EDITOR: Israeli Apartheid Week
This week, the BDS campaign is at last spreading far and wide across the globe, through the Apartheid Week campaign. It certainly seems to mark the gradual transformation of pubic opinion on this issue, and predicates a likely political change in the future. This is why the tag on anti-semitism has been automatically attached to this activity by Zionist propaganda makers.
Universities across the globe mark Israeli Apartheid Week: Haaretz
LONDON – A filmmaker, anthropologist and economic researcher are among those headlining events marking what pro-Palestinian organizers have declared as “Israeli Apartheid Week” – and all three speakers are Israeli.
University campuses in more than 40 cities around the world are marking the week with lectures, films, multimedia events, cultural performances and demonstrations.
Since they were first launched in 2005, the events have become some of “the most important global events in the Palestine solidarity calendar,” according to its organizers.
Its aim, they state on their Web site, is to “contribute to this chorus of international opposition to Israeli apartheid and to bolster support for the boycotts, divestments and sanctions (BDS) campaign.”
Though many of the details about those events were not being promoted on the Apartheid Week Web site, it did list several events being offered by Israelis.
Among them is Shir Hever, an economic researcher at the Alternative Information Center in Jerusalem, who is scheduled to give a series of lectures at the University of Amsterdam entitled “Could the Economic Policies of Israel be Considered a Form of Apartheid?”
In addition, Israeli activist and filmmaker Shai Carmeli-Pollak is screening his 2006 documentary “Bil’in Habibti,” about Israel Defense Forces violence, at Boston-area universities.
Jeff Halper, the Israel-based professor of anthropology who is co-founder and coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, was scheduled to speak on “Israeli Apartheid: The Case For BDS” at Glasgow University.
The participation of several Israelis in the anti-Zionist events is “atrocious,” said David Katz, a member of Britain’s Jewish Board of Deputies who grew up in South Africa and has long fought the comparison between that country’s racial segregation and Israel’s ethnic divisions.
“They are free to do as they please, but it’s atrocious,” he said of the participating Israelis. “I think they don’t understand the analogy they are making… which is insulting to those who suffered under apartheid.”
“It’s like calling things ‘holocaust’ which are not the Holocaust or terming something ‘genocide’ which is not genocide,” said Katz.
As part of efforts to counter the Apartheid Week events, one Jewish charity brought over Benjamin Pogrund, a South African immigrant to Israel who is the former deputy editor of the Johannesburg-based Rand Daily Mail, to speak to British university students about why Israel is not an apartheid state.
“The game plan of those who seek the destruction of Israel is to equate us with South Africa, a pariah state which had to be subjected to international sanctions,” Pogrund has said. “Israelis coming to take part in this week should know better.”
In Canada, the legislature in the province of Ontario unanimously condemned Israeli Apartheid Week, voting for a resolution that denounced the campus events.
“If you’re going to label Israel as Apartheid, then you are also… attacking Canadian values,” Conservative legislator Peter Shurman told Shalom Life, a Toronto-based Jewish Web site.
“The use of the phrase ‘Israeli Apartheid Week’ is about as close to hate speech as one can get without being arrested, and I’m not certain it doesn’t actually cross over that line,” he said.
No country would accept Netanyahu’s conditions for peace: Haaretz
By Akiva Eldar
The decision to add the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Rachel’s Tomb to the list of historical heritage sites up for renovation was not made with the intention of inflaming tempers and sabotaging efforts to revive final-status talks with the Palestinians. It was merely a routine move by a rightist government, further proof that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “two states” speech at Bar-Ilan University was a milestone on the road to nowhere. The only difference between “the rock of our existence” that launched the Western Wall tunnel violence in 1996 and the 2010 model is that this time Netanyahu is wearing a mask, trying to pass himself off as peace activist Uri Avnery, with the generous help of Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
The prime minister, as we all know, simply can’t wait for renewed final-status talks to get underway, but Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas refuses to back down and is setting “conditions that predetermine the outcome of the negotiations,” as Netanyahu told Haaretz a week ago. Indeed, the Palestinians have made their participation in indirect talks conditional on, in part, a construction freeze during the talks in West Bank settlements and East Jerusalem. They have the audacity to claim that it is Netanyahu’s demand to expand settlements during negotiations along with the assertion of Jewish ownership over sensitive sites which are the conditions that predetermine the outcome of the talks.
The Palestinian demand for a total freeze on settlement construction, including that required for natural population growth, is not, in Netanyahu’s words “a condition that no country would accept.” Israel accepted that condition in the road map seven years ago. In an article in the journal of the Israel Council on Foreign Relations in December 2009, Prof. Ruth Lapidoth, recipient of the 2006 Israel Prize for Legal Studies, and Dr. Ofra Friesel write that the Netanyahu government is obligated by the road map, which was ratified by the Sharon government. A former legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry, Lapidoth stresses that the 14 remarks (not reservations, as they are usually termed) that Israel appended have no legal validity. And since the U.S. government promised no more than to relate “fully and seriously” to these remarks, they don’t have any diplomatic validity, either.
Netanyahu argues that Sharon reached an oral agreement with George W. Bush that the construction freeze would not apply to the “settlement blocs” and that the United States would take into account natural-growth requirements. The prime minister therefore expects the Palestinians to honor not only formal agreements to which they were a party, but also informal understandings reached behind their backs between Israel and America. Yet when the Palestinians demand an acknowledgment of understandings they reached with the Olmert government on a number of final-status principles, Netanyahu says this is a “precondition that predetermines the outcome of negotiations.”
The prime minister also contemptuously rejects the Palestinian demand that the talks be resumed where they were halted in December 2008. He is not prepared to even listen to the parameters for a final-status agreement proposed by Bill Clinton in December 2000. Netanyahu insists he has the right to start negotiations from square one, ignoring every agreement already reached with the Palestinians. He has even forgotten the Wye River Memorandum of 1998, under which he undertook, in Clinton’s presence, to transfer 13 percent of Area C to the Palestinians.
Netanyahu sticks only to those clauses in the interim agreement (Oslo 2) that removed responsibility for the Palestinians’ welfare from Israel’s hands and left Israel in control of Area C (60 percent of the West Bank). And of course, Netanyahu is totally committed to those clauses that require the Palestinians to combat terrorist infrastructure and incitement and refrain from asking the United Nations to condemn the injustices of the occupation.
Netanyahu is setting conditions for negotiations that no country would accept. His opposition to a settlement freeze and his refusal to resume talks where they left off expose his Bar-Ilan declarations as a cunning diversionary tactic. As his chief spokesman, President Shimon Peres, is wont to declare, “You have to tell the people the truth.” The dismal truth is that, behind the mask, Netanyahu is still the same old Bibi.
EDITOR: The Dubai murder story that will not die down
The murder of one Palestinian in Dubai refuses to disappear from the front pages. Is it possible that Israel has gone too far for the general public sensibilities this time? We should not be celebrating too soon. After all, it certainly did go too far during the 22 days of the carnage in Gaza? While the public revulsion aroused by each wave of brutalities seems to subside after some time has passed, there is also a public memory which keeps building up, a memory of the systemic nature of Israeli Zionist methods and means, and to this end the Apartheid Week is crucial. Thus, this growth of the rejection of Israel’s impunity is also important, even, as now, it is only played on a formalistic level.
Australia police expected in Israel to probe Dubai hit passports: Haaretz
Australian investigators are expected in Israel in the coming days to question several dual nationals whose names have been connected to the assassination of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai last month.
Israel agreed to allow two to three Australian police officers to question the dual citizens, after Australia’s Foreign Ministry on Sunday requested approval from the Israeli envoy in Canberra to dispatch the investigators.
Mabhouh was found dead in his Dubai hotel room on January 20 in what police say they are almost certain was a hit by Israel’s Mossad spy agency.
Australia last week said it was not satisfied with the Israeli envoy’s explanation about the use of fraudulent Australian passports in the killing, after three people holding Australian passports were listed among 15 new suspects.
Dubai authorities have named 26 alleged members of the team that tracked and killed the Palestinian and said they operated in disguise and used fraudulent British, Irish, French, German and Australian passports.
Media reports last week said that Australian authorities had approached Israel in the 1990s to seek assurances that its passports would not be used in Mossad activities after it was feared Israel had doctored New Zealand passports.
During that meeting, the reports claimed, the Israelis said they condoned such identity theft, with Australian participants describing their response as “enraged self-righteousness.”
On Saturday, investigators from Britain’s Serious Organized Crimes Agency arrived in Israel to interview dual nationals whose names were used on British forged passports tied to the killing.
‘Two suspected Dubai assassins traveled to the U.S. after the hit’
At least two of the 26 suspected members of the team that tracked and killed Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai last month traveled to the U.S. shortly after his death, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
Records show one of the suspects entered the U.S. on January 21 using an Irish passport and another arrived in the U.S. February 14 using a British passport, reported the Wall Street Journal, quoting “a person familiar with the situation.”
Investigators are uncertain whether the two are still in the U.S. Police suspect the alleged hit squad members used fraudulently issued passports, and that the two may have left the U.S. using different travel documents.
Spokesmen for the U.S. State Department and Interpol both declined to comment on the Wall Street Journal report.
People with the same names as many of the suspects live in Israel and say their identities were stolen. The passport abuse has drawn criticism from the European Union, and some of the governments involved have summoned the Israeli ambassadors to their countries to protest.
Israel has not denied or confirmed it played any role but Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has said there was nothing to link Israel to the killing.
Dubai police have also identified two U.S. financial companies they believe issued several of the credit cards used by at least 14 suspects in the alleged killing.
EDITOR: While this article deals with a range of problems across the European political landscape, there may be few issues which are so complicated by recent European history, so the question of Palestine is crucial for us to watch in the next few months, as the EU works out its mechanisms of common political response. Will Lady Ashton represent the interests of the EU, or those of the UK as percieved by the Labour Party, or even, those of Uncle Sam in the background?
Lady Ashton endures baptism of fire as Europe’s first foreign policy chief: The Guardian
Labour peer faces sniping amid heavy workload as she creates EU’s diplomatic service
Lady Ashton removes her spectacles before facing the foreign affairs committee of the European parliament in Brussels. Photograph: Olivier Hoslet/EPA
Last week she was in Madrid and Moscow, Kiev and Bruges, as well as chairing a Brussels meeting of EU foreign ministers and wining and dining Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s pugnacious foreign minister. The week before it was Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo, mulling over whether she can make the Balkans a better place. This week she is in Haiti grappling with Europe’s role in resurrecting that benighted country after declaring she does not do disaster tourism.
Catherine Ashton is on the move. Yet despite her punishing schedule, the knives are out for the Labour peer, not because of the places she has been, but because of the meetings she has missed.
In Paris and Berlin, The Hague and Brussels, the whispering campaign against the former leader of the House of Lords is getting louder.
Ashton was thrust into the international limelight in November as Europe’s first foreign policy chief. She did not ask for the job. She was taken aback when named as a result of a classic EU political fix that had nothing to do with merit or suitability for the post.
“Lady Ashton has come under an unusual amount of criticism and attack in the first few months,” said Thomas Klau, head of the Paris office of the European council on foreign relations. “It was obviously one of her handicaps that she wasn’t put in a position to expect the nomination.”
At the weekend, Ashton marked 100 days since European leaders named her as the EU’s first high representative for common foreign and security policy. She was not the only one who was surprised. Eurocrats gulped with incredulity that a neophyte with no foreign policy pedigree could be awarded the post.
It was said to be the best job going in Europe. It is rapidly turning into the worst.
“Baroness Ashton has been given an absolutely impossible task,” said Alexander von Lambsdorff, a German liberal MEP on the parliament’s foreign affairs committee.
The critics are already feeling vindicated. Early French vitriol is widening into stronger and more substantive reservations about her judgment and early policy moves.
Brave face
Three decisions in the past 10 days have sparked widespread discontent in Brussels and across Europe. Ashton is in charge of creating the EU’s diplomatic service under the Lisbon treaty and of making the key appointments.
With decision-taking in Brussels in a vacuum, José Manuel Barroso, the European commission chief, moved deftly to place his longtime chief of staff and fellow-Portuguese João Vale de Almeida as the new EU ambassador in Washington.
Last Monday, Ashton sought to put a brave face on things, insisting she and not Barroso had made the appointment while admitting that “one or two” foreign ministers had complained about being bypassed on such a key job.
Diplomats said 12 foreign ministers had voiced their consternation. She was warned that the incident should not be repeated. “Ashton should not have let Barroso impose that,” said an EU official. “It has undermined trust in her.”
The other appointment she made was of Vygaudas Usackas, a former Lithuanian foreign minister, as the new EU envoy to Afghanistan. Usackas was supported by Britain. Diplomats from other countries complained that Ashton was doing Britain’s bidding.
The official added that the biggest blunder came last Thursday when Ashton, juggling a busy travel schedule, was seen to have made the wrong call by staying away from a meeting of EU defence ministers and Nato officials in Majorca.
Ashton’s job puts her in charge of European security policy. The Majorca meeting was the first under the new regime and under her auspices. Anders Fogh-Rasmussen, the Nato chief, was there. Ashton went to Kiev instead.
“A bit rich,” complained the French. “Conspicuous by her absence,” said the Dutch. “Regrettable,” noted the Spanish.
“That was an extraordinary mistake,” said the European official. “It reinforces the impression of a total lack of understanding of the job. I really hope she can recover.”
Criticism
Ashton’s defenders argue she is being subjected to a barrage of snide criticism that is quite unfair and vastly premature. “Cathy says it’s a marathon, not a sprint, and she should be judged on the results,” said her spokesman, Lutz Guellner. “She wants to be judged on what she achieves and not on the perceptions. She has a job that needs to be defined, that didn’t exist before.”
A sympathetic diplomat added: “She’s been put in charge of the most profound institutional change in the EU for years and she does not yet have a machine she can rely on.”
Ashton is a foreign minister without a foreign ministry, responsible for building one not exactly from scratch, but from very disparate elements of the EU apparatus in the commission, in the council of the European Union and in the diplomatic services of the 27 member states.
She has a private office of 12 officials working on different parts of the world headed by James Morrison, a former Foreign Office diplomat who has worked with her since she replaced Peter Mandelson 18 months ago as European trade commissioner.
Mandelson wanted the job Ashton has now, and some of the early bitching in November came from London. But the whispering campaign was quickly hijacked by the French, with Jean Quatremer of Libération, a prolific blogger who trades in high-grade Brussels political gossip, marshalling what many saw as a smear campaign delivered by French officials invariably speaking anonymously.
“Lady Qui?” was the headline of a two-page spread in the leftwing Paris paper in February.
Despite working in Brussels for 18 months, Ashton continued to live in hotel rooms, Quatremer scoffed. Perhaps sensitive to the jibe, she has for the first time rented a property in Brussels and is said to have accepted that she will be spending less time in Hertfordshire. But Ashton is also aggrieved that other new European commissioners who regularly dash home for the weekend are seldom subject to the same attacks.
Quatremer berated Ashton for her “amateurism, incompetence even”, while Pierre Lellouche, France’s outspoken Europe minister, complained of “the current impression of a void”. The criticism is not confined to the French in Paris or Brussels, nor is it the preserve of male officials and diplomats, despite the suspicion that sexism is a factor.
Miguel Angel Moratinos, Spain’s foreign minister, who wanted the job himself, complained bitterly, if privately, about Ashton’s performance at an international security conference in Munich in February. The Germans are known to be sceptical, but are being more discreet.
Ashton attended the Munich conference to rub shoulders with the American, Chinese, Russian and Iranian foreign policy leaders. She was generally seen to have delivered a lacklustre speech.
“There is an issue here,” admitted a supportive European commission official. “She’s going to have to start prioritising and start performing.”
French grumble
Such perceived failings aside, Ashton is handicapped by the magnitude of the job coupled with the lack of experience and the temporary absence of support systems.
While being EU foreign policy chief, she is also a vice-president of the European commission, in effect doing a job performed until November by three senior people – Javier Solana of Spain doing foreign and security policy, Benita Ferrero-Waldner of Austria as European commissioner for external affairs, and the foreign minister of whatever country was holding the EU’s six-month rotating presidency and chairing monthly meetings of EU foreign ministers.
If the workload is formidable, she is also burdened by being a relative unknown internationallyand not being plugged into the global foreign policy networks. There is also plenty of muttering in Brussels and beyond about the calibre of her staff. The French grumble, for example, that they have only one relatively junior person on her staff of 12. Only 100 days in, Ashton has not had the happiest of starts in one of the biggest jobs in Europe.
The burden of expectation is heavy, the mud-slinging is hurtful. Unlike the stellar crew of (male) European grandees who coveted her job, from Mandelson to Moratinos to Carl Bildt of Sweden, she is said to have little ego.
But in the chancelleries of Europe, especially in France, there is a palpable concern about the purpose of the new Lisbon regime and the possibility of chances lost.
“In Paris,” said Klau, “there is a sense of mixed expectations and a sense of apprehension. The fear that Lisbon will not lead to a more forceful Europe is a real source of worry.”
Created by the Lisbon treaty, the European External Action Service (EEAS) entails the organisation of some 7,000 diplomats and officials and 136 embassies, as well as a large apparatus in Brussels involving policy planning, crisis management, military, intelligence, and communications divisions. Ashton unveiled her first “vision” for the EEAS to EU ambassadors last week. The three documents she submitted, obtained by the Guardian, were seen as tentative, a plea for help from the professionals of the 27 member states. She described the service as the instrument that “mobilises all [EU] resources in support of a single political strategy … A service that ensures that when we speak our voice is heard; and that when we engage, our actions make the difference. If not, others will make decisions for us.” At least one-third of the diplomats are to come from national foreign ministries, with the European commission supplying most of the rest. The 136 “embassies” have until now been run by the commission as EU delegations. Ashton has set a deadline of 1 May for establishing the service but that may be a stretch.
Turkmenistan snubs former Mossad agent as Israel envoy: Haaretz
In new humiliation to Lieberman, Iran’s neighbor refuses credentials to ex-spy expelled from Moscow in ’90s.
For the past four months Turkmenistan has been stalling over the appointment of a former spy and close confidant of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman as Israel’s first ambassador to the country, Haaretz has learned.
Israel in October nominated Reuven Dinel, a close associate of Lieberman and a former employee of the Mossad as its envoy to the Central Asian state.
But in a rare diplomatic snub, Turkmenistan has withheld approval the posting.
“They are hoping that we’ll take the hint and nominate someone else,” one senior diplomat told Haaretz.
Behind the rejection may lie an embarrassing episode that has dogged Dinel for more than a decade. In 1996 the Mossad man was expelled from Moscow after Russian security forces caught him accepting classified satellite photographs from senior army officers.
Foreign ministry sources suspect that Russia, where Dinel remains persona non grata, is pressuring Turkmenistan to block the appointment.
Lieberman first named Dinel as his choice for ambassador in July 2009. The controversial foreign minister is said to attribute special importance to the role, which involves forging new ties with and Muslim-majority country bordering Iran, which Israel sees as the greatest threat to its security.
Dinel has longstanding ties with Lieberman, who as minister of transportation appointed him in 2003 to oversee planning for the Carmel harbor in Haifa. Dinel is currently vice-president of the Israel Ports Company.
The foreign minister, who has suffered a series of setbacks over the past year, including a crisis in relations with Israel’s old ally Turkey, is said to see set great store by the former Mossad man’s abilities and reportedly sees burgeoning relations with Turkmenistan as one of the crowning achievements of his term of office.
Dinel’s appointment to Turkmenistan was officially confirmed by the government on October 25 and a few days later the foreign ministry formally contacted officials in the capital of Turkmenistan, Ashgabat, to request consent for the selection.
According to diplomatic protocol, approval of new ambassadors is usually automatic and accompanied by a token bureaucratic process. But in an unusual break with established form, Turkmenistan continues to delay authorization.
Ashgabat has so far not responded to numerous requests from Jerusalem for an explanation, officials said – a source of personal discomfort to Lieberman who had taken on Turkmenistan as a personal project.
“The choice of candidate was strange from the start, if not surreal,” a senior diplomat told Haaretz. “They took someone who was a known spy, someone who was slung out of Moscow, and sent him to Turkmenistan – and all this without consulting a single professional adviser.”
“What did they think would happen? There is no way the government in Turkmenistan was ever going to agree to this.”
Responding to inquiries over the incident, the foreign ministry said in a statement:
“There has been a delay in the opening of an embassy in Turkmenistan because of a number of difficulties that have emerged, mostly regarding security. This is in no way uncommon when opening a new mission and we hope to overcome these issues during the coming weeks.”
Gaza girl paralyzed in strike can’t stay in Israel: The Only Democracy?
February 18th, 2010, by Jesse Bacon
YNet has this sad story:
Will eight-year-old Maria Amen, who lost five of her family members when an Israeli missile hit her home in the Gaza Strip in May 2006 get a house of her own three-and-a-half years later?
The eight-year-old lost her mother, two of her brothers, her aunt and her grandmother in the strike, and was also hit herself. She was left almost completely paralyzed to this day, and currently resides at a rehabilitation hospital in Jerusalem.
During a hearing on the matter in the High Court of Justice last week the defense and interior ministers’ counsel said the State would appoint a new representative to find a solution to the girl’s living arrangements to bring the saga to an end. The girls’ status, along with that of her father and brother, who was also injured in the strike, is being discussed by the High Court. The State refuses to grant the family’s request for permanent residency in Israel.”
Attorney Adi Lustigman, who represents the Amen family, said she also hopes the family’s permanent resident status will be approved in the future, despite that State’s current position on the matter. “She can’t breathe on her own, and this will not change. Transferring her to the Palestinian Authority would lead to doom, she cannot survive there. Here, the family can rebuild its life. What we are asking for is stability for her family, which has experienced disaster.”
While I am heartened that Israel apparently admitted enough wrongdoing to provide care for this girl for years, I am baffled as to why they refuse to approve her permanent resident status. The only possible explanation seems to be that are opposed to giving any hope or setting any precedent for other Palestinians who wish to live in Israel. It is shame that this victim of war is being victimized again by Israel’s desire to keep Palestinians out. And the care given to this girl raises the question of what happens to all the many other victims of Israel’s bombing raids or others who need medical care in Israel. Physicians for Human Rights-Israel has this story of a Gaza man denied care because he might try to move to the West Bank.
Physicians for Human Rights–Israel is aware of two other cases of patients who, like Mr. Hamdan, have recently been refused permission by Israel to leave Gaza in order to receive medical treatment based on the claim that they may settle in the West Bank. This is a new phenomenon that reflects an escalation in Israeli policy toward residents of Gaza who require medical treatment. The policy violates the basic rights of patients to receive medical care, including in emergency cases, putting political considerations ahead of Israel’s duty to safeguard the health of residents of Gaza.”
UPDATE: In researching this piece, I found a post by Tikkun Olam blogger Richard Silverstein from a year ago, in which he denounces the Peres Center (as in President Shimon Peres) for using these children for political gain while others go without care. And the Palestinian Authority for engaging in the politicization of their care.
Medical care is one of the major points of contention in the everyday low-intensity conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel’s Peres Center makes a point of subsidizing the medical care of Palestinian children in need of specialized care that can only be found at Israeli hospitals. It then publicizes its beneficence in order to score points in Israel and the world community by highlighting how merciful Israel is toward sick Palestinian children. This of course begs the question–what about solving the conflict, instead of merely providing medical care for a few hundred sick Palestinians, much as that is to be admired?”
Silverstein tells the story of a girl who died from being denied care, which uncomfortably reminded me of the stories that surfaced in the health care debate in the United States.
39 army raids, 28 arrests: Just another day in the West Bank: Haaretz
By Amira Hass
“The year 2009 was the quietest for Israelis from the security point of view and the most violent for the Palestinians from the point of view of attacks by settlers in the West Bank.” Just as he was saying this – as an example of one of the absurdities that characterize the political situation – Palestinian Agriculture Minister Ismail Daiq received a phone call from the Jenin district to inform him that five artesian wells in the village of Daan had been destroyed that morning. One person was shot and wounded in the abdomen when he tried to lift the pump to save it from damage. This was not an attack by settlers but a raid by the army.
And that wasn’t the only routine event on Wednesday, February 24. The negotiations affairs department of the Palestine Liberation Organization collects information daily from all the districts of the occupied territories (Gaza and the West Bank, as well as Jerusalem) and publishes it in a daily situation report by the Palestinian Monitoring Group. For the sake of convenience, the report categorizes the events and then provides details for each district.
That Wednesday, a total of 212 occupation-related incidents were recorded. Examples include: four physical assaults (which took place in the West Bank, and included civilians being beaten in Nablus and Jerusalem); one injury (a civilian hurt in a clash in Daan); eight military shooting attacks (two of which took place in Gaza, two were in the midst of raids, and one came from a military outpost; 39 army raids (one in Gaza); 28 arrests; and 12 detentions at checkpoints and in residential areas. The items on the checklist include home demolition (none that day), the leveling of agricultural land (one, in Gaza), and construction of the separation wall (at 22 locations).
The report also includes categories for property destruction (seven cases, including the destruction of wells and crops); checkpoint closure (eight cases at five checkpoints, including instances of impeded access); mobile (“flying”) checkpoints (23); permanent closure of village access roads (seven); closure of main roads (40, (including four in Bethlehem and 14 in Hebron, and the village of Jaba east of Ramallah); closure of main crossing points (four, including the permanent blockade of Gaza); disruptions at school (three cases, including the throwing of two tear gas canisters); violence on the part of settlers (one, in Sheikh Jarrah); demonstrations (one, in Hebron). The checklist also includes Palestinian attacks (none on that day).
The philosophy behind the situation report is clear. An “event” is not just a fatality, assault, shooting or demolition. It is something that entails permanent damage, and stems from the policy of imposing closures, building the wall and maintaining the blockade of the Gaza Strip. But even without these occupation-related items, the vast majority of the incidents are not made known to the vast majority of Israelis.
No statistics can express the emotional and social distress that accompanies every event and non-event, such as the incarceration of 1.5 million people inside the Gaza Strip or the fact that tens of thousands still have not been able to reconstruct homes that were damaged during the Israel Defense Forces offensive in the winter of 2008-2009. Even without asking, it is possible to know that the reason for the destruction of the wells in the Jenin district is that they were dug “without a permit.” But the sovereign that destroys is also the one that controls the water resources and decides on an unequal division of water between Palestinians and Israelis. The statistics do not include the practical difficulties that stem from this discrimination or the permanent insult it creates.
In 2009, Israel destroyed 225 Palestinian homes in the West Bank and uprooted 515 Palestinians from their homes, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported. Thousands more in Area C and in Jerusalem live in constant fear that their homes will be destroyed and they will be uprooted from their places of residence.
How does one count fear? Like the fear that was felt in the homes of some 700 minors the IDF arrested in 2009. The Palestinian branch of Defence for Children International represented 218 of these minors. Forty were released, 28 on bail and 12 without conditions. Seven minors were kept in administrative detention – that is, they were detained without a trial. A total of 192 were brought to trial, of whom 23 were aged 12 or 13, and 46 were 14 or 15. The majority – 123 minors – were aged 16 or 17.
Sentences of less than six months were imposed on 121 of those arrested – 63 percent – while 31 of them received sentences of between six months and a year, and 32 were sentenced to between one and three years. Eight of the minors were jailed for more than three years.
The majority (117) were sentenced for throwing stones, 33 for possessing and throwing Molotov cocktails, 11 for being members of a banned organization, eight for conspiring to kill, seven for possessing and hiding explosives, and 16 for possessing and manufacturing weapons.
For the moment, let us not discuss the arrests and trials of the military system, which is said to be a way of maintaining law and order but actually maintains the occupation. Let us put aside, for now, the fact that in military tribunals it is often advisable to admit to offenses the defendant did not commit, since the detention time while the proceedings are underway might end up being longer than the actual sentence for the alleged offense.
But how is it possible to quantify the personal and collective rage expressed by the stones being thrown and created by Israel’s military tribunal system?
Any news item we report that deals with Israeli rule over the Palestinians is misleading. It creates the impression that whatever has been reported is all that has happened on the Palestinian side and that otherwise everything is normal, or even flourishing. Any news item that is published in Israeli papers is a sign of what is missing, what no one wants to know.
“Sleepless in Gaza and Jerusalem”: YouTube Series on Palestinian Women: The Only Democracy?
February 28th, 2010, by Carol Sanders
PINA TV Production and Radiant Circle Productions announce the March 1st opening of the premier episode of a 90-part series, “Sleepless in Gaza…and Jerusalem”, that will be launched on YouTube. It will be a video diary about four young Palestinian women, Muslim and Christian, two living in Gaza and two in Arab Jerusalem/West Bank.
The series will follow Ashira Ramadan, a broadcast journalist based in Jerusalem; Ashira’s friend in Gaza, the documentary film maker Nagham Mohanna; Donna Maria Mattas, a 17 year-old student at the Holy Family school in Gaza who dreams of growing up to be a journalist, and Ala’ Khayo Mkari who works with Caritas in Jerusalem.
The intention of this series is neither rant nor rhetoric. It is rather an opportunity for all of us, who do not live in Gaza, occupied Arab Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank to grasp how these four Palestinian women live out their daily lives, precisely because their lives are stories that journalists are too often told by their editors to think of almost dismissively as human interest and almost necessarily conflict driven.
Sleepless is Gaza and Jerusalem documents how –as human beings — these four Palestinians can also experience moments of personal and community achievement, and the warmth of friends and family life that in real life is possible even in the most difficult circumstances of siege and occupation.
Each episode runs 26 minutes and will be shot in Jerusalem/West Bank and Gaza, edited and uploaded the same day. So you will find a new sequence six days a week at www.youtube.com/SleeplessinGaza. On Friday, we all rest.
Palestinian cabinet moves meeting in shrine protest: BBC
Mr Fayyad said the move was a symbolic protest over Israel’s claim
The Palestinian Authority has shifted its weekly cabinet meeting from its usual location in Ramallah to Hebron, in a symbolic protest against Israel.
The move follows Israel’s announcement that two West Bank shrines are to be included in a list of its national heritage sites.
There have been daily clashes between stone-throwing youths and Israeli troops in Hebron for the past week.
Palestinian PM Salam Fayyad said the cabinet “absolutely rejected” the plan.
“These monuments are in Palestinian territory occupied in 1967, and this is the same land on which we are going to establish an independent Palestinian state,” the prime minister said.
Just over a week ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, known to Muslims as the al-Ibrahimi mosque, and the Tomb of Rachel in Bethlehem would be included in a $107m (£69m) restoration plan.
Israeli officials denied that Muslims would be denied access and said there had been a misunderstanding.
Hamas extends British reporter Paul Martin’s detention: BBC
Paul Martin was arrested before testifying at a trial in Gaza
The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas has said it is extending the detention of a British journalist being held in the Gaza Strip.
It announced Paul Martin would be held for a further 15 days.
The freelance reporter was arrested on 14 February as he prepared to testify in the defence of a militant accused of collaborating with Israel.
Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, initially said he would be detained for 15 days.
His defence lawyer Sharhabil Zayim said he would have to either be charged or released after that, Associated Press reported.
Mr Martin has written for the BBC and the Times.
Hamas claims Mr Martin “committed offences that harmed the security of the country” but has not made public its accusations against the reporter.
Hamas is the Palestinian militant Islamist organisation that took control of Gaza after winning elections there in 2007.
‘Israelis no longer allowed in Dubai after Hamas hit’: Haaretz
Dubai’s police chief said on Monday that travelers suspected of being Israeli will not be allowed into the United Arab Emirates even if they arrive with alternative passports.
Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim says the move comes after the killing of a Hamas operative in Dubai, blamed by the Emirates authorities on Israel’s Mossad spy agency.
Tamim said a 26-member team used European and Australian passports to enter the country in January and kill Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.
“We will not allow those who hold Israeli passports into the UAE no matter what other passport they have,” Tamim said.
He did not explain what procedures would be used to identify the Israeli visitors, except that the police will “develop skills” to recognize Israelis by “physical features and the way they speak.”
It was also unclear if the measure would apply to Israeli athletes competing in international sports events in the Emirates and how it could affect Israel’s participation in international meetings here.
It was unclear if the measure would apply to Israeli athletes competing in international sports events being held there, such as tennis player Shahar Peer, a recent semifinalist in the local WTA tennis tournament.
The comment came as earlier, Tamim had charged Mossad with insulting Dubai as well as countries whose forged passports were used by its agents in the assassination of a Hamas military commander last month.
The Dubai police chief also said a 27th member of the team that killed Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in his hotel room last month had been identified, saying only that she was a woman.
“Mossad shouldn’t come to us. We haven’t done anything to Israel. This is an insult to us, to Britain, to Australia, to Germany and to New Zealand and it’s shameful,” Tamim told reporters in Dubai, a member of the United Arab Emirates.
Israel has not confirmed or denied it played any role but Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said there was nothing to link it to the killing. Hamas says Mabhouh played a role in smuggling weapons from Iran into the Gaza Strip, which Hamas runs.
The UAE, an Arab state that backs Palestinians seeking an independent state, has no diplomatic relations with Israel.
But it has established low-level political and trade links in recent years, with some Israeli officials attending events in the Gulf Arab state. Israeli tennis player Shahar Peer competed in the Dubai Championships last month.
Tamim said dual passport holders with Israeli nationality would face extra security procedures in future and predicted the alleged hit team would have problems traveling outside Israel.
“In the future, those we suspect of carrying dual nationality [including Israeli] will be treated very carefully,” he said. “If Israel and Mossad mistreated Europeans, we will not… Our treatment of Europeans will not be affected.”
People with the same names as many of the suspects live in Israel and say their identities were stolen. The passport abuse has drawn criticism from the European Union, and some of the governments involved have summoned the Israeli ambassadors to their countries to protest.
Dubai police said on Sunday the killers drugged Mabhouh with a muscle relaxant before suffocating him.
Iran’s foreign minister on Monday challenged Western countries whose passports were used by Mabhouh’s assassins to answer questions about whether they were involved in the crime.
Manouchehr Mottaki told the UN Human Rights Council that Britain, France, Germany, Australia, Austria and Ireland should answer questions about the role their security services or intelligence may have played in the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.
Mottaki has in the past accused Western nations of fomenting terror under the guise of protecting human rights.
Meanwhile, Australian investigators are expected in Israel in the coming days to question several dual nationals whose names have been connected to the assassination of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai last month.
Israel agreed to allow two to three Australian police officers to question the dual citizens, after Australia’s Foreign Ministry on Sunday requested approval from the Israeli envoy in Canberra to dispatch the investigators.
Australia last week said it was not satisfied with the Israeli envoy’s explanation about the use of fraudulent Australian passports in the killing, after three people holding Australian passports were listed among 15 new suspects.
Media reports last week said that Australian authorities had approached Israel in the 1990s to seek assurances that its passports would not be used in Mossad activities after it was feared Israel had doctored New Zealand passports.
During that meeting, the reports claimed, the Israelis said they condoned such identity theft, with Australian participants describing their response as “enraged self-righteousness.”
On Saturday, investigators from Britain’s Serious Organized Crimes Agency arrived in Israel to interview dual nationals whose names were used on British forged passports tied to the killing.
‘Two suspected Dubai assassins traveled to the U.S. after the hit’
At least two of the 26 suspected members of the team that tracked and killed Mabhouh in Dubai last month traveled to the U.S. shortly after his death, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
Records show one of the suspects entered the U.S. on January 21 using an Irish passport and another arrived in the U.S. February 14 using a British passport, reported the Wall Street Journal, quoting “a person familiar with the situation.”
Investigators are uncertain whether the two are still in the U.S. Police suspect the alleged hit squad members used fraudulently issued passports, and that the two may have left the U.S. using different travel documents.
Spokesmen for the U.S. State Department and Interpol both declined to comment on the Wall Street Journal report.
Dubai police chief bars all suspected Israelis entering UAE: The Guardian
New restrictions after death of Hamas operative in Dubai blamed on Mossad agents with European and Australian passports
Seven of the 11 suspects with European passports wanted by Dubai police for the murder of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Dubai’s police chief will not let anyone even suspected of being Israeli into the UAE. Photograph: AP
Dubai’s police chief has said travellers suspected of being Israeli will not be allowed into the United Arab Emirates even if they arrive with alternative passports.
Lt Gen Dahi Khalfan Tamim announced the move after the killing of a Hamas operative in Dubai, blamed by the Emirates authorities on Israel’s Mossad spy agency. Tamim said a 26-member team used European and Australian passports to enter the country in January and kill Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.
The Emirates will now “deny entry to anyone suspected of having Israeli citizenship”, Tamim said at a security conference in Abu Dhabi today.
Tamim has emerged as a hero in Dubai and across the Arab world for his tireless pursuit of what he says “with 99% certainty” is an Israeli crime.
It was unclear if the measure would apply to Israeli athletes competing in international sports events being held there, or how the suspicions would be confirmed.
Israel has refused to confirm or deny its involvement but has described Mabhouh as playing a key role supplying Iranian rockets and money to Hamas.