PCHR Condemns Attack by GIS Members on Staff of ‘al-Haq’ in Ramallah: PCHR
Thursday, 26 August 2010 12:00
The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns the attack launched on Wednesday, 25 August 2010, by members of the General Intelligence Service (GIS) on staff members of ‘al-Haq’ organization in Ramallah, while documenting GIS’s attempts to stop an assembly organized by Palestinian political factions and civil society organizations in protest a decision by the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) to participate in direct negotiations with Israel. PCHR calls upon the government in Ramallah to respect public freedoms and to ensure respect for the work of human rights organizations and to provide protection for their personnel.
According to statements made by ‘al-Haq’ and according to Wissam Ahmed, 33, Program Officer at al-Haq, on Wednesday afternoon, 25 August 2010, a number of al-Haq’s staff members got out of their offices as they heard noise coming from the main street. They had information that GIS members were attempting to stop the assembly of political and civil society organizations which was scheduled to be organized in the hall of the Protestant Church opposite to al-Haq offices. The assembly was supposed to discuss the positions towards direct negotiations between PNA and the government of Israel. In the meanwhile, Wissam Ahmed, 33, Program Officer at al-Haq, took a video camera and went to the street to film the event, but he was beaten by a person in civilian clothes. Later, it was found out that this person was a GIS member. The camera was taken from Ahmed and thrown onto the ground. After Ahmed had managed to get his camera back, he asked why he was prevented from filming the event. In response, more than 10 GIS members surrounded him and beat him on the head and the neck. They took his camera and pushed him away.
Mrs. Nina Ata Allah, Head of the Observation and Documentation Department at ‘al-Haq’, who intervened to stop the GIS attack on her colleague, was also attacked. A GIS member stepped on her feet. She was injured in the feet as a result and was transferred to the hospital of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society in Ramallah for treatment. Sources from ‘al-Haq’ reported that Mr. Shaawan Jabarin, asked some police members who were in the scene about the camera. One of them told him that it was with GIS members.
It should be noted that this attack on staff members of al-Haq is part of attacks launched by the Palestinian security services in Ramallah on a peaceful march which was organized with the participation of members of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Secretaries General of a number of political parties, leaders of the civil society organizations as well as independent figures. Security forces prevented the participants in the march from organizing a press conference which was scheduled to be held in the hall of the Protestant Church. A member of the Executive Committee of the PLO was arrested as well.
In view of the above, PCHR:
Strongly condemns this attack by GIS members on staff members of al-Haq and the confiscation of their camera.
Reiterates that it is important that the Palestinian security forces respect the work of human rights organizations and to ensure protection to their personnel in all circumstances.
Points with concern to the recurrence of attacks on the right to freedom of opinion and expression and the right to peaceful assembly. PCHR stresses that these two rights are guaranteed by the Palestinian Basic Law and by international human rights instruments.
Gideon Levy: The Media in Israel is the biggest collaborator with the Occupation: MAP
This week MAP attended a CAABU organised meeting with Ha’aretz journalist and editor Gideon Levy in London.
Mr Levy spoke of the “ongoing process of dehumanization and demonizing” of the Palestinians in the Israeli media, which despite being “professional and free” chooses to turn a blind eye to the occupation.
This is particularly true when it comes to reporting on the situation in Gaza. Israeli journalists have been banned from entering Gaza since November 2006. Mr Levy described how during Operation: Cast Lead the deaths of two Israeli dogs received front page coverage whilst news of hundreds of Palestinian casualties was confined to the back pages.
He described Israel as “an Apartheid state by any criteria” and spoke of how the chances of change coming from within Israeli society “are zero’ as people are ‘in a coma’ towards the Occupation. He went on to say that as change “cannot come from within it will have to come from Washington”.
In response to the news of upcoming peace talks, Mr Levy described them as an “ongoing masquerade” as “the absence of leadership in Israel means that people are happy to negotiate forever, the danger is that the failure of the talks might initiate a more violent phase”.
EU rebukes Israel for convicting Palestinian protester: BBC
The European Union has criticised Israel for convicting an organiser of weekly Palestinian protests against the West Bank separation barrier.
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said she was “deeply concerned” about Abdullah Abu Rahmeh, who now faces several years in prison.
She said he was a “human rights defender” committed to non-violent protest.
Israel’s foreign ministry described her statement as highly improper.
‘Legitimate right’
Jailed since December, Abdullah Abu Rahmeh was convicted by a military court on Tuesday of inciting protests in the West Bank village of Bilin and of participating in the protests without a legal permit.
Lady Ashton expressed deep concern “that the possible imprisonment of Mr Abu Rahmeh is intended to prevent him and other Palestinians from exercising their legitimate right to protest against the existence of the separation barriers in a non-violent manner,” her office said.
“The EU considers the route of the barrier where it is built on Palestinian land to be illegal,” it quoted her as saying in a statement.
Her statement drew a sharp rebuke from Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor, who said that any “interference with a transparent legal procedure is highly improper”.
Sentencing is scheduled for next month, after which Abu Rahmeh – a 39-year-old schoolteacher – will appeal the conviction, his lawyer has said.
Weekly protests
Activists have been protesting against the barrier for five years in what they say are mostly peaceful demonstrations. Some demonstrations have been attended by stone-throwing Palestinian youths.
Israel says it considers the protests to be “violent and illegal”. Israeli security services have fired tear gas, stun grenades, rubber bullets and on occasion live rounds at protesters.
There have been two fatalities among protesters and an American peace activist suffered brain damage after being hit by a tear gas canister.
Israel says the barrier was established to stop Palestinian suicide bombers entering from the West Bank.
But Palestinians point to its route, winding deep into the West Bank around Israeli settlements – which are illegal under international law – and say it is a way to grab territory they want for their future state.
In 2004, the International Court of Justice in The Hague issued an advisory ruling that the barrier was illegal and should be removed where it did not follow the Green Line, the internationally recognised boundary between the West Bank and Israel.
Facing jail, the unarmed activist who dared to take on Israel: The Independent
Baroness Ashton ‘deeply concerned’ at court’s ruling in case of West Bank protest
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
Thursday, 26 August 2010
Baroness Ashton, the EU’s foreign policy chief, yesterday issued an unusually sharp rebuke to Israel over a military court’s conviction of a Palestinian activist prominent in unarmed protests against the West Bank separation barrier.
Lady Ashton said she was “deeply concerned” that Abdallah Abu Rahma was facing a possible jail sentence “to prevent him and other Palestinians from exercising their legitimate right to protest against the separation barriers in a non-violent manner”.
Though acquitted on two charges – including one of stone-throwing – Mr Abu Rahma, 39, a leader of the anti-barrier protests which have taken place every Friday for five years in the West Bank village of Bil’in, was convicted on Monday on another two: “incitement” and “organising and participating in an illegal demonstration”.
He is in jail, awaiting sentencing next month. He was detained last December by troops who arrived at his Ramallah home at 2am in seven jeeps as part of what anti-barrier activists say has been an escalating wave of arrests of protesters in West Bank villages, angry about the barrier and settlements encroaching on Palestinian land.
Pointing out that the European Union regarded the barrier as “illegal” where – as at Bil’in – it was built on Palestinian land, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy said the EU considered Mr Abu Rahma, who works as a teacher at a private school, to be “a human rights defender committed to non-violent protest”.
The protest by Lady Ashton, who was yesterday accused by Israel’s foreign ministry of “interfering” in the country’s judicial process, follows mounting concern by Western diplomats over the severity of measures taken by Israeli security forces against the mainly rural protests. Officials from several European countries, including Britain, were present for the verdict in the Ofer military court on Monday.
Her intervention was partly designed to demonstrate that the EU representatives will continue closely to watch developments on the ground in the West Bank while direct peace negotiations, due to start in Washington next week, get under way.
The military judge also acquitted Mr Abu Rahma of a charge of illegal arms possession which arose from a collection of used tear gas canisters and bullet cases he had been making to demonstrate that police and troops used violence against protesters.
The Popular Struggle Co-Ordination Committee said the “absurd” charge demonstrated the lengths the military was prepared to go to “to silence and smear unarmed dissent”.
It added that the incitement charge had been upheld even though it was based on the testimonies of minors who had been arrested in the middle of the night, and which the court recognised had defects. No other evidence had been offered, despite the routine filming of the protests by the security forces. It said the charge of organising demonstrations had not been used since the first intifada, from 1987 to 1993.
In 2008 Mr Abu Rahma was given an award by the International League for Human Rights in Berlin for “outstanding service in the realisation of basic human rights”. He met “the Elders”, a group of global statesmen and women including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, when they made a solidarity visit to Bil’in last year.
The protests at Bil’in, the highest profile of several in West Bank villages, have seen clashes between security forces using tear gas and rubber bullets and stone-throwing youths. After a protester was killed there in April 2009, military prosecutors said there was insufficient evidence for an investigation.
Construction work on rerouting part of the barrier at Bil’in finally began this year after the state had twice been found in contempt by the Supreme Court for failing to implement a 2007 court order to reroute the barrier.
Yigal Palmor, Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, said: “In a country in which even open supporters of Hamas and Hizbollah enjoy freedom of speech, Lady Ashton’s accusations sound particularly hollow. If she thinks she can do a better job than the defendant’s lawyer, she should say so. Otherwise, interfering in a transparent legal process in a democratic country is a very peculiar way to promote European values.”
But Mr Abu Rahma’s lawyer, Gaby Lasky, said: “The international community must take a tough stand on this issue, and I am happy that the political motivation of the indictment against a human rights defender was clear to the EU from attending the hearings.”
The Co-ordination Committee, a loose body of protest organisers, said yesterday there had been a “dramatic” increase in arrests. Of 93 made at Bil’in alone in five years, 46 were made since July of last year. At the more recent flashpoint of Nabi Saleh, there had been 41 arrests in the last eight months.