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Jerusalemites
By Annie Robbins
It appears Israel’s ongoing incitement of Palestinian children has taken a particularly macabre turn.
Skunk spraying, apparently on West Bank
These videos have surfaced of Jerusalem police driving calmly through quiet empty East Jerusalem neighborhoods drenching elementary schools and residences with a putrid liquid with the stench of feces and rotting animal carcass, commonly referenced as “skunk spray”. 972+ has the story. “The skunk water targeted the A-Tur [Mount of Olives neighborhood] elementary school for boys, the elementary and high school for girls, a high school for boys and the ‘Basma’ elementary school for disabled children. All four schools are located on the neighborhood’s main street.”
As a result 4,500 children stayed home from school the following day: In the A-Tur neighborhood, the police shot skunk water at four large schools, forcing the parents of 4,500 students to leave their children at home due to the unbearable smell. “It was this past Friday, at around 5:30 p.m.,” says Khader Abu Sabitan, a member of the parents’ committee in the neighborhood. “I was on the road and saw them pass with their machine, and saw how they began shooting water at the school. I’m telling you – there was nothing there. It is Friday at 5:30 in the evening, and there was no one in the school or on the streets. Nothing. Everyone was home. They went to all four schools in the neighborhood, shot the water, and left.”
This form of collective punishment seems sadistic. I’m at a loss for a better term. Haggi Mater reports that “words cannot express” the stench, that “gagging is almost inevitable” and that it’s almost impossible to get rid of the smell.
The videos were given to 972+ to support resident claims that Jerusalem police had been using the spray routinely and arbitrarily. Evidently the practice of spraying the East Jerusalem neighborhoods has been going on for awhile and a complaint was filed with the police last August by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) . Palestinian residents have been meeting with human rights organizations but many are afraid to come forward and give testimony for fear of retribution. Because the practice is being used routinely, regardless of circumstance, the residence are at a loss as to how to respond.
The police claim that spraying the schools and homes is used according to regulations. Inquiries have been made seeking an explanation what those regulations are but the police have refused to tell them. Mater reports “ACRI has attempted to force the police to publish the regulations vis-a-vis the skunk” and that 972+ has also made inquires with the police and plan on publishing their response.
Read 972+’s full report here.
We’ve reported on the Israeli military’s practice of spraying villages in Occupied Palestine, but this is the first we’ve heard of police routinely spraying quiet Jerusalem neighborhoods.
Posted: 08/23/2013
By Ali Abunimah
Palestinian children are systematically subjected to torture and violence, including threats of rape, by Israeli interrogators, in order to force them to confess to stone-throwing.
Palestinian children are systematically subjected to torture and violence, including threats of rape |
The brutality, at the Etzion police station, in an illegal Israeli colony near the occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem, is documented in a new report by the Israeli group B’Tselem:
In November 2009, B’Tselem began receiving reports of violence against Palestinian minors during interrogation at the Etzion police station. Until July 2013, B’Tselem field researchers collected 64 testimonies from residents of eight communities in the southern West Bank who reported such incidents. Fifty-six of them were minors at the time of their interrogation. The testimonies described severe physical violence during the interrogation or preliminary questioning, which, in some cases, amounted to torture. The violence included slaps, punches and kicks to all parts of the body, and blows with objects, such as a gun or a stick. Some of the former interrogatees also reported threats: in twelve cases, they claimed that the interrogator had threatened them or female relatives with sexual assault, such as rape and genital injury. In six cases, the interrogatees claimed that the interrogators had threatened to execute them; in eight cases, the interrogators allegedly threatened to harm family members; and in five other cases, they allegedly threatened to electrocute the interrogatees, including in a way that would damage their fertility.
I’ll murder you if you don’t confess”
B’Tselem included the testimony of M.A., a 15-year-old boy, from Husan village near Bethlehem:
The interrogator “Daud” took me outside with a soldier. They blindfolded me. The plastic cable ties were still on my hands. They put me in a car and started driving. I don’t know where they took me. We reached some place outside Etzion and they forced me out of the car. My hands really hurt because of the cable ties. They took off my blindfold. I didn’t know where I was. They tied me to a tree, and then they raised my cuffed hands and tied them to the tree, too. It hurt a lot. “Daud” started punching me. After a few minutes, he took out a gun and said: “I’ll murder you if you don’t confess! Out here, no one will find you. We’ll kill you and leave you here.
Video
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While the revelations from B’Tselem are shocking, they are, sadly, hardly new. The accounts of the Palestinian children are consistent with those collected in dozens of cases in 2012 alone by Defence for Children International – Palestine Section (DCI).
These cases include routine use of solitary confinement with no access to family or lawyers, as well as physical violence, to force children to confess.
Last year, DCI released the brief video above, Alone, highlighting the experience and testimonies of Palestinian children abused and tortured by the occupation forces.
The film makes the point that Palestinian children subjected to military occupation have no one to protect them from such abuses by Israeli forces.
As of June this year, there are 193 Palestinian children in Israeli prisons of whom 41 were between the ages of 12 and 15.
Some 7,500 Palestinian children have been detained by Israeli occupation forces since the year 2000, according to DCI.
Systematic violence and near total impunity
B´Tselem reports that its efforts to obtain accountability for Palestinian victims in dozens of cases have been met with stone-walling.
The group said its appeals to the occupation to deal “systemically” with the phenomenon of torture and violence at Etzion have gone nowhere:
Although B´Tselem contacted the Israel Police on this matter repeatedly, no official answer was given to the question whether any steps had been taken to address the phenomenon and, if so, what they were. All our communications with the police on the matter were met with denial.
B´Tselem said that the high number of consistent reports of torture suggest a systematic process:
The high number of reports B´Tselem has received regarding violent interrogations at the Etzion station, and the fact that they span several years, gives rise to heavy suspicion that this is not a case of a single interrogator who chose to use illegal interrogation methods, but rather an entire apparatus that backs him up and allows such conduct to take place.
B´Tselem itself issued a report about the torture of children at Etzion police station as far back as 2001.
Again, B´Tselem’s experience matches that of other Israeli groups, such as Yesh Din, that have found that efforts to obstain justice for Palestinians from their oppressors result in almost total and systematic impunity for the abusers.
Source:
http://electronicintifada.net
Posted: 17 June 2009
By Jonathan Cook
The rights of Palestinian children are routinely violated by Israel’s security forces
The rights of Palestinian children are routinely violated by Israel’s security forces, according to a new report that says beatings and torture are common. In addition, hundreds of Palestinian minors are prosecuted by Israel each year without a proper trial and are denied family visits. The findings by Defence for Children International (DCI) come in the wake of revelations from Israeli soldiers and senior commanders that it is “normal procedure” in the West Bank to terrorise Palestinian civilians, including children.Col Itai Virob, commander of the Kfir Brigade, disclosed last month that to accomplish a mission, “aggressiveness towards every one of the residents in the village is common”. Questioning included slaps, beatings and kickings, he said. As a result, Gabi Ashkenazi, the head of the armed services, was forced to appear before the Israeli parliament to disavow the behaviour of his soldiers. Beatings were “absolutely prohibited”, he told legislators.
Col Virob made his remarks during court testimony in defence of two soldiers, including his deputy commander, who are accused of beating Palestinians in the village of Qaddum, close to Nablus. One told the court that “soldiers are educated towards aggression in the IDF [army]”. Col Virob appeared to confirm his observation, saying it was policy to “disturb the balance” of village life during missions and that the vast majority of assaults were “against uninvolved people”.Last week, further disclosures of ill-treatment of Palestinians, some as young as 14, were aired on Israeli TV, using material collected by dissident soldiers as part of the Breaking the Silence project, which highlights army brutality.Two soldiers serving in the Harub battalion said they had witnessed beatings at a school in the West Bank village of Hares, south-west of Nablus, in an operation in March to stop stone-throwing. Many of those held were not involved, the soldiers said.During a 12-hour operation that began at 3am, 150 detainees were blindfolded and handcuffed from behind, with the nylon restraints so tight their hands turned blue. The worst beatings, the soldiers said, occurred in the school toilets.
According to one soldier’s testimony, a boy of about 15 was given “a slap that brought him to the ground”. He added that many of his comrades “just knee [Palestinians] because it’s boring, because you stand there 10 hours, you’re not doing anything, so they beat people up”.The picture from serving soldiers confirms the findings of DCI, which noted that many children were picked up in general sweeps after disturbances or during late-night raids of their homes.Its report includes a selection of testimonies from children it represented in 2008 in which they describe Israeli soldiers beating them or being tortured by interrogators. One 10-year-old boy, identified as Ezzat H, described an army search of his family home for a gun. He said a soldier slapped and punched him repeatedly during two hours of questioning, before another soldier pointed a rifle at him: “The rifle barrel was a few centimetres away from my face. I was so terrified that I started to shiver. He made fun of me. ”Another boy, Shadi H, aged 15, said he and his friend were forced to undress by soldiers in an orange grove near Tulkarm while the soldiers threw stones at them. They were then beaten with rifle butts. Jameel K, aged 14, described being taken to a military camp where he was assaulted and then had a rope tightened around his neck in a mock execution.
Yehuda Shaul, of Breaking the Silence, said soldiers treated any Palestinian older than 12 or 13 as an adult.“For the first time a high-ranking soldier [Col Virob] has joined us in raising the issue – even if not intentionally – that the use of physical violence against Palestinians is not exceptional but policy. A few years ago no senior officer would have had the guts to say this,” he said.The DCI report also highlights the systematic use of torture by interrogators from the army and the secret police, the Shin Bet, in an attempt to extract confessions from children, often in cases involving stone-throwing. Islam M, aged 12, said he was threatened with having boiling water poured on his face if he did not admit throwing stones and was then pushed into a thorn bush. Another boy, Abed S, aged 16, said his hands and feet were tied to the wall of an interrogation room in the shape of a cross for a day and then put in solitary confinement for 15 days. Last month, the United Nations Committee Against Torture, a panel of independent experts, expressed “deep concern” at Israel’s treatment of Palestinian minors. According to the DCI report, some 700 children are convicted in Israel’s military courts each year, with children older than 12 denied access to lawyers in interrogation.
It adds that interrogators routinely blindfold and handcuff child detainees during questioning and use techniques including slaps and kicks, sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, threats to the child and his family, and tying the child up for long periods. Such practices were banned by Israel’s Supreme Court in 1999 but are still widely documented by Israeli human rights groups. In 95 per cent of cases, children are convicted on the basis of signed confessions written in Hebrew, a language few of them understand. Once sentenced, the children are held in violation of international law in prisons in Israel where most are denied visits from family and receive little or no education. Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group, reported in November that soldiers rarely faced disciplinary action over illegal behaviour. Army data from2000 to the end of 2007 revealed that the military police had indicted soldiers in only 78 of 1,268 investigations. Most soldiers received minor sentences.
Source:
http://www.jonathan-cook.net
Posted on: 7 Apr 2008
On World Health Day, DCI/PS is publishing a report on the impact of the Israeli imposed blockade on Gaza on children suffering from cancer and blood diseases in the Strip.
Impact of the blockade imposed by Israel on Gaza on the provision of health services in the Gaza Strip.
This report highlights the impact of the blockade imposed by Israel on Gaza on the provision of health services in the Gaza Strip. In particular, it focuses on children suffering from cancer and blood diseases, and their inability to access life saving medicines and treatment inside or outside Gaza. Children have the right to enjoy “the highest attainable standard of health”, as stated in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), which Israel, as the occupying power, has a duty to facilitate. However, the closing of almost all of Gaza‟s border crossings constitutes a threat to the right of Palestinian children to receive appropriate medical treatment, and a direct threat to their right to life.
A. Introduction: The Gaza blockade
The Gaza Strip has 1.48 million inhabitants and one of the highest population densities in the world. Since the election of the Hamas government in January 2006, drastic restrictions have been imposed on the movement of people and goods in and out of the Strip. The restrictions were significantly tightened when an Israeli soldier was captured by three Palestinian factions in June 2006, and again in June 2007, when Hamas took control of the Gaza strip. Further sanctions were imposed following Israel‟s decision to declare Gaza a “hostile entity” in September 2007, and reductions in fuel and electricity supplies were implemented in September 2007 and January 2008.
Read the full report click here
By: Defence for Children International /Palestine.
Year: 2008
Link: http://www.dci-palestine.org/sites/default/files/gaza_child_cancer_report_2008.PDF
The recruitment and use of children in armed conflict is prohibited under international law.
DCI-Palestine has released the report:Recruitment and Use of Palestinian Children in Armed Conflict. The recruitment and use of children in armed conflict is prohibited under international law, and can take many forms, ranging from direct involvement in fighting, to subsidiary roles, such as acting as informants. The prohibition also includes using children as human shields. The report finds that in the context of the military occupation of the Palestinian Territory, both Israel and Palestinian armed groups have violated the prohibition.
The report covers an eight year period between 2004 and 2011 (the reporting period), and identifies three circumstances where children are particularly vulnerable to recruitment by both parties to the conflict:
- The use of children as human shields by the Israeli army;
- The recruitment of children as informants by Israeli interrogators; and
- The use of children in hostilities by Palestinian armed groups.
The key findings of the report include:
1. In 16 out of the 17 cases documented involving the use of Palestinian children as human shields, the event occurred after a ruling by the Israeli High Court of Justice declared the practice illegal. This suggests that the Israeli army is either ignoring the court’s judgment, or not properly ensuring compliance with its ruling. It is also significant to note that in only one case, was anybody held accountable for using a child as a human shield.
2. The report identifies 16 cases in which attempts were made by Israeli interrogators to recruit children as informants. Most attempts at recruitment occur during interrogation following arrest and the report identifies a number of methods, including the offer of money and early release. Due to the sensitive nature of the subject and the reluctance to talk, it is difficult to ascertain the scale of the problem, although there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that the practice is widespread.
3. Finally, the report identifies 26 cases involving the recruitment and use of children by Palestinian armed groups during the reporting period. It is significant to note that in 23 out of 26 cases (88 percent), the children were from the Gaza Strip. It is also significant that in all 26 cases (100 percent) the evidence indicates that the children were not forcefully conscripted, but volunteered to join a group or to participate in hostilities. When asked why they volunteered, the children gave reasons ranging from patriotism to the “oppression” of the occupation and the killing and imprisonment of family members. The report finds that the recruitment and use of children by Palestinian armed groups increases during large scale incursions by the Israeli army, but such involvement does not appear to be either widespread or systematic.
Read the full report here
Report´s name: Recruitment and use of Palestinian children in armed conflicto
By: Defence for Children International /Palestine
Year: 2012
Link: http://www.dci-palestine.org/sites/default/files/recruitment_report_-_final.pdf
Posted on: February 27, 2014
By IMEU
New settlements contruction & theft of Palestinian land
- In the approximately seven months since negotiations restarted between Palestinians and
Talking Peace While Making War: Benjamin Netanyahu and the Peace Process
Israelis in late July 2013, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has approved plans for11,700 new settlement units to be built on occupied Palestinian land in violation of international law. As each unit represents one house or apartment, most if not all of which will likely be home to more than one person, this means once these plans have been realized the settler population will increase by well over 20,000 people.
- Additionally, Israeli authorities have moved ahead with several other construction projects intended to confiscate Palestinian land, restrict the growth of Palestinian population centers, and cement Israeli control over parts of the occupied territories, including through the creation of dubious “national parks” and archeological digs on occupied Palestinian land.
Provocative military raids & killings of Palestinians
- Since the restart of negotiations in late July, Israeli forces have killed approximately 30 Palestinians, mostly unarmed civilians, including an 85-year-old man and a 15-year-old boy who was shot in the back with live ammunition. Most of these killings took place during aggressive raids carried out by the Israeli army into Palestinian towns, cities, and refugee camps.
- On February 26, 2014, Amnesty International released a report entitled “Trigger-happy: Israel’s use of excessive force in the West Bank,” which documented “mounting bloodshed and human rights abuses in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) as a result of the Israeli forces’ use of unnecessary, arbitrary and brutal force against Palestinians since January 2011.” The report found that “Israeli forces have displayed a callous disregard for human life by killing dozens of Palestinian civilians, including children, in the occupied West Bank over the past three years with near total impunity.” It noted that Israeli forces killed more Palestinians in the West Bank last year than were killed in 2011 and 2012 combined. The director of Amnesty’s Middle East and North Africa Programme, Philip Luther, concluded:
The frequency and persistence of arbitrary and abusive force against peaceful protesters in the West Bank by Israeli soldiers and police officers – and the impunity enjoyed by perpetrators – suggests that it is carried out as a matter of policy.”
Destruction of Palestinian homes & structures
- Since talks restarted in late July, Israel has destroyed approximately 400 Palestinian homes and other structures in the occupied territories. In the process, approximately 800 Palestinians were forcibly displaced, including approximately 350 children. According to the UN, in January 2014 alone, 100 Palestinian-owned structures were demolished in the occupied territories, displacing more than 180 people, including almost 100 children. Most of the Palestinian homes and other structures targeted for destruction by Israel are located in occupied East Jerusalem and in the Jordan Valley in the West Bank, areas that Israel has been attempting to squeeze the Palestinian population out of in order to cement its control. Israel normally destroys Palestinian structures on the pretext that they were built without permission from Israeli authorities, however such permission is nearly impossible for Palestinians to obtain.
- During this period, numerous human rights and humanitarian organizations, including Amnesty International, Oxfam, Save the Children, and the United Nations, have issued reports and statements,individually and in conjunction with other groups, condemning Israel’s policy of destroying Palestinian homes. On January 31, UN Humanitarian Coordinator James W. Rawley condemned a recent wave of Israeli demolitions, stating:
I am deeply concerned about the ongoing displacement and dispossession of Palestinians in Area C [the 60% of the West Bank under total and direct Israeli control], particularly along the Jordan Valley where the number of structures demolished more than doubled in the last year. This activity not only deprives Palestinians of access to shelter and basic services, it also runs counter to international law.”
On February 7, a group of 25 humanitarian organizations working in the occupied territoriesissued a statement expressing grave concern over the steep increase in Israeli demolitions of Palestinian homes and other structures. The statement noted that the number of demolitions carried out by Israel between July 2013, when talks restarted, and December 2013 increased by almost half over the same period in 2012, and the number of Palestinians displaced increased by almost three quarters.
Adding new demands to negotiations
- Since returning to office for his second and third terms as prime minister, Netanyahu has added at least two new demands to the negotiations that were never formally made by previous Israeli governments: Insisting on recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, andinsisting that four so-called settlement “blocs” built on occupied Palestinian land would become part of Israel under any peace deal, rather than the three previously demanded by Israeli negotiators. Settlement blocs encompass a far greater amount of land than the currently existing buildings within them cover, and are strategically located to divide Palestinian population centers from one another and to sever the West Bank into easily controlled cantons. In past negotiations, Israel has insisted on keeping the massive settlement blocs of Ariel, Gush Etzion and Maale Adumim, while Netanyahu reportedly also wants to keep Beit El, which is located near Ramallah in the central West Bank.
Provocative & inflammatory statements
- Since talks restarted, senior members of Netanyahu’s government, including ministers and deputy ministers, have made a steady stream of racist and inflammatory statements, including asserting that Jews are superior to non-Jews; accusing US Secretary of State John Kerry of anti-Semitism and attempting to “terrorize” Israel; claiming that Palestinians are “wolves” who don’t want peace; denying that Israel is in fact militarily occupying Palestinian land; declaring again and again eternal Israeli control over Palestinian East Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley, and the whole of the occupied territories; and pledging to fight against the creation of a Palestinian state in the occupied territories. Netanyahu has failed to demote or punish any of his ministers, despite the fact that they have repeatedly voiced such inflammatory rhetoric that in many instances directly contradicts his alleged support for the two-state solution.
- Netanyahu has made a number of provocative and inflammatory statements himself, including:
- On January 24, 2014, Netanyahu told a press conference in Davos, Switzerland, where he was attending the World Economic Summit, that he had no intention of removing Jewish settlers from the Jordan Valley in the West Bank, a requirement for the creation of a viable and genuinely independent Palestinian state, telling reporters: “I do not intend to evacuate any settlements or uproot a single Israeli.” Following criticism from right-wing allies who feared Netanyahu intended to leave settlers inside a Palestinian state, Netanyahu’s office replied by explaining that his statement was merely a ploy “designed to expose the true face of the Palestinian Authority” as he expected it would reject the idea of having settlers inside a Palestinian state.
- On December 19, 2013, Netanyahu promised members of his Likud party that he would never stop building settlements, declaring: “We will not stop, even for a moment, building our country and becoming stronger, and developing … the settlement enterprise.”
- On November 13, Netanyahu blamed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and alleged PA “incitement” for the killing of an Israeli soldier by a young Palestinian man on a bus in northern Israel, despite providing no evidence to back up the claim.
- In October, Netanyahu praised the recently deceased, notoriously racist Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, which sat in his two previous coalition governments. Netanyahu declared that Yosef, who preached that non-Jews “were born only to serve us [Jews]” and once called on God to “annihilate” and “exterminate” Arabs, was “one of the great Torah sages of our generation.” (See here for more on Yosef.)
- On October 6, Netanyahu blamed the PA after a nine-year-old girl living in a settlement was shot and wounded by an unknown assailant, despite having no evidence to connect Palestinian leaders to the incident.
Source:
http://imeu.org
Maps 3-7: Five Elements Defining the Palestinian Bantustan
Israel defines its policy of ensuring permanent control over the Occupied Territories as “creating facts on the ground.” 
In this conception, Israeli control must be made immune from any external or internal pressures to remove Israel from the Occupied Territories (which Israel vehemently denies is an occupation at all), as well as to foreclose forever the possibility of a viable and truly sovereign Palestinian state. Nevertheless, even Sharon recognizes that Israel needs a Palestinian state, since it can neither extend citizenship to the Territories’ three and a half million Palestinians nor deny it to them. It also needs a Palestinian state to relieve itself of the necessity of accepting the refugees. A Bantustan, a cantonized Palestinian mini-state controlled by Israel yet possessing a limited independence, thus solves Israel’s fundamental dilemma of how to keep control over the entire country yet “get rid of” its Palestinian population (short of actual “transfer”). The contours of that Bantustan are defined by five elements comprising Israel’s Matrix of Control as illustrated in the following maps: (1) Areas A and B; (2) the closure; (3) the settlement blocs; (4) the infrastructure; and (5) the Separation Barrier/Wall. A full (if complex) picture of the Matrix of Control is depicted in Map 10, and the truncated Palestinian mini-state Israel is creating in Map 11.
Map 3: Defining the Palestinian Bantustan. Element #1:West Bank Areas A, B and C
In the Oslo II agreement of 1995, the West Bank was divided into three Areas: A, under full Palestinian Authority control; B, under Palestinian civil control but joint Israeli-Palestinian security; and C, under full Israeli control. Although Area A was intended to expand until it included all of the West Bank except Israel’s settlements, its military facilities and East Jerusalem – whose status would then be negotiated – in fact the division became a permanent feature. Area A comprises 18% of the West Bank, B another 22%, leaving a full 60%, Area C, including most of Palestinian farmland and water, under exclusive Israeli control. These areas, comprising 64 islands, shape the contours of the “cantons” Sharon proposed as the basis of the future Palestinian state. The emerging Bantustan will thus consist of five truncated cantons: a northern one around Nablus and Jenin; a central one around Ramallah; a southern one around Bethlehem and Hebron; enclaves in East Jerusalem; and Gaza. In this scheme Israel will expand from its present 78% to 85-90%, with the Palestinian state confined to just 10-15% of the country.
Source:
http://www.icahd.org
Posted on: March 21, 2013
By Noura Erakat
A just solution to the conflict—whether it results in one state or two—would dismantle those institutions that privilege any ethnic, religious or national group.
As President Barack Obama embarks on his listening tour in the Middle East, he is likely to witness the impact of two decades of the Oslo peace process. Twenty years, dozens of summits and millions of dollars have brought Palestinians and Israel no closer to establishing a viable peace.
A Palestinian house reflected in an Israeli glass building in Haifa. (Credit: Sherene Seikaly, 2003)
The US-brokered agreement has been associated with a mantra of establishing two states for two peoples, living side by side. In fact, Israel has existed as a state since 1948 and Palestinians have remained internally displaced within that state, exiled from it and occupied by it in adjacent territories. More significantly, Jewish Israelis and non-Jewish Palestinians, Israeli citizens and stateless civilians alike, are inextricably populated throughout a single territorial entity under Israeli control. The call for two states is really a call for the separation of two populations based on ethno-national homogeneity. The proposal has failed, not just because of a lack of accountability, but because it is fundamentally flawed. Like prescribing aspirin to deal with cancer, Oslo offered truncated self-rule as a prescription for Jewish-Israeli settler-colonialism and domination.
Much like Marcus Garvey’s proposition in response to the Black Question in the United States, Zionists insisted upon the creation of a Jewish homeland in response to systemic anti-Semitism in Europe. The horror of the European Holocaust catalyzed the Zionist option and has, since then, eclipsed all other responses to institutionalized and ethnic-based bigotry. It has thus been excruciatingly difficult, if not impossible, to critique Jewish-Zionist domination in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) without falling prey to accusations of anti-Semitism. Fundamentally, however, both the opposition to anti-Semitism as well as to Jewish-Israeli privilege is rooted in an anti-domination discourse.
Establishing a Demographic Majority
Due to the insistence upon maintaining a Jewish demographic majority, Israel’s establishment and maintenance has necessitated the ongoing forced displacement of Muslim and Christian Palestinians. Well before Israel’s establishment, David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s chief architect and two-time prime minister, said that in order to be successful, Jews must comprise 80 percent of the population, hardly a plausible ratio in light of a vibrant Palestinian society in 1948. As put by the Israeli historian Benny Morris during an interview discussing his book, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited,
Ben Gurion…understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst…that has to be clear, it’s impossible to evade it. Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen there.
And so based on that vision, Zionists demolished 531 Arab villages and expelled some 700,000 Palestinians from what is today Israel proper. The “problem,” so to speak, is that Zionist forces did not expel allPalestinians. Instead, the 100,000 Palestinians remaining within Israel at the conclusion of the 1948 war today constitute a 1.2 million-person population, approximately 20 percent of Israel’s total population.
Had Israel declared its borders along the 1949 armistice line, maintaining an 80 percent demographic balance may have been possible. Israel, however, has never declared any borders and, in accordance with a plan first elaborated by Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Allon immediately after the 1967 war, it has steadily expanded into the rest of Mandate Palestine, home now to 4 million Palestinians.
As of October 2012, the balance of Jews to non-Jews throughout Israel and the OPT was approximately 5.9 million Jewish Israelis, including the settler population, and 6.1 million Palestinians.
At this juncture, Israel could abandon its commitment to a Jewish demographic majority and establish a state for all its citizens without distinction to religion. Its leaders and supporters reject this pluralistic, democratic option outright and equate it with the destruction of Israel.
Alternatively, Israel could annex the territories and impose an apartheid regime, wherein a minority rules over the majority. Israeli leaders reject this option but, notably, a significant majority of Israelis support it, as revealed by an October 2012 poll published in Haaretz. Although Israel refuses to formally acknowledge it, this reality currently exists as a matter of fact.
Perhaps Israel’s best option for preserving a Jewish demographic majority is the establishment of a Palestinian state and the de jure establishment of international borders—the choice it abandoned more than four decades ago. Indeed, this option has received the most fervent support from the international community and the formal Palestinian leadership, represented by the Palestinian Authority, as well as Israel’s most strident supporters.
Nevertheless, Israel has obliterated the two-state option since the signing of Oslo in 1993. It sanctioned, funded and encouraged, as a matter of national policy, the growth of the settler population in the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, from 200,000 to nearly 600,000. It built 85 percent of the separation barrier on occupied West Bank land, circumscribing its largest settlement blocs and effectively confiscating 13 percent of the territory. Rather than prepare Area C (62 percent of the West Bank, now under interim Israeli civil and military jurisdiction) for Palestinian control, it has entrenched its settlement-colonial enterprise. Israel’s siege has exacerbated the cultural, social and national distance between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. And its intense Judaization campaign in East Jerusalem has accelerated the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians there, hardly preparing it to become the independent capital of the future Palestinian state.
For liberal Zionists who believe that the preservation of Israel as a Jewish state and the protection of Palestinian dignity and freedom are compatible, this predicament is especially curious—why would Israel sabotage its best available option? Crudely put, because Israel’s preferred option is the one that it has always pursued: the establishment of absolute control over Palestinians as a fragmented and dispensable underclass, without distinction to their status as citizens of Israel or civilians under occupation.
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Zionists did not historically conceive of Palestinians as a national polity entitled to self-determination; they were not considered a “people” at all. Palestinian self-representation, resistance and international recognition, however, have forced even the most ardent Zionists to reconsider this proposition. Notwithstanding their accepted standing as a people today, Israel continues to deal with Mandate Palestine’s non-Jewish indigenous population as a demographic, national and cultural impediment to its settler-colonial project rather than a constituent or future neighbor.
Ethno-National Domination
Upon its establishment, Israel passed a series of laws that privileged its Jewish inhabitants and further dispossessed and marginalized its non-Jewish indigenous population. Two laws are particularly relevant: the Citizenship Law (1952) bifurcated Jewish nationality from Israeli citizenship and denationalized the Palestinian population. In doing so, the state instantly created a two-tiered system of rights: one available for Jews, who could be both nationals and citizens, and one for non-Jews, who could be citizens only. The Law of Return (1950) extended the right to Israeli citizenship and associated state benefits to any Jewish person, now a Jewish national as well, anywhere in the world.
Together these laws ensured that Jewish persons who lived beyond Israel’s boundaries and had no relationship to it had more rights than the state’s own non-Jewish Palestinian citizens, even when their meager numbers did not constitute one-fifth of Israel’s population, as they do today. Not only was a nascent Israel cementing its Jewish demographic majority, but by instituting a series of similar laws, it also preserved Jewish political, social and economic privilege.
Notwithstanding the significant demographic majority of Jews to non-Jews within Israel proper, Israel has treated its Palestinian citizens as a fifth column. The State Department’s 2005 Annual Human Rights Report notes that there is institutionalized legal and societal discrimination against Israel’s Christian, Muslim and Druze citizens. The government does not provide Israeli Arabs with the same quality of education, housing, employment and social services as Jews.
In addition to their socioeconomic subjugation, Israel has also worked to thwart the national identity of, and social solidarity among, its minority and indigenous Palestinian population.
In furtherance of its demographic priorities, some of these Israeli policies have had the express purpose of reducing the size of its Palestinian population. The Nationality and Entry into Israel Law (Temporary Order), better known as the Ban on Family Reunification, for example, prohibits the adjustment of status and acquisition of citizenship among spouses from the Occupied Palestinian Territory and “enemy states,” not coincidentally all the states with a high concentration of Palestinians: Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Iraq. In its January 2012 decision upholding the law, the Israeli High Court of Justice explained, “human rights are not a prescription for national suicide.”
But the threat is not just numeric; it is just as much about competing narratives and memory. At stake is the state’s own national mythology.
In 2011, Israel passed the State Budget Law Amendment. Popularly known as the Nakba Law, it penalizes, by revoking state funding, any institution that either challenges Israel’s founding as a Jewish and democratic state or commemorates Israel’s Independence Day as one of mourning or loss. The threat any such commemoration poses is a challenge to Israel’s narrative of righteous conception.
The Prawer Plan, named after its author, former deputy chair of the National Security Council Ehud Prawer, seeks to forcibly displace up to 70,000 Palestinian Bedouins from their homes and communities in the Negev Desert to urban townships to make room for Jewish-only settlements and a forest. The plan, approved in September 2011, has no demographic impact, as these Palestinians are already Israeli citizens. It does, however, violently sever these Bedouin communities from their agricultural livelihoods and centuries-long association with that particular land.
Similarly, in 2001 the High Court of Justice rejected an appeal from internally displaced Palestinians to return to the villages of Ikrit and Kafr Bir’im, near the Lebanon border, from which they were forcibly displaced in 1948. Like the Negev-based Palestinians, these Palestinians are Israeli citizens and therefore pose no demographic threat. In fact, they currently live only miles away from their demolished villages. Their return to them only threatens a Zionist narrative that Palestine was a land without a people for a people without a land. To further the erasure, Israel plans on building Jewish settlements where these communities once lived.
Israel’s land and housing planning policies in the Galilee demonstrate that the threat is not just about demographics and memory but the cohesion of Palestinians within the state, and the potential for Palestinian nationalism. In Nazareth, home to 80,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel, bidding rights for public building opportunities are reserved for citizens who have completed military service. This excludes nearly all of Nazareth’s Palestinian population, who do not serve in the Israeli military for historical and political reasons. In other Galilee cities, “Admissions Committees” can legally exclude Palestinians from their residential communities for being “socially unsuitable” based on their race or national origin alone. Together with its policy of Jewish settlement expansion within Israel as well as a matrix of similarly discriminatory urban planning laws, Israel forces its Palestinian citizens to live in noncontiguous ghettos throughout the state.
Palestinian refugees fundamentally disrupt these national goals: their return would shatter Israel’s Jewish majority, their presence is a living testament of Palestinian narrative and memory, and their historical claims dislocate the ghettoization of Palestinians within Israel today. The absence of refugees, however, does not reverse Israel’s policies aimed at diminishing the number of Palestinians, concentrating them geographically and separating them from one another.
Abandoning the right of return for refugees in this context is therefore not “pragmatic” at all. Refugees are not the impediment to establishing a viable peace; its most formidable impediment is Israel’s insistence upon Jewish primacy throughout Israel and the OPT.
Inadequate Remedies
A Palestinian state is hardly adequate to remedy these conditions. At best, it responds to Israel’s hegemonic ambitions by establishing an Arab Muslim and Christian corollary where Palestinians can assert their own ethno-national dominance. It disregards the broader Palestinian question, which stems from their forced displacement, exile and occupation. In contrast to the international enthusiasm today for a Palestinian state, in 1976 the UN General Assembly, in response to the establishment of Transkei, a self-governing authority within the South African Republic, passed Resolution 31/6 A, which condemned the establishment of bantustans as designed to consolidate the inhuman policies of apartheid, to destroy the territorial integrity of the country, to perpetuate white minority domination and to dispossess the African people of South Africa of their inalienable rights.
Even a single democratic, secular state without a concomitant anti-domination movement will not suffice to remedy these conditions. Irrespective of the number of states, the goal should be to dismantle those institutions that confer privilege to any particular ethnic, religious or national group. As indicated by the outstanding poverty gaps between blacks and whites in South Africa after the nominal end of apartheid in the early 1990s, this must include more than a simple removal of discriminatory laws. Transitional justice must feature rehabilitative policies as well. Equality under the law alone will do little to alleviate the criminalization of minority, indigenous communities, as indicated in the United States by the striking proportion of incarcerated Native Americans in the states where their numbers are still significant. To adequately remedy institutionalized discrimination and subjugation, reformed state institutions should also be imbued with an ethos of socioeconomic dignity for all its citizens and residents.
Failure to do so in Israel and the OPT will likely result in the de facto ghettoization, systematic impoverishment and criminalization of Palestinians regardless of their pre-existing status as citizens, civilians or refugees. Under such circumstances, in a one-state solution, their condition would be like Native American reservations, and in a two-state solution, they will be like South African bantustans. Both ought to be rejected in favor of a democratic and dignified one-state formula as only the first step.
Source:
http://www.thenation.com
Posted on: 19 August 2013
By Jessica Purkiss
After a long career as a journalist covering the apartheid in South Africa, Allister Sparks travelled Israel and Palestine, shocked by what he witnessed he was compelled to comment, “When I look at Israel, when I traveled through the West Bank, I was looking at Bantustans-totally unviable, impossible states”.
Bantustans were Apartheid South Africa’s answer to the “problem” of the black majority. Under the Bantu Authorities Act, the man behind the vision, Dr. Hendrick Verwoerd, set about cutting little islands in the map of South Africa that were to become “states” exclusively created for the black population.
Under the façade that there would be no peace until the white man had his country and the black man had his, each island was declared an independent state. They had their own governments and infrastructure, but in reality they were merely impoverished puppet states controlled by South Africa and acted as a smokescreen for the continued policies of Apartheid.
In his speech to congress Verwoerd referenced the conflict between the Arabs and Jews as one in which the solution chased was Apartheid. Years later, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have met in Jerusalem to carve the map of peace for Israel and Palestine to the shape of a one state for them, one state for us solution, in the hope of ending the decades long conflict.
But the question remains what will these two states look like in a two state solution, or rather what will Palestinian statehood look under this vision?
Jeff Halper, Director of the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions, said to Memo that he believes Israel had created a situation in which it is impossible to detach any definable territory from Israel. He said, “There’ s one territory under Israeli control from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River, with one army, even one electrical system and one water system.”
Shortly after the commencement of talks Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the approval of 1,200 new settlement units to be constructed in the West Bank and annexed East Jerusalem. Settlement construction has eaten away at Palestinian land, with the 125 Israeli sanctioned but internationally deemed illegal settlements carving up the diminishing West Bank and increasingly encircling the major cities.
Meanwhile the remaining land of the West Bank is subject to further fracturing. A network of Jewish only roads connect the flourishing settler communities from their homes in the West Bank to Israel proper, a 8 meter high Separation Wall casts a shadow over the Palestinian villages whose land it cuts through, while military checkpoints dot the West Bank.
“Israel doesn’t want a two state solution, it wouldn’t be building settlements if it did, but Israel also can’t accept one state because it wants a Jewish state. Just like South Africa, the only way to control a whole country and exclude Palestinians is apartheid,” said Halper.
Following the announcement, Netanyahu claimed that the building of further settlements would not derail the peace talks because they would be built in the urban blocks he believes will become part of Israel proper in the final agreement. The real issue, the leader said, is creating a de-militarized Palestinian state to finally recognize and accept the one and only Jewish State. Theechoes of Verwoerd can be heard as he stood up and delivered his Senate speech with conviction, “After all, there cannot be domination by Whites over Blacks where there are two neighboring states, the White state and the Black state…A White state, a big and strong White nation, along with various Bantu national units and areas (or states, if you like)”.
The Bantustans were seen by the world as fantasy entities with governments and borders that gave them a veneer of reality. Similarly a de-militarized “state” of Palestine as envisaged by Israel leads one to consider when a state ceases to be a state.
This vision of Palestinian statehood has been set forward since the Oslo Accords and reiterated through years of failed negotiations. Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reportedly said to the Former Italian Prime Minister Massimo D’Alemhe that the Bantustan model was the most appropriate solution to the conflict.
The Oslo Accords divided Palestine into three areas, with a 60% slice of the West bank, called Area C, placed under complete Israeli control, where it still remains today. Memo spoke to Chris McGreal, a journalist who has written extensively on the subject as Guardian correspondent in both Johannesburg in the 90’s and Jerusalem during the second intifada. He said this slice contains only around 2% of the population, corroborating South Africa’s Bantustan model.
“It was about putting people where you want them, about White South Africans keeping as much land while shedding responsibility for of the black population. Take as much land for as little people, that to me is the Bantustan model.”
The Bantustans led to the herding of the majority black population into reserves that made up only 13% the land. Israel extends the Bantustan model past the West Bank, to include Palestinian residents of Israel. Under a similar façade of the protection of rights, Israel is in the process of passing the Prawer Plan. Through policies of displacement and dispossession the plan aims to relocate 70,000 Palestinian Bedouin from 35 unrecognized villages in the Naqab Desert, southern Israel, to government-regulated towns and cities that will condense them into an urban area that occupies only one percent of the land.
The Olso Accords also established the Palestinian Authority, the body that governs the West Bank. According to Na’eem Jeenah, a South African journalist, “What Oslo did was create an authority, which allowed Israel to still control the occupied Palestinian territory, but control it through a Palestinian authority. In fact, Israel controls the borders. Israel controls taxes. Israel controls all kinds of things-access in and out of that area,”
“Israel can’t create a situation of control without a pretend president of a Palestinian Bantustan, that’s Abu Mazen,” said Halper.
When asked at what point a state ceases to be a state, McGreal pointed to the reality that some countries in Africa are so dependent on Western aid, for example, they are effectively neo-colonies. Aside from defining physical borders, he argued there are much more intricate details in establishing a Palestinian state. He pointed to the example of water, a commodity Israel takes from the West Bank and questioned whether they would be willing to give up access to the water.
“The real danger of a Bantustan parallel is that you emerge with a Palestinian leadership that is effectively dependant on Israel, this would be the definition of a Bantustan Palestine. Israel may cede sovereignty but will seek to agree some kind of control,” he said.
The essence of the Bantustans was the creation of a fantasy entity for one race exclusively. The entity was to resemble a state but not to be a state, with sovereignty but dependent, run by a leader that governed the oppressed but who was a puppet for the oppressor. As settlements flourish amid peace talks discussing Palestinian statehood is this that far from the reality Israel has and continues to create today?
Posted on: Jan 4, 2013
By Wayne Madsen
Palestinians throw stones toward Israeli troops during clashes in the village of Kafr Qaddum near the West Bank city of Nablus on December 21, 2012
No other country in the world recognizes the existence of “Judea and Samaria” but 142 nations recognize the independence and statehood of Palestine.
Area C of the West Bank of Palestine is under full Israeli political and military control and there are plans underway to annex Area C to Israel. The Israeli military has security control over Area B, largely Palestinian rural land and in danger of being gobbled up by Israeli annexation if the expansionist Israel Home Party, Yisrael Beiteinu, and the right-wing of Likud have their way. Area A is under the control of the Palestinian Authority and includes its administrative headquarters city of Ramallah and other Palestinian population centers.
When one looks at a map of the Israeli area boundaries in the West Bank one can only be reminded of the patchwork quilt of majority African “Bantustans” created by apartheid South Africa. In fact, what the Benjamin Netanyahu government has offered to Palestine in the way of independence is for an unarmed and defenseless entity to exist as an unequal part of a greater Israeli zone of influence with Area C being exchanged for Israel’s recognition of Palestine’s faux “independence.” Netanyahu has referred to the co-principality of Andorra as a template for Palestine. Andorra’s actual heads of state are a Spanish Catholic bishop and the French president. Andorra’s actual independence from Spain and France is highly debatable, even though the country is a member of the UN and Council of Europe.
Such contrivances as planned by Israel for Palestine have been seen before in Bantustans with the names of Transkei, Ciskei, Venda, and Bophuthatswana.
And in what should be taught to every African student, Israel was not only a major supporter of apartheid South Africa but it had close trade and security relations with the Bantustans because it saw them as a model for future “Arabstans” in the occupied Palestinian territories. These “Arabstans” now exist in the Gaza Strip and Areas A, B, and C of the West Bank.
Close Israeli-South African relations were capped off by a visit from South African Prime Minister B. J. Vorster to Israel in April 1976, the first by a South African head of government. Israel and South Africa jointly manufactured military hardware and weapons and electronic and signals intelligence systems as a way to bypass UN sanctions imposed on the apartheid state. And the two countries, with the assistance of Taiwan, jointly produced nuclear weapons and the fissionable U-235 uranium isotope, testing an atomic bomb in the South Atlantic near the Prince Edward Islands on September 22, 1979.
Although South Africa’s self-proclaimed Bantustans were only recognized by South Africa, Israel maintained de facto relations with the four entities. Transkei, Ciskei, and Bophuthatswana maintained trade missions in Tel Aviv staffed by Israelis. In fact, these Israelis were using passports from the “republics,” as well as other diplomatic contrivances, to support the illegal side of Mossad and international Jewish lobbying and Israeli influence-peddling operations worldwide.
With Transkei, Israel maintained close intelligence and counter-insurgency ties. Its Prime Minister George Matanzima, a nephew of then-imprisoned African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, visited Israel in 1984, along with four Transkei Cabinet ministers.
But it was Ciskei, headed by President Lennox Sebe, which provided Israel with its closest Bantustan ally. Sebe traveled to Israel, supported illegal settlements in occupied Palestine, and received Israeli assistance, especially for his brutal police force. Relations were so close between the Bantustan and Israel, the Ciskei capital of Bisho had a sister city relationship with Ariel, an illegal Israeli settlement on the West Bank. A number of Israeli companies, many led by Likud officials, established themselves in Ciskei. Mossad and Israel Defense Force personnel helped Ciskei establish paramilitary units and an intelligence service. Ciskei’s flag shared its light blue and white colors with those of Israel’s flag.
Bophuthatswana resembled Palestine’s Area A and B territories. The Tswana “homeland” consisted of eight non-contiguous enclaves within South Africa. The Bantustan’s Sun City casino not only attracted top Western entertainers who did not want to run afoul of the sanctions on the apartheid regime, but also a fair number of Israeli-South African dual national organized crime figures who ran casino operations and opened up nearby strip clubs and bordellos catering to inter-racial sex.
Bophuthatswana maintained an unofficial embassy in Israel and the Bantustan’s President Lucas Mangope was received by a number of Israeli officials, including the famed General Moshe Dayan. Israel provided Bophuthatswana’s official armed forces with training and equipment and, in 1994, when Mangope was overthrown, he could only rely on the support of the white racist Afrikaner Weerstand Beweging (AWB), which was also believed to have received covert support from Israeli trainers and equippers. North West University in the former capital of Bophuthatswana, Mafikeng, honored the late Mangope in 2010. Unsurprisingly, the university also maintains close ties with Ben Gurion University in Israel.
Venda also received security assistance from Israel and its president, Patrick Mphephu, paid an official visit to Israel in 1980. In 1983, Israel hosted a large delegation from the Venda Chamber of Commerce.
Israel showed every intention of supporting other Bantustans after they became fully independent. In 1985, Israel received KwaZulu Bantustan’s Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi. There were low-level Israeli links, mostly by Israeli military intelligence operatives in the guises of tourists and backpackers, with the Bantustan governments of Lebowa and Qwa Qwa in South Africa and Kavangoland, Ovamboland, and East Caprivi.
The Bantustans disappeared after the end of apartheid and were incorporated back into South Africa. Today, South Africa has implemented plans to boycott any goods originating from Israeli businesses in the occupied territories. Israel, the second-most ardent supporter of the Bantustans, after apartheid South Africa, has cried foul and is accusing South Africa of anti-Semitism. However, Israel stands guilty of racism and pro-segregation in Africa. It is a shameful history that Israel should not be permitted to run away from.
Source:
http://217.218.67.22/
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