Tag: Bil’in

Village sues Canada companies cashing in on occupation

Deborah Guterman | Electronic Intifada

11 June 2009

The small Palestinian village of Bilin will face-off this month against two Canadian corporations accused of aiding and abetting the colonization of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Bilin has charged Green Park International and Green Mount International with illegally constructing residential buildings and other settlement infrastructure on village territory, and marketing such structures to the civilian population of the State of Israel. The condominiums in question are located in a settlement neighborhood known as Matityahu East.

Still in its preliminary phase, the lawsuit sheds light on the shady pairing of corporate interest with Israeli expansionist ambition. Representing the village of Bilin, the Bilin Village Council headed by Ahmed Issa Abdallah Yassin seeks to hold the companies accountable for violations of international law.

The lawsuit, filed by Canadian attorney Mark Arnold in 2008, accuses Israel of “severing” village land from Palestinian control, and transferring territorial control to Israeli planning councils. The rights to develop the territory were then sold to the Green Park companies.

Arnold is optimistic. “Certainly the Canadian law and the Quebec law appears to be on the side of Bilin, and against the side of the defendants,” he said.

The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 prohibits an occupying power from relocating part of its civilian population to the territory it has occupied. A violation of this principle is deemed a crime of war under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Insofar as Green Park International and Green Mount International constructed the buildings meant to house Israelis within the occupied West Bank, the corporations are considered complicit in the commission of this war crime.

According to Emily Schaeffer, an Israeli attorney representing the Village of Bilin, both the articles of the Fourth Geneva Convention and the Rome Statute have been incorporated into Canadian federal law under the Canadian Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Statute.

“The Canadian statute specifically makes aiding and abetting a country in committing those crimes a crime,” she said. “This is the essential article that ties the [actions of] corporations to government responsibilities.”

A court of last resort

The Bilin case is one of a growing number of civil and criminal motions filed abroad that attempt to hold Israel and its corporate agents responsible for breaches of international humanitarian law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

However, according to Schaeffer, this increased tendency reveals the failure of the Israeli court system to protect Palestinian rights.

“The truth is that Israel is not willing to implement all of international humanitarian law and the laws on occupation on the occupied [Palestinian] territories,” she said. “We’ve made some headway, we haven’t gone far enough, and that’s why we’re in Canada.”

The question of the legality of the settlements has been brought to the Israeli high court on multiple occasions. However, the courts have repeatedly refused to rule on this issue. Instead, the courts deem this concern political in nature and thus outside the jurisdiction of the justice system.

Green Park International and Green Mount International have motioned to dismiss the suit. They claim that Canada is not the appropriate forum in which to try the case. Instead, the defendants contend that the suit should be heard in Israel as it is the country where the activity in question has taken place.

“Our opponents want us to go to Israel,” said Arnold. “We say — and the Israeli courts have said — that issues of this type are not justiciable [in Israel]. In other words, no justice can be given by the Israeli courts on these types of issues. The Israeli courts see them as being politically-based as opposed to legal issues.”

The Canadian scene

In the run-up to the preliminary hearings, Mohammed Khatib of the Bilin Popular Committee Against the Wall, and Schaeffer will tour 11 Canadian cities. The speaking tour is part of a civil society campaign to mobilize support for the embattled village. A spokesperson for the Coalition for the Bilin Tour, who wishes to remain anonymous, emphasized the need to hold corporations accountable for affronts to human rights.

“As members of the community, it is our duty to curb the power of large multinational corporations. We need to tell them, ‘There are limits to your quest to seek profits,'” she said in French.

Schaeffer highlighted the importance for concerned individuals to show solidarity with Bilin.

Speaking of the highly controversial nature of the lawsuit in question, she said, “The judge in this case needs to feel that it’s okay to rule in favor of the village — that there’s not going to be a major backlash. And that judge also needs to feel supported in making a decision that might very well influence Canadian foreign policy with Israel.

“I think the role of civil society is to say, we’re with you on this, we want this to happen.”

Bilin is seeking a permanent injunction against the Canadian corporations. In addition, if successful, the Green Park companies will be ordered to destroy the buildings they have already constructed and pay two million dollars each in punitive damages to the village.

However, it is doubtful that such orders will ever be implemented by Israeli authorities. In order for the ruling to be enforced, the defendants will have to petition the Israeli high court to accept the Canadian decision.

Bilin is located four kilometers east of the green line (the 1949 armistice line that marks the boundary between Israel and the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967) and is adjacent to Modiin Illit, a large settlement bloc that sits on territory confiscated from Bilin and the neighboring Palestinian villages of Nilin, Kharbata, Deir Qadis and Saffa. Since 2005, the residents of this agricultural community have been leading a nonviolent struggle against the construction of Israel’s wall in the West Bank on village land.

Ostensibly built to protect the existing residents of the settlement bloc, the route of the wall was drawn to incorporate the future construction of Matityahu East located just east of Modiin Illit. The wall appropriates an additional 450 acres, which accounts for 60 percent of Bilin’s land.

In 2007, the Israeli high court deemed the route of the wall in Bilin illegal, and ordered the Israeli military to move it closer to the edge of the settlement boundary.

To date, the military has yet to implement the high court’s decision.

Deborah Guterman is a member of Young Jews for Social Justice, a collective of Montreal Jews who take action on racism, injustice in the Middle East and inequality in their communities.

A world away, Palestinian seeks justice

Iain Marlow | The Star

16 June 2009

First came the fence, which splintered the olive trees from Bil’in, the Palestinian village that tended them. Then came the tear gas canister that hit a local, well-liked man named Basem Abu Rahme in the chest, killing him.

Everyone knew Basem, which is what everyone called him. Mohammed Khatib, one of the village’s 1,700 residents, was at that protest, and is still deeply disturbed by the death. Khatib, 35, was in Toronto on the weekend on a national tour to promote the village’s latest bid to seek justice – using Quebec’s courts to stop Israeli settlements.

“We want to show that there is no justice in Israel,” said Khatib.

The case, filed last year, alleges Green Park International Inc. and Green Mount International Inc. are complicit in war crimes because they helped build an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank. The village’s lawyers have based their case on international and domestic Canadian law.

Canada’s federal Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act states a population transfer by an occupying power to “territory it occupies” is a serious violation of international humanitarian law.

Montreal lawyer Ronald Levy, who represents the corporations, declined to comment in detail, saying only he “questioned why they found it necessary to conduct a cross-Canada tour.”

Mark Arnold, the village’s Canadian lawyer, said Levy will argue the case should be tried in Israel and that it should be dismissed on jurisdictional grounds. First, Arnold said, the case deserves to be heard here because the companies are registered in Quebec.

“Secondly, the Israeli courts have never, and will never, hear a case that deals with the illegality of settlements on the West Bank.”

For human rights groups and others, using domestic law to prosecute alleged foreign crimes is not new. In May, under the same federal act, a Quebec court found Désiré Munyaneza guilty of war crimes committed during the Rwandan genocide in 1994.

Most famously, the American oil corporation Unocal was dragged into a U.S. court in 2005 by Burmese villagers who alleged the company was complicit in human rights violations there. The company settled for an undisclosed amount, generating buzz among human rights groups that domestic laws may help in their struggle against international corporations.

In 1998, however, a Quebec court dismissed a class-action suit that sought damages from a Canadian company, Cambior, for a chemical spill in Guyana. The judge said the plaintiffs should instead seek redress in the Guyanese legal system.

But Emily Schaeffer, an Israeli lawyer representing the village, said they are looking to a recent, more positive precedent involving the corporation Veolia, commissioned to run a rail system between West Jerusalem and East Jerusalem, also considered occupied territory under international law.

“The French courts ruled that they had jurisdiction over acts that took place in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories,” Schaeffer said. “That sets a really good precedent for us, particularly, because it’s a French court’s civil law system, which the Quebec courts were modelled after.”

The dismissal motions begin Monday in Montreal.

‘Tear gas is an emotional state’

Iris Leal | Ha’aretz

11 June 2009

The three days of mourning over the death of Yusuf “Akal” Srour, who was shot at close range on Friday during a demonstration against the separation fence in Na’alin, ended Tuesday. Srour was shot when he tried to help another demonstrator who had been hurt by the soldiers’ fire. The condition of that demonstrator, a boy of 15 from the village of Na’alin, is still serious. He underwent surgery and one of his lungs was removed.

In the past year there have demonstrations in Na’alin every Friday. In neighboring Bil’in, the residents have been demonstrating since 2005, when the construction of the barrier on their land began. In spite of a High Court of Justice ruling on September 4, 2007, which proposed that, within a reasonable period of time, a plan be considered to reroute existing and planned sections of the fence to reduce harm to the villagers, with preference to be given to construction on state land; and despite a subsequent ruling, after nothing was done, declaring that security considerations do not justify maintaining the route along its present line, and ordering the respondents to act on the court’s decisions without delay – the fence is still in the same place, separating the village from its land.

On the way to Na’alin, from Highway 443, one can observe the dance of the unattractive cranes that are industriously building the city of Modi’in. From the Shilat junction, one can see the depressing results of construction beyond the Green Line. It is hard to describe the ugliness of the new neighborhood there, Matityahu East, and upsetting to think about Modi’in Ilit, to which it belongs. Suffice it to say that this is misanthropic architecture, inhospitable to its residents, who are large ultra-Orthodox families, and to its rocky surroundings as well.

It is even harder to grasp that from the land on which these huge stone boxes with their fiberglass balconies are now sprouting, only four and a half years ago silvery olive trees and apricot trees grew – the livelihood of farmers from neighboring Bil’in, who now have the separation fence stuck in their throats.

It’s noontime on Friday, and most of the village residents are still at the mosque, in the midst of prayers. A large sign demands of the president of the United States, in English: “Have a look.”

One can only guess what the locals expect Barack Obama to see, the day after his speech in Cairo: perhaps the separation fence that passes through the backyard of a home, the agricultural land that lies on the other side, or the fresh grave of Bassem Abu Rahmeh, who was killed by a gas grenade that hit him during a regular Friday demonstration a month earlier. Palestinian flags and a tiny palm tree adorn his grave in the plot of the shaheed (martyrs) in the center of the village. Children energetically engaged in commerce momentarily stop selling cups of coffee and bracelets embroidered with the Palestinian flag, to tell people gathering next to the wall, before the weekly Bil’in demonstration, the story of Abu Rahmeh’s death in three languages.

Information begins to be exchanged as an essential part of the preparations. Haaretz photographer Tomer is delighted to see his friend Oren, who is setting up his own photographic equipment. Tomer has heard that they have improved the quality of the tear gas. Oren then tells him about the new device that fires 64 tear-gas grenades at once. And what about the stink bomb? Tomer has been talking about it all the way to Bil’in because he’s heard that it’s impossible to get rid of the stench for days – only immersion in the sea helps somewhat. But his friend who goes to either Bil’in or Na’alin every week and is therefore an authority on the matter, says he has not encountered it.

‘Goodbye Bassem’

Across the way, at the entrance to the grocery store, sits Abdullah Abu Rahmeh, who introduces himself to me as the “coordinator of activities of Bil’in’s Popular Committee Against the Wall and the Settlements.”

“Yesterday was great,” he says without enthusiasm. “People came from all over the territories, they came from Jenin, from Hebron, to send a message to Obama that we want deeds and not words.”

A practical man, tall and mustachioed, he wears a shirt that says “Goodbye Bassem,” with a picture of the dead man in terra-cotta hues.

From the direction of the mosque Mohammed Khatib approaches. He takes a stool and crowds in next to us in a small patch of shade, particularly precious during the hot midday hours. He has played a substantial part in the prolonged media coverage of Bil’in’s struggle against the separation fence. Indeed, one could say that Khatib is the dramaturge of the struggle, the one who comes up with the theme of the protest processions. During the Soccer World Cup three years ago, they wore the uniforms of soccer teams; on Christmas, they dressed up as Santa Claus. Occasionally the demonstrators have tied themselves to olive trees, while at other times they entered the tanks that supply the village with water – a reference to the popular story by Ghassan Kanafani “Men Under the Sun.” Khatib is a person who succeeds in maintaining his good spirits even on terrible days, as this one will be in the end.

The imam is reaching the end of his sermon and soon the procession will set out, as it does every Friday. I ask Khatib if he is nervous.

“Each time we go to a demonstration, we’re never sure we’ll return to our families,” he replies calmly, “although it’s not a violent demonstration and although there is a specific order not to shoot with live fire. In the end it’s their finger on the trigger. I was next to Bassem a month ago, it could have been me. We clearly understand that we are living very close to death and are getting closer to it all the time.”

Khatib’s prosaic manner is highly polished and he excels at creating dramatic moments – a talent I can appreciate, although at the same time I am wary of it: the exaggeration, the love of spectacle and the longing for the impossible constitute the necessary romantic foundation for struggles of this kind.

Equipped with bottles of water, we set out: A huge loudspeaker is perched on the back of a pickup truck, broadcasting praises of the latest shaheed. Palestinian flags are flying high. I march alongside Talila, Bassem’s friend, who has been coming here every week for the past two years. And then it is revealed to us in all its glory – the separation fence, a lattice of iron behind which Israel Defense Forces soldiers are patrolling while waiting for the weekly encounter. Beyond them, as if in defiance, are the agricultural fields of contention.

“You can’t get to your lands at all?” I ask Basman Yassin, a farmer who shows an interest in my yellow notebook and the pen hovering above it. He says that in theory, with the proper permits – which are a pain in the neck to obtain – there is access to the land, but in practice it is often denied for prolonged periods. Crops do not tolerate caprices, they demand regularity.

What is a regular feature here, however, is the following ritual: A barrage of gas grenades is fired at the people leading the procession while they are still a considerable distance from the fence. A double “tak-tak” sound and after it a murmur, like when the air is let out of a tire. One such sound signals the use of a rubber bullet, like the one a boy gets in his leg that day. Thus, without any provocation and in a single moment – and it’s hard to understand what sets it apart from all the moments that preceded it – a white cloud that smells like a discharged cap gun and tastes bitter descends upon the dirt path and the protestors.

“Tear gas is an emotional state,” explains Khatib, his eyes red and teary. “The most important thing is to become emotionally strong.”

We decide to approach the fence from the right side, in order to speak to the soldiers, and so we cross the olive grove. Through my gas mask, the situation becomes even more conflicted: Who are the men in uniform, whose rubber bullets and stun grenades and tear gas are scaring me, and why are they speaking to me in Hebrew?

“Hey, bro’,” shouts Tomer, the photographer. “Why are you throwing a stun grenade – don’t you see I have a camera?”

“We didn’t notice,” comes the answer.

At this same time, the army is making widespread use of weapons in Na’alin. “They arrived before prayers and tried to take over a building with dozens of gas grenades,” Yonatan Pollack, founder of Anarchists Against the Fence, tells me the next day. “There were clashes that calmed down when the Friday prayers began. As soon as the procession set out, at a distance of a kilometer from the fence, the army began to attack from inside the village.”

According to Pollack, live fire, the use of which is restricted to certain situations, was used.

Back in Bil’in, we are refreshing ourselves with cans of cola when Khatib informs us: “There’s a shaheed in Na’alin.”

Later I ask Khatib: What’s the story of the water tanks and “Men Under the Sun”?

“Ah,” he says, “it’s the story of a Palestinian refugee who is looking for work, and for that purpose tries to sneak over the border between Iraq and Kuwait. Together with another three men, he hides in water tanks being delivered by a truck. It’s the desert, in mid-July. The truck driver is stopped for questioning at the border. While he is trying to allay the suspicions of the soldiers, the men suffocate from the heat inside the tanks and die.

“They didn’t dare bang on the sides of the tank, or call for help, because they were afraid of being caught,” says Khatib, explaining the moral of the story. “But we refuse to die quietly.”

Iris Leal’s most recent book, “Home Fires Blazing” (in Hebrew), was published by Kinneret Zmora Bitan.

Court to decide if builders can be sued for settlements

Janice Arnold | The Canadian Jewish News

10 June 2009

A Quebec court will decide whether a lawsuit against two Canadian-based companies that are alleged to have illegally constructed residential buildings for Jewish settlers on disputed land in the West Bank can be heard here.
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On June 22, 23 and 25, Quebec Superior Court is scheduled to hear a motion from the firms’ lawyer to dismiss the case.

The lawsuit, filed last July by the municipal council of the Palestinian village of Bil’in and one of its residents, claims that the companies, Green Mount International and Green Park International, which are registered in Quebec, are violating international and Canadian law.

If the motions to dismiss are rejected, it would be the first time that any foreign court has agreed to hear a suit against a corporation for construction of Jewish settlements on territory under dispute between Palestinians and Israelis.

The companies’ lawyer, Ronald Levy, denounced the suit as “a media exercise intended to besmirch Israel; they don’t care if they win or not, they just want attention. We consider this an abusive action.”

Levy has filed three motions outlining why a Quebec court shouldn’t hear the case. The first main argument is that Israeli courts have determined that the individual plaintiff, Ahmed Issa Abdallah Yassin, was not the owner of the land on which the companies built. Yassin, who was head of the village council, died this year and his heirs are now named. In addition, Levy said the village itself can’t be a plaintiff, only its residents.

The second argument is that because this is a civil matter, it’s justiciable only where the alleged grievance happened, and the third, closely related, is that there is no aspect of this case that places it under the jurisdiction of a Canadian court.

“The fact that the companies are registered in Quebec is irrelevant,” Levy said.

Emily Schaeffer, the Israeli lawyer representing the plaintiffs, held a press conference outside the Montreal courthouse on June 4 to outline the arguments she, with Canadian lead lawyer Mark Arnold of Toronto, will be making.

Their case is based primarily on Canada’s 2000 Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, which ratified its obligations under the Rome Statutes of the International Criminal Court. They include a prohibition against an occupying power from transferring its civilian population into territory occupied as a result of war, which is also contained in the Geneva Conventions.

She said that while the case was lost in Israel, an argument based on international humanitarian law was not made “because Israeli courts never consider violations of international law” in such cases. “The Israeli government holds that this is state land, and that it has legitimate title… [Any contestation of that] is considered a political discussion and not for legal debate.”

The U.S.-born Schaeffer said there’s a precedent for a foreign court deciding it has jurisdiction to hear a lawsuit against a company from its country involving territory disputed by Israel and the Palestinians. The French company Veolia was sued in a French court for its construction of a tram line between west and east Jerusalem, she said, although that is now being appealed.

Montreal was the first stop on an 11-city cross-Canada tour that Schaeffer was scheduled to make leading up to June 22. She is publicizing the plight of the residents of Bil’in, a village of about 1,800 west of Ramallah near the Israeli security barrier.

She was to have been joined by Mohammed Khatib of Bil’in’s Popular Committee Against the Wall, but at the time of the press conference, he had not been granted a visa by Canadian officials.

For the past four years, Bil’in and its international supporters have been contesting the loss of part of its land due to the erection of the security barrier. In 2007, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled the adjacent Jewish settlement of Modi’in Illit could expand onto that land.

Schaeffer said Green Mount/Green Park bought sections of that land, a purchase she does not recognize as legal. It built 16 of the 42 apartment buildings housing about 1,000 Jewish families on the land in dispute. She said the companies also marketed and manages them.

The Bil’in plaintiffs are asking for three things in the lawsuit: a declaration that the companies’ construction is illegal under Canadian and international law; the demolition of the buildings and restoration of the land to the way it was, and $2 million in punitive damages from the companies, as well as $25,000 from their sole known officer and director, Annette Laroche, a resident of Deux-Montagnes.

However, lawyers for Bil’in said last year that they believe Laroche is “a nominal director having no direct involvement” with the companies, and that they have no evidence implicating her personally in the alleged wrongs.

Schaeffer said the only other information she has been able to find out about the companies, which are registered at the same Montreal address, is that the majority shareholder is a corporation listed in Panama.

The military attack Bil’in weekly protest injuring five civilians

Bil’in Popular Committee

5 June 2009

Five protesters were injured and dozens surfed from Gaza inhalation when Israeli troops attack the weekly protest in Bil’in village near the central West Bank city of Ramallah on Friday.

Residents of Bil’in and their international and Israelis supporters marched from the village center after the Friday midday prayers. They were joined by scores of Fatah movement members from the Ramallah district.

The protesters demanded the halt of the Israeli illegal settlements and the construction of the wall; they also held Palestinian and banners demanding US president Obama to translate his words into actions.

Ra’ed Radwan secretary general of Fatah movement in the Ramallah district said that Fatah movement will continue to resist the Israeli wall and settlements.

As the protestors arrived at the wall, they were greeted by a barrage of sound bombs, tear gas and rubber-coated bullets from the Israeli soldiers.

Kamel Al Khateeb, 16, Mohamed Al Khateeb, 16, Mohamed Abu Sa’di, Tarik Al Khateeb, and Abdullah Abu Rahma were injured by rubber-coated steel bullets while dozens were treated for gas inhalation.