Not an analogy: Israel and the crime of apartheid
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- Written by Hazem Jamjoum, The Electronic Intifada Hazem Jamjoum, The Electronic Intifada
- Published: 27 April 2009 27 April 2009
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Many of the writings stemming from this analysis work to detail levels of similarity and difference with apartheid South Africa, rather than looking at apartheid as a system that can be practiced by any state. To some extent, this strong emphasis on historical comparisons is understandable given that boycott, divestment and sanctions is the central campaign called for by Palestinian civil society for solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle, and is modeled on the one that helped end South African apartheid. However, an over-emphasis on similarities and differences confines the use of the term to narrow limits. With the expanding agreement that the term "apartheid" is useful in describing the level and layout of Israel's crimes, it is important that our understanding of the "apartheid label" be deepened, both as a means of informing activism in support of the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle, and in order to most effectively make use of comparisons with other struggles.
Jerusalem settlement 'extended'
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- Written by BBC News BBC News
- Published: 27 April 2009 27 April 2009
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Construction has begun on approximately 60 new homes in a Jewish settlement in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, the Israeli campaign group Peace Now says.
The work, in East Talpiot settlement, is aimed at creating a belt around East Jerusalem that would sever it from the rest of the West Bank, the group says.
Settlements on occupied land are illegal under international law.
Israel disputes this and also argues that East Jerusalem is not subject to its pledge to freeze settlement work.
Israel's claim is based on its annexation of East Jerusalem, unrecognised by the international community, which it captured along with the West Bank and other Arab territory in the 1967 war.
'Not one centimetre'
Peace Now's Hagit Ofran said the work in East Talpiot in south-east Jerusalem aims to build "housing units for Orthodox religious Jewish families right next to the Palestinian neighbourhood of Arab al-Sawahra".
The housing complex is made up of three blocks of flats containing about 60 homes, Peace Now says.
"We are against this project, which is harming the hopes for peace," Ms Ofran said in remarks to AFP news agency.
Jerusalem municipal officials declined to comment about the building work, which Peace Now said began two months ago.
Successive Israeli governments have asserted that East Jerusalem is an "eternal, indivisible" part of Israel.
In a speech in Ramallah, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said he would not give in to Israeli or international pressure to resume negotiations if settlement construction continues.
"All I know is that there is the state of Israel, in the borders of 1967, not one centimetre more, not one centimetre less. Anything else, I don't accept," Mr Abbas said.
About 200,000 Israeli Jews live in homes in East Jerusalem, with a further 250,000 settlers living in other parts of the West Bank, on land Palestinian negotiators have sought as part of a future Palestinian state.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/8020825.stm
Published: 2009/04/27 13:02:36 GMT
© BBC MMIX
The killing of Bassem Aburahma
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- Written by Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD Mazin Qumsiyeh, PhD
- Published: 27 April 2009 27 April 2009
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In this video tape, Bassem Aburahma (nick named ElFeel, the elephant, for he was always thought of as a giant among his peers) is seen pleading with Israeli soldiers to wait (saying Raiga in Hebrew) as Palestinians, Israelis and Internationals protested the land confiscation and building of the apartheid fence on vilage land. The soldiers then shoot Bassem point blank with a high velocity gas grenade which kills him within five minutes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlbzuZ_50mU
and here is a video of the funeral the next day
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F91H8sR64Ro
Non-violent protests against West Bank barrier turn increasingly dangerous
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- Written by Rory McCarthy in Bil'in, guardian.co.uk Rory McCarthy in Bil'in, guardian.co.uk
- Published: 27 April 2009 27 April 2009
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Palestinian demonstrations intended to be peaceful met with Israeli teargas, stun grenades and sometimes live ammunition
It began calmly enough with a march down the high street after midday prayers at the mosque. Palestinian villagers were surrounded by dozens of foreigners singing and waving flags. They turned and headed out to the olive-tree fields and up towards the broad path of Israel's West Bank barrier. There, behind a concrete hilltop bunker, the Israeli soldiers looked down on them.
The crowd approached the barrier, still singing. One man flew a paper kite shaped as a plane. "This land is a closed military zone," an Israeli soldier shouted in flawless Arabic over a loudspeaker. "You are not allowed near the wall." Then the soldiers fired a barrage of teargas.
It has been like this every Friday in the village of Bil'in for more than four years – the most persistent popular demonstration against Israel's vast steel and concrete barrier. It is a protest founded on non-violence that is spreading to other West Bank villages. But it has become increasingly dangerous.
On April 17, on the hillside at Bil'in, a Palestinian named Basem Abu Rahmeh, 31, was shot with a high-velocity Israeli teargas canister that sliced a hole into his chest, caused massive internal bleeding and quickly killed him. Video footage shot by another demonstrator shows he was unarmed, many metres from the barrier and posing no threat to the soldiers.
The Israeli military said it faced a "violent and illegal riot" and is investigating. On Friday the demonstrators at Bil'in wore Rameh's image on T-shirts and carried it on posters.
Last month another demonstrator, an American named Tristan Anderson, 38, was hit in the head by an identical high-velocity teargas canister in a protest against the barrier at the nearby village of Na'alin. He was severely injured, losing the sight in his right eye and suffering brain damage. "To shoot peaceful demonstrators is really horrifying to us," said his mother, Nancy.
Friday's demonstration lasted around three hours. The crowd repeatedly surged towards the fence, then retreated under clouds of teargas. The military sounded a constant, high-pitched siren, interspersed with warnings in Arabic and Hebrew: "Go back. You with the flag, go back" and, incongruously, in English: "You are entering a naval vessel exclusion zone. Reverse course immediately."
The Bil'in demonstration was always intended to be non-violent, although on Friday, as is often the case, there were half a dozen younger, angrier men lobbing stones at the soldiers with slingshots. The Israeli military, for its part, fires teargas, stun grenades, rubber-coated bullets and sometimes live ammunition at the crowd.
There have long been Palestinian advocates of non-violence, but they were drowned out by the militancy of the second intifada, the uprising that began in late 2000 and erupted into waves of appalling suicide bombings.
Eyad Burnat, 36, has spent long hours in discussions with the young men of Bil'in, a small village of fewer than 2,000, convincing them of the merits of "civil grassroots resistance".
"Of course it gets more difficult when someone is killed," said Burnat, who heads the demonstration. "But we've faced these problems in the past. We've had more than 60 people arrested and still they go back to non-violence. We've made a strategic decision."
Some, like the moderate Palestinian MP Mustafa Barghouti, hope this might be the start of a broader movement throughout Palestinian society. "It is a spark that is spreading," he said in Bil'in. "It gives an alternative to the useless negotiations and to those who say only violence can help."
But it is not so much that all the young men of the village are converted to the peaceful cause, rather that they respect and follow their elders. "I personally don't believe in non-violent resistance," said Nayef al-Khatib, 21, an accountancy student. "They've taken our land by force so we should take it back from them by force."
The barrier at Bil'in cuts off the village from more than half its agricultural land and has allowed the continuing expansion of Jewish settlements, including the vast, ultra-Orthodox settlement of Modiin Illit, even though all settlements on occupied land are illegal under international law.
The international court of justice said in a 2004 advisory opinion that the barrier was illegal where it crossed into the West Bank, and even Israel's supreme court ruled nearly two years ago that the route at Bil'in did not conform to any "security-military reasons" and must be changed. But it has not been moved.
Like most of the men in the village, Nayef al-Khatib has spent time in jail. He was arrested aged 17 for demonstrating and spent a year behind bars, taking his final year of high school from his prison cell. That jail term means he cannot now obtain a permit to travel to Jerusalem or across to Jordan and is often held for hours at Israeli military checkpoints inside the West Bank. "But it was an honour for me. Now I'm like the older men," he said.
Some of those older men are influential. Ahmad al-Khatib, 32, was once a member of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, a prominent militant group, and was jailed for a year for transporting weapons. Now he is committed to non-violence, even objecting to the stone throwers.
"I don't apologise for what I did, but I'm not going back to it," he said. "We are an occupied nation according to international law and we have the right to resist, though that doesn't mean I support suicide bombers. But I don't want to resist all my life."
He argues that a non-violent strategy brings fewer Palestinian casualties. "I have no problem dying to get back my land, but I'd say to hell with my land if it just brought back our martyr who died last week. The life of a human being is more important than the land itself."
Often the most sensitive issue for the villagers has not been whether to take up arms, but whether to accept in their midst so many foreigners, and in particular so many Israeli demonstrators. Ahmad al-Khatib said it was the "most disputed question" and that many feared the Israelis were spying on them until they saw they, too, were being injured and arrested.
One of the first Israelis to join the Bil'in protest in its earliest days was Jonathan Pollack, 27, an activist and member of Anarchists Against the Wall who lives in Jaffa, just south of Tel Aviv. Although they warmly welcome him now, it was tense at first. "I'm still not one of their own and I don't pretend to be," he said.
Unlike most other joint peace initiatives, in this case the Israelis are in the minority and in the background. "I think it is very important that the struggle is Palestinian-led and that the colonial power relations are knowingly reversed," said Pollack.
Clinton’s Mideast Pirouette
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- Written by ROGER COHEN ROGER COHEN
- Published: 26 April 2009 26 April 2009
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The criticism of the center-right government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come from an unlikely source: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She’s transitioned with aplomb from the calculation of her interests that she made as a senator from New York to a cool assessment of U.S. interests. These do not always coincide with Israel’s.
I hear that Clinton was shocked by what she saw on her visit last month to the West Bank. This is not surprising. The transition from Israel’s first-world hustle-bustle to the donkeys, carts and idle people beyond the separation wall is brutal. If Clinton cares about one thing, it’s human suffering.
In fact, you don’t so much drive into the Palestinian territories these days as sink into them. Everything, except the Jewish settlers’ cars on fenced settlers-only highways, slows down. The buzz of business gives way to the clunking of hammers.
The whole desolate West Bank scene is punctuated with garrison-like settlements on hilltops. If you’re looking for a primer on colonialism, this is not a bad place to start.
Most Israelis never see this, unless they’re in the army. Clinton witnessed it. She was, I understand, troubled by the humiliation around her.
Now, she has warned Netanyahu to get off “the sidelines” with respect to Palestinian peace efforts. Remember that the Israeli prime minister and his right-wing Likud party have still not accepted even the theory of a two-state solution.
In House testimony last week, Clinton said: “For Israel to get the kind of strong support it is looking for vis-à-vis Iran, it can’t stay on the sidelines with respect to the Palestinians and the peace efforts. They go hand in hand.”
That was a direct rebuke to comments from Netanyahu aides who told the Washington Post Israel would not move on peace talks until it sees the United States check Iran’s nuclear program and rising regional influence.
Although I don’t agree with the forms of linkage being made by Netanyahu and Clinton between Iran and an Israeli-Palestinian peace — the issue is not how to threaten Iran but how to bring it inside the tent — I agree with both of them that a link exists. At Madrid, at Oslo and at Annapolis, over a 16-year span, attempts were made to advance peace while excluding Iran. That doesn’t work; it won’t work now.
The trick is to usher Israel-Palestine peace efforts and the quest for a U.S.-Iran rapprochement along in parallel.
That’s why it’s so important that Clinton told Netanyahu that he can’t slip away from working for peace — and that means stopping settlements now — by taking an Iran detour.
Clinton also indicated an important shift on Hamas, which the State Department calls a terrorist group. While stressing that no funds would flow to Hamas “or any entity controlled by it,” she argued for keeping American options open on a possible Palestinian unity government between the moderate Fatah and Hamas.
So long as a unity government meets three conditions — renounces violence, recognizes Israel’s right to exist and abides by past agreements — the United States would be prepared to deal with it, including on $900 million in proposed aid, Clinton indicated. Washington does business with a Lebanese government in which Hezbollah controls 11 of 30 seats, although Hezbollah is also deemed a terrorist group.
Such a changed U.S. policy makes a lot more sense than the previous one, which insisted on Hamas itself — rather than any Palestinian unity government — meeting the three conditions. No peace can be made by pretending Hamas does not exist, which is why advancing Palestinian unity must be a U.S. priority.
This sensible shift will anger Israel, although it deals indirectly with Hamas through Egypt. Israel’s de jure stand on Hamas — that it must recognize Israel before any talks begin — is wildly at odds with Israel’s de facto methodology since 1948.
So it’s a week in which I cheer Clinton, although her reference to “crippling sanctions” against Iran if the proposed rapprochement fails was a mistake. Sanctions haven’t worked and won’t.
Tehran will not come to the table if it sees Obama’s extended hand as just a deceptive prelude to “crippling” measures. My advice to Tehran: watch what Obama says. He’s driving Iran policy.
Obama’s doing it in a way that means the Israeli-American friction evident in Clinton’s remarks will be a theme of his first year in office. As Lee Hamilton, the president of the Woodrow Wilson Center, told me: “Initiatives are underway that show the United States is going to have some major differences with Israel.”
He also said Netanyahu is “a little more flexible than maybe he’s given credit for.”
Netanyahu as Begin the peacemaker? It’s not impossible. Nor is Obama to Tehran. Provided the president pushes on the two fronts at once.
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