US envoy visits Israel for ‘indirect’ negotiations: The Independent
By Jeffrey Heller, Reuters, in Jerusalem
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
President Barack Obama’s Middle East peace envoy arrived in Tel Aviv yesterday for expected indirect Israeli-Palestinian talks but Israel voiced doubt about any breakthrough without direct negotiations.
Hours before the US envoy, George Mitchell, flew into Israel, the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, conferred in Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh about the upcoming US-mediated negotiations. Mr Obama’s peace efforts received a boost on Saturday when Arab states approved four months of “proximity talks”, whose expected start in March was delayed by Israel’s announcement of a settlement project on occupied land near Jerusalem.
An Israeli Defence Ministry strategist Amos Gilad said on Israel Radio that the indirect negotiations would begin on Wednesday. It was not immediately clear when the envoy would hold talks with the Palestinian side. The executive committee of the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was scheduled to meet only on Saturday to give the formal nod to start the negotiations.
The Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor described indirect talks as “a strange affair” after face-to-face peace negotiations stretching back 16 years.
There have been no direct talks for the past 18 months, a period that has included Israel’s Gaza war, the election of a right-wing Israeli government and entrenched rule in the Gaza Strip by Hamas Islamists opposed to the US peace efforts.
“I think it is clear to everyone that real talks are direct talks, and I don’t think there is a chance of a significant breakthrough until the direct talks begin,” Mr Meridor said.
“The talks will be held. The envoy, Mr Mitchell, will talk to us, to them. But the more we hasten to arrive at direct talks, the more we will be able to address the heart of the matter.”
Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Mr Abbas, said the negotiations would show whether the Israeli government was serious about peace and “test the sincerity” of the Obama administration in pursuing Palestinian statehood.
“The truth is we are not in need of negotiations. We are in need of decisions by the Israeli government. This is the time for decisions more than it is the time for negotiations,” Mr Rdainah said.
In an interview published on Sunday in the Palestinian newspaper al-Ayyam, Mr Abbas said Mr Obama had given a commitment he would not allow “any provocative measures” by either side. Mr Abbas has long insisted Israel freeze Jewish settlement building before any negotiations resume, and he had rejected as insufficient a temporary construction moratorium that Mr Netanyahu ordered in the occupied West Bank last November.
EDITOR: Even the Right has noticed…
Moshe Arens might be right-wing, but stupid he is not. He admits some of the facts that others in the Israeli elite seems to be denying at all cost.
Let’s stop pretending: Haaretz
The administration in Washington is trying to force on Israel a peace settlement with the Palestinians.
By Moshe Arens
Tags: Israel US Israel news Middle East peace
It is almost a year now that a certain ritual has marked the public discourse between Washington and Jerusalem. Israel gets a good slap in the face and a few days later someone in Washington announces that the U.S.-Israeli relationship is rock-solid. The Israeli prime minister is demeaned in Washington and a day later he declares that the U.S.-Israeli relationship is firm as ever.
Anybody who has been involved in fostering the U.S.-Israeli relationship over the years, so important to both countries, knows that things are not as they have been for the past 50 years. The relationship, which on occasion is being described in Washington as “unshakable and unbreakable,” has for the past year been shaken up quite a bit. The administration in Washington is trying to force on Israel a peace settlement with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a settlement that would involve Israel withdrawing to the 1949 armistice lines that were established after it repelled the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, which were attempting to destroy the newborn state.
They want to set the clock back, seemingly oblivious of the many wars and acts of terror that were launched against Israel in the years since then, the serious threats that are being directed against Israel at present, the dramatic changes that have taken place in the past 61 years, and the Jewish people’s internationally recognized rights to their ancient homeland. This bitter medicine needs to be taken by the people of Israel, it is argued, because it serves the interests of the United States, and in addition, the administration in Washington believes that it is also good for Israel.
For many years the differences between the United States and Israel were discussed in intimate forums and not taken public, in the common realization that venting in public the inevitable differences even among the best of friends would only harm the interests of both countries and give comfort and encouragement to their common enemies. Not since Dwight Eisenhower demanded that David Ben-Gurion withdraw the Israel Defense Forces from the Sinai and the Gaza Strip in 1957 has the White House openly challenged Israel. Now, the administration in Washington has no compunction about publicly airing its displeasure with Israel.
The recent visit of the U.S. vice president and the routine approval during his stay by a local planning body of construction plans in a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem was turned into an “insult to the United States.” It was followed by an angry telephone call by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and a subsequent attack on Israel in Clinton’s appearance on U.S. television.
In the interim, soothing words were heard from Washington until Netanyahu’s visit to the White House, where he was duly humiliated. Tom Friedman, the New York Times columnist close to the White House, reminded Israel in a recent interview of the generosity of the United States in granting Israel $3 billion annually for military assistance while America contends with a severe economic crisis. What for years was seen in Washington and Jerusalem as assistance that served the interests of both countries is now being depicted as largesse for which Israel needs to express its gratitude by accepting American demands.
The Netanyahu government has chosen to act as if nothing has changed, and that the occasional signs of displeasure coming from Washington can be appeased by minor or temporary Israeli concessions. The result seems to be the opposite. The Israeli government is seen in Washington as disingenuous and attempting to outsmart the White House.
The time has come to stop pretending. Whatever chance that may exist to conduct productive negotiations with Abbas is being hampered by the demands being made on Israel by Washington. They only provide excuses for Abbas to refuse to enter serious negotiations until these demands are met. He cannot be expected to be less of a Palestinian than U.S. President Barack Obama. While objective difficulties exist in any case because of Hamas’ control of Gaza and Abbas’ tenuous position in Judea and Samaria, outside pressure only makes things more difficult. Peace cannot be imposed. There is little doubt that the administration in Washington will learn this lesson sooner or later.
US envoy Mitchell returns to Middle East: BBC
George Mitchell is back in the region but it is not clear when talks will start
US Middle East envoy George Mitchell has returned to the region, attempting to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Israeli media say the proximity talks will resume on Wednesday.
However, Palestinian leaders are said to require the backing of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), which will not meet until Saturday.
The Palestinian Authority has refused to attend the indirect proximity talks mediated by Mr Mitchell since March.
These were knocked off course by an announcement that Israel had approved plans for new homes in the East Jerusalem settlement of Ramat Shlomo during a visit to Israel by US Vice-President Joe Biden. The move caused deep strain in Israeli-US relations. Israeli-Palestinian peace talks have been stalled since 2008.
Constructive talks
On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak.
They spoke for 90 minutes in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
An Israeli government statement said the talks had been “constructive” and had taken place “in a good atmosphere”.
During their meeting, Mr Netanyahu and Mr Mubarak “reviewed Egyptian and international efforts to prepare the ground for the indirect talks aimed at a two-state solution,” the Egyptian news agency Mena said.
The Israeli prime minister’s office said they had discussed “renewing the peace process and other regional and bilateral issues”.
Mr Netanyahu later discussed the peace efforts with US President Barack Obama in a telephone call, officials said.
According to the White House Mr Obama stressed the importance of “substantive” proximity talks and the need for direct contacts to start soon.
Mending ties
The Palestinian Authority’s formal position is that it will not enter direct talks unless Israel completely halts building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
In November, Israel announced a 10-month suspension of new building in the West Bank, under heavy US pressure. But it considers areas within the Jerusalem municipality as its territory and thus not subject to the restrictions.
But reports suggest that an unofficial slowdown of approvals for major projects in East Jerusalem may have been instigated by Mr Netanyahu in an attempt to help mend relations with the US strained by March’s announcement.
Israel has occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 1967. It insists Jerusalem will remain its undivided capital, although Palestinians want to establish their capital in the east of the city.
Nearly half a million Jews live in more than 100 settlements in the West Bank, among a Palestinian population of about 2.5 million.
The settlements are illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.
Jewish terror suspect ‘unfit to stand trial’: Haaretz
In response to newly-submitted psychiatric evaluation, Israeli-Arab MK says that in Israel an Arab who shoots a Jew is a terrorist, while a Jew who shoots Arabs is insane.
Suspected Jewish terrorist Yaakov (Jack) Teitel, who was arrested late last year on the suspicion that he was responsible for the murder of two Palestinians, is unfit to stand trial, Jerusalem’s district psychiatrist said in an evaluation submitted Tuesday.
Teitel, a resident of the settlement Shvut Rachel, was charged last November with murdering two Palestinians and attempting to murder three people, including Hebrew University Professor Zeev Sternhell and Ariel teenager Ami Ortiz. Ortiz, a member of a family of Messianic Jews, was gravely wounded by a bomb packaged inside a Purim gift in March 2008.
Teitel admitted to planting the bomb at the time of his arrest, calling the Ortiz family “missionaries trying to capture weak Jews.”
The Shvut Rachel resident had been under evaluation at Jerusalem’s Sha’ar Menashe psychiatric hospital for the last three months, as a result of an inability to reach a conclusive ruling as to Teitel’s mental state.
In the evaluation, submitted to the court Tuesday, Jerusalem’s district psychiatrist wrote that Teital had been declared unfit as a result of flaws in the way in which he perceived his alleged actions.
It should be noted, however, that the ruling does not affect Teitel’s responsibility for the crimes attributed to him, as he is charged with many separate events spread across eleven years. In order for the defense to claim his mental state affected his accountability for these crimes the defense would have to prove he was legally insane in each one of those incidents.
The evaluation will, however, likely bring about a postponement of Teitel’s trial, until there is an improvement in his mental state.
In response to the evaluation Arab MK Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List-Ta’al chairman) said “I am astounded by the unbearable ease in which Jewish killers are validated by claiming that they aren’t fit to stand trial.”
“An Arab who shoots a Jew in Israel is a terrorist, but a Jew who shoots Arabs is insane,” Tibi said, adding that “this is a crazy system and its psychiatrists and the people who run it need to be shaken up.”
Arab MK Taleb Al-Sana also responded to the evaluation and said that “he is the most sophisticated madman I know, who planned a series of terror attacks against Arabs and leftists, and if due to this he is unfit to stand trial then no man is.”
Arab MK Mohammed Barakeh (Hadash chairman) said that “like expected, and according to tradition, another Arab killing terrorist is deemed unfit to stand trial.”
“The man who astonished everyone with his sophistication crimes, has been found unfit for trial, which proves that the legal system in Israel is not fit to execute justice,” Barakeh said, adding that “Arab blood is not considered blood in the Israeli legal system, as long as the terrorist is like this one.”
How Livni escaped arrest in London: YNet
By Itamar Eichner, YNetnews.com – 3 May 2010
It happened in London last December: Police officers raided a hotel in the British capital to arrest Opposition Chairwoman Tzipi Livni for alleged war crimes during Operation Cast Lead. Luckily for her, she was not even in the city.
The details of the dramatic affair, which could have sparked a wide-scale diplomatic incident and possibly put Israel and Britain’s relations in danger, were brought to the attention of the Yedioth Ahronoth daily on Sunday.
Tami Shor, deputy director-general of Israel’s Water Authority, visited London in December 2009 after being invited to deliver a speech at a conference in the city. Her only resemblance to Livni appears to be her hair color and blue eyes.
But a Palestinian organization, convinced that this woman was the Israeli opposition leader, asked a local court to issue an arrest warrant against her for alleged war crimes committed during the Israeli operation in Gaza. The court was told that Livni was staying at the Hendon Hall Hotel in northern London.
A police force, armed with an arrest warrant, raided the hotel. The policemen searched for Livni, but couldn’t find her for a simple reason: She was indeed slated to visit London and attend the conference with the Water Authority deputy director-general, but had canceled the visit two weeks earlier.
However, her name was not deleted from the list of participants, and the organizers failed to announce that she won’t be attending in order to draw more people to the event.
The police, who thought Livni was hiding, searched for her throughout the hotel but couldn’t find her. Their next step was to demand that the hotel provide them with the security camera footage with the hopes of tracing her, but the opposition leader was nowhere to be found. A thorough investigation revealed that she had never arrived in Britain.
Tami Shor confirmed the details of the report.
Following the incident, the Foreign Ministry recommended that Livni avoid visiting Britain, and indeed she has refrained from doing so ever since.
A loophole in British law allows courts to issue arrest warrants against foreign leaders on suspicion of committing war crimes without the attorney general’s approval. This means that any Palestinian who learns about an upcoming visit of a “suspicious” Israeli official can ask for an arrest warrant – and it will be approved by the British court.
MI: Abbas laying the groundwork for failure of proximity talks: Haaretz
Abbas’ goal is to show that Israel does not want peace, Brigadier General Yossi Baidatz told a Knesset committee.
Military Intelligence research division chief Brigadier General Yossi Baidatz on Tuesday presented a bleak forecast for the opening of a negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
“[PA President Mahmoud] Abbas’ goal is to expose Israel’s true face and show that we do not want peace,” Baidatz told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, adding that “Abbas is interested in an agreement with Israel, but his leeway on the core issues is limited.”
“We do not detect any real attempt on Abbas’ part to show flexibility on the core issues, and he will start the talk with the same positions he presented to the previous [Israeli] government,” he continued, concluding that “Abbas is laying the groundwork for the failure of the talks.”
Proximity talks between Israel and the PA will start no later than mid-May, according to officials involved in efforts to renew the peace process.
Abbas has received an official invitation to the talks from U.S. President Barack Obama. In the message to Abbas, Obama acknowledged that he was unable to extract a commitment from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to freeze construction in East Jerusalem, but the American president expressed confidence that Israel would refrain from “significant” actions in the eastern part of the city during negotiations.
By “significant,” Obama appears to mean projects like the 1,600 housing units in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood of East Jerusalem that were announced during Vice President Joe Biden’s visit last month.
In his message to Abbas, Obama wrote that proximity talks with Israel would encompass all the conflict’s core issues including Jerusalem, as was agreed in the Annapolis Joint Declaration in November 2007.
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said that the Palestinians requested such a meeting and were told by Obama’s envoy that the U.S. leader would see Abbas in the near future.
European officials who have met in recent days with senior officials at the White House and State Department in late April got the impression that the Obama administration did not expect that the proximity talks would produce any agreement.
The efforts to push the peace process forward are meant to allow the United States to claim some success in its Mideast policy as the region marks one year since Obama’s historic address in Cairo.
Officials in Washington say that the talks with the Palestinians will force Netanyahu to reveal his positions beyond those outlined in his speech at Bar-Ilan University last June.
The Americans say that if Netanyahu takes an uncompromising stance in the negotiations, like the one he displays in public, the Labor Party might quit the coalition and pave the way for a new government.
Netanyahu’s statement that he is willing to recognize a Palestinian state with provisional borders has only strengthened suspicions among PA leaders that the Israeli PM wants an interim agreement, not a final-status deal.
Will Obama adopt a dangerously simplistic peace plan?: The Electronic Intifada
Ali Abunimah, 3 May 2010
A new conventional wisdom is rapidly taking shape that the United States can resolve the 130-year-old conflict in Palestine by advancing its own peace plan. Former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and former US Congressman Stephen Solarz outlined such a plan in The Washington Post recently, and argued that President Obama could boost its prospects with a “bold gesture” — a trip, to Jerusalem and Ramallah in the company of Arab and other leaders to unveil it (“To achieve Mideast peace, Obama must make a bold Mideast trip,” 11 April 2010).
Strong supporters of Israel have pushed back that “imposing peace” would not work, but few Palestinian voices have been heard. Indeed, from a Palestinian perspective, this idea is dangerously simplistic, and more likely to deepen festering injustices and fuel, rather than resolve conflict.
The “comprehensive solution” Brzezinski and Solarz propose is nothing of the kind because the conflict cannot be reduced to a mere border dispute between Israel and a putative Palestinian state. They propose for example “a territorial settlement based on the 1967 borders, with mutual and equal adjustments to allow the incorporation of the largest West Bank settlements into Israel.”
This is deceptive; the West Bank and Gaza Strip constitute just 22 percent of historic Palestine between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea, in which Palestinians formed the overwhelming majority prior to their expulsion and flight as Israel was created in 1948. Official Palestinian acceptance of the two-state solution was a concession unprecedented in the history of any nation because it involved surrendering the 78 percent of the country on which Israel was established. To demand that Palestinians further divide the remainder represents no compromise by Israel. It merely ratifies Israel’s systematic colonization of West Bank land since 1967 in flagrant defiance of international law.
The proposed “land swap” to compensate Palestinians for annexed Israeli settlements is illusory. The majority of the half million Israeli settlers are concentrated in and around Jerusalem — the heart of the would-be Palestinian state. Yet the lands that Israel might consider handing over in compensation are small barren tracts far away from population centers. If there are such lands that could compensate the French for Paris, the British for London or Americans for New York City, then there might be lands that Palestinians could accept instead of Jerusalem.
Even more devastating to Palestinian rights, Brzezinski and Solarz float “a solution to the refugee problem involving compensation and resettlement in the Palestinian state but not in Israel.” This they call “a bitter pill” but argue that “Israel cannot be expected to commit political suicide for the sake of peace.”
Palestinian refugees have an internationally-recognized legal right to return to their homes and lands, but Israel has always denied this on the sole grounds that Palestinians are not Jews. Thus Gaza, where 80 percent of the population are refugees, is essentially a holding pen for humans of the “wrong” ethno-religious group. Would Brzezinski and Solarz be so sanguine about accommodating Israel’s discriminatory character if its grounds for refusing the return of refugees was that they had the “wrong” skin color?
I write from downtown Pretoria, once the all-white capital of the South African apartheid state, which also argued that ending white rule would be “political suicide.” The notion that people of different groups cannot or should not mix is belied by the vibrant multiracial reality in the streets of Pretoria outside my window today.
And precedents for the actual return of refugees abound. Under the US-brokered 1995 Dayton Agreement that ended the Bosnia war, almost half a million refugees and internally displaced persons returned home with international assistance, to areas that had become dominated demographically and politically by members of another ethno-national community — an enormous achievement in a country with a total population of 3.5 million and deep traumas as a result of recent war.
Other than Israel’s discriminatory aversion to non-Jews it is difficult to see why Palestinian refugees could not also return to their lands inside Israel, the vast majority of which remain uninhabited.
By endorsing Israel’s self-definition as a “Jewish state,” Brzezinski and Solarz not only ratify the violation of the fundamental rights of refugees, but consign another 1.4 million Palestinian citizens of Israel to permanent second-class status within an increasingly intolerant and ultranationalist Israel. A more likely outcome than “two states living side by side in peace” is that Palestinian citizens of Israel will come under increasing threat of expulsion to the Palestinian state — in other words, a new round of ethnic cleansing.
The vision of a truncated, demilitarized mini-state in no way fulfills basic Palestinian aspirations and rights and would bring no more peace or dignity than the bantustans which apartheid South Africa tried to establish for its black citizens to forestall and delay demands for equality and democracy. Nor would a trip by Obama do anything to revive shop-worn ideas that have gained little real support either among Palestinians or Israelis since they were first proposed at the failed Camp David summit in 2000.
Margaret Thatcher once said that partitioning South Africa to create separate black and white states would be like “trying to unscramble an egg,” and could lead to tremendous bloodshed. It is time to recognize that this truth also applies to Palestine/Israel and to seek political solutions similar to the one here, or the settlement in Northern Ireland, that embrace rather than attempt to deny diversity, equality and justice for all who live in that land.
Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. This article was originally published by The Hill and is republished with the author’s permission.
Israel planning new West Bank train network, minister says: Haaretz
Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz says West Bank construction freeze is not a solution as Jews will live there for ever.
Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz (Likud) announced Tuesday that the ministry was promoting a plan to establish a train network in the West Bank which will converge with the new train tracks planned throughout Israel.
Katz said that the plan had been drawn up with the cooperation of international organizations which have expressed great interest in the issue. He added that a train track is planned to run between Jenin, the Yizrael Valley and to Jerusalem.
During a tour of the West Bank, Kats said that in the past the entire area was netted with train tracks and reminded the settlers who escorted him that the first settlement in the West Bank was at the train station in the Arab town Sebastia.
Katz also mentioned the building of the new road, Highway 505, which is due to stretch from Tel Aviv to the Jordan Valley, and said that it was strategically important, yet it could not be built based on national reasons.
“I have given the instruction to promote the plan for the road, so that the route will be prepared,” Katz said, adding that the road “could be useful both in times of peace and in times of war – during wartimes it would be good for transferring tanks, but I hope that during times of peace Israelis and Palestinians will travel on it.”
The minister also said that construction in the West Bank would continue immediately after the construction freeze comes to an end, as “the freeze is not a solution, Jews will live here for ever.”
Israel’s secret police surveilling Islamic leaders: The Electronic Intifada
Jonathan Cook, 4 May 2010
Job interviews for the position of imam at mosques in Israel are conducted not by senior clerics but by the Shin Bet, Israel’s secret police, a labor tribunal has revealed.
Sheikh Ahmed Abu Ajwa, 36, is fighting the Shin Bet’s refusal to approve his appointment as an imam in a case that has lifted the lid on Israel’s secret surveillance of the country’s Islamic leaders.
At a hearing last month, a senior government official admitted that 60 undercover inspectors were employed effectively as spies to collect information on Muslim clerics, reporting on political opinions they expressed in sermons and relaying gossip about their private lives.
Sheikh Abu Ajwa took his case to the tribunal after the Shin Bet rejected him three years ago as the imam of a mosque in Jaffa, next to Tel Aviv, despite his being the sole candidate. He was told after a security clearance interview that his views were “extremist” and too critical of Israel, even though an imam is not officially defined as a security-related position.
“During one interview with the Shin Bet, they told me they had been collecting information on me since I was 15,” Sheikh Abu Ajwa said.
“I am the first imam ever to challenge the Shin Bet’s role in our appointments. It’s important to win a precedent-setting ruling from the courts to stop this kind of interference.”
Michael Sfard, a human rights lawyer representing Sheikh Abu Ajwa, said that, as far as it could be determined, no similar vetting of rabbis took place before their hiring.
“This sort of surveillance relating to a non-security position like an imam comes straight out of the era of the Stasi police in East Germany or the McCarthy period in the United States,” he said.
The traditional independence of the local Islamic authorities was removed at Israel’s creation in 1948, when the government confiscated almost all waqf property — endowments of land and property used for the benefit of the Palestinian Muslim community — removing the main source of income for clerics, the Islamic courts and charitable services.
According to experts, as much as a fifth of Palestine’s cultivated land was waqf property before 1948. Israel passed most of it to Zionist organizations like the Jewish National Fund or sold it to developers.
Responsibility for hundreds of mosques, cemeteries and other holy sites, meanwhile, was handed either to the religious affairs ministry or to Islamic boards of trustees appointed by the government.
Today, most imams and all Islamic judges must submit to a security clearance interview before being awarded a state salary.
Israel’s Palestinian Arab minority, one fifth of the population, have long charged that many of its Muslim leaders are little more than government placemen, whose Islamic learning takes second place to their cooperation with the authorities.
Sabri Jiryis, a historian of Israel’s early years, has noted that the boards of trustees repeatedly rubber-stamped government decisions to sell off Islamic property to developers. Most notoriously Jaffa’s board approved in 1971 selling an Islamic cemetery in Tel Aviv on which the Hilton hotel was built.
Sheikh Abu Ajwa said: “In Jaffa, the government appointed many clerics because they had proved their loyalty, though not to other Muslims. They sold off our property — but you can’t sell what belongs to Allah.”
Jaffa, which was once the commercial capital of Palestine, today has a population of nearly 50,000 residents, of which two thirds are Jewish and the rest Muslim.
The sheikh has been preaching at the seafront Jabaliya mosque, one of six in the town, since he was 19, making him reportedly the youngest person to serve as an imam in Israel’s history. He qualified as an imam at an Islamic college in the Israeli Arab city of Umm al-Fahm in 1998.
The local community universally backed him as the new imam when his predecessor retired three years ago, but he cannot be officially recognized, and is ineligible for a salary, without the interior ministry’s approval.
As part of his application, he was interviewed by a Shin Bet officer named “Dror” who, he said, waved at him a folder of confidential information collected by undercover inspectors. “We will decide who is the next imam,” Dror told him, according to Sheikh Abu Ajwa. The sheikh was asked mainly about his political opinions and demonstrations he had attended.
The Shin Bet’s assessment, revealed to the tribunal, was that Sheikh Abu Ajwa’s appointment “may jeopardize security and peace in Jaffa.” In addition, the agency told the Haaretz newspaper that the sheikh “has had a long involvement in hostile activity, which manifested itself in incitement against the state and its Jewish citizens.”
Sheikh Abu Ajwa said this was a reference to his position as the leader in Jaffa of the popular northern wing of the Islamic Movement. Its leader, Sheikh Raed Salah, has raised the hackles of Jewish officials both by running a campaign warning of Israel’s intentions to take over the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem and by promoting a boycott of parliamentary elections.
The head of the Shin Bet, Yuval Diskin, warned in 2007 that his agency’s role was to prevent any activities, including democratic ones, that worked against the interests of a Jewish state.
Yaakov Salameh, the head of the religious minorities department at the interior ministry, told the tribunal last month that his inspectors collected information on Muslim religious leaders, including rumors about their private lives, such as whether they had had an affair or beat their children. The information was then handed to the Shin Bet, which assessed whether they were suitable to be appointed.
Sfard said it was an “extraordinary” admission, given that under Israeli law the criminal records of candidates for religious appointments could only be considered if the applicant agreed to the information being handed over.
David Baker, a spokesman for the prime minister’s office, which is responsible for the Shin Bet, refused to comment on whether the appointment of rabbis followed the same procedures as those for imams.
Sheikh Abu Ajwa observed that many rabbis, particularly those in the settlements, said “very extreme things but no one spies on them. In fact, they have full government support.”
He admitted he was outspoken in his sermons, but said he had never broken any laws and never advocated violence. “I talk about our Palestinian identity and criticize the policies of the state in its treatment of us as a minority,” he said. “These are very sensitive things that they want to prevent us from talking about.”
During one Shin Bet interview, he said, he had been told: “We know everything about you, we are always watching you.”
The goal of such interviews was often to recruit Muslim clerics to become informers themselves, he added.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
EDITOR: How to cook the news
Obviously the next item comes not from Hamaso much, as from the Israeli Military Intelligence who is describing the results they wish their starvation policy to have. Well, they tried now for almost four years, and still have not succeeded; but, ghey never give up. If it did not work the first time, try again, If it still does not work, use more violence, and if that fails, use even more violence. Those guys live in a simplified universe, where they are the only humans, and the rest are just pawns for them to move about. As can be seen, journalists are also helping them in Israel.
Hamas fears economic crisis could spark uprising: Haaretz
Gaza leadership faces budget shortfalls as foreign financial aid dwindles.
It turns out that not only Greece and Spain are suffering economic hardship. The Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip is facing a severe economic crisis due to the dwindling foreign assistance the organization normally relies on.
The financial distress is raising concern among Hamas leaders that they may not be able to withstand the increasing public pressure, which could lead to a popular uprising against the government.
Hamas depends on a monthly support of tens of millions of dollars to maintain its rule in Gaza, pay wages to thousands of civil servants (who are not identified with the Palestinian Authority and are not paid by it) and to carry out various activities. Some 80 percent of the Gaza Strip’s budget consists of foreign contributions.
For the past two months Hamas has been unable to pay the civil servants’ wages. The government is searching for ways to overcome the crisis, even temporarily. Among other things it has imposed several new taxes, a widely unpopular move.
Compounding the problem is Egypt’s continued construction of the anti-smuggling wall on the Gaza border in Rafah and Israel’s blockade on the Strip.
The Israeli defense establishment is having difficulty evaluating how the economic crisis will affect Hamas’ Israel policy. It is not clear whether Hamas will try to reconcile with Fatah or show more flexibility in the Shalit deal in a bid to relieve the blockade, or go the other way and set the border on fire again, contrary to the restraint it has practiced over the past year.
The dwindling of funds to Hamas has been brought about, among other things, by Iran’s changing priorities regarding foreign allocations. Muslim groups in Persian Gulf states have also cut back donations.
Egypt has cracked down on groups maintaining ties with Hamas, including Egyptian money changers who were involved in passing funds from Iran and Hezbollah to Hamas. After Egypt exposed Hezbollah’s large terror and espionage network in Egypt at the close of 2008, it took steps to stop the fund transfers as well. At the same time Egypt has stepped up its activity against smuggling in the Rafah tunnels.
Gaza officials told Haaretz yesterday the crisis also stems from the tightened American supervision over fund transfers from Muslim charity organizations to Hamas. The stricter supervision makes it more difficult to move funds from Hamas’ considerable assets in the United States to the Gaza strip.
Hamas treasury director general Ismail Mahfouz said recently that all Gaza government employees would receive a monthly salary of NIS 1,500 this week, compared to NIS 4,000 that many of them normally earn.
Only a little more than 10 percent of the Gaza budget comes from taxes. Hamas is now enlarging this cut with 10 new taxes on cigarettes (NIS 3 per box) and on market vendors’ merchandise, among other things. The authorities have also launched a real estate licensing process, requiring apartment owners to pay large sums of money if they buy a home on non-government owned land.
The Gaza Strip’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine last week issued a warning of a public uprising − i.e. an intifada − if the government persists in imposing new taxes.
Hamas responded by arresting 10 senior Popular Front members, who were released eventually following pressure exerted by other factions. The way things appear today, Hamas is having difficulty finding a solution to the situation.
I refuse to be complicit: The Electronic Intifada
Dina Elmuti writing from the United States, Live from Palestine, 4 May 2010
An Israeli checkpoint in the occupied West Bank. (Dina Elmuti)
Eight months ago, on a feverishly hot day in August, I walked the streets of the refugee camp I’d waited so long to see. That day, I met families and people whose lives touched my own in such overwhelming ways, and whose endearing stories of survival, struggle and pain will continue to resonate with me half a world away. Eight months ago, as I walked through the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem, little did I know that my entire world, as I had known it, would change just a few weeks following my visit.
I remember feeling a multitude of emotions that day, but more so than any others, I remember feeling mortified and utterly sick to my stomach as I met one family after another who was continuously denied basic medical treatment for diseases like cancer, renal failure, diabetes, physical disabilities, heart problems and so much more. I kept questioning why it was that these people, who are already suffering living in a refugee camp, weren’t even allowed the basic human right of seeking proper medical treatment — the treatment that so many of us here in the United States take for granted on a daily basis. I left feeling so immensely guilty that day for all that I had and how little I could give to those who didn’t. That reprehensible feeling has never subsided. The picture of the older woman sitting in her wheelchair, in awe of the strangers who were so curious about her way of life there in the camp, comes to mind every now and then. That day, I kept thinking to myself, “What exactly would my sympathy and support really do for her? Would my solidarity help her live out the remainder of her life in peace or without pain?”
You don’t wake up one morning and expect something as initially nerve-racking as a diagnosis of cancer. From that moment on, your entire lifestyle changes, and you’re faced with the unpleasant, albeit necessary, ordeal of consultations, doctor visits, treatments and exhaustion that comes along with that life-altering news. No one expects or anticipates something like that; I certainly didn’t. Three weeks after saying goodbye to Palestine, with the pictures and faces of all those I met at Aida still fresh in my mind, I received a much-needed wake-up call that profoundly changed my life in ways I never could have imagined or expected.
Eight months later, my humble distress will be no more. Tomorrow, I will drive up to see my doctor, regarding my last treatment of chemotherapy and tests. Like my past commutes, it will be an easy one for me — one worthy of no complaint. On this trip, I won’t be stopped at any checkpoints intentionally imposed to make my trip more difficult or unbearable. I will not be asked for my passport or denied the right to use the highway based on my ethnicity or religion. I will not be forced to walk through metal detectors, nor will I be interrogated or harassed by soldiers in the only place I’ve come to call home. I won’t be denied medical treatment or deterred from receiving it by any of the aforementioned “preventative” measures. In that hour drive, however, I will think about all those in Palestine who are not as fortunate as I am to move about so freely, especially in times of need — those whose only crimes committed are those of being born Palestinian. And for such crimes, they will continue to pay with their lives, every day.
This is not about me or my struggle, however. It is first and foremost for and about the countless lives that continue to be deemed so dispensable by the corrupt leaders of this world that they’re not even given a story to be told. These lives, which have become so invisible for so long, aren’t even considered worthy of having their story told. Each and every one of them have stories to be told, but their voices have been denied and silenced for so long. I promised myself that if and when I were to get better and receive the medical treatment I was lucky enough to receive here in the US, I would dedicate the rest of my life to making their stories heard. Palestinian lives, like their Israeli and American counterparts, are not collateral damage or just mere remnants of lives that once were. Palestinians, young and old, are human beings who have been treated as anything but for more than six decades now.
As I sit here in the comfort of my home, without the imprisonment of any illegal, malignant blockade, occupation, or siege, I am once again reminded of the sinister reality that countless people face every day in the Gaza Strip. Days ago, on 28 April 2010, 19-year-old Latifa Hawr lost her battle with cancer there, bringing the total number of victims of Israel’s villainous siege to 369. Latifa suffered from lymphoma, or cancer of the lymph nodes, and passed away suffering, because she was denied the right to travel abroad for treatment while the Gaza border crossings remained sealed off, imprisoning her and 1.5 million others. Gaza’s hospitals have been severely affected by the 22-day barbaric onslaught two winters ago. And due to Israel’s ongoing catastrophic blockade, many life-saving measures and treatments, including chemotherapy, radiotherapy and neurosurgery, to mention only a few, have become available only outside of the ravaged Strip.
Latifa was not the only victim of Israel’s unholy terrorism, not by a long shot. She has become yet another statistic, one of many who have suffered and continue to suffer so mercilessly due to Israel’s unjust policies. Nineteen-year-old Fidaa Talal Hijjy was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease back in 2007. After receiving treatment at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, where her health quickly deteriorated, she was told she needed a bone-marrow transplant. This procedure, however, is not available in Gaza.
On 20 August 2009, Fidaa’s doctors referred her to Tel HaShomer Hospital in Israel, where she was given an appointment for a transplant on 23 September 2009. The date of her appointment arrived, but the Israeli authorities had not responded to her application for a travel permit, and she ended up losing the appointment. After another grueling process, she was secured a new appointment for 20 October 2009, and again applied for a permit to travel through the Erez crossing between Gaza and Israel. Once again, no response was heard from the Israeli authorities. While her health continued to deteriorate, she was given yet another appointment at Shneider Hospital in Israel for 9 November 2009. The silence from Israel was deafening. Fidaa lost her battle with cancer on 11 November 2009. Israel so graciously approved her request on 12 November 2009, three days after her scheduled appointment and one day after her death.
According to a January 2010 report conducted by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), many patients like Latifa and Fidaa are denied exit permits or their applications are delayed. Many have missed their appointments, others died while waiting for referrals.
The OCHA report states: “1,103 applications for permits for patients to cross Erez were submitted to the Israeli Authorities in December 2009. Twenty-one percent had their applications denied or delayed as a result of which they missed their hospital appointments and had to restart their referral process.”
According to the World Health Organization in the West Bank and Gaza, 15 of Gaza’s 27 hospitals were destroyed during Israel’s malevolent assault, and the lack of building materials allowed in has affected the essential health facilities there. Primary care facilities and hospitals have not been fully rebuilt due to the blockade, further exacerbating an already deplorable situation.
So, I sit here thinking about the lives of Latifa and Fidaa — two women not much younger than myself who lost their lives before they really began. I think about the countless others whose names and stories I don’t know and may never know, and I can’t help but feel hideously entitled and favored compared to them, as if my life here were regarded with so much more value and worth than theirs. I can’t help but view my struggle as being so minute compared to theirs, and I can’t escape that overwhelming sense of guilt I feel for not being able to do more. I cannot and will never be able to fathom why I am able to receive the medicines and treatments necessary to help me with such ease, while those suffering, like Latifa, Fidaa, and countless others imprisoned in Gaza, were not even given the simple chance of fighting for their lives. Are their lives really viewed so worthless? Do they not feel joy, fear, and pain the same way that you or I would? I ask those who are reading this, those of you familiar and those of you who may not be so familiar with Palestinian struggle, to take a moment to reflect and imagine how you would feel if you were in their shoes.
All political jargon and minutiae aside, I ask you to just think about their situation from an unadulterated, humanitarian point of view. Can you begin to imagine what it would it feel like to just wait to die from a treatable illness? How would you react, if you were to have the grim thought of losing your battle at any moment due to unjust, bureaucratic measures, always in the back of your mind? For so many in Gaza, receiving a diagnosis of cancer, heart problems, or any other serious medical emergency is essentially a death sentence inflicted upon them by “the only democracy in the Middle East.” Perhaps those who continue to believe that Israel is indeed such a “democracy” can help me answer a question that has been gnawing at my conscience for years now: why are the lives of those suffering over there, under occupation and in silence, not deemed as valuable as our lives over here?
At times, I find myself unable to fully digest all that’s happened in such a short amount of time. I left there a person who took a lot for granted, someone who complained about so much in life quite unwarrantedly. Today, I sit here writing to you as a completely changed person.
My last image from Aida, forever embedded in my memory, may be of a simple pastime in Palestine, but it is one that speaks volumes in terms of embodying the resilient and innovative spirit of the Palestinian people. A group of young boys flew kites in the afternoon breeze — some were colorful, some were plain, some were in the shape of animals or superheroes, and some were ingeniously made out of old garbage bags tied to string. That zeal and zest for life are what continue to amaze me about the Palestinian people, particularly those living under siege and occupation in Palestine. Despite all the pain, suffering, and hardships thrown their way on a daily basis, whether in the West Bank or Gaza, they continue to manage to find a way to make the very best of their situation, never pitying themselves or asking for charity.
Today, I write to you as a survivor. I am one of the lucky ones, and I will never forget that. I am a Palestinian who was not denied rights because I don’t live under siege or occupation. That revolting reality has never and will never fade from my conscience.
So, to any and all facing struggles, here and abroad, I’d just like to remind you to never give up, nor to ever be bullied into silence. I, for one, will not and cannot remain silent when so much injustice continues to take place before my eyes. That is why I write today. My silence makes me complicit in war crimes, and I simply refuse to be a culprit. Such sheer injustice and depravity cannot and will not be condoned any longer, and I will do my very best to make sure my voice is heard, even in its limited volume. To anyone out there suffering and struggling, keep your head up high and remember: do not fear the winds of adversity; a kite rises against the wind rather than with it.
Dina Elmuti is a graduate student in the Masters in Social Work program at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.
Like a plane without a pilot: Haaretz
Even if not one more Jewish home is built in the occupied territories (including East Jerusalem), the enormous apparatus of domination continues to operate there with an inner logic of many years’ duration.
By Amira Hass
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unjustifiably draws fire for policies that move ahead without his involvement. The Jewish intellectuals, who suddenly saw the darkness and were terrified, should know: Even if not one more Jewish home is built in the occupied territories (including East Jerusalem), the enormous apparatus of domination continues to operate there with an inner logic of many years’ duration. It moves along by itself, like some huge aircraft without a pilot.
Prime ministers come and go, negotiations stop and start, new coalitions form, and this apparatus has a life of its own. It preserves and develops the privileges of the Jews in Greater Israel. It sets the boundaries of the Indian reservations. When it wants, it links them; when it doesn’t, it cuts them off. Its will is done: unemployment of 52 percent or 19 percent, population density of villages and cities, diameter of water pipes, the number of days that one must wait before receiving lifesaving medical treatment. If the natives want to, they can go on living in the reservations; if they don’t − let them leave.
Take, for example, the demolition order that was posted on April 26 on a structure in the community of Umm al-Kheir in the South Hebron Hills. The standardardized form was signed by the inspection subcommittee of the Civil Administration’s higher planning council. The order informs us that it was posted by one “Carlo” in the presence of the “Operations Officer of the Hebron D.C.O.”. We can guess that they were accompanied by soldiers. We know that sharp-eyed inspectors have located the offending structure.
The head of the Civil Administration, Brig. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, probably doesn’t know that the assembly line he is in charge of produced this order for the demolition of “a concrete toilet structure of about 3 square meters.” Netanyahu certainly has no idea at all. But the order encompasses an ancient Israeli philosophy that prohibits Palestinians from building toilets, digging reservoirs to collect rainwater or connecting to the electricity grid in more than half of the occupied territory.
The soldiers have internalized the philosophy, and they take it home with them, to Israel. Meanwhile, in the West Bank, the prohibition against hooking up to electricity sabotages Palestinian children’s ability to learn. Neither the cessation of construction in the settlements nor the proximity talks, starting today, will prevent this act of sabotage against children’s education that the Israeli apparatus carries out as a matter of course.
Actually, not an apparatus, but a gigantic factory. Not one assembly line but many.
Behind one such assembly line are the planners. They are architectural geniuses, graduates of the best schools in Israel, who invented mazes like the dual, separate road networks for Palestinians and Israelis (particularly Jews), or the separation fence/wall that excels at disconnecting crowded neighborhoods from their lands, their past and their future.
The fence is ugly and horrific, more so than the Holyland project. The mazes of separation create resistance to them. And then the apparatus puts another assembly line to work: the military court system.
Graduates of Israeli law schools, in the reserves or the career army, are conscripted in order to make it clear to the natives that resistance is painful; they send them to prison and levy heavy fines. Then, they export the philosophy of oppression to civil courts and college classrooms in Tel Aviv.
Behind the assembly lines are representatives of the entire people of Zion, hundreds of thousands of civilians and soldiers. Each of them has a personal interest in the continuation of the apparatus, even if that interest is wrapped in national or security cellophane. Netanyahu is not the only one responsible. He alone cannot stop the huge pilotless plane. There are a great many people in Israel who should be forced to erase the programs of the apparatus of domination and destruction, before it turns on its creators, its operators and those who profit from it. All of us.
A spa for Samaria: Haaretz
The ‘white intifada’ is spreading. After Bil’in and Na’alin, the village of Nabi Saleh has joined the popular protest. Every Friday, villagers demonstrate against the expropriation of a spring.
By Gideon Levy
Water trickles quietly down the rock, sending grasshoppers skittering to safety as it flows into two small ponds at the foot of the hill. Fields of stubble glisten in the valley below. A gentle wind breezes by. It’s an enchanting landscape, but the abiding tranquillity is just an illusion. The waters of the spring are pure, but nothing here is clean.
Like a rising fountainhead, the battle for this spring has thrust another Palestinian village into what has become known as the “white intifada.” For the past four months, the residents of the village of Nabi Saleh, accompanied by left-wing activists from Israel and abroad, have staged demonstrations over the spring, which settlers have appropriated for themselves. One more piece of stolen private land – this time for a spa in Halamish, once known as Neve Tzuf, a settlement in Samaria.
The Israel Defense Forces, of course, didn’t waste any time in declaring the spring a closed military zone on Fridays. Signs put up by the Civil Administration’s staff officer for archaeology now prohibit entry into what has been designated an “antiquities site.” On one sign, someone scrawled: “No Arabs allowed,” and also, “The Lord is the king.” Dozens of Stars of David have been plastered on the white agricultural building in the Palestinians’ fields at the foot of the spring – the settlers’ handiwork.
They’ve also come up with a name for the Palestinian spring, accompanied by a memorial plaque at the entrance: “Meir’s Spring, in blessed memory of Meir Segal, a founder of Neve Tzuf, a man of faith and deed, possessing the virtues of grace and humility, lover of the Land of Israel, who fought for its well-being and clung to its soil.”
Armed with the virtues of grace and humility or not, the settlers took it upon themselves to install tables, camping benches and lean-tos at the site; one table is bound to a tree with an iron chain. There is also a barbecue set up and the remnants of a hafla, a large feast, with an empty orange juice bottle lying nearby. Yet another picnic site in the large and promised land, recommended for use on Shabbat and holidays. “Meir’s Spring,” always and for all time, it’s all theirs.
Only one minor detail has been overlooked: The spring lies in the heart of private land belonging to the inhabitants of the adjacent village, Nabi Saleh. The villagers, prevented from working the fields around the spring by the settlers’ threats – which are backed up by the army’s might – decided to launch a different, declaredly nonviolent struggle, through which they regularly attempt to return to the spring to reclaim their land. Dozens have already been wounded or arrested.
Every Thursday they gather in a kind of “cultural center” in Nabi Saleh to watch documentary films about the occupation and plan the next day’s demonstration. Every Friday they try to reach the spring and the fields – their fields – but are driven back by the IDF. After Budros, Mas’ha, Bidu, Bil’in and Na’alin – now Nabi Saleh, a small village, secular and moderate, has joined the circle of protest. And its residents are aiming to create a different model of resistance to the occupation, one that does not involve terrorism. “The Israelis themselves won’t respect us if we don’t fight the occupation,” says Bassam Tamimi, one of the fomenters of this impressive civil protest.
This is the story of a small village whose lands were plundered and whose residents decided not to take it lying down. It’s also the story of a village that decided to fight without arms. “Neve Tzuf, it’s all for you,” declares the sign at the entrance to the white, appallingly uniform Lego-like houses of the settlement that was built on village land and now wants the village’s spring too. “No to a Perestinian state,” another sign at the entrance asserts, as a nod to Israeli President Shimon Peres. And also: “For sale, two-family house, 101 square meters, plus 101 square meters of surrounding land.”
By the gas station at the entrance to Nabi Saleh, a bit of a stench hangs in the air. Keren Manor, an activist in the photographers’ organization ActiveStills and an employee of B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, explains that the lingering odor is from the “skunk bomb” the IDF used to disperse the demonstration the Friday before. The windows of a few houses were shattered by rubber bullets fired by soldiers.
Tamimi, 43 and a father of four, works for the Palestinian Interior Ministry. He is also trying to reshape the struggle against the occupation, though perhaps this is naive. By 2004, he had been placed in administrative detention – arrest without trial – 12 times. In 1993, he was shaken so violently by Shin Bet security service interrogators that he fell into a coma and was paralyzed for a month. That same year his sister, Basama, was killed when she went to the military court in Ramallah, where Bassam was being remanded in custody. An army interpreter pushed her down a staircase and she broke her neck and died, leaving five young children behind. But all of that, he says, was long ago. Now Tamimi is offering his village, and actually his entire nation, a new model of struggle.
The settlement of Halamish, which was previously called Neve Tzuf, was established in 1976 on the ruins of a British police station from Mandate times – but on land belonging to the village of Nabi Saleh. The name Neve Tzuf was disallowed by the authorities and changed to Halamish, but the settlement itself was permitted. When the first intifada erupted, Halamish expanded its territory and built a new fence, 100 meters from the first fence – all of it on land belonging to Nabi Saleh. A court petition resulted in the dismantling of the fence, but Halamish did not stop expanding. In the summer of 2008, the settlers seized control of the spring; they started to develop the site and even brought goldfish to the pool.
The land on which the spring is located actually belongs to Bassam’s uncle, Bashir Tamimi. Bassam recalls how the settlers would attack the villagers whenever they approached the spring. The settlers also uprooted and burned down olive trees around the pool.
The villagers began to organize themselves in order to support the spring’s owner and protect his property. They held their first demonstration on a Friday late last year.
“We said we had to launch a popular struggle to protect our lands. That is the best way to protect the land,” Bassam Tamimi says. “The settlers want to push us to commit acts of terrorism, but we will not let them. We do not hate anyone, we hate the occupation and we believe that we have a right to our land. “During the first demonstration we were attacked by soldiers, who used tear-gas grenades and rubber bullets to evict us from our land,” he continues. “The settlers stood on the hill with their firearms and watched. The soldiers did nothing to defend us when the settlers attacked. We even held olive branches to show that this was a peaceful demonstration, but on that Friday the settlers uprooted 153 of our olive trees.
At the second demonstration the villagers no longer agreed to carry olive branches. I think this is what the settlers want – for all of us to become Hamas and resort to violence. They are pushing us into that mode.” At the second demonstration the villagers were forced onto the road by the soldiers and were unable to reach the spring. During the third demonstration, some villagers were wounded or arrested. Bassam’s wife, Nariman – who happens to have been born the same year that Halamish came into being – was one of those arrested. She was released on NIS 10,000 bail. Since then they have demonstrated every Friday.
To date, 70 villagers have been wounded, 15 of them moderately or seriously; 18 young people, some of them minors, are being held in detention. At one recent demonstration, a 13-year-old boy, Ihab Barghouti, was seriously wounded when a rubber bullet was fired at his head from close range. At another, a settler from Halamish arrived at the fields on a tractor and started to work land that does not belong to him; the soldiers watched and did nothing. Since then, Tamimi says, the villagers have not been able to access the fields around the spring to work them. Last Friday, the villagers were kept from leaving the village to demonstrate.
“We will continue until we liberate ourselves from the occupation, until we achieve equality,” Tamimi says. They decided against establishing a popular committee to lead the struggle, so as not to create a pretext for the arrest of its members. “Every resident of the village is a member of the popular committee and we are all its chairperson,” this new local leader asserts.
What is their ultimate goal? “To remove the occupation,” Tamimi says, laughing. Seriously? “We want to create a successful model of civil protest, which will prove that we are not terrorists and that we are the owners of this land. We want to send a message to the Palestinian people and the Israeli people, that there is a different model of resistance – nonviolent resistance.”
The IDF Spokesman issued the following response: “The IDF Spokesman wishes to emphasize that there is nothing preventing the Palestinians from reaching the lands around the village of Nabi Saleh. Therefore, the claims that this is the reason for the demonstrations would appear to be unclear and puzzling. Moreover, the disturbances and violence in the area often take place parallel to the farm work.”
A spokeswoman for the Civil Administration stated in response: “Archaeological ruins were discovered close to the Halamish spring, and therefore any work liable to damage what was found is prohibited there. At the same time, and as was made clear to the Palestinians via civil coordination channels, entry to the area of the spring is permitted – and in cases where it was needed the Palestinians were provided an IDF escort to make this possible. The sign that was put up when the work began had mistaken content and was therefore removed and will be replaced in the next few days.”