umkahlil

Nizar Sakhnini to Al-Awda Discussion Group:

AN APOLOGY DOES NOT ERASE THE CRIME COMMITTED IN 1948

I was born in Acre and my mother was born in Acre.

My father was born in Sakhnin and my grandparents were born in Sakhnin.

I own the lands that my father and my grandfather left for me in Sakhnin.

While you accept any Jew from any where in the globe to come and live in Acre and/or Sakhnin, you want to prevent me from living in my own city and on my own lands. No one has a right to prevent me and the remaining Palestinian Refugees from returning to live in any part of Palestine and to get back the lands that were stolen from them in 1948.

An apology by the Israeli Prime Minister, as suggested by you, does not erase the ethnic cleansing crime committed in 1948. Acceptance of the Right of Return is the only criterion that opens the road for peace and reconciliation.

Nizar Sakhnini, 5 July 2008

Eight-year-old Natalie Samaan, left, gets help Friday putting on her scarf from Alyssa Avdelnour, 10. (Daniel Mears / The Detroit News)

Thanks for your input umkahlil.
Here's the note you sent to The Detroit News Forum:

Topic for discussion: Mideast Christian Group Gathers

Your comments:


Thank you for Greg Krupa's story about Palestinian-Americans from the American Federation of Ramallah, Palestine, and thank you for disseminating Archbishop Atallah Hanna's wise words. Palestine will one day be restored and united, with Arab Muslims and Christians living side by side with Jews. The partition of Palestine sixty years ago resulted in great suffering for the Palestinian people. This suffering will be alleviated when Israel respects and implements the very basic right to return for all of Palestine's refugees. "Every one has a right to leave his country and to return to his country," states Article 13, Section 2, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Walls and checkpoints will not deter Palestinians from one day realizing this very basic right. From Nancy Harb Almendras, Palestinian-American with roots in Ramallah, Palestine

Friday, July 4, 2008

Mideast Christian group gathers

Several thousand who share Palestinian roots meet for convention, reunion in Metro area.

Gregg Krupa / The Detroit News

DEARBORN -- These Christian Palestinians say they are among the dispossessed, yearning for a nation to call theirs. Leaders of Christian denominations around the world say they fear these Palestinians may disappear from the Holy Land forever.

Several thousand Christian Palestinians, members of the American Federation of Ramallah Palestine, are gathering at the Hyatt Regency for several days of conferences and a full-immersion into the Arab-American culture of Metro Detroit this week. It is the 50th anniversary of the organization, formed when refugees fled to the United States from the close-knit town of Ramallah after the wars of 1948 and 1967 between Israel and Arab states.
Part social gathering, part business meeting intended to oversee the finances of their large charitable and educational operations, the convention also is a huge family reunion. Each of the various clans in Ramallah are descendants of the seven brothers who founded the ancestral village in 1515. The Christians often married within their extended families, establishing an intimate, unique culture that exists in various cities in the United States and Ramallah.
"Immigrants from the village came to the United States to study and teach, primarily because of the nakba, the founding of Israel and the beginning of the Palestinian question, those immigrants bounced by heritage and tradition created this organization to keep our heritage and culture together," said Emeel Ajluni, a senior manager at Chrysler LLC.

On Thursday, they heard about how difficult the work will be.

Archbishop Theodosios Attallah Hanna, of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the leader of many of the Orthodox Christian Palestinians, said that with the Christian presence in the Holy Land declining from 15 percent of the population in 1950 to 2 percent today, Palestinians in the United States and the territories must resolve that the population cannot disappear.

Many Christians have fled because of the long-running conflict, and because they feel trapped between out-sized Jewish and Muslim interests in Israel, the territories and surrounding countries.

"Jerusalem belongs to three religions: Judaism, Islam and Christianity," Theodosios said, through an interpreter. "For us, Jerusalem is the most sacred for our faith; in the whole world, it is the center.

"We have to keep an eye (on) the holy places and to make sure they are safe. And most of all, we have to preserve the Christian presence in the Holy Land.

"I believe in dialogue among the three religions and I am against the extremists," Theodosios said. "Everyone must be free to practice their own religion, and they cannot use religion to advance their causes."

Like an increasing number of residents of the territories, Theodosios said the only justice for the people of the region is a one-state solution in which Jews, Muslims and Christians live side-by-side, seized Palestinian land is returned to Palestinians, and all groups vote for a parliament.
That position is anathema to Israelis, who view it as the end of Israel and a Jewish state.
A number of speakers at the convention, including Mayor Janet Michael of Ramallah, complained that the Israeli crackdown on the movement of Palestinians within the territories is gutting the Palestinian economy. Michael and others also said that several Palestinians were not allowed to attend the convention by Israeli officials, who withheld permission to travel.
"We should either be allowed to build our own airport, or to travel freely from the airport in Tel Aviv," Michael said. "What Israel does is not right. We feel like we are living in a big prison."

Israeli officials say that economic development in the territories would contribute to peace. But the security concerns raised by attacks from Palestinians remains a paramount concern, including an attack Wednesday by the Palestinian driver of a bulldozer that killed three and wounded 45 in Jerusalem.

"I totally agree that economic development is suffering due to some of the conditions, that is certainly true," said Andy David, deputy consul general of Israel to the Midwest. "And we see the suffering. And we feel the suffering. And some of the people suffering from those restrictions are innocent people.

"But if they want to stop this, they need to do just one simple thing: Stop the violence," David said. "It is cause and effect. For there was violence and then there were the restrictions, not vice versa."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has pressed Israel to lift more restrictions on the movement of Palestinians, both within the territories and for foreign travel.
David said such moves have only led to more violence.

"In the past, the alleviating of those restrictions immediately caused more terrorist activity," David said. "Losing business is reversible. Losing life is irreversible."

There are some 30,000 to 40,000 descendants of Ramallah in the United States. Metro Detroit, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Chicago, San Diego and a few southern cities have significant populations.

The city of Ramallah is home to about 30,000 Palestinians, with another 200,000 in the immediate suburbs. It is the site of most of the offices of the Palestinian Authority.

You can reach Gregg Krupa at (313) 222-2359 or gkrupa@detnews.com

From Palestine News Network via Annie's Notes

The narrative of a young woman: her eyes, life and hope under occupation
04.07.08 - 15:15

Bethlehem / Manar Wahhab - I will begin with the story of leaving in 1948 with the words of my grandmother. “Before the British left in May 1948, they humiliated the Arabs.

We used to think that they sold petrol for only five dinars but when we opened the bottles we discovered that they sold us water!”

She continued, “I want to tell you what had happened to me and my family when we lived in Al-Ramlah [a village the Israelis took in 1948]…my six children and I sat at home [one of her children is my father]. Two men knocked on the door. When we opened the door, they told us to leave the house because there would be clashes. We didn’t believe them. I was cooking for my children. Then we suddenly heard shelling and bombing. I took my children and went to the Catholic convent to hide. There we met a lot of people, both Christians and Muslims. The children were afraid and cried because of the sounds they heard. There was no food or water anymore. So we were obliged to bring what we had in our houses. The Israeli soldiers told the boys and men to visit a specific place if they wanted to get permission to be in the streets, but the Israelis were lying: when the men went to the place they all were taken to prison. The Israeli airplanes shelled most of the houses. The snipers killed many boys, men, women, and children, even dogs and cats in the street.”

My grandmother went on. “After a few days my brother who lived in Bethlehem came to Al-Ramlah to take me and my sons with him, my husband didn’t come but he followed us after that. Many families in Al-Ramlah left their houses and went to other places. Some of them went to Nablus, Bethlehem, Hebron, Jordan, and even some immigrated to America. The Jews took a lot of gold and jewelry from the women. They sold it and bought weapons with the money. After they won, they were happy; they drank wine and whiskey. Threw the bottles in the air and broke them on the streets.”

Starting a new life in Bethlehem for my father and his family wasn’t so easy and of course for the other refugees because they had to adapt for the new environment, find jobs and places to live. For my father and his family, and some other people, they were lucky because they have relatives in Bethlehem, but others had to build tents and that what we now call refugee camps.

People thought that they will just stay for a while and go back home, but unfortunately they did not realize what the days held for them so they waited and waited. Eventually after so much time passed they decided to build homes. Refugees used to take food and medical help from the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) and until this day we have the refuge card with which we can take food from the UNRWA. My grandfather found a job in Bethlehem working in a café, and after that he dug artesian wells. So life continued and my dad grew up, married my mom, and they had my two sisters and me. I grew up hearing about how we are refugees and sometimes my grandmother told stories. Until now I ask and want to know more and more.

I will always keep asking for our rights. I will always tell and teach young people about the Palestinian story so as to pass the torch to every new generation to continue the march for freedom.

The following is a story that happened in 1967 in Bethlehem, this is also coming from my grandmother’s words. She stayed in Bethlehem and didn’t go back to Al-Ramlah. “I was with my son [who is my dad now] going to the market to buy some vegetables and fruits. While we were walking, we saw airplanes in the sky. At first we thought that they were Jordanian. A car came and a man shouted from the window at the people and urged them to go home because these airplanes are Israeli and would shell the area. We all went quickly to our houses. I held my son under my arms and ran home. They kept shelling every night. Then the Israelis soldiers entered Bethlehem. They used to walk in the streets without any fear. They felt safe and secure. We looked at them from the windows without making noise so as not to be seen. The war ended after only six days.”

She added, “On the morning of 5 June 1967, while we sat at home, we heard bombing and shelling. We went quickly to a nearby cave to hide. Nearly 60 persons were hiding in the cave. During the nights nothing happened, we used to go out and to look at the places that had been shelled in the early morning. At one point we saw many Israeli airplanes; initially we thought that they belonged to Iraq and that there is still war out there but unfortunately the war ended in six days and because of that they also call this war ‘The Six Day War.’ After this war the Israelis entered the West Bank. After many years when the first Intifada began in 1987 the Israeli government began to require permission for people to come and go between the West Bank and inside the Israeli boundaries. Life continued up until now but with more hurt more pain, less land, unclear dreams and hope.”

My father lived his life in Bethlehem because he was still a kid when his family was forced to flee from their city. He cannot remember much. When I ask my dad about Al-Ramlah he does not say much but he always tells to me “go to your grandmother she knows everything” and I do go to her and ask her about the life there. She always tells me more things that I didn’t know. My mother is not a refugee. She lived in Bethlehem all her life. She met my father in Bethlehem and they stayed in Bethlehem. My dad took me, my sisters and my mom to Al-Ramlah once when I was a kid but this was the last time and I can’t remember anything. In my dad’s house there is now a Jewish family living in it. I remember once I asked my grandmother about if she and my grandfather went to see their house. She said, “Yes, we did go but we were shocked because a Jewish family was living in it and this Jewish family didn’t allow us to go in and visit the house. It was all very hurtful and difficult. So we can’t think about doing something in this place because it is not our choice.”

Having a refugee status for me is like a reminder for all of us to remember that there is a right that we should keep asking and insisting for until we get it. It reminds us that still there is occupation, it reminds us of the pain that people feel everyday, it reminds us of the dear land which we can’t reach, it reminds us of many things and especially that we have to continue and handle the pain so as to reach the day that peace and justice will be prevail.

My name is Manar Ghaleb Jaleel Wahhab. I'm 22 years old. I live with my family: My father Ghaleb, my mother Ivette, and my two sisters, Dima who is 24 and Rawan who is 21. I'm a refugee from Al-Ramlah city. It was taken by the Israelis in 1948. I graduated from Bethlehem University with a B.A in Business Administration as my Major, with a Minor in Marketing. I live in Bethlehem city near Al Azzeh Refugee Camp. I live in a Christian - Muslim environment. I went to St. Joseph School for Girls. Also I'm an old and active member in the St. Joseph Girl Scout’s. I’m engaged to an Armenian Palestinian young man. His name is Milad Vosgueritchian.

I like swimming, football, drawing, music (especially I like violin). I'm learning how to play on this musical instrument with the help of my teacher who is my father in law. He is also a musician. I have a talent to play on musical instruments without knowing the notes. Beside that I have the talent to write (poets and other things).

I have a sociable personality that reaches towards that of comedians. When I'm with my friends I try to handle their pain by entertaining them. I have a strong personality, with self-confidence, and I like to help people.


I speak Arabic (of course), English, French, and Hebrew. I learned Hebrew by watching Israeli programs on TV.

My dream is to live one day with my husband in a small house and feel safety and stability. Also I dream that one day I will have a horse and ride it freely on my land, which leads to the biggest dream of all: which is to see Palestine free one day. I hope so.

Living in Palestine is a matter of fighting for living instead of dying: fighting for success instead of dying with shame, waiting for hopes and dreams, and looking to the future in a positive way.

Living in Palestine is like being in a big prison. You can feel that you are turning around yourself; you feel sometimes that you can't develop or improve…why? Because of the depressions that we go through because the Israeli government in its procedures is always succeeded in making the Palestinian people ill psychologically. For example geographically we are actually living on 54 percent of West Bank and especially with the Wall being here, it's really awful, ugly, dividing and it makes me feel really sad, bad, but it gives me more of a challenge to keep going and fighting for my rights especially to live freely without any fear or problems. That is the main secret or thing that Israel couldn’t kill: the dream, the hope, the smile, and especially the insistence and the steadfastness that the Palestinian people have to regain their occupied land. For example, my fiancé, Milad, must go through an Israeli checkpoint daily and let the solders see his identity card so as to let him pass to his home. Also I have to pass through this checkpoint every day to reach my work … This checkpoint is humiliating. You never know how much time you need to reach your place because it depends on the mood of the soldiers....is it fair?????

The movement between the Palestinian cities and villages is really hard because of the large number of checkpoints and the tough procedures on the checkpoints. There is no freedom and this is what we, and all the people all over the world, need. The familial relationships are really negatively affected because of the checkpoints and the Wall which divide families from each other. They weaken and lessen the relationships.

We have a depression in our economy, lack of jobs, and increase in the number of the population. This is really a dangerous problem and it became more dangerous when they built the Wall. Israel took all the good land; the agricultural land, the water sources. Actually Israel took all the good land and put us in a closed hopeless place. (That also you will see on the map). People don't know what to do, where to work, how to bring money. It is absolutely not easy. Our economy is going down. Families are not able to pay the fees for school and university studying and because of that a big slice of the nation has left their studies and work to get money to live. And lots of young kids are working now to help there families. The siege raised and doubled this problem.

On the other hand I can say that the problem is not in searching for food or drink and having fun. It is a nation’s pain, hurt and unheard voices that are represented in the daily suffering and difficulties that the people face. We are distracted by watching our occupied country become worse as we still wait for freedom.

The positive side is that in spite of this hard situation still we have hope. We can see the light of the candle that pushes us to continue our march toward our freedom. We still have the smile and hope because Palestinian people are still longing for their freedom. We have hope because our land is very valuable to us. It is something that we feel belongs to us. We feel the pain of our land and we belong to it. The Palestinians will always be hopeful, generation after generation.
I also find hope through my grandmother’s stories of Palestine and the original place that we belong to.

It is also important for me to know about the situation, such as that the Israeli government continues to demolish the houses of the Palestinian people. …Why? Because they are guilty of having a house on their own land (Palestinians)?!!!! The Israel government wants just to take land so as to expand the size of Israel. Israeli report: A demolition of 18,000 (eighteen thousand) houses in the West Bank since 1967. Also the International Solidarity Foundation for Human Rights announced that the Israeli occupation forces killed during the month of January 96 citizens, 87 of whom died in the Gaza Strip, and 71 citizens were killed in assassination operations, and there where 10 kids among those killed. The Israeli occupation forces increased the prison population as well. They arrested over 540 citizens, including more than 50 children under the age of eighteen years old, and three women and many, many other Palestinian people. The arrests included numbers of children and women, in addition to dozens of workers who have been arrested for entering Israel without having permits to enter. Israel has arrested a quarter of the Palestinian population since it began its occupation. Most of them are taken for illogical and unjust reasons. The people in the prisons are affected psychologically and physically from treatment and torture in prisons and there is abundant evidence of that. One of the smallest and newest examples of this is that there is a prisoner from Jerusalem who has lost 90 percent of his eyesight. He is in Administrative Detention: that means he was never charged or tried. The Prison Service did not to treat him despite repeated requests. Every morning we see the numbers, more people killed, how many were arrested, what is the solution, and many other topics.

My fiancé Milad and I are trying really hard to save money you cannot imagine the really hard conditions in which we are living. We have to build ourselves from the beginning. Our families cannot help us because they too do not have enough money even to live normally. This is the situation of almost all the Palestinians. I'm not saying that there are no rich people; there are rich families. But the middle class has become the poor class and the poor have become even more impoverished. Because of that it's a struggle of surviving. For example I said before that I finished a B.A in Business. Me and my sisters all had scholarships from the Catholic Patriarch and from a American institution because there was no money to pay. The same happened for my fiancé.

We are a nation that no Wall, no checkpoints, no demolishing of houses, nor persecutions, can destroy us. We keep insisting on our freedom …we are the powerful nation.

Jerusalem is less than half an hour from Bethlehem but I cannot go there more than two times a year: Christmas and Easter. You have to request permission from the Israelis to enter our churches to pray. Some people don’t get the permission. They are denied, forbidden to enter Jerusalem their entire lives. Imagine if someone forbade you to move within your own country. It is easier for me to go around the world than it is to go to Jerusalem.

I'm a member of the Arab Educational Institute (AEI- Open Windows) whose mission stands for nonviolence, peace, justice, and human rights. It works through community building such as schools, principals, teachers, students, youth, women, and parents through four programs.

In the Arab Educational Institute they do RRCA which stands for (Read, Reflect, Communicate and Act). They read from the holy books like the bible and the Qur’an or from nonviolence books about people like Gandhi. They read the subject, reflect upon it and then every one explains his belief. They all then communicate the results together and they also try to act upon what they read. They also celebrate things like the United Nations Day for Peace, communicate with schools, conduct sit-ins and protests against the occupation, all done in a nonviolent and spiritual manner.

Now I am working as a public relations officer and projects coordinator in our new small center which was established by my fiancé and his brother (Milad and Noubar Vosgueritchian). Establishing this center in the midst of a population that is diverse was challenging for them.

The center seeks and aims to help society, particularly the kids and youth that are gifted with a variety of talents and abilities; because these are the pillars on which a healthy society should stand. Guiding, directing, and channeling these groups’ abilities promotes the process of evolvement of opportunities towards the acquisition of culture, literature and the various forms of arts. Moreover the vision of the center looks for strengthening the Palestinian youth by raising their awareness regarding teaching new concepts and terms such as learning other cultures, including that of Palestine, human rights, nonviolence, peace and justice.

“Don’t react violently but relax and take it easy.” That is what I believe.

We as Palestinians are fed up with violence and believe in the path of nonviolence which resonates for effectively throughout the world.

Some German non-violence communication teachers (those who follow Marshall Rosenberg) gave us as Palestinian Muslim and Christian youth in the AEI a course about NVC (nonviolent communication). It went so well and we benefited from this experience. For me I learned that I should not blame the other (sister, friend, neighbors, even Israelis). I should always think and ask about the reason and background of the things, and I should have deep insight into the problem, and also search for the truth before making any decision.

If I did the PR for Palestine I would do my best to reach people in the world, people who see in life things more than eating, sleeping and just having fun all the time while at the same time there are people in other parts of the world fighting for their survival. If I did the PR for Palestine I would talk to every foreigner who come to this Holy Land and let him/her see and feel the truth in our eyes, in our lives, in our facts…I would speak with tourists and go with them to different places to let them see with their own eyes what is happening so as not just to depend on the eye of the camera ( what they see on TV) which is controlled by Zionist lobby… because if the western world wants to know the whole truth they should stop depending on what they see on TV and start searching for other ways to reach the real truth. If I did the PR for Palestine I would distribute books to the foreigners; books that are written by Palestinian people and refugees, books for Palestine, and books talking about the Palestinian pain. Also I will use every technological way like websites and make use of my Internet access to also spread the word of truth.

In the end, pressure leads to explosions. That explains what happened in the Gaza Strip. The breakthrough in the Gaza Strip for me and for all people who understand what it means to be blocked in without water, without food, without basic needs, and who understand what it means to be in a bird cage, can understand what happens in the Gaza Strip. People there did this not just because they want food and other needs, people there wanted to feel free. They are under such tremendous pressure really. Please if you want to feel a small part of what it is like being locked in your city, do this: enter your room don't take food and water. Turn off the electricity and lock the door. What would you do? Ask yourself really. For me I know this feeling because I used to live under curfews and closures, especially the 40 days of curfew in Bethlehem. During curfew no one can go out of their home, no matter what is his need. If the soldiers saw someone in the street they would shoot him or throw gas at him, or they would take him to prison. I watched this many times through the windows, and it even happened to me. What I'm trying to say is that we must break through. We are fed-up. We are finished living like this. We want freedom and dignity like anyone else in the world. At this moment I will like I will explode. But I am grateful to have a pen and a piece of paper to write this on, to write down my pain, my fear, my desire for freedom and my hope that we will achieve it.

Shots, bombs, tanks, bullets, jeeps, military helicopters, F-16s, I got used to these things. In the beginning when I for the first time heard and saw tanks and military jeeps I was frightened especially when there was shooting in the night where the Israelis turn off the electricity in the area. That also means that they will attack there. I am used to this now. So now if during the day when I hear shooting or I see military jeeps I don't feel so afraid because they are coming in these days to Bethlehem to arrest people or to pass through, to remind us that they are in control. I used to collect bullet shells. Now I don’t find as many. But the numbers of prisoners, killed, handicapped, and emotionally destroyed by the Israeli occupiers are too high.

I believe in nonviolence and that education is the most important tool we have. We have a 90 percent rate of educated people in Palestine. But now that number is going down because of the Wall, the land confiscation, the siege and the economic collapse due to those. There are also families leaving, and if not entire families, the young people are leaving in droves when they get any opportunity.

My message is one of hope: we want justice and freedom. And we want you to come here and see the reality.

We are people of life, not people for death.

Written by: Manar G. Jaleel Wahhab
Arab Palestinian Christian refugee
FREE PALESTINE

My comment: Article 13, Section 2, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country." I am a Palestinian-American Orthodox Christian as are most of the members of the American Federation of Ramallah, Palestine, where Archbishop Atallah spoke. According to universal law, my relatives and friends, who were expelled from their villages and homes have a right to return to Palestine, where they still hold the keys to their property. Israel refuses to implement the right of return for our grandmothers and grandfathers; however, any Jew from anywhere in the world becomes an instant citizen upon entering Israel. Archbishop Atallah "calls for the destroyed villages to be revived and returned to their original inhabitants, " and for one state with elections determining who rules.


The top Christian leader for Palestinians is in metro Detroit this week, offering words of hope for Palestinians and criticizing Israeli occupation. His visit comes during a national convention in Dearborn for the American Federation of Ramallah, the biggest annual gathering of Palestinians in the United States.

Archbishop Theodosius Attallah Hanna, of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, visited an Arab-American church in Livonia on Wednesday and an Islamic center in Dearborn, where he met and spoke with a range of religious and community leaders.

“As a religious man, I ask for justice for the Palestinians,” Hanna told the Free Press in an interview at the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn. “Defending human rights is a duty for Christians and religious people.”

The archbishop, who heads the Palestinian Orthodox church in Jerusalem, said through a translator that:

“My wish is that the American people understand what the Palestinians go through,” he said. “Their struggle is a just struggle”

The archbishop was at St. Mary Orthodox Church in Livonia and then visited the Islamic Center of America, where he was greeted by its leader, Imam Hassan Qazwini.

“I would like to see Christians in the U.S. be more understanding and sympathetic with Palestinians, who have had 60 years of injustice and 60 years of being prevented from going back to their land,” Hanna said. “There are millions who are refugees but are prevented from going back to their land where they were born.”

At the end of a talk, the archbishop presented Imam Qazwini with a relief of the city of Jerusalem and said to him:

“I hope that one day you will visit us in Jerusalem after it’s liberated from the occupation and the Arab Palestinian flag is there.”

Robert Cohen, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council, said:

“A Palestinian terrorist in Jerusalem yesterday deliberately drove a bulldozer into several buses and cars, killing three and injuring dozens of Israeli civilians. The Palestinian Archbishop essentially condoned that atrocity by his silence about it.”

The meeting with the archbishop was also attended by Osama Siblani, publisher of the Arab-American News, Imad Hamad, regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and Dawud Walid, head of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, all of whom praised the archbishop.

“He’s a man of principle,” Hamad said.

30 Jun 2008 15:13:20 GMT
Source: UNHCR
Reuters and AlertNet are not responsible for the content of this article or for any external internet sites. The views expressed are the author's alone.


AL TANF, Syria, June 30 (UNHCR) – It seemed like a good idea. Take a group of Palestinian children to the seaside to help them escape the monotony and hardship of their lives in limbo on the arid Iraq-Syria border.

But it all proved a bit too much for most of the children taken to the Syrian city of Tartus on the Mediterranean Sea earlier this month from the Al Tanf camp, where they and their families have lived for months after fleeing their homes in the violence-plagued Iraqi capital of Baghdad.

The sudden freedom of movement, the cool sea breezes, the abundant food and drink and the other laughing kids showed these nine children what they were missing and what they would miss once again when they returned to Al Tanf at the end of their week's holiday.

They are among a group of more than 750 Palestinian refugees who have been stuck for up to two years in Al Tanf, unable to enter Syria and unable to go back to Baghdad. They live in a tiny strip of no man's land where they must be on the alert for snakes and scorpions and endure the terrible heat, hoping that some country will come forward and offer them resettlement.

It soon became apparent that all but one of the children given special permission by the Syrian government to go to the coast were too traumatized to appreciate and enjoy their short break from reality with other youngsters at a summer camp in Tartus.

"These kids have gone through such a hard time, and the change in environment has had an impact on them. They are closed, hurt by their lives. They are not used to interacting with the world, with so many other children," said camp superviser Feras Shihabi, who works for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

The camp staff did not push the Palestinians to join in the week's activities, including swimming, dancing, singing, clown shows and daily parties. Eight of them preferred to stay inside darkened bedrooms, missing their families.

"I am here for such a short time. What is the point of enrolling in activities when I am going back to Al Tanf again?" asked Sarab, who felt that the camp gave a false sense of optimism.

Fellow refugee, Naba, said that if she joined in, it would make life that much harder when she had to go back to Al Tanf. "My life is not happy, I need to leave this summer camp right now," she said, adding: "The first day I was happy, but by the second day I was not happy. We are not adapted to this happy life and need to stay strong for our hard life."

Hussam Muktar, an Iraqi who works for the UN refugee agency as an outreach worker, said he felt the pain that the children were living through. "Al Tanf is like a prison – and no child will ever thrive in a prison. They cannot go forwards because they are not allowed into Syria or anywhere else. They cannot go backwards, because they and their families are threatened in Iraq."

In contrast, other Palestinian refugees taking part in the camp – including 24 children who live an easier life at the UNHCR-run Al Hol camp in northern Syria – made the most of their holiday, with many learning to swim in the crystal blue sea. After a few days they began avoiding their compatriots from Al Tanf, unable to relate to their anger and depression.

When Muktar visited the summer camp, some of the Al Tanf children opened up after hearing his Iraqi accent, but they were still too withdrawn to look him in the eye.

"If you look at these children, even though they are the same age as all the other children at the summer camp, their eyes, their body language tells you that they have suffered more than any child should suffer. It hurts to see the trauma in their every movement," Muktar said.

UNHCR provides assistance to Palestinian refugees in Iraq and Syria. Together with UNRWA, it has been looking for solutions for the border refugees at Al Tanf and nearby Al Waleed.

"It is clear that we need to relocate all the Palestinians that are stranded on the Iraqi border. We can meet their material needs with food, water and shelter, but the fact remains that the environment will never be suitable for human habitation," said Philippe Leclerc, UNHCR's deputy representative in Damascus.

UNHCR, UNRWA and the Palestinian Red Crescent care for the Palestinians in Al Tanf, while UNHCR, Islamic Relief and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) share the load in Al Waleed.

The inhabitants of the two border camps have endured fires, flooding and harsh extremes of temperature. An estimated 15,000 Palestinians remain in Baghdad, compared to some 30,000 in early 2003. They have fled to escape militia threats, kidnapping and killings. A few hundred have been resettled in third countries.

By Sybella Wilkes and Covadonga de la Campa
In Al Tanf, Iraq-Syria Border

Angus Reid Global Monitor : Polls & ResearchRight of Return Not Negotiable, Say Palestinians
July 01, 2008

(Angus Reid Global Monitor) - The vast majority of people in the West Bank and Gaza would reject giving up the so-called right of return, according to a poll by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion. 89.8 per cent of respondents are not willing to compromise the right to re-occupy their land in Israel in exchange for the creation of a Palestinian state and a peace agreement.

The former British mandate of Palestine was instituted at the end of World War I, to oversee a territory in the Middle East that formerly belonged to the Ottoman Empire. After the end of World War II and the Nazi holocaust, the Zionist movement succeeded in establishing an internationally recognized homeland. In November 1947, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the formation of a Jewish state.

In 1948, the British government withdrew from the mandate and the state of Israel was created in roughly 15,000 square kilometres of the mandate’s land, with the remaining areas split under the control of Egypt and Transjordan. Since then, the region has seen constant disagreement between Israel and the Palestinians, represented for decades by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). Wars broke out in the region in the second half of the 20th Century, involving Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt.

Around 750,000 Palestinians fled or were forced to leave their territory during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. The "right of return"—under which Palestinians aim to re-occupy their homes in Israel—has always been a questionable point in peace negotiations. Hundreds of thousands of refugees from the war and their descendants still live in shantytown camps run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), next to Gaza cities and towns.

On Jun. 24, French president Nicolas Sarkozy addressed Israeli lawmakers and urged them to consider the possibility of granting the right of return to the Palestinians, saying that there would be "no peace without a solution to the problem of the Palestinian refugees," and adding, "We must tell friends the truth, and the truth is that Israel’s security can never be assured unless an independent, modern, democratic and viable Palestinian state is established finally beside it."

Polling Data

Do you believe that the Palestinians should be obliged to waive their right of home return in exchange for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and the conclusion of a peace agreement with Israel?

Yes
6.8%

No
89.8%

Don’t know
3.3%


Source: Palestinian Center for Public Opinion (PCPO)
Methodology: Face-to-face interviews with 1,220 Palestinian adults in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, conducted from May 25 to May 31, 2008. Margin of error is 2.8 per cent.

[ 01/07/2008 - 12:31 AM ]

From Khalid Amayreh in the occupied Palestinian Territories



From his hospital bed at the European Hospital in Gaza and with barely audible voice, award-winning Palestinian journalist Muhammed Omer has given a full account of the hair-raising encounter he had last week with Shin Beth agents at the Allenby Bridge border-crossing between Jordan and the West Bank.

Omer, a co-winner of the 2008 Martha Gelhorn Prize for Journalistic Excellence, said he was abused, assaulted , humiliated, ridiculed, kicked, and strip-searched at gunpoint by undisciplined Shin Beth officers until he had a nervous breakdown in which case he lost consciousness for at least 90 minutes.

A resident of Rafah at the southern edge of the Gaza Strip, Omer said he didn’t know for sure why the Shin Beth people treated him in such a barbaric matter apart from the characteristic sadism and savagery routinely meted out to Palestinians.

“They behaved with unimaginable hatefulness and vindictiveness. They couldn’t accept the very idea of a Palestinian journalist winning a renowned journalism prize. They wanted to punish me for being a successful journalist and especially for exposing Israeli barbarianism to the people of Europe.”

The following is Muhammed Omer’s story as intimated by him to this writer:

“On Thursday, 26 June, the Israeli authorities finally allowed me to return to Gaza after several days of waiting and uncertainty in Jordan. When I arrived at the Allenby Bridge Border Crossing, I was dragged away rather unceremoniously to a special room where I was made to wait for more than 90 minutes. This happened as Dutch diplomats who were accompanying me were waiting outside.

“When I arrived on the Israeli side of the Allenby Bridge, I encountered an Israeli female officer who started mocking me in a brazenly insulting manner.

“She asked me repeatedly where Gaza was. She then said I had no permit to return to Gaza via Israel.

“Then a Shin Beth officer who introduced himself as “Avi” showed up and took me to an isolated room where I was kept stranded for an hour and a half.

“He asked me “Oh, You are Muhammed Omer.

“Yes, I said.

“You know you are a fool,” said Avi, adding “how could you leave Europe and return to Gaza where there is no water, no electricity, nothing.

“I told him Gaza was my country, and I was a journalist and wanted to be a voice for the voiceless.

“A voice for the voiceless,” Avi spoke sarcastically.

“He then asked me if I was carrying any contrabands or guns or knives.

“I said no, I had none.

“Then he asked me to produce the money of the prize I won. I told him that the money would be transferred later to my bank account.”

“Then one Shin Beth agent demanded in a stern tone that I hand all the money I was carrying with me over to them. They didn’t believe I didn’t have the prize money with me.

“Disappointed, Avi, who was carrying a pistol in his hand, ordered me to take off all my clothes, which I did, leaving my underwear. At the same time, another officer was pointing an M-16 rifle in my face.

“Take the underwear as well,” he said. “I told him I wouldn’t. What do you want from me,” I protested in a suffocated voice.

“Then he ganged up on me and forcibly removed my underwear piece, leaving me completely naked.”

“Avi, training the pistol at me, told me to turn right and turn left, before telling me to get dressed again.

“At that point, I was nearly totally broken emotionally. I felt I was being raped. I cried and pleaded to them to leave me alone, but to no avail”

“Telling me I haven’t seen anything yet, they dragged me to another room where they interrogated me on my speaking tour in Britain, Sweden and Greece.

“Oh, you have not left a place in Europe without speaking at…You know these Europeans, they hate Israel.

“Then another Shin Bet officer began kicking me and pushing me. This lasted for more than ten minutes after which I fainted and lost consciousness. Eventually they began dragging me along the floor by my feet with my head banging on the floor.

“I don’t remember much of what happened to me during this period, but remember a Shin Beth officer piercing his finger right below my eyes and at the lower end of ears. Also, another Shin Beth officer was pressing his large boots against my neck as I was lying unconscious on the ground.

“I thought I was dying. I remained in a state of unconsciousness for up to 90 minutes until a medical doctor, who was carrying an M-16, performed an (electro-cardiogram) or ECG on me.

“Then I heard someone saying the word ‘ambulance.’

“However, before a Palestinian ambulance from Jericho arrived, a Shin Beth officer came to me and asked me to sign a form that I was not being maltreated by the Shin Beth.

“I was too distraught, too confused and too unconscious to say anything.

“Eventually, I was taken to the Jericho hospital where I was assured by doctors that I was fine.”

Muhammed Omer said the Israeli Shin Beth inserted a special electronic device into his mobile phone which would enable them to know his whereabouts.

He also called upon his colleagues around the world to condemn in the strongest words the “criminal and disgraceful Israeli behavior” which he said “only befits criminals and thugs, not states, let a lone states that claim to be civilized, western and democratic.”

The Dutch Foreign Ministry has protested the traumatic treatment meted out to Muhammed Omer and demanded and explanation.

Similarly, the Dutch Embassy in Israel reportedly has raised the issue with the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

The Shin Beth, Israel’s chief domestic security agency, controls all aspects of Palestinian lives and is widely believed to systematically and grossly violate the basic human rights of Palestinians.

Reuters Photo

I wanted to have a record of this brilliant letter the next time someone asks me why I write about Israel instead of say, Sudan: Something bad does not cease to be bad because something else is bad too.

http://annies-letters.blogspot.com/2008/06/hypocrisy-over-israel-boycott.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/letters/letters-education-849939.html

'Hypocrisy' over Israel boycott

Sir: When I was President of the Association of University Teachers, a predecessor of the University and College Union, we passed resolutions critical of China but not of Israel; now it's the other way round. Contrary to Dr Hutchison (letter, 17 June), there neither was nor is anything illogical or hypocritical here: the boot is on the other foot.

If we decide not to oppose any evils because we cannot oppose them all, we entirely trivialise the concept of evil. The list of morally similar things is always indefinitely long and always disputable at every point, because similar things are always a bit different. The demand that we check off the entire list before we speak out against, say, Israel or China is a demand that would cause all moral language to die in our mouths.

Something bad does not cease to be bad because something else is bad too. We constantly face rhetoric that changes the subject from bad acts in the world to the state of mind or alleged hypocrisy of those who condemn those acts, rhetoric which is really a sign of guilty conscience.

Martin Hughes

Wokingham, Berkshire

Sir: P J Stewart and Sara Cohen (letters: 11, 12 June) both make pertinent and helpful points. Despite the superficial divergence of their perspectives, they identify two important truths central to the tragedy of Palestine.

One: the Arab struggle was and is against Zionism, not Jews. Two: without the West's acquiescence to Zionist terror, Jews and Arabs would still be co-inhabiting a region they had shared for centuries.

Stan Brennan

London N8

An excellent analysis of Zionist thought and actions re Palestine's natives; the Nakba didn't end in 1948; it continues as Zionists continue a calculated plan of action to grab more land and rid it of its inhabitants.

From Annie's Letters

Zionism's Dead End : Separation or ethnic cleansing? Israel's encaging of Gaza aims to achieve both by Jonathan Cook

June 28, 2008

Zionism's Dead End

Separation or ethnic cleansing? Israel's encaging of Gaza aims to achieve both
by Jonathan Cook

The following is taken from a talk delivered at the Conference for the Right of Return and the Secular Democratic State, held in Haifa on June 21.

In 1895 Theodor Herzl, Zionism's chief prophet, confided in his diary that he did not favor sharing Palestine with the natives. Better, he wrote, to "try to spirit the penniless [Palestinian] population across the border by denying it any employment in our own country … Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly."

He was proposing a program of Palestinian emigration enforced through a policy of strict separation between Jewish immigrants and the indigenous population. In simple terms, he hoped that, once Zionist organizations had bought up large areas of Palestine and owned the main sectors of the economy, Palestinians could be made to leave by denying them rights to work the land or labor in the Jewish-run economy. His vision was one of transfer, or ethnic cleansing, through ethnic separation.

Herzl was suggesting that two possible Zionist solutions to the problem of a Palestinian majority living in Palestine – separation and transfer – were not necessarily alternatives but rather could be mutually reinforcing. Not only that: he believed, if they were used together, the process of ethnic cleansing could be made to appear voluntary, the choice of the victims. It may be that this was both his most enduring legacy and his major innovation to settler colonialism.

In recent years, with the Palestinian population under Israeli rule about to reach parity with the Jewish population, the threat of a Palestinian majority has loomed large again for the Zionists. Not surprisingly, debates about which of these two Zionist solutions to pursue, separation or transfer, have resurfaced.

Today these solutions are ostensibly promoted by two ideological camps loosely associated with Israel's center-left (Labor and Kadima) and right (Likud and Yisrael Beiteinu). The modern political arguments between them turn on differing visions of the nature of a Jewish state originally put forward by Labor and Revisionist Zionists.

To make sense of the current political debates, and the events taking place inside Israel and in the West Bank and Gaza, let us first examine the history of these two principles in Zionist thinking.

During the early waves of Jewish immigration to Palestine, the dominant Labor Zionist movement and its leader David Ben Gurion advanced policies much in line with Herzl's goal. In particular, they promoted the twin principles of "Redemption of the Land" and "Hebrew Labor", which took as their premise the idea that Jews needed to separate themselves from the native population in working the land and employing only other Jews. By being entirely self-reliant in Palestine, Jews could both "cure" themselves of their tainted Diaspora natures and deprive the Palestinians of the opportunity to subsist in their own homeland.

At the forefront of this drive was the Zionist trade union federation, the Histadrut, which denied membership to Palestinians – and, for many years after the establishment of the Jewish state, even to the remnants of the Palestinian population who became Israeli citizens.

But if separation was the official policy of Labor Zionism, behind the scenes Ben Gurion and his officials increasingly appreciated that it would not be enough in itself to achieve their goal of a pure ethnic state. Land sales remained low, at about 6 per cent of the territory, and the Jewish-owned parts of the economy relied on cheap Palestinian labor

Instead, the Labor Zionists secretly began working on a program of ethnic cleansing. After 1937 and Britain's Peel Report proposing partition of Palestine, Ben Gurion was more open about transfer, recognizing that a Jewish state would be impossible unless most of the indigenous population was cleared from within its borders.

Israel's new historians have acknowledged Ben Gurion's commitment to transfer. As Benny Morris notes, for example, Ben Gurion "understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst." The Israeli leadership therefore developed a plan for ethnic cleansing under cover of war, compiling detailed dossiers on the communities that needed to be driven out and then passing on the order, in Plan Dalet, to commanders in the field. During the 1948 war the new state of Israel was emptied of at least 80 per cent of its indigenous population.

In physically expelling the Palestinian population, Ben Gurion responded to the political opportunities of the day and recalibrated the Labor Zionism of Herzl. In particular he achieved the goal of displacement desired by Herzl while also largely persuading the world through a campaign of propaganda that the exodus of the refugees was mostly voluntary. In one of the most enduring Zionist myths, convincingly rebutted by modern historians, we are still told that the refugees left because they were told to do so by the Arab leadership.

The other camp, the Revisionists, had a far more ambivalent attitude to the native Palestinian population. Paradoxically, given their uncompromising claim to a Greater Israel embracing both banks of the Jordan River (thereby including not only Palestine but also the modern state of Jordan), they were more prepared than the Labor Zionists to allow the natives to remain where they were.

Vladimir Jabotinsky, the leader of Revisionism, observed in 1938 – possibly in a rebuff to Ben Gurion's espousal of transfer – that "it must be hateful for any Jew to think that the rebirth of a Jewish state should ever be linked with such an odious suggestion as the removal of non-Jewish citizens". The Revisionists, it seems, were resigned to the fact that the enlarged territory they desired would inevitably include a majority of Arabs. They were therefore less concerned with removing the natives than finding a way to make them accept Jewish rule.

In 1923, Jabotinsky formulated his answer, one that implicitly included the notion of separation but not necessarily transfer: an "iron wall" of unremitting force to cow the natives into submission. In his words, the agreement of the Palestinians to their subjugation could be reached only "through the iron wall, that is to say, the establishment in Palestine of a force that will in no way be influenced by Arab pressure".

An enthusiast of British imperial rule, Jabotinsky envisioned the future Jewish state in simple colonial terms, as a European elite ruling over the native population.

Inside Revisionism, however, there was a shift from the idea of separation to transfer that mirrored developments inside Labor Zionism. This change was perhaps more opportunistic than ideological, and was particularly apparent as the Revisionists sensed Ben Gurion's success in forging a Jewish state through transfer.

One of Jabotinsky disciples, Menachem Begin, who would later become a Likud prime minister, was leader in 1948 of the Irgun militia that committed one of the worst atrocities of the war. He led his fighters into the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin where they massacred over 100 inhabitants, including women and children.

Savage enough though these events were, Begin and his followers consciously inflated the death toll to more than 250 through the pages of the New York Times. Their goal was to spread terror among the wider Palestinian population and encourage them to flee. He later happily noted: "Arabs throughout the country, induced to believe wild tales of 'Irgun butchery', were seized with limitless panic and started to flee for their lives. This mass flight soon developed into a maddened, uncontrollable stampede."

Subsequently, other prominent figures on the right openly espoused ethnic cleansing, including the late General Rehavam Ze'evi, whose Moledet party campaigned in elections under the symbol of the Hebrew character "tet", for transfer. His successor, Benny Elon, a settler leader and rabbi, adopted a similar platform: "Only population transfer can bring peace".

The intensity of the separation vs transfer debate subsided after 1948 and the ethnic cleansing campaign that removed most of the native Palestinian population from the Jewish state. The Palestinian minority left behind – a fifth of the population but a group, it was widely assumed, that would soon be swamped by Jewish immigration – was seen as an irritation but not yet as a threat. It was placed under a military government for nearly two decades, a system designed to enforce separation between Palestinians and Jews inside Israel. Such separation – in education, employment and residence – exists to this day, even if in a less extreme form.

The separation-transfer debate was chiefly revived by Israel's conquest of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. With Israel's erasure of the Green Line, and the effective erosion of the distinction between Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories, the problem of a Palestinian majority again loomed large for the Zionists.

Cabinet debates from 1967 show the quandary faced by the government. Almost alone, Moshe Dayan favored annexation of both the newly captured territories and the Palestinian population there. Others believed that such a move would be seen as transparently colonialist and rapidly degenerate into an apartheid system of Jewish citizens and Palestinian non-citizens. In their minds, Jabotinsky's solution of an iron wall was no longer viable.

But equally, in a more media-saturated era, which at least paid lip-service to human rights, the government could see no way to expel the Palestinian population on a large scale and annex the land, as Ben Gurion had done earlier. Also possibly, they could see no way of persuading the world that such expulsions should be characterized as voluntary.

Israel therefore declined to move decisively in either direction, neither fully carrying out a transfer program nor enforcing strict separation. Instead it opted for an apartheid model that accommodated Dayan's suggestion of a "creeping annexation" of the occupied territories that he rightly believed would go largely unnoticed by the West.

The separation embodied in South African apartheid differed from Herzl's notion of separation in one important respect: in apartheid, the "other" population was a necessary, even if much abused, component of the political arrangement. As the exiled Palestinian thinker Azmi Bishara has noted, in South Africa "racial segregation was not absolute. It took place within a framework of political unity. The racist regime saw blacks as part of the system, an ingredient of the whole. The whites created a racist hierarchy within the unity."

In other words, the self-reliance, or unilateralism, implicit in Herzl's concept of separation was ignored for many years of Israel's occupation. The Palestinian labor force was exploited by Israel just as black workers were by South Africa. This view of the Palestinians was formalized in the Oslo accords, which were predicated on the kind of separation needed to create a captive labor force.

However, Yitzhak Rabin's version of apartheid embodied by the Oslo process, and Binyamin Netanyahu's opposition in upholding Jabotinsky's vision of Greater Israel, both deviated from Herzl's model of transfer through separation. This is largely why each political current has been subsumed within the recent but more powerful trend towards "unilateral separation".

Not surprisingly, the policy of "unilateral separation" emerged from among the Labor Zionists, advocated primarily by Ehud Barak. However, it was soon adopted by many members of Likud too. Ultimately its success derived from the conversion to its cause of Greater Israel's arch-exponent, Ariel Sharon. He realized the chief manifestations of unilateral separation, the West Bank wall and the Gaza disengagement, as well breaking up Israel's right-wing to create a new consensus party, Kadima.

In the new consensus, the transfer of Palestinians could be achieved through imposed and absolute separation – just as Herzl had once hoped. After the Gaza disengagement, the next stage was promoted by Sharon's successor, Ehud Olmert. His plan for convergence, limited withdrawals from the West Bank in which most settlers would remain in place, has been dropped, but its infrastructure – the separation wall – continues to be built.

How will modern Zionists convert unilateral separation into transfer? How will Herzl's original vision of ethnic cleansing enforced through strict ethnic separation be realized in today's world?

The current siege of Gaza offers the template. After disengagement, Israel has been able to cut off at will Gazans' access to aid, food, fuel and humanitarian services. Normality has been further eroded by sonic booms, random Israeli air attacks, and repeated small-scale invasions that have inflicted a large toll of casualties, particularly among civilians.

Gaza's imprisonment has stopped being a metaphor and become a daily reality. In fact, Gaza's condition is far worse than imprisonment: prisoners, even of war, expect to have their humanity respected, and be properly sheltered, cared for, fed and clothed. Gazans can no longer rely on these staples of life.

The ultimate goal of this extreme form of separation is patently clear: transfer. By depriving Palestinians of the basic conditions of a normal life, it is assumed that they will eventually choose to leave – in what can once again be sold to the world as a voluntary exodus. And if Palestinians choose to abandon their homeland, then in Zionist thinking they have forfeited their right to it – just as earlier generations of Zionists believed the Palestinian refugees had done by supposedly fleeing during the 1948 and 1967 wars.

Is this process of transfer inevitable? I think not. The success of a modern policy of "transfer through separation" faces severe limitations.

First, it depends on continuing US global hegemony and blind support for Israel. Such support is likely to be undermined by the current American misadventures in the Middle East, and a gradual shift in the balance of power to China, Russia and India.

Second, it requires a Zionist worldview that departs starkly not only from international law but also from the values upheld by most societies and ideologies. The nature of Zionist ambitions is likely to be ever harder to conceal, as is evident from the tide of opinion polls showing that Western publics, if not their governments, believe Israel to be one of the biggest threats to world order.

And third, it assumes that the Palestinians will remain passive during their slow eradication. The historical evidence most certainly shows that they will not.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43005

GAZA CITY, Jun 28 (IPS) - Mohammed Omer, the Gaza correspondent of IPS, and
joint winner of the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, was
strip-searched at gunpoint, assaulted and abused by Israeli security officials
at the Allenby border crossing between Jordan and the West Bank on Thursday as
he tried to return home to Gaza.

Omer, a resident of Rafah in the south of Gaza, and previous recipient of the
New America Media's Best Youth Voice award several years ago, was returning
from London where he had just collected his Gellhorn Prize, and from several
European capitals where he had speaking engagements, including a meeting with
Greek parliamentarians.

Omer's trip was sponsored by The Washington Report, and the Dutch embassy in
Tel Aviv was responsible for coordinating Omer's travel plans and his security
permit to leave Gaza with Israeli officials.

Israel controls the borders of Gaza and severely restricts the entrance and
exit of Gazans allegedly on grounds of security. Human rights organisations
accuse the Israelis of using security as a pretext to apply collective
punishment indiscriminately.

While waiting in Amman on his way back, Omer eventually received the requisite
coordination and security clearance from the Israelis to return to Gaza after
this had initially been delayed by several days, he told IPS.

Accompanied by Dutch diplomats, Omer passed through the Jordanian side of the
border without incident. However, after arrival on the Israeli side, trouble
began. He informed a female soldier that he was returning home to Gaza. He was
repeatedly asked where Gaza was, and told that he had neither a permit nor any
coordination to cross.

Omer explained that he did indeed have permission and coordination but was
nevertheless taken to a room by Israel's domestic intelligence agency the Shin
Bet, where he was isolated for an hour and a half without explanation.

"Eventually I was asked whether I had a knife or gun on me even though I had
already passed through the x-ray machine, had my luggage searched, and was in
the company of Dutch diplomats," Omer said.

His luggage was again searched, and security then proceeded to go through every
document and paper he had on him, taking down the names and numbers of the
European parliamentary officials he had met.

The Shin Bet officials then started to make fun of the European
parliamentarians, and mocked Omer for being "the prize-winning journalist".

The Gazan journalist was repeatedly asked why he was returning to "the hell of
Gaza after we allowed you to leave." To this he responded that he wanted to be
a voice for the voiceless. He was told he was a "trouble-maker".

The security men also demanded he show all the money he had on him, and
particular attention was paid to the British pounds he was carrying. His
Gellhorn prize money had been awarded in British pounds but he was not carrying
the entire sum on him bodily, something the investigators refused to believe.

After being unable to produce the prize money, he was ordered to strip naked.

"At first I refused but then I had an M16 (gun) pointed in my face and my
clothes were forcibly removed, even my underwear," Omer said.

At this point Omer broke down and pleaded for an end to such treatment. He said
he was told, "you haven't seen anything yet." Every cavity of his body was
searched as one of the investigators pinned him down on the floor, placing his
boot on Omer's neck. Omer began vomiting, and fainted.

When he came round his eyelids were being forcibly opened and his eardrums
probed by an Israeli military doctor, who was also armed. He was then dragged
along the floor by his feet by the Shin Bet officials, with his head repeatedly
banging on the floor, to a Palestinian ambulance which had been called.

"I eventually woke up in a Palestinian hospital with the doctors trying to
reassure me," Omer told IPS.

The Dutch Foreign Ministry at the Hague told IPS that Foreign Minister Maxime
Zerhagen spoke to the Israeli ambassador to The Netherlands and demanded an
explanation.

The Dutch embassy in Tel Aviv has also raised the issue with the Israeli
Foreign Ministry, which in turn has promised to investigate the incident and
get back to the Dutch officials.

Ahmed Dadou, spokesman from the Dutch Foreign Ministry at the Hague told IPS,
"We are taking this whole incident very seriously as we don't believe the
behaviour of the Israeli officials is in accordance with a modern democracy.

"We are further concerned about the mistreatment of an internationally renowned
journalist trying to go about his daily business," added Dadou.

A spokeswoman at the Israeli Foreign Press Association said she was unaware of
the incident.

Lisa Dvir from the Israeli Airport Authority (IAA), the body responsible for
controlling Israel's borders, told IPS that the IAA was neither aware of Omer's
journalist credentials nor of his coordination.

"We would like to know who Omer spoke to in regard to receiving coordination to
pass through Allenby. We offer journalists a special service when passing
through our border crossings, and had we known about his arrival this would not
have happened.

"I'm not aware of the events that followed his detention, and we are not
responsible for the behaviour of the Shin Bet."

In the meantime, Omer is still traumatised and in pain. "I'm struggling to
breathe and have pain in my head and stomach and will be going back to hospital
for further medical examinations," he said. (END/2008)

http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_9681308?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com

By Bill Fletcher Jr.
Article Launched: 06/24/2008 01:31:45 AM PDT


The Israeli-Palestinian conflict often inspires a sense of powerlessness. What can average Americans do to bring an end to this decades-old conflict when our leaders have failed so miserably?

And what good is speaking out about Israel's occupation of Palestinian land as the primary obstacle to peace when even former President Jimmy Carter and Nobel Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu are condemned for their criticism of Israeli policies?

This month in San Jose, average Americans will have the opportunity to take a stand for peace and justice in the Middle East. The Presbyterian Church U.S.A.'s General Assembly began Saturday and runs through Sunday at the San Jose Convention Center. At the meeting, which takes place once every two years, delegates will make policy decisions for the 2.3 million-member denomination.

They will consider corporate engagement, up to divestment, with companies that profit from the obstacles to a just peace in Israel and Palestine. The church is considering approaches to Caterpillar, ITT Industries, Motorola and United Technologies.

The TransAfrica Forum, an organization which I was honored to head, played a leading role in the movement to end apartheid in South Africa. Corporate engagement was one of the most powerful tools in our non-violent arsenal. It was the right moral decision then and it is the right moral decision now. Just as it worked in South Africa, it can work in Palestine and Israel.

Yet Presbyterian delegates are being pressured to vote against similar measures. Some say the tactic unfairly singles out Israel for condemnation. But it is not the country we condemn; it's a system of segregation and inequality.

The Israeli government has established in the Occupied Palestinian Territories a regime of systematic discrimination. It maintains two systems of laws, and a person's rights are based on national origin. Palestinian land is confiscated to build Israeli-only settlements and roads. Palestinians wait hours in line at more than 500 Israeli checkpoints and roadblocks in the West Bank, while Jewish settlers speed by on modern, well-lit highways.

As Carter, and many Israelis have said, as long as this dual system exists, any peace agreement between Israel and Palestine will be impossible. Palestinians compare Israeli policies to those of apartheid in South Africa. Former Israeli Attorney General Michael Ben-Yair wrote in 2002, "In effect, we established an apartheid regime in the occupied territories immediately following their capture. That regime exists to this day."

South Africans who led the fight against apartheid, like Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former United Nations envoy John Dugard, make similar comparisons.

To the detriment of both Israelis and Palestinians, we provide financial and diplomatic support to maintain these separate and unequal policies. Israel is the No. 1 recipient of U.S. foreign aid: roughly $2.5 billion last year alone. Our government has cast more than 40 vetoes in the United Nations Security Council to shield Israel from international condemnation.

Divestment from companies that benefit from the occupation is an opportunity for American citizens to do what our government leaders have refused to do: say that our money will not fund human rights abuses any longer.

With humbleness, with love, with compassion for Palestinians and Israelis, I believe in the possibility that both can live as neighbors with security, dignity and respect. As it did in South Africa, corporate engagement, including divestment, can help make that possibility a reality.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BILL FLETCHER JR. is executive editor of www.blackcommentator.com and former president of the TransAfrica Forum, which led the U.S. movement to overthrow apartheid in South Africa during the 1980s.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/24/opinion/edmakdisi.php

Occupation by bureaucracy

By Saree Makdisi

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

A cease-fire went into effect in Gaza last week, offering some respite from the violence that has killed hundreds of Palestinians and five Israelis in recent months. It will do nothing, however, to address the underlying cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Intermittent spectacular violence may draw the world's attention to the occupied Palestinian territories, but our obsession with violence actually distracts us from the real nature of Israel's occupation, which is its smothering bureaucratic control of everyday Palestinian life.

This is an occupation ultimately enforced by tanks and bombs, and through the omnipresent threat, if not application, of violence. But its primary instruments are application forms, residency permits, population registries and title deeds. On its own, no cease-fire will relieve the beleaguered Palestinians.

Gaza is virtually cut off from the outside world by Israeli power. Elsewhere, in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the ongoing Israeli occupation comprehensively infuses all the normally banal activities of Palestinians' everyday lives: applying for permission to access one's own land; applying for what Israel regards as the privilege - rather than the right - of living with one's spouse and children; applying for permission to drive one's car; to dig a well; to visit relatives in the next town; to visit Jerusalem; to go to work; to school; to university; to hospital. There is hardly any dimension of everyday life in Palestine that is not minutely managed by Israeli military or bureaucratic personnel.

Partly, this occupation of everyday life enables the Israelis to maintain their vigilant control over the Palestinian population. But it also serves the purpose of slowly, gradually removing Palestinians from their land, forcing them to make way for Jewish settlers.

Just in 2006, for example, Israel stripped 1,363 Jerusalem Palestinians of the right to live in the city in which many of them were born. It did this not by dramatically forcing dozens of people at a time onto trucks and dumping them at the city limits, but rather by quietly stripping them, one by one, of their Jerusalem residency papers.

This in turn was enabled by a series of bureaucratic procedures. While Israel continues to violate international law by building exclusively Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem, it rarely grants building permits to Palestinian residents of the same city. Since 1967, the third of Jerusalem's population that is Palestinian has been granted just 9 percent of the city's official housing permits. The result is a growing abundance of housing for Jews and a severe shortage of housing for non-Jews - i.e., Palestinians.

In fact, 90 percent of the Palestinian territory Israel claimed to have annexed to Jerusalem after 1967 is today off-limits to Palestinian development because the land is either already built on by exclusively Jewish settlements or being reserved for their future expansion.

Denied permits, many Palestinians in Jerusalem build without them, but at considerable risk: Israel routinely demolishes Palestinian homes built without a permit. This includes over 300 homes in East Jerusalem demolished between 2004 and 2007 and 18,000 Palestinian homes in the occupied territories demolished since 1967.

One alternative has been to move to the West Bank suburbs and commute to Jerusalem. The wall cutting off East Jerusalem from the West Bank and thereby separating tens of thousands of Jerusalem Palestinians from the city of their birth has made that much more difficult.

And it too has its risks: Palestinians who cannot prove to Israel's satisfaction that Jerusalem has continuously been their "center of life" have been stripped of their Jerusalem residency papers. Without those papers, they will be expelled from Jerusalem, and confined to one of the walled-in reservoirs - of which Gaza is merely the largest example - that Israel has allocated as holding pens for the non-Jewish population of the holy land.

The expulsion of half of Palestine's Muslim and Christian population in what Palestinians call the nakba (catastrophe) of 1948 was undertaken by Israel's founders in order to clear space in which to create a Jewish state.

The nakba did not end 60 years ago, however: It continues to this very day, albeit on a smaller scale. Yet even ones and twos eventually add up. Virtually every day, another Palestinian joins the ranks of the millions removed from their native land and denied the right of return.

Their long wait will end - and this conflict will come to a lasting resolution - only when the futile attempt to maintain an exclusively Jewish state in what had previously been a vibrantly multi-religious land is abandoned.

Separation will always require threats or actual violence; a genuine peace will come not with more separation, but with the right to return to a land in which all can live as equals. Only a single democratic, secular and multicultural state offers that hope to Israelis and Palestinians, to Muslims, Jews and Christians alike.

Saree Makdisi is professor of English literature at the University of California, Los Angeles and author of "Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation."

More commententary at Comment is Free

Israel continues its ethnic cleansing. A small example: Yesterday Israel uprooted two hundred olive trees from a five hundred year old grove in Beit Hanina. Israel has already taken over two-thirds of the town's land and is now "trying to take over the remainder."

http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=30059

Israel's settlement policy in Jerusalem "is destroying history," according to Dr. Hassan Khater. "He said that there is no end to the Israeli demolition of Palestinian homes and the confiscation of land. "

http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2962&Itemid=1
Just new twists on ongoing Zionist plans to destroy Palestine's society and culture: A Palestine Center briefing summarizes Dr. Salman Abu Sitta's comments on David Ben Gurion's efforts in this regard:

One of the most historically destructive actions that David Ben Gurion, the head of the Zionist struggle for statehood and Prime Minister of Israel from 1948-54, did to establish Jewish dominance over the Arab population and land from a historical point of view was to create a committee of scholars, geographers, and theologians in the same week of February 1949 in which Israel signed its armistice agreement with Syria, whose goal was to "erase" all the names used in historic Palestine for the past five thousand years and to create new Hebrew names. "They wanted to make these names a symbol of the old link with Palestine, but unfortunately they could not find genuine Hebrew names for more than five percent of the names previously used," said Abu Sitta. These new maps and new names erased the vocabulary of the life of the people, he added, because of the way the names had recorded historic events like weddings and battles.

http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/images/fortherecord.php?ID=235

A response to an attempt to demonise Palestinans and Palestinian-Americans:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/23/israelandthepalestinians.middleeast?showallcomments=true&commentpage=2&commentposted=1

Some instances of the fine treatment Palestinians and Palestinian-Americans receive courtesy of the "light unto the nations" in Israel's ongoing ethnic cleansing campaign and attempts to keep Palestinians away from the land of their origin:

"New Jersey stand-up comedian Maysoon Zayid describes being strip-searched at Ben Gurion Airport when she was 'seven, eight, nine years old' on family trips to visit her parents original home in Palestine. On her most recent trip in July 2006, Maysoon, an American citizen, had her sanitary pad taken by officials in Ben Gurion Airport. When the search was completed, she says, the Israeli official in charge, Inbal Sharon, then refused to return her pad or allow her to get another.

"Zayid, who has cerebral palsy and was sitting in a wheelchair, was then forced to bleed publicly for hours while she waited for her flight."

Even Holocaust survivors and the elderly aren't immune:

"St. Louis resident Hedy Epstein, whose parents and extended family perished in Nazi camps, and whose story is featured in the Academy Award winning documentary 'Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport,' reports being strip searched three years ago following her participation in nonviolent protests in the West Bank. Epstein, who was 79 at the time, describes being forced to bend over for an Israeli official to search her internally."

http://umkahlil.blogspot.com/2007/03/easiest-targets-israels-abuse-of-women.html

Please don't demonise nine million people whose crime is that they happened to be born or have origins in Palestine: not Syria, not Jordan, not Lebanon, but Palestine, the land of their origin. Third generation Palestinian refugees continue the struggle for implementation of their inalienable right to return to their homes.