Israeli Occupation Archive – Israel’s war against Palestine

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Middle Eastern theatre reaches a new stage

17 January 2010

Amir Nizar Zuabi: “I don’t draw the line between: you’re Israeli, he’s Palestinian, or Muslim or Christian. I draw the line in a different place completely. I draw the line between people who believe that all people were born equal, and hence deserve the same things, same rights, same duties, same everything, and people who say, ‘Yes, but I am more special.’”

Real per capita income of Palestine plunges

17 January 2010

Persistent blockades, destruction of [olive] trees, closure of factories and other repressive and punitive measures by Israel in the occupied territories have massacred the Palestinian economy, widened unemployment and poverty, and killed hopes of the young generation of any recovery under Israel.

Muslim leaders’ response to Gaza suffering ‘pitiful’: Turkish PM

17 January 2010

“The governments have failed to display the reactions that the world’s Muslims expected from them. And this has been a pitiful aspect of the matter,” Erdogan told reporters.

Diskin to Abbas: Defer UN vote on Goldstone or face ‘second Gaza’

17 January 2010

Akiva Eldar: Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin told Abbas [in October 2009] that if he did not ask for a deferral of the vote on the critical report on last year’s military operation, Israel would turn the West Bank into a “second Gaza.”

IOA Editor: The “thugs” of Gaza, to quote former Israeli Foreign Minister Livni, don’t seem to hesitate repeating their crimes in the West Bank.

UK MPs, Legal Scholars, Lawyers: We must not renege on war crime laws

16 January 2010

The power to arrest individuals reasonably suspected of war crimes anywhere in the world should they set foot on UK soil is an efficient and necessary resource in the struggle against war crimes, and must not be interfered with.

Also: British MP: Israel and Egypt’s blockade of Gaza is ‘evil’

Ayalon: If Israel is attacked, we’ll consider expelling ambassadors

16 January 2010

Ayalon praised Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s policies. “His policy is proving to be effective. We will not allow a situation where every country will kick us. If there will be an attack on Israel, we will leave all options open, including the expulsion of ambassadors.”

IOA Editor: The “only democracy in the Middle East,” and one that cannot stand criticism.

Gideon Levy: Waltz in Batir

16 January 2010

“The Palestinians don’t have a real organization fighting for their rights and they can’t expect others to fight for them… No revolution in history was ever led by a government or a bureaucracy. We’ve became an agency of Israel and of the United States. You can’t lead a revolution and fly to America. Our leaders are too fluid in their views. A revolution requires toughness, not flexibility. In music, you can be flexible, but not when you’re leading a revolution.”

Occupation tourism: A new trend at West Bank fence protest

16 January 2010

“There is a large variety of international activists here,” he says. “There are those who spend weeks and months in the village and take the political issue seriously, and there are others who, as part of their trip to Israel and Palestine, drop in at Bil’in to see what’s happening. Some of them have a strong political awareness, others come to take pictures.

Night Raids and Arrests of West Bank Popular Leaders Continue

15 January 2010

In the early hours of the morning, dozens of soldiers invaded the village of alMaasara – a site of weekly peaceful demonstrations for over three years – and surrounded the houses of Popular Committee members Mohammed Barjiya and Mahmoud Zwahre. Both Barjiya and Zwahre were warned about that repercussions will follow if they do not stop organizing protests in the village. Zwahre was even threatened that a child may end up dead.

Police arrest CEO of Israeli civil rights group in Sheikh Jarrah

15 January 2010

Leftist activists have held weekly demonstrations in Sheikh Jarrah for the past three months, in protest of the eviction of Palestinians from their homes and their replacement with Jewish families.

Jonathan Cook: The Iron Dome

14 January 2010

The increasing isolation of Gaza — and the ratcheting up of pressure — is designed to send a message to Gaza: that Hamas has nothing to gain, and everything to lose, from resisting Israel’s occupation, and that ordinary Gazans should turn their back on the Islamic movement.

Tensions rise in Turkey’s dispute with Israel

14 January 2010

Alon Liel, a former director-general of the Israeli foreign ministry and an expert on relations with Turkey, said Mr Ayalon’s treatment of the ambassador had made “Israeli diplomacy look ridiculous.”

IOA Editor: The “thugs” of Gaza, to quote former Israeli Foreign Minister Livni, let their thuggery spill into the diplomatic arena. No wonder they look ridiculous.

John Pilger: For Israel, a reckoning

14 January 2010

A new global movement is challenging Israel’s violations of international law with the same strategies that were used against apartheid

Yitzhak Laor: The spider, the road and the occupation

14 January 2010

Anyone who carefully reads the debates about the military government in Arab-populated areas in the 1950s and ’60s will see that… security arguments are linked to preventing Arab farmers from entering the land in question… Whatever the nature of the solution, from the Israeli point of view it always entails the removal of Arabs from areas where Jews live.

Steve Sheffey: Obama’s First Year: Pro-Israel

14 January 2010

IOA Editor: A pro-Israel Democratic party activist enumerates the many ways in which president Obama supports Israel and its aggressive policies, including the 42 year long Occupation – no less, and perhaps more, than Republicans. A required reading for those who feel that the recently minted Nobel Laureate is a “Man of Peace.”

Larry Derfner: To be Israeli today

14 January 2010

We’re at war with the Middle East, with Europe, with liberal Jews in the Diaspora and with a pathetically small handful of dissenters at home. We trust no one. We see anti-Semites everywhere. We’d like to build an Iron Dome over this whole country to keep the world out.

IOA Editor: Mr. Derfner has an interesting, but wholly unfounded, views on the differences between Republicans and Democrats. For a fact-based view on the differences, if any, between the two US parties, as it concerns Israel, see Steve Sheffey: Obama’s First Year: Pro-Israel. Although Derfner is not focusing on the party differences with respect to Israel but more in terms of war, Obama’s treatment of Israel is very much in line with his actions elsewhere – specifically, the two active war he’s currently commanding.

Israeli authorities deny American journalist entry

13 January 2010

UPDATE: Jared Malsin, chief editor, English Desk, at Ma’an News Agency, and a US citizen, was detained upon arriving at Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport. He was deported week later, as was his girl-friend, according to The Guardian: Israel deports US journalist.

IOA Editor: Israel, for “security reasons,” cannot accept Palestinian reporting. The US, for reasons it doesn’t care to explain, “does not recognize Ma’an as a news organization.” It seems that both the “world’s leading democracy” and the “only democracy in the Middle East” cannot independent reporting. Israel, following Soviet/Chilean/Iranian (pick your favorite dictatorship) tradition, decided to ban the journalist. And his girl-friend.

UPDATE: Guardian reports Israel deports US journalist.

Avirama Golan: No entry for Arabs

13 January 2010

This new arrangement makes an already problematic situation even worse. Those same lands that the state expropriated from Arabs in the past for “public use,” and which were then added to the vast land reserves it controls, are now being privatized, meaning they are being sold to the highest bidder. As long as he’s a Jew, of course. Granted, you won’t find a sign anywhere saying “no entry for Arabs,” but aside from that, all the rules of the Wild West are in force.

IOA Editor: This is one of the most important issues in Israel today, defining the very nature of the nominally “Jewish and democratic” state. Excluding Palestinians who are Israeli citizens from land ownership has been the foundation of Israeli-statehood from 1948. (Much has been written on the subject, starting with Sabri Jiryis’ The Arabs in Israel, 1966.) This current twist is designed to continue the practice, which is anchored in a complex web of laws that are updated as circumstances change, and in order to circumvent Israeli Supreme Court rulings that threaten to undo the old order. The bottom line: the state legally bars its Palestinian Arab population – 25% of Israel’s total – from buying land in the ‘free market,’ demonstrating again that it is neither Jewish nor democratic – and how evil this very concept is.

Israeli Robots Remake Battlefield

13 January 2010

Israel is developing an army of robotic fighting machines that offers a window onto the potential future of warfare… In 10 to 15 years, one-third of Israel’s military machines will be unmanned, predicts Giora Katz, vice president of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., one of Israel’s leading weapons manufacturers.

IOA Editor: As covered in detail by Amira Hass and others, Israeli high technology warfare plays a lead role in spying on and killing Palestinians, most recently in Gaza, a development zone for Israel’s military industries. This will undoubtedly continue – paid for generously by the US, and by Third World client regimes – as Israelis are increasingly intolerant of death of their own, while they readily accept the death of thousands of innocent Palestinians.

Israel stages night-time Ramallah raid to arrest an international solidarity activist

12 January 2010

Israeli soldiers raided the Ramallah home of Eva Nováková tonight at 3 am near the Manara square. The operation to apprehend Nováková, the ISM’s new media coordinator since three weeks ago, was carried out by a force of both soldiers and members of the “Oz” immigration police unit. Eva was subsequently deported, forced on a plane back to Prague the next morning.

Netanyahu: Israel will never share Jerusalem with Palestinians

12 January 2010

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared on Tuesday that Israel would never cede control of united Jerusalem nor retreat to the 1967 borders, according to a statement.

‘Cops urinated on me, placed excrement on my head’

12 January 2010

Palestinian thief’s complaint against police abuse suggests policemen beat him, placed banana peals behind his ears while capturing all on cell phone. Five officers released after questioning, rest to face remand hearings.

IOA Editor: Israeli abuse of and violence against Palestinians is so complete, extensive, institutionalized, and far-reaching that it cannot be “explained” in terms of “battlefield” or “interrogation” conditions. It happens in wide-open spaces, on the street, and it continues once the “target” has been captured and is chained. There can be no justification for such violence, nor should any excuses for it be accepted.

Israel media splashes ‘hazing’ of Turkish envoy

12 January 2010

Press reports highlighted the fact that Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon made Ambassador Ahmet Celikkol sit on a low couch while the Israelis sat on high chairs, as he reprimanded the envoy over a Turkish television thriller which portrays Israeli Mossad agents as baby-snatchers.

Israeli Brigadier-General Uzi Eilam denies Iran is nuclear threat

11 January 2010

A general who was once in charge of Israel’s nuclear weapons has claimed that Iran is a “very, very, very long way from building a nuclear capability”. Brigadier-General Uzi Eilam, 75, a war hero and pillar of the defence establishment, believes it will probably take Iran seven years to make nuclear weapons.

PHR: Israel Prevents 17 Sight-impaired from Leaving Gaza for Treatment

11 January 2010

Because of this delay, the medical window of opportunity to perform the transplants for these patients was closed, because corneas can be transplanted only within the shortest time frame (24-48 hours after they are extracted from the donor’s body). The patients from Gaza whose exit was prevented will therefore have to wait for another donation, which may or may not happen.

US to store $800m in military gear in Israel

11 January 2010

The U.S. Army will double the value of emergency military equipment it stockpiles on Israeli soil, and Israel will be allowed to use the U.S. ordnance in the event of a military emergency, according to a report in Monday’s issue of the U.S. weekly Defense News.

Israeli firm blasted for letting would-be plane bomber slip through

11 January 2010

The failure was a twin flop: An intelligence failure, which U.S. President Barack Obama has already stated, in the poor handling of information that arrived at the State Department and probably also the CIA from both the father of the would-be bomber and the British security service; and a failure within the security system, including that of the Israeli firm ICTS.

IOA Editor: The biggest “flop” is the refusal of the powerful to accept that terrorism is an outcome of underlying conditions which must be urgently reconsidered. As Seumas Milne argues powerfully in Terror is the price of support for despots and dictators, terrorism is the result of such support and “the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian land.” As we already noted, this point, and the profound questions that follow, do not receive the public attention a single case of a would-be terrorist act (in the West) gets.

Abdallah Abu Rahmah: “No army, no prison and no wall can stop us”

9 January 2010

I mark the beginning of the new decade imprisoned in a military detention camp. Nevertheless, from within the occupation′s holding cell I meet the New Year with determination and hope… The price I and many others pay in freedom does not deter us. I wish that my two young daughters and baby son would not have to pay this price together with me. But for my son and daughters, for their future, we must continue our struggle for freedom.

Majida Abu Rahmah: My husband – jailed for protesting Israel’s wall

9 January 2010

My husband is a school teacher and farmer from the Palestinian village of Bilin. When Israel built its apartheid wall here, it separated Bilin from more than half of its land, in order to facilitate the expansion of the illegal settlement Mattityahu East. In response, Abdallah and fellow villagers began a campaign of nonviolent resistance. Every Friday for the past five years, we’ve marched, with Israeli and international supporters, to protest the theft of our land and livelihoods.

Egypt bars Gaza-bound aid convoys

9 January 2010

Egyptian FM Abul Gheit: “Egypt will no longer allow convoys, regardless of their origin or who is organising them, from crossing its territory”… Egypt accused Galloway, who once called at a London rally for the overthrow of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, of trying to embarrass the country, which has refused to permanently open its Rafah border crossing with Gaza.

More on Mubarak’s position in Seumas Milne’s Terror is the price of support for despots and dictators

Amnesty International: Israeli detention of Palestinian activists must end

9 January 2010

The Israeli authorities must immediately release, or bring before a fair trial, three Palestinian human rights activists detained in Israel following their protests against the construction of the West Bank fence/wall, Amnesty International said today.

Henry Siegman: Imposing Middle East Peace

8 January 2010

Israel’s relentless drive to establish “facts on the ground” in the occupied West Bank, a drive that continues in violation of even the limited settlement freeze to which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu committed himself, seems finally to have succeeded in locking in the irreversibility of its colonial project. As a result of that “achievement,” one that successive Israeli governments have long sought in order to preclude the possibility of a two-state solution, Israel has crossed the threshold from “the only democracy in the Middle East” to the only apartheid regime in the Western world.

Amira Hass: Pro-Gaza activists under siege – imposed by Egypt and Hamas

8 January 2010

I wondered: Were the [Hamas] restrictions an order from above, or an unwise interpretation by lower ranks? Does Hamas think it can entirely prevent the few visitors – clearly pro-Palestinian – from hearing non-official versions? Don’t the people giving the orders realize what a bad image they were creating? Or was there really a security concern?

Anshel Pfeffer: In Israel, racial profiling doesn’t warrant debate, or apologies

8 January 2010

Many Israelis have no problems with this: Let the Muslims suffer for the sins of their brothers. But those of us who like to think of ourselves as liberal humanists find it too easy to ignore the sight of entire families having their luggage rummaged through in front of the entire terminal while we are waved through.

IOA Editor: Indeed, the dilemmas of the guilt-ridden Jewish (or other) liberal – could keep Woody Allen busy for decades. Warranted or not, this subject surely isn’t debated in Israel, which has long behaved as though it is exempt from “civilized-world” standards. As Seumas Milne argues powerfully in Terror is the price of support for despots and dictators (below), terrorism is the result of such support and “the occupation and colonisation of Palestinian land.” This point, and the profound questions that follow, do not receive the public attention a single case of a would-be terrorist act (in the West) gets.

Ramzy Baroud’s “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story”

7 January 2010

John Pilger: This is a very fine book: both a loving tribute to the author’s father and the struggle and pain of Palestine seen through the witness and insights of two generations. Together, they beckon freedom.