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
Thursday, September 27, 2007
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.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
The Life and Death of Naji al-Ali: voice of a nation
24 July, 2007
It has now been 20 years since reknown Palestinian cartoonist Naji Salim al-Ali was shot in London on July 22, 1987 by an unknown assassin. He lapsed into a coma and died five weeks later on August 29, 1987.
During his life time, al-Ali drew more than 40,000 cartoons and was know for his sharp political wit and criticism of not only Israel, the US but also the Arab states. In his work, he campaigned tirelessly for the rights of the Palestinian refugees, Palestinian self-determination and against the absence of democracy, corruption and inequality in the Arab world. His work was often censored and he frequently received death threats. al-Ali was also detained and jailed in various countries and expelled from others for his political commentary.
At 10 years of age, al-Ali and his family were forced to flee Palestine to Lebanon, when Israel invaded and seized the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In Lebanon, he like thousands of others Palestinians, were forced to live in poor and over crowded refugee camps. This experience gave birth to his most famous creation, Handala (sometimes spelt Hanthala or Hanzala).
The cartoonist christened his 10 year-old boy creation, who never spoke but was the guardian of the Palestinian cause, after a short bitter bush which can be found throughout all of Palestine. The bush although weak, if cut, has the reputation of growing back, time and time again.
Handala, dressed in rags and bare foot, according to al-Ali, represented him at the age of 10 years when he was forced to flee Palestine.
“The young, barefoot Handala was a symbol of my childhood. He was the age I was when I had left Palestine and, in a sense, I am still that age today. Even though this all happened 35 years ago, the details of that phase in my life are still fully present to my mind. I feel that I can recall and sense every bush, every stone, every house and every tree I passed when I was a child in Palestine”.
Handala, explained al-Ali is “a child who is not beautiful; his hair is like the hair of a hedgehog who uses his thorns as a weapon. Handala is not a fat, happy, relaxed, or pampered child. He is barefooted like the refugee camp children, and he is an icon that protects me from making mistakes. Even though he is rough, he smells of amber. His hands are clasped behind his back as a sign of rejection at a time when solutions are presented to us the American way”.
“Handala was born ten years old, and he will always be ten years old. At that age, I left my homeland, and when he returns, Handala will still be ten, and then he will start growing up. The laws of nature do not apply to him. He is unique. Things will become normal again when the homeland returns”
“I presented him to the poor and named him Handala as a symbol of bitterness. At first, he was a Palestinian child, but his consciousness developed to have a national and then a global and human horizon. He is a simple yet tough child, and this is why people adopted him and felt that he represents their consciousness."
According to al Ali, Handala “protected” his soul when he felt weary and prevented him from ignoring his duty to his people and their struggle:
“That child was like a splash of fresh water on my forehead, bringing me to attention and keeping me from error and loss. He was the arrow of the compass, pointing steadily towards Palestine. Not just Palestine in geographical terms, but Palestine in its humanitarian sense - the symbol of a just cause, whether it is located in Egypt, Vietnam or South Africa. I am from Ain Al-Helwa, a camp like any other camp. The people of the camps were the people of the land in Palestine. They were not merchants or landowners. They were farmers. When they lost their land, they lost their lives. The bourgeoisie never had to live in the camps, whose inhabitants were exposed to hunger, to every degradation and to every form of oppression. Entire families died in our camps. Those are the Palestinians who remain in my mind, even when my work takes me away from the camp”.
In 1982, al-Ali once again experienced first hand the military might of the Israeli Zionist state. Back in Ain Al Helwa refugee camp in Lebanon, he and his family and thousands of others were forced to flee from the camp. He and many others were taken prisoner by the invading Israeli army.
He recounted once he and his family were freed five days later, they sought to return to the refugee camp:
“We travelled by day. The corpses of the victims still lay in the streets. The burnt-out hulks of Israeli tanks still stood at the entrances to the camps. The Israelis had not removed them yet. From my inquiries into the circumstances of the resistance, I learned that it consisted of a group of no more than 40 or 50 youths. The Israeli army had burned the camp while the women and children were still inside their shelters. Israeli missiles had penetrated deep inside the camp, claiming the lives of hundreds of children in the camp in Saida. The young men in the resistance group had spontaneously taken an oath to one another that they would die before they ever surrendered. And, in fact, the Israelis never captured a single one of them. In daylight, the Israeli forces would attack. At night, the resistors would strike. This is what happened in Ain Al-Helwa, as I saw for myself. But I also know that there were other forms of resistance in the camps of Sur, Al-Burj Al-Shamal, Al-Bass and Al-Rashidi”.
The subsequent butchery of Palestinian refugees in the camps shocked al-Ali to the core, none more so than the infamous massacre at Sabra and Shatila camps. For two days the IDF surrounded the camp, closing off all routes of escape and than sat and listened as their allies, the Lebanese Christian Phalangists, carried out the dirty work of murdering 3000 unarmed Palestinian men, women and children. (Israeli Defence Minister - who was later to become Prime Minister - Ariel Sharon was found personally responsible by an Israeli commission for the massacre, while the Israeli military personnel were found indirectly responsible because they knew the massacre was happening and did nothing to stop it)
In response, Handala’s 10 year-old hands become more animated, raised in anger and against oppression: sometimes holding a Palestinian flag or throwing a stone as a sign of resistance but always in condemnation of those who betrayed the justice of the Palestinian cause.
His untimely death came just five short years later. Ten months after his death, Scotland Yard arrested a Palestinian student who turned out to be a Mossad agent. According to the agent, Israel were well aware in advance of the assasination attempt. Israel, however, refused to pass on any information they had on al-Ali assasination. In response, Britain expelled two Israeli diplomates and closed down Mossad’s last base.
Despite his death, al-Ali’s legacy continues to live on, even now 20 years later. He once remarked that Handala, "this being that I have invented will certainly not cease to exist after me, and perhaps it is no exaggeration to say that I will live on with him after my death".
al-Ali words continue to ring true and since his death, his creation continues to speak out, in deafening silence, for Palestinian self determination. Handala, the small refugee boy, dressed in rags, silent in defiance and strong in resistance can be found everywhere throughout Palestine.
And while his image is prolific, he is of course found most at home in the Palestinian refugee camps - the place of his birth - where he continues to remains a potent symbol of Palestinian resistance and defiance against all odds.
Samples of Naji al-Ali's cartoons can be found at: http://www.najialali.com/
It has now been 20 years since reknown Palestinian cartoonist Naji Salim al-Ali was shot in London on July 22, 1987 by an unknown assassin. He lapsed into a coma and died five weeks later on August 29, 1987.
During his life time, al-Ali drew more than 40,000 cartoons and was know for his sharp political wit and criticism of not only Israel, the US but also the Arab states. In his work, he campaigned tirelessly for the rights of the Palestinian refugees, Palestinian self-determination and against the absence of democracy, corruption and inequality in the Arab world. His work was often censored and he frequently received death threats. al-Ali was also detained and jailed in various countries and expelled from others for his political commentary.
At 10 years of age, al-Ali and his family were forced to flee Palestine to Lebanon, when Israel invaded and seized the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In Lebanon, he like thousands of others Palestinians, were forced to live in poor and over crowded refugee camps. This experience gave birth to his most famous creation, Handala (sometimes spelt Hanthala or Hanzala).
The cartoonist christened his 10 year-old boy creation, who never spoke but was the guardian of the Palestinian cause, after a short bitter bush which can be found throughout all of Palestine. The bush although weak, if cut, has the reputation of growing back, time and time again.
Handala, dressed in rags and bare foot, according to al-Ali, represented him at the age of 10 years when he was forced to flee Palestine.
“The young, barefoot Handala was a symbol of my childhood. He was the age I was when I had left Palestine and, in a sense, I am still that age today. Even though this all happened 35 years ago, the details of that phase in my life are still fully present to my mind. I feel that I can recall and sense every bush, every stone, every house and every tree I passed when I was a child in Palestine”.
Handala, explained al-Ali is “a child who is not beautiful; his hair is like the hair of a hedgehog who uses his thorns as a weapon. Handala is not a fat, happy, relaxed, or pampered child. He is barefooted like the refugee camp children, and he is an icon that protects me from making mistakes. Even though he is rough, he smells of amber. His hands are clasped behind his back as a sign of rejection at a time when solutions are presented to us the American way”.
“Handala was born ten years old, and he will always be ten years old. At that age, I left my homeland, and when he returns, Handala will still be ten, and then he will start growing up. The laws of nature do not apply to him. He is unique. Things will become normal again when the homeland returns”
“I presented him to the poor and named him Handala as a symbol of bitterness. At first, he was a Palestinian child, but his consciousness developed to have a national and then a global and human horizon. He is a simple yet tough child, and this is why people adopted him and felt that he represents their consciousness."
According to al Ali, Handala “protected” his soul when he felt weary and prevented him from ignoring his duty to his people and their struggle:
“That child was like a splash of fresh water on my forehead, bringing me to attention and keeping me from error and loss. He was the arrow of the compass, pointing steadily towards Palestine. Not just Palestine in geographical terms, but Palestine in its humanitarian sense - the symbol of a just cause, whether it is located in Egypt, Vietnam or South Africa. I am from Ain Al-Helwa, a camp like any other camp. The people of the camps were the people of the land in Palestine. They were not merchants or landowners. They were farmers. When they lost their land, they lost their lives. The bourgeoisie never had to live in the camps, whose inhabitants were exposed to hunger, to every degradation and to every form of oppression. Entire families died in our camps. Those are the Palestinians who remain in my mind, even when my work takes me away from the camp”.
In 1982, al-Ali once again experienced first hand the military might of the Israeli Zionist state. Back in Ain Al Helwa refugee camp in Lebanon, he and his family and thousands of others were forced to flee from the camp. He and many others were taken prisoner by the invading Israeli army.
He recounted once he and his family were freed five days later, they sought to return to the refugee camp:
“We travelled by day. The corpses of the victims still lay in the streets. The burnt-out hulks of Israeli tanks still stood at the entrances to the camps. The Israelis had not removed them yet. From my inquiries into the circumstances of the resistance, I learned that it consisted of a group of no more than 40 or 50 youths. The Israeli army had burned the camp while the women and children were still inside their shelters. Israeli missiles had penetrated deep inside the camp, claiming the lives of hundreds of children in the camp in Saida. The young men in the resistance group had spontaneously taken an oath to one another that they would die before they ever surrendered. And, in fact, the Israelis never captured a single one of them. In daylight, the Israeli forces would attack. At night, the resistors would strike. This is what happened in Ain Al-Helwa, as I saw for myself. But I also know that there were other forms of resistance in the camps of Sur, Al-Burj Al-Shamal, Al-Bass and Al-Rashidi”.
The subsequent butchery of Palestinian refugees in the camps shocked al-Ali to the core, none more so than the infamous massacre at Sabra and Shatila camps. For two days the IDF surrounded the camp, closing off all routes of escape and than sat and listened as their allies, the Lebanese Christian Phalangists, carried out the dirty work of murdering 3000 unarmed Palestinian men, women and children. (Israeli Defence Minister - who was later to become Prime Minister - Ariel Sharon was found personally responsible by an Israeli commission for the massacre, while the Israeli military personnel were found indirectly responsible because they knew the massacre was happening and did nothing to stop it)
In response, Handala’s 10 year-old hands become more animated, raised in anger and against oppression: sometimes holding a Palestinian flag or throwing a stone as a sign of resistance but always in condemnation of those who betrayed the justice of the Palestinian cause.
His untimely death came just five short years later. Ten months after his death, Scotland Yard arrested a Palestinian student who turned out to be a Mossad agent. According to the agent, Israel were well aware in advance of the assasination attempt. Israel, however, refused to pass on any information they had on al-Ali assasination. In response, Britain expelled two Israeli diplomates and closed down Mossad’s last base.
Despite his death, al-Ali’s legacy continues to live on, even now 20 years later. He once remarked that Handala, "this being that I have invented will certainly not cease to exist after me, and perhaps it is no exaggeration to say that I will live on with him after my death".
al-Ali words continue to ring true and since his death, his creation continues to speak out, in deafening silence, for Palestinian self determination. Handala, the small refugee boy, dressed in rags, silent in defiance and strong in resistance can be found everywhere throughout Palestine.
And while his image is prolific, he is of course found most at home in the Palestinian refugee camps - the place of his birth - where he continues to remains a potent symbol of Palestinian resistance and defiance against all odds.
Samples of Naji al-Ali's cartoons can be found at: http://www.najialali.com/
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Israel’s “good will gestures": The distance between reality and rhetoric
For the past month, Israeli and international media has been lauding Olmert’s for his “good will gestures” which include the proposed release 250 Fatah aligned Palestinian Prisoners. While the news of the yet-to-be released Palestinian prisoners is all over the international news, barely a word has been said about the fact that Israeli has arrested more than 300 Palestinians, the majority from Abbas’ Fatah party, in the two weeks period after Olmert and Israel began touting their good will gestures. According to Palestinian News Agency, Ma’an, the figures were released by Fatah’s information office on July 10 reveal that Israel has continued to target and illegal abduct Palestinians.
This week, the PA run Palestinian National Information Centre also released its monthly statistics on the Israeli occupation. According to the PNIC, during the month of June, Israel occupation forces killed 49 Palestinians and wounded a further 147. During the same period, the Israel abducted and arrested 383 Palestinians and carried out 765 invasions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank and committed a total of 2,380 human rights violations against the civilian Palestinian population.
In their weekly report on Israeli human rights violations the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights noted that in the week of 5 July to 11 July:
•IOF killed 11 Palestinians, including 3 civilians, in the Gaza Strip and a 12th one on the West Bank.
•The victims in the Gaza Strip were killed during an IOF incursion into al-Boreij refugee camp.
•The victim in the West Bank was extra-judicially executed by IOF.
•30 Palestinians, including 25 civilians, were wounded by IOF gunfire in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
•24 of these Palestinians, including 20 civilians, were wounded during an IOF incursion into al-Boreij refugee camp.
•IOF arrested 2 of the wounded in the West Bank.
•IOF conducted 36 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank, and 2 incursions into the Gaza Strip.
•IOF razed at least 200 donums of agricultural land in the Gaza Strip.
•IOF damaged some public and private property.
•IOF arrested 69 Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, and 10 others in the Gaza Strip.
•IOF have continued to impose a total siege on the OPT.
•IOF have isolated the Gaza Strip from the outside world and a humanitarian crisis is likely to emerge.
•At least 6,000 Palestinians have been stuck at the Egyptian side of Rafah International Crossing Point, and the number of deaths among them has mounted to 14.
•IOF positioned at various checkpoints in the West Bank arrested 3 Palestinian civilians.
So while the Bush and the EU laud Olmert for his (yet to be actually given) “generous gift” of 250 Fatah aligned prisoners and Abbas seeks to undemocratically retain control of the PA, another 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners languish in Israel’s jails. The road blocks Israel promised to remove still remain in place, as do the checkpoints and 380 prisoners take the place of the ones who are supposedly going to be released and the Israeli occupation continues ...
This week, the PA run Palestinian National Information Centre also released its monthly statistics on the Israeli occupation. According to the PNIC, during the month of June, Israel occupation forces killed 49 Palestinians and wounded a further 147. During the same period, the Israel abducted and arrested 383 Palestinians and carried out 765 invasions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank and committed a total of 2,380 human rights violations against the civilian Palestinian population.
In their weekly report on Israeli human rights violations the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights noted that in the week of 5 July to 11 July:
•IOF killed 11 Palestinians, including 3 civilians, in the Gaza Strip and a 12th one on the West Bank.
•The victims in the Gaza Strip were killed during an IOF incursion into al-Boreij refugee camp.
•The victim in the West Bank was extra-judicially executed by IOF.
•30 Palestinians, including 25 civilians, were wounded by IOF gunfire in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
•24 of these Palestinians, including 20 civilians, were wounded during an IOF incursion into al-Boreij refugee camp.
•IOF arrested 2 of the wounded in the West Bank.
•IOF conducted 36 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank, and 2 incursions into the Gaza Strip.
•IOF razed at least 200 donums of agricultural land in the Gaza Strip.
•IOF damaged some public and private property.
•IOF arrested 69 Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, and 10 others in the Gaza Strip.
•IOF have continued to impose a total siege on the OPT.
•IOF have isolated the Gaza Strip from the outside world and a humanitarian crisis is likely to emerge.
•At least 6,000 Palestinians have been stuck at the Egyptian side of Rafah International Crossing Point, and the number of deaths among them has mounted to 14.
•IOF positioned at various checkpoints in the West Bank arrested 3 Palestinian civilians.
So while the Bush and the EU laud Olmert for his (yet to be actually given) “generous gift” of 250 Fatah aligned prisoners and Abbas seeks to undemocratically retain control of the PA, another 11,000 Palestinian political prisoners languish in Israel’s jails. The road blocks Israel promised to remove still remain in place, as do the checkpoints and 380 prisoners take the place of the ones who are supposedly going to be released and the Israeli occupation continues ...
Sunday, July 15, 2007
We’ve tried to enter Palestine by land. We’ve tried to arrive by air. Now we’re getting serious. We’re taking a ship!
BREAKING THE SIEGE IN GAZA
Dear friends and supporters,
please find below a copy of an article with information and interviews about the Break the Siege/Free Gaza campaign. The below article is an attempt to raise awareness and support for the campaign and includes a link to the campaign website.
Break the Siege needs your support - you can support the campaign in a variety of ways, including financially, but also by publicising of the campaign and organising solidarity events to coincide with the ship's departure to and arrival in Gaza.
Please feel free to distribute the article to your networks. Please consider talking to your social justice networks and the Palestine solidarity groups in your town, city or country about how they can support the campaign.
You can checkout the campaign website at www.freegaza.org
in solidarity, Kim
*******************************
Palestine: Breaking the siege in Gaza
Kim Bullimore
14 July 2007
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2007/717/37247
"We've tried to enter Palestine by land. We've tried to arrive by air. Now we're getting serious. We're taking a ship".
In August 2007, up to 70 human rights activists from 13 countries will attempt to non-violently break the Israeli and international siege of the densely populated Gaza Strip by sailing a ship into Gazan territorial waters with US$25,000 worth of humanitarian aid to donate to the Palestinian Red Crescent.
Israel has prevented the activists — who include teachers, students, musicians, politicians and holocaust survivors — from carrying out humanitarian work in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). The campaign aims to raise international awareness about the prison-like closure of the Gaza Strip and to pressure the international community to review its sanctions policy and end its support for continued Israeli occupation.
Green Left Weekly spoke to three activists involved in the campaign.
Sharyn, who lives in Britain, gained the dubious distinction in 2002 of becoming the first international peace activist with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) to be shot by the Israeli military, just four days after she arrived in the OPT. Despite this, Sharyn returned a further five times to carry out human rights work in the OPT before she was placed on the Israeli government's official blacklist of individuals prevented from entering Israel and the OPT.
Fellow Australian activist Michael, who was the ISM's media officer in 2003 when US activist Rachel Corrie was crushed to death while trying to prevent an Israeli armoured bulldozer from demolishing a home in Rafah in the Gaza Strip, has also been blacklisted by Israel. When Michael tried to return to Palestine in 2004, he was detained for a week as a "security risk" and deported without ever leaving Israel's Ben Gurion airport.
According to Sharyn, "this blacklist has been [Israel's] plan B after plan A of simply shooting us drew international condemnation". Both Michael and Sharyn told GLW that the idea for the Break the Siege campaign was born in November 2006 because so many human rights and peace activists had been prevented from entering the OPT.
According to Michael, "The original idea was for these peace activists to arrive simultaneously at Ben Gurion airport and demand admittance to the OPT. However, it was soon decided that the real story was not Israel's treatment of internationals, but of the Palestinians themselves, and that we needed to focus on Israel's siege of Gaza." This led to the plan to charter a boat.
"Israel claims that since it pulled its settlers out of Gaza, the strip is a 'foreign country' that is no longer under Israeli occupation. If this is the case then its total control over Gaza's air space, territorial waters and border crossings [including those into Egypt] is a gross violation of international law", Michael said.
"The purpose of the mission is to draw attention to the fact that Israel is using its illegal choke hold on Gaza to wage economic warfare on an already desperately impoverished population by arbitrarily closing the strip's border crossings to exports, restricting the supply of food and medicines, closing offshore fisheries to Palestinian fishermen and brazenly stealing customs duties that belong to the Palestinian people."
According to Sharyn, Break the Siege is about showing "solidarity with people who are living under terrible conditions" and letting the "Palestinians know they are not forgotten", as well as placing international pressure on Israel.
Should they make it to Gaza, Sharyn expects "to be given gallons of sugary tea and have multiple families attempt to feed me their entire week's food supply in one sitting". However she doesn't expect the same welcome from the Israeli military, which is likely to "make it very evident" that it holds Gaza "in an iron grip" and "will attempt to stop our boat reaching the port. Since our Israeli colleagues will be on board with us, I hope the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] will decide a violent attack wouldn't be a good idea."
Also travelling on the ship will be 82-year-old Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein, whose parent's perished in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Hedy told GLW she received "a wake up call" about Israel and Palestine in 1982 when she learned "about the massacres in the two refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon".
"I needed to find out what and why it happened; what preceded it, what had taken place since 1948. The more I learned and the more I understood, the more I began to speak out publicly against the policies and practices of the Israeli government and military."
Hedy hopes that the Break the Siege campaign will also serve as a "wake up call" for others and will contribute to a sustained global campaign to educate people about the reality of what is going on in the OPT.
Michael said the activists hoped that the campaign would assist in "mobilising people against Israeli apartheid" and that people would not only publicise and help finance the campaign, but also organise solidarity actions around the world to coincide with the ship's departure and its arrival in Gaza.
"The Israel-Palestine conflict has become the defining struggle between racism and justice in the world today. It is impossible to support justice, human rights and democracy without opposing Israeli apartheid", Michael said.
The Break the Siege campaign needs your support. Visit http://www.freegaza.org.
From: Comment & Analysis, Green Left Weekly issue #717 18 July 2007.
Dear friends and supporters,
please find below a copy of an article with information and interviews about the Break the Siege/Free Gaza campaign. The below article is an attempt to raise awareness and support for the campaign and includes a link to the campaign website.
Break the Siege needs your support - you can support the campaign in a variety of ways, including financially, but also by publicising of the campaign and organising solidarity events to coincide with the ship's departure to and arrival in Gaza.
Please feel free to distribute the article to your networks. Please consider talking to your social justice networks and the Palestine solidarity groups in your town, city or country about how they can support the campaign.
You can checkout the campaign website at www.freegaza.org
in solidarity, Kim
*******************************
Palestine: Breaking the siege in Gaza
Kim Bullimore
14 July 2007
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2007/717/37247
"We've tried to enter Palestine by land. We've tried to arrive by air. Now we're getting serious. We're taking a ship".
In August 2007, up to 70 human rights activists from 13 countries will attempt to non-violently break the Israeli and international siege of the densely populated Gaza Strip by sailing a ship into Gazan territorial waters with US$25,000 worth of humanitarian aid to donate to the Palestinian Red Crescent.
Israel has prevented the activists — who include teachers, students, musicians, politicians and holocaust survivors — from carrying out humanitarian work in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). The campaign aims to raise international awareness about the prison-like closure of the Gaza Strip and to pressure the international community to review its sanctions policy and end its support for continued Israeli occupation.
Green Left Weekly spoke to three activists involved in the campaign.
Sharyn, who lives in Britain, gained the dubious distinction in 2002 of becoming the first international peace activist with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) to be shot by the Israeli military, just four days after she arrived in the OPT. Despite this, Sharyn returned a further five times to carry out human rights work in the OPT before she was placed on the Israeli government's official blacklist of individuals prevented from entering Israel and the OPT.
Fellow Australian activist Michael, who was the ISM's media officer in 2003 when US activist Rachel Corrie was crushed to death while trying to prevent an Israeli armoured bulldozer from demolishing a home in Rafah in the Gaza Strip, has also been blacklisted by Israel. When Michael tried to return to Palestine in 2004, he was detained for a week as a "security risk" and deported without ever leaving Israel's Ben Gurion airport.
According to Sharyn, "this blacklist has been [Israel's] plan B after plan A of simply shooting us drew international condemnation". Both Michael and Sharyn told GLW that the idea for the Break the Siege campaign was born in November 2006 because so many human rights and peace activists had been prevented from entering the OPT.
According to Michael, "The original idea was for these peace activists to arrive simultaneously at Ben Gurion airport and demand admittance to the OPT. However, it was soon decided that the real story was not Israel's treatment of internationals, but of the Palestinians themselves, and that we needed to focus on Israel's siege of Gaza." This led to the plan to charter a boat.
"Israel claims that since it pulled its settlers out of Gaza, the strip is a 'foreign country' that is no longer under Israeli occupation. If this is the case then its total control over Gaza's air space, territorial waters and border crossings [including those into Egypt] is a gross violation of international law", Michael said.
"The purpose of the mission is to draw attention to the fact that Israel is using its illegal choke hold on Gaza to wage economic warfare on an already desperately impoverished population by arbitrarily closing the strip's border crossings to exports, restricting the supply of food and medicines, closing offshore fisheries to Palestinian fishermen and brazenly stealing customs duties that belong to the Palestinian people."
According to Sharyn, Break the Siege is about showing "solidarity with people who are living under terrible conditions" and letting the "Palestinians know they are not forgotten", as well as placing international pressure on Israel.
Should they make it to Gaza, Sharyn expects "to be given gallons of sugary tea and have multiple families attempt to feed me their entire week's food supply in one sitting". However she doesn't expect the same welcome from the Israeli military, which is likely to "make it very evident" that it holds Gaza "in an iron grip" and "will attempt to stop our boat reaching the port. Since our Israeli colleagues will be on board with us, I hope the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] will decide a violent attack wouldn't be a good idea."
Also travelling on the ship will be 82-year-old Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein, whose parent's perished in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Hedy told GLW she received "a wake up call" about Israel and Palestine in 1982 when she learned "about the massacres in the two refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon".
"I needed to find out what and why it happened; what preceded it, what had taken place since 1948. The more I learned and the more I understood, the more I began to speak out publicly against the policies and practices of the Israeli government and military."
Hedy hopes that the Break the Siege campaign will also serve as a "wake up call" for others and will contribute to a sustained global campaign to educate people about the reality of what is going on in the OPT.
Michael said the activists hoped that the campaign would assist in "mobilising people against Israeli apartheid" and that people would not only publicise and help finance the campaign, but also organise solidarity actions around the world to coincide with the ship's departure and its arrival in Gaza.
"The Israel-Palestine conflict has become the defining struggle between racism and justice in the world today. It is impossible to support justice, human rights and democracy without opposing Israeli apartheid", Michael said.
The Break the Siege campaign needs your support. Visit http://www.freegaza.org.
From: Comment & Analysis, Green Left Weekly issue #717 18 July 2007.
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Would you like an invasion with that?: On Israel's peace making
2 July, 2007
For the past two weeks or three weeks, the Israeli, American and world media have repeatedly told us that since Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared a state of emergency and dismissed the democratically elected Palestinian Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh (from Hamas) and his government, that this is now the Palestinians best chance for peace. Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert has publicly been reported as saying that Israel would recognise the new unelected Palestinian emergency government and “would work with it to advance the peace process as well as the U.S backed road map for peace” (Ha’aretz).
According to Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper on June 23, Olmert and Israel will do this by offering a “pack of gestures” to Abbas and the Palestinians. This “good will” package will include the release of 250 Fatah aligned political prisoners, release of Palestinian taxes stolen by Israel, not cutting of water, electricity, food and medicine supplies to the Gaza Strip, allowing Palestinian businessmen to enter Israel, transferring armoured cars to Fatah and “renewed” security cooperation. Ha’aretz went onto quoted Olmert as saying that, “We are not interested in punishing the population solely because they are ruled by a terrorist organization”. He further was quoted as saying "We are not indifferent to your suffering. We are not ignoring the need to bring it to an end, through understanding and peacemaking” and “As Israel's prime minister, I say to you: We have no desire to rule you... nor run your lives. We have no intention to make decisions for you. I believe that soon you will be able to live in your state alongside the State of Israel."
On Wednesday, the Palestinian people of Gaza and Nablus and several other cities in the West Bank got to experience first hand Israel’s “peacemaking”. In Gaza, Israeli warplanes and ground troops killed 13 Palestinians, including three children and injured another 44. In Nablus, Israeli troops put 100,000 people under curfew for almost three days, blew up houses, blockaded hospitals and killed one man and injured dozens of others, including children. Olmert, obviously inevertenly forgot to mentioned that his so-called “peace package” or “package of goodwill gestures”, also include military invasions, curfews, tear gas, rubber bullets and illegal collective punishment.
In response to the Israel’s latest efforts in “peace making”, my team mates and I recieved a call from the Palestinian coordinators of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in Nablus requesting our assistance. My team mate W and I quickly packed our overnight bags and made our way to Nablus, which is about a half an hour from our village.
My first visit to Nablus was in 2004. At the time, it was a permanent closed military zone, which meant that it was closed to all international observers unless you have receive prior permission from the Israeli state to enter the area. Located on its outskirts of Nablus are three refugee camps, Ein Beit el Ma, Balata and Askar. While all Palestinian refugee camps are considered by the IOF as being “terrorist centres”, Balata tops their list. The small two square kilometre camp is home to more 80% of Palestinians internally displaced refugees in the OPT and the refugees there have played an active role in opposing the brutality of the Israeli occupation in both the first and second intifada. By the declaring the region a closed military zone, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) were able to act with impunity, carrying out continuous and no-stop military campaigns, “targeted” assassinations, house demolitions and illegal collective punishment without the prying eyes of human rights activists, the media and international observers.
In 2004, for a period of about 9 months, the only way that international volunteers were able to get into Nablus was by surreptitiously scrambling through the back roads and the mountains surrounding the city. On the day in 2004, that myself and four other volunteers attempted to enter Nablus via the hills, we were prevented by IOF soldiers being stationed at our drop off and pick up points. Although we did not hold much in succeeding, we decided to take the chance and see if we could get in through a checkpoint. Much to both our surprise and others, we became the first internationals to enter the Nablus through a checkpoint during that period. At the time, I remember our Palestinian friends in Nablus greeting our news with complete shock and disbelief.
According to friends, the permanent closure was lifted in 2005, so this time my team mate and I had a relatively easy job of getting to Nablus. Once we arrived, we were briefed on the situation, along with the international volunteers from ISM. Shortly we broke into four teams, with our main tasks being to patrol the old city, which was under lockdown and curfew, in order to see if any Palestinians were in need off aid, such as food, water or medicine but also to monitor the activity of the IOF. As we walked into the Old City, I was struck by how eerie the scene in front of me was. I had been in Nablus three weeks earlier and the streets of the Old City, as usual, were crazy busy, with vendors selling their wears, spruiking and hundreds of people.
For hundreds of years, Nablus has been the main Palestinian centre for agricultural and commercial trading. Prior to the Israeli occupation in 1967, it had a booming economy and was famous for its olive oil, soap, leather production and sweets (with Nablusian Kanefi being the most delicious and famous). However, now the streets were completely silent except for the sounds of Israeli military vehicles patrolling the streets and sound grenades exploding. All the shops were closed and locked up and as we walked through the deserted streets, we could smell the teargas wafting through the air.
As our group split into our teams, we could see the IOF hummers and tanks patrolling the streets. At first, the IOF ignored our presence on the streets letting us pass without hassle, only occasionally coming closer to see what we were doing. If we encountered any soldiers, myself and another ISM woman had been elected as the negotiators for our team. Our job was to negotiate with the IOF in order to either secure our passage through the military lines, to ensure the Palestinian civilians we were accompanying came to no harm and to ensure both ourselves and them were not detained or arrested. Of the four teams, it turned out that our team encountered the least problems. We were able to enter the Old City and make it to the Medical Relief office with very little trouble.
However, two of our other teams were not as lucky. One team, who were accompanying medical volunteers, was unable to make it into the old city as the IOF refused to let them in, saying it was a closed military zone. Another team was detained for an hour or more by the IOF, when they refused to leave the two Palestinian medics they were accompanying. The soldiers demanded the huwiyas (ID) of the medics ensuring they would not be able to leave or continue with their duties.
The confiscation of a huwiya by the military is equivalent to physically kidnapping a Palestinian. Palestinians can not travel anywhere without a huwiya. If they can not produce their huwiya, they will be immediately arrested and jailed. So if a soldier confiscates a Palestinians huwiya, he or she can not go anywhere and must remain there until his huwiya is returned. This can sometimes be for 10 minutes or sometimes it can be in 3 or 7 or 12 hours or even longer. On many occasions, IOF soldiers while not arresting Palestinians, have refused to return their huwiya, telling them to come back the next day. The Palestinians are then caught in a catch 22 situation. They are reluctant to leave without their huwiyas but do so because they know if they don’t follow the orders of the solider they run the risk of being arrested. However, they also know if they do leave, they now run the risk of being arrested because they don’t have their huwiya. In addition, they know that if they leave without their huwiya, they will mostly not get it back the next day.
After our initial patrol was finished, our teams regrouped at our original starting point. As we waited for all the teams to turn up, we could hear sound grenades being exploded and then one huge explosion. We all ran to the balcony, realising that the IOF had just set of explosive charges in order to demolish a Palestinian house. As we looked up, we could see the dust from the explosion rising into the air. As we watched the dust dissipate, we could hear more sound grenades exploding. About an hour later, around 10.00 pm, a second detonation took place. Shortly after, we received a call from the local Medical Relief teams asking if there were any volunteers who could help facilitate the entrance of the medical team and help with the rescue efforts as there were people trapped in the rubble. Around 15 of us raised our hands and quickly ran to get our bags.
However, just as the medical team arrived and we assembled on the street to accompany them, an IOF jeep spotted us and blocked our exit. The soldiers called over the chief medic and demanded to know what was going on. Myself and J from the ISM quickly joined the medic, as we had once again been elected the team negotiators. After 10 minutes of discussion, we were informed that we could leave but the Palestinian medic could not. We, of course, refused to leave without him. Eventually, we were finally told we could all leave. However, the medic was informed that if we accompanied him or any other medical teams that he and the medical teams would be arrested. We quickly discovered that these instructions were put out to all IOF vehicles. This meant that the medics would have to go without us because they could not run the risk of being arrested. They advised us that if they needed us, they would call us and we would try and make it to the site without them. However, this would be also be very dangerous for us to be travelling without Palestinians, as not only were there IOF on the streets but also Palestinian militants who were engaged in running battles with the IOF. All throughout the evening we could hear gun fire being exchanged between the two groups and we later heard that the militants had blown up three IOF jeeps, injuring several soldiers.
While we were frustrated that we were unable to accompany the medics to the site, we were even more upset by the knowledge that there were people caught in the rubble of the demolished homes and we could not help them. Upon our return to our accommodation, we learnt that the IOF weren’t letting the medical teams enter the demolition sites, saying it was a closed military zone. This was despite that there were injured people and people caught in the rubble. Twenty minutes later, we heard yet a third huge detonation, signalling a third demolition had just taken place.
Looking around I could see the grim looks on all my fellow internationals faces. Many of them were choking back their anger and trying to hold back their tears. Many of us tried to find a quite out of the way place, away from the main crowd in order to pull themselves together. It had been a long and hot day and we had witnessed already so much oppression. We were angry because we knew that people were hurt and injured and we had been prevented from helping them. We were angry because all day long we had been inhaling teargas and hearing sound grenades being discharged. We were angry and distressed because we saw people locked in their houses and treated like animals. We were angry and distressed because with each demolition explosion, we knew the lives of another family had just been irrevocably destroyed. We were angry and distressed that the Israel could continually collectively punish an entire people, something which is illegal under international law, with impunity. We were angry and distressed at the injustices we say and the fact that world seemed to be standing by and turning a blind eye to it all.
As I sat on the balcony, I starred up at the beautiful sky above me and tried to hold back my tears. In Nablus, the intensity of Israel’s occupation is overwhelming. More then anywhere else of I had been in Palestine, it is the city where death and oppression is all around you, constantly. In Balata, more than 600 martyrs have died during the second intifada and their lives are remembered on the walls throughout the old city and the camps. It should be explained, however, that In Palestine, the word “martyr” is used to refer to anyone killed as a result of the occupation, not just the militants who participate in suicide bombing operations or who are part of the armed resistance in the camps. They are also the innocents who had died at the hands of the Israeli occupation
Martyrs are the children - boy and girls - killed on their way to school, in their class room or while playing in their homes. They are the ordinary women and men - young and old - innocent by standers, who are killed by the Israeli security forces during the IOF’s 'target assassinations’. They are those who died, inside their houses, as the IOF bulldozed their homes and they are the women who die giving birth in ambulances delayed at checkpoints.
In Nablus old city and Balata, they stare down at you from the walls in posters commemorating their lives. It can be overwhelming and disturbing to walk down the street and see so many faces – babies, toddlers, primary schoolers, teenagers and young men and women in their 20s, as well as the middle aged and the elderly – staring back at you. As I sat there, my heartached for young children who would grow up in the refugee camps, such as Balata, and who would never know one single day free from brutal repression and occupation and who saw so much death and destruction around them. However, as I sat there trying to push down my angry, tears and feelings of impotency, I reminded myself that I could walk away from this at anytime but my Palestinian friends could not.
As I sat there, I marvelled at the strength of my Palestinian friends, who had chosen the path of non-violent resistance, despite all the destruction, death and oppression around them. I recalled, how during my last visit to Nablus three weeks earlier, my friend S told me how during the last Israeli invasion of Balata in February, how half an hour after having a coffee with a friend, he had to return to the same cafe to help recovery his friend’s body and pick up the pieces of his friends brain splattered all over the wall and sidewalk. S told me that this wasn’t the first time that he had to go and recover the body of a friend killed by the Israel military. I wondered if I had to do the same, would I have the same strength as my friend...
The next day, we were woken at 6.30 am by the Israeli military shouting orders about the curfew in Hebrew through the load speakers of their military jeeps. As we prepared to go to Balata, we heard that the IOF was beginning to withdraw from both the camp and the old city. By 9am, the IOF had left the city and people began to emerge back onto the streets. While the IOF may have left the city, our jobs were not over. Over the next 6 hours, our job was to document as much as possible any violations carried out by the IOF.
We visited three of the houses that the IOF occupied and used as military posts during the invasion. All three houses had been ransacked, with cupboards, drawers and tables overturned. In two of the houses, the doors had been smashed in and broken. The families were either locked in a small room or forced to leave and go to a neighbor’s house. In at least two of the houses, the IOF had bore holes in the floors and walls or ripped open the ceilings, supposedly in search of explosives, weapons and tunnels. We also visited the three houses that had either been partially or completely demolished with explosive charges. Rubble was everywhere and the families were distressed about the destruction.
Later in the day we also visited two of the three hospitals that had been blockaded by the IOF during the invasion. The doctors and nurses we spoke with told us how many of the medical staff were not able to reach the hospitals due to the Israeli curfew. They went on to tell us how all the staff and patients that did make it to the hospital were, either, delayed or prevented from entering the hospitals. Nurses at one hospital also reported that the Israeli military had opened fire on the hospital at least five times during the course of the invasion, splaying the walls of the hospital with machine gun bullets. The went onto tell us how the Israeli forces also prevented supplies of oxygen and dialysis treatment chairs from entering the hospital for more than a half hour, along with basic supplies such as bread.
After we finished out documentation duties, W and I made our way back to Haris. Despite being exhausted we promised to return to Nablus, if the IOF reinvaded. During the last invasion in February, the IOF left Nablus for around 12 hours before re-invading and placing the city under a renewed curfew for another three or four days.
For the moment, Nablus is free of Israeli occupation forces but the question is for how long ....
For the past two weeks or three weeks, the Israeli, American and world media have repeatedly told us that since Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared a state of emergency and dismissed the democratically elected Palestinian Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh (from Hamas) and his government, that this is now the Palestinians best chance for peace. Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert has publicly been reported as saying that Israel would recognise the new unelected Palestinian emergency government and “would work with it to advance the peace process as well as the U.S backed road map for peace” (Ha’aretz).
According to Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper on June 23, Olmert and Israel will do this by offering a “pack of gestures” to Abbas and the Palestinians. This “good will” package will include the release of 250 Fatah aligned political prisoners, release of Palestinian taxes stolen by Israel, not cutting of water, electricity, food and medicine supplies to the Gaza Strip, allowing Palestinian businessmen to enter Israel, transferring armoured cars to Fatah and “renewed” security cooperation. Ha’aretz went onto quoted Olmert as saying that, “We are not interested in punishing the population solely because they are ruled by a terrorist organization”. He further was quoted as saying "We are not indifferent to your suffering. We are not ignoring the need to bring it to an end, through understanding and peacemaking” and “As Israel's prime minister, I say to you: We have no desire to rule you... nor run your lives. We have no intention to make decisions for you. I believe that soon you will be able to live in your state alongside the State of Israel."
On Wednesday, the Palestinian people of Gaza and Nablus and several other cities in the West Bank got to experience first hand Israel’s “peacemaking”. In Gaza, Israeli warplanes and ground troops killed 13 Palestinians, including three children and injured another 44. In Nablus, Israeli troops put 100,000 people under curfew for almost three days, blew up houses, blockaded hospitals and killed one man and injured dozens of others, including children. Olmert, obviously inevertenly forgot to mentioned that his so-called “peace package” or “package of goodwill gestures”, also include military invasions, curfews, tear gas, rubber bullets and illegal collective punishment.
In response to the Israel’s latest efforts in “peace making”, my team mates and I recieved a call from the Palestinian coordinators of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in Nablus requesting our assistance. My team mate W and I quickly packed our overnight bags and made our way to Nablus, which is about a half an hour from our village.
My first visit to Nablus was in 2004. At the time, it was a permanent closed military zone, which meant that it was closed to all international observers unless you have receive prior permission from the Israeli state to enter the area. Located on its outskirts of Nablus are three refugee camps, Ein Beit el Ma, Balata and Askar. While all Palestinian refugee camps are considered by the IOF as being “terrorist centres”, Balata tops their list. The small two square kilometre camp is home to more 80% of Palestinians internally displaced refugees in the OPT and the refugees there have played an active role in opposing the brutality of the Israeli occupation in both the first and second intifada. By the declaring the region a closed military zone, the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) were able to act with impunity, carrying out continuous and no-stop military campaigns, “targeted” assassinations, house demolitions and illegal collective punishment without the prying eyes of human rights activists, the media and international observers.
In 2004, for a period of about 9 months, the only way that international volunteers were able to get into Nablus was by surreptitiously scrambling through the back roads and the mountains surrounding the city. On the day in 2004, that myself and four other volunteers attempted to enter Nablus via the hills, we were prevented by IOF soldiers being stationed at our drop off and pick up points. Although we did not hold much in succeeding, we decided to take the chance and see if we could get in through a checkpoint. Much to both our surprise and others, we became the first internationals to enter the Nablus through a checkpoint during that period. At the time, I remember our Palestinian friends in Nablus greeting our news with complete shock and disbelief.
According to friends, the permanent closure was lifted in 2005, so this time my team mate and I had a relatively easy job of getting to Nablus. Once we arrived, we were briefed on the situation, along with the international volunteers from ISM. Shortly we broke into four teams, with our main tasks being to patrol the old city, which was under lockdown and curfew, in order to see if any Palestinians were in need off aid, such as food, water or medicine but also to monitor the activity of the IOF. As we walked into the Old City, I was struck by how eerie the scene in front of me was. I had been in Nablus three weeks earlier and the streets of the Old City, as usual, were crazy busy, with vendors selling their wears, spruiking and hundreds of people.
For hundreds of years, Nablus has been the main Palestinian centre for agricultural and commercial trading. Prior to the Israeli occupation in 1967, it had a booming economy and was famous for its olive oil, soap, leather production and sweets (with Nablusian Kanefi being the most delicious and famous). However, now the streets were completely silent except for the sounds of Israeli military vehicles patrolling the streets and sound grenades exploding. All the shops were closed and locked up and as we walked through the deserted streets, we could smell the teargas wafting through the air.
As our group split into our teams, we could see the IOF hummers and tanks patrolling the streets. At first, the IOF ignored our presence on the streets letting us pass without hassle, only occasionally coming closer to see what we were doing. If we encountered any soldiers, myself and another ISM woman had been elected as the negotiators for our team. Our job was to negotiate with the IOF in order to either secure our passage through the military lines, to ensure the Palestinian civilians we were accompanying came to no harm and to ensure both ourselves and them were not detained or arrested. Of the four teams, it turned out that our team encountered the least problems. We were able to enter the Old City and make it to the Medical Relief office with very little trouble.
However, two of our other teams were not as lucky. One team, who were accompanying medical volunteers, was unable to make it into the old city as the IOF refused to let them in, saying it was a closed military zone. Another team was detained for an hour or more by the IOF, when they refused to leave the two Palestinian medics they were accompanying. The soldiers demanded the huwiyas (ID) of the medics ensuring they would not be able to leave or continue with their duties.
The confiscation of a huwiya by the military is equivalent to physically kidnapping a Palestinian. Palestinians can not travel anywhere without a huwiya. If they can not produce their huwiya, they will be immediately arrested and jailed. So if a soldier confiscates a Palestinians huwiya, he or she can not go anywhere and must remain there until his huwiya is returned. This can sometimes be for 10 minutes or sometimes it can be in 3 or 7 or 12 hours or even longer. On many occasions, IOF soldiers while not arresting Palestinians, have refused to return their huwiya, telling them to come back the next day. The Palestinians are then caught in a catch 22 situation. They are reluctant to leave without their huwiyas but do so because they know if they don’t follow the orders of the solider they run the risk of being arrested. However, they also know if they do leave, they now run the risk of being arrested because they don’t have their huwiya. In addition, they know that if they leave without their huwiya, they will mostly not get it back the next day.
After our initial patrol was finished, our teams regrouped at our original starting point. As we waited for all the teams to turn up, we could hear sound grenades being exploded and then one huge explosion. We all ran to the balcony, realising that the IOF had just set of explosive charges in order to demolish a Palestinian house. As we looked up, we could see the dust from the explosion rising into the air. As we watched the dust dissipate, we could hear more sound grenades exploding. About an hour later, around 10.00 pm, a second detonation took place. Shortly after, we received a call from the local Medical Relief teams asking if there were any volunteers who could help facilitate the entrance of the medical team and help with the rescue efforts as there were people trapped in the rubble. Around 15 of us raised our hands and quickly ran to get our bags.
However, just as the medical team arrived and we assembled on the street to accompany them, an IOF jeep spotted us and blocked our exit. The soldiers called over the chief medic and demanded to know what was going on. Myself and J from the ISM quickly joined the medic, as we had once again been elected the team negotiators. After 10 minutes of discussion, we were informed that we could leave but the Palestinian medic could not. We, of course, refused to leave without him. Eventually, we were finally told we could all leave. However, the medic was informed that if we accompanied him or any other medical teams that he and the medical teams would be arrested. We quickly discovered that these instructions were put out to all IOF vehicles. This meant that the medics would have to go without us because they could not run the risk of being arrested. They advised us that if they needed us, they would call us and we would try and make it to the site without them. However, this would be also be very dangerous for us to be travelling without Palestinians, as not only were there IOF on the streets but also Palestinian militants who were engaged in running battles with the IOF. All throughout the evening we could hear gun fire being exchanged between the two groups and we later heard that the militants had blown up three IOF jeeps, injuring several soldiers.
While we were frustrated that we were unable to accompany the medics to the site, we were even more upset by the knowledge that there were people caught in the rubble of the demolished homes and we could not help them. Upon our return to our accommodation, we learnt that the IOF weren’t letting the medical teams enter the demolition sites, saying it was a closed military zone. This was despite that there were injured people and people caught in the rubble. Twenty minutes later, we heard yet a third huge detonation, signalling a third demolition had just taken place.
Looking around I could see the grim looks on all my fellow internationals faces. Many of them were choking back their anger and trying to hold back their tears. Many of us tried to find a quite out of the way place, away from the main crowd in order to pull themselves together. It had been a long and hot day and we had witnessed already so much oppression. We were angry because we knew that people were hurt and injured and we had been prevented from helping them. We were angry because all day long we had been inhaling teargas and hearing sound grenades being discharged. We were angry and distressed because we saw people locked in their houses and treated like animals. We were angry and distressed because with each demolition explosion, we knew the lives of another family had just been irrevocably destroyed. We were angry and distressed that the Israel could continually collectively punish an entire people, something which is illegal under international law, with impunity. We were angry and distressed at the injustices we say and the fact that world seemed to be standing by and turning a blind eye to it all.
As I sat on the balcony, I starred up at the beautiful sky above me and tried to hold back my tears. In Nablus, the intensity of Israel’s occupation is overwhelming. More then anywhere else of I had been in Palestine, it is the city where death and oppression is all around you, constantly. In Balata, more than 600 martyrs have died during the second intifada and their lives are remembered on the walls throughout the old city and the camps. It should be explained, however, that In Palestine, the word “martyr” is used to refer to anyone killed as a result of the occupation, not just the militants who participate in suicide bombing operations or who are part of the armed resistance in the camps. They are also the innocents who had died at the hands of the Israeli occupation
Martyrs are the children - boy and girls - killed on their way to school, in their class room or while playing in their homes. They are the ordinary women and men - young and old - innocent by standers, who are killed by the Israeli security forces during the IOF’s 'target assassinations’. They are those who died, inside their houses, as the IOF bulldozed their homes and they are the women who die giving birth in ambulances delayed at checkpoints.
In Nablus old city and Balata, they stare down at you from the walls in posters commemorating their lives. It can be overwhelming and disturbing to walk down the street and see so many faces – babies, toddlers, primary schoolers, teenagers and young men and women in their 20s, as well as the middle aged and the elderly – staring back at you. As I sat there, my heartached for young children who would grow up in the refugee camps, such as Balata, and who would never know one single day free from brutal repression and occupation and who saw so much death and destruction around them. However, as I sat there trying to push down my angry, tears and feelings of impotency, I reminded myself that I could walk away from this at anytime but my Palestinian friends could not.
As I sat there, I marvelled at the strength of my Palestinian friends, who had chosen the path of non-violent resistance, despite all the destruction, death and oppression around them. I recalled, how during my last visit to Nablus three weeks earlier, my friend S told me how during the last Israeli invasion of Balata in February, how half an hour after having a coffee with a friend, he had to return to the same cafe to help recovery his friend’s body and pick up the pieces of his friends brain splattered all over the wall and sidewalk. S told me that this wasn’t the first time that he had to go and recover the body of a friend killed by the Israel military. I wondered if I had to do the same, would I have the same strength as my friend...
The next day, we were woken at 6.30 am by the Israeli military shouting orders about the curfew in Hebrew through the load speakers of their military jeeps. As we prepared to go to Balata, we heard that the IOF was beginning to withdraw from both the camp and the old city. By 9am, the IOF had left the city and people began to emerge back onto the streets. While the IOF may have left the city, our jobs were not over. Over the next 6 hours, our job was to document as much as possible any violations carried out by the IOF.
We visited three of the houses that the IOF occupied and used as military posts during the invasion. All three houses had been ransacked, with cupboards, drawers and tables overturned. In two of the houses, the doors had been smashed in and broken. The families were either locked in a small room or forced to leave and go to a neighbor’s house. In at least two of the houses, the IOF had bore holes in the floors and walls or ripped open the ceilings, supposedly in search of explosives, weapons and tunnels. We also visited the three houses that had either been partially or completely demolished with explosive charges. Rubble was everywhere and the families were distressed about the destruction.
Later in the day we also visited two of the three hospitals that had been blockaded by the IOF during the invasion. The doctors and nurses we spoke with told us how many of the medical staff were not able to reach the hospitals due to the Israeli curfew. They went on to tell us how all the staff and patients that did make it to the hospital were, either, delayed or prevented from entering the hospitals. Nurses at one hospital also reported that the Israeli military had opened fire on the hospital at least five times during the course of the invasion, splaying the walls of the hospital with machine gun bullets. The went onto tell us how the Israeli forces also prevented supplies of oxygen and dialysis treatment chairs from entering the hospital for more than a half hour, along with basic supplies such as bread.
After we finished out documentation duties, W and I made our way back to Haris. Despite being exhausted we promised to return to Nablus, if the IOF reinvaded. During the last invasion in February, the IOF left Nablus for around 12 hours before re-invading and placing the city under a renewed curfew for another three or four days.
For the moment, Nablus is free of Israeli occupation forces but the question is for how long ....
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