Open Letter from Amnesty International’s Secretary General to European Union leaders on human rights crisis in Israel and the Occupied Territories
Amnesty International’s Secretary General Irene Khan today called on European Union Heads of State and Government to urgently address the downward spiral of human rights abuses in Israel and the Occupied Territories.
In an open letter published on International Human Rights Day and ahead of next week’s meeting of the European Council (15 December), Irene Khan made a series of concrete recomendations including the deployment of international human rights monitors to the region.
Irene Khan is currently leading an Amnesty International mission to Israel and the Occupied Territories during which she has discussed human rights concerns with government officials and members of civil society. The letter’s recommendations are elaborated on in a briefing also published today, Israel and the Occupied Territories – Road to nowhere.
Amnesty International’s recommendations include:
* Deployment of an effective international human rights monitoring mechanism;
* The investigation and and prosecution through the excercise of universal jurisdiction of those responsible for crimes under international law;
* Immediate halting of the sale or transfer of weapons to all parties in the conflict;
* Concrete provisions to ensure the removal of Israeli settlements from the Occupied Territories, the dismantling of the fence/wall inside the West Bank, ending the closures and in the long term a fair solution to the refugee question.
For further information or to arrange an interview with Irene Khan, please call:
In Israel and the Occupied Territories: Eliane Drakopoulos on mobile +44 7778 472 109 or mobile: +972 (0)547 781 691 or Judit Arenas on mobile + 44 7778 472 188
Israeli media representatives please contact: Udi Gilad on mobile +972 54 4660300
In London, James Dyson on + 44 207 413 5831 or mobile + 44 7795 628 367
Further information :
For the latest blogs from the Amnesty International mission, please see: http://blogs.amnesty.org/blogs/israelot_dec06
Laila El-Haddad spent the last three weeks in a dismal apartment she was forced to rent in El Arish, Egypt, together with her son Yusuf, who is two years and nine months old. Every few days the two tried to travel to the Rafah border crossing, about 50 kilometers away, attempting to return to their home in Gaza. These were distressful efforts: Together with another 5,000 or so residents of Gaza, who have also been waiting in recent weeks to return to their homes, she was crammed with her toddler for hours in an endless line at the crossing. “Elbow to elbow, like cattle,” is how she describes this in her blog, until being pushed back in shame once again.
El-Haddad, a young journalist who splits her time between Gaza and the U.S., can afford to pay $9 per night. But most of the unfortunate people around her, including cancer patients, infants, the elderly and students, the injured and disabled, cannot allow themselves such luxuries. Some of them rent a tent for 1.5 Egyptian pounds per night. The rest simply sleep out in the open, in the chill of night, or crowd together in local mosques.
These people want to return home. Israel does not even allow them this. They are human beings with families, plans and commitments, longings and dignity, but who cares. In recent weeks, even the Palestinian Minister of the Environment, Yusuf Abu Safiya, was stuck there. El-Haddad tells of how the minister could be seen one evening collecting twigs on the beach of El Arish to light a bonfire. During the summer, at least seven people died of heat and dehydration while waiting at the border. For many of those who are ill, the wait is a nightmare that threatens their lives. For students, it means losing an academic year. There is almost no mention of this cruel abuse in the newspapers: After all, the occupation in Gaza has ended.
Without anyone paying attention, the Gaza Strip has become the most closed-off strip of land in the world – after North Korea. But while North Korea is globally known to be a closed and isolated country, how many people know that the same description applies to a place just an hour away from hedonist Tel Aviv?
The Erez border crossing is desolate – Palestinians are not allowed to cross there, foreigners are rarely allowed to cross and Israeli journalists have also been prohibited from crossing during the past two weeks. Only wheelchairs are occasionally pushed through the long “sleeves” of the security check, leading a deadly ill person or someone seriously injured by the IDF to or from treatment in Israel. The large terminal Israel built, a concrete and glass monster that looks like a splendid shopping mall, juts up like a particularly tasteless joke, a mockery. At the Karni crossing, the only supply channel for 1.5 million people, only 12 trucks per day have passed since January. According to the “crossings accord” signed a year ago, Israel committed to allowing 400 trucks a day to pass through. The excuse: security, as usual.
But there has not been any security incident at Karni since April. The ramifications: Not only severe poverty, but also $30 million in damage to Gaza’s agriculture, which is almost the only remaining source of livelihood in the Strip. According to the UN report published last week, Israel has violated all of the articles of the agreement. There is no passage to Israel, no passage to the West Bank and even none to Egypt, the last outlet.
The Rafah crossing has been almost continually closed since June. During 86 percent of these days, the “passage” was impassable. Last month, it was open for only 36 hours, spread over four days. The desperate masses of people waiting surged toward the fences. The scenes were heart-breaking. And then it was closed again. The last time this happened was when the Palestinian foreign minister crossed with $20 million in his luggage. The collective punishment: Closure for weeks. It should be noted that crossing is only permitted for residents of Gaza who bear identity cards issued by Israel. No weapons pass through, Israel admits. And Israel also admits that the closure is solely intended to exert pressure on the residents.
Rafah is jammed with a crowd of people waiting on both sides, including many who are setting out on a pilgrimage to Mecca. A rumor was circulating last Tuesday that the crossing would open the following day. Israel only announces the opening of the crossing at 11 P.M. the night before – this is also a form of abuse. “There’s only one thing that is certain, and that’s that nobody knows when it will open,” El-Haddad wrote in her blog. She quickly set out the next morning and finally succeeded in crossing this time, but thousands remained behind.
The previous day, she described bits of conversation with her toddler in her blog:
“Why are we still here, in Arish?”
“Because we are waiting to enter Gaza, dear.”
“But then why don’t we go to Gaza?”
“Because the ma’bar [crossing] is closed, my love.”
“Well, who’s closing it mommy?”
“What do I tell him? ‘Some bad people.'”
“You mean like in the stories, like Shere Khan in the Jungle Book?”
“Yes, sure, like Shere Khan.”
“‘But who are they? Who are these bad people? Is it the yahood [the Jews]?’ He asks, mimicking what he’s heard on the border.”
“What do I say? I hesitate. ‘Look, there are some people; some are good, some are bad. And the bad ones are closing the border.'”
“But why? What did we do?”
“I wish I knew, my dear. I wish I had all the answers, my love, so I could answer all your questions. I wish I didn’t have to answer such questions to start with.”
El-Haddad then writes an open letter to Defense Minister Amir Peretz: “- what can I tell a 2-year-old – of borders and occupation and oppression and collective punishment? What would YOU tell him?” And, indeed, what would we say to 2-year-old Yusuf? What could Peretz say in response? “Israel’s security”? What memories will the toddler harbor from the three weeks of waiting in a crowded line with his mother on the border, humiliated and sad on the way home, to incarcerated Gaza, withering in its poverty? And who will be brought to account for this in the end?
Internationals have been banned by the IOF from visiting the land of Bil’in village that lies on the other side of the illegal apartheid wall. In recent days internationals have been told by soldiers stationed at the checkpoint at the wall cutting through the village, that orders have been given forbidding access to this land. For the past year internationals have been able to cross the wall to visit and stay at the outpost built on village land and to help work the agricultural land. Settler-colonists from the illegal colony of Matityahu East have in the past set fire to the outpost, making the need for a permanent presence at the outpost essential.
In the past year the outpost has served as a meeting place for villagers and friends, has been a focus for the enjoyment of the World Cup and internationals helped with the olive harvest on the other side of the wall. All these displays of friendship and international solidarity have now been brought to an end in this latest attempt to ghettoize the village. Half of the village land has been annexed by the Israeli colony of Matityahu East and now the village is being denied their right to use the remaining land across the wall as they wish.
1. IOF target Bilin non-violent activist
2. Nablus village schoolchildren terrorized by IOF
3. Police Target Tel Aviv Anti-Occupation Rally
4. Witness to checkpoint abuse “punished” by IOF
5. Israel refuses visa extensions for foreign passport holders
6. Sabatash checkpoint closed indefinitely
7. Settler attack in Urif – Israeli police do nothing
8. Azzun ‘Atma Farmer Resists Land Annexation
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1. IOF target Bilin non-violent activist
by the ISM media team, December 8th
UPDATE 7pm Ahmed has been taken from the police station to Ofer military detention centre. He has been accused of damaging the illegal apartheid wall, resisting arrest and being in a Closed Military Zone.
At today’s peaceful demo against the illegal apartheid wall in Bil’in the IOF assaulted and abducted Bil’in peace activist Ahmed Abu Hasssan, 34. Ahmed was attacked by 10 soldiers as he pulled at a razor wire fence that forms part of the illegal wall regime in Bil’in. Female activists who came to his aid were beaten and had their hair pulled by the soldiers. Ahmed was dragged away by soldiers holding him by the scruff of the neck and was then blindfolded. Bil’in residents are targeted every week for arrest due to their role in highlighting the apartheid Israeli occupation.
As protesters marched to the gate in the wall soldiers were occupying the house of a Bilin resident and standing on the roof. After singing and chanting at the gate, some demonstrators protested with banners and flags along the route of the wall whilst others pulled on the razor wire. This led to an immediate display of military force and Ahmed’s arrest.
UN observers and the director of Amnesty International Irene Khan were present in the village during the demonstration and did interviews with villagers and non-violent activists about the Occupation land theft in Bil’in and repression of local residents. Ahmed is only the latest in a long line of Bil’in residents to be abducted and held by the IOF.
For photos see: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/12/08/bilin-08-12/
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2. Nablus village schoolchildren terrorized by IOF
by aspiringnomad, December 3rd
On Tuesday a group of six human rights activists travelled to the small vallage of Sarra, west of Nablus, in response to a plea from a local school headmaster about Israeli army harassment of schoolchildren. According to countless eyewitness reports, during the last week an Israeli military Humvee would arrive in front of the school as the children were coming out, and proceed to let off sound bombs, tear gas and fire rubber bullets. However, the previous day the Humvee had arrived earlier and stayed for 4 hours between 10am and 2pm.
During the documentation of these harrowing witness statements a message arrived that the Humvee had just appeared at the gates of the girls school across the street. The six activists immediately went to the scene in order to ascertain the Israeli army’s motives and also to document any further harassment.
On seeing the approaching activists the soldiers quickly jumped into their Humvee and sped towards the centre of town at high speed. Three activists pursued the vehicle whilst the others stayed back at the entrance to the school.
As the activists caught up with the Humvee it proceeded to double back towards the school. It then stopped beside two activists and an Israeli soldier asked the reason for our presence. When the same question was asked of the soldier it was met with a cynical smile before he slammed the door, and the humvee drove into town, stopping only to throw a tear gas canister at some schoolchildren and fire a volley of bullets into the air before driving away.
After the Humvee’s departure, a call was made to the DCO (District Coordination Office – the civil administration wing of the Israeli military in the occupied West Bank) making them aware of what was happening, after which the activists remained for a further two hours.
Sarra is a typical small village that relies on agriculture for its income. Therefore the Israeli army’s military presence, and their subsequent behaviour can only be seen as a means to harass, humiliate and terrorize the residents.
The following day the activists returned to Sarra, but fortunately the Humvee didn’t return. More data was collected on Israeli army harassment that had occurred over the previous month, which included several late night visits by the army, who raided homes.
Almost a week after the initial presence of the activists at the scene, the military has yet to return to sarra.
For photo see: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/12/03/sarra-school-terror/
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3. Police Target Tel Aviv Anti-Occupation Rally
by aspiringnomad, December 4th
In Tel Aviv on Saturday, a peaceful rally of several hundred people demonstrating at the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestine and the recent Beit Hanoun massacre was marred by the arrest of a 20-year old Israeli peace activist.
The rally began peacefully with the predominantly Israeli contingent creating a convivial atmosphere with drums and whistles as they marched to Rabin Square. Apart from a few missiles thrown by occupants of overlooking apartments and the odd heckle from angry passers-by, the rally demonstrated none of the hostility common to similar such rallies in the occupied territories due to the absence of a confrontational Israeli military presence.
The arrest occurred when a demonstrator attempted to attach an anti-war bumper sticker to the window of a McDonald’s restaurant. The police reacted to this by flinging the female demonstrator to the ground. Another demonstrator who came to her aid was subsequently beaten and apprehended by upwards of a dozen police.
Police at the scene alleged the protester had tried to break a glass window of the MacDonald’s branch and had assaulted an officer with a flag pole he was holding.
However, eye witnesses refute these grounds for arrest, backed up by video footage disproving the police’s version of events and furthermore showing excessive police violence during the protester’s arrest.
The arrested activist from Nahariya, sustained a black eye and head injuries in the course of his arrest. Onlookers and marchers alike were shocked at this display of police force, unused as they are to the daily violence meted out by the IOF in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.
For photos see: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/12/04/telaviv-02-12/
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4. Witness to checkpoint abuse “punished” by IOF
by aspiringnomad December 5th
On Saturday at 4pm a human rights worker based in Nablus received a call from some fellow HRWs at Huwwara checkpoint, that hundreds of Palestinians including a mother with a sick child weren’t being allowed through after the checkpoint had been closed.
When the HRW arrived there were hundreds of people waiting to pass through the illegal Israeli checkpoint. A middle aged woman was pleading with soldiers to be able to pass as she was cradling a sick child who required treatment.
The HRWs attempted to ask the Israeli soldiers the reason for the closure and whether it would be possible for the women and child to pass through, but his pleas were met with stony silence. After further inquiries, the soldiers informed the HRW that if he didn’t go away he would be “punished”. The woman continued to remonstrate with the soldiers in the presence the HRW, at which point the soldiers wrestled him to the ground and handcuffed him.
During the arrest the HRW was lighly injured and his camera was damaged. He was then detained in a small holding cell for an hour before being taken to Ariel settlement police station where he was questioned and detained for a further 4 hours.
Police claimed that the HRW had struck one of the soldiers and asked him to sign a document promising never to visit Nablus again. The aggrieved HRW refused, pleading wrongful arrest and physical abuse. He was then asked to sign a document promising not to argue with Israeli soldiers at Huwwara checkpoint for a period of 15 days, before being released without charge at approximately 10pm.
Huwwara checkpoint is notorious for long unexplained closures, which have become more common of late. In the last few weeks Palestinians have had to spend up to 2 hours waiting to pass through. As well as Huwwara checkpoint, Palestinians have to travel through other permanent and temporary checkpoints on their way to Ramallah, resulting in journey times of up to 5 hours for a journey of 20 miles, if they are allowed through them.
There are currently 72 permanent military checkpoints throughout the West Bank along with at least 25 temporary and flying checkpoints set up randomly by Israeli occupying forces.
Checkpoints can be a major deterrent for Palestinians on any road because of the extensive delays, security searches, as well as physical and psychological abuse by Israeli soldiers.
The checkpoints and Israel’s closure policy are often used as a means of enforcing collective punishment on the inhabitants of a certain area, or even the entire population of the Occupied Palestinian Territories .Collective punishment is illegal under international law.
The system of Israeli checkpoints in the Occupied Palestinian Territories violates international humanitarian law as codified in the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949.
For photos see : https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/12/05/witness-to-checkpoint-abuse-punished-by-iof/
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5. Israel refuses visa extensions for foreign passport holders
Right to Entry, December 5th
In a new escalation of Israel’s policy of denying Palestinians and their families access to the Israeli occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), the Israeli Civil Administration at Beit El is refusing to accept at least 140 passports for visa extensions. The passport holders are mostly spouses and children of Palestinian I.D.-holders and are residing in the oPt. Many of them have been forced to become “illegal” since their visitor visas have expired while waiting to be renewed by Israel.
Twenty-seven year old Subha G is one of these cases. Her mother, brothers and her husband all have Palestinian IDs, but her request for family reunification has been frozen since 1997. “I am seven months pregnant and I am afraid of leaving to renew my visa and becoming stranded outside the country. My whole family is here.” Subha said.
Palestinian I.D.s can only be issued by Israel. Since Israel is refusing to process an estimated 120,000 family unification residency applications of spouses and children of Palestinians, foreign family members must renew their visa every three months. All foreign spouses and children of Palestinians who requested visa extensions in October had their passports returned from Beit El on November 19th stamped “Last permit.” The passport holders are required to leave the country before their visas expire, which in some cases occurred during Israel’s processing of the visa extension application. Israeli authorities are regularly denying entry to family members of
Palestinians when they attempt to cross the Israeli controlled borders to the Israeli oPt.
Soha N., French citizen, lives in Beit Jala with her Palestinian husband and their two children, ages six and eight years old. The Israeli authorities refuse to issue residency to Soha and her children. Therefore, they have been renewing their visas every three months. After applying in October for another visa extension, they received their passports back marked “last permit.” Soha’s final extension lasts until December 25th. Israeli authorities required her two children to leave by December 4th. The family may now be forced to relocate abroad, as their children are now considered “illegal” after overstaying their visas.
Shlomo Dror, spokesperson for the Israeli Civil Administration states that those foreign passport holders with family in the oPt who stay illegally in the country, should expect “tough consequences”. “Israel is working overtime to create a demographic change in the oPt by targeting the most vulnerable segment of Palestinian society, denying them residency and forcing them to leave,” said Basil Ayish, a spokesperson from the Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry to the oPt. “Palestinian residency holders are likely to follow their spouses and children to another country in order to stay together,”Ayish explained.
Contact: Basil Ayish Coordinator, Media Committee
(c) +970-(0)59-817-3953 (email) info@righttoenter.ps
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6. Sabatash checkpoint closed indefinitely
by ISM Nablus, December 5th
The checkpoint commonly known as “Sabatash”, named after the Palestinian security forces that used to maintain a presence there, has been closed indefinitely for all civilian traffic bar humanitarian transportation such as ambulances and medical supply deliveries. This turn of events was suddenly announced a little more than two weeks ago to the residents of Asira Ash-Shamalia, located on the far side of the checkpoint from Nablus city.
The checkpoint is located in a sharp bend in the main road to Nablus; a thoroughfare used daily by- and crucial to university students and workers. It has developed from a makeshift checkpoint consisting of a muddy trench and a few cement blocks to a permanent terminal with a watchtower, walls and two vehicle lanes. Palestinians have been humiliated, stripsearched, made to stand in a meter of cold ditch-water, beaten and shot here every day since the beginning of the Al-Aqsa intifada. Although notorious for its extremely violent soldiers, the checkpoint has still been the preferred route for most Palestinians, as walking around over the mountains is even more treacherous. If spotted by Israeli soldiers, one runs the risk of being shot or detained for many hours.
One villager was detained by soldiers a rainy winter day a couple of years ago. He can hardly hold back his tears as he tells the story of how he ventured over the mountains in order to buy warm winter clothes for his son. On his way back, soldiers ambushed him from behind some bushes, very nearly shooting him dead. After making sure that he was not carrying any explosives, the soldiers calmed down and their commander started talking politics for over three hours, all the time in a civil manner. All of a sudden, the commander’s attitude changed and he ordered the man to be handcuffed. The soldiers then proceeded to beat, spit and pee on the man as he lay defenceless on the ground. The commander ordered the Palestinian man to undress, produced a video camera and told the man that he would be let go if he said on tape that he is a dirty Palestinian who does not deserve to live, to breathe oxygen or to drink water.
The man agreed to testify on tape and, shivering in the cold, proclaimed that “I am proud to be Palestinian and to be walking home to my family in my village breathing my air. I was under the impression that you were a civil man, commander, but I am afraid I was mistaken for you have lost your humanity and therefore lost everything.” The commander then attacked him, thrusting the butt of his rifle into the man’s naked stomach. The man was then forced to lie down on the ground with his head ten centimeters away from the chains of the tank. Revving the motor, the commander explained to the man that they will now run him over. The Palestinian man asked for one last favour before he was to be killed – for the soldiers to deliver the warm clothes to his son and wife. The soldiers then took the clothes and burned them in front of the man as he lay naked on the ground.
After more than 12 hours of humiliation, the soldiers pushed the handcuffed man down a steep slope, cutting his skin on thorns and rocks. Nearby villagers rushed out to take care of him as the soldiers left and he eventually returned home, with both arms broken. This is but one horrific story out of many experienced by the citizens of Asira Ash-Shamalia. About one month ago, 25-year old Haithem was shot with live ammunition at close range for daring to protest against the soldiers’ treatment of a group of young women at the checkpoint – forcing them to run their hands tight along their own bodies. He is still in hospital being treated for the wounds sustained that night.
Now, the checkpoint has been closed indefinitely. Instead, the villagers are forced to travel in a 40km arc around the checkpoint to get to Nablus. Flying checkpoints are set up by Israeli military along this road, meaning the journey can take anything from 40 minutes to several hours. Despite contacting various human rights organizations, legal experts and military commanders, the villagers have not been able to find out why the road has been closed.
It could be an incidence of collective punishment due to the village’s successful olive harvest campaign. A committee of ten dedicated villagers spent the autumn months encouraging villagers to tend to their lands, even those close to the nearby military base and to stand their ground in case of confrontation with the military – “just try to have a calm logical conversation with the soldiers. The words will come naturally to you. After all, it is your land!” They also organized the removal of close to one hundred roadblocks scattered within and around the village, so as to allow for the passage of tractors and other heavy equipment needed during the harvest.
Greatly empowered by the committee’s work, the people of Asira Ash-Shamalia have this year harvested olives from land that has lain idle since the beginning of the first intifada. Furthermore, there has been a revival of old harvesting traditions, with young and old congregating in the fields to work, sing and eat together. In the past, a couple of adults from each family used to sneak to their fields and hurriedly pick as many olives as they dare before rushing home – almost as if “stealing” their own olives. This year, the harvest has been an open, joyous event, despite repression in the form of teargas and gunfire from soldiers manning the military base on the mountain Ebal.
The Israeli military have tried all sorts of measures to control the village’s newfound sense of self-determination. In the evenings, they would come and try to grab individual villagers from the olive press factories. After wrestling men to the ground and dragging them out of the building, the soldiers were forced to see themselves defeated as villager after villager struggled to get free and returned to the press. Whatever the reason for the sudden and unexplained closure of Sabatash checkpoint, this will not quench the spirit of resistance and invention in Asira Ash-Shamalia.
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7. Settler attack in Urif – Israeli police do nothing
by ISM Nablus, December 5th
On Sunday the 4th of December, a group of Israeli residents of Yitzhar colony attacked farmers from Urif, a small village south of Nablus, while they were harvesting their olives on land adjacent to the village itself. This area is not normally considered to be a high-risk area due to its close proximity to Palestinian houses but this did not deter the colonists who, brandishing rocks and sticks, proceeded to yell insults and chase the olive pickers down the hill. Fortunately, no injuries were sustained.
Israeli police were not present as the area is, as mentioned, not considered a security priority. On Monday, there were also no police in the area despite the recent attack but two solidarity workers – one international from ISM and the Palestinian coordinator for Rabbis for Human Rights – accompanied the families to their fields. Visibly frightened, the farmers flinched and started rolling up their tarpaulins at the slightest sight of the Israeli colonists patrolling the perimeter of Yitzhar at the top of the hill. Luckily, the day’s work proceeded without incident and the villagers estimate that they will have finished harvesting in a few days.
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8. Azzun ‘Atma Farmer Resists Land Annexation
by the ISM media team, December 6th
Azzun ‘Atma farmer Sameh Yousef scored a small victory in his struggle against the theft of his land today when the IOF pledged to erect a fence on the edge of his field rather than 15 metres inside it. The IOF is constructing a second wall around the village of Azzun ‘Atma, 2 kms from the Green Line between the Israeli colonies of Sha’are Tikva and Oranit.
The IOF originally intended to ghettoize Sameh’s land by building a fence on its edge beside a colonialist road, but yesterday construction workers accompanied by soldiers appeared and began digging up his field 15 metres from the road. Sameh grows potatoes and corn on this land. Sameh protested as he had been previously assured the destruction would take place on the edge of his land. When 2 local human rights workers arrived they were threatened with arrest and the confiscation of their photographic equipment. Despite a 100-metre strip of topsoil and crops having been excavated and dumped beside the road Sameh was determined not to accept the loss of 27 dunums of his land and asked HRWs to accompany him the following day to non-violently resist this land theft.
Early this morning Sameh arrived at the scene with his two children and 8 HRWs, shortly before the arrival of the construction workers accompanied by the IOF. Once it was clear Sameh was not going to allow the annexation of his land, the DCO was contacted in order to clarify the original illegal order for the construction of the fence. After 6 hours of remonstrating, the DCO arrived to concede defeat in their attempts to annex Sameh’s land and vowed to construct the illegal fence beside the road on the edge of his land. The excavated topsoil and crops were transfered back to their original location.
Despite a fruitful day of steadfast resistance, it remains to be seen whether the soldiers will keep their word.
For photos see: https://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2006/12/06/azzun-atma-06-12/
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The situation of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza has become so bad that even the pro-Israeli New York Times is reporting on some of the more revolting developments.
For instance, on October 11 the Times ran an article titled “Israel Bars New Palestinian Students From Its Universities, Citing Concern Over Security,” and in September it had published a “human interest” piece profiling the long struggle of Palestinian community leader Sam Bahour to gain a residency permit in Ramallah, the place where he has lived and worked for the past 15 years (“Israeli Visa Policy Traps Thousands of Palestinians in a Legal Quandary,” 9/18/06). In the latter piece the Times reported that, “Over the past six years, more than 70,000 people, a vast majority of them of Palestinian descent, have applied without success to immigrate to the West Bank and Gaza.”
In the former article the Times notes that the Israeli Army has just imposed an “outright ban” on all Palestinian students who wish to study at Israeli universities, even if the student has been already accepted into a doctoral program, which is the case of Sawsan Salameh, a Palestinian woman from the West Bank who recently earned a full scholarship from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to begin a doctorate in theoretical chemistry. Instead of beginning her PhD studies in this fall semester, she is tied up with lawyers who are preparing her case for the Israel Supreme Court.
The Times here has reached the farthest limits of permissible discourse on the Israeli military occupation of Palestine, the longest colonial occupation in modern history and one that is impossible without the $8 billion in unconditional U.S. aid that flows annually to Israel. The occupation costs Israel $12 billion per year and would become immediately insupportable were the massive U.S. aid package suspended for even a month or two (80 percent of all U.S. foreign aid goes to Israel). Thus it’s unlikely that the Times will follow up these two stories with the real story behind them, namely why it is that there exists not a single PhD program in any of the eight major Palestinian universities, in spite of the fact that Palestinians are among the most well educated people on earth.
The underlying issue, as is always the case with Palestine, is how Americans might respond politically if they came to know that a significant portion of their tax dollars is funding the most brutal system of racial oppression the world has seen since American Jim Crow and apartheid in South Africa. The thousands of dedicated Palestine solidarity activists across the U.S. work under the assumption that once the basic facts of Israeli racial oppression against the Palestinians are established, vividly and for the political education of the majority of Americans, organized opposition to the 60-year old U.S. pro-Israel policy will spring to life, leading finally to a just solution of what’s called euphemistically in the West “the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
The Israel Lobby works with this same assumption, evidenced by their vicious attacks on anybody who dares call the Israeli occupation racist, or who merely points out the apartheid character of its new 700 kilometer segregation wall, whose “major aim,” as the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, B’Tselem, has put it, is “to build the Barrier east of as many settlements as possible, to make it easier to annex them into Israel.” As we know, merely naming properly the thousands of well paid pro-Israeli lawyers, academics, and media pundits and organized political lobbyists, whose sole objective is to suppress this kind of information in the West, will get you labeled “anti-Semitic,” as the liberal, establishment scholars Walt and Mearsheimer recently learned.
Yet, American dissent against the Israeli occupation has tended to avoid the obvious “niggerization” process in Palestine. In this way, what Edward Said referred to as “the last taboo in American politics,” that is, any discussion of Israel as an imperialist power in aggressive pursuit of regional military and economic domination, needs to be qualified, for in the aftermath of the Israeli Air Force’s annihilation of Lebanon this kind of discussion is beginning to happen. What’s not happening, though, is a discussion of the racial character of Israeli imperialism against the Arab nations, beginning of course with the Palestinian nation.
The parallel between the nature of Israel’s establishment in 1948 and the Anglo-American extermination of the indigenous population, the Native Americans, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is clear and many Palestinian scholars have always stressed it. In 1948 Israeli Zionists executed a genocidal war against the Palestinians, the style of which would have made Joseph Conrad nod in instant recognition. Recall his description in Heart of Darkness of the murderous British imperialism let loose in the Congo: “They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force – nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale.”
More than 800,000 Palestinians, or 80 percent of the indigenous population, were forcibly expelled from their land and the ripest parts of it, the beautiful and bustling port cities of Haifa, Jaffa, and Akka, immediately confiscated by Israeli Zionists and set aside for Jews only. Palestinians had fled in horror after having either witnessed first-hand the massacre of fellow townspeople and villagers or heard the stories of the hundreds of neighboring towns and villages razed to ground by Zionist militias, who murdered everyone refusing to abandon their homes.
Many works of Palestinian historiography are available that document these basic facts, and there are several classic works of Israeli historiography that do the same, which came out of the 1980s period in which a great deal of declassified material was released by Israel. See in particular Rosemary Sayigh’s Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries and Nur Masalha’s Expulsion of the Palestinians; for the Israeli accounts, see Benny Morris’s The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem and Simha Flapan’s The Birth of Israel. These Israeli scholars use the term “ethnic cleansing” to describe the establishment of Israel and its dispossession of the Palestinians. By the logic of the Israel Lobby, these Jewish scholars are guilty of “anti-Semitism” and worse are “self-hating Jews,” even though both scholars are actually staunch Zionists.
In fact, the original Zionist idea was to reserve the land for European Jews only, modeled after the well established pattern of nineteenth-century European racialist colonialism in Asia and Africa, but this proved to be a very difficult task as the majority of European and Euro-American Jewry then preferred, and continues to prefer today, the life of a Manhattan or London Zionist to that of an actual Jewish colonial-settler on occupied Arab land. Consequently, the majority of Israeli society is comprised of Arab Jews, mainly from Iraq, and 20 percent is Palestinian. In Israeli public discourse, these facts are referred to openly as “the demographic problem.”
Any “demographic problem” is completely racial: it presupposes the existence of two distinct types of human being, one deserving full civil rights and social privileges and the other an aggravating nuisance that must be got rid of, because this type is merely pretending to be human no matter how much education, property, or eloquence the person possesses. This is the hallmark of the “niggerization” process.
There is a startling abundance of empirical evidence documenting Israel’s “niggerization” of the Palestinians, from the various studies conducted by international human rights organizations to local Palestinian and Israeli monitoring groups, who document meticulously everything from daily torture in Israeli prisons, water theft and house demolitions, to racial profiling, harassment and physical assault at military checkpoints, collective punishment and the systematic use of “administrative detention” (imprisoning a person without charge or evidence) as a means of incarcerating a whole generation of rebellious Palestinian youth, in other words, those who have rejected the “niggerization” process.
For those interested, see B’Tselem’s perspicaciously maintained web site, and also visit the excellent Electronic Intifada site, among many others. Yet I feel strongly that at this point the documentary record is simply overwhelming the crucial everyday life stories of Palestinians to the extent that more data and analysis will add nothing useful to the discussion. As Dr. King and the African American civil rights movement proved to the world, the moral critique of racial oppression is what changes people’s perceptions, not more facts and expert commentary.
Every day I travel back and forth between West Bank and Jerusalem as part of my teaching responsibilities at Al-Quds University, for we have two main campuses. For Palestinians from West Bank, this kind of commute is impossible because Israel has banned all Palestinians from entering Jerusalem, their own capital, except for the few who have Jerusalem identity cards. Consequently, close to 90 percent of all Palestinian students and faculty at the university cannot use the Jerusalem campus, which means that there are many courses students cannot take to graduate because they cannot reach the Jerusalem campus to take them, and conversely many courses are cancelled because professors cannot get there to teach them. They are also cut off from essential library resources. Taking seven or eight years to graduate is becoming normal, and there are many unfortunate student dropouts as well as a gradual loss of faculty, since there is only so much a person can take. Many students require four hours to get to the West Bank campus, coming as they do from all over West Bank where Israel has in place around 800 military checkpoints altogether.
Under American Jim Crow and South African apartheid, this was known as the illegalization of literacy, one of the basic elements of racial oppression. The other three elements – the declassing of property-holders, the deprivation of civil rights, and the destruction of the family – are also deployed in Israel’s racist policy of excluding Palestinians from Jerusalem, which is very obvious and can be illustrated by a only few examples.
In the Palestinian West Bank village where I live, there are many new shopkeepers selling cheap goods in direct competition with more established shops. At first I didn’t understand why a person would attempt such an impossible business enterprise, especially during a time when Palestinians are suffering extreme cash-flow problems due to the ongoing U.S. economic blockade of the Hamas government. So I asked a few shopkeepers. One had his tour bus business ruined after Israel imposed its ban on Palestinians from West Bank entering Jerusalem, since this meant he could no longer drive his bus in and around Jerusalem, while several others were forced to abandon their wholesale produce businesses for the same reason: without access to Jerusalem restaurants and grocery stores, they lost their whole clientele.
This central aspect of the “niggerization” process in Palestine is not new; the fact is that it is now nearly complete. Palestinian political economist Adel Samara points out that it began within days of Israel’s conquest of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, when hundreds of new military orders were issued, half of which involved Israel’s economic interests. “These interests include the employment of a cheap labor force,” says Samara. “Military orders cut the occupied territories off from the rest of the world, making Israel their main supplier (90 percent of the occupied territories’ imports come from or through Israel). Thus the wages paid to the workers were returned to Israel as payments for Israeli consumer goods. By absorbing the labor force, while at the same time pursuing a policy of rejecting Palestinian applications for licenses to start productive projects, the Israelis were able to destroy the occupied territories’ economic infrastructure, thus facilitating the integration of the latter’s economy into that of Israel” (For a full analysis, see his book, The Political Economy of West Bank).
In terms of the deprivation of civil rights, being denied entry into Jerusalem means the denial of the right to pray at the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, which are not only two of the holiest sites in Islam but also located in al-Haram al-Sharif, a 35-acre sacred area in the southeastern corner of the Old City, one of the most venerated places of worship in the entire world much less historic Palestine. Palestinian scholar Salim Tamari has referred to the Israeli policy of denying Palestinians access to worship in Jerusalem “a regime of discrimination.”
The denial of building permits is the other side of Israel’s policy of denying visas to Palestinians who hold North American or European passports: the latter blocks the development of Palestinian society by robbing it of both capital and a skilled cadre of professional analysts, social planners, architects, and administrators, while the former produces ghettoization on a massive scale. The Israeli Jerusalem Municipality issues on average only 100 building permits annually to Palestinians, as compared with 1,500 to Jewish Israelis. As a result of this racist policy, between 1986 and 1996 40 to 60 percent of Palestinian Jerusalemites were forced to move outside the municipal boundaries. Most belong to Palestine’s middle class. East Jerusalem has been reduced from Palestine’s commercial and political capital to another Palestinian ghetto. Within these ghettos, it’s very common to find Palestinian businessmen as well as college graduates driving broken down shuttle vans for less than $10 a day.
Last week I was riding in one of these vans on the way to visit a friend in Ramallah when the engine quit. The driver graciously returned our money – a mere shekel and a half each, about 30 cents – and we piled out of the van to wait along the road for a different van. While waiting together we could see a speeding sports car brake as it approached us. The windows came down and the people inside, a family of Jewish Israelis, flipped us the middle finger. A small thing compared to the total scale of Israeli oppression of Palestinians, yet the image has stayed with me. A shiny new BMW, a well-scrubbed family on the way perhaps to the local synagogue or a birthday party, their sparkling faces, taking a little time out of their busy day to say hello to a group of dusty travelers stranded by the side of the road.
Jonathan Scott is Assistant Professor of English at Al-Quds University and the author of Socialist Joy in the Writing of Langston Hughes (University of Missouri Press, 2006). He can be reached at Jonascott15@aol.com.
