It took the death of a Palestinian at Bil’in last week and the threat of another contempt of court petition to the High Court of Justice, but the state has finally come up with a new proposal for the route of the West Bank security barrier that apparently complies with the original court decision of 19 months ago, attorney Michael Sfard said on Sunday.
Last week, the state submitted a new proposal to the High Court to change the original route of the fence in the area of Modi’in Illit, which was proposed by the Defense Ministry and rejected by the court on September 4, 2007.
Now, Sfard told The Jerusalem Post, the ministry has come up with a new route that gives Bil’in villagers back 700 of the 1,700 dunams, or 170 hectares, that were set to be located on the “Israeli side” of the barrier in the original proposal.
Israel has said the route of the barrier was determined by security considerations only. But in the case of Bil’in, as was true regarding several other sections, the route was originally determined to allow for the construction of a new neighborhood, called East Matityahu, in the urban haredi settlement of Modi’in Illit.
According to the original plan, 3,000 housing units were to be built in East Matityahu in two stages.
According to Sfard, as a result of the state’s proposal to return 700 dunams of land to Bil’in, fewer than 2,000 units will be built.
On September 5, 2005, the head of the Bil’in village council, Ahmed Yasin, petitioned the High Court against the route of the security barrier. Sfard, who represented him, claimed that the state had designed the route in order to expand Modi’in Illit, taking away farmland belonging to the village and to individual villagers.
In its ruling two years later, the court upheld the petition and ordered the state to prepare a new route in accordance with a series of specific constraints.
One condition was that the new route leave the second stage of East Matityahu on the “West Bank side” of the barrier. Another condition was that the barrier itself be established as much as possible on state-owned rather than Palestinian-owned land.
It took nine months for the state to come up with a new proposal. When it finally did, it ignored key conditions established by the court in its original ruling. Above all, it left stage two of Matityahu East on the “Israeli side” of the barrier.
On December 15, 2008, the court rejected the proposal and ordered the state to come up with a new one that complied with its original ruling, “without further delay.”
Nevertheless, four more months went by without a response by the state. Sfard told the Post that after the killing of Palestinian demonstrator Bassam Ibrahim Abu Rahma, from Bil’in, during a protest against the barrier on April 17, he sent a letter to attorney Avi Licht of the State Attorney’s Office, warning that he would file another contempt of court petition unless the state submitted a new proposal within two days. (Abu Rahma, 30, was killed in a confrontation with border policemen.)
The state hurried to submit the proposal. Sfard said that although the Bil’in villagers were still angry over the loss of 1,000 or more dunams that remain on the “Israeli side” of the barrier, it looks like the court will approve the state’s new proposal.
The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office must be commended for its decision to cancel renting premises for the UK embassy in Tel Aviv from the company Africa-Israel, owned by Israeli businessman and settlement builder Lev Leviev. This is an encouraging step that should now be backed by stronger sanctions against the building of the separation wall and the building of illegal settlements by Israel. Furthermore, the governments of Norway and Dubai should emulate the example set by the UK and sever their relationships with Leviev’s companies.
The Israeli paper Ha’aretz reported on 3 March 2009 that “Due to the public pressure” several months ago in a special debate in parliament, Kim Howells of the Foreign Office was asked to explain plans to rent the embassy from Leviev.
This pressure, by a letters campaign to the FCO, was initiated by Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine with human rights organisation Adalah-New York, followed by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, former BBC correspondent Tim Llewellyn and hundreds of others.
Further voices included Daniel Machover of Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights, Palestinian notables including Hanan Ashrawi, Mustafa Barghouti and Luisa Morgantini, vice president of the European parliament.
The move was frozen after ambassador Tom Phillips requested details from Africa-Israel about its activities in the settlements.
Subsequently, on 5 March, the BBC reported the FCO’s Karen Kaufman saying that: “We looked into the issue of Africa-Israel and settlements and settlement holdings and we asked for clarification …. The UK government has always regarded settlements as illegal, but what has happened in recent months is that we are looking for ways to make a difference on this issue.”
Still, despite the FCO decision, Leviev’s companies persist in their goal, backed by the Land Redemption Fund to which Leviev is one the largest donors, of “blurring the Green Line” and connecting the illegally built Zufim settlement with Israeli communities inside the Green Line, retaining 6,000 dunams of the village Jayyous’s land sequestered by the wall. This land grab is being facilitated by the enforced construction of the apartheid wall, which the International Court of Justice firmly judged to be illegal under international law in 2004, and demanded its removal.
There are weekly non-violent protests by the Jayyous villagers, Israeli and international peace groups, together with Bil’in to stop their precious land from being taken to expand settlements and build the wall. These are being suppressed by Israeli forces on a terror rampage with live fire, beatings, tear gassings, mass arrests, house occupations and, more recently, threats of home demolitions, and pogroms.
Following an Israeli supreme court ruling that the route of the wall in Jayyous should be moved slightly, Israeli authorities are trying to blackmail Jayyous’s mayor, saying if he doesn’t accept the new wall route, there will be no gates in it for the village’s farmers to access their lands. The mayor has refused to sign. Without international intervention, Jayyous will not be able to hold on to its lands behind the wall, which contain their four vital agricultural wells and most of their greenhouses. Leviev will then be able to freely expand Zufim on to Jayyous’s stolen lands. Currently, Leviev is building 35 new housing units in Zufim.
At Bil’in, where Leviev companies are also building settlements, mainstream media failed to cover the 17 April murder of Bil’in non-violent protester Bassem Abu Rahmeh, 29, by Israeli forces. A soldier shot him with the same new type of “rocket” tear gas round, as fast and lethal as live ammunition that left US activist Tristan Anderson in critical condition.
The brutal crackdown in Bil’in continues despite three Israeli supreme court orders to move the wall in Bil’in closer to the Matityahu East settlement “outpost” where Leviev’s Danya Cebus built about 30% of the units. Israel’s court has shown itself to be the accessory of this land grab. Israel’s architects, designing these settlements, are also in breach of professional ethics, and will be held to account by their international peers.
While the US, UK and the EU seem to be keen to join Israel, the perpetrator of war crimes, in boycotting the Palestinians who are the victims of crippling sieges, deadly incursions and a prison-like occupation, they are reluctant to take any positive action to stop Israel’s breaches of international law. For instance, the Norwegian government has invested €875m in 2008 in Africa-Israel. By investing its populace’s pension fund in a company at the heart of illegal Israeli settlement building, the country that sponsored the Oslo accords violates its spirit. Norway should follow the precedent set by the UK’s FCO, in one of the latter’s few bold moves, and divest from this company.
The United Arab Emirates is also shamefully equivocating after a year-long campaign against Leviev selling his diamonds in the emirate of Dubai. Dubai’s government, despite repeated assurances that Leviev would not be allowed to open two diamond boutiques in the emirate, has allowed Leviev to open stores under another name while his website advertises a Leviev store-in-store at one of the “Levant” shops of his Dubai partner, Arif bin Khadra. A second Levant store in Dubai’s Atlantis hotel boldly touts the Leviev brand.
If Dubai does not wish to be become known as the “emirate that supports settlements”, it should take immediate action, and follow the UK’s lead and demonstrate it will not allow Leviev to profit from this indirect funding of his settlement building, that steals the future of Jayyous’s children who are growing up in the shadow of Leviev’s ever-expanding Zufim settlement.
While the new Netanyahu/Leiberman government is doing all it can to obfuscate the issue of a proper peace settlement to establish a viable Palestinian state, a clear message must be sent to Israel. The sanctions against Leviev should be the start of a wider boycott of all who profit from the enforced acquisition of Palestinian land.
Palestinians and international protesters try to escape from teargas shot by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank village of Bil’in. Photograph: Atef Safadi/EPA
27 April 2009
It began calmly enough with a march down the high street after midday prayers at the mosque. Palestinian villagers were surrounded by dozens of foreigners singing and waving flags. They turned and headed out to the olive-tree fields and up towards the broad path of Israel’s West Bank barrier. There, behind a concrete hilltop bunker, the Israeli soldiers looked down on them.
The crowd approached the barrier, still singing. One man flew a paper kite shaped as a plane. “This land is a closed military zone,” an Israeli soldier shouted in flawless Arabic over a loudspeaker. “You are not allowed near the wall.” Then the soldiers fired a barrage of teargas.
It has been like this every Friday in the village of Bil’in for more than four years – the most persistent popular demonstration against Israel’s vast steel and concrete barrier. It is a protest founded on non-violence that is spreading to other West Bank villages. But it has become increasingly dangerous.
On April 17, on the hillside at Bil’in, a Palestinian named Basem Abu Rahmeh, 31, was shot with a high-velocity Israeli teargas canister that sliced a hole into his chest, caused massive internal bleeding and quickly killed him. Video footage shot by another demonstrator shows he was unarmed, many metres from the barrier and posing no threat to the soldiers.
The Israeli military said it faced a “violent and illegal riot” and is investigating. On Friday the demonstrators at Bil’in wore Rameh’s image on T-shirts and carried it on posters.
Last month another demonstrator, an American named Tristan Anderson, 38, was hit in the head by an identical high-velocity teargas canister in a protest against the barrier at the nearby village of Na’alin. He was severely injured, losing the sight in his right eye and suffering brain damage. “To shoot peaceful demonstrators is really horrifying to us,” said his mother, Nancy.
Friday’s demonstration lasted around three hours. The crowd repeatedly surged towards the fence, then retreated under clouds of teargas. The military sounded a constant, high-pitched siren, interspersed with warnings in Arabic and Hebrew: “Go back. You with the flag, go back” and, incongruously, in English: “You are entering a naval vessel exclusion zone. Reverse course immediately.”
The Bil’in demonstration was always intended to be non-violent, although on Friday, as is often the case, there were half a dozen younger, angrier men lobbing stones at the soldiers with slingshots. The Israeli military, for its part, fires teargas, stun grenades, rubber-coated bullets and sometimes live ammunition at the crowd.
There have long been Palestinian advocates of non-violence, but they were drowned out by the militancy of the second intifada, the uprising that began in late 2000 and erupted into waves of appalling suicide bombings.
Eyad Burnat, 36, has spent long hours in discussions with the young men of Bil’in, a small village of fewer than 2,000, convincing them of the merits of “civil grassroots resistance”.
“Of course it gets more difficult when someone is killed,” said Burnat, who heads the demonstration. “But we’ve faced these problems in the past. We’ve had more than 60 people arrested and still they go back to non-violence. We’ve made a strategic decision.”
Some, like the moderate Palestinian MP Mustafa Barghouti, hope this might be the start of a broader movement throughout Palestinian society. “It is a spark that is spreading,” he said in Bil’in. “It gives an alternative to the useless negotiations and to those who say only violence can help.”
But it is not so much that all the young men of the village are converted to the peaceful cause, rather that they respect and follow their elders. “I personally don’t believe in non-violent resistance,” said Nayef al-Khatib, 21, an accountancy student. “They’ve taken our land by force so we should take it back from them by force.”
The barrier at Bil’in cuts off the village from more than half its agricultural land and has allowed the continuing expansion of Jewish settlements, including the vast, ultra-Orthodox settlement of Modiin Illit, even though all settlements on occupied land are illegal under international law.
The international court of justice said in a 2004 advisory opinion that the barrier was illegal where it crossed into the West Bank, and even Israel’s supreme court ruled nearly two years ago that the route at Bil’in did not conform to any “security-military reasons” and must be changed. But it has not been moved.
Like most of the men in the village, Nayef al-Khatib has spent time in jail. He was arrested aged 17 for demonstrating and spent a year behind bars, taking his final year of high school from his prison cell. That jail term means he cannot now obtain a permit to travel to Jerusalem or across to Jordan and is often held for hours at Israeli military checkpoints inside the West Bank. “But it was an honour for me. Now I’m like the older men,” he said.
Some of those older men are influential. Ahmad al-Khatib, 32, was once a member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, a prominent militant group, and was jailed for a year for transporting weapons. Now he is committed to non-violence, even objecting to the stone throwers.
“I don’t apologise for what I did, but I’m not going back to it,” he said. “We are an occupied nation according to international law and we have the right to resist, though that doesn’t mean I support suicide bombers. But I don’t want to resist all my life.”
He argues that a non-violent strategy brings fewer Palestinian casualties. “I have no problem dying to get back my land, but I’d say to hell with my land if it just brought back our martyr who died last week. The life of a human being is more important than the land itself.”
Often the most sensitive issue for the villagers has not been whether to take up arms, but whether to accept in their midst so many foreigners, and in particular so many Israeli demonstrators. Ahmad al-Khatib said it was the “most disputed question” and that many feared the Israelis were spying on them until they saw they, too, were being injured and arrested.
One of the first Israelis to join the Bil’in protest in its earliest days was Jonathan Pollack, 27, an activist and member of Anarchists Against the Wall who lives in Jaffa, just south of Tel Aviv. Although they warmly welcome him now, it was tense at first. “I’m still not one of their own and I don’t pretend to be,” he said.
Unlike most other joint peace initiatives, in this case the Israelis are in the minority and in the background. “I think it is very important that the struggle is Palestinian-led and that the colonial power relations are knowingly reversed,” said Pollack.
Last Friday, 17 April, during a demonstration in Bi’lin, in the Ramallah District, a soldier fired a tear-gas grenade from an increased distance at Bassem Ibrahim Abu Rahma, 30. The grenade left a hole in his chest, causing massive internal bleeding, which led to his death. Two video clips filmed at the site prove that Abu Rahma was standing on the eastern side of the fence, about thirty meters from the soldiers, when he was hit. The video clips also show that during the incident, he did not throw stones, did not damage the fence, and did not endanger soldiers in any way whatsoever.
B’Tselem wrote to the Judge Advocate General (JAG), Brig. Gen. Avichai Mandelblit on 21 April 2009, demanding that he immediately order a Military Police investigation into the circumstances of Abu Rahma’s death, and that he make it clear to security forces that it is absolutely forbidden to fire tear-gas grenades directly at people. In a previous letter that B’Tselem sent to the JAG on this matter last month, following the severe injuries sustained by the American, Tristan Anderson, when he was struck in the forhead by a tear-gas grenade fired from an increased distance, no response has been received.
In its letter of last week, B’Tselem attached video clips of demonstrations in Ni’lin, Bi’lin, and Jayyus filmed in recent months. The clips document repeated firing of tear-gas grenades directly at demonstrators, proving that, contrary to the army’s contentions, security forces in the West Bank have commonly practiced this unlawful act.
B’Tselem also noted that, at the location of the demonstrations in Bi’lin and Ni’lin, senior army and border patrol officers are always present. Whether they turn a blind eye to the extensive breach of the Open-Fire Regulations or give express orders to security forces to violate regulations, they bear responsibility for the lethal consequences of this forbidden practice. Furthermore, for some time, and at least since the extensive media coverage of the serious head injury to Tristan Anderson, on 13 March 2009, mentioned above, senior officers of the army and border police have known about direct firing of grenades at demonstrators. Since they were in a position to end this practice, they too bear responsibility for the lethal shooting.
On April the 17th, like any Fridays afternoon for the last 4 years, the small village of Bil’in, north of Ramallah, was preparing for the usual demonstration against Israel’s annexation wall (some people call it apartheid wall or separation wall. The Israeli government refers to it as the security fence).
The village of Bil’in has, since the mid eighties, lost more than 60% of its land for the purpose of Israeli growing settlements and the construction of the wall. The inhabitants of the village used to live mainly from agriculture and olive tree plantations, but more and more the people of Bil’in have to rely on their women to survive. Embroidery has become one of the main resource of the place, located a few kilometres away from Tel Aviv. On a nice day, you can see the inaccessible – for the Palestinians – beach from the roof tops of Bil’in.
In January 2005 a village organizing committee, led by Mohamed Khatib, Iyad Burnat and Abdullah Abu Rahme, was created and one month later non-violent demonstrations started, first every day, then once a week, on Yum Al Juma’a (Friday, the Muslim day of prayer).
The village won a huge battle in August 2008 when the Israeli High Court of Justice ruled that the new route of the barrier in Bil’in was in violation of the Court ruling released on September 2007. That ruling stated that the Wall’s path was prejudicial to Bil’in and must be altered. The State was ordered to present a new route within 45 days, which upheld the principles of the ruling.
On Friday the 17th of April 2009, the wall still had not moved one inch and while the inhabitants of the village were praying at the village mosque, internationals and a strong contingent of Israeli supporters – including people from the Alternative Information Centre and Anarchists Against the Wall – were looking for some shade to hide from the baking sun and chatting about the day’s event. As soon as prayer was over with, the demonstration started to move forward in direction of the wall, a few kilometres away.
Bassem Abu Rahme (aka Phil) was right at the front of the march. He always was. I had met Bassem a few times while visiting Bil’in. He was a strong looking man, singing the loudest, joking all the time, jumping around and leading the way, accompanied by the rest of the village committee and the Israeli contingent.
As it usually happens, as soon as the march reached the corner where the Israeli soldiers can be seen, the tear gas started. A few brave ones, always continue anyway and reach the beginning of the wall. Bassem, as usual, was one of those. The Israelis present at the front of the demonstration started talking with the nearby soldiers in Hebrew and Bassem screamed, “We are in a non violent protest, there are kids and internationals…”
He was shot in the chest and never managed to finished his sentence. He fell to the ground, moved a little, fell again, and died.
Bassem was shot by a new kind of tear gas canister, called the “rocket.” The soldier who shot him was a mere 40 meters away. This is the same type of tear gas that critically injured US citizen Tristan Anderson a few weeks ago. Those tear gas canisters are as fast and lethal as live ammunition and very hard to get away from. Normally, tear gas canisters fly in the air for a long time, then fall and bounce a few times. These new canisters fly like an over-sized bullet and go straight, not up and down.
Once more, Israel is using the West Bank as its testing ground and Palestinians as guinea pigs for new kinds of ammunition.
The soldier who fired knew what he was doing and who he was targeting. The shame is that he probably knew Bassem. Bassem was always at the front, and had been for several years. The soldiers often serve more than once in Bil’in and start to know the people facing them at the demonstrations.
On April the 17th , Bil’in and Palestine lost one of their heroes.
What is going to happen next? Israel claims it will investigate the incident. Only 6% of offending soldiers from similar investigations have been prosecuted and those have usually been let off with a few weeks suspension. The Israeli government claims, as it has in the past, that the demonstration was violent and that soldiers were forced to respond. This worn-out propaganda is discredited by the video of the demonstration, which clearly shows otherwise.
We may even hear in a few days that it was actually the Palestinians who fired the tear gas and killed their beloved friend.
The Palestinian Authority, instead of issuing a strong statement against this act, stopping, once and for all, the negotiations with the Israeli government, and joining the demonstrators every Friday to be hand in hand with its people, said next to nothing and is looking forward to the coming up White House meeting between Mahmoud Abbas and President Obama.
The media has hardly reported any of Bil’in’s story. In their narrative of the conflict, the Palestinians do not count. This is even more shocking when a video of the event is available and shows so clearly the imbalance of violence directed at Palestinians.
The international community will not mention this “incident” and continue issuing calls for the Palestinians to renounce violence and resist peacefully. Since the start of the second intifada, 87% of the dead have been Palestinians. But the international community will say little about Israel’s violations of international law and oppression of the Palestinians.
It is therefore left to us, the citizens of this world, to act, to join solidarity groups, to write articles, to make films and talk – constantly – about the plight of the Palestinian people. Palestine has to become the number one issue.
It must. For Bassem, his family, Bil’in, and Palestine.
Frank Barat is in the organizing committee of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine and a member of Palestine Solidarity Campaign UK.
