The charge: Arabs: Haaretz
While it may be true that Israeli Arabs enjoy more rights than most of the world’s Arabs, hey are worse off than most of the world’s Jews.
By Gideon Levy
No, this is not (yet ) a defense of Dr. Omar Sayid and Ameer Makhoul, who were arrested in the dead of night. No one knows yet what exactly they are accused of and on what grounds. Perhaps the Shin Bet security mountain will produce a mole hill, perhaps not, but in the context of another ugly and collective wave of mudslinging against the Arabs of Israel, it’s time to reveal an indictment of a different sort: What can we possibly want from our Arab citizens?
The truth is, more than anything, we would like them to disappear, though not their hummus restaurants. A second choice would be to have them all crowd into their cities and villages – not to say their ghettos. There they’ll soon be standing on top of each other, some unemployed through no fault of their own, outcast and discriminated against. They’ll raise the Israeli flag, preferably two, and sing about the Jewish soul yearning from the national anthem – anything less would be considered a transgression.
We would like their MKs, if we still agree to let them have MKs, to visit the Jewish communities of the United States, prostrate themselves on the grave of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav and take part in the March of the Living at Auschwitz. Just as long as they don’t visit their brethren in Arab countries. Let them stand at attention during the sirens on memorial day for the soldiers who fought against their people. Let them cheer the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces that eats away at them in the territories. Let their young people say thank you for their extensive and generous employment opportunities (1.3 percent of the Prime Minister’s Office staff, 6 out of 469 Knesset employees, 2 percent of the workforce at the transportation and communications ministries, a total of 6 percent in public service ).
Let them take Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s loyalty test. Let them obey the Citizenship Law and not marry members of their people from the occupied territories. Let them obey the so-called Nakba Law and not dare mention the events of 1948, even in a whisper, ever. Let them not dare buy an apartment in Upper Nazareth or Carmiel, which were built on their lands, and let them not try to rent an apartment in Tel Aviv. Let them not even think of enjoying themselves at our clubs, though there’s no chance the security guards would let them in. Let them adopt an Israeli accent, preferably Ashkenazi, so security guards at Ben-Gurion International Airport won’t stop them. Let them continue to arrive at the airport, and without complaining please, four hours before their flight because they are Arabs.
Let their poets continue to need the Supreme Court to accept Arab literary prizes. Let them have fewer children because they are “multiplying too much” and turning into a “demographic problem.” Let them not speak too loudly around Jews because we don’t like hearing Arabic. And of course, let them not dare meet with “foreign agents,” almost all of whom are citizens of neighboring countries.
If indeed the “minorities” or “Arab Israelis” – we also forced these titles on them, why should we call them Palestinians? – meet all these impossible conditions, maybe we will accept them somehow. Then we will continue to gobble up pita and hummus, coffee and baklava on the house, and let them build our homes – on condition that they don’t listen to Arabic radio while working.
The parliamentary inquiry committee headed by MK Ahmed Tibi on hiring more Arabs in the civil service issued its interim report at the beginning of the year. This impressive report should have been an indictment of Israeli society. But the report was met with indifference. It reveals severe state discrimination. But the report is only part of the problem. The other part is political and national: We can’t ignore that the debate about the “Jewish state” excludes Israel’s Arabs by definition, shunting them into a corner from which there is no way out.
True, they may enjoy more rights than most of the world’s Arabs, but that’s irrelevant. After all, we’re a democracy. In contrast, they are worse off than most of the world’s Jews. With the two-state solution rapidly vanishing and the option of one state becoming the only one, the litmus test for the regime to be instituted in a country that is already almost binational will be its treatment of its Arab citizens. Meanwhile, let’s admit it: Even if the suspicions against Sayid and Makhoul turn out to be true, Israel’s Arabs are still loyal to the state, much more than it is loyal to them.
Four Israeli Bedouin arrested for conspiracy to commit terror acts: Haaretz
Residents of Rahat detained by police for routinely throwing firebombs at civilian cars on a central Negev highway.
Israeli security forces recently arrested four Bedouin residents of the Negev suspected of plotting and carrying out terrorist acts against civilians, a gag order lifted on Friday revealed.
The four residents of the Bedouin town of Rahat were arrested by the Shin Bet and Israel Police for routinely throwing firebombs at cars on Highway 40. Two of the suspects are minors. They are being held on charges of conspiracy to carry out a terrorist plot.
Nine Bedouin from the North were arrested last year on similar charges, for allegedly blocking a highway between Haifa and Nazareth by burning tires and knocking down a lamppost, throwing stones at passing vehicles.
They were also indicted of conspiracy to commit a crime and disorderly conduct that caused damage and endangered lives.
The charges eventually handed to them were for lesser crimes than the terror offenses they had earlier been suspected of having committed. The nine were initially arrested on suspicion of forming a terrorist cell and planning a variety of attacks against civilians on national highways.
Their defense lawyer, Attorney Fares Abirak, said that as early as the second remand extension it became clear that the allegations had been hugely exaggerated by police.
Pins in the Goldstone voodoo doll: Haaretz
By Hagai El-Ad
What will they come up with next? The campaign to discredit Judge Richard Goldstone, his fact-finding commission and the report that now bears his name seems to reach new heights every week. The latest installment in this high-drama farce has been the revelations about Goldstone’s record during apartheid-era South Africa, and the implication that his report can therefore be disregarded. The mind reels at the intensity of attempts by Israeli officials and others to do everything to dodge the real questions of accountability, policy and justice that have been lingering inconveniently since Operation Cast Lead. But inconvenient questions do tend to linger, and the attempts to deploy an ever-thicker smokescreen usually only draw more attention to what may be hidden behind it.
And yet, the recent attacks on Goldstone have been helpful in re-introducing into public discourse what is perhaps the most important question of all: moral responsibility. How must individuals behave when faced with injustice? What do we expect from our judges, public servants and elected officials? And what do we expect from ourselves? The focus on Goldstone’s past, far from enabling us to escape the lingering questions of Cast Lead – and other questions that must trouble anyone seeking justice – actually serves to throw them into sharp relief.
So here are some complementary questions about justice and those involved in its disservice. And mind you, these questions were not drawn from a far-away past, but from the here-and-now. It is the present that will determine our future – and to what extent justice will be a part of it.
Consider this: What is the reader’s moral judgment of a law that allows some people to reclaim past ownership rights but denies the same rights to others? This is the question today in Sheikh Jarrah.
How just do we deem the conduct of legal advisers who approve the evacuation of longtime indigenous residents from the center of a thriving city, enforcing almost complete separation between the hundreds who have moved in and the thousands who were displaced? This is the question today in Hebron.
What do we think of military commanders who collectively punish more than a million human beings, systematically answering their nutritional needs with provisions that keep them just above a state-secret “red line”? This is the question today in Gaza.
What do you make of a court of justice that speaks in lofty terms of how wrong segregated roads are, but falls short of connecting principle and practice, and does not simply ban such wrongs outright? This is the question today regarding Route 443.
Morally speaking, how do you feel about a government that orders the arrest of leaders of nonviolent civil protest? This is the question in West Bank villages like Bil’in.
These were not questions about Goldstone’s past. There are questions about our present. Standing knee-deep in moral quicksand may not be the most convincing of postures from which to question someone else’s morality.
But let us not stop here. Let us go further and assume for a moment that Goldstone is indeed guilty as charged of having served an unjust regime. If you will, while at it, let us believe in the fiction that – as was falsely claimed by Im Tirtzu’s extremists – a huge part of Goldstone’s report was based on the work of Israeli human rights NGOs. So what? How does this information affect the real questions about justice and morality that should be concerning us? Do any of these diversions make the real questions about the Israel Defense Forces’ rules of engagement during Cast Lead or about civilian, noncombatant casualties in Gaza during the military operation less urgent or essential?
At the end of the day, after Goldstone is finally exorcised as a witch and Israel’s human rights NGOs shut down, what then? Won’t accountability still be a cornerstone of the rule of law? Putting the diversions aside for a moment – and the author is appreciative of how difficult that is, given the government’s urge to obsess on nothing but diversions – are we not still left with alarming suspicions, partial information, and a very real need for a credible, independent investigation into Cast Lead?
Not only Goldstone, but all of us, are morally responsible for our actions and inactions, for when we choose to speak out for justice and for when we keep our silence and help perpetuate what is unjust. South Africa’s past became a part of its future through the truth and reconciliation process; but here in Israel not only is there no reconciliation process, there is no desire by the government nor among most of the public to confront inconvenient truths. Rather, the focus is on truth-dodging, which only serves to further steer us away from reconciliation or justice.
The growing distance between where the moral compass points and where we as a society are headed is no one’s problem more than our own. We can stick pins in the Goldstone voodoo doll as much as we want to but, when we wake up tomorrow morning, the very same reality will still be right here, exactly as we left it. Morally speaking, it’s high time for our wake-up call, for a sincere look at our own image as reflected in our mirror, for truth-seeking instead of desperately, cynically, self-servingly trying to hide it – and hide from it.
Hagai El-Ad is executive director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel.
Obama seeks $205 million for Israel rocket shield: Y Net
Recognizing threat of missiles from Hamas, Hezbollah, US president seeks Congress support for Iron Dome after observing efficacy system
Published: 05.14.10, 07:57 / Israel News
President Barack Obama will ask Congress to provide $205 million to Israel to spur production and deployment of a new short-range rocket defense system, administration officials said Thursday.
Produced by Israeli state-owned Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., Iron Dome uses small radar-guided missiles to blow up Katyusha-style rockets with ranges of between 5 kilometers (3 miles) and 70 kilometer (45 miles), as well as mortar bombs, in mid-air.
Its development was spurred by the 2006 conflict in Lebanon with Hezbollah and the Gaza Strip war against Hamas a year ago. In both cases, Israeli towns within reach of short-range rockets were in some respects defenseless.
“The president recognizes the threat missiles and rockets fired by Hamas and Hezbollah pose to Israelis, and has therefore decided to seek funding from Congress to support the production of Israel’s short range rocket defense system called Iron Dome,” White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said.
Two Iron Dome batteries are under construction, an Israeli defense official said in February. Designed to be towed by vehicle, they will be available for any Israeli front at a few hours’ notice.
Bryan Whitman, Pentagon spokesman, said it was the first direct US investment in the Iron Dome system.
“This funding will expand what they can produce and deploy, and how quickly they’re able to do it,” he said. The decision was made to pour funds into the system after US officials observed tests last fall, officials said.
The money comes on top of annual US assistance to Israel.
According to the State Department, US military aid to Israel in 2009 totaled $2.55 billion. This will increase to $3 billion in 2012, and will total $3.15 billion a year from 2013 to 2018.
Quartet ex-envoy’s investment helps Israel greenwash settlements: The Electronic Intifada
Ali Abunimah, 6 May 2010
Former World Bank president and Middle East Quartet envoy James D. Wolfensohn is an investor in an Israeli company that is developing transport infrastructure for Jewish-only settlements built in the occupied West Bank in violation of international law, an investigation by The Electronic Intifada reveals.
Wolfensohn provided some of the start-up capital for Better Place, a company founded by Israeli entrepreneur Shai Agassi. The company owns and operates Better Place Israel (BPI), a division which is establishing a system of charging stations for electric vehicles throughout Israel and for Jewish settlers in the occupied West Bank.
The company has been a poster child for efforts to greenwash Israel — presenting it as a haven for environmental technologies — yet it has close ties to Israel’s military and political establishments and its principal officers express an explicitly anti-Muslim and anti-Arab agenda.
BPI’s chief executive officer is former general Moshe Kaplinsky, who commanded Israeli occupation forces in the West Bank during the second Palestinian intifada, a period of massive, well-documented violations of Palestinian human rights. Kaplinsky was also deputy chief of staff of Israel’s army during its 2006 war on Lebanon when Amnesty International and other human rights groups charged that Israel committed numerous war crimes including widespread use of cluster bombs in residential areas.
Better Place’s goal is to bring fully-electric vehicles and the infrastructure to support them to the mass market — starting with Israel. It also has pilot projects as far afield as Denmark, Canada, California, Australia and Japan.
Specially-built electric cars, due to be available to the public in Israel next year, are manufactured by French-Japanese conglomerate Renault-Nissan under an agreement with Better Place. Better Place had also recently signed a memorandum of understanding with Chinese car manufacturer Chery to jointly develop electric car technology for the Chinese market.
“What we do to make it convenient is we set [a] massive number of charge spots across an entire country or entire region,” Agassi explained to the BBC World Service’s One Planet program in January 2009. “And we set up battery exchange systems so that wherever you drive you don’t need to sit and wait for your battery to charge, you can just swap it and keep on going.”
Building infrastructure in the occupied West Bank
Before BPI sells its first car in Israel it is establishing a network of thousands of charging spots on the country’s entire road system including settler roads and in settlements in the West Bank.
One of the largest investors in BPI is billionaire Idan Ofer, owner of Dor-Alon energy group, Israel’s largest oil refiner. Dor-Alon has signed an agreement to install Better Place charging and battery exchange spots throughout its network of gas stations.
An example of a charging station like the ones being established throughout the occupied West Bank.
Israel’s Hebrew-language financial publication Globes reported on 3 February that “According to estimates, the deployment [of charging stations] will stress the more extensive and popular refueling locations of Dor-Alon, which enjoys a dominance on primary transportation routes, such as its four stations on the Cross Israel road (Highway 6) and the stations on Highway 443 and the Coastal Highway.”
Highway 443, significantly, is a road used by thousands of Israeli commuters daily. Half of the road’s approximately 30-kilometer length runs through the occupied West Bank. Israel has banned Palestinians whose land and villages the road traverses from accessing it, reserving it effectively for Jews only. Prior to Israel’s seizure of the road, it had been a main artery for Palestinian traffic south of Ramallah (“Route 443 — West Bank road for Israelis only,” B’Tselem).
The Electronic Intifada (EI) independently confirmed BPI’s expansion into the West Bank when it sent an undercover reporter to visit the company’s headquarters situated in a massive renovated fuel storage tank in northern Tel Aviv.
During the tour, the EI reporter, along with other visitors, was shown an IMAX-style video presentation which explained that each customer who buys a BPI electric vehicle will also have a charging spot installed at their home — a short post with an outlet that connects to the car via a nozzle-type input, and wirelessly links to the BPI communications network.
When the EI reporter asked a BPI spokesperson if these charging stations could be installed inside settlements in the West Bank, the spokesperson said that they would be installed “anywhere … that you want to live.” On a map shown during the video presentation, charging stations were shown in areas in the Jordan Valley and along major routes going east from Jerusalem — indicating that BPI has already installed charging stations inside the West Bank, and plans to install many more.
Wolfensohn an early booster of Better Place
James Wolfensohn’s investment firm, Wolfensohn & Co., is listed on BPI’s website along with Australia-based firm Macquarie Capital and US-based investment bank Morgan Stanley, among others as investors. Macquarie invests in and operates transport infrastructure all over the world, including the Chicago Skyway toll bridge, the Indiana Toll Road and the M6 Toll motorway in the UK.
Contacted by EI, Wolfensohn & Co. declined to disclose the size of its stake or provide any other comment for this story. Yet as one of the first investors it may have been influential in helping BPI attract additional capital.
BPI recently secured a $350 million equity investment from international bank HSBC, expanding the company’s estimated worth to $1.25 billion.
“Israel is a perfect test tube” for the electric car, Wolfensohn was quoted as saying in the February 2008 issue of Israel High-Tech & Investment Report. “It needs to be tested, and [BPI founder Shai] Agassi is to be commended for testing it and the Israeli government for trying it out.”
While operating as a private company — with its head office nominally in California — Better Place has been dependent on Israeli government support from the start. Initially, Agassi wrote a concept paper for the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leaders initiative. Agassi shopped it to various world leaders but found no takers, he told the BBC’s One Planet. “Then President [Shimon] Peres of Israel picked up on it,” Agassi recalled. “But the challenge to me was don’t ask us to do it. If you think it’s such a great business, go do it yourself. And that’s how it became a company instead of a government agency.” More recently Agassi told CNN, “I would not be doing this today were it not for [Peres]” (“Shai Agassi: One man’s mission to turn all cars electric,” CNN, 19 April 2010).
Wolfensohn’s investment in and personal endorsement of an Israeli company that is helping to build and solidify the infrastructure of occupation is surprising. Until 2006, Wolfensohn served as envoy for the Quartet, the ad hoc, self-appointed committee of representatives of the United States, the European Union, Russia and the UN Secretary-General that has monopolized the so-called “peace process.” Wolfensohn was tasked with assisting Palestinian economic development in the Gaza Strip after Israel removed its settlers in 2005 and moved its occupation forces from the interior to the perimeter of the besieged territory that imprisons 1.5 million Palestinians, mostly refugees.
Wolfensohn resigned in frustration after the Quartet decided to boycott, and freeze aid to, the Palestinian Authority after Hamas won the January 2006 election. “It would surprise me if one could win by getting all the kids out of school or starving the Palestinians,” Wolfensohn said in a parting shot aimed at Israeli and Quartet policies (“West ‘has to prevent collapse’ of Palestinian Authority,” Financial Times, 3 May 2006).
Wolfensohn had previously been highly critical of severe movement restrictions on Palestinians between and within the occupied territories — such as those along Highway 443 — that have devastated the Palestinian economy. Wolfensohn was succeeded as Quartet envoy by Tony Blair.
Islamophobia under the guise of environmentalism
BPI’s promotional video claimed that the funding of “extreme and unstable regimes … that fund organizations not positive for humanity” is one of the major reasons the firm is interested in getting Israelis out of their gas-guzzling cars and into fully-electric vehicles. Both Israeli President Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are shown extolling the virtues of BPI’s mission, with Netanyahu commenting that this is a part of a “changing world order … shaking off our dependence on oil.”
The canard that proceeds from the gasoline that motorists around the world pump into their cars directly funds terrorism has become popular with liberal environmentalists in recent years. While implicitly racist toward Arabs and Muslims, BPI has made such prejudiced and inflammatory claims an explicit part of its business model.
CEO Moshe Kaplinsky told the BBC’s One Planet, “I was a general in the IDF [Israeli army] and I understand where the money from the oil is going and what it cause to our society in the Western side of the globe [sic].”
When asked why he was an early booster of Better Place, Israeli President Peres told Wired magazine, “I thought that the greatest problem of our time was oil. Oil on one hand is polluting the land, and on the other hand it’s financing terror” (“Drive: Shai Agassi’s Audacious Plan to Put Electric Cars on the Road,” 18 August 2008).
Rebranding Israel
Following the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US, Israeli companies selling “security” and “anti-terrorist” expertise became an engine of the country’s exports. In the age of US President Barack Obama, and concern about climate change, there has been a concerted effort to soften Israel’s image, especially in the wake of the UN-commissioned Goldstone report into Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip.
Better Place has become a flagship for this strategy — the Reut Institute’s Gidi Grinstein, for example, used images of the Better Place logo in his notorious powerpoint presentation at the Herzliya conference, on efforts to rebrand Israel as Earth-friendly while urging its intelligence agencies to “sabotage” and “attack” the growing global Palestine solidarity movement.
The success of Better Place in raising money from Wolfensohn & Co. and other international firms, as well as the positive publicity the company has received, serve as warnings that Palestinians and the growing global boycott, divestment and sanctions movement must be ever more vigilant against Israel’s efforts to disguise its illegal and brutal colonization and apartheid behind a green mask.
Ali Abunimah is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada and author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse.
Palestinians: Settlers killed stone-throwing teen near Ramallah: Haaretz
Police earlier alerted by Israeli citizens who saw three men, one armed, get out of the car in the area.
Settlers opened fire and killed a Palestinian teenager who was throwing rocks at Israeli cars near the West Bank city of Ramallah late Thursday, according to Palestinian sources.
The body of 16-year-old Aysar Zaben was found after midnight with gunshot wounds to the back outside the village of Mazra’a al Sharqiya, located northwest of Ramallah and between the settlements of Shiloh and Ofra.
An Israel Police spokesman said an investigation into the incident had been opened and it was not clear exactly what took place or who was responsible.
Two Israeli citizens had earlier alerted police after seeing three men, one armed with a rifle, get out of a car in the area where the shooting then took place. Police who came to the scene found rocks littering the side of the road, but no trace of the three men.
Violent rightists have adopted a “price tag” policy against Palestinians since Israel declared a temporary freeze in West Bank construction last December. Over the course of the last five months, groups of extremists have vandalized mosques destroy Palestinian property as a response to the IDF’s having dismantled illegal outposts.
It was not yet clear whether this incident was related to the “price tag” operation.
Boy killed in West Bank – Palestinians blame settlers: BBC
A 16-year-old Palestinian boy has been shot dead in the West Bank.
Palestinian witnesses and security sources say the teenager was shot by Jewish settlers after rocks were thrown at their car.
Israeli police are investigating but did not confirm that the boy, named as Ayssar Yasser from the village of Mizra al-Sharqiah, had been shot by settlers.
The Israeli army confirmed there was a shooting in the area, near Ramallah, the West Bank’s administrative capital.
A Palestinian ambulance driver told the Associated Press that the boy died near his village, not far from the West Bank city of Ramallah, on Thursday evening. He had bullet wounds in his back, the ambulance driver said.
Peace talks
Yediot Ahranot, one of Israel’s leading newspapers, reported that some Israelis who were driving by at the time of the incident called the police when they saw a man open fire with an assault rifle.
The death was the first in violence of this kind since Israel and the Palestinians began indirect peace talks on Saturday.
Israel has occupied the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, since 1967, settling close to 500,000 Jews in more than 100 settlements. There are about 2.5 million Palestinians living in the West Bank.
Jewish settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.
EDITOR: The world is full of nutters, but why do I get the impression that many of them are Zionists? The demented are organising against Judge Goldstone, and the US being what it is, it could even happen. All this goes to prove that the underground links between South African apartheid and the Israeli version are strong indeed.
Attorney seeks to bar Goldstone from US: JERUSALEM POST
14/05/2010 02:31
NEW YORK – A well-known American Jewish attorney who worked to deport former Nazis from the US is urging American officials to bar former judge Richard Goldstone from entering the country over his rulings during South Africa’s apartheid regime.
In a letter sent to US officials, Neal Sher, a former executive director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, said that recently disclosed information about Goldstone’s apartheid-era rulings raised questions about whether he was eligible to enter the United States. The letter was sent to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, US Attorney-General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
Individuals who admit to acts that constitute a crime of moral turpitude¨are ineligible to enter the US, Sher charged. The recent public revelations, to which Goldstone has reportedly admitted, would appear to fit within this provision. At a minimum, there is ample basis for federal authorities to initiate an investigation into this matter, Sher said.
Goldstone, the author of a report accusing Israel of war crimes during Operation Cast Lead, sat as a judge in South Africa during the apartheid regime. He has faced recent charges that he sent 28 black South Africans to their deaths. Goldstone has defended his rulings, saying he was part of the system and had to respect the laws of the land at the time, including enforcing laws he opposed.
In his judicial position, according to Sher, Goldstone was instrumental in effectuating and legitimizing a regime universally known for its widespread human rights abuses.
Sher, formerly director of the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, was instrumental in deporting dozens of Nazi war criminals. He played a major role in placing Austrian president Kurt Waldheim on a watch list of people ineligible to enter the US.
Sher had his own brush with trouble later, when he was investigated for misappropriating funds from the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims.
30 protestors arrested in Sheikh Jarrah: YNet
Weekly demonstration in east Jerusalem neighborhood escalates into violent clashes between police, left-wing activists, dozens of whom block entrance to Simeon the Just compound. One protestor lightly injured. MK Khenin: Police using excessive violence, we’re here for democracy
Published: 05.14.10, 18:03
Violent clashes broke out Friday afternoon between left-wing activists and police forces in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.
About 30 protestors were arrested and one demonstrator was lightly injured. She was evacuated to the Hadassah Mount Scopus Hospital in the capital, suffering from bruises.
Some 350 left-wing activists arrived in the neighborhood for the weekly rally. They chanted, “Fascism won’t come” and “you won’t succeed in killing a popular resistance.”
At one point, about 100 protestors settled on the road leading to the Simeon the Just compound, which was recently inhabited by four Jewish families armed with a court order following the evacuation of Arab residents.
The police declared the protest an illegal gathering and ordered the protestors sitting on the road to evacuate themselves within three minutes. The activists refused to leave and were forcibly evacuated from the area.
About 30 of the protestors were arrested. Israel Radio reporter Shai Zilber, who was covering the event, was also detained. He suffered several blows and was released by the police after they discovered he was a journalist.
One of the protestors, Knesset Member Dov Khenin (Hadash), said that “the police are using excessive violence both against demonstrators and against journalists. A large group sat on the ground without bothering anyone or acting violently, and the police used a lot of force.
“Hundreds of people arrived to protest against the injustice taking place in Sheikh Jarrah, as well as to demonstrate for peace,” he added. “A Jewish settlement in the heart of an Arab neighborhood means preventing a future agreement as part of a two state for two people solution. We are fighting now just for peace, but for democracy in this society.”
‘Law being used for discrimination’
Former Hebrew University President Hanoch Gutfreund, who took part in the rally, said: “I am a Jerusalemite and I love the city. Many of my friends have left, and I am not thinking about leaving, so it’s very important for me to see all of Jerusalem’s residents treated fairly.
“The residents of Sheikh have been living in their houses since the 1950s, and they are subject to injustice. This is the only reason I am here, not for any political reason, to express my solidarity with them and my opinion about what is being done to them.”
Avnet Inbar, one of the rally’s organizers, said: “Today we came to protest in the exact same place where the police allowed hundreds of settlers to protest on Jerusalem Day. We sat on the road in loyalty to the non-violent popular disobedience tradition, which every conscientious civilian turns to when the law is misused by the enforcement authorities for discrimination and theft purposes.”
Meanwhile Friday, left-wing and Palestinian activists held their weekly Friday rallies in the West Bank. A left-wing activist was lightly injured from a stone hurled by Palestinian protestors in the village of Nabi Salih. She was evacuated to a hospital in Jerusalem. one protestor was arrested. Some 100 people took part in the demonstration.
About 80 people demonstrated near the village of Bilin in protest of the separation fence being built in the area. They hurled stones at Israel Defense Forces soldiers, who responded with shock grenades and tear gas. A similar rally was held in Naalin with 50 participants.
BADIL Statement: The Nakba is Not Just an Event to Remember…The Nakba is Ongoing, and the Time has Come for it to End: Badil
What is Needed on the 62nd Anniversary of the 1948 Nakba: Achieve National Unity, Strengthen BDS Campaign; Activate Popular Resistance in all of its Forms; Organize Efforts Internationally; End Public Relations Negotiations
Statement by BADIL, 15 May 2010
At their core, the circumstances surrounding the Palestinian struggle today do not differ from those circumstances that led to the 1948 Nakba and the colonization of Palestine. Today, on the sixty-second anniversary of the Nakba, the nature of the western-backed Zionist-Israeli colonial enterprise appears all the clearer. The indigenous Palestinian people have been denied their most fundamental and inalienable rights of self-determination, including their rights to return to the land from which they were displaced, and continue to suffer from Israel’s grave violations of basic human rights and freedoms. As Israel cruelly blockades the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip and denies 7.1 million displaced Palestinians around the globe their rights to return, restitution and compensation, the international community provides a protective shield forged through diplomatic, economic, cultural and security cooperation which perpetuate Israel’s impunity.
In a time when Israel’s true face as a regime of colonization, apartheid and military occupation has been exposed for the world to see, governments and their organizations, have chosen to look the other way. The protective shield preventing effective redress and accountability for Israel’s crimes is no more provided by western states alone, as international organizations have joined the chorus that calls for a “balanced position” and have allowed Israel’s membership and integration into global and regional, civil and official organizations. Israel thus enjoys not only the unlimited support of the United States, but also enjoys preferential status with the European Union under the 1995 Barcelona Declaration and the E.U.-Israel Association Agreement, which have entrenched European relations with Israel in political, military, financial, economic, social and cultural terms, and even in the field of humanitarian aid.
Only recently, on 10 May, no OECD member state felt obliged by international law or found the moral strength to block Israel’s accession to that club of the world’s powerful economies. Israel’s protective shield is no longer composed merely of U.S. veto powers in the Security Council of the United Nations. It has spread to other UN fora, such as the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council where global powers exert coercive pressure on member states, and even to domestic judicial systems and international courts, in order to enable Israel to escape accountability for its grave violations of international law.
It has become painfully clear that Israel and the so-called Quartet view Palestinian demands for the implementation of international law as an obstacle to the peace process, at best, and as a form of unacceptable radical extremism, at worst. This explains why the U.S. has resumed pressure on the Palestinian and Arab representatives to return to the negotiating table despite Israel’s refusal to cease construction and expansion of its settlements in the occupied Palestinian West Bank, and irrespective of the personal commitment given in this regard by President Obama. Thus, so-called proximity talks and indirect negotiations are being relaunched while Israel’s prime minister reassures his coalition government that there will be no limitation on settlement construction and expansion, the forced displacement of Palestinians from Jerusalem and the expansion of the network of apartheid roads and the Wall in the occupied West Bank.
Meanwhile, Israel continues to draft and adopt more racist legislation, including law proposals to outlaw Nakba commemoration, the 2009 Israel Lands Authority Law and a 2010 amendment of the Land Acquisition Law, which allow privatization and confiscation of more land of Palestinian refugees and citizens, as well as new military orders, such as Order No. 1650 arbitrarily defining a large portion of the Palestinian population of the occupied West Bank and foreigners as “infiltrators” subject to arrest and deportation.
In light of the above and the division and weakness which has characterized the performance of the Palestinian leadership, BADIL re-iterates the call of the National Committee for the Commemoration of the Nakba issued this 15 May:
for the Palestinian leadership to:
• Adopt a coherent strategy towards a just and permanent solution for Palestinian refugees and IDPs, based on their right to return and in accordance with international law, universal principles of justice and UN resolutions 194 (1948) and 237 (1967);
• Halt all negotiations, whether direct or indirect, until Israel completely halts settlement expansion, population transfer (“Judaization”), and construction of the Wall and other infrastructure of colonization and apartheid, such as roads and the light train connecting Jewish settlements to West Jerusalem;
• Ensure national reconciliation and unity as a matter of urgency, and rebuild the PLO as a legitimate and credible platform representing the entire Palestinian people and its political organizations;
• Support and activate popular resistance in all forms permitted under international law.
• Establish a consultative mechanism with professional civil society organizations to support the efforts of the PLO in international fora.
To the public in Palestine and abroad to:
Build and expand the civil society-led movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it complies with international law and exert stronger pressure on states to implement sanctions and adopt decisions and resolutions which support the global BDS Campaign;
Redouble efforts for investigation of Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity and prosecution and punishment of those responsible, as well as efforts to prevent Israel’s accession and integration into international and regional organizations.