Tag: House Demolition - Page 50 - International Solidarity Movement

Help Israeli human rights activist Ezra Nawi

Without international intervention Israeli human rights activist Ezra Nawi will most likely be sent to jail.

Ezra Nawi has been active for years in the area known as South Mt. Hebron. The Palestinians in this small desolate area in the very south of the West Bank have been under Israeli occupation for almost 42 years; they still live without electricity, running water and other basic services, and are continuously harassed by the Jewish settlers who constantly violate both Israeli and International law, and are backed by a variety of Israeli military forces, all of which operate in an effort to rid the area of its Palestinian inhabitants and create a new demographic reality in it.

Nawi`s persistent NON VIOLENT activity in the area is aimed both at aiding the local population in its plight to stay on their lands, but also at exposing the situation in the area to both the Israeli and international public eye. The latter is very much not in the interest of the Israeli settlers who complain that Nawi is disturbing the “status quo” in the area. Nawi has received threats on his life from the settlers in the past. The chief of the investigations in the Hebron Israeli Police once admitted that what Nawi is doing in the area is “exposing the dirt laying under the rug…”

Ezra Nawi`s efforts have been fruitful in the sense that the attempt to rid the South Mt. Hebron from its Palestinian inhabitants has become a visible, internationally acknowledged issue.

The settlers, army and Israeli police have a strong interest to restrict his movement and ban him from the area. Therefore they constantly falsely accuse him of violating the law. Lately he has been pronounced guilty of assaulting a police officer who was demolishing a Palestinian house on July 22, 2007. He will be sentenced this coming July.

As chance would have it, the demolition and the resistance to it were captured on film and broadcast on Israeli news. As depicted on the film (a must see), Nawi, the man dressed in a green jacket, not only courageously protests the demolition, but after the bulldozer destroys the buildings he also tells the border policemen what he thinks of their actions. Sitting handcuffed in a military vehicle following his arrest, he exclaims: “Yes, I was also a soldier, but I did not demolish houses… The only thing that will be left here is hatred…”

Nawi`s case is not only about Nawi. It is also about Israel and Israeli society, if only because one can learn a great deal about a country from the way it treats its human rights and pro-democracy activists.

To support Ezra, please write a letter or email to the Israeli embassy in your country, and send us a copy to support.ezra@gmail.com

Israeli bulldozers demolish 15 barns, three shacks in Jordan Valley

Ma’an News

17 June 2009

Israeli bulldozers demolished 15 animal barns and 3 shacks owned by Palestinian residents of Ein Al-Hilwa neighborhood in the Jordan Valley near Israeli settlement of Masquin, eyewitnesses reported Wednesday morning.

Palestinian Authority official Ghassan Daghlas, who monitors Israeli settlement activity in the northern West Bank, condemned the demolition describing it as part of a clear Israeli policy aimed at emptying the Jordan Valley of all Palestinian residents.

Daghlas called on the international community to exert pressure on Israel to stop displacing the Palestinian citizens from their homes and lands they have lived on for decades.

Israeli forces demolish Hebron water reservoirs

8 June 2009

On the 8th of June 2009, at 8 am, a bulldozer, escorted by 5 police and army cars, destroyed a Palestinian reservoir in Al Bueri, north of Hebron.

Mohammed Radi Sultan, the owner, had built the reservoir three years ago in order to irrigate his vineyard, but he could not acquire a permit from the Israeli occupation authorities. Residents of Al Bueri are not allowed to build anything on their land, which is completely surrounded by settlements and an outpost.

On Thursday, June 4th, Mohammed received a court order to demolish the reservoir but the order was not to be implemented for 10 days. Ten days were given to allow him the option of appealing the demolition decision.

A bulldozer and police cars arrived to demolish the reservoir at 8am. Ten Palestinians tried to stop the demolition, but were beaten by the police. One Palestinian was arrested.

There are severe consequences for Sultan family as a result of the demolition. They will be unable to rebuild the reservoir because it is a very expensive structure (it was 6 meters deep). Also, the lack of water will negatively impact the growth of the vines and the grape harvest this year.

In addition to the reservoir, some vines were destroyed as well as half of a surrounding wheat field. In the near area of Al Baqa seven other reservoirs were destroyed on the same day.

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

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 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

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.