UN: Israel must allow building supplies to Gaza

Rizek Abdel Jawas | Associated Press

28 July 2009

U.N. agencies and two dozen international aid groups urged Israel on Tuesday to lift its blockade of Gaza or at least allow in construction materials to repair war-damaged schools.

Out of Gaza’s 640 schools, 18 were flattened and 280 suffered some damage during Israel’s three-week offensive against Gaza’s Hamas rulers seven months ago, the groups said in a statement.

Since the war, Israel has refused to allow construction materials into Gaza, arguing that Hamas could divert iron rods and concrete to build rockets and bunkers.

Both Israel and Egypt have kept Gaza’s borders largely closed since the Islamic militant Hamas seized control of the territory by force more than two years ago.

The border blockade and the war have further burdened Gaza’s education system, which even before the Hamas takeover suffered from serious overcrowding. Many schools have been running morning and afternoon shifts for lack of space.

About 500,000 of Gaza’s 1.4 million residents are of school age. Of those, nearly half attend schools run by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which cares for Palestinian refugees and their descendants.

About 6,000 students will have to be reassigned to different schools because their old ones were rendered unusable by the war, said Numan Sherif, an official in the Education Ministry.

“The problem is the blockade,” Sherif said. “There’s money to rebuild, but we don’t have access to basic materials, or even furniture. We can’t fix toilets or the wiring in schools.”

He said Gaza would also need 100 new schools just to keep pace with population growth.

Another U.N. official, Marixie Mercado, said aid groups meet regularly with Israeli defense officials on the issue. Mercado said defense officials allowed in text books, paper and some teaching kits.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said the aid groups could not guarantee that construction materials intended for schools won’t be diverted by militants.

“The point is, what will they do with iron, what will they do with cement?” asked Palmor. “Will it go to the schools? We have a good reason to believe it won’t. This is not an abstract fear,” he said.

John Ging, the top U.N. aid official in Gaza, challenged that argument, noting that UNRWA keeps track of the supplies allowed into Gaza by Israel.

“We account for every sack of flour and we can equally account for every bag of cement,” he said. “It’s just a matter of political will to move forward on this issue. We’d like to get on with the job, and then be held accountable on whether we are achieving it or not.”

Since the war, the U.S. and Europe have also repeatedly urged Israel to ease the blockade and allow in construction materials. Thousands of homes were damaged or destroyed, and billions of dollars in international reconstruction aid remain untapped because of the border closure.

Protest over Sheikh Jarrah house continues

Abe Selig | The Jerusalem Post

27 July 2009

A woman was arrested in east Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood on Monday evening, after a scuffle broke out between police and foreign left-wing activists who were protesting the entry of Jews into a nearby home the previous day.

The house is the subject of a legal dispute in which the Jewish claimants, who say they purchased the property legally, have been granted the right to enter the premises, although a stop work order had been issued for the property and was scheduled to take effect at 5 p.m. on Tuesday.

Sheikh Jarrah residents, however, said on Monday that the home had belonged to an elderly woman, Mrs. Hijazi, who had recently passed away, and that the Jewish claimants had falsified their ownership papers for the house.

“We have papers dating back to the Turkish government that show this home to be Palestinian property,” said Mitri Nasrawi, who works for the Coalition for Jerusalem, a Palestinian group.

Monday’s protest followed a larger demonstration in front of the house on Sunday afternoon, in which seven people were arrested – including a former Palestinian Authority minister for Jerusalem affairs, Hatem Abdel Kader – after activists and Arab residents clashed with police and the Jews, who had arrived to begin renovating the property.

Activists and locals residents said on Monday they would not stop their protests until the group of Jews had left.

Yelling “settlers out!” and “thieves!” the protesters congregated outside the home as police barred them from entering.

After more than an hour, police began to push back the demonstrators, who were banging on sheet metal walls that had been set up around the property, setting off the scuffle.

“You’re terrorists!” some of the activists yelled as police began to clear the area. “We are here because you are fascists and terrorists!”

But the feelings of local residents ran the gamut from dismay over the new Jewish presence in their neighborhood to downright outrage.

One elderly man approached an Israeli reporter and asked him if “he was a Jew.”

“Yes,” the reporter replied, as the man made a disgusted hand gesture and walked away.

“I don’t have any problem with Jews, I work with them and grew up around them,” another resident, Osama Kedek, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday. “But this is just a provocation here. What would happen if a secular Jew went to live in Mea She’arim? I think there would be protests there as well.”

Kedek also said that while he appreciated the concern of the foreign activists, “it would be better if they used their energy to show their governments what Israel is doing to our neighborhoods.”

A handful of foreign reporters and even a French Embassy worker were on hand to document the demonstration.

Etgar Lefkovits contributed to this report.

Sheikh Jarrah demonstrates against settler takeover and demolition

27 July 2009

Israeli police arrested the woman on the right.
Israeli police arrested the woman on the right.

At 4pm today Sheikh Jarrah demonstrated against the Israeli settler takeover and partial demolition of the Darwish Hijazi home yesterday.

The day began with a meeting held in Sheikh Jarrah’s Um Kamal protest tent, which has become a powerful symbol of Palestinian steadfastness in face of the Israeli ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem, and international Human Rights Workers (HRWs) heard moving stories from local residents whose houses are under threat of demolition. From there, around 30 demonstrators accompanied by HRWs marched on the Hijazi house to find Israeli settlers on the stolen land. The protesters attempted to gain access to the property, only to be initially denied by settler security and Israeli police, and then a large deployment of Israeli Police and Border Police.

The protesters remained at the site, chanting and demanding the settlers leave the property. The Border police later began to attack the crowd, pushing and kicking protesters as they lay on the ground. One Palestinian woman was arrested.

As of 7.30pm, the protest has disbanded but HRWs remain with Mair Hasan, the head of a nearby household who has just today been issued with orders that he must vacate his property for two weeks, starting from 8.30pm tonight, keeping a distance of at least 1km from the home. He is married and has 5 children.

The case of Sheikh Jarrah

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. 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.

The 28 families face eviction from their homes. In November 2008, the al-Kurd family was violently evicted from their home in Sheikh Jarrah. Two weeks thereafter, Mohammad al-Kurd died from a stress induced heart attack.

Currently, the Hannoun and the al-Ghawe families face eviction from their Sheikh Jarrah homes. However, all 28 families are battling eviction in Israeli court.

Remembering Rachel, and resisting without despair

Daily Kos

26 July 2009

The screening of ‘Rachel’ yesterday at the SF Jewish Film festival, and to say the least, it was a truly emotional moment for many people, and for many reasons. Of course there is the ‘controversy’ (can I say how much I like the alternative pronunciation of this word?) which has been diaried, but I’d like to discuss other feelings and thoughts this film brought up, with me, with friends, and so forth.

The film takes on the subject of Rachel Corrie in a very clinical way, in terms of its analytical structure. It asks some basic questions, and delves into resolving them by interviewing the people involved, and filming the places where events took place, as well as incorporating pictures and video of the events in question. This is done very thoroughly, and with the filmmaker (Simone Bitton) staying off camera, although we hear her questions from interview to interview.

But connecting this approach, are the words of Rachel Corrie, which as usual, jump off the page and from the lips of the people reading them. The words are direct, passionate, inquisitive, rooted in the person she was, as well as the experiences that she was trying to take in and make sense of in Gaza. Like many others, I find myself a part of that process as well, in my life, and in the many experiences that I have had, in Palestine, the US, Israel, and elsewhere. I have throughout my life always tried to learn from experiences, to grow, to connect with others, in many situations and circumstances diverse and disparate; Rachel was also on this path, a path that was so horribly cut short, like the paths of so many others as well.

Along with the words, there are the people and places that were just heartbreaking to see; again, our paths in Palestine were connected and crossed in many ways. This is not surprising, as Rachel was the catalyst for my decision to get involved with the ISM and the larger peace movement in I/P. There is a slow shot of the hostel in East Jerusalem that many ISMers have stayed at, which is just eerie and nostalgic. I practically slept in every bed in the place, and I don’t know how many cups of sweet tea I drank there as well. And right along with the scene were Rachel’s words, her arrival into Palestine, her beginnings and training, her determination to go to the area that was hit hardest in Palestine, to Rafah.

Much like the congruence between the recent soldiers’ testimony and the Palestinian victims of the Israeli assault in December-January, the tale of the ethnic cleansing of Rafah comes through in the film; the demolished buildings, flattened neighborhoods, the surviving buildings pockmarked with shelling and rifle fire. And then the Palestinians speak of countless demolitions, of round the clock rifle fire and shelling, of snipers killing indiscriminately and firing into buildings. Then a soldier testifies (with his face in the dark) that this was standard practice; they would fire all night at the buildings, under orders to do so, and he says that if your commander was ‘lazy’ you could pretty much shoot at anyone/anything. Add this to the mountains of information available from human rights organizations (Amnesty, HRW, Btselem, PCHR, etc) and you have a very clear picture of a community under siege.

A friend of mine here spent time in Rafah, after Rachel was killed, and he met one of the Palestinians in the film, Abu Jamil. You see him talking of the many meals he happily cooked for the internationals, even though he and so many families there were struggling to survive. They were happy to feed the people that came from so far, and still come, to help them in their struggle to survive and live in dignity. I never got to Gaza, but I felt the same love and hospitality from so many Palestinians and Israelis while I stayed there; I was fed by a total stranger and his family in Nazareth (a Palestinian) and given a ride hitching to Afula by an Israeli once; so many people took me in and helped me during my stay, despite the limited resources and the horrible violence. So many times, it was this kindness, resilience, and determination among Palestinians and Israelis that was my source of strength and resolve; and it still is.

There was a very touching interview with Jonathan Pollack, a good friend and someone I was beaten and tear-gassed with many times. He is a core member of the Anarchists Against the Wall, and he spoke poignantly of the need to resist, often without hope of victory, but without despair; he made an allusion to the resistance of the Warsaw Ghetto, pointing out that they must have known that they would not survive, but they felt it necessary to resist anyway (as this is in the film, I feel that it should be mentioned and is not as such an inflammatory Godwin-offense). He sees resistance as a truth in and of itself, and knowing him, I understand just what he means. When I told him I was leaving I/P, he replied tersely, “I did not approve of this;” I took this as a pretty high compliment, and I urge anyone interested to work with the Israeli Anarchists, among others.

But the person, aside from Rachel, who I felt elevated this film and the screening, was Cindy, Rachel’s mother. I have been friends with her for years now, and have drawn so much strength from her; I just don’t know what I would have done with out her friendship. We run into each other at marches, at events, and even in Palestine. Years ago, I helped ferry her and 20 others from Bethlehem after a non-violence conference, to Bil’in for a demonstration. During a 3-4 hour bus ride (on the Wadi Al-Nahr), I gave her and her husband Craig a crash course in ISM traning, expecting the worst violence from the Israeli military. But when we arrived, the army was all laid back and allowing the day to be a full on festival, with food and music and good times for all; Palestinians, Internationals, and Israelis all gathered together and had a wonderful time that day, and the Palestinians were so honored to have Cindy there; my friend Muhamad held her arm and told the soldiers that “here is my mother and my father,” and I too felt part of a larger family that day and many more since.

We had lunch with many other friends after the screening, and I look forward to seeing Cindy and Craig again. But I hope that we all take in the importance of the screening, of the message of the film, of Rachel, and the real location of the controversy. The Jewish community and other communities (the anti-war movement, ‘Progessives,’ Americans, you name it) are all struggling with a quickly shifting paradigm regarding I/P. I have seen in my own life and experience this shift take place, within me and without me; I have seen the same arguments regarding charters and leaders and recognition and peace processes being recycled, rehashed and practically zombified in the media and in popular discourse. I have also seen a remarkable level of change and upheaval; new information and unheard testimony, of narrative and points of view shifting, of new research and ideas becoming part of the popular discourse, and of the courage of people resisting without hope, but never with despair.

I wish Rachel, and so many others, could see it as well, for their lives have made it possible; I only hope that I too can contribute in a way that honors them, and brings the peace and justice that so many have been denied for so long.

Norway examines the ethics of its Israel investments

Amira Hass | Ha’aretz

28 July 2009

Norway is reexamining its investments in several Israeli companies, in particular Elbit Systems. Two representatives of the Council on Ethics of the Norwegian finance ministry visited Israel at the beginning of June, in the wake of growing criticism of Israel in Norway in the months following last winter’s Israeli offensive in Gaza. The representatives met with, among others, groups of Palestinians and Israelis who claim that Norway invests in businesses directly involved in the Israeli occupation, which, they say, contradicts its commitment to abide by international law and to a just solution for the area.

The Council on Ethics was established to insure that foreign investments by the Norwegian Government Pension Fund-Global meet its ethical guidelines. At the end of 2008, the fund was invested in about 8,000 international companies, to the tune of 2,275 billion kroner, approximately $365 billion, according to this week’s exchange rate.

Of that amount, the Norwegian investment in Israeli companies totaled some 2.67 billion kroner, about $428 million, with another 627 million kroner in bonds, about $100 million. According to the Central Bank of Norway, the investment in Elbit Systems, which manufactures electronic equipment used by military and other security organizations, was 35 million kroner at the end of 2008, about $5.75 million, a little under a third of 1 percent of the company’s stock. The year 2008 saw a significant increase in the number of Israeli companies whose stock the Norwegian fund purchased, from eight in January to 41 by December.

Nearly two-thirds of the 41 companies are involved in development and building in the occupied territories, including the parts that were annexed to Jerusalem after the 1967 war. Another 11 international companies in which the Norwegians invest are also involved in the activities of Israeli companies on the other side of the Green Line, according to the “Who Profits from the Occupation” project of the Coalition of Women for Peace.

Earlier call for boycott

The Council on Ethics does not usually confirm or deny reports on the checks it conducts. But the examination of Israeli investments became known because representatives of the council met with the Israeli ambassador to Norway in Oslo before their visit to Israel. According to newspaper reports, Norwegian Finance Minister Kristin Halverson announced at the height of Operation Cast Lead, in Gaza last winter, that the pension fund was obligated to examine its Israeli investments.

The fund’s chairwoman, Gro Nystuen, told Haaretz that the Norwegian finance ministry itself published an announcement that investments in Elbit were under scrutiny, information that members of the council are themselves not allowed to volunteer. Finance Minister Halverson is a member of the Socialist Left Party, a partner of the Labor and Center parties in the coalition government. In 2005, when her party was in the opposition, Halverson called for a boycott of Israel. But after voicing a similar statement as a member of the government’s ruling coalition, she then recanted, when the government made clear that this was not official Norwegian policy toward Israel. The Socialist Left Party was among the most persistent political forces demanding the implementation of ethical guidelines for government investments.

The representatives’ June visit to Israel was also not a routine one. According to Nystuen, taking into consideration that Norway invests in 8,000 companies around the world, out of a potential 80,000, it is not possible to visit each relevant country. She said that one of the representatives was planning in any case to participate in a conference taking place in Israel, and so the examination, based on existing materials in writing, was combined with an on-site visit.

People who met the council representatives during their visit in the country said two major Elbit products – surveillance systems for the separation barrier and pilotless aerial vehicles (drones), both of them causes of the reexamination – were under special scrutiny, even though the drones are not included in the Norwegian category of forbidden weapons.

Erik Hagen, who works for the independent news service Norwatch, assumes that other Israeli companies are also under scrutiny. Norwatch is monitoring whether Norway’s foreign business investments match its criteria for human rights, workers rights and protection of the environment. Hagen’s previous reports in Norwatch led to the first exclusion recommended by the Council on Ethics – from the American oil-scouting firm formerly known as Kerr-McGee, which was operating in the Sahara, in territory occupied by Morocco.

The Government Pension Fund-Global, originally the Government Petroleum Fund, is meant to insure that Norway’s oil income will be available for the welfare of future generations; it began operating in the 1990s. The Council on Ethics was established in 2004, when the fact became known that – although Norway is party to the international demand for a ban on land mines – the fund was invested in a Singaporean company that manufactured mines, and the subject became a matter of public debate in Norway.

The council’s members include two lawyers, an economist, a biologist and a philosopher. The council’s ethical guidelines do not rule out investment in companies that produce weapons. A prohibition does, however, apply to producers of nuclear or chemical weapons, cluster bombs, land mines, and incendiary weapons of all types, such as napalm.

According to the guidelines, the fund may not invest in companies that “constitute an unacceptable risk of the Fund contributing to serious or systematic human rights violations, such as murder, torture, deprivation of liberty, forced labor, the worst forms of child labor and other forms of child exploitation, serious violations of individuals’ rights in situations of war or conflict, severe environmental damages, gross corruption or other particularly serious violations of fundamental ethical norms.” The council inspects the nature of the company’s products, and does not examine governments’ policies in countries where the Fund invests. Since its establishment, the council has recommended excluding some 30 companies and the Norwegian finance ministry adopted the majority of these recommendations.

The council has examined its holdings in Israel twice before: in 2006, when the fund was invested in only five Israeli companies, and in 2008 and 2009, when investments in Israel Electric Corporation bonds came under scrutiny. At that time the council decided there was no reason to withdraw its holdings, for it found no evidence that the electric company was involved as a company in the withholding of electric supply to the Gaza Strip. The examination and recommendation processes are likely to take many months; sometimes they can take as much as a year. If the recommendation is to exclude a company, and the Norwegian finance ministry adopts it, the decision will be made public only after the stocks are sold.