Archive for July, 2007
July 27, 2007 at 8:01 pm
· Filed under Apartheid, Azmi Bishara, Christianity, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Palestine, activists, occupation, refugees, zionism
Azmi Bishara is easily on my top ten list of amazing current Arab political leaders (yeah, I know he doesn’t have much competition but still).
The interview with him in The Guaradian sheds some light on the recent case against him, and on his views of the current situation in Israel and the Middle East. Excerpts below:
Before his resignation, his Balad party held only four seats in the Knesset in a country where many Arab Israelis still tend to vote for the mainstream political parties, particularly Labour – now part of the ruling coalition. Even Bishara admits there is not widespread public support for his ideas among his own community. One opinion poll earlier this year found that three-quarters of Arab Israelis would support a constitution describing Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.
However, in recent months, that has begun to change. For a start, racism against Arabs in Israel is rising, according to at least one recent poll. In a survey for the Centre Against Racism, a poll of Jewish Israelis found that more than half believed it was treason for a Jewish woman to marry an Arab man; 40% said Arabs should no longer have the right to vote in parliamentary elections; and 75% opposed apartment blocks being shared by Jews and Arabs.
At the same time, more and more prominent Arab Israelis are adopting ideas similar to Bishara’s and proposing a fundamental challenge to the Jewish nature of the state. Four separate documents have emerged since December, each making a similar case. Adalah, a human rights group, issued a draft constitution that said Israel should be defined not as a Jewish state but as a “democratic, bilingual and multicultural state”. It called for an end to the Law of Return, which gives automatic citizenship to anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent, and it called on Israel to “recognise its responsibility for past injustices suffered by the Palestinian people”.
Then, earlier this month, in a remarkable interview with the Ha’aretz newspaper, Avraham Burg, a Jewish former speaker of the Knesset and former chair of the Jewish Agency, delivered his own denunciation of Israel’s structure. “It can’t work any more,” he said. “To define the state of Israel as a Jewish state is the key to its end. A Jewish state is explosive. It’s dynamite.” Burg too called for a change to the Law of Return and was highly critical of what he called Israel’s “confrontational Zionism”.
For Bishara, such comments only reinforce his long-held opinions. “Everything is said as if there is an elephant in the room that nobody wants to speak about, which is called a state of all its citizens,” he says. “But the idea won. This idea now is the real rival of the Zionist state. This is the first time you have a real challenge.”
Read on here
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July 24, 2007 at 8:31 pm
· Filed under Palestine, activists, occupation, zionism
His cartoons are definately worth a thousand words.
More here and here
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July 21, 2007 at 5:32 pm
· Filed under Israel, Jewish National Fund, Palestine, occupation, racism, zionism
From this editorial in Haaretz:
Every day the Knesset has the option of passing laws that will advance Israel as a democratic Jewish state or turn it into a racist Jewish state. There is a very thin line between the two. This week, the line was crossed. If the Knesset legal counselor did not consider the bill entitled “the Jewish National Fund Law” as sufficiently racist to keep it off the agenda, it is hard to imagine what legislation she will consider racist.
In 1995 the Supreme Court rescued the state from callously discriminating against its Arab citizens through the Ka’adan case, which prohibited the Israel Lands Administration from discriminating against non-Jews by leasing land through the Jewish Agency. Since then the attorney general has stated that such discrimination is unacceptable – also when it is carried out through the Jewish National Fund. The MKs were unable to accept this egalitarian ruling, and on Wednesday a large majority of 65 voted in favor of a preliminary reading permitting such discrimination. The bill is also backed by the head of the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, MK Menahem Ben-Sasson.
The clause in the bill stating that “the leasing of JNF lands for the purpose of settling Jews will not be seen as unacceptable discrimination,” even though it involves 13 percent of state-controlled lands and allows for further expressions of discrimination. For example, the establishment of a university only for Jews on JNF land, or a hospital, or a movie theater.
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July 19, 2007 at 8:48 pm
· Filed under Gaza, Israel, Palestine, Rafah, zionism
“An impossibly crowded area. Chaos. A slow, imprisoned death. This, briefly, is the appalling life—though it is hard to term it living—at the Rafah border.”
Full story and more pics here
People of Rafah: patience…Allah Akbar.
Everyone else: wake up!
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July 19, 2007 at 8:38 pm
· Filed under Apartheid, Boycott and divestment, Israel, Palestine, activists, occupation, zionism
A step in the right direction…
For the first time in the history of academic and musical life in Israel, dozens of musicians, scholars and educators from the field of classical music have come out with a joint call against the occupation and in favor of peace, rapprochement and a two-state solution.
“We protest the prolonged occupation that is destroying our country’s image,” declare the signatories in a written statement. “Our continued control over the territories and their Palestinian inhabitants is morally wrong. The only positive option is an attempt to conduct responsible negotiations with Hezbollah, the Palestine Liberation Organization, Hamas, Lebanon and Syria.”
Continue here
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July 14, 2007 at 12:43 pm
· Filed under "peace" process, Hamas, Israel, Palestine, activists, occupation, zionism
Full interview here. I do not agree with Darwish’s view on the recent situation in Gaza, and being an optimist, I don’t share his despair (although things are bad in occupied Palestine, one cannot ignore the global movement against occupation). I do really like his characterization of the “peace” process though (see below). Aside from the politics, the interview provides some insight into Darwish’s life and thoughts.
—
You once wrote, “This land lays siege to us all,” and today more than ever, the feeling of depression and helplessness must be overwhelming.
“The situation today is the worst one could have imagined. The Palestinians are the only nation in the world that feels with certainty that today is better than what the days ahead will hold. Tomorrow always heralds a worse situation. It is not just an existential question. I cannot speak about the Israeli side; that is not my expertise. I can speak only about the Palestinian side. Already in 1993, on the eve of the Oslo agreement, I knew that the agreement held out no promise that we would reach true peace based on independence for the Palestinians and the end of the Israeli occupation. Despite that, I felt that people were experiencing hope. They thought that maybe a bad peace was preferable to a successful war. Those dreams were deceptive. The situation now is worse. Before Oslo there were no checkpoints, the settlements had not expanded like this, and the Palestinians had work in Israel.”
Do you think the readiness for peace was mutual?
“The Israelis complain that the Palestinians do not love them. That is really funny. Peace is made between states and is not based on love. A peace agreement is not a wedding reception. I understand the hatred for the Israelis. Every normal person hates living under occupation. First one makes peace and then one examines feelings like loving or not loving. Sometimes after making peace, there is no love. Love is a private matter and cannot be forced on others.”
What hope are you talking about?
“I accuse the Israeli side of not expressing readiness to end the occupation in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The Palestinian people is not seeking to liberate Palestine. The Palestinians want to lead a normal life on 22 percent of what they think is their homeland. The Palestinians suggested that a distinction be made between homeland and state, and they understood the historical development that led to the present situation, in which two peoples are living on the same land and in the same country. Despite that readiness, there remained nothing to talk about.”
…
Will you visit the village where you were born, Birwa?
“No. Today it is [a kibbutz] called Yas’ur. I prefer to store the memories that still linger of open spaces, fields and watermelons, olive and almond trees. I remember the horse that was tied to the mulberry tree in the yard and how I climbed onto it and was thrown off and got a beating from my mother. She always hit me, because she thought I was a real urchin. I actually don’t remember being so mischievous.
“I remember the butterflies and the clear feeling that everything was open. The village stood on a hill and everything was spread out below. One day I was awakened and told that we had to flee. No one said anything about war or danger. We went by foot, I along with my three siblings, to Lebanon, and the youngest was a toddler and never stopped crying the whole way.”
Continue here
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July 11, 2007 at 8:07 pm
· Filed under Israel, Palestine, occupation
Why should any Palestinian “recognize” the monstrous crime carried out by Israel’s founders and continued by its deformed modern apartheid state, while he or she lives 10 to a room in a cinderblock, tin-roof United Nations hut? These are not abstract questions, and it is not rejectionist simply because we have refused to abandon the victims of 1948 and their descendants.
I, for one, do not trouble myself over “recognizing” Israel’s right to exist — this is not, after all, an epistemological problem; Israel does exist, as any Rafah boy in a hospital bed, with IDF shrapnel in his torso, can tell you. This dance of mutual rejection is a mere distraction when so many are dying or have lived as prisoners for two generations in refugee camps. As I write these words, Israeli forays into Gaza have killed another 15 people, including a child. Who but a Jacobin dares to discuss the “rights” of nations in the face of such relentless state violence against an occupied population?
I look forward to the day when Israel can say to me, and millions of other Palestinians: “Here, here is your family’s house by the sea, here are your lemon trees, the olive grove your father tended: Come home and be whole again.” Then we can speak of a future together.
Full article by Mousa Abu Marzouk here
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July 9, 2007 at 8:39 pm
· Filed under Israel, Palestine, apartheid wall, occupation, zionism
From the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation:
Three years ago today, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an Advisory Opinion on the “Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory“. In an unprecedented move by an international judicial body to hold Israel accountable for its violations of human rights and international law, the ICJ ruled that:
* The Wall Israel is building in the Palestinian West Bank and East Jerusalem is illegal under international law.
* Israel must cease construction of the Wall, dismantle it, and pay compensation to Palestinians damaged by it.
* All signatories to the 4th Geneva Convention have an obligation not to recognize the illegal situation created by the Wall and not to aid Israel in the maintenance of it.
* All signatories to the 4th Geneva Convention, including the United States, have an obligation to insure Israel’s compliance with international humanitarian law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
For a legal analysis of the ICJ’s Advisory Opinion by the Palestine Center, a member group of the US Campaign, click here.
On the one year anniversary of Israel non-compliance with the ICJ Advisory Opinion, more than 170 Palestinian civil society organizations issued a statement entitled “Palestinian Civil Society Calls for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel Until It Complies with International Law and Universal Principles of Human Rights“.
The US Campaign endorsed this call from Palestinian civil society for campaigns of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and has since produced educational resources and toolkits designed to assist U.S.-based organizations in conducting these campaigns (see below).
U.S. civil society has a special responsibility to promote BDS campaigns because our government not only fails to insure Israel’s compliance with international law, but also provides military, diplomatic, and economic support to Israel to maintain the Wall in direct violation of the ICJ’s ruling. In fact, in 2005 the United States gave Israel $50 million of economic aid that was supposed to be for the Palestinians to build high-tech terminals into the Wall in the West Bank under the guise of “eas[ing] the movement of Palestinian people and goods in and out of Israel.” For additional details, see a previous US Campaign action alert by clicking here.
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July 8, 2007 at 6:47 pm
· Filed under Israel, Palestine, human rights, zionism
Sick, inhumane, absurd…how else can you call such an act? You gotto admire the IDF PR machine though…nothing they can’t justify and sugar coat.
Twilight Zone / ‘Mowing the grass’ in Nablus
By Gideon Levy
What do you do for 21 hours, trapped in one room – 28 people, including children and babies? How do you pass the time? How do you calm down crying and frightened children? How do you care for an ailing grandmother? You can’t turn on the light, or the television, or talk.
Armed soldiers guard the doorway and they’ve confiscated all the cellular phones. You can go out to the bathroom, but only after receiving permission. Used diapers have to be tossed in a corner of the room. After protracted negotiations, two women are permitted to go cook something.
Why was it necessary to imprison six innocent families this way? If the Israel Defense Forces needed their apartment building, why not let them move into the neighbors’ homes? And why choose this building, when right next to it another building of similar size stands empty? Were these people being used as a kind of human shield for the soldiers? And
what sort of trauma was inflicted on the little ones who were put through this ordeal?
On the radio I heard the explanation: “We have to ‘mow the grass.’” This was the picturesque description offered by military sources for the IDF’s activity in Nablus. This is why the army enters the city almost every night, carrying out broad-scale operations every few weeks, like the one last week. Two IDF officers were seriously injured, two were moderately injured, one passerby was killed – and members of the extended Adalay family were imprisoned together for no good reason.
Continue here
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July 6, 2007 at 7:12 pm
· Filed under Hamas, Islam, Israel, Palestine, occupation
From Joseph Massad’s recent article on EI:
The pro-coup position adopted by many of the Oslo secular intellectuals towards Palestinian democracy is indeed transforming Palestinian secularists into the “darkest force” in Palestinian history in decades. What we are witnessing is nothing less than the overall collapse of Palestinian secular example of resistance to the Israeli occupation. The only antidote to these forces of true darkness is to continue to support and mobilise for Palestinian democracy and to expose the anti-democracy coup leaders and their apologist intellectuals for what they are: collaborators with the enemy.
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July 6, 2007 at 8:05 am
· Filed under "peace" process, Apartheid, Israel, Palestine, human rights, occupation, zionism
From this article published in Haaretz
West Bank settlements have been allocated huge amounts of land, but use very little of it, according to a Peace Now report.
Only nine percent of the area under settlement jurisdiction has been built on, and only 12 percent is being used at all, the report said, citing Civil Administration figures.But despite their huge unused land reserves, 90 percent of the settlements exceed their boundaries, and about one-third of the territory they do use lies outside their jurisdiction, the report added.
…
The report, compiled by Dror Etkes and Hagit Ofran of Peace Now’s Settlement Watch, found that Israel’s policy violates the state’s commitments under the Oslo Accord. This agreement stipulated that no party would take unilateral steps to change the situation in the territories until final-status negotiations status were completed. Yet even before peace talks stalled, Israel acted methodically to expand the settlements’ jurisdiction, the report said.
Israel’s acts also contradict official government statements, including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s statement, following a meeting with King Abdullah of Jordan in May, that “construction in the settlements takes place only within the authorized boundaries.” Continue here
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July 3, 2007 at 10:00 pm
· Filed under Boycott and divestment, Israel, Jerusalem, Palestine, UN, occupation, zionism
Below are excerpts from this report posted on EI by Al-Haq (emphasis added). By the way, the 2 French companies make great targets for a boycott campaign (I think I saw something a while back about a campaign against Veolia…can’t remember where or what though).
The latest measure adopted by the Israeli authorities in consolidating its unlawful annexation of, and control over, occupied East Jerusalem comes in the form of the Jerusalem Light Rail. In 1902, Theodor Herzl, the founding father of the Zionist movement aimed at Jewish colonisation of the land of Palestine, elucidated his vision of a Jerusalem of “modern neighbourhoods with electric lines, tree-lined boulevards … a metropolis of the 20th century.” More than a century on, and that vision is now becoming reality, with construction ongoing to lay the electric lines which will connect illegal settlements in occupied territory with West Jerusalem.
An international tender was issued in 2000 for preliminary qualification for the construction and operation of the first line of the Light Rail Transportation system. As early as 2001, land belonging to Palestinians in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Shu’fat was confiscated by the Jerusalem Municipality for the future light rail. Utilities work was completed in 2005, and on 17 July 2005, two French companies signed an agreement with the Israeli government: Alstom SA will provide train cars and engines, while Connex (a subsidiary of Veolia Environnement SA) will be responsible for the operation and maintenance of the light rail for the coming 30 years. Construction of the first line of the system is now well underway; it is scheduled to begin operating between the illegal settlement of Pisgat Ze’ev in East Jerusalem and Mount Herzl in West Jerusalem, via the walls of the Old City and French Hill, in early 2009. This is but the first installment of a masterplan for the broader Light Rail Transportation system, with seven lines slated for completion by 2020 to provide access from various illegal Israeli settlements in occupied East Jerusalem to the western part of the city.
On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the unlawful and invalid annexation of East Jerusalem, Al-Haq raises its profound concern over the continuing creation of facts on the ground which serve to prejudice the realisation of the incontrovertible right of self-determination of the Palestinian population in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), including East Jerusalem. That the Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem are illegal under international humanitarian law is indisputable. Such transfer by the Occupying Power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies is defined as a war crime by Article 8(2)(b)(viii) of the Statute of the International Criminal Court. The confiscation and requisition of property in occupied territory is also illegal under Article 52 of the Hague Regulations, unless justified by military necessity. Thus any actors involved in an enterprise which recognises, assists and consolidates illegal settlements, as well as confiscates the land of the protected occupied population in the process, are complicit in the illegal actions.
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