The plot thickens… Turkey is not taking the Israeli bully lightly! So maybe some deep movement was started by Gaza, much deeper than Israel realises or admits to!
Turkey has said it will recall its ambassador unless a row over his treatment by Israel’s deputy foreign minister is rapidly resolved.
The dispute comes after the deputy minister, Danny Ayalon, summoned the ambassador, Oguz Celikkolits, to rebuke him over a TV series.
He then ensured the ambassador was seated on a lower chair and removed the Turkish flag from the table.
In an attempt to defuse the row, Mr Ayalon said disrespect “is not my way”.
He said in future he would behave “in a diplomatically acceptable manner”.
But Turkey has demanded a formal apology from Israel.
“Unless they make up for it by this evening, our ambassador will return on the first plane tomorrow,” President Abdullah Gul was quoted as saying by the NTV news channel. ‘Repeated provocation’
Footage of Mr Ayalon urging journalists to make clear the ambassador was seated on a low sofa, while the Israeli officials were in much higher chairs, has been widely broadcast by the Israeli media.
He is also heard pointing out in Hebrew that “there is only one flag” and “we are not smiling”. In an interview with Israel’s Army Radio on Tuesday, Mr Ayalon was unapologetic.
ANALYSIS
Jonathan Head, BBC News, Istanbul
What began as a diplomatic stunt now has the potential to escalate into a serious breach between Israel and Turkey. Clear splits have emerged within Israel’s coalition government over how to handle the Turkish government, which has become an increasingly strident critic of Israel at the same time as it has moved closer to Iran and Syria. It is less clear what Turkey’s long-term aims are with Israel, for decades a close military and trading partner, but the governing party has said it no longer sees its relationship with Israel as a priority.
“In terms of the diplomatic tactics available, this was the minimum that was warranted given the repeated provocation by political and other players in Turkey,” he said, according to Reuters.
One Israeli newspaper marked the height difference on the photo, and captioned it “the height of humiliation”.
The meeting with Mr Celikkol had been called to discuss the fictional television series Valley of the Wolves, popular in Turkey.
It depicts Israeli intelligence operatives kidnapping babies and converting them to Judaism.
Last October Israel complained over another Turkish series, which depicted Israeli soldiers killing Palestinians. In one clip, an Israeli soldier shoots dead a smiling young girl at close range.
The row comes ahead of a planned visit by Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak to Turkey on Sunday.
Turkey has long been an ally of Israel, but relations have deteriorated as Ankara has repeatedly criticised Israel for its offensive in Gaza a year ago.
Rights groups say about 1,400 Palestinians died during the operation, which Israel said had been aimed at ending rocket fire by Hamas.
Thirteen Israelis died during the violence.
Nora Barrows-Friedman, 11 January 2010
University students demonstrate at Hampshire college. (Hampshire SJP) In 2009, Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, became the first American higher educational institution to successfully pressure its Board of Trustees to divest from Israel-tied mutual funds. The victory came three decades after the college similarly disinvested from funds linked to apartheid South Africa. Across North America, student-led Palestine activism groups have used the methods formulated by the Palestinian-led call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) “to implement divestment initiatives against Israel, similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era, until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to self-determination and fully complies with international law.” Hampshire College’s divestment move was a victory for the students and the administration of Hampshire College, and an inspirational model for hundreds of activism groups across North American campuses.
But despite the expanding and momentous student-led BDS movement, open dialogue around the reality of the situation in occupied Palestine continues to be an uphill battle for many professors inside the classrooms. Educators who openly align with the BDS movement, or speak out against Israeli-US policy in Palestine and the region, are being harassed, threatened, blacklisted, denied tenure and fired from their academic posts.
Denied tenure at Ithaca College
Margo Ramlal-Nankoe, former professor of Sociology at Ithaca College in New York, said that after she started addressing issues of human rights abuses in occupied Palestine — especially after the start of the second Palestinian intifada — she was warned by faculty members at the college that she was “risking” her career and “would suffer repercussions from the administration.” Ramlal-Nankoe told The Electronic Intifada (EI) that the verbal threats eventually led to alleged racist and sexist attacks, and an open death threat from a faculty member who protested Ramlal-Nankoe’s support of a department colleague whose husband was Palestinian. “He [made] a cut-throat gesture with his hand across his neck to me,” Ramlal-Nankoe said. She was later denied tenure in 2007. With the tenure review board voting unanimously against her, alleging she did not “fit in the department,” faculty colleagues had encouraged the board to “stop hiring third-world elites,” and told them that Ramlal-Nankoe’s position in the department should instead go to a “native-born American.”
“My tenure debacle started in 2005,” Ramlal-Nankoe told EI. “I received a strong majority vote in support of my tenure in 2005 from the Sociology Tenure Committee. However, the Dean committed violations in my tenure review and denied me tenure. I appealed the dean’s decision and the violations by him and a minority in the Sociology tenure committee. After I won the appeal in April 2006, the provost halted my tenure review and proposed to have a new tenure review in 2007 to correct the violations. This provost was fired soon after his decision.”
Ramlal-Nankoe attributed the core of the attacks and her denial of tenure to her support of Ithaca College’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) group, her organization of a series of Palestine-Israel-themed speaking events on campus (including guests such as Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi, EI’s Ali Abunimah, and former UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq Denis Halliday) and her public criticism of Israel’s ongoing military occupation and violations of human rights in Palestine. The college’s Hillel organization was also aggressive in its attacks against on-campus criticism of Israeli policy.
Furthermore, Ramlal-Nankoe alleged that the college’s dean of the Humanities and Sciences Department at the time of her tenure denial, Howard Erlich, was “known” for his personal retaliation against faculty and staff who he considered to be “too sympathetic” to the Palestinian cause). She also asserted that Erlich denied funding requests for educational programs on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, classifying them as “anti-Israeli.” Ramlal-Nankoe added that at this time, Erlich had stated to her that his son was serving in the Israeli army.
Professor Ramlal-Nankoe has filed a lawsuit against Ithaca College, but it has not been resolved, she said, despite lengthy appeals and publications. Her case is now under investigation by the New York State Human Rights Commission and the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
North Carolina State University case
Film studies professor Terri Ginsberg, similarly fired in 2008 by North Carolina State University (NCSU) in what she says was a punishment for her outspoken criticism of “Zionism, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and US Middle East policy,” believes that institutionalized censorship on the Palestine-Israel issue in the academic realm is eerily reminiscent of the McCarthy era of the 1950s and ’60s. “So many of the dynamics and methods of discrimination perpetrated against today’s scholarly critics of Israel and US Middle East policy derive from and continue, in updated fashion, practices initiated and implemented during that shameful period,” she says.
Ginsberg told EI that she was strongly encouraged to apply for the tenure track position at NCSU because of her strong academic service record and favorable student evaluations. But when she began publicly criticizing US-Israeli policy in the Middle East inside and outside the classroom, the administration retaliated against her and she was “punished with partial removal from — and interference in — duty, non-renewal of contract and rejection from a tenure-track position.” She remarked that since then, her entire professional academic career has been crippled. “I have been veritably blacklisted from the university classroom, ostracized by many of my colleagues, and have been forced to endure unnecessary, unwarranted economic hardship and psychological distress,” Ginsberg said.
Ginsberg also filed a legal complaint against NCSU, accusing the administration of discrimination and violation of the North Carolina Constitution, alleging freedom of speech violations and employment prejudice.
Terri Ginsberg’s legal counsel, Rima Kapitan, told EI that she expects NCSU to file a response to the lawsuit soon. Kapitan added, “The pervasiveness of restrictions on Palestine-related speech in today’s academic climate is shocking, given our Constitution’s speech protections and our society’s idealistic conception of academia as a bastion of open dialogue and debate.” Scare tactics on campuses by administrations and outside Zionist-aligned groups, Kapitan asserted, have resulted in widespread “self-censorship” by untenured or adjunct professors. Combined with a paradigm in which campus administrators and program coordinators take “neutral” stances on the so-called Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Kapitan said that “voices critical of Israel are often either banned or are not permitted unless they are heard alongside Zionist perspectives …[Academia] is a very dangerous climate for critics of Zionism.”
Hostile climate
Working alongside discriminatory academic administrations are right-wing Zionist groups, such as the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) and Campus Watch. Campus Watch in particular has been a strong force behind smear campaigns against university professors such as Terri Ginsberg. Campus Watch describes itself as a “project of the Middle East Forum” that “seeks to have an influence over the future course of Middle East studies” on US college campuses. However, it has been instrumental in vilifying and discrediting distinguished, well-known academic critics of Zionism and Israeli policies such as Norman Finkelstein (denied tenure in June 2007 from DePaul University), and Joel Kovel (fired from Bard College in 2008 in what Koval claimed was a thinly-veiled attempt by the college to categorize the firing as a necessary and nonpolitical budget cut). The Middle East Forum (MEF) is a right-wing think tank based in Philadelphia that “define[s] and promote[s] … US interests in the Middle East [including] fighting radical Islam; working for Palestinian acceptance of Israel; robustly asserting US interests vis-a-vis Saudi Arabia; and developing strategies to deal with Iraq and contain Iran.” Daniel Pipes, director of the MEF and a top neoconservative American academic, was quoted in 2001 by the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs as saying, “the Palestinians are a miserable people … and they deserve to be.”
Ginsberg said that because of the hostile climate within certain academic structures, combined with external pressure by these so-called watchdog groups that seek to silence criticism of Israeli policy, academic workers are made to “self-censor in order to locate and retain albeit meager employment, producing a chilling environment for permanent faculty as well … Meanwhile, non-conforming Jewish voices and perspectives continue to be held with suspicion and condemnation, not least when they articulate solidarity with the oppressed.”
She said that her academic and intellectual work was highly influenced by her Palestine activism, and “greatly enhanced” her ability to make “informed, well-rounded scholarly judgments about the conflict’s academic and cultural expression, discern true from false facts about it, and convey them to my students and in my writing — writing which would also begin to analyze the ensuing, heightened suppression of academic speech critical of Zionism and US Middle East policy.”
Slashed from the classroom but undeterred in her political activism, she continues to pursue “scholarly, activist and public intellectual work on Palestine/Israel and on Middle Eastern culture in critical light of US and European policy and attitudes toward the region.”
Fight for academic freedom
Ramlal-Nankoe’s and Ginsberg’s battles come at a time when there are both controversies and victories in the fight for academic freedom. In New York, Nadia Abou El Haj, professor of Anthropology at Barnard, became the focus of an online petition to deny her tenure, organized in part by a Barnard graduate who lives in the illegal Israeli settlement colony of Maale Addumim in the occupied West Bank. Despite external pressure, Barnard granted El Haj full tenure in 2007.
Additionally, Joseph Massad, EI contributor and professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University, was finally granted tenure in 2009 after a years-long public struggle. Massad was the favored target of pro-Zionist student groups who sought to dismantle his tenure application in 2005 by discrediting him in the media in an attempt to pressure the tenure review board. After Columbia’s decision to grant Massad tenure, The New York Post and The Huffington Post, among many other media outlets, ran pieces decrying the outcome. Anna Kelner wrote in The Huffington Post: “[W]hen Columbia University granted tenure to Joseph Massad … the University jeopardized its long-standing commitment to cultivating and supporting its Jewish student population.”
EI also reported on the controversy surrounding Professor William Robinson at UC Santa Barbara, who, after emailing his students with a sharp critique of Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip last winter, was accused by pro-Zionist student groups (backed by the Anti-Defamation League and the Simon Wiesenthal Center) of faculty misconduct; but the case was thrown out by university officials in June of 2009.
Hindering the debate
However, Ramlal-Nankoe and Ginsberg are still worried. They believe that by attacking, censoring and firing professors because of their political activism specifically on this issue, university students are disallowed the broad-based political education necessary to understand the reality in Israel-Palestine.
“The overall situation in this respect will only deteriorate unless, in contrast to the McCarthy era, public and academic outcry, organized protest and transformative praxis are marshaled to bring about a constructive reversal in the current, nefarious trend,” Ginsberg observed. “The … Gaza Freedom March is one such protest, the BDS movement yet another. But we should not, at the same time, ignore troubles on the home-front. Persons dedicated to teaching the history and culture of Palestine justice struggles, for prime instance, must be allowed to do so unhindered by the fear and economic insecurity wrought by a higher educational system in which academic freedom has sadly devolved almost completely into academic ‘free enterprise.'”
Professor Margo Ramlal-Nankoe agrees. “The repercussions on faculty who dare to speak out against injustices [are] abysmal and contradict and defeat, in my opinion, the whole purpose of education and critical inquiry. In other words, it is anti-education.”
Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University Richard Falk, who is currently the United Nation’s Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said he, too, is concerned about “diverging trends in relation to academic freedom for those who express sharply critical views of Israel [and] Zionism”
“My only advice [to professors], having been attacked for several decades,” Falk added, “is to make yourself as invulnerable as possible in relation to the standard expectations that prevail in universities: publish in scholarly venues, teach reliably and with receptivity to diverse opinions, and be a useful colleague, but do not abandon your conscience or your identity as an engaged citizen with critical views.”
Falk told EI that the growing BDS movement, specifically within the academic and cultural boycott call against Israeli apartheid, is an effective course of action amongst educators and cultural workers of conscience. “There seems to be diverging trends in relation to academic freedom for those who express sharply critical views of Israel or Zionism,” Falk remarked. “On the one side there is growing sympathy for the Palestinian struggle, and this is exhibited by the spreading BDS campaign. On the other side, there are increased efforts by organized Zionist groups to exert covert and overt pressure on university administrations to punish those seen as critics of Israel. As a result, we can expect some inconsistent outcomes in this period.”
Currently, according to the US Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (USACBI) campaign, more than 450 American educators and 125 writers, journalists, artists and musicians (including this writer and EI’s Ali Abunimah) have signed onto the national statement. The BDS campaign is gaining ground as academics stand up for their beliefs — and resist the aggressive political pressure — within American educational institutions.
Nora Barrows-Friedman is the co-host and Senior Producer of Flashpoints, a daily investigative newsmagazine on Pacifica Radio. She is also a correspondent for Inter Press Service. She regularly reports from Palestine, where she also runs media workshops for youth in the Dheisheh refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.
Turkey has demanded that Israel apologise over what it called the “discourteous” way its ambassador was treated during a diplomatic meeting.
Israel summoned Turkey’s ambassador to rebuke him over a TV series but ensured he was photographed on a lower chair.
In response, Turkey has summoned the Israeli ambassador to Ankara to express its “annoyance”.
The foreign ministry has also insisted it expects steps to be taken to compensate its envoy.
In a statement, the ministry said it awaited “an explanation and apology” for the “attitude” of Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon.
“We invite the Israeli foreign ministry to respect the rules of diplomatic courtesy,” the statement said.
The television series that sparked the diplomatic row depicts Israeli intelligence agents as baby-snatchers.
‘Repeated provocation’
Footage of Mr Ayalon urging journalists to make clear that the ambassador was seated on a low sofa, while the Israeli officials were in much higher chairs, has been widely broadcast by the Israeli media.
He is also heard pointing out in Hebrew that “there is only one flag here” and “we are not smiling”.
In an interview with Israel’s Army Radio, Mr Ayalon was unapologetic.
“In terms of the diplomatic tactics available, this was the minimum that was warranted given the repeated provocation by political and other players in Turkey,” he said, according to Reuters.
One Israeli newspaper marked the height difference on the photo, and captioned it “the height of humiliation”.
The meeting with the Turkish ambassador, Ahmet Oguz Celikkol, was called over the fictional television series Valley of the Wolves, popular in Turkey.
It depicts Israeli intelligence operatives running operations to kidnap babies and convert them to Judaism.
Last October Israel complained over another Turkish series, which depicted Israeli soldiers killing Palestinians. In one clip, an Israeli soldier shoots dead a smiling young girl at close range.
The row comes ahead of a planned visit by Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak to Turkey on Sunday.
Turkey has long been an ally of Israel, but relations have deteriorated as Ankara has repeatedly criticised Israel for its offensive in Gaza a year ago.
Rights groups say about 1,400 Palestinians died during the operation, which Israel said was aimed at ending rocket fire by Hamas.
Please note: the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and olanned ones in Yemen and Iran are obviously not enough for Netanyahu! Now Tuekey is on the gunsight…
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that Turkey’s closer ties with Iran and Syria were a cause for concern in Jerusalem and that he fully backs Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman for the controversial reprimand delivered by his deputy in a meeting with Ankara’s ambassador.
“Turkey is consistently gravitating eastward to Syria and Iran rather than westward [over the last two years],” Netanyahu told aides. “This is a trend that certainly has to worry Israel.”
Officials in the prime minister’s bureau said that the decision to summon the Turkish ambassador for a reprimand was jointly made by Netanyahu and Lieberman.
Netanyahu aides added that the premier was not aware of the choreographed nature of the meeting between Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon and Turkish ambassador Ahmet Oguz Celikkol.
“From the moment the incident occurred, the prime minister is fully backing the foreign minister,” a source close to Netanyahu said.
The Turkish government communicated a blunt message Tuesday demanding an official apology from Ayalon for his televised castigation of Ankara’s ambassador to Tel Aviv.
Turkey said that Israel’s refusal to apologize posthaste would prompt retaliatory “diplomatic steps.” Israeli officials said that, in the worst case scenario, Turkey could recall its ambassador as a sign of protest.
Turkish officials made the demand during a meeting Tuesday to which they summoned Israel’s ambassador to Ankara, Gabi Levy.
The Israeli ambassador was asked to clarify a Foreign Ministry statement in response to Turkish Prime Minister Reccep Tayip Erdogan’s criticism of Operation Cast Lead. “The Turks are the last ones who can preach morality to Israel,” the statement read.
“We’re waiting for an apology from the Israeli side very soon,” a Turkish official told Levy. “If there won’t be an apology, we will respond with diplomatic steps of our own.”
A Turkish official denounced Ayalon and Lieberman on Tuesday as “adolescent youths” for the incident.
Israeli officials were angered by statements made Monday by Turkish Prime Minister Reccep Tayip Erdogan, who accused Jerusalem of using “disproportionate power … while refusing to abide by UN resolutions” relating to its policy toward the Palestinians.
In addition, Israeli officials were furious over a recently aired Turkish television program, “Valley of the Wolves,” which portrays Shin Bet security service agents as child kidnappers.
In response, Ayalon summoned the Turkish ambassador to Israel, Ahmet Oguz Celikkol, for consultations.
During the meeting, Celikkol was seated in a low sofa, and facing him, in higher chairs, were Ayalon and two other officials – an arrangement carried out on the orders of Ayalon’s superior, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.
A photo-op was held at the start of the meeting, during which Ayalon told the photographers in Hebrew: “Pay attention that he is sitting in a
lower chair and we are in the higher ones, that there is only an Israeli flag on the table and that we are not smiling.”
Celikkol’s associates told Army Radio on Tuesday, that the meeting with Ayalon was the most shameful display he had seen in 35 years as a diplomat.
According to the associates, Celikkol had no idea what the topic of conversation was to be when first seated. When the cameras left the room, the sources said, the meeting was normal and professional.
“Had the ambassador understood Ayalon’s intentions, which were only expressed in Hebrew, he would have responded in kind,” the source told Army Radio.
Celikkol told Army Radio that the episode was the most shameful experience of his 35-year career.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that Ayalon did not intend to humiliate Celikkol by seating him in a lower chair without flag representation during their meeting.
Celikkol was called in regarding a recent Turkish television drama depicting actors dressed as Shin Bet officers who kidnap babies.
In response to the incident, the Turkish Foreign Ministry on Tuesday summoned Israeli Ambassador Gaby Levy for clarification.
“It would be worthwhile for Israel to know its boundaries and to not dare cross them,” a Turkish official said.
He added that Ankara knows to differentiate between the various constituent elements of the Israeli government, and that it would prefer to deal only with ministers and leaders who assume a more moderate line.
Ankara on Tuesday rejected Israel’s criticism of Turkey’s past while accusing Lieberman and Ayalon of staging the incident to enhance their domestic political standing.
“Turkey has always been a friend to Jews,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
“Deep-rooted relations between Turks and Jews that precede the establishment of the Israeli state and the general structure of our relations give us the responsibility to make such warnings and criticism,” the statement read.
“We expect an explanation and apologies from Israeli authorities for the attitude against our Tel Aviv ambassador Oguz Celikkol, and the way this attitude was reflected,” the Turkish foreign ministry said in a statement.
“We call on the Israeli Foreign Ministry, whose behavior and attitude towards our Tel Aviv ambassador did not comply with diplomacy, to obey courtesy rules,” it said.
The Foreign Ministry stressed that it had summoned the envoy and ordered the seating arrangment to make clear that it would respond to any insult made by the Turkish leadership.
Meanwhile, Turkey’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Ahmet Davutoğlu spoke on Tuesday during a press conference in London following his meeting U.K. Foreign Secretary David Miliband regarding his country’s ties with Israel.
“Relations between Turkey and Israel will go back to normal once Israel returns to a pro-peace policy,” he said, adding that “the Turkish government made great efforts to advance the peace process between Israel and Syria, but Israel’s attack on Gaza harmed our efforts and has become an obstacle in our country’s relations,” he added.
Just three months ago, a similar diplomatic instance occurred between the two countries after Turkey aired the controversial television drama Ayrilik (“Separation”) which featured actors dressed as Israeli soldiers killing Palestinian children.
Israeli officials: Liberman wants to keep tense ties with Turkey
Meanwhile, ministry sources said Monday that Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman was trying to stop Defense Minister Ehud Barak from visiting to Turkey next week, in order to keep up the recent tensions between the two allied countries.
Barak was scheduled to leave for Turkey on Sunday to meet with his counterpart and the foreign minister there, in an attempt to improve deteriorating relations.
Tensions were renewed on Monday, after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared that Israel was endangering world peace by using exaggerated force against the Palestinians, breaching Lebanon’s air space and waters and for not revealing the details of its nuclear program.
According to Foreign Ministry sources, Lieberman is now looking to “heat things up” before Barak’s trip, so as to torpedo attempts to mend the tensions.
“We get the sense that Lieberman wants to heat things up before Barak’s visit,” a senior Foreign Ministry source said. “All of the recent activities were part of Lieberman’s political agenda.”
The Turkish government was expected to give a warm welcome to Barak, who alongside Labor Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer was looking to bring the allies’ relations back to stability.
The Foreign Ministry sources surmised that Lieberman’s efforts were aimed at preventing Turkey from resuming its role as mediator in Israel’s peace talks with Syria.
The Israeli firm ICTS International (not to be confused with ICTS Europe, which is a different company), and two of its subsidiaries are at the crux of an international investigation in recent days, as experts try to pinpoint the reasons for the security failure that enabled Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board Northwest flight 253 and attempt to set alight explosives hidden in his underwear.
A Haaretz investigation has learned that the security officers and their supervisor should have suspected the passenger, even without having early intelligence available to them.
At this time, ICTS and the Dutch security firm G4S are hurling recriminations at each other, as are the authorities at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, the Federal Aviation Authority and U.S. intelligence officials.
The failure was a twin flop: An intelligence failure, which U.S. President Barack Obama has already stated, in the poor handling of information that arrived at the State Department and probably also the CIA from both the father of the would-be bomber and the British security service; and a failure within the security system, including that of the Israeli firm ICTS.
The ICTS daughter company, I-SEC, has another daughter company – called PI (Pro-Check International). The firms provide security services to airports: consultation, instruction, training, inspection and supervision.
Two decades ago, ICTS adopted the system used in Israel, namely of profiling and assessing the degree to which a passenger is a potential threat on the basis of a number indicators (including age, name, origin and behavior during questioning). At the same time, a decade ago, the company developed a technological system called APS (Advanced Passenger Screening).
This system is based on a computerized algorithm, and is fed passenger information from the airline company. The system was offered to the Israel Airports Authority and the Shin Bet in the past, but rejected. According to the company’s Web site, most of the large airlines in the United States use the system.
However – in real time – the system of ICTS failed. Even if U.S. intelligence failed and the name of the Nigerian passenger was not pinpointed as a suspect for the airline, he should have stirred the suspicion of the security officers. His age, name, illogical travel route, high-priced ticket purchased at the last minute, his boarding without luggage (only a carry on) and many other signs should have been sufficient to alert the security officers and warrant further examination of the suspect.
However, the security supervisor representing I-SEC and PI allowed him to get on the flight.
ICTS was established in 1982 by former members of the Shin Bet and El Al security. Menachem Atzmon, who has been chairman of the board of directors since 2004, holds the controlling shares in the firm.
The ICTS headquarters are in the Netherlands and the company is traded in the New York Stock Exchange. Some senior managers are Israeli, including the joint managing director Ran Langer.
Another important figure is Doron Zicher, general manager of I-SEC. Zicher has been in charge of operations in the Netherlands for more than two decades and has served as adviser to the Dutch Justice Ministry, which is responsible for setting guidelines for airport security.
The company prides itself on employing 1,300 persons and providing security services to airports in 11 countries including France, Britain, Spain, Hungary, Romania and Russia.
The Viva Palestine and PSC aid convoy arrived in Gaza last night at about 19:00pm, with thousands of Palestinians greeting and cheering the convoy to welcome them.
Congratulations to everyone taking part in the convoy and all of those here who raised funds for the trip to become a reality. This has been a tremendous achievement and its importance is political as well as practical.
Thanks of course to the Reading PSC, Waltham Forest PSC, York PSC for their blogs and information which have kept us informed throughout the journey, we look forward to welcoming them and all the other participants back to Britain. We hope that branches around the country will invite them to speak to get their message about Gaza out to the public. Well done, Viva Palestina and Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
– Contact the media: Please phone and email the BBC, and other media, to ask for coverage of the Convoy’s arrival in Gaza.
– Please ask your MP to sign EDM 536 by Richard Burden MP
– Please organize local meetings about Gaza. PSC and Viva Palestina can provide speakers; contact the PSC office to arrange for a speaker.
Financial support: Support the financial appeal on Viva Palestina website as the additional costs incurred because of the obstacles created by the Egyptian government are astronomical http://www.vivapalestina.org/emergency.htm
Sign the PSC petition to end the siege on Gaza: http://www.iparl.com/petition-psc/
January Gaza Events
There will be number of events in January to commemorate the first anniversary of Israel’s attacks on Gaza. These include the following:
– National Week of Boycott Actions 9 to 17 January
– Gaza One Year On – Rally Tuesday 19 January, Conway Hall
– Week of events, starts with meeting on Wednesday13th in Friends House, London
– Brighton Demonstration on Monday 18th
Plus many more vigils, film screenings, meetings and concerts – Please visit the Events section on the PSC website to find out more!
Appeal for Help: we need footage from last January’s demonstrations in London
Over 60 protesters have been charged, mainly with violent disorder, following the demonstrations last year over Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza and are now facing a jail term of up to five years. Most of these arrests came in a series of ‘dawn raids’ throughout the summer, including one teenage boy who was arrested after 25 police officers broke into his house in the middle of the night, causing intense fear and panic to his family and neighbours. Each of those arrested has been required to surrender their passports and are not allowed to apply for travel documents without the permission of the court. Those who are not British citizens have been threatened with deportation depending on the outcome of the criminal proceedings.
It is essential that we gather together as much footage as possible in order to help those that have been charged. If you have any footage (photograph or video) of any of the protests outside the Israeli Embassy or of the demonstrations on the 3rd, 10th or 17th January, please contact Joanna on joanna.gilmore@manchester.ac.uk or 07813 797 853.
Update on Britain’s War Crimes Warrants
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/05/israel-war-crimes-warrants-britain
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/85242
http://blogs.amnesty.org.uk/blogs_entry.asp?eid=5470
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/06/lady-scotland-israeli-war-crimes
Please contact your MP to ask him to sign EDM 502, and to intervene to stop the law being changed. More info: http://www.palestinecampaign.org/Index7b.asp?m_id=1&l1_id=2&l2_id=14&Content_ID=1017
More news:
Fayyad helps burn settlement products
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3830147,00.html
Israel approves Jerusalem settlement expansion
http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=252442
Israel leveled More than 23.000 Homes Since 1967
http://www.imemc.org/index.php?obj_id=53&story_id=57552
Israel To Pay 10 M. In Compensation To The UN
http://www.imemc.org/index.php?obj_id=53&story_id=57559
Get Lowkey’s new single “Long Live Palestine” into the charts
Buy Lowkey’s new single to get it in the top 40 UK music charts, visit: www.lowkeytop40.co.uk for more information. See the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4p1CJwTNC9M
Children in Prison
Today, DCI-Palestine submitted 13 cases to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture in relation to alleged mistreatment at the Al Jalame Interrogation and Detention Centre in Israel. In each case, boys report being detained in ‘Cell No. 36’, usually in solitary confinement for lengthy periods, in a small cell containing a dim yellow light that is kept on 24 hours a day. Whilst being detained in this cell, the boys are regularly taken for interrogation during which they report being physically mistreated and threatened prior to giving confessions.
http://www.dci-pal.org/english/display.cfm?DocId=1342&CategoryId=1
Ross Kemp in Gaza: UNRWA’s John Ging & Children’s Psychiatric Hospital in Gaza http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsxkquaMDo0
Our wild world of crime has recently been sent for observation. From the bodyguard of the IDF Chief of Staff to the killers of their own children – all have been sent for observation. The time has come, as is the custom around here, to send the country for observation, too. Maybe with ongoing treatment from specialists, the diagnosis that will save us can be made.
There are numerous reasons for the observation. A long series of acts that have no rational explanation, or really any explanation whatsoever, raise the following suspicions: a loss of touch with reality; temporary or permanent insanity, paranoia, schizophrenia and megalomania; memory loss and loss of judgment. All of this must be examined, under careful observation.
The psychiatric specialists might be so kind as to try to explain how a country with leaders committed to a two-state solution continues to direct huge budgets toward building more settlements in territories it intends to vacate in the future. What explanation could there be, if not from the psychiatric realm, for a 10-month halt to residential construction in the settlements, to be immediately followed by more construction? How can a country be so tightfisted when it comes to healthcare spending on its citizens, whose poor are getting poorer – and yet when a portion of the roads in the West Bank are already deemed as dangerous, they build more and more roads there leading from nowhere to nowhere?
They should explain how the state prosecutor can announce his intention to expropriate more privately-owned Palestinian land at the settlement of Ofra – the “largest illegal settlement in the territories” (in the words of the defense minister’s adviser on settlement issues) – when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in his address at Bar-Ilan University last year, explicitly committed not to do so, and President Shimon Peres did more of the same in a meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
They should explain what lies behind the decision to examine annexing Highway 443, which runs through the West Bank, as Israeli territory – as a way of defeating the recent High Court of Justice ruling opening it to Palestinian motorists. How can a country that preaches the rule of law dare outfox the High Court through “bypass” laws? And how have an insignificant minority – the settlers – sown fear and managed to extort the country for so many years?
Psychiatric specialists should make clear how a country that’s been dealt a report as potentially disastrous for it as the Goldstone report can so adamantly and stubbornly refuse to convene the commission of inquiry the report provides as an escape clause. How can a nation that has so desperately fought for its international image and standing, and which is so dependent on the world’s benevolence, appoint such a thuggish and violent figure as Avigdor Lieberman as its No. 1 diplomat? Half the world is closed to the foreign minister and we suffer the consequences.
Why didn’t Israel consider presenting, even through some illusion, a nicer face to the world than Lieberman’s threatening visage? Why doesn’t a country so ostracized by so much of the world not ask itself, even for a moment, what part it played in shaping that position of isolation, from which it simply attacks and points fingers at its critics? How can a society which has already existed with a cruel occupation in its backyard for two generations refuse to deal with it, continue feeling so good about itself and evade any kind of self-examination or even an inkling of moral equivocation?
What kind of explanation can be given for the fact that a nation with a clear secular majority has no system for civil marriage, no buses or trains operating on Shabbat? How in such a country are wealthy municipal governments required to transfer funds to religious councils, of all places, rather than other needs? How can a country that has to deal with a domestic Arab minority which has maintained surprising loyalty to the country for more than 60 years do everything to put it down, humiliate and exclude it, treat it unfairly and engender a sense of frustration and hatred within it?
Can it be rationally explained how a country, to which all of the Arab nations have presented a historic peace proposal, refuses to even discuss this? It is a country that the president of Syria (whose major ally, Iran, is threatening Israel) is begging to come to a peace agreement with, yet it remains insistent in its refusal. Only psychiatric experts could possibly explain how the continued occupation of the Golan Heights and the missed opportunities for peace relate to security or logic. At the same time, they should try to explain the connection between the sanctity of historic sites and sovereignty over them. And above all, they should clarify how such a smart and talented society participates in this march of folly without anyone objecting.
True, it’s a difficult case to figure out – all the more reason to recommend the country be sent for observation.
The following is the best and most detailed report I have seen on the events surrounding Gaza in the last couple of weeks. It is very interesting for its scathing critique of Hamas from a left-wing perspective:
By Amira Hass
The departure from Ramses Street in Cairo, in about 20 buses, was set for the morning of Monday, December 28. However, the organizers of the Gaza Freedom March knew the buses would not arrive. Just as on Sunday night, the buses hired by a group of French activists never made it to their starting point – Cairo’s Charles de Gaulle Street, near the French Embassy and across from the zoo. In the week before the planned march, the Foreign Ministry in Cairo made it clear that the protesters would not be permitted to enter Gaza. Boats even mysteriously disappeared from the Nile on Sunday evening. The Egyptian authorities knew that scores of activists were planning to sail and light candles to mark the first anniversary of Israel’s attack on Gaza and the 1,400 people who were killed. A total of 1,361 people came to Cairo from 43 countries to participate in the Gaza Freedom March, 700 of them from the United States alone, many more than initially expected. It started out as a small initiative. Then the American feminist and peace group Codepink signed on, and it gradually spread to other countries.
Bringing Gaza to Cairo
“If we can’t go to Gaza, we’ll bring Gaza to Cairo,” said one American peace activist. And indeed, for an entire week, more than a thousand foreign citizens, the vast majority of them from Western countries, scurried around the Egyptian capital looking for ways and places to demonstrate against the blockade of Gaza. “The demonstrations in Cairo are conclusive proof that Israel pressured Egypt not to allow entry into Gaza,” said one Egyptian citizen (who like other Egyptians, did not dare participate in the demonstrations, for fear of punishment). “What does Egypt need this headache for? It would have been easier and simpler to have sent them all to Gaza and forget about them.”
When the buses didn’t show, the French activists set up tents and sleeping bags outside the embassy. At 2 A.M., they discovered that le camping had been surrounded by a fence and a tight cordon of riot-dispersal police. Tents, a police barrier, movement restrictions, and an area under siege: Without having planned it, they were replicating the Gazan situation in particular and the Palestinian situation in general. Withstanding the siege conditions became an aim and a challenge. During the next two or three days, the cordon intensified, from one row of police to three. Every few hours, the activists discussed how to proceed; this was direct democracy in action. Without secrets, without orders from on high, without hierarchies. A similar process unfolded at various spots around Cairo. Some activists discovered police were surrounding their hotels, blocking them from exiting. Several demonstrated in front of their respective embassies – and were immediately surrounded by riot police. The most violent were those posted to the American Embassy.
Who’s to blame?
One large group set up under the United Nations Development Program’s offices. “In our presence here, we are saying that we are not casting the blame on Egypt. The responsibility for the shameless and obscene Israeli siege on Gaza rests squarely with our own countries,” explained one of the organizers. This sounded like an answer to an accusation voiced mostly by supporters of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah: With Hamas encouragement, international especially Arab popular pressure is being directed at the wrong address – Egypt, rather than Israel. Some of the organizers said they were indeed under the impression that Hamas was not at all interested in demonstrating at the Erez crossing into Israel, which is almost sealed, but rather at the Rafah crossing into Egypt.
The dream was to have tens of thousands march to the Beit Hanun/Erez crossing point on the first anniversary of the Israel Defense Forces offensive, in order to demand that Israel and the world lift the siege. The would-be participants are a very varied bunch: Some have been left-wing activists for decades, while others joined only during the Gaza campaign itself. Students and pensioners, university lecturers, paupers, young and old. The older activists included Hedy Epstein, 85, a German-born American citizen whose life was saved when her Jewish parents sent her to England when she was 14. They later perished in Auschwitz. She sat on a chair under the building housing the UNDP offices, with those on hunger strike, in protest of their being banned from entering Gaza. Hippies in their 50s and 60s cavorted nearby, Italians sang “Bella Ciao,” and South African activists unfurled a banner calling for sanctions on Israel and quoting Nelson Mandela: “Our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”
Jewish mother
“I feel that I’m doing something for Israel, for the sake of its future,” said one bearded young man from Boston, who has been volunteering in a Palestinian village in the West Bank. His mother, who is Jewish, accompanied him on one of his flights into Israel to have a look at his new life. When they landed, they learned his name was on a Border Control list at the airport, and mother and son were detained for eight hours of questioning. “She came out of there a radical,” laughed the young man, who a year and a half ago discovered the alternative discourse about his “second homeland.” A Venezuelan documentary director said, “Eighty percent of the participants I have interviewed at random are Jewish.” Eighty percent is probably an exaggeration, though a large percentage of those present were Jews. The colorful crowd also included Palestinians who are citizens of Western countries, some of them Gazans hoping to see relatives for the first time in years. There were also religious Christians and Muslims. Some of the slogans they proclaimed were overly ambitious, such as “We have come to liberate Gaza.” But by and large, this variegated whole sounded a message of militant pacifism and feminism, liberation theories and a lot of faith in the cumulative, positive effect of popular, non-hierarchical action and its ability to bring about change.
It’s a pity, I thought to myself: The Egyptians are preventing us from seeing what happens when this direct, transparent democracy meets the Hamas regime. On Monday evening, the demonstrators learned that, at the request of the president’s wife, Suzanne Mubarak, 100 people would be allowed to enter the Gaza Strip. Many saw this as a way of breaking the demonstrators’ solidarity and lessening the pressure on Egypt. In the end, on December 30, about 80 people set out on buses, including several journalists who were not affected by the dilemma. At midnight, about 12 hours after leaving Cairo, we arrived at a hotel in Gaza. There the first surprise awaited us: A Hamas security official in civilian dress swooped down on a friend who had come to pick me up for a visit, announcing that guests could not stay in private homes.
The story gradually became clear. The international organizers of the march coordinated it with civil society, various non-governmental organizations, which were also supposed to involve the Popular Committee to Break the Siege, a semi-official organization affiliated with Hamas. Many European activists have long-standing connections with left-wing organizations in the Gaza Strip. Those organizations, especially the relatively large Popular Front, had organized lodging for several hundred guests in private homes. When the Hamas government heard this, it prohibited the move. “For security reasons.” What else? Also “for security reasons,” apparently, on Thursday morning, the activists discovered a cordon of stern-faced, tough Hamas security men blocking them from leaving the hotel (which is owned by Hamas). The security officials accompanied the activists as they visited homes and organizations. During the march itself, when Gazans watching from the sidelines tried to speak with the visitors, the stern-faced security men blocked them. “They didn’t want us to speak to ordinary people,” one woman concluded.
Hijacked or poorly organized?
The march was not what the organizers had dreamed of during the nine months of preparation. The day before the trip to Gaza, they already knew that the non-governmental organizations had backed out. Some people said that Hamas government representatives had found the NGOs did not have a clear, organized plan for the guests and therefore had taken the initiative. One Palestinian activist insisted: “When we heard there would only be 100, we canceled everything.” Another said, “From the outset, Hamas set conditions: No more than 5,000 marchers, no approaching the wall and the fence, how to make speeches, how long the speeches should be, who will make speeches. In short, Hamas hijacked the initiative from us and we gave in.”
Hamas, or its Popular Committee, brought 200 or 300 marchers. The march turned into nothing more than a ritual, an opportunity for Hamas cabinet ministers to get decent media coverage in the company of Western demonstrators. Especially photogenic were four Americans from the anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox Jewish group Neturei Karta, who joined the trip only at Al Arish. There were no Palestinian women among the marchers – a slap to the many feminist organizers and participants, both women and men. After the march, the guests voiced protests to some of the official Palestinian organizers. “We came to demonstrate against the siege, and we found that we ourselves were under siege,” they said. Their variegation and the transparency of their behavior did not suit the military discipline the official hosts tried to impose. The officials listened, and after the reins were loosened a bit, I set out to visit the homes of friends.
There people described the lingering fear from the Israeli onslaught. Saturday afternoon, at 11:30 A.M. – the time of the first aerial bombardments – remains today a sensitive hour for many children. Just as thunderstorms, or electricity failures (an everyday occurrence) or a persistent drone flying above cause anxiety and evoke nightmarish memories. Some of the marchers were now allowed to go out on their own, with Gazan acquaintances they had previously known only via telephone and e-mail. Some, especially the Arabic-speakers, complained that “a shadow in the shape of a security man” continued to accompany them. In quick “safari” tours of bombed neighborhoods, through bus windows, they saw ruins that had not yet been cleared, like the complex of bombed-out government buildings that are still standing – ugly concrete skeletons with empty rooms and no walls, like screaming mouths.
In meetings without the security men, several activists got the impression that non-Hamas residents live in fear, and are afraid to speak or identify themselves by name. “Now I understand that the call for ‘Freedom for Gaza’ has another meaning,” one young man told me. The participants spent Thursday and Friday in the Gaza Strip. Friday, January 1, was the 45th anniversary of the establishment of Fatah. The Hamas government does not allow the rival organization to assemble, just as the PA does not allow Hamas to assemble in the West Bank. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh congratulated Fatah on its anniversary, but at the same time the Hamas security services did all they could to deter the movement’s activists from even thinking about a celebration. Hundreds of Fatah activists were summoned by the police and kept in semi-detention for several hours, until evening. Security officials entered homes where candles were burning or Fatah flags were being flown to mark the anniversary. In one home, the security officials tried to arrest two people, and the mother tried to block them. One policeman allegedly hit her – and she had a heart attack and died.
I wondered: Were the restrictions an order from above, or an unwise interpretation by lower ranks? Does Hamas think it can entirely prevent the few visitors – clearly pro-Palestinian – from hearing non-official versions? Don’t the people giving the orders realize what a bad image they were creating? Or was there really a security concern?
Someone who, to put it mildly, is not a Hamas fan explained to me that young men who quit Iz al-Din al-Qassam for the amorphous Jaljalat militia are a genuine headache. They are a convenient excuse for restricting contact with “just anyone,” but the fear that they might try to harm the visitors in order to damage Hamas is real.
These are devout young men who, officially, criticize Hamas for not enforcing Islamic religious law in its entirely. However, as the critic said, “Unwittingly, because of their lost lives, our lost lives, they are angry at the whole world.”
Postscript: After two days all the visitors, journalists included, had to leave Gaza. According to Hamas, this was an explicit Egyptian demand. Egyptian officers confirmed this.
Abdallah Abu Rahmah, 7 January 2010
Abdallah Abu Rahmah being arrested by Israeli soldiers at demonstration in Bilin in 2005. (Oren Ziv/ActiveStills) To all our friends,
Abdallah Abu Rahmah being arrested by Israeli soldiers at demonstration in Bilin in 2005. (Oren Ziv/ActiveStills)
I mark the beginning of the new decade imprisoned in a military detention camp. Nevertheless, from within the occupation′s holding cell I meet the New Year with determination and hope.
I know that Israel’s military campaign to imprison the leadership of the Palestinian popular struggle shows that our nonviolent struggle is effective. The occupation is threatened by our growing movement and is therefore trying to shut us down. What Israel’s leaders do not understand is that popular struggle cannot be stopped by our imprisonment.
Whether we are confined in the open-air prison that Gaza has been transformed into, in military prisons in the West Bank, or in our own villages surrounded by the apartheid wall, arrests and persecution do not weaken us. They only strengthen our commitment to turning 2010 into a year of liberation through unarmed grassroots resistance to the occupation.
The price I and many others pay in freedom does not deter us. I wish that my two young daughters and baby son would not have to pay this price together with me. But for my son and daughters, for their future, we must continue our struggle for freedom.
This year, the Popular Struggle Coordination Committee will expand on the achievements of 2009, a year in which you amplified our popular demonstrations in Palestine with international boycott campaigns and international legal actions under universal jurisdiction.
In my village, Bilin, Israeli tycoon, Lev Leviev and Africa-Israel, the corporation he controls, are implicated in illegal construction of settlements on our stolen land, as well as the lands of many other Palestinian villages and cities. Adalah-NY is leading an international campaign to show Leviev that war crimes have their price.
Our village has sued two Canadian companies for their role in the construction and marketing of new settlement units on village land cut off by Israel’s Apartheid Wall. The legal proceedings in this precedent-setting case began in the Canadian courts last summer and are ongoing.
Bilin has become the graveyard of Israeli real estate empires. One after another, these companies are approaching bankruptcy as the costs of building on stolen Palestinian land are driven higher than the profits.
Unlike Israel, we have no nuclear weapons or army, but we do not need them. The justness of our cause earns us your support. No army, no prison and no wall can stop us.
Yours,
Abdallah Abu Rahmah
From the Ofer Military Detention Camp
Abdallah Abu Rahmah is a schoolteacher and nonviolent activist from Bilin. He is currently being held in an Israeli prison after he was arrested on International Human Rights Day, at 2am on 10 December 2009, by Israeli occupation forces.
Another excellent report on the Gaza events, by Ali Abunimah:
Ali Abunimah writing from Cairo, Live from Palestine, 7 January 2010
On the afternoon of 28 December 2009, I was with several persons who accompanied CODEPINK cofounder Jodie Evans to the US Embassy in Cairo to present a letter from Massachusetts Senator John Kerry in which he expressed “strong support” for citizens of his state who were traveling to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and requesting they be given “every courtesy.” In fact, we were turned away at the first checkpoint at a side street off Corniche al-Nil leading up to the embassy, and told to come back the next morning.
At 9:45am on 29 December, Evans, myself and two other Gaza Freedom March participants came back to the embassy. We explained that we wished to see Ambassdor Margaret Scobey to discuss why Egypt had prohibited more than 1,300 persons including hundreds of Americans, from going to Gaza to take part in a peaceful march with Palestinian civil society against the siege of Gaza.
We were allowed through the first checkpoint, and told we would have to be sniffed by dogs. But as the dogs finished their task, an Egyptian police officer came running up, and demanded we leave. We stood our ground. We explained that we were Americans, and wanted to visit our embassy. If they would not let us, then they must send someone out to explain why.
By this time dozens of other Americans began to arrive at the embassy — all with the same request: to meet representatives of their government to talk about the situation in Gaza. A stand-off quickly developed as detachments of riot police arrived and surrounded and tightly barricaded a group of 31 persons just inside the first checkpoint. A second group of seven, closer to the street, attempted to hold up signs but police pulled them down, and surrounded them. Others, who arrived later, were kept even further away.
As I was among the earliest to arrive, I had somehow avoided being trapped inside the barricades (although on at least two occasions Egyptian police physically grabbed me and attempted to push me into an enclosure). Others were pushed and shoved. A plain-clothes officer who appeared to be in charge made it clear that no one was allowed to leave unless everyone agreed to leave and disperse completely. A young woman who said her leg had been injured when she was shoved inside the barricade area by police said she wanted to leave and go to the hospital. I watched as she was physically prevented from doing so. A man in his 80s who was not feeling well, was also prevented from leaving.
Eventually, a representative of the embassy emerged and stated that three and only three persons would be allowed to enter. Through an on-the-spot, ad hoc process, CODEPINK cofounder Medea Benjamin, activist Kit Kettredge and myself were selected. We made clear to other marchers that we did not view this “concession” as binding them in any way — they still had the right, as they demanded, to visit the embassy and represent themselves, and we would make that point.
The “delegation” was ushered through the checkpoints until we found ourselves outside the door of the building. There we were met by three officials who said they were ready to hear what we had to say. (At that point, a young woman who had made it that far separately, identified herself to the officials as an American and said she had been struck in the face by police the previous day. She said that the embassy had been unresponsive to her complaints and wanted to see them take an active role to protect Americans against police harassment.)
Benjamin, Kettredge and I said we would not meet in the street; we wanted to be received inside the building. Eventually we were told that there was a small room near the entrance where they would agree to see us, but only the three of us.
Just beyond the airport-style security checkpoint inside the building, was the door to a small room with a table, three chairs and a heavy steel door that resembled a holding cell or an interrogation room more than anything. In a strangely petty gesture, our request for a glass of water was adamantly refused. In that room, we were met by three officials, including Gina Cabrera, head of US citizen services, and Gregory D. LoGerfo, First Secretary in the Office of Economic and Political Affairs. The third official, whose name I did not note, identified himself as a “regional security” official.
Our first request was that the embassy immediately intervene to free US citizens being held against their will by Egyptian police, and invite any American who wanted to visit the embassy to be heard or seek assistance to do so. Cabrera constantly reassured us “we are taking care of it,” although she herself was taking no action, and not apparently communicating with anyone else in the embassy who might do so. At the same time, Medea Benjamin was in constant phone contact with those held outside; they reported that no embassy staff had come to assist them, people were still being forcibly detained, and occasionally rough-handled. Eventually, only after repeated requests, Cabrera left the room saying she was going to find out what was happening, though as we found out when we left the embassy, she had done nothing to change the situation at the gate. At this point, several hours had passed and people had pressing needs for water or to use bathroom facilities.
LoGerfo, as a senior political officer, addressed our demands about Gaza: that the US work with us to lift the siege on Gaza and allow the Gaza Freedom March to proceed. This discussion went on for an hour and made little headway. LoGerfo insisted that the embassy would take no action to facilitate our passage to Gaza because of a State Department travel warning advising US citizens against traveling to Gaza. We responded that we were not asking the embassy to violate its travel warning; in the past, the embassy had not objected to US citizens traveling to Gaza provided they signed affidavits stating that they knew the US embassy would do nothing to help them if they got into trouble. We were prepared to sign such affidavits. We simply wanted the embassy to ask Egypt not to prevent a peaceful civil society initiative from proceeding to Gaza.
We noted the irony that it was in Cairo last June that US President Barack Obama had lauded and recommended to Palestinians peaceful civil-rights-style actions. And yet here were 1,300 individuals from dozens of countries who had answered such a call from Palestinian civil society only to find their plans blocked by the Egyptian government while they faced constant police harassment.
Cabrera reminded us, “US citizens have been hurt in Gaza, you know, so we are concerned about your safety.” To this, I answered that I knew that Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American peace activist, had been killed by Israeli occupation forces in Gaza on 16 March 2003, and that the embassy’s protestations of concern for our safety would be much more convincing if the United States government had demanded proper accountability from Israel in her killing. Benjamin, Kettredge and I also pointed out that the main source of danger to people in Gaza is from attacks by Israel using weapons provided by the United States.
LoGerfo asserted that the the closure of the Rafah crossing into Gaza was a “sovereign” Egyptian decision and that the US could not interfere. I pointed out that Egypt claims that its closure of the border is in keeping with the 2005 “Agreement on Movement and Access” brokered by the United States, and that the US is helping Israel and Egypt to enforce the siege as part of its policy of putting pressure on Palestinian civilians in order to force a change in their leadership. LoGerfo acknowledged that the US Army Corps of Engineers is providing Egypt with assistance to build an underground steel wall designed to prevent Palestinians digging tunnels which have become a lifeline to break the siege. We also challenged LoGerfo that the United States, as a high contracting party to the Fourth Geneva Convention, has a legal obligation to help break the siege on Gaza — which remains an occupied territory — and to bring to justice those suspected of the massive war crimes and crimes against humanity described in the UN-commissioned Goldstone report. Sadly, however, US policy is to help tighten the siege and to actively obstruct justice.
Once it became clear that LoGerfo could not or would not provide any support to the Gaza Freedom March, we requested a meeting with Ambassdor Scobey. We were told the request would be passed on, but no commitments were made to us or to the dozens of US citizens barricaded by riot police at the gates of the embassy compound. Benjamin and Kettredge decided to remain in the embassy until they could secure a specific time to meet with Scobey — who had met CODEPINK organizers previously. I decided to leave the building to brief and rejoin the others detained by the police.
There, I found the situation unchanged — except for more riot police. There were still 31 persons penned in one area — which I dubbed the “West Bank” — and the seven barricaded about 30 meters away — which I dubbed “the Gaza Strip.” Egyptian police allowed me to move between the two groups and speak to them, but no one was allowed to leave. Still no one from the embassy had come to assist or intervene.
During this time, the correspondent of a major Arabic-language TV network phoned me and said that she and her camera crew had attempted to get near the area but had been physically prevented from doing so by Egyptian police. I witnessed another independent journalist being jostled by police and forced to leave the area.
Eventually, Benjamin and Kettredge emerged from the embassy — having failed to schedule an appointment with the ambassador. Like me, they were allowed to move freely between the “West Bank” and “Gaza Strip,” but at one point they were completely surrounded by police. At another point, several police officers grabbed me and tried to push me into the “West Bank” enclosure, but thinking quickly, Benjamin, who was standing nearby, dropped to the ground and put her arms out. I dropped to the ground and grabbed her. A man in plain clothes — I believe, though I am not certain, an Egyptian who worked for the embassy — rushed up shouting at the police in English “no touch, no touch!” This seemed to indicate that while the embassy was content to have us detained against our will for hours, it did not want us treated “too” roughly. (Indeed, journalist Sam Husseini recorded on his blog an Egyptian police official outside the embassy saying that the US embassy “told us” to prevent Americans from reaching the building.)
At about 3:30pm — almost five hours after our attempt to peacefully visit our embassy had begun — we were told that everyone would be permitted into the embassy to speak to a consular officer. After discussions with police, individuals were allowed out of the barricades one at a time, and those showing US passports were led in groups of 10 toward the embassy. Those wishing to leave the area completely were allowed to do so one at a time at five minute intervals. Having been held hostage, we were forced to negotiate our own release. It was a lesson — if we needed one — that when it comes to the siege of Gaza, the United States government is not part of the solution, but an active part of the problem. And, the United States is not beyond relying on the repressive police tactics of the Egyptian state to protect itself from the opinions of its own citizens.
An Egyptian soldier has been killed and at least eight Palestinians hurt in clashes at the Egypt-Gaza border.
Egyptian security officials said the soldier was hit by Palestinian gunfire from across the border, during protests over a delayed aid convoy.
International activists have been trying to take 200 aid trucks into the blockaded Gaza Strip, but Egypt has refused some of the vehicles access.
Dozens of activists were hurt during protests over the convoy on Tuesday.
The violence broke out as hundreds of Palestinians began throwing stones across the border at Egyptian security forces, who fired back at the protesters.
The Islamic movement Hamas, which controls Gaza, had called the demonstration over the convoy.
But Hamas police later fired into the air to disperse the crowd, witnesses said.
The Egyptian soldier was apparently killed by gunfire from the Gazan side.
Egypt and Israel impose a strict blockade on the Gaza Strip, which Israel says is aimed at weakening Hamas.
The activists said 60 people were hurt in the clashes
The Viva Palestina aid convoy, carrying items ranging from heart monitors to clothing and dental equipment, is aiming to break the blockade.
A spokeswoman for the group of about 500 international activists said the Egyptians had gone back on an agreement to allow their 200 aid trucks to enter.
Alice Howard said Egypt had said that dozens of the trucks would have to enter via an Israeli-controlled checkpoint – which Viva Palestina believed meant the goods would never reach their destination.
She said she understood the reason was because of the nature of some of the goods.
Items other than basic foodstuffs and medicines, such as medical machinery, are subject to a stringent approvals procedure, usually negotiated by established international aid organisations with the Israeli authorities.
Port protest
Some of the activists staged a sit-in at the port of Al-Arish, where the trucks are currently waiting, which was broken up by some 2,000 Egyptian riot police, Ms Howard said.
Many of those injured were “quite severely beaten, with head injuries”, she said. A few were taken to hospital, but returned to the convoy on Wednesday morning.
Several Egyptian security forces were also reported to have been injured.
Television footage showed Egyptian riot police hitting the activists with batons. Some of the activists responded by throwing stones.
UK MP George Galloway, with the convoy, said: “It is completely unconscionable that 25% of our convoy should go to Israel and never arrive in Gaza.”
The clashes follow an earlier row with the Egyptian authorities over what route the convoy should take to reach Egypt in the first place.
A demonstration has also been held in the Syrian capital, Damascus, against Egypt’s treatment of the aid convoy.
A few hundred people took part in the protest organised by Hamas and other factions in Syria.
Israel says it has postponed a visit to the United Kingdom by military officials amid fears of arrest.
Israeli officials complained that the UK government has failed to give it a complete guarantee that its officials will not be arrested on British soil.
They also said the current situation threatens relations with Britain.
In December former foreign minister Tzipi Livni cancelled a visit to London, after a British judge issued an arrest warrant.
“These officials were invited by Great Britain, but they will stay in Israel as long as we do not have a 100% guarantee that they will not become objects of criminal lawsuits in that country,” said Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon.
Mr Ayalon said he will discuss the matter with Britain’s Attorney General, Baroness Scotland of Asthal, who is in Israel on a private visit.
Diplomatic row
Late last year a UK court issued a warrant for Tzipi Livni, sparking a diplomatic row. Ms Livni was foreign minister during Israel’s Gaza campaign last winter. It was the first time a UK court had issued a warrant for the arrest of a former Israeli minister.
The warrant was revoked after Ms Livni cancelled her trip, but Israeli officials reacted angrily.
Ms Livni said the court had been “abused” by the Palestinian plaintiffs who requested the warrant. “What needs to be put on trial here is the abuse of the British legal system,” she told the BBC.
Under British law, courts are allowed to issue warrants for alleged war crime suspects around the world. But Mr Ayalon said that the law is “often misused”.
“It initially targeted Nazi criminals, but terrorist organisations like Hamas are today using it to take democracies hostage. We have to put an end to this absurdity” he added.
The British government says it is looking into whether the law can be changed, to avoid further diplomatic embarrassment.
But a spokesman for the Palestinian government, speaking to BBC Jerusalem correspondent Tim Franks said it was important to follow new, “creative” ways of using international law against Israel.
Pro-Palestinian campaigners in the UK have tried several times to have Israeli officials arrested under the principle of universal jurisdiction.
This allows domestic courts in countries around the world to try war crimes suspects, even if the crime took place outside the country and the suspect is not a citizen.
Israel denies claims by human rights groups and the UN investigator Richard Goldstone that its forces committed war crimes during the operation, which it said was aimed at ending Palestinian rocket fire at its southern towns.
The Palestinian militant group Hamas has also been accused of committing war crimes during the conflict.
Egypt barred some of the vehicles in the aid convoy from passing through the Rafah crossing [Reuters]
At least 55 people have been injured in clashes between Egyptian police and pro-Palestinian activists who were trying to deliver aid into the Gaza Strip, eyewitnesses say.
Some 520 activists broke down the gate at the port in al-Arish late on Tuesday in protest against an Egyptian decision to ship some of the goods through Israel, medical workers and protesters said.
The protests were sparked by an Egyptian decision to allow 139 vehicles to enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing, about 45km from the port in al-Arish, but requiring a remaining 59 vehicles to pass via Israel.
Around 40 members of the convoy had minor injuries while over a dozen policemen were hurt in the clashes with protesters, who also blocked the two entrances to the Sinai port with vehicles, medical workers said.
The Viva Palestina convoy, led by George Galloway, the British MP, had already been delayed by more than a week, after he and a delegation of Turkish MPs failed to persuade the Egyptians to change their mind.
Disputed route
The convoy of nearly 200 vehicles arrived in al-Arish on Monday after a dispute with Cairo on the route.
But the arrival came after a bitter dispute between its organisers and the government, which banned the convoy from entering Egypt’s Sinai from Jordan by ferry, forcing it to drive north to the Syrian port of Lattakia.
The convoy with 210 lorries full of medicine and other supplies set out from the UK nearly a month ago.
Israel and Egypt have severely restricted travel to and from the Gaza Strip since Hamas seized power there in June 2007, after winning Palestinian legislative elections in 2006.
The blockade currrently allows only very basic supplies into Gaza.
The siege has severely restricted essential supplies and placed Gazans in a dire situation, made worse by Israel’s military assault last winter that reduced much of the territory to ruins.
Hamas has accused Egypt of reinforcing the siege imposed.
Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for the group, told Al Jazeera on Wednesday that Egypt’s moves to ban the Gaza aid convoy from reaching the enclave and to build an underground steel wall are deliberate policies that reinforce its participation in the siege.
He said that such practices are unjustifiable and frustrating for Palestinian expectations from the Egyptian side.
In other Gaza-related news, a Palestinian fighter was reportedly killed and four others wounded in an Israeli air attack on Tuesday in the city of Khan Younis, according to a security source.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said Israel had launched the raid against fighters “planning to fire rockets at southern Israel”.
The armed wing of a group called the Popular Resistance Committee said its members had been targeted by the attack.
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel recently told the Israeli consul in Los Angeles that the Obama administration is fed up with both Israel and the Palestinians, Army Radio reported on Wednesday.
Emanuel met with Jacob Dayan, consul general of Israel in Los Angeles, about two weeks ago, after which Dayan briefed the Foreign Ministry.
Emanuel told Dayan the U.S. is sick of the Israelis, who adopt suitable ideas months too late, when they are no longer effective, according to Army Radio.
The U.S. is also sick of the Palestinians who never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity, Emanuel reportedly said.
Emanuel added that if there is no progress in the peace process, the Obama administration will reduce its involvement in the conflict, because, as he reportedly said, the U.S. has other matters to deal with.
Emanuel reportedly said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly acknowledged the two-state solution too late, and that the freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank came only after months of U.S. pressure.
The report added that both sides reportedly rejected the peace plan proposed by former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, but that if there is progress in peace talks, Obama might visit Israel and the region
Former Supreme Court president Aharon Barak has recommended that Israel join the International Criminal Court at The Hague that tries those indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Barak, who spoke on Monday at a legal conference in Jerusalem, says that Israel will benefit from its participation in the court despite the risk that IDF soldiers and officers, and even Israeli politicians, may be brought to trial.
Israel was one of the countries behind the ICC initiative, but changed its stance at the last minute, once settlements in the territories were included in the list of serious crimes under the court’s jurisdiction. At the end of 2000, following an intense debate in the government, Israel signed the Rome Statute from which the International Criminal Court was established, but said it would not ratify its signature because of concerns that the institution would be used for political ends. Since then, Israel has stuck by its refusal to join the ICC and be answerable to its judgments.
Barak said that “Israel is part of the international community, and it must conduct itself in accordance with the interpretation that is common in international law.” As president of the Supreme Court, Barak changed an entrenched approach that rejected court involvement in security considerations. In a ruling on the issue of the route of the separation fence, he established the formula of “reason and proportionality” in the exercise of security authority in the territories. His approach also guided the current court president, Justice Dorit Beinisch, in last week’s ruling regarding the use of Route 443 by Palestinians.
Since the ICC began its work at The Hague, international law has received increased attention in Israel. Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip a year ago raised serious allegations against Israel for violating the rules of war and even carrying out crimes against humanity. Israel responded that the IDF is “the most moral army in the world,” and that international law must take into consideration the exigencies of the war against terrorism, but refused to cooperate with the Goldstone Commission and denounced its report.
A country that believes in the morality of its actions and those of its soldiers should not behave like a permanent suspect and boycott institutions of international law. On the contrary: It must fight within those institutions for its positions and justice. Joining the International Criminal Court at The Hague will place Israel on the side of the enlightened nations, and will contribute to restraining forceful and harmful actions. Barak’s recommendation deserves to be adopted.
An Egyptian border guard was killed and at least a dozen Palestinians wounded in a shooting scuffle along the Gaza Strip border.
One official said Wednesday that the border guard was shot dead by a Palestinian sniper while Gazan youths hurled stones across the border at the Egyptian security forces.
Egyptian forces opened fire on Palestinians who were pelting them with rocks from the other side of the border over frustration that an aid convoy had been delayed.
Gaza’s Hamas rulers called for the protest earlier over the delay of an international aid convoy at the nearby Egyptian port city of El-Arish, but soon lost control of the situation as hundreds of youths began hurling rocks across the border at the guards.
Hamas police fired shots to disperse the crowd and shots were also heard from the Egyptian side the border. Palestinian health official Moawiya Hassanein said the injuries were from gunfire and tear gas.
The incident follows a late night clash between international pro-Gaza activists and Egyptian security clashed at the nearby Mediterranean port of El-Arish when Egypt refused to allow part of the convoy to enter its territory and move on to Gaza.
More than 50 activists and over a dozen members of the security forces injured. Activists briefly seized some policemen as well.
The clashes add to the embarrassment of Egypt, which has come under fire from Arab and Muslim groups for cooperating with Israel in its 28-month blockade of the impoverished territory. The blockade was imposed after Hamas violently seized control of the territory from the forces of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
More than 500 international activists accompanied the convoy organized by the British-based group Viva Palestina, bringing tons of humanitarian supplies, as well as vehicles, to Gaza. The group includes British, American, Jordanian and Turkish activists and lawmakers.
The scuffles at the port broke out late Tuesday at al-Arish port building when authorities told the organizers that out of the nearly 200 vehicles, some 59 can’t enter Gaza through Egypt, but must go through Israeli terminals.
A security official said the vehicles in question are carrying pickup trucks, sedans, generators and other equipment, which are not allowed to pass through the Egyptian crossing at Rafah and had to go via Israel. Only medical aid and passengers are allowed through, the official said.
British MP George Galloway told Sky News television that the activists were negotiating with authorities and refusing to leave behind their vehicles.
“We refused this because it’s a breach of the agreement which we reached,” he said. “It is completely unconscionable.”
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki said the rules were clear from the start, and accused the activists of coordinating with Hamas to create problems. He said the private automobiles are not considered humanitarian goods, and must enter from Israel.
“We didn’t mislead anyone. They have their interests … and they want to make up problems and clash with Egypt,” he told The Associated Press.
“We are activists. We condemn the Israeli siege to start with. We will only enter through an Egyptian-Palestinian crossing,” said Wael al-Sakka, a Jordanian activist.
Alice Howard, a spokeswoman for the group, said organizers were negotiating with an Egyptian security official, who said he would come back with answers.
But instead, 2,000 riot police returned, spraying the activists with water cannons, and hurling rocks.
Television reports showed images of both riot police and activists hurling stones at each other and said clashes began when angry protesters attempted to leave the port area and were driven back by riot police.
Howard, speaking from London, said more than 50 activists were injured in the scuffle, including to the head and neck. The group’s Web site showed images of injured activists.
An Egyptian security official said the activists used two trucks to block the port gates, burned tires, and briefly detained a police officer and four of his men. They were later released, some with broken ribs.
The official was speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Al-Sakka, the Jordanian activist, said the police charged a peaceful sit-in at the gates of the port. He said the group was not allowed to get out of the port building, denying government claims they have took control of the premise.
The Egyptians were too high-strung. The police is the reason for the tension, al-Sakka said.
He said six activists were detained, including Americans and British citizens.
The security official said five were detained, but didn’t identify them. U.S. embassy officials did not immediately have information on the arrests.
Now the Brazilian president Lula is a nice enough guy, but here he is caught with his pants down, buying arms from a military regime, to spy on his own people… Bravo!
The anticipated use of Israeli-made drones by Brazilian police Tuesday drew criticism from a prominent ruling party politician and social activists, who said they would increase cooperation with Palestinian movements to protest the “importation of Israeli oppression”.
The sale of Israeli drones to Brazil “confirms that Israel draws indirect benefits from the illegal occupation of Palestinian territories,” Valter Pomar, secretary of international relations for the leftist Workers Party (PT), told Haaretz.
Pomar said he disagreed with the “democratically-reached” decision to equip Brazilian police with drones used as part of what he termed “Israel’s illegal and illegitimate actions.”
“It is symptomatic that Brazil imports tactics and equipment from Israel, an ultra-militarized country which keeps an entire population under military occupation,” said Mauricio Campos, a spokesman for the Network of Communities and Movements against Violence.
He added that the network – a prominent grassroots organization which sprang up six years ago in Rio’s poor favelas, or shantytowns – will discuss the pending sale on Thursday, during a general meeting. “Without doubt, we will make our voices heard over this,” Campos told Haaretz.
His group has organized various events to protest Israel’s policies and what the network called “genocidal attacks” on Palestinians.
The discussion on Thursday of the drone sale was scheduled after Brazilian media reported last week that Rio’s state police force is considering buying six Israeli Skylark I unmanned aerial vehicles to combat rampant crime.
In November, during President Shimon Peres’ state visit to Brazil, Israel and Brazil sealed a $350 million deal for the supply of 14 Israeli Heron UAVs to several Brazilian law enforcement agencies.
That deal was completed weeks after a drug gang from a Rio favela shot down a police helicopter with a short range rocket.
The arrest order issued in Britain against Kadima chairwoman Tzipi Livni is nothing but one of many symptoms of a deep and long-running problem that is unlikely to be solved as long as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues.
The apology by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown (whose own government would be well advised to deal with the issue, of which it has long been aware) and his government’s plan to tackle the problem through legislation, will not solve our troubles with the European Union.
The root of the problems lies in the fundamental disagreements between Israel and the EU regarding the manner in which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be resolved and our conduct vis-a-vis the Palestinians. The conclusions of the EU council of foreign ministers on the peace process, adopted last month in Brussels, and the harsh criticism of Israel voiced by the EU’s new High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton, are only the most recent examples of the deep gap that has existed for years between us and Europe.
The disagreements do not stem mainly from economic considerations and interests, although their role in shaping the positions of certain EU members should not be discounted. The reasons are deeper and are linked to the lesson taken by European states from the profound trauma of World War II. The preference for multilateral frameworks, the adherence to the principles of international law, the rejection of the use of force to change political realities, the sanctification of human rights as an absolute value (that is sometimes applied in a manner that leaves behind a sense of double standards) and empathy toward those who are perceived as being weak – all these are part of the principles by which the EU states conduct themselves.
The conduct of Israel, as a state that calls itself democratic, is not perceived by the EU countries as conforming to those principles. European politicians (if we permit ourselves to speak in generalities), not to mention the public, are generally unwilling to walk in the shoes of Israel, which operates as a democracy under threat, and to demonstrate understanding for the motivations behind its conduct. And any small understanding is not reflected in the media.
The threat of terror, which has become an inseparable part of Israel’s quotidian reality, and Israel’s responses – which are covered obsessively – bumps up against a European reality that with the exception of a few instance has not experienced the horrors of terror.
It follows from this that Israel’s responses to terror, which result in unintended harm to civilians, are not only met by a lack of understanding but represent a focus of harsh criticism.
One of the by-products of this criticism is the beginning of an open discussion among some European elites of the nature of Israel’s democracy as well as the extent of its legitimacy as a Jewish state, which is of great concern.
For years the EU has expressed its dissatisfaction with Israel’s political and military conduct with a policy of reward and punishment. When there are unilateral withdrawals and an active peace process, Israel receives a prize; the absence of a peace process and disproportionate military actions lead to punishments.
This pattern, which changes in accordance with the existence of the peace process or lack thereof, is based on a fundamental and mutual lack of trust.
After observing the situation for many years it is hard to escape the conclusion that Israel and the Europeans are conducting not a dialogue, but rather two monologues. A solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could lay the foundations for a new stage in our relations with Europe. Until that happens we must get used to reality, the expressions of which we have been witness to in recent weeks.
The right wing settlers now start the routine which worked so well with Rabin, and ended with his murder. People who are used to murder Palestinians all the time, will not be behaving differently with Jews either, if they thought it will serve their ends. It is the Dr. Frankenstein dillema – you build such successful monster, that it ends up turning against you! The settlers have been well trained by the regime, and now there are asked to behave nicely… who is riding the tiger now?… It does makea change, when it is not the ususal Palestinian victims which are being discussed, but Israeli ministers – let them start feeling what it is like to live next to those murderers they have installed illegally in Occupied Palestine!
Defense Minister Ehud Barak has received a death threat, apparently from far-rightists who oppose his involvement in implementing the 10-month freeze in West Bank settlement construction, Channel 10 news reported on Tuesday.
“If you think of destroying the settlements, you are mistaken, and I will kill you,” read part of the letter, which has been transferred to the Shin Bet Security Service for investigation, according to Channel 10.
“I will harm you or your children, be careful,” the letter continued. “If not now, then when you are no longer a minister and have no security around you.”
Channel 2 news reported last week that security had been increased for Barak due to fears over threats from right-wing extremists. The threats to Barak come after similar threats were made against Police Commissioner David Cohen.
National Union MK Michael Ben Ari on Tuesday dismissed the death threats as political spin.
“One week ago we heard about the police commissioner being threatened, after which we heard about the public security minister receiving threats and today it’s Barak,” said Ben Ari.
“The next stage will be that Barak’s Filipino housekeeper will receive a [threatening] letter. We are talking about spin from seasoned spokesmen who are leaking biased information. It’s a joke,” he said.
Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin last week said that extremists will try to sow chaos in order to prevent the settlement freeze from being enforced.
He cited the recent arson attack on a mosque in the Palestinian village of Yasuf as an example of the type of provocations the settlers would resort to, in order to interfere with security forces’ activities.
The Shin Bet on Sunday said it was investigating the source of a number of threats made against Police Commissioner David Cohen in recent days.
Police believe that the threatening letters were sent to Cohen by angry right-wing activists, in response to his recent declaration that security forces were intent on stopping any attempts to disrupt enforcement of the West Bank settlement freeze.
“You have been marked for death,” said a letter sent to Cohen. “Your day of judgment is near.”
On the first day of the Gaza War, one year ago, activists of Gush Shalom and other peace organizations demonstrated against it. Today (2.1.10), many of them took part in a large demonstration, whose main demand was to lift the siege of Gaza.
Some 3000 demonstrators gathered in Tel-Aviv’s Rabin Square and marched to Museum Square, where a protest rally was held. The demonstrators, activists of a wide range of peace organizations and other citizens, chanted in unison (in Hebrew) “Gaza, do not despair / We shall put and end to the occupation!”, “Israel, we are ashamed – the blockade is inhuman!” and more.
The demonstration was accompanied by large police forces, including a helicopter which from time to time lit up the area with a huge projector. However, there were no incidents.
Apart from the Gush Shalom posters “The Blockade is Terrorism”, there were the posters of the “Women’s Coalition” which said “Women cross borders – Freedom and Justice for Gaza”. One demonstrator brought a personal poster: “Mubarak is a War Criminal” – as a protest against the steel wall now being built by the Egyptians along the Rafah border. Many carried the Gush Shalom flag, which combines the flags of Israel and Palestine. A band of drummers, some of them women, enlivened the march.
Nurit Peled-Elchanan, a bereaved mother (and the daughter of the late general and peace activist Matti Peled), said at the rally: “I wonder about the astonishment voiced by the media at the violence in the schools, the clubs and the street. Our children are just absorbing the message conveyed by parents, elder brothers, the media and the war criminals in uniform who come to the schools and make speeches about the heroism of the army in Gaza.”
Uri Avnery called upon President Obama, the European Union and the peoples of the world: “Help us to end the cancerous occupation. For peace and reconciliation between the free State of Israel and the free State of Palestine!” Click for full text
Eilat Maoz of the Women’s Coalition said: “All around us in this city we see war criminals who have committed these acts in Gaza. They live their lives in peace, without fear of investigation and punishment.”
Special applause greeted Nasser Rawi, the father of one of the families that were evicted from their homes in Jerusalem’s Sheik Jarrach quarter, who called upon the government in pure Hebrew “to stop the Judaization of Jerusalem and stop sending us the settler who beat people up and drive them out of their homes.”
Other speakers included MK Hanin Zuabi (Balad): “Denial of flour and sugar is a method of blackmail, but the Palestinian people is not broken”; Yael Ben-Yaphet (The Mizrachi Rainbow): “Sderot was the excuse for war, but who now remembers the poor in Sderot?”; Abir Kopti (Hadash): “I congratulate the British government for marking products of settlements – this is part of what gives hope.”
The high point of the evening was the band of “Raging Grannies”, five elderly women who – on the model of the Canadian original – sang “modified” children’s songs. They concluded the evening with the slightly modified text of a popular Hebrew children’s song: “Mother said to Ahmed / My son is hero / My son never cries / like a little stupid boy. // He had a house in Gaza / And a father, a mother and a brother / Gaza was bombed / And the house is not there anymore. // I do never cry / I am not a cry-baby / But why, mother, why / Do the tears come by themselves?”
Email from Cairo: After the Gaza Freedom March has ended
here has been something in all this that could only be about Palestine. I never understood some of the Palestinian writers but I think I do now. It is like life. One minute all seems lost and the next minute you are raising the Palestinian flag and shouting full on at riot police. I do not know where it comes from …
Palestine will not be settled by these fools like Abbas. They understand nothing of the power that comes from deep inside people who want freedom. Freedom and justice have woken me up … and I do quite take to it. Who would have thought it … Something has happened here that will never be the same … The uniforms can prohibit our meeting, they can bounce us around their central squares and demand to see our papers in the middle of the night. But they will never quell this thing that is Palestine.
I have tried to do so much – meetings, reading, writing and staring these people in the face and letting them know I am with Palestine. I – am – with – Palestine … This yell now comes from my boots.
Philosophers do all this talking about the soul and the energy it gives form to surprisingly testing moments, but I have experienced this. I and so many of my international brothers and sisters … People from forty three countries realised their humanity in this city over the past week or so … We all became what we are …
So yes I am tired. Like so many others I am drained … But I am also more sure of something than I have been. I am sure of people and what they are capable of resisting … the minute that flag comes out it represents all or flags, one flag … one people all for Palestine.
If you had have seen us at exactly 10-00 am on the last day of 2009 all walking in couples along the square like tourists everywhere, passing one another with a knowing smile; and then everyone seemed to run into the road, into the traffic full pelt and the shout went out ‘Viva, viva, Palestine’ and the Egyptians looked like they were in shock. The soldiers and riot police looked shocked. No one thought we would dare because we had been hammered for seven days … But my God when that urge came we went for it like we were at Dunkirk !
In the battle my friend got into a tussle with what looked like an officer or some sort of brass and his gun, strapped to his underarm, under his shirt accidentally came out. We pointed to it and he shoved it back in the holster and said Shockran … Can you imagine that ! And then we carried on battling … resisting really.
One lady died outside of the French Embassy. She had a heart attack on her way to the hospital. Others look gaunt because we really have given all this our best. The French who I spent a lot of time with were superb. The Spanish were brilliant. It showed that within the culture of these people there are still traces of battles in the past and it all came out …
But now I am tired. And still a little worried about friends in Gaza. At times we were all so into not being pushed around by the Egyptians that it was difficult to be thinking of Gaza but these moments were rare … Palestine, Gaza, they are always on my mind … but we will win. Have not the slightest doubt. A lot of us grew up here in Cairo … we learned to struggle as Palestinians, behind fences, held in lockdowns etc and I really think most of grew incredibly. We are all Palestinians now and we really have to push on and sort these bullies out …
Email from Cairo: After the Gaza Freedom March has ended
Can you believe it there are still things going on … films by Gaza filmmakers in different venues. Codepink desperately trying to regain some sort of face – an impossibility. The group that went into Gaza – 52 in all got a roasting at gatherings here. They were actually foul mouthing Hamas in much the same way as we have come to expect from the standard media. No insight …
Police and troop carriers (those square box like personnel carriers) still around every corner. But no one getting placed under hotel arrests as in last week. But this city is nervous…
I am not sure that I understand it. One minute I think I do and the next minute I do not. What exactly have we stirred up here? What is Palestine to this place? I know what Palestine is as history, a place and a cause but what it that has caused so much of trauma. There is so much of this part of the world that I think I am getting and then I realise I have grasped nothing …
Palestine is a cause that will not go away. The more Egypt has aligned itself to the opposition the more they are vexed by the situation. But am I not amongst Arabs? Is there no bond here … ? What is it that the authorities fear being resurrected? I cannot put my finger on it … So much I am outside of here.
Yet something has been stirred. Why all the police and plain clothes fellows still lurking about. Why the confusion that is definitely in the air. I went to Al Ahram yesterday to talk with some of their analysts. Like whippets on heat ! Definitely did not want to talk … Some of these journalists call themselves oppositionalists so why are they not sticking together and opposing a wee bit more … Endless puzzles.
Tomorrow I fly back. Not sure what to expect at the airport. Whatever awaits it cannot be as bad as Ben Gurion …
It was another eventful day here in Cairo at the inaugural Gaza Freedom March (GFM). On Tuesday night, organizers informed the 1,362-strong delegation that only 100 of them had been selected to travel to Gaza yesterday morning, Wednesday 30 December. After several hours of heated debate with organizers over whether this was an appropriate strategy, the meeting concluded without a consensus.
As of Tuesday night, only the South African, French, Canadian and Swedish delegations had decided to boycott the 100-person convoy. Although an incredibly tough decision to make, the groups adopted this principled stance because they felt that the offer was divisive and betrayed the very aim of the march — to break the siege imposed on Gaza.
These delegations refused to further legitimize and reinforce the Egyptian government’s policy of occasionally allowing small aid convoys into the besieged Gaza Strip. They view the Gaza Freedom March as a political, rather than humanitarian effort, designed to pressure the Egyptian government into opening the Rafah crossing permanently.
The groups saw the acceptance of this offer by organizers as a betrayal to the original mission statement, and a dangerous compromise with the Egyptian government, allowing it to only perpetuate its inhumane policy of closure at the Rafah border with Gaza.
There was also the fear that the Egyptian government would use this 100-person convoy as a public relations ploy, deflecting attention from the fact that the siege on Gaza is only tightening, as evidenced by recent reports of the construction of an underground steel wall, designed to block Gaza’s only lifeline to the outside world — its underground system of tunnels.
As the 100 delegates boarded their busses in downtown Cairo yesterday morning, 85-year-old Hedy Epstein, a Holocaust survivor and participant in the march, arrived and made an unexpected announcement. Echoing the sentiments of the dissenting delegations, she also publicly rejected an offer to join the convoy. “This is one of the most difficult decisions I’ve made in my life. But 1,400 Palestinians were killed in the massacre in Gaza last year, and all 1,400 of us need to go” she said.
Shortly thereafter, local march organizers in the Gaza Strip also reversed their initial support for the convoy. In a letter addressed to the Gaza Freedom March steering committee and participants, Dr. Haider Eid and Omar Barghouti — two of the main organizers — called on supporters to “boycott the deal reached with the Egyptian government.”
“We are unambiguous in perceiving this compromise as too heavy, too divisive and too destructive to our future work and networking with various solidarity movements around the world,” they said.
After news of these two crucial statements spread, some of the 100 delegates got off the busses and decided against going to Gaza. Those present at the bus depot reported that Egyptian police began reloading these individuals’ luggage and attempting to force them back onto the busses.
Rumors circulated throughout the day that only 40 people ended up departing Cairo for Gaza. Late on Wednesday evening however, CODEPINK, one of the main organizers, reported that 87 persons had reached the Rafah crossing and were waiting to be processed.
Following these events, the Gaza Freedom March international steering committee also issued a press release on Wednesday officially rejecting Egypt’s proposal. “We flatly reject Egypt’s offer of a token gesture. We refuse to whitewash the siege of Gaza. Our group will continue working to get all 1,362 marchers into Gaza as one step towards the ultimate goal for the complete end of the siege and the liberation of Palestine” said Ziyaad Lunat, a member of the march’s steering committee.
However, there remained the awkward situation where the organizers had sent 87 delegates to Gaza, while hours later “rejecting” Egypt’s offer.
Separately on Wednesday, the South African delegation spearheaded a joint international effort to hammer out the beginnings of a universal anti-apartheid declaration aimed at reinvigorating the global Palestine solidarity movement.
The document, which is still under construction, aims to identify practical steps, including the endorsement of boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS), which global civil society can utilize to pressure Israel to abide by international law and respect Palestinian human rights.
The document is undergoing tweaks, and once endorsed by Palestinian civil society, will be issued as a joint declaration by the various nations who were represented at the Gaza Freedom March.
Thursday, 31 December
This morning, Thursday 31 December, hundreds of Gaza Freedom March participants left their various protest sites across Cairo and converged outside the Egyptian Museum of National History, one of the city’s most visible and central landmarks.
To avoid the detention and harassment experienced at the hands of Egyptian security forces over the last few days, delegates travelled clandestinely to the venue in small groups and pretended to be tourists. Despite these efforts, a hotel housing a large contingent of the march participants was barricaded early this morning by Egyptian police. Nobody was allowed to leave for several hours, causing many to miss the protest.
Outside the Egyptian National Museum, the hundreds of small groups waited for a secret signal and instantly swarmed together, forming one large group, and began marching down the road. This tactic had to be adopted because any large gathering of people before the march would have been broken up by police.
After marching for approximately 20 meters, hundreds of Egyptian riot police rushed toward the crowd and encircled them. In an effort to peacefully hold their ground, marchers sat on the ground. In what was a surprisingly heavy-handed response to foreigners, the police began pulling, beating and kicking protestors to get them out of the road.
While rows of riot police shoved the group from behind, police at the front and sides pushed back, causing panic and hundreds of individuals to fall to the ground. Several women were punched, kicked and dragged out of the road, while many elderly persons were pinned beneath others who had fallen on top of them. Fortunately, there were no serious injuries beyond a few bloody noses and people who had sustained cuts and bruises.
After approximately 15 minutes of this, police managed to corral the entire group into an area just off the road, where the protest continued peacefully for the rest of the day. Although unable to march, the group held a loud and emotional protest in support of those besieged in the Gaza Strip.
The crowd sang, chanted, hung flags and banners from trees and called on the Egyptian government to end its complicity in the siege imposed on the people of Gaza. Representatives of each of the dozens of countries present gave short but moving speeches, demonstrating the truly international show of solidarity for the people of Gaza in this march.
Haroon Wadee, an organizer of the South African delegation, highlighted the similarities between the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and the current struggle of the Palestinian people for their freedom and liberation. He recalled the famous quote of former South African President Nelson Mandela who said that “South Africa is not free until Palestine is free.”
While it was deeply disappointing for the nearly 1,400 delegates who came from 43 countries that they could not physically be in Gaza today, this was a momentous and historic gathering of justice-loving people from every corner of the globe, united by their common desire to see Gaza free. On the eve of a new year, the crowd vowed to do everything in their power to make 2010 the year that the siege of Gaza is finally and forever broken.
Sayed Dhansay is a South African human rights activist and independent freelance writer. He volunteered for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in 2006 and is an organizer of the South African delegation for the Gaza Freedom March. He blogs at http://sayeddhansay.wordpress.com.
Gaza Freedom Marchers issue the “Cairo Declaration” to end Israeli Apartheid
[from gazafreedommarch.org] Friday Jan 1st, 2010 1:30 PM
We, international delegates meeting in Cairo during the Gaza Freedom March 2009 in collective response to an initiative from the South African delegation, state:
Gaza Freedom Marchers issue the “Cairo Declaration” to end Israeli Apartheid
(Cairo) Gaza Freedom Marchers approved today a declaration aimed at accelerating the global campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli Apartheid.
Roughly 1400 activists from 43 countries converged in Cairo on their way to Gaza to join with Palestinians marching to break Israel’s illegal siege. They were prevented from entering Gaza by the Egyptian authorities.
As a result, the Freedom Marchers remained in Cairo. They staged a series of nonviolent actions aimed at pressuring the international community to end the siege as one step in the larger struggle to secure justice for Palestinians throughout historic Palestine.
This declaration arose from those actions:
End Israeli Apartheid
Cairo Declaration
January 1, 2010
We, international delegates meeting in Cairo during the Gaza Freedom March 2009 in collective response to an initiative from the South African delegation, state:
In view of: – Israel’s ongoing collective punishment of Palestinians through the illegal occupation and siege of Gaza;
the illegal occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the continued construction of the illegal Apartheid Wall and settlements; the new Wall under construction by Egypt and the US which will tighten even further the siege of Gaza;
o the contempt for Palestinian democracy shown by Israel, the US, Canada, the EU and others after the Palestinian elections of 2006;
o the war crimes committed by Israel during the invasion of Gaza one year ago;
o the continuing discrimination and repression faced by Palestinians within Israel;
o and the continuing exile of millions of Palestinian refugees;
o all of which oppressive acts are based ultimately on the Zionist ideology which underpins Israel;
o in the knowledge that our own governments have given Israel direct economic, financial, military and diplomatic support and allowed it to behave with impunity;
o and mindful of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of
Indigenous People (2007)
We reaffirm our commitment to:
Palestinian Self-Determination
Ending the Occupation
Equal Rights for All within historic Palestine
The full Right of Return for Palestinian refugees
We therefore reaffirm our commitment to the United Palestinian call of July 2005 for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) to compel Israel to comply with international law.
To that end, we call for and wish to help initiate a global mass, democratic anti-apartheid movement to work in full consultation with Palestinian civil society to implement the Palestinian call for BDS.
Mindful of the many strong similarities between apartheid Israel and the former apartheid regime in South Africa, we propose:
1) An international speaking tour in the first 6 months of 2010 by Palestinian and South African trade unionists and civil society activists, to be joined by trade unionists and activists committed to this programme within the countries toured, to take mass education on BDS directly to the trade union membership and wider public internationally;
2) Participation in the Israeli Apartheid Week in March 2010;
3) A systematic unified approach to the boycott of Israeli products, involving consumers, workers and their unions in the retail, warehousing, and transportation sectors;
4) Developing the Academic, Cultural and Sports boycott;
5) Campaigns to encourage divestment of trade union and other pension funds from companies directly implicated in the Occupation and/or the Israeli military industries;
6) Legal actions targeting the external recruitment of soldiers to serve in the Israeli military, and the prosecution of Israeli government war criminals; coordination of Citizen’s Arrest Bureaux to identify campaign and seek to prosecute Israeli war criminals; support for the Goldstone Report and the implementation of its recommendations;
7) Campaigns against charitable status of the Jewish National Fund (JNF).
=======================================
We appeal to organisations and individuals committed to this declaration to sign it and work with us to make it a reality.
Please e-mail us at cairodec [at] gmail.com
Signed by:
(* Affiliation for identification purposes only.)
1. Hedy Epstein, Holocaust Survivor/ Women in Black*, USA
2. Nomthandazo Sikiti, Nehawu, Congress of South African Trade Unions
(COSATU), Affiliate International Officer*, South Africa
3. Zico Tamela, Satawu, Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU)
Affiliate International Officer*, South Africa
4. Hlokoza Motau, Numsa, Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU)
Affiliate International Officer*, South Africa
5. George Mahlangu, Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU)
Campaigns Coordinator*, South Africa
6. Crystal Dicks, Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU)
Education Secretary*, South Africa
7. Savera Kalideen, SA Palestinian Solidarity Committee*, South Africa
8. Suzanne Hotz, SA Palestinian Solidarity Group*, South Africa
9. Shehnaaz Wadee, SA Palestinian Solidarity Alliance*, South Africa
10. Haroon Wadee, SA Palestinian Solidarity Alliance*, South Africa
11. Sayeed Dhansey, South Africa
12. Faiza Desai, SA Palestinian Solidarity Alliance*, South Africa
Now that 2010 is finally upon us, the real story behind the Cairo staruggle comes out from different sources. Philip Weiss description is one of the clearest, even when one disagrees with his own judgment, as he gives both sides of the argument space and caeful detail. Due to its nature, I thought including it in full is justified, despite its length:
by PHILIP WEISS on DECEMBER 31, 2009 · 105 COMMENTS
Today the Gaza Freedom March fragmented slightly when in the face of stern opposition from their fellows about 80 people headed off to Gaza on buses, the rest staying in Cairo.
But wait, weren’t you trying to go to Gaza? Yes, but it has been quite a drama. How to state this clearly…
Over the last week, as the international marchers arrived in Egypt, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry made it very clear that it did not want them going into Gaza, and it would arrest them short of that goal. But these 1400 are not tourists or milquetoasts, they are activists; and they were not going to be stopped by any old Ministry, even the ministry of a police state. Many set out by bus and taxi to the Sinai desert, while the 300 members of the French group camped out in front of the French Embassy across from the Cairo Zoo, demanding to go even as they were ringed by riot police.
After hunger strikes and demos and international press, and supposedly too the intervention of the president’s clement wife Suzanne Mubarak, the Egyptians relented yesterday and said, Well 100 of you can go in, two busfuls. I heard about this first as a rumor last night at an Egyptian-led rally at the Journalists Syndicate building in opposition to Bibi Netanyahu’s visit to Hosni Mubarak (Down Down Hosni Mubarak!), and already many of us were wondering, who would get the call? Code Pink, the antiwar group that has led the organizing, claimed victory and sent out a bulletin to delegations to select the two or three members who could go. Some delegations duly nominated representatives. But the decision set off an angry and wrenching round of all-night meetings, some of them in hotel stairwells, with many coming out against the deal. Even the Gaza Freedom March steering committee voted against the slice of bread that was being offered, instead of the whole loaf.
Then, I gather, the Egyptians made the deal even more problematic by issuing a statement saying that the 100 peaceful people were being allowed to go to Gaza, implying that the rest of us were hooligans.
Still Code Pink went forward with its plan, and at 6:30 this morning the lucky few gathered on a sidewalk on Ramses Street near the bus station. Over the next 4 hours I witnessed agony and torment, and said a secret blessing that I had not tried to get on the buses last night. A crowd of those opposed to the 100 stood outside barricades set up around the buses and shouted “All or none!” and “Get off the Bus!” It turned out that they had many confederates among the 100 who boarded the buses– confederates who at a signal marched off the buses, some giving heroic speeches.
The people staying on the buses leaned out the doors to say that the Gazans wanted them to come so as to to join their march to the Israeli border on the 31st. But they wavered. Indeed, you saw some of the most resolute activists on the planet—Bernardine Dohrn, the law professor and former member of the Weather Underground; Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada; and Donna Mulhearn, an Australian woman who was a human shield during the beginning of he Iraq war, board the bus and get it off it, and then board it again and get off it, and on and on.
Abunimah, who had been roughed up by security at the American Embassy yesterday, told me it was the hardest decision he’d ever had to make. It was an individual decision, he had no clarity on it, and no one could tell you what to do, and he respected the decisions of all parties. Mulhearn said that going to Iraq in 2003 had been easy compared to this; for that choice was in the face of physical danger and she would take that any day, this was in the face of moral doubt. As for the Egyptian statement that only hooligans were staying behind in Cairo, she said it was a lie, she would say so on her blog, and the people who were against anyone going on that basis were giving the Egyptian security state power. Dohrn said that the principle of “All or none” was a miserable one for activist politics. You always took what you could get and kept fighting for more. A European man in a red keffiyeh screamed at her that she was serving the fascisti. Her partner Bill Ayers gently confronted him and asked him why he was so out of control. Between getting on and off the bus, Dohrn, who wore a flower in her hair, said that she didn’t like the absolutist certainty of the people on the other side of the police barricades, and having been in the Weather Underground, she knew something about absolutist feeling.
In the end Dohrn and Abunimah got off the bus. Mulhearn stayed on, I heard. A big reason for them was a call that Abunimah had with leaders of civil society in Gaza, who said, if this is going to hurt the movement, don’t come. We will march without you. (The message, from Haidar Eid and Omar Barghouti, says, “After a lot of hesitation and deliberation, we are writing to call on you to reject the ‘deal’ reached with the Egyptian authorities. This deal is bad for us and, we deeply feel, terrible for the solidarity movement.”) Abunimah abided by that call (and later told me he had no regrets, he was clear now). I saw other friends sitting on the sidewalk crying, as they tried to figure out what to do.
No one had slept. Many were smoking (when in Rome…).
The argument for the majority went like this: We have come a long way with the support of an international community. We have come to march in Gaza to lift the siege against the people there. Many of us are walking our talk, by confronting the Egyptian power at the French Embassy. Now we are giving into the siege by accepting a piecemeal offering, when the core principle here is inarguable: the people of Gaza must have freedom of movement, freedom to come and go. We will show our power and solidarity not by acceding to the terms of a police state that is working with the U.S. and Israel, but by demanding our rights as a bloc here in Cairo. And by doing so, we will dramatize the Palestinian condition and serve the most important element of the struggle: activating an international movement.
I could see the other side, too. There is nothing like an actual trip to Gaza to politicize people, and having had that experience myself, I had urged some young people to have it. But I can see that I am a lousy movement person, and that the overall sense of the movement was clear and emphatic. We will work from Cairo to gain publicity for Palestinian oppression. Big deal we’re not in Gaza, it’s like being in Birmingham when the big march is going down in Selma.
By the way, the South African contingent, many of them veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle, were no-doubters on the question: we stay in Cairo.
I can see both sides, but it was a convulsive experience. People turned on one another, the Code Pink leadership was accused of being all hat and no saddle. Young people I saw last night walking around biting their lips in the hope that they might be chosen to get a seat on the bus were today enraged and vituperative at the idea that anyone was getting on the bus—a transformation out of As You Like It.
Yet I remind readers that good things are arising from this experience. The Americans, who are so conditioned to living with the Israel lobby, as an abused wife to her battering husband, are being exposed to a more adamant politics—we are having a rendezvous with the Freedom Riders. For another thing, our direct actions and demonstrations seem to be awaking Egypt, a little, and getting a lot of publicity. Helen Schiff told me that the front page of an official government newspaper today said, “Mubarak to Netanyahu: Lift the siege and end the suffering of the Palestinian people.” We gave him that line! she said. A longtime civil rights activist, Helen told me it’s “fabulous” what happened, we are achieving more in Cairo than we would if we had gotten into Gaza.
So there’s a tumultuous and ascendant feeling here tonight, in the little hotels that we have to meet in to make our plans. I can feel the spirit of the Freedom Riders and of the abolitionists, who fought the limits on freedom of movement of black people for so long in my country. As for the divisions, and bitterness, I think they will go away. A European friend advised me tonight that those who take the Palestinian side will find that they share somewhat in the Palestinian experience. They will experience isolation, division, bitterness, failure, contempt, manipulation. Surely not on the scale of the Palestinians; still, they will experience some of those things, and they will grow from them.
Having weathered the storm, tomorrow this group has more action plans. I have to be quiet about them now, because I crunched into another stairwell tonight for a planning session. Still, it should be dramatic. The international street has come to the Arab street, and everyone is learning.
Anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox Jews celebrate Sabbath in Gaza
A small group of ultra-Orthodox Jews were preparing Friday to celebrate the Jewish Sabbath in Gaza, in an unlikely show of support for Palestinians in the Hamas-run coastal territory.
Bearded and wearing black hats and coats, the four members of a tiny Jewish group vehemently opposed to Israel’s existence were a rare sight in the poverty-stricken Palestinian territory.
Members of the Neturei Karta group have expressed support for the Iranian regime and for others who oppose the Jewish state, which they believe was established in violation of Jewish law.
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“It’s crucial that the people of Gaza understand the terrible tragedy here is not in the name of Judaism,” said one of the men, Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss of New York City, as the four prepared to observe the Sabbath at a Gaza City hotel.
Israel’s offensive in Gaza destroyed some 5,000 homes and, according to figures from a Palestinian rights group, killed over 1,400 people. Israel has challenged this figure, stating that a total of 1,166 Palestinians were killed in the operation, the majority of whom were Hamas militants.
The four men are American and Canadian citizens. Israel bans its citizens from visiting the blockaded territory. Weiss and his comrades entered Gaza through a border crossing with Egypt.
This was not the first time Neturei Karta members visited the besieged strip, after a brief visit to Gaza in July of last year, when they met with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh after crossing into the territory through Egypt.
Israel, which maintains a strict blockade of Gaza, would not let them cross through its passages with the territory.
“We feel your suffering, we cry your cry,” Rabbi Weiss said at the time.
“It is your land, it is occupied, illegitimately and unjustly by people who stole it, kidnapped the name of Judaism and our identity,” Weiss continued.
During their Thursday meeting, Haniyeh told them he held no grudge against Jews, but against the state of Israel, according to a Hamas Web site.
Neturei Karta, Aramaic for Guardians of the City, was founded some 70 years ago in Jerusalem by Jews who opposed the drive to establish the state of Israel, believing only the Messiah could do that. Estimates of the group’s size range from a few hundred to a few thousand.
Representatives of the sect had previously visited Gaza when it was ruled by Fatah, Hamas’ more secular rival.
One acted as Yasser Arafat’s adviser on Jewish affairs, and a delegation traveled to Paris in 2004 to pray for the Palestinian leader’s health as he lay dying in a hospital. Months later, a group participated in a conference in Lebanon with Hamas and Hezbollah militants
Large numbers of Egyptian riot police blocked the demonstration near the Egyptian Museum in the city centre and contained the protesters by the side of the road.
Around 1,400 activists from 43 countries arrived in Egypt last week to commemorate the first anniversary of Israel’s 2008 attack on Gaza.
To view the clip, click on the link above.
Another activist email, 31st December 2009
It is the almost the end of another day here. Always I ask myself how have we represented our friends, how have we further the cause of Palestine. And I think today was good.
The action came at the end of a week where we have been bullied and pushed about and encountered experiences I could never have imagined. I do not just mean the Egyptians I mean some of these dreadful Americans who are absolute monsters. And we have not given an inch … When it comes to Palestine there is only one thing we want, only one thing that will make people like me stop and that is justice. But there have been all these doubts this week. At times it is exhausting.
I expect things to be difficult and today in that Square my God we went wild … our scarves waving in the air, our V sign in the cops faces, our demand ‘Palestine’ Palestine’
It has not stoped. The city has been in absolute chaos. Mayhem everywhere … Paddy wagons, police personel carriers and people following us … the Suth Africans are leaving tomorrow. They changed their flights because they have plain clothed men standing next to them, listening watching, going everywhere with them … they have had it bad. We just had the street battles today in the Square and believe me it was a battle at one point.
When we arrived they said everything we did was not allowed by law, so we said OK then we move regardless of the law. Every tiny move has been against the law. I will give you an example, I used an internet shop earlier today. Just to check my emails and I had to sign mu name, my passport number and the hotel I was staying at so I put my name as Willy Wonkel, I made up a number and put the Nile Hotel and then I see the name in front of mine is Eva Peron blah blah blah … they are not used to this … And this is the way it has been every minute of the day and through the night.
Throughout this period my mind is on Palestine, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. Always our thoughts are with our people and what they are facing twelve months after the massacre.
We made big learning experiences. We found out a lot about ourselves – invaluable because you go through so much in times like these. And most important of all we said to everyone in this miserable Mubarak world you are not pushing Palestinian supporters around.
Today shocked them all … They were hanging out of windows giving the V sign and you could see fear on some of the faces of these young blokes wearing the uniforms. They have not seen this kind of determination. There were people from 42 countries Nur and evertyone punched way beyond their weight. When that first call went out and we all ran for the road it was like a sudden outburst of Palestinians – freedommmmm and they are not going to forget this in a hurry.
Oh I forgot to mention, we also had a group climb to the top of the biggest pyramid and plant the Palestinian flag and this went out everywhere …. Israel should observe all this because we are just learning to stand in solidarity with Palestine. It was remarkable ….
In the Gaza Strip graffiti is not only tolerated but encouraged
In the Gaza Strip graffiti is not only tolerated but encouraged
For years, law enforcement agencies throughout the world have engaged in local crusades against what they regard as the scourge of graffiti.
New South Wales in Australia recently passed an anti-graffiti law that could see juvenile offenders jailed for up to 12 months. New York state has made it illegal to sell spray paint to anyone under 18, and Singapore has even physically canned graffiti artists as punishment.
But when it comes to the Israeli occupied and blockaded Gaza Strip, local government not only tolerates graffiti, but actually provides workshops on how artists can improve their technique.
Part propaganda, part art
Hamas facilitates the work of its graffiti artists - even purchasing spray paint for the
Hamas facilitates the work of its graffiti artists – even purchasing spray paint for them The Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since 2007, fully facilitates the work of its graffiti artists – from purchasing spray paint, to inviting artists to work on choice locations.
Elaborate, colourful calligraphy brightens the drab streets and alleys of the Gaza Strip’s densely populated towns and refugee camps. Most is political in nature, inscribing slogans of defiance against the Israeli occupation, or commemorating fallen martyrs. Some is apolitical, congratulating newly weds on their marriage, or pilgrims who have completed the Muslim obligation of Hajj.
Graffiti in Gaza is by no means the sole domain of Hamas. All political factions control crews of artists to prop up their influence and credibility. Part propaganda, part free-standing works of art, Gaza’s graffiti is deeply ingrained in the local society’s historical and political fabric.
“During the first Intifada we had no internet or newspapers that were free of control from the Israeli occupation,” explains Ayman Muslih, a 36-year-old Gaza graffiti artist from the Fatah party who started painting when he was 14 years old.
“Graffiti was a means for the leadership of the Intifada to communicate with the people, announcing strike days, the conducting of a military operation, or the falling of a martyr.”
The graffiti Muslih and others put up on Gaza’s walls was strictly controlled by each political party and their respective communications wings. Select individuals were delegated to hide their identities by covering their faces with scarves and to brave the Israeli military-patrolled streets to put up specific slogans.
“Writing on the walls was dangerous,” recalls Muslih. “I had good friends who were killed by Israeli soldiers who caught them.”
Spray paint colours became associated with each political group, with green preferred by Hamas, black by Fatah, and red for leftist groups.
The competition for popular support and leadership of the first Intifada was visually expressed in the amount of real estate each political party’s graffiti was able to capture.
First Intifada graffiti never developed too much artistically however because by nature it needed to be produced in as short a period of time as possible, to avoid detection.
Public gallery
The graffiti of the second Intifada developed more artistically than that of the first
The graffiti of the second Intifada developed more artistically than that of the first After the Palestinian Authority (PA) established itself in Gaza in 1994, more traditional means of communication with the local population took root, including national newspapers, radio and television stations and mobile phones.
While the more relaxed political atmosphere during the peace process was indeed more conducive to the retreat of political graffiti, the phenomenon never fully disappeared, perhaps because its function could not be so easily replaced by the traditional means and boundaries of political commentary.
The PA’s arrival also created the conditions for graffiti to evolve qualitatively. The Israeli army’s re-deployment outside most of the main Palestinian towns and refugee camps gave artists the time and space to better prepare and deliver their work.
Thanks to a $5mn Japanese donation to the PA to white wash miles of Gaza’s graffiti strewn roadways, a graffiti artist’s perfect canvas and public gallery emerged.
With the eruption of the second Intifada in 2000, Gaza’s graffiti culture re-emerged in full force.
Arsenal of tools
The factional competition between Fatah and Hamas and the steady flow of Palestinians killed by the Israeli occupation, created limitless material for graffiti artists who experimented with large murals commemorating the dead, or much smaller, but reproducible stencils.
Hamas particularly sought to take the discipline of graffiti art to new levels, seeing it as a part of the organisation’s arsenal of tools to propagate its world view, including promoting a resistance agenda against Israel (as opposed to the negotiations approach of the PA), and propagating the Islamisation of Palestinian society.
Hamas began offering courses for graffiti artists that trained them in the six main Arabic calligraphic scripts, known as al Aqlam aSitta: Kufi, Diwan, Thulth, Naksh, Ruq’a and Farsi.
Delivery of high-quality calligraphy graffiti was part of the religious movements’ more general reverence for the Arabic language, the sacred language of the Quran.
Tagging for the party
The different parties have different approaches to graffit
The different parties have different approaches to graffiti Gaza’s graffiti culture has just been documented in a new book by Swedish radio and photo-journalist Mia Grondhal, who has been visiting and reporting on the region for more than 30 years.
Although never previously the focus of her news reporting, Grondahl began paying closer attention to Gaza’s graffiti during the second Intifada when she became increasingly impressed with its evolving quality.
“It was some of the best graffiti I’ve seen, especially the calligraphy,” notes Grondahl.
“This is mainly the work of Hamas who are very careful about how they write the Arabic language. Fatah artists do not feel the same because they are a secular party, and to them it’s not so important how you write, but what you write.”
For Grondahl, Gaza’s graffiti tells a story that goes beyond the typical catchphrases that tend to be repeated about the Strip and its people.
“Gaza’s graffiti is so integrated into the society which makes it very interesting. You’re not out there tagging just for yourself. You are tagging for the party you belong to, the block you belong to, for a friend who is getting married, or a friend who was killed. It’s an expression of the whole range covering life to death.”
All photographs by Mia Grondahl.
Toufic Haddad is a Palestinian-American journalist based in Jerusalem, and the author of Between the Lines: Israel the Palestinians and the US ‘War on Terror’ (Haymarket Books, 2007).
Mia Grondahl is a Swedish radio and photo-journalist based in Cairo. She is the author of Gaza Graffiti: Messages of Love and Politics (University of Cairo Press, 2009).
The Year 2009 has proved to be a watershed in the growth of the global BDS movement. The massive lethal Israeli war of aggression on the Gaza Strip in late December 2008 and January 2009 galvanized many organized groups and individuals around the world to call for BDS actions as a means to end Israel’s criminal impunity and disregard for international law.
The report of the UN Fact-Finding Mission led by Judge Richard Goldstone, released in September 2009, found strong evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the assault on the Palestinian people in Gaza, and called for holding Israel accountable before international law. That report, and the media attention given to it, moved the terms of international solidarity with Palestine into a new plane, where calling for BDS is no longer considered “unrealistic” or “counterproductive.” BDS is emerging more strongly than ever as a key morally sound and politically realistic strategy for bringing an end to Israel’s impunity and holding it accountable to the same international standards as other nations.
In Palestine, the BDS National Committee (BNC), established in April 2008, has emerged as the principal anchor of the global BDS movement. A wide civil society coalition representing major sectors of Palestinian society in the OPT, inside Israel (1948) and in exile, the BNC has played a leading role in initiating international action, giving advice to BDS activists around the world, and participating in national and international forums. PACBI, which is one of the founders of the BDS movement and a member of its leadership, the BNC, continues to be actively engaged in the global BDS movement, both locally and internationally, on the level of academic and cultural boycott. Members of PACBI‘s Steering Committee have participated in many conferences, workshops, lectures, and seminars around the world to promote BDS and form alliances within international civil society. PACBI has also issued a number of important reference documents; it continues to receive positive feedback and requests for advice from artists, academics and activists using this material. The PACBI website, with both English and Arabic pages, is a valuable source of information for BDS campaigns around the world, averaging 750,000 unique visits per year.
Gaza activists surrounded by Egyptian riot police in central Cairo
Several hundred people have joined demonstrations on the Israel-Gaza border to protest against the Israeli blockade of the territory. The demonstrators, who marched to the Erez crossing point from both sides of the border, included dozens of international activists. The Egyptian authorities have allowed about 80 protesters to cross into the Gaza Strip from Egypt. Dozens more, however, scuffled with police in the capital Cairo. Some report say protesters were injured by Egyptian police. More that 1,000 international activists had gathered in Cairo in the hope of being allowed into Gaza but were refused because of what Egyptian officials called the “sensitive situation” in the Palestinian territory. Israel maintains a strict blockade of Gaza, tightened in 2007 when Hamas took over the strip, banning virtually all exports and allowing in only humanitarian basics. Egypt’s border is open to only occasionally, to people not goods. Much of what Gazans need is supplied through illegal tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border. Israel says this is also a supply route for weapons.
It has become almost impossible to work out what happens in Cairo. While this is covered on local media in Egypt, there is nothing on the western media outlets. We depend on emails from the activists and on the Gaza Freedom March messages:
Contact: Ann Wright, Egypt (19) 508-1493
Ziyaad Lunat, Egypt +20 191181340
Medea Benjamin, Egypt +20 18 956 1919
Ehab Lotayef, Egypt +20 17 638 2628 (Arabic)
(Cairo) Following Egypt’s refusal to allow the Gaza Freedom Marchers to enter Gaza, the more than 1,300 peace-and-justice activists are setting out on foot. Despite police blockades set up throughout downtown Cairo in an attempt to pen the protesters in and prevent them from demonstrating in solidarity with Palestinians, the internationals are unfurling their banners and calling on supporters of peace around the world to join them to demand the end of the siege of Gaza.
Egypt’s offer to allow 100 of the 1400 marchers to enter Gaza was denounced as insufficient and deliberately divisive by the organizers. Meanwhile, the Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs has sought to spin this last-minute offer as an act of goodwill for Palestinians and isolation of “troublemakers.” The Gaza Freedom March categorically rejects these assertions. Activists are in Cairo because they are being prevented by the Egyptian government from reaching Gaza. “We do not wish to be here, Gaza has always been our final destination”, said Max Ajl one of the marchers.
Some individuals managed to overcome the police barricades and began the march at the meeting point in Tahreer Square in downtown Cairo. They were joined by Egyptians who also wished to denounce the role of their government in sustaining the Gaza siege. The authorities have sought to separate international from the locals. The police is brutally attacking the nonviolent marchers. Many plain clothes police officers have infiltrated the crowds and are violently assaulting them. “I was lifted by the Egyptian police forces and literally tossed over the fence,” said Desiree Fairooz, one of the protesters. Marchers are chanting and resisting the attempt to disperse them vowing to remain in the square until they are allowed to go to Gaza. The GFM banner is hanging up high in a tree in the square. Some marchers are bleeding and riot police destroyed their cameras.
The Gaza Freedom March represents people from 43 countries with a diversity of backgrounds. They include peoples of all faiths, community leaders, peace activists, doctors, artists, students, politicians, authors and many others. They share a commitment to nonviolence and a determination to break the siege of Gaza.
“Egypt has tried every way possible to isolate us and to crush our spirit,” the march organizers say. “However, we remain as committed as we ever to standing up against tyranny and repression. We will march as far as we can towards Gaza, and if we are stopped by force, we will hold our ground in protest. We call on those committed to justice and peace everywhere to support our stand for freedom for Palestinians.”
Among the participants are Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker, Filipino Parliament member Walden Bello and former European Parliamentarian Luisa Morgantini from Italy. More than 20 of the marchers, including 85-year-old Holocaust survivor Hedy Epstein, have launched a hunger strike against the Egyptian crack-down and are now entering their fourth day.
New Year’s in Gaza is time to honor the dead. (Eva Bartlett) GAZA CITY, occupied Gaza Strip (IPS) – For many survivors of the last Israeli war on Gaza, time has not healed their wounds, physical or emotional.
Halil Amal Samouni, 10, still suffers vision problems in her right eye. The shrapnel remaining in her head causes her constant pain and she is unable to concentrate at school.
Her concentration is broken, also, by memories of her martyred father and younger brother, both of whom she saw shot dead at close range by Israeli soldiers during the 2008-2009 winter war on Gaza.
The name Samouni has become well known for the high number of martyrs in the extended family, and for the brutality with which many victims were killed, the Israeli army’s prevention of medical access to the injured, and the thorough and systematic destruction of homes, farms, and civilian infrastructure in the Zeitoun district in eastern Gaza, and all throughout Gaza.
In the wake of Israeli tanks, bulldozers, warplanes and Apache helicopters, the once tree-laden area was left a muddy pitch of rutted earth and tree stumps. Chicken farms were destroyed, along with plastic greenhouses, farm equipment, water piping, and the tens of homes, agricultural buildings and the local mosque.
Many of the remaining houses were taken as military positions, sniper holes bored through walls, soldiers’ excrement, clothing, spent ammunition and food provisions were routinely left among the trashed belongings of the house. Hate graffiti was found throughout homes in the Samouni neighborhood and all over Gaza.
Most horrifying was the targeted shooting of the family — including children — and the deliberate shelling of homes they had been forced into by Israeli soldiers.
Amal Samouni was among the least fortunate of survivors.
When Israeli soldiers came to her home early on 4 January, they shot her father Atiyeh dead at close range, then fired continuously into the room full of family members. Amal’s younger brother Ahmed, 4, was seriously injured by the shooting. Denied medical care, he died the following morning, roughly ten hours after Israeli soldiers prevented medical rescuers from entering the area.
“They killed my dad and my brother. They destroyed our house,” Amal says simply. She has told her story to journalists many times. “But it hasn’t done any good, nothing has changed.”
Zeinat Samouni, Amal’s widowed mother, shows the single room her family of eight are crammed into, cracked asbestos tiling covering the roof.
“The roof leaks. We put plastic jugs on the floor to catch the water,” she says. “And because we can’t buy cooking gas, we cook over a fire instead.”
Aside from their physical discomfort, it is memories of the massacre and fear of a new attack that trouble them.
“I was terrified he would choke,” she says, gesturing to a child she holds. “He was only a few weeks old at the time.”
She recounts the trauma of having another child die in her arms, seeing him shelved in an overcrowded mortuary freezer, and all the while desperately wondering whether Amal was still alive.
“Even now, I’m still so afraid for my children, afraid that another war will come. The UAVs (unmanned drones) are always over us, and often at night the helicopters come.”
In northern Gaza’s Ezbet Beit Hanoun, families and friends of the Abd al-Dayem and Abu Jerrad families gather on 26 December, holding a candlelight vigil in remembrance of their sons, wives and husbands killed during a series of Israeli flechette (dart-bomb) attacks a year back.
The first to be killed in that area of Gaza by the razor-sharp nails was medic Arafa Abd al-Dayem, 35, on the morning of 4 January. Along with other medics, Abd al-Dayem had been on duty in the Attatra region, in Gaza’s north, retrieving wounded and martyred. As the medics loaded the ambulance, Israeli soldiers fired a flechette shell at the clearly marked vehicle, spreading thousands of darts at high velocity. Abd al-Dayem died an agonizing death, his internal organs and lungs shredded by the darts.
Khalid Abu Saada, a medic and the driver of the ambulance, testified to the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights: “The shell directly hit the ambulance and 10 civilians, including the two paramedics, were injured.”
The following morning, the Abd al-Dayem family and friends gathered at a funeral tent erected for Arafa. Israeli tanks again fired flechette shells, striking the gathering multiple times, killing five at the tent, one down the road, and injuring at least 25.
“The pain is still fresh, I still can’t move on since my sons’ murders,” said Sabbah Abd al-Dayem, mother of two martyrs in their twenties.
Jamal Abd al-Dayem, father of the young men, recalls: “It was clearly a mourning house, on the road, open and visible. Immediately after the first strike, the Israelis fired again. I lost two sons. One of them was newly married, his wife eight months pregnant.”
Said Abd al-Dayem, 29, died of dart injuries to his head one day later in hospital. Nafez Abd al-Dayem, 23, died immediately from the darts to his head.
Nahez Abd al-Dayem, 25, survived but retains two darts in his abdomen, one in his chest, with only the dart in his leg removed. Islam Abd al-Dayem, 16, a cousin, died after three days in hospital from the darts to his neck. Arafat Abd al-Dayem, 15, a cousin, died instantly.
Human rights organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, and B’Tselem, among others, have criticized Israel’s use of flechette bombs in civilian areas in densely populated Gaza, where the darts have a “wide kill radius,” and indiscriminately target civilians.
Wafa Abu Jerrad, who was 21 and pregnant, lived down the street from the mourning tents. She was with her husband Muhammad, their two children, and relatives outside their house when Israeli soldiers fired the dart bombs.
Muhammad Abu Jerrad was stepping into the doorway, their two-year-old son Khalil in his arms, when the bomb hit. Wafa dropped to ground, struck by flechettes in the head, chest and back. She was killed instantly.
Sitting outside his family’s tent in the Attatra region, Saleh Abu Leila says, “Everything I worked for is gone.”
Since their two-story home was destroyed by Israeli soldiers during the war on Gaza, Abu Leila and 13 other family members have crowded into two small tents. During the summer, they sweltered in stifling heat. Now that winter is setting in, they are struggling to keep warm and dry.
Over 21,000 houses were destroyed or seriously damaged during the 23 days of Israeli attacks throughout Gaza that finally ended 18 January.
Since the end of the Israeli war on Gaza, Israeli authorities continue to block entry to cement and other necessary building materials. Glass, along with wood, piping and many other items, is considered potentially dangerous by Israeli authorities. The bomb-blasted windows of homes and buildings remain un-repaired one year later; the luckier families making due with plastic sheeting.
A small portion of Gaza’s 1.5 million people can afford to buy the overpriced, poor-quality cement smuggled in through the tunnels running between Gaza and Egypt. For those hardest hit, however, this is out of reach.
Hundreds of families, like the Attars, still remain in substandard shelters, insufficient for winter cold and rains.
Many Gazans do not welcome the New Year, they fear what it will bring.
More information from Gaza (sent by Jenny Morgan)
Images from Gaza, it seems, though the opening line of commentary says ‘Palestinians and Israelis come together to protest…’.
The High Court of Justice’s decision, in a panel headed by Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch, to end the ban on Palestinians using Route 443 is one of the most correct and just decisions the court has made in recent years.
Ever since the outbreak of the intifada, more than nine years ago, this road – which runs from the Ben Shemen interchange to the Ofer Base junction – has become a route for Israelis only. The ban even applied to the 10-kilometer portion of the road that passes through the West Bank, including on lands that were expropriated for public use. As a result, residents of nearby villages, including the owners of the land that was expropriated, who seek to reach the West Bank’s main cities are forced to use roundabout ways of getting to their destinations.
Over the course of 42 years of occupation, an approach has taken root which holds that the security and even convenience of the settlers take precedence over the property rights and welfare of the Palestinians. In order to ensure the safety of Israelis, dozens of bypass roads were paved in the West Bank and hundreds of roadblocks were put up. The route of the separation fence, which was supposed to separate the West Bank from the territory of the State of Israel, was also adjusted to the settlements’ expansion plans. To this end, thousands of dunams of land were expropriated from their owners and farmers were separated from their fields, the source of their livelihood.
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As was to be expected, MKs from the right attacked the Supreme Court with the questionable assertion that removing the roadblocks at the entrance of the villages near the road would undermine the security of travelers. These MKs ignore the principle behind the court’s ruling and the rules of international law, which enable the military administration to violate property rights only if this is done for the benefit of the local population. The term “local population” does not include those citizens of the occupying country who choose to live in the middle of occupied territory. Democratic and moral countries do not expropriate both the land and the right to make use of it.
The barring of Palestinians from Route 443 was one of the ugliest aspects of a deluxe occupation. Real security cannot be achieved by roadblocks, fences and separate roads, but only by a fair peace accord that will bring an end to the occupation.
After three days of vigils and demonstrations in downtown Cairo, Suzanne Mubarak’s offer to allow just 100 of 1,300 delegates to enter Gaza was rejected by the Gaza Freedom March.
Coordinating Committee as well as many of the larger contingents – including those from France, Scotland, Canada, South Africa, Sweden and New York State (U.S.).
“We flatly reject Egypt’s offer of a token gesture. We refuse to whitewash the siege of Gaza. Our group will continue working to get all 1362 marchers into Gaza as one step towards the ultimate goal for the complete end of the siege and the liberation of Palestine” said Ziyaad Lunat a member of the march Coordinating Committee.
The clip from Democracy Now above features an interview with Ali Abunimah giving the latest update (starts around 30:00). Abunimah states that between 50-80 people did board a bus to head to Gaza for various reasons, and according to this twitter update the bus may have been turned back at the Suez canal. Abunimah explained his own decision not to go to Gaza on his blog:
This was a very difficult morning. Many delegations to the Gaza Freedom March rejected the Egyptian offer of two buses to Gaza. Personally I wanted nothing more to be in Gaza. I did get on a bus. But I could not go when people I know and trust in Gaza did not want us to come under such conditions and when there was so much opposition to this. For me that was the bottom line. Their fear is this small delegation would be used by the Egyptian government for propaganda and there was great anger at the statements made by the Egyptian foreign minister last night maligning the Gaza Freedom March. I understand the agony of people on those buses who wanted to reach Gaza. I felt that. But it was impossible. We need to keep up the struggle to end the siege. We’ve come this far. Solidarity means standing together and continuing the struggle.
It’s been difficult to piece the situation together online, but clearly the march was put in a near impossible situation by the Egyptian offer and any decision regarding the offer would have been controversial. Here is a fascinating update on how march participants handled the news of the offer, and it’s clear that critics who felt that Egypt was using the march to whitewash their own complicity in the Gaza blockade won out. This decision was supported by Palestinians who were coordinating the march inside Gaza. Here is a statement from the Gaza-Gaza Freedom March Steering Committee:
Gaza 30.12.2009
Over the past week we, representatives of various civil society sectors in Gaza, have been humbled by the sacrifices that you, 1400 people, have made in order to come and support us in breaking the siege.
Despite our grave disappointment that we can not yet meet you all that we are still separated by this medieval siege we feel that your arrival in Cairo has already borne fruits. Your insistence to break the siege in order to be in solidarity with us has inspired many and shamed many others. Thanks to your presence with us, a network to break the siege and free Palestine has been established.
We support any decisions taken by the Gaza Freedom March Coordination Committee about the entry of just 100 of 1400 delegates into Gaza instead of all the delegates presently in Cairo. Obviously it is, as all previous decisions, a majority decision. We, at the Gaza- GFM Steering committee have reiterated our position, namely, that it is up to The Gaza Freedom March Coordination Committee in Cairo to decide. We initially felt that if representatives of all forty some countries can go to Gaza and join a march along Palestinians it would convey a very strong message to the world public opinion. Had they decided to go through with the Egyptian offer, we would have welcomed them in Gaza and deeply appreciated their solidarity.
The decision to send 100 delegates, however, seemed too divisive for the growing solidarity campaign with the Palestinian people. The unity of the global solidarity campaign is of utmost importance for us, the besieged Palestinians of Gaza. We have repeatedly argued that the march itself is not supposed to be only a symbolic gesture, but rather a part of a series of events which will lead to the end of the siege, once and for all. We want to intensify and continue building the solidarity campaign, not divide it.
We salute the GFM delegates and thank them for the tremendous amount of work they have been doing and whatever decision they came up with.
Eighty-six international activists and journalists have reportedly entered Gaza carrying humanitarian aid, but the Egyptian government is continuing to block more than 1,200 other other activists with the Gaza Freedom March from crossing the border. Organizers said Egypt’s position has prevented more aid from entering Gaza. Meanwhile, in Cairo, plainclothes Egyptian police officers beat members of the Gaza Freedom March as they staged a demonstration to demand the right to enter Gaza. Protesters were reportedly beaten with blows to the head and forcefully kicked. Other activists were detained in hotels. One Belgian protester named Maude said Egyptian security forces were tightly controlling their actions in Cairo.
Maude: “There was a lot of events in the street, in the street during the last few days. And now there is a big manifestation, but it’s not possible for us to join our group, because the police is making a circle and we can’t enter in. It’s not possible now.”
Gaza militants fired at least one Grad rocket into the southern Israeli town of Netivot Thursday evening, following a long lull in violence.
Police were looking into reports of a second explosion.
The Color Red early warning system did not go off, giving the resident no indication of the coming attack.
One woman suffered shock and no damage was reported.
The rocket marked the first such attack on Netivot in nine months. The last Grad rocket to hit the city exploded near a synagogue, and caused some damage.
Netivot Mayor Yehiel Zohar contacted the Israel Defense Forces demanding to know why the early warning system failed to work.
The unusual Grad attack came hours after hundreds of demonstrators gathered on both sides of the Gaza border to mark one year since Israel’s offensive in the Strip last winter.
By Gideon Levy
Well, here we are. A new year begins at midnight, and for the Middle East, 2010 will be a year of negotiations. Peace envoys are warming up at the starting line, document writers are polishing draft agreements for the envoys, advisers are coming up with their own phraseology, pundits are piling up verbiage, photographers are aiming their cameras, and diplomats are packing their bags and sharpening their tongues. George Mitchell will be here soon, Benjamin Netanyahu has already been to Cairo, Mahmoud Abbas is on his way. In the end there will be a summit. In Washington they’ll be elated, in Europe they’ll be exhilarated, the settlers will fulminate and the leftists will somnambulate. Yet another scene in the theater of the absurd, another act in the endless grotesque burlesque. Here we are again: The season of negotiations is upon us, negotiations that amount to nothing.
Already the archives are bursting at the seams with plans and initiatives, outlines and parameters, all already thick with dust. Never before has there been so dangerous and so protracted a conflict with so many wars and so many peace plans. From the first Rogers Plan of December 1969 to the second and third Rogers plans and up to the present, it’s been a horrifyingly dreary tale of sterile diplomacy, a 40-year journey to nowhere.
Everything has already been written and all the plans are amazingly similar, which isn’t surprising. If you want peace, just go to one of the drawers and randomly pluck out any of the plans, it really doesn’t matter which, and start implementing it. And if you want a “peace process,” you’re invited to join the coming festivities, including the killer hangover.
One could, for example, pull the original Rogers Plan out of the mothballs. William Rogers himself has been dead for years, but everything is right there in his plan: withdrawal to the 1967 borders, recognition, sovereignty, peace. It was Israel that rejected it. Forty years on, and we are wallowing in the exact same spot. You want to be a little more up-to-date? Take Bill Clinton’s plan – everything’s there too. So why start off yet again on another campaign of tortuous language? Why do all the Uzi Arads and George Mitchells have to wear themselves out?
Benjamin Netanyahu has already undergone his “historic turnabout,” he’s reportedly ready to discuss, certainly discuss, the ’67 borders, with territory swaps and security arrangements. Even the timetable has already been set – two years, of course it’s two years, it’s always two years, two years more. At the end, Israel’s ultimate triumph will be declared: There’s no partner. Again we’ll hear that the Palestinian president is “a chicken with no feathers” or that the Palestinian leaders are “a gang of terrorists,” and again we’ll hear that there’s no one to talk to.
There is no Palestinian partner, because there is no Israeli partner who is ready to take action. The day that Israel starts acting, together with the Palestinians, the partner will be there. Even Nelson Mandela wasn’t the Mandela we know until he was freed from prison and South Africa was placed in his hands. He too refused to give up armed resistance for decades, but when he was given a true opportunity, he followed a path of peace. The key was in the hands of F.W. de Clerk, not those of Mandela. Israel, too, has that key. Now that it is no longer possible to halt everything because of terrorism, since there is almost none, Israel has lost one of its best weapons. When there is terrorism, one cannot act, and when there is no terrorism, there’s no reason to act. But don’t worry, it will be back, if nothing happens. The experience of the disengagement won’t help either, because the continued imprisonment of the Gazans means that nothing has changed in their lives.
The last person to touch the dream was Ehud Olmert. Countless “excellent” meetings with Abbas, photo ops and bold speeches in abundance. Almost courage, nearly accord, a “shelf agreement” any minute now. Meanwhile, at the edge of the shelf are two lost wars and more settlement construction. All the fine words were rendered worthless by the action on the ground. Because this is the supreme test: It doesn’t matter what the Israelis say, it matters what they do.
The time for words is over. Stop negotiating, start doing. Lifting the blockade on Gaza and declaring a perpetual freeze on building in the settlements would do more than a thousand formulations. Someone who wants two states doesn’t build even one more balcony. This is the litmus test of Israel’s true intentions. Without taking these steps, everything else is a waste of time, the time of the negotiators and of all of us. Does Netanyahu mean to take any of these steps? That is very doubtful, troublingly so.
Some 1,000 people, among them all of Israel’s Arab MKs and community leaders, gathered Thursday at the Israeli side of the Gaza border to express solidarity with the residents of Gaza, one year after Israel’s offensive there. MK Taleb A-Sana relayed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh’s message to the Israeli side via a mobile phone.
During the rally, Israeli Arab MK Jamal Zahalka directed harsh criticism at Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who he said enjoys “classical music and killing children in Gaza.”
The terror emerging from the Gaza Strip was a result of Israel’s actions against Palestinians, Zahalka told the protesters.
Haniyeh told activists gathered on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides of the Gaza border that residents of the besieged territory had not given up hope and would never stop fighting for a state, with Jerusalem as its capital.
“Because of international solidarity and your support, we have become stronger,” Haniyeh declared. “The Palestinian nation will never give up its national aspirations or its right to Jerusalem, the capital of Palestine and the Islamic people.”
On the Gaza side of the border, nearly 100 international activists joined about 500 Palestinians, chanting and carrying signs denouncing the blockade.
Egypt allowed 84 pro-Palestinian foreign activists to march into Gaza, Egyptian officials in the North Sinai governorate said.
Some 1,400 activists from 43 countries have gathered in Cairo since Sunday to mark the first anniversary Operation Cast Lead. Egypt said 100 activists were allowed to pass through
“Egyptian authorities made an exception and opened the Rafah border on Wednesday and allowed activists from the Gaza Freedom March to pass through,” Alhamy Aref, secretary-general of the North Sinai governorate, said.
The Israeli Arab protesters on the Israeli side waved the flag of the Palestine Liberation Organization as they rallied against Israel’s continued blockade of Gaza, accusing Israel of starving the Palestinian people.
The 86 international activists began touring the Gaza Strip on Thursday, in an expression of solidarity with Palestinians living there under the Israeli blockade.
They were also scheduled to tour areas hit in the Israeli bombardments, visit Gaza’s Shifa hospital, and meet with community leaders, said Hamdi Shaath, the head of the pro-Hamas Committee to Defeat the Blockade.
Tighe Berry, the spokesman of the group, said Hedy Epstein, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor, had remained behind in Cairo
