Category: In the Media

Five new house demolition orders issued in Silwan, East Jerusalem

Alternative Information Center (AIC)

10 August 2009

Israeli forces issued five new house demolition orders in the al-Bustan section of Silwan in East Jerusalem on Wednesday, 5 August, injuring eight Palestinians in the process and seizing the identification card of Musa Odeh, a member of the al-Bustan Committee working to non-violently oppose the demolitions.  Authorities also deployed tear gas to prevent residents from confronting the soldiers ordering the demolitions.

The orders augment the 90 demolition orders already standing in Silwan, a densely populated village located on the southeastern slopes of the Old City of Jerusalem.  The area, which is located near the biblical site of Siloam and which houses approximately 55,000 residents, was annexed by the state of Israel in 1967; since then, the Municipality of Jerusalem has nearly uniformly refused Palestinian residents building permits to develop the neighborhood, typifying Israeli urban planning policy in East Jerusalem for the past 42 years.  In 2004, a directive was issued from the Municipality’s building supervision department to demolish all the homes in Silwan in order to build the “King’s Valley” archaeological park, which is currently under the administration of the fundamentalist settler group Elad.  If completed as planned, the Silwan demolitions would constitute the largest scale demolition program in the city of Jerusalem since the leveling of the Maghrebi quarter the night after Israel’s seizure of East Jerusalem in 1967 in order to build today’s Western Wall plaza.

Israeli school apartheid

Jonathan Cook | Counterpunch

10 August 2009

An Arab couple whose one-year-old daughter was expelled from an Israeli day-care centre on her first day are suing a Jewish mother for damages, accusing her of racist incitement against their child.

Maysa and Shua’a Zuabi, from the village of Sulam in northern Israel, launched the court action last week saying they had been “shocked and humiliated” when the centre’s owner told them that six Jewish parents had demanded their daughter’s removal because she is an Arab.

In the first legal action of its kind in Israel, the Zuabis are claiming $80,000 from Neta Kadshai, whom they accuse of being the ringleader.

The girl, Dana, is reported to be the first Arab child ever to attend the day-care centre in the rural Jewish community of Merhavia, less than 1km from Sulam.

However, human rights lawyers say that, given the narrow range of anti-racism legislation in Israel, the chance of success for the Zuabis is low.

Since its founding in 1948, Israel has operated an education system almost entirely segregated between Jews and Arabs.

However, chronic underfunding of Arab schools means that in recent years a small but growing number of Arab parents have sought to move their children into the Jewish system.

Dana was admitted to the day-care centre last December, according to the case, after its owner, Ivon Grinwald, told the couple she had a vacant place. However, on Dana’s first day six parents threatened to withdraw their own children if she was not removed.

Ms Kadshai, in particular, is said to have waged a campaign of “slurs and efforts aimed at having [Dana] removed from the day-care centre, making it clear that [her] children would not be in the same centre as an Arab girl”. Mrs Zuabi was summoned to a meeting the same evening at which Ms Grinwald said she could not afford to lose the six children. She returned the contract Mrs Zuabi had signed and repaid her advance fees.

Mrs Zuabi said that while she was in the office Ms Grinwald received a call from Ms Kadshai again slandering Dana and demanding her removal.

Ms Grinwald refused to speak to the media last week. However, last December, when the Zuabis first complained, she told Army Radio: “The [Jewish] parents called her a girl from ‘the [Arab] sector’, they said this is a day-care centre for Jewish children and that it should stay that way … I can’t change the world, I have to look out for my livelihood.”

Although Israel lacks a constitution, the Zuabis’ lawyer, Dori Kaspi, is suing Ms Kadshai under the terms of the 1992 Basic Law on Human Freedom and Dignity, the nearest legislation Israel has to a bill of rights.

In previous cases when Arab children have been excluded from schools, the parents have launched a legal action for discrimination against the education authorities or the school itself.

Lawyers are doubtful that the couple can win given the law’s lack of reference to the principles of equality or equal opportunities.

One lawyer, who wished not to be named, said: “Instances like this are not covered by laws against discrimination. Anti-discrimination legislation in Israel is very specific, covering mainly examples of discrimination in employment and access to public places like pubs and clubs.”

Even then, the lawyer added, enforcement was extremely lax.

Instances of Arab children being denied places at Jewish kindergartens and junior schools have become more common in recent years, especially in the country’s handful of mixed cities.

Yousef Jabareen, head of Dirasat, a Nazareth-based organisation monitoring education issues, said when parents tried to switch their children to Jewish schools it was because of the poor conditions in Arab education institutions.

“Although it’s an understandable reaction, it’s a cause for concern,” he said. “In Jewish schools Arab children are not taught their language, culture or history. Their Arab identity has to be sacrificed for them to receive a decent education.”

A report published in March revealed that the government invested $1,100 in each Jewish pupil’s education compared to $190 for each Arab pupil. The gap is even wider when compared to the popular state-run religious schools, where Jewish pupils receive nine times more funding than Arab pupils.

There is also an official shortfall of more than 1,000 classrooms for Arab children, said Mr Jabareen, though Arab organisations believe the problem is in reality much worse. In addition, a significant proportion of existing Arab school buildings have been judged unsafe or dangerous to children’s health.

In some parts of the country where private religious schools are available, particularly in Nazareth and Haifa, Arab parents are turning their back on the state-run system, said Mr Jabareen.

Two-thirds of the 7,500 Arab pupils in the northern mixed city of Haifa, for example, are reported to be attending private schools, despite high levels of poverty among the population.

Last September, the Adalah legal centre for Israel’s Arab minority forced the municipality of the mixed city of Ramle, near Tel Aviv, to register an Arab boy in a Jewish kindergarten close to his home.

The mayor, Yoel Lavi, had earlier told the boy’s parents that he could not be admitted because he was an Arab and that the kindergarten served only Jewish children.

Mr Jabareen said he favoured binational and bilingual schools in which Jewish and Arab children could meet and study as equals. However, the state did not offer such schools to parents.

Four bilingual elementary schools admitting both Arab and Jewish children have been established privately. Israel has no mixed secondary schools.

Mike Prashker, director of Merchavim, an organisation advocating shared citizenship in Israel, recently told the Haaretz newspaper: “The Israeli reality of segregated education systems creates ignorance and fear of the ‘other’.”

A poll published by Haifa University in January found that three-quarters of Jewish pupils regarded Arabs as “uneducated, uncivilised and dirty”.

A recent survey by Merchavim found that the segregation among pupils was mirrored by segregation among teachers. Despite some 8,000 Arab teachers being recorded as unemployed by the education ministry, only a few dozen work in Jewish schools, mainly teaching Arabic, even though the Jewish system is suffering from staff shortages.

The previous dovish education minister Yuli Tamir established a public committee last year to develop for the first time a “shared life” policy for Jewish and Arab schools.

The committee issued its report earlier this year recommending more meetings between Jewish and Arab children, that Arabic should be taught to Jewish pupils, and that schools should employ both Arab and Jewish teachers.

The new rightwing government of Benjamin Netanyahu announced it was freezing the report in April.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

Piecing the injured back together

Eva Bartlett | Inter Press Service

10 August 2009

Following consultation with him and with the specialist in prosthetics and orthotics rehabilitation from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), many will begin the long road to treatment.

“It was the second day of the war,” says Omar Al-Ghrub (24), referring to the three weeks of Israel attacks in the winter of 2008-2009. “I was working that day,” he said. By day he worked in the Al-Waleed marble and granite factory northwest of Gaza city, and by night served as its watchman.

A missile struck, and Ghrub lost both his legs. Six months later, he waits for the stumps to heal enough to begin the process of fitting artificial legs, and learning to walk anew.

Loay Al-Najjar, 22, also lost both his legs. At 11 pm Jan. 13, Najjar was trying to help his sister evacuate a house that had been hit by shelling in the Khoza’a region, east of Khan Younis. “I was hit by a drone missile,” says Najjar. His legs were lacerated with shrapnel. But he is one of the luckier ones; he was able to travel to Saudi Arabia where he received treatment for three months, and artificial legs.

Ghrub and Najjar are among the many waiting for a consultation this particular Saturday. The artificial limb centre is unique in that it makes and fits the limbs on the premises. With the help of staff from the ICRC and Doctors Without Borders (MSF), it also provides physiotherapy and other support.

The centre is overcrowded – it is the only one of its kind. The waiting list has lengthened dramatically since the Israeli attacks on Gaza. Gaza’s Ministry of Health says between 120-150 new patients have had to have amputations following the Israeli attacks on Gaza. Gerd Van de Velde, head of the ICRC’s physical rehabilitation team in Gaza, says the number could rise with patients whose wounds worsen.

“Even now we are getting new patients,” says Van de Velde. “Some patients are having problems with their stumps as they were not cared for properly during their initial treatment due to the hectic situation. At the time, treatment was focussed on life-saving.”

In January 2008, five to ten patients came on a Saturday; now there are at least 30. ICRC figures show that in 2008, 63 patients received 71 prosthetic limbs (some had multiple amputations), and the centre served 1,500 patients. In the first half of 2009, 1,018 patients have come to the centre, 53 for prosthetic limbs.

“We have 146 patients on the waiting list, including 101 with war wounds,” says Van de Velde. “Of these, over 50 percent are above the knee amputations.” Blast injuries become even more complicated, because shrapnel must be extracted from the stump of the limb before it can heal enough for prosthetics treatment.

A few years ago, the centre used its funding to pay all the costs of the materials. Nearly all came from a specialist company in Germany, some were bought at twice their usual price from an Israeli importer.

Now, the ICRC, which began working with the centre in November 2007, supplies most of the materials, buying directly from the manufacturer, and also facilitating transfer through Israel. The centre also gets help from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), Handicap International and Islamic Relief.

Van de Velde sees early hospital care, or the lack of it, as the origin of the problem for many of the patients. In a crisis, he said, “patients are evacuated quickly to make room for new patients. They did not receive the treatment and follow-up physiotherapy that they needed.”

The ICRC has now taken on a second, hospital-based project. “We’ve started with Shifa hospital, and hope to expand to Gaza’s other hospitals, focussing on quality of post-surgical physiotherapy care and ensuring that patients receive the treatment that they need.” Likewise, MSF is working throughout the Gaza Strip to provide post-operation wounds care and physiotherapy.

At the artificial limbs centre, taking a pause from casting and sculpting limbs, Nabil Farah and Mohammed Ziada, two of four specialists in prosthetics, take turns to demonstrate work at the centre. The specialists have both studied abroad, in Germany and in India, and want the trainees here to be sent for specialised studies. But with the siege on Gaza and the sealed borders, it has become difficult to leave Gaza.

Likewise, says Farah, many specialists want to come to Gaza to train technicians in making and working with prosthetic limbs, but they cannot enter because of the siege. But on Jul. 1, after much coordination with the Israeli authorities, the ICRC was able to send two Palestinians to India for an internationally recognised 18-month training programme. Van de Velde says the ICRC plans to send three more to be trained next year, with the aim of building a pool of qualified technicians.

All sorts of people were injured in the last assault. “During the first and second Intifadas (Palestinian uprisings, 1987-1991 and then from September 2000), most of the injuries were among the shebab (young men),” says Mohammed Ziada. “But in this last war, most of the injuries were people other than shebab: elderly, children, women…”

While the current focus is on people injured in the assault, the artificial limb centre also tackles birth disabilities. “Each month we normally make 20 to 30 braces for straightening legs,” says Farah. “This cures more than 80 percent of patients.”

Farah points to several siege-related difficulties the centre faces. The artificial limb centre uses hundreds of different parts, plastics and materials to make the prosthetic arms and legs. “Without even just one of the materials, the limb cannot be made. We don’t have the materials or the chemicals in Gaza to make the limbs.” Israel often prevents or greatly delays materials from entering, says Farah.

Walking through a storage room, Farah points out various empty shelves. Among clusters of different weaves of stocking net cloth used in the making of limbs, size 10 shelf sits empty. “We haven’t had size 10 for the last month,” Farah says.

Also absent are artificial foot parts L23, unavailable for the last 10 days, and R24 and R25, depleted for the last two months. “We help first those who need help the most,” says Farah.

Gerde Van de Velde says, however, that “not one patient had to wait because of a lack of material.” Items like the cloth can be substituted by a closely related size, he says. He admits there are restrictions on certain chemicals, but adds that these are more related to international law, and delayed by other bureaucratic procedures regarding the transport of chemicals.

Farah cites some sample costs: a below-the-knee prosthetic is about 800 dollars. An above-the-knee limb is twice as much. An arm costs 1,200 dollars. Yet these seemingly expensive limbs cost a fraction of what they might in other countries.

“Our salaries are very low,” says Farah. “We aren’t working for the money, obviously. We’re working for the many Palestinians who need limbs and therapy.”

Evicted Palestinians sleep rough in protest

Jacky Rowland | Al Jazeera

7 August 2009

The Hanouns, a Palestinian family evicted by Israeli authorities from their home in East Jerusalem, are protesting their eviction by sleeping on the street outside the house that was for decades their home.

Al Jazeera’s Jacky Rowland reports from the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem where the Hanouns are sleeping rough in protest.

“Palestinian Authority Only”: new Israeli stamp limits travel for tourists

Toufic Haddad | The Faster Times

6 August 2009

Palestinian Authority visa issued at Allenby crossing
Palestinian Authority visa issued at Allenby crossing

This is an image of a page from a French passport, whose owner recently went through the Allenby Bridge border crossing between Jordan and the Israeli occupied West Bank. It shows an Israeli-issued stamp that provides the passport owner with a three-month tourism visa. What makes this stamp unique however is that the Israeli border agents who issued it appear to have come up with a new criteria regarding the freedom of movement of its holder.

The presence of “Palestinian Authority only” on the stamp is what makes it unique.

Previous Israeli-issued tourism visas do not restrict the freedom of movement of tourists who are allowed passage into the country, and who originate from countries which Israel has diplomatic relations and reciprocal arrangements regarding travel. That meaning, as long as someone was allowed into the country, they were able to travel freely whether they chose to visit the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, or the Palestinian city of Nablus in the occupied West Bank.

“Palestinian Authority only” greatly restricts this freedom of movement, and thus undoes the former arrangement. It essentially precludes travel to areas of pre-1967 Israel, as well as to Israeli controlled areas in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

Israel exercises full control over 59 percent of the West Bank – areas known as “Area C.”

It further exercises security control over an additional 24 percent of the West Bank (Area B) with the Palestinian Authority [PA] in control of civil affairs there.

The only area which the PA nominally controls in full, and which a holder of this stamp is thus presumably eligible to travel to, is Area A. The latter comprises the remaining 17 percent of the West Bank.

Area A however is not composed of one territorial unit, but is divided into thirteen non-contiguous areas.

Furthermore, the Israeli army routinely invades Area As, to arrest Palestinians, making a mockery of Palestinian control there.

The fragmentation of PA jurisdiction in the West Bank has invited comparisons to the Bantustans of Apartheid South Africa. Bantustans were false states set up by the white apartheid regime as a means to enforce the segregationist nature of apartheid, controlling the primarily black population, while disenfranchising them particularly with regards to expropriating their land and resources.

In a recent speech, John Dugard, the former UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, made the comparison directly. Dugard, who is South African and a professor of international law noted:

“Are there Bantustans in the West Bank? And I think the answer to this question is yes. We do see territorial fragmentation of the kind that the South African government promoted in terms of its Bantustan policy. We see, first of all, a very clear separation being made between the West Bank and Gaza. But within the West Bank itself, we see a separation to essentially three or more territories and some additional enclaves with a center, north and south. And it’s quite clear that the Israeli government would like to see the Palestinian Authority as a kind of Bantustan puppet regime.”

Israel’s travel restrictions to PA areas are somewhat contradictory. Visitors can seemingly travel to Area As but must do so by crossing Israeli controlled areas (Area C). This means that visitors have the right to hop between different Area A ‘islands’, but can’t be caught in between.

Moreover, the very restriction on travel is equivalent to a country issuing a visa to a specific area of its country, but not to the whole country. A parallel might be the U.S. issuing a visa only to majority-black Harlem in Manhattan, or the Mashantucket Pequot reservation in Connecticut.

This happens to violate the 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement (also known as “Oslo II” or “Taba”) which states that “Tourists to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip from countries having diplomatic relations with Israel, who have passed through an international crossing, will not be required to pass any additional entry control before entry into Israel.” (Annex 1, Article IX “Movement Into, Within and Outside the West Bank and the Gaza Strip” 2 (e))

As far as I am aware, this stamp has begun to be issued within the last month, and no Palestinian or international body, official or grassroots, has identified or spoken publicly of the phenomenon, whose scope is also not known.

The stamp has also been issued to at least one American citizen, as the below image taken from a U.S. passport attests.

one week Palestinian Authority visa issued at Allenby crossing
one week Palestinian Authority visa issued at Allenby crossing

In this case, the visitor was only issued a one-week visa to PA areas, affirming that Israel also has the power to determine not only the areas visitors go to, but also the time period they spend there.

Though it is not clear why Israel decided to issue this new kind of visa, certain things can be discerned by assessing Israel’s overall policies towards Palestinians, as well as towards those who seek to visit the areas in which they live.

Israel wishes to strictly regulate travel of visitors who come to the country, especially those curious to see the West Bank. Though it is likely to justify its regulation to PA areas only, under security pretexts, this doesn’t really stand up because in order to get to a PA area, you would need to travel through an Israeli controlled area. Even if this visa ensures that Israeli security cannot be breached in pre-1967 Israel, there is nothing preventing the breaching of security in Israeli controlled areas of the West Bank, including areas of Israeli settlements, and settlement by-pass roads, which Jewish settlers and the Israeli occupation army use.

A more likely justification can be found elsewhere. Israel is issuing a visa for a jurisdictional area (the “Palestinian Authority areas”), that the nominal jurisdictional power (the Palestinian Authority) does not control or issue itself. It would seem logical that the Palestinian Authority issues visas for its areas itself. But the PA does not have that power, and Israel is taking the initiative to do so on its behalf, but without PA consent.

The repercussions of this are multifold. “Palestinian Authority areas” become ‘hardened’ as a territorial and jurisdictional unit, when previously these areas were only intended to be temporary areas of jurisdiction, that would eventually form the basis of a future Palestinian state, to be negotiated between Israel and the PLO. Hence, without the need to negotiate the latter, and to gain agreement from the PA for the actual borders of its state-to-be, (and all that entails with regards to sovereignty), Israel is de facto transforming and elevating a pre-existent jurisdictional arrangement, into a de facto border between itself and the areas the Palestinian Authority “controls.” In sum, Israel appears to be issuing a visa for a Bantustan-like state, that is yet to be declared officially, but which de facto is being created by such bureaucratic measures.