Ha’aretz: “Collateral Damage: An Entire Gaza Family”

by Gideon Levy. Ha’aretz, Wednesday, May 31 2006

The entire family of Hamdi Aman, a 28-year-old Palestinian from Gaza who spent his youth in Tel Aviv’s Carmel market, was hit in the assassination of Islamic Jihad operative Mohammed Dahdouh in Gaza a week and a half ago.

Aman’s 7-year-old son Muhand was killed; Naima, his wife, 27, was killed; his mother Hanan, 46, was killed. His three and a half year old daughter Mariya is lying in the pediatric intensive care unit at Sheba Medical Center, Tel Hashomer, permanently paralyzed and on a respirator. Aman is not allowed to be with her.

His youngest son, Muaman, 2, was lightly wounded by shrapnel in his back, and Aman himself was hit by shrapnel throughout his body. His uncle Nahed, 33, a father to two toddlers, is fully paralyzed and in critical condition at Tel Aviv’s Sourasky Medical Center.

The Amans had bought a used Mitsubishi car 11 days ago, and took it for a maiden spin through the Gargash neighborhood in Gaza City. There were eight of them in the car: five adults and three toddlers. Mariya stood dancing on her mother’s knees. When they drove down the busy industrial street and passed the home of Palestinian Authority Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar, they felt a powerful blow to the left side of the car exactly when a Magnum van carrying Dahdouh passed them on the left. A massive blast occurred, the van with the dead Jihad operative in it was in flames, and Hamdi was faced with the horror that his entire family had been hit.

Israel Air Force chief Major General Eliezer Shkedi said the next day that “we still have to check” what killed the Aman family. The IDF Spokesman’s Office also told Haaretz this week, 10 days after the assassination, that the IDF is “continuing to investigate in order to check the report that three Palestinians were killed as a result of the attack on Dahdouh’s car.”

The impact of the financial crisis on the Palestinian community

by Qusay Hamed, Nablus, Palestine. 13th May 2006

The term “Financial crisis” is an old/new term in the Palestinian dictionary; this occupied territory – that has scanty resources – is economically bounded with Israel.

Nowadays Palestine lives a dramatic financial crisis that is considered one of the worst in the nation’s history.

Palestinians have been punished for their democratic choice, where the Palestinians practiced choosing their representatives to the Palestinian Legislative Council; this choice practically brought Hamas up to the power by majority.

This choice that has been embodied by the democracy became as a pretext to refuse this choice and stop the international community subsidy to the Palestinian Authority.

I personally understand the term “Democracy” as the people’s choice for their representative in a civilized, transparent and highly credited manner.

The main and most important factor of the crisis is the external stipulated subsidy that has been cut by the American government and the European countries, in addition to the huge pressure that they practice in order to not transfer money to the newly elected government.

At the same time, Palestinian Authority has no control over their borders to import or export, That leaves Palestinian people depending on the international aid to keep the Palestinian economy and the infrastructure alive.

Political and security impacts

Security

There is no doubt that the crisis came out as a result of the American, Israeli and European pressure upon the Palestinian authority in general and upon Hamas government particularly, in order to force the government to change its political agenda. The continuation of this crisis means that the Palestinian authority will not be able to maintain it’s authority on the economical, social, health and security institutions; Which could be simply represented by the disability of what has remained from the security force, in securing the essential needs like food, health services etc, whether for it’s members or even the prisoners. In addition to that, the government is not able to pay the police force salaries. Therefore, the police force will not be able to practice its high demanded job, thus disorder, revelry and robbery will spread out and prevail.

Compulsory resignation

The other political impact is that the government becomes forced to resign or to be deposed.

This scenario is approaching for sure as this crisis continues, where the government will be forced out or will have to resign which will bring the region to a complex problematic situation that will inflame the anarchy and will have unacceptable and unpredictable results.

The economical impact of the crisis

The external financial subsidy equals 85 % of the total Palestinian income, a part of that goes to feed 150,000 employees’ families, which is the soul source of life for them. These salaries help to keep the Palestinian economy surviving, which is also considered as the main factor that keeps the Palestinian economy functioning; since these subsidies were frozen, families are not able to secure their essential life necessities. Thus the economic life is frozen also; it’s clearly embodied in Ramallah, Nablus and Hebron as the biggest cities in Palestine territories; factories, supermarkets and companies were closed as a result of the economical stagnancy and not being able to bear extra cost. Consequently that means what is called Palestinian economy will collapse at any time.

Humanitarian impact

The health sector can also clearly show the suffering which caused by the current financial crisis, whereby this institution is not able to offer its health services, in addition to the huge lack of medical staff and medicine. Therefore they are not able to give the very basic needs of life, children’s milk and health care services to the people, where also the problems of isolation and lack of mobility make it difficult for people to access essential services.

On the other hand, the education sector is highly affected by this crisis, Transportation is almost impossible because people would rather save money for basic needs of food.

Finally, the continuation of the crisis is mainly harming the lower class, Poor families are barley managing; about 150.000 families are having no money for the past three months and not clear future in the horizon, make it almost impossible for them to survive.
All this require a serious stand from the international community in order to stop the continuous suffering of the Palestinian people as a result of this financial sanction.

Large Scale Unity Demonstration in Bil’in on Friday


Credit: Tess Scheflan

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

On Friday, the villagers of Bil’in, joined by international and Israeli supporters will hold a demonstration in which they will call for enhanced unity and internal dialogue amongst the Palestinian parties.

They will use the occasion of the commemoration of the beginning of the Israeli occupation in 1967 act as a call for Palestinians to be united against the common enemy – the occupation. A large banner has been erected in Ramallah, calling for large-scale participation, and it is anticipated that it will be a particularly large demonstration this week.

Politicians have been invited from both the Israeli Knesset and the Palestinian Legislative Council.

For more information call:

Abdullah Abu-Rahme: 0547 258 210
ISM Media Office: 02 297 1824

Sunbula’s Journal: “Normalised Occupation”

Saturday May 27th: I have returned to Ramallah. I feel a little worried I’m getting used to certain things I shouldn’t really be used to. When I was coming back in the taxi from al-Quds/Jerusalem, driving through Ar-Ram and Qalandia, the Wall is alongside us on our left, and separates people’s homes from stores and vice versa. The sight of the Wall, the fucked up Qalandia “terminal” – it’s not occurring to me anymore to describe or write about these “small” things because they don’t seem to me to be anything worth noting anymore. They’ve become “normal”. I don’t know whether to be happy or sad, whether this means I’m “stabilizing” or getting more numbed in regards to the situation. But I’m reminded I do need to write about these small things. Like I wrote in my last trip, getting into the West Bank from Jerusalem is much easier than vice versa. Still part of the road to Ramallah is blocked off for no ostensible reason and we had to drive through the side roads. The Qalandia “terminal” is still as messed up as ever, still the soldiers barking orders through microphones, sitting behind windows in cubicles, still metal revolving gates and sanitized apartheid. It’s getting really hot here now as well and the sun is pretty strong. When I was going back to Jerusalem a few days ago, we had to get off from the shared taxi to walk through this “terminal”. A young woman with a baby asked in a somewhat sarcastic tone, can’t people with small children stay on? Unfortunately not.

Because of getting asked by every single new person I met, I decided to take out my nose and lip ring. When I was putting my bag into the back of the shared taxi at the stand in Jerusalem one of the drivers recognized me and starting telling me how much better I looked and how happy he was to see much without the piercings. Yay, victory for gender conformity and heterosexism.

Our friends in the Tel Rumeida neighborhood of the old city in Hebron/al-Khalil are getting stoned, spat on, assaulted almost daily by the little kids of fanatical ultra rightwing Jewish settlers who deface houses with slogans such as “gas the arabs” and yet when they do this the supposedly law enforcing Israeli police just looks the other way. The most pathetic thing is they send their children to harass Palestinians, because the army/police won’t arrest minors under the age of 14. Talk about cowards.

There were lots of PA security forces of different kinds on the streets of Ramallah today. I just read that Israel has allowed transfer of light arms to forces loyal to Mahmoud Abbas – talk about local enforcers of the occupation. Between all the different kinds of Palestinian Authority and Israeli occupation forces, I’m getting a little confused.

I visited Birzeit yesterday where I will be taking Arabic classes later on and liked the look of the place, it is really pretty and a small village, quiet and green unlike noisy bustling Ramallah that reminds me more of neighborhoods in New Delhi (not that that’s a bad thing). I’m looking forward to being based out of there though and living in a more quiet green area, plus its only about 20 minutes (and 3.5 shekels ie less than $1) from Ramallah. The people that I met in the program were nice, seemed on top of their stuff, but somewhat condescending and power-trippy, kind of like at Columbia – birzeit is supposed to be the “Harvard of Palestine” whatever that means, maybe it’s a similar complex. I detest hierarchies and power in general, if I could only get rid of my own personal dependence on them sometimes. I didn’t really like the way they intimidated me about my level of Arabic and made me feel like my Arabic education was inferior to theirs (funnily, my professor in the US said the same thing about them!) and told me to review for the “placement test” which will decide which level of Arabic I can be in. Blah, blah. I met another international student from Japan and sat with her and a Palestinian student. He was really nice to me and gave me friendly advice to not tell anyone if they asked me my religion that my mother is Jewish because: a) there are some folks around who don’t distinguish between Zionists and Jews, unfortunately; and b) the Palestinian security forces monitor international students at Birzeit for spies and saying something like that would make them more suspicious. I’m not saying it’s the right thing to do, but probably a wiser thing.

Walking back to the ISM apartment in Ramallah, I bought Ghassan Kanafani’s story “Returning to Haifa” in its original Arabic. I had read it in English this semester for a class on Israeli and Palestinian literature I took that was awesome. It’s short enough that I think it’s a reasonable reading project in Arabic. Everyone should check out his writings for the best of Palestinian resistance literature, especially this story.

I was also taken out to a nightclub in Ramallah and got to observe from close quarters members of the occupied Palestinian upper class. Seeing people dance to reggaeton in the occupied territories was an interesting and amusing experience. It was something light and fluffy that I felt I needed for a while. Let’s see what the next few days bring. Distilled excitement, hopefully.

Villagers of Jabaa to Reclaim Their Land: Thursday and Friday

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The village of Jabaa will hold two non-violent direct actions against the theft of their land by Israeli settlers and soldiers this weekend. A month ago, close to a thousand of the village’s olive trees were uprooted to prepare for the construction of the Wall, which will confiscate 600 Dunams, or roughly one sixth of the village’s agricultural land. If the wall is built according to its planned route the farmers of Jabbaa will be cut off from the means of their livelihood.

Therefore, on Thursday June 1’st at 10 am the residents of Jabaa, accompanied by international and Israeli solidarity activists, will march to the planned route of the wall at the location of Beit Shemesh checkpoint. Following this, on Friday June 2nd, at 9am farmers will bring a bulldozer and attempt to plough their land in the Jum Jum area near the settlement of Bat Ayin. The owners of this land have been prevented by the Bat Ayin settlers from accessing their land for the last seven years. In previous instances when they have approached their own land, these Bat Ayin settlers have beaten the landowners and fired shots towards them and their live stock, killing some of their sheep.

For more information call:
ISM media office: 02-2971824