GULF
EGYPT
TURKEY
JAPAN
INDIA
ITALY
USA
MEXICO
POLAND
GREAT BRITAIN
AUSTRALIA
GUATEMALA
FRANCE
.... AND GAZA!
Let it Snow
4 days ago
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
DWELLING IN ABUNDANCE - AND STRUGGLING FOR THE BARE MINIMUM!
GULFEGYPT TURKEY JAPAN INDIA ITALY USA MEXICO POLAND GREAT BRITAIN AUSTRALIA GUATEMALA FRANCE.... AND GAZA!
Monday, February 08, 2010
Israel bars Palestinian expert on settlements from travel abroad
Interior Minister Eli Yishai has banned Palestinian geographer Khalil Tufakji, a resident of Jerusalem, from traveling abroad for six months, citing unspecified security concerns.
The ban was issued on the recommendation of the Shin Bet security service and is based on 1948 Emergency regulations.
"Having been convinced that there is real concern that the exit of Mr. Khalil Tufakji from Israel may harm the security of the state, I order that he be banned from exiting the country until 2 August, 2010," the order reads.
Tufakji, 60, was summoned last week to a meeting at Jerusalem police headquarters in the Russian Compound. There, a man in civilian clothes calling himself Shadi, gave him the order.
The Shin Bet said that the man was a policeman.
Tufakji has for years been researching Israel's settlement policy and the ways by which Palestinian land is taken over, as well as planning policy which discriminates against Palestinians.
He heads the cartography department of the Arab Studies Society, established in 1980 to document the social, political and cultural history of the Palestinians.
Since 1992 Tufakji has been part of Palestinian negotiating team on property borders, land and settlements. In addition to his research, he lectures in Israel and abroad and is often interviewed by journalists.
Tufakji says that he has no scheduled lectures abroad in the near future.
Palestinian activists say that the order against him is part of a policy of oppression by the Israeli authorities, targeting popular and public opposition to the occupation.
The Shin Bet said in response that "as far as we know the minister issued the order after reviewing relevant information and a recommendation by the Shin Bet that there is a significant security threat by the exit of the aforementioned person abroad."
~
SOURCE
~
The ban was issued on the recommendation of the Shin Bet security service and is based on 1948 Emergency regulations.
"Having been convinced that there is real concern that the exit of Mr. Khalil Tufakji from Israel may harm the security of the state, I order that he be banned from exiting the country until 2 August, 2010," the order reads.
Tufakji, 60, was summoned last week to a meeting at Jerusalem police headquarters in the Russian Compound. There, a man in civilian clothes calling himself Shadi, gave him the order.
The Shin Bet said that the man was a policeman.
Tufakji has for years been researching Israel's settlement policy and the ways by which Palestinian land is taken over, as well as planning policy which discriminates against Palestinians.
He heads the cartography department of the Arab Studies Society, established in 1980 to document the social, political and cultural history of the Palestinians.
Since 1992 Tufakji has been part of Palestinian negotiating team on property borders, land and settlements. In addition to his research, he lectures in Israel and abroad and is often interviewed by journalists.
Tufakji says that he has no scheduled lectures abroad in the near future.
Palestinian activists say that the order against him is part of a policy of oppression by the Israeli authorities, targeting popular and public opposition to the occupation.
The Shin Bet said in response that "as far as we know the minister issued the order after reviewing relevant information and a recommendation by the Shin Bet that there is a significant security threat by the exit of the aforementioned person abroad."
~
SOURCE
~
Sunday, February 07, 2010
15 Things You Never Noticed on a Dollar
Pull a buck from your wallet now and prepare to be amazed.We’re serious. Did you know a dollar bill has hidden pictures, flecks of color, and mysterious symbols? And that’s just the beginning. What do all those seemingly random letters and Latin phrases mean, anyway?
The Basics: How much is a dollar worth?
The question seems simple, but the answer is quite complex. Since 1973, the dollar bill has had no value tied to it. You cannot trade in a dollar to the government for gold, silver, or any other commodity. The value of the nation's currency is related to the decree by the government that a dollar is legal tender for all debts. This means if someone attempts to pay a debt using dollars, the person being paid must accept the money or the law no longer recognizes the debt. This is important enough that the phrase is printed on every bill the government creates.
It is also vital for the nation's citizens to agree that the bills have value. If the members of a society decided that they did not believe in the currency, it would quickly be worth no more than the paper it is printed on. For the record, each bill costs the government 6.4 cents to print.
What kind of paper are the bills made from?
Bills are made from a blend of linen and cotton, which is why they don't fall apart in the wash the way paper does. If you look closely, you can see red and blue silk fibers woven throughout the bill. The threads are thought to be an anti-counterfeit measure.
Hint: Look in the white spaces on the face of the bill for little bits of the colored thread. They look like lint but you can't scratch them off!
On the face of a dollar, what does the letter inside the circular seal mean?
The black seal with the big letter in the middle signifies the Federal Reserve bank that placed the order for the bill. A = Boston, B = New York City, C = Philadelphia, D = Cleveland, E = Richmond, Va., F = Atlanta, G = Chicago, H = St. Louis, I = Minneapolis, J = Kansas City, K = Dallas, and L = San Francisco.The letter also corresponds to the black number that is repeated four times on the face of the bill. For example, if you have a bill from Dallas with the letter K, then the number on the bill will be 11 because K is the eleventh letter in the alphabet.
Can you find any tiny owls or spiders hidden on the front of the bill?
Many people believe they can see a tiny owl (some say it is a spider) next to the large "1" on the upper right of the bill. If you look at the shield shape that surrounds that "1," the tiny owl rests on the top left corner.More than likely, the markings are nothing, just a point where the webbed design of the border varies. That won't stop some people from associating the peculiar detail with Masonic symbols, or with more practical things, like anti-counterfeit measures.
The Great Seal of the United States
The green back of the dollar bill features the two sides of The Great Seal of the United States. The founding fathers approved its design in 1782. Ben Franklin, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson all had a hand in devising it. The seal provides great insight into the values of the newborn nation and, like the Constitution, provides a direct link to its formative days.
What does Annuit Coeptis mean?
The first of three Latin phrases on the back of the bill is translated as "God has favored our undertakings." Many founders, Franklin and George Washington among them, believed that God's will was behind the successful creation of the United States.
Beneath the pyramid, what does Novus Ordo Seclorum mean?
These Latin words mean "New order of the ages." Charles Thomson, a statesman involved in the design of The Great Seal of the United States, proposed the phrase to signify the beginning of what he called "the new American Era," which he said began in 1776 with the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Why is MDCCLXXVI on the bottom of the pyramid?The letters are Roman numerals for 1776. M is 1,000, D is 500, CC is 200, L is 50, XX is 20, VI is 6. Add the numerals on the pyramid together and you get the year 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was signed, and when the Novus Ordo Seclorum began.
Why is there an unfinished pyramid with a glowing eye?
Thomson explained the sturdy pyramid as a symbol of "strength and duration". He did not explain its unfinished state, but many believe it signified that our nation remained unfinished. The pyramid also stops at 13 steps, the number of the original colonies.
The "Eye of Providence" is a visual representation of the words Annuit Coeptis, and reinforces the founders' notion that God looked upon the endeavor of the new nation with favor. Many theorists mistakenly believe the symbolism of the eye is related to the Freemasons (a secret society whose members believed they were under the careful scrutiny of God), but the symbolism of the glowing eye is far older than any Freemason thinking. Scholars have traced versions of the symbol as far back as the ancient Egyptians.
What does E Pluribus Unum mean?
"Out of many, one." The 13 disparate colonies came together to form one nation.
Why a bald eagle? The founders wanted an animal native to America to be the new nation's symbol. In its talons the eagle holds arrows and olive branches, signifying war and peace.
Fun activities you and the kids can do with a dollar bill
Track your bills. Go to the website Where's George? and enter the serial number of the bill. If the bill has been in circulation long enough, you might be able to see where your bill has been as it travels from wallets to registers and back. After you enter your bills, check back later to see where they have gone.
Play dollar-bill poker. Each of you takes a dollar bill and examines the green serial numbers as if they were a hand of playing cards. Make your best poker hand and see who wins.
SOURCE
~
Friday, February 05, 2010
BU student recounts forced deportation to Carnegie Endowment in DC
Bethlehem - Ma'an - Bethlehem University student Berlanty Azzam, forcibly removed from the West Bank in October, was hosted via video-link in Washington on Wednesday by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she spoke about the right to education in Palestine.The event, titled "The Right of Palestinians to Study and Travel: A Discussion" had Berlanty recount her abrupt seizure, where she was blindfolded and handcuffed on the road from Ramallah to Bethlehem, held four hours then ejected into Gaza, where her family lives. Israeli military personnel said she was living illegally in the West Bank and 'deported' her to Gaza.
Berlanty's story, as one of the narratives of dozens of BU students from Gaza, was put in context of the larger Israeli ban on Gaza residents seeking education at Palestinian universities in the West Bank by Vice President for Development at BU Brother Jack Curran. More than 12 students from Gaza were accepted to BU last year, but were denied permission to travel to the West Bank by Israeli officials, and many more, who were able to leave years ago, are afraid they will face the same fate as Berlanty.
Tania Hary, Director of International Relations for GISHA, the Israeli rights association who oversaw the legal case challenging the forcible removal, spoke on the particulars of Berlanty's case, and its ramifications on the larger right to movement and education for Palestinians.
Organizers said they had hoped Berlanty would be able to travel to the United States to speak about the ordeal, but noted she was denied permission by Israeli forces to leave Gaza.
Groups in DC that participated in the discussion were, Project Engage, Americans for Peace Now, the Foundation for Middle East Peace, and Churches for Middle East Peace.
~
SOURCE
~
Official: Settlers take over 500 dunums of Palestinian village
Nablus - Ma'an - Israeli settlers illegally appropriated 500 dunums of land from Mount Hillah Al-Wusta, in the Palestinian village of Jalud, south of Nablus on Thursday morning.Ghassan Doughlas, official responsible for settlement activity in the northern West Bank, said the settlers took over the land and parked four caravans on the area, he told Ma'an in an interview.
The area is located near the Addy Add settlement, established several years ago, he said.
Abdullah Al-Hajj Mohammad, head of the Jalud village council, said the mount that was taken over was a vital part of the village. Settlers, he said, have seized control of over 16,000 dunums of the villages 20,000 dunums, establishing the Ady Add, Shilo and the Shavot Rahil settlements.
The Jalud village is home to 500 residents.
~
SOURCE
~
Gaza school children struggling to learn
GAZA - IRIN - Nearly half a million children in Gaza returned to overcrowded and dilapidated schools on 1 February, many attending in a shift system, with missing textbooks, stationery or uniforms."I don't have a school uniform because my Dad doesn't have a job and said he doesn't have enough money to buy me one," said Mohammed al-Khouli, nine, at the government-run al-Mu'tasem primary school in Gaza City. "I have to borrow pens and pencils from other kids in my class because I don't have any."
Israel's 23-day military offensive on Gaza which ended on 18 January 2009 had "devastating consequences for the education system", according to a report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Some 440,000 students attend 640 schools in Gaza; 383 are government schools, 221 are run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) and 36 are private schools, according to the ministry of education and UNRWA.
The OCHA report said at least 280 schools were damaged in the conflict, including 18 that were completely destroyed.
No rebuilding
The education ministry said none have been rebuilt or repaired because of the Israeli ban on the entry into Gaza of construction materials, which Israel says could be used for military purposes.
The ministry reckons it needs some 25,000 tons of iron bars and 40,000 tons of cement to build 105 new schools to cater for the annual rise in the number of schoolchildren.
"The war had and continues to have a severely negative impact on the entire education system," Yousef Ibrahim, deputy education minister in Gaza, told IRIN, adding that about 15,000 children from damaged schools had been transferred to other schools for second shifts, thus "significantly shortening class time."
Ibrahim said many damaged schools in use lacked functioning toilets, water and electricity; classrooms were overcrowded and there were shortages of basic items such as desks, doors, chairs and ink. He said half all students in government schools lacked at least one textbook for coursework this term.
UNRWA began distributing textbooks to all its students on 4 February, according to Khalil al-Halabi, UNRWA's education chief in Gaza. But he said rising unemployment and poverty were leading to more hungry students in classrooms.
According to the education ministry, 164 students and 12 teachers in its schools were killed in the conflict. UNRWA said 86 children and three teachers were killed in its schools.
"Schoolchildren, thousands of whom lost family members and/or their homes, are still suffering from trauma and anxiety and are in need of psycho-social support and recreational play activities," said the OCHA report.
Khalid Salim, 43, a science teacher at Abu Ja'far al-Mansour preparatory school in north Gaza said it was a struggle to teach children.
"Most of them don't understand the lessons; they don't concentrate at all... They forget everything explained in the class. When I give them exams, 80 percent fail. Before the war, just 3 percent failed," he said. "When they hear Israeli jet planes, the children scream and cry loudly out of fear."
This item comes to you via IRIN, the humanitarian news and analysis service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The views expressed are the author's alone.
SOURCE
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Fear of peace will be the death of Israel
By Bradley Burston
SHEIKH JARRAH, Jerusalem - As the grandson of anarchists, I've always had a soft spot in my heart for fanatics. Expressions of extremism, and passionately reasoned, exquisitely twisted world views make me feel, how shall I put this, at home.
So it was with a certain relish that I approached the cover story of a recent issue of Commentary, "The Deadly Price of Pursuing Peace," written as it was by a talented colleague and friend, Evelyn Gordon.
The thrust of the piece, which Commentary Editor John Podhoretz understandably calls "groundbreaking," is that Israel's international standing has plummeted to an unprecedented low - and the number of Palestinians killed by Israel has concurrently soared - specifically because of Israel's having done much too much for peace.
"The answer is unpleasant to contemplate, but the mounting evidence makes it inescapable," she writes. "It was Israel's very willingness to make concessions for the sake of peace that has produced its current near-pariah status."
The essay has the seamless, compellingly elegant, hyper-lucid, parallel universe logic of a hallucination - or a settlement rooted in the craw of the West Bank. Until I read it, it was difficult for me to comprehend the current runaway-freight recklessness of Israeli authorities and a certain segment of the hard right, bolstered by shady funding from abroad.
It was hard to fathom why Israeli police in this quiet hollow of the Arab half of Jerusalem, would choose to openly flout and violate the rulings of an Israeli court. I was unable to grasp why they would manhandle and arrest non-violent demonstrators - among them the executive director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel - for protesting the official expulsion from their homes of more than two dozen Palestinian families here, driven out and into the street, so that subsidized and sheltered settlers could move in.
It was beyond my understanding why an Israeli government which views the idea of a Palestinian Right of Return as tantamount to annihilation of the Jewish state, would set a legal precedent that paves the way for just such a right.
Just as I was clueless as to why the Knesset was to vote Wednesday on a bill that would make aiding asylum seekers fleeing African genocide, granting them shelter, medical care, food, a crime subject to up to 20 years in prison.
Or why there were vigorous new campaigns to increase gender segregation at the Western Wall and on public buses, and why women have been arrested and interrogated on suspicion of having worn prayer shawls while praying on their side of a barrier raised so that they would no longer be able to watch their sons' bar mitzvah on the mens' side.
Or why a sudden and ferocious campaign against human rights organizations and charity work agencies in Israel is coinciding with new human rights outrages against Palestinians and foreigners, some of them unable to leave, others forced to.
It was not until I saw the title of the Commentary piece that it all made sense.
The right is terrified of peace. And, in the end, the right's fear of peace will be the death of Israel.
They are afraid of peace, in part, because it threatens the core of what has come to replace other values as the goal of Judaism: permanent settlement of the West Bank. But that is only a part of it.
They are afraid of peace because they are afraid of the world. They dismiss fellow Jews who want to see a two-state solution - a majority of Israelis - as unrealistic, as living in a bubble. The name of the bubble these moderates live in, however, is planet Earth.
The right, meanwhile, wants to wall off Israel as the world's last remaining legally mandated Jewish ghetto. A place where all the rules are different, exit and entry, citizenship and human rights, because the residents within are Jews. A place where non-Jews, dehumanized as congenital Jew-haters, are rendered invisible. A place which, if suffocating and insufferable, still seems safer than the scary world outside.
A place which, because of its walls and its politics and its cowardice, is losing its ability to function as a part of the world, reveling in cheap-shot humiliations of key foreign ambassadors, deliriously proud of its sense that of all the world, including most of its Jews and Israelis - only the right sees the real truth.
This braid of thought was venomously endorsed this week both by an uncharacteristically Kahane-sounding Alan Dershowitz, and the obscenely infantile Im Tirtzu movement. According to them, where Cast Lead was concerned, the real war criminals are Richard Goldstone and Naomi Chazan - two people who are open about their love of Israel, and who have worked their whole adult lives for its well-being.
The fears of the right are not mere devices of rhetoric. The risks of making peace are real. Every bit as real as the risks of failing to make peace.
It all comes down to belief. It comes down to the kind of country the believer wants Israel to be. And for that reason, there is a civil war going on for Israel's soul.
It will not be weaponry that decides this war, but courage. People who care about the direction that Israel is moving, and whose watchword is moderation, would do well to choose one facet of the fight, and join. One place to start, is to support the New Israel Fund and the groups it supports.
Another place to start is this one. At the weekend, challenging the threats of rightist thugs and law-scorning police, the weekly demonstration on behalf of the Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah doubled in size. The police backed down on their vow to break up the protest, and the Kahanists barely showed.
If non-violent peace activism scares the right to this extent, there must be a great deal of power in it.
After all, most Israelis can sense that if peace is to be the enemy, more dangerous even than the threat of war, this is one doomed ghetto.
Things have reached such a devastating point, that for the first time in recent memory, even Ehud Barak is beginning to get it: "The simple truth is, if there is one state" including Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, "it will have to be either binational or undemocratic," Barak told the Herzliya Conference Tuesday.
"If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state."
The fear of peace has left Israel as a country which is prepared for nuclear warfare but not for non-violent protest on behalf of Palestinians. The fear of peace, and the blackmail of the right on behalf of settlement, has contorted Israel into a body which, unable to countenance the perils of treating the sickness of occupation, will eventually be killed by it.
Israel's defense minister, for one, is convinced: "The lack of a solution to the problem of border demarcation within the historic Land of Israel - and not an Iranian bomb - is the most serious threat to Israel's future."
~
SOURCE
~
SHEIKH JARRAH, Jerusalem - As the grandson of anarchists, I've always had a soft spot in my heart for fanatics. Expressions of extremism, and passionately reasoned, exquisitely twisted world views make me feel, how shall I put this, at home.
So it was with a certain relish that I approached the cover story of a recent issue of Commentary, "The Deadly Price of Pursuing Peace," written as it was by a talented colleague and friend, Evelyn Gordon.
The thrust of the piece, which Commentary Editor John Podhoretz understandably calls "groundbreaking," is that Israel's international standing has plummeted to an unprecedented low - and the number of Palestinians killed by Israel has concurrently soared - specifically because of Israel's having done much too much for peace.
"The answer is unpleasant to contemplate, but the mounting evidence makes it inescapable," she writes. "It was Israel's very willingness to make concessions for the sake of peace that has produced its current near-pariah status."
The essay has the seamless, compellingly elegant, hyper-lucid, parallel universe logic of a hallucination - or a settlement rooted in the craw of the West Bank. Until I read it, it was difficult for me to comprehend the current runaway-freight recklessness of Israeli authorities and a certain segment of the hard right, bolstered by shady funding from abroad.
It was hard to fathom why Israeli police in this quiet hollow of the Arab half of Jerusalem, would choose to openly flout and violate the rulings of an Israeli court. I was unable to grasp why they would manhandle and arrest non-violent demonstrators - among them the executive director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel - for protesting the official expulsion from their homes of more than two dozen Palestinian families here, driven out and into the street, so that subsidized and sheltered settlers could move in.
It was beyond my understanding why an Israeli government which views the idea of a Palestinian Right of Return as tantamount to annihilation of the Jewish state, would set a legal precedent that paves the way for just such a right.
Just as I was clueless as to why the Knesset was to vote Wednesday on a bill that would make aiding asylum seekers fleeing African genocide, granting them shelter, medical care, food, a crime subject to up to 20 years in prison.
Or why there were vigorous new campaigns to increase gender segregation at the Western Wall and on public buses, and why women have been arrested and interrogated on suspicion of having worn prayer shawls while praying on their side of a barrier raised so that they would no longer be able to watch their sons' bar mitzvah on the mens' side.
Or why a sudden and ferocious campaign against human rights organizations and charity work agencies in Israel is coinciding with new human rights outrages against Palestinians and foreigners, some of them unable to leave, others forced to.
It was not until I saw the title of the Commentary piece that it all made sense.
The right is terrified of peace. And, in the end, the right's fear of peace will be the death of Israel.
They are afraid of peace, in part, because it threatens the core of what has come to replace other values as the goal of Judaism: permanent settlement of the West Bank. But that is only a part of it.
They are afraid of peace because they are afraid of the world. They dismiss fellow Jews who want to see a two-state solution - a majority of Israelis - as unrealistic, as living in a bubble. The name of the bubble these moderates live in, however, is planet Earth.
The right, meanwhile, wants to wall off Israel as the world's last remaining legally mandated Jewish ghetto. A place where all the rules are different, exit and entry, citizenship and human rights, because the residents within are Jews. A place where non-Jews, dehumanized as congenital Jew-haters, are rendered invisible. A place which, if suffocating and insufferable, still seems safer than the scary world outside.
A place which, because of its walls and its politics and its cowardice, is losing its ability to function as a part of the world, reveling in cheap-shot humiliations of key foreign ambassadors, deliriously proud of its sense that of all the world, including most of its Jews and Israelis - only the right sees the real truth.
This braid of thought was venomously endorsed this week both by an uncharacteristically Kahane-sounding Alan Dershowitz, and the obscenely infantile Im Tirtzu movement. According to them, where Cast Lead was concerned, the real war criminals are Richard Goldstone and Naomi Chazan - two people who are open about their love of Israel, and who have worked their whole adult lives for its well-being.
The fears of the right are not mere devices of rhetoric. The risks of making peace are real. Every bit as real as the risks of failing to make peace.
It all comes down to belief. It comes down to the kind of country the believer wants Israel to be. And for that reason, there is a civil war going on for Israel's soul.
It will not be weaponry that decides this war, but courage. People who care about the direction that Israel is moving, and whose watchword is moderation, would do well to choose one facet of the fight, and join. One place to start, is to support the New Israel Fund and the groups it supports.
Another place to start is this one. At the weekend, challenging the threats of rightist thugs and law-scorning police, the weekly demonstration on behalf of the Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah doubled in size. The police backed down on their vow to break up the protest, and the Kahanists barely showed.
If non-violent peace activism scares the right to this extent, there must be a great deal of power in it.
After all, most Israelis can sense that if peace is to be the enemy, more dangerous even than the threat of war, this is one doomed ghetto.
Things have reached such a devastating point, that for the first time in recent memory, even Ehud Barak is beginning to get it: "The simple truth is, if there is one state" including Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, "it will have to be either binational or undemocratic," Barak told the Herzliya Conference Tuesday.
"If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state."
The fear of peace has left Israel as a country which is prepared for nuclear warfare but not for non-violent protest on behalf of Palestinians. The fear of peace, and the blackmail of the right on behalf of settlement, has contorted Israel into a body which, unable to countenance the perils of treating the sickness of occupation, will eventually be killed by it.
Israel's defense minister, for one, is convinced: "The lack of a solution to the problem of border demarcation within the historic Land of Israel - and not an Iranian bomb - is the most serious threat to Israel's future."
~
SOURCE
~
Sunday, January 31, 2010
In the West Bank's stony hills, Palestine is slowly dying
Governorate: JerichoPopulation (2006): 4401
Jurisdiction: 81,283 metric dunams or 81.2 km/2
In the richest of the Occupied lands, Israeli bureaucracy is driving Palestinians out of their homes.
~
Fisk reports from Jiftlik
January 30, 2010 "The Independent" - -Area C doesn't sound very ominous. A land of stone-sprinkled grey hills and soft green valleys, it's part of the wreckage of the equally wrecked Oslo Agreement, accounting for 60 per cent of the Israeli-occupied West Bank that was eventually supposed to be handed over to its Palestinian inhabitants.
But look at the statistics and leaf through the pile of demolition orders lying on the table in front of Abed Kasab, head of the village council in Jiftlik, and it all looks like ethnic cleansing via bureaucracy. Perverse might be the word for the paperwork involved. Obscene appear to be the results.
Palestinian houses that cannot be permitted to stand, roofs that must be taken down, wells closed, sewage systems demolished; in one village, I even saw a primitive electricity system in which Palestinians must sink their electrical poles cemented into concrete blocks standing on the surface of the dirt road. To place the poles in the earth would ensure their destruction – no Palestinian can dig a hole more than 40cm below the ground.
But let's return to the bureaucracy. "Ro'i" – if that is indeed the Israeli official's name, for it is difficult to decipher – signed a batch of demolition papers for Jiftlik last December, all duly delivered, in Arabic and Hebrew, to Mr Kasab. There are 21 of them, running – non-sequentially – from numbers 143912 through 145059, all from "The High Planning Council Monitoring [sic] Sub-Committee of the Civil Administration for the Area of Judea and Samaria". Judea and Samaria – for ordinary folk – is the occupied West Bank. The first communication is dated 8 December, 2009, the last 17 December.
And as Mr Kasab puts it, that's the least of his problems. Palestinian requests to build houses are either delayed for years or refused; houses built without permission are ruthlessly torn down; corrugated iron roofs have to be camouflaged with plastic sheets in the hope the "Civil Administration" won't deem them an extra floor – in which case "Ro'i's" lads will be round to rip the lot off the top of the house.
In Area C, there are up to 150,000 Palestinians and 300,000 Jewish colonists living – illegally under international law – in 120 official settlements and 100 "unapproved" settlements or, in the language we must use these days, "illegal outposts"; illegal under Israeli as well as international law, that is – as opposed to the 120 internationally illegal colonies which are legal under Israeli law. Jewish settlers, needless to say, don't have problems with planning permission.
The winter sun blazes through the door of Mr Kasab's office and cigarette smoke drifts through the room as the angry men of Jiftlik shout their grievances. "I don't mind if you print my name, I am so angry, I will take the consequences," he says. "Breathing is the only thing we don't need a permit for – yet!" The rhetoric is tired, but the fury is real. "Buildings, new roads, reservoirs, we have been waiting three years to get permits. We cannot get a permit for a new health clinic. We are short of water for both human and agricultural use. Getting permission to rehabilitate the water system costs 70,000 Israeli shekels [about £14,000] – it costs more than the rehabilitation system itself."
A drive along the wild roads of Area C – from the outskirts of Jerusalem to the semi-humid basin of the Jordan valley – runs through dark hills and bare, stony valleys lined with deep, ancient caves, until, further east, lie the fields of the Palestinians and the Jewish settlers' palm groves – electrified fences round the groves – and the mud or stone huts of Palestinian sheep farmers. This paradise is a double illusion. One group of inhabitants, the Israelis, may remember their history and live in paradise. The smaller group, the Palestinian Arabs, are able to look across these wonderful lands and remember their history – but they are already out of paradise and into limbo.
Even the western NGOs working in Area C find their work for Palestinians blocked by the Israelis. This is not just a "hitch" in the "peace process" – whatever that is – but an international scandal. Oxfam, for example, asked the Israelis for a permit to build a 300m2 capacity below-ground reservoir along with 700m of underground 4in pipes for the thousands of Palestinians living around Jiftlik. It was refused. They then gave notice that they intended to construct an above-ground installation of two glass-fibre tanks, an above-ground pipe and booster pump. They were told they would need a permit even though the pipes were above ground – and they were refused a permit. As a last resort, Oxfam is now distributing rooftop water tanks.
I came across an even more outrageous example of this apartheid-by-permit in the village of Zbeidat, where the European Union's humanitarian aid division installed 18 waste water systems to prevent the hamlet's vile-smelling sewage running through the gardens and across the main road into the fields. The £80,000 system – a series of 40ft shafts regularly flushed out by sewage trucks – was duly installed because the location lay inside Area B, where no planning permission was required.
Yet now the aid workers have been told by the Israelis that work "must stop" on six of the 18 shafts – a prelude to their demolition, although already they are already built beside the road – because part of the village stands in Area C. Needless to say, no one – neither Palestinians nor Israelis – knows the exact borderline between B and C. Thus around £20,000 of European money has been thrown away by the Israeli "Civil Administration".
But in one way, this storm of permission and non-permission papers is intended to obscure the terrible reality of Area C. Many Israeli activists as well as western NGOs suspect Israel intends to force the Palestinians here to leave their lands and homes and villages and depart into the wretchedness of Areas B and A. B is jointly controlled by Israeli military and civil authorities and Palestinian police, and A by the witless Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas. Thus would the Palestinians be left to argue over a mere 40 per cent of the occupied West Bank – in itself a tiny fraction of the 22 per cent of Mandated Palestine over which the equally useless Yasser Arafat once hoped to rule. Add to this the designation of 18 per cent of Area C as "closed military areas" by the Israelis and add another 3 per cent preposterously designated as a "nature reserve" – it would be interesting to know what kind of animals roam there – and the result is simple: even without demolition orders, Palestinians cannot build in 70 per cent of Area C.
Along one road, I discovered a series of large concrete blocks erected by the Israeli army in front of Palestinian shacks. "Danger – Firing Area" was printed on each in Hebrew, Arabic and English. "Entrance Forbidden." What are the Palestinians living here supposed to do? Area C, it should be added, is the richest of the occupied Palestinian lands, with cheese production and animal farms. Many of the 5,000 souls in Jiftlik have been refugees already, their families fled lands to the west of Jerusalem – in present-day Israel – in 1947 and 1948. Their tragedy has not yet ended, of course. What price Palestine?
~~
Gaza residents denied eye treatment
Aid agencies have cautioned that Israel's blockade of Gaza is putting the health of many Palestinians at risk.
Last week, Israeli authorities prevented 19 patients from crossing over to the West Bank for cornea implants that could save their sight.
Ayman Mohyeldin reports from Gaza on the detrimental effects of a blockade with no end in sight.
~
Saturday, January 30, 2010
World isn't buying Israel's explanations anymore
By Aluf Benn
Your situation isn't good," said a high-ranking European diplomat recently. "No one believes Bibi [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] and we don't want any connection with [Foreign Minister Avigdor] Lieberman. Only a dramatic and surprising diplomatic move, like [former prime minister] Ariel Sharon's disengagement, will change the impression."
A few hours later, Time magazine published an interview with U.S. President Barack Obama, in which he expressed disappointment with Israel's unwillingness to make "bold gestures" toward the Palestinians.
In a speech at a conference not long ago, an Israeli diplomat serving in a European capital touted Israel's hoary PR line, distinguishing between "the only democracy in the Middle East" and its autocratic Arab neighbors.
"We share common values," the Israeli told the Europeans. To his surprise, a member of the audience stood up and replied to him: "What common values? We have nothing in common with you."
In diplomatic conversations, Europeans are critical of Israel because of the Gaza blockade, the construction in the Jewish settlements, the home demolitions in East Jerusalem, the pervasive loathing of the right-wing government and even the social gaps and the way Israel is moving away from the European welfare-state model.
The Netanyahu-Lieberman government is nearly always described as "hard-line" in the foreign media. This is not entirely fair: The government of Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni went to war in Lebanon and Gaza and built thousands of apartments for Jews in East Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement blocs - many more than did Netanyahu, who has refrained from employing military force and has declared a 10-month freeze on settlement construction. But they liked the Kadima government because Olmert and Livni made the right noises about their desire for peace and a final status agreement, whereas they don't believe Netanyahu when he talks about "two states for two peoples." The fact that Olmert and Livni achieved nothing in the negotiations makes no difference. It's the intentions that count.
Netanyahu and his aides have answers to the accusations against Israel. The blame for the Gaza blockade lies squarely with the Palestinians, who chose Hamas to reign over them and kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. "You are worrying about the humanitarian rights of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. You should be worrying about one Israeli who is being held there," Netanyahu's people tell UN representatives. (What logic is THAT?? You are supposed to worry about ONE ISRAELI if the basic human rights of ONE AND A HALF MILLION PALESTINIANS are gravely violated?? It clearly shows the conviction that "... we are better, "worthier" and more important than the Palestinians"! Not that I don't want Gilad Shalit home with his family where he belongs to - I want AS WELL all those Palestinian prisoners home and with their folks who were arrested without having comitted any crime but randomly and harassingly considered a "threat to the security of the Jewish state", without any possibility to get legal representation nor the right for visits of family members for months and even years!! They as well are sons like Shalit is a son, fathers, brothers and husbands of families who are waiting! NO difference!)
In East Jerusalem, the government is hiding behind Mayor Nir Barkat and the planning and construction institutions, which are approving building plans for Jews and home demolitions for Palestinians. And for the diplomatic stagnation, it is blaming Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who is refusing to renew the talks.
There is one little problem: The world isn't buying Israel's explanations and it isn't prepared to condemn Palestinian obduracy. Obama has split the blame for the stagnation between the two sides and has also taken some of it upon himself ("We raised expectations").
American envoy George Mitchell's appeal to the members of the Quartet that they urge Abbas to return to talks, has gone unanswered. This week he completed another frustrating visit to the region, with zero results.
Obama's approach - to "park" the diplomatic process for lack of achievements and to concentrate on domestic issues - has not surprised Netanyahu. Three months ago, a senior Israeli official said the Obama administration would probably put off the Israeli-Palestinian problem to his second term, explaining: "Now they're weak, they have unemployment and the economic crisis, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, and they aren't emerging from that. They don't have the strength to complete an agreement. In the meantime, the maintenance will continue."
U.S. officials are hoping talks will be renewed within six months. The main thing is that there be some negotiations. They have no expectations of more than that.
Disturbing scenario
The Palestinian Authority is conducting a campaign to isolate Israel, based on the Goldstone report and the hatred for the Netanyahu government. Political scientists Shaul Mishal and Doron Mazza are calling it "the white intifada," which is aimed at enlisting international support for a unilateral declaration of independence in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem. In a document they distributed last week, they warn of Israeli complaisance and present a disturbing scenario: The Palestinians declare independence, and Israel refuses to recognize it and is faced with a boycott. Regardless of whether it yields or reacts with force, Israel cannot win, and will also lose control of the process. Therefore the two scholars recommend a preemptive diplomatic move.
Diplomatic isolation can be costly. Former Foreign Ministry director general Gideon Rafael wrote in his memoirs that in the summer of 1973, he felt that the diplomatic stagnation, which was perceived as something taken for granted, and perhaps even desirable, was liable to become "a death trap."
Former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat cut Israel off from its friends in the Third World, proposed a peace initiative to the Americans and was rejected. He then raised the demand for the return of the Sinai Peninsula in the UN Security Council and came up against an American veto.
In his book, "Destination Peace: Three decades of Israeli Foreign Policy, a Personal Memoir" (published in English by Littlehampton Book Services, 1981), Rafael wrote that Israel rejoiced in the veto and did not realize that closing the diplomatic door left Egypt with only one option - war.
In the coming weeks Israel apparently will request an American veto in the Security Council again, in order to bury the Goldstone report. Netanyahu is planning a fourth meeting with Obama, concerning the nuclear security conference in Washington on April 12 and perhaps even before then. The agenda will center on Iran - or "the new Amalek," as Netanyahu called it in Auschwitz on Wednesday. The question is whether alongside his demand that Obama take action against Iran, Netanyahu will also tell him that in exchange, Israel will take some sort of initiative vis-a-vis the Palestinians. This would be in an attempt to persuade the world to believe him and ameliorate Israel's increasing diplomatic isolation.
~
SOURCE
~
Your situation isn't good," said a high-ranking European diplomat recently. "No one believes Bibi [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] and we don't want any connection with [Foreign Minister Avigdor] Lieberman. Only a dramatic and surprising diplomatic move, like [former prime minister] Ariel Sharon's disengagement, will change the impression."
A few hours later, Time magazine published an interview with U.S. President Barack Obama, in which he expressed disappointment with Israel's unwillingness to make "bold gestures" toward the Palestinians.
In a speech at a conference not long ago, an Israeli diplomat serving in a European capital touted Israel's hoary PR line, distinguishing between "the only democracy in the Middle East" and its autocratic Arab neighbors.
"We share common values," the Israeli told the Europeans. To his surprise, a member of the audience stood up and replied to him: "What common values? We have nothing in common with you."
In diplomatic conversations, Europeans are critical of Israel because of the Gaza blockade, the construction in the Jewish settlements, the home demolitions in East Jerusalem, the pervasive loathing of the right-wing government and even the social gaps and the way Israel is moving away from the European welfare-state model.
The Netanyahu-Lieberman government is nearly always described as "hard-line" in the foreign media. This is not entirely fair: The government of Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni went to war in Lebanon and Gaza and built thousands of apartments for Jews in East Jerusalem and the West Bank settlement blocs - many more than did Netanyahu, who has refrained from employing military force and has declared a 10-month freeze on settlement construction. But they liked the Kadima government because Olmert and Livni made the right noises about their desire for peace and a final status agreement, whereas they don't believe Netanyahu when he talks about "two states for two peoples." The fact that Olmert and Livni achieved nothing in the negotiations makes no difference. It's the intentions that count.
Netanyahu and his aides have answers to the accusations against Israel. The blame for the Gaza blockade lies squarely with the Palestinians, who chose Hamas to reign over them and kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. "You are worrying about the humanitarian rights of 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza. You should be worrying about one Israeli who is being held there," Netanyahu's people tell UN representatives. (What logic is THAT?? You are supposed to worry about ONE ISRAELI if the basic human rights of ONE AND A HALF MILLION PALESTINIANS are gravely violated?? It clearly shows the conviction that "... we are better, "worthier" and more important than the Palestinians"! Not that I don't want Gilad Shalit home with his family where he belongs to - I want AS WELL all those Palestinian prisoners home and with their folks who were arrested without having comitted any crime but randomly and harassingly considered a "threat to the security of the Jewish state", without any possibility to get legal representation nor the right for visits of family members for months and even years!! They as well are sons like Shalit is a son, fathers, brothers and husbands of families who are waiting! NO difference!)
In East Jerusalem, the government is hiding behind Mayor Nir Barkat and the planning and construction institutions, which are approving building plans for Jews and home demolitions for Palestinians. And for the diplomatic stagnation, it is blaming Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who is refusing to renew the talks.
There is one little problem: The world isn't buying Israel's explanations and it isn't prepared to condemn Palestinian obduracy. Obama has split the blame for the stagnation between the two sides and has also taken some of it upon himself ("We raised expectations").
American envoy George Mitchell's appeal to the members of the Quartet that they urge Abbas to return to talks, has gone unanswered. This week he completed another frustrating visit to the region, with zero results.
Obama's approach - to "park" the diplomatic process for lack of achievements and to concentrate on domestic issues - has not surprised Netanyahu. Three months ago, a senior Israeli official said the Obama administration would probably put off the Israeli-Palestinian problem to his second term, explaining: "Now they're weak, they have unemployment and the economic crisis, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, and they aren't emerging from that. They don't have the strength to complete an agreement. In the meantime, the maintenance will continue."
U.S. officials are hoping talks will be renewed within six months. The main thing is that there be some negotiations. They have no expectations of more than that.
Disturbing scenario
The Palestinian Authority is conducting a campaign to isolate Israel, based on the Goldstone report and the hatred for the Netanyahu government. Political scientists Shaul Mishal and Doron Mazza are calling it "the white intifada," which is aimed at enlisting international support for a unilateral declaration of independence in the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem. In a document they distributed last week, they warn of Israeli complaisance and present a disturbing scenario: The Palestinians declare independence, and Israel refuses to recognize it and is faced with a boycott. Regardless of whether it yields or reacts with force, Israel cannot win, and will also lose control of the process. Therefore the two scholars recommend a preemptive diplomatic move.
Diplomatic isolation can be costly. Former Foreign Ministry director general Gideon Rafael wrote in his memoirs that in the summer of 1973, he felt that the diplomatic stagnation, which was perceived as something taken for granted, and perhaps even desirable, was liable to become "a death trap."
Former Egyptian president Anwar Sadat cut Israel off from its friends in the Third World, proposed a peace initiative to the Americans and was rejected. He then raised the demand for the return of the Sinai Peninsula in the UN Security Council and came up against an American veto.
In his book, "Destination Peace: Three decades of Israeli Foreign Policy, a Personal Memoir" (published in English by Littlehampton Book Services, 1981), Rafael wrote that Israel rejoiced in the veto and did not realize that closing the diplomatic door left Egypt with only one option - war.
In the coming weeks Israel apparently will request an American veto in the Security Council again, in order to bury the Goldstone report. Netanyahu is planning a fourth meeting with Obama, concerning the nuclear security conference in Washington on April 12 and perhaps even before then. The agenda will center on Iran - or "the new Amalek," as Netanyahu called it in Auschwitz on Wednesday. The question is whether alongside his demand that Obama take action against Iran, Netanyahu will also tell him that in exchange, Israel will take some sort of initiative vis-a-vis the Palestinians. This would be in an attempt to persuade the world to believe him and ameliorate Israel's increasing diplomatic isolation.
~
SOURCE
~
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
