| IOP – 08, 09, 10 & 11 January 2013 |
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| Monday, 14 January 2013 | |
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While the Occupation is business as usual for Israel, there should be no business with Israel In Occupied Palestine Zionism in practice Israel’s Daily Toll on Palestinian Life, Limb, Liberty and Property (Compiled by Leslie Bravery, Palestine Human Rights Campaign POB 56150, Dominion Rd, Auckland, New Zealand www.palestine.org.nz) 08, 09, 10 and 11 January 2013 [Main source of statistics: Palestinian Monitoring Group (PMG).] Israeli Army artillery hits Gaza farmland 1 dead – 1 wounded 2 wounded as Israeli Army shoots its way into West Bank village Israeli Army destroys East Jerusalem home Israeli Army storms Northern Gaza farmland 5am home invasion: Israeli troops abduct 17-year-old youth Settler fanatics assault East Jerusalem youngsters Israeli Army and settlers storm West Bank village – wounding – agricultural sabotage Israeli Army shoots its way indiscriminately round Nablus Occupation settlers storm West Bank village – destroy 210 olive trees Armed settler terrorists open fire on village youngsters Night peace disruption and/or home invasions in 5 refugee camps and 12 towns and villages 5 attacks – 30 raids including home invasions – 4 beaten 1 dead – 9 injured 5 acts of agricultural/economic sabotage 21 taken prisoner – 34 detained – 101 restrictions of movement January 08, 09, 10 & 11 Home invasions & occupations: 01:45, the Askar refugee camp - 01:45, the Ein Beit al-Ma refugee camp - 04:00, Beit Fajjar - 20:50, Tel al-Rumeida. 01:00-03:00, Ramlah village - 05:00, Jaba'a. 08:05, Sanur. 03:20, Bethlehem. Peace disruption raids: 00:10, Kafr Ra’i - 01:35, the Arqa refugee camp. 05:00, al-Yamun - 19:20, Anabta - 21:35, Beit Furiq - 01:45, the Beit al-Ma refugee camp - 21:00, Deir Ballut - 21:00, Kafr Al-Dik - 22:40, Beit Fajjar - 03:00, the al-Urub refugee camp. 09:10, Orif - 10:00, Qusra - 09:30,Qusra - 10:35, Furiq - 06:35, Tubas - 06:35, Aqaba - 06:35, al-Far’a - 19:15, Anabta - 03:00, Quffin - 08:40, Kafr Al-Dik. 01:20, Jenin - 00:30, Burin. January 08 Palestinian attacks: none Israeli attack: Nablus – 20:50, the Israeli Army invaded and shot its way indiscriminately round the city. House demolition: Jerusalem – 18:00, the Israeli Army destroyed a home under construction in the Ras al-Amud neighbourhood. Home invasions and occupation: Hebron – 20:50, the Israeli Army invaded several homes in Tel al-Rumeida and detained several residents outside their homes. Israeli Army violence: Salfit – 19:00, Israeli troops manning the Zatara checkpoint detained a National Security Officer, assaulted him and took away his briefcase and uniform. Economic sabotage: Gaza – the Israeli Navy is enforcing a six-nautical-mile Gaza fishing zone. January 09 Palestinian attacks: none Israeli attack – agricultural sabotage: Northern Gaza – 08:00, Israeli forces, equipped with bulldozers, stormed Abu Samara farmland and opened fire. Home invasions and abduction: Jenin – 05:00, Israeli soldiers raided Jaba'a, set up a checkpoint, invaded several homes and abducted a 17-year-old youth, Mohammad Alawneh. Occupation settlement development: Salfit – the Israeli Occupation expressed its approval and admiration for a settlement outpost built on Palestinian land in Iskaka village. Occupation settler violence – Israeli Army complicity: Jerusalem – evening, Zionist fanatics stoned children in the al-Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood and beat up two of them who were being held by the Israeli Army. Economic sabotage: Gaza – the Israeli Navy is enforcing a six-nautical-mile Gaza fishing zone. January 10 Palestinian attacks: none Israeli Army attack – injuries – settler agricultural sabotage: Nablus – 09:10, a resident, Tarik Al-Safadi, was wounded by Israeli Army gunfire during the storming of Orif village by Israeli settler militants. While the settlers were damaging and uprooting olive trees, the Israeli Army opened fire on anyone who attempted to defend their property. The wounded villager was admitted to hospital. Israeli Army attack – injuries: Nablus – 10:00, the Israeli Army shot its way into Qusra village, wounding two villagers: Ammar Masamir and Mohammad Aqlam. Israeli Army violence – injury – hospitalisation: Jenin – the driver of a vehicle in Ya’bad was admitted to hospital after he was rammed by an Israeli Army Jeep. Occupation settler agricultural sabotage: Nablus – 09:30, Israeli settler militants stormed Qusra village, damaging and uprooting 210 olive trees. Armed Occupation settler terrorism – Israeli Army complicity: Nablus – 10:35, armed settler terrorists stormed Furiq village and opened fire on nearby children before withdrawing in the company of Israeli troops. Economic sabotage: Gaza – the Israeli Navy is enforcing a six-nautical-mile Gaza fishing zone. January 11 Palestinian attacks: none Israeli attack – death and injury: Northern Gaza – evening, Israeli Army positions behind the Green Line opened fire on Jabalya farmland, killing one person, Anwar al-Mamlouk (22), and wounding another. A Gaza health ministry spokesman, Ashraf al-Qidra, told Ma'an that al-Mamlouk was outdoors studying for an exam when he was killed. Non-violent resistance – tear gas grenade assault – injury – tear gas casualties: Ramallah – 12:40, one person, Mutaz Shihadeh, was injured by a tear gas grenade during an Israeli Army assault on a protest demonstration in Al-Nabi Saleh village. Several other people were overcome by Israeli tear gas and four international peace activists were taken prisoner. Non-violent resistance – tear gas casualties: Ramallah – 12:40, several people were overcome by tear gas during an Israeli Army assault on a protest demonstration in Bil’in. Economic sabotage: Gaza – the Israeli Navy is enforcing a six-nautical-mile Gaza fishing zone. Recent news updates: Veolia withdraws from California water contract bidding following outcry against its abuses of Palestinian Rights. The Davis Committee of Palestinian Rights (DCPR) is happy to report that Veolia Water North America has withdrawn as a prospective bidder on a $325 million project that would provide treated water from the Sacramento River to residents of Woodland and Davis in Yolo County, California. The announcement came at the 20 December 2012 meeting of the Woodland-Davis Clean Water Agency (Water Agency), a joint powers authority between the University of California - Davis and the cities of Woodland and Davis. Veolia’s withdrawal followed efforts by citizens of Yolo County to prevent Veolia’s bidding due to the company’s involvement in the violation of Palestinian human rights. Contact: Mikos Fabersunne, Davis Committee for Palestinian Rights. 530-747-0185, This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Posted: http://www.endtheoccupation.org/article.php?id=3432 Gaza: Israeli Army shoots one man dead and wounds another. http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=555269Palestinian activists set up protest camp in E1 area. http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=555196 Settlers destroy over 200 Nablus olive trees. http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=555158 Four children injured in Gaza house fire. http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=555180 Israel's viciousness against Bil'in captured in "Five Broken Cameras" documentary. Emad Burnat's house was declared a "closed military zone" by Israel -- but that didn't stop him from making a great film. http://electronicintifada.net/content/israels-viciousness-against-bilin-captured-five-broken-cameras-documentary/11828“My family is living through hell”: Samer Issawi speaks from gaol. http://palestinechronicle.com/my-family-is-living-through-hell-samer-issawi-speaks-from-jail/ The health risks posed by water pollution in the Gaza Strip. http://www.middleeastmonitor.com/reports/by-sawsan-ramahi/4982-the-health-risks-posed-by-water-pollution-in-the-gaza-stripIDF conscientious objector says he will not give in to pressure. "Natan Blank, 19, has been in prison for nearly two months for refusing to serve in the Israeli Army because he opposes the occupation. http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/idf-conscientious-objector-says-he-won-t-give-in-to-pressure.premium-1.492997 Israel deliberately floods east of Gaza (again!) The civil defence department in Gaza said Israel opened the floodgates of one of its dams on Wednesday in the eastern part of the Gaza Strip. http://occupiedpalestine.wordpress.com/2013/01/10/not-enough-extreme-weather-israel-deliberately-floods-east-of-gaza-again/Israeli Army attacks Arab MK while he was protesting against a home demolition. Israel even demolishes Arab homes during extreme weather, without mercy, leaving children exposed to the bitter cold. http://www.kibush.co.il/Army%20Attacks%20Arab%20MK%20While%20Protesting%20Home%20DemolitionJerusalem: Israeli soldiers take prisoner Palestinian youths. Occupation settler abuse. http://www.imemc.org/article/64856Israel soldiers burst Into the Ofer gaol, kicking and clubbing Palestinian prisoners. There are presently more than 4500 Palestinians imprisoned by Israel, including 198 children, eight women and several elected legislators and officials. http://www.imemc.org/article/64861 Settlers uproot 210 olive trees in Nablus. Palestine News Network http://english.pnn.ps/index.php/politics/3566-settlers-uproot-210-trees-in-nablus~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ A modern history of Palestine Video: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33582.htm Zionism arrived in Palestine in the late 19th Century as a colonialist movement motivated by national impulses. The colonisation of Palestine fitted well the interests and policies of the British Empire on the eve of the First World War. With the backing of Britain, the colonisation project expanded, and became a solid presence on the land after the war and with the establishment of the British mandate in Palestine (which lasted between 1918 and 1948). While this consolidation took place, the indigenous society underwent, like other societies in the rest of the Arab world, a steady process of establishing a national identity. But with one difference. While the rest of the Arab world was shaping its political identity through the struggle against European colonialism, in Palestine nationalism meant asserting your collective identity against both an exploitative British colonialism and expansionist Zionism. Thus, the conflict with Zionism was an additional burden. The pro-Zionist policy of the British mandate there naturally strained the relationship between Britain and the local Palestinian society. This climaxed in a revolt in 1936 against both London and the expanding Zionist colonisation project. The revolt, which lasted for three years, failed to sway the British mandate from a policy it had already decided upon in 1917. The British foreign secretary, Lord Balfour, had promised the Zionist leaders that Britain would help the movement to build a homeland for the Jewish people in Palestine. The number of Jews coming into the country increased by the day – although even at that point, during the 1930s, the Jews were just a quarter of the population, possessing four per cent of the land. As resistance to colonialism strengthened, the Zionist leadership became convinced that only through a total expulsion of the Palestinians would they be able to create a state of their own. From its early inception and up to the 1930s, Zionist thinkers propagated the need to ethnically cleanse the indigenous population of Palestine if the dream of a Jewish state were to come true. The preparation for implementing these two goals of statehood and ethnic supremacy accelerated after the Second World War. The Zionist leadership defined 80 per cent of Palestine (Israel today without the West Bank) as the space for the future state. This was an area in which one million Palestinians lived next to 600,000 Jews. The idea was to uproot as many Palestinians as possible. From March 1948 until the end of that year the plan was implemented despite the attempt by some Arab states to oppose it, which failed. Some 750,000 Palestinians were expelled, 531 villages were destroyed and 11 urban neighbourhoods demolished. Half of Palestine's population was uprooted and half of its villages destroyed. The state of Israel was established in over 80 per cent of Palestine, turning Palestinian villages into Jewish settlements and recreation parks, but allowing a small number of Palestinians to remain citizens in it. The June 1967 war allowed Israel to take the remaining 20 per cent of Palestine. This seizure defeated in a way the ethnic ideology of the Zionist movement. Israel encompassed 100 per cent of Palestine, but the state incorporated a large number of Palestinians, the people who Zionists made such an effort to expel in 1948. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 4th Palestine Memorial Week 19 – 25 January 2013 International Balfour Campaign An international conference looking at Britain’s legacy in Palestine is being organised by The Palestinian Return Centre (PRC). It will coincide with the 4th Palestine Memorial Week, from 19-25 January 2013 and be the formal launching pad for International Balfour Campaign, which is a five-year initiative by the PRC to mark the centenary of the Balfour Declaration in 2017. The Balfour campaign intends to raise greater awareness of Britain’s failed policy in Palestine and its devastating consequences. Thousands of Palestinians who suffered under British administration are still alive and many millions continue to endure terrible human rights abuse as a result of Britain’s failed policy in the region. The conference, Britain’s Legacy in Palestine, is scheduled for Saturday 19 January, from 9:30am to 5pm at Friends House, 173 Euston Road London NW1 2BJ. The following sessions and speakers are confirmed: Opening Session: The conference will be inaugurated by Professor Manuel Hassassian, Palestinian Ambassador to the UK, Mohammad al Hamid of PRC and a number of MPs. Session 1: Roots of the Balfour Declaration
Session 2: Legacy of the Balfour Declaration
Session 3: Reversing Britain’s Legacy
Session 4: Significance of Mau Mau to Palestine
Confirmed Speakers:
The memorial week will include a number of events across different universities in the UK, including the University of Greenwich, Imperial College, Kings College and Brunel University. A film screening highlighting the plight of Palestinian Refugees from Iraq titled, “Displaced in Diaspora” will be shown on 25 January from 6:30pm to 9:00pm in the presence of film critics and representatives of Aljazeera News Network. Venue for the screening is: Hend House, 233 Shaftesbury Avenue, London, WC2H 8EH To participate, call and reserve your seat on: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or call 02084530919, or sign via Facebook...Refreshments will be served in both events. For further details visit our website: Also: please remember to sign e-petition: Britain should make amends to the Palestinian people and acknowledge its responsibility as the author of the Balfour Declaration. http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/42768 and visit the site of the Balfour Project: http://www.balfourproject.org/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Most Hated Woman in Israel By Larry Derfner | 11 January 2013 http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/01/11/the_most_hated_woman_in_israel Haneen Zoabi has made her career speaking up for Israel's Arab minority. In Binyamin Netanyahu's Israel, that's becoming harder each day. JEDEIDA-MAKKER, Israel — Sitting in a barren, slightly mildewy campaign office in this Arab village, I asked Haneen Zoabi, an Arab member of the Israeli Knesset, what it was like being the country's most hated politician. "It doesn't bother me at all," she said. It's easy to believe. Zoabi's style is to head for the eye of the Arab-Jewish political storm -- the result being that while she is the Jewish majority's most hated politician, she may well be the Arab minority's most beloved. Zoabi is running for re-election in Israel's January 22 parliamentary election, but it was a struggle to even reach this point. Right-wing Knesset members moved to have her disqualified, saying she had "undermined the state of Israel" and "openly incited" against the government. Only a decision by the Israeli Supreme Court in late December overturned the ban. A poll published in Haaretz indicated that her legal victory stood to gain her small, virtually all-Arab, party an additional Knesset seat. Zoabi, 43, petite and pretty in black jacket, slacks, and pointed heels – a modern, single woman in a conservative, patriarchal Arab subculture – had just exhorted some 50 local residents to "use all the democratic tools at our disposal to carry on the struggle." She urged them not to be what she derided as "good Arabs," those who "thank Israel every day for not expelling them in 1948, who think they are not equal to Jewish citizens." She had held the audience's attention for nearly two hours. In the front row sat middle-aged Arab women in Islamic head scarves next to high school girls in jeans. Afterwards, amid the stream of well-wishers, the girls came up and exchanged phone numbers with her. "She's the only Arab woman who speaks for us, who gives us the courage to stand up to the racism," said one. Zoabi, who hails from one of the most prominent families in Israeli Arab society, has not pulled her punches against the Israeli government. Israel has visited systematic injustice on its Arab minority – not to mention the Palestinians – but her views still seem excessively one-sided. Asked once by an Israeli TV interviewer whether she could say anything good about Israel, she laughed lightly and replied, "No, I can't." But she is also far from the sinister threat to Israel's existence that her enemies make her out to be. She is not an advocate of terrorism or of throwing the Jews out of the country. Zoabi represents a minority of second-class citizens who, with very rare exceptions, are politically non-violent. She rejects Israel as a country founded on the "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians, advocates the right of return to Israel for the millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants, and wants to transform the country from an explicitly "Jewish state," with all its official and unofficial discrimination against non-Jews, into a fully egalitarian "state of all its citizens." It sounds appealing -- until you try to imagine Arabs being drafted alongside Jews to fight for this country, if called upon, against Arab enemies. It's not just Zoabi who has come under fire. Israeli Arabs, who make up 21 per cent of Israel's eight million people, have become increasingly feared, distrusted, and shunned by mainstream Jewish society. The rightward drift of the Israeli public since the watershed 2000 Palestinian Intifada and, especially during the four years of Prime Minister Netanyahu's government, has taken its toll on co-existence within Israel. Fully 67 per cent of Israeli Jews won't even drive into an Israeli Arab town or village, Haifa University Professor Sammy Smooha, the country's leading pollster of Jewish-Arab attitudes, found last year. It's a foregone conclusion that voters this month will give Netanyahu an even more nationalistic government than he's got now. The Likud Party – in whose ranks Netanyahu is now a relative liberal – is running on a joint ticket with Yisrael Beiteinu, the party of ex-Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, a one-time member of the racist Kach movement who has said he hoped his Arab colleagues would one day be executed. Meanwhile, the rising star of the campaign is Naftali Bennett, who advocates annexing most of the West Bank to Israel and weakening the Supreme Court's ability to rein in the government and army. Zoabi is a lightning rod for this antagonistic spirit in the country, and a barometer of it. She became Israel's Public Enemy No. 1 on 31 May 2010, as an Israeli Arab activist aboard the Mavi Marmara, a ship chartered by a Turkish Muslim aid organisation to lead the flotilla challenging Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip. After unarmed Israeli naval commandos rappelled onto the ship and were attacked with wooden clubs and metal rods, armed Israeli soldiers stormed the ship and shot nine Turkish activists to death. A UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) panel interviewed more than 100 activists from the ship and concluded, "a number of passengers were injured or killed whilst trying to take refuge ... or assisting others to do so," and that the commandos "continued shooting at passengers who had already been wounded." Israel brushed the report off as typical UNHRC bias, and by that time the nation had been convinced that the commandos acted in self-defence against a murderous mob of jihadists. The Israeli army, which confiscated hours of footage of the incident, released a single, brief segment showing the crowd attacking the first unarmed commandos and throwing one over a railing to the deck below. This is the one image Israelis have of the Mavi Marmara incident – and it shaped the political climate to which Zoabi, who says she stayed below decks during the confrontation, returned home. "For about a year and a half I was getting letters, e-mails, and telephone calls from people saying, ‘You are a terrorist, a traitor, a piece of shit, we will get you, you and all the traitors,'" she said. The blow-back reached her in the Knesset, where her privileges as an elected representative of the Israeli people were taken away from her. She was stripped of her diplomatic passport, her right to participate in Knesset discussions, and her right to vote in committee debates. Once, while Zoabi was speaking from the Knesset podium amidst catcalls, Anastassia Michaeli of Lieberman's extreme right-wing party advanced on her, screaming, and had to be restrained by guards, who then hustled Zoabi out of the chamber. The assaults continued. When she went to the Supreme Court with supporters on December 26 to file her appeal against being disqualified from the campaign, she again had to be protected by police as right-wing radicals shouted "terrorist" as she passed. "Sometimes, not always, when I go to [a mixed Jewish-Arab suburb of Nazareth], or to the airport, or Jerusalem, people say these sorts of things to me. In the supermarket I've heard people tell the cashier not to serve me," she said. On December 30, the day Zoabi won her Supreme Court appeal, another Israeli Arab Knesset member, Ahmed Tibi, was leaving a university lecture hall after an angry debate with a far-right Knesset member when a teenage girl came up and spat on him, calling him a "child-murderer." Tibi blamed it on anti-Arab "incitement" emanating from the political arena. He had a point: The Israeli political arena is becoming more inhospitable to the country's Arab minority. In the last couple of years, Israel has witnessed arson attacks by Jewish settlers on mosques and churches; a law barring Arab municipalities and other state-funded institutions from memorialising the 1948 "Naqba" – Arabs' term for the "catastrophe" of their exile and destruction during Israel's War of Independence – and a raft of other anti-Arab legislation, including a bill that would have barred mosques from using loudspeakers in their calls to prayer. Netanyahu initially supported the bill, saying, "We don't need to be more liberal than Europe," but his more temperate colleagues eventually convinced him to change his mind, dooming the legislation. As Israel gears up for the January 22 vote, Zoabi says she sees a rise in "Arab national pride" in this campaign. But as for the campaign going on among the country's Jewish majority, she sees the situation going from bad to worse. "This has been a more racist campaign than others," she said. "And politically, none of the strong [Zionist parties] are presenting a real alternative to Netanyahu." Smooha said fewer and fewer Israeli Arabs are voting in national elections because they're growing increasingly alienated from the state. No surprise there: It's not just Haneen Zoabi -- the Arab minority in general gets a cold reception in this country. And with the right-wing parties growing more extreme and more popular, it's likely to get even colder. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Further news sources Ali Kazak's newsletter Today in Palestine contains many news summaries that include both armed and non-violent methods of resistance to the Occupation. The newsletter also contains much other useful reporting. This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it For more news see: Today in Palestine! groups.yahoo.com/group/f_shadi ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Behind the Wall Rich Wiles is a photographic artist who has been living and working in Palestine for some years. His photographic work has been shown around Europe, the US, Australia and in Palestine itself. Since 2006 he has been writing from Occupied Palestine under the title Behind the Wall. Much of this work is based in and around the refugee camps in Palestine, highlighting daily life and memories of refugees who still live in forced exile for over 60 years since Al Nakba (The Catastrophe). www.richwiles.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Visit http://www.sapienspromise.org/ for further news. See this In Occupied Palestine newsletter at: the PHRC website: www.palestine.org.nz - and you can check out previous editions by clicking on In Occupied Palestine listed under Contents ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Stop the Violence Coalition Stop the Violence is a coalition aimed at fighting against Israeli violence and crimes all over the world. The purpose of the coalition is to co-ordinate the efforts of groups and individuals working to protest against the historic and continuing oppression of Palestinian people by the Israeli regime. Our coalition is an independent and non-profit organisation, based in Europe, which was formed as part of a global movement against Israeli apartheid. We can also provide the latest news, articles, photos, events and petitions. Contact: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you have friends who would also like to receive these newsletters, please ask them to contact us at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Palestine Human Rights Campaign Aotearoa/New Zealand (PHRC) Declaration We believe that a just peace in Palestine/Israel depends upon the return of Palestinian refugees to their homeland and the dismantling of the Zionist structure of the state of Israel, recognising that the further partitioning of Palestine in order to create the so-called two-state solution would lead only to further injustice and suffering. We advocate the primacy of international law, the acceptance of which by the Israeli regime must be the basis for the ending of Israeli military occupation and all forms of ethnic discrimination. We work to raise awareness of the international community's responsibility for upholding the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the urgent need for the state of Israel to be called to account for its gross abuses of Palestinian human rights. We call for the establishment of a unitary, secular and democratic state in Palestine/Israel, with full and equal citizenship rights for Palestinians, Israeli Jews and all other ethnic communities. The Palestine Human Rights Campaign Aotearoa/New Zealand (PHRC) works to raise public awareness of the Palestinian people's struggle to resist Israeli military occupation and Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip. PHRC seeks to bring pressure on the New Zealand Government to join the majority of the international community in requiring Israel to:
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