person:amira hass

  • A l’encontre » Israël. « Oslo », la stratégie des fake news. Faut-il changer le nom de la capitale norvégienne ?
    par Amira Hass – Haaretz en date du 20 mai 2019, traduction A l’Encontre
    http://alencontre.org/moyenorient/israel/israel-oslo-la-strategie-des-fake-news-faut-il-changer-le-nom-de-la-capi

    Bien avant que les fausses nouvelles (fake news) ne fassent partie de nos vies, de concert avec son parent légal, Donald Trump, le champion en titre du genre était « Oslo ». Cette référence à Oslo (les accords d’Oslo dès 1993) est devenue synonyme de dissimulation de la réalité par le biais de fausses informations et de leur diffusion par des voies officielles respectées. Si j’étais Norvégienne, je lancerais une pétition pour changer le nom de ma capitale.

    Et pourquoi ne proposerais-je pas simplement une pétition demandant que le nom de la capitale norvégienne soit retiré du nom officieux mais commun des accords qu’Israël a signés avec l’OLP à partir de 1993 ? Parce qu’étant donné l’énorme puissance mondiale d’Israël, aucune pétition de ce genre n’aurait la chance d’être entendue.

    Il est très commode pour Israël que ses mesures calculées pour détruire l’espace géographique des Palestiniens et user la société palestinienne au point de susciter des pensées suicidaires et des rêves d’émigration restent à jamais enveloppées dans le manteau de la respectabilité scandinave, blonde et froide. (...)

  • Les soldats doivent tirer sur les Palestiniens : C’est la façon pour Israël de les maintenir sous contrôle
    Amira Hass | Publié le 28/4/2019 sur Haaretz | Traduction : Jean-Marie Flémal
    http://www.pourlapalestine.be/les-soldats-doivent-tirer-sur-les-palestiniens-cest-la-facon-pour-is

    Les soldats n’ont d’autre choix que de tirer. Ils n’ont d’autre choix que de frapper les manifestants, les lanceurs de pierres et les paramédicaux qui se portent volontaires lors des confrontations, que de tuer ceux qui brandissent des couteaux. La surprise de voir des soldats qui tirent même sur des jeunes menottés et aveuglés par un sac ou un bandeau fait partie d’un temps révolu.

    Elle appartient aux années 1970 ou 1980, quand nous pensions encore que la domination militaire sur une population de non-citoyens était un accident, une déviation temporaire qui n’allait pas tarder à être rectifiée. Quand nous n’avions pas encore reconnu que le rôle des militaires était de protéger le butin de guerre plutôt que notre existence. Quand il n’y avait pas encore de caméras partout pour faire voler en éclats notre naïveté.

    Si les Palestiniens ne reçoivent pas un message clair chaque jour où ils risquent leur propre vie en résistant à notre domination, demain ils marcheront par milliers et dizaines de milliers, les mains vides ou armés de pelles et de pierres, vers les colonies, avant-postes, check-points et bases militaires d’Israël implantés au cœur même d’une population civile.

    Ils marcheront et diront : Nous voulons récupérer notre terre. Nous voulons de l’eau. Nous voulons être en mesure de nous déplacer. Nous voulons une industrie. Nous voulons aussi planifier, construire et nous construire. Imaginez des dizaines de milliers de personnes marchant vers les colonies à Jérusalem, imaginez les manifestations d’octobre 2000 multipliées par 100, imaginez des centaines de flottilles et marches du retour. Et alors nos soldats et policiers devront tirer pour tuer et blesser des douzaines, des centaines, des milliers de gens en une seule journée.

    Cette tuerie mesurée mais résolue maintient tout cela sous contrôle. Elle est destinée à enseigner à la majorité de se ternir tranquille, d’être effrayée, de se terrer dans ses enclaves de crainte que l’armée ne s’engage demain dans des tueries massives. Non seulement à Gaza mais en Cisjordanie. Et, en Israël, à Sakhnin et, sur la côte, à Acra aussi. (...)

  • Écouter les informations palestiniennes tous les matins est une torture
    24 avril | Amira Hass pour Haaretz |Traduction SF pour l’AURDIP
    https://www.aurdip.org/ecouter-les-informations.html

    Fatma Sleiman, une enseignante du village de Tuqu au sud de la Cisjordanie, a été tuée jeudi dans un accident de voiture. Des témoins ont dit qu’un camion israélien avait heurté sa voiture. Cela n’a pas été rapporté en Israël et ne fera certainement jamais l’objet d’une enquête comme collision suspecte de voitures. Même la couverture des media palestiniens a été maigre et des nouvelles sur les événements qui ont suivi sa mort n’ont été trouvées que sur Facebook et sur des sites locaux d’actualités. Plus d’éléments ci-après. (...)

    https://seenthis.net/messages/775739

  • Une affaire allemande, pas seulement une histoire d’amour en Palestine
    2 avril | Amira Hass pour Haaretz |Traduction CG pour l’AURDIP
    https://www.aurdip.org/une-affaire-allemande-pas.html

    Pourquoi Israël discrimine-t-il les citoyens étrangers qui épousent des résidents palestiniens de Cisjordanie ?

    Des représentants de la diplomatie allemande, française, espagnole et américaine assistaient jeudi dernier à une audition à la Cour suprême israélienne, même si la requête débattue concernait une citoyenne allemande et son droit à vivre avec son époux palestinien dans leur propre maison à Hébron. Le couple, dont la requête pour rapprochement familial a été rejetée par Israël, est celui de Josefin Herbach et Abdelrahman Salaymeh. « J’étais très tendu pendant l’audition », a déclaré Salaymeh. « Pour les juges, c’était juste un autre dossier, pour nous c’est toute notre vie ».

    Les diplomates faisaient bien d’assister à l’audition puisque ce cas individuel est lié à une question générale de principe : pourquoi donc Israël interdit-il aux citoyens et citoyennes de ces pays de vivre en paix et en sécurité avec leurs conjoints palestiniens à Bethléem, Ramallah ou Jenine ? Pourquoi Israël discrimine-t-il certains citoyens nord- ou sud-américains et européens, par rapport à d’autres citoyens de ces mêmes pays, seulement parce qu’ils ou elles épousent des Palestiniens qui sont résidents de Cisjordanie (et de Jérusalem) et non juifs ?

  • Palestinian 18-year-old succumbs to wounds sustained during Dheisheh clashes
    March 27, 2019 10:37 A.M.
    http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=783002


    BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — A Palestinian paramedic succumbed, on Wednesday morning, to wounds he sustained during clashes with Israeli forces in the Dheisheh refugee camp in the southern West Bank city of Bethlehem on predawn.

    Medical sources confirmed that Sajed Abed al-Hakim Mizher , 18, who is a volunteer paramedic succumbed to his wounds.

    ““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““"
    » Updated: Israeli Soldiers Abduct Three Palestinians, Injure Five, In Deheishe
    March 27, 2019 8:34 AM - IMEMC News
    https://imemc.org/article/israeli-soldiers-abduct-three-palestinians-injure-four-in-deheishe

    Dozens of Israeli soldiers invaded, on Wednesday at dawn, the Deheishe refugee camp, south of Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank, shot five Palestinians, including a medic, and abducted three others.

    Media sources said the soldiers fired many live rounds, rubber-coated steel bullets, gas bombs, and concussion grenades at dozens of youngsters, who protested the invasion and hurled stones at the armored vehicles.

    They added that four Palestinians were shot with live fire before they were rushed to medical centers in Bethlehem, while many others suffered the effects of teargas inhalation.

    The soldiers also shot a medic, identified as Sajed Mizher , while providing treatment to wounding Palestinians.

    One of the Palestinians was shot with a live round in the abdomen and was rushed to surgery at the Arab Society Hospital for Rehabilitation, a second Palestinian was shot in the shoulder, a third in the thigh and the fourth in the arm.

    The soldiers also invaded and ransacked many homes in the refugee camp and occupied several rooftops to use them as firing posts and monitoring towers.

    During the home invasions and searches, the soldiers abducted Mohammad Rezeq Hammash, 21, Mahmoud Walid Lahham, and Ma’ali Issa Ma’ali, 27.

    #Palestine_assassinée

    • Comment l’armée israélienne a abattu un secouriste palestinien dans un camp de réfugiés
      9 avril | Amira Hass pour Haaretz |Traduction J.Ch. pour l’AURDIP
      https://www.aurdip.org/comment-l-armee-israelienne-a-3373.html

      Sajed Mizher, secouriste volontaire, avait prévu d’arriver à l’école à temps pour un examen. Mais, alors qu’il se dirigeait vers un homme blessé par un tir de fusil, lui aussi a été abattu.

      Sajed Mizher, âgé de 17 ans et quatre mois, était un secouriste volontaire. Les soldats israéliens l’ont tué au matin du 27 mars alors qu’il se précipitait pour apporter les premiers secours à quelqu’un blessé par un tir de fusil dans le camp de réfugiés de Deheisheh.

      Ce matin là, Mizher avait un examen. « Ne t’inquiète pas », a-t-il dit à son père, Abdel Hakim, alors qu’il partait de la maison. « Je serai revenu avant 8 H. et j’arriverai à temps à l’école. » (...)

  • A young, daring Palestinian hoped to smug his ‘masters’. He erred - Amira Hass | Mar 19, 2019 1:59 PM | Haaretz.com
    The Israeli Army and Shin Bet were quick to hunt down the Palestinian who killed Rabbi Ahiad Ettinger and Staff Sgt. Gal Keidan and declare his guilt. Not so for Israeli killers of Palestinians
    https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-the-courage-to-challenge-the-smug-masters-1.7039169

    The Palestinian man who carried out the stabbing and shooting attack in the West Bank on Sunday was very daring. It would behoove Israelis to understand where this came from, rather than making do with labeling him a “terrorist.”

    His gutsiness fills many Palestinians with wonder, with pride. It somewhat mitigates those many moments of humiliation they all suffer, if only because they are all dependent on permits from the Israeli military for even the most basic human activities. Even though the overwhelming majority of them won’t emulate him, Palestinians identify with what his act expressed: A deep loathing of Israeli soldiers and civilians, the masters and rapists of their land, who have settled in their midst. And yet the question, from their perspective, has to be whether this courage will, or could, lead to any concrete accomplishment in their struggle for freedom.

    He couldn’t have guessed that the soldiers at the bus stop would not know how to react to his daring. From his perspective, the most likely scenario was to be shot dead or to be seriously wounded by a soldier, not to jump into a rental car that a frightened tourist abandoned. He couldn’t have known that Gal Keidan, the soldier he stabbed with a knife, was more comfortable with musical instruments than with a loaded rifle. He wasn’t interested in the personal backgrounds of the Israeli civilians — settlers or otherwise — whom he shot at because they were at the junction, in a part of the West Bank that is under full Israeli control. They wandered around, as they wander around there every day, like lords of the estate. That’s what he saw. That’s the view that stings the eyes of every Palestinian, every day.

    His disappearance also testifies to his daring and resourcefulness. Unlike those who opted for suicide attacks, or the Gazan youth who approach the border fence expecting to be shot and killed by soldiers, his escape suggests he wasn’t dead-set on dying.

    The Shin Bet security service and the Israel Defense Forces revealed his supposed identity within hours. We should recall that 50 days have passed since an Israeli civilian killed Hamdi Na’asan in the West Bank Palestinian village of Al-Mughayyir, and we haven’t heard anything from the IDF, the Shin Bet or the police about the suspect’s identity or place of residence. We haven’t heard that he was arrested and that soldiers from the Engineering Corps were sent to survey his family’s home to prepare for its demolition. As a deterrent.

    As usual, the Shin Bet and the IDF have already convicted the man they’ve decided carried out the attack. In their wake, Israeli journalists and media outlets don’t use the word “suspect” when speaking about a Palestinian, a second- or third-generation survivor of the arrogant, violent Israeli military occupation. Journalistic ethics go out the window; reporters don’t even keep up the pretense of not convicting someone before his trial. Their obedient keyboards call him a terrorist, whose full name and place of residence must be published immediately as additional proof of the efficiency of the Shin Bet and the IDF.

    Even before he’s been captured, the bulldozer blades are being sharpened so they can take revenge on his family and destroy his home. As a deterrent. The Shin Bet and the IDF and their commanders don’t ask whether their collective vengefulness is what draws in additional young Palestinians “without a record” who “have no ties to any organization.”

    Young Israeli soldiers are sent to risk life and limb to protect the lordly normality of Jewish settlers on stolen land. This abhorrent normality forces upon the local Palestinians a life without a trace of normality, from cradle to grave.

    So a young Palestinian man hoped to stir the masters from their smug satisfaction. He erred. Now the masters, with the covert or overt funding of government ministries and local councils, will establish more unauthorized settlement outposts, whose purpose is to further expand the armed normality of a Land of Israel for Jews only.

    • Israeli settler succumbs to injuries from Salfit attack
      March 18, 2019 10:52 A.M. (Updated: March 19, 2019 2:42 P.M.)
      http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?id=782899

      SALFIT (Ma’an) — An Israeli settler succumbed to injuries, on Monday, that he had sustained after an alleged shooting attack at the Gitai Junction, north of Salfit City, in the northern occupied West Bank.

      Hebrew-language news outlets confirmed that Rabbi Ahiad Ettinger, 47, who was critically injured in an attack on Sunday, succumbed to his injuries.

      Sources said that the Palestinian suspected of carrying out the attack, in which an Israeli soldier was killed, was identified as Omar Abu Leila, 19, from Salfit City, in the northern West Bank.

      Israeli forces are conducting wide-scale searches for Abu Leila.

  • How the Israeli army takes Palestinian land and hands it to settlers -

    45 settlements have been built on Palestinian land requisitioned for military purposes. A new study explains how
    Amira Hass

    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-how-palestinian-land-goes-from-the-army-to-the-settlers-1.7004514

    In the end, the result is the same: More Palestinian land stolen and transferred to Jews because they are Jews (born in Israel or the Diaspora) and for their benefit. But the Jewish brain invents tricks of the trade, and the means and methods that the military bureaucracy has created and is still creating to reach this result are many and varied, until confusion and fear take over at the sheer multitude of details.

    Dror Etkes, a researcher of Israel’s settlement policy, wants, as usual, to put things in order. In a new study he will be publishing this week, he focuses on the history of orders to seize Palestinian land, issued by generations of army commanders in the West Bank (not including the part that was annexed to Jerusalem). More than 1,150 seizure orders have been issued from 1969 to the present. After subtracting those that were revoked or that overlap, it turns out that this particular trick enabled Israel to take over more than 100,000 dunams (25,000 acres) of Palestinian land. More millions of dunams of Palestinian land have been stolen in other ways, which Etkes has been researching too.

    The declared purpose for such seizure is security and military needs. On the website of the Military Advocate General, the body that advises the army on legal issues, this goal is stressed. Etkes quotes at length from this source in his study: In accordance with the laws of belligerent occupation detailed in customary international law, an occupying power is prohibited from confiscating the private property of a local population in an area under its belligerent occupation. [But] the commander of the area has the authority to take possession of private land if there is a military need. … Exercising this authority does not invalidate landowners’ rights of possession, although they are temporarily prevented from holding and using the land. ... The word temporary is used, because the occupation is meant to be temporary, and because military needs may change.

    Surprise surprise. Some 40 percent of the area officially seized for military and security needs have been allocated over the years to settlements (a quarter of the total area is indeed used for military purposes and another quarter is occupied by the separation barrier). The governments of the Alignment, the Labor Party’s predecessor, started this tradition. They allocated 6,280 dunams to settlements – 28 percent of the approximately 22,000 dunams that have been seized for military use in those years. As expected, the rise of Likud to power has seen a huge spike in allocation to settlements of land that was originally seized for military use. From Likud’s victory in May 1977 to the end of 1979, more than 31,000 dunams were seized. Out of this total, 23,000 were allocated to settlements – that is, 73 percent.

    If we thought this method was quashed by the High Court of Justice ruling in the case of the settlement of Elon Moreh – which was handed down in October 1979 and placed restrictions on the authority of an Israeli military commander in the West Bank to seize land for settlement construction – it turns out we were wrong. Because for three years, commanders continued under Likud to issue seizure orders for security needs that benefited the settlements: Out of some 11,000 dunams seized, 7,040 dunams were given to 12 new settlements. (The dates on some of the orders are unclear; therefore they are not included in the breakdown above that Etkes produced at Haaretz’s request. But the goal of those orders, too, is clear: settlement. And they apply to areas amounting to about 2,000 dunams).

    Following the High Court ruling on Elon Moreh, Israel found a surer method of robbery: declaring Palestinian land to be state land (that is, for Jews), in a very lenient interpretation of an Ottoman law on the matter. The raw material from Etkes’ research is digital maps and layers of data given to him by the Civil Administration (through gritted teeth) by dint of the Freedom of Information Law. According to this information, Etkes estimates that since the 1980s, Israel has declared some 750,000 dunams as state land, out of approximately 5.7 million dunams in the West Bank. (Reminder: This column does not recognize the legality of the Israeli definition of Palestinian land as state land, and even less the legality of their transfer to Jews).

  • Israël libère Mustapha Awad pour le remettre aussitôt en prison, en toute illégalité
    Publié le 5 mars 2019
    http://www.pourlapalestine.be/israel-libere-mustapha-awad-pour-le-remettre-aussitot-en-prison-en-t

    Dans le quotidien israélien Haaretz de ce 4 mars, l’estimable journaliste Amira Hass a évoqué le sort du citoyen belge Mustapha Awad, prisonnier politique en Israël depuis le 19 juillet dernier.
    Elle met en évidence que Mustapha Awad n’a été accusé d’aucun délit commis en Israël, “d’aucune infraction impliquant des armes” et que le tribunal “a même noté que son entrée en Israël et en Cisjordanie n’était pas liée au terrorisme”. Qui plus est, les conditions dans lesquelles sa libération a été annulée sont irrégulières en regard de la loi lisraélienne (…)

  • Pendant six mois, ces villages palestiniens ont eu de l’eau courante. Israël y a mis fin
    25 février | Amira Hass pour Haaretz |Traduction SF pour l’AURDIP
    https://www.aurdip.org/pendant-six-mois-ces-villages.html

    Pendant six mois, des villageois palestiniens vivant en Cisjordanie sur une terre qu’Israël considère comme une zone de feu fermée, ont vu leur rêve d’eau courante devenir réalité. Puis l’administration civile y a mis fin.

    Le rêve devenu réalité, sous la forme d’une canalisation d’eau de deux pouces (5 cm), était trop beau pour être vrai. Pendant environ six mois, 12 villages palestiniens des collines au sud de Hébron ont joui d’une eau courante claire. Cela, jusqu’au 13 février, lorsque l’équipe de l’Administration Civile israélienne, accompagnée de soldats et de la police des frontières est arrivée avec deux bulldozers.

    Les soldats ont déterré les tuyaux, les ont coupés et sciés et ont regardé les jets d’eau qui en giclaient. Environ 350 mètres cubes d’eau ont été gaspillés. L’administration civile a confisqué des restes et des sections de tuyaux de 6km environ sur un réseau de 20 km de longueur. Ils les ont chargés sur des camions à ordures à l’effigie de Ramat Gan, une banlieue de Tel Aviv.

    Le travail de démolition a duré six heures et demie. La construction du réseau d’adduction d’eau avait pris à peu près quatre mois. Ce fut clairement un acte de rébellion civile dans l’esprit du Mahatma Gandhi et de Martin Luther King contre une des privations les plus brutales qu’Israël impose aux villages palestiniens de la zone C, la partie de la Cisjordanie qui est totalement sous contrôle israélien. Cela empêche les Palestiniens de se brancher sur les infrastructures d’eau existantes.

    Les grottes qui servent d’habitation dans le district de Masafer Yatta, au sud de Hébron et les anciennes citernes de collecte d’eau de pluie confirment la revendication des villageois selon laquelle leurs villages existent depuis des décennies, bien avant la fondation de l’État d’Israël. Dans les années 1970, Israël a déclaré que quelque 30 000 dounams (3 000 ha) étaient dans la Zone de Feu 918.

    traduction de l’article cité ici : https://seenthis.net/messages/762571
    #IsraelUE

  • For six months, these Palestinian villages had running water. Israel put a stop to it
    For six months, Palestinian villagers living on West Bank land that Israel deems a closed firing range saw their dream of running water come true. Then the Civil Administration put an end to it

    Amira Hass Feb 22, 2019 3:25 PM

    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-why-doesn-t-israel-want-palestinians-to-have-running-water-1.69595

    The dream that came true, in the form of a two-inch water line, was too good to be true. For about six months, 12 Palestinian West Bank villages in the South Hebron Hills enjoyed clean running water. That was until February 13, when staff from the Israeli Civil Administration, accompanied by soldiers and Border Police and a couple of bulldozers, arrived.

    The troops dug up the pipes, cut and sawed them apart and watched the jets of water that spurted out. About 350 cubic meters of water were wasted. Of a 20 kilometer long (12 mile) network, the Civil Administration confiscated remnants and sections of a total of about 6 kilometers of piping. They loaded them on four garbage trucks emblazoned with the name of the Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Gan on them.

    The demolition work lasted six and a half hours. Construction of the water line network had taken about four months. It had been a clear act of civil rebellion in the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King against one of the most brutal bans that Israel imposes on Palestinian communities in Area C, the portion of the West Bank under full Israeli control. It bars Palestinians from hooking into existing water infrastructure.

    The residential caves in the Masafer Yatta village region south of Hebron and the ancient cisterns used for collecting rainwater confirm the local residents’ claim that their villages have existed for decades, long before the founding of the State of Israel. In the 1970s, Israel declared some 30,000 dunams (7,500 acres) in the area Firing Range 918.

    In 1999, under the auspices of the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, the army expelled the residents of the villages and demolished their structures and water cisterns. The government claimed that the residents were trespassing on the firing range, even though these were their lands and they have lived in the area long before the West Bank was captured by Israel.

    When the matter was brought to the High Court of Justice, the court approved a partial return to the villages but did not allow construction or hookups to utility infrastructure. Mediation attempts failed, because the state was demanding that the residents leave their villages and live in the West Bank town of Yatta and come to graze their flocks and work their land only on a few specific days per year.

    But the residents continued to live in their homes, risking military raids and demolition action — including the demolition of public facilities such as schools, medical clinics and even toilets. They give up a lot to maintain their way of life as shepherds, but could not forgo water.

    “The rainy season has grown much shorter in recent years, to only about 45 days a year,” explained Nidal Younes, the chairman of the Masafer Yatta council of villages. “In the past, we didn’t immediately fill the cisterns with rainwater, allowing them to be washed and cleaned first. Since the amount of rain has decreased, people stored water right away. It turns out the dirty water harmed the sheep and the people.”

    Because the number of residents has increased, even in years with abundant rain, at a certain stage the cisterns ran dry and the shepherds would bring in water by tractor. They would haul a 4 cubic meter (140 square foot) tank along the area’s narrow, poor roads — which Israel does not permit to have widened and paved. “The water has become every family’s largest expense,” Younes said.

    In the village of Halawa, he pointed out Abu Ziyad, a man of about 60. “I always see him on a tractor, bringing in water or setting out to bring back water.”

    Sometimes the tractors overturn and drivers are injured. Tires quickly wear out and precious work days go to waste. “We are drowning in debt to pay for the transportation of water,” Abu Ziyad said.

    In 2017, the Civil Administration and the Israeli army closed and demolished the roads to the villages, which the council had earlier managed to widen and rebuild. That had been done to make it easier to haul water in particular, but also more generally to give the villages better access.

    The right-wing Regavim non-profit group “exposed” the great crime committed in upgrading the roads and pressured the Civil Administration and the army to rip them up. “The residents’ suffering increased,” Younes remarked. “We asked ourselves how to solve the water problem.”

    The not very surprising solution was installing pipes to carry the water from the main water line in the village of Al-Tuwani, through privately owned lands of the other villages. “I checked it out, looking to see if there was any ban on laying water lines on private land and couldn’t find one,” Younes said.

    Work done by volunteers

    The plumbing work was done by volunteers, mostly at night and without heavy machinery, almost with their bare hands. Ali Debabseh, 77, of the village of Khalet al-Daba, recalled the moment when he opened the spigot installed near his home and washed his face with running water. “I wanted to jump for joy. I was as happy as a groom before his wedding.”

    Umm Fadi of the village of Halawa also resorted to the word “joy” in describing the six months when she had a faucet near the small shack in which she lives. “The water was clean, not brown from rust or dust. I didn’t need to go as far as the cistern to draw water, didn’t need to measure every drop.”

    Now it’s more difficult to again get used to being dependent on water dispensed from tanks.

    The piping and connections and water meters were bought with a 100,000 euro ($113,000) European donation. Instead of paying 40 shekels ($11) per cubic meter for water brought in with water tanks, the residents paid only about 6 shekels for the same amount of running water. Suddenly they not only saved money, but also had more precious time.

    The water lines also could have saved European taxpayers money. A European project to help the residents remain in their homes had been up and running since 2011, providing annual funding of 120,000 euros to cover the cost of buying and transporting drinking water during the three summer months for the residents (but not their livestock).

    The cost was based on a calculation involving consumption of 750 liters per person a month, far below the World Health Organization’s recommended quantity. There are between 1,500 and 2,000 residents. The project made things much easier for such a poor community, which continued to pay out of its own pocket for the water for some 40,000 sheep and for the residents’ drinking water during the remainder of the year. Now that the Civil Administration has demolished the water lines, the European donor countries may be forced to once again pay for the high price of transporting water during the summer months, at seven times the cost.

    For its part, the Civil Administration issued a statement noting that the area is a closed military zone. “On February 13,” the statement said, “enforcement action was taken against water infrastructure that was connected to illegal structures in this area and that were built without the required permits.”

    Ismail Bahis should have been sorry that the pipes were laid last year. He and his brothers, residents of Yatta, own water tankers and were the main water suppliers to the Masafer Yatta villages. Through a system of coupons purchased with the European donation, they received 800 shekels for every shipment of 20 cubic meters of water. But Bahis said he was happy he had lost out on the work.

    “The roads to the villages of Masafer Yatta are rough and dangerous, particularly after the army closed them,” he said. “Every trip of a few kilometers took at least three and a half hours. Once I tipped over with the tanker. Another time the army confiscated my brother’s truck, claiming it was a closed military zone. We got the truck released three weeks later in return for 5,000 shekels. We always had other additional expenses replacing tires and other repairs for the truck.

    Nidal Younes recounted that the council signed a contract with another water carrier to meet the demand. But that supplier quit after three weeks. He wouldn’t agree to drive on the poor and dangerous roads.

    On February 13, Younes heard the large group of forces sent by the Civil Administration beginning to demolish the water lines near the village of Al-Fakhit. He rushed to the scene and began arguing with the soldiers and Civil Administration staff.

    Border Police arrests

    Border Police officers arrested him, handcuffed him and put him in a jeep. His colleague, the head of the Al-Tuwani council, Mohammed al-Raba’i, also approached those carrying out the demolition work to protest. “But they arrested me after I said two words. At least Nidal managed to say a lot,” he said with a smile that concealed sadness.

    Two teams carried out the demolition work, one proceeding toward the village of Jinbah, to the southeast, the second advanced in the direction of Al-Tuwani, to the northwest. They also demolished the access road leading to the village of Sha’ab al-Butum, so that even if Bahis wanted to transport water again, he would have had to make a large detour to do so.

    Younes was shocked to spot a man named Marco among the team carrying out the demolition. “I remembered him from when I was a child, from the 1980s when he was an inspector for the Civil Administration. In 1985, he supervised the demolition of houses in our village, Jinbah — twice, during Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr [marking the end of the Ramadan holy month],” he said.

    “They knew him very well in all the villages in the area because he attended all the demolitions. The name Marco was a synonym for an evil spirit. Our parents who saw him demolish their homes, have died. He disappeared, and suddenly he has reappeared,” Younes remarked.

    Marco is Marco Ben-Shabbat, who has lead the Civil Administration’s supervision unit for the past 10 years. Speaking to a reporter from the Israel Hayom daily who accompanied the forces carrying out the demolition work, Ben-Shabbat said: “The [water line] project was not carried out by the individual village. The Palestinian Authority definitely put a project manager here and invested a lot of money.”

    More precisely, it was European governments that did so.

    From all of the villages where the Civil Administration destroyed water lines, the Jewish outposts of Mitzpeh Yair and Avigayil can be seen on the hilltops. Although they are unauthorized and illegal even according to lenient Israeli settlement laws, the outposts were connected almost immediately to water and electricity grids and paved roads lead to them.

    “I asked why they demolished the water lines,” Nidal Younes recalled. He said one of the Border Police officers answered him, in English, telling him it was done “to replace Arabs with Jews.”

    #Financementeuropéen

    • Under Israeli Occupation, Water Is a Luxury

      Of all the methods Israel uses to expel Palestinians from their land, the deprivation of water is the most cruel. And so the Palestinians are forced to buy water that Israel stole from them
      Amira Hass
      Feb 24, 2019 9:45 PM
      https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-under-israeli-occupation-water-is-a-luxury-1.6962821

      Water pipes cut by the Israeli military in the village of Khalet al-Daba, February 17, 2019. Eliyahu Hershkovitz

      When I wrote my questions and asked the spokesperson’s office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories to explain the destruction of the water pipelines in the Palestinian villages southeast of Yatta, on February 13, my fingers started itching wanting to type the following question: “Tell me, aren’t you ashamed?” You may interpret it as a didactic urge, you can see it as a vestige of faith in the possibility of exerting an influence, or a crumb of hope that there’s somebody there who doesn’t automatically carry out orders and will feel a niggling doubt. But the itching in my fingers disappeared quickly.

      This is not the first time that I’m repressing my didactic urge to ask the representatives of the destroyers, and the deprivers of water, if they aren’t ashamed. After all, every day our forces carry out some brutal act of demolition or prevent construction or assist the settlers who are permeated with a sense of racial superiority, to expel shepherds and farmers from their land. The vast majority of these acts of destruction and expulsion are not reported in the Israeli media. After all, writing about them would require the hiring of another two full-time reporters.

      These acts are carried out in the name of every Israeli citizen, who also pays the taxes to fund the salaries of the officials and the army officers and the demolition contractors. When I write about one small sampling from among the many acts of destruction, I have every right as a citizen and a journalist to ask those who hand down the orders, and those who carry them out: “Tell me, can you look at yourself in the mirror?”

      But I don’t ask. Because we know the answer: They’re pleased with what they see in the mirror. Shame has disappeared from our lives. Here’s another axiom that has come down to us from Mount Sinai: The Jews have a right to water, wherever they are. Not the Palestinians. If they insist on living outside the enclaves we assigned to them in Area A, outside the crowded reservations (the city of Yatta, for example), let them bear the responsibility of becoming accustomed to living without water. It’s impossible without water? You don’t say. Then please, let the Palestinians pay for water that is carried in containers, seven times the cost of the water in the faucet.

      It’s none of our business that most of the income of these impoverished communities is spent on water. It’s none of our business that water delivery is dangerous because of the poor roads. It’s none of our business that the Israel Defense Forces and the Civil Administration dig pits in them and pile up rocks – so that it will be truly impossible to use them to transport water for about 1,500 to 2,000 people, and another 40,000 sheep and goats. What do we care that only one road remains, a long detour that makes delivery even more expensive? After all, it’s written in the Torah: What’s good for us, we’ll deny to others.

      I confess: The fact that the pyramid that carries out the policy of depriving the Palestinians of water is now headed by a Druze (Brig. Gen. Kamil Abu Rokon, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories) made the itching in my fingers last longer. Maybe because when Abu Rokon approaches the faucet, he thinks the word “thirsty” in the same language used by the elderly Ali Dababseh from the village of Khalet al-Daba to describe life with a dry spigot and waiting for the tractor that will bring water in a container. Or because Abu Rokon first learned from his mother how to say in Arabic that he wants to drink.

      Water towers used by villages due to lack of running water in their homes. Eliyahu Hershkovitz

      But that longer itching is irrational, at least based on the test of reality. The Civil Administration and COGAT are filled with Druze soldiers and officers whose mother tongue is Arabic. They carry out the orders to implement Israel’s settler colonial policy, to expel Palestinians and to take over as much land as possible for Jews, with the same unhesitant efficiency as their colleagues whose mother tongue is Hebrew, Russian or Spanish.

      Of all the Israeli methods of removing Palestinians from their land in order to allocate it to Jews from Israel and the Diaspora, the policy of water deprivation is the cruelest. And these are the main points of this policy: Israel does not recognize the right of all the human beings living under its control to equal access to water and to quantities of water. On the contrary. It believes in the right of the Jews as lords and masters to far greater quantities of water than the Palestinians. It controls the water sources everywhere in the country, including in the West Bank. It carries out drilling in the West Bank and draws water in the occupied territory, and transfers most of it to Israel and the settlements.

      The Palestinians have wells from the Jordanian period, some of which have already dried up, and several new ones from the past 20 years, not as deep as the Israeli ones, and together they don’t yield sufficient quantities of water. The Palestinians are therefore forced to buy from Israel water that Israel is stealing from them.

      Because Israel has full administrative control over 60 percent of the area of the West Bank (among other things it decides on the master plans and approves construction permits), it also forbids the Palestinians who live there to link up to the water infrastructure. The reason for the prohibition: They have no master plan. Or that’s a firing zone. And of course firing zones were declared on Mount Sinai, and an absence of a master plan for the Palestinian is not a deliberate human omission but the act of God.

    • Pendant six mois, ces villages palestiniens ont eu de l’eau courante. Israël y a mis fin
      25 février | Amira Hass pour Haaretz |Traduction SF pour l’AURDIP
      https://www.aurdip.org/pendant-six-mois-ces-villages.html

      Pendant six mois, des villageois palestiniens vivant en Cisjordanie sur une terre qu’Israël considère comme une zone de feu fermée, ont vu leur rêve d’eau courante devenir réalité. Puis l’administration civile y a mis fin.

  • D’abord Israël asphyxie les Gazaouis, puis nous disons que nous sommes inquiets pour leur sort
    2 février | Amira Hass pour Haaretz |Traduction J.Ch. pour l’AURDIP
    https://www.aurdip.org/d-abord-israel-asphyxie-les.html

    (...) Les responsables de la de sécurité sont inquiet devant l’effondrement du système de santé de Gaza parce que cela fera que les Forces de Défense Israéliennes auront plus de difficultés à poursuivre une opération militaire majeure dans le cas où la direction politique en ordonnerait une. C’est ce que Yaniv Kubovich a écrit la semaine dernière dans son rapport sur la récente discussion du cabinet de sécurité à ce sujet. En d’autres termes, la très pauvre performance du système de santé palestinien est l’une des choses qu’il faut prendre en compte si on décide d’attaquer à nouveau l’enclave palestinienne assiégée.

    Ce rapport peut nous apprendre directement deux autres choses : 1. La plupart des morts dans la confrontation attendue seront des civils (comme ce fut le cas, accessoirement, dans les opérations précédentes) qui ne seront pas secourus hors des zones de combat dans des délais convenables ou qui ne recevront pas de traitement médical approprié, et 2. La communauté internationale (c’est-à-dire probablement les pays occidentaux) vivront un moment difficile en soutenant une autre opération israélienne à cause de l’incapacité à sauver les civils blessés.

    Ce que l’on peut comprendre entre les lignes, c’est que, et la sécurité et les responsables politiques dénient toute responsabilité de leur part dans la situation à Gaza en général et dans le système de santé palestinien en particulier. A l’opposé, une source politique a même dit que l’Autorité Palestinienne veut que le système de santé de Gaza s’effondre. (...)

  • A l’encontre » Israël/Palestine. Couper des oliviers palestiniens, pour s’emparer, demain, de terres
    Par Amira Hass Article publié dans le quotidien Haaretz, le 5 novembre 2018 ; traduction A l’Encontre
    http://alencontre.org/moyenorient/palestine/israeel-palestine-couper-des-oliviers-palestiniens-pour-semparer-demain-

    Une vidéo du 4 octobre 2018 évoque la scène d’une récolte d’olives. Après tout, c’est la saison. Deux jeunes, dont au moins un est mineur, tiennent une grande bâche. Le plus petit d’entre eux tient un bâton et donne des coups à un arbre [pour faire tomber les olives], mais plutôt que de récolter les olives, les coups cassent les branches de l’olivier.

    Les oliviers du village palestinien de Burin, en Cisjordanie, dans le nord de la Cisjordanie, n’appartiennent pas à ces jeunes hommes, et personne ne leur a donné la permission de récolter des olives dans cette oliveraie à l’ouest du poste de contrôle de Hawara. Ils sont indubitablement juifs, comme l’indiquent clairement leurs kippas blanches, leurs papillotes et leurs franges rituelles tzitzit.

    On a demandé à un résident de Burin, qui sera identifié ici seulement comme N., de filmer ce qui se passait. Il a réussi à arriver sur les lieux environ 20 minutes plus tard. Il a appelé la police et, à leur arrivée, 15 à 20 minutes plus tard, il avait réussi à filmer les jeunes hommes donnant des coups contre trois arbres. (...)


    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-tree-terror-settlers-attack-palestinian-farmers-produce-israel-doe

  • A rational Hamas

    Hamas leader’s interview with Israeli paper caused an uproar. It wasn’t always like that

    Amira Hass

    https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-hamas-leader-s-interview-with-israeli-paper-caused-an-uproar-it-wa

    The interview with Yahya Sinwar, Hamas chief in Gaza, which was conducted by Italian journalist Francesca Borri and published in the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth,” set off a major internet storm in the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian diaspora. What? Sinwar spoke knowingly to an Israeli newspaper? It wasn’t the content that caused the uproar (“A new war is not in anyone’s interest, certainly not our interest”) – only the host.
    >> Israel is incomparably stronger than Hamas – but it will never win: Interview with Hamas leader in Gaza
    Sinwar’s bureau hastened to publish a clarification: The request was for an interview with an Italian newspaper and a British newspaper; the Western media department in the Hamas movement ascertained that the journalist was neither Jewish nor Israeli, and that she has never worked with the Israeli press. There was no face-to-face interview with the above-mentioned journalist, but rather a written response to her questions. The journalist met with Sinwar only for the purpose of a joint photo.

    Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar greets militants in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, after his release from Israeli prison, October 20, 2011Adel Hana / ASSOCIATED PRESS
    Borri, 38, is a freelance journalist who began writing only about six years ago, mainly from Syria. “I think that Sinwar agreed to let me interview him because he knew that I’m a war correspondent and that I would understand when he told me that he isn’t interested in another war,” she told me over the phone from Italy on Friday.
    Her articles have been published in many languages – including in Hebrew in Yedioth Ahronoth. In June, Borri visited Gaza and published an article that was “tough on Hamas,” as she put it. She was haunted by the sight of little children begging, and in her opinion the Islamic resistance movement is also responsible for the terrible deterioration in the Strip. That article was also translated and published in Yedioth.
    And then Borri received a text message from one of Sinwar’s advisers, she told me. Why are you so hard on the Palestinians, he complained. They exchanged several text messages, until she asked if she could interview Sinwar. In late August she came to the Gaza Strip again, to interview him.

    Yahya Sinwar holds his son Ibrahim while he listens to Khaled Mashaal, the outgoing Hamas leader in exile, during his news conference in Doha, Qatar, on Monday, May 1, 2017Adel Hana,AP
    I asked her whether Hamas really didn’t know that the article would be published in Yedioth. “As a freelancer, transparency is important to me,” she said. “It was clear to everyone that the interview would be translated into other languages, including Hebrew. Everyone in Sinwar’s bureau knew that my articles have been published in Yedioth Ahronoth.”

    What caused the outrage was that the wording of the article seemed to indicate that Borri was sent by the Israeli newspaper, and that that’s how the situation was presented to Sinwar. Here is the wording of her first question: “This is the first time ever that you’re agreeing to speak to the Western media – and to an Israeli newspaper yet.” According to Borri, the words “and to an Israeli newspaper yet” didn’t appear in her original question to Sinwar.
    >> ’We can’t prevail against a nuclear power’: Hamas’ Gaza chief says he doesn’t want war with Israel
    On the other hand, she confirmed that Sinwar’s final remark in the article, “and they translate you regularly into Hebrew too,” really was said. “Sinwar spoke to me, and through me to the world. I had the impression that he’s interested in talking through me to the Israelis too,” she said.
    And was the interview really conducted face-to-face and during joint trips with Sinwar and his aides over the course of five days, or in writing, as Hamas claimed. Borri explains: “I never record. I feel that people’s answers change when they see a recording device.” She didn’t travel with him in his car, but she says she did join a convoy of cars with Sinwar through the Strip, yet preferred not to say where.
    On Thursday, in other words before the publication of the full article in Yedioth on Friday, the Al Jazeera website in Arabic already published the text of the written questions and answers that were exchanged, according to Hamas, between Sinwar’s bureau and Borri. A comparison of the written version with the article in Yedioth reveals great similarity between the two texts, with a few differences – mainly a change in the order of the questions and their answers, sentences, declarations and facts that were deleted from the Hebrew version, and a few sentences that were added to it.
    >> Israeli military strikes Gazans who launched incendiary balloons
    The questions and answers in the Arabic version flow, and there is a connection between the replies and the following questions; in other words, a conversation is taking place. According to Al Jazeera, the written questions and replies were exchanged several times between the parties. There is even mention of how during the interview, Sinwar pointed to one of his advisers and said that his son was killed by Israeli fire.
    Borri confirmed in a conversation with me that she combined the replies received in writing, over a period of time, with answers she received orally. Due to the great similarity between the two versions, my impression is that many replies were sent to her in writing. A Gaza resident told me that he was convinced that most of the answers were given in writing because of “the polished wording, the level-headed replies and the rational explanations.”
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    He believes that an entire team thought things through and wrote the answers, not Sinwar alone. He also said that the message in the interview is addressed to the Palestinians in Gaza “who are sick and tired of Hamas rule,” no less than to readers in the West, whom Borri enables to see a senior Hamas official as a leader who cares about his people, rather than as a caricature of a bloodthirsty fanatic.
    And I was left longing for the period when senior Hamas officials gave interviews to the Israeli press and to a Jewish Israeli like me – including Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Ismail Haniyeh and many others. And I was left with the following conclusion: When Israel doesn’t allow Israeli journalists to enter Gaza, it makes life easy for Hamas.

  • The Germans will ignore Israeli apartheid again

    Each day that has passed since May 1999, Europe in general and Germany in particular have crossed another red line in the normalization of the status quo

    Amira Hass SendSend me email alerts
    Oct 02, 2018

    https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-the-germans-will-ignore-israeli-apartheid-again-1.6515798

    Angela Merkel is the answer to two questions: 1. Will Israel, “having no alternative,” attack the Gaza Strip before Friday, that being “the only possible response” to the multiplying demonstrations at the border fence? And 2. Now that the Monday-evening deadline given to the residents of the West Bank Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar to dismantle their simple structures has passed, will Israel’s Civil Administration raze the entire community Tuesday?
    To really understand Israel and the Middle East - subscribe to Haaretz
    It probably won’t happen this week, so as not to embarrass Merkel. The German chancellor and her cabinet are scheduled to arrive Wednesday for meetings with their Israeli colleagues, the seventh such intergovernmental consultations since the tradition began in 2008. In between, the German delegation will visit an exhibition on technological innovation sponsored by the Foreign Ministry, at which six Israeli companies will present their wares.

    Officially, Germany — like all European Union member states — opposes the demolition of Khan al-Ahmar and the forced eviction of its residents, actions that violate international law and Israel’s obligations as an occupying power. Officially, Germany is concerned by the military escalation and the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza. Therefore, like all European states, it hopes for a nonviolent resolution of the military tension.
    But the consulting cabinet ministers aren’t supposed to delve into the bottomless expectation gap between the parties on the future of the Palestinian territories that were captured in 1967. The Germans are still talking about a two-state solution, even as Israel is realizing the eight-state vision (of defeated, disconnected Palestinian enclaves scattered throughout the expanse of Jewish sovereignty).
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    In any event, the joint consultations address the real issues of mature countries. The parties will discuss their excellent technological, military and intelligence ties, their common place in the advanced industrial world, their cultural and scientific ties — not to mention, of course, the Holocaust and Germany’s eternal obligations to Israel.
    >> Read more: Israel Gives Residents of West Bank Bedouin Village Week to Evacuate
    We can infer, from the slogans inserted in the joint statement after the 2016 consultations, that some German minister will blurt out something about human rights, and the response will be that Israel is the only democracy in the region. An open expression of Israeli military and bureaucratic superiority during the visit wouldn’t go over well with the foreign guests.
    And so, the bulldozers and the deadly armed drones, the pride of Israeli technology, along with our female combat soldiers who operate them remotely, the pride of Israeli feminism, will be forced to wait patiently. Not this week.
    On the other hand, why should they wait patiently? Why shouldn’t it happen this week? The German ministers already ignore that an important part of Israeli technological, military and intelligence development is linked to maintaining the occupation and keeping the permanent conflict on a low flame that occasionally flares up. They must ignore this, mentally and emotionally, to continue cultivating partnerships with Israel. They can also ignore Israel’s use of its military capabilities during their visit.
    Each day that has passed since May 1999 (when the final-status agreement with the Palestinians was to go into effect), Israel has crossed another red line in shaping its unique regime of separation (apartheid, in Afrikaans). None of these crossings or violations of international resolutions led European countries to put genuine political pressure on Israel.
    Each day that has passed since May 1999, Europe in general and Germany in particular have crossed another red line in the normalization of Israeli apartheid. They make a complete separation between their partner in technological, scientific and intellectual progress and the Israel that plans to erase in the near future the small village and other communities, and that for 10 years has imprisoned 2 million people in the biggest concentration facility in the world.
    And the umbrella of the victims and survivors of the Holocaust is used to excuse and explain this intolerable ability to repress and compartmentalize.

  • Bantoustans en Palestine
    par Robert Fisk - 24 août 2018 – The Independent – Traduction : Chronique de Palestine – Dominique Muselet - 23 septembre 2018
    http://www.chroniquepalestine.com/bantoustans-en-palestine

    Montrez-moi quelque chose qui va me choquer, ai-je demandé à Amira Hass. La seule journaliste israélienne qui vit en Cisjordanie – ou en Palestine, si vous croyez encore en ce mot si peu orthodoxe – m’a donc emmené sur une route à l’extérieur de Ramallah qui dans mon souvenir était une autoroute qui menait à Jérusalem. Mais maintenant, sur la colline, elle se transforme en une route à l’abandon, à moitié goudronnée, bordée de magasins fermés par des volets rouillés et des ordures. La même odeur putride d’égouts à l’air libre plane sur la route. L’eau puante stagne, verte et flasque, en flaques au pied du mur.

    (...) C’est une Israélienne qui me parle, la fille solide et inébranlable d’une résistante bosniaque qui a dû se rendre à la Gestapo et d’un survivant juif roumain de l’Holocauste, une fille à qui le socialisme a donné, à mon avis, un courage marxiste inflexible.

    Elle ne serait peut-être pas d’accord, mais je la considère comme une enfant de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, même si elle est née 11 ans après la mort d’Hitler. Elle pense qu’il ne lui reste plus qu’entre 100 et 500 lecteurs israéliens ; Grâce à Dieu, pensent beaucoup d’entre nous, son journal, Haaretz, existe toujours.

    Lorsqu’on l’a emmenée de la gare à Bergen-Belsen en 1944, la mère d’Amira, a été frappée par les ménagères allemandes qui venaient voir la file de prisonniers terrorisés, toutes ces Allemandes qui les « regardaient de loin ». Je crois qu’Amira Hass ne regardera jamais de loin. Elle s’est habituée à être haïe et insultée par son propre peuple. Mais elle est réaliste.

    « Tu sais, on ne peut pas nier que, pendant un certain temps, [le Mur] a eu un impact sécuritaire, » dit-elle. C’est vrai. Il a stoppé la campagne palestinienne d’attentats-suicide. Mais le Mur a aussi un objectif expansionniste ; il a confisqué des terres arabes qui ne font pas plus partie de l’État d’Israël que les vastes colonies qui abritent aujourd’hui environ 400 000 Juifs à travers la Cisjordanie. Pas encore, en tout cas.

    Amira porte des lunettes rondes qui la font ressembler à un de ces dentistes un peu déprimés, qui inspectent avec tristesse et cynisme votre dentition en perdition. C’est comme ça qu’elle écrit. Elle vient de terminer un long article pour Haaretz qui sera publié deux jours plus tard ; c’est une dissection féroce de l’accord d’Oslo de 1993 qui n’est pas loin de prouver que les Israéliens n’ont jamais voulu que l’accord de « paix » permette aux Palestiniens d’avoir un État.

    « La réalité des bantoustans, réserves ou enclaves palestiniens, écrit-elle à l’occasion du sombre 25ième anniversaire des accords d’Oslo, se voit sur le terrain… il n’a été précisé nulle part que l’objectif était la création d’un État palestinien dans le territoire occupé en 1967, contrairement à ce que les Palestiniens et beaucoup de gens du camp israélien à l’époque et dans les pays européens avaient imaginé. » Amira me confie : » Le problème, c’est que les rédacteurs en chef d’Haaretz, – je les appelle les enfants – changent de couplet tous les deux ans et à chaque fois ils me demandent : » Comment sais-tu qu’Oslo n’avait pas la paix comme objectif ? Il y a 20 ans, ils pensaient que j’étais folle, maintenant ils sont fiers d’avoir eu quelqu’un au journal qui avait tout compris dès le début. » (...)

  • Le long périple des enfants palestiniens vers l’école — devant les colons avec leurs armes
    26 septembre | Amira Hass pour Haaretz |Traduction CG pour l’AURDIP
    https://www.aurdip.org/le-long-periple-des-enfants.html

    Depuis 14 ans, une jeep de l’armée israélienne doit accompagner une dizaine d’enfants à leur école, et de retour, pour éviter qu’ils ne soient harcelés, attaqués, ou aient à faire un long détour.

    Un chemin de terre devenant une route asphaltée. Filles et garçons d’âge scolaire y marchent, avec une jeep militaire avançant lentement derrière eux
    Cette vision étrange est devenue une partie familière du paysage pour le village de Al-Tuwani au sud de Yatta, dans le sud de la Cisjordanie. Mais le matin du 9 septembre, quelque chose était différent. Au lieu de la jeep militaire, qui était en retard, il y avait un véhicule civil blanc. Son conducteur a essayé de bloquer les élèves et leurs deux accompagnateurs, des volontaires de l’organisation pacifiste italienne Opération Colombe.

    L’homme, qui portait une chemise grise et une kippa, avec un fusil pointant sous sa chemise, est sorti de la voiture et a crié en hébreu : « Vous n’avez pas le droit de traverser seuls ». Ensuite, il a dit en anglais : « Vous n’avez pas le droit de traverser avant que les soldats n’arrivent ». Une accompagnatrice italienne a répliqué : « Ce n’est pas vrai. Les soldats ont déjà une heure de retard ». L’Israélien a maintenu sa position et a dit en anglais : « Eux [les enfants] n’ont pas le droit, et vous, n’avez même pas le droit d’être ici ».

    Le groupe a continué à avancer. L’Israélien a dit à quelqu’un au téléphone : « Est-ce que vous venez ? Ils se baladent ici, les gauchistes et les Européens ». Apeurés, mais déterminés, les enfants ont continué de marcher parce qu’ils avaient déjà raté la première leçon et étaient sur le point d’être en retard pour la deuxième.

    « Vous êtes un touriste, et en tant que touriste vous n’avez pas le droit d’être ici », a dit l’homme. « Attendez les soldats », a-t-il ordonné à l’accompagnatrice italienne. Elle l’a photographié. Il l’a photographiée. « Est-ce que vous êtes fier d’effrayer les enfants ? », a-t-elle demandé. L’Opération Colombe est une organisation pacifiste catholique qui prône la non-violence et ses volontaires vivent et travaillent au sein de la population civile dans des zones de conflit.

    L’homme avec le fusil et la kippa a commencé à marcher rapidement, s’est rapproché des enfants d’un air menaçant et a continué ses avertissements au téléphone : « Des gauchistes et des Arabes marchent ici seuls ». Il a ensuite regagné en courant sa voiture blanche, où deux filles et un garçon d’âge scolaire étaient assis. Avec les enfants à l’intérieur, l’homme a avancé, a rattrapé les élèves et a essayé encore de les bloquer.

  • Israel Violence from God -

    Amira Hass

    https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-violence-from-god-1.6427708

    The IDF spokesman did not miss the target and proved what we have known for a long time. In other words, his employer, the army, is a willing captive of the settlement enterprise and the settlers.
    To really understand Israel and the Middle East - subscribe to Haaretz
    In a response after the attack on six activists from Ta’ayush by about a dozen or more Israelis, (Jews), at the Mitzpeh Yair settlement outpost on the holy Sabbath of the 14th of the Jewish month of Elul, 5778, the IDF spokesman lied twice: “Friction” – that’s what he called the brutal attack, after which four of the victims required treatment in the hospital. He also claimed that the soldiers declared a closed military zone. If they did, the activists didn’t hear it.

    Soldiers evacuating an injured activist after the attack in South Hebron Hills, August 25, 2018.B’Tselem
    There is no group of Israeli Jewish activists that has been and is being exposed to physical attacks by the settlers more than Ta’ayush. For almost 20 years the activists of this left-wing group have been going out to the battlefields: the pastures, fields and orchards that the settlers have their eyes on.

  • Par l’interrogatoire serré d’un militant de gauche, le Shin Bet viole une décision de la Haute Cour
    Amira Hass, Haaretz, le 25 juillet 2018
    http://aurdip.fr/par-l-interrogatoire-serre-d-un.html

    Geva a aussi déclaré qu’il n’était pas un interrogateur, mais plutôt la personne responsable pour les affaires concernant la gauche radicale et la « dalag ». C’est seulement plus tard que Kronberg a compris que ce terme était une abréviation pour « délégitimation ».

    Avant la rencontre, qui a duré environ une demi-heure, les affaires de Kronberg avaient été fouillées et il a lui-même subi une fouille au corps. On lui a dit que c’était destiné à s’assurer qu’il n’avait pas d’appareil d’enregistrement.

    Selon l’Association pour les droits civils en Israël, convoquer des militants pour des entretiens d’avertissement « est une pratique inacceptable qui ne devrait pas exister et qui n’a aucune place dans un pays démocratique. Nous entendons avec une grande inquiétude que l’agent du Shin Bet s’est défini comme ‘responsable à propos de la délégitimation’. Il est interdit au Shin Bet de fonctionner comme une police de la pensée et de saper la liberté d’expression ».

    #Palestine #BDS #Daniel_Kronberg #Taayush #Shin_Bet #criminalisation_des_militants #liberté_d'expression #censure #police_de_la_pensée

  • Israeli minister planned eviction of West Bank Bedouin 40 years ago, document reveals
    Now agriculture minister, then settler activist, Uri Ariel was already planning in the 1970s the eviction of Bedouin living east of Jerusalem that is taking place now in Khan al-Ahmar
    Amira Hass Jul 12, 2018 2:57 AM
    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-document-reveals-the-eviction-of-bedouin-was-planned-40-years-ago-

    Forty years ago Uri Ariel, now agriculture minister, was already planning the eviction of Bedouin living east of Jerusalem. This emerges from a document signed by him titled, “A proposal to plan the Ma’aleh Adumim region and establish the community settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim B.”

    The document outlines a plan to turn some 100,000 to 120,000 dunams (25,000 to 30,000 acres) of Palestinian land into an area of Jewish settlement and develop it as a “Jewish corridor,” as he put it, from the coast to the Jordan River. In fact, a large part of the plan has been executed, except for the eviction of all the area’s Bedouin.

    Now the Civil Administration and the police are expediting the demolition of the homes of the Jahalin in Khan al-Ahmar. This is one of approximately 25 Bedouin communities in the area that have become a flagship of the Bedouin resistance in the West Bank’s Area C against the efforts by the Israeli occupation to uproot them, gather them in a few compounds adjacent to Area A, and impose a semi-urban lifestyle on them.

    The boundaries of the area that Ariel sets for his plan are the Palestinian villages of Hizme, Anata, Al-Azariya and Abu Dis to the west, the hills overlooking the Jordan Valley to the east, Wadi Qelt to the north and the Kidron Valley and Horkania Valley to the south. “In the area there are many Bedouin involved in the cultivation of land,” he writes, contrary to the claims voiced today by settlers that the Bedouin only recently popped up and “took over” the land.

    But Ariel has a solution: “Since the area is used by the military and a large part of the industry there serves the defense establishment, the area must be closed to Bedouin settlement and evacuated.”

    This document, exposed here for the first time, was found by Dr. Yaron Ovadia in the Kfar Adumim archives when he was doing research for a book he’s writing about the Judean Desert. Ovadia wrote his doctorate about the Jahalin tribe.

    “Since [the area] is unsettled, it is now possible to plan it entirely,” Ariel wrote, about an area that constituted the land reserves for construction, industry, agriculture and grazing for the Palestinian towns and villages east of Bethlehem, Jerusalem and Ramallah. “Arab urban/rural settlement is spreading at an amazing pace along the route from Jerusalem eastward, and this linear spread must be stopped immediately.”

    His solutions: to build urban neighborhoods that will become part of Jerusalem and to “administratively close the area of the Arab villages by means of an appropriate plan.” This administrative closure by an appropriate plan can be discerned in the reality perpetuated by the Interim Agreement of 1995, which artificially divided the West Bank into Areas A and B, to be administered by the Palestinians, and Area C, which covers 60 percent of the West Bank, to be administered by Israel. That’s how Palestinian enclaves were created with limited development potential within a large Jewish expanse.

    Ariel’s plan was apparently written between late 1978 and the beginning of 1979, and he said that as far as he recalls, it was submitted to Brig. Gen. Avraham Tamir, the IDF’s head of planning. “We have been living for three years in the existing settlement at Mishor Adumim,” writes Ariel, referring to a settlement nucleus that was established in 1975 and was portrayed as a work camp near the Mishor Adumim industrial zone. Even before Ma’aleh Adumim was officially inaugurated, Ariel was proposing to build “Ma’aleh Adumim B,” i.e., Kfar Adumim, which was established in September 1979.

    Some Jahalin families were indeed evicted from their homes in 1977 and 1980. In 1994, expulsion orders were issued against dozens more, and they were evicted in the late 1990s, with the approval of the High Court of Justice. But thousands of Bedouin and their flocks remained in the area, albeit under increasingly difficult conditions as firing zones, settlements and roads reduced their grazing areas and their access to water. From the early 2000s the Civil Administration has been planning to evacuate the Bedouin and forcibly resettle them in permanent townships.

    It’s tempting to present Ariel’s 40-year-old suggestions as an example of the personal and political determination that characterizes many religious Zionist activists and was facilitated by the Likud electoral victory in 1977. But it was Yitzhak Rabin’s first government that decided to build a 4,500-dunam industrial zone for Jerusalem in Khan al-Amar. In 1975 it expropriated a huge area of 30,000 dunams from the Palestinian towns and villages in the area and built a settlement there disguised as a work camp for employees of the industrial zone.

    In a study (“The Hidden Agenda,” 2009) written by Nir Shalev for the nonprofit associations Bimkom – Planners for Planning Rights and B’tselem, he notes that the Housing and Construction Ministry’s Jerusalem district director when Ma’aleh Adumim was first being built in 1975 said that the objective behind it was political – “to block the entrance way to Jerusalem from a Jordanian threat.” But since the objective was political, it was clear that he wasn’t referring to a military threat, but to demographic growth that would require additional construction.

    The planning for Ma’aleh Adumim actually began in Golda Meir’s time in the early 1970s; at the time, minister Israel Galili advised Davar reporter Hagai Eshed that it would be best if the press didn’t deal with this “exciting and interesting” issue, “because it could cause damage.” Both the Meir and Rabin governments considered the planned settlement to be part of metropolitan Jerusalem. Moreover, during Rabin’s second government, the period of the Oslo Accords, Bedouin were evicted, in the spirit of Ariel’s proposal.

    Perhaps the most crucial move was actually made in 1971, when under that same government of Meir, Galili and Moshe Dayan, military order No. 418 was issued, which made drastic changes to the planning apparatus in the West Bank. The order removed the rights of Palestinian local councils to plan and build. As explained in another study by Bimkom (“The Prohibted Zone,” 2008) this prepared the legal infrastructure for the separate planning systems – the miserly, restrictive system for the Palestinians and the generous, encouraging one for the settlements. This distorted planning system refused to take into account the longtime Bedouin communities that had been expelled from the Negev and had been living in the area long before the settlements were built.

    The settlement part of Ariel’s proposal succeeded because it was merely a link in a chain of plans and ideas had already been discussed when the Labor Alignment was still in power, and which were advanced by a bureaucratic infrastructure that had been in place even before 1948. Today, under a government in which Ariel’s Habayit Hayehudi party is so powerful, the open expulsion of Bedouin is possible. But the expulsion of Palestinians in general is hardly a Habayit Hayehudi invention.

  • The missing reports on herbicides in Gaza
    Amira Hass Jul 09, 2018 1:05 AM | Haaretz.com
    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-the-missing-reports-on-herbicides-in-gaza-1.6248503

    So we’re destroying Palestinian crops with our spraying? What’s new here, shrugs the average Israeli and clicks to another channel

    As I was working on my article about Israeli herbicide spraying in Gaza, I learned that 1948 refugees from the village of Salama are living in the village of Khuza’a. They are farmers, much as their parents and grandparents were. Back then, they grew citrus fruit, bananas and grains, and sold their crops in Jaffa as well as in Jewish communities.

    We tend to associate Palestinian refugees with the refugee camps. But sometimes you get to meet some who, even in exile from their village, have managed to maintain the same type of life and livelihood – that is, to work and live off the land in the West Bank and even Gaza. The Al-Najjar family in Khuza’a is one such family.

    Together with his father, Saleh al-Najjar, 53, works 60 dunams (about 15 acres) of land that they are leasing in Khuza’a. They employ three laborers, and Saleh says the five of them work 12 hours a day.

    By working the land they maintain continuity, despite being refugees and having lost the lands of Salama – where Israel built Kfar Shalem. Israel, meanwhile, maintains the continuity by damaging their sources of income and their health. When people say the Nakba never ended, the Najjar family can be cited as another example. One of the millions.

    Over the past four years, the Najjars – like hundreds of other farming families in the eastern part of the Gaza Strip – have learned to fear also small civilian aircraft.

    In spring and fall, and sometimes in winter too, for several days the planes appear in the mornings, flying above the separation fence. But the contrails they emit are borne westward with the wind, cross the border and reach the Gazan fields. From seeing their wilted crops, the farmers have understood that the planes are spraying herbicides.

    The fear of these crop dusters is even greater than of the Israeli armored vehicles that every so often trample all the vegetation west of the separation fence – because the herbicides reach further, seep into the soil and pollute the water. Crops up to 2,200 meters (7,220 feet) west of the border fence are affected by the spraying, says the Red Cross. The crops 100 to 900 meters away were totally destroyed. The irrigation pools located a kilometer away were contaminated.

    The Palestinian reports about Israeli crop spraying destroying Gaza agriculture were first heard in late 2014. A figment of the imagination? In late 2015, the Israel Defense Forces spokesperson confirmed to the 972 website that crop spraying was taking place. The Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, an organization in Gaza, sent soil samples for laboratory testing. The army did not tell it what was being sprayed.

    Spraying of herbicides intended to destroy crops is not the sort of thing the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit or the Coordinator of Government Activity in the Territories is happy to talk about or volunteer information on. Nor is it the kind of report that concerns Israelis much, not on social media or as a common subject of conversation in Israeli homes.

    “So we’re destroying Palestinian crops with herbicide spraying – what else is new? We did the same thing to the Bedouin crops in the Negev (before the High Court of Justice outlawed it following a petition by Adala) and with the lands of Akraba in the 1970s. If our fine young men have decided to do it, it must be necessary,” shrugs the ordinary Israeli before clicking to the next channel. That is why I’m trying to return to the previous channel.

    The IDF’s Gaza Division decides; the Defense Ministry pays the civil aviation companies to do it. The seared spinach fields and the withered parsley plants prey on my mind. Also, I think about the children of these pilots: Do they know the wind carries the chemicals their daddy sprayed, and that another daddy can’t buy his kids shoes and other things because of the crops that were destroyed due to it?

    Asked to comment, the Defense Ministry says: “The spraying is carried out by properly authorized companies in accordance with the 1956 law regarding the protection of plants.” It’s true that the two civilian companies that fly crop dusters above the border fence – Chim-Nir and Telem Aviation – are recognized professionals in the field. The Defense Ministry also says: “The crop dusting is identical to that which is done throughout Israel.”

    Whoever wrote that sentence is either demeaning the intelligence of his Israeli readers, or confident that they will take his word for it and not be concerned. Both are correct.

    The Defense Ministry only revealed what the “identical” herbicides being used are in response to an inquiry from Gisha, the Legal Center for Freedom of Movement, based on the freedom of information law. The chemicals are glyphosate, oxyfluorfen and diuron.

    Despite the numerous findings about the environmental and health hazards posed by glyphosate, it is still in use in Israel. But the Defense Ministry spokesperson ignores the fact that even with all the debate about how harmful these substances are to the environment and to people’s health, their purpose is to help safeguard farmers’ livelihoods – not to destroy their crops, as we are doing in Gaza.

    The IDF and the Defense Ministry know these sprayed chemicals don’t recognize borders. The systematic damage to Palestinian crops through spraying is not an accident. It is deliberate. Another form of warfare against the health and welfare of Palestinians, and all under the worn-out blanket of security.

    #GAZA #herbicides

    • La guerre agricole ou comment Israël se sert de substances chimiques pour tuer les récoltes à Gaza
      Amira Hass | Publié le 6/7/2018 sur Haaretz | Traduction : Jean-Marie Flémal
      http://www.pourlapalestine.be/la-guerre-agricole-ou-comment-israel-se-sert-de-substances-chimiques

      Les photographies de véhicules blindés de l’armée déracinant et broyant arbres et végétation dans la bande de Gaza ne sont pas étrangères, aux yeux des Israéliens, mais ce qu’ils savent beaucoup moins, c’est que, depuis 2014, des champs palestiniens sont également détruits via l’usage d’herbicides déversés depuis les airs – comme cela a d’abord été publié sur le site internet 972. Officiellement, la pulvérisation ne se fait que du côté israélien de la clôture mais, comme en ont témoigné des fermiers palestiniens de l’autre côté, avec confirmation de la Croix-Rouge, les dégâts qui en résultent peuvent être perçus très loin dans le territoire palestinien même.

      « La pulvérisation par les airs n’est effectuée que sur le territoire de l’État d’Israël, le long de l’obstacle sécuritaire à la frontière de la bande de Gaza », a fait savoir le ministère de la Défense à Haaretz. « Elle est effectuée par des sociétés d’épandage munies d’une autorisation légale, en conformité avec les dispositions de la Loi sur la protection des plantes (5716-1956) et les réglementations qui en découlent, et elle est identique à la pulvérisation aérienne effectuée partout dans l’État d’Israël. »

      Le porte-parole des FDI 1 a déclaré : « L’épandage est réalisé à l’aide du matériel standard utilisé en Israël et dans d’autres pays ; cela provoque un dépérissement de la végétation existante et empêche les mauvaises herbes de pousser. L’épandage s’effectue près de la clôture et ne pénètre pas dans la bande de Gaza. »

      Toutefois, le matériel standard utilisé en Israël a pour but d’aider les fermiers à faire pousser leurs cultures de rapport. À Gaza, il les détruit.

  • Journalists beaten, cameras destroyed: Palestinian police break up anti-Abbas protest in Ramallah

    Dozens beaten and arrested, including foreign journalists, in breakup of demonstration against Abbas’s economic sanctions on Gaza

    Amira Hass and Jack Khoury Jun 14, 2018

    https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/.premium-palestinian-forcefully-police-break-up-anti-abbas-protest-in-ramal

    Palestinian Authority riot police forcefully broke up a demonstration in Ramallah Wednesday evening, enforcing a ban on protests citing the Id al-Fitr holiday, which marks the end of the Ramadan month of fasting.
    The police arrested journalist and dozens of protesters, busted cameras and beat many of the demonstrators.
    The protesters called for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to remove sanctions he has imposed against Hamas and residents of the Gaza Strip, for Hamas’s failure to follow through on a power share deal.
    Palestinian security forces fired tear gas, stun grenades and shot bullets into the air. They confiscated cameras and smartphones, breaking a few of them and ordered journalists not to interview demonstrators. The police arrested foreign and Palestinian journalists and beat a large number of protesters. A number of Israeli citizens participated in the protest, too.
    In spite of the violent repression of the protest, a small group of demonstrators managed to evade the police and gathered on side streets, chanting slogans such as: “Woe to the disgrace and woe to the shame,” and “With spirit and blood we will redeem you, Gaza.”

  • Il n’y a pas que Gaza... ou presque... à propos des manifestations en Cisjordanie :

    La colère rentrée des Palestiniens de Cisjordanie
    Allan Kaval, Le Monde, le 17 mai 2018
    https://seenthis.net/messages/696847

    Le jeune Odai Akram Abu Khalil est mort d’une blessure par balle infligée par l’armée d’occupation
    The New Arab, le 24 mai 2018
    https://seenthis.net/messages/696835

    Retour sur la marche du retour, vue de Haïfa – Conversation avec Majd Kayyal
    Michèle Sibony, Agence Média Palestine, le 9 juin 2018
    https://seenthis.net/messages/701597

    Ramallah Protesters Demand PA to Cancel Sanctions on Gaza
    IMEMC, le 11 juin 2018
    https://seenthis.net/messages/701517

    Palestinians protest in Ramallah against the ‘Authority of Shame’
    Jaclynn Ashly, Mondoweiss, le 11 juin 2018
    https://seenthis.net/messages/701517

    Plus de 1500 manifestants à Ramallah demandent à Abbas de lever les sanctions contre Gaza
    Amira Hass, Haaretz, le 11 juin 2018
    https://seenthis.net/messages/701517

    « Un seul peuple, un seul ennemi, une seule cause »
    Cirepal, le 11 juin 2018
    https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=241251323308073&id=139096786856861

    Multiplication des raids israéliens en Cisjordanie
    Pierre Barbancey, L’Humanité, le 12 juin 2018
    https://www.humanite.fr/palestine-multiplication-des-raids-israeliens-en-cisjordanie-656648

    #Palestine #Gaza #Cisjordanie #Ramallah #Autorité_Palestinienne #Nakba #Marche_du_retour

  • » Ramallah Protesters Demand PA to Cancel Sanctions on Gaza IMEMC News – June 11, 2018 9:36 PM
    http://imemc.org/article/ramallah-protesters-demand-pa-to-cancel-sanctions-on-gaza

    Hundreds of Palestinians held a protest in Ramallah, last night, demanding that the Palestinian Authority (PA) cancel its sanctions against Gaza, describing these measures as punitive measures against the Palestinian people in Gaza.

    The participants in the demonstration called on PA President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian leadership to lift the sanctions imposed on the region, and called for the Implementation of the Palestinian National Council decisions on Gaza.

    According to Al Ray Palestinian Media Agency, the demonstration was organized by a group called “Movement for Lifting Sanctions Imposed on Gaza”, a large movement of academics, journalists, writers, artists, prisoners, activists and citizens who decided to break the silence toward measures imposed by the Palestinian Authority on the Gaza Strip since March of 2017, in addition to ending the Palestinian division and achieving reconciliation.

    #AP