Category: In the Media

Gaza court questions accused in death of Italian

22 September 2011 | AFP

GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories — A Gaza military court on Thursday played the alleged confessions of four men accused in the April kidnap and murder of Italian peace activist Vittorio Arrigoni.

Of the four men, all from Gaza, two are accused of murder, a third of having helped in the kidnap and killing, and a fourth of providing the house where the body of Arrigoni was found hanging, hours after he was snatched.

The defendants appeared in Gaza City courtroom unshackled and in civilian clothes, all four sporting beards. They appeared calm and responded to questions from the court’s three judges.

The prosecution submitted four CDs purportedly containing videotaped confessions from each defendant.

The judges called each of the accused to the bench to observe a portion of their alleged confession being played on a laptop, which was not visible to the court’s audience.

“Is this your confession?” one of the judges asked Tamer al-Husasna, 25, who is charged with murder.

“Yes, but it was taken from me by force,” he replied, alleging he had been tortured by Hamas’s internal security forces.

The three other defendants also claimed that their confessions were extracted from them by torture, though they gave no details of their alleged mistreatment.

A lawyer observing the trial on behalf of a Gaza rights group told AFP on condition of anonymity that the trial had been adjourned to October 3, when the prosecution was expected to present additional witness testimony.

The three other defendants in the case are 23-year-old Mahmud al-Salfiti, who is charged with murder, Khadr Faruk Jerim, 25, who is accused of assisting the kidnap and murder, and Amer Abu Ghola, also 25, who allegedly provided the house in which Arrigoni was held and later killed.

Arrigoni, a long-time member of the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement, was kidnapped on April 14.

Shortly after his disappearance, a previously-unknown Salafist group released a YouTube video showing a bruised and bloodied Arrigoni and threatened to kill him within 30 hours if Hamas failed to release a group of jihadist prisoners.

Hamas security forces found Arrigoni’s body shortly afterward, ahead of the stated deadline, in an abandoned house in northern Gaza.

Among those the group demanded be freed was a leader of the Salafist group Tawhid wal Jihad (Unity and Holy War), which denied involvement in the incident.

Hamas quickly arrested several suspects in the case, and a week later raided a house where three more suspects were reportedly hiding.

Two were killed during the raid, and a third was taken into custody.

Arrigoni’s death shocked the local community and international aid workers and activists in Gaza, where he had lived and worked for much of the three years prior to his death.

Twilight zone / An organic bond

16 September 2011 | Haaretz

This is a bad story with a happy ending. It’s also a story that makes one happy, but still leaves a bit of a bitter taste in one’s mouth.

It’s the story of a Palestinian baby girl who was born during a period of unrelenting siege and curfew in her village and became ill, so that her parents had to carry her through the hills to a hospital. It’s the story of a Palestinian infant who needed a kidney transplant but for whom no suitable donor was found in the family; finally, a courageous South African woman decided to donate one of her kidneys to the little girl. It’s the story of how the donor got to Israel, after a complicated legal effort involving government authorities and after donations were collected to finance the operation. It’s the story of a successful transplant and the girl’s full and joyful recovery. But it is also a story that has something bad about it: At present, Israel is preventing the donor from visiting the girl whose life she saved.

Lina Taamallah

It was Lina Taamallah’s bad luck to be born on the day Israel launched Operation Defensive Shield in the West Bank, in the late winter of 2002. The delivery was in Rafadiyeh Hospital in Nablus. It was a rainy day, tanks and soldiers were everywhere, and most of the villages and towns were under curfew.

“It was a miracle that we made it to the hospital at all,” recalls her father, Fareed, 37, who holds a master’s degree in journalism and international relations from Birzeit University and works for the Palestinian Authority’s elections commission. His wife, Amina, a housewife, gave birth to Lina by C-section.

A few months later, Lina fell ill. For a week it was impossible to get her out of the house and to a doctor because of the curfew in their village, Qira, near Salfit. Lina, who developed a high fever and had severe diarrhea, was treated according to telephone instructions by a pediatrician, using medicines in her parents’ home.

In an article Fareed Taamallah published in The Los Angeles Times in May 2006, he described how his wife once had to carry Lina five kilometers through the hills of the West Bank to reach a doctor. In the wrenching article, Taamallah drew a connection between Lina’s ordeal at that time and the kidney failure that afflicted her a few months later.

When she was a year old, Lina contracted anemia. At first she was thought to be suffering from thalassemia, a blood disorder, but her parents had undergone genetic testing before the birth so that was ruled out. A few months later, Lina (who has three healthy siblings ) was diagnosed with renal failure. The family endured 16 hard months, in which she underwent dialysis every four hours, 24 hours a day, via a special machine suitable for infants.

Her physical development was arrested and her parents’ life became unendurable. Distraught, they turned their home into a kind of miniature hospital and they themselves became a medical team: It was essential to ensure that Lina did not come down with any infection. “I can’t bring myself to remember that period,” Fareed says now. “It was a nightmare.”

It was urgent to find a kidney donor for Lina, to save her life and then upgrade its quality. Her parents were willing to donate a kidney but were quickly found to be incompatible. Desperate, they looked for another solution. They examined the possibility of obtaining a kidney from Egypt or Pakistan, but discovered there are serious ethical problems about the way kidneys are harvested in those countries. Fareed says he did not know what to do.

Around this time, he met Anna Weekes (whose father is Jewish ), who later went by the name Majavu, from Cape Town; she was born in 1973. They met at a summer camp of Palestinian, Israeli and international peace activists in the West Bank. Anna stayed with the family after the camp disbanded and became a good friend. She knew Lina almost from the day of the girl’s birth. After a time, Anna was put on the Israeli authorities’ blacklist and deported due to her pro-Palestinian activity in the West Bank; she was in Britain at the time Lina fell ill. Fareed informed her about the development by e-mail, and she replied immediately that she would donate a kidney.

“I didn’t believe it. I thought she only wanted to express solidarity and friendship, and that the offer was meant just to make me happy,” Fareed says. He thanked Anna politely and added that at that point, he and his wife were then undergoing tests to see if they could be donors. Two months later, Fareed wrote to Anna that both they were incompatible, and Anna repeated her offer and emphasized that she was perfectly serious.

Anna then suggested that the transplant be done in Britain, however, under British law, organs must be donated by a member of the family. She decided to come to Israel for a compatibility check, and entered using a different passport which she carried legally. She underwent the examination in a private hospital in Nablus, in the meantime taking part in demonstrations against the separation fence in Bil’in and Budrus – and was again deported. She was found to be compatible.

“Now we had a compatible donor but one who could not enter the country,” Fareed recalls, going on to describe the family’s ordeal to save his daughter’s life: They considered having the operation done in South Africa, Egypt, Jordan or Pakistan, but discovered that in all these countries the donor had to be from the family. They found that the most suitable place for the transplant was Israel, where organs can be donated by people who are not family members after a professional committee considers the motives for the donation.

A few devoted friends of Fareed’s – Israeli peace activists who had heard about Lina’s illness – rallied to the cause. “We now faced two battles,” Fareed explains, “the battle to get Anna into the country and the battle to raise $40,000 to pay for the transplant.” They had to choose between Schneider Children’s Medical Center in Petah Tikva and Hadassah University Hospital in Ein Karem, Jerusalem. With the help of local friends, they chose the latter, which offered to do the operation at a discount. After lobbying, the Palestinian Authority agreed to cover half the cost of the transplant, the Peres Center for Peace also contributed and the rest was obtained through private donations. All that remained was to bring in Anna.

Attorney Gabi Lasky, who specializes in human rights cases, conducted negotiations with the Interior Ministry for Anna to be allowed to enter the country because of the special humanitarian situation. The authorities finally relented – on condition that Anna go directly from the airport to the hospital, have the kidney harvested and then return directly to the airport. Fareed himself was (and still is ) barred from entering Israel, and Lina’s mother took her for the preliminary tests at the hospital alone.

In September 2005, Lina entered Hadassah. Anna arrived from South Africa – after she was interrogated for several hours at the airport – and the operation was performed on October 2, 2005. Lina was three years old at the time. Her father also finally received a permit to be with her at the hospital. On the day of the operation, Anna’s fiance, Mandisi Majavu, arrived to be with her at the hospital.

The transplant was successfully performed by Prof. Ahmed Eid, head of the department of surgery at Hadassah in Ein Karem. Anna was discharged after a week and taken to Qira for recovery. She stayed there for about a month and flew home to South Africa on the day Lina was discharged. “We only had a few hours when the two of them were together,” Fareed relates.

On the last night of Anna’s stay in the village, the family held an improvised wedding reception for her and her fiance, who would be married a few weeks later in South Africa. The photos of the party in the family album reflect tremendous joy: Anna in a colorful and traditional embroidered Palestinian dress; Mandisi in a kaffiyeh and galabiya, both pure white, rolling amber beads with his fingers.

A short while later at the airport, Anna was again interrogated for a few hours before being allowed to leave. The security people told her she would never be allowed into Israel again. She did not sign any document, she said this week. Since then, she and Mandisi have become the parents of a daughter in South Africa. Her name: Bil’in Nkwenkwezi.

Lina recovered fully. We met her this week in the family’s second home, in an affluent suburb of El Bireh, next to Ramallah. She is a charming girl, full of life. One cannot see any outward signs of what she went through. She is in the fourth grade in the American School of Palestine, which is near her home.

Every few months she goes to Hadassah for a checkup, and because her father cannot enter Israel, an Israeli volunteer takes her from the checkpoint to the hospital. It’s usually Shraga Gorny, a 76-year-old Jerusalemite. Gorny, an electronics engineer, worked for 41 years at the Hebrew University and for the past 10, did medical research at Hadassah. Gorny regularly volunteers to drive Palestinian children for medical treatment at the hospital, which is how he met Lina and her family and got to know them well. (He is one of a group of Israelis – among them Herzliya-based peace activist Dorothy Naor – involved in such efforts.)

A few weeks ago, Gorny wrote me: “The girl who was like a matchstick before the transplant now looks beautiful and blooming.”

According to Fareed, Lina is not yet able to appreciate what Anna did for her. For her part, Anna told me this week, on the phone from Cape Town: “It was nothing. The body does not need two kidneys. I did not do anything special. I don’t think it was a noble act, as you said. I know the family and I have known Lina since she was born. I know the ordeals the family endured when they had to go through the hills by foot to get her to the hospital during the period of the curfew. It was only logical for me to donate a kidney for her. That was my duty. I just worry that Lina’s kidney will function and that no problems will arise in another few years.”

Anna is now a journalist in South Africa and raising Bil’in. Meanwhile, in a few weeks, the family will celebrate the sixth anniversary of the transplant. They celebrate Lina’s rebirth every year and their dream is for Anna to join them. Lina has never met Anna since the operation, but Anna is still banned from entering Israel.

A spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry’s Population and Immigration Authority sent the following response to Haaretz: “An examination of the details shows that there is no request by Mrs. Weekes to enter Israel. The interrogation she underwent when she left the country was not carried out by a representative of the authority, so, accordingly, in the absence of a reason of which we are not aware, there is nothing to prevent her from visiting Israel. “It should be clarified that if she wishes to enter the territories of the Palestinian Authority,” the spokeswoman continues, “she must arrange this with the coordinator of government activities in the territories. It is also desirable to check the question of why she was delayed [at the airport] with the relevant authorities.”

The Shin Bet security service provided this response to Haaretz: “Usually, the person authorized to either permit or deny the entry of Mrs. Weekes into Israel would be the interior minister, or someone associated with him. At this time, it is not his intention to recommend, to any authorized figure, to object to her entry unless negative up-to-date security-related information about her is received which would change his position.”

Settlers burn ISM tent in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah

14 September 2011 | The Alternative Information Center

At about 2am on Monday, 11 September, settlers in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah burnt to the ground an International Solidarity Movement tent that had been established to monitor and prevent settler violence in the neighborhood.

The tent, which thankfully was empty at the time it was torched, had been located in the front yard of the al-Kurd family home since March 2011. The Al-Kurd family, who have  lived on the property since 1956, reside in the back section of their home while a constantly rotating cast of Orthodox Jewish young men occupy the front extension of their home. This is due to an Israeli court ruling that forbids the Al-Kurd family from living in their home extension, which they built with their own hands in 2000. Since it was occupied with settlers in 2008, the al-Kurd family has been forced to endure an uneasy, tense and potentially violent co-existence with settlers in their own home. The ISM has maintained a constant presence outside the al-Kurd home to monitor this situation and demonstrate international solidarity.

“I was in the house,” says Nabil al-Kurd, “and at 1.30 a.m. I heard something. I went outside, I saw firemen and I saw the policemen.” Mohammed Sawbag, resident of the neighborhood, adds that “the police asked for proof, photos or something, pictures that we took- we have our cameras around the site, and computer screens inside Nabil’s house. We will send a disc of what happened to the police.”

Settler violence is nothing new for this area of East Jerusalem accustomed to political, civil and ideological conflict. In 1956, 28 Palestinian refugee families were allocated the land by UNRWA and the Jordanian government, the latter controlling East Jerusalem after the 1948 Middle East War. The Promised property deeds to the land were never delivered  to the families, and after the 1967 Middle East War the Sephardic Community Committee and the Knesset Israel Committee produced Ottomon-era title deeds alleging Jewish ownership of the land from the late 1800s. Despite the dubious authenticity of the documents (a trip to the Ottoman archives in Turkey in the late 1990s revealed that the alleged documents do not exist in their records, and the documents themselves lack essential specifying features characteristic of the era, such as detailed descriptions of the property), and despite the fact that ownership guaranteed by the documents is merely a primary registration of ownership that does not allow for the uprooting of third parties who inhabit the land, the Committees quickly began demanding rent payments from, and seeking to evict, the 28 families of Sheikh Jarrah.

The vicious legal battle which has plagued the community since the mid-1970s took a drastic turn in 2009, when four families were forcibly evicted by Israel from their homes. Now, numerous settler families live side-by-side with the 23 remaining Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah, who are embroiled in court battles and live suspended in a precarious state of uncertainty.

Why does Israel want this land? The Civic Coalition for Defending Palestinians’ Rights in Jerusalem, in its December 2009 report ‘Dispossession and Eviction in Jerusalem: The Stories of Sheikh Jarrah’, writes that “Sheikh Jarrah’s…strategic importance is based on the fact that Israeli control over this area…will form a Jewish ring or buffer between what Israel intends to keep, Jerusalem with a Jewish majority, under its direct control”[1]. The report continues that “collectively the various development initiatives in Sheikh Jarrah are intended to advance the creation of Israeli strongholds in the historic basin surrounding the Old City- with Sheikh Jarrah to the north, Silwan to the south, and the Mount of Olives to the east. Sheikh Jarrah is situated between the Old City and Mount Scopus which is home to the Hebrew University and Hadassah Hospital. In order to establish continuity through this valued corridor linking West Jerusalem with locations of strategic, historical, and religious significance to the Jewish population, a succession of Israeli neighborhoods were built to link West Jerusalem and Mount Scopus”[2].

The battle of Sheikh Jarrah residents against the Israeli Commissions is thus simultaneously a battle against the Israeli occupation, annexation and colonization of East Jerusalem.  Standing in front of the charred ruins of the ISM tent, Sheikh Jarrah resident Mohammed Sawbag relates how “from the beginning they don’t want this kind of protest. It makes them nervous….they don’t like the tent, with or without [people in it]…they don’t like this kind of symbol”.

This recent act of violence is the most extreme in a string of assaults over the last month. “It’s not the first time they tried to burn it”, relates one ISM activist. “In July settlers tried to destroy it, they ripped the side, entered the tent, and were urinating on the mattresses, we had to get new blankets. Then they urinated and defacated on the sofa” outside the tent. The most horrific incident occurred in late July. “We were sitting outside, it was 2 a.m. and from the small window next to the tent they threw all this shit in the tent, it went on the mattress, on the floor, inside, everywhere. We cleaned and then an hour later, shit again. Then we cleaned again and the settlers went out, pretending they didn’t do it.”

The blaze in the front yard of the al-Kurd family home came as a shock to the close-knit Palestinian community of Sheikh Jarrah. Says Nabil al-Kurd, “nobody does anything like this except for the settlers, because nobody in the [neighborhood] can do anything to my house, because they are good. If I am good with you, I don’t do anything bad.”

The settlers have left visible signs of their animosity throughout the property. The front door and surrounding courtyard of the Al-Kurd family’s home extension, which settlers have occupied since 2008, is adorned with layers of Israeli flags and Stars of David, a display that oversteps the boundaries of religious-cultural pride and enters the terrain of sheer brazenness and stubborn self-assertion. This display pales, however, in comparison to the occupied house across the street, which, in addition to being draped with Israeli flags, is crowned with an enormous 10-foot tall menorah on the roof. The walls of the Al-Kurd courtyard are emblazoned with graffiti like ‘Fuck Palestine’ and the logo of the Jewish Defense League, and most of the colorful drawings on the walls, painted by activists along with the children of the Al-Kurd home and the Sheikh Jarrah community, have been scrawled over with black spray paint. Slogans like ‘Free Paly’ and images of Palestinian flags wrapped in barbed wire, however, still remain on the courtyard walls as testaments to resistance and solidarity.

As ISM will continue its presence in Sheikh Jarrah, Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity is developing new tactics to raise awareness and combat the occupation throughout East Jerusalem. Says Sarah- “Sheikh Jarrah isn’t an isolated incident, you can’t isolate the incident in Sheikh Jarrah from what’s going on in all of East Jerusalem. So through the past year we’ve been demonstrating in other places, and the objective now is to bring this situation to new audiences, that maybe may not come to a demonstration because they’re scared, or don’t like to demonstrate. So we will do this by way of tours and by founding an information center which will be a base in Sheikh Jarrah, and not something which will just be on a weekly basis, and raising the situation there as related to the rest of East Jerusalem…. the point is we are working out of very basic human rights…it’s about fighting for equality and justice. And obviously what’s going on in East Jerusalem is that Palestinians are being discriminated against- that’s why it’s easier for Jewish settlers to take over the land, because the law favors them.”

For now, the police are investigating the al-Kurd family footage, and searching for the suspect(s). Meanwhile, ISMers maintain a nightly presence in Sheikh Jarrah, sitting out under the stars until a new tent is constructed. Says Mohammed Sawbag, “they [the settlers] will not try to do anything for the next few days, because the situation is bad for them. We have pictures of who did it. They are afraid. A settler told me he was not responsible, that he doesn’t know who did it. I told him you are lying! He tried to tell me that during the last month there were no insults and nothing bad has happened. He is lying!”

Nabil al-Kurd said it best as he stood in his front yard, next to the charred remnants of the ISM tent, three feet away from the words ‘Fuck Palestine’ scrawled on his courtyard wall, beside the home extension which legally is not his, though he built it with his bare hands- “This is democracy in Israel!”

– – –

[1]http://www.civiccoalition-jerusalem.org/ccdprj.ps/new/pdfs/Sheikh%20Jarrah%20Report%20(2).pdf. page 9

[2]page 19

[3]http://www.en.justjlm.org/584

Israel targets Vittorio Arrigoni School in embattled Jordan Valley

11 September 2011 | The Alternative Information Center, Ben Lorber

As schools around the world begin another year of instruction, one school, near to completion in one of the most grief-stricken and resilient areas of occupied Palestine, has suffered a massive set-back because the Israeli military has carried away its infrastructure- the Vittorio Arrigone school, in the small village of Ras Al Auja in the Jordan Valley.

The Arrigoni school, named after the Italian International Solidarity Movement activist killed in Gaza this April, began in February as a small tent school in the village of Ras Al Auja, and began evolving into a more permanent mud-brick and caravan structure in April. Built jointly by the Ras Al Auja community and the activist group Jordan Valley Solidarity, the school, once built, will educate young children up to the age of 13 in one of the areas of the West Bank hardest hit by the Israeli occupation. From the time that Israel seized control of the area in 1967 until the present, the resident Palestinian population has decreased from 320,000 residents to 56,000, as 36 primarily agricultural Israeli settlements, housing 6,400 settlers, have been constructed on 50% of the Jordan Valley’s land.

Ras Al Auja is a Bedouin community seven km west of the larger community of Al Auja. Both serve as paradigmatic examples of the devastating impact of Israeli occupation on Bedouin in the Jordan Valley. Until Israel’s occupation, Al Auja was for millennia an oasis, famous for its ever-flowing spring. As it says on the website of Jordan Valley Solidarity, “people would come to Al Auja from all over to swim, fish and sit among the banana groves that once grew there.” In 1972, the Israeli water company Mekorot, which has monopolized the West Bank water,  dug two deep water wells in Al Auja, cutting off the flow of water before it reached the village. “These wells lowered the water table, drying out the spring. Today the area is a desert, crossed with dried-up canals that see water one or two weeks every year during the rainy season.”

As is commonplace for the larger West Bank Bedouin communities, families must use tractors and mobile water tanks to bring water to their homes and villages, at considerable personal expense. The estimated amount of water that one Palestinian in the Valley consumes per day, for drinking as well as all other activities, is some 70 litres. This is the amount of water it takes to flush a toilet. Jordan Valley settlers, on the other hand, enjoy free access to water and, from the comfort of their heavily subsidized, modern settlement homes, individually consume about 33 times as much water as their Palestinian neighbors in the Valley.

To make matters worse, the families of Al Auja and Ras Al Auja, who settled there after expulsion from Beer Sheva during the 1948 Nakba, used to have “over 100 sheep or goats each, which they grazed on the mountains and watered at the spring”. Now, the settlements of Yitav, Niran and ‘Omer’s Farm’ have colonized the surrounding mountains, an army military checkpoint borders Ras Al Auja to the south, and two enormous settler-only water towers cast a grim shade over the dry Al Auja spring. ‘Omer’s Farm’, in particular, has stolen half the land of Ras Al Auja in the five years of its existence. It consists of a single family, on a hilltop, surrounded by stolen farmland, heavily guarded by the Israeli military.

The men of Al Auja, according to Jordan Valley Solidarity, “are reduced to surviving by working in Israel’s illegal settlements, earning a pittance. The area feels like little more than a work camp, reminiscent of the townships of apartheid South Africa, with all the men away during the day in the settlements.” The Bedouin now work for settlers, to farm land that the latter stole from them. While they were previously self-sufficient farmers, the residents now wage-laborers making scarcely enough to get by.

In March 2011, Jordan Valley Solidarity joined with community members to construct a school for children of the 130+ families of Ras Al Auja. Over the course of two weeks, volunteers sewed sack cloths together to construct a makeshift tent school, where women from the community began to teach 30 children, mostly aged between 5 and 8, a basic curriculum of math, English, Arabic, geography and history. It was vitally important to establish a school in Ras Al Auja, says Jordan Valley Solidarity coordinator, volunteer and driving force ‘Jane’, who has been involved with this project since its inception, because “if you don’t have education when you’re a small child, that means that when you go to school you’re behind already. Education is a basic human right. These people have a right to education in their community.”

Before construction of this school, the children of Ras Al Auja were forced to walk 7 kilometres each morning to the school in al Auja. As the foot path trailed right next to two Israeli settlements, exposing children to regular physical and psychological settler harassment, many parents were wary of sending their young children to school. In addition, numerous fathers are off working in these very Israeli settlements, thus unavailable to assist their children in the mornings. Numerous children, therefore, were left without an education until later years.

Today, because the new school in Ras Al Auja only educates children aged 7 to 13, those children over 13 lucky enough to continue their education still need to take this daily trek to the Al Auja Secondary School, where they can study for the Tawjihi (matriculation exams). Mossem Zubaidat, a volunteer with Jordan Valley Solidarity who also works with the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education, relates how “there is no transport to take them to the village, so they use their legs to go to school in summer and winter. It is hard for them to put the bag on their back and walk all the distance…We need to build the school because in Ras Al Auja the people live in boxes, not in houses, they live in tents! We are certain to build a school there, it is our land and we can build a school anywhere!”

The Israeli army does not agree. The Area A, B and C zoning system was established for the West Bank after the 1993 Oslo Accords to designate areas of full Palestinian control, joint Palestinian civil and Israeli military control, and full Israeli control, respectively. Because 95% of the Jordan Valley, including al Auja and Ras al Auja, falls under Area C (50% because of Israeli settlements and 45% because of military training grounds and nature reserves), this means that almost nowhere in the Valley can the Bedouin build any permanent structure without requiring an Israeli permit, which is expensive to apply for and almost impossible to obtain. Between January 2000 and September 2007, Israel issued almost 5,000 demolition orders against Palestinian structures in the Jordan Valley. Of those, 1,663 demolitions were carried out – Israeli bulldozers tore down houses, schools, animal shelters and even entire villages.

The stated purpose of Israel’s vise-like grip on ownership and control of the Valley is to hold a security buffer space between Israel and Jordan, necessary to defend the country; in reality, however, Israel covets the Valley because (1) the West Bank, which could serve as a future Palestinian state, is thereby surrounded on all sides by Israel; (2) the West Bank is thereby cut off from economic interaction and communication with Jordan, and the rest of the Middle East; and (3) in the words of the soon to be published Jordan Valley Solidarity factbook To Exist Is To Resist, the Jordan Valley’s “abundance of water resources, fertile soil and natural minerals offer competitive economic advantages in agriculture, industry and tourism. It also constitutes a geographical “reservoir” of land where the Palestinians could establish housing projects and public facilities.”

Israel’s policy of constant settlement expansion, pervasive military checkpoints, destruction or closure of Palestinian roads (the last few years have seen 17 new roadblocks and 4 new checkpoints in the Jordan Valley), construction of Israeli-only bypass roads and physical intimidation, harassment, and outright demolition of Bedouin villages in Area C is evidence of a conscious attempt to gradually exterminate a Palestinian presence in the Jordan Valley, to cement Israeli control and solidify a long-term Israeli presence that remains illegal under international law. Jane explains the role of Jordan Valley Solidarity in resisting the Israeli occupation: “By supporting communities to construct infrastructure for basic services, we support them to stay in their communities, on their land- because the Israelis want them to leave the Jordan Valley, or to make them move into the 5% of the land which is in area A or B to create an Israeli state with Palestinian ghettoes.” The establishment of a school in Ras Al Auja, like countless other projects in the Valley, is not primarily a gesture of humanitarian aid, but rather a symbol of international solidarity. “The aim of lack of education is to drive people from their land. What that means is that the right to education for people is really important…as a basic human right, it’s not something that can be taken away from children…Therefore our motto is ‘to exist is to resist’, and the people in Ras Al Auja are existing and resisting just by being there, and being on their land is their resistance, so we support them in their resistance…together, [we are] using their own land that the people live on to create a fact on the ground to resist the Israeli occupation.”

It was in this spirit of resistance that, in April, it was decided that a tent school, though an important first step, was too small and impermanent to meet the community’s needs. Accordingly, over 100 international volunteers and community members began constructing two permanent mud-brick classroom buildings. After the death of Italian International Solidarity Movement activist Vittorio Arrigoni in Gaza that April, the Ras Al Auja community, which personally knows the vital role of international activism, requested to name the school Vittorio Arrigoni. From the Jordan Valley Solidarity website- “Vittorio was, and will remain, a great symbol of resistance. To give his name to one of our schools is an honour, and we will do our best to make this school another example of resistance against the occupation.” On 25 April 25t Luisa Morgantini, former Vice President of the European Parliament, Majed Al Fityani, Jericho Governor, 50 Italian volunteers, members of the local community, and Jordan Valley Solidarity volunteers laid the first brick of the Vittorio Solidarity school while singing ‘Bella Ciao’ and the Socialist International anthem.

It is this spirit of resistance that the Israeli army is acting to suppress. During the month of Ramadan, the Ras Al Auja school joyously received a donation of two large caravans, which would serve as classrooms. Yet at 10.30 a.m. on 7 September, in Jane’s words, “the Israeli occupation force arrived and removed the caravans on lorries, leaving paperwork…they made all the village stay back and declared it was a closed military zone while they removed the caravans”.

Jericho Governor Majed Al Fityani, who laid the first brick of the Vittorio Arrigoni school in April, said Wednesday afternoon that “we were surprised by the Israeli actions this morning, we were not expecting this from the Israelis. We are going to request an official answer from the Israelis for why they took the caravans…it is the duty of the government to provide education for the people. it is a question of providing services and facilities for the students, free of charge. It is very difficult to provide services because the school is in Area C, so it is impossible for us to build structures there.”

The start of classes will be postponed until further accommodations are arranged for the students. In addition, a celebration and official announcement ceremony for the school, planned for September 15, will now be postponed.

Nonetheless, the community of Ras Al Auja, along with Jordan Valley Solidarity, remains resilient in the face of this new obstacle. Explains Mossem Zubaidat, “its not the first school we built with Jordan Valley Solidarity. The first school was in Jiftlik, it started in tents, now it’s a building. The second school is in Fasayil. We built it from mud and soil and tents, and now it has become a building. So we have experience with the Israelis about these situations. We are sure that we are going to build that school again, and we must build that school for these people. We are going to talk to the media, we are going to talk to the Jericho Governorate, and we are going to talk to the community, to do something about it. The army says it is illegal, but we say it is legal, because it is Palestinian land!…We have to build the school because we need to stand with these people in their land, not to leave their land to the Israelis. We are going to fight to build that school again, we are not going to surrender!”

Trial over murder of pro-Palestinian activist begins in Gaza

9 September 2011 | Haaretz

Four surviving defendants charged with kidnapping and murder of Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni; court proceedings postponed until September 22.

The trial of the four surviving defendants allegedly involved in the kidnapping and murder of Italian journalist and International Solidarity Movement activist Vittorio Arrigoni began on Thursday in a Gaza military court, the ISM website reported.

Arrigoni was abducted earlier this year by members of the Monotheism and Holy War group in Gaza. The group initially claimed in a video that they would free the activist if Hamas would release one of their leaders whom they had arrested.

However, Arrigoni’s body was found hanging in the home of a Palestinian militant in the Gaza strip, mere hours after he was reportedly kidnapped.

The hearing began on Thursday morning and was open to the public. The four defendants, Abu Ghoul, age 25, Khader Jram, age 26, Mohammed Salfi, age 23, and Hasanah Tarek, age 25, appeared to be in good health at the hearing, the report said.

Attorneys from the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, which holds power of attorney for Vittorio’s family in Bulciago, Italy, requested that they be allowed to take part in the trial, the report said.

The presiding military judge Abu Omar Atallah denied the request, saying that Palestinian military law does not allow third-party-participation in criminal trials. However, he said that the case and its files would remain open to PCHR and the public, the website said.

The prosecution reportedly then introduced evidence that the defense counsel claimed had not been previously available to them, and requested that they be given time to revise their legal strategy, the report said.

Prosecutors asked Atallah to postpone the testimony from their witnesses, the report said, requesting further time to prepare, The defense objected to this request, saying that the testimony had been scheduled to begin on Thursday.

The judge took both the prosecution and the defense’s requests into account, scheduling the next hearing for September 22, the report said.