EU’s Ashton: Israel must open all Gaza border crossings: Haaretz
European Union’s FM says ahead of three-day visit to the region that the organization has been calling for ‘fundamental’ changes of policy regarding Gaza blockade.
The European Union urges Israel to open all Gaza border crossings, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton said Friday, ahead of her planned three-day visit to the region.
“The European Union has been calling for an urgent and fundamental change of policy regarding the closure of Gaza,” Ashton said before departing for Israel.
Referring to a recent cabinet decision to lift the ban on some of the products which Isrtael previously prohibited from entering the Strip, Ashton said the EU “welcomed the announcements made by Israel following the flotilla incident and are now awaiting their implementation.”
“We stand ready to support the opening of the Gaza crossings for the traffic of goods to and from Gaza,” she continued.
During her visit, Ashton will meet with Israeli and Palestinian leadership – including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, as well as the Quartet’s special envoy to the Middle East, Tony Blair.
Ashton also reportedly plans to visit UNRWA projects sites in Gaza on Sunday.
In its statement the PMO emphasized that the change would not counter Israel’s policy “to defend it citizens against terror, rocket fire or any other hostile activities from Gaza.”
Late last month, Israel approved a loosening in its blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, with the highlight of the new policy being the fact that only weapons or “dual-use” materials that could be used to manufacture weapons will be on the list. Any item not on the list will be permitted into Gaza.
Large quantities of building materials are to be brought in for projects with PA approval such as schools, clinics and water and sewage infrastructure. Building materials for homes in Khan Yunis and other Gazan towns will also be allowed in.
All construction projects are to be under close UN supervision to ensure that Hamas does not use the building material for fortifications and bunkers.
“Israel seeks to keep out of Gaza weapons and material that Hamas uses to prepare and carry out terror and rocket attacks toward Israel and its civilians,” Netanyahu said. “All other goods will be allowed into Gaza.”
House-by-house struggle for East Jerusalem: BBC
By Jeremy Bowen
BBC Middle East editor
Sometimes you can see just why it is so difficult to make peace in Jerusalem.
This city excites strong passions.
Not only is it holy to Muslims, Jews and Christians. It is also a national symbol for Israelis and Palestinians.
No piece of ground on the planet is more contested. It has changed hands violently many times.
On a dusty, narrow and steep street on the Israeli occupied eastern side of the city stands a battered seven-storey building. Scorch marks smudge the stonework around some of the windows.
When cars pull up, security guards wearing flak jackets emerge from the building’s heavy door to escort the passengers inside.
Quite often patrols from Israel’s paramilitary border police trudge past, wearing combat helmets, carrying M-16 assault rifles, with rubber clubs shoved inside their backpacks.
‘Just business’
The building’s name is Beit Yonatan, Hebrew for Jonathan House. It is named after Jonathan Pollard, who has served 23 years in an American prison for spying for Israel.
I was given a tour of the building by Daniel Luria, an Israeli who works for a Jewish group called Ateret Cohanim. He said the marks round the windows were made by petrol bombs.
Ateret Cohanim is an organisation that helps Jews buy houses, flats and land from Palestinians. Usually they pay well over the market rate.
The newly rich Palestinians who sell often have to disappear – usually abroad – because they are considered traitors.
Mr Luria said it was just business.
“An Arab wants to sell, a Jew wants to buy. It’s that simple. We help them do it.”
The building’s residents call their section of Israeli occupied East Jerusalem the Yemenite Village, after a small group of Jews who lived there until 1938.
The district, which is overwhelmingly Palestinian, is more commonly known as Silwan.
The Israelis who live there, including families with young children, are highly motivated religious nationalists.
They believe that they are doing God’s will. They want Beit Yonatan to be the beginning of a Jewish community in Silwan.
Mr Luria said that if local Palestinians didn’t like that, they should leave.
State backing
The Israeli state has worked long and hard, and spent a great deal of money, to make the walled Old City and the territory it captured in and around Jerusalem in the 1967 war more Jewish.
Its project started as soon as the shooting stopped in 1967, and it continues. Ateret Cohanim regards itself as a vital player in a national struggle.
I asked Mr Luria if he was fighting house-by-house to control the place he says is no longer Arab Jerusalem. He said it was inch-by-inch.
The state helps in all sorts of ways.
The vehicles that pull up outside Beit Yonatan are armoured. The government pays for the private security company which shuttles the residents in and protects the building.
In a court petition, government lawyers justified the expense by saying their lives were in danger.
An order was issued more than two years ago for the Jews who live in Beit Yonatan to leave and for the building to be sealed, as it was built illegally. But the police have never carried it out.
Settlers who go to live in the heart of Palestinian communities in Jerusalem are regarded as trouble-makers by many Israelis who believe in making peace. Their presence raises the tension considerably.
Palestinian story
But Mr Luria, sat in an armoured land rover as we were driven through streets he regards as hostile, dismissed the idea, insisting that his views were shared by most Israelis.
“Land for peace doesn’t work… The world has to wake up to reality that Jerusalem, it’s impossible to divide.
“Jerusalem is the centre of the Jewish world. For a Jew, for generations, the best thing they could do is to sing ‘next year in Jerusalem’ on Passover. Today they have the opportunity to live close to God’s house, near Temple Mount.
“Every Jew wants a piece of the action, wants to be here, close to God in the heart of Jerusalem,” Mr Luria said.
Just down the road from Beit Yonatan, behind a dented steel gate, is the home of the Palestinian Abu Nab family.
Three brothers and their wives and children live there, 45 people in all. The family has rented the property since 1948.
Ateret Cohanim, which is eyeing the property, says the building once was a synagogue.
Abdullah Abu Nab, one of the brothers, said that a year ago they were offered $1m (£647,306) to move out. They refused.
“I told him that even if you pay for every single centimetre in gold I won’t agree to leave. I’ll only leave my home dead – or they’ll have to throw me out in the street,” Mr Abu Nab said.
“Those who have no religion will sell, but those who have faith won’t give up their land – the land of our Palestinian grandfathers. Money isn’t tempting, because money comes and money goes.”
His family have now been served with an eviction notice. The Palestinian community in that part of Silwan reacted with fury and there were serious clashes with Israeli security forces. The area is still tense.
Even though some Palestinians have taken the money that is on offer from Ateret Cohanim and its wealthy supporters, many others have not. The Palestinians have learnt over the years that if they leave their land, Israel is not likely to allow them back.
Mr Luria says his side is winning. But there is no chance of peace in Jerusalem if Israel ignores Palestinian rights in the holy city that both sides believe is their birthright.
EDITOR: A voice in the wilderness
David landau, ex-editor of Haaretz, who cannot be described as a lefty by any stretch of imagination, calls in a courageous article to boycott the Israeli parliament, the Knesset! Evena year ago, this could only happen in Science Fiction rather than in the realities of the Israeli polis.
Boycott the Knesset: Haaretz
I am hastening to call for this boycott because I want to earn a footnote in Jewish history: He tried, Canute-like, to stand against the wave of fascism that engulfed the Zionist project.
By David Landau
I hereby call for a boycott of the Knesset.
A bill proposed by coalition chairman Ze’ev Elkin (Likud ) and the chairwoman of the Kadima faction, Dalia Itzik, together with MK Aryeh Eldad of the National Union, would punish any Israeli calling for a boycott of any Israeli individual or institution, whether in Israel or in the territories. The fine is NIS 30,000, plus any damages that can be proven. The bill passed its preliminary reading on Wednesday.
I therefore call for a boycott of Ze’ev Elkin and Dalia Itzik as individuals (no point in boycotting Dr. Eldad; he would thrive on it ), and of the Knesset as an institution. I call on parliaments throughout the democratic world, and interparliamentary associations, to boycott Israel’s parliament, once the pride of the Jewish people, until it buries the bill and recovers its democratic heritage.
That would also, of course, require revoking the infamous vote, also taken on Wednesday, in which MK Hanin Zuabi was deprived of parliamentary privileges because she took part in May’s flotilla to Gaza (believing it would be nonviolent ).
I am hastening to call for this boycott because I want to be the first person prosecuted under the new bill when it becomes law. This article will still be out there on the Internet, and I ought therefore to qualify. I want to earn a footnote in Jewish history: He tried, Canute-like, to stand against the wave of fascism that engulfed the Zionist project. I’m ready to pay NIS 30,000 for that.
Beyond that little vanity, perhaps a call to boycott the Knesset, if it gained any traction, could puncture that most smug and pernicious piece of propaganda: that Israel is “the only democracy in the Middle East.”
Israel is a democracy for Jews. “We’ll deal with your presence in the Knesset later,” MK Ofir Akunis, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s longtime aide, informed Arab MK Ahmed Tibi ominously, unashamedly. True, he was admonished by the Knesset Speaker, Reuven Rivlin. But Rivlin the democrat is a mere fig leaf now, a holdover from another age.
Meanwhile, at any rate, Tibi’s still there. But four million Palestinians living under Israeli occupation have no political rights at all. Plainly, as was predicted decades ago by the peace camp, it is the occupation that is eroding democracy inside Israel.
The settlers got it right, too. “Yesha zeh kaan” – “Judea and Samaria are right here.”
This article would not be complete without the ritual, required – and actually completely true – addendum: I deprecate and despise the people calling for boycotts of Israeli universities. I most especially disdain them if they themselves remain faculty members of those same universities. Israeli universities do not deserve to be boycotted.
I know that “deserve to be boycotted” opens up a whole other can of worms. Do settler wines, for instance, deserve to be boycotted? I was in a restaurant recently where a salesperson from Barkan Winery was promoting her products. When someone muttered something about “boycott,” she smoothly replied that the winery had long ago moved to inside the Green Line. It was not a settler business, and there was no reason, therefore, for anyone to boycott it. So boycotts work, apparently.
But things are not always all that simple, given the complicated lives we lead here, in the fifth decade of the occupation. My darling grandchildren live in a settlement (albeit within one of the “blocs” ). Do I call for a boycott of them? I had better not, or they’ll call for a boycott of me.
Libyan ship with Gaza aid arrives in Egyptian port: BBC
The Amalthea was forced to divert after being shadowed by Israeli vessels
A ship loaded with aid supplies for Gaza has docked in an Egyptian port, ending the latest attempt by activists to break Israel’s Gaza blockade.
The vessel was intercepted by Israeli naval ships off the coast of Gaza and forced to head south, the charity which chartered the ship said.
The charity, headed by Col Muammar Gaddafi’s son, said it wanted to reach Gaza, but would not risk violence.
In May, Israeli forces clashed with another convoy, killing nine on board.
On Monday, an Israeli military inquiry said it had found mistakes were made at a senior level during the operation, which sparked international outrage, but the troops had been justified in using force.
‘Blocked’
The Libyan-chartered Amalthea left Greece on Saturday, carrying food and medical equipment, as well as 15 pro-Palestinian activists and 12 crew members.
Egyptian officials at El-Arish, some 50km (30 miles) to the west of Gaza, said the ship docked at the north Sinai port late on Wednesday.
Analysis
Malcolm Brabant
BBC News, Athens
According to the ship’s owner, Alex Angelopoulos, the Amalthea did not suffer a mechanical breakdown – the story about engine failure was a ploy, invented by the Cuban captain, after the Israelis surrounded the vessel and gave him an ultimatum to change course away from Gaza.
The captain was trying to buy some time for the Libyan charity to muster international diplomatic support to pressure the Israelis to let the vessel through. He restarted the engines around midday local time and is now underway.
Mr Angelopoulos earlier said this expedition was a risky venture, although he prided himself on taking chances.
He said he was motivated by humanitarian reasons, but he is also acting in the tradition of Greek shipowners like Aristotle Onassis, who made fortunes by breaching embargoes.
“As soon as the ship arrives in El-Arish, Egyptian authorities will unload its cargo and hand the aid to the Egyptian Red Crescent, which will deliver it to the Palestinian side,” Egypt’s Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit said earlier.
The vessel was intercepted by Israeli navy boats some 100km (60 miles) off the coast of Gaza and blocked from heading any further towards the east.
An Al-Jazeera correspondent on board said that Israeli navy boats had formed a “wall” on one side of the Amalthea and forced it towards El-Arish.
Israel’s navy began shadowing the vessel overnight, after warning that it would not be allowed to break the naval blockade of Gaza.
The Amalthea resumed its voyage mid-morning on Wednesday after idling for a few hours in international waters.
The Israeli military said the ship had run into engine trouble, but the ship’s owner later told the BBC that it was a ploy by the captain to buy time for the Libyan charity to muster international support.
A spokesman for the Gaddafi Foundation said those on board would not resort to violence.
“First and foremost, we want to arrive in Gaza,” Yussef Sawani told Al-Jazeera TV. “If this is impossible, we don’t want to subject anyone to danger.”
Israeli officials denied the group’s reports that they were given an ultimatum to change course by midnight or face a forceful takeover.
Humanitarian aid
The 92m (302ft) Amalthea, renamed Al-Amal (Hope) for the mission, is loaded with 2,000 tonnes of food, cooking oil, medicines and pre-fabricated houses, the group says.
For the past three years, Israel has enforced a tight economic blockade on the Gaza Strip, only allowing in limited humanitarian aid.
It says this is necessary to stop weapons for Palestinian militant groups inside Gaza being smuggled in, and to put pressure on the Islamist movement Hamas, which controls the coastal territory.
Egypt has also closed its border with Gaza, only opening it occasionally.
The blockade, maintained by Israel and Egypt, was widely described as “collective punishment” resulting in a humanitarian crisis for Gaza’s 1.4 million people.
Last month, Israel announced it would ease restrictions by allowing consumer goods into the territory while banning or restricting trade in weapons and materials that could have a military use.
Meanwhile, Israel’s parliament voted on Tuesday to strip an Israeli Arab lawmaker of some key privileges for joining the flotilla of aid ships that tried to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza in May.
The Knesset decided to remove Hanin Zuabi’s diplomatic passport and funding for legal defence.
Some MPs complained that by penalising an Arab member, the parliamentarians were endangering democracy, but others said that it was her actions which threatened freedoms and rights in Israel.
Ms Zuabi, an MP with the left-wing Arab nationalist Balad party, said the Knesset was punishing her out of vengeance and was threatening co-existence between Jews and Arabs.
Why doesn’t Clinton care about my jailed husband?: The Electronic Intifada
Janan Abdu, 13 July 2010
I used to tell my husband, Ameer Makhoul, “One day, they’ll come for you.” As chairman of the Public Committee for the Protection of Political Freedoms he’d begun to organize an awareness-raising campaign to push back against the security services’ harassment of our community, the Palestinian citizens of Israel.
Come for Ameer they did, late one night this May, pounding at our door, ransacking our house and terrifying our two teenage daughters. And now I’ve joined the ranks of Palestinian prisoners’ wives, many thousands of us from the occupied territories as well as within Israel. His 13 July hearing — persecution really — could begin the legal nightmare that ruptures our family for many years. This is the likely course of events unless Ameer gets a fair trial and his coerced statements are rejected or suppressed by the court.
“Democracies don’t fear their own people,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in her 3 July speech in Poland at the 10th anniversary meeting of the Community of Democracies. “They recognize that citizens must be free to come together to advocate and agitate.” But the head of Israel’s General Security Services said three years ago that Palestinian citizens’ organizational efforts for equality constitute a “strategic threat,” even if pursued by lawful means.
That’s not how democracy works. We may be a minority of 20 percent, but our rights to organize and insist on full equality and civil rights ought to be sacrosanct. That’s what our entire community believes. The Public Committee that Ameer chaired was established within the framework of the High Follow-up Committee for the Arab Citizens of Israel, the community’s overall coordinating body. It’s a vital position and the leading organization protecting our civil rights.
And now he faces the most serious charges leveled against a Palestinian citizen of Israel since the creation of the state in 1948. He is accused of being a spy (for the Lebanese militant group Hizballah) and having contact with a foreign agent. His trial will likely last for months.
After his arrest, Ameer was held incommunicado for 21 days and tortured. Then Israeli officials pressed their charges, based on the “confession” he made during this time, when he was deprived of sleep, shackled in a painful position to a small chair and not allowed to see his lawyers.
Ameer denies all charges. As he said in his first letter from Gilboa Prison, he was “forced to explain to them in a very detailed way how exactly I did what I didn’t do, ever.” And if the prosecution needs any more information to make its case, all they have to do is use “so-called secret evidence, which my lawyers and I have no legal right to know about.”
Clinton’s Krakow speech focused on civil society: Ameer is a civil society activist. He directs Ittijah, the Union of Arab-Based Community Associations — a coalition that brings together 84 nongovernmental organizations. Clinton criticized several governments by name — but not Israel — for intimidation and assassination of activists. Why does America’s drive to promote human rights stop at Israel’s door?
Throughout his life, Ameer has struggled for the rights of the Palestinian citizens of Israel — there are more than 35 laws on the books that discriminate against us — as well as those of the Palestinian people overall. He has the ability to lead and to convene diverse viewpoints, bringing them together across sect and ideology. His ability to network locally, at the Arab level, and internationally, coupled with his clear strategic vision — this is what Israel is trying to silence.
The youth also look to him for leadership, which infuriates the Israeli security services. They told Ameer so when they hauled him in for questioning during our community’s protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza in December 2008-January 2009.
During that interrogation they threatened to put him away if he kept up his activism, saying, “We can ‘disappear’ you. You should know that the next time we bring you in you will not see your family again for a long time.”
The few times we’ve been allowed to visit him thick glass has separated us and our meetings were taped. Ameer asked me for a copy of my new book to read in jail, but they wouldn’t let me even take him that. My daughters really miss their father. They often say, “If only we’d been able to hug him before they took him away.” That’s one of the things that hurts them most, not being able to hug their father.
Ameer still suffers from the torture and abuse inflicted on him, and they still try to break his spirit. They only allow 20 people into the courtroom even though it can hold many more, so when he sees it empty, he thinks no one cares. But far more people want to attend the trial than they allow in — family, community activists, politicians and supporters from all over the world.
I have never thought of myself as a “wife” but rather as Ameer’s partner in life and in activism. But these days, as I wait with the other wives for our allotted visit, I find myself reflecting on the traditional Christian marriage vows: “What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.” No man, I think, unless he’s an Israeli jailer.
Clinton spoke of “the cowardice of those who deny their citizens the protections they deserve.” Ameer deserves the protection of the law: the right to meet his lawyers in private — Israeli officials have been taping those meetings too; the right to see the evidence against him, much of which the prosecution plans to withhold on security grounds; freedom from torture; and inadmissibility of confessions secured under torture. When will Clinton call for a Palestinian activist’s human rights and an end to his persecution?
Janan Abdu is a social worker, feminist activist, and researcher with Mada al-Carmel, the Haifa-based Arab Center for Applied Social Research.
Israel Stops Listening to Its Judges: Jonathan Cook
Palestinians Suffer as Court’s Authority Hits All-Time Low
By JONATHAN COOK
Counterpunch
July 16 – 18, 2010
The Israeli government is facing legal action for contempt over its refusal to implement a Supreme Court ruling that it end a policy of awarding preferential budgets to Jewish communities, including settlements, rather than much poorer Palestinian Arab towns and villages inside Israel.
The contempt case on behalf of Israel’s Palestinian minority comes in the wake of growing criticism of the government for ignoring court decisions it does not like — a trend that has been noted by the Supreme Court justices themselves.
Yehudit Karp, a former deputy attorney general, compiled a list of 12 recent court rulings the government has refused to implement, but legal groups believe there are more examples. Many of the disregarded judgements confer benefits on Palestinians, either in the occupied territories or inside Israel, or penalise the settlers.
Critics have accused the government of violating the rule of law and warned that the defiance has been possible chiefly because right-wing politicians and religious groups have severely eroded the Supreme Court’s authority over the past few years.
Senior members of the current right-wing government of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, including the justice minister, Yaakov Neeman, have repeatedly criticized the court for what they call its “judicial activism”, or interference in matters they believe should be decided by the parliament alone.
Legal experts, however, warn that, because Israel lacks a constitution, the court is the only bulwark against a tyrannical Jewish majority abusing the rights of the country’s 1.3 million Palestinian citizens, as well as 4 million Palestinians living under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza.
Ilan Saban, a law professor at Haifa University, said: “Unlike most — if not all — other democracies, Israel lacks a political culture that respects limits on the power of the majority.”
Even the protections offered by Israel’s basic laws, he said, were not deeply entrenched and could easily be re-legislated. The lack of both a formal constitution and a tradition of political tolerance, he added, was “a dangerous cocktail”.
Israel’s liberal Haaretz newspaper went further, warning recently that, in “slandering the judiciary”, government officials had provoked a crisis that could “lead to the destruction of Israeli democracy”.
The country’s highest court is due to rule in the coming weeks on whether the government is in contempt of a ruling the court made four years ago to end a discriminatory scheme, known as National Priority Areas (NPA), that provides extra education funding to eligible communities.
The High Follow-Up Committee, an umbrella political body representing Israel’s large Palestinian minority, launched the case because only four small Palestinian villages were classified in NPAs, against some 550 Jewish communities. The scheme, introduced in 1998, is believed to have deprived Palestinian citizens, a fifth of Israel’s population, of millions of dollars.
Although the court ruled in February 2006 that the scheme must be scrapped, the government has issued a series of extensions until at least 2012.
Sawsan Zaher, a lawyer with Adalah, a legal centre that launched the contempt petition, said: “This case has become a symbol of how the government refuses to implement decisions it does not like, especially ones relating to constitutional protection and minority rights.”
However, she said that punishing the state for its actions would not be easy. “After all, the court is not going to jail the government. The best we can hope for is a fine.”
The NPA case is only one of several that have highlighted a growing trend of law-breaking by the government.
Ms Zaher said Adalah had at least half a dozen other cases in which it was considering contempt actions. Most referred either to the treatment of Bedouin villages in the Negev the state refuses to recognise and to which it denies services, or to the failure to allocate equal resources to Arab schools.
In its most recent annual report, the Association of Civil Rights in Israel, the country’s largest legal rights group, listed several examples of Supreme Court orders to dismantle sections of the separation barrier built on Palestinian land in the West Bank that have been disregarded.
In one hearing, in October 2009, Dorit Beinisch, president of the court, accused the government of taking “the law into its own hands” and treating her rulings as “mere recommendations”.
She had been angered by the fact that an order to remove the barrier around the Palestinian village of Azzoun, near Qalqilya, had been ignored for three years. The judges had learnt that the hidden reason for building the barrier had been to help expand the neighboring settlement of Tzufim.
Similarly, in May, the court found that the government had continued construction on a road between the settlements of Eli and Hayovel despite a ruling that it must stop. In a harshly worded response, the judges said: “It is inconceivable that the state does not know what is unfolding right beneath its nose.”
Last month the Supreme Court again castigated the government for ignoring an order from last year to demolish a sewage purification plant built in the West Bank settlement of Ofra on privately owned Palestinian land in violation of Israeli law.
Other prominent cases in which officials are defying court rulings involve the refusal to demolish a synagogue built by settlers; the failure to build hundreds of classrooms for Palestinian children in East Jerusalem; and the continuing practice of “binding” foreign workers to a single employer.
Late last year, the justice minister, Yaakov Neeman, warned that he was considering legislation that would allow the parliament to bypass the Supreme Court, even in cases where the judges have struck down a law on the grounds that it contravenes a basic law.
The government’s flouting of these rulings has been possible because of growing public disenchantment with the courts, observers have warned.
Last month a survey by Haifa University found that among Israeli Jews who were not ultra-Orthodox or settlers — both groups tend to reject the court’s authority — only 36 per cent expressed great faith in its decisions. That was down from 61 per cent in 2000.
Among settlers the figure was 20 per cent, down from 46 per cent a decade ago.
Aryeh Rattner, a law professor who conducted the research, partly attributed the decline in the court’s standing to its “excessive involvement” in what he called controversial religious, social and defence issues.
However, Prof Saban said the “activism” the court has been accused of was more illusory than real, and that it was often reluctant to intervene in cases where violations of rights were clear cut. In the National Priority Areas case, he said, lawyers had been challenging the patently discriminatory scheme since its introduction in 1998.
“The court took nearly 10 years to rule against the scheme, and since then the government has evaded implementing the decision until at least 2012. In other words, the petitioners are likely to be without a remedy for 14 years. That hardly qualifies as activism.”
A shorter version of this article originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.
Mother of five killed by Israeli artillery fire close to Gaza buffer zone: The Guardian
Three relatives also wounded in shelling on Gaza border, as family say no rockets were heard being fired before attack
Harriet Sherwood in Johar a-Deek
Nasser Abu Said outside the shrapnel-riddled home where his wife, Ne’ema, was killed byIsraeli artillery Photograph: Guardian
A mother of five was killed by Israeli artillery fire when she went to fetch her two-year-old son from outside her village home close to the “buffer zone” created by Israel along its border with Gaza.
Three of her relatives were wounded in the shelling earlier this week, but Red Crescent ambulances were not permitted to reach the family for several hours.
According to the woman’s husband, Nasser Abu Said, 37, the attack began without warning at about 8.30pm on Tuesday with two shells being fired as the family of 17 sat outside their house in the village of Johar a-Deek. Apart from Nasser and his 65-year-old father, the entire group was women and children.
“It was completely quiet, there were no rockets being fired or we wouldn’t have been sitting outside,” he said, referring to Qassam missiles launched by militants into Israel.
His sister and his brother’s wife were injured by shrapnel. The family moved indoors and called an ambulance. “About 10 minutes later the ambulance called back to say the Israelis had refused them permission to come to the house,” said Nasser.
His wife Ne’ema, 33, soon realised their youngest son, Jaber, was not among the children she was attempting to calm down, and was probably asleep on a mattress outside that he often shared with his grandfather.
As she went to fetch the toddler, another shell landed. “I called to my wife three times,” said Nasser, who realised his father had also been badly injured in his leg and stomach. “I could hear small noises coming from her. I knew she was dying.”
Via Palestinian co-ordinators, the IDF told the family that anyone going outside the house would be shot dead. Nasser began to tend to his injured father, knowing he could not reach his dying wife.
“I was holding myself in, especially in front of the children,” he said. The children were crying hysterically and some had wet themselves, he added.
After two hours, an ambulance was allowed to reach the family. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), which investigated the incident, said Ne’ema and her wounded relatives were taken to al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al-Balah, where it was confirmed she had died from shrapnel wounds.
The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) said it had identified a number of suspects close to the border. “An IDF force fired at the suspects and identified hitting them,” it said. The incident was being investigated, it added, but declined to say why ambulances had not been allowed to reach the family.
Since the three-week war in Gaza that began in December 2008, the IDF has continued to fire on Palestinians it suspects of launching rockets at Israeli civilians or attempting to attack Israeli forces. It created a 300m-wide buffer zone on Palestinian farmland adjacent to the border with Israel and warned it would shoot anyone seen within the forbidden area.
The Abu Saids say their land is not used by militants to fire rockets as it is open ground in full view of an Israeli watchtower at the border 400m away.
In the first five months of this year, 22 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces in the buffer zone, according to the PCHR. The IDF says one soldier and a Thai farmworker were killed and two soldiers lightly wounded in militant attacks in the first half of this year.
Palestinians have been unable to harvest their crops in the zone, which has swallowed about 30% of Gaza’s arable farmland. The Abu Said family have lived in the area for 40 years, but have had to abandon the part of their land inside the zone. “Everyone is afraid to come to this house,” said Nasser.
The house, isolated down a rutted track, was riddled with shrapnel damage from Tuesday’s shelling, and dried blood still lay in the sand where Ne’ema had been killed.
The PCHR condemned the shelling which, it said, “constitutes the highest degree of disregard for Palestinian civilians’ lives”. This was not an isolated incident but “part of a series of continuous crimes committed by the [Israeli military]”.
Israelis inciting anti-Israel boycotts could soon be forced to pay dearly: Haaretz
14 July 2010
Knesset approves in initial reading bill that would allow targets of boycotts to sue boycotters for large sums
The Knesset approved on Wednesday an initial reading of a bill calling for heavy fines to be imposed on Israeli citizens who initiate or incite boycotts against Israel. If approved into law, the fines would apply to anyone boycotting Israeli individuals, companies, factories, and organizations.
In the U.S. there is a law forbidding Americans from participating in boycotts on U.S. allies, including Israel. “It appears that in light of the reality in Israel, we need a similar law that applies to Israeli citizens,” said the bill’s sponsors – coalition chairman Zeev Elkin (Likud), MK Arieh Eldad (National Union) and MK Dalia Itzik (Kadima).
Under the new law, any group could sue damages of up to NIS 30,000 from anyone who launched a boycott against them, or incited a boycott, without having to prove that damage was indeed caused. An additional sum could then be demanded once damages were proven.
The bill comes in response to a wide range of boycotts – financial, academic, and others – that have recently been encountered in Israel. Elkin said Tuesday that “we mustn’t accept boycotts against Israel, whether academic or economic. The state must protect itself from the increasing processes of delegitimization, and provide compensation to those harmed by it.”
“The wall-to-wall support of this bill proves that members of Knesset recognize the need to maintain a balance between democratic rights and the premeditated targeting of Israeli bodies,” Elkin went on to say.
Survey reveals British Jews can be a critical friend to Israel: The Guardian CiF
There is no appetite among Jews living in the UK for giving Israel carte blanche to do what it likes, according to a new report
Antony Lerman
Israel risks losing its friends, Jonathan Freedland warned last week, referring, in large part, to strong Israel supporters in Jewish communities, who are now being more openly critical of the rightwing policies of the Israeli government. We know what American Jews think about Israel, and therefore the strength of this trend, because regular surveys are done to test opinion.
Here in the UK, the last time a representative sample of the Jewish population was asked its views on Israel was back in 1995, and the results were published in 1997 in an Institute for Jewish Policy Research report of which I was the principal author. But now we can once again gauge Jewish attachment to Israel following the release yesterday of the results of an online survey carried out by JPR, with initial help and advice from Ipsos-Mori, which examines the attitudes of Jews in Britain towards Israel. The analysis of the 4,081 responses was entirely the work of JPR.
Some of the headline findings will provide reassurance for Zionist organisations and staunchly pro-Israel groups in the UK, and also to the current Israeli government: 95% have visited Israel (78% in 1995); 90% see it as the “ancestral homeland” of the Jewish people; 86% feel that Jews have a special responsibility for its survival; and 72% categorise themselves as Zionists.
But, as in 1995, the Jewish population shows dovish tendencies: 67% agree that Israel should yield territory for peace (69% in 1995, at the height of enthusiasm for the Oslo Accords); 78% favour a two-state solution and 74% oppose settlement expansion.
Nevertheless, this dovishness is accompanied by continuing concern for Israel’s security: 72% say the security fence is “vital for Israel’s security”; 72% agree that the Gaza war was a “legitimate act of self-defence”; and 87% agree that “Iran represents a threat to Israel’s existence”.
Throughout the report, there are plenty more examples of Jewish closeness to Israel. But does this evidence, which leads The Jewish Chronicle to claim “UK Jewish bond with Israel strong as ever”, indicate that there is little or no emergence of the more pronounced “critical friend” stance Freedland and others identify elsewhere? The report’s authors say: “Evidence that this position is penetrating British shores is rather thin.” However, there seems to me to be much data that shows there is a significant minority, and in some cases a majority, favouring a more robust, critical pro-peace stance.
Especially striking is the 52% of respondents who agree that Israel should negotiate with Hamas. Taken together with the 55% who agree that Israel is “an occupying power in the West Bank”, the 47% who say “most Palestinians want peace” (38% disagreed) and the 40% who say Israeli control of the West Bank is not vital to Israel’s security, the propensity for Jews to see things from a Palestinian perspective is considerable.
Even on security and peace issues, there is no appetite for giving Israel carte blanche to do what it likes. Responding to the statement that Israel has little or no choice in the military action it takes, 43% disagreed, and 34% agreed that Israel holds less responsibility for the recent failure of the peace process than its Middle East neighbours.
The potential for, at the very least, the emergence of a much clearer and more pronounced J Street-style “pro-Israel, pro-peace” camp can also be seen in what is surely the marked absence of ideological rigidity in the way in which people describe themselves as “Zionist” or “non-Zionist”. For example, more than one-fifth say they are non-Zionists – a not insignificant figure in itself – and yet most of these respondents see Israel as the Jewish “ancestral home”. On the other hand, 62% of self-described Zionists agree to yield territory for peace and 48% agree that Israel is an occupying power in the West Bank – two hot-button issues for many Zionists today, who tend to see no partner for peace. As the authors say, “those who define themselves as ‘Zionists’ are not always firm supporters of Israeli government policy”. Equally, there is no truth in the notion that those who call themselves “non-Zionist” want to dismantle the state of Israel.
And there’s additional encouragement for those who want to see a more assertive and independent-minded diaspora: 53% of respondents think that Jews living in Britain do have the right to judge Israel and more than a third (35%) say that “if Jewish people consider criticism of Israel to be justified, they should always feel free to say so in the British media”.
There is much more that has a bearing on the strength of a “critical friend” tendency: for example, less than one third say Israel is central to their Jewish identity; among those who witnessed or experienced antisemitism, about half said it was prompted or related to the perpetrators’ views on Israel, which suggests that an end to the conflict would significantly reduce anti-Jewish hostility; and highly educated and secular respondents were significantly more dovish and critical of Israeli policy than religious Jews with lower educational achievement.
For what are probably good practical reasons, it seems that it was not possible to replicate many of the 1995 questions in the 2010 survey, so few direct comparisons can be made. Nevertheless, I venture to suggest that most of the changes that we predicted would occur in the 1997 report have come about: Israel appeals more to traditional and orthodox Jews, attachment is based more on experience than ideology, Zionism is ideologically less relevant, Israel is more a source of communal division than unity and its centrality in Jewish life is diminishing. The basis for a broader, more assertive, open and constructively critical coalition of Jews, which can speak to the mainstream, undoubtedly exists. Only a bold and imaginative leadership is required to mobilise it.
ONE STATE OR TWO, THERE SHOULD BE ECONOMIC JUSTICE: The Real News
The political economy of Israel’s occupation Pt.5 – The only state now is Israel, it has obligations
Bio
Shir Hever is an economic researcher in the Alternative Information Center, a Palestinian-Israeli organization active in Jerusalem and Beit-Sahour. Researching the economic aspect of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, some of his research topics include international aid to the Palestinians and Israel, the effects of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories on the Israeli economy, and the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns against Israel. He is a frequent speaker on the topic of the economy of the Israeli occupation.
Transcript of interview
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome back to The Real News Network. I’m Paul Jay. We’re in Jerusalem. We’re joined again now by Shir Hever. He’s an economist with the Alternative Information Center in Jerusalem. He’s the author of the book The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation. So talk about the economics of the two-state solution. Is there any real desire within the Israeli elite, and then you can say the population, to have a two-state solution? Or is this all just a stalling operation?
SHIR HEVER, ECONOMIST, ALTERNATIVE INFORMATION CENTER: What we have now is one state. There is one government, a sovereign government, who controls the entire area of Israel, the West Bank, Golan Heights, and also the Gaza Strip—completely under the Israeli control in terms of the economics. So when you have one economic unity already, those who speak about two-state solution have to, of course, clarify, first of all, what they mean in terms of how the economic situation will be in this two-state solution. Palestinians often—those who support the two-state solution among Palestinians call for a viable Palestinian state. That means creating sources of local income and employment for the Palestinian state to try to catch up with 43 years of arrested development, of de-development, by the Israeli occupation forces. So this is a project of epic scale. And even if you assume—and it is correct to assume—that Israel is responsible for making that investment, it’s Israel’s responsibility to compensate the Palestinians for 43 years of military occupation, then the question arises: is that even possible?
JAY: Well, let’s assume Israel, whether it should or shouldn’t, won’t do that. But there’s certainly plenty of wealth in the Arab world, especially in the Emirates and the oil-rich countries, and there’s plenty of money in the Arab world to help facilitate economic development in an independent Palestine, if there was to be such a thing.
HEVER: But why should they? Why should they pay for the crimes of another country?
JAY: ‘Cause they claim to care about the Palestinians.
HEVER: Well, they claim to. In reality, the actual assistance, especially political assistance, that these countries give to the Palestinians is very limited, and it comes mostly in the form of charity. And I’m not saying that this charity is not important. Palestinians live in conditions where they need food aid to survive, to sustain themselves. So I’m not diminishing from that in any way.
JAY: But wouldn’t it be in Israel’s economic interests? One would think that the more viable the economy was in Palestinian [sic], the less the security concerns there would be.
HEVER: Of course. That is a very valid argument, that a strong Palestinian state would mean also more security for Israel. But I think if we want to talk about the economic realities of the situation, we should think about one economic sphere, and we should talk about how to achieve justice and more equal redistribution of wealth within that economic sphere. There is really no reason why Palestinians in the West Bank have to ship their goods to be exported to countries like Jordan, or all the way to the Gaza Strip to a seaport that may be built there eventually, when they can ship it closer, to seaports in Haifa or Ashdod, and ship it from there. But, of course, under the current situation, if they try to do that, they have to pay a lot of taxes to Israel, they have to use a lot of Israeli companies, and they end up getting a very small margin of profit, while Israeli companies profit on their backs. So what we actually are talking about is how to create a just economic system, not about how to create two separate economic systems. The idea of separation is wrong politically, but also wrong economically.
JAY: Yes, two-state solution is wrong economically as well as politically, essentially, is what you’re saying.
HEVER: Yeah, I’m saying that—it’s not my choice. I’m an Israeli citizen, and the Palestinians are the ones who are going to decide their future, and they’re going to decide whether they prefer two states or one state.
JAY: But I think it’s pretty clear that in the current Israel, it’s hard to even fathom Israel giving a vote and equal rights to all the Palestinians outside of Israel. The Palestinians inside Israel don’t really have equal rights. They’re not going to start giving it to people in the West Bank and Gaza.
HEVER: Right.
JAY: So if—.
HEVER: You can say the very same argument about South Africa in 1992, where also you could say 99 percent of the white population would not give up apartheid and would not give equal rights to the black people. But what’s interesting is that in South Africa, one week after apartheid fell, one year after apartheid fell, you will be hard-pressed to find white people who would support apartheid anymore, and suddenly everybody was always against apartheid.
JAY: But everyone we’re talking to here is so—I mean, people who want some kind of justice with the Palestinians, who would like to see a one-state that would include Palestinians, or would like to see a two-state, at the very least, that would give rights, everyone’s so depressed and in despair. They don’t see anything happening here. I mean, but let me ask my basic question, which is: is there an economic motive for the Israeli government or elite not to have a two-state solution or to have one? I mean, what would make more economic sense?
HEVER: Well, people obviously don’t want to give up control, and right now there is a system where all the customs and all the taxes are centralized by one government. The value-added tax is—it’s set by Israel and collected by Israel; the customs, again, collected and controlled by Israel. So that gives Israel a lot of advantages. Also the currency: only Israeli currency is used, which gives Israel a strong advantage—they can print a currency, they can determine its value. Obviously they have an interest in keeping that control in their hands. And so you could hear [inaudible] proposals. Let’s give the Palestinians a state, but they’ll have to use our currency, but they’ll have to use our tax system, but they will be under a kind of a free-trade zone, which in reality would mean they will be completely subject to Israeli economic policies. So there is an economic interest in the one-state solution. There is also an economic interest for the two-state solution, because that would mean that although Palestinians will remain completely controlled under the Israeli economic regime and it will be completely dependent on the Israeli economy, they would not be Israeli citizens, and as such would not receive all the benefits, such as minimum wage law, such as pension plans, such as health care, which would make it a lot cheaper for Israeli companies to exploit them. So they will become consumers of Israeli products. They are already consumers of Israeli products. They would become the cheap labor for Palestinian companies. They’re already the cheap labor of Israeli companies. But they will not get any share of the benefits.
JAY: And most of the two-state models that are being talked about are this type of—.
HEVER: Yes, this is the two-state solution that is offered. Of course, all of these proposals also talk about eventually Palestinians having their own sources of income, trade agreements directly with third countries that don’t go through Israel, and of course that is important and I do support that very much. But creating these things would take time. And as long as Israel has the upper hand in everything, it’ll be very difficult to ensure that Palestinians really have the ability to negotiate on their own behalf.
JAY: Okay. In the next segment of our interview, let’s talk a little bit more about President Obama and his recent argument with Netanyahu, and a little bit more about the politics of occupation in Israel. Please join us for the next segment of our interview with Shir Hever.
End of Transcript