12 Nov. '08: House demolitions in Silwan, East Jerusalem
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- Written by B'Tselem B'Tselem
- Published: 19 November 2008 19 November 2008
- Hits: 3546 3546
Last Wednesday [5 November], the Jerusalem Municipality demolished one house and an addition to another house, both in the Bustan section in the center of Silwan, a neighborhood in East Jerusalem. Dozens of local residents protested the action, some of them throwing stones at police and Border Police forces, who responded by firing tear gas and in one case, fired a shot of live ammunition at a balcony on which stone-throwers were standing. During the course of removing the occupants of the houses intended for destruction, one policeman assaulted two residents of the neighborhood. That same day, the Municipality demolished an events hall in Beit Hanina and a residential dwelling Shua’fat.
The Bustan section of Silwan contains some ninety houses, which are home to about one thousand persons. Most of the houses were built in the 1980s and 1990s. A few were built prior to Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem, in 1967. In the 1990s, the Municipality demolished four homes in the neighborhood. In November 2004, the city engineer at the time, Uri Shitreet, directed the head of the Municipality’s building supervision department to demolish all houses in the neighborhood to enable expansion of the King’s Valley archeological park, which surrounds the Old City. In early 2005, the Municipality began to carry out the directive, and residents of the neighborhood began to receive demolition orders and charges were filed against them for building without a permit. At the time, the Municipality demolished two houses in al-Bustan.
Local residents requested the attorney general to prevent the destruction of the neighborhood. Also, international pressure was brought to cancel the plan. Subsequently, Mayor Uri Lupoliansky stated, in 2005, that he retracted the plan and that the residents would be allowed to propose a plan that meets their development needs. In August 2008, the residents presented their plan. The city engineer, Shlomo Eshkol, informed them that the plan would not be considered in the immediate future, and that the Municipality was proceeding with the plan to build a national park on the site.
If the Municipality carries
out its plan to demolish the houses in al-Bustan, it would be the most
massive demolition action carried out by the Municipality since the
demolition of the Mugrabi section of the Old City, in 1967, to build
the expanse in front of the Western Wall.
The Municipality’s
outline plan for the Old City, drafted in 1977, marked the existing
structures in al-Bustan, while classifying the neighborhood open,
public space. Although more than thirty years have passed since then,
the Municipality has refused to issue building permits or approve
existing construction, except in isolated cases. Indeed, choking
development of the neighborhood is characteristic of the Municipality’s
planning and building policy in East Jerusalem since 1967.
This policy is especially problematic in that, in Silwan, plans are being advanced to develop the compound run by the settler non-profit societies Elad and Ateret Cohanim, and build the City of David National Park, operated by Elad, which is being constructed between Palestinian houses surrounding al-Bustan. In addition, these societies are building institutions and parking lots, and archeological excavations are being conducted, close to Palestinian houses in Silwan. The Municipality also refrains from demolishing a large structure that Ateret Cohanim built without a permit in Silwan.
Destruction of the neighborhood denies its residents the right to housing, which is derived from the right to an adequate standard of living as it is defined in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. In addition, the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits the occupying state to destroy the property of residents of occupied territory, who benefit from the status of protected persons, “except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military actions.” The Convention further states that “extensive destruction . . . of property not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly” constitutes a grave breach of the Convention.
B'Tselem calls on the Jerusalem Municipality to cancel its plan to demolish houses in al-Bustan, to change its discriminatory and illegal policy, and to cooperate with residents of the neighborhood to develop an outline plan that will meet their needs.
Tug Of War: A controversial prof creates a skirmish at PSU over academic freedom.
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- Written by Beth Slovic, Willamette Week Beth Slovic, Willamette Week
- Published: 19 November 2008 19 November 2008
- Hits: 4339 4339
Tug Of War
BETH SLOVIC | bslovic at wweek dot com
Willamette Week
A controversial prof creates a skirmish at PSU over academic freedom.
http://wweek.com/editorial/3502/11855/
Google “Joel Beinin” and prepare for a war of words.
“If one individual can showcase all the flaws of Middle East Studies in academia, Joel Beinin is that man,” proclaims Campus-watch.org, a right-wing website affiliated with the neoconservative activist David Horowitz.
A tenured Stanford University professor who is Jewish and a Middle Eastern history expert, Beinin has been an outspoken critic of Israel’s policies toward Palestine. As a result, he has been a frequent target of accusations his views are anti-Semitic, among other things. A second article on Campus-watch.org calls him an “apologist for terrorists.”
On Nov. 3, Beinin brought that controversy to Oregon when he visited Portland State University as a candidate for a tenure-track appointment in PSU’s history department.
Two weeks later, the repercussions are still reverberating on campus—testament to Beinin’s notoriety and the volatility of Mideast studies at universities nationwide.
“This is one of those flashpoints,” says professor Ken Ruoff, chairman of the search committee for the appointment in PSU’s history department. “This is the real test [of academic freedom].”
One of four candidates for the appointment, Beinin says two PSU professors asked him his political views on Israel. If that’s true, such questions would be inappropriate hiring considerations, says Gregory Scholtz, a director at the American Association of University Professors.
Read more: Tug Of War: A controversial prof creates a skirmish at PSU over academic freedom.
On Top of Humanitarian Disaster, A News Blackout
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- Written by Cherrie Heywood, Inter Press Service Cherrie Heywood, Inter Press Service
- Published: 18 November 2008 18 November 2008
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RAMALLAH, West Bank - Israel has imposed a virtual news blackout on the Gaza Strip. For the last ten days no foreign journalists have been able to enter the besieged territory to report on the escalating humanitarian crisis caused by Israel's complete closure of Gaza's borders for the last two weeks.
[Photo: A baby in Shifa hospital in Gaza struggles against illness and lack of medicines and electricity. (Credit:Cherrie Heywood)]
Steve Gutkin, the AP bureau chief in Jerusalem and head of Israel's Foreign Press Association, said that he personally "knows of no foreign journalist that has been allowed into Gaza in the last week."
Gutkin said that "while Israel has barred foreign press from entering Gaza in the past, the length of the current ban makes it unprecedented." He added that he has received no "plausible or acceptable" explanation for the ban from the Israeli government.
AP has relied on reports from two of its journalists who were able to enter Gaza days before the closure began and are currently stuck there.
A delegation of European Union parliamentarians was also prevented from entering Gaza to assess the situation on the ground and to hold talks with Hamas leaders. They subsequently broke the naval siege of Gaza by entering the coast's territorial waters from Cyprus by boat, defying the Israeli navy.
Top judge: US and UK acted as 'vigilantes' in Iraq invasion
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- Written by Richard Norton-Taylor Richard Norton-Taylor
- Published: 17 November 2008 17 November 2008
- Hits: 3319 3319
Former senior law lord condemns 'serious violation of international law'
One of Britain's most authoritative judicial figures last night delivered a blistering attack on the invasion of Iraq, describing it as a serious violation of international law, and accusing Britain and the US of acting like a "world vigilante".
Lord Bingham, in his first major speech since retiring as the senior law lord, rejected the then attorney general's defence of the 2003 invasion as fundamentally flawed.
Contradicting head-on Lord Goldsmith's advice that the invasion was lawful, Bingham stated: "It was not plain that Iraq had failed to comply in a manner justifying resort to force and there were no strong factual grounds or hard evidence to show that it had." Adding his weight to the body of international legal opinion opposed to the invasion, Bingham said that to argue, as the British government had done, that Britain and the US could unilaterally decide that Iraq had broken UN resolutions "passes belief".
Governments were bound by international law as much as by their domestic laws, he said. "The current ministerial code," he added "binding on British ministers, requires them as an overarching duty to 'comply with the law, including international law and treaty obligations'."
The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats continue to press for an independent inquiry into the circumstances around the invasion. The government says an inquiry would be harmful while British troops are in Iraq. Ministers say most of the remaining 4,000 will leave by mid-2009.
Addressing the British Institute of International and Comparative Law last night, Bingham said: "If I am right that the invasion of Iraq by the US, the UK, and some other states was unauthorised by the security council there was, of course, a serious violation of international law and the rule of law.
"For the effect of acting unilaterally was to undermine the foundation on which the post-1945 consensus had been constructed: the prohibition of force (save in self-defence, or perhaps, to avert an impending humanitarian catastrophe) unless formally authorised by the nations of the world empowered to make collective decisions in the security council..."
The moment a state treated the rules of international law as binding on others but not on itself, the compact on which the law rested was broken, Bingham argued. Quoting a comment made by a leading academic lawyer, he added: "It is, as has been said, 'the difference between the role of world policeman and world vigilante'."
Bingham said he had very recently provided an advance copy of his speech to Goldsmith and to Jack Straw, foreign secretary at the time of the invasion of Iraq. He told his audience he should make it plain they challenged his conclusions.
Both men emphasised that point last night by intervening to defend their views as consistent with those held at the time of the invasion. Goldsmith said in a statement: "I stand by my advice of March 2003 that it was legal for Britain to take military action in Iraq. I would not have given that advice if it were not genuinely my view. Lord Bingham is entitled to his own legal perspective five years after the event." Goldsmith defended what is known as the "revival argument" - namely that Saddam Hussein had failed to comply with previous UN resolutions which could now take effect. Goldsmith added that Tony Blair had told him it was his "unequivocal view" that Iraq was in breach of its UN obligations to give up weapons of mass destruction.
Straw said last night that he shared Goldsmith's view. He continued: "However controversial the view that military action was justified in international law it was our attorney general's view that it was lawful and that view was widely shared across the world."
Bingham also criticised the post-invasion record of Britain as "an occupying power in Iraq". It is "sullied by a number of incidents, most notably the shameful beating to death of Mr Baha Mousa [a hotel receptionist] in Basra [in 2003]", he said.
Such breaches of the law, however, were not the result of deliberate government policy and the rights of victims had been recognised, Bingham observed.
He contrasted that with the "unilateral decisions of the US government" on issues such as the detention conditions in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
After referring to mistreatment of Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib, Bingham added: "Particularly disturbing to proponents of the rule of law is the cynical lack of concern for international legality among some top officials in the Bush administration."
A BONE IN AMERICA'S THROAT
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- Written by Jeff Halper Jeff Halper
- Published: 17 November 2008 17 November 2008
- Hits: 3903 3903
--Rebecca Vilkomerson, Jewish Peace News
A BONE IN AMERICA'S THROAT
Jeff Halper
Even before the voting began, Israeli politicians and pundits were asking: Will an Obama Administration be good for Israel? "Be good for Israel" is our code for "Will the US allow us to keep our settlements and continue to support our efforts to prevent negotiations with the Palestinians from ever bearing fruit?" For Americans the question should be: Will the Obama Administration understand that without addressing Palestinian needs it will not be able to disentangle itself from its broader Middle Eastern imbroglios, rejoin the community of nations and rescue its economy?
The Israel-Palestine conflict should be of central concern to Americans, near the top of the new Administration's agenda. It may not be the bloodiest conflict in the world – its minor when compared to Iraq – but it is emblematic to Muslims and to peoples the world over of American hostility and belligerence. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not merely a localized one between two squabbling tribes. It lies at the epicenter of global instability. Go where you may in the world and you will encounter the same phenomenon: a sense that the suffering of the Palestinians represents all that is wrong in an American-dominated world.