Tag: Civil rights

High Court: Gaza student cannot complete studies in West Bank

Amira Hass | Haaretz

9 December 2009

The High Court of Justice ruled on Wednesday to deny a Palestinian student from Gaza who has been studying in Bethlehem permission to complete her university degree in the West Bank.

Berlanty Azzam, 22, has been in the West Bank since 2005 and has only two months of studies left in order to complete her Bachelor’s degree in business administration. In late October, however, the Israeli authorities expelled her back to Gaza claiming that that she was illegally staying in the West Bank.

Azzam petitioned against her expulsion with the assistance of Gisha, a legal center for freedom of movement, but the High Court accepted the Israeli authorities’ decision to deny Azzam a chance to remain in the West Bank to continue her education.

The authorities did not claim security charges against Azzam.

Regarding the assertion that she is an illegal alien in the West Bank, Gisha said that she had moved to the region legally with an entrance permit into Israel issued to her by the IDF commander on the scene after a meticulous security check.

The High Court accepted Israel’s claim that Azzam entered the West Bank illegally, due to the fact that the permit entitled her entrance into Jerusalem, not the West Bank.

During the four years she lived and studied in the West Bank, Azzam placed several requests to change her address from Gaza to Bethlehem.

According to the Oslo accord, the Palestinian Authority has the power to change its’ citizen’s addresses in their identity cards, and is only required to notify the Israel authorities.

But ever since the accord was implemented, Israel has refused to accept the PA’s authority to register change of address from Gaza to the West Bank, and has retained a monopoly over the acceptance or denial of an address change request.

Since the year 2000, Israel has also refused to allow Gaza residents to study in the West Bank. It is believed that there are currently over 25,000 Palestinians who were born in Gaza and are currently living in the West Bank, all of whom have been disallowed to change their address on their identification certificates.

Most of them have been living in the West Bank for many years. They have raised their families there, and have been working in the region, but are under the constant threat of expulsion.

Israel stripped thousands of Jerusalem Arabs of residency in 2008

Nir Hasson | Haaretz

2 December 2009

Last year set an all-time record for the number of Arab residents of East Jerusalem who were stripped of residency rights by the Interior Ministry. Altogether, the ministry revoked the residency of 4,577 East Jerusalemites in 2008 – 21 times the average of the previous 40 years.

In the first 40 years of Israeli rule over East Jerusalem combined, from 1967 to 2007, the ministry deprived only 8,558 Arabs of their residency rights – less than double the number who lost their permits last year alone. Thus of all the East Jerusalem Arabs who have lost their residency rights since 1967, about 35 percent did so in 2008.

According to the ministry, last year’s sharp increase stemmed from its decision to investigate the legal status of thousands of East Jerusalem residents in March and April, 2008. The probe was the brainchild of former interior minister Meir Sheetrit (Kadima) and Yaakov Ganot, who headed the ministry’s Population Administration.

The ministry said the probe uncovered thousands of people listed as East Jerusalem residents but were no longer living in Israel, and were therefore stripped of their residency. Most of those who lost their residency for this reason did not just move from Jerusalem to the West Bank, but were actually living in other countries, the ministry’s data shows.

Those deprived of their residency included 99 minors under the age of 18.

Attorney Yotam Ben-Hillel of Hamoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual said the 250,000 Arab residents of East Jerusalem have the same legal status as people who immigrated to Israel legally but are not entitled to citizenship under the Law of Return.

“They are treated as if they were immigrants to Israel, despite the fact that it is Israel that came to them in 1967,” he said.

A resident, unlike a citizen, can be stripped of his status relatively easily. All he has to do is leave the country for seven years or obtain citizenship, permanent residency or some other form of legal status in another country, and he loses his Israeli residency automatically.

Once a Palestinian has lost his residency, even returning to Jerusalem for a family visit can be impossible, Ben-Hillel said. Moreover, he said, some of those whose residency Israel revoked may not have legal status in any other country, meaning they have been made stateless.

“The list may include students who went for a few years to study in another country, and can now no longer return to their homes,” he said.

Officials at Hamoked, which obtained the ministry data via the Freedom of Information Act, said they were concerned that some of those who lost their residency rights may not even know it.

“The phenomenon of revoking people’s residency has reached frightening dimensions,” said Dalia Kerstein, Hamoked’s executive director. “The Interior Ministry operation in 2008 is just part of a general policy whose goal is to restrict the size of the Palestinian population and maintain a Jewish majority in Jerusalem. The Palestinians are natives of this city, not Johnny-come-latelys.”

Sheetrit, however, insisted that the operation was necessary. “What we discovered is just the tip of the iceberg,” he said. “The State of Israel pays billions of shekels a year in stipends to people who don’t even live here. We sent notices to every one of them about the intention to revoke their residency; we gave them time to appeal. Those who appealed weren’t touched.”

The ministry data shows that 89 Palestinians got their residency back after appealing. Sheetrit said the probe revealed very serious offenses – such as 32 people listed as living at a single address that did not even exist.

Israeli forces impose travel restrictions as settler youth attack Palestinians at Huwara checkpoint

26 November 2009

Israeli Occupation Forces closed Huwara checkpoint for over 2 hours last night and established a flying checkpoint nearby as settlers stormed the area. Israeli military and police made little effort to contain settlers as they amassed at the checkpoint, harassing Palestinian vehicles as families waited in vain to be allowed passage to visit relatives on eve of Eid al-Adha, the holy Muslim holiday. The attack occurs amidst an atmosphere of settler outrage at Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s announcement of a partial 10-month freeze of settlement construction in the West Bank, which can be expected to trigger more outbursts of violence in the area.

Huwara checkpoint, located on Road 60 between Huwara village and Nablus, was shut down entirely at approximately 6pm last night, as soldiers positioned a line of jeeps across the road to block oncoming traffic from Nablus. Narrow roads became congested as an influx of cars traveling north to south were forced to re-route through Awarta checkpoint, which had also tightened its restrictions, stopping many cars to search and question their passengers.

As cars backed up Road 60 a third checkpoint was established 500 metres south between Huwara checkpoint and the village itself, allowing a small amount of Palestinian vehicles to proceed only to be turned away later and forced to return the way they came, effectively blocking all Palestinian traffic.

International activists arrived at the scene to witness soldiers aggressively shouting at Palestinian drivers to return to their cars and leave the area, pointing their guns at those who argued with them and ignoring the full-scale traffic jam developing as confused and angry drivers tried to proceed or turn around. When asked why the checkpoint had been closed, soldiers replied that a demonstration was occurring and it was necessary to impede traffic until it had ended.

Managing to pass the first checkpoint activists proceeded further north to Huwara checkpoint where approximately 20 settler youth had gathered on the road, screaming at soldiers as they attempted to contain them. A skirmish occurred as young female settlers grew hysterical, attacking the few Palestinian cars that gained access to the checkpoint (then forced to turn around), and IDF soldiers tried half-heartedly to keep them at bay. Israeli Police arrived shortly thereafter but permitted the settler youths to remain as they continued to run amuck on the roads, kicking and spitting on Palestinian cars as they passed.

By 9pm the military dismantled the flying checkpoint and allowed the flow of traffic to pass Huwara. Several military jeeps and police cars departed as the settlers turned their attention on the activists present, at first verbally, then physically harassing them. Eventually the settler youth left – not under military or police instruction, but of their own volition – obtaining rides from passing cars from the nearby settlement of Bracha.

It was later alleged that the mob of settler youth had been attempting to gain access to Nablus to visit the religious site of Joseph’s Tomb, located south of the city-centre close to Balata Refugee Camp and believed by some Jews to be the final resting place of the biblical patriarch, and thus a holy site not only for Jews but Muslims, Christians and Samaritans alike. The issue has been distorted over the years as settler councils have called for renewed visitation rights, ostensibly on purely religious grounds but can hardly be seen as apolitical, considering the site’s history and location. Similar contention exists regarding Jacob’s Well, another holy site in Nablus where a priest was murdered by zionist extremists in 1979 during a campaign for the site, a Christian church since 384 AD, to be reconstructed as a synagogue. The settler organisation of Gar’in Shchem has recently re-launched its campaign for unregulated Jewish access to the tomb, erecting a protest tent outside the IDF Samaria Division headquarters and announced a demonstration march from outside Nablus for this coming Thursday, 3 December.

Another contributing factor may well be Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s announcement this week of a 10-month partial freeze on settlement construction inside the West Bank. The declaration angered almost all parties across the Israeli political spectrum, most notably Yesha and municipal settlement councils across the West Bank, who have declared they will “continue to build, if necessary” – outside of government restrictions. Backlashes to what is viewed in settler communities as Netanyahu’s political ‘weakness’ frequently occur on the ground in the form of a ‘price tag campaign’ – a co-ordinated outbreak of settler aggression across the West Bank in response to the state’s feeble attempts to restrict settlement expansion and further annexation of Palestinian land.

The settlement ‘freeze’, whilst heralded by some international and Israeli media as a positive contribution to the peace process, can be expected to achieve no such thing on the ground. The freeze does not apply to public buildings – the construction of which a further 28 have just been given approval – or projects already under way. Nor does it apply to East Jerusalem, where over 1500 Palestinian homes have demolition orders, and the construction of a further 900 new apartments were announced this week in the settlement of Gilo. Construction in Palestinian villages in the West Bank has been effectively frozen since the implementation of the Oslo Accords zoning laws, wherein residents of Areas B and C (partial and full Israeli control, respectively) must apply for permits to build or extend homes or public buildings. Buildings in Area C, and even B, are frequently slated for demolition.

Student expelled to Gaza Strip by force

Ben Lynfield | The Independent

30 October 2009

A Palestinian student has been handcuffed, blindfolded and forcibly expelled to the Gaza Strip by Israeli troops just two months before she was due to graduate from university.

Berlanty Azzam, 21, who was studying for a business degree at Bethlehem University, said she was coming home in a shared taxi from a job interview in Ramallah on Wednesday when soldiers at the “Container” checkpoint took her identity card and that of another passenger with a Gaza address.

After six hours of waiting, soldiers told her she would be taken to a detention centre in the southern West Bank, and she was handcuffed and blindfolded, she said.

“The driving took longer than it should have and I started to think something was wrong. I started to wonder, what are they doing to me?” After the car stopped and the blindfold was lifted, Ms Azzam saw she was at the Erez crossing to Gaza.

It was the sixth known forced return to Gaza of Palestinians stopped at the “Container” checkpoint – which is between Bethlehem and Abu Dis – in 10 days, according to the Israeli human rights group Gisha. Israel has also been preventing family reunifications in the West Bank for Palestinians with relatives living in Gaza, in effect forcing people to relocate to the Strip.

The steps are part of an Israeli policy of treating Gaza and the West Bank as two separate entities, thereby undermining the coherence of Palestinian claims for a state encompassing both territories. The 1993 Oslo agreement stipulates that the West Bank and Gaza Strip are to be treated as one territorial unit.

Major Guy Inbar, an Israeli defense ministry official, said the reason for Ms Azzam’s deportation was that she was “staying illegally” in the West Bank.

“We are talking about a Gaza citizen who requested permission to study in the area of Judea and Samaria and received a negative answer,” he said.

“In 2005, she was given a permit to visit Jerusalem for four days and she remained afterwards [in the West Bank] without any permit. Her entire period as a student was based on deceit and was against the law.”

Sari Bashi, head of the Israeli Gisha human rights group, who tried to intervene on Ms Azzam’s behalf, said she was assured by military lawyers on Wednesday that the student would not be deported to Gaza and that the rights group could seek a judicial review in the morning.

“The military misled us,” Ms Bashi said. “There is a violation here of the right to access education, the right to freedom of movement and the right to choose one’s place of residence within one’s own territory.”

The army did not respond to a request for comment.

Brother Jack Curran, vice president for development of Bethlehem University, termed the expulsion “a disgrace”. “This is not about politics. It’s about a young person finishing her degree. Since 2005 she has been studying as a good student. No one is a winner from this.”

Israeli intelligence pose as Arabs to spy on citizens

Jonathan Cook | The Electronic Intifada

21 October 2009

Civil rights groups in Israel have expressed outrage at the announcement last week that a special undercover unit of the police has been infiltrating and collecting intelligence on Israel’s Palestinian Arab minority by disguising its officers as Arabs.

It is the first public admission that the Israeli police are using methods against the country’s 1.3 million Arab citizens that were adopted long ago in the occupied territories, where soldiers are regularly sent on missions disguised as Palestinians.

According to David Cohen, the national police commissioner, the unit was established two years ago after an assessment that there was “no intelligence infrastructure to deal with the Arab community.” He said that, in addition, undercover agents had been operating in East Jerusalem for several years to track potential terrorists.

Israel’s Arab leaders denounced the move as confirmation that the Arab minority was still regarded by the police as “an enemy” — a criticism made by a state commission of inquiry after police shot dead 13 unarmed Arab demonstrators inside Israel and wounded hundreds more at the start of the second Palestinian intifada in 2000.

In a letter of protest to Israeli officials this week, Adalah, a legal rights group, warned that the unit’s creation violated the constitutional rights of the Arab minority and risked introducing “racial profiling” into Israeli policing.

Although the police claim that only Arab criminals are being targeted, Arab leaders believe the unit is an expansion of police efforts to collect information on political activists, escalating what they term a “climate of fear” being fostered by the rightwing government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

Awad Abdel Fattah, general secretary of the National Democratic Assembly party, whose activists are regularly interrogated by the police even though the party is represented in the national parliament, said there was strong evidence that undercover units had been operating in Arab communities for many years.

“The question is, why are the police revealing this information now? I suspect it is designed to intimidate people, making them fear that they are being secretly watched so that they don’t participate in demonstrations or get involved in politics. It harms the democratic process.”

Secret agents disguised as Arabs — known in Hebrew as mista’aravim — were used before Israel’s founding. Jews, usually recruited from Arab countries, went undercover in neighboring states to collect intelligence.

The Haaretz newspaper revealed in 1998 that the secret police, the Shin Bet, also operated a number of mista’aravim inside Israel shortly after the state’s creation, locating them in major Arab communities.

The unit was disbanded in 1959, amid great secrecy, after several agents married local Arab women, and in some cases had children with them, in order to maintain their cover.

But the mista’aravim are better known for their use by the Israeli army on short-term missions inside Arab countries or in the West Bank and Gaza, where they have often been sent to capture or kill local leaders.

Famously Ehud Barak, the current defense minister, was sent to Beirut in 1973 disguised as an Arab woman to assassinate three Palestinian leaders.

More recently, however, the army’s mista’aravim have come to notice because of allegations that they are being used as agents provocateurs, especially in breaking up peaceful protests by Palestinians in the West Bank against the wall.

In April 2005, during a demonstration at the village of Bilin, north of Jerusalem, Palestinians throwing stones at soldiers were revealed to be mista’aravim. They were filmed blowing their cover shortly afterwards by pulling our pistols to make arrests. The army later admitted it had used mista’aravim at the demonstration.

Palestinians claim that stone-throwing by mista’aravim is often used to disrupt or discredit peaceful demonstrations and justify the army’s use of rubber bullets and live ammunition against the protesters in retaliation.

Last week Jamal Zahalka, an Arab member of the parliament, warned other legislators of the danger that mista’aravim police officers would adopt similar tactics: “Such a unit will carry out provocations, in which the Arab public will be blamed for disorderly conduct.”

Abdel Fattah said there were widespread suspicions that mista’avarim officers had been operating for years at legal demonstrations held by Israel’s Arab citizens, including at the protests against Israel’s winter attack on Gaza. He said they were often disguised as journalists so that they could photograph demonstrators.

He said a woman activist from his party had been called in by the police for interrogation after a demonstration last year in the Arab town of Arrabeh. “The officer told her, ‘I know what you were saying because I was standing right next to you.’ And he then told her exactly what she had said.”

In his testimony to a government watchdog, the police commissioner, Insp. Gen Cohen, said he had plans for the unit “to grow” and that it would solve a problem the police had in infiltrating Israel’s large Arab communities: “It’s very hard for us to work in Umm al-Fahm, it’s very hard for us to deal with crime in Juarish and Ramle.”

Several unnamed senior officers, however, defended their role in monitoring the Arab community, claiming the commissioner was wrong in stating that the use of mista’aravim inside Israel was new. One told Haaretz: “Existing units of mista’aravim have operated undercover among this population for about a decade.”

Orna Cohen, a lawyer with the Adalah legal group, said the accepted practice for police forces was to create specialized units according to the nature of the crime committed, not according to the ethnicity or nationality of the suspect.

She warned that the unit’s secretive nature, its working methods and the apparent lack of safeguards led to a strong suspicion that the Arab minority was being characterized as a “suspect group.” “Such a trend towards racial profiling and further discrimination against the minority is extremely dangerous,” she said.

Comments two years ago from Yuval Diskin, the head of the Shin Bet, have raised fears about the uses the police unit may be put to. He said the security services had the right to use any means to “thwart” action, even democratic activity, by the Arab minority to reform Israel’s political system. All the Arab parties are committed to changing Israel’s status from a Jewish state to “a state of all its citizens.”

Abdel Fattah said: “This is about transferring the methods used in the West Bank and Gaza into Israel to erode our rights as citizens. It raises questions about what future the state sees for us here.”