Tag: Refugees - Page 5 - International Solidarity Movement

Palestinian Refugee Yusif Barakat Returns to Palestine with 1,000 International Delegates

18 December 2009

Gaza Freedom March to Palestine Border Set for December 31

The Gaza Freedom March, to take place in Gaza on December 31, is an historic initiative to break the siege that has imprisoned the 1.5 million Palestinians who live there. Conceived in the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and nonviolent resistance to injustice worldwide, the march will gather people from all over the world to demand that the Israeli government open the borders.

One of the participating marchers is 74-year-old Yusif Barakat, who was born in Haifa, Palestine. Barakat’s family left their home when Jewish immigrants were settled in Palestine after World War II. In August 1947, this 12-year-old shepherd boy landed at Ellis Island with his family, not speaking a word of English. Four years later, his father died, leaving Barakat to take care of his mother and three sisters.

He has been taking care of the needy every since. Now a retired psychotherapist, Barakat has devoted himself to working with boys in the juvenile justice system, helping them develop trust and relationships through his treatment and rehabilitation program.

He also has deep emotional ties to his native Palestine and is deeply saddened that the U.S. government is facilitating the suffering of Palestinians. “I am appalled at the billions of U.S. tax dollars that have gone to the Israeli government, which continues a 60-year-long occupation of Palestinian homelands. And when I saw all the death and destruction from the invasion of Gaza, I knew I had to do something. That’s why I’m joining the Gaza Freedom March.”

Departing for Egypt, Barakat and 1,000 other international activists will caravan into Gaza to witness the still remaining devastation of last year’s attacks and on December 31, joining local Palestinians in a non-violent march from Northern Gaza to the Erez/Israeli border. On the Israeli side of the Erez border Palestinians and Israelis will also call on the Israeli government to open the border.

Other participants include Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker, leading Syrian comedian Duraid Lahham, South African anti-apartheid leader Ronnie Kasrils, French Senator Alima Boumediene–Thiery, author and Filipino Parliament member Walden Bello, former European Parliamentarian Luisa Morgantini from Italy, President of the U.S. Center for Constitutional Rights Attorney Michael Ratner, Japanese former Ambassador to Lebanon Naoto Amaki, French hip-hop artists Ministere des Affaires Populaires. Families of three generations, doctors, lawyers, diplomats, 70 students, an interfaith group that includes rabbis, priests and imams, a women’s delegation, a Jewish contingent, a veterans group and Palestinians born overseas who have never seen their families in Gaza.

Inside Gaza, excitement is growing. Representatives of all aspects of civil society, including students, professors, refugee groups, unions, women’s organizations, NGOs, have been busy organizing and estimate that at least 50,000 Palestinians will participate. People from the different sectors will march in their uniforms–fishermen, doctors, students, farmers, teachers, etc. Local Palestinian rappers, hip-hop bands and Dabbkeh dancers will perform on mobile stages.

Israeli forces disrupt UNRWA chief’s farewell

Ma’an News

10 December 2009

UNRWA Commissioner-General Karen AbuZayd with Refka al-Kurd

Israeli police ordered outgoing UNRWA Commissioner-General Karen AbuZayd to leave an East Jerusalem home on Thursday during her last official visit as the head of the relief agency.

Ma’an’s reporter on the scene said AbuZayd left after police gave her five minutes to evacuate the premises of the house of the Al-Kurd family, as a Palestinian woman yelled “We want our homes and our lands. We have no alternative.”

Amidst Israeli police and soldiers, AbuZayd visited Palestinians recently evicted from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem on International Human Rights Day. She spoke of Jerusalem as a “City of Dispossession,”

“On this day, and in this place, I wish to remind the international community of the unfinished business in Sheikh Jarrah and elsewhere in the West Bank,” she said.

“The dispossessed, the displaced must see their losses acknowledged, their injustices addressed,” she added. “Peace is possible, but only if we insist on our universal humanity.”

Members of the Al-Kurd family, who are fighting a court battle to keep their home from being taken over by Israeli settlers, told her, “What are we to do? International Law should have helped us.” As she spoke, settler watched nearby.

During a news conference before entering the Al-Kurd house, AbuZayd said, “As a colleague of mine said, we have ‘failed with distinction’ … I am leaving reluctantly, at a time of greater political uncertainty than at any time I’ve been here in nine years and at a greater time of economic and financial difficulties.”

“While the international community is committed to the goal of establishing two states, with Jerusalem as a shared capital, it is difficult to imagine how that outcome can be achieved in light of the systematic settlement activity and violations of basic human rights currently afflicting the Palestinian community in East Jerusalem.

“The impact of this urban settlement activity being conducted with seeming impunity is manifold and acute,” AbuZayd continued. “The intimate juxtaposition of two cultures, such as exists in the building behind me, with its accompanying violence and tension, destroyed the communal atmosphere that has evolved over decades.”

UN condemnation of forced evictions

AbuZayd reaffirmed the UN’s condemnation of the ongoing Israeli policy of forced evictions of Palestinians and house demolitions. “The UN rejects Israel’s claims that these cases are a matter for municipal authorities and domestic courts. Such acts are in violation of Israel’s obligations under international law.”

“To date, four of the 28 families have lost their homes in Sheikh Jarrah, affecting over 55 people including 20 children. At present, a further eight families are under direct threat of forced eviction, having been served with orders to vacate their homes, potentialy affected another 120 people. In all incidents to date, settlers have taken over with the active protection and assistance of the Israeli authorities. But the numbers don’t speak to the human suffering and trauma that has been the unfortunate hallmark of these forced evictions.”

Plight of the Bedouin

During her final speech in Sheikh Jarrah, AbuZayd took the opportunity to speak of the ongoing displacement of the Bedouin across the West Bank. “On International Human Right day, I would also like to highlight the plight of one of the most disadvantaged groups in this region, the bedouins of the West Bank.”

“As the occupying power, Israel remains responsible for ensuring that the basic needs of the occupied population are met. But many refugee Bedouin and herding communities, originally displaced from their traditional lands in 1948, are now experiencing multiple counts of displacement from area C as they are forcibly moved from their homes.”

“These groups are now sinking deeper into food insecurity and abject poverty, as grazing land continues to shrink and access to natural resources is severely restricted by the occupying power. Administrative demolition, forced evictions, collapsing livelihoods, poverty and settler harassment represent the key triggers to displacement for area C herding communities today and they’re already stretched coping mechanism are now reaching their limits. They’re full rights must be respected as a matter of utmost urgency.”

Human Rights Day

“It is … fitting that on my last official visit to Jerusalem as UNRWA Commissioner General, and on International Human Rights Day, I should come to the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of the city, where the failure of the international community to fulfill the promises of the Universal Declaration is so acutely felt and where the pain and ugliness of dispossession and occupation are so tragically in evidence.”

Israeli army soldiers were also on the scene, the reporter added. The forces also dispersed journalists from the area. AbuZayd had the brief opportunity to speak with Maher Ghawi, another Jerusalemite affected by Israel’s forced eviction policy.

Full text of Karen AbuZayd’s speech can be found here.

Peace must begin with the plight of Palestine’s refugees

Karen AbuZayd | guardian.co.uk

8 December 2009

Sixty years after the UN moved to address the fate of the dispossessed, we need to accept that the injustice endures

Sixty years ago today the United Nations general assembly voted into existence a temporary body known as UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. UNRWA’s task was to deal with the humanitarian consequences of the dispossession of some three-quarters of a million Palestine refugees forced by the 1948 Middle East war to abandon their homes and flee their ancestral lands. Just two decades later, the six-day war generated another spasm of violence and forced displacement, culminating in the occupation of Palestinian territory. Today, anguished exile remains the lot of Palestinians and Palestine refugees. The occupation of Palestinian land persists, there is no Palestinian state, and the human rights and fundamental freedoms to which Palestinians are entitled under international law do not exist.

The occupation, now over 40 years old, becomes more entrenched with every infringement of human rights and international law in the occupied Palestinian territory. Political actors hold in their hands the power to redress the travesties Palestinians endure. Yet the approach has been, at best, to equivocate over the minutiae of the occupation – a checkpoint here, a bag of cement there – or, at worst, to look the other way, to acquiesce in or even support the measures causing Palestinian suffering.

From my perspective as the head of the agency mandated to assist and protect Palestine refugees, it is particularly vexing that the prevailing approach fails – or refuses – to accord the refugee issue the attention it deserves. Over 60 years, dispossession has faded from the focus of peace efforts. The heart of where peace should begin is absent from the international agenda, pushed aside as one of the “final status” issues, one which belongs to a later stage of the negotiation process. As forced displacements continue across the West Bank, as Palestinians are evicted from their homes in East Jersualem, I ask a simple question: is it not time for those engaged in the peace process to muster the will and the courage to address the Palestine refugee question?

On this regrettable 60th anniversary of the agency which I shall leave in less than one month, I wish to refocus the debate on the displaced and dispossessed, to put the refugees at the centre of peacemaking efforts.

Make no mistake, not a single conflict of contemporary times has been resolved, no durable peace achieved, unless and until the voices of the victims of those conflicts were heard, their losses acknowledged and redress found to injustices they experience. The precedents of recent peacemaking efforts and the methodology of contemporary conflict resolution affirm that giving high priority to resolving dispossession and the plight of refugees is a necessity, an international obligation and a humanitarian imperative.

The Israeli-Palestinian confrontation is uniquely complex. Among its myriad dimensions, all of which require attention, the unresolved refugee issue is one of those most profoundly linked to the uncertainties of the regional situation and to the persistence of the conflict. Addressing it is, therefore, a sine qua non for making progress towards a negotiated solution.

Failing to engage with the refugee issue and consciously shunting it to one side has served only to disavow the refugees’ significance as a constituency with a prominent stake in delivering and sustaining peace. This has left many with a dangerous cynicism about the peace process, thus strengthening the hands of those who argue against peace itself.

I refuse, however, to conclude my time in office on a pessimistic note. Instead I urge that we take steps to engage the marginalised. Let us confound the cynics. Let us create alternative realities to disarm those who favour violence. I call on the peacemakers to acknowledge, in their rhetoric and their policies, the need to address Palestinian dispossession.

Let symbolism and rhetoric give way to substance. On the anniversary of UNRWA, I call on the international community and the parties to the conflict to acknowledge the 60-year-old injustice as a first step towards addressing the consequences of that injustice. Let us build facts in the mind to create facts of a just and durable peace on the ground.

Palestinians from Bir el-Eid continue reclaiming their land in spite of army harassment

27 November 2009

For the last 3 weeks, ISM activists have stayed with a community of cave-dwellers in Bir el-Eid, south east of Hebron, on the very border to the Negev desert. The villagers, who live off raising sheep and goats as well as seasonal farming, moved in recently, after a court order gave them permission to do so following 10 years in exile. In 1999, the Israeli army forcibly evicted 700 people living in the area, destroying stone houses and blowing up caves. Until now, attempts by the villagers to reclaim their land have been quashed by violence perpetrated by settlers from the three nearby settlements of Mezadot Yehuda, Susiya and Mitzpe Yair, all of which are illegal under international law.

The response from human rights groups has been tremendous. Tayush makes frequent expeditions to the village, the International Red Cross has supplied the villagers with tents, mattresses and cookware, among other things, and Breaking the Silence brought 30 people on a tour of the area to raise awareness of the plight of the people living there. Already, several tents have been raised and sheep pens restored, and 3 families are now living in Bir el-Eid, hopefully only the first of many.

The success so far, however, has been met by harassment from the army. They continue to intimidate the Palestinians when they use the road that they themselves had built at great expense, instead directing them to use a dirt track that has barely been prepared at all. On Wednesday, 25 November, the village ran out of drinking water due to a miscommunication, and when Tayush attempted to bring water the next day, soldiers delayed the transport for several hours. The local DCO (District Coordinating Office) chief visited the village on the that day, reprimanding the Palestinians for using the road, saying that it bothered the local settlers. When the Palestinians referred to the court order saying that they had the right to use the road, the DCO officer said simply “I don’t care about the courts, I’m military”.

It is this blatant arrogance toward not only International, but even Israeli, law, that composes one of the main problem for Palestinians trying to live their lives in the occupied West Bank. The army takes its orders from fanatical settlers living on stolen land, not from the courts. But the villagers of Bir el-Eid are ready to face this injustice and repression, insisting to live their lives on the land that is legally theirs.

Palestinians moving back to Bir el-Eid, a village from which they were expelled in 1999

22 November 2009

After spending a week in the modern city of Jerusalem, camping out on the street with a Palestinian family that the Israeli government had evicted from their home so that Israeli settlers could move into their house, I now have been down in the South Hebron Hills for two weeks near At-Tuwani where I spent the past five winters. I know most of the people in the area.

I am now living in Bir el-Eid, an ancient village which the Israeli military forced the Palestinian residents to abandon in 1999. Through the work of Israeli peace groups, especially Rabbis for Human Rights, Israeli courts have ordered that the Palestinian residents may return to the village. Around November 1, families began to return.

The problem is, the nearby Israeli settlers are furious about the Palestinians returning to the village. The settlers are insisting that no Palestinians use the Palestinian road to the village, so access in and out is difficult. The settlers claim the Palestinian road is for Jews only. The Israeli military is taking orders from the settlers and making life difficult for the villagers. Lawyers for the Palestinians are fighting this in the Israeli courts.

One exciting part of this struggle is Israeli peace activists coming to the village every day to bring needed supplies, plus legal and moral support. There also is now a continual international presence in the village to protect the villagers from both settlers and the military. It looks like this could be a long struggle. I plan to live in the village for the rest of my time here.

The village is comprised of eleven caves which have been dwellings for centuries, most of which the Israeli military demolished in 1999. Now there is much work to do after ten years of neglect and destruction. The people here are shepherds. I have been going out in the mountains with them.

Although the differences between the primitive lifestyle (no electricity, running water, houses, etc, except for cell phones) of the people in the village and life in Jerusalem are great, the issues are the same. In both places, the Israeli government wants to remove Palestinians and Palestinians are resisting nonviolently. Bier Ed in English means “Wellspring.” There is a wellspring of hope here in the middle of so much fear and hate. It is a fantastic privilege to be part of this struggle.