Tag: 1948 Palestine - Page 12 - International Solidarity Movement

Critical Mass Against the Occupation

What: Critical Mass Against the Occupation
When: Tuesday, 5.6, 16:00
Where: Leaving from the Tel Aviv Cinematheque and continuing to the streets of Tel Aviv

On Tuesday the 5th of June, the day in which Israel attacked its neighboring countries and declared the Six Days War, the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip will turn 40. This is also the opening day for a week of protest and resistance to the occupation, which is planned to include cultural activities, direct actions, demonstrations and more (see Kibush.org).
To mark to opening of this week we will go on a critical mass tour of the occupation in the streets of Tel Aviv.

Critical mass is a protest tactic originating in the green movement, which utilizes bicycles and other self-propelled vehicles to take the streets en masse. The purpose of Critical Mass rides are to demonstrate and to de facto reclaim the exclusive control of the road from motorized vehicles in a legal way. In the absence of a law prohibiting bicyclers from riding on the road, the “we are not disturbing traffic, we ARE the traffic” strategy makes it hard for the police to disperse critical mass rides.

The rides are organized in a decentralized and non-hierarchic way. As part if the ride we propose to use different stunts and gimmicks in order to attract the attention of passersby, such as music, whistles, flags, signs, the use of special bikes on so on and so forth. Please bring your own message and an instrument to convey it with you.

We will meet at 16:00 in front of the Tel Aviv Cinematheque, and will continue from there to paint the streets of Tel Aviv with the message of freedom and equality for all.

40 Children Without a Roof

Demolition of Palestinian homes in Attir
by Yeela Raanan, Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages in the Negev, 21 May 2007

Today, Monday, May 21, 2007, again the government of Israel again demolished homes of its citizens. This time in the village of Attir, north of the town of Hura. The government demolished four homes. About 40 children were left without a roof over their heads and with harsh memories they will carry their entire lives.

In the 1950s the government of Israel uprooted the Abu-Alqian people and relocated them in the location they are living until today.

Ahmad built his home in the 1990s. The government wanted to move him and his entire extended family to the town of Hura. Despite wishing to maintain a rural community way of life, despite living off animal husbandry, despite the government’s wish to build a village for Jews in the place of his village, because of the threat of his home being demolished, the extended family – several brothers – agreed to move to Hura. They came to an agreement with the Authority for the “Advancement” of the Bedouins on the location of a neighborhood in Hura that will host their extended family.

There were two final points to settle with the Authority: the Authority was willing to allow single young men from the age of 23 to purchase land for homes, while the family wanted the young men from the age of 18 to have this right. Especially since the Authority was not willing to allocate space for future family home purchases. The second point was the amount of compensation that the families should receive. The government decided that $25,000 was the cost of the large stone buildings the families were leaving behind, and the families had no legal way to refute this. Of this half would go towards the purchase of the land on which the new house was to be built. This left the family the ridiculous sum of $12,000 with which to build a new home. The family requested a true estimate of the cost of building a new home similar to that they had to leave.

At this point the Authority lost patience and decided that instead of negotiations, they will demolish. Now Ahmad and the others don’t have a negotiation chip – they have no home to leave…

There are several questions one may ask from what occurred today:

· Was it really less expensive to employ a helicopter, eight buses full of police people who were brought from the center of Israel, five bulldozers, scores of large cars full of more police people – hundreds, or maybe thousands of police people, rather than agreeing to the requests by the families for more fair compensation?

· Will this line of action by the Authority bring forth many more people happy to give up their lives in the villages, and negotiate with the Authority on the conditions of transfer to the new locations demanded by the government?

· Do we really want the gangsters who run the Authority to be those who define for us the relationships with our neighbors in the Negev?

Newsweek: A Grittier Trip to the Holy Land

A Grittier Trip to the Holy Land,
Sarina Rosenberg, May 21 issue

The Israel that 18,000 young Jewish Americans will see this summer on the free, 10-day trip offered by Taglit-birthright Israel is a land of ancient religious sites, sandy beaches and buff young soldiers. “It’s a Jewish identity trip,” says Wayne L. Firestone, president of Hillel, which runs one of the largest Birthright tours. But according to Dunya Alwan and Hannah Mermelstein, two Boston-based activists, the Birthright-sanctioned trips don’t give a true picture of Israel because they minimize the experience of the Palestinian people. (Mermelstein is Jewish; Alwan, the child of a Muslim-Jewish marriage, calls herself a “secular Muslim-Jew.”) In 2005, the pair launched Birthright Unplugged, an “alternative” tour of the West Bank in which the Palestinian narrative takes center stage. This Israel is a land of refugee camps, military checkpoints and security fences. “We want to put people that would otherwise not have the access in direct contact with the Palestinian people,” Mermelstein says.

The Unplugged tours are relatively tiny, with just 60 travelers in two years, compared with Birthright’s 125,000 in seven years, but applications are increasing. The six-day trip costs $350 and stops at Hebron, Ramallah and Dheisheh, a Palestinian refugee camp in Bethlehem. (Birthright avoids areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority.) Accommodations reflect Palestinian living conditions, Mermelstein says—the group rides in local buses and opts for home stays over hotels. Nova McGiffert, 24, an Austin, Texas, social worker who traveled on both Birthright and Birthright Unplugged last winter, says the latter drove home what she called the devastating results of an Israeli occupation. “During Unplugged, all of my nightmares came true about the realities of the situation,” she says.

Unplugged travelers have angered the larger Birthright operation by using the latter to get to Israel free of charge, then extending their stay to experience Unplugged. “Showing the Palestinian side is not the mandate we receive from our donors,” Taglit-birthright Israel spokesman Gidi Mark says. “It’s abusing their generosity.”

Israeli government demolishes village of Twail Abu-Jarwal

Israeli government demolishes village of Twail Abu-Jarwal
Yeela Raanan, Regional Council for the Unrecognized Bedouin Villages in the Negev. (RCUV), 10 May 2007

On May 8th , 2007, the Government of Israel once more demolished the entire village of Twail Abu-Jarwal in the Israeli Negev: 30 tents and huts.

Sunset, the stifling heat of the day had lifted, we sat as the villagers related the destruction that occurred in the morning. They arrived at 9:30am, two bulldozers accompanied by scores of armed policepeople and a handful of youth from the West Bank settlements – “workers” – to demolish the entire village. “I was at work, I didn’t know that my home was demolished until I came ‘home'”, one related. “They buried alive the doves’ hatchlings”, said Yunis sadly. “Many of the village people are in Jordan for a wedding, they must of known that, they have informers everywhere, even at the border crossing”, thought another. The bulldozer driver took his time, he worked slowly and thoroughly, he left nothing standing, nothing.” “On the other side of the village they ruined the water containers, they even destroyed the broken-down van that the old man used as a shelter.” “And the other old guy, Muhammad, didn’t want to leave his house, so they picked him up and forcefully took him out,” related Ibrahim, “and then, when his son Yaser wanted to make shade for him and picked the fabric off the ground, and took the tent pole in his other hand, he was arrested by the police, who claimed that he was about to hit him.” “This is the eighth time in the last two years the have come to demolish. It is the forth time that they have flattened it out completely.”

Aqil el-Talalqa, the village council head, sat many times with representatives from the Ministry of Interior, the Authority for the “Advancement” of the Bedouins, and the Israeli Land Authority. They suggested that he and the village move to another temporary location, while the government contemplates what to do with the people. But Aqil is refusing; he has had enough with temporary solutions. His people were moved ‘temporarily’ in 1952, and have been pushed around ever since. All 500 members of the village are still living in crowded temporary homes on the outskirts of Laqia without a possibility of receiving building permits; their homes in their ancestral village are demolished every month, they are still waiting for the plots they bought in the town on Laqia in 1978. Is it not time for a permanent solution? The village people have presented their case to the Israeli courts. In the meantime their homes are being demolished.

We sat quietly, staring at the ruins of the homes, listening to the sheep as they strolled home. Yunis broke the silence, “But the little hatchlings, why did they have to bury them alive?”

Press release
9 May 2007

Once more so-called “Green Patrol” officers, joined by police, came to destroy houses of villagers in Taweel Abu-Jerla (in the Negev). Furthermore they uprooted and confiscated the tent of Nori el-Okbi in which he demonstrates for more than a year on his lands in al-Arakib and also took his car which serves him as a home. The car was taken with all his belongings: a bed, food and water.

The treatment of the Bedouin citizens by the Israeli authorities has passed all limits.

We know that consecutive governments have prepared and implemented a policy of harshness and discrimination based on unscrupled racism with the intention of completing the dispossession of the Bedouins, and silencing those who protest the taking away of their lands.

The government policy is not to allow Bedouins a life of dignity. We call upon the enlightened world and its representatives in Israel, as well as international bodies, to get involved and bring to an end the dire violation of human rights and property, which is for us like genocide.

Nori el-Okbi,

Head of the Israeli Bedouin Rights Defence Association,

054-54605565

“Born Here”- Rap Video About Home Demolitions

by Da Arab MC’s

Palestinian rap group DAM (Da Arab MC’s) created this music video about the life of Palestinians in Israel. They’re from Lod, a town between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, so they’re Palestinians with Israeli citizenship (often called “Israeli Arabs”). They usually rap in Arabic, but they made a Hebrew version of this song with a music video to get their message out to the majority of Israelis who don’t speak Arabic.

You find out more about DAM HERE .