Category: Press Releases

Israel’s Wall puts Emad Burnat of Bil’in and his children in hospital.

At 5:20 pm on Saturday 22nd November, Bi’lin Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements member, Emad Burnat, was admitted to hospital in very serious condition after his tractor flipped over against Israel’s Apartheid Wall. The wall – which in Bil’in is composed of metal fence and barbwire – cuts through the village’s farmland.

The video documenter of the Bi’lin’s anti-wall struggle was returning with his children from plowing his fields when he was forced to detour down a steep hill in order to return to the village because the wall separates his home from his land. Loosing control of the tractor on the sharp decline, it overturned directly into the metal mesh and razor wire.

While his children were taken to hospital in Ramallah, the army medic who treated Burnat decided to send him to the Tel Aviv hospital out of fear that he wouldn’t make to Ramallah alive. None-the-less, it still took the ambulance an hour to arrive at the checkpoint and Burnat had to be transferred from a Red Crescent to an Israeli ambulance before being taken to Tel Aviv.

“While this is a tragic accident, the blame can be laid directly at the feet of Israel’s occupation and land confiscation by the wall, which forces a dangerous burden and risk on Palestinian farmers,” says popular committee chairperson and cousin of Emad, Eyad Burnat.

“Israel’s checkpoint system only adds to this hardship by preventing the speedy medical attention to Palestinians when necessary,” he added.

At present Burnat’s spleen has been removed and doctors have yet to stitch up his wounds because his liver is still bleeding. Doctors are exercising cautious optimism, reporting that he arrived at the hospital in time and was a healthy man. Burnat’s children were treated for mild injuries.

UK Guardian: Palestinian notables denounce UK-Leviev embassy deal

UK Guardian, letters section
Nov. 22, 2008

It is with great dismay that we learned of the British government’s plans to rent space for its new Tel Aviv embassy location from Lev Leviev’s company Africa-Israel. Africa-Israel builds Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Additionally, Leviev’s company Leader is building the settlement of Zufim. Israeli settlements are illegal under international law.

We welcome the recent decision by the British government to take action against Israeli settlements by cracking down on settlement exports. However, renting space for the embassy from a settlement-builder would send a contradictory message, signalling clear and active complicity with illegal settlement construction. It is this kind of international complicity that allows Israel to continue to violate international law with impunity, thereby eroding the credibility of international law at the global level and in relation to occupied Palestinian territory. The UK Foreign Office says no lease has been signed but provides no assurance that such a deal will not take place. We therefore call on the British government to publicly guarantee that it will not do business with settlement-builders such as Lev Leviev and his company Africa-Israel.

Hanan Ashrawi Palestinian legislative council, Dr. Mustafa Barghouti PLC, Atallah Hannah Archbishop of Sebastia, Khaleda Jarrar PLC, Hussam Khader PLC, Ikrimah Sabri Sheikh of al-Aqsa Mosque, Bethlehem

Human Rights Observers start hunger strike in Israel

Massiyahu Prison, Lida, Israel (20 November, 2008) – Three Human Rights Observers (HRO) with the International Solidarity Movement began a hunger strike today in protest over the illegal confiscation of Paestinian fishing boats by Israel. The three HROs, Darlene Wallach of the U.S., Vittorio Arrigoni of Italy, and Andrew Muncie of Scotland, were forcibly abducted by the Israeli Navy on Tuesday, while accompanying unarmed Palestinian fishermen off the coast of the Gaza Strip.

According to Wallach, “We were fishing about 7 miles off the shores of Gaza. The Israeli soldiers came on board the three boats via four Zodiacs. The frogmen came up and over each boat. They used a taser on Vik while he was still on the boat, then tried to push him backwards onto a sharp piece of wood. He jumped into the sea to avoid being hurt more than he already was and was in the water for quite a while. Then they came for me and forced me into the Zodiac at the point of a gun. They kidnapped me and Andrew and Vik and all of the Palestinian fishermen.”

Israel abducted and later released 15 Palestinian fishermen during the incident, and confiscated their fishing boats. The HROs are refusing to be deported, and refusing to eat, until the boats are returned– undamaged–to their rightful owners in Gaza.

“We R on hunger strike and want 2 go before judge in court. No deportation til boats are returned 2 fishermen,” was the text message sent out from jail by the HROs this afternoon.

At court today, HRO Andrew Muncie asked the judge under what law they had been arrested. According to the judge, their detention was authorized by the Oslo Accords “because it is forbidden by military law for you to fish 7 and a half miles off the coast. It is a no-fishing zone.”

However, the Oslo accords grant Palestinians the right to fish 20 miles off their own coast. When Andrew’s attorney handed a copy of that portion of the Oslo accords to the judge, she had no comment.

On August 23, 2008, Wallach, Muncie and Arrigoni were among 44 participants in the Free Gaza Movement who were aboard the first boats in forty-one years to enter Gaza by sea, breaking the Israeli blockade. They remained in Gaza to participate in human rights activities with the International Solidarity Movement. They have been living and working in Gaza since the summer, providing accompaniment to Palestinian farmers and fishermen, and documenting Israeli human rights abuses in the Gaza Strip.

The three will stop eating tomorrow morning until the confiscated fishing boats are “returned in the condition they were in when the frogmen boarded the boats, with any damage they made repaired.”

Israeli forces again demolish protest tent in east Jerusalem, Palestinian resident of Sheikh Jarrah remains in Israeli custody

9:30 am 20th November, Occupied East Jerusalem: Israeli forces have again demolished the protest camp in Sheikh Jarrah, set up after the eviction of the al-Kurd family on the 9th November.

A bulldozer arrived at the private property at 8:45am with orders to destroy the tent and the surrounding fence where the al-Kurd family has been living since they were evicted from their home on the 9th November 2008. The camp is situated on Palestinian-owned private property.

The Israeli bulldozer later created a wall surrounding the residents who remained on the site of the protest tent. The wall that the Israeli forces are creating is on Palestinian owned private land.

Yesterday the tent was also demolished, and one Palestinian and four internationals were taken into Israeli police custody. The Palestinian resident of Sheikh Jarrah continues to be held.

The family re-constructed the tent yesterday in order to continue their protest. Today, while the fence surrounding the private land was being bulldozed, neighbors dismantled the tent in order to save it from repeated destruction.

The decision to remove the al-Kurd family paves the way for the takeover of 26 multi-story houses in the neighborhood, threatening to make 500 Palestinians homeless and signifying the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from Occupied East Jerusalem by the Israeli State. In July the US State Department brought forward an official complaint to the Israeli government over the eviction of the al-Kurd family, openly questioning the legality of terms on which the Israeli Jewish settler group claimed to have purchased the land. (see www.haaretz.co.il/hasen/spages/1005342.html).

The Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem was built by the UN and Jordanian government in 1956 to house Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war. The al-Kurd family began living in the neighbourhood after having been made refugees from Jaffa and West Jerusalem. However, with the the start of the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem, following the 1967 war, settlers began claiming ownership of the land the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood was build on.

Stating that they had purchased the land from a previous Ottoman owner in the 1800s, settlers claimed ownership of the land. In 1972 settlers successfully registered this claim with the Israeli Land Registrar. While the al-Kurds family continued legal proceedings challenging the settlers claim, the settlers started filing suits against the Palestinian family.

In 2006, the court ruled the settlers claim void, recognizing it was based on fraudulent documents. Subsequently, the Al-Kurd family lawyer petitioned the Israeli Land Registrar to revoke the settlers registration of the land and state the correct owner of the land. Although it did revoke the settlers claim, the Israeli land Registrar refused to indicate the rightful owner of the land.

In 2001 settlers began occupying an extension of the al-Kurd home. Despite the fact that their claim to the land was revoked, settlers were given the keys of the al-Kurds family home extension by the local Israeli municipality. This was possible after the municipality had confiscated the keys of the extension that the al-Kurd family built on their property to house the natural expansion of the family. When this extension was declared illegal by Israeli authorities, the Israeli municipality handed the keys over to Israeli settlers. The al-Kurd family went to court and an eviction order was issued against the settlers. When the al-Kurd family were evicted on the 9th November 2008, the settlers were allowed to remain in the property, despite their own eviction order.

In July 2008 the Israeli Supreme Court ordered the eviction of the al-Kurd family, for their refusal to pay rent to the settlers for use of the land. Although the settlers claim to the land had been revoked two years earlier, the court instead based their decision on an agreement made between a previous lawyer and the settlers. It should be noted that the al-Kurd family -and the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood as a whole- rejected this agreement and fired their legal representative at the time.

Another Palestinian family expelled from their home in East Jerusalem and hundreds of houses demolished. Israel’s colonial policies kill any chance for a peace process!

Press release from Luisa Morgantini, Vice-President of the European Parliament

Brussels, 12th November 2008

Israeli police recently expelled the Al–Kurd family from its house, in the dark of night, in the Sheikh Jarrah area in East Jerusalem. The family includes Umm Kamal, the mother, her husband – who is partially paralysed and suffering from chronic heart disease – and their 5 children. Already refugees in 1948, when they were displaced from West Jerusalem, the family has once again been dispossessed of its home, where it has been living since 1956.

A group of extremist settlers claim ownership to that house and 26 other houses in the same neighbourhood, on the basis of an Ottoman title deed dating from 1880, the authenticity of which is doubtful and which is also disputed by United States.

One week ago, a European Parliament delegation to the Palestinian Occupied Territories, composed of deputies from different political groups and including myself, visited the Al-Kurd family in its home: we witnessed the violence and abuse suffered by the family because of settlers who live in the same courtyard. They no longer have that home.

In the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood, more than 500 Palestinians face the daily threat of expulsion from their homes because of Jewish extremist associations’ claims, who apply Palestinian Population Transfer policies.

The expulsion of the Al-Kurd family is part of a colonial Israeli policy, which jeopardises any chance of a peace process, day by day, demolition after demolition, colony after colony, and particularly in Jerusalem.

In this city, after many years of labour, right-wing and ultra-orthodox administration, which permitted the illegal the expansion of Israeli colonies to the eastern part of the city, Nir Barkat – who made the construction of new Jewish colonies within East Jerusalem the first priority of his campaign – was yesterday elected mayor.

An end should immediately be put to these policies and they must be condemned and sanctioned by the International Community.

The situation of confusion generated by the change from the Bush administration to the subsequent and more promising Obama administration means that we cannot remain silent about these and similar violations in West Bank as well as in Gaza where, due to the siege, the situation continues to deteriorate. Only yesterday were crossings reopened, after 6 days’ closure, after a black-out resulting from a total lack of fuel and after the state of alert declared by UNRWA which denounced – because of the closure – the absolute impossibility to distribute aid to the 750.000 Palestinians living in the refugee camps. And we now shudder to think about the possibility that the truce will definitively be broken because of the four Palestinians killed today by fire from Israeli warplanes, which came back to fly and shoot from the sky above the Strip.

Last Monday, the EU Presidency expressed its deep concern at the demolitions by Israeli bulldozers of several Palestinian houses in East Jerusalem. It is high time that Brussels does all in its power to ensure that the arbitrary and unilateral measures by the Israeli Government do not destroy all chances of a peace process. This is more urgent today than ever before and it is evident that all useful instruments must be used – including the suspension of the EU-Israel Association agreement – to ensure that International Law is respected.