Tag: Ethnic Cleansing

Settlers attack Palestinian family in Sheikh Jarrah, injure seven

20 October 2009

The settlers who have recently occupied the house of the Gawi family, forcefully evicted from their home in Sheikh Jarrah on 2 August 2009, launched an attack today on the Palestinians camping outside. According to local sources, seven Palestinians were injured and four arrested.

The attack started between 8 and 8.30pm, when a driver of a lorry delivering furniture to the occupied house, accompanied by four settlers, attacked a five year old boy from the Gawi family who was playing nearby. The settlers then attacked a small tent where the Gawi family have been living since the eviction. The tent was full of mainly women and children at that time. A Palestinian woman who was hit hard by the driver had to be taken to hospital. A fight broke out immediately, involving at least 15 settlers. Several members of the family sustained light injuries and a 15-year old girl from the neighbourhood was hit by a falling TV as the settlers managed to tear down the tent.

When police arrived, they made no attempts to stop the settlers attacking the family and later arrested four Palestinians. Two were released and another two, Khalet Gawi and Saleh Diab have been taken to hospital and told to come back to the police station tomorrow for further questioning. Four settlers were taken for questioning and released immediately.

The Gawi and Hannoun families, consisting of 53 members including 20 children, have been left homeless after they were forcibly evicted from their houses on 2 August 2009. The Israeli forces surrounded the homes of the two families at 5.30am and, breaking in through the windows, forcefully dragged all residents into the street. The police also demolished the neighbourhood’s protest tent, set up by Um Kamel, following the forced eviction of her family in November 2008.

At present, all three houses are occupied by settlers and the whole area is patrolled by armed private settler security 24 hours a day. Both Hannoun and Gawi families, who have been left without suitable alternative accommodation since August, continue to protest against the unlawful eviction from the sidewalk across the street from their homes, facing regular attacks from the settlers and harassment from the police.

The Karm Al-Ja’ouni neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah is home to 28 Palestinian families, all refugees from 1948, who received their houses from the UNRWA and Jordanian government in 1956. All face losing their homes in the manner of the Hannoun, Gawi and al-Kurd families.

The aim of the settlers is to turn the whole area into a new Jewish settlement and to create a Jewish continuum that will effectively cut off the Old City form the northern Palestinian neighborhoods. Implanting new Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank is illegal under many international laws, including Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

The dark side of Tel Aviv

Abe Hayeem | The Guardian

13 October 2009

The centenary of Tel Aviv, a city said to date from 1909, has provided a useful opportunity to present the face of Israel as a hip country built by Jewish pioneers on empty sands. Its vibrant cosmopolitan flavour, its commercial centre, its Mediterranean beaches, its liberal society and culture, are seen as signifying a truly commendable Zionist enterprise. According to the blurb on the centenary celebrations “several dozen families gathered on the sand dunes on the beach outside Yafo to allocate plots of land for a new neighbourhood they called Ahuzat Bayit, later known as Tel Aviv”.

After the horrors of the Gaza onslaught and unending blockade, and the evidence of war crimes committed by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) early this year (which Israel has responded to with hysterical denial) no effort has been spared by the Israeli embassy and its propaganda machines to deflect the attention of the world to Israel’s marvellous technical and medical discoveries, and to use Tel Aviv to present its upbeat image. Hence Tel Aviv festivities were organised in New York, Vienna, Copenhagen and Paris, with the creation of Tel Aviv beaches in Central Park and along the banks of the Seine, the Danube and Copenhagen’s canals.

In London this week, the Israeli embassy teams up with easyJet to promote its new flights to Tel Aviv with a series of events around London to provide “a sweet taste of Israel’s 24-hour city” as a “celebration of Israeli culture, which includes the valuable contribution from many minorities in Israel, such as Christians, Muslims and Druze”.

While there is much on the surface that makes Tel Aviv enticing, this picture must be not be allowed to mask the dark underlying history of ethnic cleansing and land expropriation on which Tel Aviv was built, and that still continues today, even in Jaffa, while savouring the Israeli food and the Bauhaus architecture. In fact, the whole myth of Tel Aviv being built on empty sand dunes has been taken apart by various Israeli scholars, but none of this will feature in the promotional events.

As Yonathan Mendel says in his article “Fantasising Israel” in the London Review of books:

It [Tel Aviv] didn’t just emerge from the sand in 1909, as the Zionist myth tells us. Al-Sumayil, Salame, Sheikh Munis, Abu Kabir, Al-Manshiyeh: these are the names of some of the villages that made room for it and the names are still used today. Tel Avivians still talk about the Abu Kabir neighbourhood, they still meet on Salame Street. Tel Aviv University Faculty Club used to be the house of the sheikh of Sheikh Munis.

The Israeli organisation Zochrot has published maps of Tel Aviv showing where Arab localities existed, particularly in Jaffa and its suburbs to the south, and in smaller villages east and north of the city, but which have been erased from maps of the region and its posted signs.

Initially Tel Aviv in its infancy was an adjunct of Jaffa, which Mendel says:

was probably the most prosperous and cosmopolitan of all Palestinian cities, with a port, an industry (Jaffa oranges), an international school system and a lively cultural life. In 1949, after Jaffa had been almost completely emptied of its Palestinian inhabitants (only 4,000 were left out of a population of 70,000), the Israeli government decided to unite the two cities in one metropolis, to be called ‘Tel Aviv-Jaffa’. In doing this, Ben-Gurion not only created a new Tel Aviv that was ‘part of’ biblical Jaffa, he erased the Palestinian city.

The city was subject to intensive shelling in 1948, when more than 60,000 of its residents were forced to leave – mostly fleeing to Gaza. Seventy-five per cent of the city was bulldozed, leaving only 4,000 Palestinians in the now run-down Ajame and Jabaliah neighbourhoods, which in fact today are the subject of intended clearance by the Amidar corporation, who have imposed fines on the residents for “illegally” improving their houses when they had refused to allow them to upgrade

What will be built in their place is luxurious real estate at fantastic prices beyond the reach of the existing inhabitants. Jaffa today has been turned into a picturesque artists’ colony, in the houses expropriated from their Palestinian owners.

Distant from the portrayal of Tel Aviv as a beautiful cultural city is its significance as the centre for the Israeli military and military research in an area called HaKirya, where the IDF has had its headquarters since it was founded in 1948. In addition to occupying large areas in the heart of Tel Aviv it accommodates the Israeli military deep underground, where the pre-planning and the daily orders for the assaults on Gaza were made.

This supposed “mixed city” of Tel-Aviv/Yafo (even the name Jaffa is not used) has only 4.2% Palestinian residents, compared with the 20% of Israel’s wider population – hardly an indication of the city’s vaunted “diversity”. In fact, as the author and architect Sharon Rotbard has pointed out, Jaffa existed before 1909 as mainly Arab, but in fact a mixed city, with many Palestinian Jews in suburbs established in 1887 and 1905. The new Tel Aviv was established by white European Jews, and thus, as Gabriel Ash says the centennial “is legitimising colonialism through the commemoration of the arrival of white Europeans to the orient”.

The American historian VG Smith comments on Tel Aviv’s Bauhaus architecture:

The myth of Tel Aviv as ‘the White City’ rests on the importation of style characteristics from European Modernism into Israel … and can be understood as a vocabulary of forms or as a social movement to achieve a better life through architecture. To mimic International Style characteristics is as false as the nation’s imitation of a modern state.

As an open letter put it last month, protesting at Toronto International Film Festival’s decision to spotlight Tel Aviv:

Looking at modern, sophisticated Tel Aviv without also considering the city’s past and the realities of Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza strip, would be like rhapsodising about the beauty and elegant lifestyles in white-only Cape Town or Johannesburg during apartheid without acknowledging the corresponding black townships of Khayelitsha and Soweto.

Act for East Jerusalem

13 October 2009

We as Scandinavians are very concerned about the developments in East Jerusalem. Israel is continuing a policy violating international law towards the Palestinian inhabitants of the area.

We strongly urge our politicians to put pressure on the Israeli Government to end settlement expansion and annexation of Palestinian land and property.

In the case of Sheikh Jarrah two families were recently evicted from their houses and are now in a status of refugee for the second time since the 1948 war between Israel and Palestine. The Ghawi family have been living in a tent in front of their own house since the forced eviction.

Forced displacement affects Palestinian families in many neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, including Silwan and the Mount of Olives, which together with Sheikh Jarrah form part of the Holy Basin surrounding the Old City. From January to July 2009, at least 194 people, including 95 children, were forcibly displaced and another 107, including 46 children, were affected as a result of house demolitions ordered or carried out by the Israeli authorities in East Jerusalem. According to conservative estimates, there are currently over 1,500 pending demolition orders in East Jerusalem alone, potentially affecting several thousand Palestinian residents.

We strongly urge our politicians to put pressure on the Israeli Government in accordance to the following statements (as recommended by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs):

• Prevent the displacement of Palestinian families and communities by putting an immediate stop to forced evictions and house demolitions.

• Facilitate the return to their homes of families that have been displaced as a result of forced evictions and house demolitions in East Jerusalem.

• Protect the rights of Palestinian residents to land and property and ensure respect for international law, including human rights and humanitarian law.

To sign the petition, click here

The petition will be send to the Scandinavian Foreign Ministers and relevant members of the European Parliament:

Anna Ibrisagic, a swedish MP of the comittee for Foreign Affairs, anna.ibrisagic@europarl.europa.eu

Heidi Hautala, a Finnish MP of the comittee for Foreign Affairs and the comittee of Human Rights, heidi.hautala@europarl.europa.eu

Anneli Jäätteenäki, a Finnish MP of the comittee for Foreign Affairs, anneli.jaatteenmaki@europarl.europa.eu

Per Stig Møller, the Danish Minister for Foreign Affairs, udenrigsministeren@um.dk

Jonas Gahr Støre,the Norwegian Minister for Foreign Affairs, umin@mfa.no

Alexander Stubb, the Finnish Minister for Foreign Affairs, umi@formin.fi

Carl Bildt, the Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs
http://www.regeringen.se/pub/r…

Israelis flatten Palestinian home

BBC

12 October 2009

Israeli authorities have demolished two Palestinian-owned structures in East Jerusalem, in defiance of international calls to stop such actions.

Palestinian reports say a family of five was forcibly evicted from their home in the Beit Hanina district before the building was demolished.

Israeli bulldozers then destroyed the foundations of another building nearby.

UN officials say such demolitions violate international law and raise serious humanitarian concerns.

Israel says buildings subject to demolition orders have been built without permits.

Palestinians say it is virtually impossible to obtain the necessary approval from Israel’s municipal authorities in Jerusalem.

The Israeli human rights group B’Tselem , says the authorities have demolished about 420 Palestinian-owned houses in East Jerusalem since 2004 saying they were built without permits.

Israel occupied the territory in the 1967 war and annexed it soon afterwards in a move that has not been recognised internationally.

The Elders’ view of the Middle East

Jimmy Carter | The Washington Post

6 September 2009

During the past 16 months I have visited the Middle East four times and met with leaders in Israel, Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, the West Bank and Gaza. I was in Damascus when President Obama made his historic speech in Cairo, which raised high hopes among the more-optimistic Israelis and Palestinians, who recognize that his insistence on a total freeze of settlement expansion is the key to any acceptable peace agreement or any positive responses toward Israel from Arab nations.
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Late last month I traveled to the region with a group of “Elders,” including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil and Mary Robinson of Ireland, former prime minister Gro Brundtland of Norway and women’s activist Ela Bhatt of India. Three of us had previously visited Gaza, which is now a walled-in ghetto inhabited by 1.6 million Palestinians, 1.1 million of whom are refugees from Israel and the West Bank and receive basic humanitarian assistance from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Israel prevents any cement, lumber, seeds, fertilizer and hundreds of other needed materials from entering through Gaza’s gates. Some additional goods from Egypt reach Gaza through underground tunnels. Gazans cannot produce their own food nor repair schools, hospitals, business establishments or the 50,000 homes that were destroyed or heavily damaged by Israel’s assault last January.

We found a growing sense of concern and despair among those who observe, as we did, that settlement expansion is continuing apace, rapidly encroaching into Palestinian villages, hilltops, grazing lands, farming areas and olive groves. There are more than 200 of these settlements in the West Bank.

An even more disturbing expansion is taking place in Palestinian East Jerusalem. Three months ago I visited a family who had lived for four generations in their small, recently condemned home. They were laboring to destroy it themselves to avoid much higher costs if Israeli contractors carried out the demolition order. On Aug. 27, we Elders took a gift of food to 18 members of the Hanoun family, recently evicted from their home of 65 years. The Hanouns, including six children, are living on the street, while Israeli settlers have moved into their confiscated dwelling.
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Daily, headlines in Jerusalem newspapers say that certain areas and types of construction would be excluded from the settlement freeze and that it would, at best, have a limited duration. Increasingly desperate Palestinians see little prospect of their plight being alleviated; political, business and academic leaders are making contingency plans should President Obama’s efforts fail.

We saw considerable interest in a call by Javier Solana, secretary general of the Council of the European Union, for the United Nations to endorse the two-state solution, which already has the firm commitment of the U.S. government and the other members of the “Quartet” (Russia and the United Nations). Solana proposes that the United Nations recognize the pre-1967 border between Israel and Palestine, and deal with the fate of Palestinian refugees and how Jerusalem would be shared. Palestine would become a full U.N. member and enjoy diplomatic relations with other nations, many of which would be eager to respond. Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad described to us his unilateral plan for Palestine to become an independent state.

A more likely alternative to the present debacle is one state, which is obviously the goal of Israeli leaders who insist on colonizing the West Bank and East Jerusalem. A majority of the Palestinian leaders with whom we met are seriously considering acceptance of one state, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. By renouncing the dream of an independent Palestine, they would become fellow citizens with their Jewish neighbors and then demand equal rights within a democracy. In this nonviolent civil rights struggle, their examples would be Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela.

They are aware of demographic trends. Non-Jews are already a slight majority of total citizens in this area, and within a few years Arabs will constitute a clear majority.

A two-state solution is clearly preferable and has been embraced at the grass roots.

Just south of Jerusalem, the Palestinian residents of Wadi Fukin and the nearby Israeli villagers of Tzur Hadassah are working together closely to protect their small shared valley from the ravages of rock spill, sewage and further loss of land from a huge settlement on the cliff above, where 26,000 Israelis are rapidly expanding their confiscated area. It was heartwarming to see the international harmony with which the villagers face common challenges and opportunities.

There are 25 similar cross-border partnerships between Israelis and their Palestinian neighbors. The best alternative for the future is a negotiated peace agreement, so that the example of Wadi Fukin and Tzur Hadassah can prevail along a peaceful border between two sovereign nations.

The writer was the 39th president. He founded The Carter Center, a nongovernmental organization focused on global peace and health issues.