Murdering Palestinian Children: "Murdering Palestinian Children | Nora Al-Saad |Al-Riyadh | Arab News Local Press 30 September 2003

A recent human rights report singles out Israel as the only country in the world that continues the murderous policy of killing, torturing and imprisoning Palestinian children. The report by two human rights groups -one in Gaza and the other in France- says the Zionist state continues to arrest children for political reasons and that of 7,500 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli detention camps 323 are children.

Expressing deep concern over the atrocities committed by Israel against Palestinian children, the two groups cited as some of the country's many crimes holding the children in cold cells with overflowing sewage after removing their clothes and confiscating and tearing their textbooks, including copies of the Qur'an.

Since the beginning of the Al-Aqsa intifada some three years ago, more than 1,600 Palestinian children have been arrested and imprisoned by the Israeli occupation forces. Some 15 percent have been sentenced to prison terms of more than three years. The maximum sentence given to a child has been 20 years. One child, accused of trying to kill Israelis, was sentenced to 17 years in prison.

The report clearly shows the double standards adopted by the international community. While some governments are targeted, attacked and accused of violating human rights for not allowing the building of churches in Muslim countries and for not allowing women to drive, others which continue to violate human rights, including attacking children, are spared criticism."
- posted by Editor @ 4:52 AM

World Press Review - Arab Israelis - Or Report:
Light Years Away Amir Gilat, Ma’ariv (centrist), Tel Aviv, Israel, Sept. 5, 2003

...The conclusions of the Or Commission [of Inquiry, appointed to investigate the causes of October 2000 riots in Arab areas of Israel, which left 13 Israeli Arabs and one Jewish citizen dead], which pointed to governmental prejudice against and neglect of Israel’s Arabs didn’t surprise anyone in the Arab population, though the majority of the Arab public is certain that efforts to bring Jews and Arabs closer will remain on paper (Ma’ariv’s introduction).
...
The gaping chasm between the Arab citizens and the state of Israel deepened during those difficult 10 days in October 2000 ... This gloomy history is accompanied by bleeding wounds such as the killing of 41 Arabs in Kfar Kasem in 1956. The officer who was convicted of giving the order to kill the Palestinian workers, who had asked to return to their homes during curfew, was sentenced to a fine of one penny. During this week’s talks of granting pardons to the police officers who were involved in the fatal October 2000 incident, the Arab community remembered the 1956 incident. “Apparently, [one penny] is the value of an Arab citizen in Israel; it seems nothing has changed since then,” one of the Arabs we interviewed said.
...
In the Galilee town of Majd al-Krum, the situation is far from enchanting. Twelve thousand residents live in a town that holds the record for several dubious distinctions. “We lead in unemployment, car accidents, in everything. We don’t have a comprehensive plan because they won’t authorize it, and we can’t develop and build houses,” says Muhammad Kanaan, the head of the town's council. Following the events of October 2000, plans to build new neighborhoods in the town, at the edge of the Akko-Tzfat junction, were frozen. “They told us that building a neighborhood like this would become a security hazard,” he says. “On the one hand, they don’t give us a comprehensive plan so that we could build according to the law, and on the other hand, they accuse us of breaking the law.”
...
In the meeting, Barak said the police weren’t using live ammunition, but rather rubber bullets. Muhammad Zidan, then the head of the monitoring committee, tried to disprove these claims by bringing in shells from firearms that the police used against Arab citizens and laying them on the desks of the ministers. “How did you manage to get these shells past security?” one minister joked.

- posted by Editor @ 8:29 PM

Israel Affairs - Issue 9.1&2: "Fertility Transition in the Middle East: The Case of the Israeli Arabs by Onn Winckler

The aim of this article is to examine the changing fertility trends among the Israeli Arab population, since the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 until the present, within the context of the overall changing fertility patterns among Middle Eastern Arab societies during the second half of the twentieth century. The main conclusion of the article is twofold. First, the fertility rates among Israeli Muslims have been stagnating since the mid-1980s, following an initial decline in the 1970s and the early 1980s – a decade-and-a-half before the decline in most other Arab Middle Eastern societies. This is in sharp contrast to both the Israeli Druze and Christian populations, as well as almost all of the other Middle Eastern Muslim societies, in which the fertility level has been steadily declining over the past 15 years. Thus, by the end of the twentieth century, the Israeli Muslim population’s fertility rates were among the highest in the entire Middle East. The second conclusion is that the unique demographic pattern among the Israeli Muslims during the past two decades has resulted, first and foremost, from the unique Israeli pro-natalist policy that provides substantial children’s allowances and other economic benefits only from the fifth child and above. It is also attributable to the failure of the Israeli authorities to promote the socio-economic conditions of the Muslims. For them, in sharp contrast to the Christians and the Druzes, the children’s allowances and the other financial benefits given to large families have constituted an incentive for increasing their fertility and, in many cases, the best and most available option for family income. "
- posted by Editor @ 10:27 AM

Haaretz Article: "Last Update: 15/09/2003 05:05 Arabs blast `whitewash committee' By Yair Ettinger

The cabinet decision to set up a ministerial committee to consider how to implement the Or Commission recommendations has aroused the ire of the Israeli Arab community.

Shawqi Khatib, chairman of the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee, charged that the ministerial committee would be
'a means of whitewashing the Or Commission recommendations. There is a culture of not honoring agreements with the Arab sector, and perhaps there is also a culture of not implementing the recommendations of state commissions of inquiry.'

Asked about Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's pledge at the cabinet meeting to work for equality for the Arab sector, Khatib replied: 'We are fed up with declarations.' Jamal Zahalka, MK (Balad), added: 'The decision is an Isra-bluff. The real
meaning of the decision is to accept [the recommendations] but not implement them.'

Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, also charged that 'the very establishment of the [ministerial] committee proves that this is an attempt to avoid implementing the recommendations.'"
- posted by Editor @ 9:07 PM

The man who hates poor children: "The man who hates poor children By Tamar Gozansky Sunday, September 14, 2003

Children are the private business of their parents and it is not the state's role to concern itself about children whose parents find it difficult to provide for them: this was the spirit of the remarks made by Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in an interview to Army Radio last week.

How does concern for the weak population groups - which Netanyahu described as one of the aims of the 2004 budget - sit with the steep cut in child allowances, the interviewer, Shelly Yachimovich, wanted to know. Netanyahu replied that every father should do the calculation of how many children his income can support.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1989, and ratified by Israel in 1991, "recognize[s] the right of every child to a standard of living adequate for the child's physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development" (Article 27.1). The emphasis in the convention on the right of children to an appropriate standard of living does not absolve the parents of responsibility: "The parent(s) have the primary responsibility to secure, within their abilities and financial capacities, the conditions of living necessary for the child's development" (Article 27.2).

The right of a third of Israel's children to enjoy an adequate standard of living, which is defined, for the sake of the argument, as life above the poverty line, was crudely trampled underfoot within the framework of Netanyahu's plan of March 2003. That plan slashed 70 percent of the child allowances for families with three children or more (and note well: families with three children will also have the child allowance cut). This process will continue until January 2006, with the bulk of the cut being implemented in August of this year and January next year.

... Netanyahu, we were given to understand, is fed up with the children of the poor, and especially with the
children of the Arabs and the ultra-Orthodox, whose parents find it difficult to provide for them.
- posted by Editor @ 10:03 AM

Israel and the occupied territories:
...
... During the year there were credible reports that there was an increase in the number of allegations that security forces tortured detainees, including using methods prohibited by a 1999 High Court decision. The Attorney General has the authority to accept a 'necessity defense' in deciding whether or not to prosecute. There also were numerous allegations that police officers beat detainees. Although it was not clear if any formal complaints of torture were filed, human rights groups maintained that no GSS agent has been criminally charged with torture or other ill treatment for the past several years. Human rights groups further complained that the investigators who did field work for the Attorney General's office on such claims were GSS agents.
...
...The total number of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, which was 1,854 at the beginning of the year, reached 4,672 by year's end. The Government stated that it held 1,007 persons from Gaza and the West Bank, and no Israeli Arabs in administrative detention (without charge or trial) at year's end. The Government detained approximately 10,000 prisoners at some point during the year (see Section 1.d.).

Conditions at the Russian Compound remained extremely poor; however, conditions in other IDF facilities improved in some respects. ..
...
Children's rights groups expressed particular concern over the separate sections of holding facilities for the detention of children. Overcrowding, poor physical conditions, lack of social workers, and denial of visits by parents remained problems...
...
At year's end, the Government held approximately 6,700 Palestinians in custody, 3 times as many during the previous year. Those held were a combination of common criminal prisoners (approximately 1,500), administrative detainees (approximately 850), and ordinary security detainees (approximately 4200, nearly 5 times more than the previous year). In April 2000, a High Court ruling declared illegal the holding of Lebanese detainees in Israeli prisons as "bargaining chips" to extract concessions or the release of Israeli prisoners held in Lebanon. ...
...
Section 5 Discrimination Based on Race, Sex, Disability, Language, or Social Status

The law prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex or marital status. The law also prohibits discrimination by both government and nongovernmental entities on the basis of race, political beliefs, and age. Local human rights groups were concerned that these laws often were not enforced, either as a result of institutionalized discrimination, or because resources for implementing those laws, or mechanisms for their enforcement, were lacking. According to a report submitted to the U.N. by the Government in February, allocation of resources to different population groups was not consistent with the law's prohibition on discrimination.

The Government owns and manages 77 percent of the country's land area, and as a matter of policy it does not sell land. The Jewish National Fund (JNF), an organization established in 1897 for the purchase and management of land for the Jewish people, owned 8 percent of the country's land area, including a considerable amount transferred directly from the Government, and managed another 8 percent on behalf of the Government. The JNF's statute prohibits the sale or lease of land to non-Jews. Foreigners and citizens of all religions were allowed freely to purchase or lease the 7 percent of land not controlled by the Government or the JNF. In March 2000, the High Court of Justice ruled that the Government's use of the JNF to develop public land was discriminatory. At year's end, there were no new developments in this case.
...
Education
... Children whose parents have served in the army had a cut of 4 percent and children whose parents have not served in the army had a cut of 24 percent. Most Israeli Arabs are exempt from compulsory military service. In addition to the 12 percent cut in February, the decision makes child allowances 37 percent lower for Arab children compared to Jewish children. However, children of Druze or Circassians who are drafted or Christian/Muslims who volunteer for the IDF receive the higher figure. Children from religious Jewish families who do not serve in the IDF receive the lower figure. Ultra orthodox Jews who did not serve in the military faced the same child welfare cuts. However, they were eligible for extra subsidies, including educational supplements not available to others.

Education was compulsory up to the age of 15 or until the child reaches the 10th grade, whichever comes first. Arab children made up approximately one-quarter of the public school population, but historically government resources allocated for them were proportionately less than for Jewish children. Many schools in Arab communities were dilapidated and overcrowded, lacked special education services and counselors, had poor libraries, and had no sports facilities. The Government allocated 26 percent of the school budget for the year for the construction of new classrooms for schools in Arab communities (not including Druze communities). According to the Government's report to the U.N. in February, government investment per Arab pupil was approximately 60 percent of investment per Jewish pupil.

High school graduation rates for Arabs were significantly lower than for Jews. According to 1998 statistics, 58 percent of the teachers in Jewish schools had university degrees compared with 39 percent of the teachers in Arab schools. Preschool attendance for Bedouin children was the lowest in the country, and the dropout rate for Bedouin high school students was the highest.

Arab groups noted that the public school curriculum stressed Israel's Jewish culture and heritage. Israeli Arab students were not eligible to participate in a special education program to provide academic assistance to students from disadvantaged backgrounds. ... 1997 ... The Attorney General's office agreed that the policy constituted impermissible discrimination but asked for 5 years to expand the program to Israeli Arab students. The petitioners rejected this proposal as being too slow. ... the Government promised to equalize special education resources by 2004. ... At year's end (2002), the Government still had not implemented those recommendations, and the budget for the year did not contain provisions to equalize spending on Arab and Jewish special education.
...
National/Racial/Ethnic Minorities

The Government did not allocate sufficient resources or take adequate measures to provide Israeli Arabs, who constitute approximately 20 percent of the population, with the same quality of government services, as well as the same opportunities for government employment, as Jews. In addition, government spending was proportionally far lower in predominantly Arab areas than in Jewish areas; on a per capita basis, the Government spent two-thirds as much for Arabs as for Jews. In February the Government noted in a report to the U.N. that "the Arab population is typified by larger families, lower levels of education, and lower income than the total Israeli population."

Municipalities, including Arab municipalities, were responsible for issuing building permits within the municipal boundaries. Some Arab NGOs claimed that outside of Arab-governed municipalities, the Government was more restrictive in issuing building permits to Arabs than to Jews.

The Bedouin sector was the weakest of all the population groups in the country. Bedouin living in unrecognized villages had no way to obtain building permits. ...
...
By law, the Israel Land Authority has 18-24 members; half of which represent organizations forbidden by statute to transfer land to non-Jews. In 1999 the Government appointed the first Arab citizen to the board, and in 2001 the High Court of Justice ruled that the Government must appoint an additional Arab to the board. However, during the year, this had not been done.
...
In February the Israel Lands Administration sprayed from the air chemical defoliant over 12,000 dunams (12 sq. km) of Bedouin wheat fields on the Negev that had been planted on unrecognized land. ...

There continued to be claims by Arab groups that land expropriation for public use affected the Arab community disproportionately; that Arabs have been allowed too little input in planning decisions that affect their schools and municipalities; that mosques and cemeteries belonging to the Islamic Waqf (religious endowment) have been neglected or expropriated unjustly for public use; and that successive governments have blocked the return to their homes of citizens displaced in the early years of the country's history. The Government has yet to agree with the pre-1948 residents of the northern villages of Bir Am and Ikrit, and their descendants, regarding their long-term demand to be allowed to rebuild their houses. In 1997 a special interministerial panel recommended that the Government allow the villagers to return to Bir Am and Ikrit. The High Court granted the Government several extensions for implementing the recommendation. In October 2001, after the expiration of the most recent extension, under instructions from the Sharon Government, the State Prosecutor's Office submitted an affidavit to the High Court asking it to reject the villagers' appeal, stating that the Government had legally appropriated the land and that the precedent of returning displaced persons to their villages would be used for propaganda and political purposes by the Palestinian Authority. The Court's decision was pending at year's end.

Section 6 Worker Rights

Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip who worked in Israel were not able to join Israeli trade unions or organize their own unions in Israel. Palestinian trade unions in the occupied territories were not permitted to conduct activities in Israel

[etc. etc. etc. ... ed.]
- posted by Editor @ 4:01 PM

US Dept of State: International Religious Freedom Report 2002: Israel and the occupied territories: "
...
The Government states that it is committed to granting equal and fair conditions to Israeli Arabs, particularly in the areas of education, housing, and employment. However, the Government does not provide Israeli Arabs, who constitute approximately 20 percent of the population, with the same quality of education, housing, employment, and social services as Jews. On a per capita basis, the Government spends two-thirds as much for Arabs as for Jews. Although such policies are based on a variety of factors, they reflect de facto discrimination against the country's non-Jewish citizens.
...
In civic areas in which religion is a determining criterion, such as the religious courts and centers of education, non-Jewish institutions routinely receive less state support than their Orthodox Jewish counterparts. Additionally, National Religious (i.e., modern Orthodox, one of Israel's official Jewish school systems) and Christian parochial schools complain that they receive less funding than secular schools despite the fact that they voluntarily abide by all national curricular standards. During the period covered by this report, the two groups together took their case for equal funding to the High Court.

Government resources available to Arab public schools are less than proportionate to those available to Jewish public schools. Israeli Arab private religious schools are considered among the best in the country; however, parents often must pay tuition for their children to attend such schools due to inadequate government funding. Jewish private religious schools receive significant government funding. Non-Jews are underrepresented in the student bodies and faculties of most universities and in the higher level professional and business ranks.

Government funding to the different religious sectors is disproportionate. Non-Orthodox streams of Judaism and the non-Jewish sector receive proportionally less funding than the Orthodox Jewish sector. Only 2 percent of the Ministry of Religious Affairs budget goes to the non-Jewish sector.
...
The Jewish National Fund owns approximately 8 percent of the country’s land area and manages another 8 percent on behalf of the Government. The JNF’s by-laws prohibit it from selling or leasing land to non-Jews, which has prevented Israeli Arabs from buying homes in JNF developed areas.

Israeli-Arab organizations have challenged the Government's "Master Plan for the Northern Areas of Israel," which listed as priority goals increasing the Galilee's Jewish population and blocking the territorial contiguity of Arab villages and towns, on the grounds that it discriminates against Arab citizens.
...
Israeli Arab groups allege that many employers use the prerequisite of military service to avoid hiring non-Jews, including for jobs that are unrelated to national security.

Occupied Territories
... the PA generally respects this right [freedom of religion] in practice

There generally are amicable relations between Christians and Muslims.
...
The Israeli Government gives preferential treatment to Jewish residents of the occupied territories and East Jerusalem in the areas of permits for home building and civic services. For example, Muslim Arab residents of Jerusalem pay the same taxes as Jewish residents; however, Arab residents receive significantly fewer municipal services than Jewish residents. There is a general consensus among Palestinian and Israeli human rights organizations that many of the national and municipal policies enacted in Jerusalem are designed to limit or diminish the non-Jewish population of Jerusalem. According to these activists, the Israeli Government uses a combination of zoning restrictions on building for Palestinians, confiscation of Palestinian lands, and demolition of Palestinian homes to "contain" non-Jewish neighborhoods.
- posted by Editor @ 12:23 PM

US Dept. of State: International Religious Freedom Report: Israel and the occupied territories 2001
...
Government funding to the different religious sectors is disproportionate. Non-Orthodox streams of Judaism and the non-Jewish sector receive proportionally less funding than the Orthodox Jewish sector. For example, only 2 percent of the Ministry of Religious Affairs budget goes to the non-Jewish sector. ...
...
In civic areas in which religion is a determining criterion, such as the religious courts and centers of education, non-Jewish institutions routinely receive less state support than their Orthodox Jewish counterparts.

Government resources available to Arab public schools are less than proportionate to those available to Jewish public schools. Many public schools in Arab communities are dilapidated and overcrowded, lack special education services and counselors, have poor libraries, and have no sports facilities. Israeli Arab private religious schools are considered among the best in the country; however, parents often must pay tuition for their children to attend such schools due to inadequate government funding.

- posted by Editor @ 12:22 PM

US Report: "U.S. Department of State | Annual Report on International Religious Freedom for 1999: Israel | Released by the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor |Washington, DC, September 9, 1999
...
The overwhelming majority of non-Jewish citizens are Arabs and they are subject to various forms of discrimination. It is not clear that whatever discrepancies exist in the treatment of various communities in Israeli society are based on religion per se. Israeli Arabs and other non-Jewish Israelis are, in fact, free to practice their religions.
...
The Government does not provide Israeli Arabs, who constitute 20 percent of the population, with the same quality of education, housing, employment opportunities, and social services as Jews. In addition, government spending and financial support are proportionally far lower in predominantly non-Jewish areas than in Jewish areas. ... Israeli-Arab organizations have challenged the Government's "Master Plan for the Northern Areas of Israel," which listed as priority goals increasing the Galilee's Jewish population and blocking the territorial contiguity of Arab villages and towns, on the grounds that it discriminates against Arab citizens.

... For example, only 2 percent of the Ministry of Religious Affairs budget goes to the non-Jewish sector. [Jewish sector gets 12.5 times as much money per head. Ed.] ... After three hearings during 1998, the [High Court of Justice] ruled that the budget allocation did in fact constitute "prima facie discrimination" but that the plaintiff's petition did not provide adequate information about the religious needs of the various communities. The Court refused to intervene in the budgetary process on the grounds that such action would invade the proper sphere of the legislature.
...
The Government confers automatic citizenship and residence rights to Jewish immigrants, their families, and Jewish refugees under the Law of Return. This law does not apply to non-Jews or to persons of Jewish descent who have converted to another faith.

The Government designates religion on national identity document, but not on passports
...
The overwhelming majority of non-Jewish citizens are Arabs and they are subject to various forms of discrimination. It is not clear that whatever discrepancies exist in the treatment of various communities in Israeli society are based on religion per se. Israeli Arabs and other non-Jewish Israelis are, in fact, free to practice their religions.

Relative to their numbers, Israeli Arabs are underrepresented in the student bodies and faculties of most universities, and in higher-level professional and business ranks. Well-educated Arabs often are unable to find jobs commensurate with their level of education. Arab Ph.D.'s suffer the greatest problems in this regard. A small number of Israeli Arabs have risen to responsible positions in the civil service, generally in the Arab departments of government ministries. In 1994 a civil service commission began a 3-year affirmative action program to expand that number, but it has had only modest results. ...
- posted by Editor @ 6:51 AM

Israel/Occupied Territories:Amnesty International's Human Rights Concerns:

"'The realization of the principle of territorial integrity, as enunciated in the Oslo accords, has been frustrated during the period under review by Israeli restrictions on the movement of persons and goods between so-called A, B, and C areas of the West Bank, between Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and between the occupied territories and the outside world. Safe passage arrangements have not been established, and arrangements for a Gaza seaport and airport have not been agreed upon. The Israeli policy of general closure, which has been in effect since 30 March 1993, imposes explicit restrictions on the mobility of goods and persons. There are fixed Israeli checkpoints on Palestinian roads, including key transport routes, and a system of differentiated mandatory permits for labourers, business people, medical personnel and patients, students, religious worshippers, and all other categories of Palestinians. Restrictions on entry to Jerusalem block access to the main north-south transportation route in the West Bank, necessitating lengthy and costly detours. This general closure has been aggravated by periodic comprehensive closures entailing the complete denial of such movements during a full 353 calendar days between 30 March 1993 and mid-June 1997. Since 21 March 1997, when a bomb attack in Tel Aviv, apparently carried out by Hamas, killed three Israeli women, such comprehensive closures have been imposed for a total of 24 days. Internal closure days, during which movement is not allowed even inside the West Bank (between A and B areas) totalled 27 days in 1996. Israeli restrictions on the movement of goods and personnel are also imposed on UN officials and project materials, resulting in delays and added costs for development projects in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and in serious disruption of the work of humanitarian agencies."
UN Secretary-General, June 1997(13)
- posted by Editor @ 6:49 AM

FORWARD : News : AUGUST 8, 2003 : ADL Rebukes Knesset Law By AMI EDEN FORWARD STAFF

In a rare rebuke of Israel, the Anti-Defamation League is criticizing the Knesset for passing a bill that denies residency permits to Palestinians who marry Israeli citizens.

The decision to speak out, albeit gently, puts the ADL in the unusual position of joining the European Union and international human rights organizations in criticizing Israeli policy. The group's director, Abraham Foxman, has long argued that American Jewish groups should generally defer to the democratically elected Israeli government on security-related matters.

In a statement Monday, Foxman acknowledged that the Israeli government has 'vital security concerns,' but added, 'We hope the Knesset will review this law when it expires in a year and explore other methods to ensure Israel's security needs.'"
...
...comes on the heels of the State Department's announcement that it will examine whether the new legislation is consistent with the administration's position on preventing discrimination.

The European Union's ambassador to Israel, Giancarlo Chevallard, described the legislation as "discrimination against the Palestinians in the very sensitive area of family rights." ...
- posted by Editor @ 8:40 AM

Operation Brainwashing By Gideon Samet Wednesday, September 10, 2003

... Prof. Yaakov Katz [chairman of the Education Ministry's pedagogical secretariat] led a team that for a full year prepared the list of "the 100 concepts for junior high school."
...
...missing is any concept at all of a fifth of the citizens of the state. Didn't Ali Assad, the supervisor [of Arabic education], propose any? Did they erase his choices?

There is a cacophony of Judaism and what Prof. Katz and his team understand as "Israeli democracy," one of the three chapters in this disgraceful document (the others are Jewish heritage and Zionism). ...
...
... There is nothing about the culture of the world ... And there's no mention of the Palestinians.

- posted by Editor @ 8:29 PM

Amnesty International - Library - Israel/Occupied Territories: Israel must end its policy of closures and restriction of movement | 7 September 2003 00:00 GMT

'Israel must put an end to the imposition of disproportionate and discriminatory restrictions on Palestinians' movement in the Occupied Territories which have crippled the Palestinian economy and caused widespread poverty, unemployment and increasing health problems,' Amnesty International said in a report published today.

Closures, blockades, checkpoints, curfews and a barrage of other restrictions imposed by the Israeli army on Palestinians have made even short journeys between towns and villages difficult, dangerous and often impossible - effectively confining some three and a half million Palestinians to a form of town arrest."
- posted by Editor @ 12:53 PM

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | A Jew among 25,000 Muslims | Wednesday August 27, 2003

But in reality these are little more than Jewish cities with poor, separate Arab neighbourhoods.

Israeli Arabs face their own obstacles to joining Jewish communities. Some 93% of land is owned by the state; and those who try to lease it are vetted by committees that weed out undesirables, including Arabs. ...

The parallels that Nathan draws between Israel and the old South Africa are based on long periods of her youth spent there with relatives, although she acknowledges that Israel does not enforce the same brutal apartheid. In fact, she even points out that her first real meetings with Palestinians occurred in the Hadassah hospital in Jerusalem, where her cancer was being treated. In the days before the intifada, Jews and Arabs lay in beds alongside each other.

"Of course, Jews and Arabs travel on buses together and watch films in the same cinemas. The apartheid in Israel is not formalised and legalised like it was in South Africa; it is sophisticated, hidden and emotional. It is based on a culture of fear of the Other, which is fed by the Zionist propaganda machine."

The real problem, she says, lies in the different nature of citizenship for Jews and Arabs. It starts with the founding principles of the state such as the law of return, which allows Jews anywhere in the world - such as Nathan herself - to claim a right to migrate to Israel; but at the same time it denies millions of Palestinians the right to claim the homes they and their parents were dispossessed of 55 years ago.

And it continues in the discrimination in employment, local council budgets, access to the media and control of the government. "Where are the Arab heads of banks, the civil service, the rectors of universities?"

But most of all, she says, apartheid is shaped by the battle for territory. "It is revealed in the fact that the state can confiscate hundreds of thousands of acres of Arab-owned land and then refuse even to lease it back to the original owners; that the state has refused to build a single new Arab community in its 55 years, even though the population has grown eightfold.

Dotted around Tamra are land-hungry farm collectives (the kibbutz) and luxury communities reserved exclusively for Jews. "Where are the people of Tamra supposed to live? They are being choked. By making life unbearable here is the state not trying to bring about a quiet form of transfer, of ethnic cleansing? People who have the money or connections to move abroad do so."

- posted by Editor @ 12:51 PM

Excite News | Report Faults Israeli Police for Riots Sep 1, 2003 4:44 PM (ET) By PETER ENAV

JERUSALEM (AP) - A groundbreaking Israeli commission of inquiry found police used excessive force in quelling Arab riots three years ago and said in a stinging report released Monday that the Jewish state has systematically neglected its Arab minority.
...
Successive Israeli governments have promised to do more for Arab communities, but little has been achieved.
...
The report put the blame for the riots squarely on the shoulders of the Israeli establishment, saying a major cause was systematic government neglect of the Arab minority.

"The state and all its governments failed consistently in dealing with the problems raised by the existence of a large Arab minority within a Jewish state," it said.

"The government's approach to the Arab sector was in large part characterized by neglect and discrimination. The establishment did not demonstrate sufficient sensitivity to the Arab sector, nor did it budget its resources in an equal way to the Arab population."
...
For the most part, Israeli Jews and Arabs live in separate communities, marked by profound social and economic inequalities.

Arabs are far less likely than Jews to enter college, far more likely to drop out of school, and far less likely to find jobs in the public sector, where security considerations are often invoked as a justification for barring them from employment.

State allocations to Arab municipalities are considerably lower than those for their Jewish counterparts, and Arabs are more limited than Jews in their ability to acquire state lands for building and agricultural purposes.
- posted by Editor @ 12:36 PM

Inquiry Raps Israeli Police for Killing 13 Arabs, Sep 1, 2003 7:37 am ET Excite - News

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Israeli inquiry reprimanded police Monday for killing 13 Israeli Arabs in pro-Palestinian protests three years ago, but did not recommend action against the prime minister at the time, Ehud Barak.

The creation of the Or Commission inquiry into the deaths in October 2000, soon after the start of the Palestinian uprising for independence in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, was widely seen as an attempt to appease Israel's outraged Arab minority.

After nearly three years of testimony, the commission found that police commanders committed errors of judgment when their forces opened fire on stone-throwing Arab demonstrators
...
... Israeli Arabs have long complained of institutionalized discrimination, and the fighting has driven a wedge of suspicion between Israel's Arabs and Jews"
- posted by Editor @ 12:30 PM

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Palestinians languish in Israeli jails By Martin Asser BBC News Online Friday, 8 August, 2003

Thousands of Palestinian political prisoners are being held by Israel - and many thousands more have passed through Israeli jails during nearly three years of the current Palestinian intifada.

The fate of these detainees is not mentioned in the US-backed peace plan for the Middle East, known as the roadmap.
But it remains a significant bone of contention that from time to time has the capacity to bring peace negotiations to a screeching stop.

ISRAEL'S PALESTINIAN INMATES

5,600 Palestinian security inmates
2,420 serving sentences
2,650 awaiting trial
530 'administrative detainees'
1,500+ with 'blood on hands'

At the time of writing, about 5,600 Palestinians are in Israeli custody for political reasons - there are also a few hundred common criminals.
...
Living conditions for prisoners are generally described by observers as extremely harsh and difficult.

Human Rights Watch says the 4,500 Palestinians arrested in the massive military sweep through the West Bank in March-April 2002 were subjected to widespread ill-treatment such as kicking, beatings, squalid conditions and deprivation of food and drink. "
- posted by Editor @ 9:38 AM

U.S. to check new citizenship law for discrimination By Gideon Alon, Haaretz Correspondent, and Reuters Friday, August 01, 2003 Haaretz - Article

The United States said Friday it would study an Israeli citizenship law before deciding whether it discriminates against Palestinians by denying them citizenship or residence if they marry Israelis.

The Knesset on Thursday approved the second and third readings of the bill, which singles out Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Under Israeli law, other non-Israelis are eligible for citizenship or permanent residence when they marry Israelis. "

"We will have to look at that very closely," U.S. State Department Richard Boucher told a briefing Friday.

"We certainly oppose any laws that discriminate against individuals for ethnicity, or race or sex, disability and we will have to look carefully at this law and see how it fits under the standard views that we have on this," he added.

- posted by Editor @ 9:13 AM

Primordial illogic and primitive cruelty By Amira Hass Ha'aretz - Article Thursday, July 24, 2003

There is nothing more logical than setting arbitrary times of day when a Palestinian is allowed to leave his home and come back to it. There is nothing more logical than forbidding him to leave his field in a pickup truck to take his crops straight to market. It is logical to forbid him to receive guests, to take a donkey-drawn wagon, to ride a bicycle, to visit his parents a
few kilometers away - or to bring a goat into his house 'without coordination' so as to provide some fresh milk for his children.

There is nothing more logical than to fence the Palestinian into his village, neighborhood, and land, with an electronic
barrier, and then set a minimum age to leave,. It is logical to appoint 19-year-old soldiers to watch the gate, which is
sometimes opened on time and sometimes not, and to impose the rules - 29-year-olds are not allowed out, 30-year-olds are, pregnant women are allowed out, non-pregnant woman are not.
...
It sounds cruel to lock people up in their homes and uproot their groves and orchards that they spent decades nurturing. But it's a logical cruelty, Israel is convinced,
- posted by Editor @ 8:26 AM

Our foppish self-righteousness By Shulamit Aloni Ha'aretz - Article Thursday, July 24, 2003

Since the start of the intifada, more than 800 Israelis, mostly civilians, have been killed by Palestinians. We, justifiably, call it 'murder.' Some were killed by suicide bombers and the rest with other instruments of death. At the same time, more than 2,200 Palestinians have been killed by Israelis - some as armed suspects, and almost all from soldiers' fire. We don't call these casualties 'murdered.'

But perhaps these deaths should also be referred to as murders. All the instruments of death that came from the sky, and the tanks, and the snipers were aimed at 'the enemy' as the chief of staff says, or in 'wartime operations' as Judge Advocate General Menachem Finkelstein says; and so there's no need to interrogate soldiers and prosecute the killers of civilians.

Furthermore, adds the law-abiding JAG, 'It is impossible to conduct 2,000 investigations into 2,000 deaths' (Haaretz, July 10).

But he didn't conduct investigations when there were only 50 cases of murdered Palestinians or when there were 100. So why put murderers and abusers on trial now when there are so many? Wait, he did, finally, find eight cases to investigate, for shooting incidents.

And of course, there's no comparing Jewish blood to Palestinian blood. Palestinians, after all, use the terrible weapon of suicide; while on our side, everything is aesthetic and elegant: Bombs fall out of the sky and the pilot goes home safely; the tanks fire flechettes; and our skilled snipers always hit their target. Of course, nobody ever asks which target.
...
The writer is a former MK [Member of the Knesset] and minister from Meretz
- posted by Editor @ 8:22 AM

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Religion causes a wedding daze
Saturday June 14, 2003 The Guardian

Do you live in Israel? Do you want a secular wedding? Then you'll need to go abroad to get married, reports Henry Chu

Religion, not romance, drove Alon and Einat Bilu to get married in a quaint little town in the Italian countryside. Although they are Israeli Jews, the couple objected to the only sanctioned wedding rite open to them in their homeland, an Orthodox ceremony in which Einat would be presented to Alon as his rightfully purchased property.

So instead of a rabbi, they put themselves in the hands of a travel agent. For �450, they declared their commitment before two friends and the beaming mayor of Montaione, who pronounced them husband and wife, then gave them a colourful certificate attesting to their matrimonio civile .

The Jewish state is among the few democracies in the world - some say the only one - not to offer its citizens the option of civil marriage. Only religious weddings can be performed: Jew marrying Jew, Christian marrying Christian, Muslim marrying Muslim in front of their respective clergy.
...
But many Israelis are becoming increasingly critical of what they see as a form of religious coercion...

"This puts us back to medieval times," said Tommy Lapid, a member of parliament and a Holocaust survivor. "Marriage to whomever you want to marry is one of the basic human freedoms ..." From the Los Angeles Times "
- posted by Editor @ 7:00 AM

British backpackers accuse Israel of 'psychological torture' By News Agencies Ha'aretz - Article Friday, June 13, 2003

Israel was accused Friday of the 'psychological torture' of two British students who were detained and interrogated for 11 days after being stopped as they crossed the border with Jordan during a backpacking holiday.

One of the men, 23-year-old Tahseen Chaudhry, a medical student at Birmingham University, said he was handcuffed and blindfolded, held in a dark seven-foot cell and questioned for 12 hours at a time by interrogators trying to make him confess to links with terrorism.

He and his travelling companion, Iyaz Ghani - also 23 and from Birmingham - were denied contact with British embassy officials or their families, and were initially told they had been kidnapped, he said. "
- posted by Editor @ 6:38 AM

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Marwan Bishara: My brother's fight for democracy | Peace requires both equality in Israel and an end to occupation | Marwan Bishara | Tuesday December 31, 2002

Since Israel's attorney-general recommended that the Arab-Israeli MP Azmi Bishara and his party be banned from running in the forthcoming elections, death threats against him have multiplied. It's natural that I should worry - he is my brother. But why should the world at large care?
...
Azmi has warned against Ariel Sharon's drive to war and supported popular resistance to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. As a result, his parliamentary immunity was lifted last year and he was put on trial for 'supporting terrorism'. Polls show that Azmi is now the most popular leader among the one million Palestinian citizens of Israel.
...
What angers the Israeli right most is Azmi's contention that Israel cannot be both exclusively Jewish and genuinely democratic at the same time. His political agenda, modelled on the US civil rights movement, calls for a modern democratic "state of the citizens" - instead of "the state of the Jewish people", which translates into an ethnic republic."
- posted by Editor @ 2:00 PM

Who's afraid of an Oslo investigation -- Ha'aretz - Article Monday, June 17, 2002

It would be interesting to hear how Shimon Peres explains the Rabin government decision to shelve a plan raised in 1994 to evacuate Netzarim. It would be possible to find out why the government, instead of evicting the radical settlers in Hebron after the massacre perpetrated by Baruch Goldstein, chose instead to throw out the Palestinian vendors from the wholesale market
- posted by Editor @ 5:35 PM

Chicago Tribune | Narratives of exile and of occupation By Omar Karmi Published May 5, 2002

My grandfather fled Jerusalem in 1948 just before war broke out. As a father of three young children, he was concerned primarily about the safety of his family. There had been unrest and clashes for a long time, but it was the news from Deir Yassin--where the Jewish Irgun and Stern groups killed between 100 and 200 Palestinian villagers--that finally persuaded him to leave. He and my grandmother took little with them. Like most Palestinians who fled or were forced to flee then, they didn't think their absence would be anything but temporary. Clinging to that belief, my grandmother lived in London for 40 years without ever learning English beyond the rudimentary. As it turned out, she would never return.

Their house still stands in West Jerusalem and is now inhabited by a Jewish family. My grandfather still has the deeds. No one ever bought or offered to buy the house from him. He has received no compensation and has no legal recourse.
...
And finally, the occupation must end. Palestinians have been paying the price for European crimes against the Jewish people for too long"
- posted by Editor @ 5:29 PM

Government backs bill to allot state land for Jewish use only Ha'aretz - Article By Aluf Benn, Monday, July 08, 2002: "

The government decided Sunday to support a bill proposed by MK Haim Druckman (National Religious Party) that would enable state land to be apportioned for Jewish use only. The government decided to accept an appeal submitted by Education Minister Limor Livnat, who asked to overturn a recommendation against Druckman's proposal that was submitted by the ministerial legislation committee. "
- posted by Editor @ 5:23 PM

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Palestinians 'reduced to begging' | AP Geneva | Saturday July 19, 2003

Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have been 'reduced to begging' by Israeli military action, and Israel is breaching international law by failing to provide much-needed aid, a UN expert said yesterday.

'There is a permanent, grave violation of the right to food by the occupying forces. There is a catastrophic humanitarian situation,' said Jean Ziegler, UN special expert on the right to food.

Palestinian villages are encircled by troops, preventing food being delivered and farmers freaching their fields, he said. Many villages had to buy their water because sources had been cut off.

Mr Ziegler also cited the destruction or confiscation of fertile Palestinian land for military zones or Jewish colonies. 'We saw thousands of olive trees destroyed by bulldozers,' he said. "
- posted by Editor @ 2:08 PM

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Israeli offer to leave Gaza hangs in balance | Chris McGreal in Jerusalem | Monday June 16, 2003

The fate of Israel's offer to make its most significant military withdrawal since the beginning of the intifada hung in the balance last night as the Palestinians demanded an end to the assassination of members of Hamas and other militants while Ariel Sharon said they could go on.
... The director of military intelligence, Major General Aaron Ze'evi, told the cabinet that the US had approved operations against Hamas 'without harming innocent bystanders and without causing irreparable damage'. "
- posted by Editor @ 12:51 PM

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Likud leader condemns army abuses: Likud leader condemns army abuses By Chris McGreal in Jerusalem, Tuesday May 27, 2003

A leading Israeli politician has accused soldiers of 'gross violations of human rights' in the occupied territories, and the army high command of indifference to the abuses.
...
Although Israeli and foreign human rights groups have long documented evidence of systematic abuses by soldiers in the West Bank and Gaza - including murder, indiscriminate shooting, aiming at children, torture and use of human shields - such accusations have generally been dismissed by the authorities as driven by anti-Israeli motives.

But Mr Eitan's charges drew blood when he astonished the military at the start of the hearing by alleging widespread abuses and wondering if the army leaders knew of it. 'I am not certain that the responsible officials are aware of the fact that there are gross violations of human rights in the field despite army regulations,' he said.

Mr Eitan, a former army officer, demanded to know from the head of operations, Brigadier General Eli Yaffe, whether the military was aware of the scale of abuses. The general replied: 'We are aware that there are exceptional cases.'

Asked how many cases a month, Gen Yaffe said he could not supply figures. 'How can you not know?' Mr Eitan asked. 'Are there a few instances or thousands?'

In March, the army claimed that about 18% of more than 2,000 Palestinians killed in the past two-and-a-half years of intifada were 'innocent civilians', but said most were just 'caught in crossfire'.
...
Mr Eitan went on to accuse the army high command of indifference. "Are you aware that the number of complaints is nothing compared to the number of violations? How can you take stock of the situation when you don't know how many violations occur?"

Gen Yaffe said the matter was discussed weekly "all the way up the chain of command to the chief of general staff".

Mr Eitan said: "If the army doesn't keep statistics, it cannot be seriously dealing with the problem."

- posted by Editor @ 8:52 PM

Israel's struggle for hearts and minds Ha'aretz - Article By Nathan Guttman -- Monday, December 02, 2002 : "

WASHINGTON - The conventional wisdom among policy-makers in Israel and the United States is that if there is one front on which Israel enjoys a clear advantage in the international arena, it is hasbara - information and public relations - in the United States"
...
Israel enjoys a support rate of only 50 percent among "influential" Americans (high-income, educated people who take a considerable interest in the news). The figure drops to 48 percent when this group of Americans is reduced to those living in the Washington, D.C. area, in other words, those with access to government circles
...
The Israeli attempt to establish a moral distinction between Israel's actions in the territories and Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians has not been successful: Only 39 percent believe that Israel is morally justified, while 38 percent believe that Israel is behaving like the terrorists it is trying to combat.

The not only by the question of what Israel is doing in the territories, but also by the possible repercussions of these actions for the United States itself"
- posted by Editor @ 6:50 PM

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Comment: Hate-hate relationship, Toleration of anti-Jewish racism can only undermine support for the Palestinian cause Linda Grant Wednesday September 5, 2001


It's a familiar charge. The Israeli army bulldozes houses, tears up centuries-old olive groves, expands settlements. Its trigger-happy troops aim their rifles at children armed with stones. International protest is dismissed with contempt by both the politicians and the outraged population as just the usual anti-semitism.

Israel, to many of its citizens, ought to be a Teflon state, the Holocaust making any outrage excusable. But they are wrong, morally wrong. No, it is not anti-semitic to condemn Israel, not anti-semitic to protest (even without the occupation) against a democracy in which nearly a million of the population, Israeli Arabs who hold Israeli passports, live within the 1967 borders and are treated as second-class citizens. Not anti-semitic to be outraged at the tribal racist cry at football matches when a rightwing section of the crowd shouts 'Death to the Arabs'.

But while you don't have to be anti-semitic to criticise Israel, adhering to the belief that Zionism is racism does not necessarily absolve you from being virulently racist yourself. "
- posted by Editor @ 6:18 PM

'Israel's Supreme Court ruled Monday that army reservists cannot refuse to serve in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, while four Palestinians were killed by troops in ongoing violence. ... In its ruling, the high court sidestepped a decision on whether Israel's 35-year occupation of the disputed territories violates international law. Eight reservists contended that Israel's occupation is illegal, and therefore they have the right to refuse duty there. ... The court said accepting the reservists' demands could further deepen the rifts in Israeli society. 'The considerations of state security and the integrity of Israeli society must be considered against the arguments of conscience and belief,' Justice Dorit Beinisch wrote.'"
- posted by Editor @ 5:23 PM

Jul 19, 6:48 PM (ET) -- By NICOLE WINFIELD
..
In Washington, State Department spokesman Richad Boucher said the United States expected Israel to act only based on information about a person's culpability, not personal or family relationships.
...
Israel sees expulsions as a way to undermine what it sees as one of the incentives for would-be suicide bombers: benefits to their families.
...
The Israeli human rights group Betselem said the Geneva Conventions specifically ban forced deportations and said such collective punishment "will constitute an unerasable moral blight on the state of Israel."
- posted by Editor @ 8:47 AM