Archive of the blogs published during the Gaza Carnage crisis, started in December 2008
July 23, 2012
EDITOR: Another sign European political weakness, and of Israel’s intentions…
Today, Israel will be offered almost full membership by the EU, with extraordinary status in terms of non-member benefits. This is done despite all the hot air spouted by EU politicians over the years, speaking on the illegality of Israel’s activities in the Occupied Territories of Palestine. The fear from Washington and and from their own Jewish communities, means not a single European politician was prepared to stand up for international law!
The granting of university status to Ariel College is another snub to Europe, one which did not delay or change its intention to make Israel its favoured non-member. It is a mark of shame for European hypocrisy, and another result of the shame they feel for the events during the Holocaust, shame forever being used by Zionist leaders and PR machine to milk ever-more far reaching arrangements for Israel, despite its crimes against the Palestinians.
The Judea and Samaria Council for Higher Education has decided on Tuesday to recognize the Ariel University Center as a full-fledged university. The planning and budget committee of the state’s Council for Higher Education had recommended against the move.
The decision was approved by 11 members of the committee, while only two opposed it.
Hundreds of left-wing activists protested outside committee meeting, which took place at Bar Ilan University. Meretz party leader Zahava Gal-On said that granting university status to the academic center would “bring about academic boycotts of Israel.”
“The Judea and Samaria Council for Higher Education, which excels in ‘occupation studies,’ has brought Israel to a moral low point by establishing an institution on stolen land which forbids those whose land was stolen to enter through its gates.”
On Sunday, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz announced he was “paving the way” for the establishment of the first university in the West Bank by making use of “special funding.” Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar sent a letter to the chairman of the Judea and Samaria higher education council expressing his support for transforming the Ariel institute into a university.
Sa’ar expressed his support for the move although he is chairman of the state’s Council for Higher Education, which opposed the move. The 15-member Judea and Samaria education panel was established in 1997 after the state’s council refused to discuss issues involving academics in the territories. As the highest authority in the territories, the law establishing the council was signed by the commander of the Israel Defense Force’s Central Command. It states that members of the council are to be appointed by the head of Central Command, either from current or past members of the state’s Council for Higher Education.
The military commander is the final authority governing decisions by the Judea and Samaria education council, which will be the case with its decision regarding the Ariel University Center. Following political moves to annul the recommendations of the state Council for Higher Education’s planning and budget committee, the committee’s chairman, Prof. Manuel Trajtenberg, sent a memo to the chairman of the Judea and Samaria education council, Prof. Amos Altshuler, outlining why he believes that panel lacks the legitimacy to decide whether to recognize the Ariel institute as a university.
In the memo, which Haaretz has obtained, Trajtenberg said the panel was tainted by conflict of interest and did not meet the standard of academic scrutiny upheld in Israel and abroad. “Discussion must not be on a political-ideological basis,” Trajtenberg said, adding that this would “fatally harm academia.” “The very question as to whether the Ariel University Center is worthy/should receive recognition as a university, when asked in a manner unconnected to a broader context (planning, economics, etc. ) is very problematic and reflects at best longing for a long-gone earlier time – At worst it is a purposeful and serious deviation from an egalitarian and fair basis,” Trajtenberg wrote to Altshuler.
Trajtenberg continued that it was inconceivable that “such an essential decision be discussed and made by a body in charge of one general institution of higher education (and two teachers colleges ) out of 67 institutions [of higher learning in Israel], in which only three percent of all students are enrolled.”
Trajtenberg also pointed out that the panel which recommended the Ariel institute’s transition to a university had not been properly constituted. “In Israel, because of its small size, such committees must in almost every case consist of experts from abroad who it may be proven do not have connections to the areas under scrutiny in Israel.”
The fact that Altshuler himself had headed the panel, Trajtenberg said, “meant that there was no separation between the recommending committee (the panel ) and the body charged with deciding on the recommendation,” referring to the Judea and Samaria Council for Higher Education.
Trajtenberg gave as an example the possibility of establishing a medical school in Safed. “The question was not whether Bar-Ilan University (or any other institution ) would establish a medical school of its own, even if it very much wanted to, but whether the State of Israel needed another medical school. In the end, Bar-Ilan was indeed chosen, but whether before or after the fact is critical.”
Trajtenberg went on to ask: “Is it conceivable that any institution demand that it be determined whether it is ‘worthy’ of establishing an excellent center in some realm, without the above-mentioned process, without studying the need and conducting a competition? Should public money be spent in this way? Should limited resources, human and material, be used in this way?”
Trajtenberg pointed out in the document that the panel had used “only a number of narrow academic standards” and that it had “relied almost solely on materials generated by the Ariel University Center and its progress reports.”
Trajtenberg criticized Steinitz’s transfer of earmarked funds to the institution to further its recognition as a university. “These funds are nowhere near the amount required to fund a university,” Trajtenberg argued.
He added that the transfer of these funds could impinge on the funding of the rest of the country’s universities and colleges. Trajtenberg said the question was not the academic qualifications of the panel’s members, which he did not doubt, but “the mandate of the committee from the outset, and the manner of its work in light of this.”
A member of the panel, Israel Prize laureate Prof. Daniel Sperber, said he was both hurt and angered by Trajtenberg’s letter. He said that six members of the committee were “at least Israel Prize laureates, not people new to scientific scrutiny.” Sperber said “to say we did not do real work is very insulting. I don’t know what his motives are, but he had a whole year, it is in poor taste, you do not leave such a thing to the day before the decision.” Sperber said the Ariel University Center was a “magnificent institution despite the hostility toward it from certain groups.”
The committee of university heads responded that “any additional budgets should have been given to the existing research universities which have been starved for funding for years.” The Ariel University Center responded that Trajtenberg’s actions “served only the monopoly of the university heads,” and that it was Trajtenberg who was guilty of a conflict of interest. The Ariel institute also said the panel appointed by the Judea and Samaria education council had acted with Trajtenberg’s approval and that “its report proves beyond all doubt that we meet and exceed every academic requirement set for us and so it recommended recognizing us as a university.”
The university center also said Trajtenberg’s “actions were in opposition to cabinet decisions, the opinion of the deputy attorney general, to the recommendations of the Council for Higher Education and to the national interest in encouraging higher education in Israel.”
Meanwhile, Altshuler informed the 16th member of the council, National Student Union chairman and social protest leader Itzik Shmuli, that he would not be allowed to vote, because the necessary details about him were mistakenly not passed on for approval to Israel’s military commander in the West Bank, which oversees the council. In response, the National Student Union said it was concerned that Shmuli’s right to vote had been revoked because Shmuli had not stated ahead of time how he would vote, as had other members of the council.
EU move to upgrade relations with Israel
Wide-ranging boost to bilateral relations undermines Brussels over West Bank, say critics
Catherine Ashton, the EU representative for foreign and security policy, will not take part in Tuesday’s meeting with Israel. Photograph: Samrang Pring/Reuters
The EU will offer Israel upgraded trade and diplomatic relations in more than 60 areas at a high-level meeting in Brussels on Tuesday, just weeks after European foreign ministers warned that Israeli policies in the West Bank “threaten to make a two-state solution impossible”.
In advance of the annual EU-Israel Association Council on Tuesdaymeeting , a diplomatic source shared with the Guardian details of the package of benefits that will be offered to Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s foreign minister.
The EU will widen its relationship with Jerusalem on a range of areas including migration, energy and agriculture. It will remove obstacles impeding Israel’s access to European government-controlled markets and enhance Israel’s co-operation with nine EU agencies, including Europol and the European Space Agency.
The wide-ranging boost to bilateral relations stops just short of the full upgrade that was frozen after Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip in January 2009.
One senior EU diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that despite private complaints of the inconsistency of chastising Israel with one hand while rewarding it with the other, not one minister was prepared to oppose Tuesday’s agreement.
“I was struck by the fact that a whole range of relations was offered to Israel – at the request of Israel – as if nothing is happening on the ground,” the diplomat said. “Most ministers are too afraid to speak out in case they are singled out as being too critical towards Israel, because, in the end, relations with Israel are on the one hand relations with the Jewish community at large and on the other hand with Washington – nobody wants to have fuss with Washington. So [ministers] are fine with making political statements but they refrain from taking concrete action.”
The Brussels-based bureaucrat points out that Europe‘s 500 million consumers constitute almost 60% of Israel’s trade and are an under-utilised bargaining tool.
“The only possible tool for the EU to make Israel change its behaviour is to use the weight and power of these relations,” he said. “We should be using [Tuesday’s] dialogue to get what we want, which is Israel’s compliance with its obligations under international law.”
Catherine Ashton, the EU’s high representative for foreign and security policy, a particularly voluble critic of Israel’s expansion into the West Bank, which is illegal under international law, has taken the unusual step of delegating representation at Tuesday’s meeting to Erato Kozakou-Marcoullis, the Cypriot foreign minister.
As recently as 8 June, she issued a statement deploring Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s decision to build an additional 800 settlements in occupied territory – compensation for the 17 Israeli families the country’s high court had ordered to be removed from the Migron settlement.
“Settlement activity is detrimental to current peace efforts, including by the Quartet [the UN, EU, US and Russia], and puts those efforts at risk,” she said.
On 14 May, the EU’s 27 foreign ministers unanimously condemned Israel’s demolition of Palestinian homes, its continuing settlement expansion and the rise of settler violence against Palestinians – which the UN says has leapt by 150% in the past year, largely due to the impunity of Israeli perpetrators. EU officials argue that far from a package of rewards, Tuesday’s agreement constitutes part of an existing action plan to promote co-operation, in progress since 2000. But while all 60 agreements in the package may have been discussed previously, they are being made concrete for the first time this week. In its entirety, this is the most significant package offered to Israel since the upgrade in relations was frozen.
Among the most controversial is the addition of areas of co-operation in the Agreement on Conformity, Assessment and Acceptance of industrial products, or ACAA – a deal first agreed in principle two years ago. In this agreement, the EU formally accepts for the first time the authority of Israeli ministers over goods produced in West Bank settlements.
The package also promises to “further bilateral co-operation” between Israel and key EU agencies, including the EU’s Judicial Co-operation Unit and the European Police Office.
Paul Hirschson, a spokesman for the Israeli ministry of foreign affairs, admits the EU and Israel may have their differences, but, dismissed the idea of trade sanctions as nonsensical:
“Both sides would suffer terribly if we start throwing eggs at each other. With Greece and Spain imploding, it doesn’t make sense for the EU to do anything to damage trade with anyone at this point,” Hirschson said, pointing out that two-thirds of Israel’s imports are bought from EU member states.
“The upgrade process may be frozen but both parties are finding ways to increase cooperation when it suits them,” he added.
The recently published report by an Israeli judge concluding that Israel is not in fact occupying the West Bank — despite a well-established international consensus to the contrary — has provoked mostly incredulity or mirth in Israel and abroad.
Leftwing websites in Israel used comically captioned photographs to highlight Justice Edmond Levy’s preposterous finding. One shows an Israeli soldier pressing the barrel of a rifle to the forehead of a Palestinian pinned to the ground, saying: “You see — I told you there’s no occupation.”
Even Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, seemed a little discomfited by the coverage. He was handed the report more than a fortnight earlier but was apparently reluctant to make it public.
Downplaying the Levy report’s significance may prove unwise, however. If Netanyahu is embarrassed, it is only because of the timing of the report’s publication rather than its substance.
It was, after all, Netanyahu himself who established the committee earlier this year to assess the legality of the Jewish settlers’ “outposts,” ostensibly unauthorized by the government, that have spread like wild seeds across the West Bank.
He hand-picked its three members, all diehard supporters of the settlements, and received the verdict he expected — that the settlements are legal. Certainly, Levy’s opinion should have come as no surprise. In 2005 he was the only Israeli high courtjudge to oppose the government’s decision to withdraw the settlers from Gaza.
Legal commentators too have been dismissive of the report. They have concentrated more on Levy’s dubious reasoning than on the report’s political significance.
They have noted that Theodor Meron, the foreign ministry’s legal advisor in 1967, expressly warned the government in the wake of the war that year that settling civilians in the newly seized territory was a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
Experts have also pointed to the difficulties Israel will face if it adopts Levy’s position.
Belligerent occupation
Under international law, Israel’s rule in the West Bank and Gaza is considered “belligerent occupation” and, therefore, its actions must be justified by military necessity only. If there is no occupation, Israel has no military grounds to hold on to the territories. In that case, it must either return the land to the Palestinians, and move out the settlers, or defy international law by annexing the territories, as it did earlier withEast Jerusalem, and establish a state of Greater Israel.
Annexation, however, poses its own dangers. Israel must either offer the Palestinians citizenship and wait for a non-Jewish majority to emerge in Greater Israel; or deny them citizenship and face pariah status as an apartheid state.
Just such concerns were raised recently by forty Jewish leaders in the United States, who called on Netanyahu to reject Levy’s “legal maneuverings” that, they said, threatened Israel’s “future as a Jewish and democratic state.”
But from Israel’s point of view, there may, in fact, be a way out of this conundrum.
In a 2003 interview, one of the other Levy committee members, Alan Baker, a settler who advised the foreign ministry for many years, explained Israel’s heterodox interpretation of the Oslo accords, signed a decade earlier.
The agreements were not, as most assumed, the basis for the creation of a Palestinian state in the territories, but a route to establish the legitimacy of the settlements. “We are no longer an occupying power, but we are instead present in the territories with their [the Palestinians’] consent and subject to the outcome of negotiations,” Baker said.
On this view, the Oslo accords redesignated the 62 percent of the West Bank assigned to Israel’s control — so-called Area C — from”occupied” to “disputed” territory. That explains why every Israeli administration since the mid-1990s has indulged in an orgy of settlement-building there.
Groundwork for annexation?
According to Jeff Halper, head of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, the Levy report is preparing the legal ground for Israel’s annexation of Area C. His disquiet is shared by others.
Recent European Union reports have used unprecedented language to criticize Israel for the “forced transfer” — diplomat-speak for ethnic cleansing — of Palestinians out of Area C into the West Bank’s cities,which fall under Palestinian control.
The EU notes that the numbers of Palestinians in Area C has shrunk dramatically under Israeli rule to fewer than 150,000, or no more than 6 percent of the Palestinian population of the West Bank. Settlers now outnumber Palestinians more than two-to-one in Area C.
Israel could annex nearly two-thirds of the West Bank and still safely confer citizenship on Palestinians there. Adding 150,000 to the existing 1.5 million Palestinian citizens of Israel, a fifth of the population, would not erode the Jewish majority’s dominance.
If Netanyahu is hesitant, it is only because the time is not yet ripe for implementation. But over recent weeks, there were indications of Israel’s next moves to strengthen its hold on Area C.
It was reported that Israel’s immigration police,which have been traditionally restricted to operating inside Israel, have been authorized to enter the West Bank and expel foreign activists. The new powers were on show the same day as foreigners, including a New York Times reporter, were arrested at one of the regular protests against the separation wall being built on Palestinian land. Such demonstrations are the chief expression of resistance to Israel’s takeover of Palestinian territory in Area C.
And it emerged that Israel had begun a campaign against OCHA, the UN agency that focuses on humanitarian harm done to Palestinians from Israeli military and settlement activity, most of it in Area C. Israel has demanded details of where OCHA’s staff work and what projects it is planning, and is threatening to withdraw staff visas, apparently in the hope of limiting its activities in Area C.
There is a problem, nonetheless. If Israel takes Area C, it needs someone else responsible for the other 38 percent of the West Bank — little more than 8 percent of historic Palestine — to “fill the vacuum,” as Israeli commentators have phrased it.
Bailing out the PA
The obvious candidate is the Palestinian Authority, the Ramallah government-in-waiting led by Mahmoud Abbas. Its police act as a security contractor for Israel, keeping in check Palestinians in the parts of the West Bank outside Area C. Also, as a recipient of endless international aid, the PA usefully removes the financial burden of the occupation from Israel.
But the PA’s weakness is evident on all fronts: it has lost credibility with ordinary Palestinians, it is impotent in international forums, and it is mired in financial crisis. In the long term, it looks doomed.
For the time being, though, Israel seems keen to keep the PA in place. In June, for example, it was revealed that Israel had tried — even if unsuccessfully — to bail out the PA by requesting a $100 million loan from the International Monetary Fund on the PA’s behalf.
If the PA refuses to, or cannot, take on these remaining fragments of the West Bank, Israel may simply opt to turn back the clock and once again cultivate weak and isolated local leaders for each Palestinian city.
The question is whether the international community can first be made to swallow Levy’s absurd conclusion.
Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. 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
Israel’s Haaretz has mysteriously deleted a powerful article by Amira Hass headlined “The anti-Semitism that goes unreported,” about an unchecked upsurge in violence against Palestinians by Israeli settlers.
This is at least the second notable act of apparent censorship by Haaretz in recent months. In December, as we reported, the newspaper expunged from its website an article by David Sheen on a horrifying anti-African rally in Tel Aviv.
Hass’ article, originally published on 18 July, likened the alarming increase in settler attacks to the period leading up to the 1994 settler massacre of Palestinians in Hebron:
For the human rights organization Al-Haq, the escalation is reminiscent of what happened in 1993-1994, when they warned that the increasing violence, combined with the authorities’ failure to take action, would lead to mass casualties. And then Dr. Baruch Goldstein of Kiryat Arba came along and gunned down 29 Muslim worshipers at the Ibrahim Mosque.
Hass is one of Haaretz’s best known writers, renowned internationally for documenting Israeli human rights abuses against Palestinians.
Ironically the url originally leading to Hass’ article now links to one by a man subtitled “Women, don’t be suckers; The protest’s female voice is not being heard.” Hass is one of Haaretz’s few prominent female writers, and apparently her voice cannot be heard.
Full text of censored article
Luckily, The Electronic Intifada captured the text of the article Haaretz didn’t want you to read. Here it is in full:
Amira Hass: The anti-Semitism that goes unreported
18 July 2012
By Amira Hass, Haaretz – 18 July 2012
Tens of thousands of people live in the shadow of terror
Here’s a statistic that you won’t see in research on anti-Semitism, no matter how meticulous the study is. In the first six months of the year, 154 anti-Semitic assaults have been recorded, 45 of them around one village alone. Some fear that last year’s record high of 411 attacks – significantly more than the 312 attacks in 2010 and 168 in 2009 – could be broken this year.
Fifty-eight incidents were recorded in June alone, including stone-throwing targeting farmers and shepherds, shattered windows, arson, damaged water pipes and water-storage facilities, uprooted fruit trees and one damaged house of worship. The assailants are sometimes masked, sometimes not; sometimes they attack surreptitiously, sometimes in the light of day.
There were two violent attacks a day, in separate venues, on July 13, 14 and 15. The words “death” and “revenge” have been scrawled in various areas; a more original message promises that “We will yet slaughter.”
It’s no accident that the diligent anti-Semitism researchers have left out this data. That’s because they don’t see it as relevant, since the Semites who were attacked live in villages with names like Jalud, Mughayer and At-Tuwani, Yanun and Beitilu. The daily dose of terrorizing (otherwise known as terrorism ) that is inflicted on these Semites isn’t compiled into a neat statistical report, nor is it noticed by most of the Jewish population in Israel and around the world – even though the incidents resemble the stories told by our grandparents.
The day our grandparents feared was Sunday, the Christian Sabbath; the Semites, who are not of interest to the researchers monitoring anti-Semitism, fear Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. Our grandparents knew that the order-enforcement authorities wouldn’t intervene to help a Jewish family under attack; we know that the Israel Defense Forces, the Israel Police, the Civil Administration, the Border Police and the courts all stand on the sidelines, closing their eyes, softballing investigations, ignoring evidence, downplaying the severity of the acts, protecting the attackers, and giving a boost to those progromtchiks.The hands behind these attacks belong to Israeli Jews who violate international law by living in the West Bank. But the aims and goals behind the attacks are the flesh and blood of the Israeli non-occupation. This systemic violence is part of the existing order. It complements and facilitates the violence of the regime, and what the representatives – the brigade commanders, the battalion commanders, the generals and the Civil Administration officers – are doing while “bearing the burden” of military service.
They are grabbing as much land as possible, using pretexts and tricks made kosher by the High Court of Justice; they are confining the natives to densely populated reservations. That is the essence of the tremendous success known as Area C: a deliberate thinning of the Palestinian population in about 62 percent of the West Bank, as preparation for formal annexation.
Day after day, tens of thousands of people live in the shadow of terror. Will there be an attack today on the homes at the edge of the village? Will we be able to get to the well, to the orchard, to the wheat field? Will our children get to school okay, or make it to their cousins’ house unharmed? How many olive trees were damaged overnight?
In exceptional cases, when there is luck to be had, a video camera operated by B’Tselem volunteers documents an incident and pierces the armor of willful ignorance donned by the citizens of the only democracy in the Middle East. When there is no camera, the matter is of negligible importance, because after all, you can’t believe the Palestinians. But this routine of escalating violence is very real, even if it is underreported.
For the human rights organization Al-Haq, the escalation is reminiscent of what happened in 1993-1994, when they warned that the increasing violence, combined with the authorities’ failure to take action, would lead to mass casualties. And then Dr. Baruch Goldstein of Kiryat Arba came along and gunned down 29 Muslim worshipers at the Ibrahim Mosque. The massacre set the stage for a consistent Israeli policy of emptying the Old City of Hebron of its Palestinian residents, with the assistance of Israeli Jewish pogromtchiks. Is there someone among the country’s decision-makers and decision-implementers who is hoping for a second round?
EDITOR: Unbelievable but true! A lovely gift for the EU!
On the day the EU bends over backwards to get Israel special status as most-favoured Aggressive Empire, Israel has just announced its new plan of destruction. Read and disbelieve:
Residents of targeted villages will be moved to the West Bank town of Yatta and its environs; state claims that most of those evacuated have permanent homes in the area.
By Amira Hass Jul.23, 2012
Amira Hass
The West Bank town of Yatta. Photo by Nir Kafri
Defense Minister Ehud Barak has ordered the demolition of eight Palestinian villages in the South Hebron Hills because the territory is needed for Israel Defense Forces training exercises, the state told the High Court of Justice on Sunday.
The residents of the targeted villages will be moved to the town of Yatta and its environs; the state claims, based on information it obtained from local informers, that most of these people have permanent homes in that area.
The state will allow the residents to work their lands and graze their flocks there when the IDF is not training — on weekends and Jewish holidays – and during two other periods of one month each during the year. Barak agreed to leave four villages that are in the northernmost part of the area, even though this would reduce the dimensions of training area and prevent the use of live fire.
The villages slated for demolition are the larger villages in the region: Majaz, Tabban, Sfai, Fakheit, Halaweh, Mirkez, Jinba, and Kharuba, which have a total of 1,500 residents. The villages to be spared are Tuba, Mufaqara, Sarura and Megheir al-Abeid, which have a total of 300 residents.
The IDF and the Civil Administration regard all of them as squatters in Firing Zone 918, even though the villages have existed since at least the 1830s.
Evacuation orders were issued against the 12 villages in 1999, but were frozen by an injunction issued by the High Court of Justice in response to two petitions that were united: One by attorney Shlomo Lecker and the second by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, who together represented some 200 families. An effort to reach an agreement on the status of the residents in the area by a mediation process failed in 2005.
At that point, the Civil Administration started to issue demolition orders against cisterns and restrooms that several families had added, claiming that these additions violated the status quo as set by the court. This past April, after 12 years of various proceedings and delays, the High Court held a preliminary hearing on the petitions, with the state submitting its final position on Sunday.
Attorney Hila Gurani, a senior deputy state prosecutor, wrote in the response to the petitions that the IDF has been forced to limit its military exercises in the area because of the people living there and the illegal construction that has taken place there. For the same reason, no live-fire training is conducted there.
In addition, wrote Gurani, during the second intifada, operational activity came at the expense of training, but the Second Lebanon War exposed weak spots that substantially increase the need for training and firing zones. Gurani also noted that there was a risk that residents of the firing zone would collect intelligence on IDF methods, or take weapons or equipment that the forces might leave behind, and use them for terror purposes.
The village residents, ACRI and the B’Tselem human rights group present the issues differently. According to them, all 12 villages were natural outgrowths of cave-dwelling communities that are widely found in that area. In some of the villages, homes of unchiseled stone were built even before 1967.
The connection to Yatta is natural – and characteristic of many satellite communities that developed over the centuries in historic Palestine. For generations the cave-dwellers were farmers and shepherds, producing milk and cheese, and they have preserved their way of life to this day, while integrating into Yatta as a result of contemporary demands, such as the need to send their children to school.
The IDF had declared some 30,000 dunams (7,500 acres) in the area a closed military zone back in the 1970s. Under military law, only permanent residents are allowed to remain in a closed military zone.
Until 1997, the cave-dwellers continued to live in their communities undisturbed – which the petitioners say is clear evidence that they were regarded at the time as permanent residents. However, as happened in much of the West Bank that under the Oslo Accords was deemed Area C – under complete Israeli control – the Israeli authorities did not allow the residents to build more structures, including schools or clinics, to accommodate their natural growth. These communities were not included the master plans that were prepared for the building of the area settlements, and thus to this day these villages are not connected to the road system, the water system or to the electrical grid.
In August and November 1999, most of the area’s residents received eviction orders due to “illegal residence in a firing zone.” On November 16, 1999, the security forces forcibly evicted more than 700 residents, and the IDF demolished buildings and wells and confiscated property, leaving the residents with no homes and no livelihood.
As noted, the High Court, in response to the petitions, issued an interim injunction, allowing the villagers to temporarily return to their homes. However, because the army had destroyed many of the buildings, many residents had nothing to return to. Moreover, the security forces interpreted the interim injunction as narrowly as possible, allowing reentry only to the named petitioners and denying access to their relatives.
As a result, the examination conducted by the Civil Administration that is quoted in the state’s response to the court on Sunday found that in 2000 “there were no permanent residents in the area,” and that anyone living there was there only on a seasonal basis. On the other hand, the Civil Administration identified most of the petitioners as living in and around Yatta, as reported in the affidavit of Raziel Goldstein, who was the Civil Administration’s inspection coordinator in the region.
Goldstein also wrote in his affidavit that, “This examination was conducted with the help of three local residents, who were presented with the names of the petitioners and aerial photographs of Yatta.”
The state also claims that in recent years residents have been repeatedly violating the status quo by expanding structures illegally, adding that the number of people entering the area under the interim injunctions is far greater than the number of petitioners.
“The petitioners cannot build on the development of these illegal phenomena and now claim to be talking about permanent residency,” the state wrote.
Hundreds gathered in rallies in memory of Moshe Silman, who died on Friday
A disabled Israeli war veteran is said to be in a serious condition after setting himself on fire at a bus stop near Tel Aviv.
The man was in dispute with officials in charge of rehabilitating veterans, according to a veterans’ group.
Sunday’s case came hours before the funeral of Moshe Silman, who died a week after setting himself on a fire at a protest against inequality.
More than 1,000 people took part in vigils for Mr Silman on Saturday.
Israeli police say the latest case of self-immolation happened at a bus stop in Yehud near Tel Aviv.
Passers-by managed to put out the flames but the man, a wheelchair-user, suffered burns to 80% of his body.
‘Human tragedy’
There have been other failed attempts to copy Mr Silman’s actions in recent days.
Mr Silman, who was heavily in debt, had left a note accusing the Israeli establishment of “taking from the poor to give to the rich”.
His case has produced an outpouring of emotion in Israel, the BBC’s Yolande Knell reports from Jerusalem.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called his act “a great human tragedy”.
Last summer, Israel saw an unprecedented wave of protests over inequality and financial hardship, with hundreds of thousands taking part in some of the biggest rallies Israel has ever seen.
The use of self-immolation is a dramatic new departure that will ratchet up pressure on Mr Netanyahu’s government to deliver on promised reforms to deal with the high cost of housing and food and improve social services, our correspondent adds.
Catherine Ashton, the EU representative for foreign and security policy, will not take part in Tuesday’s meeting with Israel. Photograph: Samrang Pring/Reuters
Hundreds gathered in rallies in memory of Moshe Silman, who died on Friday
