Non-violent protests against West Bank barrier turn increasingly dangerous
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- Written by Rory McCarthy in Bil'in, guardian.co.uk Rory McCarthy in Bil'in, guardian.co.uk
- Published: 27 April 2009 27 April 2009
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Palestinian demonstrations intended to be peaceful met with Israeli teargas, stun grenades and sometimes live ammunition
It began calmly enough with a march down the high street after midday prayers at the mosque. Palestinian villagers were surrounded by dozens of foreigners singing and waving flags. They turned and headed out to the olive-tree fields and up towards the broad path of Israel's West Bank barrier. There, behind a concrete hilltop bunker, the Israeli soldiers looked down on them.
The crowd approached the barrier, still singing. One man flew a paper kite shaped as a plane. "This land is a closed military zone," an Israeli soldier shouted in flawless Arabic over a loudspeaker. "You are not allowed near the wall." Then the soldiers fired a barrage of teargas.
It has been like this every Friday in the village of Bil'in for more than four years – the most persistent popular demonstration against Israel's vast steel and concrete barrier. It is a protest founded on non-violence that is spreading to other West Bank villages. But it has become increasingly dangerous.
On April 17, on the hillside at Bil'in, a Palestinian named Basem Abu Rahmeh, 31, was shot with a high-velocity Israeli teargas canister that sliced a hole into his chest, caused massive internal bleeding and quickly killed him. Video footage shot by another demonstrator shows he was unarmed, many metres from the barrier and posing no threat to the soldiers.
The Israeli military said it faced a "violent and illegal riot" and is investigating. On Friday the demonstrators at Bil'in wore Rameh's image on T-shirts and carried it on posters.
Last month another demonstrator, an American named Tristan Anderson, 38, was hit in the head by an identical high-velocity teargas canister in a protest against the barrier at the nearby village of Na'alin. He was severely injured, losing the sight in his right eye and suffering brain damage. "To shoot peaceful demonstrators is really horrifying to us," said his mother, Nancy.
Friday's demonstration lasted around three hours. The crowd repeatedly surged towards the fence, then retreated under clouds of teargas. The military sounded a constant, high-pitched siren, interspersed with warnings in Arabic and Hebrew: "Go back. You with the flag, go back" and, incongruously, in English: "You are entering a naval vessel exclusion zone. Reverse course immediately."
The Bil'in demonstration was always intended to be non-violent, although on Friday, as is often the case, there were half a dozen younger, angrier men lobbing stones at the soldiers with slingshots. The Israeli military, for its part, fires teargas, stun grenades, rubber-coated bullets and sometimes live ammunition at the crowd.
There have long been Palestinian advocates of non-violence, but they were drowned out by the militancy of the second intifada, the uprising that began in late 2000 and erupted into waves of appalling suicide bombings.
Eyad Burnat, 36, has spent long hours in discussions with the young men of Bil'in, a small village of fewer than 2,000, convincing them of the merits of "civil grassroots resistance".
"Of course it gets more difficult when someone is killed," said Burnat, who heads the demonstration. "But we've faced these problems in the past. We've had more than 60 people arrested and still they go back to non-violence. We've made a strategic decision."
Some, like the moderate Palestinian MP Mustafa Barghouti, hope this might be the start of a broader movement throughout Palestinian society. "It is a spark that is spreading," he said in Bil'in. "It gives an alternative to the useless negotiations and to those who say only violence can help."
But it is not so much that all the young men of the village are converted to the peaceful cause, rather that they respect and follow their elders. "I personally don't believe in non-violent resistance," said Nayef al-Khatib, 21, an accountancy student. "They've taken our land by force so we should take it back from them by force."
The barrier at Bil'in cuts off the village from more than half its agricultural land and has allowed the continuing expansion of Jewish settlements, including the vast, ultra-Orthodox settlement of Modiin Illit, even though all settlements on occupied land are illegal under international law.
The international court of justice said in a 2004 advisory opinion that the barrier was illegal where it crossed into the West Bank, and even Israel's supreme court ruled nearly two years ago that the route at Bil'in did not conform to any "security-military reasons" and must be changed. But it has not been moved.
Like most of the men in the village, Nayef al-Khatib has spent time in jail. He was arrested aged 17 for demonstrating and spent a year behind bars, taking his final year of high school from his prison cell. That jail term means he cannot now obtain a permit to travel to Jerusalem or across to Jordan and is often held for hours at Israeli military checkpoints inside the West Bank. "But it was an honour for me. Now I'm like the older men," he said.
Some of those older men are influential. Ahmad al-Khatib, 32, was once a member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, a prominent militant group, and was jailed for a year for transporting weapons. Now he is committed to non-violence, even objecting to the stone throwers.
"I don't apologise for what I did, but I'm not going back to it," he said. "We are an occupied nation according to international law and we have the right to resist, though that doesn't mean I support suicide bombers. But I don't want to resist all my life."
He argues that a non-violent strategy brings fewer Palestinian casualties. "I have no problem dying to get back my land, but I'd say to hell with my land if it just brought back our martyr who died last week. The life of a human being is more important than the land itself."
Often the most sensitive issue for the villagers has not been whether to take up arms, but whether to accept in their midst so many foreigners, and in particular so many Israeli demonstrators. Ahmad al-Khatib said it was the "most disputed question" and that many feared the Israelis were spying on them until they saw they, too, were being injured and arrested.
One of the first Israelis to join the Bil'in protest in its earliest days was Jonathan Pollack, 27, an activist and member of Anarchists Against the Wall who lives in Jaffa, just south of Tel Aviv. Although they warmly welcome him now, it was tense at first. "I'm still not one of their own and I don't pretend to be," he said.
Unlike most other joint peace initiatives, in this case the Israelis are in the minority and in the background. "I think it is very important that the struggle is Palestinian-led and that the colonial power relations are knowingly reversed," said Pollack.
Clinton’s Mideast Pirouette
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- Written by ROGER COHEN ROGER COHEN
- Published: 26 April 2009 26 April 2009
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The criticism of the center-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come from an unlikely source: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She’s transitioned with aplomb from the calculation of her interests that she made as a senator from New York to a cool assessment of U.S. interests. These do not always coincide with Israel’s.
I hear that Clinton was shocked by what she saw on her visit last month to the West Bank. This is not surprising. The transition from Israel’s first-world hustle-bustle to the donkeys, carts and idle people beyond the separation wall is brutal. If Clinton cares about one thing, it’s human suffering.
In fact, you don’t so much drive into the Palestinian territories these days as sink into them. Everything, except the Jewish settlers’ cars on fenced settlers-only highways, slows down. The buzz of business gives way to the clunking of hammers.
The whole desolate West Bank scene is punctuated with garrison-like settlements on hilltops. If you’re looking for a primer on colonialism, this is not a bad place to start.
Most Israelis never see this, unless they’re in the army. Clinton witnessed it. She was, I understand, troubled by the humiliation around her.
Now, she has warned Netanyahu to get off “the sidelines” with respect to Palestinian peace efforts. Remember that the Israeli prime minister and his right-wing Likud party have still not accepted even the theory of a two-state solution.
In House testimony last week, Clinton said: “For Israel to get the kind of strong support it is looking for vis-à-vis Iran, it can’t stay on the sidelines with respect to the Palestinians and the peace efforts. They go hand in hand.”
That was a direct rebuke to comments from Netanyahu aides who told the Washington Post Israel would not move on peace talks until it sees the United States check Iran’s nuclear program and rising regional influence.
Although I don’t agree with the forms of linkage being made by Netanyahu and Clinton between Iran and an Israeli-Palestinian peace — the issue is not how to threaten Iran but how to bring it inside the tent — I agree with both of them that a link exists. At Madrid, at Oslo and at Annapolis, over a 16-year span, attempts were made to advance peace while excluding Iran. That doesn’t work; it won’t work now.
The trick is to usher Israel-Palestine peace efforts and the quest for a U.S.-Iran rapprochement along in parallel.
That’s why it’s so important that Clinton told Netanyahu that he can’t slip away from working for peace — and that means stopping settlements now — by taking an Iran detour.
Clinton also indicated an important shift on Hamas, which the State Department calls a terrorist group. While stressing that no funds would flow to Hamas “or any entity controlled by it,” she argued for keeping American options open on a possible Palestinian unity government between the moderate Fatah and Hamas.
So long as a unity government meets three conditions — renounces violence, recognizes Israel’s right to exist and abides by past agreements — the United States would be prepared to deal with it, including on $900 million in proposed aid, Clinton indicated. Washington does business with a Lebanese government in which Hezbollah controls 11 of 30 seats, although Hezbollah is also deemed a terrorist group.
Such a changed U.S. policy makes a lot more sense than the previous one, which insisted on Hamas itself — rather than any Palestinian unity government — meeting the three conditions. No peace can be made by pretending Hamas does not exist, which is why advancing Palestinian unity must be a U.S. priority.
This sensible shift will anger Israel, although it deals indirectly with Hamas through Egypt. Israel’s de jure stand on Hamas — that it must recognize Israel before any talks begin — is wildly at odds with Israel’s de facto methodology since 1948.
So it’s a week in which I cheer Clinton, although her reference to “crippling sanctions” against Iran if the proposed rapprochement fails was a mistake. Sanctions haven’t worked and won’t.
Tehran will not come to the table if it sees Obama’s extended hand as just a deceptive prelude to “crippling” measures. My advice to Tehran: watch what Obama says. He’s driving Iran policy.
Obama’s doing it in a way that means the Israeli-American friction evident in Clinton’s remarks will be a theme of his first year in office. As Lee Hamilton, the president of the Woodrow Wilson Center, told me: “Initiatives are underway that show the United States is going to have some major differences with Israel.”
He also said Netanyahu is “a little more flexible than maybe he’s given credit for.”
Netanyahu as Begin the peacemaker? It’s not impossible. Nor is Obama to Tehran. Provided the president pushes on the two fronts at once.
comment Readers are invited to comment at global.nytimes.com/opinionemergency call from Rabbis for human rights - Army and Settlers Trying to Prevent Plowing
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- Written by Arik Ascherman, Rabbis for Human Rights Arik Ascherman, Rabbis for Human Rights
- Published: 25 April 2009 25 April 2009
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עברית אחרי אנגלית
A Word from the Director
Draft Notice
I wrote one “A Word from the Director,” but moved it to “The week that was” because of the urgent need just to say that “We need you.” We need 10 volunteers in Ein Abus on Sunday and 10 more in Sinjil. I hope that there will be additional locations, and that the work will continue throughout the week.
Despite desperate efforts on our part this last week to prod the army establishment to protect Palestinians who are plowing, or at least not cause problems (See letters in Hebrew at the end of “Parashat Hashavua” and “The Week that Was.”) it doesn’t seem to be important to anybody that the land is drying up and that in a few days the plowing season will have been lost for many farmers. I even heard a report that in the S. Hebron Hills one farmer was told, “The rules have changed.” I guess there are those who see our High Court victory as ancient history and believe that the current judges won’t have the backbone to enforce their own decision.
In light of the situation we are offering accompaniment to any farmer who is willing to take the risks to work without army protection and to go to the places where he doesn’t need protection but where the army has been creating facts on the ground. After years in which we also preferred to coordinate with security forces where possible and where Palestinians agreed, the time has come to say, “Fulfill your obligations. If you change the rules of the game we will have to go back to the way we operated back in 2002. In 2002 there was more danger from settlers. In 2002 we had hundreds of volunteers lending a hand.
This coming week I am asking for the kind of volunteer support we had in 2002. Do it for the sake of the farmers who see their lands and their livelihoods disappearing before their eyes. Do it to preserve the gains we have made in recent years. And don’t worry about the free time you will have after this relatively short and intensive recruitment. In light of the Government’s announcement regarding the new State budget we will need you to fight the budget and the damage it will do to the poorest and weakest Israelis.
Arik
Read more: emergency call from Rabbis for human rights - Army and Settlers Trying to Prevent Plowing
Israel's righteous fury and its victims in Gaza
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- Written by Ilan Pappe, The Electronic Intifada Ilan Pappe, The Electronic Intifada
- Published: 24 April 2009 24 April 2009
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It is based first and foremost on sheer lies transmitted with a newspeak reminiscent of darker days in 1930s Europe. Every half an hour a news bulletin on the radio and television describes the victims of Gaza as terrorists and Israel's massive killings of them as an act of self-defense. Israel presents itself to its own people as the righteous victim that defends itself against a great evil. The academic world is recruited to explain how demonic and monstrous is the Palestinian struggle, if it is led by Hamas. These are the same scholars who demonized the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in an earlier era and delegitimized his Fatah movement during the second Palestinian intifada.
But the lies and distorted representations are not the worst part of it. It is the direct attack on the last vestiges of humanity and dignity of the Palestinian people that is most enraging. The Palestinians in Israel have shown their solidarity with the people of Gaza and are now branded as a fifth column in the Jewish state; their right to remain in their homeland cast as doubtful given their lack of support for the Israeli aggression. Those among them who agree -- wrongly, in my opinion -- to appear in the local media are interrogated, and not interviewed, as if they were inmates in the Shin Bet's prison. Their appearance is prefaced and followed by humiliating racist remarks and they are met with accusations of being a fifth column, an irrational and fanatical people. And yet this is not the basest practice. There are a few Palestinian children from the occupied territories treated for cancer in Israeli hospitals. God knows what price their families have paid for them to be admitted there. The Israel Radio daily goes to the hospital to demand the poor parents tell the Israeli audience how right Israel is in its attack and how evil is Hamas in its defense.
There are no boundaries to the hypocrisy that a righteous fury produces. The discourse of the generals and the politicians is moving erratically between self-compliments of the humanity the army displays in its "surgical" operations on the one hand, and the need to destroy Gaza for once and for all, in a humane way of course, on the other.
Jerusalem's mayor defends demolition of houses in Arab area
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- Written by Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
- Published: 23 April 2009 23 April 2009
- Hits: 3567 3567
Israel's mayor of Jerusalem defended the demolition of houses in the Arab east of the city today and insisted Jerusalem could not be a future capital of a Palestinian state.
Nir Barkat, a secular businessman elected as mayor five months ago, rejected international criticism of demolitions and planning policy in east Jerusalem as "misinformation" and "Palestinian spin".
There is growing international concern about Israeli house demolitions and settlement growth in East Jerusalem, an area captured by Israel in 1967 and later annexed in a move not recognised by most of the international community. Critics of Israeli policy point out that planning permits are rarely given to Palestinians in East Jerusalem and that space allowed in the east for building is heavily restricted.
Last month the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, described demolitions as "unhelpful" and an internal EU diplomatic report, obtained last month by the Guardian, described them as "illegal under international law" and said they "fuel bitterness and extremism".
But Barkat told reporters: "There is no politics. It's just maintaining law and order in the city." Since January, he said, there had been 35 demolitions, of which 20 were in the east. Asked about the international concern, he said: "The world is basing their evidence on the wrong facts ... The world has to learn and I am sure people will change their minds."
But others on the council disagree. Meir Margalit, an elected councillor from the leftwing Meretz party, said while the demolitions in the east were of Palestinian apartments and houses, in the west of the city they were nearly all small structures added on to buildings, including shopfronts.
Margalit said fewer than 7% of planning applications submitted by Palestinians in East Jerusalem had been successful so far this year, against 14% from the west, while 41% of Palestinian East Jerusalem planning applications had been rejected, against 20% from the west. He said this followed a pattern established over many years, before Barkat's election.
"The discrimination here is more than ideological," Margalit said. "It is part of a cultural structure that is the norm in the municipality." He also produced research showing the municipality spent less than 12% of its budget in the east, where roads are often potholed and services are poor.
Barkat said he wanted to improve the life of all the city's residents, Jewish and Arab, but that he was committed to maintaining a Jewish majority. Jews make up around two-thirds of the city's population.
He said he could not accept East Jerusalem becoming the capital of a future Palestinian state. "Jerusalem, both ideologically and practically, has to be managed as a united city, as the Israeli capital, and must not be divided," he said.
Barkat said he wanted the Israeli government to build a Jewish settlement in an area of the occupied West Bank east of Jerusalem known as E1, a project the US has opposed. He said E1 was part of the "holy land of Israel" and could serve to allow the city's Jewish population to expand outwards. "I see no reason in the world why the Israelis must freeze expansion and the Palestinians can build illegally," he said. Under the US "road map", which remains the basis of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, Israel is committed to freezing all settlement building. Settlements in occupied land are widely regarded as illegal under international law.