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Posted on Saturday, 31 December, 2005 By yours truly | TOOLS: Talk or Share
This came yesterday from ORSCP operative Ron:
oday, I had the chance to communicate with two of our five delegation members, Trent and Serena. I just got off the phone with Serena and this morning I chatted with Trent on MSN messenger. From what I have gathered, the climate has shifted to a less stable state. There is a “no-go” zone in northern Gaza adjacent to the Erez checkpoint where residents have been warned by dropped flyers that anyone found walking there will risk being shot. Helicopters have been shooting missiles there as well as ground artillary and snipers.
In fact, just a few hours ago, PA police stormed Rafah crossing (in the south) forcing the EU monitors there to flee.
Both Serena and Trent have indicated to me that the security situation there has escalated to a degree and that they’re receiving advice to be extra-vigilant. Rumors and gossip pervade the “street talk” there and often misinformation is passed around so its hard to believe what you hear from people on the street. The advice I’m referring to is from trusted friends there.
Wedenesday, there was a kidnapping near Rafah crossing and it was days before hearing anything- now the BBC reports unconfirmed reports of their release this Friday. This is a source of growing concern as none of the factions claimed responsibility. These folks are British citizens one of which was a young female human rights worker who had been in Gaza a year.
Various Palestinians close to different delegates have advised that the kidnapping is a symptom of growing chaos that is likely partly tied to the upcomming municipal elections scheduled for January 25th. The last two weeks has seen the storming of several municipal offices and Fateh party offices across Palestine by armed gunmen. In general, the situation there is becoming increasingly dangerous. (see the above imemc web site for good immediate information- our delegates go there for their news)
A few weeks ago, while I was on the phone with Trent, a gun battle erupted outside the window which lasted the better part of five minutes. Last night, he relayed that a similar, but more intense gun battle lasted a half hour outside their window.
In general, our delegates have been advised against walking anywhere (even one block to the internet cafe) alone as this could present the risk of abduction.
As of now, they are carrying on with their schedules, modifying them as needed and requesting transportation which is being readily provided by Palestinians who are genuinely concerned and willing to help.
As many of you know, Craig and Cindy are in the West Bank now at a conference and had tentatively planned and may enter Gaza next week to see friends and meet with delegates etc. The upside of that would mean seven folks from here in Rafah, the downside would be that the risk associated could be above normal.
Frankly, this is most likely continued fallout following the redeployment of IDF troops and settlers. The “withdrawl” created somewhat of a power vacuum and factional fighting is heating up. Kidnappings happen to make the ruling officials look bad or tomake some other sort of “power play.”
In a seperate conversation today, I told Donna Baranski-Walker from the Rebuilding Alliance a bit about the situation, and she has contacted some of her contacts to get a bead on the security climate there as its very difficult for us to know from a distance what the situation on the ground there is like. We’re monitoring an alert system managed by UNRWA. They have people in Gaza now as well.
I asked Serena to continue their dialogue for determining how long and whether to stay in Gaza under escalating conditions, so I hope that the five of them will discuss this and share what they feel comfortable sharing with our group here in Olympia. They’ve all been working hard on lots of wonderful projects which are poised to take shape this month, and it would seem a shame to just drop things and leave, but I’m interested in generating thoughtful insights from group members for our beloved delegates and the Corries.
Thanks,
Ron
Posted on Friday, 30 December, 2005 By yours truly | TOOLS: Talk or Share
This following report ocmes from Siouxzie, an Olympia-Rafah Sister City delegate in Rafah:
Since being in Rafah, I have attended two weddings and have been invited to many more. Weddings are pretty much an everyday occurrence here, but this is winter and it is the slow season. I?m told that in summer, there are usually several weddings a day. I wish I could show you pictures from these spectacular events, but photos are only allowed for the families. Like most things in Gaza, weddings are gender segregated. The only man allowed inside the wedding hall with the women is the groom. Men sit outside, drinking tea or coffee and chatting. All of the fun happens inside the wedding hall, where the women dance to loud Arabic pop music with the occasional American ballad for the newly weds.
Weddings are basically open to the public (for women). The wedding hall looks more like a concert hall than what we associate with wedding halls in the U.S. The bride and groom sit in big fancy chairs like a king and queen on a stage. Only women from the bride and groom?s family can dance on the stage and actually participate. The rest of the ladies sit in seats in front of the stage, watching women in the families shake it like there?s no tomorrow.
The groom wears a nice suit, but no tuxes here. Brides wear fancy, sexy white wedding dresses. She, like weddings in the U.S., is the queen of the event. Her hair is elaborately styled and her makeup is so extravagant that she looks like an Arab Barbie doll. The girls from the bride and groom?s side of the family wear fancy dresses that are close to European club wear. Legs, arms, and more are showing. The mothers, however, usually wear more traditional clothes along with the hijab (hair covering).
The dancing is by far the most exciting. These women can dance in a way that puts every American girl to shame. I?m still trying to figure out how they shake their hips and butts the ways they do, even after several lessons from friends. When one of my friends asked me what foreigners would think about the Arabic style of dancing, I assured them that most American men would be quite interested and these women would have no problems making friends at a nightclub. These women can move it all in such a way that sexy can?t even come close to describing their movements.
One doesn?t pick these moves up simply by watching the tube. The girls get together with friends, lock their bedroom door, close the blinds, and pump the music. The men outside the bedroom door laugh at what they see as their silly sisters, but on their wedding day they will agree that all the hard work has paid off. Even the old mothers, despite their age, still got moves better that I could ever dream of. The bride and groom stand up to dance during particular songs. They are the center of attention, so usually the other women stand off to the side. Then there are the special slow songs for the intimate moments. During the slow songs, the bride and groom dance in a style similar to what I recall from middle school days.
The whole bash usually concludes by prayer time. What happens next for the bride and groom is anybody?s guess. Let?s just say if it?s a good night there is a baby in nine months. Mabruk!! (Congratulations)
Posted on Friday, 30 December, 2005 By yours truly | TOOLS: Talk or Share
From ISM Media Group:
Palestinian and Israeli Parliament members and Rachel Corries Parents to join the protest
BIL’IN — Starting at 8 AM on Dec. 30, Palestinian villagers in Bil’in, accompanied by Israeli and international activists, are working their agricultural lands isolated behind Israel’s annexation wall. At 12 PM, prayers will be held at the “Centre for Joint Struggle,” the legal “outpost” that Palestinians, assisted by Israeli and international activists. The outpost is built in the illicit Jewish settlement-outpost Matitayu East, currently being constructed in violation of Israel’s own laws, in addition to international law and convention, on land belonging to Bil’in. Palestinian political figures Kaddoura Fares, Mustafa Barghouti, and Kais Abu Leila as well as Cindy and Craig Corry, parents of the American peace activist murdered by an Israeli solider, plan to attend.
Approximately half of Bil’in’s lands are being isolated from the village by the Wall. The village will lose at least 1,950 dunams if the Wall is not removed. As in other villages, the Israeli government argues that the route of the wall in Bil’in was determined purely for security reasons. However, a brief visit to the village shows this to be false.
Meanwhile, in the West Bank village of Aboud…
Palestinian-Israeli members of the Knesset and religious figures will attend a protest march at the village of Aboud at 12 PM on Dec. 30. Palestinian, Israeli and international activists will march to the construction site of the Separation Wall, which when finished will isolate approximately 4,400 dunums of the village’s lands for the purpose of annexing them to the Jewish settlements of Ofarim and Bet Arye, built in violation of international law and convention. The construction is taking place 6 km east of the Green Line, within occupied Palestinian territory.
Aboud is nestled among terraced olive groves in the West Bank, west of the city of Ramallah. The village has 2,200 residents; 900 of them are Christian. Within the village are seven ancient churches and the oldest dates back to the third century. According to Christian belief, Jesus passed through the village on the Roman road from Galilee to Jerusalem.
Posted on Friday, 30 December, 2005 By yours truly | TOOLS: Talk or Share
The Seattle Times’ Bruce Ramsey listens to some former Israeli soliders critique the occupation of Palestine and can’t help but see the similiarities with the United State’s current colonial adventure in Iraq.
The travails of American occupiers of Arab Iraq may not be so different from those of the Israeli occupiers of Arab Palestine. That is what I thought while hearing the stories of Avichay Sharon and Noam Chayut.
Sharon, 24, and Chayut, 26, had been in the Israeli army. They were here recently to criticize what their army does, touring under the auspices of a group called Breaking the Silence. Of course they “had an agenda.” Keep that in mind — but hear their story.
“It is very difficult to do this,” said Sharon. “We love our country. We grew up in patriotic Zionist homes, thinking we would serve in the most moral army in the world.” But the civilian notion of morality is difficult to apply to the job of a military occupier.
Read the rest at The Seattle Times for more information on “why they hate us.”
Linda B. in Seattle writes:
Mr. Ramsey has taken the courageous step of using the appropriate name for the U.S. presence in Iraq and the Israeli presence on Palestinian land: “occupation.” Through tortuous legalistic reasoning and simple distortion of the English language the truth is usually concealed, leaving such euphemisms as “disputed territory” or “administered lands” to hide the reality of an illegal occupation. Once the word is gone, the truth disappears as well.
Posted on Friday, 30 December, 2005 By yours truly | TOOLS: Talk or Share
Something startling showed up in ABC’s coverage: a media outlet actually recognized international law. Note the paragraph in red.
Israel’s Sonic Booms Terrifying Gaza Children
By WILF DINNICK
GAZA, Dec. 29, 2005 — It’s Israel’s latest weapon: Without notice, an Israeli jet fighter flies low over the densely populated Gaza strip, breaking the sound barrier.
The massive sonic boom often breaks windows, shakes entire apartment buildings and terrifies the people of Gaza.
Just about every night for the last five months, 10-year-old Basma Abid Adiam has had trouble sleeping.
Her father says during the day she often seems distant. Basma’s problems started when the Israeli air force began breaking the sound barrier almost nightly over her home.
On the fourth floor of her family’s apartment building, surrounded by her brothers and sisters, Basma said shyly, “We are afraid when we hear the boom. I wet my bed. During the day when we go to school, we are afraid and try to hide.”
Responding to Rocket Attacks Against Israelis
Since Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip last September, a small group of Palestinian militants have been using the Northern Gaza area to launch homemade rockets at Israel.
The Palestinian authority has either been unable or unwilling to stop the attacks. The Israel army says it has to take action.
The almost nightly sonic booms are the Israeli air force’s attempt to turn the Palestinian population against the militants in Gaza and help stop the attacks.
Targeting innocent civilians violates the Geneva Conventions. Both Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups have asked Israeli High Court to stop the air force from this practice.
Dr. Eyad Sarraj, a psychiatrist in Gaza, says it is the children who are harmed the most.
“For children under the age of 6, large noise means danger, a danger to life,” he said. “This is definitely a form of collective punishment, which under international law is prohibited and considered a war crime.”
But Rannan Gissim, an adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, defends the tactic. “The inconvenience that it causes the Palestinian population cannot be measured against the question of life or death for Israelis on the other side.”
Posted on Thursday, 29 December, 2005 By yours truly | TOOLS: Talk or Share
Letter to President George W. Bush
Office of the President
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear President Bush,
I am writing to you with respect to multiple Israeli announcements of its plans to continue expanding settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT). This directly contravenes international law and Israeli commitments under the Road Map.
You recently reiterated Israel’s obligations to stop expanding settlements when you said, on October 20, 2005, following your meeting with Palestinian President Abbas: “Israel should not undertake any activity that contravenes its road map obligations, or prejudices the final status negotiations with regard to Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem. This means that Israel must remove unauthorized outposts and stop settlement expansion.” Israel has acted contrary to these obligations, escalating the building of settlements in 2005. According to the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, in the first half of 2005, there was a 28% increase in settlement housing starts compared to the same period in 2004. Israel now proposes to further expand West Bank settlements in the coming year.
We urge you to use U.S. diplomatic and financial influence to stop this trend in 2006.
On December 26, the Ministry of Housing released tenders for the construction of 228 housing units in the West Bank settlements of Beitar Ilit and Efrat; on December 19, , the Ministry of Housing published tenders for constructing 137 new housing units in the West Bank settlements of Ariel and Karnei Shomron; and on December 14, Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz’s approved the construction of approximately 300 new homes in the West Bank settlements of Maale Adumim, Bracha and Nokdim. Maale Adumim is one of the largest and fastest growing settlements in the West Bank, with some 30,000 inhabitants. The settlement is located east of Jerusalem and adjacent to the much-publicized area of “E-1,” the last remaining site for potential Palestinian development around settlement-encircled East Jerusalem. The Israeli government also has made clear that, despite U.S. opposition, it plans to build 3,500 housing units in E-1 and to include Ma’ale Adumim and E-1 on the western side (the “Israeli side”) of the metal and concrete barrier that Israel is building, mostly inside the OPT (hereinafter, the “wall”). Such actions would effectively sever the West Bank in two by cutting the already limited Palestinian north-south access routes through the West Bank. In addition, a wall encircling E-1 and Ma’ale Adumim would make access to East Jerusalem, the center of Palestinian economic and religious life, virtually impossible from the rest of the West Bank, except through limited checkpoint crossings in the wall, most of which Israel has not yet funded or built.
Israel’s continuing settlement activity is a violation of international humanitarian law (IHL), United Nations Security Council resolutions, and Israel’s own commitments under the U.S.-sponsored Road Map of April 2003. The Israeli government’s policy of encouraging, financing, establishing, and expanding Jewish-only settlements in the OPT violates two main principles of IHL: the prohibition on the transfer of civilians from an occupying power’s territory to the occupied territory, and the prohibition of creating permanent changes in the occupied territory that are not for the benefit of the occupied population. In particular, Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that “[t]he Occupying Power shall not…transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” Under the road map, Israel agreed to freeze all settlement activity, including “natural growth,” and to dismantle all settlement outposts created since March 2001.
No one but Israel disputes the fact that its settlement policy violates IHL. Yet the international community, including the United States, has failed to hold Israel accountable to its obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention to, at the very least, immediately cease current Israeli settlement activity. The wrongfulness of the settlement expansion is compounded by evidence stemming from the construction of the wall within the OPT that suggests an Israeli intention eventually to annex the territory in question. Israel claims that the wall is being built for security reasons, but the deep intrusion of the wall into West Bank territory, and the capture of major settlements on the “Israeli side” of the wall, suggest otherwise. The International Court of Justice, in a view shared by many international legal commentators and every major human rights organization in the world, concluded in its June 2004 advisory opinion that Israel’s construction of the wall within the boundaries of the OPT contravenes IHL and is tantamount to an illegal annexation of the settlements on the Israeli side of the wall.
Peace Now has published a list of seven settlements where large-scale construction (hundreds of units) is occurring. All but one of them are located on the Israeli side of the wall. In a similar list of seventeen settlements where medium-scale construction (tens of units) is occurring, all but three are on the Israeli side of the wall. In addition, two Israeli human rights organizations, B’Tselem and Bimkom, recently published a report that documents the fact that 55 settlements, including 12 in East Jerusalem, housing approximately 75% of all settlers, would fall on the Israeli side of the wall. The report shows that Israeli officials established the wall’s route hundreds to thousands of meters east of the existing boundaries of these settlements to allow for maximum future expansion. The organizations conclude that “contrary to the picture portrayed by the state, the settlement-expansion plans played a substantial role in the planning of the Barrier’s route.”
The Israeli government has recently sought to justify its construction of the wall inside Palestinian territory, and beyond the Green Line, as based on its sovereign duty to protect Israeli citizens, notwithstanding their presence in settlements. But Israel can well protect these citizens by dismantling the settlements and bringing its settler citizens back within the legitimate borders of its state. Such a measure would satisfy Israel’s duty to protect its citizens without undermining its duty to respect and uphold international law and would end the severe humanitarian and economic harm inflicted on the Palestinian population by virtue of the wall’s construction.
Even the Israeli government has now stated that the wall is not being built just for security purposes but also to establish its territorial claims on OPT land. On December 1, news reports quoted Tzipi Livni, the Israeli Minister of Justice, as saying that the future borders of Israel will roughly follow the route of the wall. This statement by an Israeli public official was the first to explicitly link the route of the wall with Israel’s political, not security, aims.
We urge you to take immediate action to end U.S. support of Israel’s unlawful policies. According to an investigative report by the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, based on government ministry budgets, Israel spends about NIS 2.5 billion a year ($550 million) for the non-military aspects of settlement maintenance and expansion. Furthermore, the Knesset has projected that Israel will spend about $3.4 billion in total on construction of the wall, 80% of which is inside the occupied West Bank. (Israel has not made public a breakdown of the portions of the costs attributable to construction of the wall inside the West Bank, on the Green Line, or inside Israel). Recent experience with the Rafah border-crossing deal confirms that when the United States is determined to change problematic Israeli conduct, Israel will comply. To avoid U.S. financial complicity in policies that the U.S. Government opposes and that international law prohibits, we therefore call on you and other key government officials, first, to state in unequivocal terms that the United States will not tolerate any further settlement expansion and, second, to announce that the administration will deduct from U.S. financial aid to Israel – about $2.58 billion in fiscal year 2005 — an amount equal to Israel’s expenditures on the settlements and on the construction and maintenance of such portion of the wall that is inside the West Bank.
Yours sincerely,
Sarah Leah Whitson
Executive Director, Middle East North Africa Division
Human Rights Watch
Note:
The above letter was addressed
to the man seen (at center)
in this photograph.
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If any of us had our lives and welfare completely strangled, lived with children in a shrinking place where we knew, because of previous experience, that soldiers and tanks and bulldozers could come for us at any moment and destroy all the greenhouses that we had been cultivating for however long, and did this while some of us were beaten and held captive with 149 other people for several hours – do you think we might try to use somewhat violent means to protect whatever fragments remained?
