Tag: Ethnic Cleansing - Page 76 - International Solidarity Movement

South Africa: Israeli policy reminiscent of apartheid

26 November 2009

The South African government urged Israel on Tuesday to end practices toward Palestinians that it said were reminiscent of its own history of apartheid.

“We call upon the Israeli government to cease their activities that are reminiscent of apartheid forced removals and resume negotiations immediately,” the government said in a statement.

The unusually strong statement criticized the demolition of Palestinian houses and the expansion of Jewish-only settlement on land taken from Palestinians.

“We condemn the fact that Israeli settlement expansion in East Jerusalem is coupled with Israel’s campaign to evict and displace the original Palestinian residents from the City,” the statement read.

The statement also took note of US and European condemnations of Israel’s latest plan to expand by 900 units the settlement of Gilo on Palestinian land south of Jerusalem.

“South Africa maintains that these attempts by Israel to create facts on the ground imperil attempts to achieve a negotiated solution to the conflict, namely that of two states, Israel and Palestine existing side by side in peace within internationally recognised borders,” the statement also said.

While individual South Africans have made the apartheid comparison, it is rare for the government to do so.

In August South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu drew parallels between Israel and apartheid South Africa during an interview with Ma’an.

“It’s the same thing that happened in South Africa for a very long time,” he said, referring to Israel’s refusal to negotiate with Hamas. “The apartheid government said they wouldn’t negotiate with Nelson Mandela, and so on – and they had to.”

In July academics released a report finding Israel in breach of international legal prohibitions on apartheid and colonialism.

The report was written by British, Irish, South African and Palestinian legal experts under the auspices of the South African Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC). The report finds Israel is committing crimes against humanity, which should trigger legal sanctions.

Israeli police escalate harassment of Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrah

21 November 2009

Police officer who threatened to murder Saleh Diab

In the past few days, Israeli police have twice harassed Palestinians in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of occupied East Jerusalem.

First, in the evening of Thursday 19 November 2009, an Israeli police officer threatened to murder Saleh Diab, who’s family is at risk of being evicted from their home in Sheikh Jarrah. The situation arose when Palestinians in the neighbourhood gathered around a concussion suffering victim of a fight between two Palestinians, and an ambulance and three police vehicles arrived at the scene. The police talked to Palestinians in the crowd and after a while grabbed Saleh (who was not involved in the fight) by the arm and took him away from the crowd to behind their vehicle as if they intended to arrest him. An international activist following Saleh to observe his treatment was instructed by the police to back well away. The police then talked to Saleh before releasing him. According to Saleh, one of the police officers said that he would kill Saleh.

Second, around midnight of Saturday 21 November 2009, an Israeli police vehicle and two police officers arrived at the Gawi family tent, where the Gawi family have been living since they were forcefully evicted from their now occupied house on 2 August 2009. Eight Palestinians (family members and neighbours) and an international activist were sitting around the fire by the tent. The police said the settlers in the Gawi house accused the Palestinians of throwing stones at the house; a false accusation according to the Palestinians and activist.

The police collected the ID cards of the Palestinians and checked them in their computer system. The police then told the Palestinians that they were all to be arrested. The situation, with only two police officers to arrest a larger group of Palestinians and on false accusation, prompted the Palestinians to question the police action. After further discussion, the police returned the ID cards and left without arresting anyone, 15 minutes after they arrived.

Settler incursions of Palestinian homes in Sheikh Jarrah

18 November 2009

On Wednesday 18 November 2009 at 10:30am, one of the settlers who are occupying the Ghawi family house in Sheikh Jarrah, climbed over a wall in order to enter the neighbouring Palestinian property. Amal Qassem, who lives in the house, was shocked to discover the settler in her backyard and another settler handing tools and a ladder over the wall to him. They stated that they were going to repair water leaks in the wall and refused to leave.

Amal Qassem reported the trespassing to the police who arrived 30 minutes later. Only after that the settlers finally left.

Settler trespassing the Palestinian property

The second settler involved in the attempt to enter the Qassem property

Later that day, at 2pm, another two settlers living in the occupied Gawi family house, attempted to enter a Palestinian property across the street. Claiming they had the right to enter, they opened the gate leading to the house owned by the Kurd family and walked through, making their way to the half of the property which has been occupied by settler security forces since the forceful takeover on 3 November 2009. The family, who gathered outside of their house succeeded in their attempt to stop the settlers, who eventually left.

The settler’s claims to have the right to enter the house, however, contradict a verbal agreement reached with the Israeli police on 3 November 2009, the day of the house take-over, which instructed the settlers to stay away from the house and allowed their security forces to stand on the street outside the gate. Despite this agreement, settler security forces have continued to occupy the house. The al-Kurd family have asked the security forces several times to show police or court orders that give them the right to be on their property, but the security forces have failed to produce such a document. On the day after the settlers’ provocative action, an Israeli court issued a written statement that the court will reach a decision about the occupied house on 29 November.

Kurd family posting the latest court order on the door of their occupied house

The al-Kurds have become the fourth Sheikh Jarrah family whose house (or part of it) has been occupied by settlers in the last year. So far, 60 people have been left homeless. In total, 28 families living in the Karm Al-Ja’ouni neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah, located directly north of the Old City, face imminent eviction from their homes.

In a strategic plan, settlers have been utilizing discriminatory laws to expand their presence in Occupied East Jerusalem. Palestinians, who face difficulties in acquiring building permits from the municipality, are often left with no legal recourse for extending their homes to accompany their growing families. The Israeli authorities exercise their abilities to demolish and evict Palestinian residents, while ignoring building violations from the Israeli population in East Jerusalem.

Palestinian cave-dweller fights Israeli eviction

YNet News

12 November 2009

A Palestinian camping in an ancient cave near Jerusalem says he has been told by Israeli authorities to get out because the hillside is slated for a housing development and his “illegal” home will be demolished.

The predicament of Abdel Fattah Abed Rabbo, a 48-year-old father of 10, highlights the dispute between Israel and Palestinians living in the steep hills between Jerusalem and Bethlehem, on land the Israelis annexed in 1980.

Abed Rabbo says he was actually brought up in the cave by his parents but occupies it now simply as a way of upholding his claim to 5 acres of stony hillside. His family lives in an apartment in a Bethlehem refugee camp.

“Three days ago, Israeli building planners came. They started landscaping this entire area,” he told Reuters Television this week.

“The purpose is, of course, to build an Israeli settlement, called Givat Yael, which is to become the biggest settlement in the Jerusalem area,” he said.

Abed Rabbo says he received his first demolition warning five years ago, and got a follow-up notice last December. In the meantime, he says, Israeli authorities have three times knocked down the tent camp he put up on the land at al-Walajeh.

He is tangled in a complex legal maze that Palestinians say is really all about national rights but Israel insists is simply about property rights and unauthorized building.

The land straddles the 1948 Green Line which formed Israel’s eastern border at the establishment of the Jewish state. It lies just west of the Jewish settlement of Gilo, a suburb community of Jerusalem which is actually in the occupied West Bank.

The World Court has ruled that Israel’s settlements are illegal. Israel rejects that and officials say, in any case, the community planned for Givat Yael will not be a “settlement”, since the land has been part of Jerusalem for nearly 30 years.

Town planning

Givat Yael is planned to house 45,000 people, with a commercial zone and sports centre. The Interior Ministry’s district planning office recently granted final approval.

“They consider my presence here a problem, because they want to be build 14,000 housing units on al-Walajeh lands,” said Abed Rabbo. “I tell them the owners of this land are here, they are the rightful owners, and you’ve no right to build here.”

Some 500,000 Israelis now live in settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, whose legitimacy is also disputed by the United Nations, the United States and most major powers.

City councilman for East Jerusalem Yakir Segev rejected claims that the hillside will become yet another settlement, taking land the Palestinians want for a future state.

“First of all, it’s not a settlement,” he said. “It’s a neighborhood within the municipal borders of Jerusalem.”

“Second of all … they were given court orders — not military orders … It’s not a matter of political dispute or political argument as far as we are concerned,” he said.

The Israeli-run Jerusalem municipality has rejected a request by al-Walajeh Palestinians to legalise 95 homes in the village built without a permit and at risk of demolition.

“The village will disappear, because most of the houses are under the master plan of Gival Yael,” says Meir Margalit, a left-wing opposition member of Jerusalem City Council.

Palestinians say Israeli planners have offered a number of concessions in return for consent, including retroactive permits for homes already built, a change in the route of Israel’s West Bank separation barrier in the vicinity of the village, and easier access to Jerusalem.

So far they have refused these offers.

If al-Walajeh is legally part of Jerusalem, its residents might expect to have Jerusalem identification cards. But they do not “because of the Givat Yael project”, says Margalit.

“It would be more difficult to expel them from their land if they had Israeli ID’s.”

And without a Jerusalem identity, Abed Rabbo is an illegal resident in his own cave.

Ethnic cleansing in Jerusalem

Art Gish

9 November 2009

My teammate woke me at 6:00 a.m. “We need to go over to the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood to accompany the al Ghawi family, a Palestinian family that Israeli police evicted from their home on August 2.” The family is now living in a tent on the sidewalk across the street from their home.

Immediately after the police evicted the al Ghawi family, four Jewish families, involving twenty people, moved into the al Ghawi house. This is part of the Israeli government’s program to remove Palestinians from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, and turn this Palestinian neighborhood into a Jewish neighborhood. The Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood is only one of the Jerusalem neighborhoods that the Israeli government is actively ethnically cleansing.

Since the family never knows when they may be attacked by the Jerusalem police or settlers, a common experience for the family, internationals stay at the tent around the clock. The police have demolished their tent four times since August. The al Ghawi family is part of the nonviolent resistance to this take over.

I sat on the curb near a fire Fuwad, one the men of the family, had built to warm us from the morning chill, and to boil some tea which he shared with us.

I watched settlers emerge from the house, presumably on their way to work. They looked us over as they passed near us with their guns. I wondered if the homeless family camped out in front of their stolen house touched anything in the hearts of those settlers.

The Ghawi family built this house in 1956 on land purchased in 1952 from the Jordanian government by the United Nations (UNWRA) for refugees from the new state of Israel. The settlers claim that land in the distant past had been owned by Jews, thus giving Jews today the right to confiscate the land. The Ghawi family now is threatened to become refugees a second time.

It became clear to me as I spent the day with the family that their morale was high. Neighbors stopped by to chat and drink tea with the family. They are not giving up and they are not going away.