Israeli Occupation Archive – Israel’s war against Palestine

Israel's War Against Palestine: Documenting the Military Occupation of Palestinian and Arab Lands

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IOA content is now updated mostly on Facebook.
More on the current status of the IOA HERE.

US actors back Israeli boycott of West Bank theater

7 September 2010

More than 150 American actors, writers, directors and other artists signed a letter of support for the Israeli actors who declared they would not perform in the West Bank.

IOA Editor: Read letter and view list of signatories HERE.

Take Action Against Isolation – Free Ahmad Sa’adat!

7 September 2010

Imprisoned Palestinian leader Ahmad Sa’adat will be returning to court in
mid-October 2010 challenging his isolation and the isolation of Palestinian
political prisoners in Israeli prisons. Write letters today and take action
from October 5-15, 2010 in support of Palestinian prisoners’ struggle for
freedom – demand an end to isolation!

Poll: Half of Israeli teens don’t want Arab students in their class

6 September 2010

Sixty four percent of Israeli teens aged 15 to 18 say that Arab Israelis do not enjoy full equal rights in Israel, and from that group, 59 percent believe that they should not have full equal rights … 96 percent of the respondents want Israel to be a Jewish and democratic state, but 27 percent believe that those who object should be tried in court, and 41 percent support stripping them of their citizenship.

Financial Times: Israel’s choice is land or peace

5 September 2010

It should be perfectly obvious that talks aimed at the creation of a Palestinian state cannot possibly prosper while Israel continues its strategic colonisation of the land on which that state would be built. The US and its international partners must insist on a cessation of settlement-building.

Israel has one of world’s largest ‘eavesdropping’ intel bases

5 September 2010

The base … is central to the [global] activities of the main Israel Defense Forces signals intelligence unit, 8200, according to report in Le Monde Diplomatique.

Geographies of aid intervention in Palestine

4 September 2010

27-28 Sept 2010 Conference on the geographies of aid intervention in Palestine – Birzeit University. The aim of the conference is to critically explore the ways in which aid intervention reshapes the socio-political, spatial, economic, and environmental relations, in addition to thinking about alternatives forms of aid that respond to Palestinians needs and rights not only in the West Bank and Gaza Strip but also elsewhere.

Ameer Makhoul: “Solidarity tastes different inside prison”

4 September 2010

I am doing a lot of efforts to bring hope and steadfastness to freedom prisoners. It is one of my missions inside prison. I have to keep in contact with Ittijah and the community and all solidarity movements, groups and persons, but most of all I have to correspond intensively as much as possible with my daughters Hind and Huda, who have become mature fighters for freedom, justice and dignity and mostly bringing back the happiness of life which was hijacked on 6 May at 2:30am. My wife Janan is leading in a heroic way the whole campaign as well as facing huge tasks at home.

Arab League chief wants to give peace talks a chance

3 September 2010

Amr Moussa: “Let us see what kind of compromise Netanyahu is offering, we have never heard from the Israeli side any initiative or any concrete position.”

Ahmed Tibi: Pressing Netanyahu is the key to success in Mideast peace talks

3 September 2010

The only way out of the impasse is for Jews to recognize Palestinians as their equals and negotiate with them on that basis. A fair two-state solution requires the abrogation of all laws, both in Israel and the occupied territories, that raise Jews above Palestinians. This is a point the US, notwithstanding the recent dangerous demagoguery of some of its politicians in seeking to elevate Christian and Jewish religious rights over those held by Muslim Americans, should still understand.

Not guilty. The Israeli captain who emptied his rifle into a Palestinian schoolgirl

3 September 2010

An Israeli army officer who fired the entire magazine of his automatic rifle into a 13-year-old Palestinian girl and then said he would have done the same even if she had been three years old was acquitted on all charges by [an Israeli] military court yesterday.

Antoine Raffoul: Lifta’s legacy under threat

3 September 2010

Lifta must be preserved and rebuilt by/for its original owners to raise awareness about the history of 1948. Lifta, in its new image, should pave the way for establishing a determined campaign for truth and reconciliation between two historic peoples. Lifta, in our view, represents the traceable genealogy which gives insight into the origins of the conflict. Peeling the layers of conflict would lead to an acknowledgment of the tragedy and an understanding of its implication on people’s identity.

Nicolas Pelham: Hamas Back Out of Its Box

2 September 2010

[A] strategy predicated on the belief that a few more humanitarian truckloads will make the problem of Gaza go away is as deeply flawed as the notion that Ramallah’s surfeit of new high-street cafés will be a sufficient sedative for the aspirants to a Palestinian state. Gaza is a political, not a humanitarian, problem.

Two-thirds of Israelis support settlement building: poll

2 September 2010

Thirty nine percent … said they favour construction resuming in all the settlements from September 26, when a partial 10-month moratorium imposed by the Israeli government under US pressure expires. Another quarter said they thought construction should only restart in the larger settlement blocks and not in smaller, isolated settlements.

Esther Zandberg: Architects out of Ariel

2 September 2010

The time has come for those planning the red-roofed facts on the ground to refuse to design any more buildings in the settlements.

Gideon Levy: A response to Pfc. [Aluf] Benn

2 September 2010

The occupation did not turn us into lawless criminals, you write with a pure heart. Really? You handcuffed thousands of people for no reason, without trial, in humiliating conditions, causing them pain that made them scream, according to your testimony. Is this not a loss of humanity?

MORE by Gideon Levy

Puppet theater
“Arabs, get out”
Missing the forest

‘Facebook Arabs’ speak out

1 September 2010

And what about the sexual assault?
“I caressed his leg? He’s a liar. I would never touch him. On the contrary, I took the picture from a distance so as not to be close to them, because they stink. It’s a simple as that…”
So, you didn’t kiss him, you didn’t touch his leg?
“They are ingrates and of course they wouldn’t say that I gave them food. Of course they would slander me.”

Jonathan Cook: Bedouin land fight

1 September 2010

Israeli historian Tom Segev: “Who does this country belong to?”

Should Mr al-Uqbi win his case, tens of thousands of Bedouin … could be entitled to repossess their agricultural lands… Theoretically, it might also open the door to claims by millions of Palestinian refugees scattered across the Middle East.

Diana Buttu: direct talks bound to fail

1 September 2010

[I]t is not at all surprising that Mahmoud Abbas, speaking on behalf of Mahmoud Abbas, comes forward and declares that the PLO has accepted such talks when they haven’t. And declares that the Palestinian people are welcoming such talks when they are not. And has the audacity to speak on behalf of Palestine and the Palestinians when he is neither elected nor legitimate any longer.

Neve Gordon: Struggling Over the Right to Struggle – An Assault on Israeli Academic Freedom and Liberal Values

1 September 2010

Israeli academe, which was once considered a bastion of free speech, has become the testing ground for the success of the assault on liberal values. And although it is still extremely difficult to hurt those who have managed to enter the academic gates, those who have not yet passed the threshold are clearly being monitored.

Haneen Zoabi: IDF boarded Gaza flotilla ships with intent to kill

31 August 2010

Israeli Arab MK Hanin Zuabi testified before a UN panel probing Israel’s deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in May, telling the panel that commandos who boarded the ships intended to kill, [Israeli] Army Radio reported.

Assaf Kfoury: Will Israel Attack Lebanon? Will the US Allow It?

30 August 2010

The thorniest problem for American and Israeli policy-makers when it comes to Lebanon is the same: how to deal with Hezbollah. While American policy is by necessity equivocal, as it tries to maintain whatever influence it has on Lebanon’s affairs, Israeli policy is explicitly bellicose. But both are equally committed to weakening and ultimately eliminating Hezbollah’s stubborn resistance to US-Israeli efforts at regional domination.

Lamis Adoni: ‘Bullied’ but not surrendering

30 August 2010

PLO official: “We are not afraid of the outcome of the talks. There is nothing Abu Mazan (Abbas) would or could accept. But going to the talks has undermined our battle to isolate Israel.”

Gideon Levy: Puppet theater

29 August 2010

We will know the answer in the coming weeks: Is there genuine theater in Israel, or is it just puppet theater? Are our theater artists really actors, playwrights and directors, or are they marionettes? Israeli theater presents “Moral Blindness” – a play with infinite acts.

Netanyahu criticizes theater figures’ West Bank boycott

29 August 2010

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized on Sunday the theater figures’ boycott of a new theater in the West Bank settlement of Ariel, saying that the government doesn’t need to fund a group promoting a boycott of Israel from within.

53 Israeli theater figures vow not to perform in settlements

29 August 2010

Fifty-three Israeli theater professionals, including performers, playwrights and directors, have signed a petition stating they would not appear in the West Bank settlement Ariel… Culture and Sport Minister Limor Livnat said Saturday that the actors’ protest was a serious matter, and was causing a rift in Israeli society.

David Gardner: A poisoned process holds little hope

27 August 2010

Arab minister: “We have all been colluding in a gigantic confidence trick, and here we go again”…

[T]he heart of the question remains the continuing Israeli occupation. It is essential to remember that the biggest single increase of Jewish settlers on Arab land – a 50 per cent rise – took place in 1992-96 … at the high-water mark of the Oslo peace accords.

Ran Greenstein: Israel/Palestine and the apartheid analogy – critics, apologists and strategic lessons

27 August 2010

“There is no doubt that the occupation is the biggest festering sore in Israeli-Palestinian relations. Futile negotiations over the last two decades have led to its intensification rather than mitigation. The only way forward is an ongoing campaign to put an end to it, without having anything to do with the diplomatic process or with the one-state, two-states, debate.”

Is Israel an apartheid state? The notion of apartheid may be applicable in different ways to different components of the system. While Israel clearly is different from South African historical apartheid, in crucial respects it has affinities with apartheid in its generic sense.

Part II of a two-part essay. Read Part I HERE

Avner Cohen: Why Israel should end its policy of nuclear ambiguity

26 August 2010

“In the long term, the more Israel appears to reject peace and to be the one that opposes a two-state solution, the more it will be perceived as a regional bully that possesses nuclear weapons. So the world will be a lot less forgiving on the nuclear issue. The situation of ambiguity, in which you don’t have real legitimacy, is not a good place to be.”

Shalom Boguslavsky: The Israeli right’s secret strategy to promote ‘Greater Israel’

25 August 2010

Over the past two yeas, many of us have felt that the democratic camp in Israel has been under a well-planned, coordinated attack … organizations from the old-style religious right … got together and planned, under the baton of one of the most talented and innovative strategic consultants in Israel, the move that would bring them back to the front of the stage as the hegemonic ideology of Israel.

EU rebukes Israel over conviction of West Bank separation barrier protester

25 August 2010

Lady Ashton:“The EU considers Abdallah Abu Rahmah to be a human rights defender committed to non-violent protest against the route of the Israeli separation barrier … The EU considers the route of the barrier where it is built on Palestinian land to be illegal. The high representative is deeply concerned that the possible imprisonment of Mr Abu Rahmah is intended to prevent him and other Palestinians from exercising their legitimate right to protest against the existence of the separation barriers in a non-violent manner.”

A quest to coax Israel out of the nuclear closet

25 August 2010

Avner Cohen: “International support for Israel and its opaque bomb is being eroded by its continued occupation of Palestinian territory and the policies that support it, such as settlement construction, house demolitions, and restrictions on the movement of Palestinians.” Cohen fears Israel’s insistence on ambiguity will leave Israel increasingly vulnerable to the charge that it is a nuclear-armed pariah state.

IOA Editor: It already is.

Bil’in’s Abdallah Abu Rahmah Cleared of Stone-Throwing; Convicted of Incitement

24 August 2010

Non-violent protest organizer Abdallah Abu Rhamah from Bil’in was convicted of incitement and organizing illegal demonstrations today, after an eight months long military trial, during which he was kept behind bars. He was acquitted of a stone-throwing charge and a vindictive arms-possession charge.

Vacationing Netanyahu can’t find time to meet IAEA chief

24 August 2010

Netanyahu’s decision to cancel his meeting with Amano raised eyebrows on Monday, particularly given the premier’s fixation on Iran’s nuclear program. The prime minister and his aides have also been working feverishly to minimize the effects of last May’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Review Conference, which adopted a resolution calling for a Middle East free of nuclear weapons.

Israel tells schools not to teach Nakba

24 August 2010

Government officials warned Israeli teachers last week not to cooperate with Zochrot, a civic group that seeks to educate Israelis about how the Palestinians view the loss of their homeland and the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.

Jonathan Cook: Israelis risk jail to smuggle Palestinians

24 August 2010

Israeli anti-Occupation activist: “We want to overturn this immoral law that gives rights to Jews to move freely around while keeping Palestinians imprisoned in their towns and villages,” referring to regulations that bar most Palestinians in the occupied territories from entering Israel, and Israelis from assisting them.