Foreign solidarity activists participate in building school in the Jordan Valley

[ 26/04/2011 - 06:04 PM ]

JENIN, (PIC)-- Foreign solidarity activists along with Palestinian citizens started on Tuesday in building a school in Ras Al-Oje southeast of Tobas in the Jordan Valley .

Citizens in the area told the PIC reporter over the phone that more than 70 Palestinians and foreign solidarity activists laid down the foundation stone of the school.

They said that the school was named after the slain Italian activist Vittorio Arrigone to affirm that the killing of the Italian activist would not deter foreign sympathizers from pursuing their support for the Palestinian people.

They said that the school would be built of straw and mud, and added that they welcome any material or financial donations. They noted that the school was built solely depending on their own resources.

The school is meant to ascertain the right of 70 students in the area in learning, they said.

Ras Al-Oje is deprived of all services and is inhabited by around 300 Bedouin families, who had been expelled from their land by the Israeli occupation authority for the sake of building an army camp back in 1982.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Interview: Hamas lawmaker defies order to leave Jerusalem

 

Jillian Kestler-D'Amours

The Electronic Intifada

20 April 2011

Muhammad Totah (Jillian Kestler-D’Amours)

Approximately a hundred persons gathered in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah on Friday, 15 April for midday prayer, and to show their solidarity with three Palestinian politicians who have lived inside a makeshift tent at the International Committee of the Red Cross headquarters since last July.
Shortly after the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) elections, three Jerusalem deputies and the former minister of Jerusalem affairs — Muhammad Abu Tir, Ahmad Attoun, Muhammad Totah and Khaled Abu Arafeh, respectively — were told by Israeli authorities that they must resign from the Hamas-led Palestinian government or have their East Jerusalem permanent resident status revoked.
Prosecuted before an Israeli military court, the four Hamas-affiliated lawmakers were sentenced to two to four years in Israeli prison when they refused to resign from their posts. Shortly after their release in the summer of 2010, the Israeli authorities again threatened to forcibly transfer the men and strip them of their East Jerusalem residency rights.
Muhammad Abu Tir was arrested on 30 June 2010 when he refused to leave the city. The next day, the three remaining deputies took refuge at the International Committee of the Red Cross headquarters in occupied East Jerusalem to avoid a similar fate. As of Friday, 15 April 2011, when the following interview was conducted, they had spent 289 days living there.
The Electronic Intifada contributor Jillian Kestler-D’Amours spoke with Muhammad Totah about why he and his colleagues decided to request help from the Red Cross, the impact the situation has had on his family, and what he hopes for in the future.

Jillian Kestler-D’Amours: What led you and your colleagues to seek refuge at the Red Cross headquarters?

Muhammad Totah: Our case started in 2006, when there were [Palestinian Legislative Council] elections in the [occupied West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem]. … All the factions participated in the elections. [The international community] said that they wanted us as Palestinians to practice democracy. They said that they will respect the results. The election was fair and free and it was monitored and witnessed by the international community. But after the results were announced, the international community denied the results and refused to deal with the [Hamas] list Change and Reform, which won in these elections.
Four or five months after these elections, the Israeli occupation [authorities] arrested 64 [persons]. All of them were ministers in the government, deputies in the parliament and mayors. Me and my other three colleagues from East Jerusalem [Ahmad Attoun, Muhammad Abu Teir and Khaled Abu Arafeh] have endured what our colleagues have endured and I have spent time in the prison, three and a half years.
I was released on 2 June 2010. After one day only, they gave me and my other three colleagues an order to leave Israel within ten days. The main reason given was that we are disloyal to Israel because we participated in the election and we have been members in the Palestinian parliament. They have asked us to resign from the parliament.
After three or four days, they have arrested one of our colleagues, Muhammad Abu Tir, on 30 June. We thought that our case would be the same. For that reason, on 1 July 2010, we came to the Red Cross, to the headquarters here in East Jerusalem, to put our case on the [radar] of the international community.
JKD: What will happen if you and your colleagues are deported from Jerusalem?

MT: It means deporting thousands of people from East Jerusalem for disloyalty. This word does not have any dimensions or any measures, so they can claim that anybody living in East Jerusalem … is disloyal to the Israeli occupation and then deport him. We know that it is one of the main objectives of the Israeli plan to empty East Jerusalem of the Palestinian people.
East Jerusalem is an occupied territory and it is illegal to deport people who are under occupation. It is now the tenth month that we haven’t left these headquarters. If we leave it, then we will be immediately arrested.
We think the only way to cancel the decision of the deportation is with the intervention of the international community. We are constantly asking the international community to uphold its responsibility regarding us, since we are occupied and it is their responsibility to take care of the people who are under occupation.
JKD: What impact has the situation had on you personally and on your family?


MT: We and our families are suffering from this separation since we have been in the prison, and we are again now separated from our children, from our wives.
I have five children. Most of them couldn’t understand the situation here because it is the first time that people are coming and [seeking refuge] in the Red Cross. It is the first time in the history of Palestine. So they couldn’t understand. They have understood that when we were in the prison, that the Israelis have imprisoned us. They understand that we have been deported but they couldn’t understand, why here? Why are we living in the Red Cross?
My little child, each time he comes here, he takes my hand he says, ‘OK, I can understand that when you were in the prison, the door was closed so you couldn’t go out. I can understand that. But now I can’t understand that the gate is open, it’s a very big gate, and you cannot go out.’
‘You have very strong legs, you can go,’ he says. He takes my hand and goes to the gate and asks me, ‘Come on, I can take you if you cannot go out.’ Then, he starts to cry and says, ‘OK, it means that you do not like me and my brothers. You hate us.’ And then he goes running to his mother.
He’s now six years old; who can explain to him the situation? I tried. And I have asked many of my friends to try with him to explain. But he couldn’t understand.

JKD: What do you think will happen in the future?

MT: We don’t have very many choices. The only choice that we have is to leave this headquarters but that means opening the door to deporting thousands of people from East Jerusalem. It is very dangerous.
It is not easy to put yourself in one place and not move. It is very difficult. We feel that it is more difficult than prison. Because prison, the decision to go out is not [yours] because the door is closed. It is not your decision to go or not to go. Here, it is your decision, to leave or not to leave.
We know that we have to endure what we are enduring now for the benefit of our people, for the Palestinian people. For that reason, we will not leave even though it is very difficult for us. We are hoping that the international community will uphold its responsibility.

Jillian Kestler-D’Amours is a reporter and documentary filmmaker based in Jerusalem. More of her work can be found at http://jkdamours.com/.

Palestinians silently transferred from East Jerusalem

Jillian Kestler-D'Amours

The Electronic Intifada

19 April 2011

Israeli border police in the occupied Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan. (Oren Ziv/ActiveStills)

For Mahmoud Qaraeen, the Israeli government’s revocation of residency rights from Palestinian residents of occupied East Jerusalem is more than just a troublesome policy; it’s a concrete threat that impacts his ability to study, work or even just travel abroad.
“People feel that they are under siege,” Qaraeen, a 25-year-old resident of Silwan in East Jerusalem, told The Electronic Intifada. “I cannot do anything to risk the possibility of not coming back [to Jerusalem].”
A field researcher with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel’s (ACRI) “Human Rights in East Jerusalem” project, Qaraeen submitted a petition with ACRI and Hamoked - the Center for the Defence of the Individual, to the Israeli high court on Thursday 7 April.
The petition demands that the current practice of revoking residency rights be changed to protect the rights of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.
“We should be treated as the indigenous people of the place. We are not guests. We are from here and we should be able to leave [the city] and come back if we choose,” Qaraeen said.

More specifically, Hamoked wrote in a 7 April press release that the petition is asking “the court to determine that with respect to East Jerusalem residents, for whom this piece of earth is home, permanent residency visas cannot expire, even following extended periods of living abroad or the acquisition of status in another country” (“HaMoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel lodge a petition”).

Since Israel illegally occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, later annexing the territory, it is estimated that more than 14,000 identification cards have been revoked from Palestinian Jerusalemites, who have thereby lost their residency rights and the ability to live in the city.
“The main focus of the petition is the Entry into Israel regulations,” Hamoked staff attorney Noa Diamond told The Electronic Intifada.
Put into place in 1974, article 11a of the Entry into Israel regulations states that “a person shall be considered as having left Israel and settled in a country outside of Israel” if this person has resided outside of Israel for at least seven years, has received permanent residency in another country or has received citizenship of another country through naturalization.
In 1988, the Israeli Ministry of Interior attempted to revoke the residency of Mubarak Awad, a Palestinian resident of Jerusalem who was born in the city in 1943. Awad fought his deportation order and took his case to the Israeli high court.
In what is now known as the “Awad judgment,” the court upheld the deportation order against Awad and, most importantly, determined that the law regulating the status of East Jerusalem residents is the Entry into Israel Law.
This ruling has formed the basis of Israel’s policy of revoking residency rights of Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem ever since. Should Palestinian residents of Jerusalem leave the city for a prolonged period of time or accept foreign status, they risk losing the right to return to their homes.
“Widely what we’re saying in the petition is there’s a very basic problem with applying these regulations to people that were born here and have been living here all their lives or most of their lives,” Diamond explained.
“We’re talking about an area that Israel annexed in 1967. We’re not talking about immigrants that filed and requested status in Israel, but rather native people that were here from before,” she added.

A 10 April ACRI explained the petition further: “The organizations further requested that the law be amended to provide special protection clauses for those who reside in areas that were annexed by the State of Israel (currently East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights) so that residents of these areas could exit and enter the country freely” (“Petition: Stop Revoking Permits of E. Jerusalem Palestinians”).

The statement adds “Thus, a distinction would be made between immigrants who had acquired status in Israel for reasons such as marriage to an Israeli citizen, who would still be required to continuously prove that their center-of-life is here, and between residents of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights who would be allowed to leave and return at will, as is the case with citizens.”
More than 14,000 ID cards revoked since 1967
Shortly after Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967, and subsequent annexing of the territory, Israeli authorities conducted a census of the Palestinian population in Jerusalem and distributed identification cards to those living in the city, granting them permanent residency — not citizenship — rights.
Palestinian Jerusalemites were permitted to apply and receive Israeli citizenship if they met certain conditions, including swearing allegiance to the State of Israel. Most refused on principle.
As permanent residents, Palestinians in East Jerusalem have the right to live and work in Israel yet are denied other provisions that come with full Israeli citizenship. For instance, unlike citizenship, permanent residency is only passed on to a person’s children if certain conditions are met, including most notably proving that one’s “center of life” is in Jerusalem.
The Israeli interior ministry introduced the “center of life” policy in 1995, placing the burden of proof on Palestinians to show that their day-to-day life takes place in the city. Electricity, telephone and tax bills, and school or work certificates are some of the documents Palestinians can use to prove that their center of life is in Jerusalem.
If they fail to prove this, Palestinians can be stripped of their residency rights and, by extension, forced to leave East Jerusalem.
According to the aforementioned petition drafted by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, “in recent years, there has been a sharp rise in revocation of residency, and 2008 set a record with 4,577 revocations. Almost 50 percent of the total revocations of permits since the annexation of Jerusalem in 1967 occurred between the years 2006 to 2008.”
While no concrete figures are available yet, the Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER) estimates that an additional 191 identification cards have been revoked so far in 2011 alone.
Municipal taxes also used to evacuate residents
In the last month, Jerusalem-based Palestinian rights groups have also denounced what they see is a subtle attempt by the Jerusalem municipality to force Palestinians from the city: the collection of taxes.
“We have some claims from the Palestinians that said that they didn’t receive the bills from the arnona [municipal tax]. Some of the people went to the municipality to ask for this bill. Then they told them, ‘Look, we are not going to give you [the tax bill] and we will not consider as if you are in East Jerusalem,’” explained Ziad al-Hammouri, the Director General of the Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights (JSCER).
Calculated by neighborhood, size of the home and construction quality, among other factors, the arnona tax is collected from all residents of Jerusalem. Palestinian Jerusalemites pay some of the highest levels of municipal taxes in the city, despite the fact that they don’t hold Israeli citizenship and receive far less municipal services compared to Jewish Israelis living in West Jerusalem.
Palestinians living on the other side of Israel’s wall — in communities like Anata, Shufat and Ras Khamis — are the ones who haven’t received their bills, al-Hammouri said.
“[The Jerusalem municipality says] that they are collecting from the Palestinians roughly between 33 and 35 percent of their budget, and they are spending not more than 5 percent [on Palestinian neighborhoods]. Of course, they are spending this [money] on the settlements,” he explained.
Al-Hammouri added that not receiving the arnona tax bill is a dangerous new development — just as dangerous as the revocation of identity cards — in the municipality’s attempt to evict Palestinians from Jerusalem, and that more than 100,000 Palestinian residents of Jerusalem could be affected.
“I think most of the Palestinians they would be happy, more than happy, if they will get rid of this taxation. But, in our case, the Israelis are using this arnona tax, this bill, as one of the documents to protect your existence in East Jerusalem,” he said.
“In the end of the day, you will lose your property from this kind of taxation. Then, if you will lose your property then you will leave the city.”
Slow ethnic cleansing taking place

In late March, United Nations Human Rights Council investigator and international law expert Richard Falk stated that Israel is carrying out a form of ethnic cleansing against Palestinians in East Jerusalem.

“The continued pattern of settlement expansion in East Jerusalem combined with the forcible eviction of long-residing Palestinians is creating an intolerable situation in the part of the city previously controlled by Jordan,” Falk told the UN council.
“This situation can only be described in its cumulative impact as a form of ethnic cleansing,” Falk added.
According to Mahmoud Qaraeen, this is indeed the purpose of Israel’s policy of revoking identity cards from Palestinian Jerusalemites: forcing Palestinian residents out of the city.
“The increase in the number of residencies revoked [from 2006 to 2008] shows that there is a threat to the mere existence of Arabs in East Jerusalem,” said Qaraeen, explaining that even if he has the opportunity, he will not study abroad for fear that his residency rights will be revoked.
Although he said he doesn’t expect much from the petition to the Israeli high court, Qaraeen added that he hoped some change or alteration to the way the laws are applied to Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem is possible.
“It’s also an attempt to refresh people’s minds and consciousness regarding the revocation of residency in East Jerusalem. We hope to force the issue into public opinion, into people’s minds,” he said.
“It’s about breaking the barrier of fear. Even as occupied [people], we do have the right to petition against the law and to have our voices heard.”

Originally from Montreal, Jillian Kestler-D’Amours is a reporter and documentary filmmaker based in occupied East Jerusalem. More of her work can be found at http://jilldamours.wordpress.com.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Again: armed and non-violent resistance!!!

Adib S. Kawar  

Through out the history of the Arab Zionism struggle, it was proved that the Zionist movement was and is still adamant to uproot every Palestinian and some other Arabs and replace them with Zionist colonizers in their homes and land. This is the ultimate Zionist goal.

The moment the Zionist entity occupied in 1967 the mere 22%, which was left of Palestine (The West Bank and the Gaza Strip) after the so-called war of independence of 1948, it started colonizing the left over of Palestine.

We all know that non-violent resistance started only during the what is known as the first INTIFADAH, while armed resistance, which some people call violent resistance (Zionists and Americans and some others call it terrorism) and we are sure that Dr. Hannan Ashrawi, who calls for non-violent resistance, is fortunate enough to be still living even in occupied Palestine; so we don't have to teach the teacher of what is going on there.

The Apartheid wall, which is called by the Zionist entity leaders, the separation wall, is only temporary in the sense that those Palestinians who are not yet in the diaspora will be walled in ghettos to make life impossible for them to finally decide to quit their land and homes, or what Zionists call "voluntary transfer". Then and only then the apartheid wall will be dismantled. If we want to give up Palestine on a gold platter to Zionist occupation, those Arabs who are still in Palestine should be ordered to "behave well", and be satisfied with resisting Zionist occupation with their greatest and most sophisticated weapon proposed by pacifists, stone throwing, then they will be thrown out of their homes again sooner then expected!!! 

Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated by Zionist extremists, even though he ordered his soldiers to break the limbs of teen age stone throwers, if they escape being killed by fire arms, just because those extremists thought he was willing to compromise with Arabs and let some of them stay in their homes.

In 1982 the Zionist entity occupied about half of Lebanon, massacring in the process more that twenty thousand Lebanese, Palestinians and Syrians, and committed the Sabra and Shatila massacre plus others, but when few of their soldiers and officers were hunted by the Lebanese resistance fire, they went around in the streets of Beirut with their loud speakers  pleading to the resistance not to target Zionist occupation men, promising to withdraw from Beirut within two days, which they did.

Twenty two years later the Zionist occupation army was forced by the relentless Lebanese resistance to withdraw from South Lebanon, or what they called "The Security Belt". For sure the occupation army with its puppet "South Lebanon Army" was at least one hundred times stronger in numbers and armament than the Lebanese resistance, but they had to evacuate without use of negotiations with their tails between the hind legs, why? Because they could not bear with the casualties they suffered. The Zionist occupation forces withdrew without notifying their SLA collaborators whom they left behind to face their fate.

During WWII the French resistance, which was equally weaker in armament, like the Lebanese resistance, inflicted heavy losses on the notorious German Nazi occupation army with it French collaborators, and its assistance was of great value for the allied forces that liberated France and then the rest of Europe.

The Vietnamese and Algerian resistance, the first was able to defeat the French occupation army, and later the mightiest army in the history of the world, the American army, which had to withdraw after very heavy casualties (also not as a result of negotiations!!!). As for Algerian resistance, which even though lost about a million martyrs, but due to inflicting heavy losses on the strong French army and the equally brutal settlers (colonialist) like Zionist colonialists, the Algerians were able to liberate what French colonialists considered as an integral part of Main land France.

Again the American coalition armies in Iraq were not received with rice and flowers, which they expected the Iraqis would shower them with, instead they were showered with all sort of armament, although not as sophisticated as what the occupiers possess. The occupation army had already declared the "liberation" of Falloujah and other Iraqi cities several times, but what!... The Americans invaded Iraq claiming that they came to liberate it but what... At what price is this liberation costing both the occupier and the occupied... up till now more than a hundred thousand Iraqi martyrs fell in about a year and a half after the invasion, this in addition to the casualties they left behind after their 1991 invasion, and the hundreds of thousands of deformed newly born babies as the result of the uranium depleted ammunitions the Americans bombarded the Iraqis with, plus the half million indirect infant casualties due to malnutrition, which was a result of economic sanctions imposed on Iraq. Iraqi armed resistance against the mightiest army in the world is paying off, and Americans are already biting their nails.

Just for a reminder, Zionist leaders are not trying to hide their role in driving the United States of America to invade Iraq, because they thought it was the biggest threat to their security. Then what type of resistance Iraqis should face the occupation armies with, civil resistance or armed resistance? If they chose the second alternative they will be permanently occupied by "their liberators"!!!

Lets return to Palestine, and the Gaza strip, and remember what Sharon said about the Zionist colonies he planted in it, which he considered to be as dear to him as Tel Aviv itself, Sharon who drove his colonizers to build colonies on every hill, this same Sharon is withdrawing, under the threat of the Palestinian armed resistance, of course not willingly, from the Gaza Strip unilaterally. Of course he intends to make of this withdrawal a smoke screen to get almost full hold of the West Bank, but with armed resistance it will finally be liberated, and his strongest and mightiest army in the region and one of the few strongest armies in the world, shall also withdraw.

Unless the ZioAmerican plan to control all the Arab land from the gulf to the ocean is met with armed resistance than we are finished once and for ever.

Some Palestinians want to apply Gandhi's non-violent resistance, but I believe that they are trying to fool themselves, if they pretend not to see the difference between Palestinians facing Zionist occupation and aggression and its type of colonialism, and the British colonialist rule of India. The British occupation army counted about 70,000 men, and their armament compared to the Israeli Occupation Army is too primitive. India's population at the time was 300,000,000 people, while at the moment there are in Palestine more Zionists than Palestinian Arabs both living in an area of about 27,000 sq. kms, compared with the vast area of the Indian subcontinent. But the most important difference is that the British type of colonialism, which was the traditional type of exploiting the land and its cheep labor, while Zionist colonialism is the type that aims at, as we mentioned above, uprooting every Palestinian from his land, and replace him with a Zionist colonizers: so the only way to stay in our land is to:

Keep the armed INTIFADAH alive.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian