Large amounts of Israeli forces and Border Police have made several attempts to raid the reclaimed village of Ein Hijleh and in return the villagers stopped their forced advancement into the center of the village. There were many cases of teargas suffocation as well as an injury in the leg resulting from a teargas canisters being shot directly at the youth preventing the raid.
A man suffering from teargas suffocation in the village of Ein Hijleh. (Photo by PSCC)
These events came as a result of Israeli forces confiscating a welcome sign in the name of Ein Hijleh that was placed on the so called Route 90.
Furthermore, two Palestinian youth were injured last night (3rd February) after physical clashes erupted with Israeli Forces. Palestinian popular resistance activist Abedallah Abu Rahmeh was injured in his arm resulting in multiple fractures, as well as Palestinian youth Mohammad Al-Khatib suffered from several rib fractures. Both were taken to a hospital in Jericho for treatment. It is important to note that Israeli forces impeded the entry of the ambulance carrying the patients back to Ein Hijleh and forced the medical crew as well as the injured to continue their way on foot.
The village is under continuous besiegement by Israeli forces in which water, food supplies and medical crews are prevented to enter.
In regards to the village activities for today, (4th February) the villagers have renovated several homes, volunteer work in which 150 trees donated by the Environmental Relief were planted around the village. Evening activities carry on including art activities well as cultural and political discussions.
Moreover, Israeli forces have detained 18 volunteers as they were entering/exiting the village including an international solidarity activist whom was released later on. This escalation comes as a series of attempts by Israeli forces to place pressure on the village as seen from the attempts on raiding the village on the fourth and fifth days (February 3rd and February 4th) of the reclamation of the village. However, the villages prevented these attempts by creating human chains and face to face confrontation.
The organizational committee conducted a meeting in which the weekly agenda for next week was created and agreed upon. The agenda is as follows:
Wednesday: Day of solidarity and expanding popular activities in reviving and renovating the lands and houses of Ein Hijleh.
Thursday: Day for diplomatic participation and embassy representatives to inform them on the situation of Ein Hijleh including information about the siege on the village which bans the entry of food, water, medical supplies, and journalists by Israeli forces.
Friday: Friday prayer in the village followed by a volunteer program for planting trees and continuing the renovation of the homes in Ein Hijleh.
Saturday: Cultural Academic day in which lectures for Palestinian university students will be held to inform the students about the reality and history of Ein Hijleh.
Sunday: Day of prayer will be held in the village to reiterate the unity of the Palestinian people regardless of the religious, ethnic, and political differences.
All days will include cultural activities in which Palestinian academics and artists will take part in during the evening.
Diana Alzeer 0592400300 or 0549168321
Abdallah Abu Rahmeh 0599107069
Salah Khawaja 0598886943
Thaer Anis 0549292422
Israeli forces invading the village of Ein Hijleh (Photo by PSCC)
A new study guide published by the church and compiled by its Israel/Palestine Mission Network has turned a critical eye on the Zionist ideology behind the Israeli policies the divestment measure aims to challenge.
Zionism Unsettled, as the pamphlet is titled, offers much value to any Palestine activist who has not considered the ramifications ofZionism as an ideology.
Its 74 pages sketch both Zionism’s historical outlines and its complex relationships with the Christian and Jewish faiths. A companion DVD offers further commentary.
“With Zionism Unsettled, we are hoping to shine a light on the effects of Zionism as a political ideology that is justified by appeal to selective biblical texts,” Walt Davis, co-chairperson of the IPMN’s education committee and Zionism Unsettled project coordinator, told The Electronic Intifada.
“There’s a good deal of examination of various theologies in Zionism Unsettled, but through the lens of how they have been affected by a nationalist ideology,” Davis added.
“The problem now is that the issue is no longer just a secular political ideology; it has become an ideology infused with biblical and theological justifications. Therefore it now needs to be examined through a theological lens too.”
“Cloak of silence”
Davis added that because the US is a highly religious society, “we want to open a dialogue about this symbiotic relationship that has been shrouded in a cloak of silence. This is what the churches have done in the past when oppressive ideologies like Jim Crow segregation in the US and apartheid in South Africa had become theologies of self-identity for their supporters.”
The publication of Zionism Unsettled does not mark a theological breakthrough. The Presbyterian Church (USA)’s liberal Reformed tradition has rarely offered fertile ground for the growth of Christian Zionism as a religious tendency.
As Zionism Unsettled says, “For decades the [Presbyterian Church (USA)] has opposed the evangelical blend of dispensationalism and Christian Zionism because it fuses religion with politics, distorts faith, and imperils peace in the Middle East.”
Rather, it indicates a political shift, a breach of what Jewish liberation theologian Marc Ellis calls “the interfaith ecumenical deal,” under which a significant number of Christians have supported Israel.
“In its liberal Christian manifestations, Zionism serves as a ‘price-tag’ theology providing Christians with a vehicle of repentance for the guilt accrued during centuries of European Christian anti-Semitism culminating in the Holocaust,” Naim Ateek, co-founder and director of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center, writes in Zionism Unsettled.
The study guide also analyzes the disparate threads of Jewish Zionism, first cultural and political, then political and religious, culminating in the fusion of the latter two after Israel’s military occupation of the Gaza Strip, West Bank and other territories in 1967 — and the subsequent launch of its settlement project.
It also suggests the United States’ own history of settler colonialism as a crucial reason for its support, both political and religious, of the similar process of Zionism.
Myths of origin
“Israeli and American myths of origin are similar and derived from the same biblical sources,” Zionism Unsettled says, noting that “the history and ideology of settler colonialism have been so central to the political history of the United States that it is not surprising the political and religious leadership in the US has been predisposed to uncritical support for the Zionist movement.”
Much church activism for Palestine, like past divestment efforts within the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the United Methodist Church, has remained within the parameters of theOslo accords, focusing on the post-1967 occupation and aiming for a negotiated two-state solution.
“The so-called peace process has devolved into a cover under which irreversible territorial and demographic facts on the ground are being implemented with impunity by Israel,”Zionism Unsettled begins. “Israel’s expansion into territory classified under international law as occupied has brought about a de factoone-state entity under Israeli jurisdiction.”
Later it reports “a growing consensus — except, notably, in the US and Israel — that the existing de facto one-state situation/solution is irreversible and that the Israeli form of apartheid (segregation and separate development) is becoming increasingly entrenched.”
“Colonizing minds”
But Zionism Unsettled’s focus remains on ideology, not the policies it inspires. Its authors quote the Palestinian writer and academic Nur Masalha: “Zionism was (and remains) not just about the colonization of Palestinian land, but also about colonizing minds — Jewish, Arab, European, American.”
Through their text, they attempt to decolonize one corner of America’s mainstream Protestant mind.
“What has been almost entirely absent from the mainstream conversation about Israel/Palestine is open, frank discussion about the ways in which ideology — that is, political and religious doctrine — has been a driving force of the conflict,” they write.
“Zionism is the problem,” Ateek states in Zionism Unsettled. “For Palestinians and a growing number of internationals around the world it is clear that Zionism is a false theology.”
Both a political ideology and a theology, Zionism has shaped and been shaped by the main religious traditions — Christianity and Judaism — it has engaged.
Zionism Unsettled is not an activist handbook. It is very much a work of theology, albeit political theology. Little of its content is prescriptive, rather than descriptive. Church members and others seeking practical steps to apply its knowledge will need to look elsewhere.
As the study guide was released, a delegation of Presbyterian Peace Fellowship members traveled through present-day Israel and the occupied West Bank on an Interfaith Peace-Builders (IFPB) tour. Over 12 days, its two dozen participants met activists on both sides of the green line (the internationally-recognized armistice line between present-day Israel and the occupied West Bank), posted updates to the delegation’s blog, and tweeted their experiences with the hashtag #PPFinAction.
“Moral obligation”
“The goal was to prepare a cadre of articulate, better informed, creative, passionate spokespersons from within the Presbyterian Church,” Mark C. Johnson, an IFPB board member who co-led the delegation, told The Electronic Intifada.
Delegates who have traveled to Palestine, spoken with residents and seen conditions firsthand can more convincingly say, “I believe the Presbyterian Church is legitimate in its witness when it supports the BDS [boycott, divestment and sanctions] call,’” he remarked.
“I think the delegation’s visit will help familiarize them, and many other Presbyterians through them, with the brutal reality of Israel’s regime of occupation, colonialism and apartheid against the Palestinian people,” Barghouti later told The Electronic Intifada.
He added that he hopes their experiences “will convince a much wider segment of the Presbyterian Church (USA) that divesting their funds from companies that are complicit in Israel’s decades-old occupation and denial of Palestinian rights is indeed a profound moral obligation.”
Barghouti added, “All Palestinians were inspired and moved to tears when a decade ago the Presbyterian Church (USA) became the first mainstream institution in the US to support divestment … For ten years, however, the church’s moves towards divestment have been held hostage to Zionist blackmail, including through so-called ‘interfaith’ groups and the unfounded, chilling and false accusations of anti-Semitism, preventing the Presbyterian Church (USA) from doing the right thing.”
Johnson also hopes the delegation’s participation will affect the divestment debate. “There is a division within the body, but the majority already have given evidence of supporting BDS and positive investment,” he said. “As long as the latter is not used to undermine the legitimacy of the former, this new wave of recruits can make a good deal of difference both prior to the GA [general assembly] and at the GA.”
On 24 January, the delegates issued a unanimous statement supporting a recommendation by the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s Mission Responsibility through Investment Committee (MRTI) for divestment.
It quotes Palestinian businessman Sam Bahour, who warned against efforts to substitute investment in Palestinian enterprises for divestment from the occupation. “Investing in our economy is an act of resistance that helps Palestinians not to give up,” he told the group. “But don’t be fooled into thinking that it will help us to end the occupation. BDS is an important tool for that” (“Presbyterian delegation unanimously supports MRTI call to divest from Caterpillar, Motorola Solutions and Hewlett-Packard,” Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, 24 January 2014).
The Presbyterian Church (USA)’s 2012 general assembly approved a church-wide boycott of Israeli settlement products by 71 percent. A motion to divest the church’s own holdings inCaterpillar, Hewlett-Packard and Motorola, all of which have business connections with the Israeli occupation, was replaced by a margin of two votes out of 666.
With divestment set to return to the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s agenda in Detroit this summer, two years of dialogue, education, and organizing by activists within the church may be nearing fruition.
Hundreds of Palestinians announced today the launching of “Melh Al-Ard” (Salt of the Earth) campaign by reviving the village of Ein Hijleh in the Jordan Valley on land belonging to the Orthodox Church and St. Gerassimos monastery. The campaign is launched in refusal of Israeli policies aimed at Judaizing and annexing the Jordan Valley.
Campaign organizers and participants declared,
We, the daughters and sons of Palestine, announce today the revival of Ein Hijleh village as part of Melh Al-Ard campaign in the Jordan Valley. The action aims at refusing the political status quo, especially given futile negotiations destroying the rights of our people for liberation and claim to their land.
Accordingly we have decided to revive an old Palestinian Canaanite village in the Jordan Valley next to so called “Route 90” linking the Dead Sea to Bisan. The action is part of a continuous step against the Israeli occupation’s plan to take over and annex the Jordan Valley. This step is a popular act against Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people and the constant Judaization of the land.
From the village of Ein Hijleh, we the participants announce that we hold tight to our right to all occupied Palestinian lands. We refuse Kerry’s Plan that will establish a disfigured Palestinian state and recognizes the Israeli entity as a Jewish State. Such a state will turn Palestinians living inside lands occupied in 1948 into residents and visitors that can be deported at anytime. We affirm the unity of our people and their struggle wherever they are for our inalienable rights.
Ein Hijleh village is located in what is called “Area C” in the Jordan Valley, which is under threat of annexation by Israeli policies and Kerry’s plan. Therefore, we have decided to take charge and call for a national action to protect the Jordan Valley and put an end to the constant Judaization of Palestinian lands.
Based on our support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS) we call upon our friends and international solidarity groups to stand with the demands of the Palestinian people and boycott all Israeli companies including Israeli factories and companies that work in the Jordan Valley and profit from Palestinian natural resources.
For instance, we ask you to boycott Mehadrin, the largest Israeli exporter of fruits and vegetables, some of which grown in the Jordan Valley. In addition, Hadiklaim, that exports dates produced by Israeli settlers in the Jordan Valley. We also call on you to boycott both Ahava and Premier, cosmetics companies that use Dead Sea minerals to produce its products.
Our Palestinian village is located near Deir Hijleh or St. Gerassimos monastery, on land that is property of the Orthodox monastery. The land mainly consists of few deserted old houses and palm trees. The white soil is highly concentrated with salt, and the area is surrounded by lands taken and used by Israeli settlers. An Israeli base is separating the land from Deir Hijleh monastery which owns a property of about 1000 dunams, some of which are taken by Israeli forces for the excuse of “security reasons.”
The campaign, “Melh Al-Ard”(Salt of the Earth), quotes a phrase from the bible, Matthew 13:5, which says, “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. “The name of our village, EinHijleh, is based on the original Canaanite name and the water spring (Ein) present there.
We the sons and daughters of Ein Hijleh call upon our people to join the struggle to revive the village and protect our rights, history, culture, and land. Daughters and sons of Palestine, be the salt of this earth and stay steadfast on it.
MEDIA CONTACT: Diana Alzeer, 0592400300 or 0525339054
24th January 2014 | FFJ Media Center | Bil’in, Occupied Palestine
Two people were injured and dozens of other civilians, including international solidarity supporters, suffered from tear gas inhalation during Bil’in’s weekly protest against the wall and settlements. This week, the demonstrators also marched in protest of the continued siege and starvation of the Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria.
After the Friday prayers, the participants set off toward the village’s liberated land and, after reaching the main gate of the wall, Israeli soldiers stationed behind the wall fired tear gas, stun grenades, rubber-coated steel bullets, and live ammunition at the participants. The soldiers also chased the protesters through the olive groves and even into the outskirts of the village, leading to violent clashes that continued into the evening. Two people were wounded. Nemer Atta (19 years old) was shot by live ammunition in the foot and taken to the Palestine Medical Complex for treatment, and Wael Bornat (38 years old) was shot by a rubber-coated steel bullet. Dozens of village residents, Israeli peace activists, and international supporters suffered from tear gas inhalation.
The participants raised Palestinian flags at the rally, chanting and singing for national unity, and called for resounding popular resistance against the occupation, and for the release of all Palestinian prisoners and for freedom in Palestine, as well as lifting the siege on the Yarmouk refugee camp. Those injured are now reported to be in stable condition.
Demonstrators carry man shot in the foot by live ammunition (Photo by H(Photo by Mohammed Yasin)
In an extra-judicial execution attempt, on Wednesday 22 January 2014, an Israeli drone fired a missile at a civilian car in Beith Hanoun, Northern Gaza. As a result, both passengers, a member of a Palestinian armed group and his cousin, were killed immediately.
According to investigations conducted by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR), at approximately12:05 p.m., an Israeli drone fired a missile at a civilian Citroen car. Ahmed Mohammed Jom’aah Khalil al-Za’anin (21), member of an armed group, and his cousin Mohammed Yousif Ahmed al-Za’anin (22), both from the al-Sekah area in Beit Hanoun were inside the car which was parked in front of the house of Ahmed’s father. As a result, the car was completely destroyed, and the bodies were maimed completely. The house of Mohammed Jom’aah al-Za’anin, the victim’s late father, was severely damaged with windows being smashed, a number of doors being broken and the walls being cracked.
An Israeli military spokesman confirmed that Ahmed al-Za’anin was targeted and killed. He added that Al-Za’anin had been responsible for launching rockets over the past few days at the Israeli towns adjacent to the Gaza Strip and was also responsible for planning to carry out military operations against military and civilian Israeli targets.
This attack is the second of its kind in 2014. On Sunday 19 January 2014, an Israeli drone fired a missile at a motorbike that was being driven by an activist of the al-Quds Brigades (the armed wing of Islamic Jihad) in the northern Gaza Strip town of Jabalya. The activist was seriously wounded, while a passing child was injured.
Israeli forces have used drones in attacks against targets in the Gaza Strip previously. According to PCHR’s documentation, since 2004, 640 Palestinians, including 395 civilians (including 184 children and 14 women), have been killed and 440 others, including 402 civilians (including 365 children and 4 women) have been wounded in attacks carried out by Israeli drones.
PCHR is deeply concerned over the latest Israeli escalation, and:
1. Strongly condemns such Israeli crimes in the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt), which reflects Israel’s disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians;
2. Reiterates condemnation for extra-judicial executions committed by Israeli forces against Palestinian activists, which serve to escalate tension in the region and threaten the lives of Palestinian civilians; and
3. Calls upon the international community to immediately act to stop these crimes, and reiterates its call for the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention to fulfill their obligations to ensure protection for Palestinian civilians in the oPt.
Palestinians gather next to a destroyed car after it was hit by an Israeli air strike in Beit Hanoun (Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images)
