NOVANEWS
WAFA—Palestine news and info agency
March 29, 2012
http://english.wafa.ps/index.php?action=detail&id=19416
Jews Control 85% of Historical Palestine, says Statistics Bureau
RAMALLAH, March 29, 2012 (WAFA) – Jews constitute around 52% of the total population living in historical Palestine and utilize more than 85% of the total area of the land, press release issued by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics said Thursday.
Arabs make the remaining 48% but are allowed to utilize only 15% of the land, it added.
The report came on the occasion of Land Day, which falls on March 30 and marks the 36th anniversary for the killing of six Palestinians living inside Israel during a demonstration against Israeli confiscation of 21,000 dunums of land in the Galilee, the Triangle, and the Naqab.
The PCBS said while the Jordan Valley makes up 29% of the West Bank, Israel controls approximately 90% of it. Fewer than 65,000 Palestinians remain there today compared to 9,500 settlers.
The Annexation Wall has a total length of about 757 kilometers, of which 92% are inside the West Bank. According to this route, 733 km2 of Palestinian land were isolated between the Wall and the Green Line in 2010. This comprises approximately 13.0% of the West Bank, of which about 348 km2 were agricultural, said the release.
It added that While Palestinians represent 30% of the population of Jerusalem, they pay 40% of the value of the taxes collected by the municipality. Yet, the Jerusalem municipality only spends 8% on providing services to Palestinians.
There were 474 Israeli settlements, outposts and military bases in the West Bank by the end of 2011. Settlers established 11 new outposts in 2010.
Data indicate that the number of settlers in the West Bank totaled 518,974 at the end of 2010; 262,493 settlers live in Jerusalem governorate and constitute 50.6% of all West Bank settlers. Of these land, 110 km2were confiscated for Israeli settlements and military bases, 250 km2were forest and open areas, and 25 km2 Palestinian built-up land. The Wall isolated 53 localities and affected over three hundred thousand people, particularly communities in Jerusalem where 27 localities affected are home to a quarter of a million people.
Moreover, the Wall besieges 165 localities with a population of more than half a million inhabitant, and Qalqilya city is one of the witnesses on that, said PCBS.
The Israeli occupation authorities demolish Palestinian homes and create obstacles and constraints to the issuance of building permits for Palestinians. According to the Al-Maqdisi Institute, between 2000 and 2011, 1,059 buildings were demolished in East Jerusalem (the areas annexed by Israel in 1967). This has resulted in the displacement of 4,865 people, including 2,537 children.
Data from Israeli human rights organizations indicate that about 25 thousand homes have been demolished in the occupied Palestinian Territory since 1967.
The data indicate an increase in demolitions where residents have to demolish their own homes, 289 residents were forced to demolish their own homes since 2000, on the other hand the year 2010 had the highest rate of self-demolition with 70 demolitions compared to 49 in 2009. In 2011, 20 self-demolitions took place. In many cases, residents do not inform the media and human rights organizations of the demolition.
About 196,178 live in areas of Jerusalem annexed by Israel in 1967. In demographic terms, the proportion of settlers to the Palestinian population in the West Bank was about 20 settlers per 100 Palestinians compared with 68 settlers per 100 Palestinians in Jerusalem governorate.
In March 2012, there were 4033 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, including 178 administrative prisoners and 8 female prisoners. Of these, 49 prisoners have spent more than 20 years in captivity and 15 prisoners have spent more than 27 years in captivity.
T.R./F.R.
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2 Al Jazeera Saturday, March 31, 2012
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Palestinians forge new strategies of resistance
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/03/20123297836253440.html
Ben White
Freelance journalist Ben White is author of Israeli Apartheid: A Beginner’s Guide.
A new generation of Palestinian activists is breaking down old divisions imposed by Israel.
Social media has enabled more Palestinian unity, despite the occupation’s policy of geographical separation [GALLO/GETTY]
A one-state solution in Palestine/Israel is a subject being increasingly discussed and debated. One way in which the conversation has emerged is through an analysis of the current situation as a de facto one state, a regime which privileges Jews above Palestinians (the latter being granted or denied different rights according to geography and legal status).
This challenges the orthodoxy that makes a clean distinction between Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. In doing so, it not only provides a framework for interpreting various policies, but also counters the fragmentation of Palestinians over the decades into “Israeli Arabs”, “West Bank” or “Gaza” Palestinians, Jerusalemites – and of course, refugees.
But apart from this discursive “reintegration”, as the apartheid regime has been consolidated irrespective of the “Green Line”, a new generation of Palestinian activists is breaking down old divisions imposed by Israel and forging new connections and strategies of resistance.
Lana Khaskia is an activist from Haifa. Last October, she worked alongside other comrades to organise a hunger strike in support of Palestinian prisoners. The action went under the name “Hungry for Freedom”, a slogan Lana says covers “many demands that can be summarised in one demand: ending Zionist colonialism in all of historic Palestine”.
That broad definition of “freedom” was matched by “one of the most important achievements” of the action, namely, “making links with many Palestinian groups both inside and outside Palestine”. Lana recalls how they got a phone call from activists in Gaza that “became a sort of demonstration, with each side shouting slogans to the other – about ending the siege on Gaza and for a return to Haifa”.
Inside Story – Israel: A ‘democratic’ violator of rights?
More recently, the hunger strike of Khader Adnan sparked a similar burst of coordinated activity among Palestinians. Blogger Jalal Abukhater described to me how “West Bank-based Palestinians would have their main demonstration at Ofer Prison. Gaza Palestinians would gather in Al-Jundi Square in Gaza City and 48 Palestinians would demonstrate in front of Ziv Hospital in Safad, where Khader Adnan was held”.
That sort of coordination, Jalal notes, has been “made easier through the use of social media” and enabled Palestinians to be “united in their action despite occupation’s policy of geographical separation”. Online communication technology, famously (and excessively) credited for its role as an activists’ tool in the Arab uprisings, is having an impact in Palestine, breaching walls and checkpoints that divide and separate.
Abir Kopty is another Palestinian blogger and activist who is taking advantage of the way in which social media can facilitate coordinated actions. “Communicating online”, Abir says, “is enabling our voices to be heard directly without agents who claim to represent us. And when we have this space to represent ourselves, we become very creative in our ways of taking action.”
These remarks point to how the changes go deeper than Facebook and Twitter – there is a shift in the mindset amongst a new generation that is, in Abir’s words, “less tied to the traditional modes of thinking and acting based on the fragmentation and division of the Palestinian people”.
This increased organisation and coordination between Palestinian youth has defied not just physical walls but also, in the words of Budour Hassan, a fourth-year law student at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, “a psychological wall constructed by the apartheid system and fortified by prejudices and stereotypes”. Prior to her participation in protests in West Bank villages, Budour relates, she had “barely been in touch with any West Bank Palestinians”.
For now, these flourishing connections are still restricted to youth activists. But Ameer Makhoul, writing from his Israeli jail cell, highlighted how a campaign like the one for Khader Adnan “illustrated how the components of popular struggle can be brought together”. After all, as Janan Abdu, an activist and researcher (and Ameer’s wife), put it to me, “the connection and co-operation between Palestinians are natural, as one people that was separated by the Nakba and military regime”.
As the peace process stalls and stagnates, it is easy to look at events in Palestine/Israel and see only unimpeded Israeli colonisation, coupled with a lack of legitimate, empowering leadership to marshal Palestinian efforts at resistance. This gloomy picture is accurate – but it misses out the signs of hope that are emerging at a grassroots level.
Ben White is a freelance writer, specialising in Palestine and Israel.
Follow him on Twitter @benabyad
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.
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3 Today in Palestine
March 30, 2012