Tag: Ethnic Cleansing

Israel pushes out its own people

Dimi Reider | The Guardian

10 June 2009

Whenever Barack Obama speaks of the Middle East these days, there’s one thing that worries “senior Israeli officials” most. “He didn’t say ‘Jewish state’,” they mutter to reporters. “He had all the time to say these two words, and didn’t. Why didn’t he?”

Binyamin Netanyahu himself utters this phrase at every opportunity. He even went as far as turning this coveted idea into a precondition for negotiating with the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, before being shushed by Washington.

But why this sudden insistence on what is supposed to be an internal Israeli matter, the self-definition of the state? As Abbas rightly commented, Israel can call itself the Hebrew Socialist Republic for all he cares. Why bring up this internal matter with Obama and Abbas, Israel’s primary foreign policy objectives?

The truth is that Netanyahu is speaking neither to Abbas nor to Obama. He is speaking to world public opinion, as he prepares for confrontation with a fourth party to the conflict, one that is as crucial as it is overlooked: the Israeli-Palestinian minority.

Israeli Palestinians, most of them native Palestinians who remained in what became Israel after 1948, constitute 21% of the population. Their very existence poses a critical reality check on Israel’s self-perception as Jewish and democratic, and if one throws in the population of the West Bank and Gaza, the proportion of Jews in Israeli-controlled areas shrinks to a mere 51%.

Despite discrimination in all walks of life – education, housing, civil service, politics – the Palestinian minority in Israel is slowly gaining ground. The number of Palestinian students on Israeli campuses is growing from year to year, discrimination is actively challenged both in court and in public life, and the years of housing neglect are biting back at Jewish hegemony as they push more and more young Palestinian professionals into previously Jewish-only areas.

So as almost any honest Zionist will tell you, here’s the dilemma. Israel’s proclaimed raison d’etre is maintaining a rigidly ethnocentric Jewish state, one in which Jews will never be in a minority. Being a minority must be understood in the emotional sense rather than the numerical one. This is important to our own historic memory as persecuted minorities, but even more so because maintaining a democracy is quintessential to Israel’s standing in the world community. On the other hand, given Palestinian advancement within Israel, an open democracy that plays by the rules will inevitably result in the erosion of the purist nation-state. So in the three-part Jewish, Palestinian and democratic conundrum, one element has to be dismissed. Netanyahu’s new catchphrase seems to indicate that that element will be the Palestinian minority in Israel.

Avigdor Lieberman is much maligned for his racism, but his line exemplifies one that had become very mainstream in Israel: a Palestinian state needs to be established – the sooner the better, before Palestinians in the occupied territories despair of nationalism and begin requesting the vote. Yet the geopolitical situation as it stands will, in such a scenario, still leave Israel as a bi-national state. His solution is annulling the citizenship of about half the Israeli Palestinians and redrawing the maps so that they find themselves within the new Palestinian state.

Lieberman’s position is widely shared; even self-proclaimed dove Tzipi Livni said, on several occasions, that “once a Palestinian state is established … we will be able to tell any Palestinian wishing to realise his national identity that he is now able to do it elsewhere”. More ominously, recent developments on the ground suggest the machinery for carrying out such an unprecedented task is already in motion.

The interior minister, Eli Yishay, had launched a legislative project to allow him the annulment of anyone’s citizenship without the authorisation of the attorney general. The IDF announced it would be allocating a special infantry brigade “to deal with a potential Arab uprising in case of war”. Last week’s national defence drill included just such a scenario – while most Israelis practised going into bomb shelters, army and police practised “suppressing a large-scale Arab revolt in the north” – the exact area of Lieberman’s proposed geographical experiment. And the outlandish bills recently tabled at the Knesset, ranging from banning commemoration of the Nakba to making citizenship conditional on a loyalty oath to a Jewish state, contribute to further alienation between the two communities and attach new fuses to an already much-rattled powder keg.

Are we facing the prospect of an ethnic cleansing? To a degree, ethnic cleansing has always been part and parcel of Israeli political life. Despite its bloody connotations, ethnic cleansing can be carried out in many ways. Family-by-family expulsion from “illegal housing” and discriminative economic pressure to emigrate is ethnic cleansing, too. We appear to be marching towards a nasty and brutal escalation on that front.

The reason why Netanyahu is talking over the heads of Palestinian Israeli citizens is precisely because most of them (over 70%) want to remain part of a sovereign democracy rather than the vague and improbably West Bank statelet. The reason he’s trying to create a fictional outside leadership for them in the character of the Palestinian Authority they so despise is precisely because their real leadership – their mayors, intellectuals, politicians and NGOs – persistently call for internal, Jewish-Arab dialogue over their rights and the role each community should play in a joint and truly democratic state.

Netanyahu’s efforts to throw in Israeli Palestinians with the West Bankers must be resisted. If he wants to make them part of the regional process, they should be heard speaking for themselves; if he doesn’t open the door for them as partners, they must be let in through the window, with every discussion of the peace process featuring exploration of the Israeli Palestinians’ exclusive plight. Most importantly, powerful international defence of their rights as Israel’s equal must be mounted and persistently ensured.

Israeli plans for East Jerusalem hotel raise U.S. ire

Akiva Eldar | Ha’aretz

2 June 2009

Washington is furious over the Interior Ministry’s anticipated approval of a plan to build a new hotel in East Jerusalem, just 100 meters from the Old City’s walls. The plan, which would see the demolition of a wholesale market and kindergarten, is slated to be approved today.

In conversations with Israeli officials, senior American officials have made it clear that they want Israel to freeze all plans for expanding the Jewish presence in East Jerusalem, and especially in the Holy Basin – the area adjacent to the Old City.

The regional planning and building committee for Jerusalem will discuss the plan today. It was submitted by the Jerusalem municipality, which owns the land on which the hotel is slated to be built, and the state-owned Jerusalem Economic Corporation, which will actually construct it.

The site in question is in the wholesale market, just east of the Rockefeller Museum.

The Interior Ministry’s district planning office told Haaretz that it will recommend the plan’s approval.

The plan calls for a 200-room hotel that will be nine stories tall on its eastern face (where the ground is lower). It will also include a commercial building, which will be five stories tall on its eastern face, plus another three stories underground.

The plan will require the existing wholesale market to be demolished, along with a Palestinian kindergarten.

The hotel plan is only one of several proposals for expanding the Jewish presence in East Jerusalem. Another, which would involve evicting hundreds of Palestinians from King’s Valley, on the outskirts of Silwan, was approved yesterday by the Jerusalem municipality’s planning committee despite the opposition of the city’s legal advisor, Yossi Havilio.

Israelis accused of settlement by stealth

Dominic Waghorn | Sky News

24 May 2009

The Israeli Government is being accused of a plot to transform East Jerusalem with Jewish settlements and drive out Palestinians by stealth.

The Hannoun family protest against the loss of their home: Photos by Sameer Bazbaz
The Hannoun family protest against the loss of their home: Photos by Sameer Bazbaz

Ir Amim, a Jerusalem based NGO specialising in Israeli Palestinian issues, claims Israeli authorities in collusion with radical Jewish settlers are cementing their hold on occupied East Jerusalem..

“The policy of the government of Israel is to establish the supremacy if not the hegemony of an exclusionary Jewish narrative in Jerusalem,” Ir Amim’s Daniel Seidemann told Sky News.

The British government also told us it is concerned by actions in East Jerusalem that threaten to “not only undermine the peace process but undermine the trust that will be needed to renew that process towards a two state solution”.

These are two examples where Israel is alleged to be altering facts on the ground and changing the status of occupied East Jerusalem against international law.

The Hannouns' home has been in their family for over 50 years
The Hannouns' home has been in their family for over 50 years

The plight of the Hannoun family

Maher Hannoun’s home in Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem has been in his family for more than 50 years. Last week an Israeli court ordered his family to leave, to make way for Jewish settlers.

The Jewish settlement company Nahalat Shimon claims the land was bought by Jews more than a century ago and says the Hannouns have not paid rent.

The Hannouns say they were given the property by the Jordanian Government in the 1940s and the settler’s claims are based on forged papers.

“Jerusalem was given to the Jewish people by God three thousand years ago”, a spokesman for the settlers told Sky News. He confirmed plans to evict more than twenty Palestinian families and move in 300 Jewish families instead.

Maher says he has been offered a lot of money to leave but has no intention of giving in to the settlers.

“For us it’s not about money,” he said. “Nobody can sell his identity, his dreams his memory. I will fight to remain where I was born, where my kids were born.”

The European Union and US Government have both protested to the Israeli Foreign Ministry about the planned evictions. The Israeli Government says it is a matter for the courts, despite the political implications of the case.

Signe Breivik gazes at the remains of the hotel she once ran
Signe Breivik gazes at the remains of the hotel she once ran

The Cliff Hotel

Ali Ayad and his wife Signe Breivik, who is Norwegian, met in his family’s hotel in Abu Dis and married there. He took over running the Cliff Hotel and they lived there with their family, until the Israelis seized it.

In 2003 when they moved out to renovate the place, the Israeli military moved in and refused to let the couple return. The Israelis have built the infamous security barrier right through the property.

They are using an absentee property law to take possession, even though Israel’s attorney general has said the law should not be applied in Jerusalem.

Making matters worse are Israeli plans to build a major settlement in and around the hotel. Some jewish families have already moved in nearby.

Ali is barred from Jerusalem because he has only West Bank ID papers and has been branded a security risk. Meeting the affable dispossess Palestinian it is hard to imagine someone less threatening.

He is not even allowed to attend court hearings determining the fate of his property, but remains calm and unbowed in his resolve to fight the Israelis taking his land.

“This is not an issue that I have a stubborn head. This is simple reason. It’s my own property. I did not sell it. My family did not sell it. We have no intention to give it up,” he said.

Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Miliband has intervened several times in the case of the Cliff Hotel but Israeli authorities appear to have no intention of handing it back.

Palestinians protest annexation of East Jerusalem

21 May 2009

On Thursday 21st of May, a group Israeli and International activists staged a protest contesting the celebration of Jerusalem day, which marks Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem in 1967.

Activists held placards showing support for the persecuted Palestinian population of occupied East Jerusalem as right-wing Israelis marched by on their route from the West to the East of the city. The protest caused anger amongst the marchers and they repeatedly attempted to take the banners and rip them. The police arrived and forced the protest back, and away from the march, by physically pushing the activists.

The protest continued through Jaffa St and Ben Yehuda Street, where it was met with another baying crowd of right-wing Israelis who chanted “Death to all Arabs” and attempted to intimidate the activists by pursuing them through the streets.

A demonstration earlier in the day was held outside Damascus Gate, involving local Palestinians. Speeches were made and chants of “End the occupation” were shouted by the crowd, with the event passing peacefully.

Jerusalem day is an Israeli national holiday celebrating the supposed unification of Jerusalem and the establishment of Israeli control over the old city in June 1967. Israeli’s sovereignty of East Jerusalem is not recognized by the international community and it’s regarded as illegally occupied land.

Palestinians living in occupied East Jerusalem have long suffered discrimination and violence since it’s annexation in the ’67 war. Recently the number of house demolition orders in East Jerusalem has increased dramatically, a result of Israel’s continued policy of attempting to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from the land.

Mayor’s aide: new deal for Jerusalem Palestinians

Karen Laub | Associated Press

21 May 2009

The Israeli official put in charge of Jerusalem’s Arabs said he believes treating them more fairly will strengthen Israeli claims to all the disputed city, and says he’s seeking ways to legalize thousands of unlicensed Arab homes vulnerable to demolition.

With Israeli control comes responsibility for all Jerusalem residents, including a quarter million Palestinians who suffered decades of neglect, said the official, 32-year-old Yakir Segev, in an interview this week.

The former army commando was appointed six months ago by Mayor Nir Barkat to oversee east Jerusalem, the area captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war and claimed by Palestinians as a future capital. The anniversary of the capture is marked Thursday, according to the Hebrew calendar, with parades and speeches.

The mayor’s critics say they’re getting empty promises. Demolitions of Arab homes have picked up under Barkat, with more than 1,000 orders issued this year, they note, while city funds are still mostly spent in Jewish areas.

Both Segev and his boss staunchly oppose a future partition of the city, seen as key to an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal promoted by President Barack Obama. But Segev says he does want to narrow the gap between well-developed Jewish areas and Arab neighborhoods marked by an acute housing shortage, crowded schools and potholed streets.

“There are lots of obligations,” he said in his office near the walled Old City, site of major shrines sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians. “You cannot take shortcuts.”

Human rights groups insist they’ve seen no change and dismiss Barkat’s promise to allow construction of 13,500 homes for Arabs over the next two decades as insufficient.

“All the policies we are facing … show that they want to limit the number of Palestinians,” said Ahmed Rweidi, an adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Israel has systematically tightened its hold on east Jerusalem since capturing it June 7, 1967. Immediately after the war, Israel drew new Jerusalem boundaries that reached deep into the West Bank, then annexed the enlarged area to its capital — a step never recognized internationally.

Today, some 180,000 Israelis live in Jewish neighborhoods built in east Jerusalem. Jewish settlement groups, often backed by the government, have established bridge heads deep inside Arab areas, particularly in and near the Old City.

Arabs have little say in city politics because they largely boycott municipal elections, fearing votes could be interpreted as acceptance of Israeli rule.

Israel’s previous prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said he was ready to give up most Arab neighborhoods, though not the Old City and its environs. But his successor, hard-liner Benjamin Netanyahu, refuses to consider concessions.

Barkat ran a law-and-order campaign, including a pledge to end rampant unlicensed construction of nearly 20,000 homes in what he called the “Wild East.”

Palestinians argue the unlicensed construction is necessary because Israel uses restrictions on building permits to limit Arab growth and bolster a Jewish majority, which has fallen nonetheless to 66 percent.

But Barkat dismissed U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as ill-informed after she called demolitions of Arab homes “unhelpful” to peace efforts. Since he took office, there’s also been uproar over plans to expand an archaeological park near the Old City, which would evict hundreds of Palestinians from unlicensed homes in the Silwan neighborhood.

Segev said a Jewish majority is important for Israel’s claims to the city, but should be achieved by attracting more Jews not limiting Palestinians. And the housing crisis in east Jerusalem has become untenable, he said. In reviewing licensing practices, “our goal is that the majority of the residents will receive a solution,” he said.

Unlicensed homes in residential areas would likely win retroactive approval, while those built on public land or areas earmarked for roads and schools would be demolished, he said. Demolitions will continue despite a call by the U.N.’s top Mideast envoy to suspend them, he said.

Danny Seidemann, who heads Ir Amim, a group that advocates a fair solution for Jerusalem, said he would applaud a policy change, but noted Barkat’s administration has so far rejected proposals, on a smaller scale, to legalize homes en masse.

Segev had never visited Arab areas of the city until Barkat appointed him, he said. Many Israelis are fearful to make the trip, belying Israel’s claims the city is united. But in the past six months, he’s often jogged in Silwan, where nearly 100 homes face demolition.

Segev, who lost his left arm in a childhood accident and overcame huge odds to get into the Egoz commando unit, displays the same can-do attitude now.

“I don’t think Silwan will be Rehavia,” he said, referring to a Jewish upscale neighborhood. “But I think the differences could be a lot less pronounced, and I would like to see to it that the (Arab) population feels that we are serious.”

Associated Press writer Joseph Marks contributed to this report.