Author: swing

EU eyes exports from Israeli settlements

Ralf Beste and Christoph Schult | BusinessWeek

14 July 2009

The Israeli settlement known as Maale Adumim sits fortress-like atop a red stone plateau. In the Bible, the road to the plateau was known as the “steep red road.”

As the largest Israeli settlement in the Palestinian-administered areas of the West Bank, Maale Adumim is home to 40,000 people. Bulldozers are clearing lots for new houses on its outskirts. Its population is growing by the week and, in recent years, it has grown faster than any other settlement.

On the edge of the settlement’s industrial zone, there is a factory operated by a company called Soda-Club. The steel gate is painted blue and green to match the company’s curvy, modern-looking logo. A camera records the movements of anyone approaching the gate. The plant produces tabletop devices that add carbonation to flat water, like the ones used in many German kitchens. And for those who prefer a sweeter taste, there’s also syrup coming out of Maale Adumim.

Journalists are not welcome to visit Soda-Club. As marketing director Asaf Snear claims on the telephone, it’s to protect against industrial espionage.

But there’s another reason behind this aversion to media attention: Soda-Club’s products are at the center of a legal dispute with Germany that could significantly intensify the already heated debate over Israel’s settlement policy.

The Hamburg Finance Court must now decide whether Soda-Club devices made in Maale Adumim can be imported into the European Union duty-free, like all other Israeli industrial products. Brussels doesn’t want the company’s products to fall into this category because they are manufactured in Israeli settlements located in the occupied territories.

The real question revolves around whether Maale Adumim is part of Israel. The EU has not formally recognized Israel’s claim to Maale Adumim and other settlements. But, in practice, it has done little to stand in the way of Israeli settlement activities.

But that could now change. The Hamburg court has consulted with the European Court of Justice about obtaining a “preliminary ruling” that would settle the issue in a binding manner for all 27 EU member states. The decision is expected to come down in the coming months. If the court decides that a customs duty can be levied, it will be tantamount to handing down a decision against Israel’s settlement policy. The delicate question at hand is whether Germany and the EU should accept how Israel handles the occupied territories or if they should wield their sharpest sword—economic sanctions.

A ‘Highly Explosive Case’

In formal terms, the judges are merely being asked to reach a decision about €19,155.46. Brita GmbH , a German company, had imported Soda-Club water-carbonating machines and syrup from Maale Adumim. The company also labeled the products as being “Made in Israel” and claimed that they should consequently be exempt from customs duties.

But the main customs office in Hamburg’s harbor refused to allow this policy to continue. German customs agents contacted their Israeli counterparts to find out where exactly the products were made. When the response came, it said that they had been made in an area “under Israeli customs administration.” When the Hamburg agents wrote back, asking whether the products had actually been manufactured in Israeli settlements, they received no response. So the Germans slapped a duty on the products.

Then Brita filed a lawsuit against this decision. The matter quickly made its way to the European Commission, which wants to use the legal dispute over Soda-Club to make an example of Israel. In an internal memo, it has asked EU member states for “support.” The German Foreign Ministry is monitoring the “highly explosive case” with some interest—and a certain amount of sympathy.

The EU is already prepared for confrontation when it comes to Israel’s new nationalist, right-wing government. The 27 EU foreign ministers have temporarily put a planned diplomatic “upgrading” of relations with Israel on hold.

Now Europe hopes to use the customs dispute to apply additional pressure on Israel. The EU is the second-largest market for Israeli goods, after the United States. In 2008, for example, Israeli companies exported €12 billion ($16.8 billion) in goods to Europe. An estimated one-third of these goods are either fully or partially made in the occupied territories. Most apparently reach Europe duty-free, and an Israeli reimbursement fund for exports subject to duties was hardly used at all last year.

In response to EU pressure, Jerusalem signed an agreement in 2005 that requires every Israeli exporter to provide the customs agency with the location and postal code of the factory where any given product was produced. But when Israeli importers deliberately declare an incorrect place of origin, customs agents are powerless to react.

The situation has prompted the British government to urge the other 26 EU member states to agree on a procedure that would allow consumers to see exactly where Israeli goods come from. The proposal makes many Israelis uneasy. Could this mean, they worry, that European governments will soon be telling consumers: “Don’t buy from Jews”?

Given the country’s history, this is understandably a very sensitive issue in Germany. This makes it all the more surprising that the German government has been willing to openly comment on the Soda-Club affair. In response to a parliamentary question from the opposition Green Party, the government has said that there can be no exemption from customs duty for “goods from the occupied territories.”

Meanwhile, the Soda-Club company is doing exactly what many Israelis do when it comes to the Palestinian conflict—ignoring the problem. When asked for Soda-Club’s reaction to people criticizing it for manufacturing its products in a settlement, marketing director Snear says: “Soda-Club is an apolitical company.”

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

Bil’in under fire: peaceful resistance meets assailment

Jennifer Urgilez | MIFTAH

15 July 2009

The systematic arrest of Bil’in activists begins with the covert intrusion of Israeli soldiers into Bil’in at the stroke of midnight. From the west, soldiers cross the Separation Wall in military vehicles concealed under a blanket of darkness, each entering one by one in 10 minute intervals dropping off soldiers on the eastern side of the barrier. Five to 30 soldiers, depending on the size of the military vehicle, jump off and immediately transition into combat-mode, laying close to the ground, managing to maneuver across the land on their elbows, while signaling the army car to recede back into isolation within two to three minutes of ensuring no opposition in sight.

From here, the soldiers clandestinely begin their operation towards the village in silence, veiled by the obscurity of night. They slowly proceed without flashlights, some wearing military camouflage paint while others, black masks. The soldiers circumvent the most direct route into the heart of Bil’in, executing their mission through neglected back roads and fields, keeping a careful eye on the lookout for Palestinians, ready to drop and hide. Often, the activists stand on their rooftops, attempting to catch the soldiers in the act and forewarning each other of the troops’ coming. Upon receiving word, Abdullah Abu Rahmah and other activists immediately get in their cars and pursue the predators only to find no evidence of their nearing. Raids usually comprised of approximately 100 soldiers divided into groups of 20-30 men, each encircling the home of an accused stone-thrower at varying hours of the night, are ideal for operations in highly volatile regions, but not to detain a 16-year-old child taking part in a peaceful resistance movement.

Witnessing the injustices endured by the villagers of Bil’in as detonated tear gas bombs adorn the eastern side of the wall relates the oppression of occupation under which Palestinians are subjected. Even while its backdrop tells its tale, it was not until my interview of Abdullah Abu Rahmah, a local Bil’in villager and organizing member of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall, that this story of their subjugation to Israeli raids and arrests became known.

Cognizant of Israel’s tightening grip over the West Bank and Gaza Strip, largely as a response to the Aqsa Intifada, the villagers of Bil’in have shunned away from armed struggle, and instead, banded in uniform as a peaceful, nonviolent resistance to the Separation Wall. Setting the ground for the annexation of 49% of Bil’in territory into Israel, the Separation Wall, far from the 1949 Armistice Line, snakes well into the West Bank isolating 1,968 of Bil’in’s 4,040 dunums, or 486 of its 998 acres of land. The inception of the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall in January of 2005 afforded activists ripe ground for the genesis of peaceful, Friday demonstrations reminiscent of Women in Black’s non-violent vigils in Israel demanding the “end of the occupation.” Emblematic of the overall catastrophe befallen Palestinians, activists from all walks of life—Palestinian, Israeli, and international—unite in the struggle against economic strangulation, occupation, and apartheid.

From resisting the uprooting of olive trees for the construction of the wall, to blockading the bulldozers from gaining entrance to Bil’in roads, to building a small edifice in the midst of dusk between the Modi’in Illit settlement bloc and the Separation Wall to secure access to their lands, the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall refuses to allow the Israeli military to tiptoe around UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 and the International Court of Justice July 2004 ruling declaring Israel’s Separation Wall and Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank in breach of international humanitarian law. Fighting the occupation two-dimensionally, through legal contestments and nonviolent public activism, the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall has monitored and challenged the construction of the barrier every step of the way, cornering the government of Israel in its own courtroom.

In his judgment of September 4, 2007, President D. Beinisch of the Israeli High Court of Justice ruled that the government of Israel must implement an alternative route of the separation barrier on Bil’in land relinquishing both agricultural land in the Dolev riverbed and terrain seized for future development of the eastern region of the Mattityahu settlement. Irrespective of the Israeli High Court of Justice’s decree, the Israeli government has not rerouted the barrier, rather finalized its erection, depicting the already-suspected disconnect between the Israeli government’s judicial and military branches. Inferring from President Beinisch’s judgment and Israeli military operations, settlement growth, and not security motives, lay at the heart of Israeli expansionist policy.

Despite the brokering of the Oslo Accords in 1993 partitioning the West Bank into three distinct security enclaves—Area A under absolute Palestinian Authority (PA) control, Area B under PA civil control and Israeli security control, and Area C under complete Israeli military control—as Mr. Abu Rahmah denotes, “Nothing is Area A, everything is Area C.” Commencing on June 23, 2009, the Israeli military initiated its most recent string of raids into the village of Bil’in in spite of its Area A demarcations.

In the past three weeks, 15 youth activists have been detained—13 Palestinians, one Israeli, and one American—and scores injured at Friday’s peaceful demonstration with sound bombs, tear gas canisters, rubber-coated bullets, and a foul-smelling chemical spray, a clear use of excessive force against unarmed protesters. Hence, regardless of the detainee’s culpability, an entire military unit is not needed to arrest one individual. Judging from their actions, the Israeli military’s goal is psychological warfare—the brewing of helplessness and terror among Bil’in’s 1,800 residents aimed at freezing the resistance. Surrounding the house, destroying everything in their path, and even confiscating the detainee’s mobile phone at 3:00am can certainly break Palestinian morale. Luma, Mr. Abu Rahmah’s seven-year-old daughter, depicts the constant panic in which these children live. As of late, Luma awakes in the middle of the night, sometimes in screams and tears, calling out for her father. Luma’s sleepless nights are illustrative of the emotional and psychological despair of children in conflict.

Moreover, in their attempts to dismantle the movement, the Israeli military specifically targets the youth. For example, on June 23 and 25 of 2009, four children were detained ranging from 16-17 years of age, who during interrogation were forced to release the names of peace activists and information related to the movement’s organizing body. In response, the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall, recognizing that the children do not have “experience” in these types of matters, gathered all the youths and with the assistance of a lawyer, “trained” the children on how to act during an Israeli interrogation, and further instructed them not to answer any questions—“I don’t want to speak. I have rights.”

If the systematic arrest and injuring of activists is the military’s methodological plan to demolish the movement, it fails to understand the struggle’s resilience—“If they want to arrest us all, they can. But our wives and children will continue the struggle,” admits Abdullah Abu Rahmah. On April 19, 2009, Bassem Abu Rahmah, a peaceful demonstrator, was shot in the chest with a tear gas bomb during one of Bil’in’s nonviolent, Friday protests. Thus, if neither the murder of Abu Rahmah, Abdullah’s extended family member, nor the 1,300 injuries and 60 arrests endured by activists has broken their spirits, virtually nothing can affect them now. As Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi pursued satyagraha—nonviolence—in his quest for Indian independence, the Bil’in Popular Committee Against the Wall too employs this philosophy in the pursuit of achieving Palestinian sovereignty and absolute freedom from Israeli occupation.

The picture is clear: concessions to Israeli “democratic” values and security modus operandi deprive Palestinians of their inalienable human rights. Our common humanity generates a moral duty to uphold the United Nations’ explicit benchmark for an occupying power’s conduct in its occupied territories. Despite big brother’s backing in the Security Council, Israel is not absolved of its responsibilities under the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War—the Separation Wall and settlement activity in the West Bank indeed constitute war crimes. The international community needs to stop playing big-power politics and start dodging the aura of taboo accompanying espousal of the Palestinian plight—accountability is a must and exoneration, pure blasphemy.

Palestinians organize a picnic protest near Susiya outpost

11 July 2009

On Saturday the 11th of July, solidarity activists of Ta’ayush and inhabitants of Susiya (South Hebron Hills) organized a picnic of resistance next to the outpost of the settlement of Susiya.

Activists from the ISM, Tayyoush and Palestinian residents gathered to non-violently protest the illegal outpost. The action was planned for 8am, but two buses with Tayyoush activists driving from Jerusalem were held for approximately two hours at a checkpoint.

At 10am, around 50 Palestinian, Israeli and international activists gathered near the outpost to have a picnic as a means to challenge ongoing illegal outposts on Palestinian-owned land.

On the way to the land, the activists were stopped by Israeli forces. They were able to walk around the soldiers and set up their picnic near the outpost. Israeli soldiers surrounded the picnic area and began to hassle the activists. They announced a ‘closed military zone’ and demanded that everyone leave the area.

Despite the fact that the land is Palestinian owned, and owners have a right to hold a picnic, Israeli soldiers began to physically push the picnickers away from the area. Upon inquiry of what the purpose of the ‘closed military zone’ order was, soldiers told activists that it was meant to ‘protect’ the settlers. Then Israeli occupation forces arrested three Tayyoush activists, using unnecessary violence against the activists.

The three arrested were released within hours due to lack of charges against them.

The Palestinian residents of Susiya face difficulties in living their lives, due to the violence from nearby Israeli settlers and soldiers. As a result of the maintanance of the illegal settlement of Susiya, (illegal in international law by the Geneva Conventions), Palestinians cannot graze their sheep or harvest their land. Israeli soldiers or settlers frequently harass residents and forbid them from going on their land with ‘closed military zone’ orders.

Israeli forces arrest 6 solidarity activists in Beit Ommar

Palestine Solidarity Project

7 July 2009

On July 7, 2009 at approximately 5pm, an Israeli military official called the mayor of Beit Ommar/ Saffa, Nasri Sabarneh, and informed him that settlers had set fire to some trees in the Abu Jabber Soleiby land in Saffa, just under the illegal Bat ‘Ayn settlement. A group of internationals, including one who also holds Israeli ID, went down into the valley to investigate and document the destruction. When they arrived, a group of Israeli soldiers was already present. While the group of internationals quickly began surveying the area, one soldier, Phillip, crossed the valley to a group of 4 activists and told them to leave. The group, who did not find evidence of a new fire (other than the old destruction of June 19, 2009 and June 22, 2009) began leaving the area, accompanied by the one soldier. Meanwhile, two internationals who were further up the valley with the owner of the land and his family, were also told to leave, and they began to do so. At one point Phillip threw a sound grenade at the group of 4 activists as they were walking away, but the group continued. Half-way up the valley, however, the trap was sprung. Soldiers ran up from behind the group of 4, grabbing two men by the neck and one women by the arm, screaming at them to sit down, that they were being arrested. One activist managed to get away, going further up to the village from which they had come and ostensibly where the soldiers wanted everyone to go. She, along with the other two internationals and the farmers were then surrounded by soldiers at the entrance to the village, preventing the tractor from leaving the area. The three internationals were then attacked by soldiers. One was hit in the face with a gun, another kicked in the leg, and a third wrestled into handcuffs and dragged into an army jeep, in total contradiction to Israeli law that states only police can arrest foreign nationals. All three were brought to the police station in the illegal settlement of Etzion. They were never shown a paper declaring the area a Closed Military Zone, another Israeli law.

The other three internationals further down the valley, were held on the ground until a commander could run up and show them a paper, insisting it was a closed military zone order, though no one was allowed to look at it closely and the group was already detained and not allowed to leave, also in violation of military procedures. Phillip then said to Bekah Wolf, co-founder of Palestine Solidarity Project and married to Palestinian co-founder Mousa Abu Maria, “your father didn’t teach you what to do with your pussy so you went and f*cked Arabs.” Phillip also indicated that he knew Wolf from previous actions in Saffa, and that she was “famous” with that particular unit and the police of Etzion. What followed was clearly a series of planned harassment of Wolf and the other internationals, even though the arrest itself was totally illegitimate.

Police finally arrived and officially arrested the group of three, and began to transport them to the Etzion police station. The group with Wolf were paraded through the Bat ‘Ayn settlement. At one point soldiers transporting one of the men alone stopped the jeep in the settlement and opened the back doors in front of a group of settler youth. The two groups of three were then reunited at the police station.

While 5 of the internationals (all excluding Wolf) were first offered release on conditions to stay out of the area for 2 weeks, and then were eventually released without any conditions, Wolf was to be held over night and taken to court. A commander, who was not present until after the arrests, filed a complaint stating that Wolf had slapped one of his soldiers, though the soldier himself said he wasn’t sure if it was intentional or if he’d been hit while trying to grab Wolf during her illegal arrest.

After 23.5 hours (Israeli citizens can only be held for 24 hours before being brought in front of a judge), Wolf was taken to a court and after reviewing the evidence presented by the prosecution, including the assertion that “settlers have never entered the valley”, she was released only on the condition that she obey any closed military zone orders (which is already law) and sign a guarantee of 5,000 shekels.
Not pleased with the results, police, in collusion with the prosecution, refused to process her release, causing her to be put back into the Jerusalem prison for more than three additional hours. The attempt to prevent “left-wing activists” (as they were described in the police reports) from entering the area in the end was totally rejected. The next day, however, when farmers attempted to enter the land, which has been ordered open to them for the last 10 days, they were refused by the Israeli military, without cause or paperwork.

The blue velvet hills of my youth have been destroyed

Raja Shehadeh | The Guardian

5 July 2009

I can remember the appearance of the hills around Ramallah in 1979, before any Jewish settlement came to be established there. In the spring of that year I walked north from Ramallah, where I live, to the nearby village of A’yn Qenya and up the pine-forested hill. A gazelle leapt ahead of me. When I reached the top I could see hills spread below me like crumpled blue velvet, with the hamlets of Janiya and Deir Ammar huddled between its folds. On top of the highest hill in the distance stood the village of Ras Karkar with its centuries-old citadel that dominated the area during Ottoman times. I had been following the worrying developments of extensive settlement-building elsewhere in the West Bank and wondered how long it would be before these hills came under the merciless blades of the Israeli bulldozers. I didn’t have to wait long. A year later the top of the hill was lopped off and the settlement of Dolev, then a cluster of red-tiled Swiss-style chalets, was established.

Now, more than 25 years later, Dolev has expanded and taken over the hills to its north for vineyards. Numerous highways for the exclusive use of its Jewish settlers connect it to the many other settlements in the area and to Israel’s coastline. Those settlers travelling to and from Israeli cities where they work can only see road signs indicating other Jewish settlements. They encounter no Palestinian traffic on the roads nor do they see any Palestinian villages. No wonder then that I was once stopped by an armed settler and interrogated as to why I was taking a walk in his hills. When I asked him what right he had to be there, he answered: “I live here.” He then pointedly added: “Unlike you, I really live here.”

Not a single year has passed since Israel acquired the territories in 1967 in which Jewish settlements were not built. Had it pursued peace as assiduously, surely it would have achieved it by now. Instead, whenever the US pressed for a peace initiative, the “proper Zionist response” was the creation of new a settlement. The pattern of settling the Ramallah hills illustrates well the workings of this doomed policy. The Jewish settlement of Talmon was established in 1989 on the lands of the Palestinian village of Janiya, when the government of Yitzhak Shamir was being pressured to agree to start negotiations with the Palestinians. Talmon B was established, about two miles away, when the US secretary of state, James Baker, arrived in Israel two years later to broker the first ever peace conference between Israel and Arab countries.

At that time, Shamir dismissed the new settlement as “just a new neighbourhood”. The signing of the Oslo accords under a Rabin government in 1993 led to the building of a road connecting Dolev to Beit Eil, running through private Palestinian land. This winding road passed through the beautiful wadi linking Ramallah to A’yn Qenya, causing extensive destruction to the ancient rock formations and olive orchards along the way. One rockface that I particularly miss used to be studded with cyclamens during the late winter months, coming down all the way to the spring – which was also destroyed.

The Israeli policy of speeding up settlement construction in the face of US diplomatic pressure shows no sign of changing. Following the latest US administration declaration that Israel must impose a complete freeze on settlements, the country’s defence minister, Ehud Barak, declared last week the decision to establish 300 housing units in Givat Habrecha (Hebrew for hill of the blessing), one of the 12 outposts near the settlement of Talmon in the Ramallah hills. A few days later, on 29 June, he announced a further expansion of the illegal settlement of Adam, where 50 families are to move to a new neighbourhood located on a relatively large parcel of land outside the built–up area of the settlement. This also violates the Israeli commitment in the road map agreement not to expand the area of existing settlements.

This demand for a freeze on new settlements – which is not accepted by Israel even temporarily, as one Likud minister underlined today– falls short of what should happen if a viable peace is to be achieved: a complete evacuation of all the settlements built illegally in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967. Some would say this cannot possibly happen, given that there are around half a million Israeli settlers living in the West Bank. But who would have thought in 1962 that it would be possible to evict a million French Algerians who had been living in the country for almost a century and who represented roughly 9% of the population ?

Until this happens, we will have a continuation of the present reality where there is a single apartheid Israeli state encompassing pre-1967 borders and the Palestinian occupied territories. The sad truth is that when Israeli illegal settlements come to an end, as they must, Palestinians will not be able to undo the damage caused to the landscape by this massive, politically motivated development.