Author: ISM Media Group

Hearing of the Petition Against the wall in Bil’in

The judges, Barak, Prokachia, and Rivlin, presiding over the court case protesting the route of the wall in Bil’in village have not yet reached a decision.

In the last hearing, which took place May 14, 2006, the applicant, Bil’in village council, was represented by Michael Sfard, who argued that the wall is not designed to protect people, but rather to protect the investment of real estate sharks and to accommodate the expansion of settlements.

The eight lawyers representing the respondents- the state, Modi’in Illit council, and the real estate companies involved in the Matityahu Mizrakh Project- tried to convince the court that the route should remain as it is. Their main argument was that there is a government approved plan from 1999 for 1,500 housing units that occupies the same area that the current unapproved, illegal plan of 3,000 housing units of Matityahu Mizrakh East occupies.

Attorney Michael Sfard, representing the Bil’in village council, mentioned prior decisions from other cases as examples that the route of the wall should not be designed to include unapproved plans for settlements or illegal outposts. Nevertheless, the court seems very concerned with the fact that, illegal or not, Matityahu Mizrakh has already been built and 80 families have already moved in.

Bil’in village council has also filed another petition to the court, case 143/06, challenging the legality of the existence of the settlement because of a suspicious transfer of ownership of the land from the village to the realtors, by the state declaring the land state land only to later transfer it to the developers. A criminal investigation into the illegal building in Matityahu Mizrakh was instigated after the scope of the illegalities was exposed in court. Recently the villagers filed a third petition, number 3998/06, asking to cancel the designation of their lands as state property.

At some point during the latest hearing, Judge Prokachia, seemed to be convinced by the defendant arguments and asked Attorney Sfard to consider withdrawing the petition because she said it is without sufficient grounding in facts. Sfard refused. After continuous discussion, Sfard proposed to the court not to make a decision on this petition until a verdict is reached on the cases involving the legality of the settlement, case 143/06. The judge, Barak, seemed like he was accepting of this option, but did not make a decision immediately.

The state expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that currently, according to the courts request, there is an open gate in the fence that the villagers use to access their land. The state asked the court to allow them to set up an agricultural gate, which only farmers with individual permits will be allowed to cross. Sfard asked that the court to uphold the court injunction that was originally given when the court refused to freeze the construction of the wall in it’s current route, saying that all the villagers can have access to their agricultural land.

The State’s lawyers said that Palestinians who enter the gate then have access to the settlement and Israel. One of the solutions that Sfard brought up is to close the gate on the settlement instead of closing the gate on Bil’in.

The judge, Barak, proposed that the two sides agree on further limitations to be imposed without preventing completely the movement of Palestinians over this land. No decision was reached about this either at this point in time and the issue has been left open.

For more information:
Muhammad Khatib 0545-573-285

Declared Innocent

The trial of Jonathan Pollak and Kobi Snitz has come to an end a year after the two were arrested at a demonstration against the wall in the West Bank village of Budrus.

Today, Tuesday, May 16th, Judge Alexander Ron of the Jerusalem Peace court declared the two Israeli activists from “Anarchists Against the Wall” innocent of their rioting charge.

Judge Alexander agreed with defense attorney Gabi Laski that “if the court would attribute rioting to any person present at a demonstration where others break the law this would cause severe damage to the freedom to demonstrate.” He added that “the freedom to demonstrate is, no doubt, a basic legal right of the first degree,” even in the Occupied Territories. “The claim that the presence of the defendants at the demonstration, as a basis for their conviction, was rejected and despite the court’s expressed disapproval of participating in demonstrations where stones are thrown by others, “it is not possible to attribute to the defendants any concrete criminal offense.”

Interesting details regarding the Border Police tactics were made public during the trial. When police officer Yasmin Levi was asked during the trial if the border police use weapons on Palestinians that they would not use on Israelis, she said, “of course.” Border Police officer Hassan Mada said that when there are Israelis in a Palestinian demonstration “we will remove the Israelis to get them out of the line of fire… so that we can take action against the Palestinians.”

Kobi Snitz stated, “in their testimonies the police reinforced what we already knew: when Palestinians demonstrate without Israeli activists support they are met with lethal repression.”

Judge Alexander criticized Border Police officer Yasmin Levi for changing her testimony. According to the Judge, Yasmin wrote an initial arrest report, but “after speaking to her friends ‘remembered’ to accuse the defendants of stone throwing and cursing;” accusations she later dropped.

He adds, “if her changing versions would not be enough to nullify her testimony… the fact that she apparently lied when questioned by the court would.”

Judge Alexander said, “it should be noted that Yasmin’s statements indicate previous knowledge of the defendants, and it seems [there are] personal grudges that she has against them from previous demonstrations… This also does not add to her credibility… Her testimony casts a shadow on the testimonies of all the other Border Police officers.”

Koby and Jonathan plan to file complaints against Yasmin Levi.

For more information:
Attorney Gabi Laski 0544 418 988
Jonathan Polack 0546 327 736

This Is Apartheid

By Rann

The Israeli Supreme Court approved a law yesterday denying West Bank and Gaza Palestinians married to Israeli Palestinians residence or citizenship in Israel. As the linked Ha’aretz editorial states, this is a disgrace. Moreover, this is yet another grounding of apartheid by the Israeli ‘justice’ system.

“… not one single Western country discriminates against some of its citizens by passing laws that apply only to them, and that impose limits only on their choice of a partner with whom they can live in their homeland.”

Yes, five out of the eleven judges voted against the law. Yes, those included both the current president of the court and his replacement. Yes, this law has been contested over and over again and the legal system allowed it to be.

But no, that does not make a bit of difference. As of now, Israeli Palestinians who just happen to fall in love with someone from the West Bank or Gaza cannot do a thing about it.

I guess it’s just one more element to add to the list:

  • Separate roads for Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank (and Gaza pre-disengagement) – see Road Networks in the legend here.
  • Different ID cards, giving different privileges (see here).
  • Massive discrimination on access to water (see here).
  • Israeli Palestinian districts inside Israel get far less funding for schools, health and other services than Jewish areas (see here).
  • Israelis can move around…see here.

And so on and so forth…

The country I was born in is a racial pseudo-democracy. That makes me sad and extremely angry. So many of the comments on the Ha’aretz article linked above are sickeningly racist: “Arabs commit horrible acts of terror and behave like animals, and they expect equal rights?!?”

You see? They are animals, they are terrorists. All of them. Sound familiar?

Therein lies the essence of racism: generalization. This law is fundamentally racist in that in it punishes enormous numbers of innocents for the actions of the very very few.

¡YA BASTA!

Ha’aretz: “Supreme Disgrace”

A Haaretz Editorial

The bottom line is the decisive one in yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling on family reunification. In light of such serious damage to the equal rights of Arab citizens of Israel, it does not matter at all what the ruling says or how instructive the position of the minority justices, led by Supreme Court President Aharon Barak, was. It also does not matter that the decision to rob Israel’s Arab citizens of the right to marry the person they choose and live with that person in Israel was made by a 6-5 majority.

There is no country in the Western world that does not limit immigration and set priorities in accordance with its needs at a given time. Immigration laws make it difficult for foreign partners of citizens to receive citizenship, and they combat fictitious marriages. But not one single Western country discriminates against some of its citizens by passing laws that apply only to them, and that impose limits only on their choice of a partner with whom they can live in their homeland.

It is difficult to accept the argument that the amendment to the Citizenship Law, which won the Supreme Court’s approbation yesterday, comes in response to a genuine security need. It is easier to accept the skeptical position of Justice Ayala Procaccia, who wrote that in light of the facts before her, she doubted whether the security explanation is the only one behind the law. The facts presented by the security establishment do not explain the law, since out of the tens of thousands who have become Israeli citizens since 1967 in the framework of family unification, only 26 have been questioned on suspicion of abetting terrorism. Since 1993, 16,000 requests for family unification have been submitted. This number also does not justify the demographic frenzy at which the justice hinted. The relatively small number of people suspected of abetting terrorism does not justify the blow the Knesset dealt to family unification in general, nor does it justify the injustice done in particular to hundreds of married couples who were barred from living in Israel because the law applied retroactively to couples whose cases were pending.

The justices did agree that the law infringes on the equality and human rights of Arab citizens of Israel, but they decided that this was trumped by the risk of terror. It is tough to be impressed by the security rationale when recalling the approximately quarter of a million Arabs from East Jerusalem who were annexed against their will, and who have given rise to more terrorists and terror accomplices than did all those who entered Israel as a result of marriage.

In the minority opinion, Barak wrote things that the Knesset and the majority justices chose to forget: “Democracy does not impose a sweeping ban, thereby cutting off its citizens from their partners and not allowing them to live a family life … It does not give its citizens the option of living in it without their partners or leaving the country … Democracy cedes a certain amount of security in order to obtain an immeasurably greater amount of family life and equality.”

The fear is that the position expressed by the Supreme Court president will fade and disappear once the Knesset turns the Citizenship Law into a Basic Law, aided by a tailwind from the Supreme Court in one of its most shameful hours.