Palestinian businesses demolished by Israeli forces
Residents of Qusra witnessed a Caterpillar bulldozer, flanked by 20 Israeli military jeeps, entering the village at 7am on Wednesday, 23 December. Israeli Occupation Forces quickly occupied the entire village, establishing three checkpoints at its entrances and imposing curfew on the residents. Members of Abu Amer’s family, owner of the station and adjoining supermarket, were forbidden from leaving their home as the bulldozer began razing the area before their eyes. Abu Amer was forced back in to his house when he attempted to exit, begging soldiers to allow him to remove his wares and possessions before they were destroyed.
The building were located in Area B, under Palestinian civilian authority. When asked why Israeli forces had demolished the family’s property, the military stated that the gas station was deemed a security risk, claiming that children of Qusra had been spotted throwing rocks in the direction of nearby Migdalim settlement from the area.
Problems first arose several years ago when Abu Amer’s application for a Jordan Valley work permit was refused by Israeli officials unless he first close the gas station. Family members reported that Israeli Occupation Forces had enforced an order to close the businesses of Abu Amer’s family and seven other businesses on Qusra’s main street seven months previously. The sole source of income for Abu Amer, his five children and elderly mother, the businesses’ closure severely crippled them financially. The eight families of Qusra who had been handed the orders then sought legal aid.
Knowing the unscrupulousness of Israeli courts and the greater clout held by Israeli lawyers, residents hired a lawyer of Qedumim settlement to handle the cases. “If the judge is your enemy,” says Abu Amer’s brother, “you must hire your enemy to speak for you.” The case was still in court at the time of demolition. No demolition orders have ever been issued to any of the eight families involved.
Perpendicular to the gas station’s lies the road leading directly to the Israeli settlement of Migdalim, some 500 metres away. Abu Amer recalls doing business with many of its residents coming to and from the settlement. Approximately 15 of Migdalim’s 70 houses are occupied at any time, says Abu Amer, largely by economic settlers, drawn to the heavily government-subsidised West Bank settlements after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The family has spent over 5,000 shekels on legal fees to date. The economic loss goes above and beyond this figure, the original construction of the gas station and supermarket costing approximately 300,000 shekels. The destruction not only of the physical structures, but a family’s financial security, is undoubtedly the paramount effect of another chapter of Israel’s economic stragulation of Palestinian rural communities.
Imprisoned American citizen and Minnesota resident Ryan Olander to be deported to the US after being arrested in Sheikh Jarrah, Occupied East Jerusalem, whilst visiting Palestinian family whose house has been taken over by Israeli settlers.
Ryan was visiting the al-Kurds in the tent the Palestinian family built in their own backyard, after the recent setter take-over of a section of their house. At 1.15pm, 6 Israeli police walked into the tent, where Ryan was talking to the family members and drinking tea, and took him for questioning at the Russian Compound police station in west Jerusalem.
From the Givon prison in Ramle where Mr. Olander is currently awaiting his deportation hearing he reported that:
“On Friday, 18 December, I was placed under arrest illegally. A police officer forcibly removed me from the al-Kurd private residence and proceeded to file a fallacious police report stating I participated in what they claimed was an illegal demonstration and refused to disperse when ordered. In fact, I was arrested before the demonstration even took place.
I have become a target of the police for standing in solidarity with the Palestinians of Sheikh Jarrah who struggle against the unjust and illegal evictions from the places they have called their homes for nearly 60 years. Now I face illegal deportation from Israel.”
His arrest happened just before a peaceful demonstration of around 300 people, held in solidarity with the evicted Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah, was violently dispersed by the Israeli police. Following a violent dispersal of a similar demonstration the previous week, the police blocked all entrances to Sheikh Jarrah in an attempt to prevent protesters from accessing the Palestinian neighbourhood and used unprecedented force against those who succeeded in reaching the al-Kurd and Gawi family houses, currently occupied by Israeli settlers. Twenty six Israeli protesters were arrested, three of them wearing clown costumes. Similarly to last week, the police used a section of the al-Kurd house, previously taken over by settlers, to detain the arrested demonstrators.
Ryan, along with other arrestees from Sheikh Jarrah reported ill-treatment by the police, who subjected them to several strip-searches, denied them food and water for prolonged periods of time and held them outside of the police station until late at night, with insufficient protection against the cold conditions. Unlike the 26 arrested Israeli citizens, who were brought in front of the judge, Ryan was released by the police before the beginning of the trial on Saturday, 19 December, only to be illegally re-arrested by immigration police right outside of the same police station that told him he was free to go.
The police have used the same tactics previously, when three foreign nationals, who were arrested at a peaceful demonstration Sheikh Jarrah on 11 December 2009, were released by the judge in a court hearing held at the Russian Compound the following day, only to be illegally arrested again and taken straight from the courtroom to a deportation facility. All three were released the following morning, over 40 hours after their initial arrest.
Background on Sheikh Jarrah
Approximately 475 Palestinian residents living in the Karm Al-Ja’ouni neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, located directly north of the Old City, face imminent eviction from their homes in the manner of the Hannoun and Gawi families, and the al-Kurd family before them. All 28 families are refugees from 1948, mostly from West Jerusalem and Haifa, whose houses in Sheikh Jarrah were built and given to them through a joint project between the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and the Jordanian government in 1956.
So far, settlers took over houses of four Palestinian families, displacing around 60 residents, including 20 children. At present, settlers occupy all these houses and the whole area is patrolled by armed private security 24 hours a day. The evicted Palestinian families, some of whom 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 violent attacks from the settlers and harassment from the police.
The Gawi family, for example, had their only shelter, a small tent built near their house, destroyed by the police and all their belongings stolen five times. In addition, the al-Kurd family has been forced to live in an extremely difficult situation, sharing the entrance gate and the backyard of their house with extremist settlers, who occupied a part of the al-Kurd home in December 2009. The settlers subject the Palestinian family to regular violent attacks and harassment, making their life a living hell.
The ultimate goal of the settler organizations is to evict all Palestinians from the area and turn it into a new Jewish settlement and to create a Jewish continuum that will effectively cut off the Old City form the northern Palestinian neighborhoods. On 28 August 2008, Nahalat Shimon International filed a plan to build a series of five and six-story apartment blocks – Town Plan Scheme (TPS) 12705 – in the Jerusalem Local Planning Commission. If TPS 12705 comes to pass, the existing Palestinian houses in this key area would be demolished, about 500 Palestinians would be evicted, and 200 new settler units would be built for a new settlement: Shimon HaTzadik.
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 plight of the Gawi, al-Kurd and the Hannoun families is just a small part of Israel’s ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from East Jerusalem.
Legal background
The eviction orders, issued by Israeli courts, are a result of claims made in 1967 by the Sephardic Community Committee and the Knesseth Yisrael Association (who since sold their claim to the area to Nahalat Shimon) – settler organizations whose aim is to take over the whole area using falsified deeds for the land dating back to 1875. In 1972, these two settler organizations applied to have the land registered in their names with the Israel Lands Administration (ILA). Their claim to ownership was noted in the Land Registry; however, it was never made into an official registry of title. The first Palestinian property in the area was taken over at this time.
The case continued in the courts for another 37 years. Amongst other developments, the first lawyer of the Palestinian residents reached an agreement with the settler organizations in 1982 (without the knowledge or consent of the Palestinian families) in which he recognized the settlers’ ownership in return for granting the families the legal status of protected tenants. This affected 23 families and served as a basis for future court and eviction orders (including the al-Kurd family house take-over in December 2009), despite the immediate appeal filed by the families’ new lawyer. Furthermore, a Palestinian landowner, Suleiman Darwish Hijazi, has legally challenged the settlers’ claims. In 1994 he presented documents certifying his ownership of the land to the courts, including tax receipts from 1927. In addition, the new lawyer of the Palestinian residents located a document, proving the land in Sheikh Jarrah had never been under Jewish ownership. The Israeli courts rejected these documents.
The first eviction orders were issued in 1999 based on the (still disputed) agreement from 1982 and, as a result, two Palestinian families (Hannoun and Gawi) were evicted in February 2002. After the 2006 Israeli Supreme Court finding that the settler committees’ ownership of the lands was uncertain, and the Lands Settlement officer of the court requesting that the ILA remove their names from the Lands Registrar, the Palestinian families returned back to their homes. The courts, however, failed to recognize new evidence presented to them and continued to issue eviction orders based on decisions from 1982 and 1999 respectively. Further evictions followed in November 2008 (Kamel al-Kurd family) and August 2009 (Hannoun and Gawi families for the second time). An uninhabited section of a house belonging to the al-Kurd family was taken over by settlers on 1 December 2009.
New York, NY, December 19, 2009 – On a snowy Saturday afternoon, forty-five human rights carolers serenaded Madison Avenue shoppers with familiar holiday tunes outside the storefront of Israeli diamond and settlement mogul Lev Leviev, but their lyrics called for the boycott of Leviev’s companies. The New York protest took place against the backdrop of a growing arrest campaign by the Israeli military against Palestinian protest and boycott activists from West Bank villages where Leviev has built settlements.
Ethan Heitner from Adalah-NY commented, “Today in New York City we celebrated the many victories of the international movement to boycott companies like Leviev’s that support Israel’s oppression of the Palestinian people. At the same time, we’re angry that our Palestinian colleagues, like Mohammad Othman from Jayyous, Abdallah Abu Rahmah from Bil’in and Jamal Juma’ from Stop the Wall, have been imprisoned by Israel for organizing nonviolent protests and boycotts. Still, the Israeli government’s desperate measures won’t succeed in crushing the growing movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. Instead they just provide further proof to the world of why BDS is necessary.”
Groups worldwide have conducted a successful boycott campaign against Leviev’s companies due to their construction of Israeli settlements in violation of international law, and their human rights abuses in the diamond industry in Angola. With Leviev’s companies in freefall, New York human rights advocates, many wearing Santa hats, returned to his store for a third year of holiday caroling, and greeted Madison Avenue holiday shoppers with choruses like this, to the tune of “Jingle Bell Rock”:
So Lev as you, watch while your, stock goes kaput,
Think of the folks you’ve hurt,
And we’ll keep being the thorns in your side,
Til’ there’s justice for,
Palestinians,
And you’ve paid for your crimes!
In a new development, three heavyset, middle-aged men, seemingly employed by Leviev, videotaped and photographed the carolers from the storefront throughout the event.
Leviev’s companies Africa Israel and Leader have built Jewish-only homes on Palestinian land in the Israeli settlements of Zufim on the land of the village of Jayyous, Mattityahu East on the land of the village of Bil’in, and Har Homa and Maale Adumim, impoverishing Palestinian communities and violating international law. On December 12th in the middle of the night, the Israeli military arrested Abdallah Abu Rahmah, a leading organizer of Bil’in’s five year nonviolent protest campaign to save the village’s land from Israel’s wall and settlements. Many other protesters from Bil’in and from the neighboring village of Ni’ilin, also campaigning to save its land, have been arrested recently in nighttime raids. The Palestinian organization Stop the Wall announced that its Coordinator, Jamal Juma’, was arrested on December 16th. Israeli authorities have jailed Jayyous protest and boycott organizer Mohammad Othman, also from Stop the Wall, without charges since September 22nd. This week, Israeli settlers from Zufim, built on Jayyous’ land, attacked Israeli soldiers who were attempting to slow settlement expansion there.
Leviev is facing a financial crisis, imperiling his control of his flagship company Africa-Israel, that appears to have been aggravated by the growing boycott movement. UNICEF, Oxfam, The British Government and major Hollywood stars have all distanced themselves from Leviev. The investment firm BlackRock, pension giant TIAA-CREF and the Swedish government recently sold off their shares of Leviev’s company Africa-Israel, though BlackRock and TIAA-CREF denied they did so due to his settlement construction. New reports indicate that the second largest Dutch pension fund PZVW divested from Africa-Israel. Eleven organizations have asked the Norwegian government to sell its pension holdings in Africa-Israel over ethical concerns.
Ahava, an Israeli beauty product company that operates on stolen Palestinian land, was the target of protest on Saturday by approximately 20 pro-Palestine activists.
With Dead Sea mud covering their faces and dressed in bath robes on a freezing cold day, the protesters set out to highlight the complicity of Ahava in the expansion of Israeli settlements which are illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention.
The activists came from a range of organisations that includes the International Solidarity Movement, Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Jews for the Boycott of Israeli Goods and others. During the picket, numerous shoppers and passers by chatted with protesters, took leaflets and expressed their support and solidarity with the aims of the protest.
There was a tiny counter-demonstration by three or four “Pro-Zionists” who tried to encourage people to enter the shop via bribes of £5 store vouchers. They also tried to harass the pro-Palestine demonstrators, but were ignored.
The day of action in the UK was undertaken alongside international efforts by groups such as Code Pink in the USA. It took place a week following a blockade of Ahava which saw the Covent Garden shop closed for five hours as two protesters locked themselves inside.
The event is the most recent of a series of actions and demonstrations in the UK this year. The shop has been closed down three times and numerous other pickets have taken place. It also sits alongside international campaign efforts in the USA, Dubai, Israeli and Palestine which have set out to address the complicity of Ahava in the Israeli Occupation.
It is generally recognised that the Middle East peace process is in the doldrums, almost moribund. Israeli settlement expansion within Palestine continues, and PLO leaders refuse to join in renewed peace talks without a settlement freeze, knowing that no Arab or Islamic nation will accept any comprehensive agreement while Israel retains control of East Jerusalem.
US objections have impeded Egyptian efforts to resolve differences between Hamas and Fatah that could lead to 2010 elections. With this stalemate, PLO leaders have decided that President Mahmoud Abbas will continue in power until elections can be held – a decision condemned by many Palestinians.
Even though Syria and Israel under the Olmert government had almost reached an agreement with Turkey’s help, the current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, rejects Turkey as a mediator on the Golan Heights. No apparent alternative is in the offing.
The UN general assembly approved a report issued by its human rights council that called on Israel and the Palestinians to investigate charges of war crimes during the recent Gaza war, but positive responses seem unlikely.
In summary: UN resolutions, Geneva conventions, previous agreements between Israelis and Palestinians, the Arab peace initiative, and official policies of the US and other nations are all being ignored. In the meantime, the demolition of Arab houses, expansion of Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and Palestinian recalcitrance threaten any real prospect for peace.
Of more immediate concern, those under siege in Gaza face another winter of intense personal suffering. I visited Gaza after the devastating January war and observed homeless people huddling in makeshift tents, under plastic sheets, or in caves dug into the debris of their former homes. Despite offers by Palestinian leaders and international agencies to guarantee no use of imported materials for even defensive military purposes, cement, lumber, and panes of glass are not being permitted to pass entry points into Gaza. The US and other nations have accepted this abhorrent situation without forceful corrective action.
I have discussed ways to assist the citizens of Gaza with a number of Arab and European leaders and their common response is that the Israeli blockade makes any assistance impossible. Donors point out that they have provided enormous aid funds to build schools, hospitals and factories, only to see them destroyed in a few hours by precision bombs and missiles. Without international guarantees, why risk similar losses in the future?
It is time to face the fact that, for the past 30 years, no one nation has been able or willing to break the impasse and induce the disputing parties to comply with international law. We cannot wait any longer. Israel has long argued that it cannot negotiate with terrorists, yet has had an entire year without terrorism and still could not negotiate. President Obama has promised active involvement of the US government, but no formal peace talks have begun and no comprehensive framework for peace has been proposed. Individually and collectively, the world powers must act.
One recent glimmer of life has been the 8 December decision of EU foreign ministers to restate the long-standing basic requirements for peace commonly accepted within the international community, including that Israel’s pre-1967 boundaries will prevail unless modified by a negotiated agreement with the Palestinians. A week later the new EU foreign policy chief, Baroness Catherine Ashton, reiterated this statement in even stronger terms and called for the international Quartet to be “reinvigorated”. This is a promising prospect.
President Obama was right to insist on a two-state solution and a complete settlement freeze as the basis for negotiations. Since Israel has rejected the freeze and the Palestinians won’t negotiate without it, a logical step is for all Quartet members (the US, EU, Russia and UN) to support the Obama proposal by declaring any further expansion of settlements illegal and refusing to veto UN security council decisions to condemn such settlements. This might restrain Israel and also bring Palestinians to the negotiating table.
At the same time, the Quartet should join with Turkey and invite Syria and Israel to negotiate a solution to the Golan Heights dispute.
Without ascribing blame to any of the disputing parties, the Quartet also should begin rebuilding Gaza by organising relief efforts under the supervision of an active special envoy, overseeing a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and mediating an opening of the crossings. The cries of homeless and freezing people demand immediate relief.
This is a time for bold action, and the season for forgiveness, reconciliation and peace.
