Palestine Occupation Info - Archive for Thur 26th & Fri 27th Oct 2006

(26-10-06) - Roundup, IMEMC. From Occupied Bethlehem, today's updates from the West Bank and Gaza. Palestine Today is a production of the International Middle East Media Centre [audio & transcript].

(27-10-06) - Report, AFP. Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas is determined to press rapidly ahead with forming a new government and is expected to announce a decision within days, EU officials have said. "He is determined to move the process of the government... to have a solution," EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana told reporters Friday on the first leg of a Middle East tour following talks with Abbas and Israeli leaders. See Also: EU chief asks Israel to reopen border (AP).

(27-10-06) - Report, AP. Three Palestinians were killed Friday in Israeli army raids in the northern West Bank, medics and relatives said. In the refugee camp of Al Faraa, Saadi Subuh, 23, and Mustafa Abu Zalat, 17, were shot and killed, their relatives and medics said. The circumstances of the shooting were not clear, but Abu Zalat's uncle said his nephew might have been throwing stones at army jeeps. See Also: Residents say Israel killed three in West Bank raids (Reuters).

(27-10-06) - Amin Abu Wardeh, PNN. Israeli forces closed Hawara checkpoint near the West Bank city of Nablus Thursday afternoon, despite the presence of hundreds of Palestinians waiting in line to leave the city. Sources discovered that Israeli forces found a man in possession of a cellular battery, and ordered the closure of the checkpoint to investigate the situation.

(27-10-06) - Yoav Stern, Haaretz. Investigators of the shooting at the Umm al-Fahm riot in October 2000 failed to collect all the firearms deployed during the demonstration. This meant there was no chance of identifying the officer who shot and killed Mohamed Jabarin. The Police Investigation Department (PID) at the Justice Ministry says its investigators did not collect all the firearms used in the riot because some of the firearm registration records had been destroyed.

(27-10-06) - Report, AFP. Israel's supreme court has thrown out a petition lodged by Palestinian villagers against the erection of a section of a controversial barrier in the occupied West Bank, a legal source said. The plea concerned a six-kilometre (four-mile) section scheduled to incorporate the Jewish settlements of Immanuel, Karnei Shomron and Maale Shomrom that encroaches on Palestinian land in the northern West Bank.

(27-10-06) - Mazal Mualem, Haaretz. MK Raleb Majadele, one of nine Labor MKs opposed to the inclusion of the right-wing Yisrael Beteinu party in the government, said Friday that the party's entry into the coalition would mark a "black day for the Knesset of Israel, a black day for democracy." Labor Party members opposed to the inclusion of Yisrael Beiteinu are demanding that a secret ballot on the matter be held at the Labor Central Committee meeting Sunday. See Also: Labor MKs seek secret ballot vote on Lieberman (Haaretz).

(27-10-06) - Mehdi Lebouachera, AFP. Palestinian prime minister Ismail Haniya and Israel have said they saw progress towards a prisoner swap that would free an Israeli soldier captured four months ago and Palestinian detainees held in the Jewish state's jails. The optimism emerged with news Friday that powerful Hamas politburo chief, Khaled Meshaal, was expected soon in Egypt for talks on the matter with Egyptian officials who have been the main broker in the crisis. See Also: Report: Hamas demanding simultaneous swap of Shalit, prisoners (Haaretz).

(27-10-06) - Report, AFP. Israeli warplanes fired shots over an unarmed German vessel backing up the UN mission off the Lebanese coast, the German defence ministry has said. The incident, which Israel has so far denied, was one of two involving the Israeli military and German forces in the region this week, defence spokesman Thomas Raabe told reporters Friday. See Also: Peretz - We didn't fire at German naval vessel (Haaretz).

(27-10-06) - Mustafa Sabre, PNN. Israeli prison authorities have just announced that all Palestinians arrested at Nablus' Hawara checkpoint over the Eid al-Fitr holiday have been taken to Qadumim Prison east of Qalqilia. The prison, which lies inside the illegal Israeli settlement of Qadumim, is notorious for its stories of prisoner abuse and neglect. Lawyer Fayez Alzerba told PNN, "I was surprised to hear that those arrested had been taken to Qadumim".

(27-10-06) - Report, B'Tselem. Israel holds in prison more than 9,000 Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The vast majority are held in prisons situated inside Israel's sovereign territory, and not in the Occupied Territories. Holding these prisoners and detainees in Israel flagrantly breaches international humanitarian law, which prohibits the transfer of civilians, including detainees and prisoners, from the occupied territory to the territory of the occupying state. See Also: Video - The Prisoners' Children (often only those under 16 may visit relatives in prison, this short film produced by B'Tselem tells their tale), Israeli group accuses Prisons Authority (AP), Report says Israel violates Palestinian prisoner rights (Reuters), and Israel 'should transfer prisons' to West Bank (AFP).

(27-10-06) - Report, PNN. Five farmers in the Qalqilia province are the latest victims of the outbreak of settler attacks occurring during this year's olive harvest. The five were among a group of men trying to harvest olives on their property near Qalqilia when a group of settlers began attacking them with stones and sharp tools. Officials from Physicians for Human Rights told PNN that the men were transferred to a nearby hospital for treatment.

(27-10-06) - Dan Williams, Reuters. After decades of battling to win foreign support for its two-fisted policies against Arab foes, Israel is trying a new approach with a campaign aimed at creating a less warlike and more welcoming national image. Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, who has argued that the protracted conflict with the Palestinians is sapping Israel's international legitimacy, this week convened diplomats and PR executives to come up with ways of "rebranding" the country.

(27-10-06) - Forced Migration Review, Refugee Studies Centre. This report was published by the University of Oxford's Refugee Studies Centre in September 2006, just after the second Israeli invasion of Lebanon. It contains twenty-eight articles examining the root causes of the displacement of Palestinians, the consequences of the failure to apply international humanitarian law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory and Palestinian entitlement to protection and compensation and other issues of concern to those seeking a just peace in the Middle East. [Note: This file is a PDF, and requires Adobe Acrobat Reader or Foxit Reader].

(27-10-06) - Akiva Eldar, Haaretz. Peretz's celebratory promises that this year's olive harvest would be different than those of past years are shattered daily at Israel Defense Forces checkpoints. Even the High Court injunction to permit farmers to work their land makes no impression on security forces. Members of the Yesh Din-Volunteers for Human Rights organization, who go out to the field every day, reported yesterday that the IDF had completely blocked access to groves in five West Bank villages. The IDF prevents farmers in three villages from entering their land on the west side of the separation fence. Another six villages were informed their lands had been closed or seized by the military.

(27-10-06) - Report, IRIN. Palestinian refugees living in Iraq, who are predominantly Sunni Muslims, have become targets of Shi'ite death squads because of resentment towards them for their perceived support of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's government, which was also Sunni and which sympathised with their cause. This targeting has forced thousands of Palestinians to flee their homes, UNHCR says.

(27-10-06) - Amiram Barkat, Haaretz. Two recent studies challenge the customary perception that Jews living in Israel and the United States, which make up 80 percent of the world's Jewry - belong to the same nation. One study indicates that Israel occupies a marginal place in the younger generation's Jewish identity. The other finds that Israeli pupils' knowledge of American Jewry is negligible. Both studies were conducted by the American Jewish Committee.

(27-10-06) - Report, Council for the National Interest. Christian Zionism, a belief that paradise for Christians can only be achieved once Jews are in control of the Holy Land, is gathering strength in the United States and forging alliances that are giving increasingly weird shape to American policy toward the Middle East. The nature of the movement and its detrimental impact on policy was the subject of the 22nd Capitol Hill public hearing presented by the Council for the National Interest yesterday.

(27-10-06) - Dr. Daud Abdullah, Palestine Chronicle. No one can predict the security, political and social consequences if the elected Palestinian government was overthrown by a US backed junta. If the situation in the Occupied Territories was explosive after the signing of the Oslo Accords, then it is ten times worse today. To many the gunfights on the streets of Gaza represent the ultimate insult and injustice to the thousands of Palestinians who sacrificed their lives for freedom. They must be turning in their graves by the vile images of Palestinian attacking Palestinian.

(27-10-06) - Gideon Levy, Haaretz. Every week one sees new pictures of destruction that Israeli bulldozers cause nightly. Almost nobody notices them. The Erez industrial zone was also destroyed last week, its ruins joining other memorials to regional peace and cooperation. The sewage water flowing in the center of the quiet street in the Daraj neighborhood in Gaza is actually white. Soapy water. Nobody is sure what the street is called, but in the end they agreed on Jarjawi Street, after the nearby restaurant. We ascend to the second floor, home of the Rezal family. We sit in the living room.

(27-10-06) - Arthur Neslen, Comment Is Free. It was a moment that Israel's left and right had both been waiting for. The ascent of Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel is our home) party into the corridors of power was the cue for pantomime cries of "victory", "sell out", "business as usual" and "fascism" to bloom across the country's political desert. While the "sell out" shrieks from Lieberman's far-right bedfellows were feebly predictable, the "fascism" alarm call from veteran peace activist Uri Avnery was a more serious matter. It may circulate around the left for as long as his last such heads-up about Gush Emunim before disengagement, or the one a few months later about Israeli army officers after Lebanon. Indeed, Azmi Bishara, the leader of the Balad party, has already taken up the call.

(27-10-06) - Dr. Bill Dienst, Live from Palestine. I can't tell the Israeli security officer my real reasons for coming here, for if I do, I will be detained. My passport will be stamped "Entry Denied", and I will be placed on the very next flight back to Amsterdam. More and more, peaceful human rights activists are suffering this fate. Palestinian-Americans are being denied entry all the time. Israel and its supporters in the United States try to control the information flow. Israel does not want the world, and especially the American taxpayers who finance the Jewish state, to know the ugly truth.

(27-10-06) - Rami Bathish, MIFTAH. The issue of the refugees is commonly identified by Palestinians, at least the so called “pragmatists” among them, as the major stumbling block in reaching a final solution to the Palestinian-Zionist conflict. It is also embraced by those of us (short-sightedly) labelled as “rejectionists” and “nationalists” as the nucleus of the Palestinian liberation movement altogether. However, to all Israelis, without exception, the Palestinian refugees’ right of return is immediately and absolutely dismissed as a romantic aspiration, the mere mention of which constitutes a perceived rejection to the existence of Israel itself, and may even ignite the over-consumed, yet common, accusations of anti-Semitism against those who dare to defend it.

(27-10-06) - Sally Bland, Electronic Intifada. Comprising essays published in various scholarly journals between 1993 and 2005, The Persistence of the Palestinian Question is a painfully honest book. The author, who grew up in Amman and is now associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, does not mince words or cut corners. He addresses the question of Palestine from a number of new angles, covering a broad spectrum of fields in which history is made - official politics, sexual politics, popular resistance, national and social struggle, demography, ideology and state repression.

(27-10-06) - Stephen Lendman, Countercurrents.org. Petras' powerful new book is titled The Power of Israel in the United States. It's a work of epic writing and essential reading documenting the enormous influence of the Jewish Lobby on US policy in the Middle East. It focuses like a laser to assure that policy conforms with Israel's long-term goal for regional hegemony. The Lobby's influence is broad and deep enough to include officials at the highest levels of government, the business community, academia, the clergy (especially the dominant Christian fundamentalists/Christian Zionists) and the mass media.

(27-10-06) - Interview, Flashpoints. On October 20, Electronic Intifada co-founder Ali Abunimah appeared on KPFA's Flashpoints Radio to discuss his new book: One Country, a Bold Proposal to the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. The program also features excerpts from his recent speech in Oakland, California. Listen to Ali discuss the need to break through the current impasse of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and hear his proposal for a better future for all concerned parties. [Note: links to mp3 file - To download, right click & 'save target/link as'].

(27-10-06) - Interview, Flashpoints. Nora Barrows-Friedman of KPFA's Flashpoints Radio interviews Yehuda Shaul, co-founder of Breaking the Silence, an anti-occupation group of former Israeli military personnel. All BTS members have served in the Occupied Territories, and all have decided that it is time to speak out about the real situation in these areas. Check out the Breaking the Silence website for more information on this brave group of people as well as many images from the occupation. [Note: links to mp3 file - To download, right click & 'save target/link as'].

(27-10-06) - Interview, Middle East Panorama. An Interview with academic and journalist Daniel Dor. Dor is author of the recent book The Suppression of Guilt: The Israeli Media and the Reoccupation of the West Bank, as well as Intifada Hits the Headlines - How the Israeli Press Misreported the Outbreak of the Second Palestinian Uprising. He discusses these issues in conversation with Nadim Mahjoub. [Note: links to mp3 file - To download, right click & 'save target/link as'].