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Palestinians tell U.S. that East Jerusalem must be included in continued Israeli settlement freeze

Jerusalem Entrance (Photo: Nick Marouf)

Marian Houk, 26 August 2010

Akiva Eldar reported in Haaretz overnight that the Palestinian negotiating team (meaning Sa’eb Erekat and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas) have “delivered to the Americans an opinion prepared by Israeli jurists. The Palestinians say this paper proves that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claims that the government has no authority to freeze construction on private land are unfounded”.

According to Eldar’s report, the Palestinians “expect that even after the September 26 deadline, when the 10-month moratorium ends, the United States will support their demand to continue the ban on all construction outside the Green Line, including in the settlement blocs” — including in East Jerusalem.

Israeli officials, however, have said many times that the settlement freeze — which has been very loosely enforced — does not apply in East Jerusalem.

East Jerusalem was part of the West Bank from the time of the creation of the state of Israel in May 1948, when Jordanian troops moved across the Jordan River and took positions in that area from which British forces evacuated, until the June 1967 war, when Israeli forces expelled the Jordanians back across the Jordan River.

Shortly after their June 1967 conquest, Israel extended its administration and laws (effectively, annexing) to a unilaterally- expanded Jerusalem that includes not only the 6 square kilometers of the Old City (where many sites important to Judaism as well as to Christianity and Islam are located), but also nearly 65 additional kilometers of West Bank territory in an crescent surrounding Jerusalem along the east, running from from Qalandia, Qafr Aqab, and Semiramis in the north, to Bethlehem in the south. Israel called this new agglomeration “Greater Municipal Jerusalem”.

[Though Israel has effectively lopped off parts of this crescent by the construction of The Wall to exclude areas of dense Palestinian population, it has not yet given administrative effect to this new reality on the ground. But, as a practical result, many residents of East Jerusalem now live on the "other side" of The Wall, and have to pass through tense and chaotic military checkpoints to get to work, to school, to their doctors, to see their friends and families, and more.]

After the start of U.S.-brokerered direct Israeli-Palestinian talks in November 2007 under the Annapolis process launched by former U.S. President George W. Bush, Israeli spokesmen (including, notably, the then-Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mark Regev), said over and over again that the Israeli government under then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert would not freeze any settlements in “Jerusalem”, which, it was explained could not be considered part of the West Bank because Israel has decided it is not [though the large Israeli settlement of Har Homa, just north of Bethlehem, and many other Israeli settlements north and west of Jerusalem are on the West Bank side of the "green line" which used to separate Israeli and Jordanian forces.

Much of the rest of the world, and particularly the European Union, issues periodic statements indicating they have not totally accepted this Israeli view.

[In a somewhat surprising article in the Jerusalem Post, also published overnight, Herb Keinon has reported that the hard-line right-wing and pro-settlement Israeli Foreign Minister Alexander Lieberman has just "hinted" that settlement construction in East Jerusalem might have been frozen, after all, during the past nine months, despite previous adamant denials -- though Lieberman reportedly added that this should not be extended when the present "freeze" expires on 26 September. However, the same JPost article added that "A spokesman for the Prime Minister’s Office denied that there had been a freeze in Jerusalem, saying that when Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu declared the moratorium 10-months ago he made clear that it did not include any part of the capital. 'I know there have been tenders issued since that time', the official said". This JPost article -- which says that the issue of whether or not to renew the settlement freeze later this month is "splitting the cabinet" -- can be read in full here.

Eldar added, in his Haaretz piece published overnight, that "A source familiar with the exchanges with the United States said last night that for now the Americans have not changed their attitude regarding the building freeze [n.b. - whatever that actually means]. The source says the Americans are not inclined to adopt the compromise proposed by Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor that would see construction continue in large blocs but not in isolated settlements”. This report is posted here.

Also overnight, there has been another serious clash between Israeli settlers (backed up by Israeli Border Police) and Palestinian residents of Silwan, an East Jerusalem neighborhood that is threatened by massive house demolitions to accomodate expansion of an archeologically-oriented tourist site run by a large Israeli settler organization, just outside the Old City walls just below the revered Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock. [Haaretz is reporting that the clash began when settlers tried to break open a lock closing a local mosque gate through which the settlers wished to pass to go to a swimming pool.]

Meanwhile, in the lead-up to the controversial (at least, among Palestinians) restart of direct talks — apparently just as happened during the visit of former U.S. President George Bush to Ramallah in January 2008, when a Palestinian demonstration against his visit and his Middle East policy were brutally supressed by baton-wielding Palestinian security forces — a group of Palestinians heading towards a conference organized at a hall in Ramallah on Wednesday to protest Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ acceptance of an American invitation to Washington D.C. on September 1 + 2 to restart direct talks with Israel were also attacked an beaten by Palestinian policemen who said they were only acting against an “illegal demonstration” and had no intention to interfere in the conference itself, which nonetheless could not be held.

Two Palestinian cameramen covering the event were also beaten by Palestinian police, and their equipment was confiscated. The Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh has reported today that Al-Watan TV station, for whom the two journalists were working, then “issued a statement condemned the assault on its cameramen and called on Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to launch an inquiry against the assailants. The statement pointed out that attacks by PA security forces on Palestinian journalists had escalated, constituting a flagrant violation of freedom of expression and democracy … Following the incident, PA President Mahmoud Abbas decided to establish a special commission of inquiry to look into charges that PA security forces had used excessive force … A statement issued by Abbas’s office said that he showed ‘instant interest in the chaos that prevailed during the meeting at the Protestant Club [in Ramallah]‘.”

According to Abu Toameh’s report in the JPost, “Wednesday’s press conference was organized by the National Conference Against Direct Talks, a coalition consisting of hundreds of political factions, organizations, institutions and figures from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The event was supposed to be held simultaneously in the West Bank and Gaza Strip through video conference”.

The JPost report also said that Khalida Jarrar, a Palestinian politician supporting the conference, has accused non-uniformed Palestinian security agents of inciting a spontaneous march through the streets en route to the conference — but the JPost noted that a Palestinian police spokesman responded by stating that the suppression had nothing to do with the marchers’ political views, explaining that “Even if they [the demonstrators in the street in Ramallah, who were encouraged by plainclothes security agents, according to one Palestinian politician supporting the conference] supported the direct talks, they would still need a license to demonstrate … The era of chaos is gone and forever”. This JPost article can be viewed in full here.

Ma’an News Agency has reported from Bethlehem that “Speaking with Ma’an by phone from Ramallah, Jarrar said she held the PA ‘completely responsible’ for the events of the day. ‘We aimed to voice our dissent, and the PA decided to enter the conference hall and drag participants out to an unplanned rally’ in order to quash it”. This report is posted here.

Just night before, Ma’an reported separately (based on a story published by the official Palestinian news agency WAFA), Palestinian President Abbas “toured Ramallah’s city center on Tuesday evening to discuss the state of trading during the Muslim month of Ramadan with shopkeepers … Abbas talked to shop owners about the state of the Palestinian economy and its development in light of increased safety and security in the West Bank, the news agency wrote. The president was welcomed by Ramallah residents as he walked through Rukab Street, WAFA added”.

This item — reminiscent of stories about a legendary Caliph (Haroun ar-Rashid) who walked the streets of historic Baghdad (in disguise) to learn about the true feelings and problems facing his subjects — is accompanied by a photo of President Abbas being offered an ice cream cone, and can be viewed in full here.

Did the President accept, and taste, the pre-talks ice cream?

This is almost unimaginable, given the state of alert of Palestinian Presidential security, who are prepared to eliminate any imminent threat they believe they face from potential assassins who are mainly imagined to be Islamic fundamentalists. Abbas normally travels around Ramallah in a multi-car convoy travelling at high speed with lots of flashing lights and a special communications-disrupting van bristling with a crown of black antennas. These convoys are preceeded by sweep of a security-escorted specially-trained explosives-sniffing dog, and are attended by armed Presidential security forces stationed at regular intervals in the streets (including alternate routes as a decoy) that the President may choose to travel, mainly on the routes between his house and the Presidential presidential headquarters in the Muqata’a.

As we have previously reported, normal civilian circulation is always disrupted during the Presidential passage –though apparent effort is being made in recent months to reduce civilian immobilization time, and the pointing of guns directly at residents houses along the planned routes, as well as accompanying security noise.

  • Marian Houk is the Editor of UN-Truth news site. She is a Member of the Online News Association, Member of the Foreign Correspondents Association (in Israel) and Marian Houk is a past President (1986) of the United Nations Correspondents Association (UNCA) at UNHQ/NY

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Palestinian Centre for Human Rights 2009 Annual Report

PCHR

Stephen Lendman, 27 June 2010

Each year, PCHR publishes its annual report on Occupied Palestine, this year’s a detailed 250 page review of the past year, including the first days of Israel’s war on Gaza, Operation Cast Lead, “the major issue in the record of human rights and international humanitarian law violations in the Occupied Palestinian Terrority (OPT) in 2009,” the bloodiest since the 1948 Nakba that stole a nation from its people.

Today, 1.5 million Gazans struggle to rebuild their lives, “in spite of sustaining permanent disabilities, losing loved ones or becoming homeless” after war under siege – collective punishment in violation of international law, and fundamental human rights, including free movement of persons and goods, proper shelter, adequate health care and education, and the right to rebuild homes and other structures destroyed by the war’s onslaught.

Israel’s settlement expansion, Separation Wall, and control matrix exacerbates West Bank conditions, “turning Palestinian communities into (isolated) Bantustans.” In addition, efforts continue to consolidate and illegally annex East Jerusalem by dispossessing its residents, en route to making the entire city exclusively Jewish, unheard of in the modern era, especially by a so-called civilized state, in fact, barbarian and brutish while touting its democratic credentials and victimhood, more evidence of a scoundrel caught red-handed.

PCHR stresses the horrific human rights violations and deterioration throughout the year, intensified since Hamas’ January 2006 election, including:

“willful killings and violations of the right to life;

– collective punishment policies represented by a tightened closure and severe restrictions on the right to freedom of movement;

– detention and torture of Palestinians (official Israeli policy);

– continued settlement activities and attacks by Israeli settlers; and

– continued construction of the Annexation Wall inside the West Bank territory,” on 12% of stolen Palestinian land.

Nonetheless, the international community doesn’t enforce their international law obligation to stop human rights violations and hold those responsible accountable. As such, they’re complicit, guilty through silence and failure to act.

Worse still, the West and colluding Arab states participate in Gaza’s isolation by financially boycotting, and bogusly criminalizing, its legitimate government, democratically elected, in support of Mahmoud Abbas’ coup d’etat regime, Fatah in the West Bank, soundly defeated in the January 2006 election.

Innocent victims are punished, reeling under 43 years of occupation, an unprecedented international betrayal.

Occupation Force Crimes

Numerous ones occur daily, explained in weekly PCHR updates, like its June 17 – 23 one covering:

– peaceful Gaza and West Bank protestors attacked, injuring three civilians (including a child) in Bal’ein village, west of Ramallah;

– dozens more harmed by tear gas inhalation;

– three journalists assaulted in Beit Jala;

– 10 civilians, including three human rights workers, a journalist and five medical volunteers arrested;

– four Gazan farmers and workers, including two children, shot and wounded in their fields;

– 43 civilians, including five children, arrested in 16 West Bank incursions and three others in Gaza;

– the suffocating Gaza siege continues unabated;

– the West Bank and East Jerusalem remain locked down by a control matrix of about 630 checkpoints and 60 – 80 “flying” ones, including in and around Jerusalem, severely restricting access to and throughout the city; and

– ruthless ethnic cleansing continues, stealing land and bulldozing homes for settlement expansions and other Jews only projects.

When completed, the Separation Wall (half finished) will stretch 724 kilometers (on 12% of stolen Palestinian land), encircling the West Bank, further isolating the population. Civilians protesting against it nonviolently are systematically assaulted, tear gassed, fired on, injured and arrested.

In addition, two-thirds of the main roads are closed or controlled by security forces. Further, one-third of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is inaccessible to anyone without a (very hard to get) permit, that if obtained takes months and must be renewed – measures to make life in Occupied Palestine oppressive, punishing, and impossible, including random searches on streets and in private homes, some followed by arrests and imprisonment.

Numbers of Dead and Wounded in 2009

Forty-three years of occupation have taken an unprecedented toll. In 2009 alone, it included:

– 1,092 killed, including 831 civilians, the others resistance fighters;

– civilian victims included 305 children and 101 women, targeted the same as men; civilians attacked like freedom fighters;

– 1,066 were killed in Gaza, 97% of the total;

– the war’s toll killed 1,419 Palestinians and wounded another 5,200, many severely from loss of limbs, brain damage, or other extreme injuries;

– from September 2000 (the start of the second Intifada) through December 2009, 6,520 Palestinians were killed, including 4,955 civilians, tens of thousands more wounded;

– after the January 18, 2010 ceasefire, the IDF killed 47 Palestinians, including 26 civilians, seven of them children; 12 civilians were killed by Israeli snipers in Gaza buffer zones, gunned down in cold blood; five others died when tunnels were bombed;

– in the West Bank, Israeli forces killed 18 Palestinians, including 15 civilians, six of them children; Israeli settlers killed three more, including two children;

– all of them posed no threat, including participants in nonviolent protests against the Separation Wall, land confiscations or home demolitions; nonetheless, Israeli forces murdered them in cold blood, claiming self-defense, the usual bogus pretext.

PCHR investigations confirmed that Israel “used excessive and disproportionate force against Palestinian civilians, who are recognized as protected persons under international humanitarian law” – what Israel doesn’t acknowldege or the principles of distinction and proportionality.

Evidence clearly shows that Israeli forces repeatedly used (and continue to use) excessive and disproportionate force against nonviolent Palestinian civilians, in violation of international law.

They posed no threat, yet were killed when their homes, other buildings, factories, or vehicles were bombed. Some were extrajudicially executed, others when their communities were invaded – in all cases, crimes of war and against humanity.

Throughout 2009, Israel tightened closure on the West Bank, and imprisoned Gazans under siege, denying them enough food, medicines, fuel, electricity, and other common essentials – exacerbating a worsening humanitarian crisis, suffocating 1.5 million people, and paralyzing the economy.

“The members of the international community, especially the High Contracting Parties to (Fourth Geneva) have shamefully failed to take the action necessary to ensure” this stops and to hold Israel accountable. Instead, they’ve been complicit in the worst of its crimes, and share equal guilt, especially America, Israel’s paymaster/partner.

Israeli forces also prevent Palestinian civilians from entering Israel or going abroad for medical care, other emergencies, education, or their right of free movement – denied throughout Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Palestinians are imprisoned on their own land in their own country by a hostile occupier, there illegally.

Throughout 2009, the humanitarian crisis worsened, the result of:

– 40% unemployment, over 55% in Gaza where poverty exceeds 80%, affecting 1.2 million people;

– since September 2000, incomes have steadily decreased, down 45% at yearend 2009; and

– national output dropped sharply in all sectors, especially in Gaza.

Other Imposed Harshness

In December 2009, at least 9,381 Palestinians were imprisoned, including 310 children and 34 women, mostly inside Israel – a clear international law violation under Fourth Geneva’s Article 76 stating:

“Protected persons accused of offences (sic) shall be detained in the occupied country, and if convicted they shall serve their sentences therein.”

They must also be afforded proper food, hygiene, medical, and other essentials, including spiritual assistance. In addition, minors must be given special care, and women must be confined in separate quarters under female supervision. Israel, however, has male guards in women’s prisons and treats children the same as adults, besides violating other international laws regarding the treatment of prisoners.

Israeli forces disregard them as well commit regular assaults, other incursions, and arrests during house raids, especially in West Bank villages and refugee camps. Also at checkpoints, roadblocks and during nonviolent demonstrations.

Throughout 2009, security forces arrested about 5,000 Palestinians, including 1,000 in Gaza, mostly civilian men, women and children, all treated horrifically, included elected officials, imprisoned for belonging to the wrong parties and wanting Palestine to be free.

At yearend 2009, 26 PLC members were incarcerated, most from the Change and Reform bloc, affiliated with Hamas. Another was speaker Dr. ‘Aziz al-Dweik, now released. However, civil activists are detained for defending human rights, they like others treated harshly, most of them tortured like other Palestinian prisoners. Others are kept in solitary confinement for prolonged periods.

Testimonies confirm prison horror stories, including physical and mental torture, exposure to extreme heat or cold, starvation, sleep deprivation, beatings, pressure to collaborate in exchange for release, (in some cases, threatened harm to family members if refuse), and/or forced confessions in Hebrew, not Arabic, for crimes they didn’t commit.

During Cast Lead, Israel “wantonly and extensively destroyed Palestinian civilian property, including homes, agricultural lands, as well as health, educational, religious and economic facilities,” all in violation of international law. As a result, about 450,000 Gazans evacuated their homes for safer locations, “causing many to recall scenes of the forced mass migration” during 1948, what those who endured it can’t forget, nor their children who know the toll on their parents, why the event is called the Nakba, the catastrophe, affecting the entire population.

Cast Lead’s toll was horrific by any standard, PCHR documenting:

– 2,116 totally destroyed homes, containing 2,881 housing units for 3,253 families and 18,750 individuals;

– another 3,277 houses with 4,925 housing units for 5,483 families and 32,703 individuals rendered uninhabitable, their damage so extensive;

– 16,000 others were partly damaged;

– in total, 51,453 civilians lost their homes, victimized by illegal bombings or shellings; and

– in the West Bank, Israel demolished 134 houses, including 83 in East Jerusalem; another 23 Palestinian civilians were forced to destroy their own homes and pay the cost.

Today under the extremist Netanyahu government, conditions are worse than ever. Besides daily repression, settlement construction continues, the Municipality of Jerusalem and Israeli ministries taking bids for 3,400 housing units on occupied Palestinian land, ordering homes demolished and thousands of donums of land confiscated for them.

Complicit with Israeli security forces, the judiciary legitimizes occupation policies, Israel’s High Court, for example, rejecting Palestinian petitions against the expropriation of their land for settlement construction and the Separation Wall. Rarely ever does the court order its route changed. Even then, it seldom happens.

Illegal construction imposed new hardships, including farmers denied access to their land beyond the Wall without hard to obtain permits to reach it. Yet to get them, they must be registered owners, nearly impossible due to land registry complications because earlier ownership was under deceased persons’ names. In addition, registries haven’t been updated, and some heirs don’t live in the West Bank.

Other hardships include:

– new movement restrictions for Palestinians living near the Wall’s route, not just affecting farmers; and

– access to medical care, education, and relatives is impacted, plus restricted hours to move through gates at the Wall, “operated under a strict security system,” often closing for no apparent reason, and even when open, onerous to pass through.

A Nation and Occupation Repressively Persecuting Non-Jews

For Palestinians, Israel’s legal system is nightmarish, the chance for impartial investigations impossible, in violation of international standards. They require those responsible for crimes be punished, victims afforded redress, and justice to be blind to race, religion or ethnicity.

Under military occupation and for Israeli Arabs, the system is fundamentally flawed and unfair, under laws affording justice solely to Jews. As a result, PCHR and other human rights organizations pursue universal jurisdiction (UJ) remedies, a legal principle empowering courts in other countries to indict, prosecute and convict persons guilty of international crimes, no matter where they occurred.

Nonetheless, winning judgments against Israeli officials is daunting, not accomplished so far, politics and national alliances superseding the rule of law – what no longer can be tolerated at the expense of victims’ rights.

The UN Fact Finding Mission conducted extensive investigations into Israel’s Gaza war, as well as West Bank and East Jerusalem attacks, confirming gross international law violations – crimes of war and against humanity.

Yet over Q 4 2009, “persistent efforts were made to undermine” reports from the UN Human Rights Council, General Assembly and Security Council, again, Palestinians denied their rights.

As a result, on October 16, 2009, at the urging of the Palestinian leadership, the UN Human Rights Council (at its 12th Special Session) issued a Resolution condemning illegal Israeli acts, especially annexing East Jerusalem lands. It also endorsed the Goldstone Commission’s conclusions and recommendations – a first step toward justice, so far not achieved.

Israel’s harshness continues. A subservient Mahmound Abbas issues presidential decrees without presenting them to the PLC or involving the legitimate Hamas government.

Though released from detention in June 2009, PLC Speaker, Dr. ‘Aziz al-Dwaik, is prevented from even entering his Ramallah office by presidential decree, an illegitimate act by a coup d’etat president.

The split between West Bank and Gaza is untenable, the result of Israel targeting Hamas, bogusly calling it a terrorist organization, Abbas its servile tool obeying orders and being rewarded with White House visits and photo-ops, the benefits for betraying his people, including remaining president long after his term expired and not calling new elections.

Life in Occupied Palestine remains grim, Israeli imposed viciousness creating enormous hardships for millions of victimized Palestinians, ongoing for 62 years, 43 under occupation brutishness – illegal, unjustifiable, and unconscionable by a so-called civilized state, in fact, run by hooligans, war criminals, respecting might alone over right, what grassroots activism no longer can tolerate nor should anyone of conscience anywhere.

  • Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/