Dagelijks archief: 6 juli 2012

Month in Pictures: June 2012

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During the month of June, Israeli air strikes on Gaza killed more than a dozen Palestinians and injured more than 70. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, “Between 20 and 23 June, the Israeli air force launched a series of air strikes, targeting metal workshops, civilian structures, motorcycles carrying armed Palestinians, military bases and open fields.” One victim, 12-year-old Mamoun al-Dam, was killed in an Israeli missile strike while picnicking with his family. During this time, one Israeli soldier was killed by a Palestinian gunman.

Also during June, Palestinian prisoner Akram Rikhawi continued his open-ended hunger strike, now going on 86 days, in protest of Israel’s refusal to release him on humanitarian grounds. Samer al-Barq and Hassan Safadi also renewed their hunger strikes after Israeli violated the agreement ending the mass hunger strike in the prisons by extending the orders to detain the men without charge or trial — a practice known as administrative detention.

Palestinians also marked for the 45th year the Naksa, or setback — the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip which began after Israel captured the territories during the 1967 War.

This month Israel also began rounding up African refugees and deporting them en masse; “Israel belongs to the white man,” declared Eli Yishai, Israel’s interior minister.

 

Thaer Halahleh (right) in the West Bank village of Kharas near Hebron following his release from Israeli prison after a 78-day hunger strike. At Halahleh’s left is Khader Adnan, who inspired a wave of hunger strikes among Palestinian political prisoners.

A Palestinian woman mourns Naim al-Najjar during his funeral in the West Bank village of Idhna, near Hebron, 17 June. Al-Najjar and another man were shot dead by an Israeli truck driver in the occupied West Bank.

Palestinian boys inspect the damage at a dairy factory in Gaza City after it was hit during Israeli air strikes the previous day, 4 June.

Relatives of Ahmed Nassir mourn during his funeral in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, 2 June. Nassir killed an Israeli soldier before being shot dead himself in a rare cross-border attack.

A Palestinian boy wounded during Israeli air strikes on Gaza City, 20 June.

A relative of Thaer al-Baik collapses during the man’s funeral in Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, 21 June. Al-Baik, 30, and another member of Hamas’ armed wing suffocated in a tunnel at a Hamas training camp after it was hit in an Israeli air strike, according to reports.

Palestinian mourners pray over the body of Hadeel al-Haddad during her funeral in Gaza City, 20 June. The girl was killed the previous day when a rocket fired by Palestinian fighters fell short of its target in Israel.

Palestinians in the refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared in north Lebanon take part in a funeral procession for 15-year-old Palestinian Ahmad Qassim, who was killed at a Lebanese army checkpoint in the camp.

Palestinians in the occupied West Bank city of Nablus demonstrate in solidarity with Palestinian hunger striker Mahmoud Sarsak. Sarsak, a footballer with the Palestinian national team, refused food for nearly three months before Israel agreed to release him when his current detention orders expire.

A protest and press conference is held outisde the Nablus home of Hassan Safadi who renewed his hunger strike after Israel extended orders to hold him without charge or trial, 28 June.

Residents of al-Mufaqarah village in the West Bank’s South Hebron Hills pause to pray after being forbidden to continue building the local mosque. The original mosque was demolished last November.

Palestinian policemen confront demonstrators during a protest against a meeting between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Deputy Israeli Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, 30 June.

Palestinian protesters hold flags and banners during a demonstration against the Israeli occupation and to mark Naksa Day, the 44th anniversary of the 1967 Six Day War, at the entrance of the old city near the settlement of Beit Romano in the occupied West Bank town of Hebron, 5 June.

Graffiti in Hebrew reading “Death to Arabs,” “revenge” and “Hello from Gilad’s farm” (an illegal settler outpost) spray-painted on a wall in the “coexistence” community of Neve Shalom/Wahat al-Salam (Oasis of Peace), west of Jerusalem, on 8 June. Vandals rampaged overnight, slashing car tires and spraying graffiti.

A Sudanese activist hangs a poster of an African refugee with the slogan “Refugee, not an infiltrator” as part of a campaign against the deportation of refugees, Tel Aviv, 13 June.

An Israeli activist says goodbye to a South Sudanese youth as he sits in a bus taking him from Tel Aviv to Ben Gurion airport to be deported to South Sudan with another 120 persons on a flight leaving the same night, 17 June.

A Palestinian protester during a weekly demonstration against the wall and settlements in the occupied West Bank village of Nilin, 15 June.

A Palestinian family observes Israeli soldiers during clashes with Palestinian protesters in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh near Ramallah, 22 June. Used tear gas canisters used against previous demonstrations against the occupation and settlements are strung together for display outside the home.

Palestinians in Gaza City celebrate the victory of Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi in Egypt’s first free presidential elections, 24 June.

Activists march in Tel Aviv during a protest marking 45 years of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, 9 June.

Palestinians harvest wheat in al-Sawiya village near Nablus in the occupied West Bank, 14 June.

A Palestinian employee works at the al-Arz ice cream factory in the occupied West Bank City of Nablus, 19 June.

A Palestinian baker prepares bread at his bakery in Rafah, southern Gaza Strip, 13 June.

Palestinian boys read verses from the Quran during a class on how to read Islam’s holy book at a mosque in Rafah, southern occupied Gaza Strip, 14 June.

Palestinian girls sit for their final high school exams, known as tawjihi, in Gaza City, 9 June.

Palestinians enjoy the steam bath at the 400-year-old traditional Turkish bath Hamam al-Shifa in the occupied West Bank City of Nablus, 27 June.

Palestinians in Gaza City enjoy the beach, 27 June.

Young couples wearing traditional dress take part in a wedding during the opening of Heritage Week in Birzeit village near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, 27 June.

Palestinians celebrate during a mass wedding party for 19 grooms in the village of Silwad near the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah, 28 June.

(electronicintifada.net / 06.07.2012)

Clinton meets Abbas before talks with Israel

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PARIS (Reuters) — US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday the Palestinian-Israeli conflict should not be forgotten amid wider upheaval in the Middle East.

Washington has made no visible progress toward its goal of reaching an outline peace deal by the end of this year and both sides appear unlikely to make any significant steps toward peace ahead of the US election in November.

Clinton met Abbas after attending an international meeting on Syria, where forces loyal to President Bashar Assad have sought for more than a year to crush a rebellion against his family’s four-decade rule.

The Syrian conflict is the bloodiest of the Arab Spring uprisings that have toppled authoritarian rulers in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.

Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians broke down in 2010 in a dispute over Jewish settlement building in the West Bank.

“In a time of upheaval across the region, we cannot lose sight of the critical importance of resolving this issue,” Clinton told reporters.

Clinton is due to travel to Israel later this month.

(www.maannews.net / 06.07.2012)

USAID in Palestine: Building Roads to Cut Off the People

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A young Palestinian protester runs away from Israeli soldiers during a demonstration against the expropriation of Palestinian land by Israel in the village of Kafr Qaddum, near the West Bank city of Ramallah on 22 June 2012.

So very far from the network of old roads present since before the British mandate — and far from the winding settler roads that cover close to 2 percent of the area of the West Bank — there, in the valleys and mountains of Palestine, USAID is building alternative roads that will become the main transportation network for Palestinians.

Prime Minister Salam Fayyad marketed the new roads as part of his plan to establish a Palestinian state. He was proud that the roads would intersect areas B and J, which comprise 80 percent of the West Bank and touted them as “Palestinian” development projects.

However, critics such as Ingrid Jaradat Gassner, director of BADIL resource center for Palestinian refugees in Bethlehem, said that through the project, the PA was aiding in the ghettoization of its own people.

The roads project is the latest step in a series of attempts to dislocate Palestinians from their historical geography and separate them from the ever-growing settler communities in the West Bank. The walls, roads, and ghettos are an enactment of the Zionist colonial fantasy of completely removing the traces of Palestinian life from the landscape after having failed to remove the Palestinians themselves.

The new roads, which provide a separate means of transport for Palestinians in the area, conform to the larger colonial project while serving the interest of the PA to create a space of its own in the West Bank. They also conveniently remove Palestinians from the sight of the Zionist colonizers, strengthening the racial divides of an already segregated and unequal society.In establishing connections between spaces in Palestine, the roads also sever old connections, namely the connection between collective memory and geography in Palestine. Moving and operating in a shared space defined as Palestine has resulted in experiences, feelings, and memories that become fixed and tied to the land and nation.

National sentiment has been targeted by years of roadblocks, checkpoints, and conflict aimed at preventing Palestinians from moving freely on their land, disrupting the memories tied to the place and creating a conceptual gap between Palestinians of different cities and regions.

In the past decades, this memory has eroded, becoming more localized and narrow, so that little is left of the memory tied to geography and the geography tied to memory save some small fragments that vanish with the passing of time.

Today, it is normal to find that there are many people in Ramallah who have visited a number of European capitals but have never set foot in Hebron, a mere 50 km away. Many Palestinians reflect nostalgically on the period before the signing of the Oslo accords, when Haifa and Jaffa were just a stone’s throw away and the occupation was uniting Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem, and the land occupied in 1948. Moving and operating in this space kept the memory alive and full with the details of the Palestinian resistance.

Today, settlers have returned to the roads of the West Bank, sharing them with Palestinians in an illustration of the relative peace and stability that currently prevails. In many cases, they move about without guards and supervision and are not required to stop behind the stone mounts present at every stop out of fear of being trampled by Palestinians.

Yet, it is clear that this situation will not last, as any tension would put all those settlers in danger. Thus, this sharing of the settlement roads is temporary and will not continue. In this sense, the American roads are inevitable.

This new roads network is part of the “Roadmap for Peace in the Middle East” advocated by George W. Bush, specifically the aspect stressing the “territorial continuity” in any discussion of the Palestinian state. These alternate roads and networks of tunnels just for Palestinians (more than 48 tunnels and 34 barriers and checkpoints) ensure geographic continuity comfortable for Israel and the settlers.With the call for territorial continuity in the Palestinian state, the Rand corporation devised a plan in 2007 to build fast trains linking the major concentrations of Palestinian populations between Rafah and Jenin in the shape of an arc.

This project was promoted as setting a new example for peace. Alongside creating geographic continuity, the experience of moving in a fast train (90 minutes between the first and last stops) would produce a feeling that the passenger is in Palestine. On both sides of the train tracks Palestinians would build new communities.

In all of this discussion, the focus is on the sense of “a Palestinian state” as opposed to the idea of “Palestine” as defined by Palestinians. Irrespective of whether or not the plan is implemented or delayed, it blatantly expresses the nature of the American conception of Palestinian space and the colonial attempt to impose this conception upon the Palestinians. This conception remains bound by a commitment to place Israel and its security above all else.

The projects have also been poisoned by a consumerist nature — even the construction of roads — since they would require renovation every five years. In other words, real continuous development beyond the scope of Western development activities in the West Bank, and an infrastructure that meets the needs of Palestinians will never be installed.

Meanwhile, another goal of these projects is to disrupt Palestinian memory and collective consciousness. They are designed to foster a new conception of Palestine in the West Bank sanctioned by the PA and its financiers, where Palestine is reduced to the areas controlled by the PA through the use of school curricula and official language.

With the money of Western backers, the PA establishes police stations on what remains of the headquarters of military administration under the Israeli occupation and British mandate in utter disregard of the symbolic significance of these places within the Palestinian consciousness.

Sovereignty for the PA means establishing security in the cities and preventing any military operations against the Israeli occupation. Meanwhile, acts of aggression by settlers on Palestinians somehow do not constitute a violation of sovereignty.

The PA’s ministries and security services grow amidst talk of a Palestinian state, as if there were no occupation. Within this framework, the new roads are marketed as Palestinian roads, as they are empty and good for constructing a memory compatible with the PA’s projects.

Traveling on the road between Nablus and Jenin brings up many questions about this creation of distance between urban centers and the towns and villages. There are substantial differences in design between the extremely straight and accommodating settlement roads that resemble wide highways and the new narrow roads for Palestinians that wind through the valleys of the West Bank and along the slopes of mountains.One must doubt the seriousness of any talk of their being main roads for the prospective Palestinian state, not to mention the obvious fact that these roads are not at all suitable for heavy commercial traffic. Israel realizes full well that these roads are incapable of playing a role in building the Palestinian economy, which if it exists at all, must stop at every military checkpoint and is subject to myriad permits.

Throughout the years of the intifada, Palestinians developed the habit of asking any visitor from outside a given village or city about the condition of the roads. They would ask “is there anything on the roads?” or “How are the roads?” in reference to the numerous checkpoints and roadblocks that fill the streets and threaten all those who seek to pass.

Today, it is possible to respond to this question by saying that the “American roads” in the West Bank are lifeless. No martyr’s blood has fallen upon them, nor have they been traversed by fighters leaving for, and returning from, commando operations. They have not been ignited by protests, nor filled with the cries of the nation extending from the river to the sea.

They have not borne witnessed to the episodes of uprising against the occupation or the revolts against British imperialism. They have not contained anything resembling Palestinian life such as farmers going to their fields or children returning from school on the day of a strike singing patriotic chants.

On these roads, memory is cut off. Collective memories disappear to give way to those huge signs that fill the new roads with the ill-fated expression that has served as a signature of USAID projects: “A gift from the American people.”

(occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com / 06.07.2012)

Poisoning Arafat: Ariel Sharon and the Jewish settlements enterprise

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Uri Avnery recalls Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s journey from national liberation fighter to peace warrior and argues that Arafat’s quest for peace, which if successful would have posed a mortal danger to the Jewish settlements, is what led the Israelis to poison him.

For me, there was no surprise. From the very first day, I was convinced that Yasser Arafat had been poisoned by Ariel Sharon. I even wrote about it several times.

It was a simple logical conclusion.

First, a thorough medical examination in the French military hospital where he died did not find any cause for his sudden collapse and death. No traces of any life-threatening disease were found.

The rumours distributed by the Israeli propaganda machine that Arafat had AIDS were blatant lies. They were a continuation of the rumors spread by the same machine that he was gay – all part of the relentless demonization of the Palestinian leader, which went on daily for decades.

When there is no obvious cause of death, there must be a less obvious one.

Second, we know by now that several secret services possess poisons that leave no routinely detectable trace. These include the CIA, the Russian FSB (successor of the KGB) and the Israeli Mossad.

Third, opportunities were plentiful. Arafat’s security arrangements were decidedly lax. He would embrace perfect strangers who presented themselves as sympathizers of the Palestinian cause and often seated them next to himself at meals.

In Ariel Sharon’s crosshairs

Fourth, there were plenty of people who aimed at killing him and had the means to do so. The most obvious one was the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon. He had even talked about Arafat having “no insurance policy” in 2004.

What was previously a logical probability has now become a certainty.

An examination of his belongings commissioned by Al-Jazeera TV and conducted by a highly respected Swiss scientific institute has confirmed that Arafat was poisoned with Polonium, a deadly radioactive substance that avoids detection unless one specifically looks for it. (See Al-Jazeera report, “What killed Arafat?”

Two years after Arafat’s death, the Russian dissident and former KGB/FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko was murdered in London by Russian agents using this poison. The cause was discovered by his doctors by accident. It took him three weeks to die.

Closer to home, in Amman, Hamas leader Khaled Mash’al was almost killed in 1997 by the Mossad, on orders of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. The means was a poison that kills within days after coming into contact with the skin. The assassination was bungled and the victim’s life was saved when the Mossad was compelled, after an ultimatum from King Hussein, to provide an antidote in time.

If Arafat’s widow, Suha, succeeds in getting his body exhumed from the mausoleum in the Mukata’a in Ramallah, where it has become a national symbol, the poison will undoubtedly be found in his body.

Arafat’s lack of proper security arrangements always astonished me. Israeli prime ministers are tenfold better protected.

“I cannot prove it, but I am sure that Sharon was told by Washington: ‘On no condition are you allowed to kill him in a way that can be traced to you. If you can do it without leaving a trace, go ahead.’”

I remonstrated with him several times. He shrugged it off. In this respect, he was a fatalist. After his life was miraculously preserved when his airplane made a crash landing in the Libyan Desert and the people around him were killed, he was convinced that Allah was protecting him. (Though the head of a secular movement with a clear secular programme, he himself was an observant Sunni Muslim, praying at the proper times and abstaining from alcohol. He did not impose his piety on his assistants.)

Once he was interviewed in my presence in Ramallah. The journalists asked him if he expected to see the creation of the Palestinian state in his lifetime. His answer: “Both I and Uri Avnery will see it in our life.” He was quite sure of this.

Ariel Sharon’s determination to kill Arafat was well known. Already during the siege of Beirut in Lebanon War I, it was no secret that agents were combing West Beirut for his whereabouts. To Sharon’s great frustration, they did not find him.

Even after Oslo, when Arafat came back to Palestine, Sharon did not let up. When he became prime minister, my fear for Arafat’s life became acute. When the Israeli army attacked Ramallah during “Operation Defencive Shield” they broke into Arafat’s compound (Mukata’a is Arabic for compound) and came within 10 metres of his rooms. I saw them with my own eyes.

Twice during the siege of many months my friends and I went to stay at the Mukata’a for several days to serve as a human shield. When Sharon was asked why he did not kill Arafat, he answered that the presence of Israelis there made it impossible.

However, I believe that this was only a pretext. It was the US that forbade it. The Americans feared, quite rightly, that an open assassination would cause the whole Arab and Muslim world to explode in anti-American fury. I cannot prove it, but I am sure that Sharon was told by Washington: “On no condition are you allowed to kill him in a way that can be traced to you. If you can do it without leaving a trace, go ahead.” (Just as the US secretary of state told Sharon in 1982 that on no condition was he allowed to attack Lebanon, unless there was a clear and internationally recognized provocation – which was promptly provided.)

In an eerie coincidence, Sharon himself was felled by a stroke soon after Arafat’s death, and has lived in a coma ever since.

Warrior for peace

The day Al-Jazeera’s conclusions were published this week happened to be the 30th anniversary of my first meeting with Arafat, which for him was the first meeting with an Israeli.

It was at the height of the battle of Beirut. To get to him, I had to cross the lines of four belligerents – the Israeli army, the Christian Lebanese Phalange militia, the Lebanese army and the Palestine Liberation Organization forces.

I spoke to Arafat for two hours. There, in the middle of a war, when he could expect to find his death at any moment, we talked about Israeli-Palestinian peace, and even a federation of Israel and Palestine, perhaps to be joined by Jordan. The meeting, which was announced by Arafat’s office, caused a worldwide sensation. My account of the conversation was published in several leading newspapers.

On my way home, I heard on the radio that four cabinet ministers were demanding that I be put on trial for treason. The government of Menachem Begin instructed the attorney-general to open a criminal investigation. However, after several weeks, the attorney-general determined that I had not broken any law. (The law was duly changed soon afterwards.)

In the many meetings I held with Arafat since then, I became totally convinced that he was an effective and trustworthy partner for peace.

“Arafat was the man who was able to make peace with Israel, willing to do so, and – more important – to get his people, including the Islamists, to accept it. This would have put an end to the settlement enterprise. That’s why he was poisoned.”

I slowly began to understand how this father of the modern Palestinian liberation movement, considered an arch-terrorist by Israel and the US, became the leader of the Palestinian peace effort. Few people in history have been privileged to lead two successive revolutions in their lifetime.

When Arafat started his work, Palestine had disappeared from the map and from world consciousness. By using the “armed struggle” (alias “terrorism”)’ he succeeded in putting Palestine back on the world’s agenda.

His change of orientation occurred right after the 1973 war. That war, it will be remembered, started with stunning Arab successes and ended with a rout of the Egyptian and Syrian armies. Arafat, an engineer by profession, drew the logical conclusion: if the Arabs could not win an armed confrontation even in such ideal circumstances, other means had to be found

His decision to start peace negotiations with Israel went totally against the grain of the Palestinian national movement, which considered Israel as a foreign invader. It took Arafat a full 15 years to convince his own people to accept his line, using all his wiles, tactical deftness and powers of persuasion. In the 1988 meeting of the Palestinian parliament-in-exile, the Palestinian National Council, his concept was adopted: a Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel in part of the country. This state, with its capital in East Jerusalem and its borders based on the Green Line, has been, since then, the fixed and unchangeable goal; the legacy of Arafat to his successors.

Not by accident, my contacts with Arafat, first indirectly through his assistants and then directly, started at the same time: 1974. I helped him to establish contact with the Israeli leadership, and especially with Yitzhak Rabin. This led to the 1993 Oslo agreement – which was killed by the assassination of Rabin.

When asked if he had an Israeli friend, Arafat named me. This was based on his belief that I had risked my life when I went to see him in Beirut. On my part, I was grateful for his trust in me when he met me there, at a time when hundreds of Sharon’s agents were looking for him.

But beyond personal considerations, Arafat was the man who was able to make peace with Israel, willing to do so, and – more important – to get his people, including the Islamists, to accept it. This would have put an end to the settlement enterprise.

That’s why he was poisoned.

(Uri Avnery / www.redress.cc /06.07.2012)

Syrian coalition rejects Cairo meeting message

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The coalition of peaceful change forces in Syria has rejected the statements of the Cairo opposition meeting which called for supporting the so called Free Syrian Army. It expressed full rejection of foreign intervention in Syria’s internal affairs.
The coalition of peaceful change forces in Syria held a press conference elaborating on several issues mainly the meetings of opposition figures in Cairo and the contact group in Geneva. A statement by the coalition rejected the final communiqué of the Cairo opposition meeting saying the opposition abroad implements a foreign and Western agenda and a large number of Syrians were not represented in the meeting.
Speakers said the UNSMIS is an important part of the political solution in Syria. The coalition considered the Geneva contact group meeting as positive.
The coalition underlined the importance of national reconciliation and called for a comprehensive national dialogue to be held soon inside Syria with the participation of all Syrians.
It represents the SSNP, the party of popular will and a number of democratic and social currents. They all rejected foreign intervention in Syria’s internal affairs and stressed that the only solution for the unrest is a Syrian one.
The coalition of peaceful change forces criticized the Cairo meeting for excluding a wide range of Syrian parties saying the meeting blocks the way for a peaceful solution to the Syrian unrest.
(www.presstv.ir / 06.07.2012)

Narrating The Arab Spring, with Tunisian Author Hassouna Mosbahi

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    • donderdag 19 juli 2012
    • 19:00 tot 21:00 in PDT
  • Goethe-Institut 5750 Wilshire Blvd. Suite 100 Los Angeles CA 90036 Free validated parking after 6 pm under the complex (enter from Wilshire Blvd just east of Curson) Goethe-Institut info line, 323.525.3388 Levantine Center info, 323.413.2001.
  • On Thursday, July 19, the Goethe-Institut and Levantine Cultural Center present an evening of readings with Tunisian novelist Hassouna Mosbahi. Selections from Mosbahi’s most recent novels, The Orphan of Time and A Tunisian Tale (available in English from the American University of Cairo Press) will be read by Mosbahi along with actors Jihad Abdo and Patrick Faucette reading from his work in Arabic and English. A public discussion will ensue, moderated by Fareed Majari, director of the Goethe-Institut in Los Angeles following his posting in Beirut, Lebanon. The program is free to the public, and is cosponsored by the Villa Aurora, where Hassouna Mosbahi is a Feuchtwanger Fellow until the end of the year. For further information, please visit our website.

    http://www.levantinecenter.org/event/narrating-arab-spring-tunisian-author-hassouna-mosbahi

‘Nederzettingenbeleid bedreigt Palestijnen’

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DEN HAAG – Het Israëlische nederzettingenbeleid in de Jordaanvallei leidt tot armoede bij de Palestijnen en vernietigt de levensvatbaarheid van een toekomstige Palestijnse staat.

Dat staat te lezen in een rapport dat ontwikkelingsorganisatie Oxfam Novib donderdag heeft gepubliceerd.

Het rapport komt een week voordat de voorzitter van de Europese Commissie, José Manuel Barroso, Israël en de Westelijke Jordaanoever bezoekt.

De Europese Unie en de lidstaten zijn de grootste handelspartners van Israël en de grootste donoren van de Palestijnen. Oxfam Novib roept hen op Israël onder druk te zetten om de bouw van nederzettingen te staken en de sloop van Palestijnse huizen stop te zetten.

Kolonisten

86 procent van het land in de Jordaanvallei is in bezit van de Israëlische kolonisten, hoewel die maar 13 procent van de bewoners van de vallei vormen.

Voor de Palestijnse bevolking betekenen de nederzettingen dat hun mogelijkheden om huizen te bouwen worden beperkt en zij minder landbouwgrond en water tot hun beschikking hebben. Vele Palestijnse boeren komen daardoor moeilijk rond.

Graanschuur

De Jordaanvallei zou de graanschuur van de Palestijnen kunnen worden. Als de beperkingen in de Jordaanvallei voor hen worden opgeheven, kan de Palestijnse economie maar liefst 1 miljard dollar aan extra inkomsten genereren.

Op dit moment hebben de Israëlische kolonisten industriële boerderijen opgezet die hoogwaardige gewassen voor de lokale markt en het buitenland produceren. Hun groei wordt mede mogelijk gemaakt door Israëlische overheidssubsidies.

(www.nu.nl / 06.07.2012)

EU parliament condemns Israel’s violence against Palestinians

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The European Parliament building in Strasbourg (file photo)

The European Parliament building in Strasbourg
The European lawmakers have condemned acts of violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East al-Quds (Jerusalem).

In a resolution adopted by the European Parliament on Thursday, the lawmakers also urged Israel to bring the perpetrators of such acts to justice.

In recent years, extremist Israeli settlers in the West Bank have often assaulted Palestinians and vandalized their property. However, Tel Aviv rarely detains the assailants.

The parliament also called for “an immediate end to house demolitions, evictions and forced displacement of Palestinians.”

Palestinians say that their efforts to construct a free and independent Palestinian state will prove fruitless as long as Israel continues to demolish Palestinians’ homes.

Meanwhile, Tel Aviv was urged to stop its illegal settlement projects in the occupied territories. The resolution said the projects are “a major obstacle to peace efforts.”

Israel occupied the West Bank as well as East al-Quds, considered by Palestinians as the capital of their homeland, during the 1967 Six-Day War.

(www.presstv.ir / 06.07.2012)

UN names experts to probe Israeli settlements

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GENEVA (Reuters) — The United Nations named French judge Christine Chanet on Friday as the leader of a team of three experts who will investigate whether Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories violate human rights law.

The other team members are Pakistani lawyer Asma Jahangir and Botswana judge Unity Dow. Jahangir has been the subject of human rights cases in the past, having been put under house arrest in 1983 and warned of a plot to assassinate her last month.

The UN Human Rights Council launched the probe in March under an initiative brought to the 47-member forum by the Palestinian Authority. Israel’s ally the United States was the only member to vote against it.

The council said Israel’s planned construction of new housing units in the West Bank and East Jerusalem undermined the peace process and posed a threat to the two-state solution and the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

Israel on Friday condemned the investigation. “The establishment of this mission is another blatant expression of the singling out of Israel in the UNHRC,” a Foreign Ministry statement said.

“This fact-finding mission will find no co-operation in Israel, and its members will not be allowed to enter Israel and the Territories.”

The council’s president, Uruguay’s ambassador Laura Dupuy Lasserre, announced the names of the investigators after holding consultations among member states, diplomats said.

As the team will not be allowed access to Israeli settlements, they are likely to have to gather information from second-hand sources, including media.

Even if the investigators conclude settlements violate human rights law, US opposition is likely to stymie any attempt to impose any punishment on Israel.

About 500,000 Israelis and 2.5 million Palestinians live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, areas Israel captured in a 1967 war. Palestinians seek the territory for an independent state along with the Gaza Strip.

Palestinians say settlements, considered illegal by the International Court of Justice, the highest UN legal body for disputes, would deny them a viable state.

Israel cites historical and biblical links to the West Bank and says the status of settlements should be decided in peace negotiations.

On Monday Richard Falk, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian Territories, told a news conference that the acceleration of settlement building had “closed the book” on the feasibility of a two-state solution.

“The Palestinian position gets weaker and weaker through time and the Israelis get more and more of a fait accompli through their unlawful activities,” he said.

“Is it just a delaying tactic that allows the Israelis to expand the settlements, expand the settled population, demolish more and more Palestinian homes and structures and engage in a program that has assumed such proportions that the language of ethnic cleansing is the only way to describe the demographic changes in East Jerusalem?”

(www.maannews.net / 06.07.2012)