Dorothy Online Newsletter

NOVANEWS

 

Dear Friends,

 

My inbox and contacts are all back in place, but due to the mess that I had, some emails might have gotten lost.  If there is anything in particular that you wanted me to see or to contact me about, please resend.  Also, somehow or other, my name has gotten changed to Sorothy instead of Dorothy.  I have no idea why or how to repair it.  I am Dorothy in my contact list, and no Sorothy comes up when I search for one in the contact list.  So I’m at a loss.  Any suggestions of how to correct will be much appreciated—but that’s a minor problem.

 

A few tidbits from the local newspapers and emails that I received.   In Today in Palestine, the first item hit me in the pit of my stomach.  A 7 month old baby died in Gaza because his respirator went off due to an electricity stoppage.  The stoppages occur because Israel denies Gaza the electricity that it needs.  Now is that not murder?

 

Dorothy

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1 Haaretz

March 23, 2012

 

Israel’s economy will pay heavy price for Iron Dome

The Iron Dome system promises a sense of physical security, but without a national conversation about economic priorities, its extraordinary cost will have unintended consequences for Israeli economic security.

 

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/israel-s-economy-will-pay-heavy-price-for-iron-dome-1.420312

 

By Jamie Levin

Since March 9, more than 300 rockets, mortars and missiles have been fired into southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, a response to the killing of Zohair al-Qaisi, secretary-general of the Palestinian Popular Resistance Committee, who the army said was planning a major terrorist attack on Israel. But unlike during the decade of attacks that preceded these hostilities, in which 8,000 rockets induced terror and resulted in 31 fatalities in southern Israel, a sense of euphoria has instead prevailed among many Israelis. The reason? Seventy-eight percent of the rockets threatening population centers were successfully intercepted by the new Iron Dome air defense system, with no Israeli fatalities, according to a report in this paper.

 

Over the past decade, successive Israeli leaders have struggled to find an appropriate response to these attacks, but neither the unilateral Gaza pullout in 2005, nor an outright three-week war in 2008-09 was effective in halting rocket fire on southern Israel. Rather than toppling the Hamas leadership in Gaza, the most immediate result of long-term closures and regular Israeli military reprisals has been to create enormous suffering among ordinary Palestinians.

 

Iron Dome has managed to do what the politicians could not: make the residents of southern Israel feel more secure. Hence the widespread celebration, particularly in the media, which has heralded the missile-defense system variously as “the best show in town,” a “star” and a “hero.”

 

Capitalizing on the success of the system, Defense Minister Ehud Barak has begun talking about the urgent need to deploy a total of 13 Iron Dome systems, including those already operational in Ashkelon, Ashdod and Be’er Sheva. From the north to the south, Israelis living under the threat of extended-range rockets from Gaza and Hezbollah rockets from southern Lebanon will likely demand them.

 

But before Israelis become complacent in a newfound sense of safety that missile defense promises to provide, they should consider that each Iron Dome system costs $50,000,000 and each Tamir interceptor it employs has a price tag of no less than $62,000. In contrast, each of the Qassam rockets that the Iron Dome is meant to intercept cost no more than $1,000. It is believed that there are tens of thousands of Qassam rockets in Gaza alone and the capacity to produce more.

 

It is the cost differential between the Iron Dome and the rockets that it is intended to defend against that creates the perfect conditions for an economic war of attrition, in which Israel is forced to choose between bankruptcy and security. Rafael’s missile-defense system is seen as the perfect response to occasional rocket attacks that do not justify full-scale military reprisals. But while Iron Dome may stop the rockets from hitting their targets, it won’t keep them from being fired, and the economic costs of intercepting such intermittent attacks (which have become an almost daily occurrence ) will be tremendous. Israel’s enemies can leverage this cost difference to create an economic weapon.

 

Budgetary shortfalls have plagued the Iron Dome from the beginning, delaying the system’s development. The initial budget of NIS 800 million to develop, test and field two batteries was insufficient, according to a report by Gili Cohen in Haaretz. Neither the army nor the Defense Ministry was willing to sacrifice other programs to make up the difference. Limited financial resources (the United States has pledged only $205,000,000 to the program ) mean that Israel will be forced to weigh spending on missile defenses against other expenditures – a scenario that economists refer to as the guns-versus-butter dilemma.

 

Such trade-offs come in a troubling economic climate. Fully 20 percent of Israelis currently live below the poverty line and the countrywide protests this past summer, which targeted everything from the price of cottage cheese to the lack of affordable housing, highlighted the growing inequality between rich and poor. In the wake of these protests, the Trajtenberg Committee recommended boosting social spending by NIS 5 to 6 billion per year, part of which was to come out of the defense budget.

 

The confidence inspired by Iron Dome will surely temper the willingness to cut into military expenditures. Instead of money coming from defense to fund social welfare, the opposite will likely occur. Money for the Iron Dome will likely come from programs intended to help the most vulnerable sectors of society, which are less capable of defending their interests. Such cuts will deepen the already troubling disparities between rich and poor, further threatening social cohesion.

 

The Iron Dome system promises a sense of physical security, but without a national conversation about economic priorities, its extraordinary cost will have unintended consequences for Israeli economic security. These are the realities that Israel can ill afford to ignore.

 

Jamie Levin is a research fellow at the Harry S Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a PhD candidate in political science at the University of Toronto.

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2  From younes arar [younesarar@yahoo.com] Thursday, March 22

 

Dear All,

 

Beit Ommar Popular Committee against Settlement and Apartheid Wall

Campeign against The Israeli occupation military Decision to Deport 8 minors from Beit Ommar

 

 

The Ofer Israeli occupation military court demanding the deportation of 8 boys from the area of ​​their residence in Beit Ommar
In a precedent the first of its kind against Palestinian children, Ofer Military Court, which was held on Tuesday, called for the deportation of 8 young minors from their homes In Beit Ommar for a distance of at least 30 kilometers from the town, according to Israeli military prosecution claim: that these young minors are a danger to the security of the settlers who are going through from Hebron Jerusalem Road.
According to Yousef Abu Maria, media spokesman of the Popular Committee against settlement in Beit Ommar, the young eight minors are represented by their Israeli lawyer, “Neri Rmata” who refused to categorically discuss the decision and considered the decision unjust and dangerous precedent and urged the families of the detainees to reject this decision, a number of Palestinian lawyers reject this decision because it sets a dangerous precedent and threatened to boycott the Israeli courts.

As the administration of Ofer military prison beat severely captive minor Ahmed Solaiby (16 years) in front of the courtroom causing tumors in his face, as he told the judge I do not recognize you and the Court of Ofer because they are illegal, which forced the Israeli military Judge to leave the courtroom for an hour and after returning to the hall he postponed the case to next meeting on Sunday 25.3.2012. The detainees are Ayesh Khalid Sabri Awad (17 years), Basil Khalid Hassan Abu Hashim (15 years), Zain Hisham Khalil Abu Maria (15 years) Sami Amer Ahmed Abo Joudeh (16 years), Emad Mohammed Saed Solaiby (16 years), Mohab Jawdat Adi (14 years), Bilal Mahmud Awad Ayyad (16 years), and Ahmed Ali Mahmoud Solaiby (16 years).

In another context, the occupation forces at dawn today raided a house belonging to Basem Khidr Alalami (48 years) in the area of ​​Beit Ommar and handed over notes to meet with Israeli intelligence on Wednesday for him and his two sons, Mohammed (22 years) and Mamdouh (19 years) who were released two weeks ago after their imprisonment for different periods and the payment of fines.

 

– – – – – –

Younes Arar

Center for Freedom and Justice

Executive Manager

younesarar@yahoo.com

www.center4freedom.org

www.palestinesolidarityproject.org

+972599 965 272

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3-Saturday, March 24 2012

First large Israeli protest against war with Iran in Tel Aviv

http://972mag.com/first-large-israeli-demonstration-against-war-with-iran-held-in-tel-aviv/39178/

By Dahlia Scheindlin and Larry Derfner

A lively crowd of approximately 1000 people, according to estimates by the Israeli media, gathered at Habima Square in Tel Aviv to voice its opposition to a war between Israel and Iran. Although hoping to capitalize on the energy of a surprisingly successful grassroots internet campaign that seemed to sweep the whole country last week, the protesters had all the hallmark attributes of a left-wing demonstration: large red flags associated with Hadash, the far-left Jewish-Arab party, calls for the Netanyahu government to resign, and no Israeli flags.

http://972mag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/DSC_1313.jpg

Demonstration against attack on Iran, Tel Aviv, 24 March, 2012 (Photo: Dahlia Scheindlin)

Unlike most such gatherings, including left-wing and peace demonstrations, there were no politicians in sight – certainly none representing parties or speaking publicly.

Slogans, chants and signs directed most of the attention at the Prime Minister, calling “Bibi, don’t bomb Iran,” and exhorting him to “talk” instead of starting a war. Some implicitly accused Netanyahu of colluding with American Jewish leaders to ratchet up the war rhetoric, describing relationship with AIPAC as a love affair.

http://972mag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/DSC_1335.jpg

Demonstration against attack on Iran, Tel Aviv, 24 March, 2012 (Photo: Dahlia Scheindlin)

Others said that an attack on Iran will come directly at the expense of social justice in Israel. Only one chant tried explicitly to say what the demonstration was actually trying to convey: “The majority of the public is against the war.”

Then there were the counter-demonstrators, who consisted mainly of angry individuals, rather than any organized group. One young man stood on a bench holding his middle finger up defiantly as the procession marched by, while another couple stood nearby, gaping. The man said “Are these Jews? Tell me – are they Jews?” One sign could be seen bobbing inside the crowd throughout the procession, reading ‘As usual, the left embraces the enemy.” At first its owner stood on the sidewalk, then joined the crowd marching up King George, where he was safe from harm. How would a lone leftist carrying a settler-bashing sign fare at a right-wing rally?

One smiling woman held a sign that said simply, “Make Sense, Not War.” When asked if she thought Israel would attack Iran, nonsensical though this may be, the woman, Ifat Zvirin, stopped smiling and said, “I think so. The odds are that it will happen.” Was there any way to prevent it? She said, “If people are strong and say no, then yes.” Did she think that would happen? “From past experience, no. But one must always hope.”

http://972mag.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/DSC_1338.jpg

Demonstration against attack on Iran, Tel Aviv, 24 March, 2012 (Photo: Dahlia Scheindlin)

http://972mag.com/first-large-israeli-demonstration-against-war-with-iran-held-in-tel-aviv/39178/

 

http://91.228.126.171/~w972mag/wp-content/Cimy_User_Extra_Fields/dahlias/DahliaScheindlin.jpg

Dahlia Scheindlin is a leading international public opinion analyst and strategic consultant based in Tel Aviv, specializing in progressive causes, political campaigns in many countries, including new/transitional democracies and peace/ conflict research. In Israel, she works for a wide range of local and international organizations dealing with Israeli-Palestinian conflict issues, peacemaking, democracy, religious identity and internal social issues in Israeli society. Dahlia is currently writing her doctoral dissertation in comparative politics at Tel Aviv University. The focus of her research is unrecognized (de facto) states. She is an adjunct lecturer at the Department of Politics and Government at Ben Gurion University. Dahlia writes a monthly column for the Jerusalem Report magazine and is a regular media commentator and guest lecturer.

Contact dahlia1@actcom.net.il

 

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4 Haaretz

March 25, 2012

 

Right-wing activist says will evacuate Palestinian family from East Jerusalem home

Aryeh King, of the Israel Land Fund, publishes ad calling for able-bodied Jews to assist court-ordered evacuation following what he says is the police’s refusal to secure the move.

 

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/right-wing-activist-says-will-evacuate-palestinian-family-from-east-jerusalem-home-1.420651

 

By Oz Rosenberg

Tags: East Jerusalem

An Israeli right-wing activist published an ad last week, calling for the aid of fellow activists in securing a court-ordered evacuation of a Palestinian family from its East Jerusalem home, following the police’s refusal to do so.

 

Israel Land Fund founder and director Aryeh King, is claiming that the 18-member Palestinian family illegally entered a housing compound in 2002, despite the fact that it was purchased by a British Jew about years 30 ago.

 

Ruling on the case, a Jerusalem magistrate’s court ordered the house be evacuated by March 1, saying the Palestinian family had to pay NIS 125,000 in damages.

 

According to King, the evacuation was set to take place on the date issued by the court, and in coordination with the police, until he received a call from the police’s legal advisor, who indicated that the operation was canceled following the order of Jerusalem District Commander Niso Shaham.

 

King intimated that the police advisor said that the order to cancel was given since the evacuation was to take part a day prior to a meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama, which could bring about “unfavorable headlines.”

 

Following that cancellation, King appealed the state for an alternative date, with March 30 surfacing as the evacuations new timeslot. However, despite what King describes as repeated requests, the police has not responded to his demand to secure the evacuation.

 

In response, King published an ad last week, stating: “Strong men are wanted to legally evacuate Arab squatters, after Niso Shaham announced he won’t allow for the evacuation to take place – the Jews will do it without the police’s aid.”

 

The right-wing activist added that he was looking for “dozens of unmarried army veterans to arrive this week and clear out the tenets themselves.

 

“All this month I’ve been sending the Arabs every offer they could care for to evacuate consensually,” King told Haaretz, saying he went to see the Palestinian tenants “personally, to the Arabs, I told them: listen, I’ll let the damages go, just get out, we won’t harm you, we won’t bring you to the brink of bankruptcy too.”

 

According to King, he was told that a pregnant woman resided in the disputed building, and he said: “I’ve got no problem. You want us to wait until she gives birth? We’ll do it, but in the presence of a lawyer and a left-wing public figure as a witness. They keep wasting time and don’t give us answers.”

 

“We’ve been warned that an action such as this should only be done with the police,” King said, adding: “We answered that we can pull something like this off without the police. You tell them: ‘Here’s the warrant, take it, get out’. Whether it works or not is a matter of timing,” King added.

 

Khaled Natcha Suleiman, who resides in the structure along with his sons’ and cousins’ families, told Haaretz that he will not evacuate the premises, despite the court order. “I told Aryeh King I wasn’t going to get out, they can kill us, but we won’t get out.”

 

According to Suleiman, his father purchased the land back in 1935, but wasn’t able to supply documents backing his claim. “I’m a poor man and have been sick all my life, I don’t have the money to pay the legal fees for an appeal. I lost, but I don’t intent to get out,” he said.

 

Referring to King’s intention to clear him out himself, Suleiman said: “King’s men coming to get us out by force? Let them come. If they can take us out, let them. We’ll die on this land and won’t get out. It’s our land, our father’s – so why should we leave?”

 

Jerusalem’s police department said in response that it informed King that it would “aid the execution of the warrant according to the date set by the court. The police rejects any claim of a deliberate postponement of the warrant’s execution and will consider any independent attempt to evacuate as an offence to law and will act accordingly.”

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5  Haaretz

March 23, 2012

 

West Bank Palestinians see an Israeli roadblock to economic independence

Israel’s control of the West Bank has both political and economic implications. Whether natural resources or renewable energy, it seems like whatever the Palestinians seek, Israel denies.

 

http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/west-bank-palestinians-see-an-israeli-roadblock-to-economic-independence-1.420361

 

By Shuki Sadeh

Tags: West Bank Palestinians

Mussa (not his real name ), a Palestinian businessman who opened a quarry about a year ago across the Green Line from Modi’in, wanted to take advantage of its location and transport gravel to that Israeli city and its environs, as well as to Palestinian construction sites in the Ramallah area. He managed to close a deal with Israeli contractors to sell them gravel, but when his trucks arrived at the Na’alin checkpoint, Civil Administration officials ordered them to turn around. At the same time, he says, the Natuf quarry across the road, which belongs to the Israeli-owned Shafir Civil and Marine Engineering Ltd., delivers gravel in Israel uninterrupted.

 

Civil Administration officials explained to Mussa that his trucks could get to Modi’in only via another, more remote checkpoint, where the cargo would then be unloaded onto Israeli trucks that would reach Modi’in through areas inside the Green Line. Mussa estimates that this journey, which would be 70 kilometers longer, would make the gravel at least twice as expensive. “It is very frustrating,” he says. “Modi’in is so close, but because of the army’s orders it doesn’t pay for me to transport gravel to it.”

 

The Civil Administration said in response: “The Na’alin crossing is not suitable for transporting cargo because of its capacity for security checks.”

 

According to official figures, 94 percent of the output from West Bank quarries reaches construction sites in Israel, and supplies a quarter of the industry’s gravel needs. According to the data, Israel’s housing industry will be dependent on the gravel produced by the quarries for the next 35 years. If it weren’t for their activity, housing prices might today be even higher than those that prompted Daphni Leef and her friends to pitch tents on Rothschild Boulevard last summer.

 

“Gravel of various types is sold at a price of NIS 25-30 per ton,” explains Shimon Giller, an Israeli geologist who is intimately acquainted with the quarry industry in the West Bank. “Transport constitutes a large part of the cost to the consumer; it raises the gravel price by 30 agorot a ton per kilometer of travel. Gravel in the Eilat region, for example, costs around NIS 60 per ton. Aside from Judea and Samaria, most of the quality quarry sites are in the Galilee or northern Negev. This clearly has implications for housing prices.”

 

Israeli-owned quarries in the territories have been active for more than 40 years and are operated by large and well-known companies like Shafir Engineering, Kfar Giladi Quarries and Hanson Israel, plus some smaller firms. The quarries are licensed by the Civil Administration to operate without having to participate in a competitive tender, because Israeli law – in this case the Mandatory Tender Law of 1992 – does not apply to the West Bank.

 

The Palestinians claim that the ongoing occupation and the restrictions on mobility it entails give the Israeli quarries in the territories an advantage over Palestinian ones. The Israeli quarry industry sees the matter differently.

 

“It’s not that for years Israeli quarries got rich from quarrying in the territories,” says a source close to Shafir Engineering. “There were years when the market waned and a quarry lay dormant. Up until a few years ago, the Natuf quarry was operating at half capacity.”

 

During the second intifada, he adds, workers at the quarry “were shot at, and they had to travel to work in guarded convoys. There were many days of curfew and confusion. In recent years things have been calm, and in the wake of the rising cost of raw materials, prices have gone up – but there is no telling what the market will look like in the future.”

 

Yesh Din petition

 

Two years ago, Yesh Din, an Israeli NGO that works to safeguard human rights in the territories, filed a court petition demanding suspension of operation by Israeli quarries in the territories. The organization argued that they operate in violation of international law – specifically a clause in the Fourth Geneva Convention that was intended to prevent an economic incentive for going to war, and which stipulates that an occupying power is not permitted to exploit natural resources for its own benefit.

 

“When we began to handle the matter we noticed there was exploitation of the West Bank for economic purposes, but it was not receiving public attention,” says Shlomi Zacharya of the law firm of Michael Sfard, which represents Yesh Din. “The Israeli quarries in the West Bank yield an annual income of NIS 900 million, but only NIS 25 million is transferred as royalties to the Civil Administration, which is responsible for building infrastructure for the Palestinians. Until we filed the petition, the royalties were being transferred to the state coffers and not into a separately dedicated repository, so it is impossible to know what that money was used for.”

 

Several weeks ago, however, the High Court of Justice denied the petition. The panel of justices, headed by then-outgoing court president Dorit Beinisch, explained that Israeli quarrying does not consume the stone at a rate that justifies intervention, and also that the quarries employ Palestinians. Additionally, the court ruled that at issue is a reality of “ongoing occupation,” as opposed to a state of temporary occupation to which the Geneva Convention referred. Yesh Din has petitioned the court to hear the case again.

 

According to Meir Bar-El, head of the quarry division of the Manufacturers Association of Israel, there is little chance the High Court will reverse its position, nor any reason to do so. “It is a political petition. The Israeli quarry industry in the territories is good for the Palestinians. They have good terms of employment there, and Palestinian contractors receive high-quality raw materials from us. Everyone benefits from this.”

 

“If the verdict remains unchanged, it will be a clear-cut jump in the level of exploiting Israel’s economic resources in the territories,” says Prof. Jonathan Yovel, an expert in commercial international law at the University of Haifa. “To date, Israel has intensively exploited mainly the land resource. From here on it will be able to exploit other resources – including ones that may not have been discovered yet.”

 

As long as there is no peace process under way, the situation that existed in the West Bank in the late 1990s has remained in place: Palestinian control of Area A (where Palestinians have full administrative control, including over internal security matters ) and Area B (where Palestinian control extends only to civil matters ) – in which most of the Palestinian populace is concentrated – is much less powerful than Israel’s control, via the Civil Administration, over the 62 percent of the West Bank that constitutes Area C. The nine Israeli quarries in the territories operate in Area C.

 

The Palestinians, for whom the quarry industry constitutes 10 percent of their GDP, have many quarries in Areas A and B, primarily in the vicinity of Bethlehem and Hebron. From their perspective, they lose a very important chunk of the market when Israeli-owned quarries in Area C, rather than Palestinian ones, supply the raw materials to Israel.

 

Energy problems

 

Israel’s control over land prevents economic development in other areas. For example, to develop sources of renewable energy you need an expanse on which to install solar panels. Because of the Palestinian Authority’s dependence on the Israeli electricity grid, Palestinian projects for solar energy in the West Bank receive permission to supply electricity only to places that are not even hooked up to the electricity grid.

 

Lately the Civil Administration has been seeking to demolish a small facility of solar panels that was set up in the south Hebron hills by activists from the nonprofit organization Community, Energy, Technology in the Middle East, with financing from the German government. The administration says the panels were installed without a permit.

 

Danny Danan, owner of Friendly Energy, an Israeli company that installs solar panels, has also been trying for the past year to initiate a solar energy project in Palestinian villages in the southern West Bank, together with a Palestinian partner. He says he deliberately chose to focus on rooftop installation rather than on the ground: “Installing on the ground means butting heads with the Civil Administration, so I avoid such initiatives in advance. Because of the ground obstacle, it is much more complicated for Palestinians to utilize their solar energy, which is a shame, because you can do good solar projects in the West Bank.”

 

The Civil Administration responds: “The facility in the south Hebron hills is an illegal solar facility that was built with the support of an international entity without the requisite plans, in complete disregard for the law. They were given an opportunity to try and get the facility approved retroactively, but they chose to ignore that option. Over the years, a number of joint projects were built with funding from the German government in the areas of infrastructure, which even earned praise from Israeli government representatives who visited the area.”

 

“Israel’s policy since 1967 has been to reinforce the fact that the economy of the territories is intertwined with Israel’s economy,” says Prof. Arie Arnon, an economist who coordinates the Israeli team of the Aix Group – experts from the PA, Israel and the international community who are studying economic aspects of a projected peace agreement. “At the time of the Oslo Accords, an attempt was made to create two separate economies, but today we have a situation wherein Area C and Israel are increasingly becoming one economic unit under Israeli control – the verdict in the quarries matter is representative of this.”

 

Says Dr. Saeb Bamya, head of the Palestinian team in the group: “Most Palestinian natural resources are located in Area C. From our standpoint, the Israeli policy is not to let us develop the resources we have in these areas, as part of the efforts to prevent a two-state solution.”

 

If the Palestinians had better access to the natural resources, they would need Israeli help to exploit them, and because of the physical proximity of the economies and the demands of the Israeli market, Palestinian economic initiatives in the fields of water and energy would become more feasible. Both sides would benefit.

 

“Israel would indeed have to give up land, but the economic development that would follow in the wake of that would not skip over it,” says Yoav Stern, director of the business and environment department at the Peres Center for Peace. “The more time goes by, we get farther away from a peace agreement and facts are established on the ground that will make such initiatives difficult in the future.”

 

The precious Dead Sea

 

The economic aspect of the conflict is not restricted to land issues. Hoteliers, Israel Chemicals and cosmetics firms that market products made of minerals from the Dead Sea can attest that this body of water, one-third of which (its northwestern part ) was conquered by Israel in 1967, is an economic asset to Israel. As far as the Palestinians are concerned, they own 25 percent of the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea cosmetics company Ahava buys mud – an essential raw material for its products – from the Dead Sea Works, which is located within the Green Line, but the firm’s products are the subject of protests by Palestinian and international organizations around the world, because its factory is over the Green Line, on Kibbutz Kfar Shalem.

 

In the mid-1990s, the Palestinians presented plans for the tourist industry in the future Palestinian state (which included thousands of hotel rooms on the northern side of the Dead Sea ) in economic forums that accompanied the diplomatic negotiations. Today, these and other such plans are collecting dust.

 

“They have a development plan, which includes tourism and utilizing chemicals. They want to do as we and the Jordanians are doing,” says economist Rafi Benvenisti, who advised former Labor governments. “Originally, the Dead Sea Works were built at the northern end of the sea, and it is possible [for the Palestinians] to build them once again in the same place. It would take hundreds of millions of dollars, and in all likelihood the production level would be lower than in the Israeli factories and closer to the Jordanian level.”

 

Four years ago the Palestinian chemical manufacturer Star wanted to produce cosmetics based on Dead Sea mud. That initiative failed, according to Israeli and Palestinian sources familiar with the case, because of the refusal by the Civil Administration, the sovereign in the Dead Sea region beyond the Green Line.

 

Bamya: “Israeli companies essentially have a monopoly on manufacturing cosmetics that originate from the Dead Sea. This monopoly also exists in the tourism field. It is completely pointless for Palestinian entrepreneurs to submit a request to build hotels on the Dead Sea, because they will meet with rejection from the Civil Administration on various pretexts.”

 

“The Palestinians have a lot of nerve making such a demand,” says Dov Litvinoff, head of the Tamar Regional Council, which is within the Green Line. “There was never a Palestinian connection to the northern Dead Sea. But even if we dismiss the political issues, they would have a problem building hotels in that area. The sea is drying up there – each year it loses a meter and rehabilitating it will take 10 to 30 years. Today, if they want to build hotels there, they would have to invest a lot in artificial saltwater pools.”

 

Motti Dahaman was among the founders of Kibbutz Kfar Shalem and now heads the Megilot regional council, which is over the Green Line. “There will not be Palestinian enterprises here. These are our lands, state lands, and they have no rights here. At the time of the Oslo Accords, Shimon Peres [then the foreign minister] wanted us to enter into an American-Palestinian-Israeli cooperation in the hotel business, but we refused. The Palestinians can be guests – they are welcome – but not build a hotel. After all, we wouldn’t want them to build hotels in Tel Aviv either.”

 

Gideon Bromberg, the Israeli director of the nonprofit organization Friends of Earth Middle East, a coalition of Jordanian, Palestinian and Israeli environmentalists, argues that the tourist potential of the West Bank is far from exhausted. “It has to do first and foremost with rehabilitating the southern Jordan River. So long as the Jordan remains a sewage canal, we will not be able to realize that potential,” he says.

 

The Dead Sea is on the verge of a new death, mainly because of water pumping – by Israel, Jordan and Syria – from the Jordan and Yarmouk rivers, and also because of Israel’s Dead Sea Works, which is responsible for 20 percent of the decline in the sea level – according to a study conducted by the Geological Survey of Israel. This, Bromberg says, is why the Palestinians will have to focus, when the time comes, on developing tourism rather than on industry dependent on the waters of the Dead Sea.

 

Water flows to Israel

 

The crux of the dispute over the water is the question of who owns the groundwater beneath the hills in the center of historic Palestine: the western mountain aquifer. The Palestinians claim that Israel has been encroaching on their water rights for years, mainly because rainfall in the territories flows to the coastal plain, but also because of discrimination within the West Bank, in terms of the water supplied to Palestinian villages versus the quantities settlements receive.

 

“During the last big rainfall, people rejoiced, but I explained that the rain won’t increase our water supply because most of it will flow into Israel,” says Dr. Shaddad Attili, the PA minister who heads the Palestinian Water Authority. “We want equitable and logical allocation and joint management of water resources, in keeping with international law. We simply want our share.”

 

The water agreements that were signed between the parties in 1995 determined that until any permanent agreement is signed, Israel would get 80 percent of the aquifer and the Palestinians would get 20 percent – in accordance with the size of their populations. Today Palestinians consider the agreement nullified, because of the amount of time that has gone by since it was signed and because it doesn’t look like a permanent agreement is in the offing.

 

Water experts say that in an era when desalination is an available solution, there is no need to argue about who owns the rainwater that fills the aquifer. “Once upon a time water really was an existential product over which wars break out, but today it is a product that can be manufactured for 60 cents per cubic meter,” explains economist Benvenisti. “Hence, this is an argument over no more than $50-60 million.”

 

But two years ago Attili approached the Israeli Water Authority with a request to buy desalinated water. Attorney Dov Weissglas, who had been Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s bureau chief, accompanied him as a liaison to IDI, a company owned jointly by Yitzhak Tshuva and Nochi Dankner that has a desalination plant in Palmahim, along the Mediterranean coast. Under Israeli law, the desalinated water is transported to a reservoir of the water authority, so Tshuva and Dankner could not sell the water to the Palestinians directly.

 

The Palestinians wanted to purchase approximately 20 million cubic meters, but the Israeli water authority refused.

 

“It began after Salam Fayyad became prime minister,” says an Israeli source with knowledge of the talks, “and the move was foiled by the current government, which raised all sorts of reasons to torpedo the move.”

 

Officials at the water authority confirm there was a Palestinian request, but claim it was rejected for pertinent reasons. “We told Attili that he has to submit a serious plan and then we would be able to consider it,” says a senior official at the Israeli water authority, who asked not to be named, “but to this day he has not submitted such a plan. He doesn’t really want the water, but rather to goad Israel.”

 

The Palestinians also wanted to desalinate water in the vicinity of the Ein Feshkha nature reserve, near the Dead Sea, and put it to agricultural use in an area that suffers from a serious drought. According to a report published last May by the Israeli human-rights group B’Tselem, Israeli appropriation of water wells in the area limited the Palestinians’ water, and many farmers were forced to abandon crops. The Palestinians wanted to desalinate water that originates in the eastern mountain aquifer – in other words, water that is not destined to flow into Israel. The Israeli water authority refused in this case as well.

 

The same source in the water authority says that, internationally, it’s not acceptable for the expensive technology of desalination to be used for agriculture; for that, purified sewage water is used. “The Palestinians wanted to gain a hold on the land, and not really [start] a desalination project,” a senior source there says.

 

The West Bank has one sewage purification plant. The Israeli water authority says that the Palestinians require another 50 such plants, but that the Palestinians flat out refuse to treat their sewage. The authority built another plant with Palestinian funding on Israeli soil, near Kibbutz Yad Hanna, which is meant to treat water that flows from the West Bank.

 

A few months ago the Palestinians sought to build a purification plant near Tul Karm with international funding, but their request was turned down by Israel.

 

“This is a project that is designed to protect Israel as well, so that sewage water does not reach within the Green Line,” Attili says, “but the Israelis told us that the land was earmarked for other purposes.”

 

For its part, the Israeli water authority claims that the Palestinians deliberately decided to set up the purification plant across from the community of Bat Hefer, which is on the Israeli side of the Green Line, even though the purification plant would be a seriously smelly nuisance to Bat Hefer residents. “It was manipulation on the part of the Palestinians,” says the water authority official.

 

Gas woes

 

In 1999 Yasser Arafat, then chairman of the Palestinian Authority, granted the franchise for gas production from the natural gas deposit opposite the Gaza coast – the Gaza Marine Field, worth an estimated $6 billion – to British Gas, giving it 60 percent of the mining rights. Thirty percent of the holdings went to the Khourys, a wealthy family of Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon, and only 10 percent remained in the hands of the Palestinian people, a state of affairs that prompted charges of corruption against the Palestinian Authority and Arafat. In 2000, the Al-Aqsa Intifada erupted, and the gas project in Gaza has been frozen ever since, even though both sides could have benefited from it.

 

Earlier this month it was reported that British Gas is selling its holdings in the mining operation.

 

Today, because of the maritime blockade on Gaza, the possibility of developing the gas deposit seems more distant than ever. But even if the situation were otherwise, mining is economically feasible only if Israel buys the gas from the Palestinians, since demand from the less-developed Palestinian economy is not high enough to justify the high production costs, and exporting gas to other countries is too expensive.

 

In 2004 the possibility of developing the deposit was close to being realized. According to one of the routes considered, the gas was supposed to reach Ashkelon, where the Israel Electric Corp. would produce electricity for the Gaza Strip in return. At the time, IEC was debating between buying natural gas from Gaza Marine Field and buying natural gas from Egypt through EMG, a company co-owned by Israeli businessman Yossi Meiman.

 

Ultimately, after a political scandal that led to the resignation of then-minister of national infrastructure and energy Yossi Paritzky, who actually favored the Palestinian option, Prime Minister Sharon opted for the Egyptian option, also because he viewed the Palestinians as enemies to whom Israel should not funnel money.

 

“I had reached understandings with the Palestinian energy minister that they would receive electricity, not money, from the project, but Sharon shouted that he wasn’t going to give money to terrorism,” Paritzky recalls. “Too bad, all of the parties were supposed to be satisfied. We are continuing to miss that opportunity today as well.”

 

In January 2006 Hamas seized control of the Gaza, but as late as a year later the Olmert government held talks with British Gas, mediated by Tony Blair, the Quartet’s envoy to the Middle East, who also had been involved in the matter when he was prime minister of Britain. The negotiations collapsed, among other reasons because British Gas asked Israel to buy the gas directly instead of through the electric company.

 

“In retrospect it was a big mistake not to develop that deposit, certainly when electricity prices are on the rise,” says Amit Mor, CEO of Eco Energy Ltd. “Buying gas from that deposit should be an inseparable part of the economic process that will accompany future diplomatic talks.”

 

During Benjamin Netanyahu’s tenure, there have been other Palestinian attempts to resume mining of the gas deposit, with an emphasis that the mining will be the sole responsibility of the PA under Prime Minister Fayyad and not left in the hands of Hamas.

 

“This is a gas deposit that can be developed in a very short time, even six months, by building a pipeline to the existing receptacle in Ashkelon – which already takes in gas from the nearby Yam Tethys deposit,” says a senior Israeli official who had knowledge of the negotiations. “The Palestinians announced a long time ago that they were prepared to send all of its production to Israel, but the government decided, as in other fields, that here too issues of economic development would be leveraged for political pressure. British Gas had already agreed to sell directly to companies such as Israel Electric, Oil Refineries Ltd., and other companies, but the Netanyahu government is unwilling to grant authorization.”

 

Asked from comment, the Prime Minister’s Bureau released this statement: “Israel sees great importance in regional cooperation, and in the past negotiations were held between the Israel Electric Corporation and British Gas regarding joint development of the gas field. After the negotiations were unfruitful, Israel began to develop its [own] gas fields independently, and they are expected to yield gas in the coming year. The shortest time frame within which the field opposite Gaza will be able to begin operating is three years, and therefore at this stage, it will not be beneficial to the Israeli economy.”

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6 Haaretz

March 25, 2012

 

Israel mulls ways to penalize PA in wake of UN human rights probe

Top ministers Lieberman, Ya’alon and Steinitz reportedly support freezing the transfer of tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority.

 

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israel-mulls-ways-to-penalize-pa-in-wake-of-un-human-rights-probe-1.420541

 

By Barak Ravid

Tags: Palestinians Israel settlements UN Palestinian Authority

Israel is considering sanctions against the Palestinian Authority after the United Nations’ Human Rights Council decided to establish an international investigative committee on the West Bank settlements.

 

Today, a forum of eight senior Israeli cabinet ministers is scheduled to meet in Jerusalem to discuss sanctions against the PA and representatives of the UN Human Rights Council in Israel. It is unclear whether any decisions will be made during today’s meeting.

 

Three members of the octet reportedly support freezing the transfer of tax revenues to the PA. According to one source, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon and Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz would back such a move.

 

Lieberman said Friday that the move by the UN body proves that the Palestinians do not want to renew negotiations with Israel. “We are dealing with Al-Qaida terror on the one hand and diplomatic terror by Abu Mazen on the other,” Lieberman said, referring to PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

 

Senior officials in the Prime Minister’s Bureau and the Foreign Ministry said Israel would not cooperate with the UN committee. The Prime Minister’s Bureau decided Friday that the committee’s members – who are yet to be determined – would not be allowed into Israel.

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7 Today in Palestine

March 25, 2012

 

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/f_shadi/message/3437

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