Day by day Archive

Israel to launch ‘Palestinians-only’ bus service: Guardian

Service will ferry workers from the Palestinian town of Qalqiliya across the border of the West Bank towards Tel Aviv

Conal Urquhart

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has demanded Israel to provide an explanation for the secret deportation of more than 1,000 Sudanesemigrants via a third country.

A Haaretz story on the practice on Tuesday drew an outcry among human rights activists and politicians, with Labor leader Shelly Yacimovichdescribing the deportations as “immoral” and MK Dov Khenin of Hadash calling for them to be halted immediately.

Khenin also asked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to investigate who ordered the repatriation in the first place.

Sudan defines Israel as an enemy country and has warned that it will punish any of its citizens who set foot here. Consequently, human rights groups said, the deportation constitutes a violation of Israel’s most basic obligations under international law.

“The ease with which the State of Israel is willing to force people to return to a place where their lives are in danger, even if this danger arises only because they were in Israel, is worrying, and shows that we have become a society that sanctifies Jewish demography and gives it priority over humanistic Jewish values,” said Reut Michaeli, executive director of the Hotline for Migrant Workers.

While the state claims that all those deported left voluntarily, aid groups say the deportees were coerced by the threat that if they didn’t go, they could be jailed for years under a recent amendment to the Infiltration Law.

Sudanese migrants “who hear from government representatives that the law enables them to be held in prison forever without trial, and without their being able to apply for refugee status, despair,” said Michaeli. “They are even willing to endanger their lives to gain a slim chance at freedom.”

Shahar Shoham, who heads the migrants department of Physicians for Human Rights, agreed that the deportees could not really be said to have acted out of their own free will.

“At our open clinic, we treat many who report daily anxiety, fear of walking down the street and suicidal thoughts,” she said. “Is this free choice? And more than that, is this the treatment and protection we as a state give to victims of torture, human trafficking and persecution?”

Israel attempted to protect the deportees by deporting them via a third country to conceal the fact that they came from Israel, but the deportation took place without the knowledge or supervision of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

“In deporting [people] to Sudan, Israel has crossed a red line and is not only violating its most basic obligation under international law, but demonstrating cruelty, hardheartedness and indifference to the fate of human beings,” Assaf, the Aid Organization for Refugees and Asylum Seekers, said in a statement.

Haaretz, which first broke the story, has repeatedly tried to obtain a response from Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein, but his office again refused to comment Tuesday. As of press time, no response had been received from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Interior Minister Eli Yishai.

Meretz chairwoman Zahava Gal-On assailed Weinstein. “The attorney general is responsible for the fact that Israel’s government is acting contrary to the rule of law,” she wrote on her Facebook page.

Yacimovich said Israel should be helping asylum seekers, not sending them back. “The Jewish nation is well-versed in persecution and pogroms, so we have a special obligation to extend aid to refugees from genocide,” she said.

Israel has “voluntarily” returned at least 1,000 people to Sudan, an enemy country that has vowed to punish any of its citizens who ever set foot in Israel. The repatriation was done secretly, via a third country, over the last few months, without the knowledge of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

Haaretz knows the name of the third country, but is withholding it to avoid harming those who returned via this route.

Though Israel claims the people’s return was voluntary, this claim was rejected by UNHCR, which says there is no “free will from inside a prison.”

Under a recent amendment to Israel’s infiltration law, asylum seekers can be jailed for years without trial. Testimony from within prisons indicates that detainees were also denied access to UNHCR, in violation of the UN convention on the status of refugees, which Israel has signed.

All the Sudanese who left “voluntarily” already had Sudanese passports: Since their presence here was being kept secret, Israel couldn’t coordinate their departure with Sudan. An official source said Israel paid for their plane tickets.

In the past, the state has said in court that Israel doesn’t deport Sudanese nationals, because “Sudan and Israel are enemy states, such that a Sudanese national who has set foot in Israel can’t return to his country for fear of his life, or so he claims.” This is in contrast to residents of South Sudan, with which Israel does have relations, and to which it began repatriating people after the country gained its independence from Sudan in 2011.

Aside from the fact that Israel and Sudan are enemies, Sudanese law explicitly forbids its citizens to enter Israel. Its passports even state that they are valid for entry to every country except Israel.

Senior Sudanese officials have also made public threats against Sudanese nationals who fled to Israel. In July 2007, for instance, Sudan’s interior minister said that any Sudanese living in Israel would be punished. Shortly afterward, Sudan’s refugee commissioner accused Sudanese refugees in Israel of carrying out a “Zionist agenda” against Sudan, and urged the Egyptian authorities to punish Sudanese who try to enter Israel via Egypt.

In September 2007, Sudan’s foreign minister said that for a Sudanese to reside in Israel was a criminal offense.

The UN’s stance on the issue is also clear. Michael Bavli, UNHCR’s representative in Israel, warned the Population, Immigration and Border Authority that “deporting Sudanese to Sudan would be the gravest violation possible of the convention that Israel has signed – a crime never before committed.”

The UN refugee convention explicitly states that even someone who wasn’t a refugee when he first left his country can become one thereafter, if subsequent events – in this case, entering an enemy country – make it impossible for him to return to his country without risking his life.

Such people, known as “refugees sur place,” enjoy all the same protections under the convention as people who originally fled their country due to a “well-founded fear of persecution.”

This interpretation has been upheld by Israel’s Supreme Court. “All governmental powers – including the power to deport under the Entry into Israel Law – must be exercised on the basis of recognition ‘of the value of the human being, and the sanctity of his life and his freedom,'” wrote former Supreme Court President Aharon Barak in one verdict, quoting the Basic Law on Human Dignity and Freedom. “This is the great principle of non-refoulement, under which a person cannot be deported to a place where his life or liberty would be in danger. This principle is enshrined in Article 33 of the refugee convention. It is part of the domestic legislation of many countries … This is a general principle that isn’t limited solely to ‘refugees.’ It applies in Israel to every governmental authority that deals with deporting someone from Israel.”

Harel Locker, director general of the Prime Minister’s Office, has also said previously that Sudanese nationals can’t be deported back to Sudan, though they could be deported to another country “that agreed to absorb them” and would “guarantee their safety.”

Aside from the fact that Sudan and Israel are enemy states, many of the Sudanese in Israel come from the province of Darfur, where they were victims of ethnic persecution and genocide by the regime. Due to these crimes, the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant on charges of genocide against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and other senior Sudanese officials.

Others come from other areas of Sudan, such as the Nuba Mountains or other parts of Kordofan, that have been subjected to brutal attack by the Sudanese government – including aerial bombing, the destruction of entire villages and mass arrests of hundreds of thousands of people – in an effort to suppress what the government terms rebellions. Still others fled Sudan due to religious or ethnic persecution.

The Population, Immigration and Border Authority (part of the Interior Ministry ) responded that “the government’s policy of not deporting north Sudanese has not changed.”

The Foreign Ministry said: “Since overall responsibility for this issue rests with the Population Authority, we are barred from commenting independently on this issue and refer you to the responsible party – that is, the Population Authority.”

The Justice Ministry declined to comment.

EDITOR: The apartheid pogroms go on, now in Jerusalem

A groups of Jewish youngsters has attacked and beat up an elderly Arab woman in the Jerusalem neighbourhood of Kiryat Moshe, in broad daylight and in view of hundreds of people, including the security officers of the train service, who stood besides and smiled, doing nothing to stop the violence or arrest the perpetrators. This is the Jewish democracy at work. Unfortunately, I have this report only in Hebrew, as Maariv does not translate the news, and Haaretz found it acceptable not to translate or report in English.

תקרית אלימה בירושלים: צעירות יהודיות הכו ערבייה בתחנת רכבת:Haaretz

האישה עמדה בתחנה בשכונת קריית משה בבירה, כשלפתע החלו מספר צעירות שעברו במקום להכות אותה נמרצות ואף הסירו ממנה את כיסוי הראש. עדת ראייה סיפרה ל-nrg: “הצעירים היו שתויים והקב”ט צפה בתקרית בחיוך ולא התערב”

יוסי אלי | 26/2/2013 14:57Share on facebookShare on twitter

תקיפות הערבים בבירה נמשכות: לטענת עוברי אורח, קבוצת נשים יהודיות תקפה אתמול (ב’) אישה ערבייה שעמדה בתחנת הרכבת הקלה בקריית משה בירושלים. לדברי העדים, האישה ניסתה להתנגד, אולם הצעירות תקפו אותה שוב ושוב ואף הצליחו להוריד ממנה את כיסוי הראש. בעקבות הפרסום ב-nrg מעריב, המשטרה פתחה בחקירת המקרה.

האישה נהדפת אל הקיר. היום צילום: דורית יורדן דותן

המקרה התרחש כאמור אתמול בסביבות השעה שלוש אחר הצהריים, כאשר לדברי עדת ראייה, צעירה דתייה שחלפה בתחנת הרכבת הקלה נתנה לפתע אגרוף לאישה שהמתינה במקום. לטענת העדה, חברותיה של היהודיה מיד חשו לעזרתה והחלו להכות אותה נמרצות ואף הדפו אותה לעבר קיר התחנה.

עדת ראייה שחלפה במקום ואף צילמה את הנעשה סיפרה ל-nrg מעריב: “היו שם בערך 100 חרדים ובחורי ישיבה שיצאו מהרכבת הקלה וראו אישה ערבייה עם גבר מבוגר, התפתח שם ויכוח וצעקות, ואני לא יודעת מה היה תוכן הדברים כולם התנפלו עליה”.

לדברי עדת הראייה,  פעילת השלום דורית יורדן דותן, קצין הביטחון של עיריית ירושלים,  שעובד בתוואי הרכבת הקלה, צפה באירוע ונראה מחייך. “זה היה פשוט נורא”, תיארה.

מעיריית ירושלים נמסר בתגובה כי “המקרה המדובר לא התרחש בתוך הרכבת אלא ברחוב. מאבטח של  הרכבת הקלה ששהה בסמוך דיווח מיידית על האירוע, שהסתיים תוך שניות ספורות”. עוד הוסיפו בעירייה כי “יש לפנות למשטרה בנושא”.

דותן סיפרה עוד כי כאשר הגיעה הרכבת לתחנה והחלה לנסוע, חבורת הצעירים עזבו את המקום. “האישה הערבייה הייתה נרגשת מאוד”, ציינה. “הצעירים שתו הרבה יין בגלל פורים והצעקות נשמעו לכל עבר. האישה ניסתה להלחם בהם אך הם צעקו עליה שלא תעז לגעת ביהודים והמשיכו להכותה”.

עדת הראייה הוסיפה כי להוציא אדם מבוגר שהיה יחד עם האישה שהותקפה וניסה לעזור לה, תושבים רבים עמדו מנגד ולא חשו לעזרת המותקפת. “האדם שהיה איתה עמד חסר אונים ולא ידע כיצד להפסיק את התקיפה”, ציינה והוסיפה כי “בכל אותה העת, עמד וחייך איש הביטחון במקום ואפילו לא ניסה להפריד”.

בעקבות הפרסום ב-nrg מעריב אמר ח”כ עיסאוי פריג’ (מרצ): “אם נכון הדבר, ואנו עדים למתקפה גזענית נוספת כנגד אזרחית ערבייה, כל אזרח במדינת ישראל, יהודי או ערבי, צריך לפחד. למה הופכת מדינת ישראל? אישה מותקפת לאור יום ואיש לא מתערב ולא בא לעזרתה?”.

פריג’ הוסיף: “מקוממת במיוחד היא מדיניות השתיקה שמובילים ראש הממשלה בנימין נתניהו ושר החינוך גדעון סער, שלא יוצאים בצורה ברורה כנגד תופעות מחרידות כאלה. שתיקה כמוה כמתן הרשאה ורוח גבית לנגע האלימות והגזענות שמתפשט בחברה הישראלית”.

גם ח”כ אחמד טיבי (רע”ם תע”ל) הגיב לפרסום הפרשה. לדבריו, “ריבוי תקיפות ערבים על רקע לאומי לאחרונה הוא סימפטום של חברה געזנית ובלתי סובלנית. לא מדובר בשתיינים אלא בחוליגנים גזעניים שהשטרה חייבת לעצור ולהעמיד לדין” . לטענתו, התנהגות קצין הבטחון היא חלק מהבעיה ולכן הוא חייב להיחקר.

”זה היה פשוט נורא” צילום: דורית יורדן דותן

”

האישה לא הצליחה להתנגד” צילום: דורית יורדן דותן

In Jerusalem, Palestinian protesters hurled stones at Israel Police forces following the conclusion of Friday prayers. In a rare move, Israeli police entered the Temple Mount and used stun grenades to disperse the crowd. Dozens were reportedly wounded after inhaling tear gas.

According to Palestinian eyewitnesses, the confrontations began at the conclusion of Friday prayers as many demonstrators marched toward roadblocks the West Bank. IDF soldiers fired tear gas, stun grenades and rubber bullets toward Palestinian protesters, who threw rocks at the soldiers.

In the area around Ramallah, hundreds of Palestinians gathered near the IDF roadblock next to Ofer Prison to rally in support of hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners. At least 12 people were reportedly wounded by rubber bullets or due to tear gas inhalation during clashes with IDF forces.

Heavy clashes also reached the area of Hebron, where Palestinian demonstrators demanded the re-opening of Hebron’s Shuhada Street to Palestinian residents, who cannot use the street, and also showed their support for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons.

As the protesters approached Shuhada Street, IDF soldiers fired tear gas at them. One of the demonstrators said that the procession had been a quiet one and that the demonstrators had no intention of confronting IDF troops. However, the Palestinian witness stated, as the procession neared Shuhada Street they were met with what was described as a very violent response from IDF soldiers, who fired tear gas and stun grenades at them and used other crowd dispersal methods. Palestinian Legislative Council member Mustafa al-Barghouti was wounded along with dozens of others as a result of the tear gas. Clashes also broke out in the area of Tul Karm, Nablus, Jenin and at several Palestinian villages located near the separation barrier.

In the last few days, tension in the West Bank has escalated. Hundreds of Palestinians have participated in a slew of protests, demonstrating in support of hunger-striking Palestinians jailed in Israeli prisons.

Hundreds of young Palestinians from Beitunia demonstrated Thursday in support of hunger-striking prisoners. The youths clashed with Israel Defense Forces soldiers that arrived on the scene with heavy reinforcements, ready to contain the protests.

During the morning protests, Palestinian youths began hurling stones at soldiers and Israeli Border Police officers. Three journalists were lightly wounded by the stones, including Channel 1 correspondent Yoram Cohen, a reporter and a photographer from Channel 10. Palestinian officials reported that 20 people were injured by rubber bullets.

On Thursday, the leader of the northern wing of The Islamic Movement in Israel, Sheik Ra’ad Salah, announced that he has also begun a hunger strike, in solidarity with the prisoners. Two days ago, a tent was erected in Nazareth’s Maayan square in support of the prisoners. There, activists distribute information about the prisoners, and released prisoners are available to talk.

On Saturday, a demonstration is scheduled to be held in the city’s main street in support of the prisoners, while other protests are expected to continue throughout the West Bank.

EDITOR: The pogroms continue

As the notion of anti-Arab pogrom is becoming normalised in Israel – a toxic import from the settlements – the latest brutal attack happens in Jaffa, very near the place I grew up in. It matters not to racists that these are actually citizens of Israel – they are not fooled by silly democracy – and such attacks are spreading to other parts of the country. These attacks bear all the signs of the typical anti-Semitic attacks on Jews in Eastern Europe during the early 20th century. The perpetrators are never caught or brought to justice, surprisingly.

Jewish youths attack Arab man in Tel Aviv: Haaretz

40-year-old Jaffa resident was beaten with glass bottles early Sunday morning; victim’s wife says attacking youths claimed ‘Arabs are taking over the country.’

By Jack Khoury and Yaniv Kubovich | Feb.24, 2013 | 7:45 PM |  1

A 40-year-old Jaffa resident was attacked early Sunday morning in Tel Aviv by Jewish youths and sustained serious wounds to his head. The attack, which occurred on Herbert Samuel Street around 4:00 A.M. after the victim, Hassan Ausruf, 40, had gone out to work. Ausruf operates a street-cleaning vehicle for contractor cleaning company. When Ausruf stopped his vehicle to fill its water tank, a group of youths assaulted him.

Ausruf’s wife, Nariman, told Haaretz that a group of about 15 people started to bully and attack Hassan without provocation. “He asked them why they were attacking him and they told him with utmost chutzpah ‘because you’re Arab,'” Nariman told Haaretz. “They attacked him with whatever they could get their hands on, bottles and shards of glass and they inflicted serious wounds to his head and in one of his eyes.” She added, “At some point he managed to escape with his entire face covered in blood and reached a friend where he collapsed.”

A Magen David Adom ambulance took Ausruf to Wolfson Medical Center in Holon where he was treated for deep cuts to his face and fractures to his skull and the region surround one of his eyes. “There’s no doubt that he was saved by a miracle,” said Nariman. “We have lived in this city for decades and we have never encountered this kind of violence and racism. They simply beat him because he is Arab and told him that Arabs were trying to take over the country.”

Tel Aviv Police have opened an investigation into the incident. Police stated that the group that attacked Ausruf was dark-skinned and it is believed that they were a group of Ethiopian-Israelis that left a Purim party. Police also stated that no suspects were arrested at the time of this report.

EDITOR: No torture in Israel, ever…

In the only Jewish democracy in the Middle East, prisoners die all the time, just like Prisoner X, who has managed to commit suicide in the most watched cell in the known universe… Now, a Palestinian prisoner, Arafat Jaradat, has died of torture, it seems… but of course, this cannot happen in Israel, where no one is being tortured, so he just died in order to annoy the Israelis, of course.

Palestinians say autopsy shows detainee died from torture: Haaretz

PA chief pathologist, present at Arafat Jaradat’s autopsy, says body of the prisoner, who died on Saturday, has signs of torture; medical examination lists no cause of death; Israeli officials: No signs of torture.

By Dan Even, Jack Khoury and DPA | Feb.24, 2013 | 10:11 PM

Palestinian women take part in a protest against the death of a Palestinian detainee in an Israeli jail, in Gaza City, Feb. 24, 2013. Photo by Reuters

The Palestinian prisoner who died in Megiddo Prison on Saturday did not expire from a heart attack, as Israeli officials previously claimed, but from torture, says a Palestinian doctor who was present for the autopsy performed by an Israeli doctor Sunday.

Saber Aloul, chief pathologist of the Palestinian Authority, who attended the autopsy in Israel, said marks on Arafat Jaradat’s body showed he had been tortured during his interrogation.

The autopsy, performed at the National Institute of Forensic Medicine, listed no
cause of death.

The Shin Bet security service denied Aloul was tortured. A Health Ministry spokesperson said no exterior signs of injuries were discovered during the medical examination, apart from resuscitation bruises and a small abrasion on the right side of Jaradat’s chest.

The examination was conducted by the institute’s chief pathologist, Yehuda Hiss, in the presence of Aloul and the head of the Health Ministry’s medical administration, Prof. Arnon Afek.

Prior to the autopsy, Israeli officials had said Jaradat likely died of cardiac arrest, while Palestinians believed he died as a result of torture.

No sign of heart failure was found during the examination, nor was any other sign of illness, according to Aloul and Israeli officials.

Pathologists are now awaiting the results of microscopic and toxicology tests, which might take days or even weeks to receive.

Jaradat’s death sparked clashes throughout the West Bank Sunday and Palestinians called for an international investigation of Israel’s treatment of detained Palestinians.

In all, Israel holds close to 4,600 Palestinians on a range of charges, from throwing stones at Israelis to involvement in deadly shooting and bombing attacks. Of the detainees, 159 are being held without charges or trial in administrative detention.

According to the Shin Bet, Jaradat was arrested last Monday, after residents of his village said he was involved in a rock-throwing attack that injured an Israeli. Jaradat admitted to the charge, as well as to another West Bank rock-throwing incident last year, the Shin Bet said.

The Shin Bet said that during interrogation he was examined several times by a doctor who detected no health problems. On Saturday, he was in his cell and
felt unwell after lunch, the security service said in a statement. “Rescue services and a doctor were alerted and treated him. They didn’t succeed in saving his life,” the statement said.

A Shin Bet spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with protocol, said Jaradat was not beaten during his interrogation, nor was he subjected to any treatment that could have affected his health. Jaradat was not on a hunger strike, said Sivan Weizman of the Israel Prison Service. Prior to the autopsy, Weizman said Jaradat had died of an apparent heart attack.

Jaradat’s attorney, Kamil Sabbagh, said his client told an Israeli military judge during a hearing on Thursday that he was being forced to sit for long periods during interrogation. He also complained of back pain and seemed terrified to return to the Shin Bet lockup, but did not have any apparent signs of physical abuse, Sabbagh said.

After the court hearing, the judge ordered Jaradat to be examined by a prison doctor.

Jaradat, a father of a 4-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son, worked as a gas station attendant. His wife, Dalal, is pregnant, relatives said. Issa Karake, a Palestinian official who handles prisoner issues, said he holds Israel responsible for Jaradat’s death, alleging ill-treatment and medical negligence. Karake called for an independent international investigation of Israel’s treatment of Palestinian detainees.

The human rights group B’Tselem also demanded an investigation, including how Jaradat was questioned.

The agency routinely holds detainees in isolation for extended periods during interrogation, keeping them in cells that are lit around the clock and denying them access to lawyers, said Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for the group.

She said that physical mistreatment of detainees had dropped sharply in recent years, but has not disappeared, according to affidavits by released prisoners. She also said detainees have filed some 700 complaints about mistreatment by Shin Bet agents during the past decade, but that none has led to a criminal investigation.

Prisoner was tortured before dying in Israeli jail, says Palestinian Authority: Guardian

Death of 30-year-old man sparks violent clashes in Hebron that leave three Palestinians and one Israeli soldier injured

Phoebe Greenwood in Hebron

Palestinian students take cover from tear gas fired by Israeli security forces during clashes in the village of Saair following the death of a Palestinian prisoner held in Israel. Photograph: Hazem Bader/AFP/Getty Images

A Palestinian prisoner whose death in Israeli custody fanned violent clashes across the West Bank over the weekend was tortured before he died, the Palestinian Authority has said.

The results of an autopsy conducted in Tel Aviv were revealed at a press conference in Ramallah on Sunday evening after a day of angry protests across West Bank and Gaza in which dozens were injured.

The findings contradict claims by the Israeli prison service that Arafat Jaradat died on Saturday from a cardiac arrest. A Palestinian doctor’s investigations found that while Jaradat’s arteries were clear, his bruised and bloody body suggested he had been beaten in the days before his death.

The 30-year-old, a petrol station worker and father of two, was arrested on 18 February in relation to a stone-throwing incident in November during which an Israeli was slightly injured.

Aside from an old back injury inflicted by a teargas canister, his relatives insist he was healthy when he was arrested.

Just a few days later, he died in Megiddo prison..

Kameel Sabbagh, a lawyer who attended Jaradat’s last hearing on Thursday, has claimed that he had advised the Israeli Judge that his client had been tortured and should be examined by the prison doctor. According to Sabbagh, this did not happen.

“He had serious pains in his back and other parts of his body because he was being beaten up and hanged for many long hours while he was being investigated,” Sabbagh told Ma’an news agency. Sabbagh’s notes from the court hearing describe his client as “extremely afraid” of returning to his cell.

A rumour that he had been beaten to death during an interrogation spread quickly through Hebron on Sunday where hundreds of protesters clashed with Israeli soldiers for the second day running in the streets kilometres from Jaradat’s home.

“When the soldiers came to arrest him last week, they told him say goodbye to your wife and your babies, you won’t be seeing them again,” said Mohamed Hashlamon, 58, as he watched masked Palestinian youths hurl concrete blocks from the roof above his home in downtown Hebron to arm themselves with the rubble.

A phalanx of Israeli soldiers lining the border between the Israeli and Palestinian quarters answered rocks with rubber bullets and tear gas. Three Palestinians and one Israeli soldier were injured in the clashes.

“People here are angry. They will fight until night fall and they will protest again from 10am tomorrow just as they did yesterday,” Hashlamon said. Jaradat’s body was taken for an autopsy in Tel Aviv on Saturday and will be returned to his pregnant wife for burial in their village of Saeer after midday prayers on Monday.

His death has inflamed already heightened tensions across the occupied Palestinian territory. On Friday, hundreds clashed with Israeli soldiers in a continuation of months-long demonstrations supporting four hunger-striking Palestinian prisoners held without charge in Israeli jails. On Saturday, nine Palestinians were injured, one critically, when settlers used live rounds of fire in clashes near Nablus.

The Hebrew-language media have noted with alarm that the Palestinian Authority is doing little to dissuade protests but is lending its voice to the popular outrage. Issa Qaraqea, the PA’s minister for prisoners’ affairs, expressed his suspicion of foul play in Jaradat’s death.

“Our information was that Jaradat was being interrogated and then he died. Therefore we call for an international investigation into his death that may have resulted from torture,” he told Reuters.

As night fell on Sunday, the West Bank showed no sign of calming. In Beitunia, near Ramallah, two teenagers were reportedly hit with live rounds fired by Israeli soldiers. One, the 15 year-old son of the Palestinian secret services chief, was undergoing surgery having been shot in the stomach.

“Statements from the international community calling upon Israel to ‘respect Palestinian prisoner rights’ are insufficient when Israel can arrest, incarcerate and even kill Palestinians without … consequences for its appalling actions,” a statement from the Palestinian leadership read. “Without justice, there will be no peace.”

EDITOR: While Israel is playing coalition forming, Palestinians are moving towards a general action against the occupation

The PA government has done all it can to assuage Israeli interests and to scotch Palestinian anger and frustration, but it seems they were not that successful. After months of hunger strike but growing numbers of Palestinian political prisoners, the population in the West Bank is rising again against the brutalities of the occupation. If Israel counts on the PA to do its dirty work, maybe it is a miscalculation? They may not be able to deliver the goods this time round.

The Israeli-Palestinian talks that never took place begin on the street: Haaretz

As support for Palestinian hunger-striking prisoners grows throughout the Arab world, releasing them is a small price to pay to deflect increasing pressure from Israel.

By Zvi Bar’el | Feb.24, 2013 | 12:38 PM |  3

Palestinian women take part in a protest against the death of a Palestinian detainee in an Israeli jail, in Gaza City, Feb. 24, 2013. Photo by Reuters

Clashes in the West Bank, Feb. 2013.Photo by AFP and Haaretz

The death of Arafat Jaradat in the Megiddo Prison, together with the 216-day-long hunger strike of Samer el-Issawi and the hunger strike of three other prisoners, the demonstrations commemorating the anniversary of the massacre perpetrated by Baruch Goldstein in Hebron in 1994, the clashes in the village of Kosra in the Nablus district – all these are supposedly “local incidents” that can be easily defeated by a few smoke grenades, rubber bullets and arrests.

Nobody describes them as an intifada yet, and with good reason. The term “intifada” is reserved for an all-out war, a series of terror attacks, call-ups of the reserves and flooding the ground with troops. These things have not happened yet in the West Bank.

The Fatah leadership, headed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), has announced that they will not allow the outbreak of a new intifada. Certainly they will not allow it on the eve of U.S. President Barack Obama’s historic visit to Israel. Nor will they allow it when Abbas’s representatives, Saeb Erekat and Muhammad Shtaya, are holding talks about the scheduling of the visit of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. But all it takes is the death of one of the prisoners on a hunger strike or several youths being killed by IDF gunfire to make the Palestinian Authority lose its restraining power, which is not all that much in any case.

Quite a few groups are operating in the West Bank, including Abbas’s critics and rivals within Fatah, who believe that he is not strong enough to cause a change in Israel’s policy. Some of them are demanding that the Palestinian Authority be dismantled and Israel “handed back the keys.” Others fear that Abbas’s political moves against Hamas could shut Fatah out of the positions that control wealth and power. Setting the ground ablaze could serve those groups, locking Abbas into a belligerent stance he never intended to take.

This is not Abbas’s dilemma only. For now, the demonstrations and clashes have attained one important goal: the affair of the prisoners has led to demonstrations of support and statements of solidarity in Beirut, Egypt and Jordan, and “serious concern” by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. They have also been discussed in Washington by the Palestinian emissaries, and the Arab League intends to transfer the matter to the Security Council.

But all this international activity will not impress the activists on the ground, or the prisoners, as long as Israel gives nothing in exchange or makes no compromises. As usual, the question is whether Israel will succeed in taking an important measure before things go out of control, or wait for more pressure from the ground and from the international community. On several occasions in the past, Israel realized that there was no sense in dealing stubbornly with a hunger strike, which not only won support but also put it under international pressure that it didn’t need. The case of Khader Adnan, an Islamic Jihad operative whom Israel released from prison where he had been under administrative detention after a 67-day hunger strike, is just one example.

Even if the price of dealing quickly and rapidly with the jailed hunger strikers involves making concessions, it is still much lower than an escalation that could cause hunger strikes to spread to all the prisons and nourish clashes in the city streets. In a situation where there is still no government in Israel that can make decisions on the peace process, start talks with the Palestinian Authority and offer a practical peace arrangement, the least Israel can do is calm inflamed areas. The most sensitive among them is the matter of the hunger-striking prisoners.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday commented for the first time on the Prisoner X affair, after several days of silence by the Israeli government.

“At the opening of the meeting I would like to say that I trust completely the security forces of the State of Israel. They work with endless dedication to ensure that we can live in this land. I also have absolute trust in the legal authorities in the State of Israel.”

“Israel’s security and intelligence forces act under the full supervision of the legal authorities, which are completely independent. In providing for security and enforcing the law, freedom of expression is also protected. But primarily – we are not like the other states.”

“We are an exemplary democratic state and we protect the rights of the interrogated and individual rights no less than any other country. But we are also more threatened and more challenged, and thus we must preserve the proper activities of our security services. Therefore I ask of everyone: Let the security forces continue to work undisturbed, so that we can continue to live in security and tranquility in the State of Israel.”

Australia to conduct its own probe into Prisoner X affair: Haaretz

Australian foreign minister requests that Israel pass over all information surrounding the 2010 imprisonment and death of Australian national and alleged Mossad agent Ben Zygier.

By Barak Ravid | Feb.17, 2013 | 10:00 AM |  2

Israeli elections yet again ended in a draw – a tie between left and right, if those are the correct terms in Israel. The elections deflated the Bennett legend, with Habayit Hayehudi turning out to be another Shas in the number of seats it won, no less and no more. Not what we thought and not what we feared. Israel on Tuesay voiced a very hesitant “yes”, which was almost a “no”, to the aspirations of Shelly Yacimovich to become a real alternative to Netanyahu. The party she heads will not even be the second largest in the Knesset, to its shame. This signals the end to her pretensions to reconstruct the Labor party, counting on drawing strength from the social protests two summers ago and from masses of young-old voters, obedient and conformist, who ended up not delivering the goods. Her dreadful sleight of hand, attempting to hide the occupation under the carpet, did not help her much.

In contrast, Israel said “yes” to a straight shooting party such as Meretz, which doubled its strength in a dignified showing. Israel also said “no” to the fragments of tiny parties that did not pass the electoral threshold. The good news: the racist Otzma Leyisrael as of this writing is out. The bad news: as of this writing, the subversive “Eretz Hadasha” (new country) didn’t make it either.

Above all, Israel made a decisive statement regarding what it wants: it wants nothing, only to be left alone. Voters want a quiet, good life, peaceful and bourgeois, and to hell with all those pesky nagging issues. Lapid epitomizes this attitude, being the role model for the all-Israeli dream. He looks good and dresses well, he’s well-spoken and well-married, lives in the right neighborhood and drives the right kind of Jeep.

With that, he doesn’t say much. He’s not extreme, heaven forbid, that’s not who we are, nor does he stick his hand in the fire, that’s not us either. He stays away from any divisive issues, just as Israelis prefer. Even when they took to the streets in that magical summer of 2011, remnants of which event were still evident yesterday, their protests turned out in retrospect to be encapsulated only in songs by popular singers Shlomo Artzi and Eyal Golan, without real substance. Lapid fits this mold perfectly, as characterized by protest singing in the city square, with no clear agenda and angry protest. “Let us Live in Peace” was the slogan of the General Zionist party in the 1951 elections. Let us live in this land was the slogan of many Israelis yesterday. Let us live without Arabs and Haredi Jews, without wars and terror attacks, without the world and its preaching. Now, as it was then, this represents pure escapism. Yesterday, Israel affirmed escapism.

On Tuesday, Lapid acquired power that he most likely did not anticipate, and that he may not know what to do with. It is difficult to know if he can put some content behind the power given to him, but perhaps there is room for hope. For someone who managed to change his conduct and mannerisms in the course of the preceding campaign, shedding some of those that characterized his columns and TV appearances, growing and maturing in the process, it is possible that he will grow into the role thrust upon him yesterday. Perhaps with the power will also come some meaningful utterances and a willingness to fight.

A new day is dawning upon us, a dawn of a day in which Israel only wants to be left alone with all its comforts. Only grant it Lapid and quiet, the terrible quiet at the brink of the abyss.

EDITOR: And while the pundits are punditting, apartheid strikes in total immunity!

On January 17, the Israeli army destroyed 55 homes and animal shelters in the Al Maleh area. This large scale military operation happened simultaneously in two separate locations: Hamamat al-Maleh, and further up the valley in Al-Mayta. Al-Maleh and Al-Mayta are two marginalized villages located in the north of the Jordan Valley, near the Tayasir checkpoint.

Of the 55 buildings demolished, 23 were family homes: five in Hamamat Al-Maleh (leaving 37 people homeless) and 18 in Al-Mayta (leaving 150 people homeless). In addition, 33 other buildings used to shelter the communities’ animals were destroyed, as well as some water tanks. Two days later, on January 19, the entire village had been declared a Closed Military Zone and the Israeli army confiscated the community’s possessions, including food, bedding and tents that had been provided to the families by the Red Cross after the demolitions. However, the residents stayed and slept out in the fields with no shelter.

Both Al-Maleh and Al-Mayta, like many villages in Area C, have suffered a continuous pattern of harassment by the Israeli army. They have been subject to repeated demolition orders and only two weeks ago were forced to leave their homes for one night, purportedly due to Israeli military training.

LIKUD VICTORY RALLY, TEL AVIV – After months of predictions for a comfortable right-wing win, Israel reeled tonight at a surprising near-gridlock between the “Right” and “Left” parliamentary blocs, with the Netanyahu-Liberman union barely scrambling past 30 seats, instead of the 45 42 they held between them in the departing parliament. But Netanyahu’s ratings were in steady decline ever since the union pact in late November and not least thanks his petty and paranoid attacks on settler leader Naftali Bennett.  The true surprise of the landslide vote was ultra-centrist candidate Yair Lapid. Lapid, a TV personality who avoided taking any remotely controversial stand on almost any issue, careened past rivals right and left to end up with 17 to 19 seats, rendering him the kingmaker of these elections. Bennett himself, the other golden boy of the 2013 elections, is currently forecasted to win 12 seats, a solid achievement but a far cry from the utopian poll projections of 15-19. Kadima, the centrist party that led Israel to wars in Lebanon and Gaza during its first term in the Knesset, and imploded in a series of ill-judged political manoeuvres at the end of its second term, has not made it to a third term at all, evaporating from Israeli politics with zero seats in the exit polls.

On the Left, Shelly Yacimovich doubled Labor’s seats but fell far, far behind her promise to oust Netanyahu or even to restore Labor as a significant force in Israeli politics. To add insult to injury, after making every possible effort to depoliticise and centralise Labor’s toxic brand, she was overtaken by an ad-hoc party led by a man who lacks any of the political structures, networks and traditional strongholds of Labor, but whose neutral and consensual public image made him more apolitical than she could ever hope to be. The great winner on the left side of the map is Meretz, raised from the dead by new leader Zehava Galon to go from three to seven seats; unlike Labor, Meretz never harboured illusions about premiership, so it can be content with its significant victory. Hadash, the only Jewish-Arab party running, is left with four seats, having failed to rejuvenate its front ranks and thus also failed to capitalise on the social justice movement in which its activists played a significant part (stay tuned for separate stories on social justice and Hadash tomorrow).

Theoretically (or rather, purely arithmetically), Lapid is now in a position to make a bold bid for premiership. Although earlier attempts to herd the centre-leftist cats into a unified bloc ahead of the elections failed miserably, the tantalisingly small gap between the Left and Right in the exit polls could give Lapid enough of a momentum – to hammer together a centre-left government of small parties, to persuade Shas to switch sides (by reminding them they’d hold much more sway in such a fractured coalition than in a strong right-wing one), and to solicit the external support of Arab parties (among which Hadash is usually lumped), eventually creating something akin to Rabin’s government in 1992. But, to the tune of “you are no Jack Kennedy,” Lapid is no Rabin, and 2013 is not 1993. Lapid is risk-averse and lacks a political program or vision; while the negotiated two-state process, a novel idea in Rabin’s time, has been tested and failed in the 21 years since. What’s more, hostility towards the Arab parties is immeasurably greater than it was in the 1990s. Any party overpowering the Right with these parties’ support will be seen as an usurper. Lapid may well launch a bid for premiership – but this is likely to be a negotiation ploy designed to mark him as not just a coalition member, but a partner in a “national unity” government, a title with considerably more clout and gravitas.

Poison, sir?

The more likely outcome, then, is a strong right-wing government with Lapid’s party as its safety belt and fig leaf. In such a scenario, Lapid can look forward to appointment as foreign minister, which would reward him with prestige and the limelight he is long accustomed to, and would reward Netanyahu with a telegenic, charismatic and unoriginal moderate face in the world arena. If Netanyahu sees Lapid more as a rival than a partner, however, he might offer him the Finance Ministry instead – a poisoned chalice if there ever was one. While a highly prestigious position and well in tune with (upper class) Lapid’s self-appointed role as emissary of the middle class, the Treasury is the least enviable fiefdom Netanyahu can offer anyone. Israel is facing an NIS 40 billion deficit and is poised on the brink of an austerity drive set to affect primarily Lapid’s own electorate; getting him to deliver the blow to his own crowd will neutralise him even more effectively than leaving him out of government. The same, with slight amendments, applies to Naftali Bennett and several other candidates; the Finance Minister appointment will tell us where Netanyahu sees the greater threat – from the Centre or from within the Right – and who he considers his most dangerous rival.

If she holds by her vow never to enter Netanyahu’s government (even if he offers her, say, the Finance Ministry), Yacimovich now has the opportunity to forge a combative and determined opposition. Such a move, if played patiently and committedly, will pay off with interest over the long term, especially in the wake of the anticipated austerity drive. This move can be impeded not only by tempting offers from Netanyahu, but primarily from within Labor – the most patricidal (or matricidal) party in Israeli politics. The knives will be out for the leader whose campaign was characterised by self-promotion and by a neglect, to put it mildly, of some of the strongest potential Labor candidates who came into the party of their own accord (Stav Shaffir and Merav Michaeli being the lead examples,) in favour of loyal but utterly lacklustre apparatchiks.

Tomorrow morning Israel will wake up to the real results fairly similar to the exit polls (despite the latter’s margin of error), and while a complete tie between Right and Left or a slight advantage to the Left can generate a modest momentum for an attempted leftist government, the right-by-centre-right coalition is the likeliest outcome. The only question is how tough a negotiator Lapid will prove to be – he could condition his entry into government on, say, complete exclusion of all ultra-Orthodox parties – and how protracted negotiations will be as a result. This might be more significant than a mere inconvenience: Israel is currently without a budget (Netanyahu threw down the cards on budget negotiations in the spring as pretext for gambling on elections) and is weighed down by a 40-billion-shekel deficit. Delay in putting together the team that will cover up that black hole will make the fabled Israeli stock exchange very antsy and drive a pin into Israel’s financial stability balloon – setting the stage for a much more heated contestation over economy, far from the Right’s familiar playing field.

The success of Israel’s social protest failure: Haaretz

While Tuesday’s election was in many ways about the social protests in Israel in 2011, it did not address the most pressing social ills and only perpetuated the false dichotomy between right and left.
By Lev Grinberg     | Jan.23, 2013 | 2:12 AM

Tuesday’s election in Israel revolved around the success of the social protests of the summer of 2011 — and also their failure. If we cannot comprehend this paradox then we cannot easily comprehend the bizarre and surprising campaign we just witnessed — and what it is expected to bring.

There is nothing extraordinary about this paradox. It is the nature of protest movements to succeed only in part because they are not political parties, and the existing parties always try to gain political capital on Election Day from the protests.

The Israeli Black Panther movement, for example, erupted, like all social protests, during a period of military calm (1971-73), and it shook up the political system. The Panthers protested against anti-Mizrahi discrimination and voiced their anger at an establishment that absorbed them as immigrants and then relegated them to the social, economic, geographic and cultural periphery. “The second Israel,” they were called, or edot hamizrah (communities of the east), to underscore their inferiority.

Even though it comprised only a few thousand young and inexperienced demonstrators, the Panthers’ protest made enormous gains in changing the public discourse about Mizrahim. It also succeeded in changing economic policy and in transforming Israel from a hand-out state into a welfare state.

But the Panthers’ success helped Likud to mobilize Mizrahi anger without having to represent Mizrahi interests. The peripheral Mizrahim voted for Likud in order to bring down the Labor Alignment, which had discriminated against them. But they got stuck on the “right” and the Mizrahi voice was suppressed repeatedly, by both the right and the left. The economic situation of some Mizrahim has improved since the 1970s, thanks both to the welfare policies introduced by Labor Party precursor Mapai and Likud’s rise to power. But others remained stuck in the periphery and in difficult economic circumstances. At the same time, the legitimacy for speaking in the name of anti-Mizrahi discrimination was lost: For proof, look at Shas.

The reference to the Black Panthers was not accidental. This election revolved around the discourse that was created in that era, a discourse of left and right and the Ashkenazi hegemony that silences any voice that lays it bare. Hatred of Shas was a common denominator of this election, in parties from Habayit Hayehudi on the right to Meretz on the left — a wall-to-wall coalition.

This points up one of the most glaring failures of the recent social protest movement: its inability to combine the discourse of equality and social justice with the need for affirmative action for groups within society that the regime oppresses: Mizrahim on the periphery, the ultra-Orthodox, Arabs, Ethiopians, some Russian-speakers and above all, Palestinians in the territories.

The reign of the business tycoons would not be possible without dividing and sowing strife among these various groups. A universalist discourse on behalf of justice and equality is insufficient, because justice and equality only for some immediately become injustice and inequality.

To my mind, the most serious failure has been the preservation of the left-right discourse, which silences any substantive debate on all the issues on the agenda, including those relating to the Palestinians. But above all, the “left-right” discourse silences issues of economic and social policy, because the poor can be found on both sides of this divide and they have not succeeded in uniting against the rule of the wealthy. Ever since 1977 Likud and Labor have imposed this left-right dichotomy in order to preserve their power and prevent rivals from entering the arena.

And that is what happened in the recent election season: Even though the socioeconomic agenda was in the background throughout the campaign (from the joint slate formed by Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman to the resignation from the cabinet of Moshe Kahlon and his appointment to a different post at the last moment), there was no new political language. We went back to talking about left-wing and right-wing blocs even as both are crumbling, divided and strife-ridden, and the public feels that every word uttered by the politicians is empty: symbols that stand for nothing. Peace, security justice, equality — everything is included, and it’s all hollow.

They talk about natural partners, about one’s political home. But politics is the opposite of nature: It’s about changing reality: about interests, positions, disagreements, building coalitions to deal with the state’s major problems, formulating policy and implementing it. All these were absent from this election. And therefore, the day after the election, when the results are already known, all the questions will still be before us, but the public won’t be involved in how they are decided. It’s a facade of democracy.

This, too, is an expression of the social protest’s failure: its inability to create a new political language that links the question of social justice to the regime that discriminates against various groups because of their identity, its inability to overcome the regime of division, of intimidate and conquer. This is the regime that Mapai built and Likud perfected, while in the process building the reign of capital and the tycoons.

The language of the left-right cartel is still with us. The Ashkenazi elites have many parties — all except those of the very poorest, who are set apart out and marked as inferior, the lazy and the exploiters who don’t fulfill their obligations: “the ultra-Orthodox and the Arabs.”

When Shas co-leader Aryeh Deri pointed out the whiteness of the right he was attacked from all sides, and he retreated. But this election revolved around whiteness.

That was precisely the criticism leveled at the leadership of the Rothschild Boulevard protesters in the summer of 2011: its whiteness, its dominance, its failure to represent the periphery and its desire to preserve the power of the middle class — that is, the secular Ashkenazim.

Their supporters will indeed enter the Knesset. But all the others won’t. And I don’t believe they’ll quietly go home. My prediction is that they will yet return to the streets, and someday they will succeed in translating the protest into a political language. There will be other elections.

So let’s get this out of the way first: Dov Khenin is the best!

No, seriously. It’s really tough to find something bad to say about the Hadash party Knesset member, try as you might.

Just ask his detractors. Sure, they might point out that he’s a communist, which is true. They could claim he belongs to the radical left, which he does. They could snarl that he’s anti-Zionist, and he probably wouldn’t deny it.

But then they’d have to explain why he is the No.1 legislator in the 18th Knesset, proposing no less than 529 bills in the last four years, of which 27 were approved. They would also have to ignore the awards and honors he’s received, among them the Knight of Quality Government Award from the Movement for Quality Government in Israel and the Parliamentary Excellence award from the Israeli institute for Democracy. They’d also have to admit that he is the most socially and environmentally conscious Member of Knesset there is.

And then they’d have to explain why they cooperated with him on so many bills. Khenin is such an enigma that even his most ardent enemies have a hard time demonizing him. So they just leave him alone.

The point is you can say what you want about Khenin, but you can’t deny he’s probably the most committed, hard-working MK in Israel in recent memory. That’s why unlike his peers, such as Balad’s Hanin Zuabi, Meretz’s Zehava Gal-On or even Labor’s Shelly Yacimovich – it’s hard for the right wing to attack him.

Yes, he is unashamedly communist. He supports nationalizing the banks, the profits from the Tamar and Leviathan deep-water gas prospects and the mineral wealth of the Dead Sea. What of it?

Khenin is so open about his communistic world view that it’s hard to accuse him of being covert. And he speaks just as much about social and environmental issues as he does about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, if not more, so it is hard to stamp him with the “leftist” label that in Israel dooms you to the fringes of society.

Khenin is already in the fringiest fringe anyway. And he is destined to stay there. And he knows it. And that’s fine. He has learned to make the best of it. In July 2012, Kadima MK (and Hatnuah party candidate) Meir Sheetrit said in a televised interview: “Dov Khenin comes from a small party, but his influence is far greater than all of Kadima.”

Kadima, with 28 seats, was the biggest party within the 18th Knesset. Hadash, with three seats, was one of the smallest.

‘I think I can, I think I can’

It’s not so much that Khenin seems resigned to his marginal status, as that he seems cool with it.

A lot of politicians in Israel would despair of being stuck in third place on the list of a small far-left Arab-Jewish party that has never exceeded three seats in the Knesset and probably won’t this time either (according to recent polls). Many would give up. Many did. But like The Little Engine That Could, Khenin is always forging ahead. It is easy to imagine him telling himself in moments of self-doubt: “I think I can, I think I can.”

The tenacity with which Khenin, married with three children, has engaged the margins of the political debate, and his ability to make lemonade out of some really tart lemons, can be explained by his background. He was born into the political fringes in 1958, his father being David Khenin, a leader of Maki, the Israeli communist party. Khenin is a member of the Maki central committee himself.

His mother, also a communist activist, was a preschool teacher. Young Dov developed a keen interest in politics from an early age, earning his first stripes in Banki, Maki’s communist youth movement, and other left wing youth organizations. Being a communist in Israel, even in socialist Israel, was akin to being a social pariah. In some circles, it still is. Yet he hung on, and stuck to the family tradition. When it came time for him to enter the Israel Defense Forces, he did, but he refused to serve in the Occupied Territories, foreshadowing a lifelong support for conscientious objectors. “I have never tried to hide any detail of my past. I am at peace with everything I’ve ever done,” he told the right-wing newspaper Makor Rishon in 2006.

In 1982, he completed an undergraduate law degree at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He has described his university days as a time of intense social and political activity. One of his activities was pushing for combined Arab-Jewish political activities and agendas. In 1984, he began working as a lawyer at the firm of Amnon Zichroni, famous for being one of the first conscientious objectors in the history of Israel – declaring himself a pacifist in 1954 – and for being the lawyer of Israeli nuclear spy Mordechai Vanunu.

During his first years as a lawyer, an occupation he continued practicing until 2004, Khenin led some influential human rights cases, including that of five left-wing conscientious objectors, known as Mishpat Hasarvanim (“The Trial of the Refuseniks”). During this period, he also received a PhD. in political science from Tel Aviv University, completed post-doctoral work at Oxford, writing about the relationship between environmentalism and social issues, taught at Tel Aviv University, wrote two books and edited various other books and articles and continued with his political and environmental activism. In 2002 he became the chairman of Haim VeSviva (“Life and Environment”), an umbrella organization comprised of more than 100 environmental organizations and causes in Israel.

Since 1990, Khenin has been a member of Maki’s leadership. In 2003, he made his first foray into parliamentary politics, running in the fourth spot on the Hadash-Taal party list. He had originally been in third place on the Hadash list, a slot held before him by the much-admired (and strikingly similar in gaining admiration from all ends of the political spectrum) Tamar Gozansky. But Hadash, a Jewish-Arab socialist party and the de facto political arm of Maki, banded with the Arab Taal party for the elections, winning just three seats and leaving Khenin less than 1,000 votes short of qualifying. It was the first time Hadash had not sent a Jewish party member to the Knesset.

The partnership between Hadash and Taal did not last long, and in the 2006 elections for the 17th Knesset Khenin was placed third on the Hadash list, finally making it to the Knesset and becoming a MK. He was quick to become one of the most active Members of Knesset, becoming the head of the social-environmental lobby, the biggest lobby group in the Knesset, together with the Rabbi Michael Melchior of Memad.

Darling of cats and the coolth of Tel Aviv

Khenin was especially active on social and environmental issues, writing dozens of bills relating to human rights, workers’ rights and women’s rights, as well as animal, environmental and child protection laws. Together with Labor MK Eitan Cabel, he was responsible among other things for the prohibition of declawing cats, which won him the support of, well, the entire freaking Internet.

Then, in 2008, he really made his mark with the Israeli public, going from an anonymous MK from a small party hardly anyone knew to the total darling of Tel Aviv leftists and hipster wannabe-leftists. The event that upgraded his status was his decision to run against Tel Aviv mayor Ron Huldai in the municipal elections. Khenin, who was not perceived as particularly charismatic then, ran as the mayoral candidate of Ir Lekulanu, a non-partisan Arab-Jewish-Green municipal party established in 2008 and composed of social and environmental, as well as Hadash, activists. Khenin did not have an easy time running against the incumbent Huldai, who was popular and established and enjoyed the endorsement of the Labor party. Plus, the voting rate in the municipal elections in Israel is patently low.

Still, Ir Lekulano gave one hell of a fight, running a viral Facebook (in the relatively early days of Facebook in Israel) and Youtube campaign, directed specifically at young people living in Tel Aviv, most of them in their 20s and early 30s, leaning to the left, riding bicycles and having a hard time dealing with the rise in rental prices that was effectively forcing them out of the city. The campaign recruited many celebrities and created a political, activist climate in Tel Aviv that would contribute to emergence of the social protest movement three years later.

But still, Khenin lost. He gained 34.3 percent of the vote, compared to Huldai’s 50.6 percent. Ir Lekulani, despite losing the mayoral race, still gained the most votes in the municipal elections and won five seats in the city council. To this day, it remains a viable political force in the Tel Aviv political scene, struggling for affordable housing and better public transportation.

After the mayoral elections, Khenin went back to the Knesset, having lost the race but won the affection and admiration of Tel Aviv’s young adults. In the elections for the 18th Knesset, he was placed again in the third place in Hadash. Upon entering the Knesset, he again headed the social-environmental lobby, this time alongside Nitzan Horowitz of Meretz. During his second term as MK Khenin sustained his energetic style, remaining highly involved in issues relating to social and environmental issues, winning the title of ‘most social MK’ twice in a row by the HaMishmar HaHevrati (“The Social Guard”), a nongovernmental organization established following the social protests of 2011 to keep track of the activity in the Knesset and report it to the public.

Singlehandedly, he elevated Hadash’s image with the Israeli left, projecting an agenda that could be mistaken for social democracy if it wasn’t for his candid, outspoken style.

To read the rest of the article use the link above.

Palestinian activists have set up a protest camp in the West Bank to demonstrate against what they say is an Israeli land grab.

They say they set up a mosque and several tents Friday in the village of Beit Iksa near Jerusalem.

In a statement, activists said they were securing land from Israel.

The Israeli military said soldiers were monitoring the area to prevent disturbances.

On Sunday, hundreds of Israeli security forces evacuated some 100 Palestinians from a protest tent camp set up two days earlier in the E-1 corridor east of Jerusalem.

The evacuation – which involved about 500 Israel Police officers and Israel Defense Force soldiers – was carried out despite a temporary injunction issued by the High Court of Justice preventing the state from evacuating the encampment for six days, pending deliberations.

Protesters refusing to evacuated leave were carried down the hill by Israeli officials, but there were no reports of injuries. “Everyone was evacuated carefully and swiftly, without any injuries to officers or protesters,” said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued the evacuation order on Saturday, and by late night the IDF had the area surrounded and were preventing supporters from entering. Activists said they would oppose any attempt to forcibly remove them.

Netanyahu said Sunday that he had ordered the area sealed off immediately after hearing of the tent encampment. “I immediately called for the area to be closed off so there would not be large gatherings there that could cause friction and breach the public order,” he said.

“We will not allow anyone to touch the corridor between Jerusalem and Ma’aleh Adumim,” Netanyahu added.

Haaretz has determined that the tents were put up on private Palestinian land. In preparing the plans for area E-1 in the West Bank, the state in 2005 examined the records for the lands on which the settlement is to be built. The plan shows an area of 1,500 dunams (375 acres) out of the total 12,000 dunams (3,000 acres‏) allocated for construction that Civil Administration figures indicate is privately owned by Palestinians, although the land was not registered officially.

Continue reading Jauary 19, 2013