A Palestinian official says the Palestinian Authority has scrapped plans to host Pope Benedict XVI next week on a stage near the West Bank separation fence.
Palestinian say they had hoped that receiving the pope next to a towering cement wall and military watchtower inside the Aida refugee camp would highlight their suffering under Israeli occupation.
But Palestinian lawmaker Essa Qaraqie said Thursday that the location had been changed to a United Nations school after Israeli military officials forbade them to erect the stage near the barrier. The pope’s convoy will, however, still pass close to the barrier.
The pontiff’s visit to the region will include trips to Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories. In Israel, he will hold mass in Nazareth and Jerusalem, as well as visiting the Western Wall, the Dome of the Rock and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. He will also hold mass in Bethlehem, believed by Christians to be the birthplace of Jesus Christ.
Jordanian Islamist leaders condemn pope`s Mideast visit as `provocative`
Jordanian Islamist leaders on Thursday condemned Pope Benedict’s visit to the Middle East, saying it was provocative because he has not apologized for offending comments implying Islam was violent and irrational.
They said the pope, who arrives in Jordan on Friday on the first leg of his Middle East tour, still owed them an apology for making the comments in in a 2006 speech in Regensburg, Germany.
Jordan’s Roman Catholic Church urged Islamists on Wednesday to welcome the pope despite their earlier criticism of his visit. A senior Jordanian official acknowledged some discontent but said the government would warmly welcome Benedict.
“The present Vatican pope is the one who issued severe insults to Islam and did not offer any apology to the Muslims,” Zaki Bani Rusheid, head of the Islamic Action Front, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s largest mainstream Islamist party, told Reuters.
“It’s the same pope who apologized to the Jews about the Holocaust and now comes to the region but says nothing about the Palestinian nakba (catastrophe),” he said.
Another Islamist figure, Jamil Abu Baker, added that “Ignoring Muslim sentiments will only block the healing of wounds his statements caused.”
West Bank construction has been accelerating for several months, putting Israel on a collision course with a U.S. administration taking a hard line on settlement expansion.
A new outpost, new roads, and other building projects have raced ahead in and around the settlements, often without legal permits, producing the biggest construction drive since 2003, according to Dror Etkes of the Israeli advocacy group Yesh Din. That group monitors construction in the West Bank.
The construction, which has sped up even more since Benjamin Netanyahu’s government took office this spring, is to be a main issues in U.S. President Barack Obama’s meeting with Netanyahu at mid-month.
Vice President Joe Biden called on Israel on Tuesday to stop building in the settlements and to dismantle existing illegal outposts. However, left-wing groups monitoring events in the territories say the construction has accelerated in recent months, not halted.
Examples include the following:
Construction in outposts: Between Talmon and Nahliel, west of Ramallah, a stone house and another structure have been built without a permit, next to a vineyard set up by settlers a year and a half ago. The Israel Defense Forces’ civil administration has recently issued an order to stop the project.
Illegal construction has been carried out on Palestinian land at the outposts Mitzpeh Ahiya and Adei-Ad, north of Ramallah. A mobile home has been set in an outpost near Susia south of Hebron. An outpost that was vacated near Hebron has been reinstated.
Construction east of the separation fence: New houses have been built in the Eli settlement, Rechelim, Ma’aleh Michmash and Kochav Hashahar (north and east of Ramallah). In addition, a neighborhood has been built in Na’ale, and there are at least 10 houses in Halamish and new houses in Talmon (all west of Ramallah).
Construction west of the planned fence route: Land has been prepared for building in the Kedar settlement, and 30 houses have been built in Ma’aleh Shomron. There is also a new neighborhood in both the Elkana and Zofim settlements.
Road construction and farmland: This has gone on near the Bracha settlement south of Nablus, near Tapuach, in the Eli and Shiloh area and in the Amona and Elazar settlements.
The accelerated construction stems mainly from the reduced supervision of events in the territories in the last stages of the Olmert government, while Netanyahu’s right-wing government, part of which supports the construction, hasn’t begun to address the issue.
The settlers also took advantage of the public and media attention’s focus on Gaza during the IDF offensive in January to continue the settlements and outposts’ expansion in the territories.
Israel is officially committed to the promise made by former prime minister Ariel Sharon to the Bush administration to evacuate all illegal outposts built after March 2001. But evacuations have been carried out languidly and with long intervals.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak recently reached an agreement with the settlers to evacuate the largest outpost, Migron, and transfer it to the nearby settlement Adam. But the agreement has yet to be implemented.
The Mitchell Report of May 2001 and the Bush administration’s road map of 2003 called on Israel to halt all construction in the settlements. This implies stopping construction for natural growth as well. Israel, however, has never stopped this kind of construction.
Sharon’s government reached a tacit agreement with the Bush administration to reduce construction east of the separation fence. Israel kept this promise until recently, when building resumed there as well, mostly without legal permits.
The extensive and often illegal construction west of the fence and in the large settlements has been going on continuously. The authorities have not tried to stop it even in cases of illegal construction, says Etkes.
The defense minister’s bureau said Barak supports evacuating outposts not because of promises to the Americans but to maintain the rule of law. Every new outpost is evacuated immediately, Barak’s aides said. The minister is not under the impression that the construction of illegal outposts and settlements has accelerated, they said.
In April, Palestinian activist Bassam Ibrahim Abou Rahme was killed by Israeli military forces after being shot at close range by a teargas canister, becoming the 18th Palestinian to have been killed for protesting against the Israeli wall being built in Bil’in, a farming village.
“Bassam was a leader from the Bil’in movement against Israeli apartheid. Everyone in the village loved Bassam, who regularly worked with Israeli activists,” remembers Abdullah Abu Rahme, a Bil’in resident and activist.
Local residents have held weekly demonstrations every Friday in attempts to alert the world to their cause.
Rahme says Bil’in has been severely impacted by the construction of the security wall, which will annex around 50 per cent of village lands, mainly farm lands. In some areas, the wall towers over eight metres high and is fortified by armed military watchtowers. The village is also battling Israeli attempts to build illegal settlements on the land, a project with ties to Montreal.
Bil’in has launched a lawsuit in the Quebec Superior Court against two companies registered locally, Green Park International and Green Mount International, who are currently helping to build an Israeli-only settlement on land within Bil’in’s municipal jurisdiction.
“Israel is colonizing our land and stealing it for future generations. They are trying to erase Palestine,” explains Rahme.
In June 2009, Bil’in village is scheduled to have a series of court dates that will determine if the lawsuit filed with Quebec Superior Court will be heard.
A solidarity protest with Bil’in village is scheduled for Friday, May 8, at noon outside Indigo bookstore (corner of Ste-Catherine and McGill College).
Jihad el-Shaar is pleased with his mud-brick house in the Moraj district of Gaza. The 80-square metre home is a basic one-storey, two-bedroom design, with a small kitchen, bathroom and sitting room, made mostly with mud and straw.
“My wife and our four daughters and I were living with family, but it was overcrowded, impossible. We knew we had to build a home of our own,” Shaar said. “We waited over two years for cement but because of the siege there is none available. What could we do, wait forever?”
So he decided to do it with mud.
Building earthen structures like bread ovens and small animal pens is a technique many Palestinians are familiar with, but extending the method to houses isn’t a notion that has taken hold in Gaza.
Jihad el-Shaar got the idea from his travels in Asia and the Middle East. “I travelled in Bangladesh, India, Yemen, Turkey…they all use some similar technique of building houses from earth. All you need is clay, sand and some straw.” These he mixed with water, and poured into brick moulds that were left in the sun to dry for three days. Good enough to build a fine house with.
While some Gaza residents speak of shame at the way life has ‘gone backwards’ with the siege – using cooking oil in cars, wood fires for cooking, and horse and donkey carts for transportation – Shaar is proud of his clay home.
“In the winter it is warm, and in the summer it will be cool. There’s no problem with leaking, and this type of house will last a lifetime,” he says. “And it was cheap to build. A house this size made of cement would cost around 16,000 dollars at least. This one, because it was made with simple, local materials cost just 3,000 dollars.”
Prior to Israel’s crippling siege on Gaza cement would have cost 20 shekels (about five dollars) a bag. Now, with cement among the many banned items, what does make it into Gaza through tunnels under the Egypt border costs ten times as much.
The 3,000 dollars Shaar spent was mostly on support metal and on the flakes of straw used in the mud bricks as a strengthening agent. The metal bits, formerly just over 1,000 shekels a tonne, are now quadrupled in price, which contribute to making an otherwise cheap building process still somewhat pricey.
Straw abounds, but due to the siege it is more often used as animal fodder, rendering it more precious and driving the price up. Clay and sand, found all over Gaza, must still be transported to the building site.
Compared to a cement home, the mud homes Shaar has designed and taught others to build are nonetheless the most practical and immediate solution.
Nidal Eid (35) has seven children and has been renting a home in the Rafah region since his house was bulldozed by the Israeli army four years ago. Larger than Shaar’s and still in its nascent form, Eid’s home will take another two weeks to complete, he estimates, and will cost roughly 4,000 dollars.
“It’s going to be fantastic,” Eid said, adding mud mortar and new bricks to the waist-high wall he has already completed. “We make about 1,000 bricks every three days.”
The work, he said, was shared between six people. “I couldn’t wait any longer for the siege to end. I have a family and we need a house, so I’m building this. Everything is difficult in Gaza, but we have to find ways to get by.”
A tour through Jihad el-Shaar’s home shows all sorts of creative touches to the simple structure. Inlaid shelves are custom-sized to hold gas lanterns, dishes, ornamental vases, books…an earth-brick bed eliminates the need for an additional bed frame. The 35cm thick walls keep the house surprisingly cool, and the wooden windows propped open by poles allow the breeze to pass through.
This sort of idea is catching on. Yousef Al-Mansi, minister for public works and housing says the ministry will build a school, a mosque, and a clinic out of recycled rubble from bombed buildings.
The Gaza crossings online database of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) records that only two trucks carrying construction material have been allowed into Gaza since Jan. 19 this year. Israel’s assault on Gaza ended Jan. 18.
While 4.5 billion dollars in aid money for reconstruction has been pledged by international donors, to date Israel has not permitted the entry of materials into Gaza.
During its three-week assault Israel destroyed some 5,000 homes and 20,000 buildings.
“Since I’ve made my house, I’ve got many calls from people, especially in Rafah, who want to rebuild their houses using this technique,” says Shaar. “There are entire families living in tents. Why not build a home like this? Because of the siege, we’ve found other ways of living.”
The West Bank Palestinian villages of Bil’in and Jayyous and 11 national and international networks from Europe, Palestine, Israel and the US have sent letters calling on Norway to comply with its ethical guidelines and divest from its pension fund holdings in the company Africa-Israel, owned by the controversial diamond magnate Lev Leviev. The villages of Bil’in and Jayyous cited the devastating impacts of the construction of Israeli settlements by Africa-Israel and another Leviev-owned company, Leader Management and Development, on their villages’ agricultural land.
The letters to Norwegian officials follow controversy in Norway over pension investments in Africa-Israel and other Israeli companies involved in human rights abuses, statements by Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen supporting a review of pension fund investments, and an April 28 article in the UK’s Guardian by Abe Hayeem of Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine urging the governments of Norway and Dubai to “emulate the example set by the UK and sever their relationships with Leviev’s companies.” In March, the UK announced that it would not rent its new embassy in Tel Aviv from Leviev due to concerns over settlement construction. UNICEF and Oxfam have also publicly renounced all connections with Leviev.
A May 4 letter to Norwegian officials signed by Jayyous’ Municipality, Palestinian Grassroots Anti-Apartheid Wall Committee, and Land Defence Committee noted that, “Leviev is the co-owner of Leader Management and Development, the company that is building the Israeli settlement of Zufim on our village’s land… Today, many families from our village live in poverty because they can no longer reach their farmland due to Israel’s construction of a wall on our land, a wall intended to annex Jayyous’ land for the expansion of Zufim settlement.” The letter closed by noting, “In Jayyous, we are engaged in a struggle for justice, for our freedom – indeed, for our very lives. We call on the government and people of Norway to divest from Leviev’s companies and stand with us in our struggle to save our land, our communities and the dreams of our children.”
In an April 21 letter, Bil’in’s Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements expressed “great dismay” “that Norway, a strong supporter of human rights and peace in the Middle East, has invested its citizens’ pensions in a company, Lev Leviev’s Africa-Israel, that is building Israeli settlements on our village’s land, and is destroying our olive groves and any hope for justice and peace in Palestine.” Bil’in highlighted its long “nonviolent campaign to prevent the seizure of 57.5% of our village’s land for the construction of the settlement of Mattityahu East,” “more than 250 creative protests over the last four years,” the April 17th killing by Israeli soldiers of Bil’in nonviolent protester Bassem Abu Rahma, the injuring of 1300 civilian protesters, and the arrest of 60 more. The letter summarized, “We are sure that the people of Norway do not want to support the seizure of our farmland, and violence against our community.”
In a May 5th letter, Adalah-NY, Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, Association France-Palestine Solidarite, Norway’s Electricians and IT workers Union, European Coordinating Committee of NGOs on the Question of Palestine, Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, Jewish Voice for Peace, Jews Against the Occupation-NYC, Norwegian Association for NGOs for Palestine, Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign wrote to Norwegian officials supporting Bil’in and Jayyous. The organizations asserted that investing in Africa-Israel “violates government guidelines which require the exclusion of ‘companies from the investment universe where there is considered to be an unacceptable risk of contributing to… serious violations of individuals’ rights in situations of war or conflict’ and ‘other particularly serious violations of fundamental ethical norms.’” They also noted evidence of Africa-Israel’s settlement construction in Maale Adumim and Har Homa, the sale by Africa-Israel subsidiary Anglo-Saxon Real Estate of Israeli settlements homes, Leviev’s donations to the settlement organization the Land Redemption Fund, and Leviev’s companies’ involvement in serious human rights abuses in Angola’s diamond industry.
