Category: In the Media

YNet: “Prosecution: Soldiers must detain settlers harassing Palestinians”

by Aviram Zino, February 2nd

Following incident caught on video in which soldiers failed to interfere while female settler harassed Palestinian neighbor in Hebron, State Prosecutor’s office rules: Soldiers must block violence towards people, property and alert police

When a soldier witnesses settler violence towards Palestinians or their property, he must detain the suspects and alert the police or Border Guard, Deputy State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan declared Thursday.

In a letter to the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Nitzan addressed the recent incident in the West Bank exposed by Ynet in which Hebron settlers harassed their Palestinian neighbors and soldiers failed to interfere.

After two videos recording incidents of settler harassment were published on Ynet, the question arose as to what degree of involvement should be required of soldiers who witness such disturbances.

The letter told the civil rights groups that all the relevant officials had met at the Deputy State Prosecutor’s office to discuss the problem.

Nitzan wrote that the officials concluded that soldiers must detain suspects until police arrived, rather than rely on identifying the suspects later.

The letter noted that in the course of 2005, Hebron District Police dealt with 152 complaints against settlers for violence towards Palestinians. Indictments were filed in 39 of the cases. During 2006, 155 complaints were recorded and 81 indictments were filed.

According to the Judea Division’s commanding officer and police reports, there was a significant decrease in the number of disturbances in Hebron, Attorney Nitzan wrote. In the past six months there have been no serious incidents in the area, he said.

Nitzan attributed the decrease in violent incidents to improved deployment of law enforcement authorities in Hebron. An important tactic, according to Nitzan, was the deployment of special Border Guard patrol unit in the area to back up police forces.

Regarding minors, who are frequently involved in harassing Palestinian residents, Nitzan wrote: “There has been a significant decrease in incidents involving minors. In 2006, 16 complaints were filed against minors. In three of the incidents, the identity of the suspects is known, and their names and details of the incident were transferred to regional authorities.”

Participants in the meeting stressed that it must be made clear to Israeli settlers that “there will no tolerance” towards such behavior and offenders would be held culpable, the letter noted.

Security forces were recently ordered to patrol the area more frequently, it said.

The Guardian: “A doctor’s call”

by Victoria Brittain, January 30th

Mona el-Farra, a Palestinian doctor working in Gaza should have been in London this evening, launching a campaign for peace between Israelis and Palestinians based on recognition of international law.

The campaign, simply called “Enough”, is backed by various aid organisations, trade unions, faith and other campaign groups.

Dr Farra was invited before Christmas, and planned to leave Gaza around January 15 to allow plenty of time to get through the difficult Rafah border with Egypt. But she is not in London today because – along with hundreds of other Palestinians – she was refused the right to cross the border. For a week, with her suitcase packed, she thought she would be able to come. But in the end the border was only opened one way – into Gaza from Egypt, not out of it.

Last week, in an attempt to get an exemption for Dr Farra, two eminent British doctors – Derek Summerfield and David Halpin – faxed new invitations to her to come to London. But these health professionals’ invitations also cut no ice with the Israelis.

For almost a year or more Dr Farra’s blog, From Gaza, With Love, has been giving a uniquely vivid idea of the day-to-day desperate poverty and total unpredictability of life in Gaza, and the work of a doctor in that place where everything is lacking.

Dr Farra coordinates incoming aid, and organises three doctors and dozens of women volunteers to distribute food parcels, milk, meat, blankets, money vouchers, medicines for sick children and cancer patients, university fees for needy students, etc.

The border was opened 14 times in six months, electricity was off for four months, she wrote. Patients died waiting at the border, women gave birth on the road waiting for permission to travel to hospital, ambulances have been restricted, four emergency health workers died in December …

Is this why the Israelis don’t want people in Britain to hear her speak?

It is her blogs, as well as personal experience of working in the occupied Palestinian territories on and off for 14 years that has brought Dr Derek Summerfield and many of his colleagues to support the call of Palestinian health professionals like Dr Farra, last November, for a boycott of links with the Israeli universities and hospitals which support the occupation, and stronger links with Israeli institutions and organisations which defy it. They joined the boycott call by 60 Palestinian trade union and civil society organisations.

Dr Summerfield, South African by birth, honorary senior lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College, London, makes the parallels with the academic isolation of apartheid South Africa (which was much contested at the time):

This rightly included a boycott of the medical profession for collusion of a very similar nature to what we see today in Israel. For instance, the Medical Association of South Africa was for a time suspended from membership of the World Medical Association. On visits there in recent years I have heard it said more than once that the boycott played a distinct role in bringing the profession to its senses.

As in South Africa, the Israeli medical profession, and the establishment generally, is sensitive to opinion in the western world, not least from fellow doctors. An academic boycott in an extreme situation is a moral and ethical imperative when all else has failed.

The place to start is a boycott of the Israeli Medical Association, who have made their decisions with their eyes open over many years, and should be held to account for them. Any Israeli doctor who publicly dissociates him or herself from state practice becomes part of the solution rather than part of the problem.

Haaretz: “PM approves eastward move of section of separation barrier”

by Meron Rapoport, January 31st

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has approved the moving of the separation barrier at least five kilometers eastward from the Green Line in the area of Modi’in Ilit, in order to take in the settlements of Nili and Na’aleh, according to security sources and a brief submitted by the state to the High Court of Justice.

The new route will create two Palestinian enclaves containing about 20,000 people. Nili and Na’aleh together have some 1,500 residents.

Olmert approved the change in response to pressure from residents of the two settlements, both of which would have been left outside the barrier, according to the route approved by the cabinet last April. The new route will lengthen the fence by about 12 kilometers, which will cost an estimated NIS 120 million.

If the cabinet approves Olmert’s decision, it will be the first time part of the fence has been moved eastward after receiving cabinet approval. Hitherto, all such changes have moved the fence westward, toward the Green Line, the pre-1967 border that separates Israel and the West Bank.

Nili and Na’aleh, both secular settlements, are located some five kilometers from the Green Line. Originally, they were supposed to be surrounded by a “double fence” ¬ one along the Green Line and one to their east ¬ that would have trapped five Palestinian villages, with some 17,000 residents between them. In June 2004, however, the High Court ordered a section of the fence near Jerusalem dismantled on the grounds that it caused disproportionate harm to local Palestinians, and the defense establishment feared that the court would do the same to the Nili-Na’aleh section. It therefore proposed a new route that eliminated the eastern fence and left Nili and Na’aleh outside the western fence, and in April 2006, the cabinet approved this route.

Rani Hernik, chairman of the Na’aleh local council, said that leaders of both settlements then began intensive lobbying in an effort to get the route changed again. Their main argument, he said, was that both settlements are on state land and would thus not interfere with the Palestinians’ “fabric of life,” and therefore, the court would be likely to approve a route that included them.

Colonel Danny Tirza, then the official in charge of planning the fence’s route, was the main person pushing to include Nili and Na’aleh, Hernik said. (The Defense Ministry subsequently removed Tirza from his position, because of an inaccurate affidavit he submitted to the High Court.)

Hernik said that the proposal to include the two settlements within the fence ended up on Olmert’s desk, “and as far as I know, received his authorization.” Security sources confirmed that Olmert approved the change in principle last November and asked the defense establishment to prepare a formal proposal for the cabinet.

And in response to a petition against the route approved by the cabinet last April, the Justice Ministry recently told the High Court that “a proposal to change the route of the security fence to include the Israeli settlements of Nili and Na’aleh and part of the road connecting the Nili-Na’aleh Junction to Kiryat Sefer (Modi’in Ilit) is due to be presented to the Israeli government.”

Hernik said that a new road is also due to be paved, which will connect Modi’in Ilit, Nili and Na’aleh with the settlement of Ofarim. Palestinians will not be permitted access to this road, but two tunnels will be built under it to allow Palestinian traffic to transverse it.

The result is that some 17,000 Palestinians will be stuck in an enclave bounded by the fence along the Green Line to the west, and the road and the Nili-Na’aleh fence to the east. Another village, with some 2,000 residents, will be enclosed by the new fence route on three sides.

Olmert’s office said in response that he has received a proposal to connect the defenses around Nili and Na’aleh to the barrier and is currently studying it. When he finishes, he will bring it to the cabinet for discussion.

The Defense Ministry and the Israel Defense Forces said that the defense establishment “is currently engaged in staff work to examine the various alternatives,” including proposals to encompass the two settlements with a security fence and to protect the access road connecting them with Kiryat Sefer.

YNet: “Ministers okay restrictions on violent settlers”

by Ronny Sofer, January 29th

Ministerial committee approves series of measures against extremist settlers to prevent attacks on Palestinian civilians

Government ministers on Monday approved a series of measures to be implemented against extremist settlers to prevent attacks on Palestinian civilians.

Movement restriction and expulsion orders will be issued for violent settlers and the budgets of settler institutions that foster incitement against Palestinian civilians will be slashed, a committee headed by Defense Minister Amir Peretz ruled.

The committee was set up after a video recording recorded in late January showed a female settler verbally abusing a Palestinian woman in the segregated West Bank city of Hebron.

It was also decided to boost police and Israeli army forces in hotbeds of confrontation between Jewish settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank, with a special emphasis on Herbon where some 600 settlers live among 120,000 Palestinians.

The meeting was attended by committee members Foreign and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, Minister of the Interior Ronnie Bar-On, and Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter, who left the meeting to Eilat when news reached him that a suicide bomber had blown himself up in the southern resort city.

“We need to prevent this situation where breaches of the law take place with the authorities’ sponsorship,” Peretz said.

Measures irk right-wing groups

Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh has been appointed to oversee the implementation of the measures, which will be presented to the government for approval within 30 days.

Settler groups condemned the measures, accusing Peretz of pushing for tough actions against settlers to secure political gains ahead of elections for the leadership of the left-leaning Labor Party that he heads.

“The decisions badly carry the smell of primaries in the Labor Party,” the Yesha Council said in a statement.

“The use of expulsion orders is an aggressive and outrageous move. If there is evidence against a citizen he should be tried as expected. It is preferred that the security establishment deals with problems among our enemies, and the bombing in Eilat today is just a reminder of their intentions,” the statement said.

The National Union-NRP party said, “Instead of dealing with terror attacks, rising crime, and government corruption, the government is discriminating against residents of Judea and Samaria who are suffering from harassment by Palestinians.”

Right-wing activist Itamar Ben-Gvir said the measures are illegal. “We have always known that the biggest dictators are the left-wingers. These are orders that lack legality and evidence,” he said.

PNN: “Displaced from Aqaba as Israeli forces confiscate Jordan Valley village”

by Ali Samoudi, January 28th

The President of the Aqaba Village Council says the small community in the Jordan Valley is facing a new scheme which includes demolishing the village mosque, kindergarten, clinic and rural women’s center. Israeli forces issued 19 more demolition orders for houses and organizations that will replace Aqaba with military installations.

Council President, Sami Sadiq, told PNN that the features of a massive takeover became apparent at the beginning of the month.

He did say, however, that residents were “patient at first, simply watching and waiting as they had become accustomed to arbitrary actions.”

He said that the trouble began when the Israeli government decided to build the Wall on village lands. “They took vast areas and demolished many houses and buildings in the village, destroyed much of the water supply, and agricultural lands. When they demolished Ahmed Mahmoud Ali’s house they used the pretext of ‘security,’ which is the argument frequently employed to explain the policies of occupation.”

Sadiq said, “There is no international law that provides for the destruction of educational facilities for children or a mosque devoted to worship, or even a health center. What is the relationship between security and these centers? How can citizens live without the provision of vital services?”

The Village Council President answered his own question. “That’s just it, they can’t.”