Category: In the Media

Ynet: UN Envoy Condemns Israeli “Ethnic Cleansing” of Palestinians

Special UN envoy on human rights in Palestinian territories says in special report Israel’s actions in territories can be described as ‘ethnic cleansing,’ adds three-quarters of Gaza population depend on food aid for survival

from YnetNews, 26th September 2006. By Ali Waked and Reuters

United Nations Human rights envoy to the Palestinian territories John Dugard has published a report Tuesday where he does not shy away from sharply criticizing Israel and the West for the situation in Gaza. “Israel has turned the Gaza Strip into a prison for Palestinians and have thrown away the key,” he said, adding that “in other countries this process might be described as ethnic cleansing.”

In the report handed to the UN Human Rights Council Dugard wrote that “life in Gaza has turned to be intolerable, appalling and tragic.” According to him, 75 percent of Gaza’s population is dependant on food aid for survival, and the destruction left from Israeli bombings is “intolerable.”

Dugard also mentions the situation in the West Bank where there is a danger of a humanitarian crisis because of the security fence which is as bad as in Gaza.

The South African lawyer, who has been a special UN investigator since 2001, repeated earlier accusations that Israel is breaking international humanitarian law with security measures which amount to “collective punishment.”

Dugard also attacked the United States, the European Union and Canada for withdrawing funding for the Palestinian Authority in protest at the governing party Hamas’ refusal to accept Israel’s right to exist.

“If… the international community cannot … take some action, it must not be surprised if the people of the planet disbelieve that they are seriously committed to the promotion of human rights,” he said.

“Israel violates international law as expounded by the Security Council and the International Court of Justice and goes unpunished. But the Palestinian people are punished for having democratically elected a regime unacceptable to Israel, the US and the EU,” Dugard said.

Israeli Ambassador to the UN headquarters in Gevneva Itzhak Levanon said in response that “the report lays the blame solely on Israel and does not hold the terror groups responsible for taking the Palestinian people hostage.”

Saddest Ramadan in 40 years

To many residents of Gaza, this month of Ramadan is the poorest and saddest holiday since 1967. According to them, the economic situation has never been worse and the holiday feasts have never been as lacking as this year.

Abed Srur, a construction worker from Gaza said that unlike the Ramadan tradition, for their fast ending meal they eat only rice with no meat. He said that his income since May has been only NIS 3,000.

The Palestinians continue to be troubled by the closure imposed on the Strip that prevents the transfer of goods and people and hurts the ability of traders and workers to support their families.

Srur also said that the salaries that the Palestinian government has promised to pay its employees have not been paid because of conflicts between the government and Palestinian President Abbas. “Ramadan has never been so sad,” said Srur.

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In 2004, Dugard described the situation imposed by Israel in the Palestinian territories as worse than South African apartheid:

UN agent: Apartheid regime in territories worse than S. Africa
Ha’aretz, 24th August 2004. By Aluf Benn

South African law professor Prof. John Dugard, the special rapporteur for the United Nations on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories, has written in a report to the UN General Assembly that there is “an apartheid regime” in the territories “worse than the one that existed in South Africa.”

As an example, Dugard points to the roads only open to settlers, from which Palestinians are banned.

In his report presented early this month, Dugard is highly critical of Israel for its “continuing violations of human rights in the territories.” He said Israel is blatantly violating the International Court of Justice’s ruling on the separation fence, and has declared it will not obey it.

The report was disseminated among the member countries ahead of the September General Assembly session meant to discuss the fence.

Dugard, a law professor from South Africa, was a member of a Truth Commission at the end of the apartheid regime, and was appointed by the UN in 2001 as special rapporteur for human rights in the West Bank and Gaza.

He called for a general arms embargo against Israel in May, in response to the IDF operations in Rafah, similar to the arms embargo imposed on South Africa in 1977.

According to government sources in Jerusalem, Israel is currently leaning toward cooperating with the various rapporteurs of the UN, and responding to their questions and requests.

But there are two exceptions to that rule: Dugard, and the special rapporteur for food, Jean Zigler. Israel refuses to cooperate with them because of the language of their mandates, and what it regards as their unfair approach. According to the sources, Dugard’s assignment was phrased in a way that discriminates against Israel.

But the government does not prevent Dugard from traveling in the territories and Israel, to meet people and to report as he wishes.

Haaretz: Israeli “Law as Roadkill on Highway 443”

by Akiva Eldar, September 26th

The masses of Israelis who regularly travel to Jerusalem via Modi’in are familiar with the large cement cubes near the signs that indicate the approach roads to the Palestinian villages on either side of the main road known as Highway 443. Anyone who bothers to look to the sides will be able to see, beyond the cubes, at the side of the ride, cars bearing Palestinian Authority license plates. Those who have sharp eyes will be able to descry the passengers climbing up and down the hills.

Few are aware that for six years now, ever since the outbreak of the intifada, the highway has been serving Israelis only. Palestinians are forbidden to travel even along the segment that is nine and a half kilometers long and passes through West Bank territory, including lands that have been confiscated and where trees have been cut down “for public needs.” Israel Defense Forces soldiers ensure that only lucky people who have been granted a temporary permit can enjoy the shortcut.

Now it emerges that there is no order that can give legal validity to discrimination among travels according to nationality. In reply to a question from Haaretz, the IDF Spokesman has confirmed that “in light of the many security risks and threats to traffic on Highway 443 in recent years, it was decided in the Israel Defense Forces Central Command to close several approach roads that connect directly from the village expanse to the highway.” At the same time, the spokesman stresses that “no order has been issued that prohibits travel on the highway,” and in any case, “there is no prohibition on the part of the IDF regarding Palestinian traffic on the segment of the highway located in the territories of the Judea and Samaria [West Bank] area.” Nevertheless, in the same statement in which it is claimed that “there is no prohibition regarding Palestinian traffic on the Palestinian segment of the road,” it is also stated that because of the security risks, some of the approach roads that link the villages to the highway are closed “permanently.”

According to the statement, some of the other roads are open and “are closed in accordance with the assessment of the security situation.”

Attorney Limor Yehuda of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), who is preparing a petition to the High Court of Justice on the matter, sees the situation differently. According to her, most of the roads are usually closed, and from time to time special permission to use the road is given to a limited number of cars. Some of the approach roads have been blocked with boulders, others with concrete barriers, and there are those that have been closed with iron gates. A Palestinian driver who is caught on the road can expect a lengthy delay, a warning and a scare, and sometimes even the confiscation of the keys to the vehicle and also harsher sanctions. Last May ACRI applied to the GOC Central Command, Yair Naveh, on behalf of the heads of the village councils of Beit Sira, Beit Likiyeh, Hirbet al-Masbah, Beit ‘Ur al Tahta, Beit ‘Ur al Fuqa and Tsaffeh. Yehuda noted that Highway 443 is the main approach road that links the 25,000 inhabitants of the six villages to the main city in the area, Ramallah, and serves as a link among these villages.

A month later people from the Civil Administration came to the village of Beit Sira and proposed to the council head, ‘Ali Abu Tsafya, that transit permits be granted to a number of taxi owners from the village. He insisted that the highway be opened to all of the inhabitants of the village, as had been the case in the past. The visitors promised to organize a meeting with one of the responsible senior officers. Since then no one has called and Major General Naveh has not replied to the letter.

Yehuda wrote that following the blockage of the approach to the highway, the inhabitants have had to use back roads, some of them dirt roads, that pass through the villages and wind through the narrow lanes. As a result of this, trips in the area have become prolonged, dangerous and costly. Instead of a trip of a quarter of an hour in comfortable conditions on Highway 443 from the village of Beit Sira to Betunya and from there to Ramallah, the inhabitants have to wind their way along dirt roads that become impassable on winter days. The cost of the trip has more than doubled and many of the inhabitants of the villages are unable to bear the costs.

This is not a matter of preventing Palestinians from entering territories on the Israeli side of the Green Line (the pre-Six Day War border), but rather of a road that is located entirely in the area of the West Bank. At the two entrances to the territory of the state of Israel there are roadblocks that are permanently manned by soldiers (the Maccabim roadblock and the Atarot Junction roadblock). When lands of the six villages were confiscated in the 1980s and the 1990s, it was explained to the inhabitants that widening the road was essential for the needs of the inhabitants of the entire area. Including their needs, of course. In response to the petition to the High Court of Justice concerning the confiscation of lands for purposes of paving a road in the Ramallah area, the state argued that the planning “took into account the conditions and needs of the area and not only Israel’s conditions and needs.” Based on that principled commitment, Justice Aharon Barak rejected the petition in September 1983, and issued a ruling in principle that the rules of international public law grant the right to a military government to infringe on property rights if a number of conditions are fulfilled. The first of these conditions: “The step is taken for the benefit of the local population.”

Israeli Colonists Break Old Man’s Leg in Susia

by PSP

September 23, 2006: As we walk away down the craggy biblical landscape, she turns around to wag her finger at him and say “Remember? It is no defence to say you were only following orders”. The soldier looks perplexed and puts his hands out, letting his gun hang down from its strap. He looks like he’s struggling to find an appropriate reply – the insult of her words, echoing the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem, hitting him hard.

The soldier, an Officer, is guarding a military outpost adjacent to the colonial settlement named Susiya. The woman, a representative of Ta’ayush, an Israeli anti-occupation group, is visiting the Palestinian villagers in the area with activists from the Palestine Solidarity Project (PSP). On Monday, soldiers from this outpost accompanied seven young armed settlers to the home of an elderly couple where they watched as the settlers pushed, taunted and beat the old man and woman with sticks.

This happened four days ago but the officer on guard says that it is impossible. “It could not have happened. If I find out about any of my soldiers doing a thing like that, I will beat his ass. I will break his bones.” Nevertheless, Haj Khalil’s legs are now sore and swollen from the beating, one of the bones in his calf fractured. His wife buries her head in her hands as he talks, punctuating his sentences with nods and sighs of despair.

“It is very important for us to have internationals here. They must be here always. Otherwise they will come again,” says Haj Khalil. Ta’ayush, PSP and Christian Peacemaker Teams in Hebron are planning to co-operate on creating a permanent international presence in the area. The villagers, dotted about on the arid slopes of the Susiya valley, only a few solar cell panels and home-made TV antennas interrupting the landscape of traditionally Bedouin homesteads made up of tents, goat pens and snarling watchdogs, which all regularly fall victim to settler aggression and military complicity.

Furthermore, the villagers have been unable to tend to or even visit their olive groves for several years. The trees surround an Israeli military base, one grove right next to a field used by the soldiers for shooting practice. Among the trees lie discarded result charts, shot-through pieces of paper evidence of how soldiers learn to “zero in” on their targets. The military want the entire area from the Susiya settlement to the large town of Yatta to be evacuated of the whole Palestinian civilian population, to make it what Israel calls a “free fire zone.” This process has been frozen due to the resolute non-violent resistance of the Palestinians living in the area, but is legally difficult to challenge since Israeli courts generally do not meddle with what they regard as being ‘professional assessments’ by military experts on issues of security.

The colonists in Susiya, who arrived in the mid-80s around the same time that many Palestinian families were forced to move from their cave homes nearby to make way for Israeli archaeological excavations, did not approach the villagers today. They stood by the soldiers, their white clothing contrasting with the drab military uniforms and red earth. Their little girls wore long skirts and colourful ribbons in their hair, playing with a pet dog as they skipped back to the settlement. Haj Khalil, leaning on his walking-stick, shook his head in silence.

The Palestinian villagers of Susiya all have their own stories to tell about the fathers and brothers of these little settler girls. Most of them have bruises or scars to support their accounts of hooded men setting their tents on fire in the middle of the night, cracking their skulls open with the butts of their rifles or slashing their arms with a knife. All of them have learned that the official Israeli military policy stating that soldiers should protect both Palestinians and Israeli settlers is a sham – that while the Israeli military may sit and bond over a glass of wine with the settlers, they come to Susiya only to watch the oppression unfurl.

Devoid of protection from both the legal and military institutions of Israeli society, the Bedouin people of Susiya are left to fend for themselves, and therefore call on the support of Palestinian, international and Israeli solidarity initiatives. The villagers remain determined to continue living as they have always done, and each new breath, each stone overturned, each drop of goat’s milk bears witness to the steadfastness of their resistance.

Meanwhile, pursuing a policy of discrimination against Bedouin in the Negev, an Israeli court has rejected a request for unrecognised Bedouin villages to be connected to clean water sources. This is clearly part of Israeli state policy to ethnically transfer the Bedouin population from their land in both the South Hebron hills and 1948 land.

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Court rejects Bedouin villages’ request for clean water connection

from Ha’aretz, 25th September 2006. by Yoav Stern

Haifa district court last week rejected a petition to connect the unrecognized Bedouin villages in the Negev to clean water sources, citing the larger underlying issue of village regularization.

In its session as a water court, the court ruled that the water commissioner has no authority over considerations pertaining to town regularization in Israel, and therefore rejected to appeal by the Adalah Legal Center on behalf of over 100 Negev families.

The Adalah Center plans on appealing the decision with the Supreme Court. They said there is no connection between realizing the basic right all state residents to clean water and the legal standing of the Negev towns.

In the appeal filed by the organization against the water commissioner, it claimed that the right for a guarantee of minimal sustenance conditions is anchored in Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, as well as in international law.

Even so, Judge Ron Shapira stated in his decision that behind the appeal lies a larger issue of the regularization of “Bedouin settlements,” and added that a public interest exists “not to encourage additional illegal settlement.”

The court ruled that it does not ignore the problem of discrimination against the Bedouin residents, but that in the court’s opinion, the problem of unrecognized villages cannot be resolved in this manner.

The Adalah Center said the ruling meant that the court decided the right to water is not absolute and can therefore be limited.

“The court’s decision in effect makes the water commissioner a tool in the hands of the government, which works to expel Arab-Bedouin citizens, residents of unrecognized villages in the Negev, through the non-provision of basic services, such as the right to clean drinking water,” the center said.

The appeal against the commissioner’s decision was submitted in April 2005, and the ruling on the matter was delivered to the Adalah Center offices last Thursday.

Boston Globe: “Israeli Policy divides Palestinian families”

by Matthew Kalman, September 23rd

Immigration crackdown in West Bank

EL-BIREH, West Bank — Nariman Yazbak and her 2-year-old daughter, Salma, left their home in the West Bank town of El Bireh last April for a routine visit to relatives in Jordan.

Six months later, she is still trying to return. Yazbak’s husband, Rami, a human resources specialist at Bir Zeit University near Ramallah, has petitioned the Palestinian Authority, the Israeli government, the Israeli Army, and even written to Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni for help. He has filled out all the forms and presented all the necessary documentation, but no one will process the paperwork.

The Yazbaks are among the thousands of Palestinians caught in what human rights activists call a bureaucratic nightmare that has divided families, prevented visitors of Palestinian origin from visiting relatives in the West Bank, and is inducing many long-term West Bank residents to leave their homes.

Israel, which controls all the international borders leading to the West Bank, says it is not trying to break up Palestinian families. It says it is merely implementing existing immigration law and preventing foreign nationals from living in the country illegally.

But Palestinians, many of whom were born abroad and do not have Palestinian identity cards, say the Israelis suddenly clamped down after the January election of the Hamas government, when Israel broke off all ministry-level contacts with the Palestinian Authority after years of allowing them to live in the West Bank on three-month tourist visas.

The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem says in a report issued in July that the result of the policy is “the forced break-up of the family unit.”

The report, “Perpetual Limbo: Israel’s freeze on unification of Palestinian families in the occupied territories,” suggests that the Israeli crackdown is part of a broader policy to limit the growth of the Palestinian population “by preventing the entry of spouses and children of residents, and by stimulating emigration from the area.”

The Yazbaks say the result is that they will probably be forced to move abroad.

Rami Yazbak is a Palestinian, born in the West Bank, who returned in early 2000 with his Spanish-born Palestinian wife, Nariman, to their ancestral homeland.

“It was a dream to live in Palestine and to have my family, wife, and kid here,” he said.

No one knows how immigrants like Nariman Yazbak can be granted Palestinian permanent residence, which under the Oslo peace accords requires the agreement of both Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Since the second intifadah erupted in 2000, there have been no contacts between the relevant ministries. So, like thousands of others in a similar position, for the past six years she has been leaving the country every three months and returning with a new three-month tourist visa issued at the border by the Israelis.

In April, as Nariman and Salma returned as usual via the Israeli-controlled Allenby Bridge linking Jordan to the West Bank, they were stopped by immigration officials and turned back. Their passports were stamped “Entry Denied.” Rami Yazbak has contacted every Israeli and Palestinian official he can find, but so far without success.

“I need my family,” he said. “I’m giving it one last chance. We might appeal to the Israeli Supreme Court, but I’m afraid they will reject it. Otherwise we will have to go to Spain and start again from zero.”

For Palestinians with Jordanian citizenship, the troubles began at the start of the second intifadah in 2000, when Israel stopped allowing Jordanian-Palestinians to re enter the West Bank if they were effectively residing there.

Wahel Hushia, 35, from the West Bank village of Katana, married a Palestinian woman from Jordan in 1999. In 2001, his wife went to visit her parents in Jordan with their baby daughter, and the Israelis never allowed them back. Hushia visits them every few months, whenever he can afford the fare, and their West Bank-born daughter, now 6, comes to stay with his family for a few weeks per year.

“We cannot have any more children, because if they are born in Jordan, the Israelis will never let them in,” Hushia said. “I last saw them four months ago.”

The Palestinian Ministry for Civil Affairs reports that it has received more than 120,000 requests for family reunification since September 2000, which the Israelis refuse to process. In a few cases, after intervention by B’Tselem and other human rights groups, Israel has granted a few individual requests on a piecemeal basis, as “exceptional cases.”

East Jerusalem lawyers Ibrahim Khoury and Ehab Abu Gosh said there are dozens of similar cases before the Israeli courts.

Khoury cited the case of one family in Beit Hanina, an area of Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, whose members left for the United States in 1967 but maintain extensive property holdings and visit each year to see relatives. He said the father of the family, a US citizen, was recently detained on arrival at Ben-Gurion airport and held in the cells there for three weeks before an Israeli judge ordered him released pending a final decision on his status.

The US Consulate-General in Jerusalem, which handles relations with the Palestinian territories, said it was receiving several new complaints every week from Palestinian-Americans who were being denied entry after living in the West Bank for years.

Sam Bahour, a prominent West Bank businessman, has lived in El-Bireh since 1995. He applied to Israel for residency in the West Bank before the Palestinian Authority even existed but never received a reply. For the past 11 years, he said, he has traveled to and from the West Bank via the Israeli-controlled borders with Jordan on a three-month tourist visa. But the last time he went to the Israeli authorities they refused to extend it for more than one month.

He was given until Oct. 1 to leave the West Bank, and the Israeli soldier who stuck the visa in his passport scribbled “final permit” across it in English, Arabic, and Hebrew.

“I hope to find the decision-makers within the Israeli system and resolve the issue,” said Bahour. “If not, I will be separated from my family. My work has already been affected. I have been unable to take on any new projects in the past 45 days.”

“I won’t violate the visa and stay here illegally,” he said. “I won’t give the Israelis that gift.”

Sabine Hadad, spokeswoman for the Israeli Interior Ministry, denied there was any policy change.

“There has been a clarification of the instructions,” Hadad said. “. . . When a foreigner, from the USA or any other country, comes to the border and they know they are coming to visit the territories, they need a visitors’ permit for the territories, from the army.”

Haaretz: “Routine Anarchy” of the Israeli Colonies

by Akiva Eldar, September 21st

Last Tuesday, the Interior Ministry held another session of the inquiry commission on changing Modi’in Ilit’s status from that of a local council to a city. Ostensibly, this is a routine process of upgrading a community that meets the accepted standards. In effect, we have before us another example of the anarchy prevailing beyond the Green Line.

While the Interior Ministry discussed the proposal to grant Modi’in Ilit local council head Yaakov Guterman the lofty title of “mayor,” the State Prosecutor’s Office central district was discussing the criminal file of that same Guterman, who is suspected of fraud and breach of trust. Guterman is suspected of being selected as council leader (not elected – he was appointed based on rabbinic instructions) even though he was actually a resident of Bnei Brak.

Elsewhere, in the offices of the National Fraud Squad in Bat Yam, there has been an ongoing investigation since this March into the large-scale illegal construction in the Matityahu neighborhood of Modi’in Ilit. The High Court of Justice has already ordered a halt to the construction of 1,500 housing units, which were built contrary to the municipal master plan, and the State Prosecutor’s Office agreed to submit the matter for police investigation.

Among those who appeared before the investigating committee was Shmuel Heisler, the local council’s internal auditor, who exposed the case of the illegal construction. Dror Etkes, head of the Peace Now’s settlement monitoring team, also appeared before the committee. Etkes disclosed that during Guterman’s tenure, a school was built on privately owned Palestinian land. He has current photos of bulldozers preparing the ground for a new park, which is, amazingly enough, also on gentiles’ privately owned lands.