CPT: Israeli military delivers stop work orders on 9 Palestinian structures in At-Tuwani

Christian Peacemaker Team

20 July 2009

At-Tuwani – In the afternoon of 20 July, the Israeli District Coordinating Office (DCO) delivered stop work orders for nine Palestinian structures around the village of At-Tuwani. These orders were delivered to seven new houses, one cave, and one cistern in the area. The Israeli military sometimes delivers a stop work order to a structure prior to a demolition order; and after a demolition order is delivered, the Israeli military may then demolish the structure. While the DCO and Israeli soldiers delivered the stop work orders, Palestinian children and adults gathered in the area, protesting the delivery of the stop work orders. One Palestinian admonished the DCO and soldiers to deliver demolition orders to the illegal buildings in the Israeli outpost of Havat Ma’on, which continues to expand. Palestinian children surrounded each house and chanted loudly, attempting to make it difficult for the DCO to leave the orders at each house and making it difficult for the DCO and soldiers to use their radio and phones. In addition, Palestinians sat in protest in front of the military and DCO and prayed together on their land.

While delivering the stop work orders, a member of the DCO struck a small child and an Israeli soldier shoved a Palestinian civilian to the ground. In addition, Israeli police arrested a Palestinian man who was present to protest the stop work orders. He is supposedly charged with “threatening soldiers” and remains in the Kiryat Arba police station.

One of the houses had already been destroyed in the night of 16 July (see release: New Palestinian House and Olive Tree Destroyed in the Night.) The Palestinian family suspects the house had been demolished by Israeli settlers from the Israeli settlement of Ma’on or the illegal outpost of Havat Ma’on, and the family began rebuilding the home the next day.

Despite Israeli settler and soldier harassment to discourage the growth of the village of At-Tuwani, Palestinians remain committed to asserting their right to develop and build their privately owned Palestinian land.

Photos from the day are available at:
http://cpt.org/gallery/Israeli-Military-Delivers-Stop-Work-Orders%3B-Palestinians-Protest-Nonviolently

A short video from the day is available at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX322W_VTlI

Campaigners for evicted Palestinians call on Barack Obama to intervene

Rachel Shabi | The Guardian

20 July 2009

Campaigners protesting at the eviction of two Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem to make way for a Jewish development today appealed to President Barack Obama to stop the settlement going ahead.

The families, who have lived in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood north of the Old City, were given until last Sunday by an Israeli court to leave their homes, and now face fines, arrests and eviction. The decision affects 55 people, including 14 children.

The families say that, as refugees from the 1948 war, they were given the houses in 1956 by the UN’s refugee agency and the Jordanian government, which controlled the area until 1967.

But the Israeli court upheld a prior claim to the land by the Sephardi Community Committee, which subsequently sold the rights to an Israeli construction company with reported US investment ties.

“They have the power and we could be evicted or arrested at any time,” says Maher Hannoun, head of one of the families at Sheikh Jarrah. “But I will never run away from my house. It is my job to protest my house and my children.”

Nahalot Shimon International, the company that the court decreed current owner of the site, has plans to build a new 200-unit settlement in the area – which would affect a further 20 or so Palestinian families.

“My children keep asking me, ‘Daddy are we going to live in a tent?’ What do I tell them? I tell them I have hope that it won’t happen,” says Hannoun, a 51-year-old salesman whose family is from Haifa, now in Israel, and Nablus, in the occupied West Bank.

The neighbourhood is close to the site of the Shepherd Hotel, where the US recently demanded that Israeli halt a construction project. Building has not yet commenced at the site of the old, disused hotel – a vast stone building and sprawling terrace, once owned by the grand mufti of Jerusalem and bought by the American millionaire Irving Moskowitz in 1985.

Yesterday, the Guardian revealed that 80-year-old Moskowitz is funding many illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

East Jerusalem was annexed by Israel after the 1967 war – a move not recognised by the international community. Israel maintains the Jewish right to reside in any part of Jerusalem.

“It is not about the Jewish right to live in East Jerusalem,” says Meir Margalit, a Meretz party member of Jerusalem city council. “But about settlers who have come with a dangerous political agenda to ‘Israelise’ the area, change the demographic and in that way undermine any kind of political solution in the future.”

Most Arabs can’t buy most homes in West Jerusalem

Nir Hasson | Ha’aretz

21 July 2009

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed this week that Jerusalem is an “open city” that permits all its inhabitants, Jewish and Palestinian, to purchase homes in both its eastern and western parts.

“Our policy is that Jerusalem residents can purchase apartments anywhere in the city. There is no ban on Arabs buying apartments in the west of the city, and there is no ban on Jews building or buying in the city’s east,” Netanyahu said in response to the U.S. request to halt a Jewish construction project in East Jerusalem.

An examination by Haaretz, however, presented a rather different situation on the ground. According to Israel Lands Administration rules, residents of East Jerusalem cannot take ownership of the vast majority of Jerusalem homes.

When an Israeli citizen purchases an apartment or house, ownership of the land remains with the ILA, which leases it to the purchaser for a period of 49 years, enabling the registration of the home (“tabu”). Article 19 of the ILA lease specifies that a foreign national cannot lease – much less own – ILA land.

Attorney Yael Azoulay, of Zeev and Naomi Weil Lawyers and Notary Office, explains that if a foreign national purchases an apartment they must show the ILA proof of eligibility to immigrate to Israel in accordance with the Law of Return. Non-Jewish foreigners cannot purchase apartments. This group includes Palestinians from the east of the city, who have Israeli identity cards but are residents rather than citizens of Israel.

Most residences in West Jerusalem and in the Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem are built on ILA land. All the neighborhoods built after 1967 – Gilo, Pisgat Ze’ev, Ramot, French Hill and Armon Hanatziv – are built on ILA land. Even in the older neighborhoods of Kiryat Hayovel, Katamonim and Beit Hakerem, tens of thousands of apartments are built on ILA land and cannot be sold to Palestinians. In the ultra-Orthodox central Jerusalem neighborhoods of Geula and Mea Shearim, as well as in Rehavia and Talbieh, there are homes built on private land – mainly owned by one of the churches or purchased in the past by Jews.

It goes without saying that a Palestinian seeking to purchase an apartment in a Haredi area would be rejected out of hand, and Rehavia or Talbieh would in any event be out of the range of most East Jerusalemites’ budget.

Nevertheless, dozens of Palestinian families have moved into Jewish neighborhoods, mainly French Hill and Pisgat Ze’ev. Most are renting, while a few buy apartments without registering them. Lawyers in the field say the law is not always applied, and that if a resident of East Jerusalem were to apply to register the apartment at the ILA, they would not have problems doing so.

If the amendment to the Israel Lands Administration Law is passed – the bill is in an advanced stage – an Israeli apartment owner would be able to take ownership of the land and could then sell it to anyone, including foreign nationals and Palestinians.

Peace activist finally allowed to return to UK

Herald Express

21 July 2009

A totnes peace activist who spent a year in Gaza has returned to the UK.

Jenny Linnell flew back from the Middle East in London at the weekend following weeks of being stuck at the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt.

The pro-Palestinian human rights charity worker had been prevented from leaving the Gaza Strip through Egypt after she was identified as one of the peace activists from Europe who came into Gaza on the Free Gaza boat last year.

Ms Linnell, a former vegan chef at The Willow restaurant in Totnes, moved to Gaza last August as part of the Free Gaza Movement and International Solidarity Movement to help Palestinians and document the hardship of their daily lives.

Ms Linnell was in Gaza in January when the Israeli army, responding to rocket attacks from Hamas, carried out a three-week bombardment of the Palestinian enclave.

Last month, the 33-year-old tried to return to Britain, but she says she was unable to leave Gaza because neither Israel nor Egypt would let her out through their borders.

The humanitarian aid worker and three fellow UK citizens, including two men and a woman, tried to cross the border several times, but were turned away despite having the necessary official documents from the British Embassy in Cairo, the Palestinian government and the Egyptians.

At the time she said she had been despairing and was feeling like a prisoner at the border crossing and was not being let out.

It is understood she was finally allowed to go to Egypt so she could move on to Jordan.

Ms Linnell went to Syria then Turkey before catching a plane back to Heathrow on Saturday.

One of Ms Linnell’s friends from Totnes, Richard Taylor said: “She’s back in the UK and we are all very relieved that she is safe and sound. She travelled overland after she received a call from the British consulate in Cairo telling her if she went straight to the border now she’d be able to go across.

“We think it happened because George Galloway was out there delivering some humanitarian aid to Gaza.

“It was such a worry to have a close friend on the front line.

“She’s not due back down to Devon for a while because she’s staying with her family.

“But she has been overwhelmed with the support she received here. We’re over the moon.”

Fellow friend and humanitarian buddy Liz Snook added: “It seems Jenny didn’t actually see Galloway who was due to return to the UK a day early.

“But she was let out which is what counts. A big thank you to every one who put pressure on the Foreign office, the Egyptian Embassy and MP and MEPs. It seems to have worked. I’m so pleased she’s back.”

Ms Linnell who is understood to be staying with her parents in Leicester, was not available for comment.

Under attack Bil’in and the peaceful resistance of the village against the Israeli wall

Luisa Morgantini | Liberazione

19 July 2009

Israel wants to stop the non-violent struggle and the unity created amongst Palestinians, Israelis and Internationals, who since more than four years demonstrate in order to end the construction of the wall: in the last weeks the escalation of systematic arrests and kidnappings of activists in Bil’in by the Israeli soldiers.

Raids in the middle of the nights, with military vehicles crossing in the dark that illegal barrier represented by the Apartheid wall. Tens of armed soldiers laying close to the ground in order to not to be seen.

They proceed slowly, without lights, wearing dark military camouflage uniforms and black masks on their faces.

They arrive in the hearth of Bil’in crossing streets and fields. They surround houses destroying all that they meet on their path, kidnapping people, including 15 or 16 years old adolescents, confiscating documents, mobile phones and personal things of the detained persons. Also last Friday a 15-years-old boy has been abducted from his home at 3 a.m., and during the demonstration activists have been attacked with a strange sort of smelling water, probably containing chemical substances provoking blistering effects and with a suffocating smell.

This is the same scenario taking place also in other villages in the West Bank, but Bil’in has become a symbol: the village –where the shame wall confiscates 49% of lands- in the last weeks has become a theatre of a further intensification of this kind of operations, that are real war operations, perpetrated against the activists of the Popular Committee of non-violent resistance, men and women, civilians, who are resisting in a non-violent, peaceful and creative way against the wall and the occupation.

Often, the activists stand on the rooftops of the village, in order to forewarning the others of incoming of the raids that usually comprise of approximately 100 soldiers divided into groups of 20-30 men, each encircling the home of an accused stone-thrower at varying hours of the night. In the last three weeks, 17 young activists have been arrested -15 Palestinians, 1 Israeli, then released, and one American, according to what reported in a document by Miftah, the Palestinian Initiative for the promotion of Global dialogue and democracy, denouncing the escalation of violence in Bil’in.

I saw with my own eyes many and many wounded people during the demonstrations that every Friday take place near the construction site of the wall and during which the Israeli soldiers use sound bombs, tear gas canisters, and a foul-smelling chemical spray: I was many times intoxicated by those gas, while rubber-coated bullets were shot at men’s height.

On 19th April 2009, Bassem Abu Rahmah, 30 years old, a pacifist Palestinian demonstrator, was shot in the chest by an Israeli soldier with a tear gas bomb during one of Bil’in’s nonviolent Friday protests: an use clearly excessive and inhuman of the force against unarmed demonstrators.

The week after the murder of Bassem, I have been many times in Bil’in with the Popular Committee. Together we have protested and built a symbolic grave in the place where he was killed.

We did under the fire of tear gas canisters and when we finished it, putting the memorial tablet with the name of Bassem, we were so happy. What a paradox to be happy for the construction of a grave!

In their attempts to dismantle the movement, the Israeli military specifically targets the youth: from 23rd to 25th 2009, four adolescents, 16-17 years old, have been arrested and forced to release the names of peace activists and information related to Bil’in Committee. The aim is not only to arrest, kidnap and physically neutralize the activists, but also to spread terror amongst the inhabitants of the village of Bil’in, 1,800 residents, in order to stop all kind of activity of non violent resistance, that become an example also for other realities of the occupied West Bank such as Nil’in and Ma’asara, whose land continue to be confiscated by the wall.

However neither all this, nor 1,300 wounded people and 60 arrests suffered by the activists have been enough to stop their determination.

“If they want to arrest us all, they can. But our wives and children will continue the struggle” declared Abdullah Abu Rahmah, one of the coordinators of the Popular Committee of non-violent resistance of Bil’in. His daughter Luma, 7 years old, suffers of insomnia, as well as other children in Bil’in, a clear sign of the emotional and psychological despair: constantly in panic, Luma awakes in the middle of the night, sometimes in screams and tears, calling out for her father fearing that he has been abducted.

The injustices suffered by Bil’in residents and witnessed by many organizations for human rights and International and Israeli activists, are the most clear consequence of the oppression experienced by Palestinians because of the Israeli military occupation.

However their answer has become an example for all those who struggle for justice showing the way to follow and to support for the solution of the conflict.

Since 2005 residents of Bil’in responded in fact with a peaceful and non-violent resistance to the separation wall, that far from the Green line, snakes deeply inside the West Bank annexing 1,968 of 4,040 dunums of Bil’in lands, (196,68 hectares on 403,88).

Activists in Bil’in are only exerting their legitimate rights to defend their land against the arbitrariness of Israel, disregarding the International Court of Justice that five years ago condemned as illegal the construction of the wall inside the Occupied Palestinian territories (OPT), including in and around East Jerusalem, in violation of international obligations, intimating to Israel to stop the construction and to bring down the parts already built, terminating also the entire system of rigid restrictions on the freedom of movement of Palestinians in the West Bank since they represent a violation of human rights.

And also the Israeli High Court of Justice declared many times illegal the route of the wall in Bil’in, inviting the Israeli Government to actuate an alternative route: this invitation has of course been ignored while the Israeli settlements of Mod’in Ilit and Mattityahu continue to grow.

For all this, their Friday demonstrations have gained the solidarity of Israeli and International activists, united in the common need of justice and against the strangulation, the occupation and the apartheid. Together they oppose to the uprooting of olive trees replaced by the foundations of the wall, blocking the bulldozers or preventing the installation of outposts of the Israeli settlements, still in expansion.

The International Community must give more force to all those Palestinians, supported by Israeli activists (who represent the honour of Israel) and Internationals in the defence of their rights, pretending from Israel the end of the raids and the immediate release of all activists arrested – included Abeed Abu Rahme- as requested by the Campaign launched by the Popular Committee of Bil’in (on the website http://www.bilin-village.org/english/activities-and-support/Campaign-to-release-Palestinian-activist-arrested-in-Bil-in the sample of letters of protest). It’s time also that the International Community demands with force and urgency to Israel to respect the International Court of Justice and to destroy the wall inside the Occupied Palestinian Territories, making reparation for all damage suffered by people affected by the wall, and to end military occupation, including all restriction of movement in the West Bank as well as the Siege that in Gaza, is collectively punishing over 1 million and a half of civilians.