Vittorio waves the Palestinian flag on a boat off the coast of Gaza.
After leaving Cairo this morning at dawn, the 80 activists of the ‘Restiamo Umani’ convoy have entered Gaza at 4pm after crossing five Egyptian check-points.
The convoy will remain in the Gaza strip until the 17 of May to meet the Palestinian people who day by day are trying to resist the Israeli military occupation. The convoy will also join the commemorations for the thirtieth day of Vittorio’s death and for Nakba, the day of the Palestinian catastrophe, which will take place between the 14 and the 15 of May.
Meanwhile, a second convoy, with over 100 buses, will leave from Tahir square in Cairo, the square that has become the symbol of recent popular revolutions in the Middle East , and will try to cross the Rafah pass on the 15 of May. This is a collective movement that wants to show full support to the fight of the Palestinian people for self-determination, to their everyday resistance against military occupation and to the right of all Palestinian refugees to come back to their land.
Dr Saeb ErakatMember of the PLO Executive Committee and Chief Palestinian Negotiator Dr. Saeb Erakat was reacting to a report appearing today in the Israeli online Haaretz confirming that Israel stripped almost 140,000 West Bank Palestinians of their residency rights upon their departure from the occupied Palestinian territories between 1967 and 1994.
This represents 5.5% of today’s Palestinian population living in the West Bank . It also excluded around 20.000 Palestinian Jerusalemites whose residency rights have been revoked and hence have been denied the ability to return home.
“This report confirms our claims that Israel is engaging in a systematic policy of displacement in order to gain land for the expansion of more settlement-colonies and to change the demographic composition of the occupied Palestinian territories,” Dr. Erakat stated.
“This policy should not only be seen as a war crime as it is under international law; it also has a humanitarian dimension: we are talking about people who left Palestine to study or work temporarily but who could not return to resume their lives in their country with their families. It has been a crippling and life-changing situation that thousands of families have been forced to deal with since 1967,” Dr. Erakat added.
In statement sent out to press by the PLO office in Ramallah, Dr. Erakat pointed out that the report provides evidence that the Palestinian catastrophe is an ongoing process.
“Israel ought to restore residency rights to our people and permit families who have been separated for decades to be reunited. Israel’s actions violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states that ‘everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country’.”
In light of such Israeli actions, Dr. Erakat called on those states in the international community that have yet to recognize the Palestinian state on the 1967 border to join those who have already done so. “Our right to self determination must not be subject to negotiations, including the right of our families to live in their homeland. It is time to put an end to the pain and humiliation caused by the continuation of the Israeli occupation,” he concluded.
In a substantial victory for the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, a major German rail transportation company — Deutsche Bahn, or DB — has pulled out of the $550 million illegal A1 train project, which is designed to connect Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
The projected route of the rail project cuts more than 6 kilometers through the occupied West Bank in two places, and construction work has already been heavily underway. Palestinian villagers, some of them already refugees from Israel’s ethnic cleansing operations in 1948 and further displacement in 1967, have lost their land due to the train project. The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC) stated last December that:
In blatant violation of its obligations under international humanitarian and human rights law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention, Israel as the occupying power has, without military necessity, expropriated privately owned Palestinian land with the aim of constructing permanent infrastructure, ostensibly to serve the needs of its own civilian population. When completed, the A1 high-speed train will exclusively serve Israeli commuters between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
The fact that the A1 project is also intended to serve Israel’s long-standing policy of forced population transfer is clearly evident in its route, which will force Palestinians, once more, off their lands. The route is designed to expropriate more Palestinian land from and undermine Palestinian means of subsistence in vulnerable communities that have already been victims of massive dispossession and displacement in the past, in order to make place for Israeli infrastructure that serves the dominant Jewish population.
On 9 May, the Financial Times reported that Deutsche Bahn (DB) ostensibly pulled out of the A1 rail project due to pressure from activists “angered by the activities of [DB’s] international consulting arm, which provided advice on the electrification of the new track linking Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.” The article continues:
Opponents said the project was illegal because it used occupied Palestinian territory for a project that would be used primarily, or solely, by Israeli citizens. They also argued that the new line could have easily been built on Israeli territory alone, making land confiscations in the West Bank unnecessary.
… According to a letter sent by Germany’s ministry for transport to a member of parliament, the operator faced criticism for its involvement from the government itself: “The federal government pointed out [to Deutsche Bahn] that the project of the Israeli state railway is problematic from a foreign policy point of view and potentially breaches international law,” it said. The letter added that the German operator confirmed “in writing” that there would be no further involvement of its international subsidiary in “this politically very sensitive project”.
Merav Emir, an activist with Who Profits, the campaign group that leads the lobbying effort against the rail project, welcomed the decision. “I want to congratulate the German government for making such a clear and bold statement about the illegality of this train route under international law,” she said. “We call on other European governments to follow suit in making sure that companies in their countries abide by international law.”
The BDS Movement website stated on Monday that “this is one of the first known government interventions relating corporate complicity with Israeli violations of international law … German BDS campaigners and the Coalition of Women for Peace [the parent organization of Who Profits] have been targeting Deutsche Bahn over their involvement in the project.” They added that a broad coalition in Italy “has been formed to oppose the involvement of Parma-based Pizzarotti” in the A1 rail project.
A year ago this month, Israel shocked the world when it attacked a humanitarian convoy on its way to Gaza in international waters, killing 9 civilians, injuring dozens more, and kidnapping hundreds. Today — as Hamas and Fatah negotiate internal unity and Egypt moves to permanently open Gaza’s southern border, consequences of the Arab Spring — the international solidarity movement musters an even greater flotilla of ships to challenge Israel’s illegal actions against the Palestinians. As anticipated, Israel promises to do everything it can to once again stop an organized, nonviolent force of civil society standing with Palestinians in their struggle for equal rights and self-determination.
Threatening to hijack boats in international waters and kill or kidnap passengers is, of course, a serious crime. But Israel’s threats and actual uses of force are nothing new. For decades, Israel has been hijacking international vessels throughout the Mediterranean and kidnapping or killing passengers. To understand the current situation involving civil resistance to Israeli policy, a glance at Israel’s aggressive history in international waters is in order.
In 1976, according to Knesset member Mattiyahu Peled, the Israeli Navy began to capture boats belonging to Lebanese Muslims — turning them over to Lebanese Christian allies, who killed the owners — in an effort to abort a movement towards reconciliation that had been arranged between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel.
Then after a prisoner exchange in November 1983, a front-page story in the New York Times mentioned 37 Arab prisoners who had been held at the notorious Ansar prison camp, and who “had been seized recently by the Israeli Navy as they tried to make their way from Cyprus to Tripoli [Lebanon].”
In June, 1984, Israel hijacked a ferryboat operating between Cyprus and Lebanon five miles off the Lebanese coast with a burst of machinegun fire and forced it to Haifa, where nine people were removed and held, including one woman and a schoolboy returning from England for a holiday in Beirut. Two passengers were released two weeks later, while the fate of the others remained unreported.
In its report on the Israeli “interception” (more accurately, hijacking) of the ferryboat, the Times observes that prior to the 1982 war, “the Israeli Navy regularly intercepted ships bound for or leaving ports of Tyre and Sidon in the south and searched them for guerillas,” as usual accepting Israeli claims at face value. Syrian “interception” of civilian Israeli ships on a similar pretext might be regarded a bit differently.
On April 25, 1985, several Palestinians were kidnapped from civilian boats operating between Lebanon and Cyprus and sent to secret destinations in Israel, a fact that became public knowledge (in Israel) when one was interviewed on Israeli television, leading to an appeal to the High Court of Justice for information; presumably there were others, unknown.
In late-July 1985, Israeli gunboats attacked a Honduran-registered cargo ship a mile from the port of Sidon, delivering cement according to its Greek captain, setting it ablaze with 30 shells and wounding civilians in subsequent shore bombardment when militiamen returned the fire. The mainstream press did not even bother to report that the following day Israeli gunboats sank a fishing boat and damaged three others, while a Sidon parliamentarian called on the UN to end U.S.-backed Israeli “piracy.”
It is considered Israel’s prerogative to carry out hijacking of ships and kidnappings, at will — with the approval of opinion in the United States — whatever the facts may be.
When a popular nonviolent uprising by Palestinians in the occupied territories began in December 1987, Israel responded with harsh violence, mass beatings and deportations. After Israel ignored a January 1988 United Nations Security Council resolution calling on the state to “ensure the safe and immediate return” of deportees, the PLO organized a Ship of Return for 130 deportees to sail from Cyprus to Israel. More than five hundred international supporters and journalists also intended to sail — including Israelis who risked arrest for boarding the ship.
Menacing reactions to the ship plans by Israeli heads of state were reported and passed without comment by the major media. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir called the planned voyage “a declaration of war” — remarking the ship would be carrying “murderers (and) terrorists” — while Defense Minister Rabin added that Israel was “compelled not to let [the organizers] achieve their purpose, and we will do that in whatever ways we find.”
Following Israel’s vows to prevent the voyage, the ship was bombed in port before sailing. After the explosion, the Times quoted an Israeli Transport Ministry official who remarked that, should another ship attempt to sail against Israel’s will, “its fate will be the same.”
The next attempt came twenty years later, in August 2008. This time it was the newly formed Free Gaza Movement, a group of international Palestinian solidarity activists, who decided to gather ships to violate Israel’s criminal siege of Gaza, imposed after Hamas was democratically elected in January 2006. Shortly before the ships sailed, leading Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz reported on discussions of defense officials who concluded that “allowing the ships to reach the Gaza Coastline could create a dangerous precedent.”
Despite Israel’s threats to stop the voyage, two small fishing boats, “Free Gaza” and “Liberty,” successfully reached the Gaza coast, becoming the first vessels to reach Gazan shores in over 41 years. The Free Gaza movement would organize four more successful sea voyages to Gaza over the next four months. During and in the months following Israel’s massive 22-day assault on Gaza in December-January 2008-09, which killed more than 1400 people, Israeli naval forces violently thwarted three Free Gaza vessels, culminating with Israel’s massacre of civilians aboard the Gaza Freedom flotilla last May.
Israel has arrested, beaten, gassed, tortured, deported and killed internationals — essentially a taste of the measures it inflicts daily against the Palestinians. But nothing has succeeded in deterring the international solidarity movement from resisting Israel’s violence and aggression, and nonviolently supporting the Palestinian freedom struggle. Despite the impunity with which Israel operates, thanks to firm U.S. support and participation, civil resistance to Israel’s actions continues to grow exponentially.
International law looks good on paper, but its enforcement requires political will. As the Civil Rights and other social change movements in the United States and elsewhere have shown, citizen action is an important part of creating political will, limited only by the choice to act. People acting together in the name of freedom, human rights, and democracy, can constitute a powerful force that even the most oppressive regimes cannot withstand.
The success of the next flotilla — and all those to follow — will largely depend on the will and choice of the international community to resist U.S.-backed Israeli crimes in the occupied territories and on the sea — and to stand with Palestinians until the death and the suffering ends and a lasting and honorable peace is achieved.
The Special Rapporteur’s expert opinion will be filed to the Ofer Military Court by the defense next Monday in a pre-trial hearing in the case of 14 year-old Islam Dar Ayyoub who was taken from his bed at gun-point by Israeli soldiers in the middle of the night and questioned unlawfully.
14 year-old Islam Dar Ayyoub was arrested on January 23 by a large group of soldiers who stormed his family’s home in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh in the middle of the night. He was taken from his bed at gunpoint , beaten up by the soldiers who arrested him and denied him sleep. His arrest, only a week after a previous military night-time raid on his house, is in line with a common Israeli tactic of callously arresting minors in order to use their confessions against many others in the quest to suppress anti occupation demonstrations.
In addition to the report prepared by the Special Rapporteur in regards to such unjustified arrests of minors in night-time military operations, defense witnesses will also include Adv. Lymor Goldstine on the denial of legal counsel, a psychiatrist’s expert opinion on the psychological effects of such arrests, as well as the testimony of the 14 year-old himself.
Despite being a minor, Dar Ayyoub was questioned by the Israeli police the following morning for nearly five hours, without being allowed sleep since his arrest. He was denied his right to legal counsel even while his lawyer was present at the police station, as well as his right to have a parent present during his questioning.
During a previous hearing in the defense’s motion to declare his confession inadmissible, it was proved that Dar Ayyoub was not informed of his right to remain silent, and even told that “It would be best to tell the truth” by his interrogators. It was also acknowledged that only one of his four interrogators was qualified as a youth interrogator.
Due to the fundamental flaws in Dar Ayyoub’s interrogation, the court has ordered his release from custody on April 4th. While no longer behind bars, the military prosecution refuses to drop the charges against him, apparently because his confession is used as the main evidence in the trials of many others.
During his interrogation, Dar Ayyoub confessed to having thrown stones at Israeli soldiers during the weekly demonstrations against settlement expansion in his village, Nabi Saleh. He also implicated many others in committing similar offenses. Among those incriminated by his confession are grassroots organizers Bassem Tamimi and Naji Tamimi. Dar Ayyoub told his interrogators a fictitious story alleging that the two organized groups of youth into “brigades”, each with its own responsibility during the demonstrations: some have allegedly been in charge of stone-throwing, some of blocking roads, others of distracting the army and so on. The two have been arrested and indicted mostly based on his statement, and are currently awaiting trial.
