| Al Jazeera, Oct 28, 2009 | |
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Israeli authorities have torn down several Palestinian houses in occupied east Jerusalem, defying international calls to halt the demolitions in the disputed city. Gidi Schmerling, a Jerusalem municipality spokesman, said the houses in the Shuafat, Zur Baher, Silwan and Jabel Mukabar neighbourhoods were pulled down on Tuesday because they had been built illegally. “All the houses were demolished in accordance with a court order,” he said in a statement to the AFP news agency. Palestinians say that the municipality discriminates against them, making it virtually impossible for them to get legal permits for new homes or extensions to existing ones. As a result, thousands of effectively illegal structures have been built in recent decades with Israel responding by destroying dozens of houses each year. Construction crackdown Nir Barkat, the mayor of Jerusalem, had vowed to crack down on illegal construction in the city, including east Jerusalem, whose fate is one of the thorniest issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But the United Nations on Tuesday called for an immediate halt to all forced evictions and demolitions of Palestinian homes in the area, which was seized by Israel in the 1967 war. “Such actions run counter to international law and have a serious and long-term negative impact on Palestinian families and communities,” the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement.”The UN reiterates its call for an immediate and unconditional halt to such actions and urges the state of Israel to protect the civilian population in OPT [occupied Palestinian Territories] from further displacement and dispossession.” At least 600 Palestinians ave been displaced by eveictions and demolitions since the beginning of the year, according to OCHA, and many thousands more may be at risk. The United States, which is seeking to revive peace talks in the long-standing dispute, called the latest demolitions “unhelpful”. The forced evictions and demolitions have raised tensions in the eastern half of the city, which Palestinians see as the capital of any future independent state. The situation has prompted a number of protests and Palestinians have attempted to challenge the municipality’s actions in the courts. ‘Irresponsible step’ An Israeli rights group, Ir Amim, said the demolitions were “an irresponsible step that could escalate the situation in the city and bring it to a new boiling point”. Palestinians and human rights groups have condemned Israel’s demolition policy, accusing it of using the demolitions to shift east Jerusalem’s demographic balance. “International bodies and the United Nations Security Council should intervene to stop Israeli authorities from carrying out these criminal actions,” Adnan al-Husseini, the Palestinian-appointed governor of Jerusalem, said. A UN report in May showed that 1,500 demolition orders issued by the Jerusalem municipality were pending for illegal Palestinian dwellings. The report said that if the orders were implemented, about 9,000 Palestinians would be displaced. There are about 200,000 Jews living in East Jerusalem, alongside an estimated 250,000 Palestinians. |
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Archive for the ‘Zionist Israel’ Category
Israel levels Palestinian homes in east Jerusalem
October 29, 2009
European Human Rights Lawyers To Sue Israeli Officers For War Crimes
October 28, 2009
Saed Bannoura,IMEMC, Oct 28, 2009
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A number of European lawyers and human rights activities stated that they obtained names of Israeli army officers suspected of committing war crimes during the war against the Gaza Strip earlier this year.
The lawyers said they would be filing lawsuits against the officers for committing war crimes against the Palestinian people. Israeli paper Haaretz said that the lawyers collected testimonies from residents of the Gaza Strip in preparation to file the lawsuits. The lists are being filed in Britain, Spain, Norway, Belgium and Holland as the legislation in these countries allow arrest warrants against war crimes suspects. Haaretz added that attorney Daniel Makeover, from London, told its reporter that the report of Judge Richard Goldstone will be helpful in the lawsuits. Israel said it would be countering the lawsuits, and that it is preparing legal teams but did not offer further details. The Israeli Foreign Ministry said that it is working against the issue which it described as ‘efforts carried out by pro Palestinian groups and their supporters to harm Israel’. Last month, former Israeli Army Chief of Staff, Moshe Yaalon, had to cancel a trip to London due to fears of being apprehended there. Yaalon is the current vice Prime Minister and Minister of the so-called Strategic Affairs. |
Israel’s European Lobby
October 28, 2009by Maidhc Ó Cathail, Dissident Voice, October 28, 2009
In their 2006 article “The Israel Lobby,” John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt famously assert, “Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and those of the other country – in this case, Israel – are essentially identical.” Having for decades successfully steered policymaking in Washington in a pro-Israel direction, Israel’s American Lobby has more recently turned its attention to Europe. Despite its brief presence in Brussels, it appears to have already had marked success in influencing the nascent foreign policy of the European Union.
US-Israeli Missile Defense War Game Signals Israeli Attack on Iran
October 28, 2009By Paul Craig Roberts, Information Clearing House, Oct 28, 2009
There’s no word in the Western press, but Al Jazeera reports that the US and Israel are conducting tests of the high altitude missile defense system that the US has provided to Israel.
The anti-missile system is useless against the short range rockets of Hamas and Hezbollah. Its purpose is to protect Israel from longer range Iranian missiles.
Everyone understands that Iran would not attack Israel except in retaliation. It is logical to conclude that the missile defense system signals an upcoming Israeli attack on Iran.
If the US were opposed to an Israeli attack on Iran, the US would not provide Israel with protection against retaliation and would not engage in war games with Israel to test the system. The best way to prevent an Israeli attack on Iran is to leave Israel open to retaliation.
French FM Warns Israel May Soon Attack Iran
October 27, 2009Iran Downplays Threat, Says Israel in No Position to Attack
During a visit to Lebanon, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said that time was of the essence to finalize a deal with Iran, cautioning that Israel might launch an attack against Iran soon in the absence of such a deal.
Kouchner also said that he didn’t believe sanctions were an effective way to deal with Iran, noting that they wind up disproportionately harming the poor and do little to those in power.
Speaking through the state media, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki downplayed the threat, insisting that Israel was in a weak position and in no position to launch an attack against them.
Though the IAEA has insisted that the alleged “threat” posed by Iran’s civilian nuclear program is greatly exaggerated, Israel has repeatedly threatened to attack the nation if the international community didn’t force Iran to abandon it.
MIDEAST: Is Jerusalem Burning?
October 27, 2009Analysis by Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler, Inter Press Service
JERUSALEM, Oct 26 (IPS) – Déjà vu on one of the world’s most volatile religious sites, a site deeply revered by both Muslims and Jews.
On Sunday, Israeli police helicopters circle over the Al-Aqsa mosque and the adjacent Golden Dome of the Rock from where Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven and where, for Jews, two Biblical temples once stood.
In the narrow alleyways below, heavy Israeli police reinforcements, batons, tear-gas and shock grenades at the ready in order to confront young Palestinian protesters.
On the contested ‘Temple Mount’ (for Jews), ‘Haram el-Sharif’ or ‘Noble Sanctuary’ (for Muslims), clashes soon erupt – dozens are lightly injured on both sides; the Israeli police arrest 21 Palestinians, among them the former Palestinian Authority minister in charge of Jerusalem, Hatim Abdel Qader.
Israel rations Palestinians to trickle of water
October 27, 2009Amnesty International USA, 27 October 2009
Amnesty International has accused Israel of denying Palestinians the right to access adequate water by maintaining total control over the shared water resources and pursuing discriminatory policies.
These unreasonably restrict the availability of water in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and prevent the Palestinians developing an effective water infrastructure there.
Administrative Detention in Israel: Palestinians Behind Bars with No Recourse to Justice
October 26, 2009By Christoph Schult, Spiegel Online International, Oct 23, 2009
The cell is only a few square meters in size and there are no windows. A mattress lies on the floor; a hole in the floor for prisoners’ needs, cynically called a “Turkish toilet” is next to it.
Mohammed Othman has been held in Kishon Detention Center in northern Israel for almost a month. But neither he nor his lawyer knows exactly what he is being accused of. Othman is locked up as an administrative detainee — called Maazar Minhali in Hebrew — and is one of around 335 Palestinians currently in the same position.
Robert Bernstein: Human Shield for Criticism of Israel
October 24, 2009|
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| By Max Kantar, The Palestine Chronicle, Oct 24, 2009 Earlier this week the New York Times published an op-ed article, Rights Watchdog, ‘Lost in the Mideast’ written by Robert L. Bernstein, the founding chairman emeritus of Human Rights Watch. The editorial amounts to one regurgitation of Israeli propaganda after another in an effort to delegitimize mainstream criticism of Israeli policies in the international human rights community. The timing of Bernstein’s article is instructive; its publication in the New York Times comes on the heels of the release of the Goldstone Report as the intellectual apologists for Israeli crimes in the U.S. go into ultra-hysteria mode to save the already eroding image of their favorite client state. Bernstein decries HRW for its supposed anti-Israel bias and unleashes a tirade of familiar accusations routinely invoked by ‘supporters of Israel’ to deflect criticism of the Jewish state. To make the case that HRW–and presumably the international human rights community in general—has ‘lost critical perspective’ on Israel-Palestine, Bernstein cites six major points:
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Peace and Justice Post 
Student expelled to Gaza Strip by force
October 30, 2009Palestinian’s involuntary return is the sixth in 10 days, says human rights group
By Ben Lynfield in Jerusalem, The Independent/UK, Oct 30, 2009
Berlanty Azzam, 21,was handcuffed and blindfolded
Berlanty Azzam, 21, who was studying for a business degree at Bethlehem University, said she was coming home in a shared taxi from a job interview in Ramallah on Wednesday when soldiers at the “Container” checkpoint took her identity card and that of another passenger with a Gaza address.
After six hours of waiting, soldiers told her she would be taken to a detention centre in the southern West Bank, and she was handcuffed and blindfolded, she said.
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Tags:Berlanty Azzam, deportation, Gaza, Israeli soldiers, Palestinains, Sari Bashi
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