Category: Features

Tree-planting action to re-claim Iraq Burin’s land, Sunday 18 October

17 October 2009

For immediate release:

Iraq Burin has achieved the first success of its kind, in which the District Co-ordination Office has entered in to an agreement with the village to return 30 dunums of contested farmland to its rightful owners. It comes on the heels of four fiery weekly demonstrations, where local protesters and international activists came together to protest illegal land annexation and settlement expansion in the West Bank.

The land in question lies in Area C on the edge of Iraq Burin next to the illegal settlement of Mar-Barcha, just south of Nablus. Mayor Abu Haitham has stated the DCO expressed a desire to lease the land from the village but rejected the offer, in favour of the four families owning segments of the 30 dunums and wish only to recommence its cultivation.

The village was subject to a visit from the Israeli Occupation Forces on the night of Sunday, 11 October, following an attack on an unmanned military outpost in village farmland nearby the settlement. Two jeeps entered the village to raid a total of 7 houses, firing tear gas inside four and causing damage to the exterior of all. No arrests were made as the soldiers searched in vain for wanted men.

This Sunday, 18 October, a tree-planting action is planned for the village. Locals and international groups will once again join forces in an affirmation of the village’s inspiring success and begin re-claiming the returned land by the plantation of 45 olive trees. Demonstrators will meet at 8am in the village center to march to the land and begin its cultivation.

Without Trial: Administrative detention of Palestinians by Israel and the Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law

B’Tselem

16 October 2009

Report published by B’Tselem and HaMoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual

Under international law, a state may detain a resident of occupied territory without trial to prevent danger only in extremely exceptional cases. Israel, however, holds hundreds of Palestinians for months and years under administrative orders, without prosecuting them. By doing so, it denies them rights to which ordinary detainees in criminal proceedings are entitled: they do not know why they are detained, when they will go free and what evidence exists against them, and are not given an opportunity to refute this evidence.

As with many patterns of its activity in the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip, Israel cites what it defines as “security needs” to explain its policy of detention without trial. Yet these needs, assuming they indeed exist in every case of administrative detention, cannot justify such grave infringement of human rights, in breach of international humanitarian law.

The report presents the stories of nine persons who were detained without trial, illustrating their great difficulty in mounting a proper defense against this draconian measure.

The Administrative Detention Order in the West Bank

Most administrative detainees in Israel are residents of the West Bank who are held under administrative-detention orders issued by OC Central Command or by an officer delegated by him. The grounds given for the detention are that the person endangers the “security of the region” and that the danger cannot be prevented by other means.

The number of Palestinians that Israel has held in administrative detention at any given moment exceeded the 1,000-person line during the second intifada. In recent months there has been a steady drop in the number: on 30 September 2009, Israel held 335 Palestinians in administrative detention, among them three women and one minor. Some 37 percent of them have been held for six months to one year, and almost 33 percent for one year to two years. Some eight percent have been detained for two to five years.

The judicial-review apparatus established under the Administrative Detention Order creates a semblance of a fair legal system. In practice, however, it denies the detainees any possibility to reasonably defend themselves against the allegations made against them. In the vast majority of cases, the judges declare the evidence privileged and suffice with Israeli Security Agency reports submitted to them in the absence of the detainee and the detainee’s attorney. Consequently, it is impossible for the detainee to refute the allegations against him or to present alternative evidence.

According to the army’s figures, between August 2008 and July 2009, judges in the court of first instance gave decisions regarding 1,678 administrative-detention orders. In these decisions, the judges cancelled 82 orders (5 percent) and approved 1,596 (95 percent). In 2008, the military appellate court accepted 57 percent of the prosecution’s appeals of lower-court decisions, while accepting only 15 percent of detainees’ appeals.

HaMoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual and B’Tselem call on the government of Israel to release the administrative detainees or prosecute them in accord with the due-process standards set forth in international law. So long as Israel continues to administratively detain Palestinians, it must use this means in a way that comports with international law.

Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law

In 2002, the Knesset enacted the Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law. This statute, too, arranges the holding of detainees without trial. The Law was originally intended to enable the internment of Lebanese nationals whom Israel classified as “bargaining chips” for the exchange of prisoners of war and bodies. To the best of B’Tselem’s and HaMoked’s knowledge, Israel has used the Law against 54 persons thus far: 15 Lebanese nationals, who were subsequently released, and 39 residents of the Gaza Strip. Most of the latter were interned in 2009, which began with Operation Cast Lead, and most of them have been released. On 30 September 2009, Israel was holding nine Gazans pursuant to the Law.

The Law enables the sweeping and swift detention without trial of large numbers of persons. An amendment to the Law, passed in 2008, enables even broader use of the Law in the event of “wide-scale hostilities.” Furthermore, the Law provides internees with fewer protections than the few that are granted detainees under the Administrative Detention Order, which applies in the West Bank.

The Law defines an “unlawful combatant” as a person who is not entitled to the status of prisoner of war and belongs to a force carrying out hostilities against the State of Israel or has taken part in hostilities against the State of Israel, even indirectly. The chief of staff or an officer delegated by him may order the internment of such a person without trial and for an unlimited period of time if he has “a reasonable basis for believing” that the person poses a danger to state security.

With regard to legal proceedings on internment, the Law established two presumptions: first, the release of a person classified as an “unlawful combatant” will harm state security, unless proven otherwise; second, the organization to which the internee belongs carries out hostilities, provided that the minister of defense has made this determination. The presumptions release the state from the need to provide evidence justifying the internment and its continuation, thus switching the burden of proof onto the shoulders of the internee, who can never refute the allegations. The first presumption also contradicts the fundamental requirement specified in the Law that the person “pose a personal danger.”

HaMoked and B’Tselem call on the government of Israel to immediately cease use of the Incarceration of Unlawful Combatants Law, and to act to repeal the statute.

Israel Arrests Soldier Over Beaten Protester

Dominic Waghorn | Sky News

8 October 2009

The move comes as concern mounts about Israeli methods in handling protests in the West Bank village of Bil’in.

Village councillor Mohammed Khatib was treated in hospital after he allegedly was beaten to the head on September 15, during an attempt to arrest one of his friends.

Human rights organisation Yesh-Din has released a photograph showing the injuries he sustained.

Bil’in has been the scene of a persistent campaign of protests against Israel’s security barrier.

Israeli authorities failed to implement an Israeli court order to re-route the barrier in the area.

Recently Israeli security forces have conducted a series of early morning raids targeting protest leaders.

Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard claims the Israeli military is attempting to “squash the legitimate unarmed popular struggle in Bil’in through a variety of illegal means: violence, wrongful arrests and night searches carried out just to instill fear”.

Yesh Din human rights organisation says Khatib was warned by soldiers that “unless the protests stop, you’ll end up like Bassem”.

Israeli soldier fires tear gas at protesters in the West Bank

Controversial tear gas tactics

This was said to be a reference to Bassem abu Rahma, who was killed during a protest rally in the village in April, with a high velocity tear gas round.

The use of such rounds is highly controversial.

In March, American activist Tristan Anderson was critically injured and put in a coma when he was struck by a tear gas round during a demonstration in the neighbouring village of Nalin.

Israeli security forces claim the rounds are necessary to disperse rock throwing protesters.

But when they are fired directly at people such rounds are potentially lethal.

Video of the incidents involving Anderson and Bassem suggests in both cases they were fired at directly.

Last year, an 11-year-old Palestinian boy was killed by Israelis using live ammunition in the village of Naalin.

During his funeral a 18-year-old Palestinian was shot dead at close range with a rubber-coated bullet.

Organizer admits City of David endangers Arab homes

Akiva Eldar | Ha’aretz

5 October 2009

A video tape made during a guided tour of the archaeological excavations at Silwan (the City of David) near Jerusalem’s Old City walls reveals how Elad, the association that runs the dig, works together with the Israel Antiquities Authority, the Israel Nature and Parks Authority and the Jerusalem municipality to dig under the homes of Arab residents.

In the tape, made a year ago, the founding head of Elad, David Be’eri, says: “At a certain point we came to court. The judge approached me and said, ‘you’re digging under their houses.’ I said ‘I’m digging under their houses? King David dug under their houses. I’m just cleaning.’ He said to me, ‘Clean as much as possible.’ Since then, we’re just cleaning; we’re not digging.”

Be’eri goes on to describe an excavation method in which “we built from the top down” and “everything’s standing in the air” [due to the removal of fill]. “Then [the engineer] says, you have to shut the whole thing [because of danger of collapse]. I tell him, ‘are you crazy?'”

In February a pit appeared on the steps connecting the upper part of the village to the lower sections. Three months later, the plaza, beneath which Elad is conducting its intensive excavations, began to collapse.

A tour participant told Haaretz that she also heard Be’eri say he usually leaves a narrow entrance to a dig, and invites inspectors to crawl in. He said most of them make do with a look from the outside.

As for construction of the visitors’ center, Be’eri was also recorded as saying: “You dig and you dig … and one day … we found a rounded corner. We said this is a pool … there’s an 18-meter-high mountain here, above it are Arab houses. And I want to get to the bottom of the mountain, to the pool, to find it. How can I get there? We started to dig carefully, and support ourselves with metal struts that hold up the mountain and the houses. We found ourselves with five kilometers of welded iron inside. It’s crazy. The cost of iron went up because of us.”

“We bought two rooms, this one and the one beneath … and I started to build the visitors’ center,” Be’eri also said. “What can be done with two rooms? Nothing. So … we broke the wall into the mountain … All this space was a mountain filled with earth … the Israel Antiquities Authority came and I told them, ‘we’re renovating…’ At night I would move the terrace. They [the Antiquities Authority] would come in the morning and say, “Hey, it didn’t look like this.”

The Israel Nature and Parks Authority has authorized Elad to run the site, encompassing some of the most extensive excavations in Israel in recent years.

At the beginning of the 1990s, a Justice Ministry probe discovered that one of the buildings handed over to Elad, the Spring House, administered by the Custodian of Abandoned Properties, had been rented to Elad for NIS 23.73 per month. Elad also paid 3,000 Dinars to the Palestinian who lived there, to get him to leave.

Two weeks ago, the High Court of Justice rejected two petitions by Silwan residents against all the bodies involved in excavations under their homes. In her ruling, Justice Edna Arbel cited the public interest in revealing thousands of years of Jerusalem’s history. However, Arbel also said: “The importance of studying the past does not cancel out the interests of the present. It cannot preempt the right of the residents to live securely and cannot overcome the rule of law.”

The Israel Antiquities Authority did not respond to this report by press time. Elad responded that due to the lateness of the request for a response (in the early hours of Sunday afternoon) it was unable to respond.

Gazan human rights organizations hold press conference

ISM Gaza

3 October 2009

Following the Palestinian Authority decision on 2 October to defer the draft proposal endorsing the UN “Goldstone Report”, nearly twenty different human rights organizations issued a statement and held a press conference condemning the Palestinian Authority’s decision. Among the groups were the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR), Al Mezan Centre for Human Rights, Badil, Adalah, Defense for Children (DCI)-Palestine, and other women’s, prisoners’ and children’s rights groups from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

PCHR, Al Mezan, Addameer and the Commission for Human Rights representatives spoke at a press conference in front of the bombed Ministry complex, targeted repeatedly by F-16 attacks during the winter Israeli massacre of Gaza.

Following the 23 day massacre of Gaza, Justice Richard Goldstone and a team of investigators conducted two visits to Gaza, during which they heard nearly 200 interviews, and reviewed thousands of documents, photos, and videos, reported the UK’s Guardian.

The report, 575 pages, found evidence of Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity during their massacre of Gaza. Nearly 1500 Palestinians have died, during and following the massacre, as a result of injuries sustained during the attacks.

As Palestinian human rights organizations and international NGOs contended, the majority of those killed civilians.

While the United States accused the report of being biased (without clarifying exactly how, Goldstone pointed out), Israeli authorities did not cooperate with the UN investigation. Nonetheless, the UN report looked at what it called crimes committed by Palestinian resistance during the Israeli attacks.

“Justice delayed is justice denied. All victims have a legitimate right to an effective judicial remedy, and the equal protection of the law.”

This is the most important message from the human rights groups protesting the PA’s deferral.

“The crimes documented in the report of the UN Fact Finding Mission represent the most serious violations of international law,” the statement said. “Justice Goldstone concluded that there was evidence to indicate that crimes against humanity may have been committed in the Gaza Strip.”

The statement also notes that with the continued imposition of an all-encompassing siege on the population of Gaza, Israel’s violations of international law continue.

Aside from recognizing the validity of the UN report’s findings, the human rights groups point out that “International human rights and humanitarian law are not subject to discrimination, they are not dependent on nationality, religion, or political affiliation.
International human rights and humanitarian law apply universally to all human beings.”

And while NGOs from Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, legal groups from the US and politicians from Europe have all concluded that Israel committed the cited violations, since the end of the Israeli attacks, “no effective judicial investigations have been conducted into the conflict. Impunity prevails,” say the human rights groups.

The PA, which initially supported the findings of the “Goldstone report”, changed its mind after what is believed to have been intense pressure from the United States, as well as Israel, citing the peace process negotiations as a reason to postpone endorsing the report.

The day before the PA back-tracked, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened that the endorsement of the UN report would hinder the ‘peace process’.

But the human rights groups disagree. “The belief that accountability and the rule of law can be brushed aside in the pursuit of peace is misguided. In such situations, international law demands recourse to international judicial mechanisms. Victims’ rights must be upheld. Those responsible must be held to account.”

Various Palestinian factions, including Hamas and the PFLP, have likewise strongly condemned the PA’s turn-around, calling it a ‘betrayal of the Palestinian cause’ and a confirmation of the ‘extent of the collaboration between and his aides with the Zionist enemy, against the Palestinian people’.

Al Jazeera reports that Mustafa Barghouti, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, said the PA decision was ‘totally unacceptable, unjustified and the public here is very angry at it’.

The article continues, “Regardless of the position of the PA, I think the civil society and different political and human rights organisation are going to proceed in demanding sanctions, actions against the Israeli apartheid system and the war criminals that committed these crimes,” said Barghouti.

Just days earlier, Abbas had further backed down on the issue of Israeli illegal settlement expansion, retreating from the Palestinian call to stop settlement construction. This about-face is also believed to be due to US pressure.

The PA reversals clearly seem to be serving their own interest and that of Israel and the US. Ma’an news reported Badil’s statement that “this deferral of the UN report “is against the interests of Palestinian victims and against the higher Palestinian interest as well as efforts to incriminate Israel for its illegal actions.”

Richard Goldstone, a Jewish South African with a long history of involvement in justice, according an IPS report said, “Without some form of truth-telling, there cannot be an enduring peace. Truth-telling and acknowledgement to victims can be a very important assistance to peace.”