Category: In the Media - Page 187 - International Solidarity Movement

Palestine’s Holocaust museum

Dania Yousef | Al Jazeera

30 April 2009

Musa says Palestinians feel sorrow for the Holocaust, but question why they are being punished

In a small anonymous home in the West Bank, a Palestinian academic has set up a project which is almost unheard of in the Occupied Territories.

Hassan Musa is the curator of a museum exhibition dedicated to the Jewish Holocaust in Europe.

The cracked white walls of this makeshift museum in the village of Ni’lin are covered from floor to ceiling with images of people forced out of their homes, tortured, imprisoned, starved and murdered.

In addition to the pictures depicting the Nazi brutality against Jews in Europe, there are also images of the Palestinian Nakba (catastrophe) following the creation of the state of Israel in 1948 and the violence in Palestine since.

On one wall, there is a picture of a scared Jewish boy holding up his hands as Nazi soldiers look on; the caption reads: “Make your final account with Hitler and the Nazi Germans, not with the Palestinians.”

On an adjacent wall there are photos of dead children, demolished homes and women screaming during the Israeli war on Gaza in January.

Musa, who is also a member of Ni’lin’s Popular Committee Against the Wall, says pictures of the atrocities committed against both peoples were strategically placed side-by-side to not only reflect the suffering of both and help Israelis and Palestinians better understand each other, but also to demonstrate how victims of one conflict can become the harbinger of another.

“The Palestinians have no connection to the Holocaust in Europe, but unfortunately we are paying the price of a misdeed we did not commit,” he said.

‘Paying’ for the holocaust

Pictures of Jewish victims of the Holocaust are on the museum's walls

In the main room, a large banner sends a direct message to Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, a message: “Why should we Palestinians continue to pay for the Holocaust?”

Musa believes this question is the impetus behind the exhibit, hoping it will challenge the international community on what is happening between Israelis and Palestinians.

“The world is shamefully silent about what is happening in Palestine as a way of expressing their sorrow for the death of six million Jews, but in the meantime, they are supporting the state of occupation,” he said.

Ni’lin has become synonymous with violent weekly clashes between Israeli soldiers and activists protesting against the construction of the ‘Separation Wall’.

The current path of the Wall will annex 10,000 acres of Ni’lin land to Israel, leaving its residents with 30,000 acres; this is a fraction of the 228,000 acres that constituted the village in 1948.

Since then, Ni’lin residents have lost more than 85 per cent of their land to confiscation and illegal settlement building.

People in the village also accused the Israeli military of killing four Ni’lin residents since protests against land confiscation began in May 2008.

Among those was Musa’s 10-year-old nephew, Ahmad, who died on July 29, 2008 from a bullet wound to the head; a number of residents and activists have also been injured in the protests.

In March, Tristan Anderson, a 38-year-old American activist acting as an observer with the International Solidarity Movement, was shot in the head with a high-velocity tear gas canister, leaving him in critical condition.

Understanding the occupier

There are also pictures depicting the Nakba in 1948 and the violence since

It is these events that make the location of the museum all the more significant, Musa says.

In a place where Palestinians struggle to fend off occupation, Musa now offers them an opportunity to empathise with and further understand their occupier.

Israeli, Palestinian and international visitors continue to trickle into the museum, though they are fewer in number than the crowds that gather for the protests.

Remaining optimistic, Musa hopes this endeavour will encourage Israelis to pressure their government to halt the occupation.

“Our message to the Jewish people all over the world is that having been victims of such a brutal genocide, we expect you to be messengers of all the principles of justice, mercy and humanity,” he told Al Jazeera.

According to Musa, reaction from Palestinians, especially those in the village, has been positive; the exhibits are, in many instances, the first images they have ever seen of the Holocaust.

Musa says some Palestinian visitors leave the exhibit feeling sorrow for the Jewish people, but also with the same question posed in the messages plastered across the walls: “Why are they punishing us?”

“I lost my nephew and I know how painful it is for me,” Musa says, “that’s why I don’t want anyone else living on this land to lose their loved ones.”

Azzun cut off from Palestinian infrastructure

International Women’s Peace Service

18 April 2009

The status quo of Azzun – a town with 12.000 inhabitants – is miserable and is getting worse in the distant future. Three big settlements were partly built on Azzun land so that the current city center is now circumscribed from the east, west and north western side. In addition to that there are plans for two new settler-only roads to be built. After completion of the roads Azzun will be completely isolated and surrounded by settlements and settler-only roads.

Azzun consists of approximately 9130 dunams. When the first outpost near Azzun was built, land belonging to the Palestinian Authority and to farmers of Azzun was taken. The first settlement was Qarne Shomron built in 1977 on the eastern part of Azzun. Maale Shomron was established in 1980 to the east of Azzun and Alfei Menashe took was built on the west of Azzun.

Azzun inhabitants suffer from acute water shortages. There are two big springs which supply Azzoun and Jayyus. The pipe system was constructed before 67 and now because the population has grown it has to be renewed in order to satisfy needs. To meet this demand Azzun receives water from Israeli Mekorot.

The villages An Nabi Elyas, Mahattat Tahseen Mansur and Izbat at Tabib which belong to Azzun are no longer recognized by the Israeli government. Inhabitants from these villages were forced to move to Azzun when Israel built two new roads on their land. Both of these roads are settler-only roads (55 and 531) which connect the settlement areas east and west of Azzun.

Israeli authorities are planning changes to road 55 which leads from Azzun to Nablus. This road will be enlarged to 200m and will be called 531 whilst becoming a settler-only road. In addition there are plans for the road 55 to link two big settlements and it will be accompanied by a barrier so that Azzun will be completely encircled by settlers or their roads.

The harassment towards villagers of these three Palestinian villages has already started. They are completely disfranchised paying taxes without having any rights any more. Whilst controlling their IDs soldiers are telling villagers that their villages do not exist anymore and that from now on the would belong to Azzun.

The Israel boycott is biting

Nadia Hijab | Agence Global

30 April 2009

On May 4, protesters will greet Motorola shareholders, already disgruntled by the company’s losses, as they arrive for their annual meeting at the Rosemont Theater in Chicago, Illinois.

The protest, organized by the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, is part of a drive to “Hang Up On Motorola” until it ends sales of communications and other products that support Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian land.

Inside the meeting, the Presbyterian, United Methodist and other churches will urge shareholders to support their resolution, which calls for corporate standards grounded in international law. Doing the right thing could also reduce the risk of “consumer boycotts, divestment campaigns and lawsuits.”

Although Motorola executives deny it, such risks must have played a part in their decision to sell the department making bomb fuses shortly after Human Rights Watch teams found shrapnel with Motorola serial numbers at some of the civilian sites bombed by Israel in its December-January assault on Gaza.

The US protests are part of a growing global movement that has taken international law into its own hands because governments have not. And, especially since the attacks on Gaza, the boycotts have been biting. There are three reasons why.

First, boycotts enable ordinary citizens to take direct action. For instance, the New York group Adalah decided to target diamond merchant Lev Leviev, whose profits are plowed into colonizing the West Bank. During the Christmas season, they sing carols with the words creatively altered to urge shoppers to boycott his Madison Avenue store.

The British group Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine teamed up with Adalah NY and others to exert public pressure on the British government regarding Leviev. The British Embassy in Tel Aviv recently cancelled plans to rent premises from Leviev’s company Africa-Israel.

There are other results. Activists in Britain have targeted the supermarket chain Tesco to stop the sales of Israeli goods produced in settlements. In a video of one such action — over 38,000 YouTube views to date — Welsh activists load up a trolley with settlement products and push it out of the shop without paying.

All the while, they calmly explain to the camera just what they are doing and why. They talk away as they pour red paint over the produce, and as British Bobbies quietly lead them away to a police van.

The result of such consumer boycotts? A fifth of Israeli producers have reported a drop in demand since the assault on Gaza, particularly in Britain and Scandinavia.

The second reason boycotts are more effective is the visible role of Jewish human rights advocates, making it harder for Israel to argue that these actions are anti-Semitic.

For example, British architect Abe Hayeem, an Iraqi Jew, describes in a passionate column in The Guardian exactly how Leviev tramples on Palestinian rights, and warns Israeli architects involved in settlements that they will be held to account by their international peers.

In the United States, Jewish Voice for Peace has led an ongoing campaign to stop Caterpillar from selling bulldozers to Israel, which militarizes them and uses them in home demolitions and building the separation wall.

The third, key, reason for the growing success of this global movement is the determined leadership of Palestinian civil society. The spark was lit at the world conference against racism in Durban in 2001. In 2004, Palestinian civil society launched an academic and cultural boycott that is having an impact.

In 2005, over 170 Palestinian civil society coalitions, organizations, and unions, from the occupied territories, within Israel, and in exile issued a formal call for an international campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) until Israel abides by international law. The call sets out clear goals for the movement and provides a framework for action.

In November 2008, Palestinian NGOs helped convene an international BDS conference in Bilbao, Spain, to adopt common actions. This launched a “Derail Veolia” campaign. That French multinational corporation, together with another French company, Alstom, is building a light railway linking East Jerusalem to illegal settlements.

The light rail project was cited by the Swedish national pension fund in its decision to exclude Alstom from its $15 billion portfolio, and by the Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council in its decision not to consider further Veolia’s bid for a $1.9 billion waste improvement plan. There were active grassroots campaigns in both areas.

Other hits: Veolia lost the contract to operate the city of Stockholm subway and an urban network in Bordeaux. Although these were reportedly “business decisions” there were also activist campaigns in both places. The Galway city council in Ireland decided to follow Stockholm’s example. Meanwhile, Connex, the company that is supposed to operate the light rail, is being targeted by activists in Australia.

The “Derail Veolia” campaign has been the movement’s biggest success to date. Veolia and its subsidiaries are estimated to have lost as much as $7.5 billion.

As one of the BDS movement leaders, Omar Barghouti, put it, “When companies start to lose money, then they listen.” Perhaps governments will too.

Nadia Hijab is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies in Washington D.C.

End Palestinian demolitions in Jerusalem, UN tells Israel

Rory McCarthy | The Guardian

1 May 2009

The United Nations has called on Israel to end its programme of demolishing homes in east Jerusalem and tackle a mounting housing crisis for Palestinians in the city.

Dozens of Palestinian homes in east Jerusalem are demolished each year because they do not have planning permits. Critics say the demolitions are part of an effort to extend Israeli control as Jewish settlements continue to expand. The 21-page report from the UN office for the co-ordination of humanitarian affairs is the latest round in an intensifying campaign on the issue.

Although Israel’s mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, has defended the planning policy as even-handed, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, in March described demolitions as “unhelpful”. An internal report for EU diplomats, released earlier and obtained by the Guardian, described them as illegal under international law and said they “fuel bitterness and extremism”. Israel occupied east Jerusalem in the 1967 war and later unilaterally annexed it, a move not recognised by the international community.

The UN said that of the 70.5 sq km of east Jerusalem and the West Bank annexed by Israel, only 13% was zoned for Palestinian construction and this was mostly already built up. At the same time 35% had been expropriated for Israeli settlements, even though all settlements on occupied land are illegal under international law.

As a result Palestinians in east Jerusalem had found it increasingly difficult to obtain planning permits and many had built without them, risking fines and eventual demolition, the UN said. As many as 28% of all Palestinian homes in east Jerusalem were built in violation of Israeli planning rules.

“Throughout its occupation, Israel has significantly restricted Palestinian development in east Jerusalem,” the UN report said. It said 673 Palestinian structures had been demolished in the east between 2000 and 2008. Last year alone 90 structures were demolished, leaving 400 Palestinians displaced, the highest number of demolitions for four years. Similar demolitions are carried out regularly by the Israeli military across the West Bank.

The UN said it was particularly concerned about areas facing mass demolition, including Bustan in Silwan, just south of the old city, where the threatened destruction of 90 houses would lead to the displacement of 1,000 Palestinians.

Families who lose their homes are faced with the choice of moving into crowded apartments with relatives or renting new homes. They face “significant hardships”, including having their property destroyed and struggling with debts from fines and legal fees, the UN said.

A 2007 survey, quoted in the UN report, found that more than half of the displaced families took at least two years to find a new permanent home and often moved several times in the process. Children missed out on school and suffered emotional and behavioural problems for months, with poor academic records over the longer term.

The authorities in Jerusalem challenged the UN report and denied “the accusations and numbers throughout”. Israel’s Jerusalem municipality accepted there was a “planning crisis” but said it was “not just in eastern Jerusalem but throughout all of Jerusalem that affects Jews, Christians and Muslims alike”. It said the mayor would present a new plan for the city.

“Recent events indicate that the Jerusalem municipality will maintain, and possibly accelerate, its policy on house demolition,” the UN report said. “Israel should immediately freeze all pending demolition orders and undertake planning that will address the Palestinian housing crisis in east Jerusalem.”

Last week, Barkat, who won election five months ago, rejected international criticism of demolitions and planning policy as “misinformation” and “Palestinian spin. There is no politics. It’s just maintaining law and order in the city,” he said. “The world is basing its evidence on the wrong facts.The world has to learn and I am sure people will change their minds.”

Barkat said he wanted to improve the life of all the city’s residents, Jewish and Arab, but that he was committed to maintaining a Jewish majority. Jews make up around two-thirds of the city’s population.

The UN said nearly a third of east Jerusalem remained unplanned, meaning there could be no construction. Even in planned areas there were problems, including the number of small privately held plots, poor infrastructure and few resources.

Although the number of permit applications more than doubled between 2003 and 2007, the number of permits grants remained relatively flat, the UN said. There was a gap between housing needs and permitted construction of 1,100 housing units a year. “Due to the lack of proper urban planning, the under-investment in public infrastructure and the inequitable allocation of budgetary resources, east Jerusalem is overcrowded and the public services do not meet the needs of the Palestinian population,” the report said.

New Bil’in barrier route reduces Modi’in Illit expansion

Dan Izenberg | Jerusalem Post

26 April 2009

It took the death of a Palestinian at Bil’in last week and the threat of another contempt of court petition to the High Court of Justice, but the state has finally come up with a new proposal for the route of the West Bank security barrier that apparently complies with the original court decision of 19 months ago, attorney Michael Sfard said on Sunday.

Last week, the state submitted a new proposal to the High Court to change the original route of the fence in the area of Modi’in Illit, which was proposed by the Defense Ministry and rejected by the court on September 4, 2007.

Now, Sfard told The Jerusalem Post, the ministry has come up with a new route that gives Bil’in villagers back 700 of the 1,700 dunams, or 170 hectares, that were set to be located on the “Israeli side” of the barrier in the original proposal.

Israel has said the route of the barrier was determined by security considerations only. But in the case of Bil’in, as was true regarding several other sections, the route was originally determined to allow for the construction of a new neighborhood, called East Matityahu, in the urban haredi settlement of Modi’in Illit.

According to the original plan, 3,000 housing units were to be built in East Matityahu in two stages.

According to Sfard, as a result of the state’s proposal to return 700 dunams of land to Bil’in, fewer than 2,000 units will be built.

On September 5, 2005, the head of the Bil’in village council, Ahmed Yasin, petitioned the High Court against the route of the security barrier. Sfard, who represented him, claimed that the state had designed the route in order to expand Modi’in Illit, taking away farmland belonging to the village and to individual villagers.

In its ruling two years later, the court upheld the petition and ordered the state to prepare a new route in accordance with a series of specific constraints.

One condition was that the new route leave the second stage of East Matityahu on the “West Bank side” of the barrier. Another condition was that the barrier itself be established as much as possible on state-owned rather than Palestinian-owned land.

It took nine months for the state to come up with a new proposal. When it finally did, it ignored key conditions established by the court in its original ruling. Above all, it left stage two of Matityahu East on the “Israeli side” of the barrier.

On December 15, 2008, the court rejected the proposal and ordered the state to come up with a new one that complied with its original ruling, “without further delay.”

Nevertheless, four more months went by without a response by the state. Sfard told the Post that after the killing of Palestinian demonstrator Bassam Ibrahim Abu Rahma, from Bil’in, during a protest against the barrier on April 17, he sent a letter to attorney Avi Licht of the State Attorney’s Office, warning that he would file another contempt of court petition unless the state submitted a new proposal within two days. (Abu Rahma, 30, was killed in a confrontation with border policemen.)

The state hurried to submit the proposal. Sfard said that although the Bil’in villagers were still angry over the loss of 1,000 or more dunams that remain on the “Israeli side” of the barrier, it looks like the court will approve the state’s new proposal.