Posted by: Sammi Ibrahem Chair of West Midland PSC
Hi All,
There has been much going on in the area for the past 24 hours, that I was left with 20 articles that I’d read. Rather than list them below, I’ll summarize several of the more significant events along with their links in case you should wish to read the details yourselves.
The first matter that I heard of this morning on the radio news and which appeared on the front page of the electronic edition of Haaretz was that someone had put out a video (Youtube, I presume) calling for the murder of the Deputy State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan because he supported Arabs not Jews (he called for an investigation of the racist letter signed by 200 or more Rabbis to not rent or sell property to Arabs) http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4011351,00.html. Only the medium used is new. The type of accusation was typical also before Rabin’s assassination. And how little incentive one needs to commit murder we have seen from the recent mass killings in Arizona. The Israeli police have placed a guard around Nitzan’s house.
The 2nd nasty bit of news is from today’s Fascist Israeli elements– the Knesset Internal Affairs Committee approved a bill that will allow revoking citizenship from anyone convicted of terror or espionage crimes. This is a broad depiction that could include many of us. Will the Knesset pass the bill? Probably yes, though even on the far right there are those who do not approve it http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4011469,00.html
The newspapers also reported that the Israeli Air force had bombed portions of Gaza last night, in retaliation for missiles shot into Israel that injured 3 Thais, who might not have been injured had they had a fortified area to run to as do the members of the kibbutz http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4011277,00.html
There were several reports about yesterday’s demolition of the Shepherd hotel. The details are more or less the same, but emphases differ. Two of these are
And before we get to the few items that I do intend to give their texts, one other slight detail of interest, though it doesn’t mean much, is that Hillary Clinton in addition to calling on Arab countries to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, also calls on them to support the PA government http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/10/AR2011011001989.html
We are left with 3 items.
The first of these is promising news—news to keep our eyes on. The EU consulates in response to Israel’s conduct in East Jerusalem recommend (a) that East Jerusalem should be treated as the Palestinian capital, and (b) a whole slew of what appear to be sanctions against Israel—not enough sanctions, and not serious enough, but nevertheless these are concrete acts, and if taken will not necessarily suffice to make Israel change its ways, but perhaps if Israel does not, then maybe the EU will consider going further. For the present, this is merely something to keep our eyes on. Nothing has actually happened so far.
Item 2 brings us back to the reality of the occupation. More specifically it deals with what is happening in Silwan. It’s author, Hagit Ofran, a member of Peace Now, keeps tab of construction in the colonies and passes on the information so that we can all be informed, if we wish. In the report below, however, she details how the Israeli police treats Palestinian residents of Silwan.
The final item tells us that Israel’s racism has finally reached the High Court. Am not so sure that ‘finally’ is the correct word.
All the best, and still hoping for better times,
Dorothy
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1. EU diplomats say East Jerusalem should be treated as Palestinian capital
EU consuls to Israel, Palestinian Authority recommend boycotting Israeli products from East Jerusalem, call for EU officials to be present at home demolitions and evacuations.
East Jerusalem should be treated as the capital of the Palestinian state, according to a report compiled by the heads of European diplomatic missions in Jerusalem and Ramallah. The report includes several other unprecedented recommendations to the European Union regarding its attitude toward East Jerusalem.
The European diplomats, mainly consuls, also recommend that EU officials and politicians refuse to visit Israeli government offices that are located beyond the Green Line and that they decline any Israeli security in the Old City and elsewhere in East Jerusalem.
The report, which was completed last month, was sent to the EU’s main foreign policy body, the Political and Security Committee in Brussels. It was apparently not released at the time due to the sensitivity of its content.
The diplomats’ report also discusses the possibility of preventing “violent settlers in East Jerusalem” from being granted entry into EU countries. In the area of commerce, it recommends encouraging a boycott of Israeli products from East Jerusalem.
The first part of the report details construction and expansion of settlements in East Jerusalem, the infringement of human rights of Palestinian residents of the eastern part of the city, as well as inequality in education and medical services available to Palestinians. The report concludes that beyond their humanitarian significance, these conditions weaken the Palestinian hold on the city.
European criticism of Israeli policy in the territories and particularly East Jerusalem is not new. But the dramatic turn in the report can be seen in the operative steps it recommends, which in fact constitute the foundations for sanctions against Israel.
For example, the document proposes that visiting senior EU officials not use Israeli businesses operating in East Jerusalem, such as hotels and transportation companies, and that archaeological sites operated by “pro-settler organizations” (a reference to the City of David National Park ) not be visited.
The report goes on to suggest that public awareness be raised about settlement products, “for instance by providing guidance on origin labeling for settlement products to major EU retailers,” and that EU citizens be informed “of the financial risks involved in purchasing property in occupied East Jerusalem.”
The diplomats also recommend that the EU encourage Israel to allow the reopening of Palestine Liberation Organization offices in East Jerusalem, in keeping with the road map. Israel closed the PLO institutions during the second intifada.
EU diplomats are called on to express great concern during their meetings with senior Israeli officials over the state of emergency services to East Jerusalem Arabs, the report also says.
It added that EU officials should be present at house demolitions or evacuations from homes, as well as at court hearings on such issues, and “ensure EU intervention when Palestinians are arrested or intimidated by Israeli authorities for peaceful cultural, social or political activities in East Jerusalem”.
The report further recommends that the European Union “encourage Arab countries to acknowledge the multicultural dimension of Jerusalem, including its Jewish and Christian heritage.”
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2. Eyes On The Ground in East Jerusalem
Hagit Ofran brings you the human stories behind the headlines.
The Jerusalem police have been putting a lot of pressure on the Palestinian residents of Silwan in what seems to be an attempt to break the social and political leadership of the Palestinians in East Jerusalem. The recent wave of attacks started a few weeks ago when Adnan Ghaith, one of the local leaders of al-Bustan neighborhood, received an order of expulsion from Jerusalem for four months.
Last week, Jawad Siyam, the director of the Madaa Community Center in Wadi Hilweh was arrested for three days and then released into house arrest. This was after a Palestinian man filed a complaint of assault against him, but Siyam was interrogated mainly about his political and social activity in Silwan. One of central reasons given for the extension of his arrest was a suspected conspiracy to commit a crime, yet the charges that were filed against him today mentioned only the alleged assault.
Probably the most severe, though, was the police attack on Battan Al-Hawa last Friday night and the arrest of Zoheir A-Rajabi. Battan al-Hawa is one of the most tense places in Silwan, if not in all of East Jerusalem. Tension there began when settlers built an illegal building, Beit Yonatan, in the heart of the neighborhood. The armed guards of the settlers, the armored jeep taking them in and out of their house and the added police patrols have been the focus of many quarrels, brawls, and in some cases stone-throwing incidents that ended in clashes with the police, tear gas in the streets and in the homes, injuries and arrests.
When I came to Battan Al-Hawa on Saturday morning, I could see the traces of what had happen the night before. Four armed policemen walked down the alley, attracting the attention of the children who were playing in the street. They were coming to man the military-post that the border police put up on the roof of one of the Palestinian homes a few months ago, without the required injunction.
According to what I was told, the previous night, their colleagues at the post were forced off the roof by some young Palestinians following a brawl which probably irrupted after one of the policeman talked to/watched/or touched a young Palestinian woman. The policemen left behind a box full of ammunition. Zoheir A-Rajabi, who is one of the local leaders, managed to get hold of the box and to prevent the youngsters from stealing and using its contents. He called the police and informed them that they could come and take the box, and so they did.
Two hours later, the police came back with a huge amount of cars and soldiers. They used massive amounts of tear gas, shock grenades and plastic bullets.
The boy Ahmad Abu Ramila hit by a plastic bullet at the balcony of his home
They entered Rajabi’s house by force, broke the door, and arrested him, not before breaking his computer and taking it away.
The police broke the door and took the computer
Watch the testimony of Rula A-Rajabi the wife of Zoheir a-Rajabi (in Arabic)
They also tried to enter his brother’s house. They used a shock grenade at the door, broke the glass and called the family out.
A Shock Grenade at the Door and the Broken Glass of the Door
Eventually the family managed to prevent them from entering but Zoheir’s brother was beaten up badly by the police, his rib was broken as well as his top jaw bone. Now, 48 hours later, Zoheir A-Rajabi is still in custody, probably under allegation of assaulting a policeman.
But this was not enough for the Jerusalem police: early this morning (Sunday 9/1/11), they arrested some of al-Bustan neighborhood’s activists. According to reports, about 10 people were arrested, including the son of Fakhri Abu Diab, one of the local leaders of al-Bustan, well known by the press and the diplomatic community as one of the spokesmen and social leaders of al-Bustan. Fakhri Abu Diab himself was summoned for an investigation at the police headquarters as well as Adnan Gaith.
What all this means?
It seems to me that the Jerusalem police have decided to try and break the local leadership of Silwan. These kinds of community leaders need be remarkable people. The Palestinian society in East Jerusalem is fragmented and crushed. Day-to-day hardships and the constant threat to the basic needs of the residents (home demolitions, expulsions and denial of residency, neglect of the infrastructure and social services) keep the residents busy dealing with survival. The police, the settlers and the secret services are using Palestinian collaborators and informers, making it almost impossible for the people to trust one another.
Under these circumstances, the price of taking action to organize the people for any kind of activity can be very high. The local leaders of Silwan, together with many other Palestinians in their neighborhood, are trying to do the impossible and create a community ready to act in order to achieve common goals, and ready to stand up against the oppression of the Israeli authorities and the settlers in East Jerusalem. The Jerusalem police doesn’t want such leadership, and is trying to wear them down with investigations, arrests, expulsions and other means that would never be accepted in a democratic system.
This is only a further example demonstrating that Jerusalem is not united: in West Jerusalem some form of a democracy is kept. In the Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, there is occupation, and a fight for survival.
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3. Haaretz,
January 10, 2011
Israel’s racism has finally reached the High Court
The court uses strong language regarding the illegality of segregation. But, in the same breath, it enables those with power to maintain it almost unhindered.
The Association for Civil Rights in Israel has threatened it will petition the High Court of Justice if the Knesset passes the bill that would subject applicants for residency in small communities to the discriminatory approval of admissions committees. The petition is not worth the trouble. The High Court will take a year or two to ponder the issue and then ask that a committee be established to look into how many communities use admissions committees, why people are rejected and whether the rejections were justified.
The committee will issue a report stating that admissions committees are indeed problematic, and the state cannot permit segregation and discrimination, except in cases when it is voluntary.
Then the High Court will rule specifically and unequivocally that discrimination and segregation are illegal unless someone desires such policies, in which case they should be allowed in accordance with the outlines of the committee report. So the policy will remain in place. While the High Court and the investigatory committee toil away, the admissions committees will flourish, large numbers of the public will be segregated from the “clean” population, allowing the latter group to dwell securely in communities that become increasingly similar in character to West Bank settlements. And “compatibility with social and cultural fabric” will become synonymous with voluntarism as a way of legitimizing the discrimination.
This scenario is not the product of my wild imagination. It is precisely what happened in the case of segregation of men and women on buses serving the ultra-Orthodox public, which ended last Thursday with an astonishing High Court ruling in which segregation and discrimination were condemned. “Have we returned to the days of Rosa Parks, the African-American woman who in 1955 brought about the end of racist segregation and discrimination in the buses of the United States?” the court asked. Strong words, indeed.
But, at the same time, the court left the back door open, and I am not simply speaking metaphorically. All the ultra-Orthodox women will continue to board the buses through the back door as they were conditioned to do, even through violence, over the course of the seven years that this scandalous segregation spread. During this period, the High Court of Justice weighed the issue. The investigative committee was appointed. It wrote its report. And the transportation minister pondered whether to accept its recommendations.
This approach has become customary with the court in recent years. It was true with the ruling on the appointment of a woman to the Turkel Committee investigating the Turkish flotilla incident. It was also true regarding the issue of fertility treatments for single women, and in the case of proper representation of Arabs in the Israel Lands Administration, etc. In its opinions, the court uses outstanding, strong, truly moving language regarding the illegality of segregation and equal rights. But, in the same breath, it enables those with power, the ones who are carrying out the oppression and discrimination, to continue to maintain it almost unhindered.
Two concurrent developments have brought the High Court to his point. First, it doesn’t function in a vacuum. The expansion and penetration of discrimination, racism and segregation in Israeli politics and Israeli society reaches the court as well. It can be said that the dominant culture of the occupation, which has filtered down into various sectors in Israel for many years, is also filtering down to the High Court of Justice.
One can be more precise and say that the tools with which the High Court has for years legitimized the occupation now also serve its legitimization of serious injustices within Israel itself. Let’s admit it. The approach involves verbose, enlightened condemnation regarding illegal acts and then giving them a legal seal of approval as a “necessary evil.” This is what the High Court has done throughout the years of occupation. Aside from the issue of torture, which took the court 10 years to outlaw, everything has been legitimized: assassinations, home demolitions, sealing of homes, expulsion, expropriation, administrative detention, withholding of information and, of course, the separation fence.
The second development is part of the dangerous and fascist introversion of the Israeli political system in recent years, as expressed in attacks on the High Court. The fact that the court does not provide backing for the truly beautiful theories it expounds in its directives reflects how these attacks on the court have penetrated. If it is not afraid, the court is at least wary. That is the result of threats, legislative initiatives and ministerial acts of people like former justice minister Daniel Friedmann.
Our politicians should understand that through their dangerous acts, which corrupt and destroy anything good, they won’t be able to rely on the court to save them and us from perdition.
