Holy Land Trust in Partnership with The Israeli Committee Against House Demolition (ICAHD)
1 July 2007 – 15 July 2007
Purpose of the Camp:
The main activity of the camp is to rebuild a home demolished by the Israeli military in a Palestinian area; this is one of the most important issues facing Palestinians living under Israeli occupation. In addition to working on rebuilding the house, Holy Land Trust will,
– Provide nonviolence training courses for the participants.
– Political tours in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Israel.
– Discussions and presentations by Israeli and Palestinians NGOs.
– Field trips to historical and religious sites.
– Weekend excursions and cultural evenings.
During this experience, participants will learn more of the culture, food and lifestyle of those who live here as they will work hand in hand with the local community.
Participants will be staying at a local Palestinian guest house in Bethlehem and should plan to arrive no later than July 1st 2007 and can plan to return to their homes after July 15th 2007.
It is our hope that you will return to your homes carrying the messages of peace, justice and hope.
History of the family and the house where you will be working:
The Salim Family from Walija, a village near Bethlehem owned a plot of land that was 800 square meters in size, inherited from the mother’s side of the family. In 2004 Mr. Munther Salim, who continues to work as a laborer, began building a house approximately 100 square meters for his five family members. On July 2005, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and Israeli police came to the location and gave the family the first home demolition warning. Mr. Munther refused to take the warning and tore the papers claiming that this is his land an that Israeli had nothing to do there and not even the right to give him any warnings, the IDF forces left and he summoned to go to the Israeli court.
Mr. Munther went to court several times; the first time Israeli government asked him to pay a penalty of 6,000 shekel (almost $1,500 USD) because he refused to accept the demolition warning. He was told in court that the land belongs to the Jerusalem municipal district and he should get permission to build from the Jerusalem Municipality. It is important to note that other houses in the same area received their permits from the Walajeh Village council. The lawyer succeeded in postponing the demolition orders.
On January 31st 2006 an Israeli demolition crew, accompanied by bulldozers and dozens of soldiers and police, suddenly arrived to the location. Within an hour the house was reduced to rubble after they the family was forced out. The family did not give up; a month later they began building the house for the second time. The Israeli demolition crew came back eight months later and on the 12th of December 2006 demolished the house for the second time.
While they were living in a relative’s house after their first and second house demolition in January 2006, the Israeli demolition crew came and demolished that house as well.
The Salim family continues to live through hope. Mr. Salim would like to rebuild his destroyed house once again, although it is very certain to be destroyed once again, Should he attempt to do so. What would you do if you were in his place?
The Salim family is looking to get international and local support to prevent the Israeli demolition of their house and confiscation of their land.
Eight human rights organizations seek the suspension of two attorneys from the High Court of Justice Division of the State Prosecutor’s Office for making offensive remarks about two local human rights groups in a written statement to the High Court about two weeks ago.
Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann and Attorney General Menachem Mazuz were asked to suspend attorneys Gilad Sherman and Yochi Gensin and to start disciplinary proceedings against them for comments they made about the Association for Civil Rights in Israel and Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel.
Sherman and Gensin wrote to the court that “[ACRI] and Adalah are comfortable with the possibility of a prime minister, cabinet minister or MP from Hamas ordering Qassam rockets launched at Sderot, [abducted Israeli soldier] Gilad Shalit not being released and as many Israeli citizens as possible killed, in the spirit of the Hamas charter, while at the same time being entitled to reside permanently in Israel and to enjoy National Insurance Institute allowances and complete freedom of movement in the country.”
The comments were made as Hamas members in the Palestinian parliament appeal against the Interior Ministry’s revocation of their permanent residency status in East Jerusalem.
“The approach of ACRI and Adalah is absurd, lacking legal or ethical basis, and contradictory to the elements and ideas of civil rights and freedoms, and is liable to endanger the safety and welfare of the public as well as jeopardizing the public’s faith in governmental and law enforcement authorities,” Sherman and Gensin wrote.
Eight organizations joined the demand for the attorneys’ suspension: The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel; B’Tselem; Amnesty International, Israel Section; Gisha: Center for the Legal Protection of Freedom of Movement; HaMoked Center for the Defense of the Individual; Yesh Din – Volunteers for Human Rights; Physicians for Human Rights and Rabbis for Human Rights.
“The implication of the attorneys’ statements, which amount to slander and constitute infuriating demagoguery, is that ACRI and Adalah are a ‘fifth column’ whose entire aim is to undermine the existence and the security of the state,” the organizations wrote. “The foundation of this statement is a clear attempt to sow doubt concerning the legitimacy of these organizations in the public and in the High Court.”
In addition to the suspension and disciplinary proceedings against Sherman and Gensin, the protesting organizations seek a public apology and want the attorneys to meet with representatives from the Justice Ministry and the rights organizations to set principles for future cooperation.
Urgent Appeal from Israeli Human Rights Groups to Israeli Defense Minister:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
17 June 2007
As we write these lines, hundreds of refugees are trapped between Erez crossing, which is sealed, and the Hamas military force preventing their return to Gaza. The sick and those injured from recent events are trapped in Gaza. Essential food products are diminishing, and there is a growing shortage of essential medical supplies. The state of Israel cannot stand idly by at a time when the fundamental human rights of Gaza residents are being violated and the right to life is being threatened.
Eight Israeli human rights organizations today warn of a crisis which has the potential of worsening if Israel continues to close borders and isolate Gaza from the outside world by preventing the supply of essential goods, trapping residents inside the Gaza Strip and preventing Gaza residents who traveled outside the Strip from returning home.
Over the weekend, Israel closed the border crossings between the Gaza Strip and the outside world. Karni Crossing, Gaza’s main artery through which essential supplies are transferred, is closed for the sixth day. Fresh foods, such as meat, fruit and dairy products, have begun to diminish from the shelves. The World Food Program warns of food shortages by the end of the week if the crossings are not opened. Today, Nahal Oz, the passage way through which fuel is provided to the Gaza Strip, is closed.
Rafah Crossing on the Egyptian border has been closed for eight days and the Erez crossing into Israel has been closed since yesterday. Gaza residents who left the Strip are unable to return home and reunite with their families. Gaza residents seeking to leave to receive medical treatment in Egypt or Israel, including the chronically sick or those injured due to recent events, are trapped within Gaza. Even though a small number of blood rations arrived in the last few days to Gaza through Erez crossing, the shortage of essential medical supplies is worsening. Hundreds of refugees are attempting to escape the violence and are trapped in Erez Crossing, caught between IDF soldiers and the military wing of Hamas which is preventing these refugees from returning to Gaza.
The state of Israel cannot stand idly by at a time when fundamental human rights of Gaza residents are being violated, including the most essential of all rights – the right to life and physical integrity.
Israel controls the land crossings between Gaza and Israel, and Gaza’s air space and territorial waters, and does not allow the crossing of people or goods via the sea or air. To a great extent, Israel is exercising control of the border between Gaza and Egypt and completely controls the borders of the West Bank, to which refugees are trying to escape from Gaza. The closing of borders and the threat of disconnecting Gaza’s electricity and water grid can be interpreted as collective punishment for all Gaza residents.
We call upon the state of Israel to fulfill its obligation under international law and to open the borders of Gaza to the outside world. We call upon the State of Israel to allow those whose lives are in danger to leave the Gaza Strip immediately and to enter the West Bank. We call upon the State of Israel to allow the sick and injured to access needed medical treatment in Israel and Egypt. We call upon Israel to open the land borders with the Gaza Strip to allow the entrance of humanitarian supplies, especially fuel, medicines and essential supplies.
B’Tselem: The Israeli Information Center for Human Right in the Occupied Territories
Gisha: Legal Center for Freedom of Movement
Association for Civil Rights in Israel
Physicians for Human Rights
Public Committee against Torture in Israel
HaMoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual
Yesh Din – Volunteers for Human Rights
Rabbis for Human Rights
George S. Rishmawi is a co-founder and coordinator of Siraj, the Palestinian Center for Holy Land Studies and one of the founders of the International Solidarity Movement. He is a board member of the Network of Christian Organizations in Bethlehem. Siraj is organizing a network of bicycle clubs in the West Bank and environmental hiking programs for Palestinian and international young people. Originating in Beit Sahour, a town famous for its nonviolent struggle in the First Intifada, Rishmawi is a life-long peace activist.
In this talk, he discusses how to promote economic independence by supporting Palestinian crafts and building Palestinian-led tourism. He gave this talk 19 April 2007 at the Bil’in International Nonviolence Conference.
For about two years now, the Israeli government has been carrying out an unwritten policy of wiping from the face of the earth entire villages of Bedouins in the Negev. This policy is well demonstrated by the repeated demolition of ‘Tawil Abu Jarwal’ village in the eight-month period between September 2006 and May 2007. In February 2007, members of the Al-Nasasra clan received warnings that all village houses would be demolished. The unrecognized Bedouin villages such as ‘Al-Sadir’, ‘Atir, Um al-Hiran’, ‘Tel-Arad’ received similar warnings, and all households in the village ‘Amara-Tarabin’ received demolition orders. We request your participation in a letter-writing campaign that we are initiating in order to counter this policy of force, coercion and demolition by the Israeli government.
Background
In 1948, on the eve of the establishment of the State of Israel, there were about 110,000 Bedouins in the Negev. Following the war, there was an ongoing evacuation of the Bedouins from southern Israel. A census made in 1960 reveals that 11,000 Bedouins remained. During the early 1950s, the State of Israel concentrated the Bedouins in the area of the Sayag (see attached map). Entire tribes were displaced from their lands in the western and southern Negev and transferred to the Sayag area. The state declared a large part of the Sayag area to which the Bedouins had been moved as lands over which there was no municipal government. The planning and building law legislated in 1965 zoned all of these lands as agricultural, so implicitly building was forbidden there. Every house already built was therefore considered to be “illegal”. Thus with a single sweeping political decision, the State of Israel transformed the entire Bedouin population into law-breakers, though the Bedouins’ only crime was to exercise their basic human right to housing.
In the late 1960s, a new stage commenced, in the policy of concentrating the Bedouins into narrower areas. The government started to establish a small number of townships, in which it intended to concentrate all the Bedouins. In order to encourage them to move to these townships, it began a policy of demolishing houses, destroying crops, confiscating herds of sheep and goats and denying basic services such as water, electricity, access roads, schools, clinics, sewage systems, etc. Only after public and legal struggles was the government obligated to build twenty regional schools and eight clinics for these unrecognized villages, and to connect some of the villages to the water system. Not only were the lands of the Bedouins nationalized and expropriated so that few of their lands remained available to them, but this rapacious policy of expulsion was accompanied by an enormous publicity campaign and by demonization of the Bedouins.
The townships have been a failure from every point of view – they remain a pocket of unemployment and welfare assistance, blighted by problems of hard crime and violence, and suffering from a dearth of workplaces, public transportation, banks, large businesses, industrial zoning, basic infrastructure, etc.
Bedouin tribes that were once dispersed throughout the entire Negev (see map), and intensively used about 2,000,000 dunams (200,000 hectares) of land, live today on about 240,000 dunams (24,000 hectares) and struggle to preserve ownership of a further 450,000 dunams (45,000 hectares). Today, the Negev Bedouins number about 160,000, out of which about 80,000 live in dozens of unrecognized villages and the rest in the eight new townships. If the state succeeds in concentrating the Bedouins into the townships (of which another nine are planned), the area remaining available to them for sustenance (grazing flocks, cultivating crops, etc.) will be reduced dramatically.
It can be seen from the above that the State of Israel is engaged in persecuting its Bedouin citizens, while coveting their remaining lands. The terrible situation in the townships proves that these were established not out of concern for the Bedouins, but from the desire to evict them from their lands.
Sample Letter:
Dear Mr. Prime Minister
Re: Opposition to the deliberate policy of your government to eradicate villages in the Negev
How can it be that Israel has villages inhabited by hundreds and sometimes thousands of Israeli citizens but which remain unrecognized by your Government? How can it be that tens of thousands of Israeli citizens are denied the simple right to a roof over their heads, to running water for their houses, to electricity, health services, roads or sewage systems, simply because your Government wishes to force them into townships? How can it be that there are Israeli citizens who are denied the opportunity to choose the way in which they wish to live?
Having already transferred entire tribes of Bedouins from their lands to elsewhere in the Negev, how can the Government then fail to recognize the new villages thus created? Why does the Government refuse to return these inhabitants to their original dwelling places despite promises to do so? Why is the State of Israel unwilling to recognize villages that were already there, on their lands, even before the State’s establishment?
Is it permissible for the State of Israel to persecute these citizens because they were born as Bedouins and not as Jews?
Did this policy come about in order to snatch from the Arab Bedouins their remaining lands in the Negev, just as the majority of their lands were expropriated long ago?
Being a nation that (justifiably) struggles against anti-semitism around the world, it is difficult to understand how you can harm Israeli citizens in this way, simply because they are Bedouins rather than Jews.
I respectfully appeal to you to desist from this racist policy against the Bedouins and permit them to live in their dwelling places according to their needs, their traditions and desires, as is permitted to every Jewish citizen of Israel.
Respectfully,
Please send letters of protest to:
Mr. Ehud Olmert
Prime Minister of Israel,
Fax: 972-2-6513955,
Email: eulmert@knesset.gov.il
Office of the Prime Minister,
Government Offices, Jerusalem, Israel.
Ms. Tsipi Livni
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Fax: 972-2-5303704
Email: sar@mofa.gov.il
Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
Government Offices, Jerusalem, Israel
Mr. Shimon Peres
Deputy Prime Minister,
Fax: 972-3-6954156,
Email: info@sp.pmo.gov.il
Ministry of Development of the Negev and the Galilee and Regional Economic Development.
Prof. Daniel Friedman
Minister of Justice
Fax: 972-2-6287757
Email: sar@justice.gov.il
Ministry of Justice
Government Offices, Jerusalem, Israel
Mr. Roni Bar-On
Minister of the Interior
Fax: 972-2-6701585
Email: sar@moin.gov.il
Ministry of the Interior
Government Offices, Jerusalem, Israel.
Mr. Meir Shitrit,
Housing and Construction Minister
Fax: 972-2-5847688
Email: sar@moch.gov.il
Ministry of Housing and Construction
Government Offices, Jerusalem, Israel
We also ask that you send copies to Israeli ambassadors in your countries and to members of parliament in your countries.
Thanks,
Recognition Forum.
Recognition Forum
Association Forty, Association for Support and Defense of Bedouin in Israel, Coalition of Women for Peace, Negev Coexistence Forum for Civil Equality, New Profile, Rabbis for Human Rights, Ta’ayush, The Committee Against House Demolition.
