NOVANEWS
‘Dear Friends,
First off I want to apologize to Zalman Amit and Daphna Levit, authors of “Israeli Rejectionism.” Yesterday when I wrote that the book was not scholarly, I should have added “in style.” It is clearly a well researched and important work. Additionally, thanks to the style, it reads easily.
Below are 7 items.
The first returns us to October 1, 2000, when Palestinians having Israeli citizenship started to demonstrate near or in their villages—mainly in the Wadi Ara area, but not only. The end result was 12 Israeli citizens (Palestinians) and one who was not a citizen were killed by Israeli police—not all of whom were demonstrating. Was a bloody mess! Never have the Israeli police used live bullets on any other group demonstrating, regardless of how violent they might have been. This was obviously a racist attack. Additionally, not one police officer responsible for the killing was ever charged or held responsible. This was not the first nor will it probably be the last use of violence against Israel ’s Palestinian citizens.
Item 2 rightly denigrates Israel ’s intention to “relocate “ (i.e., ‘expel) 30,000 Bedouins from their villages to urban centers, entirely unsuitable for their way of life.
Item 3 states that the construction in East Jerusalem scuttles the 2-state solution. Obviously this is the intention. Moreover, when the ‘greater Israel’ officially comes into being, then Israel will start demolishing Palestinian homes and banishing Palestinians from it as fast as the world will allow it to so as to maintain a Jewish majority.
Item 4 informs us that the Palestinian Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, “dismisses peace-talk chances.”
I promised myself not to send any more items on the Gilad Shalit affair, not only because I am really tired of hearing about it, but also because you can read about it in almost any commercial news paper. However, Uri Avnery ’s take on the release of Gilad Shalit. is worth reading.
Item 6 informs us that researchers warn of a new Stuxnet worm—the same kind of worm that invaded Iranian computers and slowed down Iran ’s nuclear program.
Item 7 is, of course,
‘Today in Palestine .’
All the best,
Dorothy
1. Forwarded by JPLO-OLPJ @yahoogroups.com; on behalf of; Saalaha
“Eleven years later, the wound is still bleeding”Budour Youssef Hassan |
http://www.uruknet.de/pic.php?f=19-sakhnin-protest.jpg |
Marching annually in Sakhnin, families continue to demand accountability for the deaths of 13 Palestinians by Israeli police forces in October 2000. ( Oren Ziv /ActiveStills )October 19, 2011 On 1 October, thousands of Palestinians marched in Sakhnin to commemorate the eleventh anniversary of the October 2000 uprising during which Israeli police forces murdered 13 unarmed Palestinian citizens of Israel over the course of eight days. None of the slain protesters posed a threat to the life of police forces or others and most of them were shot in the upper-body at close range. The killings took place in Umm al-Fahm, Jatt, Arrabeh, Sakhnin, Nazareth , Kufr Kanna and Kufr Manda between 1-8 October 2000. “Eleven years later, the wound is still bleeding,” Ibrahim Siyam, father of martyr Ahmad Siyam and spokesman for the martyrs’ families, told The Electronic Intifada. “Ahmad was the first martyr of the October 2000 demonstrations. He was just 18 and preparing to attend college in few days,” Siyam added.All 13 martyrs were young men, brimming with hope and life. Amid the attempts of the Israeli propaganda machine to dehumanize Palestinians, the martyrs’ families insist on reminding everyone of the dreams and aspirations of their loved ones.One of the most poignant images of the October 2000 uprising was that of 17-year-old Aseel Assleh from Arrabeh wearing a T-shirt that carried the logo of Seeds of Peace — a Palestinian-Jewish peace group — his head buried in an olive grove after being shot in the back of his neck at extremely close range. Aseel was a remarkably smart student who believed in non-violent resistance and whose political consciousness far exceeded his age.In a phone interview, Aseel’s father, Hassan Assleh, said, “Aseel crackled with energy … even on his way to the demonstration in Arrabeh on 2 October, he was singing. His eyes were glistening with hope and lust for life.”Challenging the “death-loving” mythHassan Assleh is particularly bothered by the stigma often ascribed to Palestinians in the mainstream Israeli and Western media as “death-loving people” who are obsessed with seeking martyrdom. “This is a simplistic and false stereotype,” he said. “Aseel had smoldering passion and he clung to life until his very last heartbeat. All Palestinians are like that. Don’t think that any of the martyrs chooses to die or put martyrdom as their goal. We are aware, however, that freedom requires great sacrifices and it is the insistent drive to freedom and justice that inspires these young women and men to sacrifice. Martyrdom is not our aim, but it’s the cost we are forced to pay to liberate our land and regain dignity.”When I asked him whether he regrets allowing his son to join the demonstration, he heaved a deep sigh that summed up his feelings as expressively as his eloquent words. “No, even if I had known the consequences, I would have never stopped him from joining the protest. I always taught my kids to speak out and stand up to injustice; and preventing Aseel from attending the demonstration would have contravened the values his mother Jamila and I hold,” he replied.“However, there are arduous times when I feel betrayed by our political ‘leadership’ that did very little to demand accountability. In these painfully onerous and lonely moments, I miss Aseel the most. His memory and my wife’s fortitude keep me strong, though.”“Betrayed by the political leadership” is a feeling that is constantly expressed by the martyrs’ families. Even though it was the High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens in Israel that called for mass demonstrations and public strikes on 1 October 2000 in response to Ariel Sharon ’s rabble-rousing visit to the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, and the killing of 12-year-old Mohammad Al Durra a day later in Gaza, the martyrs’ parents feel that the High Follow-Up Committee and the Palestinian parties in the Knesset (Israeli parliament) have let them down ever since.“I think that since the establishment of the Or Commission [the commission that was set up by the government to investigate into the killings under pressure from the Palestinian minority], the High Follow-Up Committee and all the Palestinian parties did not apply any pressure,” Ibrahim Siyam said. “The Commission desperately tried to absolve the government from any responsibility and in various occasions it denied Palestinians due process and failed to abide by legal norms, but this might not have not happened had a constant pressure been exercised.”Siyam agrees with Assleh: “With every passing year, the October 2000 uprising is pushed further to the margins. In this year, the High Follow-Up Committee did not call for a public strike and was content with staging a central march that has over the years become more of a festival.”The victims’ families are concerned that the October 2000 uprising is turning into a folklore event that is only remembered every subsequent year on 1 October.Protection from amnesia“It’s important to internationalize the October 2000 massacre,” Assleh said, “But what’s more important is to protect it from amnesia inside Palestine . Just like the Kufr Qassem massacre and Land Day, October 2000 is a landmark in the struggle of Palestinian minority in Israel against the Zionist entity and every Palestinian citizen of Israel should be aware of its significance and implications.”Keeping October 2000 a part of the local discourse is an enormous challenge, however. And while the Palestinian political representatives inside Israel bear some of the brunt, the state of Israel also attempts to control the collective memory of Palestinians by banning schools from commemorating the October 2000 killings and persecuting and terrorizing those who do. For instance, the principal of Al Battof high school in Arrabeh was summoned for a hearing at the Israeli ministry of education for holding a panel to discuss the October 2000 killings. Such steps, along with the “Nakba Law” and the censorship imposed on teaching the Palestinian narrative, make a mockery of Israel ’s claim to be the “only democracy in the Middle East .”Another damning indictment against Israel is the fact that no criminal investigation was held into the October 2000 killings, and that none of the policemen responsible for the killings was held accountable. In its final report that was published in September 2003, the Or Commission, headed by Justice Theodore Or, found that rubber-coated bullets and live ammunition were used against unarmed protesters and ordered the police investigation department Mahash to restart investigation into the cases. Two years later, Mahash concluded that there was no sufficient evidence to warrant criminal investigation into the cases, in stark contrast to the findings of the Or Commission. In his review of Mahash’s report, the then Attorney General Menachem Mazuz decided to back Mahash and closed all 13 cases in February 2008.“We never trusted the racist state of Israel to bring us justice.” Assleh said. And he is right. In the country that boastfully appoints itself as the only democracy in the Middle East , state-sponsored crimes against Palestinians have always gone unpunished.Ibrahim Siyam wondered: “If one Jewish citizen had been killed by the police, do you think they would have allowed the killer to escape accountability? In Israel , it seems that Palestinian lives are cheap.”Budour Youssef Hassan, originally from Nazareth, is a Palestinian socialist activist and third-year law student at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem . Follow her on Twitter at: twitter.com/Budouroddick.
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:: Article nr. 82415 sent on 20-oct-2011 02:55 ECT
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2. Haaretz Friday,
October 21, 2011
Israeli plan to relocate 30,000 Bedouin a gross injustice, say researchers
Critics say plan to appropriate land from unrecognized village would not grant adequate reparation nor sufficient compensation for those unable to receive proper documentation to purchase new homes.
By David Sheen
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Researchers who have spent much of the past several decades studying and documenting the Bedouin Arabs of Israel’s Negev Desert claim that a government plan to relocate tens of thousands of Bedouin would be a gross injustice.
Ethnographer Clinton Bailey, who has authored volumes about Bedouin poetry, proverbs and legal traditions, says he is pessimistic about the Prawer Plan, which would effectively extinguish the Bedouin’s land claims without adequate compensation.
The Prawer plan, which the government approved on September 11 and is supposed to take effect in three weeks’ time, would appropriate land where between 20,000 and 30,000 Bedouin are living in villages that are not recognized by the state and which do not receive government services, such as electric power and other utilities.
Some of those Bedouin will be compensated for their losses, receiving either a cash payout or deed to another piece of real estate elsewhere in the country. But not all of the Bedouin who have land claims are able to produce documentation that meets the requirements laid out in the Prawer plan.
“They’re giving the Bedouin much too little, much less than they deserve,” says Bailey, who has reported on Bedouin life since the late 1960s. “It doesn’t really relate to all the Bedouin population, whereas it should, in terms of reparations for land that’s been taken, in land or in money.”
Bailey also says that the wording of the government plan is as insulting as its terms. “The language of it is too sharp, as if they’re doing the Bedouin a big favor, which the Bedouin will never take,” Bailey says. “Generally speaking, most Bedouin are opposed to it.”
Thousands of Bedouin men, women and children and their supporters protested the government plan in Be’er Sheva two weeks ago on October 6; the Guardian reported that the demonstration drew 8,000 people. “That’s the largest demonstration that the Bedouin have ever gotten together,” says Clinton . “This has served to unite Bedouin in a way that nothing else has ever been able to.”
Despite its size and significance, the demonstration seemed to have eluded the notice of most of the Israeli media, where it was scarcely reported on.
“These people had land claims. They were based on unwritten law. Our legal system depends on written evidence of such things, deeds, contracts. They didn’t have it, and we also wanted to make sure that we controlled as much of the Negev as possible, because it’s half the size of the country. So there was a natural conflict,” says Bailey.
“But they don’t want the whole Negev , they want certain parts of it. And there were ways of dealing with it respectfully and fairly,” he says.
Israel Prize-winning sociologist and anthropologist Emanuel Marx, a professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University who has written books about Bedouin culture and economy, agrees with Bailey that the Prawer Plan is fundamentally unfair.
“The Bedouin have been claiming ownership of the land for several generations, and the government has been doing everything to take away their land,” he says.
One strong argument in favor of Bedouin land claims, despite the lack of written evidence for it , says Marx, is that there are records of Bedouin payment of land taxes to the government of mandatory Palestine , pointing out that “you don’t pay taxes on land you don’t own.”
3. East Jerusalem construction scuttling two-state solution
Givat Hamatos is the keystone of a plan that quietly, piece by piece, with no Israeli public debate, is unilaterally sealing the southern border of annexed East Jerusalem with Israeli construction.
By Sarah Kreimer
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We’re in the midst of a housing crisis, and our government has promised to build tens of thousands of new homes all over the country. So what’s wrong with the recent government decision to advance the construction of 2,610 apartments in Givat Hamatos in Jerusalem ?
What’s wrong is that whether you call it a “neighborhood” (as most Israelis do) or a “ settlement” (as all other nations of the world do), Givat Hamatos is the first new Jewish neighborhood to be built over the Green Line in East Jerusalem since Har Homa in 1997. Har Homa, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu initiated during his first term as a kind of “price tag” for Israel’s withdrawal from parts of Hebron, has embroiled Israel in international controversy ever since. Is Givat Hamatos Netanyahu’s “price tag” for the Palestinian decision to apply for UN membership?
What’s clear is that Givat Hamatos is the keystone of a plan that quietly, piece by piece, with no Israeli public debate, is unilaterally sealing the southern border of annexed East Jerusalem with Israeli construction. In the last year, plans for building more than 5,000 homes in this southern area have been approved or advanced − 2,000 to expand Gilo toward Wallajeh and Beit Jala, almost 1,000 to expand Har Homa toward Beit Sahur, and now more than 2,000 units to link Har Homa with Gilo. These plans are presented under many guises − as an answer to the social protest, as an expression of Israel ’s right to build in its capital. But never is the Israeli public allowed to see the full picture: that, despite its rhetoric, the Israeli government is working on the ground to scuttle a two-state solution.
Taken together, these expansion plans in southern East Jerusalem wreak havoc with the one set of principles agreed upon by most Israeli and Palestinian negotiators (including former prime ministers Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak) − the “Clinton Parameters.” Under these guidelines, Gilo would have been recognized as Israeli − swapped for a commensurate piece of land from within the Green Line − and the rest of the land on Jerusalem ’s southern borders would become part of a Palestinian capital. Thus, through this construction, we are doing no less foreclosing on the option of a two-state solution. For, without an agreement on Jerusalem ’ s borders , there will be no Palestinian-Israeli peace.
In the meantime, Givat Hamatos, which has housed a prefab ghetto for immigrants from Ethiopia for much of the past two decades, will surround the Palestinian neighborhood of Beit Safafa with Israeli construction, eating up the last available land reserves that would let this rapidly growing neighborhood expand. Rather than providing land for Beit Safafa’s growth, Givat Hamatos chokes off the community’s expansion options. And this is happening on land that was, in part, expropriated from Palestinians after 1967.
Writing in Haaretz last Friday, Akiva Eldar reported that some of Givat Hamatos’ planned units will be made available to Palestinians. That would be a welcome change, if it in fact happens. However, these few units provided to Palestinians would come at the cost of detaching the Palestinian neighborhoods from Palestinian East Jerusalem , leaving Beit Safafa engulfed by Gilo, Har Homa and Givat Hamatos. It would not change the basic fact that Givat Hamatos is an attempt to claim another part of East Jerusalem for Israelis.
Givat Hamatos is slipping through the planning process at a time when the Israeli public is focused on the intense, exciting drama of Gilad Shalit’s return. There is great, tragic irony in this timing. In the very week that our government has made the difficult choice to release more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners who embraced the path of terror, it is slamming the door in the face of those who have been willing to negotiate for a viable two-state solution. Just last month, Netanyahu spoke passionately at the UN about the need to forgo unilateral action and to return to negotiations.
He rallied the United States and several European governments to work against the Palestinians’ statehood bid, and they answered his call. Now, they see themselves betrayed by the Israeli government’s bald unilateral acts in East Jerusalem − acts that contradict the spirit of bilateralism, and violate the Israeli government’s recent commitment to the Quartet to refrain from inflammatory action. Advancing plans to build Givat Hamatos is not just a matter of provoking ill will; it is an unwise policy for Israel .
Sarah Kreimer is associate director of Ir Amim, an Israeli NGO dedicated to creating a more equitable Jerusalem and reaching an agreed-upon political future for the city.
4. Independent Friday, 21 October 2011
Palestinian PM dismisses peace talk chances Palestinians don’t believe Israel is ready to agree acceptable terms for a two state solution
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/palestinian-pm-dismisses-peace-talk-chances-2373746.html
By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem