Category: Action Alerts - Page 26 - International Solidarity Movement

As Obama lands : Palestinians erect new Bab al Shams neighbourhood

20th March 2013 | Popular Struggle Coordination Committee , Jerusalem, Occupied Palestine

Palestinians assert their right to protect their lands from colonialism and their opposition to American policy which keeps granting Israeli occupation and repression of Palestinians full support.

Hundreds of the Palestinians arrived this morning, Wednesday March 20th, to Eizariya and erected about 15 tents on lands of the village as new neighborhood of Bab al Shams village, on a hillside opposite to the one on which the original village of Bab al Shams was established two months ago.

Organisers stress that the action today aims “first, to claim our right as Palestinians to return to our lands and villages, second, to claim our sovereignty over our lands without permission from anyone. Third, our actions are aimed at protecting our land from continued confiscation and threat of settlement and colonization. And Fourth to expand popular resistance as one form of resistance, out of many, that our people are engaged in everywhere.

As the action today coincide with President Barack Obama’s visit to the region, activists assert their opposition to the American Administration policy, which has been complicit in Israeli occupation and colonialism. Organizers stress: “An administration that used the veto 43 times out of 79 (between 1979 to 2011) in support of Israel and against Palestinian rights, an administration that grants military aid to Israel of over three billion dollars annually, can’t have any positive contribution to achieve justice and rights of the Palestinian people.”

The village is established on the lands of Eizariya east of occupied Jerusalem in an area the Israeli government calls E1 and where it has committed to building 4000 settlement units. The hillside falls between Ma’ale Adumim settlement and Jerusalem, and is 13 square KM in size. This land belongs to the villages of Al-Issawiyeh, Eizariya, Al-Tor, Anata, and Abu Deis.

Activists consider this area to be the lands of Bab Al-Shams where we have established today a new neighborhood called “Ahfad Younis” (Younis’ Grandchildren-after the name of the main figure in Bab al Shams novel).

Residents of the new neighborhood of Bab Al-Shams invite Palestinians to join the village and participate in maintaining its steadfastness.

Bab Al-Shams is accessible through Eizariya

Media Contact: 05991070069 or 0598914541

Facbook page: https://www.facebook.com/Babalshams2013

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Bab_Alshams

Demonstrators arrive with materials to build new village

Tent facing the Maale Adumim settlement which is the largest in the West Bank

Huge Palestinian flag is erected directly across from Maale Adumim settlement

Demonstrators hold up sign made for Obamas visit

Statement from Samer Issawi who has spent over 240 days on hunger strike

19th March 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Occupied Palestine

The following statement by Samer Issawi was posted on his Facebook page by his lawyer Fawwaz Shloudy. It was translated from Arabic to English by Shahd Abusalama.

“Regarding the Israeli Occupation offer to deport me to Gaza, I affirm that Gaza is undeniable part of my homeland and its people are my people. However, I will visit Gaza whenever I want or I feel like it as it is within my homeland Palestine which I have the right to wander whenever I like from the very north to the very south. I strongly refuse to be deported to Gaza as this practice will just bring back bitter flashbacks from the expulsion process which our Palestinian people were subjected to during 1948 and 1967.

We are fighting for the sake of freedom of our land and return of our refugees in Palestine and exile, not to add more deportees to them. This systematic practice which Israel aims to empty Palestine from Palestinians through and bring strangers in their place is but a crime. Therefore, I refuse being deported and I will only agree to be released to Jerusalem as I know that the Israeli Occupation is aiming to empty Jerusalem of its people and turn Arabs to become a minority group of its population. The issue of deportation is no longer a personal decision. It is rather a national principle. If every detainee agrees to be deported outside Jerusalem under pressure, Jerusalem will eventually be emptied of its people.

I would prefer to die on my hospital bed to being deported from Jerusalem. Jerusalem is my soul and my life. If I was uprooted from there, my soul would be uprooted from my body. My life is meaningless away from Jerusalem. No land on earth will be able to embrace me other than Jerusalem. Therefore, my return will be only to Jerusalem but nowhere else. I advise all Palestinians to embrace their land and their villages and never succumb to the Israeli Occupation’s wishes. I don’t see this issue as a personal cause that is related to Samer Issawi. It is a national issue, a conviction and a principle that every Palestinian who loves his homeland’s sacred soil should hold. Finally, I reaffirm for the thousands time that I continue my hunger strike until either freedom and return to Jerusalem or martyrdom!”

Call to action : sanctions against Israeli settlements

10th March 2013 | European Coordination of Committees and Associations for Palestine

In the latest EU Heads of Mission Report on Jerusalem 2012 the EU consuls urge sanctions against Israeli settlements. Authored by the EU heads of mission in Jerusalem and Ramallah, the report makes recommendations on settlements that are related to financial translations linked to or supporting Israel’s ongoing construction on occupied Palestinian land.

European Union leaders and international organizations should play their role in ending Israeli occupation of Palestinians, uphold international law and respect Palestinian human rights

Call for action:

Send a letter to your MEP`s and ask for imposing a ban of any financial engagement with illegal Israeli settlements and Israeli companies that are directly involved or materially complicit with Israeli violations of international law pertaining to illegal Israeli settlement construction on Occupied Palestinian Territory

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Honourable Member of the European Parliament,

In the latest Heads of Mission Report 2012 the EU consuls recommend imposing sanctions on Israeli settlements. The European Union recommended that its 27 member states prevent all financial transactions that support Israel’s settlement activities in the occupied West Bank. In a strongly-worded 15-page report, the EU suggested to its member states that they « prevent, discourage and raise awareness about problematic implications of financial transactions, including foreign direct investments, from within the EU, in support of settlement activities, infrastructure and services. »

Authored by the EU heads of mission inJerusalemand Ramallah, the report also calls to « ensure that imports of settlement products do not benefit from preferential tariffs » and make sure that all such products are clearly labelled as originating from Israeli-occupied areas.”

It also warns that EU programmes should not be « used to support settlements and settlement-related activity, including funding for research, education or technological cooperation. » And it proposes that member states raise awareness about « the financial and legal risks involved in purchasing property or providing services in settlements. »

Moreover, in a new letter to the foreign ministries of the 27 member states, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton called for the full implementation of existing EU legislation according to which products from West Bank settlements, the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem should not receive the same preferential treatment as products from areas which the EU recognizes as sovereign Israeli territory.

The Members of the European Parliament should be aware that the Lisbon Treaty obliges the EU to ensure consistency, in its external action, between foreign policy and trade policy.

We believe that the continued occupation of the West Bank; the blockade of Gaza; the annexation of East Jerusalem; the establishment and expansion of Israeli settlements in the Occupied State of Palestine, the exploitation of Palestinian natural resources for the benefit of Israeli settlers; the construction of a Wall on Palestinian territory; the illegal detention of Palestinian prisoners, among them children, in Israeli jails; and the systematic discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel, are not consistent with the enhancement of EU trade relationswith Israel.

In that context, we respectfully request you to make efforts to:

Call upon the European Commission and other relevant EU bodies to undertake an urgent review of the participation of Israeli companies involved in violations of international law, in European research projects and ensure that no further funds are allocated to them (with special focus on the recently adopted ACAA trade agreement and Horizon 2020 Programme).
Propose legislation in your respective countries that would ban any financial engagement with illegal Israeli settlements and Israeli companies that are directly involved or materially complicit with Israeli violations of international law pertaining to illegal Israeli settlement construction on Occupied State of Palestine. Such a ban should include Israeli companies operating in illegal settlements from the European marketplace, in accordance with the call released by Palestinian agricultural organisations[1].
Send a strong message to Israel, confirming that there will be no increased cooperation unless there is tangible progress inIsrael’s adherence to international law.
Suspend the EU-Israel Association agreement.

Please find attached :

1) The 2012 Heads of Mission Report

2) The call released by Palestinian agricultural organisations

Sincerely,

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**Find your MEP here.

Is there Hope of Justice for a Palestinian family in Israel’s Courts?

Update on the 13th March 2013: The Supreme court will review the case of Ziad Jilani

After hearing an appeal presented on behalf of Moira Jilani, the widow of Ziad and their three daughters the Israeli Supreme Court Judges have decided that they wished to review all evidence in the case.

Ziad Jilani was killed by Israeli border policeman Maxim Vinogradov in 2010. According to eyewitnesses Maxim VInagrodov shot Ziad at point blank range in the head while Zaid had laying on the ground wounded after being shot in the back. Ziad was unarmed.

Family and friends holding posters in support of Ziad Jilani (Photo by ISM)

The State Prosecutor, who had previously not charged those who shot and killed Ziad, is now obliged to hand over all evidence to the Supreme Court by the 24^th of March. The Jilani family, was more optimistic after the hearing than they had been before.

Bilal Ziad’s brother stated said, “If the Israeli Supreme Court really looks at the evidence of this case, and if they still say there are no grounds to press charges against the officers who murdered Ziad, then it means Israel has no credibility at all. They rule by the law of the jungle.”

9th March 2013 | International Solidarity Movement, Occupied Palestine

By ISM Media Office

On Wednesday (13 March) Moira Jilani and her three daughters will come face to face with their husband and father’s killer. Ziad Jilani’s widow and daughters seek justice for his killing by Israeli border policeman Maxim Vinogradov, for the third time.

“I am dreading facing them for my daughters”, says Moira, “I think I could face them myself but I’m afraid that when I see the pain in my daughters eyes it will kill me”. Her husband, Ziad, was killed three years ago by Maxim Vinogradov, an Israeli Magav (border police) officer who put his rifle to Ziad’s head and pulled the trigger three consecutive times while Ziad lay helplessly on the ground, having already been shot twice fleeing police shooting at him after he was involved in a car accident after a stone hit his truck.

Now, for the third time, the family is appealing to Israeli authorities to press charges against Ziad’s killer. On the 16th of January 2011 the case was closed by police internal investigations (Machash) for the first time, for “lack of evidence”.

In the following month, 15th of February 2011, the family submitted an appeal to then Israel Attorney General, Menachem Mazuz. Despite a confession by Vinogradov that he had shot Ziad at zero range when he was lying on the ground because of the initial gunshot wound, an autopsy report pointing to an a close range shooting, dozens of eyewitnesses who were also injured that day as a result of the incident and very clear changes in Vinogradov’s testimonies before and after the autopsy, Mazuz did not see fit to change. Machash’s decision to close the case.

With the help of the al-Mazaan Center for Human Rights, on January 4th 2012, the family submitted a second appeal. This time to the Israeli Supreme Court, demanding that the new state prosecutor, Yehuda Weinstein, bring criminal charges against Ziad’s murderers.

“After Weinstein [Israel’s current Attorney General] had all the evidence we had hope that he would press charges against the killers,” Moira recalls, “but after he decided not to do so for the third time, it is hard to have hope that the court will do justice.”

According to Yesh Din in 2012 the MPCID received 240 complaints and various reports of suspected crimes allegedly committed by Israeli soldiers against Palestinians and their property in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Out of these registered complaints, only 103- not even half- have yielded investigations. Not one single indictment has been served to date.

The organization commented on the findings: “The numerous defects in MPCID investigations of offenses against Palestinians and in the Military Advocate General Corps’ supervision of the investigations, result in the closure of the vast majority of the files and a minimal number of indictments being served. This creates a feeling of lawlessness on the ground, which may be a central contributing factor in the rise in the number of killings over recent weeks”.

Moira describes this sense of lawlessness, “I still have hope, but its hard when we see everything that’s happening around us,” she says, “my husband’s case is one of what seems to be a systematic sweeping under the rug of violent incidences of Israeli soldiers against the Palestinian population under their authority. We are not just going to court for Ziad Jilani. We are going to court for all the Palestinians killed before Ziad and those that will be killed thereafter.”

A step in the right direction; as EU consuls urge sanctions against settlements, we call for the suspension of all trade agreements

28 February 2013 | Palestine Solidarity Campaign and International Solidarity Movement

The European Union is actively supporting Apartheid Israel with its current trade agreements. Enough is enough; keep the pressure up, 2013 is the time for justice in Palestine.

As more and more of us become aware of the systematic denial of Palestinians human rights by Israel military occupation, it is time to make our elected representatives aware of the growing and unstoppable pressure for peace and justice.

The EU should be playing a leading role in implementing policies to ensure that Israel ends its illegal occupation, uphold international law and respect Palestinian human rights.

Instead, they are supporting Israel’s occupation by:

allowing illegal settlement products to be traded across Europe

by using EU tax-payers money to fund Israeli military companies that are responsible for killing civilians and supporting Israel’s military occupation

As recommended by European Union consuls general in East Jerusalem and Ramallah in a recent report, the European Union must divest from settlements and economic sanctions should be put on bodies and companies involved in settlement industry. A report submitted to the UN´s Human Rights Council by an independent fact-finding mission, has also called on all relevant international actors, private or state-connected to take “all necessary steps” to ensure that they were respecting human rights, “including by terminating their business interests in the settlements”.

This is a step forward but not enough; keep the pressure on EU representatives to suspend trade agreements with Israel until they fully and completely abide by international law.

It is time for actions, not words. Tell the EU to act now.

Read the full letter and sign the call here today: http://psc.iparl.com/lobby/96.

Send letters to EU Prime Ministers and Foreign Ministers (in all EU languages!)

Send letters to Members of European Parliament (MEPs) (in all EU languages!)

Please, send letters today and spread widely.

When people lead, governments follow.