Tag: Inter Press Service

Palestinians step again towards nationhood

by adminin Miscellaneous, Writing

Inter Press Service, August 18, 2012

A year after their bid for statehood flopped in the United Nations’ Security Council, the Palestine Liberation Organisation is again planning to seek an upgrade in UN status. On Sep. 27, the PLO will approach the UN General Assembly in hopes of becoming a non-member observer state. If their bid is successful, the Palestinians will be eligible to join various UN agencies and will also be able to bring allegations of Israeli war crimes to the International Criminal Court.

Responding to news of the Palestinians’ upcoming UN bid, Israeli Knesset Member (MK) Danny Danon said that Israel should unilaterally annex Israeli-controlled Area C, which makes up more than 60 percent of the West Bank and includes more than 200 Israeli settlements and outposts.

The idea of an annexation seems to be gaining currency. Danon, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling Likud party, promoted a Knesset bill calling for such a move. MK Uri Ariel has called for the application of Israeli civil law to Area C – a move that analysts say would amount to a de facto annexation.

According to The Jerusalem Post, Ariel’s proposal has garnered the support of “more than half” of Likud’s parliamentary representatives. And last month a number of Likud MKs participated in a conference organized around annexing not just Area C but the whole of the West Bank.

Despite the fact that Knesset Members are active in the drive towards an annexation, government spokesman Mark Regev has said that talk of an Israeli annexation of Area C is “ludicrous.”

Whatever the end goal, the Israel government continues to establish “facts on the ground” in Area C. According to the Israeli non-governmental organisation Peace Now, 2011 saw a 20 percent increase in West Bank settlement construction with work beginning on more than 1,850 new units. This year, Israel has approved over 1,400 new housing units in settlements – suggesting that 2012 will be a record-breaking year of settlement growth – and the number of West Bank settlers has risen by 4.5 percent.

As the state facilitates the transfer of Jewish Israelis to Area C with one hand, it uses the other to push the indigenous Palestinian residents out. Between January and June of 2012, the UN reports, Israel destroyed 384 Palestinian and Bedouin homes and structures in East Jerusalem and Area C. According to the UN, this led to the “forced displacement” of 615 Palestinians and Bedouins, more than half of who are children.

The UN notes that 2012 has seen a “significant increase” in both demolitions and displacements, “On average, 103 people have been displaced every month in 2012, compared to 91 in 2011, 51 in 2010, 52 in 2009 and 26 in 2008.”

Both the state and Israeli settlers are increasingly using “lawfare” against the Palestinian population in Area C – deeming Palestinian structures and villages that often pre-date the Israeli occupation itself as “illegal” and, therefore, subject to demolition.

According to Tamar Feldman of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, there are more than 14 Palestinian villages in the South Hebron Hills that are caught up in legal battles – waged by the state and right-wing organizations like Regavim – to hang on to their land.

The Palestinian villages of Zanuta and Susya, which are both under threat of imminent demolition, are two situations in which Regavim revived frozen demolition orders by petitioning the court, essentially forcing judges to rule on the cases. There are also the 12 villages in Firing Zone 918. If the state has its way, 1,500 Palestinians will be expelled from the area.

The state has no plans to relocate the families or to compensate them for taking their land.

Speaking to IPS, Feldman comments, “The Jordan Valley and the South Hebron Hills area have a lot of (Israeli-declared) firing zones and nature reserves that have restrictions on entry and residency. Most of the firing zones are not really being used for live fire training and (Zone 918) has not been used for live ammunition training. In fact, it has been used very little in the last 15 years.”

She calls the state’s sudden claim that it needs to use the area for military exercises, “very strange.”

The firing zones and nature reserves that dot Area C – as well as the demolitions, lopsided allocation of resources, and restrictions on freedom of movement – all function together to block Palestinian growth or drive Palestinians out altogether by making life unbearable. Is it a matter of grabbing more land or is it about creating a Jewish demographic majority on that land? Either way, both are crucial issues to annexation.

Feldman adds that the state’s expropriation of Palestinian land to create firing zones and nature reserves is “very problematic from an international law point of view. You’re not supposed to use an area within the occupied territory for any general purpose that serves you.”

But the recent Levy Commission report denies that Israel is occupying the West Bank. While the committee recommended that the government legalise all settlements and outposts, some observers say the Levy report constitutes an attempt to lay the legal groundwork for an Israeli annexation.

Jeff Halper, co-founder and director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, tells IPS, “A lot of the settlements are built on private Palestinian land. And the Supreme Court isn’t letting (the state) expropriate the land. An annexation would mean that it all becomes Israeli land…it cuts through that Gordian knot of legal hassle and the issue of criticism of the settlements…”

“If Israel annexes Area C,” Halper continues, “the world will complain for a day…after the yelling and screaming, it will be normalised.”

Despite the fact that Israel unilaterally annexed East Jerusalem in 1980 and the Golan Heights in 1981 – and faced no real repercussions from the international community for either move – some analysts say that Israel won’t take Area C.

Neve Gordon, author of Israel’s Occupation, says Israel is too worried about “demographic concerns” to annex Area C and that “the political cost is considered too high…at this point, Israel is happy with a de facto annexation of parts of the West Bank without legally annexing the region as a whole.”

Africans fear more violence in Israel

by adminin African refugees, Writing

Inter Press Service, June 11, 2012

It’s Saturday night in south Tel Aviv. Amine Zegata, a 36-year-old refugee from Eritrea, is reopening the small bar he owns in the HaTikva neighborhood. The pub was closed after Jewish Israelis smashed his windows and the bottles within during the race riots two weeks back. But Zegata has been assaulted twice since then. Violence against African refugees is continuing.

On the evening of 23 May, a number of Jewish Israelis gathered in south Tel Aviv to protest the presence of Africans in their neighborhood. Members of Israel’s parliament, theKnesset, gave inflammatory speeches at the rally. Miri Regev, a member of Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, declared that Africans are a “cancer” in Israel’s body. Michael Ben Ari from the far-right National Union party claimed that Africans are rapists, and said the “time for talk is over.”

Mobs responded to such speeches by chasing and beating asylum-seekers, vandalizing African-owned stores, and breaking the windshield of a car carrying African men.

Zegata said that the violence “isn’t over.” After assaulting him twice following the riots, local Israelis have warned him to stop repairing his bar, and threatened to crack his head open.

Locals have already cracked the new glass storefront Zegata put in to replace the one that was smashed. Zegata said he is less worried about his business than about his safety. “The glass, this isn’t a problem,” he said in fluent Hebrew, pointing to the cracks. “If they break the glass, I can switch it, I can buy a new one. But life, you can’t buy.”

Sigal Rozen of the Israeli organization Hotline for Migrant Workers said it was impossible to know how many Africans have faced intimidation and assaults in the wake of the race riots. Some asylum-seekers have been coming daily to the organization with complaints about violence, but Rozen says most refugees who have been harassed or attacked by Jewish Israelis do not approach migrant support groups or the police for help.

Rozen offered the example of a refugee stabbed by Jewish Israelis in south Tel Aviv. Rozen ran into the man as she was visiting Levinsky park in south Tel Aviv where many homeless asylum-seekers gather. The man took his shirt off to show her fresh stitches on his stomach. “He said, ‘this is what they did to me in HaTikva neighborhood.’”

As Zegata and Rozen both point out, violence against African refugees is not new. Four months before the race riots, Zegata was beaten up by a group of Jewish Israeli teenagers. He was hospitalized briefly.

Numerous other attacks have taken place. A particularly brutal incident came last year when some African girls were jumped by a group of Jewish Israeli youth. The teenagers shouted racial slurs at the girls, who are Israeli-born daughters of Nigerian migrant workers. One of the attackers was armed with a knife. One girl needed medical treatment for her injuries.

Some Africans in south Tel Aviv say they face constant harassment from Jewish Israeli residents. Zegata opened his bar eight months ago and has had trouble for six months. Several months ago, he also had problems at home. After returning from work late one night, someone opened the window and dropped lit matches into his apartment.

Abraham Alu is a 35-year-old refugee from South Sudan who sells plastic shoes on a busy pedestrian thoroughfare in the Neve Shaanan neighborhood. Locals approach him nearly every day, telling him to “go home.”

Alu is frightened and feels that he and other Africans need to leave Israel for their own safety. But, he said, “There’s nowhere to go.”

Alu fled Sudan when he was seven after he saw his mother and father murdered by militiamen. He eventually ended up in Egypt where refugees are not permitted to work legally. In 2005, Alu was one of the 3,000 African asylum-seekers who spent three months camped out in front of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) offices in Cairo to protest their treatment.

The demonstrators also called on the UNHCR to help them move to other countries. Egyptian police attacked the protest with water cannons and batons, leading to the death of more than twenty Africans, including a four-year-old girl. Fearing for his life, Alu headed to Israel.

Israel is home to approximately 60,000 African asylum-seekers, 85 percent of them from Eritrea and Sudan. These men, women and children get group protection against deportation, and Israel gives visas to the refugees. Although they remain in the state legally, the state does not allow the refugees to work.

African asylum-seekers take odd jobs and crowd into cheap apartments in poor neighborhoods, including south Tel Aviv. Those who cannot scrape together the money for rent live in parks.

Knesset members have participated in anti-African protests like the one that led to violence last month since the demonstrations began in 2010. Most of the Knesset members who have joined in are from the far-right. But Miri Regev belongs to Likud, a mainstream party led by Netanyahu, a popular prime minister who enjoys high approval ratings from the Israeli public.

While Regev faced sharp criticism for inciting violence against African refugees, government officials have long used inflammatory language. Speaking to Army Radio in 2009, Interior Minister Eli Yishai said that asylum-seekers bring “a profusion of diseases” to the country. In 2010, Netanyahu remarked that Africans pose “a concrete threat to the Jewish and democratic character” of Israel.

 

Israel bans mother from visiting daughters, deports families

by adminin Miscellaneous, Writing

Inter Press Service, May 31, 2012

Hundreds of thousands of families — from Palestinians to Southeast Asian migrant workers to African refugees — struggle under Israeli policies that seek to limit the number of non-Jews within Israel and in the areas it occupies.

Sitting in the living room of her home in East Amman, Jordan, Sabah Othman flips through the photos of her two daughters’ weddings. “I love all of my children,” she said, in Arabic. “But my girls are my best friends.”

Due to Israeli policies, however, Othman’s relationship with her daughters now takes place on the phone.

Othman’s daughters live with their Palestinian husbands in Shuafat refugee camp in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem. Because Othman’s husband is from Hebron, all of Othman’s Jordanian-born children hold West Bank identification cards and can enter the West Bank without a visa.

But Othman holds only a Jordanian passport, so she must apply to the Israeli consulate in Amman to enter the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. In the past three years, she has applied six times and has been rejected four times. The two times Othman received a visa, she was permitted to visit for two weeks.

Most tourists get a three-month visa issued on the border.

Israeli officials have admitted that the state has no security claim against Othman, who is a mother of five and a grandmother of eight. Numerous inquiries at the Ministry of Interior, the Israeli consulate in Amman, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs revealed that Othman’s visa requests were denied due to questions about her “migration intentions.”

Othman denied that she intended to leave her husband, sons and grandchildren in Amman and migrate to Shuafat Refugee Camp. But Israel’s concerns that she would do so point to the state’s obsession with demographics and maintaining a Jewish majority.

Sam Bahour of the Ramallah-based organization Right to Enter explained that, under Israeli law, West Bank ID holders can help first degree relatives secure residency in the West Bank. In practice, however, things are not so simple.

Bahour, who was born and raised in the United States, married a West Bank Palestinian in 1994 and immediately applied for an ID. “The Palestinian Authority wasn’t even here yet [and the Israelis] refused to deal with it.”

Since the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza began in 1967, Israel has purged more than 150,000 Palestinian residents from the population registry and has ignored hundreds of thousands of requests like Bahour’s for family unification. Between 2000 and 2005 alone Israel received 120,000 such applications. The requests were simply not processed.

A survey conducted in 2005, on behalf of the Israeli rights group B’Tselem, estimated that more than 640,000 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza had a parent, sibling, child, or spouse who was unregistered.

Because Israel controls the population registry for the West Bank and Gaza, the Palestinian Authority cannot help.

“The PA is just the mailman,” Bahour says, explaining that Palestinians submit their applications to the PA, which delivers them to Israel and then distributes the Israelis’ answers.

After 15 years of living in the West Bank, Bahour received an ID in 2009. His was one of the 33,000 applications Israel processed to reward the PA for taking part in “peace talks” — turning the human right to family into a political card.

Bahour believes that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and their family members reflects a “policy of fragmentation” designed to pressure the population into emigrating.

Othman’s daughter, Amira Dana, has begun to look for work abroad. She hopes to move to a place where her family members can visit her whenever they like.

Dana mourns the important life moments she has been unable to share with her mother, like the births of her three children.

“I really wanted her there next to me. I didn’t want anyone there except her,” Dana said. But Israel denied Othman entry.

Inside present-day Israel, migrant workers’ children and African asylum seekers bear the brunt of Israel’s demographic war.

The state ignores African refugees’ requests for asylum. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called them a “concrete threat to the Jewish and democratic character of the country” and even though Sudanese and Eritrean citizens cannot be deported to their home countries, Israel does not provide them with work visas.

Speaking to Israel’s Army Radio recently, Interior Minister Eli Yishai said, “Jobs will root them here.” As a result, many of Israel’s approximately 45,000 African asylum seekers are unemployed and homeless.

Mimi Hylameshesh, a 28-year-old refugee from Eritrea, cleans houses for a living. She makes just enough to rent a small apartment in south Tel Aviv and to send her daughter to daycare. While Hylameshesh manages to feed her child, she does not always have the money to buy food for herself.

In another attempt to preserve its Jewish majority, the state is in the process of deporting hundreds of families of migrant workers, including Israeli-born children. Until now, all of the children who have been expelled have been aged four and under. But members of the organization Israeli Children explain that older kids could be arrested and expelled during the upcoming summer break.

Angie Robles, 56, has been taking care of her 15-year-old grandson since 1999, when his father died and his mother abandoned him. The boy was born here, attends public school in Tel Aviv, celebrates the Jewish holidays, and speaks fluent Hebrew.

Despite the fact that he met all of the criteria for “naturalization” in both 2005 and 2010 — when Israel opened “one-time” windows for the children of undocumented migrant workers — his applications were denied. He faces expulsion to the Philippines, his parents’ home country, a place he has never visited.

Rose Fabianas, 32, and her six-year-old daughter, Danielle, also face imminent deportation to the Philippines.

Fabianas sits on a park bench in south Tel Aviv, watching her daughter play on the swings with friends. She calls to Danielle and the girl darts over. Danielle talks, shyly, about her life in Israel, where she was born. Her favorite subject is mathematics, she said in fluent Hebrew, and her favourite holiday is Purim.

Fabianas remarked that Danielle used to live in constant fear of the immigration police. When someone knocked on the door, Danielle would beg her mother not to answer. “But now she says, ‘Ima [mom], I’m already big, they’re not going to take me’ … She’s very settled.”

Not for a woman in Amman

by adminin Middle East, Writing

Inter Press Service, April 12, 2012

Two young women in brightly colored hijab and tight jeans stand on the edge of a freeway as cars whiz by. They watch the traffic, heavy in Amman where car ownership is skyrocketing by 10-15 percent a year. When there’s a break in the steady flow of vehicles, the women hold hands and race across the road.

It’s an odd sight here. The city is not pedestrian-friendly. Nor is it common to see women walking, much less darting, across freeways.

Though Western media has praised Amman’s urban planning as a step towards egalitarianism, highlighting the fact that the ‘Amman 2025’ urban master plan won the 2007 World Leadership Award in Town Planning, a visit to Amman, home to nearly three million people, reveals a starkly different picture.

Poor public transportation keeps women isolated from city life; low-income families are dependent on cars; and, ironically, the Arab Spring has sidelined urban development.

One of the women, Sandra Hiari, is an architect, urban planner, and founder of Tareeq (Arabic for street), a website that focuses on city design in the Middle East.

“If you want to know if a place is safe or not, count how many women are walking on the street,” she said, adding that in Amman, women are visible only “in limited areas, like Rainbow (Street).”

Located in a bourgeois neighborhood, the avenue is filled with chic cafes, bars, and restaurants, drawing enough of a crowd for women to feel safe, Hiari explained. But the street is not an example of the city’s planning. It is a rare exception. Because women often face harassment and catcalls, many avoid public spaces including Amman’s public transportation system, relying on cars and taxis instead.

Women, Hiari said, have been forced to “resort to structures –buildings – and to stay there rather than to use the street as a safe place where they can navigate through the city. I think we women are captured in bubbles,” she reflected. “We move from one bubble to another in the city.”

Despite closing the education gap, with girls and women attending schools and universities in slightly higher rates than boys and men, Jordanian women comprise a smaller percentage of the workforce than their male counterparts.

According to Hazem Zureiqat, a transportation planner and economist at Engicon, the lack of transportation options in Amman – home to half of the country’s population – is largely to blame for this discrepancy.

Zureiqat pointed to a recent survey that asked Jordanian women why they don’t work. “Many of them cited mobility and transportation (issues),” he stressed, meaning that, often, women simply cannot get to work.

While at least half of Jordan’s low-income households have a car, the male usually drives it, leaving women, who might otherwise work, stuck at home.

When asked if creating separate bus lines for women is the answer to their transportation troubles, Zureiqat quickly answered, “No, no. I don’t support that…you have to fix the (social issue) rather than just separating women (from men).”

He added that service needs to be improved in general, not just for women. Amman’s few bus lines run infrequently and are very unreliable. Up until some shelters were erected at bus stops recently, Zureiqat lamented that there had been “barely any shelter from the sun and rain” for commuters.

The Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system was an ambitious project that sought to correct many of these issues with 32 kilometres of new, bus-only lanes. Each BRT lane would have carried three times the amount of people than a regular traffic lane.

Zureiqat said that the BRT wasn’t just about improving the movement of people throughout the city. It was also about “human dignity.”

Ironically, however, the Arab Spring led officials to scrap the project.

Zureiqat explained, “Fighting corruption became the buzzword here and everything (was called into) question.”

Former Amman mayor Omar Maani came under particularly intense scrutiny, as did the projects that the municipality had a hand in during his tenure from 2006 to 2011. That included the BRT; the Amman Institute for Urban Development, a city-funded “think and do tank” that sought, among other goals, to help reverse the country’s brain drain; and the Amman 2025 master plan, which emphasised public transportation and fostering a more pedestrian-friendly city.

Although the BRT passed an intensive governmental review that probed every aspect of the project – including its finances – it was sidelined in September of 2011.

In December 2011 Maani was arrested on unrelated fraud charges. He is currently out on bail.

While the Amman Institute for Urban Development was beset with problems from the get-go, the Arab Spring spelt the end for the inefficient organisation, including what many considered its “overinflated” wages.

Hiari, who was employed by the Amman Institute, explained that there’s a stigma attached now to the Amman 2025 master plan as well as projects that were born of the Amman Institute.

“Officials (at the Greater Amman Municipality) are afraid to sign off on anything associated with the Amman Institute and the master plan,” Hiari said, because they don’t want to be “associated with corruption.”

These reactionary changes have left the city as unplanned, chaotic and isolating as ever.

New threat looms over South Sudan refugees

by adminin Israel, Writing

Inter Press Service, March 19, 2012

Hundreds of African refugees and Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv on Saturday night under the banner ‘It’s dangerous in South Sudan’ to protest the imminent expulsion of 700 Sudanese asylum seekers, including children.

A small group of counter-protesters attended to show their support for the government’s decision to deport the refugees. One held a sign calling for an end to the asylum seekers’ “occupation” of South Tel Aviv, where many of the estimated 35,000 African refugees in Israel live.

Ethnic clashes between the Murle and Lou Nuer tribes continue in the Jonglei region of South Sudan, where fighting has claimed thousands of lives since the country gained independence from Sudan in July 2011. According to the United Nations, more than 300,000 South Sudanese were displaced due to internal violence last year.

Despite the volatile situation in South Sudan, the Israeli government announced in January that it would no longer give group protection to South Sudanese refugees. They have until Mar. 31 to leave voluntarily. After that, they have been warned they will be deported by force.

A number of families will be affected. About 400 of those facing expulsion are children; many were born in Israel. Some of the kids held signs that read “Help Me”.

Speaking to IPS at Saturday night’s protest, Winni Govita, a 24-year-old mother of two boys, aged six and four, said she is simply unable to imagine returning to South Sudan with her children.

“I watch television and I see (what’s happening) and I think ‘How can we go there?’” she asked. “How, how, how?”

Govita added that she has no family left in South Sudan. She was 12 when she fled to Egypt with her mother. After spending six years in Egypt, she came to Israel. Her youngest child was born here.

While open racism is becoming increasingly common in Israel – and much of it is directed towards African refugees and their children, who have been banned from some municipal schools in Eilat and South Tel Aviv – Govita said she has not had trouble in Arad, where she works at a hotel.

“The kids go to school. Everything is fine.” But, in South Sudan, she said, “There’s no healthcare, no school.”

Due to the country’s extreme poverty, and lack of education and opportunities, the UN estimates that some 2,000 minors are currently serving in South Sudan’s army.

In South Sudan, one of every three children suffers from malnutrition; nearly 50 percent of the population lacks access to clean water.

After visiting South Sudan last month, UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos remarked, “The situation in the country is extremely precarious, and the risk of a dangerous decline is very real. Food insecurity has already increased, and 2012 will witness an earlier, and a longer, season of hunger.”

Wou Riek, 25, is worried about the violence in South Sudan. He is from Jonglei’s Murle community. His mother, he said, has fled the fighting.

Riek was 17 when he left Sudan and made his way to Israel after spending four years in Egypt. When asked about his last memories of South Sudan, which was in the midst of a civil war when he fled, Riek answered, “There is no need to recall this. Everyone knows what happened between the north and south.” He was referring to the 21-year civil war that saw more than two million killed and millions more displaced.

Riek said that he fears for his life in returning to South Sudan.

South Sudan’s army is widely reported to have been lax in its duty to protect citizens. Soldiers often identify with their ethnic group rather than the state, and sometimes turn a blind eye to attacks, or assist in them. Many have reportedly raped women and girls from rival tribes.

Cross-border clashes have also fueled concerns that war could erupt with Sudan again. Although a peace treaty was signed in 2005, Sudan has bombed the pro-south stronghold of South Kordofan in recent months. And tensions over South Sudan’s oil reserves remain high.

In a report released last week, the Israeli Knesset admitted that South Sudan is in a humanitarian emergency. “In recent months, we’ve received information on the deterioration of stability and the humanitarian situation in the state,” the report stated.

Responding to a recent letter protesting the deportation of South Sudanese, signed by 400 Israeli artists, writers, and academics, Interior Minister Eli Yishai remarked, “In my time as Interior Minister I have and will continue to preserve Israel as a Jewish state.”

In December 2011, Yishai told Army Radio that he intends to guard the state’s Jewish majority and that, accordingly, he will see to it that all Africans are returned to their home countries.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called African asylum seekers a “threat” to the state’s “Jewish and democratic character.”

The deportation of South Sudanese refugees is part of the Israeli government’s ongoing efforts to expel non-Jewish migrants.

Hundreds of children of Southeast Asian migrant workers, along with their parents, are currently being deported. Most of the mothers arrived legally but lost their visa because they gave birth in Israel and did not send their babies back to their home country within the three-month period allotted to them by the state. Last April, the Supreme Court ruled that this policy was a violation of Israel’s own labour laws.

In January, Israel announced its intention to expel 2000 refugees from the Cote d’Ivoire, despite the fact that some could face persecution, violence, and death back home.

The state is also deporting Eritreans of Ethiopian origin to Ethiopia, even though officials in the Ministry of Interior say that the country is unsafe for mixed Ethiopians. An Israeli judge has likened the move to “gambling with human life.”

Addressing the audience of refugees and Israelis on Saturday night, a 14-year-old girl from South Sudan said, in fluent Hebrew, “I know that you are all scared that we came here to take over your country and to take from you all something that isn’t ours, but that’s the last thing that I wanted in the world.

“I’m here to ask you for help, but I’m not here to stay here. I want to return to my country but I do not want to put my life in danger and the lives of my little brothers and that of my little brother who was just born.”

Into an unsettled new year: settler violence rising in the West Bank

by adminin Writing

Inter Press Service, January 22, 2012

An elderly Palestinian woman spent last week on hunger strike to protest violent attacks by Israeli settlers.

Hana Abu Heikel went on the hunger strike on behalf of her family after settlers burned the family car during the previous weekend. Since Israeli settlers moved into the houses surrounding the Abu Heikel family home in Hebron in 1984, the Abu Heikels have seen eight cars burned. Six vehicles were also smashed by settlers.

Settlers also pelted the Abu Heikel’s home with stones last weekend. Two young Palestinian men were attacked and beaten by Jewish settlers in Hebron during the same period. The young men were jumped on Shuhada Street which was once the bustling centre of Palestinian commerce in Hebron. Because of the street runs through an illegal Israeli settlement, it has been closed. Its shuttered storefronts are covered with spray-painted Jewish Stars of David.

When Israeli soldiers intervened, they arrested the Palestinian men and did not take any action against the settlers.

The second weekend of January also saw settlers cut down over 100 olive trees in two small villages near the West Bank city of Salfit.

Although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu approved measures to curb settler violence last month, January’s incidents reflect Israeli authorities’ continued refusal to protect Palestinian civilians and their property.

Recent settler attacks also point to growing violence in the West Bank.

According a year-end report compiled by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), settler violence against Palestinians and their property went up 40 percent in 2011 compared to 2010. When compared to 2009, it rose 165 percent.

While settler violence is on the rise, it is not new. According to the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, Israeli settlers killed 50 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza between September 2000 and June 2011. During the 13 years spanning December 1987 and September 2000, 115 Palestinians were killed by Israeli settlers.

Many of these deaths were not acts of self-defence but malice. On numerous occasions, B’Tselem reports, “Israeli civilians chased Palestinians who had thrown stones, and killed them by shooting directly at their bodies.”

According to the U.N., 2011 saw Israeli settlers kill three Palestinians and injure 167; settlers damaged or destroyed approximately 10,000 Palestinian-owned trees, mostly olive trees, in the same year.

The Abu Heikels’ olive grove was ruined after settlers set fire to it in 2008.

Abu Heikel’s brother, Hani, estimates that the family has filed approximately 500 complaints about settlers with Israeli authorities in the past 28 years. He says that the police have not investigated these complaints and that authorities are dismissive of the family’s troubles.

“They tell us to ‘leave the area, leave the house’,” Abu Heikel says.

OCHA reports that over 90 percent of monitored Palestinian complaints about settler violence are “closed without indictment.”

Some settler assaults on Palestinians and their property are “price tag” attacks – retribution for the evacuation or threatened demolition of illegal Israeli outposts. But, in many instances, settler violence is an attempt to run Palestinians out of their homes so that some Israelis can take the property and tighten Israel’s grip on the West Bank.

While the Abu Heikels are surrounded by settlers and are under immense pressure to leave, they refuse to abandon their house. When discussing his family’s long history in Hebron, Abu Heikel notes that his grandparents were one of the Palestinian families that sheltered more than 400 Jews during the 1929 massacre in Hebron that saw 67 Jews killed.

Still, settlers seem intent on driving the Abu Heikels out.

On one occasion, a settler cut the fence surrounding the Abu Heikel’s home and entered the garden. The Israeli woman was accompanied by her children, pointing to one reason settler violence proves so intractable – some settlers teach their children to behave in a violent manner towards the local Palestinian population. This writer has interviewed children, including a 13-year-old girl, who openly admitted to throwing stones at Palestinians.

The United Nations’ recent report on settler violence pointed out that international law mandates that Israel must protect civilians and their property and “ensure that all incidents of settler violence are investigated in a thorough, impartial and independent manner.”

Israel’s High Court has also ruled that the army is obligated to protect Palestinians and their property in the Occupied Territories.

Abu Heikel says that when he asks Israeli police and soldiers for help, they answer, “‘Our work is just to protect the settlers’.”

While the third weekend of January was quiet, human rights groups in the West Bank were bracing themselves for “price tag” attacks due to Israel’s recent demolition of an illegal outpost. Speaking to IPS, a spokeswoman for the Christian Peacemaker Teams said that her organisation and others were preparing for imminent violence in the Hebron area. The groups were scheduling shifts to maintain an international presence in the city and to monitor both the settlers and the Israeli army.

The spokeswoman, who asked to remain anonymous because she does not want to attract the attention of Israeli authorities, added that while the settlers were unusually calm last week, Israeli soldiers from the Golani brigade broke into the CPT’s building and a neighbouring apartment.

Photo: armed settlers walking on Shuhada Street in Hebron (ISM Palestine)