Category: Press Releases

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

Adalah-NY: Palestinians sue Canadian companies owned by Shaya Boymelgreen for war crimes

Adalah-NY: Lev Leviev’s Company Danya Cebus in Israeli Settlement Partnership with Boymelgreen

To view the Adalah New York website click here

New York, NY, July 10, 2008 – Evidence gathered by Adalah-NY indicates that Brooklyn-based billionaire Shaya Boymelgreen owns the two little-known Canadian companies sued Wednesday for war crimes in Canada by the West Bank Palestinian village of Bil’in. Three Hebrew language Israeli media reports from 2005-2006 report that Boymelgreen owns the Green Park companies that are now being sued for $2 million in Quebec Superior Court for building and selling the Israeli settlements of Mattityahu East/Modi’in Illit on Bil’in’s land in violation of international law. The construction of Israeli settlements in Occupied Palestinian Territory violates the Fourth Geneva Convention according to a broad international consensus.

Additional evidence gathered by Adalah-NY shows that, though not a target of the lawsuit, the Israeli company Danya Cebus, a subsidiary of Lev Leviev’s company Africa Israel, was contracted by Boymelgreen’s Green Park to execute the settlement construction. Billionaires Leviev and Boymelgreen were US partners from 2002 -2007.

Adalah-NY spokesperson Riham Barghouti explained, “We applaud the lawsuit filed by Bil’in for holding businesses accountable for settlement construction and violations of Palestinian rights. We also believe that these well-known Israeli businessmen like Boymelgreen and Leviev, who often try to hide their involvement in Israeli settlement construction from the international community, need to be made known to the public and to their business associates.”

The ownership of the two Canadian-registered companies named in the suit, Green Park International and Green Mount International, is murky, typical of many facts related to Israeli settlement construction. However, a May 8, 2005 article in Chabad On-line entitled “Boymelgreen is the controlling interest-holder in the Green Park Project” explains that Boymelgreen’s Green Park is building thousands of settlement homes in Modi’in Illit. In an April 11, 2006 article in Tsofar, Boymelgreen is quoted responding to a court petition that stopped construction by saying, “Flat buyers in my residential project, Green Park, in Modi’in Illit, will not be harmed.” A February 16, 2006 article about Boymelgreen in The Marker, the respected financial paper of Ha’aretz Daily, notes that “Of his investments in Israel, Green Park is noteworthy, a building project in Modi’in Illit…” Full English translations of these articles are available on the Adalah-NY website.

In their press release announcing the suit, Bil’in’s lawyers, Israeli Michael Sfard and Canadian lawyer Mark Arnold, noted that “the Green Park companies have… a single director who resides in the Montreal Region… it is believed that she is likely a nominal director having no direct involvement with Green Park.”

Though not a target of Bil’in’s suit, Israeli diamond mogul Lev Leviev is also implicated in the settlement construction in Bil’in, as well as in other parts of the West Bank. Three August 22 and 24, 2004 articles in the Israeli financial paper Globes announced Danya Cebus’ construction plans. The August 22 article noted, “Danya Cebus will build the $230 million Green Park project in the haredi (ultra-orthodox) town of Upper Modi’in… The company bought 939 dunam (234.75 acres) in the residential East Matityahu lot, zoned for the haredi community. Danya Cebus’s parent company, Africa-Israel Investments will market the project.” A May 8, 2005 Sales Agreement from Modi’in Illit between Green Park and a home buyer that was obtained by Adalah-NY notes, among many examples, that, “it is known and agreed upon among the buyers that the landscaping work and building for the project will be carried out by the Danya Cebus Company, Ltd.”

Boymelgreen and Leviev have also earned reputations in New York City as developers who abuse laborers while building expensive condos that price low-income and middle-income families out of their communities. Leviev’s companies’ human rights records in Angola and Namibia, where he mines and polishes diamonds, have also been severely criticized.

Statement from the Ni’lin Popular Committee Against the Apartheid Wall

8 July 2008 for immediate release

As of today, Tuesday 8th of July 2008, the military curfew in Ni’lin has been lifted. In response to statements released earlier today by an Israeli army spokeswoman claiming that “There were discussions between the villagers and the army commanders and they decided to lift the curfew,” and that “The villagers promised not to protest and to keep the village quiet” (Reuters 7/8/08), the Ni’lin Popular Committee Against the Apartheid Wall wants to clarify the following:

The Popular Committee, who is representing the Ni’lin municipality, political parties, institutions and organizations in Ni’lin, has not been in any discussions with any Israeli army commanders and has not made a promise to the Israeli army that there will be no more protests.

No such discussions have taken place with the village. The Popular Committee wants to stress that the people of Ni’lin village will not give up their right to defend their basic human, economic, and social rights and therefore will not relinquish their
right to protest against the confiscation of their land. The people of Ni’lin are also not willing to give up their right to stand up against the construction of a Wall that has been declared illegal by the International Court of Justice.

The village will not be quiet! The demonstrations organized in Ni’lin were always of a peaceful, nonviolent nature. Each time, the unarmed demonstrators were met with severe force and heavy violence from the side of the Israeli army (often before even reaching the construction site), injuring many Palestinian, international and Israeli participants, even attacking and injuring journalists and medical workers.

The Ni’lin Popular Committee would like to draw attention to the following facts regarding the disproportionate use of force by the Israeli army and Border Police since the beginning of the construction of the Wall (May 2008):

*160 people were injured by rubber coated steel bullets during the protests, including children

*Hundreds of non-violent protesters were brutally beaten by the Israeli army during the protests

*26 people were arrested

*A Palestinian Medical Relief Society ambulance was shot at. The driver counted 18 bullet marks on the outside of the van and two of the ambulance windows were shattered, with several bullets found inside the van

*Many people in the protests suffered severe respiratory problems due to the heavy use of tear gas

*Tear gas canisters were shot directly into the crowds, aiming at people and injuring dozens

*The Israeli army started using a new tear gas machine, shooting 30 tear gas canisters at the same time

*The Israeli army used live ammunition on several occasions

*There were numerous incidents where the Israeli army invaded the village in the middle of the night after a protest, shooting tear gas and rubber coated steal bullets at and into homes where families were sleeping, and also arresting several people during these military incursions into the village

The curfew imposed on Friday 4th of July 2008 was yet another measure in line with the severely disproportionate tactics that the Israeli army is using to slam down the protests and silence the people of Ni’lin, who are merely trying to defend their land and lives through nonviolent measures. The Ni’lin Popular Committee against the Apartheid Wall strongly condemns these aggressive and unprovoked Israeli military policies that have been declared illegal under international law. The Popular Committee specifically condemns the recent curfew and siege on Ni’lin, which caused excessive damage and severe injuries in a village that is already being strangled due to the construction of the Wall.

The Ni’lin Popular Committee draws your attention to the casualties and damages caused by the 4-day curfew and siege on Ni’lin:

*The Israeli army injured more than 50 villagers with rubber coated-steal bullets, three of them were seriously injured by live
ammunition. They are currently undergoing treatment in different hospitals in Ramallah

*Hundreds of people suffered from respiratory problems due to teargas inhalation. Teargas was shot at and into the houses. Villagers, who went on their rooftops or gardens in order to try to communicate with family and neighbors, were immediately attacked with tear gas and rubber coated steal bullets. Even standing too close to the window meant risking being shot at. The firing of teargas and rubber coated steal bullets at the windows has caused irreconcilable damage to the houses in Ni’lin

*During the first three days of the siege ambulances were not allowed access into the village, the injured remained untreated
The body of a deceased villager was kept for four hours at the entrance of Ni’lin before they let the remains into the village for burial

*A woman in labor was not allowed to leave the village and was forced to deliver the baby at home

*A twelve year old boy was kidnapped from his home by the Israeli army, who kept him hostage for 2 days.

*The army invaded approximately 20 houses, breaking personal property in the house and beating women, children and men

*The army used bulldozers to dig up newly paved roads, thereby wrecking parts of the municipal sewage system and destroying a large portion of the village’s infrastructure. In order to strategically control the whole area of the village, they entered the girls’ school, breaking the school’s windows and doors

*Shops and businesses were closed during the curfew and people could not get to work, depriving the people of Ni’lin from their much-needed income

*Three journalists were detained for several hours while trying to report on the situation of Ni’lin.

The Ni’lin people are calling for local, regional, and international support to sustain solidarity with the village. This support is very much needed. The Popular Committee would also like to take this opportunity to thank everybody who participated in the demonstrations and for all the efforts individuals have put into advocating for Ni’lin, contacting political representatives, and drawing worldwide media attention. We cannot express enough our feelings of deep gratitude for all of these efforts and the coming efforts too!

This Thursday, 10th of July 2008, a monumental protest is organized for the 4th anniversary of the ruling on the Wall of the International Court of Justice. The protest will start at 11 am in front of the municipality of Ni’lin. We will leave Ramallah at 9.30 am from the bus station behind Ziryab. Please confirm your attendance by contacting Hindi: 0599 83 98 43. He is also available for questions regarding the protest or for more information regarding the situation in Ni’lin.

For online information, please refer to the following links:
http://www.palestin emonitor. org/spip/ spip.php? article439 or
http://www.facebook .com/inbox/ #/group.php? gid=18853218651&ref=mf

ActLeft: Stop the fence in Ni’alin

The village of Ni’alin, which is located in the Ramallah district, has for more than a month now been leading an intense struggle against the de-facto appropriation of 2,500 dunams of land, over a third of all its land, as a result of the building of the “separation fence”.

The route of the fence in this area, much like in the famous case of the neighboring village of Bil’in, has been planned in such a way that all lands “left behind” the fence will serve the expansion of the near by illegal settlement of Hashmonaim.

The villagers have declared an uncompromising struggle against the fence; three-four demonstrations are held each week, marching towards the construction site and the settlement, in many cases successfully forcing a halt of construction.

The popular and nonviolent struggle of the demonstrators is met by growing ferocity on the side of the army, which is using live ammunition in addition to the regular tear gas and rubber bullets. On Friday, 4.7, the army decided to use collective punishment against the village – a full siege and curfew for ten days have been declared and enforced.

We demand that violence against demonstrators be stopped, and that the construction of the fence will be stopped in Nia’lin and elsewhere.

We sympathize and support the just struggle of the villagers against the appropriation of their lands.

An especially big demonstration will be held in the village of Ni’alin on Thursday morning, commemorating the anniversary of The Hague ruling which defined the Apartheid Wall illegal.

We call upon everyone to join this demonstration and the following ones as well

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The initiators of this call intend to publish it in Ha’aretz newspaper *this Wednesday or Thursday

In order to do so, we need to get some 250 signatories, each donating 100 NIS or more.

The donation can be broken down to two payments. Donations of all sizes will be warmly accepted.

Please confirm your signature with Ya’akov Manor at 050-5733276, 09-7670801, or with Amos Gvitz at 052-6035685, or at: manor12@zahav.net.il

Checks are to be made out to “Matte Hacoalitsia”, PB 1335, Kfar Saba, 44113

*If we do not receive enough signatures before the demonstration date we will have to postpone the publication to a latter date