Category: Press Releases

Support Bil’in’s historic court case

Dear Friends,

As you may already know, the village of Bil’in recently announced the launch of an unprecedented legal action against two Canadian companies, Green Park International Inc. and Green Mount International Inc., charging them with war crimes. The case has been filed in the Quebec Superior Court in Montreal, Canada.


What you can do to show your solidarity with this historic action:
The village of Bil’in is calling on supporters from all over the world to join them in solidarity actions during the court case. The village also needs your help setting up and financing a legal fund to fight the court case, which currently is in need of approximately $50,000.

Please consider doing any one or more of the following:

* Donate directly to the cause through Paypal – click on ‘send money online’. The email to send it to is donate.bilin@gmail.com. (For more information on how to send a tax deductable donation in the US, contact palreports@gmail.com)

* Circulate and publicize a petition of support for the village of Bil’in

* Hold a fundraising party for the Bil’in case in your home or organization

* Add this link to your blog, website, and organization website so visitors can donate to the fund.

* Hold demonstrations of support outside the court in Montreal, and in the city at large.

* Hold demonstrations where the companies are registered.

* Write letters to the editor of local, regional, and national papers, expressing outrage that Canadian companies and Canadian citizens are involved in war crimes.

Bil’in charges that these companies have violated both international law and Canadian domestic law by acting as agents of Israel, illegally constructing residences and other buildings in the West Bank, a territory internationally recognized as illegally occupied due to an act of war in 1967. According to the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, an occupying power may not transfer its civilian population into territory that it has occupied as a result of war. Canada has similar prohibitions under its Canadian Geneva Conventions Act and its Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act. Moreover, the Canadian statutes have jurisdiction over all its citizens everywhere, regardless of where in the world the offence has been committed.

Bil’in is seeking an immediate Order from the Canadian Supreme Court that these companies halt their illegal construction and provide punitive damages and other relief to the village. Upon obtaining such an Order in Canada, Bil’in intends to petition the Israeli Court to enforce the Canadian Court Order in Israel and the West Bank.

This landmark court case aims to bring international companies active in illegal settlement construction to justice. Bil’in’s case is strong, and the lawsuit will foreground the political issue of settlement colonialism as well as the legal responsibility of perpetrators abroad, regardless of the case’s actual outcome. However, if the outcome of the case is positive, other companies in other countries could be dealt with in a similar manner.

To obtain background information on Bil’in please visit www.bilin-village.org/english/discover-bilin/

Scottish Medicines for Gaza stopped in El Arish

For more information, click here.

(SUNDAY JULY 20th 4.45pm) The 1.5 tons of medicines from Scotland to Gaza are now a few metres outside the gate into Gaza at Rafah on the Egyptian side of the Israeli-built wall that has enclosed the people of this area.

The Egyptian authorities in Rafah are refusing entry of the medicines to Gaza and are now demanding that Khalil and Linda drive the van away from their destination towards El Arish. They are threatening to load the van onto a truck and impound van and medicines.

Khalil and Linda, who have overcome may obstacles on the road from Scotland to Rafah to deliver these medicines, are refusing to drive the medicines away from the gate through the Wall into Rafah.

Please text and call with your support for Linda (00 44 (0)7958673840) and Khlalil 00 44 (0)796 00 87 000

Also write and/or call

Egyptian Prime Minister:
Dr. Ahmed Mahmoud Mohammed Nazif
Phone: (202) 7958014/35/36
Fax: (202) 7356449 – 7958016
Website: http://www.cabinet.gov.eg
Email: primemin@idsc.gov.eg

Egyptian Interior Minister
General Habib Ibrahim Habib El Adly
Phone: (202) 7948308 – 7984300
Fax: (202) 7945529
Email: Moi1@idsc.gov.eg

At the Egyptian Embassy in London, please email Mr Amr Al Shams at amrshams@live.com 07852 337 210
If he is unavailable, try 07950912304
(020) 7235 9719 Consulate General
(020) 7409 2236 Press and Information Office
Egyptian Consulate Press Office: info@egpressoffice.com or info@egyptianconsulate.co.uk

A projected five-day journey has turned into ten days: earlier, they were turned back by the Croatian authorities, and had to drive through Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria to reach the Turkish border. There, they were initially refused entry and told to turn back, before the medicines were allowed to transit Turkey, Syria, Jordan and into Egypt to try to get to the people of Gaza.

Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign
secretary@scottishpsc.org.uk
www.scottishpsc.org.uk
SPSC is affiliated to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (UK) www.palestinecampaign.org

Canadian Press: Activists say Montreal firms used as fronts for building Israeli settlements

Activists say Montreal firms used as fronts for building Israeli settlements
JONATHAN MONTPETIT

http://www.metronews.ca/toronto/canada/article/86457
July 20, 2008 12:21

MONTREAL – Murky ownership of two Montreal companies is feeding allegations by U.S. activists that the firms are being used as fronts for Israeli developers intent on building settlements in Palestinian territory.

The companies – Green Mount International Inc. and Green Park International Inc. – are already being sued for war crimes in Quebec Superior Court by the West Bank town of Bilin.

They are accused of violating international and Canadian law by acting as “agents of Israel” in building condominiums within Bilin’s town limits and selling them to Israelis

A Palestinian-rights group, Adalah-NY, now alleges the companies are controlled by Shaya Boymelgreen, a controversial real-estate developer in New York City.

As evidence, they cite Israeli media reports from 2005 and 2006 that identify Boymelgreen as Green Park’s principal stakeholder.

“I don’t think people in Canada widely knew that these companies were building settlements in the West Bank,” said David Bloom, a spokesman for the group.

“They’re only half-exposed since … (Boymelgreen) has not been publicly named.”

Calls to Boymelgreen’s spokesperson in New York were not returned.

Boymelgreen’s name does not appear in Bilin’s $2-million lawsuit. Both Green Park and Green Mount list a Montreal woman as their sole director, president and secretary.

But Bilin’s Canadian lawyer says he believes the woman – Annette Laroche – is only a figurehead.

“We believe (her) to be simply the secretary at the law firm that incorporated the company with really no knowledge or involvement,” said Mark Arnold.

“I have no evidence that she has done anything wrong. Nevertheless she is liable for the conduct of that company.”

Both companies have Byzantine ownership structures with ties that extend to the African diamond trade.

Quebec government records say Green Park and Green Mount are each controlled by Lexinter Management, which lists a commercial photo studio in Montreal as its address.

Lexinter in turn lists its majority shareholder as F.T.S. Worldwide Corp., a Panama-based company involved in the past with the diamond trade in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

F.T.S. Worldwide was formerly the majority shareholder of Emaxon Inc., which was granted an exclusive deal to market Congolese diamonds in 2003.

Emaxon’s sole director, president and secretary is Karen McIntyre, who served the same functions for Green Mount until she was replaced by Laroche in 2007.

Efforts to reach McIntyre and Laroche were unsuccessful.

Repeated calls to Ronald Levy, the lawyer representing Laroche and the two companies in her name, were not returned.

The Montreal offices of Levy’s law firm, De Grandpre Chait, also serve as Emaxon’s head office, at least for government tax records.

Adalah-NY argues Boymelgreen used Green Park and Green Mount to sub-contract the construction of the settlements near Bilin to Danya Cebus, a subsidiary of Africa Israel Investments.

The conglomerate is headed by Israeli diamond magnate Lev Leviev, who partnered with Boymelgreen in a series of New York real-estate ventures between 2002-2007.

UNICEF, the UN children’s fund, cut its ties with Leviev last month after it found “at least a reasonable grounds for suspecting” that Danya Cebus was involved in settlement building, which is considered illegal by the UN.

Adalah-NY said their research has shown that settlements are often funded by complex and misleading business deals.

“They want people to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” said Bloom.

Bilin’s lawyer acknowledged that his case is focused more on what the companies did and not who runs them.

“The fact that they may be billionaires – or God knows what – has no bearing on Bilin’s belief that Green Park is carrying out illegal activity in its neighbourhood,” Arnold said.

And while the defendants have filed an appearance in the lawsuit, they have yet to outline their defence.

News from ©The Canadian Press, 2008

Luisa Morgantini: “Tony Blair is not performing his duty – the cancellation of his visit to Gaza is another sign of his lack of determination and commitment”

Press Release by Luisa Morgantini, Vice President of the European Parliament

Rome, 16th July 2008

To view original press release on the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) website, click here

It’s a very negative signal that the International Quartet Envoy Tony Blair’s planned trip to the Gaza was canceled yesterday, Tuesday 15th July, following what was described as “specific security threats that made the visit impossible”.

As a delegation of the European Parliament we visited, last June, the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem. Our visit in Gaza was perfectly coordinated by UNRWA, and we didn’t feel any sort of insecurity, but only despair and responsibility looking at the living conditions of the Palestinian population under an illegal siege (don’t worry we also went to see the danger and the damages of the rockets fired on Sderot).

I really hope that the Israeli authorities’ pressures or other forces are not behind this decision by Tony Blair not to go to Gaza Strip, using the threat of security in order to prevent to witness the disaster of the blockade.

Palestinians, both in West Bank and in Gaza Strip, deplored the fact that Tony Blair had never visited the Strip, despite of the duties related to his role as Quartet Representative that include mobilizing international assistance to the Palestinians, working closely with donors and others, as well as helping to implement plans and concrete projects aimed to promote Palestinian economic development.

Those projects are fundamental and urgent in order to ensure as soon as possible a better and more healthy life for Palestinians, and especially those aimed to solve the increasing pollution in Gaza Strip due to the malfunctioning of the drainage system, such as in Beit Lahya, in northern Gaza Strip where Mr Tony Blair was due to be yesterday.

We saw sewage waters running freely and visibly through the streets of Gaza city and other cities of the Strip and ending up in the sea: any delay in this sense will be a tragedy not only for all the Palestinians living there, but also for the Israelis, sharing the same and polluted Mediterranean Sea.

For this reason Tony Blair’s visit could be -and it can of course be in the future- a fundamental opportunity to improve the living conditions for Palestinians in Gaza, showing that they are not alone, giving at same time a signal of hope for the unity and the reconciliation of the Palestinian people and Territory and finally also demonstrating, instead of a double standards policy, an impartial attitude by the International Community towards this conflict, starting concretely to end the collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza represented by the Israeli siege and closures for people and goods.

Further information: Luisa Morgantini, + 39 348 39 21 465; Office: + 39 06 69 95 02 17
Luisa.morgantini@europarl.europa.eu; www.luisamorgantini.net;

Every day in Palestine

By Jonas

Every day Mahmoud takes his sheep and goats out to the fields that his family has used and been bound to through blood and sweat for generations. Every day he is met by violence and threats of violence by the ultra-orthodox settlers who live two hills away, who say that the land is theirs because it was given the by their God four thousand years ago. Every day he is forced from his lands by the soldiers of the occupation forces who are protecting the illegal settlers. Every day he loses the fight for the land that is his, his only way of surviving. Every night he and his wonderful family sleep in a tiny tent without water, electricity and plumbing because they’ve been refused building rights on their own land for forty years – while the settlers two hills away are provided with every resource by the state of Israel.

But every night he goes with his brothers and their children to the football field and he becomes Mahmoud Maradona, and laughs like crazy with joy when he scores in the light of the setting sun over the hills of south Hebron.

Every Friday Fatima sees her son Hassan go at the head of the demonstration that marches from her house towards the illegal wall that Israel is building across their land, the wall that is destroying their olive groves and taking away their right to travel freely in their own land. One of her sons was killed by the military, and another but in prison while non-violently expressing his disgust and protest against the occupation. Every Friday she knows that Hassan maybe won’t come back, since every Friday for the past months he has been arrested and held for four days by the military. Every day her family lives under constant harassment from the soldiers.

But every Friday Hassan is home again, and Fatima offers her friends and international activists sweet tea and laughs, and shares her warmth, her joy of life and her inexhaustible fighting spirit – telling us about the occupation and what it is doing to her people and her children.

Every day Mustafa’s father goes to the wall in Ni’lin. Every day he comes home with eyes that are red from teargas. Mustafa, who is four years old, had a teargas grenade fired into his home last week when the army occupied Ni’lin, and since then he plays a lot with an onion – onion is used to counter teargas. Every guest that comes into his home gets to play with his onion. When the grenade exploded he was silent for a long time, marked by the fear of the grownups that they will lose seventy percent of the olive trees that have been in their ancestors planted centuries ago. Every day his father has to tell him that the soldiers who came into their home and who occupied the village are friends, and that they are just playing. Mustafa has seen more weapons in his four years than I will in my entire life.

But when we are invited for dinner he plays with us, he laughs and flirts and charms us, he gives us his onion and sits a while peacefully in his father’s lap.

These people fill me with such awe and admiration that I have a hard time finding the right words. They welcome us into their homes, they give us of the little they have and say that we are brave who come here. I feel ashamed when they do – we are going home in three weeks or two months but they have no choice, they will fight the occupation until they die or until they win the peace that they always speak of, the peace that is ever present in their language.

Again I must say: the occupation is illegal. Collective punishment is a war crime. Destroying and breaking down an entire people is a crime against humanity. The wall is illegal, declared so in international courts of law. What Israel is doing to the Palestinian people is comparable to what happened in South Africa. This is Apartheid, and it will not stop until the world sees it for what it is and puts pressure on Israel to stop it.

But the Palestinian people will never give up.

Maa’salama – Peace be with you

Jonas, in Ni’lin, West Bank