EDITOR: While the west prepares for its Iran War, Palestine is forgotten…
So, after Abbas basking in the lights of the UN and feeling important, he is now back in Palestine, and back in the mud of world avoidance of the Palestine question. If it is not one war, it is another, if it is not one election, it is another, everything is a good area to delay talking, not to mention doing anything, about Palestine. The idea that the UN can do anything positive about Palestine is laughable – after all, it is the UN which created the problem in the first place, with its devastating and negative, colonial Resolution 181. The UN has never in its almost seven decades of its history, done ONE positive thing about the rights of the Palestinian people.
So now, even Abbas must have realised this – one hopes.
The second delusion Abbas has, is the idea that the US will help Palestine. Did this ever take place? Did the US ever veer from its total-support-of -Zionist-atrocities position? Is it ever likely to?
So maybe Abbas will also understand this, in his own good time.
Well, there is also a third delusion, the worst of them all – that Israel under Netanyahu will talk to him about anything, and will follow this with actions. All Palestinians must be aware that this assumption is sheer madness, so maybe someone can also tell Abbas?
If the ANC in South Africa waited for US, UK and UN to end apartheid, we would still be waiting today for it. Apartheid was ended by struggle – armed and popular struggle in South Africa, non-violent Direct Action in South Africa by millions of blacks and whites alike, and also by BDS and solidarity movements all over the globe. There was no other way to achieve equality and justice.
There still isn’t today. We all, everywhere, must struggle together to achieve the end of the Zionist colonial project, and the just solution in Palestine, for Jews and Arabs, for Palestinians and Israelis, and for the whole region. Now that Abbas and the Hamas may work together towards getting a just solution in Palestine, they should remember that not a single nation was liberated without struggle, and along and painful one. for two long decades the PLO has lived in a dream time to wake up and face realities! The PLO should follow the example of the ANC – demand justice and equality, and the removal of the colonial project, and direct its call to ALL the people on this earth, as did the ANC.
As long as South Africa had the racist apartheid regime in power, all of us were responsible for its iniquities. As long as Zionism continues to oppress Palestine, we are all responsible. Let us all act to end it, and bring a just peace for all in the Middle East.
Peace is NOT divisible. Justice is NOT divisible. Either all shall have it, or none.
2,600 Bedouins threatened with displacement as Israeli settlements expand: The Electronic Intifada
Sophie Crowe, Jerusalem 7 February 2012
Women sort through their belongings three days after Israeli forces demolished several homes in Anata, 26 January 2012.(Anne Paq / ActiveStills)
The “E1” area of the West Bank, comprising 12 square kilometers, lies between the Maale Adumim settlement and occupied East Jerusalem, curling around and separating the Palestinian towns of Anata and Abu Dis. While E1 is home to roughly 2,600 Bedouins, Israel has prevented any Palestinian development there so that Maale Adumim might expand and new settlements can go up.
Though the settlement development project was temporarily postponed in 2008 due to disapproval from the United States, Israel has long planned on emptying the space of its Palestinian inhabitants in order to implement the plan. Many of these communities have been displaced several times since the 1970s to make way for Israel’s settlement enterprise.
Two years ago, rumors began circulating among the Bedouins living in the EI area of Israel’s intentions to displace them once more. These rumors have been buttressed by waves of demolition orders in most of the Bedouin encampments.
Twenty communities, in which 2,600 persons live, are facing displacement, stated Abu Suleiman, mukhtar (or leader) of Qeserat, a Bedouin community within E1.
Stealing water resources
Qeserat, home to approximately 200 persons, spreads along the slope of a hill beside a busy highway, close to Anata. Israel moved the community there in the 1970s in order to use their land for Kfar Adumim settlement. The Israeli authorities wanted this site for its valuable water resources, Abu Suleiman noted.
Most of the Bedouins in this area are from the Jahalin tribe, originally from the Naqab (Negev) desert. They became refugees after 1948, when the new authorities forced them from their land, and eventually resettled in the West Bank.
Israeli authorities have suggested moving some of the communities in E1 to a location beside Abu Dis — an East Jerusalem suburb partitioned from the city by Israel’s wall in the West Bank — which borders Jerusalem’s chief garbage dump.
This site is already home to about 2,000 Bedouins, who were moved there in the 1990s from land which is to facilitate the expansion of Maale Adumim.
The Civil Administration (the body overseeing Israel’s occupation of the West Bank), however, may be backing down from its enforcement of this idea. Haaretz reported yesterday that Israeli Major General Eitan Dangot suggested Israel would find another location on which the Bedouin would be permanently settled (“Bedouin community wins reprieve from forcible relocation to Jerusalem garbage dump,” 6 February 2012).
Shlomo Lecker, an Israeli lawyer representing 250 Bedouin families threatened by removal, has advised them to refuse the Abu Dis plan at all costs.
He told Israeli daily Haaretz in November that Israel’s plan “is intended to cut them off from the area … No one wants to move to the Abu Dis village and those living there refuse to accept them” (“Israel cancels plans for new Bedouin neighborhood,” 7 November 2011).
The Bedouins have traditionally lived off rearing animals, but the continuing encroachment on their land has made grazing animals increasingly difficult. The proposed site near Abu Dis would bring a halt to this way of life altogether.
“To raise animals you need space,” Abu Suleiman told The Electronic Intifada. “We don’t want to go to Abu Dis. It is crowded and not a safe place for people to live.”
Land mines
Aside from the proximity to a refuse site, land mines remain on the land near the Abu Dis site from Israeli military training. The Bedouin Protection Committee, a representative body comprising leaders from each community, was formed last summer to discuss ways of dealing with the threat of displacement and to advocate for suitable living conditions.
The committee has asked why Israel should not — if they insist on transferring the Bedouins — let them return to their original home in the Naqab. “In our history we are refugees,” Abu Suleiman stressed.
He would be happy, he said, with a permanent Bedouin town, “away from the cities, near the Dead Sea.” He is not optimistic, however, but acutely aware of Israel’s intransigence: “They will not enlarge the Palestinian areas.”
Abu Rashed, mukhtar of Arara, another Bedouin encampment in E1, believes Israel is trying to coerce the Bedouin into accepting the Abu Dis site by expropriating land the communities may see as an alternative. In the first week of January, Israeli soldiers left a military order near Arara, informing them that Nabi Musa, a neighboring area of 18 dunams used for grazing animals, was now a closed military zone (a dunam is equal to 1,000 square meters).
Abu Rashed recalls how life changed after Israel’s occupation of the West Bank in 1967. “Under the Jordanian government we felt free,” he reflects. The situation began to worsen in the 1980s, by which time Israel’s illegal settlement of the West Bank was in full swing. “Israel was taking land, claiming it to be a military area,” he says. “Since then they have taken 90 percent of Arara’s land.”
Many of the E1 communities made agreements decades ago with the owners of the land, mostly residents of Anata or Abu Dis. “Since the settlements began to appear, people prefer for Bedouins to live on their land rather than use it for farming; it’s like protection,” Abu Rashed explained.
Thousands made homeless
The Bedouins of Abu Hindi, an encampment near Abu Dis that falls just outside E1, have been embroiled in a years-long legal battle for their right to stay on their land.
Abu Hamad, the mukhtar’s brother, explains that the deal with the original landowner was informal, agreed upon without the official documentation of ownership that Israel now demands of them.
Israel’s demolition of homes in Area C, creating 1,000 homeless persons in 2011, has continued unabated into the new year.
On 23 January Israeli forces demolished a home — Beit Arabiya, which houses the Shawamreh family and doubles as a peace center — near Anata, for the fifth time, leaving the family of seven homeless. Three other homes and several animal enclosures in the community were also torn down (“Halper vows to rebuild Palestinian home destroyed five times by Israeli soldiers,” Mondoweiss, 25 January 2012).
Two days later the Israeli military tore down six sheds, home to six Bedouin families, in the War ad-Beik area, also bordering Anata (“Army bulldozer destroys six sheds near Jerusalem,” International Middle East Media Center, 25 January 2012).
Abu Suleiman suspects Israel’s pressure on the Bedouins is part of a wider plan to push all Palestinians out of Area C of the West Bank — where Israel has total control. Israel creates obstacles in each facet of life, he says, taking away communities’ water tanks and tractors and refusing to supply them with electricity.
He does not see much change on the horizon. The state “will try to destroy people step by step,” he predicts.
Sophie Crowe is a journalist based in the West Bank. She can be reached at croweso [at] tcd [dot] ie.
Where is the Palestinian Spring?: AIC
SUNDAY, 05 FEBRUARY 2012 12:41 ELENA VIOLA FOR THE ALTERNATIVE INFORMATION CENTER
The Egyptian Revolution recently marked its first anniversary. When is the Arab Spring coming to Palestine?
Revolution has been spreading through a number of North African, Middle Eastern, and Gulf countries since December 2010. The first protests broke out in Tunisia and were soon followed by similar upheavals in Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria. These uprisings represent a popular attempt to end undemocratic, oppressive regimes and to move towards representative government.
But, despite shifting regional politics, Palestine remains relatively quiet.
Today, we ask Nassar Ibrahim – Palestinian writer, political activist and co-director of the Alternative Information Center – why the Arab Spring has yet to come to Palestine.
“We have been in ‘Spring’ for 30 years now,” Ibrahim answers. “While the whole Arab world was sleepy, Palestinians had the First Intifada, the Second Intifada and several other different forms of resistance.”
But, Ibrahim, adds the political situation in Palestine is quite different than that in Egypt and Tunisia where uprisings toppled to regimes and led to elections. There, “popular movements had the concrete power to enact significant changes in the internal, external and even in the economic policy of their country,” Ibrahim explains.
That scenario is unlikely to be played out here for a number of reasons.
“Firstly, we Palestinians live under Israeli occupation and our situation won’t be any better, unless we are backed up by the other Arab countries in our fight against the status quo. The neighbouring Arab countries must understand that we are dealing with a comprehensive Israeli-Arab conflict, not just an Israeli-Palestinian strife.”
“Secondly, even if we bring down the [Palestinian Authority], will anything change? Will a new PA be able to fight the Israeli occupation and improve our bad economic situation? I don’t mean to protect the current political leadership but what I am trying to say is that, to have a real change, the thing that should be overturned in the first place is the PA strategy on the ground.”
Ibrahim continues, explaining that many Palestinians still consider their political parties to be resistance movements. Because these resistance movements have been unable to bring about serious change, there is a feeling of hopelessness. Palestinians are also weary of the unknown, Ibrahim adds, explaining that some are concerned that their lives will only be more difficult with a different leadership.
The first and the second points – the occupation and the need for a new PA strategy—are related.
Reflecting on events in Egypt and Tunisia, Ibrahim points out that after millions went into the streets to protest the authoritarian regimes, and those regimes feel, political parties took the reins of the protest movements. “This shows that there can be no strategy without a political party to put it in action and, thus, we can’t expect Palestinian people to react on their own,” Ibrahim concludes.
He adds, “I don’t think you will find a single Palestinian who doesn’t want to free himself from the Israeli occupation but, at the same time, Palestinians are frustrated by [politicians making use] of their resistance. People would sacrifice themselves to fight the Israeli occupation, if the political parties gave them a specific strategy to be followed.
“But, if Mahmoud Abbas, for example, keeps saying that the only way to stop the occupation is to resume peace negotiations, why would people decide to struggle on the streets?”
“In Palestine it is unrealistic to think of an uprising that, newly born, will wipe out the Israeli occupation and Palestinian political corruption. Here, the situation is much more complex. We have a prolonged occupation, internal fractures, and [increasing] economic pressure to be tackled.”
Ibrahim adds that, after two Intifadas and over 40 years of occupation, Palestinians “are looking for something different… They are seeking a balance between the resistance to the daily injustices they face and the accomplishment of a ‘normal’ life.”
The ground is not ready yet for a third Palestinian uprising, Ibrahim argues, but, “at any time, Palestinians might surprise you.”
“Nobody thought that the First or the Second Intifada would start but, suddenly, they broke out…”