Posts Tagged ‘Israeli occupation’

Obama’s block to Middle East peace

December 15, 2009

Ramzy Baroud, Morning Star Online, Dec 15, 2009

A just and peaceful solution to the protracted Palestinian-Israeli conflict is only possible when the US ceases to block every attempt made towards it.

The long-held assumption is that a just resolution is one that would be consistent with international and humanitarian laws and which would enjoy the largest possible consensus worldwide.

A consensus is indeed at hand and has been for decades – it is one that recognises the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territories as illegal and immoral, that unconditionally acknowledges the illegality of all Jewish settlements in occupied Palestine and the transfer of Israeli settlers to inhabit unlawfully acquired Palestinian land.

Continues >>

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Peace must begin with the plight of Palestine’s refugees

December 8, 2009

Sixty years after the UN moved to address the fate of the dispossessed, we need to accept that the injustice endures

Karen Abu Zayd, The Guardian/UK, Dec 8, 2009

Sixty years ago today the United Nations general assembly voted into existence a temporary body known as UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. UNRWA’s task was to deal with the humanitarian consequences of the dispossession of some three-quarters of a million Palestine refugees forced by the 1948 Middle East war to abandon their homes and flee their ancestral lands. Just two decades later, the six-day war generated another spasm of violence and forced displacement, culminating in the occupation of Palestinian territory. Today, anguished exile remains the lot of Palestinians and Palestine refugees. The occupation of Palestinian land persists, there is no Palestinian state, and the human rights and fundamental freedoms to which Palestinians are entitled under international law do not exist.

Continued >>

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Palestinian Christians Exodus

April 13, 2009

By  Khalid Amayreh | IslamOnline, Apr 12, 2009

“They can’t easily adapt to the hardships associated with the stressful situation stemming from the Israeli occupation,” Khadr told IOL.

BETHLEHEM — Palestine, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, is losing many of its young Christians who, reeling under the yoke of the Israeli occupation and economic hardships, are seeking a better life abroad.“They can’t easily adapt to the hardships associated with the stressful situation stemming from the Israeli occupation,” Dr. Jamal Khadr, a priest at the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, told IslamOnline.net.

In recent decades, thousands of Christians left the occupied West Bank for a new life abroad, especially in North and South America, Australia, Scandinavia and even Africa.

No precise statistics are available as to the exact number, though it is widely believed to be significantly high.

According to figures compiled by the UN, about one-tenth of the Christian population in Bethlehem and the adjacent towns of Beit Jalla and and Beit Sahour has moved in recent years.

Dr. Khadr, also a professor of Dogmatic Theology at the Latin Seminary, says most of the emigrants are young Christians who are distressed by occupation and crises.

They largely travelled to North America and Sweden, where usually some family members had previously settled.

Nabil Kukali, a professor of education and public opinion pollster, agrees that the stressful conditions under the Israeli occupation are forcing many young Christians to migrate.

“These young people want to build a future for themselves and this is very hard to do here,” explains Kukali, a Christian himself.

About 50,000 Christians live in the West Bank, Al-Quds (occupied East Jerusalem) and Gaza Strip, according to MP Bernard Sabella, a former Professor of Sociology at Bethlehem University.

Christians make up less than 1.5 percent of the total population inside the occupied Palestinian territories, 10 percent of Israeli Arabs and slightly more than 6 percent of the world’s Palestinian population of more than 9 million.

Economy Factor

“Christian are more economically and in other ways, language, church and other connections, able to leave than…Muslims,” notes Qumsiyeh.

The tough economic conditions in the occupied territories, aggravated by the strangling occupation, are a major factor in making migration decisions.“Palestinian Christians are economically better off than most other Palestinians,” notes Khadr.

“They are generally accustomed to a certain pattern of bourgeoisie life.”

He insists that emigration is not confined to Christians and that Muslims, too, are moving out.

Khadr explains, however, that emigration within the Christian community is more conspicuous due to the small size of the community.

Mazen Qumsiyeh, an American-Palestinian professor of genetics and former academic at Yale University, says pressures on Muslims are just as daunting but Christians are more economically able to find a way out.

“Both are subject to the same pressures,” he told IOL.

“Christian are usually more economically and in other ways, language, church and other connections, able to leave than their fellow compatriots who are Muslim.”

Battle

Unsettled by the phenomenal shrinkage of their community, Christian leaders are trying to find ways and means to encourage mainly young Christian males to resist the temptation of emigration.

“The only way to prevent a further deterioration is by discouraging emigration and encouraging people to stay through lasting incentives,” a Greek Orthodox clergyman told IOL.

He added that the exodus has created a serious social imbalance.

“Today in Bethlehem there are two or three young [Christian] females for every young [Christian] male within the marriage age, and that is a real problem.”

Christian organizations in the West Bank, subsidized by Christian groups abroad, have been making strenuous efforts to encourage potential emigrants to stay home.

They are offering young Christians financial assistance in housing, education and in maintaining businesses.

Christian or mainly Christian institutions of higher education, such as the Catholic University of Bethlehem, also try to help in resisting the phenomenon of emigration.

“There is a real problem, and it won’t go away just by talking about it,” says Kukali, the education professor.

“I believe that the Palestinian Authority should create work opportunities here and enhance the overall psychological atmosphere.”

He notes that for some Christians, fleeing is just not an option.

“I was born here, my father is buried here, and my grandfather is also buried here. So I am staying here. I have no other homeland.

“I am Palestinian and will always be Palestinian.”

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The Israel donors conference

March 5, 2009

Amira Haas | Haaretz, Israel, March 4, 2009

The extent of the funding pledged to the Palestinian Authority by donor countries reflects the extent of their support for Israel and its policies. The American taxpayers’ contribution to the Ramallah government’s bank account is dwarfed by the large sums the U.S. government donates to Israel every year. It’s impossible to get excited over the American pledge of $900 million (two-thirds of it for strengthening Salam Fayyad’s government and the rest for Gaza’s recovery) and forget the $30 billion the United States has promised Israel in defense aid by the end of 2017, as last week’s Amnesty International report noted.

The $900 million pledged to the Palestinians in Sharm el-Sheikh should be seen as part of the regular American aid to Israel. As an occupying power, Israel is obligated to assure the well-being of the population under its control. But Israel is harming it instead, after which the United States (like other countries) rushes to compensate for the damage.

The Clinton and Bush administrations – and Barack Obama appears to be following in their footsteps – erased the phrase “Israeli occupation” from their dictionaries and collaborated with Israel in ignoring its commitments as enshrined in international law. The billions of dollars that Israel receives from the United States for weapons and defense development – which played a significant role in the destruction in the Gaza Strip – are part of Israel’s successful propaganda, which presents the Rafah tunnels and Grad rockets as a strategic threat and part of the Islamic terror offensive against enlightened countries.

The West has blown the Hamas movement out of proportion, exaggerating its military might to the point of mendacity; this allowed for an extended siege and three weeks of Israeli military intractability. In the Palestinian and larger Arab world, this embellishment helps Hamas depict itself as the real patriotic force.

The hundreds of millions of euros that have been donated or pledged to help Gaza, as though it were beset by natural disasters, are overshadowing the trade ties between Europe and Israel. The Western countries concerned about humanitarian aid for the Palestinians also buy from Israel arms and defense knowledge developed under the laboratory conditions of the occupation, that serial creator of humanitarian crises.

And the 1 billion petrodollars? First of all, they were generated from a natural resource that logic dictates should benefit the Arab peoples. Second, they were pledged at a conference that boycotted Gaza (neither Hamas nor business people or social activists from the Strip participated in the donors conference). This is how Saudi Arabia lends its hand to the American and Israeli veto of inter-Palestinian reconciliation.

Every cent paid to the Palestinians – whether for the Ramallah government’s budget or medical treatment of children wounded by Israeli pilots or soldiers – lets Israel know that it can continue its efforts to force a capitulation deal on the Palestinian elite. Only by recognizing that surrender is the goal can one understand that 16 years after Oslo, no Palestinian state was established. When did Shimon Peres, Ariel Sharon and Tzipi Livni begin talking about two states? Only after their bulldozers and military bureaucrats crushed the realistic physical basis of a Palestinian state. And this basis is: June 4, 1967 land (including East Jerusalem), Gaza – an inseparable part of the state – and zero settlements (and that applies to Gilo and Ma’aleh Adumim).

During the 1990s it was still possible to describe donations to the Palestinians as an expression of confidence and hope in Israel’s readiness to free itself of the occupation regime it had created. But not in 2009. Support for Israeli policy – this is the only way to understand the fact that other countries keep pouring in hundreds of millions of dollars meant to put out the fires set by this policy, without extinguishing the source of the blaze.

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Enough. It’s time for a boycott of Israel

January 12, 2009

The best way to end the bloody occupation is to target Israel with the kind of movement that ended apartheid in South Africa

It’s time. Long past time. The best strategy to end the increasingly bloody occupation is for Israel to become the target of the kind of global movement that put an end to apartheid in South Africa. In July 2005 a huge coalition of Palestinian groups laid out plans to do just that. They called on “people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era”. The campaign Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions was born.

Every day that Israel pounds Gaza brings more converts to the BDS cause – even among Israeli Jews. In the midst of the assault roughly 500 Israelis, dozens of them well-known artists and scholars, sent a letter to foreign ambassadors in Israel. It calls for “the adoption of immediate restrictive measures and sanctions” and draws a clear parallel with the anti-apartheid struggle. “The boycott on South Africa was effective, but Israel is handled with kid gloves … This international backing must stop.”

Yet even in the face of these clear calls, many of us still can’t go there. The reasons are complex, emotional and understandable. But they simply aren’t good enough. Economic sanctions are the most effective tool in the non-violent arsenal: surrendering them verges on active complicity. Here are the top four objections to the BDS strategy, followed by counter-arguments.

Punitive measures will alienate rather than persuade Israelis.

The world has tried what used to be called “constructive engagement”. It has failed utterly. Since 2006 Israel has been steadily escalating its criminality: expanding settlements, launching an outrageous war against Lebanon, and imposing collective punishment on Gaza through the brutal blockade. Despite this escalation, Israel has not faced punitive measures – quite the opposite. The weapons and $3bn in annual aid the US sends Israel are only the beginning. Throughout this key period, Israel has enjoyed a dramatic improvement in its diplomatic, cultural and trade relations with a variety of other allies. For instance, in 2007 Israel became the first country outside Latin America to sign a free-trade deal with the Mercosur bloc. In the first nine months of 2008, Israeli exports to Canada went up 45%. A new deal with the EU is set to double Israel’s exports of processed food. And in December European ministers “upgraded” the EU-Israel association agreement, a reward long sought by Jerusalem.

It is in this context that Israeli leaders started their latest war: confident they would face no meaningful costs. It is remarkable that over seven days of wartime trading, the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange’s flagship index actually went up 10.7%. When carrots don’t work, sticks are needed.

Israel is not South Africa.

Of course it isn’t. The relevance of the South African model is that it proves BDS tactics can be effective when weaker measures (protests, petitions, backroom lobbying) fail. And there are deeply distressing echoes of apartheid in the occupied territories: the colour-coded IDs and travel permits, the bulldozed homes and forced displacement, the settler-only roads. Ronnie Kasrils, a prominent South African politician, said the architecture of segregation he saw in the West Bank and Gaza was “infinitely worse than apartheid”. That was in 2007, before Israel began its full-scale war against the open-air prison that is Gaza.

Why single out Israel when the US, Britain and other western countries do the same things in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Boycott is not a dogma; it is a tactic. The reason the strategy should be tried is practical: in a country so small and trade-dependent, it could actually work.

Boycotts sever communication; we need more dialogue, not less.

This one I’ll answer with a personal story. For eight years, my books have been published in Israel by a commercial house called Babel. But when I published The Shock Doctrine, I wanted to respect the boycott. On the advice of BDS activists, including the wonderful writer John Berger, I contacted a small publisher called Andalus. Andalus is an activist press, deeply involved in the anti-occupation movement and the only Israeli publisher devoted exclusively to translating Arabic writing into Hebrew. We drafted a contract that guarantees that all proceeds go to Andalus’s work, and none to me. I am boycotting the Israeli economy but not Israelis.

Our modest publishing plan required dozens of phone calls, emails and instant messages, stretching between Tel Aviv, Ramallah, Paris, Toronto and Gaza City. My point is this: as soon as you start a boycott strategy, dialogue grows dramatically. The argument that boycotts will cut us off from one another is particularly specious given the array of cheap information technologies at our fingertips. We are drowning in ways to rant at each other across national boundaries. No boycott can stop us.

Just about now, many a proud Zionist is gearing up for major point-scoring: don’t I know that many of these very hi-tech toys come from Israeli research parks, world leaders in infotech? True enough, but not all of them. Several days into Israel’s Gaza assault, Richard Ramsey, managing director of a British telecom specialising in voice-over-internet services, sent an email to the Israeli tech firm MobileMax: “As a result of the Israeli government action in the last few days we will no longer be in a position to consider doing business with yourself or any other Israeli company.”

Ramsey says his decision wasn’t political; he just didn’t want to lose customers. “We can’t afford to lose any of our clients,” he explains, “so it was purely commercially defensive.”

It was this kind of cold business calculation that led many companies to pull out of South Africa two decades ago. And it’s precisely the kind of calculation that is our most realistic hope of bringing justice, so long denied, to Palestine.

A version of this column was published in the Nation (thenation.com)

naomiklein.org

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Rashid Khalidi: What You Don’t Know About Gaza

January 11, 2009

By Rashid Khalidi | New York Times,
Published: January 7, 2009

NEARLY everything you’ve been led to believe about Gaza is wrong. Below are a few essential points that seem to be missing from the conversation, much of which has taken place in the press, about Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip.

THE GAZANS Most of the people living in Gaza are not there by choice. The majority of the 1.5 million people crammed into the roughly 140 square miles of the Gaza Strip belong to families that came from towns and villages outside Gaza like Ashkelon and Beersheba. They were driven to Gaza by the Israeli Army in 1948.

THE OCCUPATION The Gazans have lived under Israeli occupation since the Six-Day War in 1967. Israel is still widely considered to be an occupying power, even though it removed its troops and settlers from the strip in 2005. Israel still controls access to the area, imports and exports, and the movement of people in and out. Israel has control over Gaza’s air space and sea coast, and its forces enter the area at will. As the occupying power, Israel has the responsibility under the Fourth Geneva Convention to see to the welfare of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.

THE BLOCKADE Israel’s blockade of the strip, with the support of the United States and the European Union, has grown increasingly stringent since Hamas won the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in January 2006. Fuel, electricity, imports, exports and the movement of people in and out of the Strip have been slowly choked off, leading to life-threatening problems of sanitation, health, water supply and transportation.

The blockade has subjected many to unemployment, penury and malnutrition. This amounts to the collective punishment — with the tacit support of the United States — of a civilian population for exercising its democratic rights.

THE CEASE-FIRE Lifting the blockade, along with a cessation of rocket fire, was one of the key terms of the June cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. This accord led to a reduction in rockets fired from Gaza from hundreds in May and June to a total of less than 20 in the subsequent four months (according to Israeli government figures). The cease-fire broke down when Israeli forces launched major air and ground attacks in early November; six Hamas operatives were reported killed.

WAR CRIMES The targeting of civilians, whether by Hamas or by Israel, is potentially a war crime. Every human life is precious. But the numbers speak for themselves: Nearly 700 Palestinians, most of them civilians, have been killed since the conflict broke out at the end of last year. In contrast, there have been around a dozen Israelis killed, many of them soldiers. Negotiation is a much more effective way to deal with rockets and other forms of violence. This might have been able to happen had Israel fulfilled the terms of the June cease-fire and lifted its blockade of the Gaza Strip.

This war on the people of Gaza isn’t really about rockets. Nor is it about “restoring Israel’s deterrence,” as the Israeli press might have you believe. Far more revealing are the words of Moshe Yaalon, then the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, in 2002: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”

Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Arab studies at Columbia, is the author of the forthcoming “Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East.”

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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Amy Goodman: Media silence doesn’t mean all’s well in Gaza

November 28, 2008

Amy Goodman | The Capital Times, Nov 27, 2008

As President-elect Barack Obama focuses on the meltdown of the U.S. economy, another fire is burning: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

You may not have heard much lately about the disaster in the Gaza Strip. That silence is intentional: The Israeli government has barred international journalists from entering the occupied territory. Last week, executives from the Associated Press, New York Times, Reuters, CNN, BBC and other news organizations sent a letter of protest to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert criticizing his government’s decision to bar journalists from entering Gaza.

Israel has virtually sealed off the Gaza Strip and cut off aid and fuel shipments. A spokesman for Israel’s Defense Ministry said Israel was displeased with international media coverage, which he said inflated Palestinian suffering and did not make clear that Israel’s measures were in response to Palestinian violence.

A cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, the group that won Palestinian elections nearly three years ago and controls Gaza, broke down after an Israeli raid killed six Hamas militants two weeks ago. More Israeli raids have followed, killing approximately 17 Hamas members, and Palestinian militants have fired dozens of rockets into southern Israel, injuring several people.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has criticized Israel over its blockade of the overcrowded Gaza, home to close to 1.5 million Palestinians. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency is warning that Gaza faces a humanitarian “catastrophe” if Israel continues to blockade aid from reaching the territory.

The sharply divided landscape of Israel and the occupied territories is familiar ground for South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for his opposition to apartheid in South Africa. Tutu was in New York last week to receive the Global Citizens Circle award. I sat down with him at the residence of the South African vice consul.

Tutu reflected on the Israeli occupation: “Coming from South Africa … and looking at the checkpoints … when you humiliate a people to the extent that they are being — and, yes, one remembers the kind of experience we had when we were being humiliated — when you do that, you’re not contributing to your own security.”

Tutu said the embargo must be lifted. “The suffering is unacceptable. It doesn’t promote the security of Israel or any other part of that very volatile region,” he said. “There are very, very many in Israel who are opposed to what is happening.”

Tutu points to the outgoing Israeli prime minister. In September, Olmert made a stunning declaration to Yedioth Ahronoth, the largest Israeli newspaper. He said that Israel should withdraw from nearly all territory captured in the 1967 Middle East war in return for peace with the Palestinians and Syria: “I am saying what no previous Israeli leader has ever said: We should withdraw from almost all of the territories, including in East Jerusalem and in the Golan Heights.” Olmert said that traditional Israeli defense strategists had learned nothing from past experiences and that they seemed stuck in the considerations of the 1948 War of Independence. He said: “With them, it is all about tanks and land and controlling territories and controlled territories and this hilltop and that hilltop. All these things are worthless.”

Olmert appears to have come closer to his daughter’s point of view. In 2006, Dana Olmert was among 200 people who gathered outside the home of the Israeli army chief of staff and chanted “murderer” as they protested Israeli killings of Palestinians (Archbishop Tutu was blocked from entering Gaza in his U.N.- backed attempts to investigate those killings). Ehud Olmert recently resigned over corruption allegations, but remains prime minister until a new government is approved by parliament.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al- Maliki criticized Olmert for waiting until now to call for an end to the settlements: “We wish we heard this personal opinion when Olmert was prime minister, not after he resigned. I think it is a very important commitment, but it came too late. We hope this commitment will be fulfilled by the new Israeli government.”

Israel is a top recipient of U.S. military aid. Archbishop Tutu says of the Israeli- Palestinian conflict, “When that is resolved, what we will find (is) that the tensions between the West and … a large part of the Muslim world … evaporates.” He said of Obama, “I pray that this new president will have the capacity to see we’ve got to do something here … for the sake of our children.”

Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 700 stations, including WYOU cable access TV and WORT-FM/89.9 radio here. You can hear her podcast at captimes.com. Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

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Free the Palestinian Journalists!

November 2, 2008

Nov 1st, 2008 by kawther.salam

Unfortunately, the Palestinian journalists who are held in the jails of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and other West Bank cities are more likely to be tortured than the Palestinian journalists who are held in the Israeli military jails. The Palestinian Authority has committed crimes against journalism and the freedom of speech. They held and tortured nine journalists, and have closed two newspapers, “Palestine” and “Al-Risala”. The Hamas in Gaza has also committed crimes against journalism and journalists, they hold three Palestinian journalists from “Al-Hadath Press”, and they have caused lots of troubles for many other journalists. They also took several times illegal steps which hindered the distribution of the newspapers from Ramallah and Jerusalem.

Shame on the Palestinian Authority and shame on Hamas, who are not better than the Israeli occupation in how they deal with Palestinian journalists. I remind both the PA and the ministerial employees of Salam Fayyad in Ramallah and the Hamas Authority in Gaza that the Palestinian journalists who are held illegally in the Israeli occupation jails under administrative arrest are not tortured like the journalists who are held under your criminal power and continue being tortured for political reasons.

I add my voice to the President of International Federation of journalist, general secretary Dr. Aidan White, who issued a statement on October 31, 2008, asking both Palestinian sides to free the imprisoned journalists without conditions.

I also ask the illegal Israeli occupation to free the Palestinian journalists who they hold under administrative arrest since many years. Personally, I remind both the PA and Hamas, that holding journalists is inhuman and illegal, and puts their regimes in one group together with the criminal terrorists of the Israeli occupation. I ask the International journalist organizations to play an active to end this crime against the Palestinian journalists who are held in jails for political reasons and for pursuing their holy journalistic mission honestly. It should be possible to bring these criminal authorities before the International Criminal Court  if they do not free these journalists.

The names of the journalists who were jailed because they were exercising their work as journalists are mentioned after the Press release of the IFJ below.

Press Release of the Secretary General of the International Federation of Journalists, Dr. Aidan White.
October 31, 2008

Aidan White, the General Secretary of the International Federation of Journalists

Palestinian Journalists Held in Power Struggle Must be Freed Says IFJ
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) today called for the immediate release of Palestinian journalists who are being held by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas as part of the political power struggle. The call comes as both sides prepare for new talks to break the political deadlock.

“For months, Palestinian journalists have been used as pawns in the ongoing dispute between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas,” said IFJ General Secretary Aidan White. “Both sides claim journalists are a “security risk” but it is little more than a device for intimidation, media control and political in-fighting.”

Currently there are 11 Palestinian journalists in prisons: eight held by the PA in the West Bank and three held by Hamas in Gaza. Most of them are being held because they worked for media organisations of rival political factions. Security forces on both sides deny this, but not one journalist has been charged or brought to trial.

At least one journalist, Osaid Amarneh from Hebron, was held and then released but only after he agreed to stop working for Hamas media in the West Bank.  He signed a document promising the PA he would stop working for Hamas media organization Al Aqsa TV. Media on both sides are also being targeted. Newspapers from the rival parties are banned on both sides and the offices of Palestine TV in Gaza and Al Aqsa TV in the West Bank are still closed.

Palestinian journalists will stand in solidarity with their colleagues and defend their freedom and right to work freely on November 5, a global day of action “Stand Up for Journalism” in defence of journalists’ rights organised by the IFJ. In the Middle East and North Africa region, journalists will mark the day with events promoting their campaign for press freedom, “Breaking the Chains.”

On November 9 a Palestinian national dialogue will start between Hamas and Fatah in Cairo. The IFJ is renewing calls for both governments to end the campaign against media and to free all journalists as part of the new dialogue.

Lists of some of the journalists who are held illegally in PA, Hamas and Israeli occupation jails follow.

Palestinian Prisoners detained in Hamas jails in Gaza are:

  • Akram Al-Llouh, director of Al-Hadath Press
  • Josef Fayad and Hani Ismael from Al-Hadath Press.
    For some time Hamas prevented the Palestinian newspapers Al-Ayyam and Al-Hayat Al-Jadidah to be distributed in Gaza. Hamas accused the PA security systems of assassinating three journalists.
  • On 15 May 2007, Suleiman Al-Ashe and Mohammad Abdo from Palestine Press and Isam Al-Jojo were killed after the PA security kidnapped them on 12 May 2007.

Some of the Palestinian journalists illegally detained by the PA are:

  • Musab Hosam Al-Din Katloni from Nablus, age 24, jailed on 5 March 2008.
  • Ala’a Al-Titi from the Al-Fawar refugee camp south of Hebron.
  • Asiad Amarneh from Hebron was arrested several times by the PA security and accused of damaging the national security through his journalistic work. After a PA court found him not guilty he was and arrested again by the PA security in May 2008.
  • Mohammad Al-Kik from Hebron was arrested several times by the PA, the last time he was arrested while exercising his journalistic duties a during a demonstration against the closure of the charities in Hebron by the Israeli occupation.
  • Mohammad Al-Halaika, Beni Neim/ Hebron
  • Mohammad Athba and Nimer Hindi, both photographers, were arrested in May 2008 by the PA security.

Palestinian journalists under administrative arrest in the Gulag of the Israeli Occupation:

  • Sami Asi from Nablus
  • Walid Khaled, director of the “Palestine” newspaper from Salfit
  • Tariq Abu Zeed, who was arrested by the PA security
  • Mohammad Al-Halayka
  • Jihad Dawood
  • Nizar Ramadan.

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What Obama missed in the Middle East

July 26, 2008
BY ALI ABUNIMAH (World View)

WHEN I and other Palestinian- Americans first knew Barack Obama in Chicago in the 1990s, he grasped the oppression faced by Palestinians under Israeli occupation. He understood that an honest broker cannot simultaneously be the main cheerleader, financier and arms supplier for one side in a conflict.

He often attended Palestinian-American community events and heard about the Palestinian experience from perspectives stifled in mainstream discussion.

In recent months, Obama has sought to allay persistent concerns from pro-Israel groups by recasting himself as a stalwart backer of Israel and tacking ever closer to positions espoused by the powerful, hard-line pro-Israel lobby Aipac. He distanced himself from mainstream advisers because pro-Israel groups objected to their calls for even-handedness.

Like his Republican rival, senator John McCain, Obama gave staunch backing to Israel’s 2006 bombing of Lebanon, which killed over 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and the blockade and bombardment of the Gaza Strip, calling them “self defence”.

Every aspect of Obama’s visit to Palestine-Israel this week has seemed designed to further appease pro-Israel groups. Typically for an American aspirant to high office, he visited the Israeli Holocaust memorial and the Western Wall. He met the full spectrum of Israeli Jewish (though not Israeli Arab) political leaders. He travelled to the Israeli Jewish town of Sderot, which until last month’s ceasefire, frequently experienced rockets from the Gaza Strip. At every step, Obama warmly professed his support for Israel and condemned Palestinian violence. Other than a cursory 45-minute visit to occupied Ramallah to meet with Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, Palestinians got little. According to an Abbas aide, Obama provided assurances that he would be “a constructive partner in the peace process.” Some observers took comfort in his promise that he would get engaged “starting from the minute I’m sworn into office”. Obama remained silent on the issue of Jerusalem, after boldly promising the “undivided” city to Israel as its capital in a speech to Aipac last month, and then appearing to backtrack amid a wave of outrage across the Arab world.

But Obama missed the opportunity to visit Palestinian refugee camps, schools and even shopping malls to witness first-hand the devastation caused by the Israeli army and settlers, or to see how Palestinians cope under what many call “apartheid”. This year alone, almost 500 Palestinians, including over 70 children, have been killed by the Israeli army – exceeding the total for 2007 and dwarfing the two-dozen Israelis killed in conflict-related violence.

Obama said nothing about Israel’s relentless expansion of colonies on occupied land. Nor did he follow the courageous lead of former President Jimmy Carter and meet with the democratically elected Hamas leaders, even though Israel negotiated a ceasefire with them. That such steps are inconceivable shows how off-balance is the US debate on Palestine.

Many people I talk to are resigned to the conventional wisdom that aspiring national politicians cannot afford to be seen as sympathetic to the concerns of Palestinians, Arabs or Muslims. They still hope that, if elected, Obama would display an even-handedness absent in the campaign.

Without entirely foreclosing the possibility of change in US policy, the reality is that the political pressures evident in a campaign do not magically disappear once the campaign is over. Nor is all change necessarily for the better.

One risk is that a President Obama or President McCain would just bring back the Clinton-era approach where the United States effectively acted as “Israel’s lawyer”, as Aaron David Miller, a 25-year veteran of the US state department’s Middle East peace efforts, memorably put it. This led to a doubling of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, an upsurge in violence and the failed 2000 Camp David summit where Clinton tried to pressure Arafat into accepting a bantustan. A depressing feature of Obama’s visit was the prominent advisory role for Dennis Ross, the official in charge of the peace process under Clinton, and the founder of an Aipac-sponsored pro-Israel think-tank.

Whoever is elected will face a rapidly changing situation in Palestine-Israel. A number of shifts are taking place simultaneously. First, the consensus supporting the two-state solution is disintegrating as Israeli colonies have rendered it unachievable. Second, the traditional Palestinian national leadership is being eclipsed by new movements including Hamas. And, as western and Arab governments become more craven in the face of Israeli human rights violations, a Palestinian-led campaign modelled on the anti-apartheid strategy of boycott, divestment and sanctions is building global civil society support. Finally, the demographic shift in Palestine-Israel toward an absolute Palestinian majority in all of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip will be complete in the next three to five years.

Making peace in this new reality will take leaders ready to listen and talk to all sides in the conflict and to consider alternatives to the moribund two-state solution, such as power-sharing, confederation or a single democratic state. It will require, above all, the courage, imagination and political will to challenge the status quo of Israeli domination and Palestinian dispossession that has led to ever more violence with each passing year.

Ali Abunimah is a Palestinian activist

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‘This is like apartheid’: ANC veterans visit West Bank

July 11, 2008

By Donald Macintyre in Hebron | The Independent, Friday, 11 July 2008

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Veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle said last night that the segregation endured by Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied territories was in some respects worse than that imposed on the black majority under white rule in South Africa.

Members of a 23-strong human-rights team of prominent South Africans cited the impact of the Israeli military’s separation barrier, checkpoints, the permit system for Palestinian travel, and the extent to which Palestinians are barred from using roads in the West Bank.

After a five-day visit to Israel and the Occupied Territories, some delegates expressed shock and dismay at conditions in the Israeli-controlled heart of Hebron. Uniquely among West Bank cities, 800 settlers now live there and segregation has seen the closure of nearly 3,000 Palestinian businesses and housing units. Palestinian cars (and in some sections pedestrians) are prohibited from using the once busy streets.

“Even with the system of permits, even with the limits of movement to South Africa, we never had as much restriction on movement as I see for the people here,” said an ANC parliamentarian, Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge of the West Bank. “There are areas in which people would live their whole lifetime without visiting because it’s impossible.”

Continued . . .

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