umkahlil

Nablus: February 25



February 26



An Appeal to all Conscience Hearts Worldwide


On Sunday corresponding to 25/2/2007, more than 120 Israeli Military Vehicles raided Nablus City on which curfew was imposed particularly on the Old City and its surrounding neighborhoods. Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) started a wide and vicious campaign on the City and its belongings; two houses were demolished in the Old City, another was set on fire at Al-Makhfyah Neighborhood, and more than 100 doors of “commercial stores” were destroyed, not to mention the damage brought upon the entrance of every house on the pretext of searching for “wanted people”.

In the same context, IOF surrounded the City’s hospitals; searched ambulances, and suppressed the work of the medical teams at the hospitals, which caused a severe and negative impact upon patients and their treatment.

The new, yet old scenario of Israeli Forces’ Invasion upon the City has made all Health Institutions work on activating their emergency plans to face this ferocious operation.

According to sources from hospitals and field institutions more than 150 persons were arrested, 40 citizens were injured, and a citizen was killed while being on his balcony.

IOF actions that resembled in taking over buildings have caused fear and terror among citizens; IOF tend to detain people in their houses i.e. putting more than 20 individuals in one room and prevent them from accessing to their cell phones and even to their refrigerators. We had dozens of calls from imprisoned people, and we barely reached them, many of them were children, women, and some suffering from chronic diseases (hyper blood pressure, diabetes…etc…).

Israeli Occupation Forces have inhibited deliberately the work of our medical teams; the Israeli soldiers detained for more than 3 hours 5 of our volunteers; in another area 3 of our volunteers were beaten up by IOF; more than 35 of field workers at the Old City from different institutions were held as well; ambulances were prevented from reaching the Old City or even entering it.

In the past two days, our teams at UHCC’s main headquarter and the ones working in the field have received hundreds of calls and appeals from citizens under detention, all asking to be provided with babies’ milk, bread, and medications particularly to those suffering from chronic diseases. We were not able to answer all the calls received due to the Israelis’ arrogance that prohibited us from reaching afflicted families and due to being short in hand, as we did not have enough supplies.


In no pre-incident, IOF have intruded the broadcast of local TV and Radio Stations to put on air announcements threatening the citizens from offering help to “wanted people” and asking them to report on such people and in the same time it released a list of names for the “wanted people” on the working local frequencies.

We call upon all Conscience Hearts to help and offer us humanitarian aid from medications and babies’ milk to fulfill our vocational, national, and humanitarian duties towards our people in this Inhuman and Brutal Israeli behaviors brought on the Palestinian Territories in General and Nablus City in Particular, which is under continuous siege for the past 5 years.

We call upon all International, Law, and Humanitarian Institutions, International Red Cross, and WHO to condemn and denounce the Israelis’ Oppression that violates and infringes all International Laws and Treaties.

It is noteworthy, that Nablus City became a scene for killing and destruction during the day and the night by the Israeli Occupation Forces who announced that their campaign has not ended…

We in Union of Health Care Committees (UHCC) call upon you to help & support us in any manner you see convenient; we are now more than any time else in need for your aid & assistance, to be able to serve our people everywhere.


Union of Health Care Committees (UHCC)
Al-Moutanabi St. Fraitkh Bldg. Nablus-Palestine.

Tele-Fax: 00972 9 2372432, 2336668.

Email:uhcc@palnet.com,

Website: www.uhcc-pal.org

P.O. Box: 796, Nablus-West Bank-Palestinian Authority.

Palestinian refugees in Bourj El-Barajneh Refugee Camp

They may not return to their homes although international law maintains that everyone has a right to leave his country and return to his country.

“If you cry over the ruins [al-tulul], you also cry for your own being.” Ahmad Hilmi

The other picture if from a Nefesh B N'Fesh Advertisement. Nefesh B N'Fesh encourages North American Jews to immigrate to Israel.

"They don't want us in this country," says Terry Boullata, headmistress of a private school, and narrator of this powerful film which depicts Israel's institutionalized racism. "They couldn't believe they came to a land with people." The couldn't believe that they came to a land with people so they are erasing the people who have been in the land for thousands of years. "Yitzak Rabin said, 'Yes, they were here,' and they killed him. They really perceive us as inhuman."

Terry, a Jerusalemite, will soon need a permit to travel to the West Bank, so that her children may visit their father.

"A Palestine Woman" is a powerful film produced by alternate focus which clearly shows how Israel is Judaising Jerusalem, the international city of peace; it clearly depicts Israel's land confiscations and illegal movement of settlers on to stolen Palestinian land; it clearly shows that the wall's purpose is to absorb the settlers, the "masters of the land" into Israel and to put Palestinians in thirty-three isolated cantons; it clearly depicts the inhumanity and criminality which is Zionism.

The photo of the young woman holding on to the door appeared in National Geographic's September, 1926 edition.

The other young woman from Ramallah's picture appeared in National Geographic in December, 1950. Shaheen, Naseeb. A Pictorial History of Ramallah. Beirut: Arab institute for Research and Publishing, 1992.

This film shows the effect of sanctions and checkpoints on the economy. It was made in Balata Refugee Camp.

Part I:



Part II:

Thanks to Bonsoir for this film from 1950 about the effects of the destruction of Palestinian society as a result of Zionist systematic ethnic cleansing. Few know that only one in five Palestinian refugee babies lived beyond six months after their forced removal from their homes. While the film does not mention the Zionists' responsibility for Palestinians' catastrophe, the results of massive Jewish immigration to Palestine and their penchant for the land without its people are clearly depicted. Almost sixty years and no Zionist apology, no pressure from the international community for Zionists to abide by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and UN Resolution 194. Zionists are moving toward completion of their annihilation of Palestinian society unabated.

In his introduction to Before Their Diaspora, Walid Khalidi describes Israel's application to "the newly occupied territories [1967] the very policy of systematic colonization, pursued by the Zionists in Palestine from the 1880s until 1948, that created the Palestine problem in the first place." He notes "Between June and September 1967, it expelled across the Jordan River some 250,000 inmates of the refugee camps located on the West Bank and Gaza Strip."

He continues, "Israel has facilitated its colonization of these territories through a whole gamut of administrative, legalistic, economic, psychological, and physical measures. Immediately after the cessation of fighting in June 1967, Israel annexed East Jerusalem and declared the 'unified' city its capital. The municipal boundaries were expanded to include large areas of Palestinian territory on the West Bank. Strategic parts of these areas were expropriated and housing projects completed in them to accommodate Jewish settlers 'returning home' from Russia and the United States. Bulldozers were dispatched into the Old City of Jerusalem to tear down venerable medieval Muslim religious buildings adjacent to the Wailing Wall. Dozens of Muslim family properties withing the Old City walls were seized in the name of 'public interest' and transferred to Jewish ownership. Extensive excavations were undertaken next to the foundations of the holiest of Muslim shrines without prior permission of the Muslim religious authorities. Three prosperous villages in the foothills around Latrun were literally erased from the map and their entire population expelled overnight."

Khalidi, Walid. Before Their Disapora: A Photographic History of the Palestinians 1876-1948. Washington D.C.: Institute For Palestine Studies, 1991.

Dear Senator Barack Obama,

I am thrilled that you are running for president, and I really do very much hope you get elected.
Earlier tonight I saw a bit of an interview with you and your delightful wife, which also showed footage of your very adorable daughters. A fine family indeed and I do hope your run for election is successful.

I like that you seem to have a sense of humor- and humbleness. And your name sounds like poetry.

I am writing tonight because I am very concerned about the Middle East and the way that politicians play up Israel in order to get elected. Please don't do that. Apartheid should not be praised... and really we should not be making peace with any kind of crime against humanity. Nor should we be aiding and abetting it.

I can understand why as a politician you must be careful in what you say, especially about out "friend" racist Israel.... just please don't be bullied into praising it and idolizing it. Please stay true to America- and American ideals.

Sincerely,

Anne Selden Annab, homemaker
Mechanicsburg PA USA

blogspot http://annies-letters.blogspot.com/

& published letters & comments page http://home.comcast.net/~anneseldenannab/

Ruth Raad in the traditional costume of Ramallah, circa 1943. Khalidi, Walid. Before Their Diaspora: A Photographic History of the Palestinians 1876-1948. Washington D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1991.

Hillary Clinton in a Palestinian dress with traditional embroidery.

Hillary Clinton was on hand for the press conference announcing Itamar Marcus's publication of another of what Palestinian educator Gabriel Baramki calls "poisonous attacks" of Palestinian textbooks.

Wonder how many US textbooks Clinton scrutinized before she took on the daunting task of Palestine's Arabic texts?

Disheartening to see her align herself with an American-Israeli propagandist who gets paid to cherry pick items from the Palestinian media to aid Israel in its efforts to demonise Palestinians.

Marcus is an American and an illegal settler. Did I say that? The ones who hog up all the Palestinian water for themselves.

Hillary Clinton is supposed to represent American values.

Instead she hob-nobs with falsifiers of history and this occupier of stolen property, which is a violation of the Geneva Convention, while feigning concern for Palestinian children's education:

"These textbooks don't give Palestinian children an education, they give them an indoctrination."

Unfortunate, that one running for the highest office in the land considers respect for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights "indoctrination." Marcus offers this poem (I am sure his Arabic is impeccable) from a textbook as an example of "the Palestinian demand that Israel accept millions of residents of refugee camps as part of a settlement is one of the chief obstacles to peace."

At the gates of Jaffa, oh my beloved,
And the disarray of the remains of the houses
Among the ruins and the thorns
I stood and told my eyes: Oh eyes
Let us cry
On the ruins of those who left and disappeared from them
The house calls for the one who built it.

Hillary Clinton and Itamar Marcus, ensconced in some neurotic denial that the Palestinians were not ethnically cleansed, expect Palestinian educators to join them in their neuroses, and twist Palestinians expressions of their right to return home as manifestations of hate and indoctrination.

Itamar Marcus's livelihood depends on demonising and misrepresenting Palestinians. Itamar Marcus is a "chief obstacle to peace."

And Hillary Clinton disgraces America's values and thumbs her nose at peace by embracing this textbook example of a bigot.

...almost all Zionists/Israelis advocating "peace" fail the Litmus test: supporting the Right of Return. Which tells you that the purpose of this "peace" is to legitimize Nakba and all its evil consequences. They will not succeed. Dr. Salman Abu Sitta
Author, Atlas of Palestine

Video: The Geography of Occupation

Dr. Salman Abu Sitta begins the video The Geography of Occupation with a description of how he became a refugee. He was ten when the headmaster of his boarding school, which was about forty-sixty kilometers (24-36 miles) from Abu Sitta's house, told the students, six weeks before the end of the term, that he could no longer protect them and that they would have to return home.

Dr. Abu Sitta relates how he and an older cousin began the trek home through a path frequented by Zionists in jeeps outfitted with machine guns in the front and in the back. They terrorized the local farmers and shot anyone on the road. Dr. Abu Sitta and his cousin agreed that they would hide in the wheat fields when they heard a jeep.

Once he reached home he slept for two days. Six weeks to the day the Zionists in twenty-four tanks assaulted his house and destroyed the school which his father built in 1920.

"What did we do to them?" he asks. "I'd never seen a Jew before in my life."

Dr. Abu Sitta notes that the Balfour Declaration stated that the Jews would have a "home," not a "state," "in" Palestine, not "of" Palestine. At the beginning of the British Mandate Jews comprised nine percent of Palestine's population; by the end, thirty percent. He notes that the Zionists amassed an army of 120,000, that immigrants were picked for their military prowess, including many World War II combat veterans. Contrast this to twenty-thirty home guards in each village, for a total of 2500 Palestinians. Despite discriminatory tax laws imposed by the mandate authorities on the Palestinians, Zionists managed to secure only 5.5 percent of land in Palestine by the end of the mandate.

Before the end of the Mandate Period, [and before any Arab armies entered Palestine], Zionists had expelled over one-half of Palestine's inhabitants. He states that it would have not have been possible for Arab Jews to immigrate to Palestine unless Palestine's Arabs were expelled. Zionists depopulated a total of 675 Arab villages and to insure that their people wouldn't return shot returnees they labeled "infiltrators," demolished homes, burned crops, and poisoned wells. When Zionists completed the initial faze of its ongoing ethnic cleansing, eighty-five percent of Palestine's population was disenfranchised.

He points out that the 1949 July armistice line has no value; it neither confers or denies rights; it is a temporary line and not a legal international border. Unfortunately, 111 villages have been decimated by this line, with 5-7 in Gaza suffering a similar fate, losing wells, farmland, houses, etc.

"My home is my castle," the British and Americans say. No less so for Palestinians. Many families are named after villages with Palestinian presence going back 5000 years. Eighty-eight percent of Palestinians live within 100 miles of their land; ninety-seven percent of the refugees are within sixty miles of their homes, with fifty percent of the refugees twenty-four miles away. Some can see their property from their refugee camps.

If Palestinians, without financial support and arms, were not strong in their belief of return they would not have endured fifty-eight years of brutal occupation. A human being's identity is tied to his/her patrimony. People belong to their place of origin and "defy severance of their geography. A nation's history and geography must be united."

UNGAR 194 has been reaffirmed over one hundred times in the UN. It calls for right of return and compensation for damages and revenues earned for fifty-eight years.

Israel asks the world to pay compensation in return for its legal rights to the land. Thus, Israel would secure legal rights to land paid for by others. Palestinians are united in refusing to accept compensation in return for their land and in refusing to agree to settle anywhere other than their home.