This is a roundup of news related to Palestine with a particular focus on grassroots action and peaceful civil disobedience in the Occupied Territories and within the borders of Israel proper.
We use the name Filasṭīn, since that is the pronunciation preferred by Arabic speakers (irrespective of faith) for their homeland.
For one Palestinian village: A judge, settler and demolisher
(
story in +972mag)
>The High Court justice who gave the army a green light to expel an entire Palestinian village just happens to live in a nearby settlement, one of many that thrives on their dispossession.
Justice Sohlberg, who is the most prominent yet not the only settler on the bench, is the standard bearer of a pre-eminent Western judicial tradition, which hails back and openly draws on colonialism. The tenets of that tradition are to exclude “the natives” from decision-making circles as well as to dispense them of the basic democratic principle of the separation of powers. Sohlberg finds himself in the company of the American Supreme Court judges who, in 1857, ruled that African-Americans could not be considered American citizens, as well as those who, a century later, championed the “separate but equal” paradigm.
Soldier pays the price for criticizing the Israel army
(
article in Haaretz)
IDF soldier Shachar Berrin was sentenced to a week in prison after he attended the taping of an international TV program, during which he stood up and expressed his opinion of the occupation.
The proposition debated by the panel appearing on the show was: “The occupation is destroying Israel.” The speakers consisted of the settler-activist Dani Dayan and a member of the left-wing Meretz party, Uri Zaki. Berrin, who was in uniform, stood up to address Dayan. The settlers and right-wing activists in the audience filmed him, and in less than 12 hours he was ordered to return to his base, where he was tried and convicted – even before the program was broadcast. (It aired this week.) Berrin makes his comment at minute 43 of the hour-long show.
This whole incident shows that when rapid, determined action is called for, the Israel Defense Forces knows how to act. When soldiers kill Palestinian children, the investigation is stretched out over years, gathering dust before usually going nowhere. When soldiers are filmed holding abusive slogans, or when they identify publicly with “David Hanahalawi” – the soldier from the Nahal Brigade who threatened a Palestinian youth with his rifle and roughed him up a year ago, prompting hundreds of soldiers to express solidarity with him on the social networks – no one considers putting them on trial. But if a soldier dares to attest publicly that his fellow soldiers are humiliating Palestinians, the IDF mobilizes rapidly to trample, punish and silence. That’s what happened to Shachar Berrin.
Berrin: “Sure. Definitely. Just the other week, when some Border Police soldiers were rough with Christian tourists, another soldier, a colleague, said she couldn’t believe what they were doing: ‘I mean, come on, they are people, not Palestinians.' I think that resonates throughout the occupied territories. I serve in the Jordan Valley, and we see every day how soldiers… look at these people not as human beings, not as someone who is equal, but someone who is less than them. And to think that we can just leave the racism and the xenophobia – that they will only be racist when they humiliate Palestinians – of course not… I think that once you are conditioned to think something, you bring it back with you and that it deeply affects Israeli society and causes it, as our president says, to be more racist.”
Israel knew all along that settlements, home demolitions were illegal
(
article in Haaretz)
It was March 1968. Yaakov Herzog, director-general of the Prime Minister's Office, received a memo marked "Top Secret" from the Foreign Ministry’s legal adviser, Theodor Meron. As the government's authority on international law, Meron was responding to questions put to him about the legality of demolishing the homes of terror suspects in East Jerusalem and the West Bank and of deporting residents on security grounds.
His answer: Both measures violated the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention on the protection of civilians in war. The government's justifications of the measures – that they were permitted under British emergency regulations still in force, or that the West Bank wasn't occupied territory – might have value for hasbara, public diplomacy, but were legally unconvincing.
The memo is not the first evidence of Meron's warnings, though. In 2006, I published another of his legal opinions, which I found in the late Prime Minister Levi Eshkol's declassified office files. Written in mid-September of 1967, about three months after the Six-Day War, it responds to a query from Eshkol's bureau about the legality of establishing settlements in the West Bank and Golan Heights.
He answered, "My conclusion is that civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention."
Central figures in Israel’s government at the time – Eshkol, Foreign Minister Abba Eban, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan and Justice Minister Yaakov Shimshon Shapira – all received that legal advice. A week and a half later, the cabinet approved settlement in the West Bank for the first time.
World Bank: Gaza facing ‘dangerous fiscal crisis’
(
article at Times of Israel)
The Gaza Strip has the world’s highest unemployment rate, and Palestinians, Israelis and donors must take action to avoid a “dangerous fiscal crisis,” the World Bank said Friday.
According to the World Bank, the virtual disappearance of Gaza’s exports can be explained by no other variable than “war and the blockade".
“The impact of the blockade imposed in 2007 was particularly devastating, with GDP losses caused by the blockade estimated at above 50 percent and large welfare losses,” the report said of the blockade imposed by neighbors Israel and Egypt.
Segregation in Israel does not begin or end on buses
(
article in +972mag)
As long as there is occupation there will be segregation. As long as the State of Israel interprets being a “Jewish state” as meaning some citizens should have more individual and group rights than others, then discrimination, segregation and inequality will be the norm, not the exception.
Issues like bus segregation get people angry. Activists start to plan freedom rides and massive campaigns, the international media starts to pay attention, and it seems that, for a fleeting moment, people care about the fate of Palestinians living under occupation. Until that same energy and anger and mobilization materializes around the occupation itself, against the concept of institutionalized supremacy and oppression, there will only be more symptoms over which to feign outrage.
A more in-depth diary on bus segregation:
Israel "suspends" segregation on buses after global uproar calling it apartheid
For Jerusalem's Palestinians, a city of poverty and division
(
report from Association for Civil Rights in Israel and
reporting at +972mag)
More than one quarter of Jerusalem’s Palestinian residents live behind the concrete separation barrier; Israel has revoked the residency of over 14,000 Palestinian Jerusalemites since ‘reunifying’ the city in 1967, including 107 last year alone.
At least five children from East Jerusalem, the youngest among them aged 6, were hit in the face by a sponge bullet and lost vision in one of their eyes. A 30-year-old man, who was blind in one eye since childhood, lost his healthy eye after being hit by a sponge-tipped bullet and became completely blind. In other incidents, the firing of sponge bullets caused arm fractures, jaw fractures and a spleen tear. At least three journalists covering the events, who were wearing vests identifying them as media workers, were hit by sponge bullets in the head, face and shoulder.
Testimonies indicate that in a various instances, police officers fired sponge bullets in absolute contravention of the directives prohibiting aiming at the upper body or aiming at children.
ACRI appealed to the Police Commissioner and the Attorney General, demanding an
immediate end to the use of the black sponge bullets until further review of the reasonableness of their use as a riot-control weapon, in light of the severe injuries caused to residents of East Jerusalem.
Over the summer, ACRI received testimonies of severe physical violence by the police, aimed against those participating in riots as well as against uninvolved Palestinian residents. The violence used was at times so severe that residents required medical treatment and even prolonged hospitalization. In July 2014, the media published a video showing Border Police officers severely and brutally beating the teenager Tariq Abu Khdeir while he was lying handcuffed on the ground.
Palestinian teenagers who were arrested reported physical violence used against them by police officers on the way to interrogation and during the interrogation, as well as threats and intimidation; unnecessary handcuffing and blindfolding for long hours; interrogations without parental presence, in contravention of the law; and various forms of abuse, such as denying food and water and prohibiting toilet breaks.
In addition, several incidents were reported in which the police detained minors under the age of 12, which is the age of criminal responsibility.
Another innovation that was introduced during the summer of 2014 was the frequent use of Skunk-spraying vehicles by police. The Skunk is an extremely foul-smelling chemical liquid, intended to disperse riots.
Police use of the Skunk in East Jerusalem included many incidents of excessive and unreasonable use in the heart of crowded neighborhoods. Even when the Skunk is aimed at riot participants, it sticks to houses, cars and asphalt and leaves a fetid scent from which all of the neighborhood’s residents continue to suffer for many days.
In the period of turmoil between July and December 2014, 1,184 Palestinians were arrested in East Jerusalem, about one-third of them under the age of 18 (a total of 406 minors), for offenses related to riots and disruption of public order (stone throwing, assaulting an officer, participating in riots and so on).
So far, indictments have been served against 338 of those arrested (28.5% of all arrestees), including 122 minors (30% of all minors arrested).
+972mag reported on
yet another case earlier this week:
Israeli Police wounded a 10-year-old Palestinian child in the eye Thursday afternoon while dispersing protesters near the Shuafat refugee camp in Jerusalem, according to Arabic media outlets in East Jerusalem. The boy, who was most likely hit by a black-tipped sponge bullet, was hospitalized in moderate condition in Hadassah University Hospital. It is unclear what will be the fate of his eye.
'Death to Israel' Facebook page lands Palestinian in jail
(
story in Haaretz)
The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court sentenced East Jerusalem resident Sami Deis to eight months in prison, for creating and managing a Facebook page entitled “Death to Israel,” which included many incitement-filled posts. The sentence follows similar punishment handed down to Fatah activist Omar Shalabi; he was given nine months imprisonment for similar crimes.
Deis, a 27-year-old resident of Shoafat, has no criminal background, and though he admitted to his crimes as part of a plea bargain, Judge Shmuel Herbst opted for what is seen as a rather severe punishment. Last week, another East Jerusalem resident, 44-year-old Omar Shalhabi was handed nine months for a number of Facebook statuses he wrote between July and October last year.
No word yet on whether the Israelis posting and chanting "Death to Arabs" will also be prosecuted. For example, the ones
chanting it here,
posting on FB here,
here or
here, or
here,
here or
here. Israeli police don't seem too concerned about incidents IRL either, for example the people who
scrawled "death to arabs" on cars and buildings,
chanted it in Jerusalem, or the ones who sprayed it on a
Arab-Jewish school in Jerusalem. One guy who shouted it before
stabbing a Palestinian was arrested. But Israeli prosecutors do not seem to be in much of a hurry to find and prosecute
the individual who tweeted:
#ZionStandUp for Israeli @ashlisade: "Kill Arab children so there won't be a next generation" https://t.co/... pic.twitter.com/2hSZAwyMuJ
Treating the still-open wound of contested Arab homes in Jaffa
(
article in Haaretz)
It all began on Yom Kippur in September 2009. A phone conversation between Tovi Fenster and her mother touched on the period of the family’s immigration from Romania to Israel in 1948, and the house where they lived in Jaffa until the 1960s.
During that phone call, her mother related for the first time how she and a group of other immigrants were sent by the Jewish Agency to find a home for themselves. They walked among the houses that had been abandoned in Jaffa, which borders on Tel Aviv, and from which Arabs had been forced to flee during the War of Independence. When they found one with the door open, they went in and took up residence there.
Fenster asked her mother why she had never told her this before, and her mother replied that she didn’t feel comfortable with everything that had happened – “that we had taken from them what was theirs.” She added that after all the tribulations the family had experienced until they reached Israel, all they wanted was a home of their own.
WATCH: 'Jaffa flotilla' marks destruction of Palestine's cultural capital
(
Video and article at +972mag)
Dozens of Palestinians and Israeli Jews sailed along the coast last week to mark the destruction of Jaffa — the former political, cultural and economic capital of Palestine — during the 1948 War. Organized by the Israeli NGO Zochrot, which works to raise awareness of the Nakba and promote the right of return among Israeli Jews, the participants, which included Joint List MK Haneen Zoabi, listened to first-hand stories of the fear, expulsions and mass exodus of Palestinians from the city by the pre-state Zionist militias.
A lesbian wedding in Israel: Under the chuppah, legal or not
(
story in Haaretz)
Let’s get together: The two met nine years ago when, through the twists and fate of life, they found themselves sitting in the same car, on their way from the north to a gay party in Tel Aviv. Inbal: “I got into the back seat, and then someone in the passenger’s seat turned around and said, ‘Nice to meet you, I’m Avishag.’ I said ‘hi’ and stuttered something. I think I immediately wanted what I saw – it was just 'snap,' and it was there.” However, it took four years for something to come out of that “snap.”
At first, head-over-heels Inbal did all she could to win the heart of the elusive Avishag, to no great success. For Inbal, the long courtship felt like she was being played, while Avishag saw it a bit differently: “I wasn’t out of the closet yet, and I was confused, and just out of a relationship. I didn’t know if I wanted boys, girls, or what was up with me.”
Word in the ear: Inbal on the couple’s choice to have a kind of chuppah, despite the illegality of same-sex marriage in Israel: “For the symbolism. Because we’re still Jewish, and we still love the State of Israel, and Judaism is our home.” Avishag: “But not in the way it’s being implemented.”
More stories below the fold:
- Palestinian chief negotiator: No chance of renewing talks with radical right Netanyahu government
- Netanyahu: Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people alone
- Abbas responds to Netanyahu: No Mideast peace without East Jerusalem as Palestinian capital
- Israel's new deputy foreign minister: 'This land is ours. All of it is ours'
- PHOTOS: When Israel decides to cut Palestinian farmers off from their land
- “…but still with a few hope in our hearts”
- Right-wing Jews and Israeli police 'assault Al-Aqsa guards'
- Hundreds of unarmed demonstrators confront live fire at Kafr Qaddum on Nakba Day
- South African students protest against Woolworths
- South African Jews apologize to displaced Palestinians
- Rightist NGO demands eviction of seven Palestinian families
- Arab leaders pledge all-out campaign against destruction of Bedouin village
- PA soccer chief looks to outmaneuver Israel on diplomatic field
- IDF to disband Druze battalion after more than 40 years’ service
- On Scott Walker’s 'listening tour' of Israel, Palestinians aren’t heard
- What Ayelet Shaked can learn from Sarah Palin
- In Adelson's paper, Bibi's man says Pope helping Palestinians crucify the Jews
- Settler leader Rabbi Moshe Levinger dies at 80
- Western Wall gender barriers locked to stop women reading from Torah
- Haredi website censors female ministers from government picture
- Thousands attend prayer protest against Shabbat-violating mall in Ashdod
- Concern in Jerusalem over international decision against Israeli nuclear program
- Clashes erupt between Jews, Palestinians at Jerusalem Day march
- Jerusalem Day: Palestinians met with extreme violence
- On Jerusalem Day, is there anything to celebrate?
- Lieberman apologizes after calling two-state solution supporters 'autistic'
- Report: Swiss court orders Israel to pay Iran $1.1 billion in oil pipeline dispute
- Settlers turning West Bank church compound into new outpost
- A house divided: Hamas torn between long-term truce and renewed war
Palestinian chief negotiator: No chance of renewing talks with radical right Netanyahu government
(
article in Haaretz)
Senior Palestinian officials responded with scorn Tuesday to the appointment of Israeli minister Silvan Shalom to lead delegations to any future peace talks held with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's new government.
The appointment of Shalom – a veteran Likud minister who has never accepted the two state solution – is any empty gesture as Netanyahu has no interest in peace, according to the officials, who spoke with Israel Radio.
The officials went on to say that there was no point in meeting with Shalom, who is deputy prime minister and holds the Interior Ministry, until he has accepted the 1967 "Green-Line" borders as the basis for talks and a future Palestinian state, Israel Radio reported. They also demanded a freeze in settlement construction and called for the release of Palestinian prisoners – conditions Shalom and Netanyahu's government are unlikely to accept.
Netanyahu: Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people alone
(
article in Haaretz)
Jerusalem was always the capital of the Jewish people alone – and not of any other nation, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday night during a Jerusalem Day address at Ammunition Hill.
"This is our home and here we will stay," the prime minister added.
That said, Netanyahu stressed that Israel ensures that Jerusalem will be an open and tolerant city.
"Only under Israeli rule is the freedom of worship in Jerusalem guaranteed for all religions," he said. "Believers pray at their holy sites, not despite our control over the city but because of it."
Abbas responds to Netanyahu: No Mideast peace without East Jerusalem as Palestinian capital
(
article in Haaretz)
President Mahmoud Abbas' spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh told Palestinian news agency Wafa on Monday that there would be no peace or stability in the Mideast unless the Palestinians can claim East Jerusalem as their capital.
He also said Netanyahu's remarks were a clear violation of UN resolutions, and the stances of the international community and the Arab League. Netanyahu's comments show that the next step is a diplomatic confrontation, Abu Rudeineh said, with the Palestinians turning to international bodies to thwart the Israeli government's "destructive policies."
What Netanyahu and his ministers says about the Palestinian issue will spark a fire that will be impossible to put out, Abu Rudeineh added.
In a more conciliatory speech, meanwhile, President Reuven Rivlin said that, while Jerusalem for him is both "Zion and Zionism," it doesn't belong only to its history.
"It belongs first and foremost to its people, to all its residents – secular, religious and Haredi; Arabs and Jews," Rivlin said. "In united Jerusalem there is a west and an east. It has no step-children."
Israel's new deputy foreign minister: 'This land is ours. All of it is ours'
(
article in The Guardian)
Israel’s new deputy foreign minister on Thursday delivered a defiant message to the international community, saying that Israel owes no apologies for its policies in the Holy Land and citing religious texts to back her belief that it belongs to the Jewish people.
The speech by Tzipi Hotovely illustrated the influence of hardliners in Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s new government, and the challenges he will face as he tries to persuade the world that he is serious about pursuing peace with the Palestinians.
Hotovely, 36, is among a generation of young hardliners in Netanyahu’s Likud party who support West Bank settlement construction and oppose ceding captured land to the Palestinians. Since Netanyahu has a slim one-seat majority in parliament, these lawmakers could complicate any attempt to revive peace talks.
PHOTOS: When Israel decides to cut Palestinian farmers off from their land
(
story at +972mag)
In order to reach their lands, the army told the farmers that they would have to use another gate near the village of Jayyous, about 15 kilometers from their usual gate near the village of Falamya. Some of the farmers told Activestills they believed the decision was the beginning of an attempt to confiscate their land. Israeli authorities often exploit an Ottoman law that permits the state to confiscate land that hasn’t been cultivated for a number of years.
The International Court of Justice has published its opinion that the route of the wall is illegal and called on Israel to cease construction of it. Israel claimed at the time that the route was temporary and did not constitute a change to the Green Line or attempted annexation.
The route of the separation fence/wall, however, does not follow the 1949 Green Line, which most of the world recognizes as the interim border between Israel and the West Bank. It snakes through the Palestinian territory and Israeli officials have even admitted that it is intended to be a future border, which would constitute illegal annexation.
“…but still with a few hope in our hearts”
(
Testimony of a 23 year old woman who survived the land invasion of Khuzaa, Gaza, in the summer of 2014. This is the original version of her writings. @ Int'l Solidarity Movement)
We went out thinking that we would be killed by the zionist occupiers, but still with a few hope in our hearts.
I left with my mother, my sister and some other people; we saw rubble, glass and corpses in the street.
I saw a child in the street with his stomach and bowels out. I started shouting what was that, where was the world, where were the Arab countries… and kept crying while going on.
We couldn’t do anything because we were afraid we would get killed by an helicopter or by any kind of weapon, we didn’t know where were the zionist soldiers.
We kept running and running. When we arrived to the entrance of the village we saw many tanks and many soldiers, I was crying so much, and the soldiers started laughing at me.
I’m so sorry I couldn’t stop crying!
Right-wing Jews and Israeli police 'assault Al-Aqsa guards'
(
story in Ma'an News)
Right-wing Jews and Israeli police officers physically assaulted Palestinian security guards on duty at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound early Tuesday, the director of the compound told Ma'an.
Sheikh Omar al-Kiswani said that a group of Israeli settlers was touring the compound when they began to "deliberately" provoke Palestinians near the Cotton Merchants Gate by repeating slogans calling for the removal of the Dome of the Rock.
Al-Kiswani said that "when the guards intervened, Israeli settlers assaulted and beat them. The Israeli police backed [the right-wing Jews], protected them, and clashes erupted in the area."
Hundreds of unarmed demonstrators confront live fire at Kafr Qaddum on Nakba Day
(
Int'l Solidarity Movement)
Today (15th of May), during the Nakba day demonstration in Kafr Qaddum, four young men were shot with live ammunition in their legs. One of the men got a serious bone fracture. Apart from the live ammunition being shot from all directions, Israeli forces fired several rounds of rubber coated steel bullets, tear gas and stun grenades. Throughout the protest, the Israeli military forces used a skunk truck to force the demonstrators back from reaching the closed road; closed since 2002 due to the building of the settlement Kedumim. ISMers in the demonstration saw houses and gardens being sprayed, and a boy as young as four crying, covered in the noxious chemical skunk ‘water’.
South African students protest against Woolworths
(
Int'l Solidarity Movement)
More than 10 000 South African school learners protested earlier today against Woolworths Stores over its Israeli trade. The #BoycottWoolworths protest was led by the Congress of South African Students (COSAS) in the Free State. COSAS represents school children in all 9 SA provinces and is arguably the largest school learner organization in the country.
According to COSAS Free State, the protest march by COSAS against Woolworths is “in solidarity with the people of Palestine who continue to experience the harshest form of apartheid by the Israeli regime”. Sipho Tsunke of COSAS Free State said: “We are therefore mobilizing all young people and parents to boycott Woolworths which continues to have relations with Apartheid Israel. We will not be misled by Woolworths and their silly PR campaigns for example their MySchool programme or that of bringing USA musician Pharrell Williams to South Africa. We are telling Pharrell Williams, as school learners of South Africa, to cancel his shows in South Africa until Woolworths ends its relations with Israel.”
South African Jews apologize to displaced Palestinians
(
article in Haaretz)
Last Friday, a long line of people wound its way along the narrow trail that leads up a hill that is adjacent to Golani Junction in the north. A few carried the flags of Palestine. Others held yellow signs with the names of places that no longer exist: a school, a cemetery, a neighborhood. The village’s displaced persons walked into the forest under which the remains of their homes are buried. Their visit has become a ritual.
This time, though, the DPs were accompanied by what, in terms of current reality in Israel, was a rare, unexpected, almost inconceivable sight: a group of 14 Jews from South Africa, who came to apologize and ask forgiveness for donating money to the Jewish National Fund, which used it to create The South Africa Forest here in 1964, on what remains of the village of Lubya.
Rightist NGO demands eviction of seven Palestinian families
(
article in Haaretz)
The Ateret Cohanim organization filed a lawsuit this week demanding the eviction of seven Palestinian families from a house in Silwan, as part of its ongoing effort to expand Jewish settlement in the East Jerusalem neighborhood.
The suit, filed Tuesday, seeks to evict the Rajabi family from the house next door to the one Jewish settlers entered two weeks ago. It says the land on which the building sits is owned by a Jewish religious trust that purchased it 134 years ago.
By law, Jews who owned property in East Jerusalem before it was conquered by Jordan during the 1948 War of Independence can get it back from the Administrator General’s office, which inherited it from the Jordanian custodian of enemy property. In contrast, Palestinians who owned property in Israel before 1948 cannot reclaim it. This law has enabled Elad and Ateret Cohanim to gain control of many buildings in Silwan and other East Jerusalem neighborhoods.
Arab leaders pledge all-out campaign against destruction of Bedouin village
(
article in Haaretz)
Umm al-Hiran resident Salem Abu al-Kiyan agreed. “This is a decision we can’t accept – when they ask us to vacate the site to which we were moved by the state 50 years ago, solely in order to establish a Jewish community,” he said.
MK Ahmad Tibi termed the decision a new low in the state’s “racist treatment” of its Arab citizens. “The Arab public sees this act as a declaration of war against it, which mandates a chain reaction in Israel and abroad to prevent the community’s eviction,” he said.
MK Talab Abu Arar, himself a Negev resident, said Arab leaders had “always called for restraint,” but this was no longer an option. “The government will bear responsibility for any deterioration in the situation,” he added.
PA soccer chief looks to outmaneuver Israel on diplomatic field
(
interview in Times of Israel)
For many years Israelis knew [Jibril] Rajoub, who is also known by his nom de guerre Abu Rami, as the strongman of the West Bank by virtue of his position as the commander of the Palestinian Preventive Security Force, at least during Yasser Arafat’s reign in the PA. Subsequent events, such as Operation Defensive Shield, the major 2002 anti-terror campaign in the West Bank; the collapse of the organization he led; and a falling-out with his Fatah rival Mohammed Dahlan — weakened him considerably. But that was many years ago.
“Suspension from FIFA does not kill people,” Rajoub says. “It is a nonviolent resistance measure. What would the Israelis rather do — promote the ethics and values of the game among young people, or promote the values of a submachine gun? The Israelis must realize that they should be joining our effort to end the Palestinian athletes’ suffering.”
He recalls quite a few cases in which Israeli security forces used force against Palestinian athletes and soccer clubs. He shows photographs and videos of a raid by IDF soldiers on the Palestinian Football Association, the arrest of a soccer referee and a police raid on a Palestinian soccer game in East Jerusalem.
IDF to disband Druze battalion after more than 40 years’ service
(
article in Haaretz)
The Israel Defense Forces is disbanding the Herev Battalion for Druze soldiers after 41 years, because young Druze want to serve in regular field units rather than be segregated, a senior officer said on Monday.
“The young Druze have been clearly and unequivocally indicating over the past few years that they want to integrate into the larger IDF and not be in a battalion of their own,” the senior officer told reporters. Often, the army was assigning them there against their will. According to army data, while only five percent of Druze inductees indicated a preference for the Herev Battalion, 19 percent were assigned to it.
On Scott Walker’s 'listening tour' of Israel, Palestinians aren’t heard
(
Opinion in Haaretz by Peter Beinart)
Last week, Scott Walker went to Israel on a “listening tour.” To emphasize that he was going purely to learn, the Wisconsin governor and Republican presidential hopeful gave no speeches or interviews. “It’s an educational trip,” he explained. “It’s not a photo op.”
When I emailed Saeb Erekat to ask about Walker’s itinerary, the longtime Palestinian negotiator replied, “I do not know that he met any Palestinian.” When I asked the same question to Matt Brooks, the Republican Jewish Coalition executive director who accompanied Walker on his journey, Brooks did not reply at all.
It’s a bit like a foreigner visiting the United States on a “listening tour” aimed largely at better understanding race relations, listening only to white people, and then pontificating about what he has learned. It’s absurd.
But it’s also normal. When American synagogues, Jewish youth movements and Jewish day schools take trips to Israel, ignoring Palestinians is the rule. Birthright, which since 1999 has taken roughly 350,000 young Diaspora Jews – mostly Americans – to Israel, does not visit Palestinian towns and cities in the West Bank.
Given that Walker’s Israel trip was organized by the Republican Jewish Coalition, an organization bankrolled by Sheldon Adelson, who doesn’t think Palestinians exist, perhaps it’s not surprising that Walker acted like they don’t either. It’s up to the media to remind him that they do.
What Ayelet Shaked can learn from Sarah Palin
(
Opinion in Haaretz by Seth Lipsky)
The former Alaska governor is one of the most radically pro-Israel leaders of the GOP. She turns out to be the only Republican figure to argue that “the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon,” as she put it in an interview with Barbara Walters in 2009, “because that population of Israel is, is going to grow.” Palin told Walters that she was anticipating future immigration to Israel, saying, “I don’t think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand.”
Given that Shaked’s Habayit Hayehudi party is seeking to increase construction of settlements in the West Bank, the message here is that Palin and Shaked could be natural friends.
Seth Lipsky, the founding editor of The Forward and a former foreign editor of The Wall Street Journal, is editor of The New York Sun.
In Adelson's paper, Bibi's man says Pope helping Palestinians crucify the Jews
(
article in Haaretz)
For now, just one question for Dr. Eydar, who holds a PhD in Hebrew literature, and is, in the words of Israel Hayom, "an expert in Jewish thought." In your quest to prove to Pope Francis that the Holy Land in its entirety belongs solely to the Jews, you write:
"If we were to go back 2,000 years to the time of the Roman rule and ask Jesus to whom this country belongs, he would simply refer us to the verses of promise in the Bible, such as God's promise to Abraham, the greatest believer: 'For all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever" (Genesis 13:16).'"
After all, you continue, "From the time we were exiled and lost our independence, this land was desolate and never became another self-determined state. The country was waiting for its true children, and our return to the land fulfilled the biblical prophecy."
As a learned Jew, Jesus would surely have known that the Biblical promise was given to Abraham before the birth of his first son, Ishmael – by tradition, the ancestor of the Arabs - and long before the birth of his second, Isaac, ancestor of the Jews.
Leaving aside the dubious description of the desolation of the land, by quoting that particular passage, aren't you concerned that Jesus, and the Pope, might conclude that the land belongs to all of the offspring of Abraham?
Settler leader Rabbi Moshe Levinger dies at 80
(
story in Haaretz)
Levinger first became known to the general public when he led a group of Jews that held a Passover seder at the Park Hotel in Hebron in 1968.
The group refused to leave the city after the holiday, living for three years in the military administration building in Hebron until Kiryat Arba was established adjacent to the ancient city.
After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, he represented the Jews who moved into Israel's first West Bank settlement — Sebastia in Samaria — in opposition to the government of then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. A photograph of Levinger and settler leader Hanan Porat dancing as they were carried on the shoulders of rejoicing settlers became a symbol of the struggle in Sebastia.
Western Wall gender barriers locked to stop women reading from Torah
(
article in Haaretz)
To prevent women from reading from a Torah scroll at the Western Wall, police took the unprecedented step this morning of locking the partitions that separate the women’s and men’s sections and stationing barriers all along it.
A male worshipper trying to pass a Torah scroll from the men’s section to the women’s section, over the partition, was detained by police. The barriers were set up at the instructions of Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, the director of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, an Orthodox-run organization the controls prayer regulations at the site, in order to prevent a replay of last month’s events.
At their monthly Rosh Chodesh service in April, Women of the Wall, a group fighting for freedom of worship at the Western Wall, fulfilled a longstanding goal of reading from a full-size Torah scroll at the Western Wall. It was the first time since the group was founded 25 years ago that it had read from one of the full-size public Torah scrolls available at the Kotel.
Haredi website censors female ministers from government picture
(
story in Yedioth Ahronoth)
Behadrei Haredim posts traditional government picture taken at President's Residence..
[...]
In the picture which was published on the website Tuesday, the faces of Ministers Gila Gamliel, Ayelet Shaked and Miri Regev were blurred in accordance with the norms of most haredi media outlets and of the public domain in the haredi sector. Regev's legs, by the way, remained exposed – which caused many on social networks to ridicule the website's modesty norms – but were later blurred as well.
Thousands attend prayer protest against Shabbat-violating mall in Ashdod
(
story in Haaretz)
Over 10,000 people participated in a mass prayer rally in Ashdod on Monday, in protest against the opening of a new shopping complex that operates on Saturdays.
The rally was held in one of the city's ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods. The shopping complex, which houses 140 businesses, was opened some two months ago, and has been at the center of tensions between the secular and religious publics of Ashdod, Israel's fifth-largest city.
[...]
Ultra-Orthodox make up some 40% of the city's population. Largely Hassidic, they have significant representation in the city's municipal board – ten representatives out of 27. As part of the fight against the new center, the ultra-Orthodox board members threatened to quit the city's governing coalition – a move decried as extortion by other members of the coalition.
Concern in Jerusalem over international decision against Israeli nuclear program
(
story in Haaretz)
Senior Israeli officials are worried that the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference will make a decision with extremely problematic consequences for Israel’s nuclear program, by adopting the Arab states’ position on the terms for convening a conference on making the Middle East a nuclear weapons-free zone.
The Review Conference ends on Friday in New York.
When the conference opened a month ago, Egypt submitted a proposal that would mandate holding the Mideast conference with or without Israeli agreement. Moreover, the Egyptian proposal would make Israel’s nuclear program the conference’s focus.
Israel, the United States and other countries objected strenuously to the Egyptian proposal. The Israeli position holds that such a conference should deal with all regional security problems, including missiles and terrorism, rather than the nuclear issue alone. Israel also demanded that any such conference be conditioned on all participating countries agreeing on the agenda.
Clashes erupt between Jews, Palestinians at Jerusalem Day march
(
Int'l Solidarity Movement)
These arrests were all at the entrance to Damascus Gate, watched over by a group of Zionists who were left to stay in the area. The agenda of the police and military at the scene, was to clear the area and road leading to it of any Palestinians. All Palestinians were moved to a side street, by police on horses charging through the crowds. Palestinians were pushed shoved and pulled away from the gate, many of whom had shopping bags and were with their children.
One elderly man passing through was thrown forwards onto his face by two soldiers. I next saw him as his bloody mouth was tended to by paramedics. Another was grabbed by a number of soldiers, and thrown with such force onto his back, he traveled a meter or so passed me before landing. A Palestinian man who attempted to stop a young zionist from pulling a scarf from a Palestinian woman, was pushed down the steps by two soldiers, as the zionist boy and his friends watched on. The woman, reclaimed her scarf and sat on the spot holding a Palestinian scarf in one hand, gesturing the peace sign with the other.
The scenes witnessed at Damascus Gate on Sunday were not however the full extent of the day. A family we later visited whose house has just been demolished in East Jerusalem, had their area surrounded by Israeli flags, with people chanting ‘Death to the Arabs’ outside their window. Their 8 children, who were too afraid to leave the house, are daily witnesses to hatred inflicted towards themselves and their families.
On Jerusalem Day, is there anything to celebrate?
(
opinion in Haaretz)
Israelis may lament how intolerable the cost of living has become in Jerusalem, particularly in terms of rental and housing prices, but they rarely stop to consider how equally terrible the situation has become in East Jerusalem, influenced both by the Israeli economy and the construction of the separation barrier – in urban areas an eight-meter-high wall. Palestinian Jerusalemites’ biggest fear in recent years has been being left on the wrong side of the wall and having their Jerusalem residency revoked, creating a real estate crush of people scrambling to stay inside the city.
But trying to summarize how Palestinians feel about this situation is likely to be as inaccurate as it would be for me to try to describe how Israelis feel about Jerusalem Day in one broad brushstroke. Politicians are used to saying that a unified Jerusalem is the consensus. Regular people, however, know that the reality is far more complex. Asked in polls about specific neighborhoods – say, Issawiyeh or Kufr Aqab – a majority of Israelis say they would be willing to turn areas of East Jerusalem over to Palestinian control in the context of an agreement.
But in same polls, the Peace Index, carried out since 1994 and sponsored by the Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University, most recently show that 86.3 percent of Israelis think there is either a “very low” or “moderately low” chance that, given the orientation of Israel’s new government, there will be any kind of breakthrough in the negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.
Lieberman apologizes after calling two-state solution supporters 'autistic'
(
story in Haaretz)
Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s former foreign minister, apologized after calling supporters of a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict “autistic.”
Lieberman, who heads the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party, made his remarks Thursday in an interview with Israel Radio.
“Anyone who thinks going back to the 1967 lines will solve the conflict is autistic,” Liberman said.
Also Thursday, Lieberman said Netanyahu should cancel a scheduled meeting with the head of the Joint Arab List party. The Arab-Israeli party, headed by Ayman Odeh and made up of the major Arab-Israeli parties, is the third largest in the Knesset with 13 seats.
Netanyahu went ahead with the meeting, however.
Report: Swiss court orders Israel to pay Iran $1.1 billion in oil pipeline dispute
(
article in Haaretz)
An Israeli oil company, the Eilat Ashkelon Pipeline Company, has been ordered to pay $1.1 billion in compensation to Iran by a Swiss court, the official Iranian news agency IRNA reported on Wednesday.
In response, Israel clarified that it will not pay the debt to the Iranians. "Without referring to the matter at hand, we'll note that according to the Trading with the Enemy Act it is forbidden to transfer money to the enemy, including the Iranian national oil company," the Finance Ministry statement said.
The compensation ruling follows a long-running legal battle between the two countries over the revenues from an oil pipeline joint venture that dates back to before the Islamic Revolution.
Settlers turning West Bank church compound into new outpost
(
story in Haaretz)
Right-wing activist Aryeh King has purchased an abandoned church compound near the Aroub refugee camp between Hebron and Jerusalem, and is refurbishing it ahead of establishing a new settlement outpost at the site, Haaretz has learned. King, who specializes in buying Arab-owned real estate, purchased the property three years ago from its church owners.
Massive reconstruction of the compound, which can house 20 families, has been going on for the last few months to ready it for settlers to move in. There are several security guards on the site posing as workers. A new fence has been built, despite a stop-work injunction having been issued by the Civil Administration, since there was no building permit for the fence. None is needed for the refurbishing because the buildings, which stand at the side of Route 60, were constructed long ago, in the late 1940s.
A house divided: Hamas torn between long-term truce and renewed war
(
article in Haaretz)
At the moment Hamas’ political leadership appears to be making efforts to avert conflagration. When an extreme jihadist group fired a rocket into an open field in the Negev at the end of Independence Day, Hamas had the shooters arrested and hastened to tell Israel that its people had nothing to do with the incident.
The two rival Hamas camps could be said to be in a race against time. While Deif and his people are probably considering an attack against Israel, the political leadership has sent Israel messages via the UN, Qatar and Switzerland that it wants a long term cease-fire that would alleviate the pressure on Gaza.
Israel has not responded to the offer, as far as we know, and at any rate its leaders do not agree on the benefit of such a truce. Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon believes only in an unsigned de facto cease-fire and objects to building a floating port for Gaza under international supervision.
Others in the army top brass think Israel should give a cease-fire a chance. Senior Israeli officials deny that direct negotiations with Hamas are taking place, but Israel has consistently been looking for indirect contact with the organization.
This is a roundup of news related to Palestine with a particular focus on grassroots action and peaceful civil disobedience in the Occupied Territories and within the borders of Israel proper. The goal is to provide a bi-weekly update on the non-violent resistance movement.
Diplomatic negotiations and actions by armed resistance groups are covered quite widely by the mainstream press and in other diaries on DKos so they will rarely be included.
We use the name Filasṭīn, since this is the pronunciation used by Arabic speakers (irrespective of faith) for their homeland. The more familiar Palestine is the Hellenic or Roman variant. Filasṭīn refers to the geographic entity roughly encompassing Israel and Palestine. It is a likely cognate of "Philistine", the name used in the Hebrew bible to describe a rival of the Jewish kingdom of that era.
Prior diaries:
May 17, 2015: Despite literal "smoking gun", settlers cleared of charges for shooting
May 10, 2015: "Palestinians are beasts, they are not human" - new head of West Bank civil administration
May 3, 2015: 6 year old child arrested in Jerusalem; The Death of Compassion
April 26, 2015: No Arabs Allowed; Christian cemetery vandalized; Annual March of Return
April 19, 2015: Shooting kids in the back, segregating female soldiers, state-sanctioned theft
April 12, 2015: Yarmouk refugees, NYU divestment letter, Terrorizing Children
April 5, 2015: Segregated Streets in Hebron, Palestinians observe Land Day
March 29, 2015: A March for the Bedouin, A License to Kill & To Teach the Nakba