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.”

Settlers occupying Palestinian home in Hebron riot following eviction order

On the 19th March, around 30 settlers from Kiryat Arba in Hebron occupied a house strategically placed along the road between the large settlement and the Tomb of Abraham.

The Israeli High Court acknowledged that the documentation that the settlers claimed was proof of ownership was indeed forged and made a final decision on Sunday 15th November that the settlers had 72 hours to vacate the Palestinian owned house. The settlers had made it clear that they will not leave the house voluntarily and threatened to confront any attempt to forcibly evict them.

As the 72 hour deadline came to an end yesterday (19th November), settlers had grouped around the house, protected by Israeli army soldiers stationed around and on the roof of the house they were supposed to be evicting the settlers from. The military had previously announced that they were ordered to complete the eviction within 30 days.

A group of around fifty, mostly younger, settlers kept vigilant watch all day. The army was present at all times inside and outside the house. There seemed to be no confrontations between army and settlers.

During the afternoon, settlers twice attacked Palestinian youth who had gathered in the area to see if the eviction would actually take place. On both occasions the soldiers ignored the settlers throwing of stones at the Palestinians, yet immediately attacked the Palestinians with tear-gas when they responded by throwing stones back at the settlers. One Palestinian was then detained by the Israeli army.

There was no attempt made by the Israeli army to prevent settlers from attacking Palestinians residents of the area. Several times the settlers threw stones, also using a slingshot, at international human rights activists who were observing the situation. Israeli soldiers were also present on the roof, but did nothing to prevent the settler violence.

From around 11pm, settlers used slings to hurl stones randomly at Palestinian homes around the occupied house. This was occurring from the roof of the house and from around the house. After about an hour of stone throwing, a group of 15 settlers approached a Palestinian house from which the international activists were observing. The settler group escalated their attacks against the Palestinian residents and the internationals staying with them. This lasted for around half an hour before the settlers returned to the occupied house.

At 1.20am, a large group of settlers came down the street close to the occupied house, surrounding and heavily bombarding neighbouring Palestinian houses with rocks. After five minutes of heavy stone throwing, settlers walked in the direction of Ibrahimi Mosque. All night a police or army jeep would patrol the street every 5 minutes without intervening to stop the settlers.

Settlers attacked several Palestinian houses on the way to the mosque, seriously injuring a Palestinian man who was hit in the head by a rock. At 2am they returned to the occupied house they have dubbed the ‘Peace-House’. More Israeli police forces arrived at this point initially and began to intervene, with the stone throwing slowly dying out. The settler youth then surrounded police and army cars and prevented them from moving, by dancing around them and sitting on top of them, while other settlers painted insulting slogans and stars of David on the Mosque.

During the evening Israeli army and police were routinely ignoring settler violence and did not react to the situation until several hours into the violence against Palestinian homes. Appeals to the police and DCO were systematically ignored. Israeli authorities seriously violated their obligation of protecting all civilians as the occupying force.

A neighbour to the so-called “Peace-House”, Atif Jaber, a 40 year old shopkeeper, who has lived in his home opposite the occupied house all his life, says that attacks from the settlers occupying the house are very common and that the police are uninterested in these crimes. The settlers do not only throw stones, they have also vandalised the cars in the neighbourhood, desecrated the local Muslim graveyard and physically assaulted people in the vicinity.

The last assault was on a man called Motee’a, who was hit and kicked by several of the settlers. Atif also says that his father has been offered 9million dollars for his lands, which consists of an olive and grape grove and the land of three houses including the ‘Peace-house’, but that he immediately refused this offer.

Atif maintains that he will never leave the area where he was born.

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.

JPost: State to compensate wounded activist

By Dan Izenberg

To view original article, published by The Jerusalem Post on the 19th November, click here

The state will pay human rights activist Brian Avery NIS 600,000 in damages in an out-of-court settlement reached Wednesday with his Israeli lawyer, Shlomo Lecker.

Avery, a member of the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement (ISM), was shot in Jenin on April 5, 2003 and suffered severe facial wounds. He has undergone at least six operations so far and has more to go.

“The sum does not reflect the injuries Avery suffered,” Lecker told The Jerusalem Post. “On the other hand, it’s one of the very few times the state has awarded damages to anyone hurt by the IDF during the Second Intifada.”

According to the description of events given by Avery and ISM volunteers who were with him, Avery and his flatmate, Jan Tobias Karrson, heard shooting near the apartment where they lived. They called other volunteers and went out to see if anyone needed medical help. By that time, it was dark and a curfew was in force.

According to their testimony, an IDF armored personnel carrier and a tank turned into the street and headed towards them. Avery was standing under a street light, wearing a red fluorescent jacket with the word “doctor” in English and Arabic on the front and back. He raised his hands to show the soldiers he was unarmed.

The vehicles continued to approach the group and the APC opened fire at a distance of a few dozen meters. Avery was hit in the face, his cheek was torn and his eye socket and jaw bones were smashed.

The army refused to order a military police investigation of the incident, claiming that a field probe had revealed that no soldiers on patrol in Jenin that night had reported an incident that resembled Avery’s description.

Avery petitioned the High Court to order the army to conduct a military police investigation. Before the court handed down a final decision, the army changed its mind and agreed to do so. The investigation began 15 months ago.

In the meantime, Avery also decided to sue the state for damages in a civil action in Jerusalem District Court. He and three other ISM volunteers who witnessed the incident came to testify at the first hearing in September 2007.

The out-of-court agreement reached Wednesday between the plaintiff and the state has put an end to the lawsuit. Lecker told the Post his client had agreed to accept the settlement because the military police investigation had already been underway for 15 months with no sign of an end. Furthermore, the courts, including the Supreme Court, routinely ruled in favor of the state in similar lawsuits involving Palestinians or foreigners so that “the chances of an appropriate decision were small.”

Lecker said Avery didn’t have full medical insurance coverage in the US and that the money the state was willing to pay would help defray some of the costs of the operations he must still undergo.

Albawaba: Despite Ban, Leviev to Sell Jewelry at Grand Opening of Atlantis Hotel in Dubai

Unconfirmed Report says Leviev to Attend Atlantis Opening

Al-Bawaba
November 18

Adalah-NY has learned that the jewelry of Israeli billionaire and settlement-builder Lev Leviev will be on sale at this week’s gala opening of the luxury hotel Atlantis, The Palm in Dubai. Despite Leviev’s on-going construction of Israeli settlements and claims by United Arab Emirates officials that Leviev would receive no license to sell his jewelry there, the New York-based human rights coalition Adalah-NY has confirmed that Leviev’s jewelry will be on sale at the Atlantis branch of the Levant Jewelry chain on the fabled Palm Jumeirah island.

Adalah-NY has also heard from a Dubai source that Leviev will attend the grand opening events in person, but the group has been unable to corroborate this report. A press release on the Atlantis web site claims that the opening gala, set for November 20-21st, “will culminate in a giant fireworks display,” and that guests will include “prominent CEO’s, business leaders, politicians, actors and musicians and members of the Dubai Royal family.”

Adalah-NY has obtained photos of Leviev jewelry prominently displayed in the windows of the Levant store at the Atlantis, with Leviev’s name and logo prominently printed on display cases. Leviev’s jewelry and logo are featured at the Levant store at the Al Qasr Hotel. Leviev notes Dubai as a store location on the front of his Madison Avenue boutique in New York, and in recent Leviev ads in the New York Times.

Prior to an advocacy campaign by Adalah-NY and Jews Against the Occupation-NYC, Leviev had announced plans to open in Dubai two Leviev stores and sell his products in a third store in partnership with his local partner, Arif Ben-Khadra, who is of Palestinian-Moroccan origin. Subsequently, in an April 30 article in Dubai’s Gulf News, Ali Ebrahim, Deputy Director General for Executive Affairs in Dubai, said Leviev would not be able to do business in Dubai. “We are aware of these reports and have not granted a trade licence to any business of this name. If such an application does come to us we will deal with it accordingly,” said Ebrahim. Further, Ebrahim told the paper that Israeli citizens were not allowed to do business in Dubai, and that “precautionary measures” made sure of that. Ebrahim further implied Leviev would not be able to do business through a local partner. “There are no loopholes,” he said. “We check backgrounds of businesses that apply.”

Leviev built his enormous fortune trading diamonds with Apartheid-era South Africa. His company mines diamonds in partnership with the repressive Angolan government. New York Magazine reported in 2007 that in Angola, “A security company contracted by Leviev was accused… of participating in practices of ‘humiliation, whipping, torture, sexual abuse, and, in some cases, assassinations.'” Also, according to the diamond industry watchdog Partnership Africa Canada, Angola and Leviev have failed to fully comply with the Kimberley Process.

In the West Bank, Leviev’s companies build Israeli-only settlements such as Ma’aleh Adumim, Mattityahu East and Zufim on stolen Palestinian land. According to Stop the Wall, Leviev is currently expanding Zufim settlement by 45 housing units on land owned by the village of Jayyous (see photo). Jayyous continues to hold non-violent protests against the confiscation of their land. All Israeli settlements are illegal under international law. UNICEF and Oxfam have both rejected support from Leviev due to his human rights violations, and the British government is under pressure to pull put of a deal to rent their new Tel Aviv Embassy from him.

Daniel Lang/Levitsky of Adalah-NY stated that “Dubai claimed that it has closed all the loopholes, but we have seen that to be glaringly false. Leviev jewelry will be prominently displayed and sold at a major hotel in Dubai. By allowing such a blatant contravention of its own laws, Dubai has made a mockery of its promise to boycott Leviev. The villagers of Jayyous and Bil’in, on whose stolen land Leviev’s settlements sit, will be saddened and outraged, as will be human rights advocates worldwide.”