Posted by: Sammi Ibrahem Chair of West Midland PSC
Dear All,
The 6 items below begin with another IOF shooting. As you read item 1, you have to realize that road 60 is the main north-south route through the West Bank. It is heavily traveled in the morning and again during the evening rush hours. The report below tells us that a temporary checkpoint was erected—not a regular one, so that drivers would not expect a checkpoint. I don’t know why the driver did not slow down, but it could very well have been because he did not expect the checkpoint to be there. What is clear is that the soldier aimed for the head. Why? Had I been driving on that road and neglected to slow down would this soldier have shot me, too? After all, the person shot is an Israeli citizen, that is to say, he had yellow license plates, Israeli plates. Again the question comes up, why not shoot at the tires if you suspect the worst? Why again at the head? Why?
Item 2 reveals that on the ruins of a Palestinian village a modern Jewish village will arise. There is nothing new about this. All of Israel is built on former Palestinian land. The trouble with the new plan is that it is for Jews not for Palestinians. But that too is true for most of Israel.
Item 3 begins with the question ‘How old does a Palestinian have to be to pick strawberries?’ This issue is permits to enter Israel and work at various of the jobs it offers. There has been a slight increase in the Palestinians allowed in to Israel to work. Of course it is clear why there would be a demand for jobs. After Israel has taken much of WB land for settlements and other purposes, many Palestinian farmers are left without work. Israel, by urbanizing the WB is creating a cheap labor force for its own uses.
Item 4 is about the PA’s Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, and his plans for a Palestinian state.
Item 5 informs us that Gideon Levy will be speaking in London on March 6, and the negative reactions received about the affair. Not everyone likes to have his/her dirty laundry washed in public, I guess.
Item 6 is an initiative that I am taking part in, being one of the 4 petitioners who are appealing to the Israeli High Court, to invalidate the formation of a parliamentary committee to investigate human rights organizations.
Reserve troops who set up surprise roadblock in order to check vehicles notice driver speeding towards them, fire at him under assumption he was trying to break through roadblock. Man sustains head wounds, taken to Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital in Jerusalem
An Arab-Israeli citizen was critically wounded Thursday night after the IDF fired at his car at a roadblock near Hebron. The injured man was taken to the Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center in Jerusalem. The IDF has launched an inquiry into the incident.
The man, driving on Route 60, encountered a surprise roadblock set up by reserves troops in order to check suspicious vehicles. For an unclear reason, the soldiers thought the driver was trying to break through the roadblock and fired at him. He sustained head wounds and was taken to the Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center on an IDF intensive care vehicle.
The Etzion Brigade’s deputy commander later arrived at the scene and began probing the incident. The IDF is looking into a possibility that the driver did not notice the improvised roadblock and as a result speeded towards it, which aroused the soldiers’ suspicion. The other possibility is that the driver intentionally tried to target the troops.
Military sources said that the IDF is on high alert following Wednesday’s shooting incident near Mevo Dotan.
An Islamic Jihad militant began firing at a Nahal Haredi post prompting the soldiers to fire back. He was killed as a result. Security elements said that the militant has been arrested twice in the past few years over his involvement in terrorist activity.
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2. Haaretz,
January 21, 2011
Israel moves to turn deserted Palestinian village into luxury housing project
Israelis and Palestinians dedicated to the village Lifta’s preservation have called the plan to build 212 luxury units and a small hotel the end for the last Arab village of its kind.
Yakub Odeh, 67, walks among the ruins of the Arab village of Lifta at the entrance to Jerusalem and is oblivious to the new neighborhoods and freeways that surround it. He doesn’t see the train tunnel being dug above it or the secret escape route for the country’s leaders being dug below.
Odeh doesn’t see the “Death to the Arabs” graffiti at the entrance to the village or the Arabic version of the name that someone blotted out on the sign there. He sees a village and an area as it existed until March 1948, before it was abandoned by its Palestinian residents.
“Ali Badr’s family lives here, and here’s Salah Mohammed’s house,” he says on a walk through Lifta. The village for him is not limited to the houses left standing around the well-known village spring. For him, it is also the remnants of houses in the Romema neighborhood of Jerusalem. the land on which new housing in Ramot was built. It is also the village school, which now serves as an ultra-Orthodox educational institution, at the entrance to Jerusalem.
“My roots are here. My whole mentality is from here. I will never be able to forget,” he says.
Now, the remains of the village are threatened by changes to the special character of the
place. Two weeks ago, the Israel Land Administration published a public tender for
construction in Lifta, which is to transform an abandoned Palestinian village on the edge of Jerusalem and a popular location for hiking into a luxury residential neighborhood. The developers have committed to preserve the houses and meticulously restore them. Plans call for the houses to become restaurants and galleries.
Odeh calls the redevelopment plan a second Nakba, Arabic for “catastrophe” and the word the Palestinians use to speak of the events surrounding the establishment of Israel in 1948.
Architect Gabriel Kertesz, who designed the new development in Lifta, together with Shmuel Groag and Shlomo Aronson, said the redevelopment is the best thing that could happen to Lifta.
“There is one approach that nothing should be done, which means the disappearance of the village. Our approach is one involving preservation and revival. The plan requires the most meticulous preservation rules and permits construction only after the historic buildings are preserved and everything is done under the supervision of the Antiquities Authority and a conservation architect,” he said.
Odeh is now involved in human rights work, but he is a former member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine who served a lengthy prison term. He was eight when his family fled Lifta. His former house overlooks the spring in the center of the village.
Lifta is an anomaly. Among the hundreds of Palestinian villages abandoned in 1948, it is the only one that was neither destroyed nor reinhabited. The villages of Ein Karem and Ein Hod, for example, remained standing but were inhabited by Jews.
Odeh and others see the remaining 55 homes in Lifta and the surrounding terraces as a kind of memorial to Palestinian society before Israel’s War of Independence. After the village was abandoned, the ceilings in the buildings were deliberately destroyed to deter intruders, however the homeless and others on the margins of society took up residence there.
One of the buildings houses a successful program for young drug addicts, which has been operating there for 20 years. The program’s director said yesterday that he doesn’t know what will become of the program once the redevelopment of the village begins.
In open areas around the existing homes in the village, plans call for 212 luxury housing
units and a small hotel. Israelis and Palestinians dedicated to Lifta’s preservation have
called the plan the end for the last Arab village of its kind.
Odeh said: “Our dream is that there be peace, and that we be able to return to our village.
There is enough room in Palestine for everyone. These are our homes. We were born here. We breathed the air here, and we are entitled to return here.”
Not all of the opponents of the proposed development share Odeh’s aspiration that he and descendents of other villagers return to live in Lifta. Architect Gadi Iron envisions Lifta as a world heritage site that should be preserved. He called it a “Garden of Eden” of streams and fruit trees and beautiful landscapes and a site containing important Palestinian architecture.
Iron said: “Lifta is more important than the Taj Mahal, from the standpoint of its beauty and for its Mediterranean heritage. The Taj Mahal is kitsch. In Lifta, there’s no kitsch.” He
proposed the village be preserved as an architectural museum.
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3. Haaretz,
January 21, 2011
How old does a Palestinian need to be to pick strawberries in Israel?
Defense Minister sets criteria for Palestinians to be issued a work permit in Israel; 19,500 Palestinians are permitted to enter Israel to work in construction.
A Palestinian must be at least 28 years old to pick strawberries in Israel, and to work in a field he must be at least 35, according to set criteria for Palestinians to be issued a work permit in Israel, Haaretz has learned.
The government of Israel occasionally sets quotas for Palestinian workers. The number of Palestinians working in Israel has increased in recent years and currently stands at 32,000.
The defense minister determines the criteria for being issued a work permit, and a Palestinian who wants to cross into Israel for work must first find an interested employer willing to file an application on his behalf.
According to the criteria established by Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and received by Gisha, a non-government organization, the quota for Palestinians seeking construction work in Israel is set at 19,500. Gisha had filed a petition, on the basis of the Freedom of Information Act, requesting data on Palestinian workers.
In order to receive a work permit in construction, the Palestinian applicant must be at least 35 years old and married with children.
In the industry or services sector, 2,250 positions are allotted; 1,750 positions in agriculture; and 3,000 for work in orchards and groves. In these sectors, too, a Palestinian must be at least 35 and married with children to receive a work permit.
On the other hand, to pick citrus fruits or strawberries, a Palestinian worker can be 28 and married with children. It is not clear from the list of criteria why a 30-year-old Palestinian can pick strawberries but cannot water fields.
To work in a hotel in East Jerusalem, a Palestinian can be single and aged 25; to work in the Atarot industrial zone in East Jerusalem, one must be at least 21.
Responding to a Haaretz query, the Defense Ministry explained that “the criteria are set on the basis of security concerns of defense establishment officials and according to updated assessments.”
The number of Palestinians entering Israel for work has been on the rise in recent years. In 2003, at the peak of the second intifada, 12,708 Palestinians were given work permits. In 2008, the figure stood at 23,821.
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4. LA Times,
January 21, 2011
Leader confounds both sides with plans for Palestinian state
Salam Fayyad believes in nonviolence and is well thought of in the international community. But Israelis don’t get him and Palestinians lack faith in him.
No one seems to know what to make of him. Israelis puzzle over the cleanshaven technocrat who denounces violence. Palestinians see an outsider who never cut his teeth on the tear-gas-choked streets of intifadas.
Now, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad hopes to confound expectations even further, pursuing what some see as a quixotic goal of laying the groundwork for an independent country by August.
No matter that peace talks are stalled. If Palestinians build the trappings of a state, he believes, a real state will follow.
“Part of getting where we must go comes from transforming this from abstract concept to the realm of the possible,” he said in an interview in his Ramallah office. “A key point of strength is to impart a sense of inevitability.”
Over the last year, the pragmatic, suit-wearing former World Bank economist has worked hard to burnish his image with skeptical Palestinians — harvesting olive trees with farmers, attending protests against Israel’s separation barrier and organizing boycotts of products made by Jewish settlements in the West Bank. His government’s approval rating rose from 34% in 2008 to 43% last month, according to one poll.
During a visit to Jericho in the fall, Fayyad could barely hide his delight when children mobbed him like a returning war hero. In a display of adoration he rarely sees, they even serenaded him with a popular Palestinian chant about sacrificing their “blood and soul.”
Israelis too have taken notice of Fayyad, and they seem unsure of how to confront this new-styled Palestinian leader who’s a darling of the international community and is demonstrating increasingly sharp political instincts.
In a public relations coup in November, Fayyad embarrassed Israeli officials by announcing that the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority had spent $5 million renovating neglected schools and roads in East Jerusalem, an Arab-dominated area that is under Israeli control but where Palestinians hope to one day build their capital.
“He will kill us with his moderation,” quipped Yossi Sarid, newspaper columnist for Haaretz and a former lawmaker, who only half-jokingly labeled Fayyad as Israel’s “Public Enemy No. 1” because he is quietly defying the usual Israeli characterization of Palestinians as extremist and violent.
Israeli President Shimon Peres calls Fayyad the “Palestinians’ first Ben-Gurionist,” referring to Israel’s founding father.
Fayyad, 58, denies political ambitions, but many think he’s angling to take over one day as president; the current Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, is 75 and has frequently threatened to quit over the faltering peace talks.
Although Fayyad is a long shot because he is not a member of the powerful Fatah party, the list of possible presidential successors is short, particularly with the recent sidelining of Palestinian strongman Mohammed Dahlan, who apparently angered Abbas by appearing too eager to take over the top job.
“Fayyad is going to become a serious political player because he is the only one who can play this game,” Palestinian political analyst Hani Masri said. “Fatah does not have a person to replace Abbas when the time comes for Abbas to leave. Their only option would be Fayyad.”
At the same time, Masri said, Fayyad, who has vowed to remain a political independent, may have to fight for the post.
“There are people in Fatah who hate Fayyad and speak against him,” Masri said. Some in Fatah complain that Fayyad’s pacifism will never work against Israelis and his state-building only “beautifies” the occupation.
Fayyad insists that he has no political aspirations beyond implementing his two-year plan to whip Palestinian institutions into shape so they will be ready for statehood by this summer.
“It’s a campaign for the statehood vision, not a political campaign for office,” he said. “Why would anyone who is so preoccupied with this kind of mission have other aspirations? It’s a full-time job.”
He dismissed speculation among Israelis that his secret aim is to unilaterally declare statehood, and break away from Israel, rather than reach an agreement over borders and territory. Israelis have been alarmed in recent weeks by Palestinians’ success in winning formal diplomatic recognition as a state from several South American nations, including Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador and Bolivia.
Fayyad says that a fully functioning state can arise only from the political process and that his goal is simply to be ready once an agreement is reached.
He said he is surprised that his approach seems to “confound” Israelis, since he is largely borrowing from their playbook.
“Israelis say they want peace and a two-state solution,” he said. “We’re doing it. There is no hidden plan…. I’m sure Israelis can relate to this and to their own experience. It worked for them. Why not for us?”
Since taking over as prime minister in 2007, Fayyad has won praise for overhauling the Finance Ministry and rooting out the corruption that plagued the Palestinian Authority under the late Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat. Fayyad’s government has also created a professional police force that restored security to several West Bank cities and it is embarking on hundreds of civic projects, from a new cellphone provider to master-planned cities outside Ramallah.
International donors, who provide more than half of the Palestinian Authority’s budget, have let it be known that they want Fayyad to continue holding the purse strings.
“Fayyad’s best job security is his support from the international community,” said one European diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. “The PA [Palestinian Authority] realizes that if they get rid of him, they might lose their international funding.”
That partly explains why Fayyad has survived numerous attempts by Fatah critics to topple him or wrest control of the Finance Ministry.
But a senior Israeli intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, warned that Fayyad’s position remains tenuous and largely reliant on his alliance with Abbas.
“If [Abbas] retires, it might happen that Fayyad is not there,” the official said. “He has aspirations, but his problem is he’s not coming from the right party and doesn’t have real support.”
Fayyad dismissed the criticisms as “background noise” and expressed confidence that Palestinians are warming to his nonviolent alternative.
“This is about concepts and ideas,” he said. “I’m a firm believer in the immense power of nonviolence.”
On the streets, however, some don’t see Fayyad as a maverick. In polls, he still lags behind other Palestinian leaders, including Abbas, jailed activist Marwan Barghouti and Ismail Haniyeh, the prime minister of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
“He’s just like everybody else,” said Rani Bakri, 32, a shop owner in East Jerusalem. Business in Bakri’s glass-window shop remains sluggish. Teachers at the government school across the street went on strike for lack of salaries. “We hear about the things they are doing, but we don’t see them.”
Fayyad’s political fortunes also face a major test this summer, when his state-readiness campaign is slated to be completed by Aug. 26.
He acknowledged that there is major unfinished business, including weak courts, a nonfunctioning parliament and the absence of elections because of the split between Fatah and Hamas, the militant group that controls the Gaza Strip. All of that, including the reunification of Fatah and Hamas, needs to be completed before Palestinians will be ready for statehood, he said.
Some think Fayyad should start backing away from the August deadline and lowering expectations, because he might be blamed for failing to deliver statehood.
“He created a dream with his statehood plan and made people believe it, but this is not going to happen,” Masri said.
Fayyad insisted that the work can be completed on time.
“I can’t project anything but full confidence,” he said. “Unless we believe it, how is it going to become a reality? Let the skeptics have second thoughts. I have no Plan B. No parachute.”
edmund.sanders@latimes.com
Special correspondent Maher Abukhater contributed to this report.
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5. The Independen,
21 January 2011
I’ll be chairing an event at Jewish Book Week where the great Gideon Levy will be speaking
[see also http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/43682/book-week-attacked-anti-israel-event]
By Johann Hari
Notebook
It’s on Sunday, 6th March. Please do come along – there’s a really ugly campaign going to boycott the event due to Levy’s brave stance defending Israel from those within the country who are leading it on a path to self-destruction by ramping up the occupation and further wars. You can book tickets here.
For myself, I’ll also briefly respond to a smear against me. In 2008, I witnessed how, on the occupied West Bank, raw sewage is sometimes pumped from the settlements onto Palestinian land, where it contaminates the water supply in obviously highly dangerous ways. I didn’t break the story: it has beendocumented by the BBC, Friends of the Earth, and others, and is an established fact. After I wrote about it, a number of far right websites invented the claim that, by factually describing this, I had “compared Israel to excrement”, and even tried to revive the blood libel of Jews poisoning the wells. These claims have now been revived to argue therefore I am an inappropriate person to host an event at Jewish Book Week. Anybody who reads the article can see that this description is an outright and preposterous lie. I said no such thing, and would vehemently oppose anyone who did. Unlike the people who invented these smears, I have in fact taken considerable physical risks to oppose and expose anti-Semites, including working undercover at the Finsbury Park mosque and among Holocaust deniers, and receiving a large number of death threats after I went on the Islam Channel to challenge Hizb ut Tahrir over their disgusting anti-Semitism.
Yet this blatant lie is repeated in the latest Jewish Chronicle in a call for a boycott of the event. Sadly, it’s not the first time the Jewish Chronicle hasprinted provably false (and weirdly contradictory) smears against me. The JC also contains some very good and valuable journalism, which makes these bursts of dishonesty all the more disappointing. By all means vigorously disagree with my position, or Levy’s – but not with a series of repellent straw men. Alas, this is part of a much larger process of smearing people who try to urge the Israeli state towards a safer path.
I’d urge people to ignore these smears and to come along to the event to hear one of Israel’s most remarkable people explain how the country can make itself, and the Palestinians, safe at last. You can read the full brochure for Jewish Book Week – there’s some other amazing events – here.
Tagged in: Gideon Levy, jewish book week
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6. Ibn Khaldun Center for Legal Services
37 Ben Gurion Boulevard, Haifa
Petition against the formation of a Parliamentary Committee to Investigate Human Rights Organizations
Four Israeli women, represented by advocates Lynda Brayer and Yossi Schwartz, submitted a petition to the High Court of Justice against the formation of a parliamentary committee for the investigation of the financial resources of human rights organizations in Israel.
The petitioners are Israeli citizens concerned for the democratic future in Israel.
The respondents are the Israeli Knesset which exceeded its authority as the legislative body, and the Attorney General who did not fulfill his responsibility as the defender of the Basic Laws of Israel and its democratic regime.
The State of Israel is constituted as a parliamentary democracy. The supreme principle of such a regime is the separation of powers.
The primary function of the Knesset is to legislate laws which do not contradict the principleof the separation of powers nor the constitutional Basic Laws of Israel which constitute its democratic system. The relevant Basic Laws are Basic Law: Knesset; Basic Law: Government; Basic Law: Judiciary; Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom and Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation.
Freedom of expression is a central principle in the democratic framework and is protected by Basic Law: Human Dignity and Freedom and the right to criticize the actions of the government is both central and necessary to this freedom.
Human Rights organizations use standards of critcism of acts of the Israeli regime taken from the laws of Israel, and the directives of customary law and the humanitarian directives, at the very least, of the International Treaties of the United Nations Organization. The courts have recognized these directives as an integral part of the laws of Israel. Furthermore, the United Nations is the source of the legitimacy of the State of Israel.
The decision of a plenary session of the Knesset, led by the “Israel Our Home” party, to create an investigative parliamentary committee undermines the basis of the democratic system of Israel.
In order to suppress legitimate criticism the Knesset wants to step into the shoes of the police, which is the only body, as part of the Executive Branch of the democratic system, which has the legitimate authority to investigate suspected criminal activities. The creation of such a parliamentary body is an expression of political persecution.
Such an act resembles the totalitarian persecution of the former Soviet Union towards the Soviet authors Andrey Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel for the books they wrote and published abroad, as well as the actions of the House Un-American Committee (HUAC) under the baton of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
In the light of this analysis, the High Court of Justice has been asked to prevent either the formation of such a committee or its functioning.
