person:amira hass

  • Proportionate Israeli Revenge - par Amira Hass - Nov 18, 2015 4:42 AM
    http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.686710

    AFP A Palestinian woman walks amid the rubble of a house after Israeli security forces demolished the homes of two convicted Palestinian terrorists in Jabal Mukaber in East Jerusalem, October 6, 2015.

    Revenge has many fathers, and even mothers. Some are known by name: their honors Justices Miriam Naor, Hanan Melcer and Noam Sohlberg; head of the army’s Central Command Roni Numa; commander of the Binyamin Brigade Yisrael Shomer (the names change, but not their positions or their roles in the chain of vengeance).

    The High Court of Justice ruling that authorized demolishing the houses of people suspected in the recent murders of Jews isn’t called revenge, but deterrence. Well, that is intriguing. After 50 years of Israeli rule that was forced on the Palestinians, and which has included every possible type of “deterrent” action, how is it that those dimwits still haven’t learned that they’re supposed to be deterred? So let’s dispense with the wrapping paper and call things by their proper name.

    Most of the fathers of revenge aren’t known by name: for example, the numerous soldiers serving in the Binyamin Brigade, the Duvdevan undercover unit, the Shaked Battalion and the engineering corps who invaded the Qalandiyah refugee camp sometime after midnight on Monday. Their assignment was to demolish an apartment in the Al-Jabal neighborhood, the home of Mohammed Abu Shahin, who is accused of murdering Danny Gonen at a spring in the West Bank village of Deir Ibzi’a.

    Accused, mind you; his guilt hasn’t yet been proven. And we, poor fools, learned back in elementary school that he is innocent until proven guilty. What’s surprising here is that when the suspect is a Palestinian, the High Court justices don’t even tried to conceal the gross violation of this basic legal presumption.

    The honored justices and the officers are acting on the government’s orders to take revenge, and they make haste to do its will. A lynching has many faces. The lucky ones, and those with refined tastes, don’t have to soil their hands with blows and blood. They need only sign orders and cite previous, nicely wrapped verdicts.

    Revenge is not sufficiently sweet without knowing the graphic details: the tear gas and the sounds of the explosions that once again invaded dreams and rooms, the helplessness of the parents, the fear of the children who live in Al-Jabal, who were awakened by blows on their doors and calls over the loudspeaker to leave their homes and gather on the soccer field (41 percent of the camp’s approximately 13,000 residents are up to 14 years old.)

    “I believe there’s no reason to conclude that the planned demolition is disproportionate,” wrote Naor, and her learned colleagues concurred.

    True, it’s crowded in the camp (343 dunams housing refugees who originated from Lod and 51 destroyed villages). Houses touch each other; upper-story apartments are just an arm’s length from their neighbors; alleys are only 1.5 meters wide. Naor, the author of the High Court’s decision, believed the state’s assertion that “the demolition will be carried out under the supervision of an engineer, who will ensure that all necessary steps are taken to prevent collateral damage.” Fifty years of rule, and the state and the honored justice and the engineer truly don’t know that it’s impossible to blow up a flat in a refugee camp without causing collateral damage?

    And now for the collateral damage: At least nine other apartments were damaged in the explosion. Here the damage totaled tens of thousands of shekels, there it was merely thousands. Cracked supporting walls are in danger of collapsing.

    These people worked in Israel, built for Israelis, removed Israelis’ trash and saved for years to build a multistory home in which the overcrowding could be forgotten — one with an air conditioner and pictures of Disney characters in the children’s rooms. The lynchers can rub their hands with glee: It’s not just the family of the accused that is paying for the murder, but also 50 or 60 of its neighbors.

    Revenge in the guise of deterrence may work in the short term. For a month. For half a year. But in the long term, it creates new generations of Palestinians who will conclude they have no future with Israel and the Israelis.

    #Amira_Hass

  • Were All Palestinians Killed in Hebron Really a Threat to Soldiers? - Israel News - Israel News - Haaretz Israeli News Source
    http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.685913

    There are two versions to the recent spate of killings at Hebron checkpoints: IDF says Palestinians attacked them with knives and were shot, while Palestinians question whether the people even had knives at all. Haaretz examines the evidence.
    Amira Hass Nov 13, 2015 6:31 PM

    Border Police officers gather around the body of Dania Ershied, 17, who was shot to death at the Hebron checkpoint in disputed circumstances on October 25, 2015(AFP)

    The gallows humor that has made the rounds in Hebron in recent weeks has given birth to a new style of joke. For example, “The Israel Defense Forces showed the media knives [that were allegedly found in the hands of Palestinians] that were made in Germany, but here we only have knives made in China.” The jokes means:

    1. The IDF is planting evidence, and the proof is that Hebron is flooded with Chinese goods, not German;

    2. Whoever really wants to kill a soldier in Hebron should use a German knife.

    This black humor was born from the following statistics: Out of 70 Palestinians suspected of carrying out stabbing or car-ramming terror attacks, either in the West Bank or Israel, the security forces killed 43 of them between October 3 and November 9. Twenty-four of them were residents of the Hebron district, including 18 who lived in the city itself. Nine were killed near military checkpoints that sever the heart of Palestinian Hebron from the rest of its neighborhoods. A defense source told Haaretz there have been at least 10 other incidents, unreported, in which people were arrested carrying knives at checkpoints in Hebron during the same period.

    The Palestinians do not believe the standard Israeli version that the soldiers’ lives were in danger and therefore they had to kill the person. In some cases, they question whether the Palestinians even tried to attack the soldiers.

    Israeli media reports about the killings are uniform: A terrorist / male or female / attempted stabbing / terrorist killed. / Soldier / male or female / lightly wounded. Or no casualties among our forces.

    Haaretz independently examined six of the cases. Three cases were detailed in Amnesty International reports. On November 5, Haaretz asked the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit and the Border Police spokesperson to comment on eight deaths (here we will discuss only five of them). After six days, Haaretz received a short and generic response, unrelated to our specific questions.

    There are security cameras beside every checkpoint and settlement complex. Palestinians are convinced that the IDF permits only the publication of those videos that support its story, and refuses to release footage that proves the opposite. Haaretz’s request to the IDF to see the security camera footage was not answered.

    The parents of Dania Ershied, who was shot to death at a Hebron checkpoint on October 25, 2015. (Amira Hass)

    The black humor in Hebron also spawned another joke: Those passing through the checkpoints to the Old City should say the Surat al-Fatiḥah (the opening chapter of the Koran). In other words – prepare for death.

    Dania Ershied, 17, passed through the Hebron mosque checkpoint on October 25 at about 1:30 P.M. The checkpoint cuts off the way from the old market to the mosque square/Tomb of the Patriarchs. It was a Sunday. The normal afternoon lesson for Dania’s English course had been canceled, her parents later learned. She had no cell phone, and her house is without an Internet connection: That was how her father tried to protect her and maintain her innocence. In their simple apartment (which they rent from his father), her parents showed me the childlike pictures she drew and the handicrafts she loved to do.

    Instead of the English lesson, Ershied walked down the street to the checkpoint. A few Border Police officers were in the hut; others were outside it. The checkpoint itself consists of a revolving iron gate, with a metal detector gate and another revolving iron gate beyond that. A small table stands between the hut and the gate, and a large table stands outside the second revolving gate. There are also movable separation barriers that can be positioned as needed.

    The Israeli media reports were more or less the same. For example, a Haredi news website quotes a police spokesman saying: “The Palestinian woman aroused the suspicions of Border Police officers. She was asked to identify herself but suddenly pulled out a knife and drew near the soldiers while shouting at them. The soldiers fired precisely and she was neutralized. There were no injuries to our forces.”

    IDF soldiers around the body of Mahdi al-Muhtaseb, 24, who was shot to death while fleeing from a checkpoint in Hebron, October 29, 2015 (Reuters)

    In a video published on the NRG website, in which Ershied’s body is seen lying on the ground behind the overturned large table, a person says, breathing hard: “A terrorist tried to stab soldiers. Thank God she was shot and killed.”

    A Palestinian witness who entered through the checkpoint gates after Ershied told Haaretz that the 17-year-old passed through the metal detector gate and the two revolving gates, and was then asked to hand over her bag. The police officer put the bag on the table and shouted at her, “Where’s the knife? Where’s the knife?”

    The witness said Ershied looked scared, raised her hands and shouted, “I don’t have a knife, I don’t have a knife!” A police officer fired a warning shot that scared her even more. She jumped back (placing her out of sight of the witness, who at this point was ushered away by the police) and continued to shout that she didn’t have a knife. But one policeman or maybe more shot and killed her.

    In the Amnesty International report, which contains a similar testimony, it was noted that in the pictures released afterward, a knife was seen alongside the body. A defense source told Haaretz that Ershied had “suddenly pulled out a knife and moved closer to the soldiers. At this stage, it does not matter how old the person is – after all, yesterday we saw kids, 11 and 13 years old [the light-rail stabbing attack in Jerusalem on November 10]. When you look at a [young woman] such as Dania, she comes with a knife to the checkpoint. They call on her to stop. She moves closer to the soldiers and they shoot her.” The defense source did not address the witness’ statement.

    The scene in Hebron where Sa’ad Al-Atrash died on October 26, 2015.AP

    Mahdi al-Muhtaseb, 24, worked in two sweet-pastry bakeries. On the evening of October 29, he had plans to meet the young woman who was intended to be his fiancée. In the preceding days, he bought a large amount of nutritional supplements to complement his workouts at the gym. “Such a person is not thinking of suicide, nor about prison,” his mourning father and brother told Haaretz a week ago, at their home in Hebron’s Al-Kassara neighborhood. On the morning of October 29, he walked, as per usual, to his second job in the Al-Dik neighborhood – to a relatively new bakery called Tito. His home, the route, the bakery – all are in the H2 area under full Israeli control, although his home and the bakery are outside the area where the settlers live. On the way, he had to pass through the Al-Salaymeh checkpoint.

    Something happened at the checkpoint: Perhaps a fight broke out between a soldier from the Kfir Brigade and Muhtaseb. His family and neighbors assume the soldier taunted the young Palestinian, as often happens at the checkpoints, and that Muhtaseb retaliated. The soldier was wounded in the head. A neighbor said he noticed a soldier bleeding from his face. Muhtaseb started to run away. The owner of a nearby store saw him running and then heard heavy gunfire; shots also hit a car and the road. The store owner rushed to close his doors and go up onto the roof. In those few minutes, as video footage shows, Muhtaseb lay injured on the ground. Two Border Police officers were just five feet away from him, aiming their rifles. Muhtaseb moved a bit and raised his torso, and then one of the officers shot and killed him. The store owner, who had already reached the roof and knows Hebrew, heard one of the soldiers shouting, “No one take him and don’t touch him.”

    Haaretz asked the defense source why the soldiers killed Muhtaseb, who was already lying injured on the ground. “You must get into the soldiers’ heads and understand their perspective,” the source said. “A Palestinian comes and stabs a soldier in the head and flees [to a neighborhood where there are no Jews or soldiers – A.H.]. We don’t know if he has an explosive device on him or a weapon. The soldier asks [him] not to move. At some stage he tries to get up – and the soldier shoots again. That is what is expected of the soldier. Because maybe the terrorist was a suicide bomber with an explosive device, or takes out a gun and shoots him. You never know,” he adds.

    When told that Muhtaseb could have used the gun from the start, had he had one, the defense source responded, “Do you remember the case of Charlie Shlush? [A Border Police officer who, in October 1990, shot and wounded a Palestinian who had knifed to death two Israelis in Jerusalem. When Shlush went to arrest him, the Palestinian pulled out a knife and fatally stabbed Shlush in the chest.] You must remember, this is not a sterile [crime] scene. There are a lot of scenarios that, because of the terrorist threat, can still cause harm to the troops. They receive instructions, and those are the instructions,” he said.

    The last person to see cousins Bassam and Hussam Jabari – 15 and 18, respectively – alive was a Palestinian who lives near the Rajabi house, where a new settlement complex was established last year (Beit Hashalom, the House of Peace). This witness said that on their way home, at about 8 P.M. on October 20, the young men passed through the military checkpoint and the metal detector gate behind the Rajabi house and neared the intersection, near the road that leads from Kiryat Arba to the Tomb of the Patriarchs.

    The witness told Haaretz that the two cousins got frightened when a large group of settlers marched down the road, demonstrating over the killing of a Kiryat Arba resident in a car-ramming attack. He invited the boys to come into his house, but a soldier appeared suddenly and called for them to come to him. After that, all three went out of view because they were walking on the path behind the Rajbi house. A short time later, he heard a burst of gunfire. Pictures on Israeli websites show Hussam lying bleeding with a knife in his hand and Bassam sitting on the ground, a narrow and long object in his left hand. The Palestinian witness wonders how, if they had knives, the metal detector didn’t beep when they went through the checkpoint.

    This question prompts the Palestinian conclusion that the knives, or what appear to be knives, were planted on them. Such claims have been made in other cases, too, including Sa’ad Al-Atrash, who was shot to death by a soldier at the Abu Arish checkpoint on October 26. The Amnesty International report described the killing as a particularly egregious example of excessive use of lethal force.

    The report is based on a witness who saw what happened from the balcony of her house. She said Atrash came close to the soldiers and one of them asked to see his identity card. As soon as he put his hand into his pocket to retrieve the identity card, she said, another soldier who was standing behind him shot him on his right side. The witness said the soldier fired six or seven times, and Atrash lay on the ground bleeding for about 40 minutes without receiving medical aid. She also said she saw soldiers bring a knife and place it in the dying man’s hand.

    The NRG website reported that day, “A Palestinian terrorist came close to an IDF force in the position located next to the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, at the entrance to the Avraham Avinu neighborhood. He tried to stab one of the soldiers there, but was shot and killed. The IDF Spokesperson’s Office said an attempt was made to stab a soldier next to the Jewish community of Hebron. An IDF force fired in order to remove the threat. There were no Israeli casualties.”

    Spokesmen for the IDF and Border Police issued a generic response to Haaretz: “With regard to the planting of knives at the scene of the incident, this is a false claim; no knives were planted by IDF soldiers or Border Police forces. Any attempt to distort the situation is unacceptable.”

    The witnesses in the four cases in question point to a regular pattern after the shootings: Soldiers and settlers crowd around the person (whether seriously wounded or dead), photographing him from every angle. The soldiers strip him of his clothes. Medical care is not provided in order to try and save lives. The body is removed after 30 to 40 minutes.

    The IDF spokesman and Border Police added: “In all the examples cited, the distance between the soldiers and terrorists was short and the soldiers felt an immediate life-threatening danger. Consequently, they opened fire to remove the threat, in accordance with the rules of engagement.

    “The events in question, as well as the claims about the manner in which the shooting was conducted, were investigated and the conclusions were passed onto forces in the field and for the examination of the military prosecutor’s office. IDF medical forces in the West Bank provide medical care to the residents of the region, Jews and Palestinians alike. In operational incidents, a quick check is made by the force to rule out the threat of an explosive device, and then medical care is provided immediately. In places where this did not happen, the procedure has been refined.”

    Amira Hass
    Haaretz Correspondent

  • The Question Isn’t Why Violence Is Erupting in Hebron but Why Now? - Friction is inevitable when hundreds of settlers live among hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

    Amira Hass Haaretz Nov 09, 2015

    http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.684893

    The riddle the Israeli security establishment has been trying to solve for past few weeks, as to the reason the focus of escalation moved between Jerusalem and Hebron, is not complicated. These are the two cities in which settlers are living in the heart of the Palestinian population. In both, settlers are under a heavy guard, which means constantly running into armed Israelis – soldiers, police, security people and the settlers themselves. In other cities life can go on, almost forgetting the settlements and military positions surrounding them. In Jerusalem and Hebron that is impossible; protection of a few hundred settlers constantly disrupts the lives of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
    From the Palestinian perspective, life goes on under the shadow of daily violent provocation and endless humiliation. And so the real riddle is why the wave of popular protest, including individual attempts at stabbing, broke out now and not before this. It cannot be known yet whether Friday’s shooting attacks are a new phase and whether Israeli attempts at suppression will block it or encourage others to use guns.
    One of the tasks of the Palestinian security services in recent weeks has been to see to it that armed individuals do not approach points of friction with the Israeli army – but that is not the only explanation for the fact that guns have not been used. So far, even without instructions from above, most Palestinians agree that it is better not to be dragged into the use of guns because of the bitter experience of the second intifada and the fear of Israeli suppression. The people who shot and wounded three Israelis have apparently reached the conclusion that now Palestinians will accept it and are prepared to be subjected to more suppression.
    As expected, on the night between Friday and Saturday the Israel Defense Forces raided a number of neighborhoods. A news website identified with Hamas reported that in the Abu Sneina neighborhood soldiers arrested a man serving in the Palestinian security forces. It was apparently from this neighborhood, part of which is under Israeli security control, that the two young Israelis were shot near the Tomb of the Patriarchs.
    According to Palestinian sources, Friday night and Saturday morning Israelis attacked a number of Palestinian homes in Tel Rumeida and the Jaber neighborhood, through which the road passes connecting Hebron’s old city with Kiryat Arba. They tried to break into houses and threw stones at least at one of them, with Israeli soldiers nearby. On Sunday the IDF took over at least three houses in Hebron’s old city, held the residents of each house in one room and announced that the houses had become military positions for 24 hours.
    Last week, direct access roads connecting Hebron with neighboring villages and towns were blocked. In the old city of Hebron, anyone who does not live on Shuhada Street or Tel Rumeida is not allowed to enter these neighborhoods. The checkpoint at the entrance to the Al-Ibrahimi Mosque (Tomb of the Patriarchs) has been closed. On Friday afternoon Muslims were not allowed to enter their holy place.
    IDF and Shin Bet security service forces have raided every home in which a family member has been killed recently by soldiers or police. In at least some of the houses, soldiers surveyed every room and examined the construction materials. Residents told Haaretz that Shin Bet personnel told them the intention was to blow up the houses. These were not cases in which an Israeli soldier or civilian was killed by a member of these families, but rather stabbing attempts that ended in slight or no injury.
    The families say they are certain that if the soldiers had wanted to, they could have made do with wounding or arresting their relative. After the killing, which the families see as intentional, the next greatest punishment is withholding the body. For the families and their wider circles, the thought that their loved ones are lying in a morgue and not afforded proper burial raises the level of hatred and abhorrence of Israel and Israelis.

  • The Execution of Hadeel al-Hashlamoun - Amira Hass – Amira Hass Nov 03, 2015 9:08 PM

    http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.684048

    The parents of the soldiers who killed Hadeel al-Hashlamoun while she was lying wounded are not worried: No military force will break into their homes in the wee hours of the morning, gather at gunpoint the wife and the scared little children into a small room and measure each room in preparation for blowing up the house. They probably continue to have their relaxed Friday night meals at home, perhaps accompanied by Shabbat melodies. Normal life of the ordinary families will continue as usual.

    An Israel Defense Forces investigation revealed that the soldiers who killed Hashlamoun on September 22, while she was passing through a checkpoint at the entrance to the old city in Hebron, could have done with only arresting her. Human rights organizations and journalists, not to mention basic logic, reached the same conclusion much earlier. At least two soldiers shot the 18-year-old from a distance of two to four meters. Three bullets hit her legs. Another seven — her upper body. She fell to the ground after the first shots, but our soldiers continued to spray her with bullets.

    Israelis mark the killing of Eitam and Naama Henkin as the beginning of the “wave of riots” of October 2015. For the Palestinians, the killing of Hashlamoun was the last straw, added to accumulated, permanent fear and lack of security in the face of thousands of armed Israelis (soldiers and settlers) who are stuck among them and disrupt their lives all the time. That Israelis are ignoring the constant undermining of the Palestinians’ personal security and their civilian dead as an explanation for the escalation is another example of how cheap Palestinian life is in Israeli eyes.
    B’Tselem, relying on the testimony of a Palestinian eyewitness who approached her, noted that Hashlamoun (yes, a veiled woman!) was holding a knife. So even the assertion of the learned investigation that there was a knife in the area is not exactly an exciting revelation. But Hashlamoun did not stab any soldier (as opposed to the impression given by the initial reports of her death). She didn’t even get close enough for the knife to graze his rifle. While she was lying on the ground, wounded, she could have been arrested. But the soldiers shot her repeatedly.

    There is especially no surprise in the IDF’s decision not to take any steps against the soldiers, who, according to the investigation, did not have to kill. It was the first incident in which they were involved, it was reported, and they felt their lives were in danger. For heaven’s sake, what kind of military training do the soldiers receive, when a knife held by a girl at a distance of some meters scares them so much? (Answer: four months of basic training and two months of advanced training, according to the Givati Brigade website.) And how many Palestinians are the soldiers allowed to kill until they get rid of “a sense that their lives are in danger” and begin to internalize their lethal, terrorizing power?

    The “first incident” explanation is a weak excuse designed to conceal the fact that in the past month, many other soldiers acted like those of the Tzabar battalion: They killed instead of arresting. Punishing them would have required punishing other soldiers who “felt that their lives were in danger” and easily took a life. Do you remember the yeshiva student Simcha Hodedtov, who was killed by soldiers on October 22 as he got off the bus? Isn’t killing him proof of the victory of solldierly feelings, which we hold more sacred than life?

    The fact is that the IDF permits its soldiers to be the prosecutors, witnesses, judges and hangmen of every Palestinian — and to carry out a death sentence on the spot. That’s nothing new. And yes, it’s another explanation for the desperate decision by individual Palestinians to embark on stabbing campaigns against Israeli civilians, including the elderly.

    Amira Hass
    Haaretz Correspondent

  • La lâcheté de la violence israélienne face à l’inouïe bravoure des Palestiniens par Amira Hass
    Publié le 1 novembre sur Haaretz –
    http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.683656


    Traduction : Jean-Marie Flémal
    http://www.pourlapalestine.be/la-lachete-de-la-violence-israelienne-face-a-linouie-bravoure-des-pa

    Quand il s’agit de bravoure et d’audace, les jeunes manifestants palestiniens dament le pion aux soldats d’Israël et à sa police des frontières. Ils sont armés d’agilité et de rapidité, avec les keffiehs qui couvrent leurs visages. Ils sont armés de pierres et de cocktails Molotov, pendant que les soldats, sortant de l’entraînement militaire, sont armés et protégés par des véhicules blindés, des drones, des casques, des armes létales en tous genres et des gaz lacrymogènes hautement toxiques.


    Photo : AFP

    Contre la bravoure des jeunes Palestiniens, c’est la lâcheté des soldats israéliens qui se révèle. Ils avaient le sentiment d’être héroïques, dans leurs avions, chars et véhicules blindés, dans leurs locaux de détention et d’interrogatoire et leurs tours d’observation aux équipements sophistiqués, ou lors de leurs raids nocturnes dans les maisons au cours desquels ils sortaient des gosses de leurs lits.

  • Avec les Palestiniens, contre l’occupation | NPA
    http://www.npa2009.org/actualite/avec-les-palestiniens-contre-loccupation
    excellent article de Julien Salingue

    Sois colonisé et tais-toi !

    Comme le faisait en effet remarquer la journaliste israélienne Amira Hass dans une tribune parue le 6 octobre dernier dans Haaretz, « Les Palestiniens se battent pour leurs vies, [alors qu’]Israël se bat pour l’occupation ». Et de poursuivre : « Les jeunes Palestiniens ne se mettent pas à assassiner des juifs parce qu’ils sont juifs, mais parce que nous sommes leurs occupants, leurs tortionnaires, leurs geôliers, les voleurs de leur terre et de leur eau, les démolisseurs de leurs maisons, ceux qui les ont exilés, qui bloquent leur horizon. Les jeunes Palestiniens, vengeurs et désespérés, sont prêts à donner leur vie et à causer à leur famille une énorme douleur, parce que l’ennemi auquel ils font face leur prouve chaque jour que sa cruauté n’a pas de limites. »

    Quelles sont les perspectives offertes aux Palestiniens par ceux qui aujourd’hui critiquent leurs actions et exigent un « retour au calme » ? Aucune, sinon la perpétuation d’un système de domination et d’oppression contre lequel ils n’auraient pas le droit de s’insurger, et face auquel ils n’auraient qu’une seule attitude : la soumission et le silence, en attendant que les choses s’améliorent dans un avenir plus ou moins lointain. En d’autres termes : sois colonisé et tais-toi !

    • Excellent point de vue auquel je m’y retrouve. Toute colonisation est par essence abjecte. J’ai vécu la colonisation étant adolescent dans mon pays Djibouti, occupé par la France de 1882 á 1977. Je suis particulièrement sensible à la cause palestinienne et faisait parti durant 10 ans de la commission djiboutienne de soutien de la Palestine. Elle a été fondée et présidée par notre actuel président de la république Ismaël Omar. Et c’est pour dire que les malheurs les cris et les pleurs les ressentiments du peuple palestinien dans l’indifférence des nations occidentales, nous accablent nuit et jour. Ceux se disant être les rescapés de la shoa et leurs descendants, ont perpétré les mêmes méthodes avec les mêmes moyens mais plus sophistiqués contre le peuple palestinien. Et ceux-là sont ceux venus des pays de l’Est et l’ex URSS. Enfin je voudrais á travers ce site lancer un appel au peuple juif de par le monde á contrecarrer le complot des sionistes qui veulent détruire á la longue Israël et exterminer les palestiniens. Il faut pour les juifs d’Israël un Mandela juif. Et je suis fort persuader qu’un tel homme qui abattra l’apartheid sioniste surgira un jour ou l’autre. Vive le peuple juif. A bas les sionistes génocidaires. Je manifeste ici min respect et mon admiration á un grand homme. Il s’agit de Uri Avnery, une sorte de Mandela israélien. Salut à toute l’équipe. Aboubaker.

  • Abbas ne peut pas contrôler sa génération perdue d’Oslo | Pour la Palestine | Amira Hass – 11 octobre 2015 | Traduction : JPP pour le Collectif Solidarité Palestine de Saint-Nazaire
    http://www.pourlapalestine.be/abbas-ne-peut-pas-controler-sa-generation-perdue-doslo

    Une jeune Palestinienne blessée, étendue à terre, pendant les affrontements avec les troupes israéliennes près de la colonie juive de Beit EI, près de Ramallah en Cisjordanie, le 8 octobre 2015. (Reuters)

    Des dizaines de milliers de familles en Cisjordanie et à Jérusalem-Est vivent actuellement dans la crainte que leurs enfants soient tués, blessés ou arrêtés dans les affrontements avec l’armée israélienne ou en tentant de porter des attaques en loups solitaires.

    Quand leurs enfants partent le matin, elles ne savent pas s’ils vont vraiment à l’école, ou retrouver des amis, ou manifester à un check-point militaire, ou attaquer un Israélien au couteau. Pas moins que les forces de renseignements israéliennes et palestiniennes, les parents sont stupéfaits de la vague inorganisée, massive, qui balaie la jeune génération de Palestiniens et les met en danger.

    Face à cette incertitude, chaque famille sait que, elle aussi, elle peut devenir une statistique, être sujette à une punition collective – sujette à voir sa maison démolie ou murée, à avoir un membre de la famille expulsé de Jérusalem, ou des frères et des sœurs ou des parents arrêtés et frappés par les forces de sécurité, où à être ciblée pendant de longs mois par le service de sécurité du Shin Bet. À l’instant présent, il semble que le feu vert que le Premier ministre Benjamin Netanyahu a donné pour une punition collective et tirer sur les manifestants ne dissuade aucunement les jeunes loups solitaires et les milliers de jeunes gens rassemblés aux check-points qui défient le destin et les soldats.

    L’une des hypothèses des renseignements israéliens et palestiniens est que les auteurs de ces attaques en solitaire sont influencés par les médias sociaux. Cela est vrai, mais ils sont aussi influencés par des clips vidéo, dont certains apparaissent d’abord sur des sites israéliens, dépeignant la violence quotidienne qu’Israël dirige contre les Palestiniens. Ceux qui parlent d’incitation sous-estiment l’influence qu’ont les soldats israéliens en train de tuer des civils palestiniens.

    Par exemple, il y a les cas d’ Ahmed Khatatbeh de Beit Furik et d’ Hadil Hashlamun d’Hébron, que les Forces de défense israéliennes prétendent avoir abattus après qu’ils ont attaqué les soldats. Une enquête de la presse a révélé qu’aucune attaque de ce genre n’avait eu lieu. Et puis, dimanche dernier en début de journée, il y a eu le cas de Fadi Alon , d’Isawiya à Jérusalem. Selon la police, il aurait poignardé un Juif et par suite, il aurait été abattu. Une vidéo Youtube sur des sites israéliens montre clairement que, même s’il avait agressé au couteau, il ne représentait aucun danger pour quiconque au moment où il a été abattu. Elle montre aussi que des jeunes juifs avaient dit à un policier de l’abattre sans se préoccuper de ce qu’Alon était censé avoir fait. Les vidéos sont du fourrage, prêt à enflammer la situation, mais elles n’en sont pas la cause. (...)

    #Palestine #Résistance
    #occupation #colonisation

  • Les Palestiniens se battent pour leur vie

    Que nous remarquions qu’il y a une guerre que lorsque des juifs sont assassinés n’enlève rien au fait que des Palestiniens se font tuer tout le temps.

    Oui, il y a une guerre, et le Premier ministre Benjamin Netanyahu, avec son mandat du peuple, a ordonné qu’elle s’intensifie. Il n’écoute déjà pas les messages de conciliation et d’acceptation du Président palestinien Mahmoud Abbas dans les période calmes, pourquoi devrait-il les écouter aujourd’hui ?
    Netanyahu intensifie la guerre principalement à Jérusalem-Est, avec des orgies de punitions collectives. Il révèle ainsi qu’Israël a réussi à déconnecter physiquement Jérusalem de la plus grande partie de la population palestinienne, soulignant l’absence d’une direction palestinienne à Jérusalem-Est et la faiblesse du gouvernement de Ramallah - qui tente d’enrayer la dérive dans le reste de la Cisjordanie.

    La guerre n’a pas commencé jeudi dernier, elle ne commence pas avec les victimes juives, et elle ne prend pas fin quand plus aucun juif n’est assassiné. Les Palestiniens se battent pour leur vie, dans le plein sens du terme. Nous, juifs israéliens, nous battons pour notre privilège en tant que nation de maîtres, dans la pleine laideur du terme.

    Que nous remarquions qu’il y a une guerre que lorsque des juifs sont assassinés n’enlève rien au fait que des Palestiniens se font tuer tout le temps, et que tout le temps, nous faisons tout ce qui est en notre pouvoir pour leur rendre la vie insupportable. La plupart du temps, il s’agit d’une guerre unilatérale, conduite par nous, pour les amener à dire « oui » au maître, merci beaucoup de nous laisser en vie dans nos réserves. Quand quelque chose dans l’unilatéralité de la guerre est perturbé, et que des juifs sont assassinés, alors nous accordons notre attention.

    Les jeunes Palestiniens ne vont pas se mettre à assassiner des juifs parce qu’ils sont juifs, mais parce que nous sommes leurs occupants, leurs tortionnaires, leurs geôliers, les voleurs de leur terre et de leur eau, les démolisseurs de leurs maisons, ceux qui les ont exilés, qui leur bloquent leur horizon. Les jeunes Palestiniens, vengeurs et désespérés, sont prêts à donner leur vie et à causer à leur famille une énorme douleur, parce que l’ennemi auquel ils font face leur prouve chaque jour que sa méchanceté n’a pas de limites.

    Même le langage est malveillant. Les juifs sont assassinés, mais les Palestiniens sont tués et meurent. Est-ce vrai ? Le problème ne commence pas avec le fait que nous ne sommes pas autorisés à écrire qu’un soldat ou un policier a assassiné des Palestiniens, à bout portant, quand sa vie n’était pas en danger, ou qu’il l’a fait par télécommande, ou depuis un avion ou un drone. Mais c’est une partie du problème. Notre compréhension est captive d’un langage censuré rétroactivement qui déforme la réalité. Dans notre langage, les juifs sont assassinés parce qu’ils sont juifs, et les Palestiniens trouvent leur mort et leur détresse, parce ce que c’est probablement ce qu’ils cherchent.

    Notre vision du monde est façonnée par la trahison constante par les médias israéliens de leur devoir de rapporter les évènements, ou leur manque de capacité technique et émotionnelle à contenir tous les détails de la guerre mondiale que nous sommes en train de conduire afin de préserver notre supériorité sur le territoire entre le fleuve et la mer.

    Pas même ce journal n’a les ressources économiques pour employer 10 journalistes et remplir 20 pages d’articles sur toutes les attaques en période d’escalade et toutes les attaques de l’occupation en période de calme, depuis les fusillades lors de la construction d’une route qui détruit un village jusqu’à la légalisation d’un avant-poste colonial et à un million d’autres agressions. Chaque jour. Les exemples pris au hasard que nous arrivons à rapporter ne représentent qu’une goutte dans l’océan, et ils n’ont aucun impact sur la compréhension de la situation par la grande majorité des Israéliens.

    Le but de cette guerre unilatérale est de forcer les Palestiniens à renoncer à leurs exigences nationales dans leur patrie. Netanyahu veut l’escalade parce que jusqu’à maintenant, l’expérience a prouvé que les périodes de calme après le bain de sang ne nous ramènent pas à la ligne de départ, mais plutôt rabaissent à un niveau toujours plus bas le système politique palestinien, et ajoutent aux privilèges des juifs dans un Grand Israël.

    Les privilèges sont le principal facteur qui déforme notre compréhension et notre réalité, en nous aveuglant. À cause d’eux, nous échouons à comprendre que même avec une direction faible, « présente-absente », le peuple palestinien – dispersé dans ses réserves indiennes – n’abandonnera pas, et qu’il continuera de puiser la force nécessaire pour résister à notre maîtrise malveillante.

    Amira Hass (עמירה הס), née en 1956 à Jérusalem, est une journaliste et auteur israélienne, surtout connue pour ses colonnes dans le quotidien Ha’aretz. Elle est particulièrement connue parce qu’elle vit en Cisjordanie après avoir habité à Gaza et qu’elle rapporte les événements du conflit israélo-palestinien depuis les territoires palestiniens.
    [...]"

    Traduction : JPP pour le Collectif Solidarité Palestine de Saint-Nazaire

  • Occupés autrement : au programme du Shin Bet, café et torture
    2 septembre | Amira Hass pour Haaretz |Traduction SF pour l’AURDIP
    http://www.aurdip.fr/occupes-autrement-au-programme.html

    (...) Comme tout autre Palestinien, Jarrar devrait savoir qu’elle est condamnée avant même le début du procès.

    La raison principale qui fait que ce procès n’a pas de couverture de presse est qu’écrire sur ce qui se passe dans les baraquements du camp d’Ofer est une façon de collaborer avec la duperie qui est à la source de ce mécanisme. Il faut de nouveaux mots pour remplacer des termes fallacieux tels que « procès », « chefs d’accusation », « audition de témoins » et « mon éminent ami ».

    Une deuxième raison est qu’il est impossible d’interviewer Jarrar et de lui demander : « qu’est ce que ça fait d’être assise ici, dans cette baraque, sans comprendre l’essentiel de ce qui se dit sur ton cas (étant donné que la traduction de l’hébreu à l’arabe est tellement indigente) ? Et comment as-tu fait pour rester éveillée (et sourire à l’intention de ta famille) depuis 4h du matin, alors que tu as été extraite de ta cellule à 3h du matin et secouée dans un bus qui ramasse des prisonniers menottés jusqu’à presque 8h du matin ? Les gens qui ont assisté au « procès » sont rentrés chez eux exténués.(...)

  • Amira Hass : La réponse logique à la terreur d’état d’Israël : le boycott | Agence Media Palestine | Par Amira Hass, le 9 juin 2015 | Traduction : E.C pour l’Agence Média Palestine
    http://www.agencemediapalestine.fr/blog/2015/06/19/amira-hass-la-reponse-logique-a-la-terreur-detat-disrael-le-boy

    Les peuples des pays occidentaux dont les impôts servent de prix du silence pour Israël commencent à réagir.

    Nous n’en sommes pas encore là. Le big bang n’a pas encore eu lieu et la plupart des Israéliens – et leurs représentants dans les médias – n’ont pas encore fait le lien entre les menaces de boycott (symboliques ou réelles) et leur attitude quotidienne en tant que peuple suprême. La capitulation rapide du PDG d’Orange leur a remonté le moral – jusqu’à la prochaine surprise.

    Le gouvernement a des milliers de soldats (que ce soit en uniforme ou non) qui effectuent ses opérations violentes routinières. De gentils fistons démolissent des baraquements et s’introduisent dans les foyers, et des enfants bien-aimés tirent sur des pêcheurs. Et les bons pères ont décidé que certaines personnes n’avaient nul besoin de rester là où elles sont nées, sur leurs terres, mais qu’il n’y a pas de problème à ce que le peuple supérieur y vive. ?

  • You live in Ramallah? Do you want me to help get you out? -
    Amira Hass received an unusual phone call on her Palestinian cellphone the other day.
    By Amira Hass | Jun. 16, 2015 |Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News
    http://www.haaretz.com/news/israel/.premium-1.661145

    Last Tuesday, my Palestinian cell phone rings. Caller ID shows it’s from an Israeli number. “Hello, this is Yad L’achim,” the young voice on the other end says. Excuse me? I respond.

    I’m speaking from Yad L’achim. We’ve heard that you live in Ramallah. Is that true? Are you interested in our assistance?

    Assistance with what? I say. If you want to leave, comes the response. Why would I want to leave? I ask. Just asking, the caller says. Just asking if everything is OK. If everything is OK, then stay there.

    His name is Yitzhak, and I ask him: And if I do want to leave, how will you get me out of Ramallah? Do you go into Ramallah? Or set a place to meet?

    “I’m just a volunteer,” he says diplomatically, “but the minute that you say you need to get out, I will tell the call center, the management at the office. They will know what to do.”

    No, he has not yet had the chance to get someone out of the West Bank, but he has prepared for it. He hasn’t been volunteering for very long, he explains, but he “tries to help, just volunteering here for his national civilian service. Anything that Jews and Arabs need help with, I try to help.”

    “You also help Arabs?” I ask.

    “I help everyone. I try. I am not officially doing national service. It’s like picking up hitchhikers at every hitchhiking post.”

  • The rational response to Israel’s state terror: #boycott
    Amira Hass
    http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/.premium-1.660141

    Israel has outsourced the occupation – it has turned the nations of the worlds into active participants. How? American citizens’ tax money funds the generous U.S. security aid to Israel and the close military cooperation with Israel. Their taxes, and taxes from other European and Western states, fund the partial reparations for the material and health damage caused by Israel’s rule and artificially resuscitates the existing order of violence. Gaza has not completely collapsed, because Western states and Qatar provide charity to the hundreds of thousands of people there whom Israel forbids to make a dignified living.

    Western donations are not a safety net for the Palestinians, but rather a safety net for Israel’s prohibitions, restrictions and onslaughts. The donations, in their current form, come in lieu of clear and decisive political action against Israeli policy, which every World Bank report describes as a reason for economic disaster. And surely for more existential disasters to come. It is easier for these countries to spend their taxpayers’ money on expensive water tanks for villages without infrastructure. It’s easier for them to rebuild destroyed buildings for the third or fourth time than to order Israel to stop.

    Why is it surprising, then, that people whose taxes are being used for hush money are beginning to enlist as guerilla fighters in the counter-offensive and boycotting? As unwilling sponsors, they are involved anyway, and it’s their democratic right to express their opinion about the illegitimate use of their money.

    #Israel #terreur #occupation #Palestine #impunité #complicité#communauté_internationale

    #BDS

  • Palestinian FIFA move hit an Israeli nerve
    The bid pushed Israel into a state of constant tension and hinted at how much BDS efforts could hurt the Israeli public; but it also displays the Palestinian Authority’s logic of stagnation.
    By Amira Hass | Jun. 1, 2015 Haaretz Daily Newspaper
    http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.659004

    A laywoman’s question to UEFA, the European soccer federation, and to its president, Michel Platini, who worked diligently to shelve the Palestinian bid to suspend Israel from FIFA.

    Will you let Beitar Jerusalem play against European teams? This question is based on an amended Palestinian motion adopted in full at the FIFA congress relating to Israeli violations of the organization’s statutes.

    After its win against Maccabi Tel Aviv, Beitar is in fact expected to play in Europe. This is the team whose coach Guy Levy said about a month ago: “Even if there was an [Arab] player who suited me professionally, I wouldn’t bring him on because it would create unnecessary tensions.”

    So I ask you, Platini, how do you square Levy’s statement with Section 3 of the FIFA statutes, entitled “Non-discrimination and stance against racism”? The section states: “Discrimination of any kind against a Country, private person or group of people on account of race, skin color, ethnic, national or social origin, gender, language, religion, political opinion or any other opinion … is strictly prohibited and punishable by suspension or expulsion.”

    Racial segregation in sports led to South Africa’s suspension from FIFA in 1962. The Israeli sociologist Tamir Sorek, who teaches at the University of Florida, has researched Palestinian soccer before and after 1948. He told Haaretz that in 1977, whites were asked in a South African opinion poll to name the greatest damage inflicted by apartheid. Damage to South African sports ranked No. 3.

    “Historians disagree on the extent sanctions in general, and in sports in particular, contributed to the downfall of the apartheid regime,” Sorek said. “But there is no doubt that the ruling party believed that the boycott was influencing public opinion.”

    In 1992, when leaders of the ruling National Party wanted to lay the groundwork for a regime change, a central theme in their propaganda was that a change would improve the international standing of South African athletes. Sorek added that with all the differences between the South African and Israeli violations, “if pressure builds in the future to suspend Israel from sports organizations, the public effect will be huge compared to the effect of blocking researchers’ access to funding.”

    On Friday, 163 FIFA members voted in favor of the Palestinian amendment to the motion (with nine against and 37 abstaining). The headlines and reporting focused on the shelving of a resolution that would have suspended Israel from FIFA. My Haaretz colleagues Barak Ravid and Uzi Dann suggested that anybody celebrating an Israeli victory shouldn’t overdo it.

    In that same spirit, I would suggest that Palestinians angry that once again a Palestinian leader has caved should learn something about how politics work.

    A Palestinian insistence that FIFA vote for Israel’s suspension would have ended in failure. The head of the Palestinian soccer federation, Jabril Rajoub, could have retained a macho image and flaunted the demand to put the Palestinian resolution to a vote, just as those who fire Qassam rockets at Israel from Gaza flaunt their dubious military achievements. But the predicted defeat of the motion would have given a kosher stamp of approval to Israel’s violations.

    But now, 167 delegates have affirmed in the amendment that passed: “Restrictions of Palestinian rights for the freedom of movement. Players and football officials both within and outside the borders of the occupied State of Palestine, have been systematically restricted from their right to free movement, and continue to be hindered, limited, and obstructed by a set of unilateral regulations arbitrarily and inconsistently implemented. This constitutes a direct violation by IFA of Article 13.3 of the FIFA Statute, specifically in relation to Article 13.1(i) and its correspond[ing] articles in UEFA rules.”

    Commentators spoke of a yellow card against Israel, not a red card. Another hackneyed phrase — a snowball effect — would no less accurately reflect the maneuver room the Palestinian delegation managed to create.

    FIFA has now appointed the equivalent of a probation officer for Israel. The establishment of a monitoring committee will enable the Palestinians to continue to pester FIFA, and it puts Rajoub under the microscope of social-media activists who will demand proof that a corrupt FIFA hasn’t bought him off.

    On the other side of the front, the monitoring committee leaves Israel in a state of constant tension. Any expression of racism on the Israeli soccer field and the delaying of a soccer player at the Allenby crossing would be grounds for deliberations and possible punishment of Israel.

    Since the Palestinian Authority’s infancy, Palestinian membership in FIFA and the state­-like etiquette surrounding soccer games fit into the PA leadership’s efforts to present its institutions as permanent and natural: a ­state ­in ­the ­making. It’s one way to make people forget that its intended transitional political presence became permanent.

    In short, the Palestinian leadership needs soccer, with its popularity, to project an air of normalcy — to maintain the PA existence and the logic of its existence.

    The boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel is working in its own way to undermine this false normalcy. It’s setting the bar high for the PA. Anyone who considers himself a Palestinian leader must take this threshold into account.

    Thus, Rajoub understood he had to use globally institutionalized soccer, one of the tools of Palestinian normalization, as anti-normalization leverage, and challenge the rules of the game that Israel has been imposing.

  • Israeli colonialism, plain and simple
    In two court decisions involving shoving Palestinians off their land, Supreme Court justices have confirmed what Israel’s critics are saying: that Israel has been a colonialist entity since 1948.
    By Amira Hass | May 11, 2015 | Haaretz
    http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.655812

    There is a straight line connecting the Palestinian village of Sussia in the southern West Bank and Atir/Umm al-Hiran, a Bedouin community in the Negev. This was highlighted last week by the justices of the Supreme Court. These are two communities of Palestinians that the Jewish state expelled from their homes and land decades ago, and whose families have lived ever since in “unrecognized” villages in shameful humanitarian conditions, forced on them by the Israeli government. One community settled on its agricultural land and the other in an area that the government moved them to during the early years of the state, when the Arabs citizens were under military rule.

    These are two Palestinian communities that Israel is depriving of their planning rights. Instead, it demands of them to crowd in the pales of settlement it has allotted to them, so Jews can fulfill and rejoice and thrive in their new and expanding suburban fantasies.

    The justices have allowed the state to demolish these two Palestinian communities, which are just 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) apart, but are separated by Israel’s 1967 border, the Green Line. On May 4, Justice Noam Sohlberg allowed the state, the Israel Defense Forces and the IDF Civil Administration to demolish Sussia’s tents, tin shacks and livestock pens as they see fit. The community petitioned against the Civil Administration’s decision to reject the master plan it had prepared, and what would be more natural than to stop home demolitions while the hearing of its case was still going on? But without a hearing, Sohlberg rejected the request filed by the community’s representatives – lawyers of Rabbis for Human Rights – for an interim injunction suspending implementation of demolition orders.

    The Civil Administration is demanding that the residents of Palestinian Sussia relocate close to the West Bank Palestinian town of Yata, purportedly for their own good. Yata is in Area A, an enclave under the control of the Palestinian Authority. In other words, the CA intends to squeeze Sussia in one of the West Bank’s Bantustans, as it does and intends to do with Bedouin and other Palestinians who live in Area C, under total Israeli control.

    In good faith?

    Next to the tin shacks of today’s Palestinian Sussia (after the army expelled the residents of their ancient village in 1986 and turned it into an archaeological site where Jews could celebrate), Jewish Susya now wallows in its greenery and abundance. After all, it has to grow and doesn’t want to see Arabs living in shacks and buying water at exorbitant prices from tanker trucks.

    Can a judge who permits demolition work to be carried out as an interim step then in good faith consider a petition challenging the residents’ final expulsion? And is it relevant that Sohlberg is a resident of a West Bank Jewish settlement?

    It is no more and no less relevant than the fact that the other justices of the Supreme Court and their families, and every other Jewish Israeli (including myself), are entitled at any time to move to a West Bank Jewish settlement, and that they – we – live on the Israeli side of the Green Line in manicured neighborhoods for Jews only and in some instances on land from which Palestinians were expelled 65 years ago or yesterday.

    On May 5, two other Supreme Court justices, Elyakim Rubinstein and Neal Hendel, allowed the authorities to demolish the unrecognized village of Atir/Umm al-Hiran. In the face of opposition from their fellow justice, Daphne Barak-Erez, they dismissed a petition filed by the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel that challenged the state’s decision to expel the residents for a second time, from the location to which they were expelled in the 1950s. Go to Hura, the state tells them, and the justices agree – to that Bedouin township that, like similar townships, was designated to condense Bedouins after their primary expulsion from their land. After all, how can we set up expansive farms for Jews and build pioneering communities such as Hiran if we recognize the Bedouin as citizens with rights, history and heritage?

    The honorable justices were ingratiating Habayit Hayehudi even before this party was selected as the fox that guards the hen-house – through its appointment of Uri Ariel as the agriculture minister (who is in also in charge of Bedouin affairs) and Eli Ben-Dahan as a deputy defense minister responsible for the Civil Administration (which carries out the expulsion of Palestinians and the settlement of Jews in the West Bank). Don’t worry, you folks at the Jewish Home, we support the right of Jews to disposes Palestinians in Area C and the Negev, so say the judges. We, like you, are in favor of crowding the Arabs into Bantustans.

    Even before the Supreme Court justices knew that Ayelet Shaked (Habayit Hayehudi) would be the next justice minister, even before they knew that her mentor, party leader Naftali Bennett, would be entrusted with the education of our children as education minister, they were telling us in a loud voice that the justices’ reputation was not what people feared, that the right wing has unjustly portrayed them as a monster seeking equality and justice. The justices had proven that their image as defenders of human rights, even if those humans were Palestinians or left-wing, had been totally twisted.

    Just weeks before, on April 15, they had enthusiastically embraced the Boycott Law. That’s the law through which the right wing is threatening with financial penalties left-wing Israeli dissidents who publicly support sanctions on Israel and a boycott of its institutions and settlement products, as part of the struggle against institutionalized inequality and discrimination.

    That very day, the justices endorsed the law that permits Israel to rob land owned by residents of Bethlehem, Beit Sahur, Beit Jala and Abu Dis. The land is where it has always been since before it was annexed to Israeli-ruled Jerusalem. Its owners remain living where they always did – a few kilometers away from their private land. But now the state declares them “absentees”: beyond the separation barrier.

    The justices dismissed the petition challenging the application of the Absentee Property Law in their case, thus continuing the tradition from the 1950s. That is when we coined the oxymoron “present absentees” in order to facilitate the demolition of villages and robbery of land of Palestinians that remained, those that we failed to expel.

    In the justices’ consent to the demolition of Sussia and Umm al-Hiran, they have drawn a direct line linking 1948 to today. They have confirmed what Israel’s most virulent critics say about the country – that it is a colonialist, dispossessing entity. The justices have parroted what the state has been screaming all along: It’s my right to dispossess, my right to expel, my right to demolish and crowd people into pens. I have demolished and will continue to do so. I have expelled and will continue to expel. I have crowded people in and will continue to do so. I never gave a damn and never will do.

  • Un reportage très intéressant sur un couple d’Arabes Israéliens qui tente d’intégrer une communauté israélienne “multiculturelle” “unique, qui prône l’ouverture sur toutes les religions, la tolérance et l’acceptation de l’autre". Et qui essuie un refus.

    But would you celebrate Israel’s Independence Day? - Features - Israel News | Haaretz
    http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/.premium-1.653316

    Nes Ammim rejected an Israeli Arab couple who wanted to join the self-described open, tolerant, multicultural community because they answered the question wrong.
    By Amira Hass

    “What will you do if the community invites you to a barbecue on Independence Day?” asked one of the six selection committee members of the Nes Ammim community. He asked the question in English, for the benefit of two of his fellow committee members who were Dutch – members of this Christian community that was established between Acre and Nahariya in 1963.

    In 2012, the community changed its original designation and started releasing agricultural land to allow for expanded housing construction, as part of the process of becoming a “multicultural” community. Despite this, none of the four Israelis on the panel was Arab. They did not introduce themselves by their full names to the interviewees, and two of the committee members them did not even live in the community when the interviews took place.

    The two candidates appearing before the committee were both shocked yet also not entirely surprised by the question. They were human rights lawyer Abeer Baker and Ala Khalikhal, a writer, translator and editor. It didn’t surprise them because this is precisely the kind of question Palestinian citizens of Israel often hear on the street – reflecting ignorance, insensitivity or the desire to irritate. But it did surprise them since they weren’t expecting to hear it at a selection committee for a “unique, high-quality community based on the principles of openness to all religions, tolerance and acceptance of the other,” as is stated on the community’s website. They also were surprised since they thought that in an interview for this kind of community, the bar for measuring acceptance of the Other would be higher, and the horizons for a joint life wider.

    Baker and Khalikhal, parents of 5-year-old Shada and 1-year-old Mohammed, surprised some of their friends when they decided to move to a newly emerging Jewish-Arab community. For both of them, though, this was a natural decision, compatible with their vision of a secular, democratic state for two nations in which the basic condition for its establishment is dialogue with the Jews of Israel, states Khalikhal.

    In mid-2014, when the Nes Ammim initiative was in its second trial year, Baker and Khalikhal heard that not enough Arabs had registered and that an Arab marketing person had been employed to address this. Khalikhal was familiar with the swimming pool at Nes Ammim from his childhood, since Arabs swam there without hindrance. He knew that the Christian founders of the community wanted to live among Jews as a way of seeking atonement after the Holocaust. The definition of the community as a joint one appealed to him and his wife.

    They also knew that the Western Galilee community was built on land that was legally and freely sold by a resident of the Arab town of Abu Snan, and not on terrain from which its Palestinian owners had been expelled in 1948 and then expropriated by the Israel Land Authority. As a result, they thought they wouldn’t have to face nagging questions every morning, such as who are the real and lawful owners of the land? Where are they now – perhaps in the embattled Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria? And what other tragedies befell them after the original one? And, yes, the idea of a house with a garden also attracted them – a small bourgeois dream within reach. “Bourgeois” is a self-directed barb used by Khalikhal. The price was 1,600,000 shekels ($405,000).

    It’s important for them that there is a safe playground for the children and, of course, that “the values on which we raise them will find natural expression in their neighborhood, so they don’t live in dissonance between values they learn at home and their immediate surroundings,” explains Baker.

    They aren’t concerned about being different. For example, Shada often hears them say they don’t believe in Allah – words not often heard in their community. “Who knows, maybe in her rebellious years she’ll wear a veil,” says Khalikhal, sarcastic as usual. A few weeks ago, when Baker muttered “With Allah’s help,” little Shada looked at her scoldingly and said, “But there is no Allah.” Khalikhal knows they could have made things easier by telling their daughter that God exists. But if they were looking for an easier life, perhaps the interview at Nes Ammim would have gone differently.

    When asked about the Independence Day barbecue, Baker told the interviewers that they would turn down the invitation. Khalikhal added, “We live in Acre and there are fireworks on that day. People dance in the streets and we remain at home.” Another choice they could have made while their Jewish neighbors were celebrating their independence at a barbecue would be to participate in a march commemorating one of the Palestinian villages Israel destroyed in 1948.

    “My philosophy is not to put a damper on anyone’s joy, but to insist on having my own space,” explains Baker. “On that day I have a right to live as I wish. [However], this is not accorded to us because of the Other’s refusal to accept my space, because of the Other’s difficulty in understanding that, logically – in essence and in principle – you can’t ask me if I’ll come and join Independence Day celebrations.”

    Both of them are children of “internal” refugees, citizens of Israel whose lands were confiscated and homes destroyed by Israel after 1948. Baker’s father was from the village of Safuriyya (now Tzippori, near Tiberias). Khalikhal’s father is from Kadita, which is now an alternative-style Jewish community in the Galilee, built alongside cisterns and stone houses, including the one owned by his family. They often pass close to these strikingly beautiful places, in which they could have been living without the filter of a selection committee. These places are off-limits to them and their imaginations.

    Up until the first interview in 2014, Baker and Khalikhal were under the impression that the committee phase was simply a technicality. They were encouraged to sign a contract before the interview took place, to choose a plot for their house and to pay an advance of 25,000 shekels. “It didn’t occur to us that we might not be accepted,” admits Baker. She believed that, of all communities, this one would recognize that there are different kinds of Arabs; that there is diverse political activity and multiple viewpoints among them.

    The couple was asked why they had chosen Nes Ammim. Baker replied that she is frustrated by contemporary life in Acre. She was born and raised in that city and remembers the truly mixed neighborhood she lived in and the Jewish girls (from Georgia) who were her friends. It used to be and to feel like a binational and multicultural place, without the hiding of differences, but without obstacles to friendship. “I explained during the interview that today there are no spontaneous mixed social encounters between children and that this is dangerous” she recalls. “And then one of the Jewish interviewers interrupted and pointed out that his mother lives in Acre and still asks for and gets sugar from her Arab neighbors. I understood that for him, saying ‘Good Morning’ to an Arab in the elevator is enough for him to state that there is a Jewish-Arab communal life there.”

    At the second interview, held last January, the Jewish Israelis were silent and the Dutchmen asked the questions. The woman on the committee told Khalikhal that she had Googled him and found an interview with him in which he likened the Knesset to a garbage dump. Khalikhal explained that he knows what goes on there since he had worked as a parliamentary assistant for half a year. To his surprise, the committee never asked about his literary work and only focused on the outspoken style of the opinion pieces he writes. “I told them that as a member of a minority I don’t have access to a microphone, as the majority does, so occasionally I have to yell.” Baker continues reconstructing the interview: “The Dutchman said that it’s bad to yell, that it’s impolite.” Khalikhal understood that his metaphor was lost on that person.

    And then, says Baker, came the comment that blew it all up. “The Dutchman said that they thought we were a very interesting and intelligent couple, but that they were afraid that we would foster confrontations in the community.” Khalikhal replied: “Do you want to tell me that the people in this room are less intelligent than we are and that this is the reason you selected them as community members?” The two of them explained that they were not seeking confrontations and were not concerned about ideological differences. Baker explained that as one ages one realizes that it is possible to hold a dialogue even with ‘enemies,’ accompanying that last word with her fingers indicating quotation marks. One of the men then jumped up and asked in English: “Who are your enemies?” Baker explained in Hebrew that she meant “rivals.”

    It didn’t take long for the letter of rejection to arrive. The deposit was returned. The two tried to appeal the verdict. “The community is not completely populated yet, and communal life has not yet been put to a real test,” they wrote. “Thus, disqualifying someone in advance could derive from prejudice on the part of people who have never experienced joint communal life. It’s highly doubtful that the committee members who have not yet lived in the community and have not yet internalized its principles in practical ways can judge our suitability. Our sense is that our disqualification stemmed from the wish not to hold a dialogue with someone expressing legitimate opinions that may not be acceptable by some of the community’s members.”

    The selection committee replied: “We emphatically reject the claim that the decision to refuse your request was based on discrimination and unwillingness to dialogue. Nes Ammim is a mixed community of Jews and Arabs, Muslim and Christian. It espouses coexistence and interfaith tolerance. We currently have members of all faiths and ‘Arab’ (sic) candidates were accepted both before and after your rejection.”

    The office at Nes Ammim did not respond to a query by Haaretz as to why the word Arab was put in quotation marks, as well as other questions, such as why there is no Arab member on the committee, why its members didn’t give their full names, how many Arabs applied and how many were accepted, and why the reasons for rejection weren’t given in writing, as required by law. The committee only responded by saying that the community is built on private land, so that it is not subject to the admissions committee law (which regulates the criteria by which communities established on state land can select or reject potential members.)

    A request by Haaretz to meet with officials in Nes Ammim went unanswered. In a letter signed by the committee the community is again defined as a “tolerant and accepting community, open to all faiths and nationalities.” The letter states that out of “concern for privacy” the reasons for rejecting Baker and Khalikhal were not given in detail. The committee notes that they accepted “families of different religions and nationalities and any attempt to suggest that their rejection derives from their being members of a minority is erroneous, superficial and unfounded.”

  • La géographie politique, de colonies et de bantoustans, est la même des deux côtés de la Ligne verte
    28 mars | Amira Hass et Philip Weiss pour Mondoweiss
    http://www.aurdip.fr/la-geographie-politique-de.html

    Amira Hass était sur la radio Law & Disorder cette semaine pour commenter l’élection israélienne. Ce fut un entretien formidable, riche en réflexion, cliquez sur le lien pour l’écouter, en particulier son commentaire sur les « deux historiographies d’Israël ». En voici quelques extraits clés.

    (À l’époque d’Oslo, les Palestiniens) connaissaient les Israéliens, ils les avaient rencontrés soit au travail soit en prison… et ils ont accepté la société israélienne. Ils la voyaient, ils savaient qu’elle existait. Elle est là, vous ne pouvez pas la faire disparaître. D’une certaine manière, ils ont accepté une historiographie plus nuancée de l’État d’Israël… non seulement comme un produit des temps colonialistes, et du mouvement colonialiste… mais aussi en lien avec cette partie de l’histoire européenne qui l’a rendue possible.

    Sans les douze années de règne nazi, la plupart des juifs n’auraient pas choisi de partir, d’émigrer en Palestine. Et si le Canada, l’Amérique du Sud n’avaient pas résisté à l’émigration des juifs, beaucoup de juifs auraient préféré émigré en Amérique, pas en Palestine. Dans les Accords d’Oslo, du côté palestinien il y avait un potentiel pour inclure ces deux historiographies qui font l’État d’Israël : l’historiographie du mouvement colonialiste… et d’autre part l’historiographie d’un refuge pour des gens exclus de la Diaspora contre leur volonté, et plus ou moins le seul endroit qu’ils ont trouvé et où ils se sentaient en sécurité à l’époque, c’était la Palestine, sur le dos des Palestiniens. L’énormité de ce chapitre de l’histoire ne devrait pas être ignorée.

    http://lawanddisorder.org/wp-content/uploads/lawanddisorder20150323.mp3

  • Otherwise Occupied / Israel gives Palestinians a reason to get older -

    Palestinians will now be able to leave the West Bank without exit permits, provided they’re women over 50 or men over 55. Your best chance of getting out of Gaza, though, is if you’re a tomato or eggplant.
    By Amira Hass | Mar. 16, 2015 Haaretz
    http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/.premium-1.647019

    Here is some good news: Maj. Gen. Yoav Mordechai, the coordinator of government activities in the territories (“Our prime minister,” as a high-ranking Palestinian official puts it), announced last Thursday that the minimum age for Palestinian residents of the West Bank who are allowed to enter Israel without a permit was being lowered – to 55 for men, 50 for women. Mordechai, who is also known by his nickname, Poli, ordered last October that the minimum age for Palestinian residents wishing to leave the West Bank without a permit would be 60 for men and 55 for women. This was after about 17 years in which even 90-year-olds needed a permit. Now the threshold is being lowered: a reason for the Palestinians to hope they age quickly and in good health.

    In the six months that have passed since the previous order, the checkpoint computers have registered that 140,000 men and women left the Bantustans of the West Bank for a short while, with no need to navigate the bureaucracy of Palestinian Authority offices and the office of the Israeli Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT). Now, at least 150,000 more Palestinians are expected to enter Israel and East Jerusalem without permits. Without even the additional biometric ID cards (known as magnetic cards) that Palestinian workers, especially, are required to have.

    Setting a minimum age threshold for entrants not only does away with the need for an exit and entry permit – a waste of time and, some say, humiliation from having to request a permit to travel in your own country, your own homeland, to enter the Palestinian capital, Jerusalem. It also does away with the mantra that has been in use since 1991, when Israel started its own pass system – obliging Palestinians to ask for a personal permit to cross the Green Line.

    The mantra was that the applicant needed a reason to leave: work, commerce, illness, family, or if he was under the auspices of an important organization and could prove he was a PA official, member of the clergy, or employee of an international NGO. Now the older ones can just use their right to free movement and go wherever they choose, without a special reason or reporting it.

    Of course, the ones permitted to travel are only those who are not “prevented for security reasons.” This is a vague term, and the criteria for determining who may or may not travel for security reasons lack transparency. Experience shows that, often, they can be close relatives of someone who was killed by Israel Defense Forces gunfire; or participants in a demonstration; or activists in political groups that are not Fatah – and Shin Bet security service officers have put an X in their files. If someone is not allowed to travel freely for security-related reasons, he will only discover this at the checkpoint.

    But let us rejoice for the ones who are middle-aged and older, and have no such X next to their names.

    And not only them: a quota of 200 adult Gazans permitted to leave for prayers at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, and then return, was set last October. In addition, for the first time since 2007, tomatoes and eggplants were permitted to be exported from Gaza and sold in Israeli markets. Was it because of the Jewish shmita (when land lies fallow for a year), or because of dire warnings from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund about the deteriorating Gazan economy? It does not matter. What matters is that the tomatoes and eggplants left last week on two trucks, 25 tons of produce on each. How extraordinary.

    A Gazan farmer carries boxes of tomatoes from a greenhouse to a truck for export to Israel, Wednesday March 11, 2015. Photo by AP
    Adding and removing goats

    The checkpoints, travel prohibitions and blocked roads are the innumerable goats that Israel has introduced into Palestinians’ lives. From time to time, “Poli” or “Bogie” (Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon] removes a goat or two – whether as a reward for the PA’s good behavior, an understanding that some pressure valves need to be opened, or to assuage the concerns of Western diplomats. COGAT carried out a decision that had been made in the political echelon – in other words, by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ya’alon.

    And when COGAT prohibits a mother and her son – Belgian citizens – from leaving the Gaza Strip, that is not malice, heaven forbid, but policy. R.G., a native of the Gaza Strip, has seven children. About 10 years ago, she and her husband moved to Belgium, where M., their 8-year-old son, was born. The entire family has Belgian citizenship. For health and family-related reasons, R.G. and her son went to Gaza for a visit some five months ago, via Egypt. They planned to stay a few weeks and then return. In the meantime, Egypt closed the border crossing at Rafah. However, each of the three times it was opened for a day or two since December, they failed to leave because of the overcrowding.

    The children in Belgium need their mother, and M. needs to go back to school. But COGAT and the Gaza District Coordination and Liaison Office refuse to allow them to leave through the Erez border crossing and proceed from there – through Israel and the West Bank – to the Allenby Bridge crossing and Jordan. The reason? They do not meet the criteria, which are that only extraordinary humanitarian cases are allowed to leave.

    Haaretz received no response as to why the needs of children and their mother is not a humanitarian case. The NGO Gisha is preparing to submit a petition to the High Court of Justice if the department of petitions at the State Prosecutor’s Office, which is headed by attorney Osnat Mandel, does not intervene.

    Since 1997, Israel has forbidden the inhabitants of the Gaza Strip from going abroad via the Allenby Bridge crossing: This prohibition is one of the solid proofs that Israel decided to cut the Gaza Strip off from the West Bank long before the Qassam rockets and Hamas’ rise to power. The result is the de facto imprisonment of 1.8 million human beings. Where are Belgium, the European Union and President Barack Obama, who can order Israel to put an end to this crude violation of the Oslo Accords and the rules of basic decency?

  • Otherwise Occupied / Palestinians start food fight as boycott intensifies
    Although Palestinian boycotts of Israeli products only have a marginal impact on the Israeli economy, they do serve a greater social purpose.
    By Amira Hass | Mar. 9, 2015 Haaretz
    http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.645863

    Tnuva and Osem products are disappearing from the shelves of Palestinian grocery stores and supermarkets. However, the shop owners are boycotting these and other Israeli companies, more because several high-ranking Palestinians have publicly embarrassed them than out of patriotic fervor. It began about three and a half weeks ago, when the National Committee against Israeli Punitive Measures announced a campaign to boycott the products of five Israeli companies for as long as Israel held on to Palestinian tax revenues it had collected at the international borders.

    The committee, which is headed by high-ranking Fatah member Mahmoud al-Aloul, gave the stores two weeks to clear their shelves. In the meantime, after some people ridiculed linking the end of the boycott to the return of the tax funds, a statement was made that the boycott would be indefinite.

    The committee is not a governmental one and the boycott is not legally binding – unlike the boycott of products from the settlements, which is enshrined in an official government decision (supervision of this boycott was stopped, however, due to lack of desire or funds, and it is only partially observed).

    At the end of the two-week period, the committee members went to several grocery stores and supermarkets, accompanied by the media (including Israeli journalists), and publicly humiliated vendors who had failed to comply. And last Monday, Fatah youth members confiscated a truck carrying Tnuva milk, worth several tens of thousands of shekels, and spilled the milk in the middle of al-Manara Square, Ramallah. It took three water tanks from the municipality (using at least 30 cubic meters of that precious fluid) to clean up the public space. Several passersby hurried to save a few of the bags and cartons of milk. When people asked why the milk had been spilled instead of being given to a refugee camp, for example, the Fatah youth answered that doing so would have made it possible to claim they had stolen the milk for themselves.

    In principle, there is support for the boycott of Israeli products. This is both to encourage Palestinian local products and manufacturing, and to broadcast to Israel and Israelis that, no, it is not business as usual. But the forceful manner in which the National Committee and the Fatah youth enforcing the boycott are acting has drawn criticism and complaints.

    “This is the first time high-ranking Fatah members have been hurt by Israeli punitive measures [which forced salaries to be cut because of the delay in transferring the tax monies], so they decided to act,” was the unflattering assessment of some former Fatah activists. They also said that “Fatah and its high-ranking personnel are politically marginalized, so they are looking for any way to stand out.” And, of course, there were those who raised the inevitable question, “And have they given up their VIP cards?” This question refers to documents provided by Israel that grant the high-ranking members some leniencies in movement.

    I heard a further explanation of the committee’s actions from several young people (who have no need to be scared into boycotting the products of the “Zionist entity”). They said the hidden motive is to throw out the marketing companies and replace them with different ones that are owned by close associates. Even if this explanation for the National Committee’s action is groundless, it shows how deeply the current of suspicion runs of the class that it represents. Maybe it would be better if the high-ranking members engaged in the boycott invoked health considerations as well: to explain that milk, particularly that which is full of hormones, is unhealthy; and that Bamba snacks, which are full of fat and salt, are unnecessary, too.

    Vegetarians overnight?

    The PLO Central Council met last week in Ramallah, but one of its resolutions – to boycott all Israeli products – is an empty one, as economists from the Palestinian Authority are well aware. It is true that one can do without many of these products (who on earth needs Israeli chocolate and chewing gum, or mineral water from the Golan Heights or Ein Gedi?). It is also possible – even within the framework of the restrictive Paris Protocol on economic relations – to import them directly from abroad, rather than through Israeli importers.

    But there are many products that have no replacement, and importing them from abroad will make them more expensive. What about meat, for example: A Palestinian economist told me that 97 percent of the meat and chicken that Palestinians consume is purchased from Israel. Can anyone envisage the Palestinians giving up meat and becoming vegetarians immediately? He told me that, so far, every boycott of Israeli products (including those from the settlements) has not reduced the amount of Palestinian imports from Israel by more than about five percent.

    But even if abstaining from most of the products has not harmed Israel’s economy, the activity on behalf of the boycott is important. A boycott allows large-scale participation by people in the act of rebellion, without lifting a stone or firing a shot.

    The roughshod military-colonialist occupation sticks its hands into every facet of human life and disrupts it: from cradle to grave, and beyond. There is no way to respond individually to every such violent act of disruption. A boycott redirects the feelings of anger and hatred, and the desire for revenge – which are justified, natural and understandable – into channels of mass action (what is surprising is the small number of individual violent expressions of those justified, natural and understandable feelings).

    Whatever their motivations may be, the high-ranking members’ boycott initiative (an echo of popular, not official, initiatives) is evidence of the changes in the internal Palestinian political climate. And it is definitely not the last word.

  • Si cette suspension entrait en vigueur, ce serait énorme. Mais le scepticisme est de rigueur...

    « Palestinian leaders vote to suspend security coordination with Israel »

    By Amira Hass | Mar. 6, 2015

    Despite the PLO Central Council’s vote, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, as head of PLO Executive Committee, is not expected to implement this decision anytime soon.

    http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.645604

    The PLO’s Central Council decided on Thursday night to suspend security coordination with Israel. However, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, as head of the PLO’s Executive Committee, is not expected to implement this decision anytime soon.

    After two days of deliberations, the council opted to halt the security coordination because of what it termed “Israel’s systematic and ongoing noncompliance with its obligations under signed agreements, including its daily military raids throughout the State of Palestine.”

    Instead of implementing the decision immediately, however, Abbas is expected to try to use the threat of its implementation to push the United States and the European Union to pressure Israel to halt construction in the settlements and release Palestinian prisoners as conditions for restarting diplomatic negotiations. In his speech to the council on Wednesday, Abbas said explicitly that he would be willing to resume negotiations if those two conditions were fulfilled.

    The council’s decision to suspend security coordination indicates that its members are seeking to keep the PLO, and themselves, relevant among the Palestinian public by taking aggressive positions in response to what they view as Israel’s peace rejectionism.

    The council also decided on Thursday to “boycott all Israeli products and not only those coming from Israeli settlements,” because “Israel must pay the price for its refusal to assume its responsibilities under international law.” But PA economists know the boycott doesn’t really hurt Israel’s economy; its significance is primarily symbolic.

    The council is a substitute for the much larger Palestine National Council, a pan-Palestinian body that hasn’t met in years because of both its size and geopolitical circumstances. The PA’s Legislative Council has also been paralyzed for years, and as a result, the Central Council has been meeting more frequently in recent years. But even though various views are voiced in the council, the real decisions remain in Abbas’ hands.

    Though some of the council’s decisions, like the boycott and suspending security coordination, were theoretically actionable, it’s not clear how they will actually be implemented. And other decisions were purely declarative, like the one stating that “Israel, the occupying power in Palestine, must assume all its responsibilities in accordance with its obligations underinternational law.”

    Another resolution stressed the need to “strengthen” reconciliation between the rival Fatah and Hamas parties in order to speed reconstruction of the Gaza Strip following last summer’s war between Hamas and Israel, while still another called for holding both presidential and parliamentary elections “as soon as possible.”

    Finally, the council resolved that “The Palestinian National Authority was the outcome of the national struggle of the Palestinian people to move from occupation to independence. Its institutions should be maintained and must not be dissolved.” This resolution was a response to those Palestinians who see the PA as a form of treason and demand its dissolution.

    In his speech on Wednesday, Abbas mocked those who define the Oslo Accords as treasonous, noting that the PA, its various institutions and even the Hamas government in Gaza all stem from those accords.

    Amira Hass tweets at @hass_haaretz

    #Palestine #Cisjordanie #Israël #OLP #Autorité_palestinienne #coopération_sécuritaire #territoires_occupés

  • Palestinian journalists increasingly find themselves in the line of IDF fire
    Voici des morts de journalistes dont personne ne se préoccupe

    A Palestinian cameraman was shot by an Israeli soldier in December while filming a demonstration in the West Bank. It’s still unclear if the Israeli authorities will investigate.
    By Amira Hass | Feb. 15, 2015 |Haaretz
    http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.642481

    A Palestinian cameraman was shot by an Israeli soldier in December while filming a demonstration in the West Bank. It’s still unclear if the Israeli authorities will investigate.
    By Amira Hass | Feb. 15, 2015 |

  • Otherwise Occupied / Fighting for Bruce Lee at The Hague
    A word of advice to the International Criminal Court: Law enforcement officers who don’t put settlers on trial for attacking Palestinians must also be considered suspects.
    By Amira Hass | Jan. 19, 2015 Israel News | Haaretz
    http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.637747

    If Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had asked me, I would have suggested that the International Criminal Court in The Hague investigate suspicions of war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories starting from April 18, 2011, not June 13, 2014. Why? Because on April 19, 2011, a terrorist with a Jewish appearance shot Bruce Lee.

    Bruce Lee? His friends from the West Bank village of Burin hoped his unconventional name would attract widespread attention, so that the attack against him would not be buried – like almost 100 other documented cases since 2005 had been of Jewish terrorists attacking village residents.

    His friends were mistaken. Lee’s name did not lead to earth-shattering headlines. I, too, am partly at fault. Twice I intended to write; twice, events of force majeure intervened and the reporting was postponed.

    The most important thing: Israel Police’s Judea and Samaria District let the investigation drift away, as is it customarily does. The file was passed back and forth from the police in Ariel to the Central District prosecutor’s office, and to the prosecution in the Samaria District – and then closed. Closed despite the file containing video footage of the incident that had been provided to the police, along with three eyewitnesses who identified the Israeli with the pistol from a lineup of digital pictures, and despite Bruce Lee’s serious injury.

    Bruce Lee? Some 40 years ago, his elder brother really loved the actor from the martial arts movies, and asked his pregnant mother to name his soon-to-be-born brother after him.

    After high school, Bruce Lee Eid thought about studying overseas, maybe law. “But then my brother, who returned to the West Bank with the Sulta [Palestinian Authority] in 1994, told me, ‘Join the Palestinian police. Serve your people. A state will be established and things will be okay.’ We are all Fatah, we are all for the PLO and peace, and we fought for independence. They convinced us that the way to independence is peace, and this is the peace of the brave.”

    Truly brave

    And Bruce Lee Eid is truly brave. Brave like the rest of his neighbors who built their homes in a section of northeast Burin. This is in Area B – in other words, the Palestinian Authority is responsible for providing building permits here, and the Israeli Civil Administration cannot prevent it from doing so. The neighborhood climbs up on a number of levels on the side of a mountain, below the peak, above which spreads out the unauthorized and illegal outpost of Givat Ronen, a descendant of the government-authorized but illegal settlement of Har Bracha.

  • A single Knesset slate for Israel’s most threatened population
    – If these were ordinary times, the ideological differences among Israel’s Arab parties would have constituted a good reason to run separately. But these aren’t ordinary times.
    By Amira Hass | Jan. 8, 2015 | Haaretz
    http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.635868

    On the fringe of this week’s discussion about putting together a united list of Arab parties for the Knesset, we learned the position of two men of the Zionist aristocracy.

    Avraham Burg, a new member of Hadash, opposed a united list, saying that he had not left the Jewish national space, which had become nationalist, to join nationalism of a different sort.

    Yossi Beilin, one of the architects of the Oslo Accords, which created the Authority of Palestinian Bantustans, responded to Burg’s preachiness in his typical patronizing style.

    He gave marks to Hadash (“a legitimate party with democratic elements” but a Stalinist past) and lamented Burg’s renunciation of what he once considered the most important thing: “the right of the Jews to live here and to bring in any Jew who wishes to live here, and grant him citizenship.”

    Three axioms

    For the past 67 years, Zionist vision and praxis have been expressed by three axioms:

    1) Every Jew has automatic rights in our country that are denied to any Palestinian whose parents and great-grandparents, as well as himself, were born here: the right to live where he chooses, earn a livelihood and buy property; marry, visit, travel freely, receive financial benefits, possess land, receive water, electricity and other services, and so on.

    2) The principle of “the rights of the Jews” to come here and live here applies to the entire country, between the river and the sea, as Labor and Likud governments in their various incarnations have made clear since 1967, and,

    3) Taking advantage of one’s right to live here comes with unending processes, on both sides of the Green Line, of expulsions of Palestinians from their homes, theft of their land and concentration of them in territorial cells, as the military jargon defines them.

    In these spheres, Benjamin Netanyahu and Naftali Bennett are pupils of Mapai.

    Simply put, the Zionist praxis gives every Jew the right to improve his situation in the country and reserves the right to degrade the situation of every Palestinian — be he a citizen of Israel, a resident of the country or a subject of the Bantustans Authority.

    That is enough to make the Jewish leftists and anti-racist liberals, who fear for the future of both peoples, vote for one of the parties that represent the country’s most oppressed population.

    An opportunity to be seized

    The vote is not the only answer to the expulsion and dispossession reflex of the Zionist enterprise, but it is an opportunity that should be seized.

    The right to degrade and undermine the Palestinians’ status at every moment has recently been invoked in the initiative of Yesh Atid and Yisrael Beiteinu to raise the electoral threshold. These parties are natural partners in a coalition led by Likud or Labor.

    Even without other measures intended to push Israel’s Palestinian citizens further to the margins, this law is reason enough to create a single Arab list and for anti-racist people to vote for it.

    Show a little modesty, Mr. Burg: It is not “nationalism,” if only because the nationalism of the oppressive ruler and the need and the right of the oppressed to defend themselves do not overlap.

    And why doubt from the start the power of the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality (Hadash) with the Communist Party to influence the character of the united list? After all, Arab-Jewish partnership is one of the Front’s Ten Commandments.

    Some people are daunted by the ideological differences among the Arab parties. If these were ordinary times, of the moderate right of 1990s-era Labor and a reasonable electoral threshold, the differences in outlook would have continued to be a good reason to run separately.

    But we are no longer living in ordinary times of restrained Zionist discrimination. Instead, we are living in a time when it has become wildly extreme and indulges in dreams of finishing what was left unfinished in 1948.

    This is a state of emergency that requires new alignments.

    A single list of Israel’s most threatened population, which is in constant danger of expulsion and delegitimization, could be a natural home for leftists from every nation and ethnic group.

    Its members have the power to turn it into a school for anti-racist defiance during the difficult times that the “Jewish nationalist space” has in store for us.

  • Palestinian official: PA can’t halt security coordination with Israel - we rely on it
    Declarations on suspending security cooperation were intended first and foremost to rein in the anger within the Fatah movement, and stemmed from internal needs within the Palestinian leadership, official says.
    By Amira Hass | Dec. 14, 2014 |Haaretz
    http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.631570

    Following a request by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the Palestinian leadership has postponed its discussions on a response to the death of Minister Ziad Abu Ein, who died of a heart attack after a confrontation with Israel Defense Forces troops last Wednesday.

    Kerry’s request was considered “American pressure,” a senior Palestinian official involved in the leadership meetings told Haaretz. But he added that there had never been any intention on the part of the Palestinians to carry out its threats to suspend or halt security cooperation with Israel.

    The postponement of any decision is part of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ ongoing tactics, which involve waiting for the United States to act and find an acceptable solution to the conflict, said the official.

    The Palestinian leadership met last Wednesday evening to discuss the response to the death of Abu Ein, who died after a protest was blocked by the IDF in Yurmus Aya, near Ramallah.

    Israeli medical sources said the primary cause of death was a heart attack caused by stress, but Palestinian officials said Abu Ein had died from being struck and inhaling tear gas.

    It was announced after the meeting that the discussion about an official response would be postponed until Friday.

    But none of the proposals raised on Wednesday were new, and have been brought up time and again over the past few months, said the Palestinian official. For example, signing on international covenants such as the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court or a UN Security Council Resolution on setting a date for an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories.

    Talk of suspending security cooperation with Israel had also been raised in the past, he said.

    The declarations on suspending security cooperation were intended first and foremost to rein in the anger within the Fatah movement, and stemmed from internal needs within the Palestinian leadership.

    “A few of the people who spoke in the media in favor of suspending security coordination speak completely differently in closed meetings and are asking to act with restraint and caution,” the official said.

    “The Israelis know that very well, and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said more or less that these were empty threats.

    “These are threats that have stopped being threatening. The Palestinian Authority cannot end the security coordination because of the many economic and personal interests – not only security ones – that rely on it,” he added.

    Hamas arrests

    In recent months, the Palestinian security services have conducted many arrests among members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad – many among the students at the various universities in the West Bank.

    Some were released after a few days, others are summoned daily to one of the Palestinian security organizations and released in the evening, without even being questioned.

    Over the weekend, the PA arrested 21 Hamas members in Hebron.

    A Hamas member said the arrests were meant to silence any other viewpoint.

    “Between the Israeli detentions and the PA campaign to silence [dissent], it is impossible to speak today about the existence of the Hamas organization in the West Bank,” he said.

    However, the PA claims the reason for the arrests was holding weapons or the financing of banned activities.

    Many of the arrests were meant to deter or intimidate, but others are based on information concerning weapons and transfers of money whose purpose is unknown, the senior Palestinian official told Haaretz.

    “These are arrests that it was possible to carry out without security coordination with Israel, but with the security coordination it is easier,” he said.

    Some 1,000 Hamas supporters in Hebron planned to hold a march and rally on Friday, to mark 27 years since the organization’s foundation.

    IDF soldiers destroyed the stage and confiscated banners and flags, and then dispersed the gathering with tear gas and rubber-covered bullets, which injured at least two, according to Palestinian reports.

    Hamas sources said the PA placed roadblocks in the streets leading to the rally and arrested activists who were on their way to the demonstration.

    Media outlets close to the PA reported widely yesterday about the dozen demonstrations that the IDF dispersed Friday, and the dozens of Palestinians injured by tear gas and a few who were wounded by bullets.

    But the Palestinian media also played down reports on the use of force to disperse the Hamas gathering.

    Even if the Palestinian and Israeli security forces did not act with prior coordination, the dispersal of the Hamas gathering, the arrests and the silencing of the media reflect their mutual interest in silencing the group.

    Ya’alon spoke dismissively on Friday evening about the Palestinian officials’ threats to end the security coordination.

    “The security coordination is more important to the [Palestinian] Authority than it is to us,” he said in an interview with Channel 2. “We will get by without security coordination. These are empty threats.”

  • Les gouvernements de droite et d’extrême-droite se succèdent en Israël, et Abbas reste inamovible
    Amira Hass - 5 décembre 2014 - Haaretz
    http://www.info-palestine.eu/spip.php?article15086

    L’officiel palestinien Saeb Erekat, qui a assisté à une discussion organisée à Ramallah par Masarat - le Centre Palestinien pour la Recherche en Politique et Études Stratégiques Ramallah, a également parlé de la voie diplomatique aux Nations Unies. Ceci inclut de soumettre au vote des Nations Unies la question de l’occupation, et d’obtenir que les presque 200 pays qui ont signé la Convention de Genève s’occupent de la question palestinienne.

    Il a affirmé que des officiels palestiniens étaient en négociation avec la France au sujet d’une initiative de cette dernière pour définir la voie à suivre et mettre fin à l’occupation et conclure des négociations de paix dans un délai de deux ans.

    Selon le rapport de Masarat, les participants ont noté la contradiction entre le fait de fixer un échéancier pour conclure les négociations et défendre un programme aux Nations Unies pour en finir avec l’occupation. Les deux officiels ont en fait traité d’approches contradictoires. Les Palestiniens voient les négociations comme la préservation du statu quo remettant à plus tard toutes les décisions et levant oute véritable pression internationale sur Israël.

    D’autre part, la voie diplomatique - « établir un calendrier pour la fin de l’occupation » - telle qu’elle est pratiquée par la direction palestinienne, exclut les autres manières de défier cette occupation qui engageraient les dirigeants et le public.

    La politique menée par Mahmoud Abbas repose sur plusieurs éléments. Ceux-ci incluent de diriger l’AP et ses institutions comme « un État en cours de construction », de dépendre de l’assistance internationale - principalement occidentale, de croire au soutien des États-Unis pour établir un État palestinien. Cela comprend aussi un gouvernement autoritaire qui limite la critique, une opposition à toute escalade militaire et à l’utilisation des armes contre l’occupation, de tenir des discours creux sur une lutte populaire et non-violente tout en la limitant et en faisant la promotion d’une stratégie diplomatique aux Nations Unies et dans le monde.

    Ces principes de base se plient au confinement des Palestiniens dans les enclaves (secteurs A et B en Cisjordanie et à Gaza) et encouragent la renonciation de facto à Jérusalem et au Secteur C (qui inclut les colonies). Le tout combiné favorise un haut niveau d’ajustement - de la direction officielle et du public – à n’importe quelle radicalisation de droite en Israël.

    Le public palestinien est sceptique quant aux buts et intentions de sa direction. La question qui ne cesse de planer est de savoir si la stratégie diplomatique d’Abbas a pour but d’en finir avec l’occupation, ou de prolonger la vie de l’AP et justifier son existence, avec tous les avantages que cela signifie pour toutes les strates impliquées.

    Les mêmes questions ont été posées concernant le choix adopté de longue date par la direction en faveur des négociations avec l’Israël, même après avoir tiré la conclusion qu’Israël exploitait les entretiens non pour conclure un accord mais pour renforcer l’annexion et contrecarrer la mise en place d’un État Palestinien.

    http://seenthis.net/messages/319134