MCC Palestine Update #110
14 June 2005
Another Round of Optimism
After a whirlwind tour around the world, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas is back in the occupied Palestinian territories. And though his visit with President Bush and many other world leaders provided good visual fodder for speculations about “progress toward peace,” the lack of tangible commitments on the part of the U.S. to ending this occupation and disrupting the oppressive status quo in the territories reveal that nothing could be farther from the truth.
Promises were spoken by the U.S. president but nothing concrete was offered in terms of writing, let alone actions taken. Only a “reminder” to Israel to freeze settlement expansions. The fact that Israel’s illegal colonization of Palestinian territory has increased 83% since last year (http://imemc.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11656&Itemid=1) speaks to the seriousness and political will of the United States and the rest of the “Quartet,” or lack thereof, in their advancement of the “roadmap for peace.”
Though much was said about the $50 million earmarked for the PA, the U.S. had initially talked about giving $350 million. But members of Congress expressed their outrage about money going to “terrorism” and so instead of these funds going directly to Palestinians they will be given instead to Israel, the occupying power (and to some NGO’s; see http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story.php?sid=20050507050457252).
The fear is that instead of benefiting the lives of Palestinians suffering under occupation this money will actually be used to make the occupation look “nicer” to the world by doing things like establishing “maximum contiguity” (a call raised by Bush). How? By returning territory to Palestinians that has been illegally occupied by the state of Israel for the last 38 years? No, by building tunnels to connect the isolated “reservations” that Palestinians are being pushed onto. (Tunnels so that Israeli settlers whipping in and out of their illegal colony-homes on their “Jews-only” roads do not have to see Palestinians so they do not have to feel guilty about the death-dealing status quo their presence in occupied Palestinian territory creates while they drive to the mall in Jerusalem.)
The “special relationship” the United States holds with the state of Israel is revealed in the nature this funding has been designated. While only $50 million will make it to the Palestinians directly, it comes with a long list of requirements and oversight. This compared to the billions of dollars a year the United States provides to Israel with absolutely no requirements or oversight whatsoever alone speaks to the compromised position the United States holds as a “neutral broker” in this peace process.
Again, despite the portrayal of “window of opportunity” during this sensitive “period of hope for peace,” the “facts on the ground” remain the same. Only recently, the Israeli occupation “turned” 38. It was 38 years ago that the “six-day war” ended, resulting in the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory—something the international community immediately spoke out against, condemning with the passing of United Nations Security Council resolution 242 calling for the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from the territories.
The anniversary of the occupation was marked by many Israelis with celebrations over the “liberation” of Jerusalem, which included an armed escort of Israeli settlers onto the Haram al-Sharif or “Noble Sanctuary,” the third most holy site in Islam. The feelings of violation resulting from a display such as this can only be understood against the backdrop of Ariel Sharon’s visit to the same site in 2000 that sparked this current intifada and the threat that many Jewish extremist have presented over the past several months of blowing up the Haram al-Sharif.
The anniversary was marked by other Israelis along with Palestinians with protests against the continued construction of the “Separation” or “Apartheid” Wall and the confiscation of Palestinian land in the West Bank, which included many cases of harassment and beatings of peaceful protesters by Israeli soldiers.
After 38 years of uninterrupted, unchallenged oppression, there is little reason for Palestinians to be optimistic right now.
In pursuit of “Greater Jerusalem”—the Separation Wall and the Israeli Colonization of the West Bank
The construction of the “Separation” or “Apartheid” Wall in occupied Palestinian territory also continues unabated. The situation here in Bethlehem regarding the Wall only worsens. And unfortunately Bethlehem is not the only Palestinian area in this situation. Though pretty much every major city in the West Bank is adversely affected by this Wall, a city in the northern part of the West Bank called Qalqilya is literally enclosed by the Wall, cutting off the inhabitants from all surrounding villages. There is only one entrance / exit in and out of that city. Guess who controls that gate. (For a recent photostory of the Wall in Bethlehem, please visit: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3918.shtml.)
Through the Rural Renaissance Society for Northwest of Jerusalem, Mennonite Central Committee along with Palestinian NGO the Ma’an Development Center assisted with the distribution of 39,000 vegetable seedlings to 43 farmers and their families in 13 villages where Palestinian are increasingly turning to farming after years without work. Palestinians from these villages, unable to work in Israel as they used to, are now cut off from Jerusalem, segregated into an isolated reservation with access only to neighboring Ramallah.
One of these farmers severely affected by the Wall is Musa Taha. Like so many Palestinians, Musa and his family are being severely affected by the separation wall that the Israeli military continues to build, cutting deeply inside occupied Palestinian territory in the West Bank. It was only last year that the Israeli military came without warning and confiscated 12 of his 17 dunams of land (1 dunam = ¼ of an acre), uprooting over 100 of his olive and fruit trees to make way for the wall. Every day for 17 years he had cared for these trees that he planted. In just one day they were all taken from him.
Musa continues to work, in spite of these devastating experiences. He looks forward to the day when a justpeace will be known in this land. “We want for this day to come,” Musa says. “Maybe for our children. We want peace.”
In pursuit of “Greater Jerusalem”—House Demolitions and the Israeli Colonization of the West Bank
Another form that this occupation takes is in the demolition of Palestinian homes. Recently it has been reported that 88 more homes in Silwan, a Palestinian village right next to the Old City in Jerusalem, are scheduled to be demolished. This will leave another 1000 people without a home (see Jeff Halper’s article below for more on this and visit MCC partner the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions online at http://www.icahd.org/eng/ for more information on what you can do to help).
These efforts are part of a larger project to create a “greater Jerusalem” that along with such policies as home demolitions are an attempt to create a Jerusalem without Palestinians that will: 1) cut the West Bank in half, isolating the north and south regions and 2) create such a large Jewish majority in this “greater Jerusalem” so that when the time comes to discuss “final status issues” such as the status of Jerusalem at the negotiating table it will have become a “non-issue” due to the Jewish demographic of the area.
For Palestinians like Sami who has to come into Bethlehem from Beit Hanina in Jerusalem every day because he works as an English literature professor at Bethlehem University, this has devastating effects. There are at least two checkpoints he has to travel through everyday using three different legs of public transportation just to get to work. Apart from the time spent, this is a heavy expense.
Though Sami and his wife Hannah are Palestinian, since they live in Jerusalem they have different ID cards than their West Bank family members (Palestinians have to carry around special ID’s wherever they go and can be stopped on the street at any point by Israeli soldiers demanding to see them). Their blue ID’s currently allow them movement in and out of Jerusalem into Bethlehem or Ramallah in the West Bank, whereas West Bank green ID holders cannot leave the West Bank to go to Jerusalem without special permits from the Israeli government. But this is going to change very soon.
Hannah was telling us that later on this summer, possibly July, Palestinian Jerusalem ID holders will begin to have to gain special permits to go into the West Bank. This not only means that these Palestinians will not be able to see their families freely, but that workers like Sami with jobs in Bethlehem or Ramallah (which is a very important center of business for Palestinians) will not only have to jump through all of the hoops of this ridiculous checkpoint system but will have to get special permission (costing even more money) to simply go to work every morning. That is assuming that the soldiers at the checkpoints will feel like allowing them to move through despite their having the “proper” paperwork.
“Security,” one might say in response to this “matrix of control” Israel exercises over Palestinians, “Israel needs to ensure their security.” But Hannah offered an important insight into this weak argument. “They want to make life so difficult for Palestinians living in Jerusalem that they will move to the West Bank. They are trying to ‘Judaize’ Jerusalem,” she says so when the “final status” issues like the status of Jerusalem comes up in negotiations, Israel can say that there are hardly any Palestinians living in Jerusalem, making it a final status non-issue.
But Hannah tells us, “We can’t leave Jerusalem, we have to stay.” The fact that Palestinians like Hannah and Sami chose to stay in their homes, despite walls being built around them, is a powerful form of resistance to this occupation.
Though Sami has a good job at Bethlehem University (a rarity for Palestinians these days), he is going to try to find work in Jerusalem. With the institution of this permit system, it is just going to be too much. Though the occupation might win a little battle like this forcing Palestinians to adjust their lives in ridiculous ways, in the end it is the Palestinians, like Sami and Hannah, with their sabr or patient steadfastness that will persist and overcome this oppression.
Indeed this reflects our own faith confession that believes that despite the death and devastation that surrounds us, death will not have the final word. But rather that life has already triumphed over death through the resurrection and that in such “active patience” justice will one day be had.
MCC Peacebuilding in Palestine/Israel: A Discussion Paper
Following a Mennonite Central Committee advocacy delegation visit to Palestine / Israel earlier this year, the MCC Middle East department drafted a discussion paper to speak to the issues of alternative pressures to struggle against the Israeli occupation over Palestinian life and land. This included a conversation about morally responsible investment. This paper was shared for feedback with MCC's Peace Committee in March and then MCC's Executive Committee in April. Earlier this month MCC's Executive Director, Ron Mathies, sent the discussion paper, along with a cover letter, to Mennonite and Brethren in Christ institutions for their feedback.
We sent this discussion paper with the cover letter to you all recently and hope that you all have received it and have had the time to read through it. As we mentioned in that email, we distributed this paper to you all because we feel it is important to share this with you and widen the conversation. We recognize this is a sensitive issue to be handled with sensitivity within our communities. And as the goal of this discussion paper is to initiate discussion, we very much welcome your feedback on these issues as we all continue to work for a justpeace in this land.
If any of you did not receive this discussion paper, please feel free to let us know and we will be happy to send it to you. And of course, if any of you have comments or questions about this discussion, we would greatly appreciate hearing your thoughts.
Peace to you all,
Timothy and Christi Seidel
Peace Development Workers
Mennonite Central Committee – Palestine
Attachments:
· Jamal Juma, “Israeli Apartheid,” Al-Ahram Weekly, 26 May - 1 June 2005
· Jeff Halper, “The process of transfer continues: The Jerusalem Municipality plans to demolish 88 houses in Silwan, East Jerusalem,” Electronic Intifada, 3 June 2005
· Dr. Bernard Sabella, “Reconciliation with Separation: Is it Possible in the Palestinian-Israeli Case?” Alternatives.ca, 30 May 2005
· Ilan Pappe, “Fortress Israel,” London Review of Books, 19 May 2005
· Danny Rubinstein, “One Jerusalem for two nations,” Haaretz, 10 June 2005
· Eve Sabbagh, “The three monkeys of Israeli media,” Palestine Report, 8 June 2005
· Justine McCabe, “What Indians and Palestinians Share,” PalestineChronicle.com, 30 May 2005
________________________________
Al-Ahram Weekly
Israeli Apartheid
Jamal Juma on the World Bank, international aid and the Bantustanisation of Palestine
26 May - 1 June 2005
As US President George W Bush had his first White House meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas -- a summit giving Bush a platform for his phony $200 million "aid" package -- devastating new realities are being constructed in Palestine. The Apartheid Wall and accompanying infrastructure of Jewish-only bypass roads, military zones and settlements, are rapidly moving towards the permanent ghettoisation of the Palestinian people. Bush's "aid" package, however, neither stops these crimes nor helps Palestinians: most of it is destined for occupation projects such as new checkpoints. As part of global "aid" efforts outlined and coordinated by the World Bank, it supports not liberation but Bantustanisation of Palestine.
The Bank's latest publication -- Stagnation or Revival? -- leaves no doubt about these aims as it meticulously maps out a vision of economic development "for" Palestine that serves to provide long-term financial support of the Israeli Apartheid system. It begins by repeating the lie that Israeli "disengagement" will provide Palestinians with a "significant amount of land" and an ideal environment for development. In reality, Gaza will be totally imprisoned, surrounded by a second eight- metre high wall, with all borders, coastline and airspace controlled by Israel…
Read more at http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2005/745/re5.htm
________________________________
The Electronic Intifada
The process of transfer continues: The Jerusalem Municipality plans to demolish 88 houses in Silwan, East Jerusalem
Jeff Halper
3 June 2005
The Municipality of Jerusalem intends to demolish an entire East Jerusalem neighborhood. 88 homes housing 1000 residents in the el Bustan area of Silwan village in East ,Jerusalem close to the walls of the Old City. The reason, (according to the city engineer Uri Shitreet, who issued the orders) is that this area is an important cultural and historical site for the Jewish nation because it stands on the site where King David established his kingdom. The aim, says Shitreet, is to return this "densely populated Palestinian part of the city" to its landscape. "The largest demolition of Palestinian homes in Jerusalem since, 1967's named 'The Cherry in the Crown". The earliest houses in the neighborhood date from the 1940's and '50's though most were built in the 1980s and early '90's on private land belonging to Silwan villagers. Some of the houses in this area were built before 1967. The 1970 first forty houses have already received demolition orders.
Since the Israeli government zoned almost all the unbuilt-upon land of Palestinian East Jerusalem as "open green space" after the 1967 war (and since Palestinians would not be allowed to live in Jewish West Jerusalem), there is little space for them at all. The reasons are political, not urban…
Read more at http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3901.shtml
________________________________
Alternatives.ca
Reconciliation with Separation: Is it Possible in the Palestinian-Israeli Case?
Dr. Bernard Sabella
30 May 2005 For some time now I have been pondering this question. As the Arab-Israeli conflict is coming to a new phase characterized principally by the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, on the one hand and by the construction of the separation wall in the West Bank, on the other the rationale behind reconciliation work, as principally attempted in encounter groups, is in need of some serious examination.
First, some encounter groups are motivated by the wistful thinking that changing hearts, primarily Arab Palestinian hearts, would lead to peace and eventual reconciliation. This assumes that Israeli Jewish hearts have already been changed and won. This changing of Arab Palestinian hearts would accordingly enhance the security of the state of Israel, in the long run. Thus winning Arab Palestinian hearts is an important premise for carrying encounters, exchanges, dialogues and all sorts of activities that would encourage or directly lead into reconciliation.
Second, some encounter groups are motivated by a genuinely common utilitarian concern such as the environment or school children living in a situation of conflict. While these groups are directing their attention to practical subjects and issues, the fact of the coming separation would render their work less feasible particularly if there is a need for regular ongoing face to face encounters…
Read more at http://www.alternatives.ca/article1825.html
________________________________
London Review of Books
Fortress Israel
Ilan Pappe
19 May 2005
The right of the Palestinian refugees expelled in the 1948 war to return home was acknowledged by the UN General Assembly in December 1948. It is a right anchored in international law and in accordance with notions of universal justice. More surprisingly perhaps, it also makes sense in terms of realpolitik: unless Israel agrees to repatriate the refugees, all attempts to solve the Israel-Palestine conflict are bound to fail, as became clear in 2000 when the Oslo initiative broke down over this issue. Yet only a handful of Jews in Israel are willing to support it, in part because most Israeli Jews deny that ethnic cleansing was carried out in 1948 by Israel.
The aim of the Zionist project has always been to construct and then defend a Western/‘white’ fortress in the Arab/‘dark’ world. At the heart of the refusal to allow Palestinians the right to return is the fear of Jewish Israelis that they will eventually be outnumbered by Arabs in Israel. This prospect arouses such strong feelings that Israelis seem not to care that their actions are condemned throughout the world; the Jewish propensity to seek atonement has been replaced by pious arrogance and self-righteousness…
Read more at http://peaceandjustice.org/article.php?story=20050515024649730&mode=print0
________________________________
Haaretz
One Jerusalem for Two Nations
Danny Rubinstein
10 June 2005
The scenery in the Old City of Jerusalem has changed in the last few months. After more than four years, we are once again seeing groups of tourists from abroad touring the city. These are not only Christian pilgrims bearing crosses and singing hymns as they walk the Via Dolorosa on their way to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, but rather ordinary tourists trekking through the markets and alleyways inside the walls.
Among the tourists are many Israelis, too. Early on Saturday mornings, it is already difficult to find parking on Mamilla Street, from which stairs lead up to the Jaffa Gate. Until not long ago, the road was empty. The markets are filled with many more shoppers than in the recent past, there are few incidents and tourists feel safe. Are the walls and fences constructed around East Jerusalem the reason? Perhaps.
Sheikh Taysir al-Tamimi, the chief kadi (Muslim religious judge) of the Palestinian Authority, said in honor of Jerusalem Day ("Jerusalem Occupation Day," to the Palestinians) last week that the Old City has been turned into a veritable military fortress, with many hundreds of soldiers and police officers constantly on patrol…
Read more at http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/586965.html
________________________________
Palestine Report
The three monkeys of Israeli media
Eve Sabbagh
8 June 2005
FOR NEARLY 40 years, Israelis have known Haim Yavin’s face. Now they also know his opinions. Whether that is leading to any deeper understanding of his message about the functioning of the Israeli media is less certain.
“Since 1967, we have been brutal conquerors, occupiers suppressing another people.” It is in such terms Yavin has been expressing his disgust for the Israeli occupation in the five-week series of reports “A Land of Settlers” currently being broadcast on Israeli Channel Two.
Known to Israelis as “Mr. TV”, Yavin has been the anchor of “Mabat”, the main news show on Israeli public television, since 1968, and has accompanied Israelis through all major political events since. When this calm and reassuring character “came out of the closet” and affirmed publicly his political views on the occupation it sent shock waves through his audience…
Read more at http://www.palestinereport.org/article.php?article=798
________________________________
PalestineChronicle.com
What Indians and Palestinians Share
Justine McCabe
30 May 2005
"Like America's native peoples, Palestinians bear the burden of proof of their existence."
Controversy over Indian rights in Connecticut recently intensified when the federal government reversed its recognition of Stonington's Eastern Pequots and Kent- based Schaghticoke tribes. Overall, officials and the public appear pleased. Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said, “One reason this is so historic is because no positive recognition decision has been reversed before. This is a first for the nation, which makes it all the more significant and satisfying,” according to The Litchfield County Times.
Clearly, it's not satisfying for Connecticut's indigenous peoples as their rights and attachment to the land continue to be challenged even centuries after first contact with European settlers.
Due-process arguments put into high relief the irony experienced by America's native peoples in obtaining recognition: they must prove they exist. They must demonstrate that their people and cultures actually survived government intentions to eradicate them and seize land on which survival depended…
Read more at http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story.php?sid=20050530023335186
Tuesday, June 14
Wednesday, May 25
MCC Palestine Update #109
MCC Palestine Update #109
25 May 2005
“Independence” and “Nakba”
How we look at history determines in large part what that history says to us about who we are, where we are, where we came from, and where we are going. What is good news in the grand telling of events for some often has a very different meaning for those viewing history from the underside. For most Israeli Jews, for example, May 15, 1948 means Independence Day and is part of a story of freedom, liberty, and success in overcoming great difficulties. But for Palestinians, the same events are known as the Nakba, an Arabic word meaning “catastrophe.”
For Palestinians, the events between 1947 and 1949 are remembered as a time when Israeli military forces destroyed over five hundred Palestinian villages and expelled between 700,000 to 900,000 Palestinians from their lands (about 85% of the Palestinian population at that time). These refugees have lived exiled from their land since then. Since 1967, the Palestinian experience of dispossession has continued in the Occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, as the Israeli authorities have expropriated Palestinian land for the construction of illegal settlements and more recently for the construction of a separation barrier in the Occupied Territories that solidifies Israeli control over all of historic Palestine.
Today it is estimated that over seven million Palestinians—about three-quarters of the total Palestinian population (and about one-third of the global refugee population)—live as refugees and internally displaced persons throughout the Middle East and beyond. Many still hold the land deeds to the properties they were expelled from and the keys to the homes from which they were driven. They wait for their opportunity to exercise their “right of return”—a right articulated in 1948 in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194(III) that called on Israel to allow the return of, to provide for compensation to, those refugees from the 1948 war willing to live at peace with their neighbors. Israel has consistently refused to allow any refugees to return home.
Several of MCC’s partner organizations held different activities this year to mark the occasion including the Badil Resource Center for Residency and Refugee Rights (http://www.badil.org)/. One such event was held by the Zochrot Association (http://www.nakbainhebrew.org/) to commemorate the 57th anniversary of the “Nakba.” It was an incredible event. In the heart of Tel Aviv, in Rabin Square, Zochrot set up a huge grid that served as a map of historical Palestine. Throughout the evening participants placed cards with the names of and various information about the over 500 destroyed Palestinian villages on the grid creating a huge “Nakba map” of the landscape pre-1948. A powerful display (http://www.zochrot.org/index.php?id=206).
A Wall that Separates and an Israeli Colony in Bethlehem
Recently MCC partner the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center (http://www.sabeel.org/) held a conference in Jerusalem. In it, Dr. Bernard Sabella, a Palestinian Christian working with the Middle East Council of Churches, spoke about his years of working to facilitate dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians—what some would consider to be an integral component to any reconciliation process. In fact, Dr. Sabella spoke to his oftentimes criticized role in pursuing these kinds of dialogues that became very popular during the Oslo years.
Yet in reflecting on these experiences in the current context of this “Separation Wall” and on his hard work in them, he said to us “The Wall tells me that I have spent years in nonsense trying to dialogue with Israelis…The Wall tells me that Israelis live somewhere else and I live somewhere else…The future is separation.”
On our way into Jerusalem for that Sabeel conference, we noticed that the Israeli military had begun building another portion of the Wall in Bethlehem, right across the street from a hospital. Walking back home from the checkpoint later that night with some friends, we saw that this section of the Wall on this road, facing the hospital was already finished. It is a striking sight.
Just imagine, walking down a street, with a hospital to your left and this giant nine meter or thirty foot high concrete wall to your right. We stopped for a few minutes to talk with a young man that lives in one of the buildings now across the street from the Wall. He mentioned that his family was hoping to add another story to their home (because so much land has been expropriated by Israel often times the only way for Palestinians to expand is by building up). This will be impossible now because adjacent buildings cannot rise higher than the wall, as this is considered a “security threat” to those on the other side of the barrier—which many are saying will actually be Israeli settlers brought in to live in a new settlement right in the middle of Bethlehem. His home may soon be demolished for being too tall as it is now.
Farming in the West Bank
Recently MCC has joined with the MA’AN Development Center (http://www.maan-ctr.org/) in a project to support Palestinian farmers who are being impacted by the ongoing construction of the Wall. One farmer we met from the village of Qatanna northwest of Jerusalem took us to his home. He showed us where 12 out of the 17 dunams of land he owns were confiscated by the Israeli military to make way for the Wall, uprooting 100 plus of his olive and fruit trees. With the little that he and his family (all 29 children and grandchildren living in one house) have, this had a devastating effect.
For more information and recent developments on the Wall, please visit MCC partners PENGON (http://www.stopthewall.org/) and ARIJ (http://www.arij.org/).
The Complicity of International Corporations in Occupation: Home Demolitions
Home demolitions continue in the occupied territories. On April 13th, two homes were demolished by the Israeli military in the town of Anata, east of Jerusalem. One of the homes belonged to the Yamani family. It was rebuilt three years ago (after being previously demolished) on land owned by the family with the help of MCC and MCC partner the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD http://www.icahd.org/eng/). It was located in Area C of the West Bank in an area where it is virtually impossible to receive a building permit from the Israeli authorities. This was the reason given for the demolition: that the home was built without a permit.
Once the demolition of the Yamani home was complete, the Caterpillar bulldozers moved on to the Dahalia home half a kilometer away. The house has served as the residence for the 22 members of the Dahalia family, 15 of them children, for the past two decades. After an hour, the home was reduced to a pile of rubble. The reason given for this demolition was the same as the first: it was built without a permit. Both of these actions violate international law. MCC provided relief assistance for the construction of temporary housing for the Dahalia family through ICAHD in partnership with Rabbis for Human Rights (http://www.rhr.israel.net/). For more information on these demolitions, please visit http://www.icahd.org/eng/news.asp?menu=5&submenu=1&item=230.
This destruction of Palestinian homes by Caterpillar bulldozers happened only hours before Caterpillar shareholders met in Chicago. Protests calling for a boycott of Caterpillar and other companies contributing to the Israeli illegal occupation of Palestinian territories resonate from the cries of those left homeless and forgotten by the rest of the world.
This is just one example as to why many are arguing that alternative pressures (economic, academic, etc.) to ending the occupation need to be pursued. To find out what you can do to force Caterpillar to stop selling home crushing bulldozers to Israel, visit http://www.catdestroyshomes.org/.
Palestinian Christian Presence in the Land
Like all Palestinians, Palestinian Christians are suffering under the weight of this occupation. Their homes get demolished, their property gets confiscated, they have no access to work and suffer unemployment. Even churches and church property is affected by this Separation Wall.
Here in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus where half of the population is Christian, all Palestinians are feeling these effects. When it is finished, the Wall will surround Bethlehem to the north, west and south. This coupled with a settler road to the east that Palestinians are not permitted to travel on will effectively turn Bethlehem into an open-air prison with only three points of exit/entry.
Due to these oppressive conditions, many who have the opportunity to leave Palestine have. Some estimates report that up to 40% of Christians in the Bethlehem “triangle” (Bethlehem, Beit Jala, Beit Sahour) have left for America or Europe especially over the past several years. “If this trend continues,” one report speculates, “Bethlehem might very soon be little more than a Christian museum with many ancient shrines but no living, witnessing community.”
This speaks to one of the biggest issues facing Palestinian Christians. One of the most common responses that we hear from Palestinian Christians is that they feel forgotten by the rest of the world. With all the attention and sympathy that Israel receives, especially from Christian communities in the United States, Palestinian Christians feel forsaken by their brothers and sisters in the U.S.
They wonder how Christians in America can provide unquestionable support to a state that is crushing them on a daily basis while these same American Christians do not even acknowledging their existence in the “Holy Land.”
The presence of Christian organizations like MCC in Palestine sends the message that Christians here are not alone.
Unfortunately, this ends up being a pretty weak message compared to all of the support that the state of Israel receives.
To read more about the recent scandal surrounding the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem (and the historically oppressive role that Christianity has sometimes played in this land) and the relationship of Palestinian Christians to the state of Israel, please read “Palestinian Christians and Israel” by Daoud Kuttab at http://www.imemc.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11239&Itemid=1.
***
We appreciate your thoughts, prayers and feedback for us here in Palestine. As always, if there are any comments or questions that you may have about these updates, please feel free to share them with us.
Peace to you all,
Timothy and Christi Seidel
Peace Development Workers
Mennonite Central Committee – Palestine
Attachments:
· Jeff Halper, “Another ‘generous offer’ mythology in the works?” The Electronic Intifada, 12 April 2005
· Gideon Levy, “The dead who walk among us,” Haaretz, 16 May 2005
· Charmaine Seitz, “Sharon's minimum solution,” Palestine Report, 5 May 2005
________________________________
The Electronic Intifada
Another "generous offer" mythology in the works?
Jeff Halper
12 April 2005
In peace-making, as in law, business, and other areas of life, the devil is in the details. The crux of the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is not over a Palestinian state. The "quartet" of the Middle East Road Map — Europe, Russia, the United Nations, and the United States — all agree that a Palestinian state must emerge. Even Ariel Sharon himself, the father of the settlements and a fervent proponent of the Greater Land of Israel ideology, has come to understand the need for a Palestinian state in order to relieve Israel of the 4 million Palestinians living in the occupied territories. No, the problem is not a Palestinian state, but a viable Palestinian state.
Viability, a term found in the Road Map, is not a secondary issue. After almost four decades of deliberate Israeli de-development of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, the Palestinians are left today with scorched earth. No functioning economy (the Palestinians, 70 percent of whom live on less than $2 a day, are being kept alive by international relief agencies); no agriculture (since 1967 Israel has uprooted or cut down a million olive and fruit trees); no homes for the young generation (Israel has demolished 12,000 Palestinian homes since the occupation began, and refuses to issue permits to build new ones). Two generations of Palestinians have never known freedom, only military occupation. They have been brutalized, traumatized, undereducated, and left with few skills and little hope of employment. A full 60 percent of the Palestinian population is under the age of 18.
Add to this equation the fact that the small, truncated Palestinian state that emerges will be required also to provide an infrastructure, services, employment, and a future to the thousands of refugees that will return — Israel, with American backing, refuses to take in any refugees even though it expelled them in 1948 — and President Bush's recent call in Brussels for a "truly viable" Palestinian state sounds hollow. While he declared emphatically that "a state of scattered territories will not work," his agreement to Israel's annexation of its major settlement blocs leaves one to wonder just where that viable Palestinian state will be.
One gets the impression that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is being set up for yet another "generous offer." At the end of the Oslo process then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak was supposed to have offered 95 percent of the occupied territories to the Palestinians. It is not true (the 95 percent figure came from a Clinton proposal that both the Israelis and Palestinians accepted, but which never materialized).
But even if it were, Israel needs only 5 to 15 percent of the occupied territories to retain complete control and confine the Palestinians to a prison-state. Israel could control the borders, Palestinian movement, all the water and most of the agricultural land, the Jerusalem area (which, because of tourism, represents almost half the Palestinian economy), the country's airspace, and even its communications sphere. The Palestinians could get 85 to 95 percent of the actual territory and, like inmates of a prison, still be locked into a series of cells called a "state."
This, it appears, is what awaits Abbas in the next few months. The euphoria generated around the "moderate and pragmatic" Abu Mazen in this "post-Arafat era" is intended to put him in a corner, to place expectations of concessions upon him that he cannot possibly fulfill. Coordinated, as always, with the Americans, Sharon will spring his Generous Offer: Gaza plus 60-75 percent of the West Bank and a symbolic presence in East Jerusalem.
Sounds okay, and fleshed out on a map it will look okay to most people abroad who have no way of evaluating the issue of viability. But it will lock the Palestinians into the cantonized entity toward which Sharon has been tirelessly and openly working this past quarter century. It will be a new apartheid.
If Abbas says "yes," he will be the quisling leader Israel has hoped for. Two things will happen: Abbas will win the Nobel Peace Prize (sharing the stage proudly with Sharon and Bush), and he will be assassinated. Say "no," and Sharon will pounce: "See?!" he will proclaim, "the Palestinians have refused yet another generous offer! They obviously do not want peace!" And Israel, off the hook, will be free to expand its control of the occupied territories for years to come.
The Chinese expression has it: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. The generous offer, though fictitious, worked once. It is the responsibility of everyone seeking a just and endurable peace to ensure that it does not happen again. Viability is the devil in the details.
Jeff Halper is the coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. This article was first published in the The Boston Globe on 11 April 2005, under the title "A Palestinian prison-state?"
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/printer3755.shtml
________________________________
Haaretz
The dead who walk among us
Gideon Levy
16 May 2005
The days of commemoration are over. After honoring the memory of our dead who perished in the Holocaust and those killed in Israel's wars, the time has come to think about the next victims. They are walking among us. The fate of the next round's victims is almost sealed. This will be the last summer for the woman with the shopping bags who boards the bus that explodes, for the soldier at the bus stop, for the teenage girl at the mall, for the grandfather traveling to visit his grandchildren and for the foreign worker at the central bus station.
The cause of death: blindness, arrogance and stupidity - despite the fact that the intelligence services, which in recent weeks have repeatedly predicted the return of terror to our streets, see it as an unavoidable natural disaster.
Terrorism has abated for many months. With the exception of the attack at the Stage club in Tel Aviv, the fear of suicide bombers has receded, and our lives have returned to normal. This fundamental change has not occurred out of the blue, and those who think it can be wholly attributed to the actions of the security forces are mistaken. It was a Palestinian decision to stop the hostilities and to give Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) a chance.
The quiet could have been exploited to create a real change in our attitude toward the Palestinians. They are now led by the most moderate leadership they have ever had, creating an opportunity to try to begin a fair dialogue with them.
But Israel chose to refrain from any expression of goodwill, any decent gesture, any serious effort to meet and to work toward rapprochement. As in the past, the quiet was seen as a sign of weakness and surrender, enabling us to continue to go our own way, unhindered. Thus another missed opportunity, which cried out for attention, was recorded in the history of the conflict.
However, the quiet prevailed almost entirely on one side of the Green Line. Even if Israel shows no interest, almost nothing has changed in the territories, except for the removal of some checkpoints. There is still little personal security, children who go out in the street put their lives at risk, the Israel Defense Forces continue to conduct raids, day and night, in cities and villages, searching for wanted men and sometimes even killing them.
Peaceful demonstrations against the separation fence face violent, deadly responses from soldiers, as if there were no cease-fire. Even if the number of Palestinians killed has declined, a sense of danger hovers everywhere. Freedom of movement is still very restricted, and the humiliation involved in moving from one place to another, even for the sick and elderly, is unbearable.
The economic situation has also hardly improved - 34 percent unemployment in the West Bank and 40 percent in the Gaza Strip, while in many villages and towns the unemployment rate has reached 70 percent. The gates to employment in Israel are locked, and no new work places will be created under the current situation. Close to half of all Palestinians - 47 percent - live under the poverty line.
On the other hand, Israel is not fulfilling its basic commitments: The IDF has only left two cities, and more importantly, almost no prisoners have been released. It seems that few people in Israel realize the importance of the prisoner issue. There is no issue that troubles Palestinian society more, and there is no step that could bring about a more rapid change in the atmosphere than an extensive release of prisoners.
This kind of step would also serve to strengthen the current leadership - something that is clearly an Israeli interest. But Israel has discharged its obligations perfunctorily, releasing about 500 low-ranking prisoners who were due to be released soon in any case, and in this way has damaged Abu Mazen's standing in the eyes of his people.
The settlements and separation fence continue to be built at full steam, as if there were no agreement to freeze the settlements. Every day, more and more farmers lose their land. The occupation, therefore, continues unchanged. And in light of what is perceived, justifiably, as the PA's impotence, Hamas is garnering increasing strength.
The government of Israel is Hamas's best ally. The government's actions express an old and bad pattern, based on the haughty attitude that there is just one player on the stage, to whom everything is permitted. Only we are permitted to arm ourselves and prepare for the next round; only we are allowed to defend ourselves, to violate the cease-fire and to use violence. The thought that perhaps the Palestinians also have the right to defend themselves and their honor is incomprehensible.
This same pattern of thought is also behind the hope that disengagement supporters are fostering. Their belief that a dramatic change is underway ignores the fact that the lives of the Palestinians have scarcely changed as a result of the disengagement plan. Residents of Gaza continue to live in poverty in a giant prison, and residents of the West Bank, meanwhile, only see more cranes and bulldozers coming onto their land.
In light of all this, it is clear that the prevailing quiet is an illusion. One can assume that at the end of the summer, when the disengagement is completed and the occupation continues in all its cruelty, our streets will again come under attack. A new generation is growing up in the territories that is more extreme than its predecessor. Unlike their parents, who worked in Israel and got to know all sides of Israeli society, the new generation of Palestinians knows only the armed and violent Israeli.
The writing cries out from every wall, as a warning to all the dead who walk among us. But, amazingly, no one is doing a thing to stop the next cycle of killing.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/576301.html
________________________________
Palestine Report
Sharon's minimum solution
Charmaine Seitz
5 May 2005
About one year ago, the Israeli settlement industry appeared to gain new life. "Much better than Jerusalem!" proclaims a sign advertising housing in New Adam, which lies just three kilometers from Pisgat Zeev and on Ramallah's eastern shoulder. "Cottages and a garden for the price of an apartment."
Real estate agents for Rimmonim entice wary buyers even deeper into the West Bank with promises of new villas and large gardens. It's hard to believe, looking at these cheerful signs, that Israel's prime minister worries out loud that these communities are ready to wage civil war.
Indeed, if the early years of the Palestinian uprising were lean times for the sellers of occupied land, since 2003, West Bank settlements have begun once again to expand beyond the annual five percent considered natural growth. "When the Intifada broke out, demand for housing in the invasive settlements of the West Bank declined and construction concentrated in areas closer to the Green Line," explains Dror Etkes, coordinator of Peace Now's Settlement Watch. "Now the real estate market has learned how to live with the new situation." On the ground, there are no visible signs that the Israeli government has altered its policy of investing and expanding into the 1967 lands.
How then does one contextualize this right-wing Israeli government's upcoming relocation of 8,650 West Bank and Gaza settlers? Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's close advisor has described the disengagement plan as a means of preempting a political conclusion. "The disengagement is actually formaldehyde," Dov Weisglass told Haaretz's Uri Shavit in August. "It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that's necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians."
More specifically, the disengagement plan is intended to forestall international intervention and Israeli public dissension. As incomplete as Palestinians perceive the roadmap plan to be, this broadly accepted document talks about ending the occupation, establishing a viable Palestinian state, and incorporating an international framework outside the sole purview of the United States. "Sharon will fight with a few more settlers, everyone will say that is wonderful, and the roadmap will be discarded," predicts Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. In the meantime, the strategic settlement project will grow.
There is no denying, however, that the removal of even one Israeli settlement will alter the contours of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Perhaps - as the settlers vigorously assert - it will set an influential precedent for Israel's withdrawal from occupied territory. More certainly, Israel will have committed itself to demarcating the contours of the Palestinian ghetto. Already, the first lines have been drawn in the form of the walls, fences, guard towers and gates that make up the barrier Israel is constructing in the West Bank. "The settlers are probably right when they say that everything outside the fence will be slated for dismantlement," says Etkes. "But they still can't prove it." The removal of the Gaza Strip settlements, in other words, will establish that Israel believes it does not belong there.
Because it will in effect set limits for the Israeli settlement enterprise, there are still Israelis (and many Palestinians) who believe the disengagement plan is just a ruse. After the plan was broached in 2004, analyst Yossi Alpher promised to eat his laptop if Ariel Sharon ever oversaw the removal of a single settlement from the West Bank or Gaza. Today he is less doubtful, but Hebrew University Professor Tanya Reinhart remains convinced that there will be no withdrawal. She points out that only weeks before the July disengagement is slated to begin, not a single settler has received compensation, and no temporary housing has been established. Now the Israeli government is discussing postponing the withdrawal for three weeks to dodge Jewish holidays, pushing it back to August. This week, talks to relocate the Gaza settlers near Ashkalon stalled, and an agreement will not be drafted by the May 10 deadline. As if to demonstrate official lack of conviction, the Israeli minister of agriculture proposed recently that the Gush Katif farmers be allowed to stay on past the redeployment to continue working in their valuable greenhouses.
If disengagement was born from a desire to deflect criticism from Israel, new opportunities for pointing the finger have presented themselves. In his last visit to Washington, Sharon reportedly told US President George W. Bush that President Mahmoud Abbas was a "disappointment," returning to the Arafat-era refrain that no Palestinian partner exists.
Complicating matters, the secular nationalist Palestinian leadership is today in the uncomfortable position of preparing for much-needed elections that are certain to establish the rival Islamist faction Hamas as a leading political force in Palestinian civic life. Without those elections, Palestinian institutions will remain strategically paralyzed, and scorned by the public. But the incorporation of Hamas, named a terrorist group by both the United States and Europe, will also provide Israel with added leverage for pressuring the Palestinian leadership. Already Israeli officials are quietly telling diplomats that a Palestinian Authority that includes Hamas will be an outlaw government. It remains to be seen whether the international community will allow that to be an excuse for Israel to avoid acting at all.
"I suggest that the progress be slow," Sharon told reporters at a Passover ceremony. "I'm not saying that it should be deliberately halted, but we must insist that commitments are thoroughly met and not waver even the tiniest bit about their need to prevent smuggling, prevent terror, dismantle the terror organizations and stop their military industrial activity. The Americans also don't propose that we yield on these things." But it was Weisglass himself who told Haaretz in November that the torpedoing of the disengagement plan would be cause for "everlasting regret."
Etkes isn't sure what Sharon is up to, but his money is on Sharon doing all he can to stall. "I think Sharon is buying time. He really doesn't know what will be possible, and what will not be possible, and so he is just trying to wait and see."
If the disengagement plan is ultimately completed successfully, analysts say it could be part of a larger plan to cede land and Palestinian population centers, without turning over meaningful control. In fact, says Halper, Sharon could ultimately withdraw from as much as 85 percent of the West Bank without abandoning any major settlement blocs, and without giving Palestinians the resources and access necessary to build a viable state.
"Imagine going to a prison in your country and asking to see a blueprint," says Halper, using his favorite analogy. "It will appear to you at first that the prisoners are in control of 95 percent of the territory. But the truth is, it is possible to maintain control of that prison by controlling only as much as five percent of the property - the bars, the doors, and the barbed wire."
He believes that Sharon might even find it politically useful to make one final offer: "Palestinians will get a state, but a state that has no development potential whatsoever." If they refuse, then the Israeli government will once again declare the Palestinian leadership irrelevant, and continue to impose the borders on Palestinians that it desires.
"The fence is the minimum of what Sharon is willing to get out of this," points out Etkes. Otherwise, the long-term plan is war. Every withdrawal is a withdrawal to the next starting point for negotiations." The disengagement will be the first step in establishing Israel's permanent borders, writes Sharon's security advisor Ephraim Halevy. This change is driven by US interests in the region, he says, and will be completed over the next three years.
At the Qalandiya checkpoint just south of Ramallah, it is obvious that settlers, too, see the advantages of establishing a minimum border. Flying an orange Gush Katif flag, a car speeds its way through the crowded Palestinian intersection next to the eight-meter-high concrete wall that severs the town from its undeveloped hinterlands. Afterwards, the bearded driver shares a conspiratorial laugh with a kippa-wearing passenger in the back seat - no rocks through the windshield; in fact, they barely earned a curious glance.
Israelis once rarely used this intersection - it formerly connected Ramallah to the Palestinian village of al Ram, and to Jericho. It takes two settlers and a flash of clarity, however, to show how the intersection has been transformed. In less than a year, it will be the major thoroughfare connecting settlements to the east of Ramallah with their counterparts to the west, and on to Israel. A few years after that, this dusty passage will likely be lined with Israeli-owned shops emblazoned with Hebrew products and landscaped with irrigated flowering plants. On the other side of the wall, Palestinians will be standing in line, trying to get out.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3819.shtml
25 May 2005
“Independence” and “Nakba”
How we look at history determines in large part what that history says to us about who we are, where we are, where we came from, and where we are going. What is good news in the grand telling of events for some often has a very different meaning for those viewing history from the underside. For most Israeli Jews, for example, May 15, 1948 means Independence Day and is part of a story of freedom, liberty, and success in overcoming great difficulties. But for Palestinians, the same events are known as the Nakba, an Arabic word meaning “catastrophe.”
For Palestinians, the events between 1947 and 1949 are remembered as a time when Israeli military forces destroyed over five hundred Palestinian villages and expelled between 700,000 to 900,000 Palestinians from their lands (about 85% of the Palestinian population at that time). These refugees have lived exiled from their land since then. Since 1967, the Palestinian experience of dispossession has continued in the Occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, as the Israeli authorities have expropriated Palestinian land for the construction of illegal settlements and more recently for the construction of a separation barrier in the Occupied Territories that solidifies Israeli control over all of historic Palestine.
Today it is estimated that over seven million Palestinians—about three-quarters of the total Palestinian population (and about one-third of the global refugee population)—live as refugees and internally displaced persons throughout the Middle East and beyond. Many still hold the land deeds to the properties they were expelled from and the keys to the homes from which they were driven. They wait for their opportunity to exercise their “right of return”—a right articulated in 1948 in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 194(III) that called on Israel to allow the return of, to provide for compensation to, those refugees from the 1948 war willing to live at peace with their neighbors. Israel has consistently refused to allow any refugees to return home.
Several of MCC’s partner organizations held different activities this year to mark the occasion including the Badil Resource Center for Residency and Refugee Rights (http://www.badil.org)/. One such event was held by the Zochrot Association (http://www.nakbainhebrew.org/) to commemorate the 57th anniversary of the “Nakba.” It was an incredible event. In the heart of Tel Aviv, in Rabin Square, Zochrot set up a huge grid that served as a map of historical Palestine. Throughout the evening participants placed cards with the names of and various information about the over 500 destroyed Palestinian villages on the grid creating a huge “Nakba map” of the landscape pre-1948. A powerful display (http://www.zochrot.org/index.php?id=206).
A Wall that Separates and an Israeli Colony in Bethlehem
Recently MCC partner the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center (http://www.sabeel.org/) held a conference in Jerusalem. In it, Dr. Bernard Sabella, a Palestinian Christian working with the Middle East Council of Churches, spoke about his years of working to facilitate dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians—what some would consider to be an integral component to any reconciliation process. In fact, Dr. Sabella spoke to his oftentimes criticized role in pursuing these kinds of dialogues that became very popular during the Oslo years.
Yet in reflecting on these experiences in the current context of this “Separation Wall” and on his hard work in them, he said to us “The Wall tells me that I have spent years in nonsense trying to dialogue with Israelis…The Wall tells me that Israelis live somewhere else and I live somewhere else…The future is separation.”
On our way into Jerusalem for that Sabeel conference, we noticed that the Israeli military had begun building another portion of the Wall in Bethlehem, right across the street from a hospital. Walking back home from the checkpoint later that night with some friends, we saw that this section of the Wall on this road, facing the hospital was already finished. It is a striking sight.
Just imagine, walking down a street, with a hospital to your left and this giant nine meter or thirty foot high concrete wall to your right. We stopped for a few minutes to talk with a young man that lives in one of the buildings now across the street from the Wall. He mentioned that his family was hoping to add another story to their home (because so much land has been expropriated by Israel often times the only way for Palestinians to expand is by building up). This will be impossible now because adjacent buildings cannot rise higher than the wall, as this is considered a “security threat” to those on the other side of the barrier—which many are saying will actually be Israeli settlers brought in to live in a new settlement right in the middle of Bethlehem. His home may soon be demolished for being too tall as it is now.
Farming in the West Bank
Recently MCC has joined with the MA’AN Development Center (http://www.maan-ctr.org/) in a project to support Palestinian farmers who are being impacted by the ongoing construction of the Wall. One farmer we met from the village of Qatanna northwest of Jerusalem took us to his home. He showed us where 12 out of the 17 dunams of land he owns were confiscated by the Israeli military to make way for the Wall, uprooting 100 plus of his olive and fruit trees. With the little that he and his family (all 29 children and grandchildren living in one house) have, this had a devastating effect.
For more information and recent developments on the Wall, please visit MCC partners PENGON (http://www.stopthewall.org/) and ARIJ (http://www.arij.org/).
The Complicity of International Corporations in Occupation: Home Demolitions
Home demolitions continue in the occupied territories. On April 13th, two homes were demolished by the Israeli military in the town of Anata, east of Jerusalem. One of the homes belonged to the Yamani family. It was rebuilt three years ago (after being previously demolished) on land owned by the family with the help of MCC and MCC partner the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD http://www.icahd.org/eng/). It was located in Area C of the West Bank in an area where it is virtually impossible to receive a building permit from the Israeli authorities. This was the reason given for the demolition: that the home was built without a permit.
Once the demolition of the Yamani home was complete, the Caterpillar bulldozers moved on to the Dahalia home half a kilometer away. The house has served as the residence for the 22 members of the Dahalia family, 15 of them children, for the past two decades. After an hour, the home was reduced to a pile of rubble. The reason given for this demolition was the same as the first: it was built without a permit. Both of these actions violate international law. MCC provided relief assistance for the construction of temporary housing for the Dahalia family through ICAHD in partnership with Rabbis for Human Rights (http://www.rhr.israel.net/). For more information on these demolitions, please visit http://www.icahd.org/eng/news.asp?menu=5&submenu=1&item=230.
This destruction of Palestinian homes by Caterpillar bulldozers happened only hours before Caterpillar shareholders met in Chicago. Protests calling for a boycott of Caterpillar and other companies contributing to the Israeli illegal occupation of Palestinian territories resonate from the cries of those left homeless and forgotten by the rest of the world.
This is just one example as to why many are arguing that alternative pressures (economic, academic, etc.) to ending the occupation need to be pursued. To find out what you can do to force Caterpillar to stop selling home crushing bulldozers to Israel, visit http://www.catdestroyshomes.org/.
Palestinian Christian Presence in the Land
Like all Palestinians, Palestinian Christians are suffering under the weight of this occupation. Their homes get demolished, their property gets confiscated, they have no access to work and suffer unemployment. Even churches and church property is affected by this Separation Wall.
Here in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus where half of the population is Christian, all Palestinians are feeling these effects. When it is finished, the Wall will surround Bethlehem to the north, west and south. This coupled with a settler road to the east that Palestinians are not permitted to travel on will effectively turn Bethlehem into an open-air prison with only three points of exit/entry.
Due to these oppressive conditions, many who have the opportunity to leave Palestine have. Some estimates report that up to 40% of Christians in the Bethlehem “triangle” (Bethlehem, Beit Jala, Beit Sahour) have left for America or Europe especially over the past several years. “If this trend continues,” one report speculates, “Bethlehem might very soon be little more than a Christian museum with many ancient shrines but no living, witnessing community.”
This speaks to one of the biggest issues facing Palestinian Christians. One of the most common responses that we hear from Palestinian Christians is that they feel forgotten by the rest of the world. With all the attention and sympathy that Israel receives, especially from Christian communities in the United States, Palestinian Christians feel forsaken by their brothers and sisters in the U.S.
They wonder how Christians in America can provide unquestionable support to a state that is crushing them on a daily basis while these same American Christians do not even acknowledging their existence in the “Holy Land.”
The presence of Christian organizations like MCC in Palestine sends the message that Christians here are not alone.
Unfortunately, this ends up being a pretty weak message compared to all of the support that the state of Israel receives.
To read more about the recent scandal surrounding the Greek Orthodox Church in Jerusalem (and the historically oppressive role that Christianity has sometimes played in this land) and the relationship of Palestinian Christians to the state of Israel, please read “Palestinian Christians and Israel” by Daoud Kuttab at http://www.imemc.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11239&Itemid=1.
***
We appreciate your thoughts, prayers and feedback for us here in Palestine. As always, if there are any comments or questions that you may have about these updates, please feel free to share them with us.
Peace to you all,
Timothy and Christi Seidel
Peace Development Workers
Mennonite Central Committee – Palestine
Attachments:
· Jeff Halper, “Another ‘generous offer’ mythology in the works?” The Electronic Intifada, 12 April 2005
· Gideon Levy, “The dead who walk among us,” Haaretz, 16 May 2005
· Charmaine Seitz, “Sharon's minimum solution,” Palestine Report, 5 May 2005
________________________________
The Electronic Intifada
Another "generous offer" mythology in the works?
Jeff Halper
12 April 2005
In peace-making, as in law, business, and other areas of life, the devil is in the details. The crux of the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is not over a Palestinian state. The "quartet" of the Middle East Road Map — Europe, Russia, the United Nations, and the United States — all agree that a Palestinian state must emerge. Even Ariel Sharon himself, the father of the settlements and a fervent proponent of the Greater Land of Israel ideology, has come to understand the need for a Palestinian state in order to relieve Israel of the 4 million Palestinians living in the occupied territories. No, the problem is not a Palestinian state, but a viable Palestinian state.
Viability, a term found in the Road Map, is not a secondary issue. After almost four decades of deliberate Israeli de-development of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, the Palestinians are left today with scorched earth. No functioning economy (the Palestinians, 70 percent of whom live on less than $2 a day, are being kept alive by international relief agencies); no agriculture (since 1967 Israel has uprooted or cut down a million olive and fruit trees); no homes for the young generation (Israel has demolished 12,000 Palestinian homes since the occupation began, and refuses to issue permits to build new ones). Two generations of Palestinians have never known freedom, only military occupation. They have been brutalized, traumatized, undereducated, and left with few skills and little hope of employment. A full 60 percent of the Palestinian population is under the age of 18.
Add to this equation the fact that the small, truncated Palestinian state that emerges will be required also to provide an infrastructure, services, employment, and a future to the thousands of refugees that will return — Israel, with American backing, refuses to take in any refugees even though it expelled them in 1948 — and President Bush's recent call in Brussels for a "truly viable" Palestinian state sounds hollow. While he declared emphatically that "a state of scattered territories will not work," his agreement to Israel's annexation of its major settlement blocs leaves one to wonder just where that viable Palestinian state will be.
One gets the impression that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) is being set up for yet another "generous offer." At the end of the Oslo process then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak was supposed to have offered 95 percent of the occupied territories to the Palestinians. It is not true (the 95 percent figure came from a Clinton proposal that both the Israelis and Palestinians accepted, but which never materialized).
But even if it were, Israel needs only 5 to 15 percent of the occupied territories to retain complete control and confine the Palestinians to a prison-state. Israel could control the borders, Palestinian movement, all the water and most of the agricultural land, the Jerusalem area (which, because of tourism, represents almost half the Palestinian economy), the country's airspace, and even its communications sphere. The Palestinians could get 85 to 95 percent of the actual territory and, like inmates of a prison, still be locked into a series of cells called a "state."
This, it appears, is what awaits Abbas in the next few months. The euphoria generated around the "moderate and pragmatic" Abu Mazen in this "post-Arafat era" is intended to put him in a corner, to place expectations of concessions upon him that he cannot possibly fulfill. Coordinated, as always, with the Americans, Sharon will spring his Generous Offer: Gaza plus 60-75 percent of the West Bank and a symbolic presence in East Jerusalem.
Sounds okay, and fleshed out on a map it will look okay to most people abroad who have no way of evaluating the issue of viability. But it will lock the Palestinians into the cantonized entity toward which Sharon has been tirelessly and openly working this past quarter century. It will be a new apartheid.
If Abbas says "yes," he will be the quisling leader Israel has hoped for. Two things will happen: Abbas will win the Nobel Peace Prize (sharing the stage proudly with Sharon and Bush), and he will be assassinated. Say "no," and Sharon will pounce: "See?!" he will proclaim, "the Palestinians have refused yet another generous offer! They obviously do not want peace!" And Israel, off the hook, will be free to expand its control of the occupied territories for years to come.
The Chinese expression has it: Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. The generous offer, though fictitious, worked once. It is the responsibility of everyone seeking a just and endurable peace to ensure that it does not happen again. Viability is the devil in the details.
Jeff Halper is the coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. This article was first published in the The Boston Globe on 11 April 2005, under the title "A Palestinian prison-state?"
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/printer3755.shtml
________________________________
Haaretz
The dead who walk among us
Gideon Levy
16 May 2005
The days of commemoration are over. After honoring the memory of our dead who perished in the Holocaust and those killed in Israel's wars, the time has come to think about the next victims. They are walking among us. The fate of the next round's victims is almost sealed. This will be the last summer for the woman with the shopping bags who boards the bus that explodes, for the soldier at the bus stop, for the teenage girl at the mall, for the grandfather traveling to visit his grandchildren and for the foreign worker at the central bus station.
The cause of death: blindness, arrogance and stupidity - despite the fact that the intelligence services, which in recent weeks have repeatedly predicted the return of terror to our streets, see it as an unavoidable natural disaster.
Terrorism has abated for many months. With the exception of the attack at the Stage club in Tel Aviv, the fear of suicide bombers has receded, and our lives have returned to normal. This fundamental change has not occurred out of the blue, and those who think it can be wholly attributed to the actions of the security forces are mistaken. It was a Palestinian decision to stop the hostilities and to give Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) a chance.
The quiet could have been exploited to create a real change in our attitude toward the Palestinians. They are now led by the most moderate leadership they have ever had, creating an opportunity to try to begin a fair dialogue with them.
But Israel chose to refrain from any expression of goodwill, any decent gesture, any serious effort to meet and to work toward rapprochement. As in the past, the quiet was seen as a sign of weakness and surrender, enabling us to continue to go our own way, unhindered. Thus another missed opportunity, which cried out for attention, was recorded in the history of the conflict.
However, the quiet prevailed almost entirely on one side of the Green Line. Even if Israel shows no interest, almost nothing has changed in the territories, except for the removal of some checkpoints. There is still little personal security, children who go out in the street put their lives at risk, the Israel Defense Forces continue to conduct raids, day and night, in cities and villages, searching for wanted men and sometimes even killing them.
Peaceful demonstrations against the separation fence face violent, deadly responses from soldiers, as if there were no cease-fire. Even if the number of Palestinians killed has declined, a sense of danger hovers everywhere. Freedom of movement is still very restricted, and the humiliation involved in moving from one place to another, even for the sick and elderly, is unbearable.
The economic situation has also hardly improved - 34 percent unemployment in the West Bank and 40 percent in the Gaza Strip, while in many villages and towns the unemployment rate has reached 70 percent. The gates to employment in Israel are locked, and no new work places will be created under the current situation. Close to half of all Palestinians - 47 percent - live under the poverty line.
On the other hand, Israel is not fulfilling its basic commitments: The IDF has only left two cities, and more importantly, almost no prisoners have been released. It seems that few people in Israel realize the importance of the prisoner issue. There is no issue that troubles Palestinian society more, and there is no step that could bring about a more rapid change in the atmosphere than an extensive release of prisoners.
This kind of step would also serve to strengthen the current leadership - something that is clearly an Israeli interest. But Israel has discharged its obligations perfunctorily, releasing about 500 low-ranking prisoners who were due to be released soon in any case, and in this way has damaged Abu Mazen's standing in the eyes of his people.
The settlements and separation fence continue to be built at full steam, as if there were no agreement to freeze the settlements. Every day, more and more farmers lose their land. The occupation, therefore, continues unchanged. And in light of what is perceived, justifiably, as the PA's impotence, Hamas is garnering increasing strength.
The government of Israel is Hamas's best ally. The government's actions express an old and bad pattern, based on the haughty attitude that there is just one player on the stage, to whom everything is permitted. Only we are permitted to arm ourselves and prepare for the next round; only we are allowed to defend ourselves, to violate the cease-fire and to use violence. The thought that perhaps the Palestinians also have the right to defend themselves and their honor is incomprehensible.
This same pattern of thought is also behind the hope that disengagement supporters are fostering. Their belief that a dramatic change is underway ignores the fact that the lives of the Palestinians have scarcely changed as a result of the disengagement plan. Residents of Gaza continue to live in poverty in a giant prison, and residents of the West Bank, meanwhile, only see more cranes and bulldozers coming onto their land.
In light of all this, it is clear that the prevailing quiet is an illusion. One can assume that at the end of the summer, when the disengagement is completed and the occupation continues in all its cruelty, our streets will again come under attack. A new generation is growing up in the territories that is more extreme than its predecessor. Unlike their parents, who worked in Israel and got to know all sides of Israeli society, the new generation of Palestinians knows only the armed and violent Israeli.
The writing cries out from every wall, as a warning to all the dead who walk among us. But, amazingly, no one is doing a thing to stop the next cycle of killing.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/576301.html
________________________________
Palestine Report
Sharon's minimum solution
Charmaine Seitz
5 May 2005
About one year ago, the Israeli settlement industry appeared to gain new life. "Much better than Jerusalem!" proclaims a sign advertising housing in New Adam, which lies just three kilometers from Pisgat Zeev and on Ramallah's eastern shoulder. "Cottages and a garden for the price of an apartment."
Real estate agents for Rimmonim entice wary buyers even deeper into the West Bank with promises of new villas and large gardens. It's hard to believe, looking at these cheerful signs, that Israel's prime minister worries out loud that these communities are ready to wage civil war.
Indeed, if the early years of the Palestinian uprising were lean times for the sellers of occupied land, since 2003, West Bank settlements have begun once again to expand beyond the annual five percent considered natural growth. "When the Intifada broke out, demand for housing in the invasive settlements of the West Bank declined and construction concentrated in areas closer to the Green Line," explains Dror Etkes, coordinator of Peace Now's Settlement Watch. "Now the real estate market has learned how to live with the new situation." On the ground, there are no visible signs that the Israeli government has altered its policy of investing and expanding into the 1967 lands.
How then does one contextualize this right-wing Israeli government's upcoming relocation of 8,650 West Bank and Gaza settlers? Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's close advisor has described the disengagement plan as a means of preempting a political conclusion. "The disengagement is actually formaldehyde," Dov Weisglass told Haaretz's Uri Shavit in August. "It supplies the amount of formaldehyde that's necessary so that there will not be a political process with the Palestinians."
More specifically, the disengagement plan is intended to forestall international intervention and Israeli public dissension. As incomplete as Palestinians perceive the roadmap plan to be, this broadly accepted document talks about ending the occupation, establishing a viable Palestinian state, and incorporating an international framework outside the sole purview of the United States. "Sharon will fight with a few more settlers, everyone will say that is wonderful, and the roadmap will be discarded," predicts Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions. In the meantime, the strategic settlement project will grow.
There is no denying, however, that the removal of even one Israeli settlement will alter the contours of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Perhaps - as the settlers vigorously assert - it will set an influential precedent for Israel's withdrawal from occupied territory. More certainly, Israel will have committed itself to demarcating the contours of the Palestinian ghetto. Already, the first lines have been drawn in the form of the walls, fences, guard towers and gates that make up the barrier Israel is constructing in the West Bank. "The settlers are probably right when they say that everything outside the fence will be slated for dismantlement," says Etkes. "But they still can't prove it." The removal of the Gaza Strip settlements, in other words, will establish that Israel believes it does not belong there.
Because it will in effect set limits for the Israeli settlement enterprise, there are still Israelis (and many Palestinians) who believe the disengagement plan is just a ruse. After the plan was broached in 2004, analyst Yossi Alpher promised to eat his laptop if Ariel Sharon ever oversaw the removal of a single settlement from the West Bank or Gaza. Today he is less doubtful, but Hebrew University Professor Tanya Reinhart remains convinced that there will be no withdrawal. She points out that only weeks before the July disengagement is slated to begin, not a single settler has received compensation, and no temporary housing has been established. Now the Israeli government is discussing postponing the withdrawal for three weeks to dodge Jewish holidays, pushing it back to August. This week, talks to relocate the Gaza settlers near Ashkalon stalled, and an agreement will not be drafted by the May 10 deadline. As if to demonstrate official lack of conviction, the Israeli minister of agriculture proposed recently that the Gush Katif farmers be allowed to stay on past the redeployment to continue working in their valuable greenhouses.
If disengagement was born from a desire to deflect criticism from Israel, new opportunities for pointing the finger have presented themselves. In his last visit to Washington, Sharon reportedly told US President George W. Bush that President Mahmoud Abbas was a "disappointment," returning to the Arafat-era refrain that no Palestinian partner exists.
Complicating matters, the secular nationalist Palestinian leadership is today in the uncomfortable position of preparing for much-needed elections that are certain to establish the rival Islamist faction Hamas as a leading political force in Palestinian civic life. Without those elections, Palestinian institutions will remain strategically paralyzed, and scorned by the public. But the incorporation of Hamas, named a terrorist group by both the United States and Europe, will also provide Israel with added leverage for pressuring the Palestinian leadership. Already Israeli officials are quietly telling diplomats that a Palestinian Authority that includes Hamas will be an outlaw government. It remains to be seen whether the international community will allow that to be an excuse for Israel to avoid acting at all.
"I suggest that the progress be slow," Sharon told reporters at a Passover ceremony. "I'm not saying that it should be deliberately halted, but we must insist that commitments are thoroughly met and not waver even the tiniest bit about their need to prevent smuggling, prevent terror, dismantle the terror organizations and stop their military industrial activity. The Americans also don't propose that we yield on these things." But it was Weisglass himself who told Haaretz in November that the torpedoing of the disengagement plan would be cause for "everlasting regret."
Etkes isn't sure what Sharon is up to, but his money is on Sharon doing all he can to stall. "I think Sharon is buying time. He really doesn't know what will be possible, and what will not be possible, and so he is just trying to wait and see."
If the disengagement plan is ultimately completed successfully, analysts say it could be part of a larger plan to cede land and Palestinian population centers, without turning over meaningful control. In fact, says Halper, Sharon could ultimately withdraw from as much as 85 percent of the West Bank without abandoning any major settlement blocs, and without giving Palestinians the resources and access necessary to build a viable state.
"Imagine going to a prison in your country and asking to see a blueprint," says Halper, using his favorite analogy. "It will appear to you at first that the prisoners are in control of 95 percent of the territory. But the truth is, it is possible to maintain control of that prison by controlling only as much as five percent of the property - the bars, the doors, and the barbed wire."
He believes that Sharon might even find it politically useful to make one final offer: "Palestinians will get a state, but a state that has no development potential whatsoever." If they refuse, then the Israeli government will once again declare the Palestinian leadership irrelevant, and continue to impose the borders on Palestinians that it desires.
"The fence is the minimum of what Sharon is willing to get out of this," points out Etkes. Otherwise, the long-term plan is war. Every withdrawal is a withdrawal to the next starting point for negotiations." The disengagement will be the first step in establishing Israel's permanent borders, writes Sharon's security advisor Ephraim Halevy. This change is driven by US interests in the region, he says, and will be completed over the next three years.
At the Qalandiya checkpoint just south of Ramallah, it is obvious that settlers, too, see the advantages of establishing a minimum border. Flying an orange Gush Katif flag, a car speeds its way through the crowded Palestinian intersection next to the eight-meter-high concrete wall that severs the town from its undeveloped hinterlands. Afterwards, the bearded driver shares a conspiratorial laugh with a kippa-wearing passenger in the back seat - no rocks through the windshield; in fact, they barely earned a curious glance.
Israelis once rarely used this intersection - it formerly connected Ramallah to the Palestinian village of al Ram, and to Jericho. It takes two settlers and a flash of clarity, however, to show how the intersection has been transformed. In less than a year, it will be the major thoroughfare connecting settlements to the east of Ramallah with their counterparts to the west, and on to Israel. A few years after that, this dusty passage will likely be lined with Israeli-owned shops emblazoned with Hebrew products and landscaped with irrigated flowering plants. On the other side of the wall, Palestinians will be standing in line, trying to get out.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3819.shtml
Friday, April 15
MCC Palestine Update #108
MCC Palestine Update #108
15 April 2005
Gaza: “One Big Prison”
We recently returned from spending almost a week in Gaza. The time was good, meeting some incredible people, especially at the Culture and Free Thought Association (http://www.cfta.org/) in Khan Younis, an MCC partner. But no time in Gaza is without some incident. This time it was the news of three children in Rafah who were killed by Israeli military gunfire. Reports we heard there were that they were simply playing soccer. The Israeli military is investigating the matter.
Last Tuesday morning we were in Rafah and saw the funeral procession of one of the boys who was killed. It was so heart-breaking. All of Rafah is. The day before, visiting families in the refugee camps of Khan Younis, they were still fearful from the previous night when apache helicopters were swarming overhead. When this happens, families typically grab what they can and head towards a family member’s home further away from such activity. And all of this in the context of a “cease-fire.”
Imagine, waking up in the middle of the night to such a sound over your head—a sound that often means death to those who hear it—and having to wake and gather up your children to move them to hopefully what is a safer place.
So much of this kind of uncertainty exists right now in Gaza, especially with the upcoming Israeli "disengagement." Palestinians really don't know what to expect. What if there are closures? Where will their food come from? How will they access needed medical care or other services? Such uncertainty is a key ingredient for fear.
However it all happens, what is certain is that the occupation will still exist in Gaza, with Israeli control over all borders, the coast, and airspace. (A recent report by B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, titled "One Big Prison" offers a good perspective on the near future of Palestinians in Gaza; you can find a summary of this report attached below and online at www.btselem.org/Download/200503_Gaza_Prison_Abstract_English.doc)
You may be wondering, “Aren’t the Israeli settlers supposed to leave Gaza this summer?” “Isn’t that a good thing?” “Aren’t the Israelis holding up their end of the deal?” “Aren’t they sacrificing a lot for peace with the Palestinians?” The short and honest answer? “No.” Yes, the settlers are to depart from Gaza, but Palestinians in Gaza fear what will come next. Even if they are left to themselves, they will still be closed in like one big prison. Businesses will suffer more difficulty, as Israel will still have control of sea, land and air space for “security.” Gaza may turn into one big humanitarian crisis—that is, if you don’t think it is one already. Even in the absence of Israeli soldiers and settlers, Palestinians in Gaza have undergone such severe psychological damage that they will continue to live with the occupation inside of themselves for a long time to come. In addition to this, these settlers will move to the West Bank, carrying with them more problems here. Stated bluntly, words of peace and progress from Israelis still mean harsh realities for Palestinians.
Please keep these families in your thoughts and prayers.
More on Exploring Alternative Pressures: Sabeel’s Statement on Morally Responsible Investment
In last month’s update, we heard the perspectives of some Jewish voices that were calling for the consideration of economic pressures to compliment political and legal mechanisms to end the Israeli occupation.
An additional voice in this discussion is MCC partner organization the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center (http://www.sabeel.org/). Sabeel has recently released a statement titled “A Nonviolent Response to the Occupation: A Call for Morally Responsible Investment.” While appreciating the political and legal reasons for pursuing these kinds of actions, Sabeel offers something unique with this theological and moral reflection.
"Furthermore, God in Christ has given us life…Jesus said, “I have come in order that you might have life – life in all its fullness” (John 10:10). For people to enjoy life in its fullness, they must live in peace and justice, in dignity and harmony with each other. Their God-given human worth must be respected. We must do everything we can to remove any obstacles that prevent human beings from achieving life in its fullness. God must be sovereign over all aspects of our lives including our politics, work, and investments."
To this end, Sabeel states
"The churches repeatedly and categorically have stood on the side of a just peace for the Palestinians in accordance with UN resolutions and International Law. International, regional, and national councils of churches around the world have asserted this same position. Through their statements and representations, the churches were encouraging their national governments to pressure Israel to implement International Law, all to no avail. Indeed, the international community has been helpless to prevail upon Israel to halt its oppression of the Palestinians.
"As churches examine their own investment policies and show willingness to take moral and ethical investment decisions, they pick up where the political global community has failed to date. It is important to demonstrate by our own example that, just as we are prepared to bear burdens to maintain our own respect for international law, so Israel must accept these same burdens. Churches, by moving from statements to direct action and adopting appropriate financial policies that are in line with their moral and theological stance, create an example for the international community, even if it means incurring and absorbing some financial loss."
Sabeel is an important voice for Palestinian Christians and all of those seeking a just peace in the Occupied Territories. Will we heed their call?
Sabeel’s complete statement can be found online at http://www.fosna.org/doc/Sabeel.
Palm Sunday March
In an act of nonviolent resistance against the occupation, MCC partner Holy Land Trust (http://www.holylandtrust.org/) organized a march on Palm Sunday that was to go from Manger Square in Bethlehem to the Old City of Jerusalem. For Palestinians living in Bethlehem, or anywhere else in the occupied territories, it is not possible to travel to Jerusalem, even on such special occasions as Palm Sunday or Easter, without special permission from the Israeli government.
The procession made it as far as the Bethlehem checkpoint where they were stopped by the Israeli military. After some time of standing, and then sitting in front of the soldiers, a statement was read to the soldiers declaring the right of all people of faith to journey to Jerusalem. Though they were not allowed to travel to Jerusalem, a strong point was made and fundamental injustices of the occupation exposed.
For more information on the event, please visit www.ecapc.org/palmsunstories05.asp
Zochrot to Deir Yassin
On Thursday April 7th, MCC partner the Zochrot Association (www.nakbainhebrew.org) and Deir Yassin Remembered organized an event to commemorate 57 years since the massacre at the Palestinian village Deir Yassin. The massacre at Deir Yassin in particular holds great significance in the Nakba as it was used as a tool of fear by the Israeli forces driving out Palestinians and destroying the over 500 Palestinian villages between 1947 and 1949. After a procession, signs were posted bearing the names of 93 out of 110 to 140 people who were killed at Deir Yassin. The names were read aloud by a number of participants, including Israeli peace activist Mordechai Vanunu. (To see photos, please visit www.nakbainhebrew.org/index.php?id=195 and www.nakbainhebrew.org/index.php?id=193)
We also celebrated with Zochrot on the evening of Thursday April 14th as they held an opening for their first official office in Tel Aviv. In addition to being a meeting place for Zochrot events and activities, this office will also provide a resource center for educating Israelis about the Nakba of 1948 and the ongoing reality of Palestinian dispossession. Congratulations, Zochrot! Mabrook!
Our Challenge: A Call to Action…
As we often try to do at the end of these updates, we would like to close this one with a plea and a challenge from Sabeel:
"We are, therefore, pleading with our brothers and sisters all over the world to invest their God-given material resources in morally responsible activities that would contribute to the achievement of a just peace in Israel-Palestine. Furthermore, we ask them to continue to pray for all the inhabitants of our land so that peace will be achieved and the way for reconciliation will be opened. We are reminded of the words of the Latin American theologian, Leonardo Boff: 'If we want to serve the true God, we must break out of the circle of self-absorption and pay heed to the bloodied faces of our fellow human beings. If we do not share life with the oppressed, we do not share life with God.'"
Peace to you all,
Christi and Timothy Seidel
Peace Development Workers
Mennonite Central Committee – Palestine
Attachments:
· Jeff Halper, “E-1: The end of a viable Palestinian state,” The Electronic Intifada, 31 March 2005
· Amira Hass, “Palestinians also sleep in the day,” Haaretz, 31 March 2005
· B'Tselem/HaMoked Report Warns Against Continued Strangulation of Gaza Strip after Disengagement, 29 March 2005…“Gaza Prison: Freedom of Movement to and from the Gaza Strip on the Eve of the Disengagement Plan”
________________________________
The Electronic Intifada
E-1: The end of a viable Palestinian state
Jeff Halper
31 March 2005
The fatal flaw in most analyses of the Israel-Palestine conflict is the assumption that if the Palestinians can just get a state of their own, then all will be fine. A state on all the Occupied Territories (UN Resolution 242), on most of the Occupied Territories (Oslo and the Road Map to the Geneva Initiative), on even half the Occupied Territories (Sharon's notion) - it doesn't matter. Once there's a Palestinian state the conflict is over and we can all move on to the next item on the agenda.
Wrong. A Palestinian state can just as easily be a prison as a legitimate state that addresses the national aspirations of its people. The crucial issue is viability. Israel is a small country, but it is three times larger than the Palestinian areas. The entire Occupied Areas - the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza - make up only 22% of Israel/Palestine. That means that even if all of the territories Israel conquered in 1967 were relinquished, it would still comprise a full 78% of the country.
Would the Palestinian areas constitute a viable state? Barely. Just the size of the American state of Delaware (but with three times the population before refugees return), it would at least have a coherent territory, borders with Israel, Jordan, Syria and Egypt, a capital in Jerusalem, a port on the Mediterranean, an airport in Gaza, a viable economy (based on Holy Land tourism, agriculture and hi-tech) and access to the water of the Jordan River.
An accepted member of the international community enjoying trade with its neighbors - and enjoying as well the support of a far-flung, highly educated and affluent diaspora - a small Palestinian state would have a shot at viability.
This is what Israel seeks to prevent. Ever since becoming the head of the Ministerial Committee on Settlements in the Begin government back in 1977, Ariel Sharon has been completely up-front about his intention of securing the entire Land of Israel for the Jewish people. “Security” has nothing to do with Israel's expansionist policies.
Successive Israeli governments did not establish 200 settlements because of security. Nor did they build a massive infrastructure of Israeli-only highways that link the settlement blocs irreversibly into Israel for security reasons. Nor can the route of the Separation Barrier, nor the policy of expropriating Palestinian land and systematically demolishing Palestinian homes be explained by “security.” They all derive from one central goal: to claim the entire country for Israel. Period.
Still, Israel cannot “digest” the 3.6 million Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories. Giving them citizenship would nullify Israel as a Jewish state; not giving them citizenship yet keeping them forever under occupation would constitute outright apartheid.
What to do? The answer is clear: establish a tiny Palestinian state of, say, five or six cantons (Sharon's term) on 40-70% of the Occupied Territories, completely surrounded and controlled by Israel. Such a Palestinian state would cover only 10-15% of the entire country and would have no meaningful sovereignty and viability: no coherent territory, no freedom of movement, no control of borders, no capital in Jerusalem, no economic viability, no control of water, no control of airspace or communications, no military - not even the right as a sovereign state to enter into alliances without Israeli permission.
And since the Palestinians will never agree to this, Israel must “create facts on the ground” that prejudice negotiations even before they begin. Last week's announcement that Israel is constructing 3500 housing units in E-1, a corridor connecting Jerusalem to the West Bank settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim, seals the fate of the Palestinian state.
As a key element of an Israeli “Greater Jerusalem,” the E-1 plan removes any viability from a Palestinian state. It cuts the West Bank in half, allowing Israel to control Palestinian movement from one part of their country to another, while isolating East Jerusalem from the rest of Palestinian territory. Since 40% of the Palestinian economy revolves around Jerusalem and its tourist-based economy, the E-1 plan effectively cuts the economic heart out of any Palestinian state, rendering it nothing more than a set of non-viable Indian reservations.
If there is any silver lining in the E-1 plan, it is that it has highlighted American complicity in Israel's settlement expansion. The Bush Administration, while calling the E-1 plan “unhelpful,” nevertheless formally recognized the Ma'aleh Adumim settlement bloc, together with E-1, in last year's agreement between Bush and Sharon - a fundamental American policy change that was ratified almost unanimously by Congress. This puts the US in the very uncomfortable position of undermining its own Road Map initiative, which stems from the “Bush vision” of an Israeli-Palestinian peace. It also neutralizes completely America's role as an honest broker, and pits it against the other three members of the Road Map Quartet - Europe, the UN and Russia - who deplore the change in American policy.
Most tragically, American support for Sharon's settlement project destroys forever the possibility of a viable Palestinian state, dooming the peoples of Israel-Palestine to perpetual conflict. How this squares with American interests in a stable Middle East is anybody's guess.
Jeff Halper, Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD)
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3728.shtml
________________________________
Haaretz
Palestinians also sleep in the day
Amira Hass
31 March 2005
"The Israelis don't sleep at night, and we, the Palestinians also sleep in the day time."
So said an East Jerusalemite Palestinian recently. He was referring to the submission with which the Palestinian public in general and its leadership in particular accepts the progress of the Israeli plan to cut off East Jerusalem and its residents from the rest of the West Bank. The saying is more than just an expression of sorrow mixed with anger, and it goes beyond the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian situation. It contains within it the viewpoint that an oppressed public that doesn't merely passively collect victims has the ability to act and make a change to improve its situation; and that not every plan to dispossess them is a guaranteed success. If you want, it's an optimistic-humanistic view. But it needs supporters.
About two months ago, Israelis and Palestinians were shocked to read the news item that said that starting in July, when the separation wall is completed in the area of Qalandiya, East Jerusalemites will have to ask for permits to go to Ramallah. After the initial shock, there were Israelis who began to doubt the veracity of the report. Palestinians, scared of course, were heard to say that "meanwhile, those are only rumors."
The facts: Two months ago, soldiers indeed prevented East Jerusalemites in their cars from entering Ramallah through the Qalandiya checkpoint, based on an order signed by the major general of the Central Command that prohibits Israelis from entering Palestinian Authority areas. But that phenomenon has ceased.
But now some worrisome signals are coming from the checkpoint on the southern side of Jerusalem, between Abu Dis and Wadi Nar - the only road that Palestinians are allowed to use to travel from the northern part of the West Bank to the southern part. East Jerusalemites are "trapped" when they leave the Bethlehem area through that checkpoint, and receive a summons to report to the police so they can be questioned about their violation of the order prohibiting their travel.
It's still a trickle. There is a huge gap between the fact that Border Police troops at the checkpoint detained East Jerusalemites, and a formal statement by the spokesman for the Judea and Samaria police that the major general's orders do not apply to the East Jerusalemites but only to Israeli citizens. Most of the East Jerusalemites meanwhile make their way to Bethlehem other ways, and without permits.
The shock is understandable but infuriating. Understandable because anyone who knows just how much East Jerusalemites are connected to Ramallah and Bethlehem can imagine the intensity of the blow that landed on those communities. Infuriating, because it shows ignorance of the steps Israel has been taking for years, paving the way for this highest level of disengagement of East Jerusalem and its residents from the rest of the territories occupied in 1967. After all, the unceasing expansion of Ma'aleh Adumim, with or without the 3,000 new apartments planned for area E1, is an inseparable part of the plan.
The Israeli skepticism is outrageous because it exposes the blindness of the Israelis to all the facts that have accumulated over recent years: According to all the army statements, the major general's order also covers Jerusalemite Palestinians, who carry blue ID cards. Leaving Nablus, for example, they are asked for their "permit." Soon, the separation wall will be completed. Then, when the crossing from Jerusalem to the rest of the West Bank, including next door neighborhoods, is only possible through special gates and terminals that are dressed up to look like international border crossings, the occupation bureaucracy will find it easier to enforce the administrative prohibitions.
Palestinian doubts are saddening and frustrating, because it is an escape from taking action. The East Jerusalem experience shows that patient, coordinated action can stop dispossession plans. Two campaigns conducted at the end of the 1990s won relative success: against lifting of residency from East Jerusalemites, and against house demolitions. The campaigns were an example of joint Palestinian-Israeli-international efforts, a combination of grassroots, legal, political, diplomatic and media efforts.
Indeed, with the outbreak of the intifada, Jerusalem city hall resumed its policy of demolishing houses that were built without permits, because Jerusalem municipalities have always severely limited house construction for East Jerusalemites.
After the Interior Ministry was forced to reinstate the residency of many East Jerusalemites, the harm done to their rights as residents continued in various ways. Nonetheless, there is much to learn from the relative successes of those campaigns as opposed to campaigns that failed - against the Judaization of lands and homes in Palestinian neighborhoods, against ceaseless discrimination between Palestinians and Jews in East Jerusalem. There is no doubt that one of the factors in the success was the Palestinian-Israeli cooperation, and the way the campaign departed from merely making statements and issuing condemnations.
After the first reports, there began to be heard semi-official Israeli statements about how the matter of the permits to travel to Ramallah was not a settled matter. That's a signal. There is a chance to block the move if the occupation bureaucracy encounters real resistance. And for that, much more than for the playing of songs on the Voice of Palestine and Army Radio, real Israeli-Palestinian cooperation is required.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/559065.html
________________________________
B'Tselem/HaMoked
New Report Warns Against Continued Strangulation of Gaza Strip after Disengagement
29 March 2005
Israel has cut off the Gaza Strip from the rest of the world to such an extent that it is easier for Palestinians in Israel or the West Bank to visit relatives in prison than visit a relative in Gaza.
This is one conclusion of the 100-page report that B’Tselem and HaMoked publish today. One Big Prison documents the ongoing violations of human rights and international law resulting from Israel’s restrictions on the movement of people and goods between Gaza and the West Bank, Israel, and the rest of the world. The report also warns against Israel’s attempt to avoid its responsibility toward residents of the Gaza Strip following disengagement.
Despite the easing of restrictions that Israel declared following the Sharm el-Sheikh summit in February 2005, there has been almost no improvement in the movement of Palestinians to and from Gaza, nor in the movement of goods. The report illustrates the extent to which Israel treats many fundamental human rights – among them the right to freedom of movement, family life, health, education, and work – as “humanitarian gestures” that it grants or denies at will.
Report Highlights:
As a result of the economic siege on Gaza, more than 77 percent of Gazans (1,033,500 people) now live below the poverty line - almost double the number before the intifada. Some 23 percent of Gazans (over 323,000 people) are in “deep poverty,” meaning that they do not reach the subsistence poverty line even after receiving aid from international agencies.
The forced isolation of Gaza tears many Palestinians from their families, and in some cases even separates spouses. The report includes the testimonies of a woman whose husband was expelled from the West Bank to Gaza, and of a mother whose son has never seen his father.
Almost all the restrictions on movement are imposed on entire categories of people, based on sweeping criteria, without checking if the individual poses a security risk, and without weighing the harm the person will suffer, or if less harmful alternatives are available. In most cases, where Israel denies a permit and human rights organizations intervene, Israel reverses its decision to avoid an embarrassing legal challenge.
Most components of the policy of strangulation are illegal under international and Israeli law.
The strangulation of the Gaza Strip increased following Palestinian attacks against civilians in Israel and the Occupied Territories over the past few years. Targetting civilians is a “war crime” and never justified. Israel is entitled, even obligated, to protect its citizens. However, Israel’s right to self-defense does not permit it to trample on the rights of an entire population.
Israel declared that “completion of the disengagement will invalidate the claims against Israel on its responsibility for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” In the report, HaMoked and B’Tselem emphasize that all the suffering described in the report is likely to continue, and even worsen, after disengagement, for which Israel will be continue to bear legal responsibility.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3720.shtml
B'Tselem
Gaza Prison: Freedom of Movement to and from the Gaza Strip on the Eve of the Disengagement Plan
Summary
For the past four and a half years, Israel has severely restricted freedom of movement to and from the Gaza Strip. These restrictions further strangled the Gaza Strip, so much so that the area resembles one gigantic prison. Israel’s policies have reduced many human rights – among them the right to freedom of movement, family life, health, education, and work – to “humanitarian gestures” that Israel sparingly provides.
Following the Sharm el-Sheikh summit, in February 2005, Israel took measures that significantly improve the human rights situation of Palestinians. However, there was little change in movement to and from the Gaza Strip, including the import and export of goods.
This report documents the ongoing breach of human rights and international law inherent in Israel’s restrictions on the movement of people and goods between the Gaza Strip and the rest of the World, including to Israel or the West Bank. The report warns against Israel’s attempt to disavow its responsibility for the residents of the Gaza Strip following disengagement.
The Gaza Strip and the West Bank: Are they really “a single territorial unit”?
The closing of the “safe passage” between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, in October 2000, marked the beginning of a new separation regime between the two areas, unprecedented in its severity in the course of Israel’s occupation. In the Oslo Agreements, Israel undertook to treat the Gaza Strip and the West Bank as a “single territorial unit.” In closing Gaza, Israel flagrantly breached this commitment.
The manner in which Israel decides to grant or deny permits to move between Gaza and the West Bank is completely arbitrary and non-transparent, and has harsh effects on all areas of life relating to reciprocal relations and mutual dependence among residents of the two areas. For example, Israel’s policy impairs family life, and the ability of residents of Gaza to gain an education and receive medical treatment.
Contrary to the state’s contention that every request is examined “on its merits,” many requests are summarily rejected, based on sweeping criteria of age and family status, though the defense establishment has no actual suspicions against the individual applicant. Since the beginning of the intifada, travel from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank declined by ninety-eight percent. In most cases, where the authorities deny a permit, and a lawyer or human rights organization later intervenes, the authorities reverse their decision. This fact clearly indicates that most of the rejections are made arbitrarily.
One of the gravest manifestations of the separation policy is the practice of expelling Palestinians who have moved from Gaza to the West Bank, based on their claim that they residing illegally in the West Bank. Israel has no authority to take this action, and does so in violation of the Oslo Agreements. Palestinians are removed from their homes, families, and jobs in the West Bank, without warning and without being given the opportunity to appeal the expulsion.
Rafah Crossing and preventing residents to go abroad
Since September 2000, Israel has placed heavy restrictions on residents of Gaza wanting to travel abroad. Israel only allows Palestinians to exit Gaza through the Rafah Crossing. As a result, whenever Israel decides to close the Crossing, it literally seals Gaza off from the outside world. In 2004, operations at Rafah Crossing were suspended for a total of sixty-six days.
Israel also prohibits individuals and entire age groups from leaving Gaza. In April 2004, Israel prohibited all residents of Gaza aged 16-35 from going abroad. This blanket restriction was cancelled following the Sharm el-Sheikh summit. However, tens of thousands of Gazans are labeled “denied exit abroad for security reasons.” An individual receives notice that he or she is so labeled orally and with no explanation. Here, too, the “security reasons” disappear in most cases following the intervention of an attorney or a human rights organization.
Among the many implications of this policy, preventing Gazans from going abroad restricts their ability to obtain proper medical treatment. The Palestinian health system in Gaza is substandard and depends on external medical services that are unavailable in Gaza. The long waits combined with the nerve-wracking uncertainty as to whether a person will be able to leave increase the suffering of the sick and their families. Many Palestinians who required urgent treatment abroad had to petition the High Court of Justice to get Israel to admit that it does not, in fact, object to their going abroad.
Families torn apart: Travel between Gaza and Israel
From the beginning of the occupation until 2000, there was regular traffic between the Gaza Strip and Israel. One reason is the extensive family ties between residents of Gaza and Arab citizens and residents of Israel.
In September 2000, Israel imposed an almost complete prohibition on Gazans from entering Israel for family visits. It also drastically restricted Israelis’ ability to enter the Palestinian Authority-controlled areas of Gaza; permits to enter Gaza fell by ninety-eight percent.
The permit system for Israelis wanting to visit family in Gaza manifests disregard and unreasonableness, and blatantly violates the right to family life.
In addition, since the beginning of the intifada, Israel has made it difficult for couples, one of whom is Israeli and the other a resident of Gaza, to live together under one roof, and consequently for their children to live with both parents.
A common obstacle that Israel places on divided families is to suspend the permits of Israelis to enter Gaza, generally following Palestinian attacks or during extensive military operations. Israel suspends the permits in a wholesale manner with no notice of the decision or how long it will be in effect. The vast majority of those holding such permits are women with Israeli citizenship or residency who are married to Gazans. Women who left Gaza for a brief visit in Israel, become “stuck,” and are unable to return to their homes, husbands, and children. In January 2002, Israel decided to shorten the period of the entry permits for divided families, from three months to one month. In January 2002, Israel decided to shorten the validity of the entry permits for divided families, from three months to one month. Women who wish to obey the law must travel to the Erez checkpoint, during military operations and other harsh conditions, twelve times a year to renew their permits. Owing to these conditions, many women do not reach Erez to renew their permits on time. When they later try to get a new permit, their application is rejected on the grounds that they had “stayed illegally in the territory of the Palestinian Authority.”
The economic siege on the Gaza Strip
Israel’s almost complete control over the economy of the Gaza Strip is reflected in two primary areas: control of the movement of Palestinian workers employed in Israel, and control over the movement of goods to and from the Gaza Strip.
To obtain a permit to work in Israel, Palestinians have to pass certain conditions established for security reasons. However, Israel also places quotas on the number of permits it issues to those who pass the security checks. These quotas are set by the political echelon, for reasons unrelated to security. As a result of the quotas and the closures, since the beginning of the intifada, there has been a sharp drop in the number of workers from the Gaza Strip who were employed in Israel. Whereas on the eve of the intifada (the third quarter of 2000), some 26,500 residents of the Gaza Strip entered Israel to work every day, the average number in the third quarter of 2004 was one thousand, a drop of ninety-six percent.
With the outbreak of the intifada, Israel prohibited the movement of goods through the Erez Checkpoint, directing all exports and most imports to the Karni Crossing. This decision results in the almost complete paralysis of foreign trade whenever Israel decides to close the Karni Crossing. In addition, the procedures and methods for checking goods and transporting them in and out of Gaza impair the ability of Palestinian merchants to keep to a reasonable schedule even when the Karni Crossing is open. Some of these procedures and methods are patently unreasonable and needlessly harm the movement of goods.
Goods are unloaded and go through security checks that cause damage. Most of the goods that originate in Gaza or are destined for it are checked more than once until they get to their final destination. Even if the security check is necessary, there are technologies to make such a check possible without causing damage and delays. As a result of the range of obstacles Israel places on the movement of goods, Palestinian manufacturers find it difficult to compete for both existing and potential customers. This has drastically reduced the scope of economic activity in the Gaza Strip.
The cumulative effect of the restrictions on the movement of goods, and on the entry of workers into Israel, brought about a sharp increase in unemployment and poverty in the Gaza Strip. In September 2000, unemployment was 26.9 percent (71,000 persons). At the end of 2004, the number stood at 39.4 percent (115,000 persons). The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics sets the poverty line for a family of two parents and four children at net expenditures of less than NIS 1,850 a month. By this definition, at the end of 2004, 77.3 percent of Gaza’s population was living in poverty, a total of 1,033,500 persons. Prior to the intifada, the figure was 42 percent. According to a research project of the PCBS and the World Bank, 23 percent of the residents of Gaza, 323,000 persons, suffer from “deep poverty,” and do not reach the minimum subsistence level, (NIS 205 per person per month), even after calculating aid they receive from international organizations is taken into account.
The Disengagement Plan: Does it really end Israel’s responsibility?
Following disengagement, Israel is expected to retain control of key areas that directly affect the residents’ ability to exercise their rights, particularly in the areas discussed in this report. Despite this, the government declared in its decision on the disengagement that, “completion of the plan will invalidate claims against Israel on its responsibility for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” and that as a result of implementation of the plan, “there will be no basis for the contention that the Gaza Strip is occupied territory.” These statements are baseless, according to international law.
According to international humanitarian law, a situation of occupation is created when, as a result of an armed conflict, one state acquires “effective control” of territory beyond its sovereign borders. Effective control does not require a permanent military presence in all parts of the area.
Even after redeployment of its armed forces and evacuation of its settlements, Israel will maintain complete control of all of Gaza’s land borders, its air space, its coastline, and its territorial waters. Israel’s control directly and clearly affects the local population’s ability to conduct many central aspects of their lives. In addition, the government declared its readiness to conduct military operations in the Gaza Strip, not only in response to attack, but as a “preventive measure.” So long as these methods of control remain in Israeli hands, Israel’s claim of an “end of the occupation” is called into question.
Israel’s responsibility for residents of the Gaza Strip after disengagement derives also from its obligations under international human rights law. Contrary to Israel’s traditional position, this law applies not only in its sovereign territory, but in every place in which it exercises its authority. Israel will continue to bear legal responsibility for its acts and omissions that violate the rights of residents of the Gaza Strip even after disengagement. It bears such responsibility regardless of whether its control over Gaza amounts to “effective control” and continued occupation.
http://www.btselem.org/Download/200503_Gaza_Prison_Abstract_English.doc
15 April 2005
Gaza: “One Big Prison”
We recently returned from spending almost a week in Gaza. The time was good, meeting some incredible people, especially at the Culture and Free Thought Association (http://www.cfta.org/) in Khan Younis, an MCC partner. But no time in Gaza is without some incident. This time it was the news of three children in Rafah who were killed by Israeli military gunfire. Reports we heard there were that they were simply playing soccer. The Israeli military is investigating the matter.
Last Tuesday morning we were in Rafah and saw the funeral procession of one of the boys who was killed. It was so heart-breaking. All of Rafah is. The day before, visiting families in the refugee camps of Khan Younis, they were still fearful from the previous night when apache helicopters were swarming overhead. When this happens, families typically grab what they can and head towards a family member’s home further away from such activity. And all of this in the context of a “cease-fire.”
Imagine, waking up in the middle of the night to such a sound over your head—a sound that often means death to those who hear it—and having to wake and gather up your children to move them to hopefully what is a safer place.
So much of this kind of uncertainty exists right now in Gaza, especially with the upcoming Israeli "disengagement." Palestinians really don't know what to expect. What if there are closures? Where will their food come from? How will they access needed medical care or other services? Such uncertainty is a key ingredient for fear.
However it all happens, what is certain is that the occupation will still exist in Gaza, with Israeli control over all borders, the coast, and airspace. (A recent report by B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, titled "One Big Prison" offers a good perspective on the near future of Palestinians in Gaza; you can find a summary of this report attached below and online at www.btselem.org/Download/200503_Gaza_Prison_Abstract_English.doc)
You may be wondering, “Aren’t the Israeli settlers supposed to leave Gaza this summer?” “Isn’t that a good thing?” “Aren’t the Israelis holding up their end of the deal?” “Aren’t they sacrificing a lot for peace with the Palestinians?” The short and honest answer? “No.” Yes, the settlers are to depart from Gaza, but Palestinians in Gaza fear what will come next. Even if they are left to themselves, they will still be closed in like one big prison. Businesses will suffer more difficulty, as Israel will still have control of sea, land and air space for “security.” Gaza may turn into one big humanitarian crisis—that is, if you don’t think it is one already. Even in the absence of Israeli soldiers and settlers, Palestinians in Gaza have undergone such severe psychological damage that they will continue to live with the occupation inside of themselves for a long time to come. In addition to this, these settlers will move to the West Bank, carrying with them more problems here. Stated bluntly, words of peace and progress from Israelis still mean harsh realities for Palestinians.
Please keep these families in your thoughts and prayers.
More on Exploring Alternative Pressures: Sabeel’s Statement on Morally Responsible Investment
In last month’s update, we heard the perspectives of some Jewish voices that were calling for the consideration of economic pressures to compliment political and legal mechanisms to end the Israeli occupation.
An additional voice in this discussion is MCC partner organization the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center (http://www.sabeel.org/). Sabeel has recently released a statement titled “A Nonviolent Response to the Occupation: A Call for Morally Responsible Investment.” While appreciating the political and legal reasons for pursuing these kinds of actions, Sabeel offers something unique with this theological and moral reflection.
"Furthermore, God in Christ has given us life…Jesus said, “I have come in order that you might have life – life in all its fullness” (John 10:10). For people to enjoy life in its fullness, they must live in peace and justice, in dignity and harmony with each other. Their God-given human worth must be respected. We must do everything we can to remove any obstacles that prevent human beings from achieving life in its fullness. God must be sovereign over all aspects of our lives including our politics, work, and investments."
To this end, Sabeel states
"The churches repeatedly and categorically have stood on the side of a just peace for the Palestinians in accordance with UN resolutions and International Law. International, regional, and national councils of churches around the world have asserted this same position. Through their statements and representations, the churches were encouraging their national governments to pressure Israel to implement International Law, all to no avail. Indeed, the international community has been helpless to prevail upon Israel to halt its oppression of the Palestinians.
"As churches examine their own investment policies and show willingness to take moral and ethical investment decisions, they pick up where the political global community has failed to date. It is important to demonstrate by our own example that, just as we are prepared to bear burdens to maintain our own respect for international law, so Israel must accept these same burdens. Churches, by moving from statements to direct action and adopting appropriate financial policies that are in line with their moral and theological stance, create an example for the international community, even if it means incurring and absorbing some financial loss."
Sabeel is an important voice for Palestinian Christians and all of those seeking a just peace in the Occupied Territories. Will we heed their call?
Sabeel’s complete statement can be found online at http://www.fosna.org/doc/Sabeel.
Palm Sunday March
In an act of nonviolent resistance against the occupation, MCC partner Holy Land Trust (http://www.holylandtrust.org/) organized a march on Palm Sunday that was to go from Manger Square in Bethlehem to the Old City of Jerusalem. For Palestinians living in Bethlehem, or anywhere else in the occupied territories, it is not possible to travel to Jerusalem, even on such special occasions as Palm Sunday or Easter, without special permission from the Israeli government.
The procession made it as far as the Bethlehem checkpoint where they were stopped by the Israeli military. After some time of standing, and then sitting in front of the soldiers, a statement was read to the soldiers declaring the right of all people of faith to journey to Jerusalem. Though they were not allowed to travel to Jerusalem, a strong point was made and fundamental injustices of the occupation exposed.
For more information on the event, please visit www.ecapc.org/palmsunstories05.asp
Zochrot to Deir Yassin
On Thursday April 7th, MCC partner the Zochrot Association (www.nakbainhebrew.org) and Deir Yassin Remembered organized an event to commemorate 57 years since the massacre at the Palestinian village Deir Yassin. The massacre at Deir Yassin in particular holds great significance in the Nakba as it was used as a tool of fear by the Israeli forces driving out Palestinians and destroying the over 500 Palestinian villages between 1947 and 1949. After a procession, signs were posted bearing the names of 93 out of 110 to 140 people who were killed at Deir Yassin. The names were read aloud by a number of participants, including Israeli peace activist Mordechai Vanunu. (To see photos, please visit www.nakbainhebrew.org/index.php?id=195 and www.nakbainhebrew.org/index.php?id=193)
We also celebrated with Zochrot on the evening of Thursday April 14th as they held an opening for their first official office in Tel Aviv. In addition to being a meeting place for Zochrot events and activities, this office will also provide a resource center for educating Israelis about the Nakba of 1948 and the ongoing reality of Palestinian dispossession. Congratulations, Zochrot! Mabrook!
Our Challenge: A Call to Action…
As we often try to do at the end of these updates, we would like to close this one with a plea and a challenge from Sabeel:
"We are, therefore, pleading with our brothers and sisters all over the world to invest their God-given material resources in morally responsible activities that would contribute to the achievement of a just peace in Israel-Palestine. Furthermore, we ask them to continue to pray for all the inhabitants of our land so that peace will be achieved and the way for reconciliation will be opened. We are reminded of the words of the Latin American theologian, Leonardo Boff: 'If we want to serve the true God, we must break out of the circle of self-absorption and pay heed to the bloodied faces of our fellow human beings. If we do not share life with the oppressed, we do not share life with God.'"
Peace to you all,
Christi and Timothy Seidel
Peace Development Workers
Mennonite Central Committee – Palestine
Attachments:
· Jeff Halper, “E-1: The end of a viable Palestinian state,” The Electronic Intifada, 31 March 2005
· Amira Hass, “Palestinians also sleep in the day,” Haaretz, 31 March 2005
· B'Tselem/HaMoked Report Warns Against Continued Strangulation of Gaza Strip after Disengagement, 29 March 2005…“Gaza Prison: Freedom of Movement to and from the Gaza Strip on the Eve of the Disengagement Plan”
________________________________
The Electronic Intifada
E-1: The end of a viable Palestinian state
Jeff Halper
31 March 2005
The fatal flaw in most analyses of the Israel-Palestine conflict is the assumption that if the Palestinians can just get a state of their own, then all will be fine. A state on all the Occupied Territories (UN Resolution 242), on most of the Occupied Territories (Oslo and the Road Map to the Geneva Initiative), on even half the Occupied Territories (Sharon's notion) - it doesn't matter. Once there's a Palestinian state the conflict is over and we can all move on to the next item on the agenda.
Wrong. A Palestinian state can just as easily be a prison as a legitimate state that addresses the national aspirations of its people. The crucial issue is viability. Israel is a small country, but it is three times larger than the Palestinian areas. The entire Occupied Areas - the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza - make up only 22% of Israel/Palestine. That means that even if all of the territories Israel conquered in 1967 were relinquished, it would still comprise a full 78% of the country.
Would the Palestinian areas constitute a viable state? Barely. Just the size of the American state of Delaware (but with three times the population before refugees return), it would at least have a coherent territory, borders with Israel, Jordan, Syria and Egypt, a capital in Jerusalem, a port on the Mediterranean, an airport in Gaza, a viable economy (based on Holy Land tourism, agriculture and hi-tech) and access to the water of the Jordan River.
An accepted member of the international community enjoying trade with its neighbors - and enjoying as well the support of a far-flung, highly educated and affluent diaspora - a small Palestinian state would have a shot at viability.
This is what Israel seeks to prevent. Ever since becoming the head of the Ministerial Committee on Settlements in the Begin government back in 1977, Ariel Sharon has been completely up-front about his intention of securing the entire Land of Israel for the Jewish people. “Security” has nothing to do with Israel's expansionist policies.
Successive Israeli governments did not establish 200 settlements because of security. Nor did they build a massive infrastructure of Israeli-only highways that link the settlement blocs irreversibly into Israel for security reasons. Nor can the route of the Separation Barrier, nor the policy of expropriating Palestinian land and systematically demolishing Palestinian homes be explained by “security.” They all derive from one central goal: to claim the entire country for Israel. Period.
Still, Israel cannot “digest” the 3.6 million Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories. Giving them citizenship would nullify Israel as a Jewish state; not giving them citizenship yet keeping them forever under occupation would constitute outright apartheid.
What to do? The answer is clear: establish a tiny Palestinian state of, say, five or six cantons (Sharon's term) on 40-70% of the Occupied Territories, completely surrounded and controlled by Israel. Such a Palestinian state would cover only 10-15% of the entire country and would have no meaningful sovereignty and viability: no coherent territory, no freedom of movement, no control of borders, no capital in Jerusalem, no economic viability, no control of water, no control of airspace or communications, no military - not even the right as a sovereign state to enter into alliances without Israeli permission.
And since the Palestinians will never agree to this, Israel must “create facts on the ground” that prejudice negotiations even before they begin. Last week's announcement that Israel is constructing 3500 housing units in E-1, a corridor connecting Jerusalem to the West Bank settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim, seals the fate of the Palestinian state.
As a key element of an Israeli “Greater Jerusalem,” the E-1 plan removes any viability from a Palestinian state. It cuts the West Bank in half, allowing Israel to control Palestinian movement from one part of their country to another, while isolating East Jerusalem from the rest of Palestinian territory. Since 40% of the Palestinian economy revolves around Jerusalem and its tourist-based economy, the E-1 plan effectively cuts the economic heart out of any Palestinian state, rendering it nothing more than a set of non-viable Indian reservations.
If there is any silver lining in the E-1 plan, it is that it has highlighted American complicity in Israel's settlement expansion. The Bush Administration, while calling the E-1 plan “unhelpful,” nevertheless formally recognized the Ma'aleh Adumim settlement bloc, together with E-1, in last year's agreement between Bush and Sharon - a fundamental American policy change that was ratified almost unanimously by Congress. This puts the US in the very uncomfortable position of undermining its own Road Map initiative, which stems from the “Bush vision” of an Israeli-Palestinian peace. It also neutralizes completely America's role as an honest broker, and pits it against the other three members of the Road Map Quartet - Europe, the UN and Russia - who deplore the change in American policy.
Most tragically, American support for Sharon's settlement project destroys forever the possibility of a viable Palestinian state, dooming the peoples of Israel-Palestine to perpetual conflict. How this squares with American interests in a stable Middle East is anybody's guess.
Jeff Halper, Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD)
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3728.shtml
________________________________
Haaretz
Palestinians also sleep in the day
Amira Hass
31 March 2005
"The Israelis don't sleep at night, and we, the Palestinians also sleep in the day time."
So said an East Jerusalemite Palestinian recently. He was referring to the submission with which the Palestinian public in general and its leadership in particular accepts the progress of the Israeli plan to cut off East Jerusalem and its residents from the rest of the West Bank. The saying is more than just an expression of sorrow mixed with anger, and it goes beyond the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian situation. It contains within it the viewpoint that an oppressed public that doesn't merely passively collect victims has the ability to act and make a change to improve its situation; and that not every plan to dispossess them is a guaranteed success. If you want, it's an optimistic-humanistic view. But it needs supporters.
About two months ago, Israelis and Palestinians were shocked to read the news item that said that starting in July, when the separation wall is completed in the area of Qalandiya, East Jerusalemites will have to ask for permits to go to Ramallah. After the initial shock, there were Israelis who began to doubt the veracity of the report. Palestinians, scared of course, were heard to say that "meanwhile, those are only rumors."
The facts: Two months ago, soldiers indeed prevented East Jerusalemites in their cars from entering Ramallah through the Qalandiya checkpoint, based on an order signed by the major general of the Central Command that prohibits Israelis from entering Palestinian Authority areas. But that phenomenon has ceased.
But now some worrisome signals are coming from the checkpoint on the southern side of Jerusalem, between Abu Dis and Wadi Nar - the only road that Palestinians are allowed to use to travel from the northern part of the West Bank to the southern part. East Jerusalemites are "trapped" when they leave the Bethlehem area through that checkpoint, and receive a summons to report to the police so they can be questioned about their violation of the order prohibiting their travel.
It's still a trickle. There is a huge gap between the fact that Border Police troops at the checkpoint detained East Jerusalemites, and a formal statement by the spokesman for the Judea and Samaria police that the major general's orders do not apply to the East Jerusalemites but only to Israeli citizens. Most of the East Jerusalemites meanwhile make their way to Bethlehem other ways, and without permits.
The shock is understandable but infuriating. Understandable because anyone who knows just how much East Jerusalemites are connected to Ramallah and Bethlehem can imagine the intensity of the blow that landed on those communities. Infuriating, because it shows ignorance of the steps Israel has been taking for years, paving the way for this highest level of disengagement of East Jerusalem and its residents from the rest of the territories occupied in 1967. After all, the unceasing expansion of Ma'aleh Adumim, with or without the 3,000 new apartments planned for area E1, is an inseparable part of the plan.
The Israeli skepticism is outrageous because it exposes the blindness of the Israelis to all the facts that have accumulated over recent years: According to all the army statements, the major general's order also covers Jerusalemite Palestinians, who carry blue ID cards. Leaving Nablus, for example, they are asked for their "permit." Soon, the separation wall will be completed. Then, when the crossing from Jerusalem to the rest of the West Bank, including next door neighborhoods, is only possible through special gates and terminals that are dressed up to look like international border crossings, the occupation bureaucracy will find it easier to enforce the administrative prohibitions.
Palestinian doubts are saddening and frustrating, because it is an escape from taking action. The East Jerusalem experience shows that patient, coordinated action can stop dispossession plans. Two campaigns conducted at the end of the 1990s won relative success: against lifting of residency from East Jerusalemites, and against house demolitions. The campaigns were an example of joint Palestinian-Israeli-international efforts, a combination of grassroots, legal, political, diplomatic and media efforts.
Indeed, with the outbreak of the intifada, Jerusalem city hall resumed its policy of demolishing houses that were built without permits, because Jerusalem municipalities have always severely limited house construction for East Jerusalemites.
After the Interior Ministry was forced to reinstate the residency of many East Jerusalemites, the harm done to their rights as residents continued in various ways. Nonetheless, there is much to learn from the relative successes of those campaigns as opposed to campaigns that failed - against the Judaization of lands and homes in Palestinian neighborhoods, against ceaseless discrimination between Palestinians and Jews in East Jerusalem. There is no doubt that one of the factors in the success was the Palestinian-Israeli cooperation, and the way the campaign departed from merely making statements and issuing condemnations.
After the first reports, there began to be heard semi-official Israeli statements about how the matter of the permits to travel to Ramallah was not a settled matter. That's a signal. There is a chance to block the move if the occupation bureaucracy encounters real resistance. And for that, much more than for the playing of songs on the Voice of Palestine and Army Radio, real Israeli-Palestinian cooperation is required.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/559065.html
________________________________
B'Tselem/HaMoked
New Report Warns Against Continued Strangulation of Gaza Strip after Disengagement
29 March 2005
Israel has cut off the Gaza Strip from the rest of the world to such an extent that it is easier for Palestinians in Israel or the West Bank to visit relatives in prison than visit a relative in Gaza.
This is one conclusion of the 100-page report that B’Tselem and HaMoked publish today. One Big Prison documents the ongoing violations of human rights and international law resulting from Israel’s restrictions on the movement of people and goods between Gaza and the West Bank, Israel, and the rest of the world. The report also warns against Israel’s attempt to avoid its responsibility toward residents of the Gaza Strip following disengagement.
Despite the easing of restrictions that Israel declared following the Sharm el-Sheikh summit in February 2005, there has been almost no improvement in the movement of Palestinians to and from Gaza, nor in the movement of goods. The report illustrates the extent to which Israel treats many fundamental human rights – among them the right to freedom of movement, family life, health, education, and work – as “humanitarian gestures” that it grants or denies at will.
Report Highlights:
As a result of the economic siege on Gaza, more than 77 percent of Gazans (1,033,500 people) now live below the poverty line - almost double the number before the intifada. Some 23 percent of Gazans (over 323,000 people) are in “deep poverty,” meaning that they do not reach the subsistence poverty line even after receiving aid from international agencies.
The forced isolation of Gaza tears many Palestinians from their families, and in some cases even separates spouses. The report includes the testimonies of a woman whose husband was expelled from the West Bank to Gaza, and of a mother whose son has never seen his father.
Almost all the restrictions on movement are imposed on entire categories of people, based on sweeping criteria, without checking if the individual poses a security risk, and without weighing the harm the person will suffer, or if less harmful alternatives are available. In most cases, where Israel denies a permit and human rights organizations intervene, Israel reverses its decision to avoid an embarrassing legal challenge.
Most components of the policy of strangulation are illegal under international and Israeli law.
The strangulation of the Gaza Strip increased following Palestinian attacks against civilians in Israel and the Occupied Territories over the past few years. Targetting civilians is a “war crime” and never justified. Israel is entitled, even obligated, to protect its citizens. However, Israel’s right to self-defense does not permit it to trample on the rights of an entire population.
Israel declared that “completion of the disengagement will invalidate the claims against Israel on its responsibility for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.” In the report, HaMoked and B’Tselem emphasize that all the suffering described in the report is likely to continue, and even worsen, after disengagement, for which Israel will be continue to bear legal responsibility.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3720.shtml
B'Tselem
Gaza Prison: Freedom of Movement to and from the Gaza Strip on the Eve of the Disengagement Plan
Summary
For the past four and a half years, Israel has severely restricted freedom of movement to and from the Gaza Strip. These restrictions further strangled the Gaza Strip, so much so that the area resembles one gigantic prison. Israel’s policies have reduced many human rights – among them the right to freedom of movement, family life, health, education, and work – to “humanitarian gestures” that Israel sparingly provides.
Following the Sharm el-Sheikh summit, in February 2005, Israel took measures that significantly improve the human rights situation of Palestinians. However, there was little change in movement to and from the Gaza Strip, including the import and export of goods.
This report documents the ongoing breach of human rights and international law inherent in Israel’s restrictions on the movement of people and goods between the Gaza Strip and the rest of the World, including to Israel or the West Bank. The report warns against Israel’s attempt to disavow its responsibility for the residents of the Gaza Strip following disengagement.
The Gaza Strip and the West Bank: Are they really “a single territorial unit”?
The closing of the “safe passage” between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, in October 2000, marked the beginning of a new separation regime between the two areas, unprecedented in its severity in the course of Israel’s occupation. In the Oslo Agreements, Israel undertook to treat the Gaza Strip and the West Bank as a “single territorial unit.” In closing Gaza, Israel flagrantly breached this commitment.
The manner in which Israel decides to grant or deny permits to move between Gaza and the West Bank is completely arbitrary and non-transparent, and has harsh effects on all areas of life relating to reciprocal relations and mutual dependence among residents of the two areas. For example, Israel’s policy impairs family life, and the ability of residents of Gaza to gain an education and receive medical treatment.
Contrary to the state’s contention that every request is examined “on its merits,” many requests are summarily rejected, based on sweeping criteria of age and family status, though the defense establishment has no actual suspicions against the individual applicant. Since the beginning of the intifada, travel from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank declined by ninety-eight percent. In most cases, where the authorities deny a permit, and a lawyer or human rights organization later intervenes, the authorities reverse their decision. This fact clearly indicates that most of the rejections are made arbitrarily.
One of the gravest manifestations of the separation policy is the practice of expelling Palestinians who have moved from Gaza to the West Bank, based on their claim that they residing illegally in the West Bank. Israel has no authority to take this action, and does so in violation of the Oslo Agreements. Palestinians are removed from their homes, families, and jobs in the West Bank, without warning and without being given the opportunity to appeal the expulsion.
Rafah Crossing and preventing residents to go abroad
Since September 2000, Israel has placed heavy restrictions on residents of Gaza wanting to travel abroad. Israel only allows Palestinians to exit Gaza through the Rafah Crossing. As a result, whenever Israel decides to close the Crossing, it literally seals Gaza off from the outside world. In 2004, operations at Rafah Crossing were suspended for a total of sixty-six days.
Israel also prohibits individuals and entire age groups from leaving Gaza. In April 2004, Israel prohibited all residents of Gaza aged 16-35 from going abroad. This blanket restriction was cancelled following the Sharm el-Sheikh summit. However, tens of thousands of Gazans are labeled “denied exit abroad for security reasons.” An individual receives notice that he or she is so labeled orally and with no explanation. Here, too, the “security reasons” disappear in most cases following the intervention of an attorney or a human rights organization.
Among the many implications of this policy, preventing Gazans from going abroad restricts their ability to obtain proper medical treatment. The Palestinian health system in Gaza is substandard and depends on external medical services that are unavailable in Gaza. The long waits combined with the nerve-wracking uncertainty as to whether a person will be able to leave increase the suffering of the sick and their families. Many Palestinians who required urgent treatment abroad had to petition the High Court of Justice to get Israel to admit that it does not, in fact, object to their going abroad.
Families torn apart: Travel between Gaza and Israel
From the beginning of the occupation until 2000, there was regular traffic between the Gaza Strip and Israel. One reason is the extensive family ties between residents of Gaza and Arab citizens and residents of Israel.
In September 2000, Israel imposed an almost complete prohibition on Gazans from entering Israel for family visits. It also drastically restricted Israelis’ ability to enter the Palestinian Authority-controlled areas of Gaza; permits to enter Gaza fell by ninety-eight percent.
The permit system for Israelis wanting to visit family in Gaza manifests disregard and unreasonableness, and blatantly violates the right to family life.
In addition, since the beginning of the intifada, Israel has made it difficult for couples, one of whom is Israeli and the other a resident of Gaza, to live together under one roof, and consequently for their children to live with both parents.
A common obstacle that Israel places on divided families is to suspend the permits of Israelis to enter Gaza, generally following Palestinian attacks or during extensive military operations. Israel suspends the permits in a wholesale manner with no notice of the decision or how long it will be in effect. The vast majority of those holding such permits are women with Israeli citizenship or residency who are married to Gazans. Women who left Gaza for a brief visit in Israel, become “stuck,” and are unable to return to their homes, husbands, and children. In January 2002, Israel decided to shorten the period of the entry permits for divided families, from three months to one month. In January 2002, Israel decided to shorten the validity of the entry permits for divided families, from three months to one month. Women who wish to obey the law must travel to the Erez checkpoint, during military operations and other harsh conditions, twelve times a year to renew their permits. Owing to these conditions, many women do not reach Erez to renew their permits on time. When they later try to get a new permit, their application is rejected on the grounds that they had “stayed illegally in the territory of the Palestinian Authority.”
The economic siege on the Gaza Strip
Israel’s almost complete control over the economy of the Gaza Strip is reflected in two primary areas: control of the movement of Palestinian workers employed in Israel, and control over the movement of goods to and from the Gaza Strip.
To obtain a permit to work in Israel, Palestinians have to pass certain conditions established for security reasons. However, Israel also places quotas on the number of permits it issues to those who pass the security checks. These quotas are set by the political echelon, for reasons unrelated to security. As a result of the quotas and the closures, since the beginning of the intifada, there has been a sharp drop in the number of workers from the Gaza Strip who were employed in Israel. Whereas on the eve of the intifada (the third quarter of 2000), some 26,500 residents of the Gaza Strip entered Israel to work every day, the average number in the third quarter of 2004 was one thousand, a drop of ninety-six percent.
With the outbreak of the intifada, Israel prohibited the movement of goods through the Erez Checkpoint, directing all exports and most imports to the Karni Crossing. This decision results in the almost complete paralysis of foreign trade whenever Israel decides to close the Karni Crossing. In addition, the procedures and methods for checking goods and transporting them in and out of Gaza impair the ability of Palestinian merchants to keep to a reasonable schedule even when the Karni Crossing is open. Some of these procedures and methods are patently unreasonable and needlessly harm the movement of goods.
Goods are unloaded and go through security checks that cause damage. Most of the goods that originate in Gaza or are destined for it are checked more than once until they get to their final destination. Even if the security check is necessary, there are technologies to make such a check possible without causing damage and delays. As a result of the range of obstacles Israel places on the movement of goods, Palestinian manufacturers find it difficult to compete for both existing and potential customers. This has drastically reduced the scope of economic activity in the Gaza Strip.
The cumulative effect of the restrictions on the movement of goods, and on the entry of workers into Israel, brought about a sharp increase in unemployment and poverty in the Gaza Strip. In September 2000, unemployment was 26.9 percent (71,000 persons). At the end of 2004, the number stood at 39.4 percent (115,000 persons). The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics sets the poverty line for a family of two parents and four children at net expenditures of less than NIS 1,850 a month. By this definition, at the end of 2004, 77.3 percent of Gaza’s population was living in poverty, a total of 1,033,500 persons. Prior to the intifada, the figure was 42 percent. According to a research project of the PCBS and the World Bank, 23 percent of the residents of Gaza, 323,000 persons, suffer from “deep poverty,” and do not reach the minimum subsistence level, (NIS 205 per person per month), even after calculating aid they receive from international organizations is taken into account.
The Disengagement Plan: Does it really end Israel’s responsibility?
Following disengagement, Israel is expected to retain control of key areas that directly affect the residents’ ability to exercise their rights, particularly in the areas discussed in this report. Despite this, the government declared in its decision on the disengagement that, “completion of the plan will invalidate claims against Israel on its responsibility for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” and that as a result of implementation of the plan, “there will be no basis for the contention that the Gaza Strip is occupied territory.” These statements are baseless, according to international law.
According to international humanitarian law, a situation of occupation is created when, as a result of an armed conflict, one state acquires “effective control” of territory beyond its sovereign borders. Effective control does not require a permanent military presence in all parts of the area.
Even after redeployment of its armed forces and evacuation of its settlements, Israel will maintain complete control of all of Gaza’s land borders, its air space, its coastline, and its territorial waters. Israel’s control directly and clearly affects the local population’s ability to conduct many central aspects of their lives. In addition, the government declared its readiness to conduct military operations in the Gaza Strip, not only in response to attack, but as a “preventive measure.” So long as these methods of control remain in Israeli hands, Israel’s claim of an “end of the occupation” is called into question.
Israel’s responsibility for residents of the Gaza Strip after disengagement derives also from its obligations under international human rights law. Contrary to Israel’s traditional position, this law applies not only in its sovereign territory, but in every place in which it exercises its authority. Israel will continue to bear legal responsibility for its acts and omissions that violate the rights of residents of the Gaza Strip even after disengagement. It bears such responsibility regardless of whether its control over Gaza amounts to “effective control” and continued occupation.
http://www.btselem.org/Download/200503_Gaza_Prison_Abstract_English.doc
Thursday, March 17
MCC Palestine Update #107
MCC Palestine Update #107
17 March 2005
The Persistence of Misplaced Optimism
With all of the hardships and tragedies facing the human experience today, it is quite normal for us to hold on to any glimmer of hope or optimism that comes our way. This is especially true here, under the umbrella of fear and death that casts a shadow over much of life in Palestine / Israel. Thus much has been said about the windows of opportunity and the growing optimism of “truces,” “peace processes,” and burgeoning “democracies.”
This sense of optimism rests easily in the calm homes of the Global North. But unfortunately, that optimism suffers a very short half-life here under occupation. One needs only attempt the short journey from Jerusalem to Bethlehem—a six-mile distance—to learn the misplaced nature of this optimism. For as soon as you make your way to Bethlehem, you must first face the main checkpoint guarding the entrance to the “little town,” where chances are you will notice lines of Palestinian men being detained on the side of the road for trying to get to their places of employment outside of Bethlehem.
But what is most striking is the “Wall.” Standing about thirty feet high, the “Separation” or “Apartheid” Wall has recently grown at a considerable pace around Bethlehem, now almost complete, imprisoning this Palestinian community here.
It is difficult to communicate just how impacting this sight is when entering Bethlehem, face-to-face with this monstrosity of concrete. “Disturbing” does not quite describe it. “Sad” also falls short. “Heart-breaking” is a little more appropriate, tying to capture all of the visceral responses to this visual trauma. It is against this Wall that any semblance of optimism for many in this land has been shattered
When the Wall is complete, the larger communities of Bethlehem, Beit Jala, and Beit Sahour will be completely cut off, an open-air prison, with only three points of entry / exit. (For more information and maps of these developments, please visit www.stopthewall.org/maps/857.shtml as well as www.humanitarianinfo.org/opt/docs/UN/Beth_Rep_Dec_04_EN.pdf.)
“Disengagement”? Sure. Occupation? Still!
The construction of this Wall is just one of the several finishing touches that are integral to the creation of a “Palestinian State” composed of segregated reservations on only about forty percent of the West Bank. Palestinians will be confined to these reservations, which will be rendered “contiguous” (per a recent comment by U.S. President George W. Bush; see Uri Averny’s commentary below) by a new network of tunnels accommodated to the equally absurd network of illegal “Jews-only” colonist roads for “outposts” and “settlements”—colonies all and illegal.
The unilateral “disengagement plan” to remove all Israeli settlers from Gaza continues to move forward. Yet the language of disengagement distracts the listener from other developments, like the plan to build 400 more new housing units for a burgeoning settlement right in Bethlehem, one purpose of which is to “resettle” those leaving Gaza in the West Bank, solidifying Israel’s control over this area. The fact that does not get media play is that despite this “disengagement,” Israel will continue to maintain absolute control over all of Gaza’s borders (land and sea) as well as its airspace, which means that Israel will be very much still holding the Gaza Strip under occupation.
Exploring Alternative Pressures
It is due to this misplaced optimism and the seemingly ineffective nature of political or legal mechanisms to find a justpeace for this land that a growing conversation about exploring economic pressure has developed. Shamai Leibowitz, an Israeli lawyer from Tel Aviv, points out that
"After years of failed political efforts by the Israeli and international human rights community aimed at ending the occupation, it is clear that new approaches must be implemented. It is time for American civic institutions to support a multi-tiered campaign of strategic, selective sanctions against Israel until the occupation ends. Since the Israeli government is flagrantly disobeying the ICJ decision, international law mandates the use of sanctions to force Israel to comply with UN resolutions and human rights treaties."
Read more about his thoughts in an article attached below. For more on Jewish voices calling for exploring economic pressures to end the occupation, please also visit MCC partner the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) at http://www.icahd.org/eng/news.asp?menu=5&submenu=1&item=218 or Jewish Voices for Peace at http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/pressRelease.jsp?press_release_KEY=47&t=press.dwt
Zochrot at Lifta
On February 25th, MCC partner organization the Zochrot Association visited the destroyed Palestinian village of Lifta. Situated on the outskirts of Jerusalem, Lifta was one of over 500 Palestinian villages destroyed by Israeli forces between 1947 and 1949, with its over 2,500 inhabitants numbered among the 700,000 to 900,00 Palestinians made refugees in what became known to Palestinians as the Nakba, or “Catastrophe.” An Israeli organization, Zochrot (which means “Remember” in Hebrew) invited Palestinian refugees from Lifta to speak about their village and their experiences of dispossession to a gathering over 200 people and posted signs in Hebrew and in Arabic at various points in the village to mark where the mosque, the oil press, village spring, and the cemetery lay.
Today you can still see some of the old homes sitting on the valley floor of this picturesque location as you look down from Ben Gurion highway. But not for long. What does remain of the village is scheduled to be destroyed to make way for a new suburban neighborhood for Jerusalem. Almost sixty years after its destruction, Lifta is still being targeted in these further attempts to erase any sign of Palestinian existence prior to the Nakba.
You can find out more information about the Zochrot Association and their remembrance of Lifta by visiting www.zochrot.org/index.php?id=186 as well as www.electronicintifada.net/v2/article3652.shtml.
Lent in the “Holy Land”
As this Lenten season comes to an end, we cannot help but reflect with our Palestinian friends and neighbors on what it means to celebrate Easter in the midst of despair. The season of Lent always seems more appropriate than that of Easter. And yet, ours is an Easter faith. Here, it is a constant source of struggle to rediscover from where our hope comes from. Zoughbi Zoughbi, our good friend and partner at the Wi’am Palestinian Conflict Resolution Center, has described it as moving along the Stations of the Cross. “We know that the end, the final station brings resurrection and the new life that conquers death. But we just do not know which station we are on right now.”
During this Easter season, would you reflect on the historical realities of this land and struggle as well with those who would seek to know how to proclaim the light and life of resurrection to those living under the darkness of oppression?
Peace to you all,
Timothy and Christi Seidel.
Peace Development Workers
Mennonite Central Committee - Palestine
Attachments:
· Shamai Leibowitz, “Israel: A Call for Divestment,” The Nation, 16 March 2005
· Ali Abunimah, “Is peace in Palestine about to break out?” The Electronic Intifada, 25 February 2005
· Uri Avnery, “Finger After Finger,” Gush-Shalom.org, 26 February 2005
________________________________
The Nation
Israel: A Call for Divestment
Shamai Leibowitz
16 March 2005
The assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has led to an explosion of "people power" in the streets of Beirut, in which hundreds of thousands of Lebanese citizens have called for an end to Syria's occupation of their land. These calls have been celebrated and echoed in other capitals, and nowhere more so than in Washington. However, there is another area in the Middle East where a struggle to end foreign occupation has brought the natives only death and destruction. For decades, Israel has crushed the 3.5 million Palestinians living under military domination, beating them into submission while taking away their civil rights and their land.
As an Israeli Jew committed to peace for Israel and our neighbors, I was shocked and disgusted by the recent terror attack in Tel Aviv, which took the lives of innocent Jews. Such acts of terror have made headlines and been rightfully condemned by the international community. However, deadly Israeli attacks against Palestinian civilians have not received significant press attention in the West or led to appropriate, decisive international action. For decades the Israeli army, equipped with US arms and technology, has killed, maimed, beaten and tortured tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians. Evidently, in the eyes of the West the people power of Palestinians does not count.
From 1986 to 1991 I served in the Israeli army in the occupied territories. During this period I was shocked and disgusted at what my comrades and I were repeatedly ordered to do to Palestinian civilians. To crush the uprising for independence and statehood, we were ordered to brutalize them. In one of our army bases in the West Bank, there was a mysterious room. Every day we watched Palestinians being led into it. After a couple of days our commanders would lead the Palestinians out, black and blue from bruises and their faces swollen. They resembled sacks of potatoes more than human beings.
We later realized this room was a torture chamber. On some days, we could hear screams coming from the room. It was a sickening experience. However, we continued participating in the occupation because Israeli politicians persuaded us that we were in the midst of a "peace process." So effusive were they in their lectures on how Israel "only wants peace" that we were blinded from seeing the reality of how the state is brutally oppressing, subjugating and dehumanizing the Palestinian people.
As many Israelis realize today, when Israeli governments talked about the peace process during the Oslo period, they were pulling the wool over the world's eyes. Israel continued colonizing the West Bank and Gaza with its Jewish-only settlements and, at the same time, entrenching a cruel military regime over Palestinians. The same is true today with Ariel Sharon's "disengagement" plan, which is being marketed by Israeli propaganda as a "painful concession" toward peace. Many of us who live in Israel and visit or serve in the occupied territories recognize the truth: Israel is continuously intensifying its military rule in the West Bank while stealing more Palestinian land and building more illegal Jewish-only settlements.
For years, American taxpayer money has funded the occupation--the torture chambers, the military apparatus, the bulldozers used in house demolitions, the building of settlements and now the construction of the West Bank wall, declared illegal by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Americans should be held accountable for where their money is going.
After years of failed political efforts by the Israeli and international human rights community aimed at ending the occupation, it is clear that new approaches must be implemented. It is time for American civic institutions to support a multi-tiered campaign of strategic, selective sanctions against Israel until the occupation ends. Since the Israeli government is flagrantly disobeying the ICJ decision, international law mandates the use of sanctions to force Israel to comply with UN resolutions and human rights treaties.
The first step for American institutions is to engage in selective divestment--withdrawal of their investments from companies that are, directly or indirectly, funding the occupation. First and foremost, states, cities, universities, churches, unions, banks and pension funds should divest from Israel Bonds, which finance the occupation, and from any company that sells arms, ammunition or other military equipment to Israel. This should include companies like Caterpillar, which manufactures and sells the bulldozers that have flattened thousands of Palestinian homes, and General Dynamics, General Electric, Lockheed Martin, Northrop-Grumman, Raytheon and other corporations, because these companies play an active role in enabling Israeli forces to engage in practices that violate international humanitarian law.
Second, the West should hold Israeli military personnel and political leaders personally accountable for human rights violations, including trial before international courts and bans on travel to other countries. This strategy has been implemented in other conflicts (Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo and South Africa, for example), proving its deterrent value and effectiveness.
Prohibiting the sale of arms and military equipment to Israel is, in fact, called for by existing US law. According to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (22 USC §2304), "No security assistance may be provided to any country the government of which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights."
The current hypocritical American Administration is not enforcing this law with regard to Israel. It is, therefore, up to American civil society to uphold the law and prevent the sale of any military equipment to Israel by pressuring the government, filing complaints against companies that violate this law and withdrawing all investments from such companies.
The Presbyterian Church took a positive step in this direction when in July 2004 its General Assembly passed a resolution calling for selective divestment from companies that profit from the occupation. This past February the World Council of Churches, which brings together more than 340 churches worldwide, issued a similar resolution. While criticizing the severe human rights abuses inherent in the occupation and the construction of the illegal West Bank wall, these resolutions also affirm the right of the State of Israel to exist securely and peacefully, and they categorically reject the tragic cycle of indiscriminate violence perpetrated by both sides against innocent civilian populations.
Sanctions are a powerful and nonviolent means to insure that the Israeli government abides by international law and ends its appalling human rights violations in the occupied territories. Divestment resolutions are long overdue. We have witnessed the power of worldwide economic pressure in the collapse of the South African apartheid regime. If American civic institutions follow the same strategy, we could see the end of the Israeli occupation in our lifetime. Americans should stand up for human rights and justice, follow their own law and take the most productive step toward peace and security in the Middle East.
Shamai Leibowitz, an Israeli human rights attorney from Tel Aviv, is a reserve staff sergeant in the Israeli tank corps and a member of Courage to Refuse, an organization of Israeli soldiers who refuse to serve in the occupied Palestinian territories. He is also a member of Gush Shalom, the largest peace NGO in Israel.
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050328&s=leibowitz
Note: For more on Jewish voices calling for exploring economic pressures to end the occupation, please visit MCC partner the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) at http://www.icahd.org/eng/news.asp?menu=5&submenu=1&item=218 or Jewish Voices for Peace at http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/pressRelease.jsp?press_release_KEY=47&t=press.dwt
________________________________
The Electronic Intifada
Is peace in Palestine about to break out?
Ali Abunimah
25 February 2005
Are Israelis and Palestinians finally on the road to peace? A cursory glance at commentary in the US press would seem to suggest so. Since Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas announced a truce in early February at the Sharm al-Sheikh summit, many observers see a "window of opportunity" they are encouraging both sides to leap through.
Sharon has announced he is now coordinating with the Palestinians on his originally unilateral plan to pull Israeli troops and settlers out of Gaza and the Israeli cabinet voted to approve the "disengagement."
The New York Times editorial gushed about the disengagement that "it would be churlish to greet [Sharon's] historic decision with anything other than enthusiasm." (24 February). The Chicago Tribune praised Sharon's "impressive" perfomance and marveled as he "defies death threats and warnings of a civil war to move his nation toward the kind of actions that are imperative for a two-state solution and a lasting peace." (24 February).
Behind the photo opportunities and historic handshakes, however, the evidence on the ground is that Israel is taking advantage of the new mood not to build peace, but to build more settlements. Without an immediate halt in settlement construction, the possibility for a territorially contiguous, free Palestinian state alongside Israel will remain a distant mirage, no matter how many times President Bush talks about it, and the present easing of tension will be no more than a short respite from more horror to come.
Phase One of President Bush's Road Map peace plan says that both sides must immediately halt all violence against eachother, and Israel must freeze all construction of Jewish-only settlements on occupied Palestinian land. But Palestinians still watch helplessly as Israeli bulldozers chew up their farms and orchards. Palestinian Authority prime minister Ahmed Qureia complained that "Israel is throwing sand in our eyes by continuing with the settlement process" in the occupied West Bank.
At a press conference with foreign reporters on 15 February, Sharon confirmed that Israel intends to keep "Jewish population blocs" inside the West Bank. Last Spring, the Bush administration explicitly endorsed Israel's intention to do so. Israel's housing minister Yitzhak Herzog announced in mid-February that Israel would build a new settlement called "Gvaot" near the West Bank city of Bethlehem. Herzog also said that settlers set to be evacuated from Gaza would be free to move to other settlements in the West Bank. "I cannot prevent an individual who wants to use his compensation to buy a house in Gush Etzion from doing so," he said, referring to a growing settlement near Jerusalem. (Reuters, 15 February 2005)
Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper reported that Israel is forging ahead with plans to expand Ma'ale Adumim, the largest settlement in the West Bank, which lies between Jerusalem and Jericho and cuts the West Bank in two from north to south. If this expansion goes ahead, as it seems it will, it confirms that Israel intends there to be no possibility for a contiguous Palestinian state. ("Herzog's Greater Jerusalem," by Shahar Ilan, Haaretz, 16 February).
Israel's Yediot Aharonot newspaper revealed that according to the state land authority, Israel plans to build more than 6,000 new homes in settlements in the West Bank -- many in Ma'ale Adumim -- and that the government will also legitimize 120 unauthorixed settlement outposts. (BBC, 25 February 2005)
A recent study by Israel's Peace Now using aerial photography and field research found that "the main building effort in the Jewish settlements in the West Bank is now focused on the area between the Green Line [1967 border] and the separation fence, and it is aimed at turning the fence into Israel's permanent border." ("Quietly carrying on building," Ha'aretz, 8 January 2005). A confidential report by the Israeli attorney general that found that "almost every major ministry in the Israeli government assisted in the construction, expansion and maintenance of illegal settlement outposts." ("Israelis Act to Encircle East Jerusalem; Enclaves in Arab Areas, Illegal Building Projects Seen Intended to Consolidate Control," The Washington Post, 7 February 2005)
This evidence bolsters Palestinian claims that the separation wall -- ruled illegal last July by the International Court of Justice -- is not a temporary security measure as Israel argues, but a land grab carried out while world attention focuses on Gaza. The deception, however, is not Israel's alone, but requires the active participation of all those invested in the "peace process" as it is currently configured and who prefer to talk about the Gaza as if it were the only and most important thing happening.
There is a vast and growing gap between the Bush administration's peace rhetoric and what is happening on the ground. Lately it has been easier to ignore these contradictions because exhausted Israelis and Palestinians are ready to give anything a chance. But time is very short.
Post-"truce" talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority to handover the West Bank city of Jericho to Palestinian control quickly stalled over where to place Israeli roadblocks around the town. Israel refused Palestinian demands for free movement from Jericho to Ramallah. Many Palestinians feel that what is happening now is not a genuine quest for peace, but simply discussions between the jailor and the prisoner on easing prison conditions.
Meanwhile, in Ramallah, democratic "reform" Palestinian Authority-style continues. The recent wrangle over the approval of a Palestinian cabinet has been presented as a struggle between the Arafat old guard and young reformers grouped around Abbas. While Palestinian Authority prime minister Ahmed Qureia has forced by the Palestinian Legislative Council to bring a number of technocrats into the cabinet, but he also brought in Mohammed Dahlan, the Gaza strongman closely allied with Abbas. Dahlan, the Gaza security chief in the heyday of Oslo is implicated in massive corruption and human rights abuses in Gaza. Qureia himself was the subject of a Legislative Council investigation into allegations that his family cement business sold concrete to Israel to build the separation wall in the occupied West Bank. Despite the investigative committee's recommendations for action, nothing has been done. Rather than genuine reform, the tussle in Ramallah appears to be little more than a redivision of the spoils among top figures in Fatah, the movement that monopolizes power in the Palestinian Authority.
If Palestinians feel that Abbas' Palestinian Authority is receiving international aid and support only to act as a proxy police force on behalf of a deepening Israeli occupation, it will rapidly lose what legitimacy it has. Abbas' problem was well illustrated by one Palestinian police officer in Gaza who told the Associated Press, "I will never raise my weapons against the [Palestinian] fighters ... I can only ask them not to fire." No Palestinian leader can order Palestinians to engage in civil war on Israel's behalf. In recent municipal elections in the Gaza Strip, Hamas trounced Fatah, an indication that despite a campaign of assassination against their leaders by Israel, Islamist opposition groups remain the strongest force in some parts of the occupied territories.
Other noteworthy developments on the ground bode ill for Palestinians. Under Israeli and American pressure, scandal-plagued UN Secretary General Kofi Annan recently decided not to renew the term of Peter Hansen, the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which employs thousands of Palestinian refugees and cares for the basic needs of millions. Hansen, a seasoned and widely-respected professional, had angered Israel by vigorously defending his agency and staff against false Israeli allegations that they were involved in armed activity. Hansen's departure will be a blow to Palestinians, and only the more so if he is replaced by the new breed of UN official that Annan's dismal reign has ushered in, who are self-interested politicians first and international civil servants a distant second.
The dynamic that exists looks ominously like the failed Oslo peace process during which Israel doubled the number of settlers on Palestinian land, and never let up on forced land confiscation and house demolitions, sustaining a cycle of violence which claimed thousands of innocent lives. Despite the continuing euphoria created by Sharon's theatrics, there is no evidence that Israel has any intention of seizing perhaps the last opportunity to save itself through the two-state solution. Neither is there any sign that its chief sponsor, the United States, has any intention of pressuring it to do so.
Ali Abunimah is a co-founder of The Electronic Intifada.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3637.shtml
________________________________
Gush-Shalom.org
Finger After Finger
Uri Avnery
26 February 2005
Seven words uttered by President Bush in Brussels have not been paid the attention they deserve.
He called for the establishment of “a democratic Palestinian state with territorial contiguity” in the West Bank, and then added: “A state on scattered territories will not work.”
It is worthwhile to ponder these words. Who did he point the finger at? Why did he say this in Brussels, of all places?
Nobody warns of a danger without a reason. If Bush said what he said, it means that he believes that someone is causing this danger.
Just who might that be?
For years now I have been warning that this is the intention of Ariel Sharon, the basis of the whole settlement enterprise planned and set up by him. The lay-out of the settlements on the West Bank map is designed to cut the territory up from North to South and from West to East, in order to forestall any possibility of establishing a really viable and contiguous Palestinian state, a state like any other.
If the settlement blocs that have been created are annexed to Israel, the Palestinian territory will be sliced up into a number of enclaves – perhaps four, perhaps six. The Gaza Strip, an isolated ghetto by itself, will be another enclave. Each enclave will be surrounded by settlements and military installations, and all of them will be cut off from the world outside.
The American intelligence agencies are familiar with this picture, of course. They can see it with their satellites. But that did not deter President Bush from promising Sharon last year that Israeli “population centers” in the West Bank will be annexed to Israel. These “population centers” are the very same settlement blocs that were defined by the US in the past as “illegal” and “an obstacle to peace”. During the presidency of the first President Bush, the American administration even decided to deduct the costs of new settlement projects from the financial benefits accorded to Israel.
So why did the second Bush suddenly make a declaration whose practical meaning is that some of these settlement blocs must be dismantled? And why did he make it in Brussels?
It is clear that he wanted to gain favor with his European hosts. The European Union opposes the annexation of West Bank territory to Israel. Bush said what he said in order to reduce his differences with Europe.
So he said it. And what is happening on the ground in the meantime?
Last Sunday the Israeli government decided for the second time to implement the disengagement plan, a decision that was hailed by the media as “historic”. With all the hullabaloo, hardly any attention was paid to a second resolution adopted at the same meeting: to continue building the wall in the West Bank.
At first sight, that is a routine decision. After all, the government argues that this is nothing but a “security fence”. It does indeed have a certain security function, and Israeli public opinion accepts it as such. But by now, informed people must know that this wall is intended as the future border of Israel. Therefore, this week all government spokespersons took pains to stress that the new path of the wall cuts off only 7-8% of the West Bank.
The word “only” deserves attention. President Bill Clinton’s last peace plan spoke about the annexation of 3-4% of the West Bank to Israel, in return for the transfer of 1% of Israeli territory to the Palestinian state. Seven percent of the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany is much more than the whole state of Saxony. Seven percent of the territory of the United States of America is more than the whole giant state of Texas. (Imagine: Mexico conquers Texas, builds a wall between it and the rest of the US and fills it with Mexican settlements.)
But the percentage game is misleading. It is not only the size of the territory that is important, but also its location.
In this respect, the controversy between Israel and the US remains. It concerns mainly two places, where the path of the wall causes the dismemberment of the West Bank. If the wall is to include the settlement town of Ariel, it will send a finger deep into the West Bank. This finger will connect with a second one, coming from the opposite direction – the two fingers together will cut through the whole width of the West Bank south of Nablus. Another finger will extend from Jerusalem to the enlarged Ma’aleh Adumim settlement bloc, also cutting practically the full width of the West Bank.
The Americans do not yet agree. So Sharon is using one of his typical methods: in those two places he leaves a gap in the wall. He will build there in due course, after using a future opportunity to wrap President Bush – so to say – around his little finger.
But the percentage account is also wrong in another respect. Nowadays one speaks only about the wall that will separate the West Bank from Israel proper. Nobody is talking now of the “Eastern” wall.
It is no secret that Sharon plans to build this wall in order to complete the encirclement of the West Bank and cut it off from the Jordan valley and the Dead Sea shore. That is a big slice of territory, about 20% of the West Bank, and would cut the West Bank off from any contact with the world. Sharon knows that he cannot build this wall at the moment, because of the opposition of the US and the whole world. Also, there is no budget for it. Therefore, he is leaving it for the future.
The government decision does formally include the southern border of the West Bank, where the planned path of the wall runs almost completely along the Green Line. That looks really nice. But this, too, contains a trick: Sharon does not intend to build this part of the wall in the near future. He is postponing it for another time – and then he will propose a different path altogether, including a finger thrust deeply into Palestinian territory, so as to annex the South Hebron settlement bloc, up to Kiryat Arba.
By way of deception shalt thou build settlements.
In the meantime, Sharon is keeping himself occupied with building on the 7% of the territory that has been approved by the government decision. All this area between the wall and the Green Line – the territory already annexed in practice – is being filled with new settlements. Among others:
· A new town called Gevaoth that is to be built west of Bethlehem, in what is called the “Etzion Bloc”.
That is a mendacious name: the original Etzion Bloc consisted of a small group of settlements near the Green Line. It was occupied by the Arabs in the 1948 war and re-conquered by Israel in 1967, when the former settlements were also re-built. But then a whole new town (Efrata) was added to the East, and beyond that a number of new settlements, until the original few settlements had expanded into a massive settlement bloc almost surrounding Bethlehem. Now Sharon is going to fill it with even more settlers.
· A big new settlement called “North Tsufim” that is to be built north of Qalqilia. This, too, will reach the proportions of a town.
· Giant housing projects, that will be set up in order to connect the Ma’aleh Adumim bloc to Jerusalem, and just about reach the Jordan river.
Also in the Jerusalem Area, the new (Labor) Minister for Housing, Yitzhak Herzog, promises to build big housing projects from Har Homa to Ma’aleh Adumim, while another one is going to be built east of a-Ram. The aim is to cut Jerusalem off completely from the West Bank.
All this is happening while Israel and the world are waxing lyrical about the “disengagement” plan – which, in essence, is nothing but a plan to consolidate the Gaza strip as one of the enclaves in “a state of scattered territories”. (The Gaza Strip constitutes only 6% of the occupied territories.)
The Labor party is a full partner in this scheme.
As far as Sharon is concerned, the disengagement plan plays with the dismantling of some small settlements in a remote corner of the occupied territories for the fulfillment of his grand design to take over most of the West Bank.
Now President Bush has declared that he does not accept this design. His European hosts smiled politely. Perhaps they believed him, and then, maybe they did not.
http://www.gush-shalom.org/archives/article345.html
17 March 2005
The Persistence of Misplaced Optimism
With all of the hardships and tragedies facing the human experience today, it is quite normal for us to hold on to any glimmer of hope or optimism that comes our way. This is especially true here, under the umbrella of fear and death that casts a shadow over much of life in Palestine / Israel. Thus much has been said about the windows of opportunity and the growing optimism of “truces,” “peace processes,” and burgeoning “democracies.”
This sense of optimism rests easily in the calm homes of the Global North. But unfortunately, that optimism suffers a very short half-life here under occupation. One needs only attempt the short journey from Jerusalem to Bethlehem—a six-mile distance—to learn the misplaced nature of this optimism. For as soon as you make your way to Bethlehem, you must first face the main checkpoint guarding the entrance to the “little town,” where chances are you will notice lines of Palestinian men being detained on the side of the road for trying to get to their places of employment outside of Bethlehem.
But what is most striking is the “Wall.” Standing about thirty feet high, the “Separation” or “Apartheid” Wall has recently grown at a considerable pace around Bethlehem, now almost complete, imprisoning this Palestinian community here.
It is difficult to communicate just how impacting this sight is when entering Bethlehem, face-to-face with this monstrosity of concrete. “Disturbing” does not quite describe it. “Sad” also falls short. “Heart-breaking” is a little more appropriate, tying to capture all of the visceral responses to this visual trauma. It is against this Wall that any semblance of optimism for many in this land has been shattered
When the Wall is complete, the larger communities of Bethlehem, Beit Jala, and Beit Sahour will be completely cut off, an open-air prison, with only three points of entry / exit. (For more information and maps of these developments, please visit www.stopthewall.org/maps/857.shtml as well as www.humanitarianinfo.org/opt/docs/UN/Beth_Rep_Dec_04_EN.pdf.)
“Disengagement”? Sure. Occupation? Still!
The construction of this Wall is just one of the several finishing touches that are integral to the creation of a “Palestinian State” composed of segregated reservations on only about forty percent of the West Bank. Palestinians will be confined to these reservations, which will be rendered “contiguous” (per a recent comment by U.S. President George W. Bush; see Uri Averny’s commentary below) by a new network of tunnels accommodated to the equally absurd network of illegal “Jews-only” colonist roads for “outposts” and “settlements”—colonies all and illegal.
The unilateral “disengagement plan” to remove all Israeli settlers from Gaza continues to move forward. Yet the language of disengagement distracts the listener from other developments, like the plan to build 400 more new housing units for a burgeoning settlement right in Bethlehem, one purpose of which is to “resettle” those leaving Gaza in the West Bank, solidifying Israel’s control over this area. The fact that does not get media play is that despite this “disengagement,” Israel will continue to maintain absolute control over all of Gaza’s borders (land and sea) as well as its airspace, which means that Israel will be very much still holding the Gaza Strip under occupation.
Exploring Alternative Pressures
It is due to this misplaced optimism and the seemingly ineffective nature of political or legal mechanisms to find a justpeace for this land that a growing conversation about exploring economic pressure has developed. Shamai Leibowitz, an Israeli lawyer from Tel Aviv, points out that
"After years of failed political efforts by the Israeli and international human rights community aimed at ending the occupation, it is clear that new approaches must be implemented. It is time for American civic institutions to support a multi-tiered campaign of strategic, selective sanctions against Israel until the occupation ends. Since the Israeli government is flagrantly disobeying the ICJ decision, international law mandates the use of sanctions to force Israel to comply with UN resolutions and human rights treaties."
Read more about his thoughts in an article attached below. For more on Jewish voices calling for exploring economic pressures to end the occupation, please also visit MCC partner the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) at http://www.icahd.org/eng/news.asp?menu=5&submenu=1&item=218 or Jewish Voices for Peace at http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/pressRelease.jsp?press_release_KEY=47&t=press.dwt
Zochrot at Lifta
On February 25th, MCC partner organization the Zochrot Association visited the destroyed Palestinian village of Lifta. Situated on the outskirts of Jerusalem, Lifta was one of over 500 Palestinian villages destroyed by Israeli forces between 1947 and 1949, with its over 2,500 inhabitants numbered among the 700,000 to 900,00 Palestinians made refugees in what became known to Palestinians as the Nakba, or “Catastrophe.” An Israeli organization, Zochrot (which means “Remember” in Hebrew) invited Palestinian refugees from Lifta to speak about their village and their experiences of dispossession to a gathering over 200 people and posted signs in Hebrew and in Arabic at various points in the village to mark where the mosque, the oil press, village spring, and the cemetery lay.
Today you can still see some of the old homes sitting on the valley floor of this picturesque location as you look down from Ben Gurion highway. But not for long. What does remain of the village is scheduled to be destroyed to make way for a new suburban neighborhood for Jerusalem. Almost sixty years after its destruction, Lifta is still being targeted in these further attempts to erase any sign of Palestinian existence prior to the Nakba.
You can find out more information about the Zochrot Association and their remembrance of Lifta by visiting www.zochrot.org/index.php?id=186 as well as www.electronicintifada.net/v2/article3652.shtml.
Lent in the “Holy Land”
As this Lenten season comes to an end, we cannot help but reflect with our Palestinian friends and neighbors on what it means to celebrate Easter in the midst of despair. The season of Lent always seems more appropriate than that of Easter. And yet, ours is an Easter faith. Here, it is a constant source of struggle to rediscover from where our hope comes from. Zoughbi Zoughbi, our good friend and partner at the Wi’am Palestinian Conflict Resolution Center, has described it as moving along the Stations of the Cross. “We know that the end, the final station brings resurrection and the new life that conquers death. But we just do not know which station we are on right now.”
During this Easter season, would you reflect on the historical realities of this land and struggle as well with those who would seek to know how to proclaim the light and life of resurrection to those living under the darkness of oppression?
Peace to you all,
Timothy and Christi Seidel.
Peace Development Workers
Mennonite Central Committee - Palestine
Attachments:
· Shamai Leibowitz, “Israel: A Call for Divestment,” The Nation, 16 March 2005
· Ali Abunimah, “Is peace in Palestine about to break out?” The Electronic Intifada, 25 February 2005
· Uri Avnery, “Finger After Finger,” Gush-Shalom.org, 26 February 2005
________________________________
The Nation
Israel: A Call for Divestment
Shamai Leibowitz
16 March 2005
The assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has led to an explosion of "people power" in the streets of Beirut, in which hundreds of thousands of Lebanese citizens have called for an end to Syria's occupation of their land. These calls have been celebrated and echoed in other capitals, and nowhere more so than in Washington. However, there is another area in the Middle East where a struggle to end foreign occupation has brought the natives only death and destruction. For decades, Israel has crushed the 3.5 million Palestinians living under military domination, beating them into submission while taking away their civil rights and their land.
As an Israeli Jew committed to peace for Israel and our neighbors, I was shocked and disgusted by the recent terror attack in Tel Aviv, which took the lives of innocent Jews. Such acts of terror have made headlines and been rightfully condemned by the international community. However, deadly Israeli attacks against Palestinian civilians have not received significant press attention in the West or led to appropriate, decisive international action. For decades the Israeli army, equipped with US arms and technology, has killed, maimed, beaten and tortured tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians. Evidently, in the eyes of the West the people power of Palestinians does not count.
From 1986 to 1991 I served in the Israeli army in the occupied territories. During this period I was shocked and disgusted at what my comrades and I were repeatedly ordered to do to Palestinian civilians. To crush the uprising for independence and statehood, we were ordered to brutalize them. In one of our army bases in the West Bank, there was a mysterious room. Every day we watched Palestinians being led into it. After a couple of days our commanders would lead the Palestinians out, black and blue from bruises and their faces swollen. They resembled sacks of potatoes more than human beings.
We later realized this room was a torture chamber. On some days, we could hear screams coming from the room. It was a sickening experience. However, we continued participating in the occupation because Israeli politicians persuaded us that we were in the midst of a "peace process." So effusive were they in their lectures on how Israel "only wants peace" that we were blinded from seeing the reality of how the state is brutally oppressing, subjugating and dehumanizing the Palestinian people.
As many Israelis realize today, when Israeli governments talked about the peace process during the Oslo period, they were pulling the wool over the world's eyes. Israel continued colonizing the West Bank and Gaza with its Jewish-only settlements and, at the same time, entrenching a cruel military regime over Palestinians. The same is true today with Ariel Sharon's "disengagement" plan, which is being marketed by Israeli propaganda as a "painful concession" toward peace. Many of us who live in Israel and visit or serve in the occupied territories recognize the truth: Israel is continuously intensifying its military rule in the West Bank while stealing more Palestinian land and building more illegal Jewish-only settlements.
For years, American taxpayer money has funded the occupation--the torture chambers, the military apparatus, the bulldozers used in house demolitions, the building of settlements and now the construction of the West Bank wall, declared illegal by the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Americans should be held accountable for where their money is going.
After years of failed political efforts by the Israeli and international human rights community aimed at ending the occupation, it is clear that new approaches must be implemented. It is time for American civic institutions to support a multi-tiered campaign of strategic, selective sanctions against Israel until the occupation ends. Since the Israeli government is flagrantly disobeying the ICJ decision, international law mandates the use of sanctions to force Israel to comply with UN resolutions and human rights treaties.
The first step for American institutions is to engage in selective divestment--withdrawal of their investments from companies that are, directly or indirectly, funding the occupation. First and foremost, states, cities, universities, churches, unions, banks and pension funds should divest from Israel Bonds, which finance the occupation, and from any company that sells arms, ammunition or other military equipment to Israel. This should include companies like Caterpillar, which manufactures and sells the bulldozers that have flattened thousands of Palestinian homes, and General Dynamics, General Electric, Lockheed Martin, Northrop-Grumman, Raytheon and other corporations, because these companies play an active role in enabling Israeli forces to engage in practices that violate international humanitarian law.
Second, the West should hold Israeli military personnel and political leaders personally accountable for human rights violations, including trial before international courts and bans on travel to other countries. This strategy has been implemented in other conflicts (Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo and South Africa, for example), proving its deterrent value and effectiveness.
Prohibiting the sale of arms and military equipment to Israel is, in fact, called for by existing US law. According to the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (22 USC §2304), "No security assistance may be provided to any country the government of which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights."
The current hypocritical American Administration is not enforcing this law with regard to Israel. It is, therefore, up to American civil society to uphold the law and prevent the sale of any military equipment to Israel by pressuring the government, filing complaints against companies that violate this law and withdrawing all investments from such companies.
The Presbyterian Church took a positive step in this direction when in July 2004 its General Assembly passed a resolution calling for selective divestment from companies that profit from the occupation. This past February the World Council of Churches, which brings together more than 340 churches worldwide, issued a similar resolution. While criticizing the severe human rights abuses inherent in the occupation and the construction of the illegal West Bank wall, these resolutions also affirm the right of the State of Israel to exist securely and peacefully, and they categorically reject the tragic cycle of indiscriminate violence perpetrated by both sides against innocent civilian populations.
Sanctions are a powerful and nonviolent means to insure that the Israeli government abides by international law and ends its appalling human rights violations in the occupied territories. Divestment resolutions are long overdue. We have witnessed the power of worldwide economic pressure in the collapse of the South African apartheid regime. If American civic institutions follow the same strategy, we could see the end of the Israeli occupation in our lifetime. Americans should stand up for human rights and justice, follow their own law and take the most productive step toward peace and security in the Middle East.
Shamai Leibowitz, an Israeli human rights attorney from Tel Aviv, is a reserve staff sergeant in the Israeli tank corps and a member of Courage to Refuse, an organization of Israeli soldiers who refuse to serve in the occupied Palestinian territories. He is also a member of Gush Shalom, the largest peace NGO in Israel.
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050328&s=leibowitz
Note: For more on Jewish voices calling for exploring economic pressures to end the occupation, please visit MCC partner the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) at http://www.icahd.org/eng/news.asp?menu=5&submenu=1&item=218 or Jewish Voices for Peace at http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/pressRelease.jsp?press_release_KEY=47&t=press.dwt
________________________________
The Electronic Intifada
Is peace in Palestine about to break out?
Ali Abunimah
25 February 2005
Are Israelis and Palestinians finally on the road to peace? A cursory glance at commentary in the US press would seem to suggest so. Since Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon, and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas announced a truce in early February at the Sharm al-Sheikh summit, many observers see a "window of opportunity" they are encouraging both sides to leap through.
Sharon has announced he is now coordinating with the Palestinians on his originally unilateral plan to pull Israeli troops and settlers out of Gaza and the Israeli cabinet voted to approve the "disengagement."
The New York Times editorial gushed about the disengagement that "it would be churlish to greet [Sharon's] historic decision with anything other than enthusiasm." (24 February). The Chicago Tribune praised Sharon's "impressive" perfomance and marveled as he "defies death threats and warnings of a civil war to move his nation toward the kind of actions that are imperative for a two-state solution and a lasting peace." (24 February).
Behind the photo opportunities and historic handshakes, however, the evidence on the ground is that Israel is taking advantage of the new mood not to build peace, but to build more settlements. Without an immediate halt in settlement construction, the possibility for a territorially contiguous, free Palestinian state alongside Israel will remain a distant mirage, no matter how many times President Bush talks about it, and the present easing of tension will be no more than a short respite from more horror to come.
Phase One of President Bush's Road Map peace plan says that both sides must immediately halt all violence against eachother, and Israel must freeze all construction of Jewish-only settlements on occupied Palestinian land. But Palestinians still watch helplessly as Israeli bulldozers chew up their farms and orchards. Palestinian Authority prime minister Ahmed Qureia complained that "Israel is throwing sand in our eyes by continuing with the settlement process" in the occupied West Bank.
At a press conference with foreign reporters on 15 February, Sharon confirmed that Israel intends to keep "Jewish population blocs" inside the West Bank. Last Spring, the Bush administration explicitly endorsed Israel's intention to do so. Israel's housing minister Yitzhak Herzog announced in mid-February that Israel would build a new settlement called "Gvaot" near the West Bank city of Bethlehem. Herzog also said that settlers set to be evacuated from Gaza would be free to move to other settlements in the West Bank. "I cannot prevent an individual who wants to use his compensation to buy a house in Gush Etzion from doing so," he said, referring to a growing settlement near Jerusalem. (Reuters, 15 February 2005)
Israel's Ha'aretz newspaper reported that Israel is forging ahead with plans to expand Ma'ale Adumim, the largest settlement in the West Bank, which lies between Jerusalem and Jericho and cuts the West Bank in two from north to south. If this expansion goes ahead, as it seems it will, it confirms that Israel intends there to be no possibility for a contiguous Palestinian state. ("Herzog's Greater Jerusalem," by Shahar Ilan, Haaretz, 16 February).
Israel's Yediot Aharonot newspaper revealed that according to the state land authority, Israel plans to build more than 6,000 new homes in settlements in the West Bank -- many in Ma'ale Adumim -- and that the government will also legitimize 120 unauthorixed settlement outposts. (BBC, 25 February 2005)
A recent study by Israel's Peace Now using aerial photography and field research found that "the main building effort in the Jewish settlements in the West Bank is now focused on the area between the Green Line [1967 border] and the separation fence, and it is aimed at turning the fence into Israel's permanent border." ("Quietly carrying on building," Ha'aretz, 8 January 2005). A confidential report by the Israeli attorney general that found that "almost every major ministry in the Israeli government assisted in the construction, expansion and maintenance of illegal settlement outposts." ("Israelis Act to Encircle East Jerusalem; Enclaves in Arab Areas, Illegal Building Projects Seen Intended to Consolidate Control," The Washington Post, 7 February 2005)
This evidence bolsters Palestinian claims that the separation wall -- ruled illegal last July by the International Court of Justice -- is not a temporary security measure as Israel argues, but a land grab carried out while world attention focuses on Gaza. The deception, however, is not Israel's alone, but requires the active participation of all those invested in the "peace process" as it is currently configured and who prefer to talk about the Gaza as if it were the only and most important thing happening.
There is a vast and growing gap between the Bush administration's peace rhetoric and what is happening on the ground. Lately it has been easier to ignore these contradictions because exhausted Israelis and Palestinians are ready to give anything a chance. But time is very short.
Post-"truce" talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority to handover the West Bank city of Jericho to Palestinian control quickly stalled over where to place Israeli roadblocks around the town. Israel refused Palestinian demands for free movement from Jericho to Ramallah. Many Palestinians feel that what is happening now is not a genuine quest for peace, but simply discussions between the jailor and the prisoner on easing prison conditions.
Meanwhile, in Ramallah, democratic "reform" Palestinian Authority-style continues. The recent wrangle over the approval of a Palestinian cabinet has been presented as a struggle between the Arafat old guard and young reformers grouped around Abbas. While Palestinian Authority prime minister Ahmed Qureia has forced by the Palestinian Legislative Council to bring a number of technocrats into the cabinet, but he also brought in Mohammed Dahlan, the Gaza strongman closely allied with Abbas. Dahlan, the Gaza security chief in the heyday of Oslo is implicated in massive corruption and human rights abuses in Gaza. Qureia himself was the subject of a Legislative Council investigation into allegations that his family cement business sold concrete to Israel to build the separation wall in the occupied West Bank. Despite the investigative committee's recommendations for action, nothing has been done. Rather than genuine reform, the tussle in Ramallah appears to be little more than a redivision of the spoils among top figures in Fatah, the movement that monopolizes power in the Palestinian Authority.
If Palestinians feel that Abbas' Palestinian Authority is receiving international aid and support only to act as a proxy police force on behalf of a deepening Israeli occupation, it will rapidly lose what legitimacy it has. Abbas' problem was well illustrated by one Palestinian police officer in Gaza who told the Associated Press, "I will never raise my weapons against the [Palestinian] fighters ... I can only ask them not to fire." No Palestinian leader can order Palestinians to engage in civil war on Israel's behalf. In recent municipal elections in the Gaza Strip, Hamas trounced Fatah, an indication that despite a campaign of assassination against their leaders by Israel, Islamist opposition groups remain the strongest force in some parts of the occupied territories.
Other noteworthy developments on the ground bode ill for Palestinians. Under Israeli and American pressure, scandal-plagued UN Secretary General Kofi Annan recently decided not to renew the term of Peter Hansen, the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which employs thousands of Palestinian refugees and cares for the basic needs of millions. Hansen, a seasoned and widely-respected professional, had angered Israel by vigorously defending his agency and staff against false Israeli allegations that they were involved in armed activity. Hansen's departure will be a blow to Palestinians, and only the more so if he is replaced by the new breed of UN official that Annan's dismal reign has ushered in, who are self-interested politicians first and international civil servants a distant second.
The dynamic that exists looks ominously like the failed Oslo peace process during which Israel doubled the number of settlers on Palestinian land, and never let up on forced land confiscation and house demolitions, sustaining a cycle of violence which claimed thousands of innocent lives. Despite the continuing euphoria created by Sharon's theatrics, there is no evidence that Israel has any intention of seizing perhaps the last opportunity to save itself through the two-state solution. Neither is there any sign that its chief sponsor, the United States, has any intention of pressuring it to do so.
Ali Abunimah is a co-founder of The Electronic Intifada.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3637.shtml
________________________________
Gush-Shalom.org
Finger After Finger
Uri Avnery
26 February 2005
Seven words uttered by President Bush in Brussels have not been paid the attention they deserve.
He called for the establishment of “a democratic Palestinian state with territorial contiguity” in the West Bank, and then added: “A state on scattered territories will not work.”
It is worthwhile to ponder these words. Who did he point the finger at? Why did he say this in Brussels, of all places?
Nobody warns of a danger without a reason. If Bush said what he said, it means that he believes that someone is causing this danger.
Just who might that be?
For years now I have been warning that this is the intention of Ariel Sharon, the basis of the whole settlement enterprise planned and set up by him. The lay-out of the settlements on the West Bank map is designed to cut the territory up from North to South and from West to East, in order to forestall any possibility of establishing a really viable and contiguous Palestinian state, a state like any other.
If the settlement blocs that have been created are annexed to Israel, the Palestinian territory will be sliced up into a number of enclaves – perhaps four, perhaps six. The Gaza Strip, an isolated ghetto by itself, will be another enclave. Each enclave will be surrounded by settlements and military installations, and all of them will be cut off from the world outside.
The American intelligence agencies are familiar with this picture, of course. They can see it with their satellites. But that did not deter President Bush from promising Sharon last year that Israeli “population centers” in the West Bank will be annexed to Israel. These “population centers” are the very same settlement blocs that were defined by the US in the past as “illegal” and “an obstacle to peace”. During the presidency of the first President Bush, the American administration even decided to deduct the costs of new settlement projects from the financial benefits accorded to Israel.
So why did the second Bush suddenly make a declaration whose practical meaning is that some of these settlement blocs must be dismantled? And why did he make it in Brussels?
It is clear that he wanted to gain favor with his European hosts. The European Union opposes the annexation of West Bank territory to Israel. Bush said what he said in order to reduce his differences with Europe.
So he said it. And what is happening on the ground in the meantime?
Last Sunday the Israeli government decided for the second time to implement the disengagement plan, a decision that was hailed by the media as “historic”. With all the hullabaloo, hardly any attention was paid to a second resolution adopted at the same meeting: to continue building the wall in the West Bank.
At first sight, that is a routine decision. After all, the government argues that this is nothing but a “security fence”. It does indeed have a certain security function, and Israeli public opinion accepts it as such. But by now, informed people must know that this wall is intended as the future border of Israel. Therefore, this week all government spokespersons took pains to stress that the new path of the wall cuts off only 7-8% of the West Bank.
The word “only” deserves attention. President Bill Clinton’s last peace plan spoke about the annexation of 3-4% of the West Bank to Israel, in return for the transfer of 1% of Israeli territory to the Palestinian state. Seven percent of the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany is much more than the whole state of Saxony. Seven percent of the territory of the United States of America is more than the whole giant state of Texas. (Imagine: Mexico conquers Texas, builds a wall between it and the rest of the US and fills it with Mexican settlements.)
But the percentage game is misleading. It is not only the size of the territory that is important, but also its location.
In this respect, the controversy between Israel and the US remains. It concerns mainly two places, where the path of the wall causes the dismemberment of the West Bank. If the wall is to include the settlement town of Ariel, it will send a finger deep into the West Bank. This finger will connect with a second one, coming from the opposite direction – the two fingers together will cut through the whole width of the West Bank south of Nablus. Another finger will extend from Jerusalem to the enlarged Ma’aleh Adumim settlement bloc, also cutting practically the full width of the West Bank.
The Americans do not yet agree. So Sharon is using one of his typical methods: in those two places he leaves a gap in the wall. He will build there in due course, after using a future opportunity to wrap President Bush – so to say – around his little finger.
But the percentage account is also wrong in another respect. Nowadays one speaks only about the wall that will separate the West Bank from Israel proper. Nobody is talking now of the “Eastern” wall.
It is no secret that Sharon plans to build this wall in order to complete the encirclement of the West Bank and cut it off from the Jordan valley and the Dead Sea shore. That is a big slice of territory, about 20% of the West Bank, and would cut the West Bank off from any contact with the world. Sharon knows that he cannot build this wall at the moment, because of the opposition of the US and the whole world. Also, there is no budget for it. Therefore, he is leaving it for the future.
The government decision does formally include the southern border of the West Bank, where the planned path of the wall runs almost completely along the Green Line. That looks really nice. But this, too, contains a trick: Sharon does not intend to build this part of the wall in the near future. He is postponing it for another time – and then he will propose a different path altogether, including a finger thrust deeply into Palestinian territory, so as to annex the South Hebron settlement bloc, up to Kiryat Arba.
By way of deception shalt thou build settlements.
In the meantime, Sharon is keeping himself occupied with building on the 7% of the territory that has been approved by the government decision. All this area between the wall and the Green Line – the territory already annexed in practice – is being filled with new settlements. Among others:
· A new town called Gevaoth that is to be built west of Bethlehem, in what is called the “Etzion Bloc”.
That is a mendacious name: the original Etzion Bloc consisted of a small group of settlements near the Green Line. It was occupied by the Arabs in the 1948 war and re-conquered by Israel in 1967, when the former settlements were also re-built. But then a whole new town (Efrata) was added to the East, and beyond that a number of new settlements, until the original few settlements had expanded into a massive settlement bloc almost surrounding Bethlehem. Now Sharon is going to fill it with even more settlers.
· A big new settlement called “North Tsufim” that is to be built north of Qalqilia. This, too, will reach the proportions of a town.
· Giant housing projects, that will be set up in order to connect the Ma’aleh Adumim bloc to Jerusalem, and just about reach the Jordan river.
Also in the Jerusalem Area, the new (Labor) Minister for Housing, Yitzhak Herzog, promises to build big housing projects from Har Homa to Ma’aleh Adumim, while another one is going to be built east of a-Ram. The aim is to cut Jerusalem off completely from the West Bank.
All this is happening while Israel and the world are waxing lyrical about the “disengagement” plan – which, in essence, is nothing but a plan to consolidate the Gaza strip as one of the enclaves in “a state of scattered territories”. (The Gaza Strip constitutes only 6% of the occupied territories.)
The Labor party is a full partner in this scheme.
As far as Sharon is concerned, the disengagement plan plays with the dismantling of some small settlements in a remote corner of the occupied territories for the fulfillment of his grand design to take over most of the West Bank.
Now President Bush has declared that he does not accept this design. His European hosts smiled politely. Perhaps they believed him, and then, maybe they did not.
http://www.gush-shalom.org/archives/article345.html
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
