the heat of combat. But there were women lying in houses with their skirts torn up to their waists and their legs wide apart, children with their throats cut, rows of young men shot in the back after being lined up at an execution wall. There were babies - blackened babies because they had been slaughtered more than 24-hours earlier and their small bodies were already in a state of decomposition - tossed into rubbish heaps alongside discarded US army ration tins, Israeli army equipment and empty bottles of whiskey”.
Fisk went on to recounted how:
“Down a laneway to our right, no more than 50 yards from the entrance, there lay a pile of corpses. There were more than a dozen of them, young men whose arms and legs had been wrapped around each other in the agony of death. All had been shot point-blank range through the cheek, the bullet tearing away a line of flesh up to the ear and entering the brain. Some had vivid crimson or black scars down the left side of their throats. One had been castrated, his trousers torn open and a settlement of flies throbbing over his torn intestines”.
“The eyes of these young men were all open. The youngest was only 12 or 13 years old. They were dressed in jeans and coloured shirts, the material absurdly tight over their flesh now that their bodies had begun to bloat in the heat. They had not been robbed. On one blackened wrist a Swiss watch recorded the correct time, the second hand still ticking round uselessly, expending the last energies of its dead owner”.
“On the other side of the main road, up a track through the debris, we found the bodies of five women and several children. The women were middle-aged and their corpses lay draped over a pile of rubble. One lay on her back, her dress torn open and the head of a little girl emerging from behind her. The girl had short dark curly hair, her eyes were staring at us and there was a frown on her face. She was dead”.
“Another child lay on the roadway like a discarded doll, her white dress stained with mud and dust. She could have been no more than three years old. The back of her head had been blown away by a bullet fired into her brain. One of the women also held a tiny baby to her body. The bullet that had passed into her breast had killed the baby too. Someone had slit open the woman's stomach, cutting sideways and then upwards, perhaps trying to kill her unborn child. Her eyes were wide open, her dark face frozen in horror”.
According to Israeli journalist, Amnon Kapeliouk, in his investigative article, Sabra and Shatila: an inquiry into a massacre, in the days after the massacre, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Lebanese officials had counted and buried at 762 bodies in state graves and that 1200 other bodies were claimed by their families and buried in private graves. However, Kapeliouk noted that “there are three other categories of victims which must be added to the 2000 bodies recovered, buried and cremated after the massacre”.
These included (1) those who had been buried by the Phalangists in mass graves, which the Lebanese authorities prevented anyone from unearthing; (2) others who were buried in the ruins of 200 destroyed houses and whose bodies were unable to be recovered “because of the advance decomposition of the corpses” and; (3) up to 2000 other camp inhabitants had been taken alive to an unknown destination, many never to return (many of their bodies were later found on roadsides leading to the south of Lebanon). According to Kapeliouk, “if all these categories were added together, the number of victims reaches approximately 3000 people. Between 3,000-3,500 men, women and children were massacred within 48 hours between September 16 and 18, 1982”.
The massacre shocked the world. Israel’s Prime Minister Menachim Begin was forced to resign. In December 1982, the UN declared the massacre to be an act of genocide (despite the fact that all Western democracies abstained on the vote). An Israeli judicial commission found that the Israeli military had abandon its duty of care and that Ariel Sharon was “personally responsible” for the massacre. However, neither Sharon or any member of the Israeli military or the Christian Phalange were every punished for the war crimes they facilitated and carried out. In 2001, the Butcher of Sabra and Shatila, Ariel Sharon became the Prime Minister of Israel.
In Pity the Nation, Robert Fisk asked in relation to Sabra and Shatila, “When does a killing become an outrage? When does an atrocity become a massacre? Or, put another way, how many killings make a massacre? Thirty? A hundred? Three hundred? When is a massacre not a massacre? When the figures are too low? Or when the massacre is carried out by Israel’s friends rather than Israel's enemies?
In response to his own rhetorical questions, Fisk wrote that he suspected that the only reason that there was “debate” around whether or not Sabra and Shatila was a “massacre” was because “in Beirut, the victims were Palestinians”. Fisk noted that, however, “If Syrian troops had crossed into Israel, surrounded a Kibbutz and allowed their Palestinian allies to slaughter the Jewish inhabitants, no Western news agency would waste its time afterwards arguing about whether or not it should be called a massacre”.
Twenty-five years after Sabra and Shatila, Fisk’s observation continues to ring true. The Palestinian people, in the eyes of the western media and many so-called “western democracies”, continue to remain what British historian Mark Curtis calls a “un-people”. According to Curtis, “un-people” are those whose lives are deemed worthless and/or expendable. They are “the modern day equivalent of the ‘savages’ of colonial days, who could be mown down by British guns in virtual secrecy, or else in circumstances where the perpetrators were hailed as the upholders of civilisation”.
The concept of Un-people is central, notes Australian journalist and filmmaker, John Pilger, to the way the Palestinians (and Arabs and Muslim) are viewed by the Western world and how their plight and the war crimes against them are ignored by a silent media and international community.
As an occupied people, the Palestinian people should be protected by 149 articles of the Fourth Geneva Convention - a convention that Israel is a signatory too. However, since 1967, Israel has repeatedly violated every single one of these articles by indiscriminately shelling Palestinian civilian residential areas (using warplanes, tanks and machine guns), by using Palestinian civilians as human shields during military operations, by transferring sections of the Israeli civilian population into the occupied territories (ie. illegal settlers), by forcibly deporting and transferring sections of the Palestinian population - both in and out of the Palestinian occupied territories, by building illegal settlements, by carrying out arbitrary arrests and detention, by jailing Palestinians without trail, by refusing to allow Palestinian civilians to access medical and educational facilities, by carrying out extra-judicial executions, by restricting the freedom of movement of Palestinians via checkpoints, road blocks, curfews and closures.
In 2006 alone, Israel was accused repeatedly by international and Israeli human rights monitoring groups of violating the Fourth Geneva Convention and committing war crimes. In June 2006, Israel began– once again – bombarding the Gaza Strip as part of Operation Summer Rain. According to Amnesty International, deliberate attacks by Israeli forces against civilian property and infrastructure in the Gaza Strip violated international humanitarian law and constitute war crimes. On June 9, Israel’s bombing of civilian areas resulted in 7 members of the Ghalia family, including 5 children and their parents, being killed as they picnicked on the beach in Gaza. Over the next three months, Israel would continue to bombard the Gaza, killing more than 200 Palestinian civilians - a quarter of them children.
In November, after a brief lull, Israel began bombing the Gaza again as part of their Autumn Clouds military operation. In the first 48 hours, Israeli’s occupation forces killed 70 Palestinian civilians. On November 8, Israel shelled the Palestinian city of Beit Hanoun, killing 18 civilians, including 7 children - all from the Athamna family. Fifty other civilians were wounded. B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Centre for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories accused Israel of carrying out a war crime. By the end of November, as part of Autumn Clouds, Israel had killed more than 200 Palestinians; half of those killed were women and children.
In August 2007, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) noted that since the beginning of the Al Aqsa intifada in September 2000, more than 3354 unarmed Palestinian civilians have been killed by Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank and Gaza. According to the PCHR, of those killed, 23% or 788 were children. During the same period, PCHR noting that 24,350 Palestinian civilians were wounded by the IOF.
There has been little outcry or outrage, however, by the world media who salivate at every facet of Paris Hilton or Britney Spear’s inane lives. There was little outcry or condemnation from the leaders of the so-called “free world”, as the Israeli Zionist state systematically violated (and continues to violate) the Fourth Geneva Convention and uses state terrorism to kill thousands of unarmed civilians in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Why? Because in Gaza, as in Beirut, the victims were Palestinian – a “un-people” whose lives are expendable and not as worthy as other human beings. From Sabra and Shatila to Gaza and the West Bank today, the Israeli state and its occupation forces have continued to violate the political, civil, economic, social, cultural and human rights of the Palestinian people with impunity. They have been encouraged in this by the leaders of the “free world” who have looked on in silence, turning a blind eye to the war crimes being carried out by the Israeli state.
Despite the odds, the repression and Israel’s state terror, however, the Palestinian people refuse to be a “un-people” or to give up their struggle. Why? Because in the words of the late Palestinian academic, Edward Said, “it is a just cause, a noble ideal, a moral quest for equality and human rights”
On the anniversary of Sabra and Shatila, we remember the dead. But we also remember the living and stand in solidarity with their struggle for justice and equality and to end the brutal Israeli occupation.
Sabra and Shatila: inquiry into a massacre by Amnon Kapeliouk can be read at: www.geocities.com/indictsharon/Kapeliouk.doc
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
When it's a friend...
Living in Ramallah for an extended period of time, to an extent, in errs you against what is happening in the rest of the Occupied West Bank and Gaza. In Ramallah, it is possible, even given the Israeli occupation to obtain a degree (just a degree mind you) of normalcy.
Ramallah is a busy, bustling city that never seems to sleep. And inside its surrounds, the worst aspects of the occupation are not always visible. Last week, I travelled to Occupied East Jerusalem, via Qalandia checkpoint, for the first time in about 6 weeks. As I approached the checkpoint in the service, the apartheid wall suddenly appeared before me. I was stunned that I felt quite shocked when I saw it. It made me realise that I had adjusted, at least a bit, to the occupation and having spent the last month mainly in central Ramallah and its surrounds, I had developed a degree of "normalcy".
Sure there were PA soldiers on the streets everywhere, yes every few weeks the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) would enter the city, carry out an attack and just as quickly leave, yes I was still outraged every time I read about what the IOF were doing in Salfit or Nablus or Jenin but now that I was in Ramallah, I was not having to witness every single day the worst aspects of the occupation. And without realising it I had become somewhat complacent.
Seeing the apartheid wall suddenly appeared before me last Saturday and having to traverse Qalandia checkpoint once again soon dispelled that complacency. Just as today it was once again dispelled.
This morning, the IOF entered the northern city of Qalqilya to conduct a military raid, supposedly against Palestinian resistance fighters. Qalqilya, a once thriving city of 50,000 people, is close the Green Line and perhaps only and hour from Tel Aviv and as a result it became one of the first Palestinians cities to feel the bitter bite of the apartheid wall. In 2004, I visited Qalqilya many times and I remember the horror I felt the first time I saw and experienced this completely walled city. (see my 2004 blog: The Wall: a land grab that creates violence http://redapril.blogspot.com/2004/11/wall-land-grab-that-creates-violence.html).
When I read about the military assault today on the Palestinian Maan News Agency website, I thought to ring my friend M, who is from Qalqilya (but now lives in Ramallah) to see if his family was okay. But then I didn't, thinking to myself, that Qaliqilya is regularly raided and I was sure that there was nothing to worry about and his family would be fine. Without realising it my complacency had once again raised its head.
When I did finally ring him two hours later to see if all was okay, I was horrified to hear that the houses of two of his uncles had been demolished by the IOF during the invasion and that two rooms of his parents house had also been demolished. M told me that the IOF had seized one of the house belong to another family member and set up an interrogation base and they were interrogating all the men in the local area. He told me that his father and brother, along with all the other men in the neighbourhood, had been detained.
CLICK ON PHOTO TO ENLARGE
He was in regular contact with his mother and was waiting on the latest news to make sure that his family were all okay. When I rang him back 30 minutes later to see if he was okay and if his family okay, the answer was no. During that short 30 minutes since I spoke to him, the IOF had gone in and demolished his parent's house completely - the house he grew up in, the house that his mother and father had spent a lifetime building, the house that was home to him and his five brothers and sisters, gone forever.
According to the reports in the Israeli media, the IOF had enter Qalqilya in the morning and more than 30 Palestinian civilians had been injured in the military assault. Some were suffering from teargas inhalation; one young man had been shot in the head. According to the Israeli newspapers, the IOF had surrounded "a cluster of homes in which the IDF said wanted militants are hiding....The troops called over loudspeakers on the militants to surrender, but were met with no response. During the operation, which is still ongoing, IDF bulldozers demolished two of the homes in the compound in an attempt to force the militants out, and are threatening to demolish the rest".
CLICK ON PHOTO TO ENLARGE
This is of course the usual story put forward by the IOF to justify their actions, their target killings, their house demolitions, their arrests, their curfews, their mass abductions and arrests, their invasions.
The reason why there was "no response" from the supposed militants was because there were no militants in the houses. My friend's family are ordinary Palestinians, just a family trying to survive and get by like any other family in the world. But now their world has been turned completely upside down.
CLICK ON PHOTO TO ENLARGE
Living in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, I have been a witness to what my friend Wendy calls the "everyday sorrows of the occupation" – the checkpoints, the curfews, the house demolitions, the arrests, the beatings, the dehumanisation and collective punishment of 4 million people. And like any normal human being, I have felt anger and sadness at the injustice and inhumanity I have witnessed. But today, I could feel no anger. All I could feel was bewilderment, pain and helplessness.
Today, the brutal Israeli occupation cut closer to the bone then it had ever done before - it was a friend, someone I know and care for, someone I admire and respect, someone who is dear to me. Today, the Israeli occupation army destroyed, without blinking an eyelid, the lives of the family of someone I love.
CLICK ON PHOTO TO ENLARGE
At a loss what to do, feeling completely helpless, I rang the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolition. Meir, their chief field worker, was surprised when I told him that the IOF had been demolishing houses in Qalqilya. He said that he had not heard any reports about it yet. I explained the situation to him and how my friend, so angry wanted to sue the IOF for the demolition of his parent's house. Before Meir responded, I knew what he was going to say.
"Yes, we have good Israeli lawyers who can help him, but the chance of a successful outcome is very low". He went on to say that the Israeli Courts will not intervene if the IOF say the demolitions were part of a "security operation".
It wouldn't matter that there were no "militants", it wouldn't matter that the homes of three innocent families had been destroyed, it wouldn't matter that the lives of these families have been all but destroyed in just one short afternoon.
CLICK ON PHOTO TO ENLARGE
So now my friend is waiting.
Waiting to hear if all is okay with his family, to hear if his brother and father have been released, to hear that nothing more has happened to his family.
Tonight three branches of his family, more than a dozen or more people, will be forced to try and find comfort under the roof of his grandfather and extremely ill grandmother's house.
Tomorrow, he will travel to Qaliqilya to see his family and to make sure they are all okay. Tomorrow, he will climb through the rubble of the house that was once his home. Tomorrow, he will sit and try and comfort his mother, father and brothers and sisters. Tomorrow, the occupation will continue and the homes and lives of more Palestinian families will be destroyed.
And tomorrow what will you do? Will you stand up and be counted? Will you move a motion at your union to support the international boycott? Will you organise a rally to call for an end to the siege of Gaza? Tomorrow, will you take stand and say enough is enough? Tomorrow, will you join the campaign to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine?
VIDEO FOOTAGE OF M's HOUSE BEING DEMOLISHED - QALQILYA, 29 AUGUST 2007
B'Tselem Report on Qalqilya House demolitions: http://www.btselem.org/english/Razing/20070911_Demolitions_in_Qalqiliya.asp
Ramallah is a busy, bustling city that never seems to sleep. And inside its surrounds, the worst aspects of the occupation are not always visible. Last week, I travelled to Occupied East Jerusalem, via Qalandia checkpoint, for the first time in about 6 weeks. As I approached the checkpoint in the service, the apartheid wall suddenly appeared before me. I was stunned that I felt quite shocked when I saw it. It made me realise that I had adjusted, at least a bit, to the occupation and having spent the last month mainly in central Ramallah and its surrounds, I had developed a degree of "normalcy".
Sure there were PA soldiers on the streets everywhere, yes every few weeks the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) would enter the city, carry out an attack and just as quickly leave, yes I was still outraged every time I read about what the IOF were doing in Salfit or Nablus or Jenin but now that I was in Ramallah, I was not having to witness every single day the worst aspects of the occupation. And without realising it I had become somewhat complacent.
Seeing the apartheid wall suddenly appeared before me last Saturday and having to traverse Qalandia checkpoint once again soon dispelled that complacency. Just as today it was once again dispelled.
This morning, the IOF entered the northern city of Qalqilya to conduct a military raid, supposedly against Palestinian resistance fighters. Qalqilya, a once thriving city of 50,000 people, is close the Green Line and perhaps only and hour from Tel Aviv and as a result it became one of the first Palestinians cities to feel the bitter bite of the apartheid wall. In 2004, I visited Qalqilya many times and I remember the horror I felt the first time I saw and experienced this completely walled city. (see my 2004 blog: The Wall: a land grab that creates violence http://redapril.blogspot.com/2004/11/wall-land-grab-that-creates-violence.html).
When I read about the military assault today on the Palestinian Maan News Agency website, I thought to ring my friend M, who is from Qalqilya (but now lives in Ramallah) to see if his family was okay. But then I didn't, thinking to myself, that Qaliqilya is regularly raided and I was sure that there was nothing to worry about and his family would be fine. Without realising it my complacency had once again raised its head.
When I did finally ring him two hours later to see if all was okay, I was horrified to hear that the houses of two of his uncles had been demolished by the IOF during the invasion and that two rooms of his parents house had also been demolished. M told me that the IOF had seized one of the house belong to another family member and set up an interrogation base and they were interrogating all the men in the local area. He told me that his father and brother, along with all the other men in the neighbourhood, had been detained.
CLICK ON PHOTO TO ENLARGEHe was in regular contact with his mother and was waiting on the latest news to make sure that his family were all okay. When I rang him back 30 minutes later to see if he was okay and if his family okay, the answer was no. During that short 30 minutes since I spoke to him, the IOF had gone in and demolished his parent's house completely - the house he grew up in, the house that his mother and father had spent a lifetime building, the house that was home to him and his five brothers and sisters, gone forever.
According to the reports in the Israeli media, the IOF had enter Qalqilya in the morning and more than 30 Palestinian civilians had been injured in the military assault. Some were suffering from teargas inhalation; one young man had been shot in the head. According to the Israeli newspapers, the IOF had surrounded "a cluster of homes in which the IDF said wanted militants are hiding....The troops called over loudspeakers on the militants to surrender, but were met with no response. During the operation, which is still ongoing, IDF bulldozers demolished two of the homes in the compound in an attempt to force the militants out, and are threatening to demolish the rest".
CLICK ON PHOTO TO ENLARGEThis is of course the usual story put forward by the IOF to justify their actions, their target killings, their house demolitions, their arrests, their curfews, their mass abductions and arrests, their invasions.
The reason why there was "no response" from the supposed militants was because there were no militants in the houses. My friend's family are ordinary Palestinians, just a family trying to survive and get by like any other family in the world. But now their world has been turned completely upside down.
CLICK ON PHOTO TO ENLARGELiving in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, I have been a witness to what my friend Wendy calls the "everyday sorrows of the occupation" – the checkpoints, the curfews, the house demolitions, the arrests, the beatings, the dehumanisation and collective punishment of 4 million people. And like any normal human being, I have felt anger and sadness at the injustice and inhumanity I have witnessed. But today, I could feel no anger. All I could feel was bewilderment, pain and helplessness.
Today, the brutal Israeli occupation cut closer to the bone then it had ever done before - it was a friend, someone I know and care for, someone I admire and respect, someone who is dear to me. Today, the Israeli occupation army destroyed, without blinking an eyelid, the lives of the family of someone I love.
CLICK ON PHOTO TO ENLARGEAt a loss what to do, feeling completely helpless, I rang the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolition. Meir, their chief field worker, was surprised when I told him that the IOF had been demolishing houses in Qalqilya. He said that he had not heard any reports about it yet. I explained the situation to him and how my friend, so angry wanted to sue the IOF for the demolition of his parent's house. Before Meir responded, I knew what he was going to say.
"Yes, we have good Israeli lawyers who can help him, but the chance of a successful outcome is very low". He went on to say that the Israeli Courts will not intervene if the IOF say the demolitions were part of a "security operation".
It wouldn't matter that there were no "militants", it wouldn't matter that the homes of three innocent families had been destroyed, it wouldn't matter that the lives of these families have been all but destroyed in just one short afternoon.
CLICK ON PHOTO TO ENLARGESo now my friend is waiting.
Waiting to hear if all is okay with his family, to hear if his brother and father have been released, to hear that nothing more has happened to his family.
Tonight three branches of his family, more than a dozen or more people, will be forced to try and find comfort under the roof of his grandfather and extremely ill grandmother's house.
Tomorrow, he will travel to Qaliqilya to see his family and to make sure they are all okay. Tomorrow, he will climb through the rubble of the house that was once his home. Tomorrow, he will sit and try and comfort his mother, father and brothers and sisters. Tomorrow, the occupation will continue and the homes and lives of more Palestinian families will be destroyed.
And tomorrow what will you do? Will you stand up and be counted? Will you move a motion at your union to support the international boycott? Will you organise a rally to call for an end to the siege of Gaza? Tomorrow, will you take stand and say enough is enough? Tomorrow, will you join the campaign to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine?
VIDEO FOOTAGE OF M's HOUSE BEING DEMOLISHED - QALQILYA, 29 AUGUST 2007
B'Tselem Report on Qalqilya House demolitions: http://www.btselem.org/english/Razing/20070911_Demolitions_in_Qalqiliya.asp
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Occupation 101 - A must see documentary
Dear friends and supporters
Recently a new documentary called Occupation 101 about the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine was released.
The film has won numerous awards and it can be viewed on the web at:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8481947913401709466&hl=en
This documentary, along with the Iron Wall which was released last year are both excellent introductions and explanations of what is happening in Palestine and Israel, and why.
In solidarity, KIm
Occupation 101 - A Must Watch Video
Information Clearing House
August 9, 2007
An award-winning documentary film on the root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The film depicts life in occupied Palestine under Israeli military occupation.
Synopsis: A thought-provoking and powerful documentary film on the current and historical root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unlike any other film ever produced on the conflict -- 'Occupation 101' presents a comprehensive analysis of the facts and hidden truths surrounding the never ending controversy and
dispels many of its long-perceived myths and misconceptions.
The film also details life under Israeli military rule, the role of the United States in the conflict, and the major obstacles that stand in the way of a lasting and viable peace. The roots of the conflict are explained through first-hand on-the-ground experiences from leading Middle East scholars, peace activists, journalists, religious leaders and humanitarian workers whose voices have too often been
suppressed in American media outlets.
The film covers a wide range of topics -- which include -- the first wave of Jewish immigration from Europe in the 1880's, the 1920 tensions, the 1948 war, the 1967 war, the first Intifada of 1987, the Oslo Peace Process, Settlement expansion, the role of the United States Government, the second Intifada of 2000, the separation
barrier and the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, as well as many heart wrenching testimonials from victims of this tragedy.
Click either of these links to view the entire video:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18145.htm
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8481947913401709466&hl=en
For more information and to purchase a DVD:
http://www.occupation101.com/
Recently a new documentary called Occupation 101 about the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine was released.
The film has won numerous awards and it can be viewed on the web at:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8481947913401709466&hl=en
This documentary, along with the Iron Wall which was released last year are both excellent introductions and explanations of what is happening in Palestine and Israel, and why.
In solidarity, KIm
Occupation 101 - A Must Watch Video
Information Clearing House
August 9, 2007
An award-winning documentary film on the root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The film depicts life in occupied Palestine under Israeli military occupation.
Synopsis: A thought-provoking and powerful documentary film on the current and historical root causes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Unlike any other film ever produced on the conflict -- 'Occupation 101' presents a comprehensive analysis of the facts and hidden truths surrounding the never ending controversy and
dispels many of its long-perceived myths and misconceptions.
The film also details life under Israeli military rule, the role of the United States in the conflict, and the major obstacles that stand in the way of a lasting and viable peace. The roots of the conflict are explained through first-hand on-the-ground experiences from leading Middle East scholars, peace activists, journalists, religious leaders and humanitarian workers whose voices have too often been
suppressed in American media outlets.
The film covers a wide range of topics -- which include -- the first wave of Jewish immigration from Europe in the 1880's, the 1920 tensions, the 1948 war, the 1967 war, the first Intifada of 1987, the Oslo Peace Process, Settlement expansion, the role of the United States Government, the second Intifada of 2000, the separation
barrier and the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, as well as many heart wrenching testimonials from victims of this tragedy.
Click either of these links to view the entire video:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18145.htm
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8481947913401709466&hl=en
For more information and to purchase a DVD:
http://www.occupation101.com/
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
A Time for Celebration
7 August, 2007
Even during a time of occupation and a quisling government, the resilience of the ordinary Palestinian people continues to shine through. Today was one of those occasions.
Today, the Palestinian education ministry released the results for the Tawjihi exam in the West Bank (the results for Gaza had been released 5 days earlier by the deposed Hamas education minister). The Tawjihi exams are the secondary school certificate exams taken by senior high schools students which determine whether or not Palestinian students are able to get into university or not.
Anyone who spends anytime in the Occupied Palestinian Territories will no doubt be struck by the overwhelming importance placed on education by the Palestinian people. Education in Palestine is not an individual affair, it is a family and societal affair that everyone participates in.
Everywhere I have gone in the past four to six weeks, friends and contacts have at different times asked me to excuse them for not being able to attend this meeting or that or only being able to meet at a certain time. The reason was that their children, whether in primary school or secondary school were undergoing their exams and they had to be with them to assist them in their study and preparation.
When my friend, who works for one of the local radio and television stations in Ramallah, told me yesterday that today he and another colleague would spend the entire day on radio announcing the outcome of the exams for the Ramallah and surrounding districts (each individual student names would be read and their score given) it brought home even more the importance placed on the exams.
And then today, my Palestinian friends and colleagues, one after another, came around with chocolates, kanafi and other sweets to celebrate the fact that their brothers or daughters or nieces had passed the exams with flying colours. According to a friend, tonight we should expect to hear fireworks being set off all over Ramallah as families celebrate the outcome of the exams.
The Tawjihi exam celebrations reflect that fact that education has traditionally been a high priority for the Palestinian people. A fact that can be seen in the high literacy levels in Palestinian society. According to the Palestinian Right to Education campaign there is a 98.2% literacy rate between 15-24 year olds and a 91.1% total adult literacy. Palestine also has the highest enrollment rates in the Middle East and North Africa, a fact that is reflected in the number of schools and educational institutions to be found in Palestine. In 2005, there were 11 Palestinian universities, 5 university colleges and 25 community colleges. The education of girls is also seen as a priority in Palestinian society. According to Bir Zeit University in 2005, female students made up more than 52% of their student body.
The majority of Palestinians believe that education can improve their living conditions not only by opening doors to employment but also act as an inoculation against the attempts to destroy the Palestinian identity and the Palestinian culture.
Gaining an education in Palestine, however, is not a simple thing. Every single day, students and their families have to deal with the ongoing brutal Israeli occupation. As with all aspects of Palestinian life, the occupation with its checkpoints, curfews and the apartheid wall is the main barrier to any normalcy and peace for the Palestinian people. The occupation impacts on every single aspect of Palestinian life, including the right to education.
In 2001, according to Dima Al-Samma from the Palestinian Ministry of Education, "Violence and blockages the Israeli government imposed on Palestinian areas for the past 255 days hindered the educational process on all levels. Teachers have been forced to take difficult and rough side routes and bypass roads, which are extremely dangerous in light of the Israeli settler aggression. Teachers have also been subjected to physical and verbal abuse. 21 teachers were arrested. Furthermore, teachers were over burdened with transportation fees that doubled due to the prolonged routes."
During the same period, three schools in Hebron were confiscated and turned into Israeli military posts and 66 schools in the West Bank had to suspend their schooling at different times. In Bethlehem, four schools were closed for 62 days. In Nablus, two schools were closed for around 23 days. At one stage 50 schools were forced to evacuate because there was fear of random bombings by the Israeli Occupation Forces.
In 2001, the Ministry of Education noted that 90 students had been killed by the Israeli Occupation Forces, while another 2151 were shot and wounded of whom many are handicapped and bedridden. Furthermore, 76 students were arrested. In addition, the Israeli government prevented 67 out of 854 students from taking the Tawjihi examination
Bir Zeit University, in 2005, as part of their Right to Education campaign noted that between September 2000 and 2005, more than 676 children, 199 university students and 39 teachers had been killed by the Israeli Occupation Forces. In addition 2500 children had been arrested, 269 schools damaged as a result of shelling by the Israeli military, in the Gaza 73 educational institutions had been destroyed. In 2004, 14 children under the age of 14 years had been injured or killed in their classrooms in the Gaza. Iman Sameer Al-Hams, 13 years of age, was just one of several children killed on their way to school by the Israeli military. Iman was shot and killed by 20 live bullets: she was wearing her school uniform and carrying her school bag.
The Right to Education campaign also noted that in 2004, 1289 schools had been closed during sieges and curfews and 48 turned into military bases. In addition, Israel's apartheid wall has resulted in students in 22 localities being cut off from the educational institutions, resulting in more than 14, 740 students not being able to reach their classrooms.
In Palestine, there is often so much to be sad and angry about as the Israeli occupation brings with it everyday sorrows, sorrows which at time can seem overwhelming. But there is also much in Palestine to celebrate: the people, their resilience and the collective resistance. And because of this, today is a day of celebration.
A celebration not only that one's child, or niece or brother past the exam but a celebration that despite everything and despite the brutal Israeli occupation the Palestinian people will not be suppressed or made subservient. It is a day of hope and a day for congratulations and haflas (parties) and to celebrate once more Palestinian people's resilience and their struggle for freedom against overwhelming odds.
Palestinian Right to Education Campaign: http://right2edu.birzeit.edu/
Even during a time of occupation and a quisling government, the resilience of the ordinary Palestinian people continues to shine through. Today was one of those occasions.
Today, the Palestinian education ministry released the results for the Tawjihi exam in the West Bank (the results for Gaza had been released 5 days earlier by the deposed Hamas education minister). The Tawjihi exams are the secondary school certificate exams taken by senior high schools students which determine whether or not Palestinian students are able to get into university or not.
Anyone who spends anytime in the Occupied Palestinian Territories will no doubt be struck by the overwhelming importance placed on education by the Palestinian people. Education in Palestine is not an individual affair, it is a family and societal affair that everyone participates in.
Everywhere I have gone in the past four to six weeks, friends and contacts have at different times asked me to excuse them for not being able to attend this meeting or that or only being able to meet at a certain time. The reason was that their children, whether in primary school or secondary school were undergoing their exams and they had to be with them to assist them in their study and preparation.
When my friend, who works for one of the local radio and television stations in Ramallah, told me yesterday that today he and another colleague would spend the entire day on radio announcing the outcome of the exams for the Ramallah and surrounding districts (each individual student names would be read and their score given) it brought home even more the importance placed on the exams.
And then today, my Palestinian friends and colleagues, one after another, came around with chocolates, kanafi and other sweets to celebrate the fact that their brothers or daughters or nieces had passed the exams with flying colours. According to a friend, tonight we should expect to hear fireworks being set off all over Ramallah as families celebrate the outcome of the exams.
The Tawjihi exam celebrations reflect that fact that education has traditionally been a high priority for the Palestinian people. A fact that can be seen in the high literacy levels in Palestinian society. According to the Palestinian Right to Education campaign there is a 98.2% literacy rate between 15-24 year olds and a 91.1% total adult literacy. Palestine also has the highest enrollment rates in the Middle East and North Africa, a fact that is reflected in the number of schools and educational institutions to be found in Palestine. In 2005, there were 11 Palestinian universities, 5 university colleges and 25 community colleges. The education of girls is also seen as a priority in Palestinian society. According to Bir Zeit University in 2005, female students made up more than 52% of their student body.
The majority of Palestinians believe that education can improve their living conditions not only by opening doors to employment but also act as an inoculation against the attempts to destroy the Palestinian identity and the Palestinian culture.
Gaining an education in Palestine, however, is not a simple thing. Every single day, students and their families have to deal with the ongoing brutal Israeli occupation. As with all aspects of Palestinian life, the occupation with its checkpoints, curfews and the apartheid wall is the main barrier to any normalcy and peace for the Palestinian people. The occupation impacts on every single aspect of Palestinian life, including the right to education.
In 2001, according to Dima Al-Samma from the Palestinian Ministry of Education, "Violence and blockages the Israeli government imposed on Palestinian areas for the past 255 days hindered the educational process on all levels. Teachers have been forced to take difficult and rough side routes and bypass roads, which are extremely dangerous in light of the Israeli settler aggression. Teachers have also been subjected to physical and verbal abuse. 21 teachers were arrested. Furthermore, teachers were over burdened with transportation fees that doubled due to the prolonged routes."
During the same period, three schools in Hebron were confiscated and turned into Israeli military posts and 66 schools in the West Bank had to suspend their schooling at different times. In Bethlehem, four schools were closed for 62 days. In Nablus, two schools were closed for around 23 days. At one stage 50 schools were forced to evacuate because there was fear of random bombings by the Israeli Occupation Forces.
In 2001, the Ministry of Education noted that 90 students had been killed by the Israeli Occupation Forces, while another 2151 were shot and wounded of whom many are handicapped and bedridden. Furthermore, 76 students were arrested. In addition, the Israeli government prevented 67 out of 854 students from taking the Tawjihi examination
Bir Zeit University, in 2005, as part of their Right to Education campaign noted that between September 2000 and 2005, more than 676 children, 199 university students and 39 teachers had been killed by the Israeli Occupation Forces. In addition 2500 children had been arrested, 269 schools damaged as a result of shelling by the Israeli military, in the Gaza 73 educational institutions had been destroyed. In 2004, 14 children under the age of 14 years had been injured or killed in their classrooms in the Gaza. Iman Sameer Al-Hams, 13 years of age, was just one of several children killed on their way to school by the Israeli military. Iman was shot and killed by 20 live bullets: she was wearing her school uniform and carrying her school bag.
The Right to Education campaign also noted that in 2004, 1289 schools had been closed during sieges and curfews and 48 turned into military bases. In addition, Israel's apartheid wall has resulted in students in 22 localities being cut off from the educational institutions, resulting in more than 14, 740 students not being able to reach their classrooms.
In Palestine, there is often so much to be sad and angry about as the Israeli occupation brings with it everyday sorrows, sorrows which at time can seem overwhelming. But there is also much in Palestine to celebrate: the people, their resilience and the collective resistance. And because of this, today is a day of celebration.
A celebration not only that one's child, or niece or brother past the exam but a celebration that despite everything and despite the brutal Israeli occupation the Palestinian people will not be suppressed or made subservient. It is a day of hope and a day for congratulations and haflas (parties) and to celebrate once more Palestinian people's resilience and their struggle for freedom against overwhelming odds.
Palestinian Right to Education Campaign: http://right2edu.birzeit.edu/
Friday, August 3, 2007
Oslo Mark II and the making of the Third Intifada
4 August, 2007
Now the dust has settled, Palestinian President and Fatah leader, Mahmoud Abbas and the unelected Prime Minister of Palestine, Salaam Fayyad, along with the minority of the old Fatah guard have revealed that they have nothing to offer the Palestinian people except a return to the failed “peace process” of the 1990s.
Over the past two weeks, anyone who has any interest or knowledge of Palestinian politics would have had a distinct feeling of Déjà vu – that distinct sinking feeling that you are either experiencing something or been somewhere before. One just has to listen to the excited proclamations coming out of the mouths of Abbas, Fayyad and Olmert to feel like you have been transported back body and soul to the 1990s.
In the 1990s, Abu Mazan (Abbas) was the key Palestinian negotiator in what was to become known as the Oslo Peace Process – a process which many Palestinians believed and still believed turned the PLO leadership into a tool of the Israeli state.
In the mid 1990s, however, many Palestinians, like many Israelis held out great hope for the peace process. Ordinary Israelis were tried of Israelis wars in Lebanon and the OPT. After 26 years, the Palestinians people also wanted an end to the brutal Israeli occupation – so much so that they were willing to commit themselves to the bad deal their leaders had signed them up too – a deal which saw the Palestinians renounce the claim to 78% of their historical homeland.
Olso, however, was never really about bringing about a just peace. Arafat weakened and unable to control the first intifada saw the Olso negotiations as the only way to retain power, while Israel simply wanted an immediate end to the Palestinian intifada and an end to the international pressure being placed upon them to end the occupation. As Guardian reporter, David Hirst noted in 2001, “for the Israelis, security - theirs, not the Palestinians' - was the be-all and end-all of Oslo”. The job of Arafat, Hirst noted was “to supply it on their behalf”.
Similarly, Israeli academic, Tanya Reinhart (who died last year) noted in 2001 at the beginning of the Al Aqsa intifada that the Oslo Accord allowed Israel “to reduce the cost of the occupation, using a Palestinian patronage regime, with Arafat as the senior cop responsible for the security of Israel”.
In addition, wrote Reinhart, Olso was designed to set in train a process that:
“should lead to the collapse of Arafat and the PLO. The humiliation of Arafat, and the amplification of his surrender, will gradually lead to loss of popular support. Consequently, the PLO will collapse, or enter power conflicts. Thus, the Palestinian society will loose its secular leadership and institutions. In the power driven mind of those eager to maintain the Israeli occupation, the collapse of the secular leadership is interpreted as an achievement, because it would take a long while for the Palestinian people to get organized again, and, in any case, it is easier to justify even the worst acts of oppression, when the enemy is a fanatic Muslim organization”.
During Arafat’s life time, however, as Reinhart notes the collapse of the PA was staved off. This was because of what the Palestinians called “Sumoud” or steadfastness - a refusal to give up their land willingly, a refusal to give into the Israeli occupation and a refusal to turn on one another. In spite of Israel, Palestinian society refused to collapse and refused to fragment, instead they remained Sumoud, even as Israeli deepened its occupation and breached its Olso obligations again and again.
Over the next 7 years from 1993 until the outbreak of the Al Asqa Intifada in September 2000, the hope that the Palestinian people placed in the peace process was dashed on the rocks of the continuing Israeli occupation and Israeli intransigence.
Under the 1993 Declaration of Principles (Oslo Accord) signed by Shimon Peres on behalf of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), Israel agreed that it would not take any unilateral steps to alter the situation in the occupied territories. In addition, they promised that they would not expand the all ready established illegal Israeli settlements.
However, through the 1990s, Israel continued to build and expand the settlements and by the 21st century had establish more than 75 new settlements in breach of the Oslo Accord agreement. Throughout the 1990s, in breach of Oslo, Israel continued to steal Palestinian land and to deepen the occupation, it continued to arrest Palestinians and jail them, it continued to set up checkpoints, roadblocks, to demolish houses and impose, illegally, collective punishment on more than 4 million Palestinians living in the OPT.
Under Oslo, both the US and Israel demanded that the Palestinian people conduct free and democratic elections. However, as the Palestinians soon discovered in 2006, if they fairly and democratically elect a leadership that neither Israel or the US like, then they will be starved, blockaded and beaten into submissions until a quisling government is established.
After Olso was exposed once and for all at the Camp David Summit, the Palestinian people rose up again in popular revolt as they realised that Oslo would never bring about an end to the Israeli occupation. The Al Asqa Intifada, sparked by Ariel Sharon’s deliberately provocative visit to the Temple Mount was simply the expression of the Palestinian refusal to submit to occupation even in the name of peace.
After 14 years of abject failure, it has become clear to just about everyone, except Mahmoud Abbas, that Israel was never interested in negotiating a real lasting peace with the Palestinian people. Abbas, as former CIA analyst, Kathleen Christison noted in a recent article on the Counterpunch website that “despite being repeatedly slapped in the face”, the leadership of Fatah who started the peace process (ie. Abbas) continues with “blind desire to please the U.S. in the expectation that this behaviour would bring some political benefit to the Palestinians, despite repeated evidence to the contrary”.
Under the leadership of Abbas, the process set in train by Oslo and outlined by Reinhart has begun to bear fruit. The refusal of a small coterie of the Fatah leadership to accept the fact they are no longer the dominate player in the Palestinian political landscape and that they no longer control the PLC has resulted in Israel being able to ferment in just 18 short months,what it has not been able to achieve in nearly 60 years – civil war between the Palestinians. This “power conflicts” as Reinhart called them have now made it “easier to justify even the worst acts of oppression” in the name of opposing a supposedly “fanatic Muslim organization”.
Over the past few weeks, since the dismissal of the democratically elected Hamas lead PLC by Abbas, while the world has focused on Israel and the US have attempted to bolster him and Fayyad and the range of “good will gestures” including the release of 250 prisoners and the release of some of the Palestinian tax funds that Israel stole, little attention has been paid to Israel’s ongoing brutality both in the West Bank and Gaza.
In just one week, between 5 – 12 July, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights reported that Israel had killed 12 Palestinians, including 3 civilians; wounded 30 others, including 25 civilians, carried out 38 invasions into Palestinian communities, razed at 200 dunums of land in the Gaza, arrested 79 Palestinian civilians, imposed a total siege on the Gaza (meaning that 1. 3 million people are trapped in worsening humanitarian conditions).
Since the Sharm el Sheik Summit, Israel has also arrested more than 400 Palestinians (almost twice as many as they freed and mostly from Fatah) and have killed nearly 50 Palestinians.
The world media, however, is content to ignore these facts. Instead they focus all their attention on Bush’s announcement that he will convene of an international peace conference later this year is an attempt to bolster Abbas. However, true to form, Bush also has made it clear that all concessions in the so-called peace process would come from the Palestinians, not Israel.
As with the last peace processes, both Oslo and the Road Map, both Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert have refused to set a deadline for final status discussions with Palestinians on issues such as Jerusalem, refugees, borders, settlements and security. According to a July 20 report by Ha’aretz journalists Aluf Benn and Shmuel Rosner, “the demands Bush presented to Israel were mild, almost imperceptible, compared to the challenge he gave the Palestinians”.
In the clearest rehash of Olso so far, in late July Olmert announced in the lead-up to the conference that Israel will seek to negotiate an “agreement of principles” with Abbas. The agreement of principles, as with the Oslo Declaration of Principles will push permanent status issues such as refugees, borders and Jerusalem to the backburner. Instead, the negotiations would revolve around the characteristics of the Palestinian state, its official institutions, its economy and the custom arrangements it would have with Israel.
Olmert’s plan, like the failed Oslo Accords and the Road Map, proposes a nominal exchange of land for peace. However, the larger Israeli “settlement” blocs in the West Bank will not be dismantled and will remain under Israeli control. Israel would also not withdraw from East Jerusalem, the Mount of Olives or the Old City and its environs. It would only withdraw from Arab neighbourhoods not considered part of the historical city.
Olmert has, however, come up with something new in relation to his Agreement of Principles – according tot he Israeli media he plans to connect the West Bank and the Gaza Strip through an under ground tunnel, supposedly in “order to offer the Palestinians territorial contiguity, prevent friction between Israelis and Palestinians, and preserve security”. However, Israel will demand compensation for digging the tunnel in Israeli territory.
While Olmert, Bush, Rice and Elliot Abrams (the key instigator of the US policy for the overthrow of the democratically elected Palestinian PLC and the National Unity government) are all going around slapping each other on the back and promoting Oslo Mark II, the Palestinian people are not fooled.
Fourteen years after Oslo Mark I, they are well aware of the reality of the “peace process” and the fact that it did not bring them peace, justice or a state. Abbas knows that it will be a hard sell and an even harder sell if Gaza remains isolated.
Despite, Abbas having the international backing his government is weak, something he knows as well as do the US and Israel. Israel security officials have stated that they recognise that despite everything and all of Abbas pronouncements there is enormous pressure from the Palestinian people regarding unity.
The Palestinian people do not want a divided nation and Hamas is very much part of the political landscape, whether Israel or the US like it or not. The Palestinian people will not accept two separate Palestinian territories, they will not accept the division amongst the factions and the demonising of one faction by another, they will not accept a divided struggle. Recent polls have reaffirmed this with one poll by a Norwegian NGO revealing that 85% of Palestinians want national reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah. Israel and the US think they have won and they think they have crushed the Palestinian people but they have not.
The Palestinian people will remain “sumoud” despite the inadequacy of their leadership. And if Abbas, Olmert and Bush are not careful they will once again have another intifada on their hands, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not this year or next year, but when a people have nothing more to lose, then the struggle is the only thing they have left.
Now the dust has settled, Palestinian President and Fatah leader, Mahmoud Abbas and the unelected Prime Minister of Palestine, Salaam Fayyad, along with the minority of the old Fatah guard have revealed that they have nothing to offer the Palestinian people except a return to the failed “peace process” of the 1990s.
Over the past two weeks, anyone who has any interest or knowledge of Palestinian politics would have had a distinct feeling of Déjà vu – that distinct sinking feeling that you are either experiencing something or been somewhere before. One just has to listen to the excited proclamations coming out of the mouths of Abbas, Fayyad and Olmert to feel like you have been transported back body and soul to the 1990s.
In the 1990s, Abu Mazan (Abbas) was the key Palestinian negotiator in what was to become known as the Oslo Peace Process – a process which many Palestinians believed and still believed turned the PLO leadership into a tool of the Israeli state.
In the mid 1990s, however, many Palestinians, like many Israelis held out great hope for the peace process. Ordinary Israelis were tried of Israelis wars in Lebanon and the OPT. After 26 years, the Palestinians people also wanted an end to the brutal Israeli occupation – so much so that they were willing to commit themselves to the bad deal their leaders had signed them up too – a deal which saw the Palestinians renounce the claim to 78% of their historical homeland.
Olso, however, was never really about bringing about a just peace. Arafat weakened and unable to control the first intifada saw the Olso negotiations as the only way to retain power, while Israel simply wanted an immediate end to the Palestinian intifada and an end to the international pressure being placed upon them to end the occupation. As Guardian reporter, David Hirst noted in 2001, “for the Israelis, security - theirs, not the Palestinians' - was the be-all and end-all of Oslo”. The job of Arafat, Hirst noted was “to supply it on their behalf”.
Similarly, Israeli academic, Tanya Reinhart (who died last year) noted in 2001 at the beginning of the Al Aqsa intifada that the Oslo Accord allowed Israel “to reduce the cost of the occupation, using a Palestinian patronage regime, with Arafat as the senior cop responsible for the security of Israel”.
In addition, wrote Reinhart, Olso was designed to set in train a process that:
“should lead to the collapse of Arafat and the PLO. The humiliation of Arafat, and the amplification of his surrender, will gradually lead to loss of popular support. Consequently, the PLO will collapse, or enter power conflicts. Thus, the Palestinian society will loose its secular leadership and institutions. In the power driven mind of those eager to maintain the Israeli occupation, the collapse of the secular leadership is interpreted as an achievement, because it would take a long while for the Palestinian people to get organized again, and, in any case, it is easier to justify even the worst acts of oppression, when the enemy is a fanatic Muslim organization”.
During Arafat’s life time, however, as Reinhart notes the collapse of the PA was staved off. This was because of what the Palestinians called “Sumoud” or steadfastness - a refusal to give up their land willingly, a refusal to give into the Israeli occupation and a refusal to turn on one another. In spite of Israel, Palestinian society refused to collapse and refused to fragment, instead they remained Sumoud, even as Israeli deepened its occupation and breached its Olso obligations again and again.
Over the next 7 years from 1993 until the outbreak of the Al Asqa Intifada in September 2000, the hope that the Palestinian people placed in the peace process was dashed on the rocks of the continuing Israeli occupation and Israeli intransigence.
Under the 1993 Declaration of Principles (Oslo Accord) signed by Shimon Peres on behalf of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), Israel agreed that it would not take any unilateral steps to alter the situation in the occupied territories. In addition, they promised that they would not expand the all ready established illegal Israeli settlements.
However, through the 1990s, Israel continued to build and expand the settlements and by the 21st century had establish more than 75 new settlements in breach of the Oslo Accord agreement. Throughout the 1990s, in breach of Oslo, Israel continued to steal Palestinian land and to deepen the occupation, it continued to arrest Palestinians and jail them, it continued to set up checkpoints, roadblocks, to demolish houses and impose, illegally, collective punishment on more than 4 million Palestinians living in the OPT.
Under Oslo, both the US and Israel demanded that the Palestinian people conduct free and democratic elections. However, as the Palestinians soon discovered in 2006, if they fairly and democratically elect a leadership that neither Israel or the US like, then they will be starved, blockaded and beaten into submissions until a quisling government is established.
After Olso was exposed once and for all at the Camp David Summit, the Palestinian people rose up again in popular revolt as they realised that Oslo would never bring about an end to the Israeli occupation. The Al Asqa Intifada, sparked by Ariel Sharon’s deliberately provocative visit to the Temple Mount was simply the expression of the Palestinian refusal to submit to occupation even in the name of peace.
After 14 years of abject failure, it has become clear to just about everyone, except Mahmoud Abbas, that Israel was never interested in negotiating a real lasting peace with the Palestinian people. Abbas, as former CIA analyst, Kathleen Christison noted in a recent article on the Counterpunch website that “despite being repeatedly slapped in the face”, the leadership of Fatah who started the peace process (ie. Abbas) continues with “blind desire to please the U.S. in the expectation that this behaviour would bring some political benefit to the Palestinians, despite repeated evidence to the contrary”.
Under the leadership of Abbas, the process set in train by Oslo and outlined by Reinhart has begun to bear fruit. The refusal of a small coterie of the Fatah leadership to accept the fact they are no longer the dominate player in the Palestinian political landscape and that they no longer control the PLC has resulted in Israel being able to ferment in just 18 short months,what it has not been able to achieve in nearly 60 years – civil war between the Palestinians. This “power conflicts” as Reinhart called them have now made it “easier to justify even the worst acts of oppression” in the name of opposing a supposedly “fanatic Muslim organization”.
Over the past few weeks, since the dismissal of the democratically elected Hamas lead PLC by Abbas, while the world has focused on Israel and the US have attempted to bolster him and Fayyad and the range of “good will gestures” including the release of 250 prisoners and the release of some of the Palestinian tax funds that Israel stole, little attention has been paid to Israel’s ongoing brutality both in the West Bank and Gaza.
In just one week, between 5 – 12 July, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights reported that Israel had killed 12 Palestinians, including 3 civilians; wounded 30 others, including 25 civilians, carried out 38 invasions into Palestinian communities, razed at 200 dunums of land in the Gaza, arrested 79 Palestinian civilians, imposed a total siege on the Gaza (meaning that 1. 3 million people are trapped in worsening humanitarian conditions).
Since the Sharm el Sheik Summit, Israel has also arrested more than 400 Palestinians (almost twice as many as they freed and mostly from Fatah) and have killed nearly 50 Palestinians.
The world media, however, is content to ignore these facts. Instead they focus all their attention on Bush’s announcement that he will convene of an international peace conference later this year is an attempt to bolster Abbas. However, true to form, Bush also has made it clear that all concessions in the so-called peace process would come from the Palestinians, not Israel.
As with the last peace processes, both Oslo and the Road Map, both Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert have refused to set a deadline for final status discussions with Palestinians on issues such as Jerusalem, refugees, borders, settlements and security. According to a July 20 report by Ha’aretz journalists Aluf Benn and Shmuel Rosner, “the demands Bush presented to Israel were mild, almost imperceptible, compared to the challenge he gave the Palestinians”.
In the clearest rehash of Olso so far, in late July Olmert announced in the lead-up to the conference that Israel will seek to negotiate an “agreement of principles” with Abbas. The agreement of principles, as with the Oslo Declaration of Principles will push permanent status issues such as refugees, borders and Jerusalem to the backburner. Instead, the negotiations would revolve around the characteristics of the Palestinian state, its official institutions, its economy and the custom arrangements it would have with Israel.
Olmert’s plan, like the failed Oslo Accords and the Road Map, proposes a nominal exchange of land for peace. However, the larger Israeli “settlement” blocs in the West Bank will not be dismantled and will remain under Israeli control. Israel would also not withdraw from East Jerusalem, the Mount of Olives or the Old City and its environs. It would only withdraw from Arab neighbourhoods not considered part of the historical city.
Olmert has, however, come up with something new in relation to his Agreement of Principles – according tot he Israeli media he plans to connect the West Bank and the Gaza Strip through an under ground tunnel, supposedly in “order to offer the Palestinians territorial contiguity, prevent friction between Israelis and Palestinians, and preserve security”. However, Israel will demand compensation for digging the tunnel in Israeli territory.
While Olmert, Bush, Rice and Elliot Abrams (the key instigator of the US policy for the overthrow of the democratically elected Palestinian PLC and the National Unity government) are all going around slapping each other on the back and promoting Oslo Mark II, the Palestinian people are not fooled.
Fourteen years after Oslo Mark I, they are well aware of the reality of the “peace process” and the fact that it did not bring them peace, justice or a state. Abbas knows that it will be a hard sell and an even harder sell if Gaza remains isolated.
Despite, Abbas having the international backing his government is weak, something he knows as well as do the US and Israel. Israel security officials have stated that they recognise that despite everything and all of Abbas pronouncements there is enormous pressure from the Palestinian people regarding unity.
The Palestinian people do not want a divided nation and Hamas is very much part of the political landscape, whether Israel or the US like it or not. The Palestinian people will not accept two separate Palestinian territories, they will not accept the division amongst the factions and the demonising of one faction by another, they will not accept a divided struggle. Recent polls have reaffirmed this with one poll by a Norwegian NGO revealing that 85% of Palestinians want national reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah. Israel and the US think they have won and they think they have crushed the Palestinian people but they have not.
The Palestinian people will remain “sumoud” despite the inadequacy of their leadership. And if Abbas, Olmert and Bush are not careful they will once again have another intifada on their hands, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not this year or next year, but when a people have nothing more to lose, then the struggle is the only thing they have left.
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