A Thousand Prisoners for One Israeli Soldier

On Sunday, June 26, 2006, at 5:40 in the morning, several Hamas militants tunneled beneath the Kerem Shalom border crossing and killed two IDF soldiers by launching a rocket grenade at their tank, then captured the young corporal Gilad Shalit and took him back inside the Gaza Strip.  (In captivity, he was promoted to Sergeant.)  Because Shalit holds French as well as Israeli citizenship, there has been considerable European input into the extended negotiations over his freedom. Now, post-Arab Spring, Shalit's release looks closer than ever, but cynics warn that it is not quite a done deal yet.

Reuters reported today about the reaction inside Israel to the proposed swap of more than 1000 Palestinian prisoners for the single now-famous Israeli conscript:

Tens of thousands of Israelis have visited social media websites, which were in their infancy when tank crewman Shalit was grabbed, to push their government not to make a deal with Hamas, a group sworn to Israel's destruction. It appeared an exchange would not get under way before early next week. Under Israeli law the Palestinian prisoners' names must be published 48 hours ahead of their release to allow legal appeals against granting them liberty. Israel's Justice Ministry said it intended to publish the list no later than Sunday.
Hamas and its supporters in the Gaza Strip have threatened to seize more Israeli soldiers until all 6,000 Palestinian prisoners are freed from Israeli jails.
The deal resolves one of the most emotive and intractable issues between Israel and the Palestinians, but has no obvious direct effect on peace negotiations which have been stalled for the past year, apart from potentially improving the climate for a resumption as urged by Washington and its allies.
The breakthrough pact was achieved after many false dawns in years of secret efforts to free Shalit, who was captured a year after Israeli forces withdrew from the Gaza Strip. Israel tightened its Gaza blockade after he was seized and again after Hamas took over the enclave from a rival movement in 2007.
Yoram Cohen, chief of Israel's Shin Bet internal security service, said he believed Hamas opted for a deal now because it hoped to strengthen its ties with Egypt at a time of unrest and uncertainty in Syria, where the group has its headquarters.

No one expects Ofer Prison in the West Bank and the Megiddo and Ketziot prisons in Israel to suddenly empty out. In fact, compared to California, where 30,000 inmates will get out of jail early because of overcrowding, it's a trifling number.  But plenty of people on both sides are doubting that the release for prisoner exchange is a win-win situation.

Behold- Facts on the Ground

The BBC covers the latest diplomatic kerfuffle between Barack (no, the American one!) and Bibi here. Hat tip to the Beeb for the current West Bank map, which unfortunately does not show how one could make a passageway or linked border to Gaza. Any suggestions? And is it fair for all the security buffer zones to extend into non-Israeli land? Friendly neighbours should split the difference and have a DMZ of shared land.I'd like to see a West Bank map with precise borders. Here's an excerpt from the Beeb's piece:

Bibi Netanyahu: "While Israel is prepared to make generous compromises for peace, it cannot go back to the 1967 lines because these lines are indefensible.

"They do not take into account certain demographic changes on the ground that have taken place over the last 44 years."

Netanyahu insisted he valued Mr Obama's efforts, saying: "Israel wants peace, I want peace."

Giza recaps the problems of access for Gazans in their latest release, called "Gaza Reels". Hat tip to Nitin Sawhney for the link.
http://youtu.be/XMu3MNasH7I

Israelis Outsource High Tech to West Bank

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks may be stalled, but that hasn't stopped a small but steady trickle of Israeli technology companies from seeking to work with people on the other side of the decades-old conflict, writes the Associated Press. (Outsourcing beyond the security fence is proving to be quite profitable. Payroll costs for a computer engineer are halved and by telecommuting instead of being herded through checkpoints with other permit-holders, Palestinian employees have a more pleasant work day. :-)

Israeli CEOs say it's their way of bringing a little bit of peace to their troubled corner of the world. But the real reason they're hiring Palestinians, they acknowledge, is because it simply makes good business sense.

Israel's high-tech industry is among the country's crowning achievements. Israel has the most start-ups per capita in the world and has helped produce such game-changing innovations as instant messaging and Internet telephony. Many Israeli tech firms send work offshore to eastern Europe, India or China.

In the past three years, however, some have turned to Palestinian engineers and programmers. They are cheaper, ambitious, work in the same time zone, and — surprisingly to many Israelis — are remarkably similar to them.

"The cultural gap is much smaller than we would think," said Gai Anbar, chief executive of Comply, an Israeli start-up in this central Israeli town that develops software for global pharmaceutical companies like Merck and Teva.

At a previous job, he worked with engineers in India and eastern Europe, but found communication difficult. So in 2007, when he was looking to outsource work at his new start-up, he turned to Palestinian engineers. He said they speak like Israelis do — they are direct and uninhibited. Today, Comply employs four Palestinians.

Palestinian engineers have also warmed up to the idea. "I doubt you would find a company who says, 'I am closed for business'" to Israelis, said Ala Alaeddin, chairman of the Palestinian Information Technology Association.

If there is hesitation, it's in marketing Israeli products under a Palestinian name to tap into larger Arab markets off-limits to them. "We're looking for a partnership ... not one side benefits from the other side," Alaeddin said.

"We have a window of opportunity to demonstrate our skills," said Murad Tahboub, CEO of Asal Technologies, a Palestinian outsourcing company that works with Comply and a handful of other Israeli-based companies. "The more people know about us ... the more comfortable they will be in doing business with us."

This is easier said than done. Comply's office in Hod Hasharon is only about 20 miles (30 kilometers) from Asal Technologies in the West Bank city of Ramallah — but they are worlds apart.

Israel's military prevents most Palestinians and Israelis from visiting each others' cities without special permits, citing security concerns.

A network of fences and concrete walls divides Israel from the West Bank, built by Israel earlier this decade amid a wave of Palestinian attacks. Travel restrictions make meetings between Israelis and Palestinians rare, and psychological barriers separate them as well.

Anbar says his company is proving skeptics wrong. One recent morning, Israeli project manager Gali Kahane chatted online in English with Palestinian programmer Mohammad Radad, sending him smiley emoticons while reviewing updates to the database software they are developing.

"At first it was a little bit strange" to work with Palestinians, but now it's like working with any other Israeli developer, Kahane said. "We are very curious what they think about us," but they never talk politics. "The only thing we talk about is when the bugs will be finished, and reaching our deadline together," she said.

Anbar says working with Palestinians is "doing something good for the world we are living in," but says the real reason he outsources to the West Bank is financial: He pays the outsourcing company about $4,000 a month per engineer, half the cost of outsourcing to an Israeli company.

While Indians or Chinese engineers cost even less, he said Palestinians are more loyal to his company than workers from distant countries — and have a dogged work ethic. Many gained experience working abroad, and stiff competition for coveted engineering jobs in the West Bank pushes those who have work to prove themselves, Tahboub said.

About 10 Israeli start-ups and international companies with centers in Israel have been outsourcing to the West Bank in the past three years, said Tova Scherr of Mercy Corps, an international aid group working to encourage these ventures. Scherr said visits by Israeli businessmen to Ramallah — with Israeli military permission — are becoming more common.

Networking giant Cisco says it was the first international corporation with research and development centers in Israel to begin outsourcing work to the West Bank. Israeli branches of Hewlett-Packard Co., Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp. have followed Cisco's example and begun to outsource to the Palestinian territories this year, according to Mercy Corps.

Arranging meetings is "sometimes like crossing the Red Sea," said Cisco spokesman Gai Hetzroni.

Last year's initial meeting of Palestinian and Israeli engineers was meant to take place in the West Bank city of Jericho, but an Israeli military closure forced the workers to drag their laptops into a nearby Bedouin tent they rented for the day. Hetzroni said it was an "extraordinary meeting" that convinced the firm to go forward with the partnership.

Word of the West Bank's potential is spreading: Tahboub of Asal Technologies said he received about 20 inquiries this year from Israeli companies.

"We are doing great work for our country," Tahboub said, referring to the yet-to-be-born Palestinian state. "I believe the (technology) sector will become one of the pillars of the Palestinian economy."

Palestinians, Contained

Israelis credit the serpentine, 400-mile (640 km)system of fences, barricades and checkpoints with reducing terrorist attacks to almost nil since construction began in earnest seven years ago. But the Wall has done more than keep out suicide bombers. No less important, it has created a separation of the mind. Israelis say they simply think much less about Palestinians. And a generation of Palestinians is coming of age without even knowing what Israelis look like, much less the land both sides claim as their own. The absence of familiarity, names, basic knowing — the absence of the foundations of empathy — does not bode well for the chances of the two peoples one day living as neighbors in peace.

The economic consequences of the Wall are plain: it has kept out of Israel hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who used to travel there every day, mostly to work. In the living room of Ramzi's father, family friend Taeser Ihmad complains that after 20 years earning 200 shekels ($55) a day as a gardener at a Jerusalem hospital, he now makes just 80 shekels ($22) building houses in Ramallah.

"I never faced a day that they were not nice to me," Ihmad says of the Israelis as Ramzi and his older brother Anis watch silently from the sofa, drinking in the adult conversation with both the silence expected of the young in an Arab household and the curiosity that betrays a less obvious effect of the barrier. Whatever lies beyond it — enemy, oppressor, kindly cashier — is largely a matter of speculation to those born in the hammock of optimism between the 1993 Oslo accords and the second intifadeh, the uprising that began in 2000 and ended after an iron curtain was drawn across the occupied territories.

Read more at Palestinians, Contained. Kudos to Karl Vick in Ein Arik

Checkpoint: Backscatter Fears and Naked Aggression

"Don't touch my junk" has a corollary: don't zap my gonads with radiation, either.

Americans on the go are increasingly upset about the intrusiveness of pre-boarding security checks at their airports, whether by full-body scanner or an enhanced pat-down grope. Perhaps lessons can be learned by examining the health effects on Palestinians who have for years submitted to similar security checks.

More than a quarter million Palestinians live in the shadow of the Israeli's separation barrier, particularly in spots where the barrier is jig-sawed to protect hilltop settlers in what they refer to as Judea and Samaria. Ostensibly to deter terrorists, a tall electrified fence and trench system disconnects many Palestinian families living in such isolated rural pockets from their families and jobs in the West Bank. (Gaza is entirely corralled, and any patients and accompanying medical staff who are permitted to leave the enclave undergo such body scans as well.) In order for West Bank residents to reach jobs outside these restricted zones, to see friends and relatives, shop, or even make bank deposits, an Israeli-issued permit is required. All permit-holders must line up to be checked by private Israeli armed security guards or national border police before they are allowed past the separation barrier.

Crossing the Reihan/Bartaa checkpoint into the rest of the West Bank entails a full body backscatter x-ray scan, using machines similar to the bulky TSA scanners at 68 American airports which have raised the hackles of travelers this month.

Like US pilots who object to any extra doses of radiation caused by these virtual strip-searches, many Palestinian women are reluctant to undergo full-body scans twice a day, repeatedly. Even though their refusal denies them access to work or to harvest family fields that lie on the other side of the barrier, many resist.

Three years ago, I interviewed more than a dozen women at a basic health clinic in Um el Reihan run by a Western foreign aid agency. Each one said she was too scared to enter a foreign-built machine that might endanger a pregnancy or reduce her fertility.

Dr Muthanna Jabbarin , who tends the day clinic inside Um el Reihan and returns to Jenin at dusk a couple of days per week, is bothered that he has no access to data about the security equipment and the radiation hazard of malfunctions. He's unable to reassure worried patients who must go through the scanning machine twice daily about possible cancer risks. Several miscarriages, including one suffered by a woman in her eighth month, have raised his concerns. The doctor believes that the heat, the prolonged standing, and the anxiety all take a toll on expectant mothers.

In such a conservative community, many people feel violated because the security apparatus can see through their clothing and records each fold of flesh. Scars from, say, a Caesarean birth or a circumcision will be readily apparent on the screen. Every one of these scans is scrutinized by young Israeli guards. Fears that the images will be kept or photographed on mobile phones and uploaded to the internet are widespread. Numerous Palestinian seamstresses, teachers, and students have abandoned the commute from their Um el Reihan enclave into the West bank to avoid the public humiliation. Now they are marooned in this tiny hamlet which receives no services from either the Palestinian authority or the Israeli government.

Not only are the 350 Palestinian residents of Um el Reihan unable to cross the old Green Line west of their village to enter Israel but, but even if they go east and stand on line for hours, many are delayed or prevented from visiting the rest of the Palestinian territory. Reihan/Bartaa checkpoint, with its requisite body scans and searches, has mutated this little community into a Mid-Eastern gulag. After the Transport Security Administration's latest controversy over backscatter strip searches and groin-thumping frisks, a few more jet-setting Americans may empathize with the plight of these folks in the West Bank.

Jan McGirk was a special correspondent reporting from Gaza and the West Bank for The Lancet, a British medical journal. Crossposted on The Huffington Post.

Tweet

Israeli security forces prepare for mass riots after possible 'population exchange'

Ethnic cleansing may be on the horizon if the Avigdor Lieberman plan for population exchange kicks in, and Israel's security forces are girding for the fallout.

Doesn't anyone recall the bloody Partition of India and Pakistan in 1947? When Izzy Bee raised this worry directly to Lieberman a couple years ago, he just shrugged his shoulders ever so avigdorably and said that Cyprus was his model for a two-state solution, not the sub-Continent. Oy veh.

According to Noam on "The Promised Land" blog:

IBA Radio is reporting that Israel’s security forces concluded on Thursday a large national drill, in which the civil defense forces, police, military police, fire department and Israel’s prisons unit trained for large scale riots in the Israeli-Arab public, following a signing of a peace agreement that would include “population exchange” (transfer of Arab population to the Palestinian state).

According to Kol Israel’s report, in such an event, a large detention camp for Palestinian citizens will be constructed in Golani Junction, at Israel’s north, and all illegal aliens will be released from prisons to make room for Palestinians.

Two weeks ago, Israel’s foreign minister was criticizing for presenting his plan for population exchange in a speech at the United Nation General Assembly. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later claimed that FM Avigdor Lieberman didn’t represent Israeli government policy in his speech.

—————————–

On one hand, I think we should not turn this into a conspiracy item. The fact that the security forces are training doesn’t mean that Israeli leaders have such a plan or that they have a secret deal for population exchange with the Palestinian Authority.

On the other hand, this report does teach us a lot about the way Israel views its Palestinian citizens: while Israeli leaders are praising Israeli democracy and claiming that Palestinians are equal citizens (within the Green Line borders), policy makers view Arabs first and foremost as a security threat, and as people whose citizenship might be revoked at any given moment.

Some might argue that security forces must train for every scenario, even one that is not very likely to happen, so we shouldn’t deduct much from this item.

Well, how about training for widespread demonstrations and terror attacks following the evacuation of settlements? This is something that can actually take place, but no one would ever consider preparing for mass detentions of settlers right now. The political consequences of even contemplating such idea in public would be disastrous, as they should be.

Arab citizens should be treated with the same respect.

Tweet

Line in the Sand: Israeli activists defy law with Tel Aviv beach parties for Palestinians

The soothing sound of the Mediterranean might do more for Israeli-Palestinian relations than endless waves of US-backed peace talks. But it takes a certain grit for Israeli women activists to spirit West Bank families across checkpoints to reach the sea and sand. Israeli and West Bank women both risk jail for organizing a fun day at the beach. Civil disobedience is rarely tolerated by the IDF, who are supposed to be attuned to any potential security breach. But the profiling they use routinely during enforcement means that settlers at checkpoints get waved through - as well as women who look a bit like settlers
These illegal trips challenge laws governing the movement of Palestinians, reports the Guardian's Rachel Shabi, who follows up a group of activists inspired by a May 7 article by Ilana Hammerman, of Haaretz.

"It's like we are using the tools of the occupation," said Irit, one of the [Israeli] drivers. "It just wouldn't occur to the soldiers at the checkpoints that Israeli women would want to do this."

As Tel Aviv nears, the Palestinian passengers silently survey the tall buildings and outdoor cafes and seem especially taken with the ubiquitous motorcycles and mopeds that speed around the city...But all the Palestinian women have just one request: to go to the sea. For most, it's their first trip to the seaside, even though it is a short drive from home.

The passengers join another carload and head to the promenade in Jaffa, the mixed Arab-Israeli city stuck to the tail-end of Tel Aviv, where the Palestinian women race to greet the waves crashing against the bright rocks. "It is so much more beautiful than I thought," said Nawal, watching her gleeful seven-year-old daughter skipping backwards to avoid being sprayed by the waves.

Hat tip to Juliette for this link. Photo from The Guardian

The Shadow over the bubble

Author Margaret Atwood, a Canadian gentile, writes poignantly about "the situation" in Haaretz:

Recently I was in Israel. The Israelis I met could not have been more welcoming. I saw many impressive accomplishments and creative projects, and talked with many different people. The sun was shining, the waves waving, the flowers were in bloom. Tourists jogged along the beach at Tel Aviv as if everything was normal.

But… there was the Shadow. Why was everything trembling a little, like a mirage? Was it like that moment before a tsunami when the birds fly to the treetops and the animals head for the hills because they can feel it coming?

“Every morning I wake up in fear,” someone told me. “That’s just self-pity, to excuse what’s happening,” said someone else. Of course, fear and self-pity can both be real. But by “what’s happening,” they meant the Shadow.

I’d been told ahead of time that Israelis would try to cover up the Shadow, but instead they talked about it non-stop. Two minutes into any conversation, the Shadow would appear. It’s not called the Shadow, it’s called “the situation.” It haunts everything.

The Shadow is not the Palestinians. The Shadow is Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, linked with Israeli’s own fears. The worse the Palestinians are treated in the name of those fears, the bigger the Shadow grows, and then the fears grow with them; and the justifications for the treatment multiply.

The attempts to shut down criticism are ominous, as is the language being used. Once you start calling other people by vermin names such as “vipers,” you imply their extermination. To name just one example, such labels were applied wholesale to the Tutsis months before the Rwanda massacre began. Studies have shown that ordinary people can be led to commit horrors if told they’ll be acting in self-defense, for “victory,” or to benefit mankind.

I’d never been to Israel before, except in the airport. Like a lot of people on the sidelines – not Jewish, not Israeli, not Palestinian, not Muslim – I hadn’t followed the “the situation” closely, though, also like most, I’d deplored the violence and wished for a happy ending for all.

Again like most, I’d avoided conversations on this subject because they swiftly became screaming matches. (Why was that? Faced with two undesirable choices, the brain – we’re told -- chooses one as less evil, pronounces it good, and demonizes the other.)

I did have some distant background. As “Egypt” at a Model U.N. in 1956, my high school’s delegation had presented the Palestinian case. Why was it fair that the Palestinians, innocent bystanders during the Holocaust, had lost their homes? To which the Model Israel replied, “You don’t want Israel to exist.” A mere decade after the Camps and the six million obliterated, such a statement was a talk-stopper.

Then I’d been hired to start a Nature program at a liberal Jewish summer camp. The people were smart, funny, inventive, idealistic. We went in a lot for World Peace and the Brotherhood of Man. I couldn’t fit this together with the Model U.N. Palestinian experience. Did these two realities nullify each other? Surely not, and surely the humane Jewish Brotherhood-of-Manners numerous in both the summer camp and in Israel itself would soon sort this conflict out in a fair way.

But they didn’t. And they haven’t. And it’s no longer 1956. The conversation has changed dramatically. I was recently attacked for accepting a cultural prize that such others as Atom Egoyan, Al Gore, Tom Stoppard, Goenawan Mohamad, and Yo-Yo Ma had previously received. This prize was decided upon, not by an instrument of Israeli state power as some would have it, but by a moderate committee within an independent foundation. This group was pitching real democracy, open dialogue, a two-state solution, and reconciliation. Nevertheless, I’ve now heard every possible negative thing about Israel – in effect, I’ve had an abrupt and searing immersion course in present-day politics. The whole experience was like learning about cooking by being thrown into the soup pot...

There are many groups in which Israelis and Palestinians work together on issues of common interest, and these show what a positive future might hold; but until the structural problem is fixed and Palestine has its own “legitimized” state within its internationally recognized borders, the Shadow will remain.

“We know what we have to do, to fix it,” said many Israelis. “We need to get beyond Us and Them, to We,” said a Palestinian. This is the hopeful path. For Israelis and Palestinians both, the region itself is what’s now being threatened, as the globe heats up and water vanishes. Two traumas create neither erasure nor invalidation: both are real. And a catastrophe for one would also be a catastrophe for the other.

See the entire article here

'Redeeming Jerusalem by truth, not hollow slogans': Seidemann refutes Wiesel words

In recent full page ads in the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, renowned author and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel argued that Jerusalem is "above politics." But the portrait of the city Wiesel painted is so factually inaccurate and so morally specious as to leave no room for doubt: Wiesel's false innocence and moral posturing over Jerusalem is an example of politics par excellence, with Wiesel willingly becoming a tool of Israel's extreme right in its desperate efforts to block Obama's peace efforts.

A review of the facts is in order.

93 percent of Israel - including most of West Jerusalem and the 35 percent of privately-owned land in East Jerusalem expropriated by Israel since 1967 - is categorized by Israel as "State Land." Only Israeli citizens and those entitled to immigrate under the Law of Return may acquire properties on this land. Palestinians of East Jerusalem, with rare exception, are in neither of these categories. So while Wiesel may purchase a home in anywhere in East or West Jerusalem, a Palestinian cannot.

Since 1967, Israel has built more than 50,000 dwellings for Israelis in East Jerusalem, but has built fewer than 600 for Palestinians (the last was built 35 years ago). And from 1967 until today, as East Jerusalem's Palestinian population increased from 70,000 to 280,000, Israel has issued only 4,000 permits for private Palestinian construction in East Jerusalem. Barred from building legally, the Palestinians built without permits - leaving them subject to Israeli demolition of their "illegal" homes.

Today extreme settler groups have launched a campaign to evict Palestinian families - refugees of Israel's War of Independence - from densely-populated Palestinian neighborhoods in the heart of East Jerusalem. They are doing so based on the "right" of Jews to recover properties lost in the 1948 war. But under Israeli law Palestinians have no such right. So while Israel insists that Palestinians renounce any "right of return" - something understood as necessary for the two-state solution - it is implementing a Jewish right of return to Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, and turning 1948 refugees into 2010 refugees.



And then there is the question of Israel's respect for other religions.

In recent years the Israeli Government has transferred virtually all of the most sensitive religious, archeological and cultural sites in East Jerusalem to the de facto control of extreme settler groups. These groups are abusing archeology and public planning to highlight the Jewish past, while marginalizing the Christian, Muslim and Palestinian dimensions of the city, past and present.

Due to Israeli restrictions, today it is easier for a Palestinian Christian living just south of Jerusalem in Bethlehem to worship in Washington's National Cathedral than to pray in Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Today a Muslim living in Turkey has a better chance of getting to Jerusalem to pray at the Old City's al-Aqsa mosque than a Muslim living a few miles away in Ramallah.

Before our eyes, Jerusalem is becoming the arena where the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is morphing from a resolvable national conflict into a religious war - a transformation that, if it continues, poses an existential threat to Israel. And what starts in Jerusalem does not stay in Jerusalem: conflict in Jerusalem resonates throughout the region and beyond, wind in the sails of every jihadist.

By asserting the Jewish people's exclusive "ownership" of Jerusalem, Wiesel embraces the policies that are accelerating this metamorphosis.

Wiesel ignores these facts. He ignores the fact that the policies he is defending will soon turn Jerusalem into a city so balkanized, geographically and demographically, that the two-state solution will no longer be possible. And the demise of the two-state solution portends the end of Israel as a Jewish, democratic state, to be replaced by either an apartheid-like reality with a Jewish minority ruling over an Arab majority, or by a bi-national Arab-Jewish state.

Israel is at an existential crossroads with Jerusalem. Current policies cannot be justified - even by Elie Wiesel, even to Israel's staunchest allies. These policies consistently derail the resumption of negotiations towards a conflict-ending agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. The cumulative impact of these policies will be the destruction of the two-state solution, the radicalization of the conflict and the de-legitimization of Israel. With these policies, Jerusalem is becoming the place where Israel slides down the slippery slope into pariah status.

By agreeing to carry the water for Israel's extreme right, Wiesel has not only undermined his own moral authority, but has done so in the service of a political agenda that is a grave threat to Israel's most vital interests. If Wiesel loves Jerusalem as much as he claims, he should indeed put Jerusalem above politics and join President Obama in his insistence that these dangerous policies cease, and support Obama's efforts to achieve a final status agreement that resolves all the issues, not the least of which being Jerusalem.

Guest poster Daniel Seidemann is a Jerusalem-based lawyer and expert on Jerusalem, and the founder of the Israeli NGO Terrestrial Jerusalem.Cross-posted on Foreign Policy

Stoned in the Old City - a woman, a rock and a hard place to take cover

This past Sunday, 24 October, radio reporter Irris Makler went to cover some riots in Jerusalem's Old City. From a hospital bed, she recounts what happened in this guest post. Irris cannot work for the moment, because she cannot speak until she heals:

The riots over access to the Temple Mount /Al Haram al Sharif were only sporadic, but I thought it was best to go and see for myself. It was a slow morning and Canadian Broadcasting said they needed something -- which is often how these things go...

As I was driving down, top of the local radio bulletin was the Israeli chief of police saying that both extremist Jewish and Muslim groups were inciting their followers to defend the holy site. The closest I could get was an alley near the Lion's Gate where Palestinian boys were burning rubbish and throwing stones. There were lots of Israeli police, but it didn't seem particularly dangerous - I've been to lots of these which were at a much higher temperature.

I needed [to record] some sound , but did not go all the way up to the end of the alley where the rubbish was burning. There were journalists about 20 meters back from the boys and I was about 20 metres back from them, standing under a small balcony to protect me from the stones. As I was getting some sound of the stones being thrown I became aware they were getting larger, more like fist sized rocks, so I decided not to go any further and to turn back. My small balcony did not feel like sufficient protection any more. As I turned to go one rock caught me in the face.

It was a head snapping blow, coming I now think from someone on a nearby roof, since it came in from above, under the awning. It was incredibly fortunate that I had turned -- it hit me in the lower left jaw, and not in the eye. I never lost consciousness, never felt nauseous, was able to walk to the ambulance. No brain damage, no broken cheek bones or vision problems. That and the localised blow is all part of the good news. The bad news is my jaw is broken in two places, some of my teeth have been forced out of alighment and one of my facial nerves may have been severed. We won't know for sure about the nerve for a while.

One definite plus about being injured here is the high standard of the health care. I am writing to you from [Jerusalem's] Hadassah hospital where I have had the wound in my cheek stitched and an operation to wire my jaw closed so that the bones will knit and the teeth realign.

I look horribly like a werewolf, and will have to stay like this, for six (¡) weeks.

I am quite happy about the enforced diet, less so about the enforced silence, since I am talkative even by journalist standards...

Still my friends have rallied round, supplying me with clothes, magazines books, ipods, laptops. But most of all they have given me support and love, reminding me how lucky I am. This hospital is an amazing melting pot, Palestinians and Orthodox Jews in adjoining beds, kind, fierce Russian nurses, doctors from every nation in the world. It is an appropriately strange environment from which to reflect on this strange life we lead as correspondents...

I have been to so many dangerous places, for so long, and nothing bad has happened to me before... my friend Margaret who has been in plenty of dangerous situations herself says there is no point in brooding on fate and chance, but I find that I can't help myself...... if I come up with some answers I'll let you know. :-)

More bulletins from the Land of Silence soon.

and best wishes for rapid recovery!

No way home: the Palestinian diaspora

You might think Palestinian refugees would be welcomed by their Arab neighbours, yet they are denied basic rights and citizenship. In a guest post, Judith Miller and David Samuels examine the diaspora.

It is a cynical but time-honoured practice in Middle Eastern politics: the statesmen who decry the political and humanitarian crisis of the approximately 3.9 million Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in Gaza ignore the plight of an estimated 4.6 million Palestinians who live in Arab countries. For decades, Arab governments have justified their decision to maintain millions of stateless Palestinians as refugees in squalid camps as a means of applying pressure to Israel. The refugee problem will be solved, they say, when Israel agrees to let the Palestinians have their own state.
Yet in the two decades since the end of the Cold War, after two Gulf wars, and the rise and fall of the Oslo peace process, not a single Palestinian refugee has returned to Israel – and only a handful of ageing political functionaries have returned from neighbouring Arab countries to the West Bank and Gaza. Instead, failed peace plans and shifting political priorities have resulted in a second Palestinian "Nakba", or catastrophe – this one at hands of the Arab governments.
"Marginalised, deprived of basic political and economic rights, trapped in the camps, bereft of realistic prospects, heavily armed and standing atop multiple fault lines," a report by the International Crisis Group (ICG) in Lebanon recently observed, "the refugee population constitutes a time bomb."

In the unlikely event that President Obama's vision of a swift and final settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict materialises, millions of Palestinians would still live in decaying refugee camps whose inhabitants are forbidden from owning land or participating in normal economic life. The only governing authority that Palestinians living in the camps have ever known is UNRWA – the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Established by the UN on 8 December 1949 to assist 650,000 impoverished Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war, UNRWA has been battling budget cuts and strikes among its employees as it struggles to provide subsidies and services to Palestinian refugees, who are defined as "persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948".

Click here to read all of this special report in The Independent

Yoram Kaniuk remembers the Nakba

How powerful is a word?
The word Nakba is officially verboten. Referring to the recreation of Israel in 1948 as the 'Catastrophe' is being banned from Arabic schoolbooks following the reversal of a court decision.
The distinguished Israeli writer Yoram Kaniuk, who was there to witness Israel's birth pangs and whose opinion carries alot of weight, had his say about the Nakba, thereby provoking some controversy in the Yediot Ahronot, the most popular Hebrew daily paper. He argues 'Our defeated enemy is not a geometrical unknown; it’s a people that still exists'

I remember the Nakba

This week I visited the Knesset for the third time in my life. The first time was during the War of Independence, when the site was not yet under Israel’s control.

Today, it’s an immense building. If Netanyahu’s policy of going to war against the Americans will be implemented, even the US Army won’t be able to take over the Knesset building. Israel’s parliament looks like the formidable fortress of a strong nation. Barbed wire, thick walls, police officers, and checkpoints. An ugly citadel surrounded by even uglier buildings.

I haven’t seen a more fortified fortress in any other capital. And so, even if the planned war takes place, the Knesset will survive. This is what we call a secure democracy.

In the fortified building that is Israel’s Knesset, officials are redrafting history, as well as the future. The future we looked forward to once upon a time, when the hill was still empty. Via the Nakba Law and the education minister’s plan to remove the term from the curriculum, it appears that the future will be all about erasing everything that exists.

I remember the Nakba. I saw it to a much greater extent than the education minister, who apparently only heard about it. It was a harsh, merciless campaign of young soldiers who spilled their blood while fighting a determined enemy that was eventually defeated. Yet the enemy that was defeated is not a geometrical unknown, but rather, a people that still exists. Its parents and grandparents fought well. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have suffered so many casualties.

I was wounded in battle, but I believe that the education minister must educate our young people to be heroes by teaching them that this war had losers too, and that they too have a narrative. They don’t have the country that was theirs but they have a history, and no education minister can erase the defeated people from its powerful memory. The Nakba fighters fought heroically, but we fought better.

The fact that the State of Israel exists today is the victory, rather than the erasing of the circumstances of its establishment from the losing side. The Germans tried to teach German history without the Holocaust. It didn’t work. The Holocaust is a powerful element in Germany today, because it was a powerful event. The same is true for all sorts of hasty laws by ministers who wish to correct history.

Our education minister did not invent this idea. Stalin made sure to write a new Russian history, yet the past reclaimed it. A narrative that turns into a myth constitutes more history than any education minister can create; even if Arab children here learn Bialik’s songs and are forced to hoist Israel’s flag over their homes every morning and sing our national anthem every evening, at night, in hiding, they will read Arabic poetry. Because Arabic poetry is them. There’s nothing we can do about it.

While inside the Knesset fortress I thought that maybe it is still possible, before my death, to turn this state into a Jewish State – not one populated by zealous masses called Jews, but rather, Jews like we used to be; a state where we respect those who fought against us and were defeated. When that will happen, we will see the establishment of an Arab state alongside us, and the city of Jerusalem, also known as al-Quds, will become the capital of two states, one Jewish and one Arab. And then peace will come to Israel. Amen.

Meanwhile, the signs on the streets are being switched, and only Hebrew placenames will be in use if the transport ministry gets its way.
:

The Israeli transport ministry will soon get rid of Arabic and English names for cities and towns on road signs, keeping only the Hebrew terms.

"Minister Yisrael Katz took this decision that will be progressively applied," a ministry spokeswoman told Agence France Press.

Currently Israeli road signs are written in Hebrew, Arabic and English, with the city names in each language. So Jerusalem is identified as Yerushalaim in Hebrew, Jerusalem in English and Al-Quds in Arabic (along with Yerushalaim written in Arabic script).
Under the new policy the Holy City will only be identified as Yerushalaim in all three languages. Nazareth (Al-Nasra in Arabic) will be identified as Natzrat and Jaffa (Jaffa in Arabic) will only be written as Yafo.

WHen signs went up labelling my neighborhood, not as Abu Tor, but as Givat Hananiya, the residents got confused. Visitors drove right by. Mail deliveries went astray. Now there's a movement protesting the deletion of Arabic and English names from our cities and streets. Those who rewrite history may be doomed to repeat it.

Hat tip to Irris for the Kaniuk piece!

Scores of settlers settling scores

Burn baby burn. Settlers on horseback torched thousands of trees around Nablus yesterday, after setting Palestinian fields alight and stoning passing vehicles. Israeli occupation forces had urged the group to obey the law and shut down their illegal outpost. Most of the western press just yawned.
However, International Crisis Group warns against underestimating the effect of 280,000 rightwing Jewish settlers grabbing land and inserting themselves inside Biblical Judea and Samaria. If ignored, this burgeoning political and social phenomenon could undermine a sustainable Israeli-Palestinian peace, they say.

Israel is facing arguably unprecedented pressure to halt all settlement activity, led by a new and surprisingly determined U.S. administration. But the settlement issue has been transformed in recent years by shifting domestic dynamics, as national-religious and ultra-orthodox Israelis have gained influence and leverage. Entrenched in many West Bank settlements, they benefit from demographic trends: Israel’s army is increasingly dependent on their manpower and politicians on their votes.

“The religious right has assumed an ever more prominent role in opposing territorial compromise”, says Nicolas Pelham, a Crisis Group Senior Consultant based in Jerusalem. “It is banking on its support within state institutions to discourage the government from taking action and on its own rank-and-file to ensure that every attempt to evict an outpost or destroy a structure, however insignificant, comes at a heavy price”.

The ultra-orthodox and national-religious camps account for the lion’s share of the 37 per cent increase in the settler population in the past six years. Although not a united bloc, their politicians hold over a fifth of Knesset seats, some 40 per cent of the ruling coalition. In Israel proper, their numbers are growing steadily, and they carry weight far in excess of their numbers. They occupy key positions in the military, government and legal and education sectors, as well as the bureaucracy, and are seeking to strengthen their ability to resist future territorial withdrawals by building up their influence within and without state institutions. Their role and concerns need to be understood if the obstacle settlements pose to a two-state solution is to be removed.

An agreed Israeli-Palestinian border would make clear which settlers could remain in place and which could not. Several long-overdue steps should be taken in the interim, however. Legislative enactment of an early evacuation compensation package could help persuade some settlers to leave voluntarily. For those who value their attachment to the land over their attachment to the state, efforts could be made to examine how and under what conditions they might live under Palestinian rule and the extent to which Palestinians might accept them. Foreign actors, the U.S. included, should examine ways of making religious parties feel part of the diplomatic process. A clear offer by the Palestinian leadership to guarantee and protect Jewish access to Jewish holy sites under its control could send religious sectors a positive signal of its vision for post-conflict relations.

At the same time, the government should apply its laws more consistently, whether on settlement and outpost construction in the West Bank or acts of violence and incitement against Palestinians.

“The 2005 disengagement from Gaza went remarkably smoothly, but it would be wrong to assume that what happened in Gaza automatically will be replicated in the West Bank”, explains Robert Malley, Crisis Group’s Middle East Program Director. “The differences in numbers, background and militancy of the respective settler populations should serve as a warning of the need to give more attention to this issue as talks with Palestinians proceed”.

Venerable olive trees like this one bore the brunt of the protest. If this is politics as usual, perhaps the actions may pset some green activists.

It's not exactly Rocket Science, but it's provoked Israeli Overkill for three weeks

Hamas rocketeers, pictured above, have provoked their neighbour.

There have been alot of earnest analogies floating around cyberspace to rationalize Israel's bloody response to Hamas rocketfire, in one case even likening the dusty lanes of Sderot to the Champs d' Elysees of Paris and Gaza to Belgium! The official government line in Jerusalem is to blame Hamas's cowardly tactics of fighting behind human shields for the 1000 fresh deaths in Gaza, including more than 320 dead children, over the past 19 days. There's a layman's term for the IDF battle strategy of a relentless 3-week assault from tanks, attack helicopters, fighter planes and gunships: overkill.

To make sense of all these comparisons, Israelity bites is sharing a provocative piece of professorial writing which appeared, of all places, in the Moonie-owned Washington Times. A ninety-something formerly conservative Texas matriarch dared us to crosspost the editorial here. "Have you the courage -- the guts -- the journalistic integrity -- the compassion to publish this op-ed for the beneficial education of our electronic community? she asked."This one ray of light may shine through the Zionist fog. See if y'all would want to walk in the Palestinians shoes for a few months, what they have been wearing for 60 years. We will never be free until truth prevails." OK, ok Marge, here's your clip:

When Israel expelled Palestinians
By Randall Kuhn in the Washington Times, January 14, 2009

"Think about what would happen if for seven years rockets had been fired at San Diego, California from Tijuana, Mexico." Within hours scores of American pundits and politicians had mimicked Ehud Barak's comparisons almost verbatim. In fact, in this very paper on January 9 House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor ended an opinion piece by saying "America would never sit still if terrorists were lobbing missiles across our border into Texas or Montana." But let's see if our political and pundit class can parrot this analogy.

Think about what would happen if San Diego expelled most of its Hispanic, African American, Asian American, and Native American population, about 48 percent of the total, and forcibly relocated them to Tijuana? Not just immigrants, but even those who have lived in this country for many generations. Not just the unemployed or the criminals or the America haters, but the school teachers, the small business owners, the soldiers, even the baseball players.

What if we established government and faith-based agencies to help move white people into their former homes? And what if we razed hundreds of their homes in rural areas and, with the aid of charitable donations from people in the United States and abroad, planted forests on their former towns, creating nature preserves for whites to enjoy? Sounds pretty awful, huh? I may be called anti-Semitic for speaking this truth. Well, I'm Jewish and the scenario above is what many prominent Israeli scholars say happened when Israel expelled Palestinians from southern Israel and forced them into Gaza. But this analogy is just getting started.

What if the United Nations kept San Diego's discarded minorities in crowded, festering camps in Tijuana for 19 years? Then, the United States invaded Mexico, occupied Tijuana and began to build large housing developments in Tijuana where only whites could live. And what if the United States built a network of highways connecting American citizens of Tijuana to the United States? And checkpoints, not just between Mexico and the United States but also around every neighborhood of Tijuana? What if we required every Tijuana resident, refugee or native, to show an ID card to the U.S. military on demand? What if thousands of Tijuana residents lost their homes, their jobs, their businesses, their children, their sense of self worth to this occupation? Would you be surprised to hear of a protest movement in Tijuana that sometimes became violent and hateful? Okay, now for the unbelievable part.

Think about what would happen if, after expelling all of the minorities from San Diego to Tijuana and subjecting them to 40 years of brutal military occupation, we just left Tijuana, removing all the white settlers and the soldiers? Only instead of giving them their freedom, we built a 20-foot tall electrified wall around Tijuana? Not just on the sides bordering San Diego, but on all the Mexico crossings as well. What if we set up 50-foot high watchtowers with machine gun batteries, and told them that if they stood within 100 yards of this wall we would shoot them dead on sight? And four out of every five days we kept every single one of those border crossings closed, not even allowing food, clothing, or medicine to arrive. And we patrolled their air space with our state- of-the-art fighter jets but didn't allow them so much as a crop duster. And we patrolled their waters with destroyers and submarines, but didn't even allow them to fish.

Would you be at all surprised to hear that these resistance groups in Tijuana, even after having been "freed" from their occupation but starved half to death, kept on firing rockets at the United States? Probably not. But you may be surprised to learn that the majority of people in Tijuana never picked up a rocket, or a gun, or a weapon of any kind. The majority, instead, supported against all hope negotiations toward a peaceful solution that would provide security, freedom and equal rights to both people in two independent states living side by side as neighbors. This is the sound analogy to Israel's military onslaught in Gaza today. Maybe some day soon, common sense will prevail and no corpus of misleading analogies abut Tijuana or the crazy guy across the hall who wants to murder your daughter will be able to obscure the truth. And at that moment, in a country whose people shouted We Shall Overcome, Ich bin ein Berliner, End Apartheid, Free Tibet and Save Darfur, we will all join together and shout "Free Gaza. Free Palestine." And because we are Americans, the world will take notice and they will be free, and perhaps peace will prevail for all the residents of the Holy Land.

Randall Kuhn is an assistant professor and Director of the Global Health Affairs Program at the University of Denver Josef Korbel School of International Studies. He just returned from a trip to Israel and the West Bank.
An IDF soldier cleans the tank treads (photo AFP)

It's also worth noting that Israel, the Middle East democracy which touts its freedom of expression and holds itself up as an example for the Arab neighbours, has arrested some 714 anti-war protestors, overwhelmingly Arabs, for speaking out against the war in Gaza. There is an impressive martial unity in a small country where more than 90 per cent are beating war drums and consider this a defensive action to safeguard security. Around 12,000 Palestinian suspects currently are held in Israeli jails, some without trial for years.

Massive Weapons of Construction

Lately I've been cursing the traffic delays from all the heavy construction. It's relentless. Jerusalem is pretty much in upheaval. At the hottest and busiest time of the year, the city fathers are widening the sidewalk and narrowing the lanes on King David Street. (I wondered who runs the cement concession; streets are dug up and then re-dug, and someone must be profiting.)
Today, I was coming back from my dentist appointment and took a shortcut through the YMCA carpark (It's across the street from the King David Hotel, where British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his wife had just left and Barack Obama is due to check in tonight.) Timing is everything, they say. Just ten minutes later, chaos broke out.

Once again a Palestinian construction worker --aren't they all?---let loose against the traffic in the heat of a Jerusalem afternoon. After he rammed a bus and passing cars with his bulldozer, armed civilians shot him dead. One car driver was seriously hurt, and at least ten other people were injured, including a scuffed up little baby.

This must be some kind of copy-cat attack, inspired by coverage of the bulldozer driver rampage on July 3rd. Several militant groups came forward to claim credit for what the government described as a terror attack. As a tactic, it's terrifying to be sure to be chased and smashed by heavy equipment. It doesn't seem overly organized.
Do Anti-zionist groups watch cult 70s horror movies like Killdozer for inspiration?

Phlegmatic Israelis are still out on the streets...but what's the alternative? The area is buzzing with helicopters and ambulances now. I just hope that no mid-air crashes are caused. Am going out to see and will update this later.

Israelity bites.

Reuters reports:

"The first thing I saw is that he tried to smash the head of a passerby with the (bulldozer's) shovel. Then he zigzagged down the street, smashing into cars," said eyewitness Moshe Feiglin.

Witness Moshe Shimshi said the driver, who was wearing a large, white skullcap commonly worn by religious Muslims, slammed into the side of the bus, then sped away and went for a car.

"He didn't yell anything, he just kept ramming into cars," Shimshi said.

The driver then headed for cars waiting at a red light "and rammed into them with all his might," he added.

Beating the odds: organ transplants across the political divide

This is an extraordinary tale,despite the rather dry translation. One Palestinian teenager dies of wounds after a confrontation with security , and his parents approve that his healthy organs be transplanted into half a dozen ailing Israelis. All names are kept under wraps to prevent reprisals by extremists who would harm the teenaged donor's relatives or the Israeli recipients who now owe their lives to what some would term "shaheed organs".

In "Two Peoples, One Heart", published in the Hebrew daily Ma’ariv, reporter Dan Even reports about a rare Palestinian-Israeli organ transplant:

An 18 year-old Palestinian was injured a few weeks ago in an incident with Israeli security guards. He was taken to the intensive care unit at Sheba Medical Center at Tel-Hashomer, where the doctors fought for his life, but after a week he was pronounced brain dead. In spite of the incident his parents agreed to donate his organs, which saved the lives of no less than six Israelis.
The young man’s parents accepted the request from the staff of the hospital and the National Center for Transplants and Donation of Organs. At the transplants center the identity of the donor was kept secret so as not to endanger his parents, who live in one of the towns in the territory of the Palestinian Authority. The recipients of the organs were also informed that the family of the donor wished to remain anonymous. Yesterday, however, just a few hours after he heard the story, one of the recipients met the father of the donor, who had donated his heart. The emotional meeting was held at the hospital and the two embraced, shook hands, and formed a close friendship, which transcends the borders of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and will link the families for ever.
The meeting took place in the same room where a few weeks ago the father received the bad news that his son, “A”, had died. In the previous few months, “A” had been the main provider for his family, because his father had fallen sick. “He was an amazing man,” the father told Ma’ariv. He said he did not hesitate to donate the organs of his son to Israelis, even though his son was killed in an incident with Israelis. “At first it was very difficult for me,” he said, “but I received my inspiration from God. I am at peace with my decision to this day.”

Hamas and Fatah back Palestinian Headcount

Amid the big brouhaha over Condoleezza Rice's seventh visit to the region this year, while expectations for the Bush administration's legacy-polishing Middle East summit planned in Annapolis next month are plummeting fast, there is a cooperative effort by Palestinians to get some "facts on the ground" of their own. Hence an official new census is underway. Oddly enough, officials are starting off by tallying buildings and only later doing a headcount. According to the Associated Press, the results should count for something:

Rapid Palestinian growth would bolster Palestinian territorial demands, while Israelis' fear of being outnumbered in areas they now control might make them more willing to consider a West Bank withdrawal.

Later this week, some 5,000 census-takers will fan out across the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, first to count buildings, and, in December, to count people. Results are expected by February.

"We hope we can use these statistics in the negotiations," said Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, a supporter of moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his Ramallah-based administration. "It's not only important for the political process, but also for building the institutions of the state."

The militant group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, has also said the census results are important and that it will cooperate.

Present guesstimates suggest around 3.9 million Palestinians inhabit the occupied territories. Last December, government statistics revealed that the Israeli population comprises 5.4 million Jews, 1.4 million Arabs and 310,000 others (Christians and miscellaneous) Most of the million plus Russians emigres are tallied in with the Jews. The stumbling block is East Jerusalem. It is still unclear whether Israel will allow Palestinians to take a census in just a portion of Jerusalem when they are busy promoting a P.R. campaign that hails "40 years of Reunification." Israelity bites.

Settlers divert water supply from thirsty villagers to their own splash pool

Settlers cut Palestinian water supply to fill up a swimming pool for summer holidays. Ozzy Bee pointed out this instance of hot weather selfishness, which Ronny Shaked filed on ynet news:

Elon Moreh reroutes a pipe carrying drinking water to neighboring Palestinian village to a small pool; water drains back to village's pipe system

Residents of the settlement of Elon Moreh in the West Bank have cut a pipe carrying drinking water to a nearby Palestinian village, and are using it to fill a small swimming pool located at a picnic site, which was itself built on land owned by the village.

The pipe, which carries water to the village of Dir al-Khatab, was rerouted in order to fill the pool. The pipe channels fresh drinking water into the pool and drains dirty water back into the village's water system.

"They not only use water that doesn't belong to them, but they also pollute the drinking water of some of the village residents," said Yoel Marshak, head of the Kibbutz Movement's Special Assignments Branch. "The little kids pee in the water, which flows straight to the taps of the Palestinian school."

The small swimming pool was built at the settlement's picnic site, which is located less than a mile from Dir al-Khatab and on the village's lands.

"The settlers of Elon Moreh behave like landlords on our private land," said Jafar Shatai, deputy chairman of the neighboring village of Salem.

The Civil Administration has issued a demolition order for the picnic site following complains by the Palestinian residents, and stated that the order would be carried out in the coming days.

Benny Katzover, one of the community leaders in Elon Moreh, said in response that the pool in question was merely a small hole dug near an archeological site where travelers visit. He claimed that the water came from a small fountain near Elon Moreh which streams to the village.

"The fountain's water does not constitute the village's main water supply, because the village has been connected to Mekorot (the national water company) for many years. The fountain's water is used as drinking water for the sheep and goats, and as backup in case the water supply is interrupted. No one has blocked the channeling of water to the village," he stated.

Remember that old song? "Summertime & the livin' is easy...so hush,little baby, don't you cry." There are hot tears of frustration all around. This weekend, in the southern town of Ofakim, a Bedouin family was refused entry to an Israeli public swimming pool because the traditional mother refused to unveil as she watched her three kids frolic. Her garb was not dissimilar to what's routinely worn by ultra-Orthodox Jewish women at pools across the country. The children left in tears.

Rebuilding Peace by hammering the Occupied Territories

A Jerusalem-based NGO plans to rebuild every Palestinian home demolished this past year, 300 in all. (Over the past 40 decades, some 18,000 West Bank and East Jerusalem homes were razed.)

To mark 40 years of Occupation, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) launches a campaign to rebuild every Palestinian home demolished by Israel in the Occupied Territories in a year – some 300 homes. With funding from Jewish donors appalled by the Israeli government’s house demolition policy, ICAHD mounts this challenge to Israel’s Occupation, intensifying a 10-year struggle against the Occupation’s most cruel expression, the demolition of Palestinian homes – 18,000 in the Occupied Territories since 1967 – part of a larger Israeli policy of transfer and dispossession.

The Action: On Monday June 11, at 10 a.m., the group will meet at the Jaffa Gate, and join residents of the Mughrabi Quarter to mark the first act of the Occupation: the demolition, on the night of June 11, 1967, of their entire neighborhood, in order to create an open plaza in front of the Western Wall. Reconstruction work will start in Silwan village nearby.

Background: On the night of June 11, 1967, as the Six Day War was drawing to its close, 135 Palestinian families were roused from their beds to watch as Israeli bulldozers summarily destroyed their homes and the quarter’s two mosques. It was an operation that created the first of thousands of “facts on the ground;” it had nothing to do with either the war or security. In the course of the demolition an elderly Palestinian woman, Hajja Rasmia Tabaki, was killed when her home was demolished on top of her. She became the Occupation’s first victim.

Organizers are Shai Haim, Jeff Halper, Ashraf Abu Moch, Angela Godfrey-Goldstein. For further information, click here or email: info@icahd.org

New Palestinian Campaign targets Stones

No Satisfaction...The Rolling Stones, those sexagenarian uber-rockers who promoter Shuki Weiss has booked to play Tel Aviv in September, are being urged to boycott Israel.
Word is out that Britney Spears, no stranger to controversy herself, is due to sing here as well this autumn. But security issues make these big concerts iffy. Depeche Mode disappointed 40,000 fans by cancelling at the last minute last summer. The rockers Blonde Redhead and American Idol's Kelly Clarkson also got cold feet because of the Second Lebanon War and the rain of rockets as far south as Haifa.

This week the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel issued an open letter to Jagger's manager which reportedly says: "Performing in Israel at this time is morally equivalent to performing in South Africa during the apartheid era." Campaigners urged the Stones to refrain from performing in Israel "until the time comes when (Israel) ends its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory and respects fundamental human rights," according to Haaretz.
The Stones joined a cultural boycott of apartheid-era South Africa during the 1980s, by playing on the 1985 single, Sun City, which raised public awareness about apartheid and its injustices. The lyrics are by Steven Van Zandt:

We're rockers and rappers united and strong
... we don't like what's going on
It's time for some justice it's time for the truth
We've realized there's only one thing we can do
...Got to say I aint gonna play
It's time to accept responsibility
Freedom is a privilege nobody rides for free

Getting the Rolling Stones in the Holy Land: an uphill struggle.