Land, Settlements, Occupation, Apartheid ?Israel and Palestine
The division of land has been fundamental to the Israeli-Palstinian conflict ever since Zionism started and the Jewish population was 10% or less. What really happens with the land?
York High student reflects on how to achieve peace in the Middle East | SeacoastOnline.com
York High student reflects on how to achieve peace in the Middle East | SeacoastOnline.comBy Nico Catano | Opinion | April 14, 2010 2:00 AM
Editor's note: Nico Catano, 17, is a junior at York High School who visited Israel and the West Bank in December, 2009. He shares his opinions and reflections of that trip below. For more about the Seeds of Peace organization, visit http://www.seedsofpeace.org/.
In the West Bank in southern Palestine, a Palestinian farmer living in a small village called Im Salamuneh owned a 50-acre parcel of land. Next to this farmer's land was an Israeli settlement — illegally located in the West Bank according to international law. The settlers wanted more land in order to build a graveyard, and to do this, they wanted to expand the border wall two kilometers into the farmer's land. Unlike most Palestinian farmers, this man had all the legal papers to show that he in fact owned all the land the settlers were trying to take. So he went to the Israeli governmental courts to defend his right to the land.
The Israeli government gave him three years to restore his land and make it useful, meaning it needed to be a functional farm, or else they would expand the wall. But the Israeli soldiers never let him work his land. They would throw gas or tear bombs so that he was unable to work, and whenever he tried to farm the land, he would be harassed to the point that he had to run away.
At last the people of Im Salamuneh, and several international organizations, including the Seeds of Peace organization to which I belong, along with people from all over the world, decided that they should all get together to work with him, and protest against the actions of the soldiers. My friends from Seeds of Peace described their work on the land and showed me pictures. Finally, after two years and 10 months, they began work on the land, and on Dec. 31, the farm was fully operational. But the farmer still does not know if the Israelis will take his land. The courts might decide that the land is not really functional, or even change their initial decision.
This is the story of a Palestinian farmer who was lucky enough to have papers that supported his legal ownership of his land. The sad reality in Palestine is that people have lived on their land for hundreds of years and still do not have papers that show they legally own their land.
I had met many Israeli and Palestinians teens over this past summer at a camp sponsored by the Seeds of Peace organization. The Seeds of Peace camp is in Otisfield, and its goal is to promote peace among opposing groups by bringing together teens from the conflict areas for three weeks. This organization is based in New York City, and always has an American delegation as part of the camp. Having stayed in touch with many of the campers from the Middle East, I planned a trip to visit friends in Israel and the West Bank over my December school vacation.
I arrived in Tel Aviv on my own and stayed with my friend, Yuval, in an Israeli settlement called Pisgat Zeev, near Jerusalem. After five days with Yuval and his family, I was picked up by my Palestinian friend, Fadi, and we crossed the wall into the West Bank, where I stayed with his family for six days.
While in Palestine, I was shocked at many things I saw; but the most appalling was the wall which the Israelis call the "separation barrier," known to Palestinians as the apartheid wall. This wall is similar to the one that separated East and West Berlin, except it is twice as tall, and four times as long. The solid cement wall is eight meters tall and crowned with barbed wire. It has giant concrete sniper towers every several hundred feet, and it separates kids from schools, mothers from daughters, and friends from friends. In order to cross the wall, you need to have a certain type of ID, which most Palestinians do not have. The wait to cross can take up to four hours, and it is a humiliating process. When crossing the border, I saw old women being searched, and people who were in a large crowd waiting to get in. My friend, Fadi, told me that they would probably have to wait at least two hours. ...
Al Jazeera English - Middle East - Israel defends West Bank ID policy
Al Jazeera English - Middle East - Israel defends West Bank ID policy
Israel has defended a new policy that critics say could allow the Israeli military to expel tens of thousands of Palestinians from their own homes.
The new legislation, signed off six months ago and due to be implemented on Tuesday, amends an existing order from 1969 to prevent infiltration into the country.
The military policy now stipulates that all Palestinians in the occupied West Bank not carrying what Israel deems a valid identity card can be classified as "infiltrators", and as such, could face deportation or up to seven years in prison.
The Israeli military order does not specify what would be accepted as valid identification.
Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli government, denied that the amended measure was aimed at expelling Palestinians, but instead, said it would safeguard their rights.
"What we've done here is we've strengthened the rights of people who face such deportation by creating ... an independent judicial oversight mechanism, which makes sure there are checks and balances and that the legal rights of people are protected," he told Al Jazeera. ...
They’ve Stolen Our Road! � Aletho News
They’ve Stolen Our Road! � Aletho News...
We already knew about this, because our taxi-ride to Shufa had been interrupted by a huge earth mound and some concrete blocks in the road. We had to get out and walk the last mile up a steep hill.
This stretch of road is now solely for the use of the settlers, who use it to get to their settlement from the main road. The Israeli army will not allow Palestinians to use the road except on foot or on a donkey.
The road was built in 1950 by the Palestinians. In 1987, the Israelis built 40 houses on Palestinian land and started to share the road with the local villagers. The settlement expanded for some years, and then in 1995, the Israeli army suddenly built the earth mound and forbade the Palestinians to use the road. Now Jamal has to drive home from the school where he is the headteacher, park his car by the earth mound and walk the last mile uphill to his home. And he does this every day, in any weather, including temperatures in the 40s in summer.
“Why?” I asked Jamal. “Why can’t they share the road with you?” Jamal had no answer. For years they had shared the road with no problem. The Israeli answer is just “Security”, but they refuse to explain what they mean by this.
The only explanation that Jamal can think of is that the Israelis simply want to cause the Palestinians to suffer. Another explanation I have heard is that if someone wished to attack people in the settlement, the road would have provided an easy way of escape. But there has been no such attack in 23 years. Perhaps it’s just that the settlers feel nervous about sharing a road with people whose land they appropriated in order to build their settlement. ...
Why The Settlements In East Jerusalem? - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Why The Settlements In East Jerusalem? - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Hmmm. I have no idea, do you? But here's a Nexis story from the WaPo in 1994 that helps provide some historical context:
On the map, Maale Adumim is a settlement built on West Bank land that Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war. But for Raanan, it is not. "It is Jerusalem," she said. Raanan is at the vanguard of a long-planned and ambitious drive by Israel to fortify the area around Jerusalem with expanded Jewish settlements.
Nah that couldn't be it, could it? From another WaPo piece in 2004:
Israel is close to finishing a decades-long effort to surround Jerusalem with Jewish settlements, walls, fences and roads that will severely restrict Palestinian access to the city and could reduce the chance of its becoming the capital of a Palestinian state, according to documents, maps and interviews with Israelis, Palestinians and foreign diplomats.
The web of projects includes 13 settlements to the north of the city that are being linked with each other and with Jerusalem by access roads that act as physical barriers to Palestinian communities. To the east, Israel has approved expansion of the West Bank's largest settlement, Maleh Adumim, to absorb a swath of Palestinian land between the community and East Jerusalem. To the south, access and bypass roads and Jewish settlements have carved Palestinian lands into a checkerboard...
Avraham Duvdevani, head of the settlement unit of the World Zionist Organization (WZO), which implements the Israeli government's settlement program in the West Bank, said that the aim was to consolidate the capital of the Jewish state. "It's been the formal policy of all governments in Israel that Jerusalem will not be discussed or divided -- Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, to stay undivided forever," Duvdevani said. "Because of that, it was very easy to get permission from the minister of defense and the governments to build settlements that strengthened Jerusalem as the capital and the Jewish majority in Jerusalem and that blocked the option of the Palestinians to build in and near Jerusalem."
Why The Settlements In East Jerusalem? - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Why The Settlements In East Jerusalem? - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Hmmm. I have no idea, do you? But here's a Nexis story from the WaPo in 1994 that helps provide some historical context:
On the map, Maale Adumim is a settlement built on West Bank land that Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war. But for Raanan, it is not. "It is Jerusalem," she said. Raanan is at the vanguard of a long-planned and ambitious drive by Israel to fortify the area around Jerusalem with expanded Jewish settlements.
Nah that couldn't be it, could it? From another WaPo piece in 2004:
Israel is close to finishing a decades-long effort to surround Jerusalem with Jewish settlements, walls, fences and roads that will severely restrict Palestinian access to the city and could reduce the chance of its becoming the capital of a Palestinian state, according to documents, maps and interviews with Israelis, Palestinians and foreign diplomats.
The web of projects includes 13 settlements to the north of the city that are being linked with each other and with Jerusalem by access roads that act as physical barriers to Palestinian communities. To the east, Israel has approved expansion of the West Bank's largest settlement, Maleh Adumim, to absorb a swath of Palestinian land between the community and East Jerusalem. To the south, access and bypass roads and Jewish settlements have carved Palestinian lands into a checkerboard...
Avraham Duvdevani, head of the settlement unit of the World Zionist Organization (WZO), which implements the Israeli government's settlement program in the West Bank, said that the aim was to consolidate the capital of the Jewish state. "It's been the formal policy of all governments in Israel that Jerusalem will not be discussed or divided -- Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, to stay undivided forever," Duvdevani said. "Because of that, it was very easy to get permission from the minister of defense and the governments to build settlements that strengthened Jerusalem as the capital and the Jewish majority in Jerusalem and that blocked the option of the Palestinians to build in and near Jerusalem."
UN chief says Israeli settlements must be stopped - Yahoo! News
UN chief says Israeli settlements must be stopped - Yahoo! News
By MOHAMMED DARAGHMEH, Associated Press Writer –
26 mins ago RAMALLAH, West Bank – Israeli settlement building anywhere on occupied land is illegal and must be stopped, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moonsaid Saturday, after getting a closer look at some of the Israeli enclaves scattered across Palestinian-claimed territories.
From a hilltop observation post on the outskirts of the Palestinian city of Ramallah, the U.N. secretary-general saw the sprawling West Bank settlement of Givat Zeev, home to 11,000 Israelis who live in rows of red-roofed houses. The panorama included Jewish neighborhoods in traditionally Arab east Jerusalem, the Israeli-annexed sector of the city that Palestinians claim as a future capital.
The brief geography lesson came a day after Ban, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other major Mideast mediators — known as the Quartet — met in Moscow to try to find a way to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
The mediators urged Israel to halt all settlement construction, which has emerged as a key obstacle to renewing talks. Israel has agreed to curb settlement construction in the West Bank, but not in east Jerusalem, claiming the entire city as Israel's eternal capital.
On Saturday, Ban rejected Israel's distinction between east Jerusalem and the West Bank, noting that both are occupied lands.
"The world has condemned Israel's settlement plans in east Jerusalem," Ban told a news conference after his brief tour. "Let us be clear. All settlement activity is illegal anywhere in occupied territory and must be stopped." ...
Video: Settlers pouring cement into spring :: www.uruknet.info :: informazione dal medio oriente :: information from middle east :: [vs-1]
Video: Settlers pouring cement into spring :: www.uruknet.info :: informazione dal medio oriente :: information from middle east :: [vs-1]..
A group of Israeli settlers destroy a spring by the village of Qarawat Bani Hassan in the Salfit district of the occupied West Bank. Palestinian villagers were forced to watch helplessly as settlers poured sand and cement into the spring, guarded by five armed members of the Israeli military.
"A Settlement Freeze Is Apartheid" - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
"A Settlement Freeze Is Apartheid" - The Daily Dish | By Andrew SullivanAs Netanyahu engages in yet another "go fuck-yourself" to the president of the United States, and continues his ethnic social engineering in East Jerusalem, an op-ed in Ha'aretz gives an insight into the forces he is coping with at home. Americans can be a little naive when it comes to many Israelis' view of the West Bank and the religious and tribal fundamentalism that courses through their discourse. But this op-ed in the liberal Ha'aretz highlights the kind of looking glass world many extreme Israelis and their Washington allies inhabit:
Once upon a time there was a black woman; her name was Rosa Parks. There were racially discriminating laws in the United States, but she continued to sit on the bus even when she was told to vacate her seat for a white person. She was arrested, which set off a process whose end saw the abolishment of racial segregation on American buses. How is it possible that one little black woman, a dressmaker by profession, could change history simply because she remained sitting? Her protest was stronger than any demonstration, op-ed piece or Knesset vote. She opted for the natural choice; that is why she was triumphant.
People get married and have children. The children need space. The children grow up and get married. The children need a house. That is known as life. No one has ever managed to stop it. But every time another evil person arises who plans to destroy us, he does not succeed. And he does not succeed in destroying life itself.
Yes, the settler is analogizing the seizure of other people's land, slow expulsion of much of the population, erection of massive walls to contain and police them ... as the equivalent of the fight against Jim Crow. But he's not done yet:
The freeze is an edict that the public cannot tolerate.
It is not democratic, nor is it humane. It hits hard at the pockets of law-abiding citizens and embitters their lives. But at its foundation, either intentionally or by accident, is pure and basic apartheid - it is forbidden for Jews to live in certain places. It is forbidden to build. It is forbidden to develop. And it doesn't matter what the reasons are...
Despite the fury and the insult, let's not turn to violence. There is a simple, natural solution that is full of life - continuing to build. That will perhaps embarrass the prime minister in front of U.S. President Barack Obama, but that's precisely the point. A person with a manual cement mixer in Samaria can change history. Sometimes the man in the field can be a lot stronger than the great leaders. Just like Rosa Parks.
What I notice in this op-ed is no reference at all to the Palestinians and their claims and their rights. To these settlers, Arabs are non-persons; they do not exist in their narrative so they are utterly invisible. There is no one to compromise with - just land promised by divine diktat, against which there is no appeal. Any Israeli government beholden to these people will be incapable of making peace on its own. Increasingly, it seems to me, NATO or US troops will have to intervene on the border to enforce a separation and an end to these settlements for good and all. ..
� Gaza Must Be Rebuilt Now����������� : Information Clearing House -� ICH
� Gaza Must Be Rebuilt Now: Information Clearing House -� ICH...
The UN general assembly approved a report issued by its human rights council that called on Israel and the Palestinians to investigate charges of war crimes during the recent Gaza war, but positive responses seem unlikely.
In summary: UN resolutions, Geneva conventions, previous agreements between Israelis and Palestinians, the Arab peace initiative, and official policies of the US and other nations are all being ignored. In the meantime, the demolition of Arab houses, expansion of Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and Palestinian recalcitrance threaten any real prospect for peace.
Of more immediate concern, those under siege in Gaza face another winter of intense personal suffering. I visited Gaza after the devastating January war and observed homeless people huddling in makeshift tents, under plastic sheets, or in caves dug into the debris of their former homes. Despite offers by Palestinian leaders and international agencies to guarantee no use of imported materials for even defensive military purposes, cement, lumber, and panes of glass are not being permitted to pass entry points into Gaza. The US and other nations have accepted this abhorrent situation without forceful corrective action.
I have discussed ways to assist the citizens of Gaza with a number of Arab and European leaders and their common response is that the Israeli blockade makes any assistance impossible. Donors point out that they have provided enormous aid funds to build schools, hospitals and factories, only to see them destroyed in a few hours by precision bombs and missiles. Without international guarantees, why risk similar losses in the future?
It is time to face the fact that, for the past 30 years, no one nation has been able or willing to break the impasse and induce the disputing parties to comply with international law. We cannot wait any longer. Israel has long argued that it cannot negotiate with terrorists, yet has had an entire year without terrorism and still could not negotiate. President Obama has promised active involvement of the US government, but no formal peace talks have begun and no comprehensive framework for peace has been proposed. Individually and collectively, the world powers must act. ...
Al Jazeera English - GAZA: ONE YEAR ON - 'Punish, humiliate, terrorise'
Al Jazeera English - GAZA: ONE YEAR ON - 'Punish, humiliate, terrorise'...
The isolation of the Gaza Strip actually goes back to the early 1990s, when Israel first implemented the system of 'closure' and fenced off the territory. But Israel's current tight control of the Gaza Strip dates back to the aftermath of the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in January 2006, and then Hamas' armed defeat of Fatah in the summer of 2007.
Thus even before the widespread targeting of civilian infrastructure by the Israeli military a year ago, the Gaza Strip had been subjected to what the Goldstone report described as "a systematic policy of progressive isolation and deprivation".
'Economy dismantled'
Since 2007, aid as a proportion of all imports into the Gaza Strip has increased eightfold. Workforce unemployment stands at around 40 per cent, with only seven per cent of factories operational. The weekly average for truckloads of goods entering Gaza is a quarter of the quantity in the first half of 2007.
Months before Operation Cast Lead, an aid agency report described how the blockade "is destroying public service infrastructure in Gaza" and "has effectively dismantled the economy".
Little wonder then that the World Health Organisation's mission to Gaza reported in May this year that "since 2006, the health effects of the blockade have included stagnating life expectancy, worsening infant and child mortality, and childhood stunting".
Israel has also maintained a tight control over Gaza's air space and territorial waters, the population registry, and movement between Gaza and the West Bank.
Political strategy
The second crucial context for Operation Cast Lead is the overarching political strategy behind Israel's collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza. For the humanitarian catastrophe documented in numerous reports by the UN and NGOs is not, of course, a 'natural disaster' but a deliberate, political policy.
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One of Israel's main aims over the last few years has been to keep Hamas diplomatically and internationally isolated. Tzipi Livni, the then foreign minister, told a press conference a few days into Operation Cast Lead of how it was "important to keep Hamas from becoming a legitimate organisation" (a reason for Israel preferring not to extend a six-month truce).
Another key Israeli goal, evident in both the ongoing blockade as well as the brutal military assault of Operation Cast Lead, is to punish the civilian population in the hope of turning them against Hamas.
In early 2006, an advisor to Ehud Olmert, the then Israeli prime minister, said that "the idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet" in order to pressure the elected Hamas-majority government.
In September 2007, Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported on the Israeli military's plans "to limit services to the civilian population in Gaza" in order "to compromise the ability of Hamas to govern". ...
BBC News - Israel settlers obstruct building curbs inspectors
BBC News - Israel settlers obstruct building curbs inspectorsJewish settlers have sought to prevent building inspectors from enforcing recently announced limits on construction in the occupied West Bank.
Groups of settlers, who have vowed to ignore the curbs, gathered at the entrance to one settlement and said they had forced inspectors to leave.
A government official said there had been some "low level friction".
The Palestinians say Israel's 10-month building pause is not enough and are refusing to restart peace talks.
The building restrictions do not apply to East Jerusalem, where the Palestinians want to locate the capital of their future state. ...
Jewish Nationalists and Palestinians Clash in East Jerusalem - NYTimes.com
Jewish Nationalists and Palestinians Clash in East Jerusalem - NYTimes.comJERUSALEM — Jewish nationalists and
Palestinians clashed in an East Jerusalem neighborhood on Tuesday after the Israelis took over a house by court order in a predominantly Arab area. The confrontation further strained tensions in this contested city, where competing Israeli and Palestinian claims have become a sticking point in the Obama administration’s efforts to restart peace talks.
The house at the center of Tuesday’s flare-up is in Sheik Jarrah, a district just north of the Old City, where three Palestinian families have been evicted from other houses in the last year after losing a lengthy legal battle in the High Court and lower district and magistrates courts.
A Jewish association won its claim to historical ownership of the land in question, and has plans to build a large Jewish housing complex there. The Palestinians fear that the Jewish presence in Sheik Jarrah is part of a larger project to cement Israeli control of the eastern part of the city and to push Palestinian residents out.
The latest Jewish residents to move into the area were escorted by the police and private security guards and immediately removed furniture from the property, which was built by a Palestinian family headed by Refka al-Kurd, 87.
The small, one-story structure was built about 10 years ago as an extension of the Kurds’ original home, but it was unoccupied, having been sealed by the authorities after it was determined to have been constructed without the proper permits.
“The authorities took our keys to the property because we built it without permits,” said Nabil al-Kurd, 66, who lives in the original house. “But it seems the settlers can live here without permits because they are the sons of God,” he said bitterly, referring to the Jewish newcomers. ...
Corporations: The Real Reason Obama is not Making Much Progress | CommonDreams.org
Corporations: The Real Reason Obama is not Making Much Progress | CommonDreams.org
Almost a year after Barack Obama ascended to the White House, many of his supporters are bemused. His healthcare bill is a hefty improvement but it still won't provide coverage for all Americans, and may not provide a public alternative to the over-charging insurance companies - if it passes at all. His environmental team is vandalising the vital Copenhagen conference by saying the US - the single biggest emitter of warming gases - will not sign up to any legally binding restrictions there. He has placed the deregulation-fanatics who caused the New Depression, like Lawrence Summers, in charge of the recovery. Despite the real improvements on Bush - such as the end of torture, the resumption of stem-cell research, and opposition to the coup in Honduras - many people are asking: why he is delivering so little, so slowly?
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This policy came, however, with a different price tag. According to her later sworn testimony, Jamie Leigh Jones - a 20-year-old working for the contractor Halliburton/KBR - was hanging out with co-workers one night in Iraq when her drink was spiked. When she woke up, she was haemorraging blood from her vagina and her anus. Her breast implants were ripped. The damage was so severe she later needed reconstructive surgery on her genitalia. She surmised she had been gang-raped by the seven men she had been drinking with. When she approached Halliburton/KBR, she says they locked her in a metal container with no food or water for 24 hours. A doctor came to see her wounds and took DNA evidence, although it was later "lost." A guard took pity on her and loaned her his cell phone. She called her father, who called the American embassy - and only then was she released.
In an Iraq that was collapsing all around her, there was no chance of the Iraqi police investigating. Halliburton/KBR insisted that her contract required the alleged gang-rape to be addressed by the company's private arbitration process, forbidding any claim in the American courts. (If this was how they treated blonde English-speaking American girls, what did they do if Iraqis said they had been abused?) After Leigh Jones went public, many other American women came forward to say they had similar experiences working in Iraq. Her legal team argues the refusal to allow rape to be pursued through the courts created a climate where it was more likely to happen.
The Democratic Senator Al Franken, when he heard about this, was horrified, and tabled a simple amendment to the law. It demanded that no company that prevents rape victims from having their day in court should receive taxpayers' money any more. Rape is rape. A majority of Republicans in the Senate - including John McCain - voted against the amendment. Why? The private contractors are major donors to the Republican Party, but the Senators claim this didn't affect their judgement. No - they said that Franken's proposal was a "vendetta" against Halliburton/KBR with "political motives". Franken pointed out any company trying to stop rape victims getting justice would be treated exactly the same by this law. The Republicans ignored him. They voted to maintain a system where some rape is not pursuable in a court of law.
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At the same time, a group of Democratic senators have tried to amend the latest customs bill to ensure that nothing produced by slaves should be sold in the United States. It sounds uncontroversial - as uncontroversial as punishing rapists, in fact. Yet corporate lobbyists are militating behind the scenes to oppose it. As the private subscription-only newsletter "Inside US Trade" reported: "Business groups are worried by the potential effects", and a source tells them there will be, "a push from lobbyists closer to the Finance Committee mark-up of the bill... US industry groups and foreign governments [ie those that use slave labour] could form ad hoc coalitions to help send a united message." They will fight for their right to use slave labour.
These examples are extreme, but they reveal a powerful undertow that is at work on all political issues (and both main parties) in the United States. To see how, you have to understand two processes. The first is the nature of corporate power. Corporations are structured to do one thing, and one thing only: to maximise profit for their shareholders. No matter how personally nice or nasty their CEOs are, if they put anything ahead of profit, they will be sacked, and replaced by somebody who doesn't. As part of a tightly regulated market, this can be a useful engine for growth. But if it is not strictly reigned in by the law and by trade unions, this pressure for profit will extend anywhere - from trashing the environment to rape and slavery, as these cases remind us. The second factor is the nature of the American political process today. If you want to run for elected office in the US, you have to raise a fortune from corporations or the super-rich to pay for TV advertising. So before you can appeal to the voters, you have to appeal to the corporations. You do this by assuring them you will serve their interests. Once you are in office, you have to keep pleasing them at every step, or they won't pay for your re-election campaign. This two-step overwhelms the positive instincts the individual politicians may have to do good - and drags the US government further and further from the will of the people.
Obama had to climb through this system, and he is currently imprisoned by it. It explains his relative failure so far. Healthcare is proving so hard because the insurance companies are paying both Republicans and right-wing Democrats in Senate to thwart any attempt to provide universal healthcare coverage. ...
This Land is My Land, Your Land is My Land | CommonDreams.org
This Land is My Land, Your Land is My Land | CommonDreams.org...
One reason people probably believe the cross-border checkpoints are more disruptive than those within the West Bank is the visual contrast. Unlike the prominent walls designed to physically and mentally imprison Palestinians on the border, the barriers within the West Bank are wire-link fences which are comparatively invisible especially from the settler colonies in the distance that are designed to "protect". Israel is one giant military base and the occupied territories are its brigs.
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Palestinians suffer more from the occupation, but Israelis suffer as well. To cope with the guilt of being governed by a nation that occupies their neighbors, some Israelis choose to remain ignorant about what's happening in their own backyards, others are compelled to develop religious excuses for setting up apartheid systems. All the while generations are growing up under unjust treatment breeding anger and resentment and ironically making Israel less safe. Much like in the U.S. other Israelis choose instead to take responsibility and work against the crimes being committed by their government.
Susan and other volunteers at Machsom Watch may not be able to sleep at night, but their important work along other activists we have met during the DAM delegation are vital pieces to solving the puzzle of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Clinton says Israeli settlements not legitimate - Yahoo! News
CAIRO (Reuters) – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday that Washington does not accept the legitimacy of Israeli settlement activity but believes that getting to talks is the quickest way to achieve a freeze.
"We do not accept the legitimacy of settlement activity and we have a very firm belief that ending all settlement activity, current and future, would be preferable," Clinton said after meeting with Egyptian officials including President Hosni Mubarak.
Jews take over Jerusalem house from Palestinians | Reuters
Jews take over Jerusalem house from Palestinians | ReutersJERUSALEM, Nov 3 (Reuters) - Jews took over another house in Arab East Jerusalem on Tuesday in what Palestinians say is a systematic campaign to drive them out and strengthen Israel's hold on all of Jerusalem.
The house, built 10 years ago by the al-Kurd family, is the seventh this year to be awarded to Jewish settlers following legal battles in the Israeli courts, where the Palestinians say a fair hearing is impossible to obtain.
The houses, in a predominantly Palestinian district, now fly the Israeli flag and are protected by men with guns.
The al-Kurd house was unoccupied and locked for eight years by court order pending settlement of a land-ownership dispute.
Police kept members of the family back as a dozen Israeli men removed furniture.
"They can go to Syria, Iraq, Jordan. We are six million and they are billions," said Yehya Gureish, an Arabic-speaking Yemen-born Jew who said his family owned the land and had Ottoman Empire documentation to prove it.
"This land is Israel. We are in Israel. God gave this land to the Jews. The Torah tells us so. You want war? Declare war on God, not on us," he said. ...
Amnesty says Israel curbing water to Palestinians :: www.uruknet.info :: informazione dal medio oriente :: information from middle east :: [vs-1]
Amnesty says Israel curbing water to Palestinians :: www.uruknet.info :: informazione dal medio oriente :: information from middle east :: [vs-1]26 October 2009
JERUSALEM - Human rights group Amnesty International said in a report published on Tuesday that Israeli restrictions prevent Palestinians from receiving enough water in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The report says Israel’s daily water consumption per capita is four times higher than that in the Palestinian territories.
"Water is a basic need and a right, but for many Palestinians obtaining even poor-quality subsistence-level quantities of water has become a luxury that they can barely afford," said Amnesty’s Donatella Rovera.
Israel, itself facing unprecedented water shortages and rising tariffs, controls much of the West Bank’s supplies, pumping from an aquifer that bridges Israel and the territory.
Israel sells some water back to the Palestinians under quotas agreed in the 1993 Oslo Accords, which rights groups say have not been increased in line with population growth.
The report said that Gaza’s coastal aquifer, its sole fresh water resource, has been polluted by infiltration of seawater and raw sewage and degraded by over-extraction.
Israel maintains a blockade of the Gaza Strip, an area taken over by Hamas Islamists who fought Palestinian forces loyal to Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007. ...
Nothing to Lose But Apartheid | CommonDreams.org
Nothing to Lose But Apartheid | CommonDreams.orgThis weekend at the eighth annual US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation national organizers' conference held in Chicago, delegates from the approximately 300 member groups that make up the US Campaign voted in favor of an academic and cultural boycott of Israel. The vote came on the heels of a presentation by Omar Barghouti and myself on behalf of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel and the US Campaign for an Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.
The proposal that "the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation should endorse the principle of cultural and academic boycotts" passed by a landslide with one abstention and not a single objection. The quasi-unanimous vote, and the deep collective breath of relief that followed, will go down in history as the moment US-based Palestine solidarity activists overcame tactical differences that had long hindered us, to finally come together to confront Israeli apartheid....
BBC NEWS | Middle East | No settlement freeze - Netanyahu
BBC NEWS | Middle East | No settlement freeze - NetanyahuIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to have rebuffed US demands for a total freeze on settlement building in the West Bank.
He is quoted as saying he had told Washington he would instead consider "scaling down construction" .
The US has called on Israel to halt all construction work in a bid to restart peace talks with the Palestinians.
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"We made clear that we will build 2,500 housing units which are already in construction," he is quoted as saying.
"A few days ago, we confirmed 450 additional housing units. I told the Americans that we shall consider scaling down construction."
... "The Palestinians expected a complete halt to construction, a freeze, now it is clear that will not be," he went on to say. "Jerusalem is not a settlement and construction there will continue as usual."
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Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas insists he will not meet his Israeli counterparts until there is a freeze on the settlement of occupied territory, which is illegal under international law.
When news emerged of Israel's plan to build 450 new homes last week, he said there was no point attending a summit with Mr Netanyahu.
Ira Glunts: Netanyahu's Time Bomb
Ira Glunts: Netanyahu's Time BombThe public disagreement between Israel and the U.S. over continued settlement expansion in the West Bank and Jerusalem has heated up considerably. At a cabinet meeting on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly rejected the Obama administration's request for a halt to construction of a planned settlement in Sheik Jarrah, located in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem.
The disputed site is owned by billionaire and settlement supporter Irving Moskowitz who bought the property in 1985. Mr. Moskowitz hopes to construct 20 residence units at what is currently the site of the Shepherd's Hotel. The location was once used as a residence by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. It was also was once the home of author and Palestinian nationalist, George Antonius. The location borders an historic and wealthy Palestinian neighborhood which has many opulent villas. The proposed building site was described at the Israeli (Hebrew) Channel One web site as a "ticking time bomb since 1985." The municipality of Jerusalem has prevented the development of the site because of Palestinian sensibilities until recently.
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What makes construction at the Shepherd's Hotel site so controversial is that it demonstrates Israel's policy of not only generally rejecting the U.S. request to cease building in the territories, but also to refuse a U.S. plea to halt a building at a specific site. An entreaty to stop the planned building on the property was delivered to Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren by State Department officials within the last few days. According to Ha'aretz, Oren told the Americans that Jerusalem is no different than any other part of his country and that Israel would not accede to their demand.
In his speech to the cabinet on Sunday, Netanyahu declared, "Jerusalem is united, it is the capital of the Jewish people, and its sovereignty is not open to debate." He further added that any Jew has the right to build anywhere in Jerusalem. The Prime Minister's statement received support from opposition member of parliament Yoel Hasoon (Kadima), who said,"the American request to refrain from building in Jerusalem is not legitimate. Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and the Jewish people, and is not a settlement...." ...
In Israel, no settlement deal for US envoy – just more settlers | csmonitor.com
In Israel, no settlement deal for US envoy – just more settlers | csmonitor.com
During Mitchell's visit, activists set up 11 outposts. A report said the number of Israelis living in the West Bank has surpassed 300,000. Jerusalem - US Mideast envoy George Mitchell wrapped up three days of talks here on Tuesday, heralding "good progress" in his meetings with Israeli officials. But he made no mention of a much anticipated agreement on the most visible point of contention in recent weeks and a key issue for Arabs: freezing settlement construction in the West Bank.
One of the main goals of Mr. Mitchell's visit, part of a regional trip that includes stops in Arab Gulf states later this week, had been to get Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to stop the expansion of settlements – a move President Obama sees as a jumping-off point to getting Israeli and Palestinian leaders to agree on a two-state solution. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has said that he will not return to talks with Israel unless such a freeze is instituted. ...
Israeli Settlers Set Fire To Palestinian Fields, Stone Cars During Rampage
Israeli Settlers Set Fire To Palestinian Fields, Stone Cars During RampageNABLUS, West Bank — More than 30 Israeli settlers, some of them on horseback, set fire to fields and olive trees and stoned Palestinian cars during a rampage in the West Bank on Monday, a Palestinian official said. Two Palestinians were lightly injured.
The settlers went on the rampage near the city of Nablus in the northern West Bank to protest the Israeli army's removal of an unauthorized settlement outpost in the area.
Ghassan Daglas, a Nablus municipality official, said the riot began with 10 settlers on horseback and grew to a mob of 30 south of the city, where the settlers attacked Palestinians who passed in cars.
Daglas said smoke from the burning fields blanketed the area, but no houses were damaged. Daglas said Israeli forces tried to stop the rampaging settlers.
Israel's paramilitary border police force said it arrested one settler. ...
50 Palestinians Evicted From Their Jerusalem Homes
50 Palestinians Evicted From Their Jerusalem Homes
JERUSALEM — Israeli police evicted two Palestinian families in east Jerusalem on Sunday, then allowed Jewish settlers to move into their homes, drawing criticism from Palestinians, the United Nations and the State Department.
Police arrived before dawn and cordoned off part of the Arab neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah before forcibly removing more than 50 people, said Chris Gunness, spokesman for the U.N. agency in charge of Palestinian refugees.
U.N. staff later saw vehicles bringing Jewish settlers to move into the homes, he said.
Israeli police cited a ruling by the country's Supreme Court that the houses belonged to Jews and that the Arab families had been living there illegally.
Gunness said the families had lived in the homes for more than 50 years. ...
US teen pregnancy and syphilis rates rose sharply during George Bush's presidency, Centres for Disease Control finds | World news | guardian.c
US teen pregnancy and syphilis rates rose sharply during George Bush's presidency, Centres for Disease Control finds | World news | guardian.co.uk
• Aids cases in adolescent boys have nearly doubled
• Fall in gonorrhea infection rate reversed
Teenage pregnancies and syphilis have risen sharply among a generation of American school girls who were urged to avoid sex before marriage under George Bush's evangelically-driven education policy, according to a new report by the US's major public health body.
In a report that will surprise few of Bush's critics on the issue, the Centres for Disease Control says years of falling rates of teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted disease infections under previous administrations were reversed or stalled in the Bush years. According to the CDC, birth rates among teenagers aged 15 or older had been in decline since 1991 but are up sharply in more than half of American states since 2005. The study also revealed that the number of teenage females with syphilis has risen by nearly half after a significant decrease while a two-decade fall in the gonorrhea infection rate is being reversed. The number of Aids cases in adolescent boys has nearly doubled.
The CDC says that southern states, where there is often the greatest emphasis on abstinence and religion, tend to have the highest rates of teenage pregnancy and STDs.
In addition, about 16,000 pregnancies were reported among 10- to 14-year-old girls in 2004 and a similar number of young people in the age group reported having a sexually transmitted disease.
"It is disheartening that after years of improvement with respect to teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, we now see signs that progress is stalling and many of these trends are going in the wrong direction," said Janet Collins, a CDC director.
Although the CDC does not attribute a cause, groups that support comprehensive sex education have seized on the report as evidence of the failure of religiously-driven policies that shy away from teaching about contraception in favour of emphasising avoiding sexual contact.
Planned Parenthood said the CDC report is "alarming" and confirms that teenagers need "medically accurate, age-appropriate, comprehensive sex education".
But supporters of abstinence-based education said that the new report shows that there is too little not too much emphasis on discouraging sex before marriage....
YouTube - Cruel, but Necessary
YouTube - Cruel, but Necessary
"when you go to war ... when you get to bomb a population ... to tell them to stop sending their people to fight us ... it's cruel but necessary ..." ... "... the Israeli's try to minimize casualties and I don't agree with that all the time"
... insights on settlements from Jerusalem ....
