Posts Tagged Palestine
Nahr al-Bared reconstruction delays protested
Posted by APOC-Philly in Middle East, News, Palestine on October 2, 2009
Ray Smith, Electronic Lebanon, 1 October 2009
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| Palestinians from Nahr al-Bared and their Lebanese supporters protest the halt to reconstruction, Tripoli, north Lebanon (August 2009). (Matthew Cassel) |
Since the end of August, construction equipment in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared, near the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, has stood unused after the Lebanese State Council granted a two month moratorium for the reconstruction of the camp. Nahr al-Bared, home to approximately 30,000 refugees, was destroyed during a three-month-long battle between the Lebanese army and the militant group Fatah al-Islam in the summer of 2007.
Although a master plan for the reconstruction was already compiled by early 2008 and approved by the Lebanese government, the beginning of the construction works was delayed again and again. Ancient ruins were discovered beneath the rubble of the camp this spring, but few among the refugees believed the reports. For the last two years they heard too many — often flimsy — reasons for repeated delays in the reconstruction of the camp.
However, the archaeological findings were legitimate and the Lebanese Directorate General for Antiquities (DGA) became involved. Along with the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) and the office of the Lebanese prime minister, a solution was found: before the different sectors of the old camp would be backfilled and the concrete foundations laid, the DGA would excavate and document the archaeological findings.
The delay is understandably frustrating for refugees who could hardly believe their eyes when, after almost two years, reconstruction finally began in Nahr al-Bared late last June. According to UNRWA, the backfilling first stage of the eight-stage plan was almost complete by the end of August and the laying of the concrete foundation was about to start when the agency was ordered by the Lebanese government to halt construction.
Amr Saededine, an organizer with the Nahr al-Bared Reconstruction Commission, told The Electronic Intifada, “There is a real fear in the camp based on previous experiences that the displacement will continue and they will not be allowed to return to Nahr al-Bared,” referring to camps like Nabatiyeh, Tel al-Zatar and even areas of Shatila that were destroyed in the past and never rebuilt.
The leader of the opposition-aligned Free Patriotic Movement, former Lebanese General Michel Aoun, filed a plea this summer against the government’s decision regarding the backfilling of the camp. On 18 August, the English-language Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star reported that the State Council, in light of Aoun’s request, granted a moratorium for the time being. A definitive decision is expected in October.
Representatives of the Nahr al-Bared Reconstruction Commission accuse Lebanese politicians of using the archaeological findings for scoring political gains. The commission points to a discourse demanding the transformation of the ancient ruins into a tourist site. In a recent speech, Michel Aoun denied delaying the reconstruction of Nahr al-Bared but said: “It is the government’s responsibility to purchase substitute lands to build the camp on, instead of rebuilding on the site where an archeological discovery was recently made.” The commission meanwhile rejects resettling the refugees on lots surrounding Nahr al-Bared, calling Aoun’s intentions “theoretical and unworkable.”
Thousands of Nahr al-Bared residents organized a massive protest at the end of August at the entrance to the construction site, which was complemented by protests in other Palestinian refugee camps throughout Lebanon. Criticism not only targeted the halting of reconstruction, but also the Lebanese army’s continued siege of the camp. The Lebanese army controls movement inside and at the perimeters of Nahr al-Bared, isolating the camp’s residents and crippling its economy. On 16 September, the refugees took their protest to the streets of Tripoli where they were joined by Lebanese supporters.
Three protesters were shot dead and many others wounded at a demonstration during the military operations in Nahr al-Bared at the end of June 2007. Since then, protests have been limited to non-confrontational gatherings, but at a press conference on 3 September, activists from Nahr al-Bared hinted at launching a series of nonviolent direct actions and more strategic campaigns.
Saededine of the reconstruction commission stated that these latest protests were just the beginning: “There is an escalation happening now in the organizing against the halt to reconstruction. [The protests] began in Nahr al-Bared, then [the nearby refugee camp of] Baddawi, then Tripoli and next Beirut.” He said that there would be a sit-in held on 12 October in downton Beirut “organized by all the camps in Lebanon, saying that we will not accept [a failure] to reconstruct Nahr al-Bared. This is also supported by forces in the Lebanese civil society [movement].”
Nahr al-Bared’s refugees meanwhile stick to a slogan they’ve been using since the first days of their displacement in 2007. At the nearby Baddawi refugee camp, displaced families had taken refuge in schools which they refused to leave for other temporary shelter, claiming that they would only be satisfied by a return to Nahr al-Bared camp — or to their property in Palestine.
Ray Smith is an activist with the anarchist media collective a-films. The collective has been working in Nahr al-Bared for the past two years and has published about a dozen short films from the camp at a-films.blogspot.com.
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Night raids in Bilin target activists
Posted by APOC-Philly in General, Interview, Palestine on October 2, 2009
Interview, The Electronic Intifada, 29 September 2009
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| An Israeli soldier threatens a Palestinian man during a night raid in the West Bank village of Bilin, 20 August 2009. (Hamde Abu Rahme) |
For the last three months, residents of the West Bank village of Bilin have been subjected to constant night raids by the Israeli military. The raids are in retaliation for their five-year campaign of nonviolent resistance against Israel’s wall, which is being constructed on the village’s land. The Israeli authorities have arrested members of the Bilin Popular Committee as well as teenagers and young boys from the village in order to obtain forced confessions against committee members. The home of Abdullah Abu Rahme, the Bilin Popular Committee’s Media Coordinator, was raided on 16 September 2009. The following is his account of the raid as told to The Electronic Intifada contributor Jody McIntyre.
It was a Wednesday morning [16 September]. At around 1:30am, my wife heard sounds outside, near our home in Bilin. She rushed to the window to see what was going on and saw scores of Israeli soldiers climbing over our garden fence. Within a matter of seconds, they had reached the front door.
My wife ran downstairs as quickly as she could to open the door, which the soldiers were beating ferociously. They asked her, “Where is Abdullah?” and she replied, “Abdullah is not here, he is Ramallah.” The soldiers didn’t care, they just pushed her aside.
Masked and heavily armed, they poured into all the rooms of our home, damaging cupboards, ransacking drawers and leaving our belongings strewn across floors. My wife and nephew, whom they had woken from their sleep, were ordered to stay in one room as they searched the house.
My two daughters, Layan, 5, and Luma, 7, awoke to find themselves staring at many masked strangers in green uniforms. They wondered why they were looking through their toys. Immediately, they burst into tears — their mother asked if she could take them from the bedroom but the soldiers stopped her from doing so.
Feeling helpless, my wife called my friend Mohammed Khatib, a fellow member of the Bilin Popular Committee. International volunteers who were staying in the village distracted the soldiers at the front gate, which allowed Mohammed to climb over a garden wall and get into the house. The moment the soldiers saw him inside, they brutally attacked him — they didn’t want anyone to see the damage they were doing to my home and, more importantly, my two young daughters.
The international volunteers, still standing outside, heard Mohammed’s screams as he was beaten so badly that he could barely stand, but still they were prevented from entering the home. Luckily, my wife was able to release him from the soldiers by standing in their way.
The soldiers moved on to the first floor of the house, where there is an apartment for internationals to stay in. They started to destroy the door, which was locked. My wife told them that she had a key and could open it for them, but they refused her offer, and smashed down the door. It was clear that the army wanted not only to arrest me, but to leave a path of destruction in their wake.
They continued on to the second floor, where they stole Palestinian flags and shields we use to protect ourselves from harm during our weekly nonviolent demonstrations against the wall. The shields bear the image of Bassem Abu Rahme, a close friend of mine who was killed during one such demonstration in April, as he called on soldiers to hold their fire because an Israeli girl had been injured. They also took a banner we had made to welcome my brother Ratib home from studying his Ph.D. I really don’t understand how such a banner can be perceived as a threat to Israel.
But what hurts me the most is that the soldiers broke into my mother’s room, again destroying the door in the process. It was also locked, but only because my mother died a month ago. She died in al-Makassed hospital in Jerusalem. I wasn’t given a permit by the Israeli authorities to pass the checkpoints and the wall which separate Palestinians in the West Bank from Jerusalem to go visit her. My mother and I had a very close relationship, but I didn’t get to visit her as she suffered. She died alone, and I didn’t get to see her, to tell her one word, or to put my hand on her face for one moment. The Israeli occupation separated me from my mother when she was at her most vulnerable — I hate it.
Our nonviolent struggle against the wall and settlements which are being built on our land is now in its fifth year. Before she died my mother would wait at the door of our home every Friday to welcome me back from the weekly demonstration. She would ask if I was OK, and thank God that I hadn’t been injured. I love her very much, as I love my wife and daughters who the Israeli soldiers woke in the middle of the night, and as I love my land which the wall has stolen.
Finally, the army gave my wife an “invitation” for me. They told her I had to go visit the Shabak [Israel's internal security service, also known as the Shin Bet], and threatened that if I didn’t they would do the same terrible things to my home every night. They told her that I wouldn’t live to see Eid.
But it was my children and my brother’s children who were affected most by the whole experience. Particularly my nephew Mahmoud, 8, who ran screaming into the street when the soldiers invaded. Two days later he had facial spasms for more than an hour, leaving his entire family heartbroken as they tried to reassure him. How can we reassure our children when we know this will happen again and again?
My daughter Layan told me that she didn’t want to sleep at home because she was afraid that the soldiers would come to arrest her father and kill the rest of the family. Five days later she went back. But she woke up in the middle of the night and pleaded with her mother to take her away, fearing that the soldiers were on their way back.
My daughter Luma was the top student in her class at school. But two days after the invasion she told me that she hated school and didn’t want to go. I told her a joke and she burst into giggles, and I said I was happy to see her laughing. “Daddy,” she said, “I’m laughing, but inside I’m crying.”
I haven’t done anything wrong, but they want to arrest me because I am a nonviolent activist. Israel does not want our model of nonviolent resistance to spread, and this is one of the ways they are trying to crush us in Bilin — by invading the village and attacking our homes. But until we remove the wall and settlements from our land, our struggle will continue.
Abdullah Abu Rahme is Media Coordinator of the Bilin Popular Committee.
Jody McIntyre is a journalist from the United Kingdom, currently living in the occupied West Bank village of Bilin. Jody has cerebral palsy, and travels in a wheelchair. He writes a blog for Ctrl.Alt.Shift, entitled “Life on Wheels,” which can be found at www.ctrlaltshift.co.uk. He can be reached at jody.mcintyre AT gmail DOT com.
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Video: Israel/America: A rambling poem
Posted by APOC-Philly in Art, General, Palestine on September 23, 2009
Remi Kanazi, The Electronic Intifada, 21 September 2009
The above video features a poem (transcribed below) by Remi Kanazi that he performed on GRITtv with Laura Flanders after a segment on the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israeli repression of Palestinian rights.
Israel/America: A rambling poem
Every time I think of 9/11
I see burning flesh dripping off the bones of Iraqi children in Fallujah
Now Gaza
I tend to memorialize the forgotten
The collateral damage eclipsing our unpunished crimes
Maybe it’s because I’m a numbers guy
Because if I had a dollar for every time an Iraqi died since 2003
I’d be a millionaire
And don’t get me wrong
Sometimes I don’t know who I hate more
The governments in the West
Or the politicians in the East
Who sell their souls quicker than the oil they export
Straw men who use Palestine as a tool to line their pockets
And don’t give a nickel to their people
Quisling governments
Who stitch mouths shut for a check from Washington and AIPAC
How can you be their prototypical anti-Semite
If you are signing peace accords to oppress your own people?
And then Orientalists and idiots talk about how
We can’t have democracy in the Middle East
Because of what happened in Gaza
A Hamas bogeyman wrapped in democratic elections
Rahm Emanuel wants to educate me and my people about democracy gone wrong
Why doesn’t try implementing one Israel first?
Instead of bowing down to terrorists like his father and the IDF
Lauding a third rate, racist, European society that’s imploding quicker
Than its moral standing in the world
Enlightened like 1950s Afrikaaners and slave traders
Just because the house is beautiful
Doesn’t mean the bones you built it on have fully decomposed
The Israeli left is about as alive as Ariel Sharon
I’m sick and tired of asking for permission to resist
From antiquated leftists and progressives
Who care more about keeping it Kosher than moving things forward
I put down my pen and waving fist to resist with college kids and Palestinians
Boycott and divest!
Because who cares about preserving a living when governments are killing civilians
Complicity by silence and reserve units bombing Gaza
Your academics and scholars, theater groups and practitioners, are part of the problem
And if logic doesn’t fit into your long term plan of rejecting
My right to return, I’m sorry
Maybe one day you’ll return to reality
Where my people have babies quicker
Than Zionists can concoct Jordanian options
I don’t want your sympathy or introspective confessions
Won’t sit on my hands till they lose oxygen
Like the people of Balata and Rafah
Vote for Barack Obama
And pretend that his 22 day silence was golden
While emaciated children starved to death
Surrounded by their parents’ corpses
This can’t be America the Beautiful
A criminal with a few positive attributes
Doesn’t alleviate genocide
Bombing Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq
Into oblivion doesn’t make you historic
It makes you as blind and bloodthirsty
As the white men that came before you
Apathetic hipsters now excited about a president
Who broke history, but not poverty, occupation, or corporate interests
I’d rather proudly walk through the graveyard of peace accords
And failed dialogue sessions
Than see my people just as occupied or third-class citizens
We are the gavel that will slam down like a verdict
We are not waiting for Israel or America or the Supreme Court to approve it
We’ll boycott Lev Leviev, Caterpillar and your apartheid companies
We’re taking back the right of return and the keys to a country
Because we never asked you to go back to Europe or sit in open air prisons
I’m not asking for your advice, I’m explaining the decision
You can stay here, with us, but only as equals
It’s not that you’re Israeli, it’s that you’re wrong
That’s why I fight for my people!
Remi Kanazi is the editor of Poets For Palestine and will be touring the US and Canada this fall on the Poets For Palestine tour. He can be contacted at Remroum A T gmail D O T com. For more information on Poets For Palestine, visit www.PoetsForPalestine.com.
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US Campaign’s longstanding endorsement of the boycott call
Posted by APOC-Philly in General, News, Organizing, Palestine on September 23, 2009
David Wildman and Amie Fishman, The Electronic Intifada, 21 September 2009
Thanks to Nada Elia for her article “A Turning Point in the US Solidarity Movement” (16 September 2009) and for her important role in cogently laying out the rationale for engaging in cultural and academic boycotts of Israeli institutions during the 8th Annual National Organizers’ Conference of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.
Indeed, as Elia states, we broke new ground at this conference by voting to expand the scope of our boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) work to encompass both cultural and academic boycotts of Israeli institutions and campaigns against Israeli corporations profiting from occupation and apartheid. Up until this conference, the US Campaign focused its BDS efforts on confronting US corporations that profit from Israeli occupation and apartheid. While this expanded commitment is new, the US Campaign’s commitments to BDS and organizing within an anti-apartheid framework are longstanding.
The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation actually began an early BDS campaign in 2002, with the creation of our Divestment Task Force during the US Campaign’s first year of existence. We endorsed the Palestinian civil society call for BDS campaigns shortly after it was issued in 2005, and within one month had chosen Caterpillar as the first BDS priority for the coalition. And in 2007, we voted to add to our work a new BDS campaign against Motorola during our 6th Annual National Organizers’ Conference.
In 2006 we adopted the anti-apartheid framework to shape all of our work challenging Israeli policy towards Palestinians. This has resulted in the US Campaign producing numerous educational materials about Israeli apartheid and a major national anti-apartheid speaking tour in 2008 featuring Diana Buttu, former Palestine Liberation Organization legal advisor, and Eddie Makue, Secretary General of the South African Council of Churches.
The US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation has been and will continue to be committed to the Palestinian civil society call for BDS and to opposing Israeli apartheid policies toward Palestinians. For additional information about our BDS and anti-apartheid work, please visit our website at: http://www.endtheoccupation.org.
Sincerely,
David Wildman and Amie Fishman
Co-Chairs, Steering Committee
US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation
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Boycott movement derails Jerusalem’s transit system
Posted by APOC-Philly in General, News, Organizing, Palestine on September 22, 2009
Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 18 September 2009
An ill-fated light railway under construction in Jerusalem was originally heralded by Israeli officials as a way to cement the city’s “unification” four decades after the city’s Palestinian half was illegally annexed to Israel.
But the only unity generated among Jewish and Palestinian residents after four years of disruptions to the city’s traffic and businesses is general agreement that the project is rapidly becoming a white elephant.
After engineering problems, rows between the contractors and the municipality and delays caused by archaeological discoveries along the route, completion of the first 14 kilometers section of track is not expected until the end of next year at the earliest — more than 18 months behind schedule. The budget overspend is estimated at more than $500 million.
This week, in an indication of the deepening crisis, Israel’s Dan bus company was forced to step in to buy the five percent stake of Veolia, a French company that is supposed to operate the line for the next 30 years. Dan, which is waiting for the Israeli government to approve its bid, has no prior experience of running a rail system.
Shmuel Elgrably, a spokesman for the transit system, told the Haaretz newspaper last week that the loss of Veolia had “screwed” the project.
Veolia’s unexpected withdrawal from City Pass, a French-Israeli private consortium backed in part by public finances, is being claimed as a victory by Palestinian officials and activists whose boycott and lobbying efforts appear to have forced the company to quit the project.
They have accused Veolia and another French firm, Alstom, which is laying the tracks and providing the rail cars, of violating international law by working on a project designed to benefit Jewish settlements in the occupied part of Jerusalem.
Since East Jerusalem’s annexation, Israel has moved some 200,000 Jews into illegal colonies surrounding more than a quarter of a million Palestinian residents.
Despite pressure from Washington for a settlement freeze in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, declared this week: “Jerusalem is not a settlement and construction [of homes] will go on as planned.”
Officials announced this month that 500 new apartments are to be built in Pisgat Zeev — a settlement of more than 40,000 Jews that will be connected to West Jerusalem in the first phase of the rail system’s construction.
The line, which is supposed to serve 150,000 passengers a day and ease congestion on Jerusalem’s roads, will also pass by the famous Damascus and Jaffa Gates of the Old City.
Future sections of track are supposed to link up other Jewish settlements, including Neve Yaacov, Atarot and Gilo.
When the transit system contract was signed in 2005, Ariel Sharon, the prime minister at the time, said it would “sustain Jerusalem for eternity as the capital of the Jewish people.”
Omar Barghouti, a founder of the Palestinian boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, which has been targeting Veolia and Alstom over their involvement, wrote this month in the Jerusalem Quarterly magazine that the railway was part of “a comprehensive, long-term strategy … to cement the integration of those [settlement] blocs into an ever sprawling ‘Greater Jerusalem.’”
Barghouti claimed that the transit system is part of a secret Israeli plan, the outlines of which were revealed by the Haaretz newspaper in May, to create large infrastructure projects to prevent the future division of Jerusalem and thereby thwart any hope of a peace agreement.
The Palestinians demand East Jerusalem as the capital of their hoped-for state.
The project’s supporters, however, point out that five of the 23 stations along the first line will be located in Palestinian neighborhoods, including the deprived Shuafat refugee camp.
To be profitable, says City Pass, the light rail must cater to the city’s large communities of ultra-Othodox and Palestinians, both of whom are heavy users of public transport but currently use different bus routes.
Yet there are few indications that either group is keen to be brought on-board the transit system.
Palestinians are likely to be wary of using a railway dominated by settlers, and there may be severe limitations to their access to the service.
Shir Hever, a Jerusalem-based economist, said many Israeli Jews would be unwilling to share trains with the city’s Palestinian inhabitants, particularly after a series of attacks last summer in East Jerusalem, mostly using bulldozers.
“The real questions,” he said, “are how many Palestinian areas in East Jerusalem will be left out of the loop of the rail system and, even where there are stops, what security requirements will be imposed on Palestinians, compared to Israeli Jews, before they can board the train?”
Some observers suspect that, after the first attack following the railway’s opening, it will be closed to Palestinian travelers.
The ultra-Orthodox appear equally distrustful. Their rabbis have condemned the transit system because it will encourage men and women to mingle and replace the community’s own segregated “modesty” buses. Last year, seven rabbis wrote to the municipality to complain that their followers would have to pass through secular neighborhoods “where a God-fearing person would not set foot.”
Planners too, it seems, are preparing for trouble. The 42 rail cars — each costing more than $3 million — are designed to withstand stones and firebombs.
But the very survival of the project is now in question after the BDS movement’s successful lobbying. A Dutch bank, ASN, pulled its investments from Veolia in 2006, and the company lost a large contract in Sweden this year.
Alstom is also under great pressure. The Swedish national pension fund, AP7, excluded the French firm from its investment portfolio this year and activists are now seeking to force its withdrawal from a consortium awarded a $1.8 billion contract in Saudi Arabia to build the Haramain Express between Mecca and Medina.
In addition, both Veolia and Alstom are battling the Palestine Liberation Organization through the French courts over their involvement in City Pass.
The consortium’s woes have only increased with the election last year as Jerusalem mayor of Nir Barkat, a right-wing businessman who is a vocal opponent of the venture. Costs have already exceeded $1.1 billion, twice the original projections, with the Israeli government sinking in $200 million itself.
Earlier this year Barkat threatened to terminate City Pass’ contract after the completion of the first line. He believes other routes can be served by a fleet of buses that would be five times cheaper to run.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National, published in Abu Dhabi.
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In Gaza, only cancer sufferers get only painkillers
Posted by APOC-Philly in General on August 21, 2009
Report, The Electronic Intifada, 20 August 2009
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| Ismail Ahmed, 66-years old from Shujayah, lies in the cancer unit of al-Shifa, Gaza’s primary hospital. His catheter for urination flows into a wastebasket due to the lack of medical supplies at the hospital. (Erica Silverman/IRIN) |
GAZA CITY, occupied Gaza Strip (IRIN) – Arafat Hamdona, 20, has been confined to the cancer unit of al-Shifa, Gaza’s primary hospital, since he was diagnosed with maxillary skin tumors in June 2008. Red lesions protrude from his face, his features are distorted and his eyes swollen shut.
In April, Arafat was permitted to travel to Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem where he received three series of chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment. He was scheduled to return for further treatment, but has not been granted permission by the Israeli authorities to leave Gaza.
“He is only given pain killers,” said Arafat’s father, Faraj Hamdona, explaining that it is all al-Shifa has to offer.
According to a July 2009 report published by the World Health Organization (WHO) in Jerusalem, Gaza doctors and nurses do not have the medical equipment to respond to the health needs of the 1.5 million people living in the Gaza Strip.
Medical equipment is often broken, lacking spare parts, or outdated.
WHO attributes the dismal state of Gaza’s healthcare system to the Israeli blockade of the territory, tightened in June 2007 after Hamas seized control. The poor organization of maintenance services in Gaza compounds the problem, reports WHO.
Medical equipment sits idle
Some 500 tons of donations of medical equipment which flooded the Strip after Israel’s military offensive ended on 18 January sits idle in warehouses. Few donors consulted the health ministry or aid agencies working in Gaza to find out what provisions were needed. According to the health ministry, 20 percent of the donated medications had expired. WHO said much of the equipment sent was old and unusable due to a lack of spare parts.
WHO also said suppliers were unable to access medical equipment for repairs and maintenance and “since 2000, maintenance staff and clinical workers have not been able to leave the Strip for training in the use of medical devices.”
The Israeli Defense Ministry says it is not obliged to allow into Gaza anything other than basic humanitarian supplies necessary for survival, and is concerned certain medical technology could be used for other more sinister means. Gaza’s only other connection to the outside world is its border crossing with Egypt, which is closed most of the time.
The lack of proper medical care in Gaza can have dire consequences.
“The largest number of deaths due to the siege is among cancer patients,” Gaza deputy health minister Hassan Halifa said. “Radiotherapy for cancer patients is not available due to the lack of equipment, and chemotherapy is generally not available due to the lack of drugs.”
Lack of drugs, medical supplies
In July, 77 out of 480 essential drugs and 140 out of 700 essential medical supplies in Gaza’s health ministry were out of stock, according to WHO.
Ismail Ahmed, a 66-year-old from Shejayiya, also lies in the cancer unit of al-Shifa, with a catheter for urination flowing into a wastebasket.
“We lack necessary equipment for the patients,” Abdullah Farajullah, a nurse at the unit, said.
Suffering from bladder cancer, Ismail requires blood transfusions.
“There are not enough IV [intravenous] bags. The nurses put blood into plastic water bottles to transfer into my IV bag,” Ismail said.
Due to a lack of equipment, he has been on a waiting list for over a month to have a CT (computed tomography) scan, and requires an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) — although Gaza lacks a single working MRI scanner, according to WHO.
Al-Shifa lacks equipment for basic blood tests. Patients rely on family members to take their blood to certain clinics for testing.
Limited electricity
Another problem for medics in Gaza is the irregular electricity supply, which affects sensitive medical equipment such as incubators and kidney dialysis machines.
Hospitals in Gaza use uninterruptible power supply (UPS) systems as backups, but they require batteries which are often not available due to border closures with Israel and Egypt, according to WHO.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is funding and supplying 30 percent of medications and medical supplies in Gaza, said communications officer Mustafa Abu-Hassanain in Gaza.
“Most of the other 70 percent comes from the health ministry in Ramallah, paid for by the Palestinian Authority budget,” said Tony Laurance, head of WHO’s West Bank and Gaza Office in Jerusalem.
There is a dialogue between the health ministry in Gaza and the ministry in Ramallah (under Fatah’s control). Deliveries must be approved by the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), a unit of the Israeli Ministry of Defense, before being allowed into Gaza, explained Laurance.
This supply chain is unpredictable and exacerbated by the conflict between Fatah and Hamas.
This item comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian news and information service, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. All IRIN material may be reposted or reprinted free-of-charge; refer to the copyright page for conditions of use. IRIN is a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
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Israel brings Gaza entry restrictions to West Bank
Posted by APOC-Philly in General on August 21, 2009
Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 18 August 2009
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| A French passport stamped with a “Palestinian Authority only” visa. (Toufic Haddad) |
In an echo of restrictions already firmly in place in Gaza, Israel has begun barring movement between Israel and the West Bank for those holding a foreign passport, including humanitarian aid workers and thousands of Palestinian residents.
The new policy is designed to force foreign citizens, mainly from North America and Europe, to choose between visiting Israel — including East Jerusalem, which Israel has annexed illegally — and the West Bank.
The new regulation is in breach of Israel’s commitments under the Oslo accords to Western governments that their citizens would be given continued access to the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Israel has not suggested there are any security justifications for the new restriction.
Palestinian activists point out that the rule is being enforced selectively by Israel, which is barring foreign citizens of Palestinian origin from access to Israel and East Jerusalem while actively encouraging European and American Jews to settle in the West Bank.
US diplomats, who are aware of the policy, have raised no objections.
Additionally, human rights groups complain that the rule change will further separate East Jerusalem, the planned capital of a Palestinian state, from the West Bank. It is also expected to increase the pressures on families where one member holds a foreign passport to leave the region and to disrupt the assistance aid organizations are able to give Palestinians.
According to observers, the regulation was introduced quietly three months ago at the Allenby Bridge terminal on the border with Jordan, the only international crossing point for Palestinians in the West Bank. Israeli officials, who control the border, now issue foreign visitors with a visa for the “Palestinian Authority only,” preventing them from entering Israel and East Jerusalem.
Interior ministry officials say a similar policy is being adopted at Ben Gurion, Israel’s international airport near Tel Aviv, to bar holders of foreign passports who arrive via this route from reaching the West Bank. Foreign citizens, especially those with Palestinian ancestry, are being turned away and told to seek entry via the Allenby Bridge.
Gaza has long been off-limits to any Palestinian who is not resident there and has been effectively closed to Israelis and most foreigners since early 2006, when Israel began its blockade.
“This is a deepening and refinement of the policy of separation that began with Israel establishing checkpoints in the West Bank and building the wall,” said Sam Bahour, a Palestinian-American living in Ramallah who heads a Right to Enter campaign highlighting Israeli restrictions on Palestinian movement.
“Foreign governments like the US ought to be up in arms because this rule violates their own citizens’ rights under diplomatic agreements. So far they have remained silent.”
The US consulate in Jerusalem is aware of the increasing restrictions on foreign passport-holders, according to its website, but claims to be powerless to help.
The Right to Enter campaign notes that 60 percent of all people turned back at the borders by Israeli officials are American citizens.
The consulate website notes both the denial of entry for many Palestinian-Americans at Ben Gurion airport, forcing them instead to use the Allenby Bridge crossing into the West Bank, and the issuing at the crossing of the “Palestinian Authority only” stamp, which excludes them from East Jerusalem and Israel.
“The Consulate can do nothing to assist in getting this visa status changed; only Israeli liaison offices in the West Bank can assist — but they rarely will,” points out the website. “Travelers should be alert, and pay attention to which stamp they receive upon entry.”
Bahour, 44, said the immediate victims of the new policy would be thousands of Palestinians from abroad who, like himself, returned to the West Bank during the more optimistic Oslo period.
Well-educated and often with established careers, they have been vital both to the regeneration of the local Palestinian economy by investing in and setting up businesses and to the nurturing of a fledgling civil society by running welfare organizations and teaching at universities.
Although many have married local spouses and raised their children in the West Bank, Israel has usually denied them residency permits, forcing them to renew tourist visas every three months by temporarily leaving the region, often for years on end.
Bahour said the latest rule change should be understood as one measure in a web of restrictions strangling normal Palestinian life that have been imposed by Israel, which controls the population registers for both Israelis and Palestinians.
In addition to the wall and checkpoints, he said, Israel regularly deported “foreigners,” both humanitarian workers and those of Palestinian origin, arriving in the region; it denied family unification to prevent Palestinian couples living together; it often revoked the residency of Palestinians who study abroad for extended periods; and it confiscated Jerusalem IDs from Palestinians to push them into the West Bank.
He added that the US consulate appeared to have accepted Israel’s right to treat American citizens differently based solely on their ethnic origin.
“While Palestinian-Americans are being denied entry to the region or excluded from Israel and East Jerusalem, Israel is actively encouraging American Jews to come and settle in the West Bank.”
In early 2006 Bahour, who is married with two daughters, was affected by another rule change when Israel refused to renew tourist visas to Palestinians with foreign passports, forcing them to separate from their families in the West Bank.
After an international outcry, Israel revoked the policy but insisted that Palestinians such as Bahour apply for permits from the Israeli military authorities to remain in the West Bank.
“This latest rule, like the earlier one, fits into Israel’s general goal of ethnic cleansing,” he said. “Israel makes life ever more difficult to encourage any Palestinians who can, such as those with foreign passports, to leave.”
Bahour said the new restrictions would further sever the West Bank from Jerusalem, the centre of Palestinian commercial and cultural life.
Overnight, he said, his Ramallah business consultancy had lost a quarter of its clients — all from nearby East Jerusalem — because he was now barred from leaving the West Bank.
He lost his limited privileges last month when he finally received a Palestinian ID. He said he had been forced to take the ID, which supersedes his American passport in the eyes of the Israeli authorities, to avoid the danger of being deported.
“The ID was bittersweet for me. It means I can’t be separated from my family here, but it also means my American passport is not recognized and I am now subject to the closures and arrests faced by ordinary Palestinians.”
Sari Bashi, a lawyer with Gisha, an Israeli organization that challenges restrictions on Palestinian movement, said the new policy was placing a severe obstacle in the way of humanitarian organizations, as well as foreigners working in Palestinian welfare organizations and academic institutions.
“Many of the aid organizations working in the West Bank have offices and staff in East Jerusalem and even in Israel, and it’s difficult to see how they are going to cope with this new restriction.”
She said staff of major international organizations such as the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, and its humanitarian division, OCHA, had been denied entry at Ben Gurion airport after declaring that they were working in the West Bank.
“When Israel prevents access to an area, it raises the question of what is happening there,” she said. “What are we being prevented from seeing?”
Human rights groups are also concerned by the wording of the new restriction, confining foreign citizens to the “Palestinian Authority.” The PA rules over only about 40 per cent of the West Bank. The groups fear that in the future Israel may seek to prevent foreigners from moving between the PA-controlled enclaves of the West Bank and the 60 percent under Israel control.
Guy Imbar, a spokesman for Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, said the phrase referred to the entire West Bank.
But Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions warned: “Given Israel’s track record, it is right to be suspicious that the restriction may be reinterpreted at a later date.”
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (Pluto Press) and Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National, published in Abu Dhabi.
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JNF presence in S. America perpetuates Palestine injustice
Posted by APOC-Philly in General on August 16, 2009
Rahela Mizrahi, The Electronic Intifada, 13 August 2009
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| The sign leading to Bolivar and San Martin courts. (Rahela Mizrahi) |
Without any sense of irony, lands of destroyed Palestinian villages have been expropriated by the Jewish National Fund (JNF) and dedicated to revolutionary South American heroes of liberation.
Since its inception in 1901, the JNF has been a key player in the dispossession of Palestinians and the colonization of their homeland. As Uri Davis notes in his book Apartheid Israel, the 1953 Jewish National Fund Law and the 1961 Covenant between the government of Israel and the JNF are central to the Israeli legal apartheid system that “nationalizes” privately-owned Palestinian property.
Despite this history, JNF has offices in the capitals of Bolivia and Venezuela where they raise funds to further entrench a racist system and to erase the signs of Israel’s double crime: the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the demolition of the Arab Jewish communities all over the Arab world and the transfer of Jews of Arab origin to Palestine by means of deception and terror.
After demolishing most of the Palestinian villages in the territory now called Israel, the Zionist movement housed the transferred Jews of Arab origin in some of the villages and the JNF employed them in the planting of pine forests over the ruins of the Palestinian villages.
Together, the Jewish National Fund Law and the Covenant define 93 percent of the entire territory that Israel occupied in 1948 as “national lands” legally designated for those persons who are defined under the laws of the State of Israel as “Jews.” This effectively places these lands off limits to the indigenous Palestinian population, carrying out a sort of legal ethnic cleansing. In addition, the JNF has been instrumental in veiling the ruins of many, if not most, of the Palestinian localities ethnically cleansed by the Israeli army in the course of and in the wake of the 1948 war. According to Uri Davis, it accomplishes this task by planting forests and developing recreational facilities on the lands they have cleansed, and over their remains.
A prime example of the double crime being committed by the Zionists is Eshtaol Forest. Most of the Eshtaol Forest covers the lands of the two Palestinian villages: Islin, where 280 inhabitants used to live, and Ishwa, formerly home to 680 Palestinians. The inhabitants of these lands were expelled by the Harel Brigade of the Palmach militia, which departed from Kibbutz Zoraa the morning of 18 July 1948. The Eshtaol forest also resides on the lands of two other villages: Beit Mahsir, where 2,620 inhabitants were expelled on 11 May 1948, and Beit Susin, where 230 inhabitants were expelled on 20 April 1948.
In Eshtaol Forest, there stand three courts. The first one is dedicated to the memory of Simon Bolivar, the revered 19th century liberator of Latin America from European colonialism; it stands on the land of the village Ishwa. The other two courts are dedicated to another liberator of Latin America from the same period, General Jose de San Martin; they stand on the land of Beit Mahsir.
Moshav (the Zionist term for village) Eshtaol, built on the ruins of Ishwa, is a village of immigrants from Yemen, who were transferred by the Zionist movement to Palestine right after the 1948 ethnic cleansing. In the transfer camp in Sana, Yemen’s capital, the Zionist Agency looted more then 50 tons of the Yemeni Jewish community’s ancient sacred books and manuscripts and many tons of goldsmithing, a craft in which they specialized. In the transfer camp, children were kidnapped and were delivered to European Jewish families for adoption. Once in Moshav Eshtaol, and in the neighboring Moshav, Yishi, which has an identical story, the community succeeded in restoring a part of life as it was in Yemen.
The return of the Palestinian refugees to their land does not necessarily mean another dispossession of this community. On the contrary, it may provide an opportunity to establish neighborhood relationships that will fix the wrongs that were done both to the Palestinian refugees and Jews from Arab countries by a European settler-colonial movement. Meanwhile, it would fortify the culture of the Yemeni Jewish community of Moshav Eshtaol and Moshav Yishi, which were always fed by Arab and Muslim civilizations in their country of origin. It might also serve to strengthen their Arab dialect of Hebrew, a dialect and culture under threat of extermination by the Israeli Zionist Ashkenazi establishment.
Only when these historic injustices are rectified, can the use of these revolutionary heroes’ names be justified. Until that time, those concerned with social justice should pressure the governments of Venezuela and Bolivia to kick the JNF out of their cities.
Rahela Mizrahi has a degree in fine arts from the Betzalel Academy in Jerusalem and is currently completing her second degree, writing on the “Patterns of Expropriation, Conversion, and Appropriation of Palestinian Heritage through Israeli Art” at Tel Aviv University. A version of this essay was originally published by the International anti-Zionist Network: http://www.ijsn.net/398/.
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Israeli Troops Fired on Gazans Waving White Flags
Posted by illvox collective in General on August 14, 2009
by Dion Nissenbaum
JERUSALEM — Israeli soldiers battling Hamas militants last winter in Gaza opened fire on at least seven groups of Palestinian civilians who were carrying white flags, killing 11 people, according to a Human Rights Watch report released Thursday.
[A Palestinian boy plays with a balloon amongst the rubble of his house which was destroyed during Israel's 22-day offensive in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, April 2009. Israeli soldiers unlawfully shot and killed 11 Palestinian civilians, including four children, who were in groups waving white flags during the Gaza war, Human Rights Watch has said. (AFP/File/Mohammed Abed)] During the three-week conflict, the U.S.-based human rights group says, Israeli soldiers in separate parts of Gaza killed five women, four children and two men as they used white flags to try to escape the battle zone.
The report raises new questions about the actions of Israeli soldiers during the military offensive. A United Nations investigation into possible war crimes continues. McClatchy documented in January one of the instances that Thursday’s report outlines.
“The Israeli military needs to investigate,” said Fred Abrahams, a Human Rights Watch investigator who conducted research in Gaza on some of the cases. “We want the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) to get to the bottom of it.”
Israeli military officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
In its report, Human Rights Watch concludes that the research “strongly indicates that, at the least, Israeli soldiers failed to take all feasible precautions to distinguish between civilians and combatants before opening fire, as required by the laws of war.”
“At worst,” the group says, “the soldiers deliberately shot at persons known to be civilians.”
Faced with prolonged criticism and scrutiny, the Israeli government recently revealed that it’s looking into scores of allegations against soldiers, including five incidents in which Israeli fighters are accused of shooting Palestinian civilians carrying white flags.
Of the seven cases Human Rights Watch documented, Abrahams said, Israeli soldiers didn’t intentionally kill civilians in five, each involving Palestinian civilians shot while walking down desolate roads that Israeli forces controlled. Rather, he said, the incidents appeared to be the tragic result of Israeli military directives to soldiers that they take few risks combined with poor coordination between Israeli units when civilians had a green light to flee.
Two others, however, may have been intentional, Human Rights Watch found.
In one, Palestinian witnesses said that an Israeli sniper shot and killed a 40-year-old woman carrying a white flag when she emerged from her house as an Israeli bulldozer was demolishing it in an attempt to tell the Israeli forces that there were dozens of civilians inside the home.
In the other, Human Rights Watch concluded that evidence backs Palestinian claims that an Israeli soldier opened fire on a woman, her mother-in-law and three girls as they stood on the steps of their home waving a white flag.
Two of the girls, aged 2 and 7, were killed. The third girl, 4, and the older woman were wounded. The 4-year-old was one of the few who managed to escape Gaza for special medical care in Europe.
The incident took place Jan. 7 in the Ezbt Abed Rabbo neighborhood after Israeli forces drove out the few Hamas fighters who were trying to make a stand. Khaled Abed Rabbo, whose wife, daughters and mother were involved, spoke with McClatchy a few days after the shooting.
Human Rights Watch said that evidence at the scene, medical records and other testimony buttressed the family’s story. Investigators said they’d uncovered no evidence that the Palestinian civilians were trying to shield militants from Israeli attacks.
The report reveals some discrepancies in the stories that the survivors told. In January, Abed Rabbo’s mother, Souad, told McClatchy that she’d pushed her son back into the house as the soldier opened fire. Khaled Abed Rabbo told Human Rights Watch investigators that he was in the house when the shooting started, however.
Abrahams attributed the inconsistency to the intense trauma the family went through during the fighting.
“Imagine if your two girls got shot and killed,” he said. “It’s not surprising that discrepancies come up in traumatic and chaotic situations, and they must be probed. But the fundamental narrative remains clear.”
Abrahams expressed doubt that the Israeli military would or could conduct a thorough investigation and noted that Israeli investigators had yet to contact Khaled Abed Rabbo about his case.
According to Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups, the Israeli military killed about 1,400 Palestinians during the conflict. Most of them, according to research by the various groups, were women, children and men who weren’t directly involved in the fighting.
The Israeli military contends that it killed 1,100 Palestinians, the majority of whom were “terror operatives.”
Ten Israeli soldiers and three Israeli civilians were killed during the 22-day conflict.
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