The rhetoric of "peace"

The rhetoric of "peace"
Ziyaad Lunat, The Electronic Intifada, 15 April 2009


Benjamin Netanyahu's promise of "economic peace" means the beginning of a new stage of colonization. (Moti Milrod/MaanImages)

The Israelis have offered the Palestinians many types of "peace." Their first attempt to reach out to the Palestinians was in 1948 with an offer of a "racist peace." Ethnic cleansing was the basis of a "racist peace" where Zionist terrorists drove out two thirds of the Palestinian population from their homes. Its logic was that expulsion would end strife between Zionists and Palestinians (by eliminating one side) enabling the Zionists to enjoy peace in an ethnic Jewish haven. The Palestinians, stubborn as they were, refused a racist Zionist state as the basis for "peace."

Israel relentlessly extended its hand to the Palestinians offering them a "military peace" instead. Deterrence was the basis of a "military peace" where a Zionist state armed to the teeth would instill fear in the hearts of the Palestinians. Its logic was that through military deterrence the Palestinians would accept their condition of displacement. Soon after their expulsion in 1948, Palestinian refugees continuously attempted to return to their properties. The Zionists initiated a campaign of reprisals to deny their right to return. Hundreds were killed in this way, massacres included Qibya in 1953, Lebanon in 1982, Jenin in 2002 and Gaza in 2009. Palestinians however rejected Zionist military domination as the basis for "peace."

While the above two peace offers were crude, Israel devised an "apartheid peace" as a more elaborate proposal to the Palestinians, hoping they would finally reciprocate. Physical separation between Jews and Arab Palestinians was the basis for an "apartheid peace." Its logic was that the Palestinians would be given limited autonomy to manage their internal affairs and build their own institutions but their demands would have to eventually fall short of full sovereignty. Some Palestinians were co-opted in signing the Oslo accords in 1993, accepting apartheid as the basis for "peace."

During the following years, Israel consolidated its vision for an "apartheid peace," generously referred to as a "two-state solution." More land was taken from the Palestinians for building of Jewish-only colonies and Jewish-only roads, fragmenting the territories. House demolitions cleared unwanted Palestinians from certain areas and a wall was built to encircle the ghettos. Israel's "peace" offensive divided the Palestinians into those who accepted Israel's apartheid, namely the Palestinian Collaborationist Authority in Ramallah, and those who refuse to subordinate their most basic rights to Israel's racism.

In the latest peace overture, the new Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu promised the Palestinians "economic peace," this time literally. Previous Israeli governments have used the economy to pacify the Palestinians and allure them with short-term individualist and materialist gains. Netanyahu however is astute and understands that the circumstances today are different than in the 1970s or 1990s. He has even more enthusiastic support from the Palestinian side and the international community.

Since taking office, Salam Fayyad, the unelected prime minister of the Palestinian Collaborationist Authority, has worked with Quartet envoy Tony Blair to develop an economic plan to "revitalize" the Palestinian economy. The Paris conference at the end of 2007 raised $7.4 billion for the "Palestinian Reform and Development Plan." It called for the creation of "an enabling environment for private sector growth." The document says nothing about basic freedoms or human rights. Moreover, it positions Israel as an implementing partner, normalizing its status as the occupier and explicitly accepting the existing colonizing structures. The plan, for example, calls for "tourist-friendly checkpoints."

Much due to pressure from the security establishment, Israel had in the past been reluctant to facilitate these initiatives, refusing to remove the odd roadblock or allow foreign investor access. It conditioned such a steps to demonstrable willingness on the Palestinian side to police and contain resistance to Israel's colonialist actions. Collaborationist security forces passed a crucial test during Israel's 22-day-long massacre in Gaza, when hundreds of protesters were violently repressed and prevented from expressing their revulsion at the attacks and from reaching Israeli military checkpoints. The security forces acted as loyal subcontractors on behalf of Israel. Israel is now willing to reward the Ramallah clique with more "confidence-building measures" as an incentive for continued collaboration.

Netanyahu's "economic peace" proposal should not only be seen in this context but crucially too as the beginning of a new stage of colonization. Israel has been successful in dividing the Palestinians into different groups, separated politically and geographically. Israel has also been successful in creating a collaborating political class. Israel failed however to squash their desire for freedom and their right to resist aggression. In other words, Israel was successful in the physical colonization of the land, de facto controlling the whole of historic Palestine, but failed to colonize Palestinian minds, for the most part, at least. This new stage will target the latter.

A sample of what is to come can already be seen within the Palestinian Collaborationist Authority's bureaucracy. Employing roughly 300,000, it is the biggest employer in the occupied territories. These employees and their families are dependent on the bureaucracy to sustain their livelihoods, raising incentives for compliance and creating costs for dissent, namely loss of income and political reprisals. Netanyahu's "economic peace" will mean that further to the existing political stratification of the Palestinian society, a capitalist class will be co-opted to subordinate the Palestinian working class to the requirements of the market. It is expected that the Palestinians will become too comfortable with the newly bestowed economic freedoms and relegate political rights to a secondary concern. The plan strives for the creation of a homo economicus, an individualist, self-interested man, a slave to the capitalist structures of inequality. Dependence on this neo-liberal structure-in-formation is aimed at removing individual and collective agency. The resulting false consciousness -- under the framework of hegemonic capitalism -- betrays the true relation of forces between the occupier and the occupied.

Of course, it is not all doom and gloom; the Palestinians have survived worst attempts on their existence. This mode of thinking -- that the Palestinians can simply be manipulated -- is too naive in its underpinnings. It is linked to an orientalist view of the lesser people, which sees them as devoid of principles, with the assumption that Palestinians with a full stomach will accept their condition of oppression. Israel has butchered the word "peace" with its many strands. Netanyahu's latest proposal of an "economic peace" will go to the history books as one of the many failed attempts to control a people with a thirst for freedom and justice.

Ziyaad Lunat is an activist for Palestine and co-founder of the Palestine Solidarity Initiative (www.palestinesolidarity.org). He can be reached at z.lunat A T gmail D O T com.

Aid rots outside Gaza

Erin Cunningham , The Electronic Intifada, 16 April 2009


People and goods are prevented from entering the Gaza Strip at the Egyptian-controlled Rafah crossing, January 2009. (Matthew Cassel)

AL-ARISH, Egypt (IPS) - Hundreds of thousands of tons of aid intended for the Gaza Strip is piling up in cities across Egypt's North Sinai region, despite recent calls from the United Nations to ease aid flow restrictions to the embattled territory in the wake of Israel's 22-day assault.

Food, medicine, blankets, infant food and other supplies for Gaza's 1.5 million people, coming from governments and non-governmental agencies around the world, are being stored in warehouses, parking lots, stadiums and on airport runways across Egypt's North Sinai governorate.

Egypt shares a 14-kilometer border with Gaza that has been closed more or less permanently since the Islamist movement Hamas took control of the territory in June 2007.

Flour, pasta, sugar, coffee, chocolate, tomato sauce, lentils, date bars, juice, chickpeas, blankets, hospital beds, catheter tubes and other humanitarian-based items are all sitting in at least eight storage points in and around al-Arish, a city in North Sinai approximately 50 kilometers from Gaza's border.

Three months after the end of the war, much of the aid has either rotted or been irreparably damaged as a result of both rain and sunshine, and Egypt's refusal to open the Rafah crossing.

"To be honest, most of this aid will never make it to Gaza," a local government official told IPS on condition of anonymity. "A lot of the food here will have to be thrown away."

The Gaza Strip was the target of Israel's three-week operation codenamed "Cast Lead," where both the enclave's civilian population and an already decrepit infrastructure were pummeled by powerful Israeli weaponry, leaving some 1,400 dead and over 5,000 injured by the time a unilateral ceasefire was called by Israel 18 January.

The UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) head in Gaza, John Ging, told IPS last week that the stranglehold on relief efforts in the post-war period was having devastating consequences, both physical and emotional, on the strip's population.

The last Situation Report released by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) 30 March stated that the "amounts and types of deliveries reaching Gaza continue being subject to random restrictions and unpredictable clearance procedures, creating major logistical problems for humanitarian agencies."

Food aid and other essential humanitarian supplies for Gaza began pouring into Egypt at the outset of the war, and medical supplies were routed through Rafah -- Gaza's only crossing that bypasses Israel -- throughout the assault, while food aid was directed through Israel.

All aid meant for Gaza via Egypt must currently pass through either al-Auja or Kerem Abu Sellem, Egypt's commercial crossings with Israel, and is subject to both Israeli-Egyptian trade specifications and Israeli import law.

Much of what is being stored in North Sinai -- including food items like lentils, pasta, chickpeas, and juice -- has been deemed by Israel to be "non-essential" to life in the Gaza Strip.

Two thousand "family boxes" -- containing essential supplies for Palestinian families and donated by the Italian non-governmental organization (NGO) Music for Peace -- were recently rejected at the al-Auja crossing by Israeli authorities because they each contained a jar of honey, the NGO's President, Stefano Robera, told IPS in al-Arish.

Representatives from international NGOs currently in both al-Arish and Rafah say not even a sliver of the aid donated is going through any of Egypt's transit points, despite assurances by the Egyptian government that the Rafah crossing remains open for "humanitarian considerations."

OCHA says Rafah was closed to all cargo for the month of March, and was opened for just two days to send blankets and mattresses into the Gaza Strip.

Since 27 December 2008, the day Israel launched its war, just 43 trucks of what OCHA calls "human food products" were sent into the Gaza Strip via Rafah. The first truckload was sent in 10 January, 2009, more than two weeks after the war began.

Some organizations coordinating their aid through Egypt say North Sinai governor Mohamed Abdel Fadil Shousha asked them to simply donate the goods to local NGOs. Other witnesses told IPS that Egyptian security forces tasked with guarding aid supplies have been giving it away to residents of al-Arish.

The Rafah border crossing opened in November 2005 when Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) signed an Agreement on Movement and Access as part of Israel's "disengagement" from the Gaza Strip.

In coordination with the PA, Egypt allowed passengers, cargo and humanitarian aid to pass under the supervision of both EU monitors and Israeli security. When Hamas, the Islamist movement democratically elected in 2006, seized control of the Gaza Strip in June 2007, Egypt closed its border with the coastal enclave.

The Egyptian government has since refused to open the Rafah crossing to any cargo or non-medical humanitarian aid, leaving the supplies in a state of political limbo and Gaza's population grappling with the after-effects of both deadly war and continued economic siege.

Human rights organizations have recently said that not only Israel but Egypt, the EU and the US could be in violation of international law for failing to adhere to the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access, and consequently violating the basic human rights of Gaza's 1.5 million people -- particularly in the post-war period.

All rights reserved, IPS - Inter Press Service (2009). Total or partial publication, retransmission or sale forbidden.

Punitive house demolitions as "deterrence"

Marian Houk, The Electronic Intifada, 15 April 2009


Palestinians inspect the house of a Palestinian fighter after it was demolished by Israeli troops during a military operation in the West Bank town of Sedia near Tulkarem, March 2008. (Mouid Ashqar/MaanImages)

By the time we arrived in Sur Bahir, a Palestinian village near Bethlehem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on the afternoon of 7 April, it was calm. At the entrance to the village, in a small traffic circle where three olive trees were planted, there were rocks all over the road, the only sign of what had happened suddenly earlier that day. Everything was all over, but the grief and the anger.

At 6am, some 2,000 Israeli border police and special forces and other personnel descended on the village to demolish a wing of a house that belonged to the family of a Palestinian construction worker who allegedly went on a rampage while operating a bulldozer last July.

Three Israelis were killed and dozens injured before the bulldozer driver, Husam Taysir Dwayat, was stopped when he was shot by passers-by. He was then finished off by a special elite mobile unit of trained sharp-shooters who ride around Jerusalem on black motorcycles with red military license plates, wearing black helmets and black jackets, and carrying black weapons slung across their chests and shoulders.

There was little hesitation by Israeli officials, journalists and society at large before they asserted that this had been a terror attack. It was not thought for a moment that it might have been an accident, or a mistake gone badly wrong. There was a later suggestion that the driver was drug-dependent and was having sudden withdrawal symptoms, but that was not reported in the mainstream media. According to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolition, "lawyers for the Dwayat family argued that he was suffering from a mental illness."

Meanwhile, the family of the driver has maintained that Dwayat was innocent and that he did not intend to attack. Nevertheless, there were immediate calls for the demolition of Dwayat's family home, which was carried out last week.

Punitive house demolitions

Hundreds of Palestinian homes, many belonging to families of Palestinians accused by Israel of "terrorism," were demolished in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) during the first and second Palestinian intifadas.

But in 2005, an Israeli army panel headed by Major General Udi Shani reported that punitive demolitions had no deterrent effect that would prevent any future "terror" attacks. The Shani panel "unequivocally recommended putting an end to the demolition of homes in the territories [and] the chief of staff and the defense minister both fully endorsed and adopted the recommendation," according to an article published in the Israeli daily Haaretz last July.

Then, last year, after a series of what were labeled as attacks perpetrated by Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, Israel's then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak both backed the calls for punitive demolition of the homes of the alleged attackers' family members. Olmert also supported demands by right-wing groups that the surviving family members of the alleged attackers be deprived of all social benefits. There have also been calls for the deportation or exile of alleged attackers' family members.

Before the first bulldozer incident in July of last year, a Palestinian taxi driver from the Jebal Mukaber neighborhood near Sur Bahir went into a prominent West Jerusalem religious seminary that belonged to the national religious settler movement, the Mercaz Ha Rav, and apparently began shooting at random before being killed by two armed bystanders. The Palestinian gunman and eight students died. The home of the Palestinian gunman's family was reportedly recently partly sealed, for punitive reasons -- but not demolished. It is not clear why the procedure was different, but one media report suggested that one reason was because part of the building was rented out to a "foreigner."

Immediately after the attack on the seminary, the family house of a fugitive Palestinian fighter was demolished in the West Bank town of Bethlehem. About a week later, an Israeli assassination squad killed the fugitive and three of his friends while they were sitting in a car outside a bakery in Bethlehem.

Orna Kohn, senior attorney at the Haifa-based Adalah organization, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, said in an interview last year that house confiscation or demolition "is not supposed to be used as a punishment, but only as a preventive measure," according to Article 119 of the 1945 British Mandatory regulations that are still being used by Israeli authorities.

Because the Shani committee had reported in 2005 "that house demolition is not effective, because it is not really working as a preventive measure," Kohn said, "it would be difficult for the military to say now it is destroying a house as a preventive measure after their own experts said it does not prevent anything."

Purely punitive demolitions, done as retaliation or punishment, are now formally justified by the newly reinstated doctrine of "deterrence."

Other demolitions

Punitive demolition is very different from house demolition for "administrative" or "judicial" reasons based on bureaucratic irregularities such as lack of a permit, or exceeding the terms and conditions of an issued permit, though the net effect is also punitive. There was, for example, a house demolition in the Burj al-Laqlaq quarter, overlooking the Dome of the Rock, in the Old City of East Jerusalem on 6 April. The Israeli authorities claimed the home was demolished for lack of a building permit -- though the family had applied for a permit twice.

In a miserable irony, the Old City demolition was carried out so precipitously that the family did not have time to destroy their building themselves -- a contractor had already been hired for this purpose, in order to save money, because it would cost less than the fees that Israeli authorities will bill for their demolitions. Ir Amim, a Jerusalem-based organization that works "for an equitable and stable Jerusalem with an agreed political future," has written in its "Layman's Guide to Home Demolitions" that "the authorities approach the violator and say: 'Demolish your own home or we will do it for you, which will be much more damaging and much more expensive.' Of the 85 demolitions carried out by the Jerusalem Municipality in 2008, 27 were 'voluntary.'"

Also on 6 April, according to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), an Israeli newspaper reported that the Jerusalem municipality has asked the Municipal Tender Committee to approve the hiring of a company specializing in demolishing buildings by means of controlled explosions, where it is difficult to do so by bulldozers, "because of technical limitations or a lack of time."

According to ICAHD, "house demolitions are clearly a case of collective punishment, which is illegal under international law, in particular Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention (1949)."

In the year 2000, Ir Amim reported, there were only nine house demolitions in East Jerusalem -- after "then-Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek announced that he would refrain from most demolitions in East Jerusalem, saying in effect that it was not right to punish people for building illegally when they were not permitted to build legally." However, Ir Amim says, "there are in excess of 1,500 outstanding judicial demolition orders that have been issued but not yet executed ... these orders never expire, and tens of thousands of residents in East Jerusalem live in perpetual fear that they may awake to the sound of bulldozers on any given morning. Consequently ... every demolition understandably evokes widespread fear throughout East Jerusalem."

Jerusalem's new mayor, Nir Barakat, has vowed to carry out home demolition orders vigorously, under the guise of implementing the "rule of law."

According to B'Tselem, some 688 Palestinian houses were demolished in East Jerusalem alone between 1999 and 2008, the majority by the Jerusalem municipality, the rest by the Israeli Ministry of Interior. At least another 207 Palestinian homes were destroyed in East Jerusalem between 1988 and 1998 -- and three years of data are missing for that decade.

Thousands of Palestinian homes have also been demolished in Gaza, although Israel claims this in most cases this was done for reasons of "military necessity." In addition, 4,000 buildings were destroyed (and tens of thousands damaged) in various operations before and after Israel's unilateral "disengagement" from Gaza, including during the recent invasion.

The Jerusalem Post recently reported that the Israeli army was very pleased with the performance of unmanned D-9 bulldozers that were used in the Gaza Strip during the closing days of the Gaza invasion. D-9s are huge machines built by the Caterpillar Corporation and then armored by Israeli Military Industries. It was reported in 2003 that work was beginning on the development of a version that can be operated unmanned by remote control -- but their use has never previously been confirmed and an Israeli army spokesperson stated to this reporter that "its general policy is not to discuss the type of weapons we used."

During her recent visit to the region, US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton was widely quoted as saying that demolition and eviction orders were "unhelpful." But she was speaking about pending demolition and eviction orders issued against hundreds of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem -- 88 in the Silwan neighborhood alone, just outside the walls of the Old City in East Jerusalem, to make way for what one Israeli lawyer who defends Palestinian rights called a "Jewish theme park."

Punitive demolition then killing

The house that was punitively destroyed last week in Sur Bahir is at the end of a road in the village, with a magnificent panoramic view across the hilly countryside covered with greenery and spring flowers, and Palestinian villages and Jewish settlements. By the time we got there on the day of the demolition, boys and young men were standing in a group outside in the sun. Inside a part of the house that was still intact, women were sitting in sympathy with the dead bulldozer driver's distressed mother, whose face was red and swollen from weeping.

The demolition order was handed down 30 days prior to the demolition, but the family said they had no advance notice that the order would be carried out the day it was enforced. They were in the process of appealing the order in court, on the grounds that it would be collective punishment affecting innocent people. Reportedly, some 14 people live there.

The border police had, that morning, forcibly moved out some family members living in the part of the structure marked for demolition. Dwayat's mother fainted in the process. His father was handcuffed and restrained. The soldiers and police entered every room in the entire building and overturned chairs and emptied cupboards, cabinets and armoires. The contents were still strewn on the floor, and a child was searching for his shoes.

A birdcage was perched in the spring sunshine, at the very top edge of the demolished part of the structure, overlooking the destroyed building and the panoramic view. A small bird was moving around inside the cage, and singing. Other birds, flying free in the mild spring air, were also singing.

"It is the most precious, wonderful, esteemed bird," said Dwayat's father, Taysir, of the bird in the cage. "It is Husam's bird." Suddenly, the frozen defiance in his face melted, and his eyes filled with tears. He struggled to regain composure.

The door to the damaged part of the family home is shut with a welded iron bar, and a big sign with words in red letters -- printed in Hebrew and hand-written in Arabic -- warned against entry because the premises were uninhabitable.

Dwayat's father said that he was told that he is not allowed to remove the rubble, even though he fears that water will collect amidst the debris, and damage the remaining part of the house. "They told us it is now under the control of the State of Israel," he said. He also said that he feared he would be billed for the costs of the demolition, which is apparently the current Israeli practice. "We had two lawyers working on our appeal, and neither of them is worth a damn," he said bitterly.

He vowed that the entire family was prepared to move into a tent, and that they would fight the Israeli occupation.

On our way out of the village, we stopped in the traffic circle where the rocks still dotted the street. One man who had been near the scene that morning showed us the blood of 20-year-old motorist Iyad Azmi Uweisat still visible on the white stone in the center, beneath the olive tree, where he died after being shot around 10am. It was apparently shortly after the house demolition took place a couple hundred meters away.

"There were about 30 soldiers there," said 46-year-old Mahmoud al-Toon, known as Abu al-Zeddine. The soldiers had apparently set up a checkpoint for "security procedures." But, the witness said, some of the Israeli soldiers were sitting in the circle, others were sitting on a wall across the street, and they were eating. Suddenly, there was a deafening outburst of Israeli shooting. "They were all shooting at once," al-Toon said, and the young Palestinian driver was killed. It was the first shooting death, ever, in the village, he said, commenting that it was briefly like a war zone.

Al-Toon also volunteered that the Israeli soldiers picked up all the bullets or bullet casings that were strewn about the roads around the traffic circle -- but they did not pick up the garbage from their picnic. The New York Times, quoting the Israeli police, said that only one of the border police officers fired -- whereas al-Toon said that many soldiers were firing at once. Haaretz reported that "The driver's body was laid out on the street under a white plastic sheet. The windshield of his white Seat car was shattered by about 20 bullet holes." The brother of the driver repeated what al-Toon had also explained earlier -- the driver's body had been stripped of all its clothes, and was left lying on the road for two and a half hours. Al-Toon and the brother of the slain man both insisted that no robot was used to remove the clothes -- as is the case when there is suspicion that a suicide bomber may still have explosives on the body. In this case, the soldiers apparently did not feel there was any such threat.

The police said that the driver was shot while attempting to run over the Israeli soldiers and that three of them were injured in the attack. Witnesses in the village disputed the assertion.

Uweisat's father said later that he had been told that his son's body was taken for autopsy to Abu Kabir Forensic Institute in south Tel Aviv.

The body of Uweisat was returned to his family for burial by the Israeli authorities a week later, on 14 April. Reportedly, only 15 people were allowed to be present at the burial in the pre-dawn hours.

Marian Houk is a journalist currently working in Jerusalem with experience at the United Nations and in the region. This article originally appeared in an earlier form on her blog, www.un-truth.com.

Call for demonstrations on April 18th at ICRC offices! Demand that the ICRC take public action against Israel's treatment of Palestinian political pri

7500 Palestinians are currently being held as political prisoners by Israel, including around 344 Palestinian children and 115 Palestinian women. These prisoners face forms of torture and mistreatment during their arrest and detention, and are consistently denied family and lawyer visits.

April 17th is the International Day in Solidarity with Palestinian Political Prisoners. It is marked by demonstrations through out the Occupied Territories with families demanding the release of prisoners. Many of these demonstrations take place outside the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross, as this body is responsible for maintaining contact with prisoner! s, as well as delivering clothes and other essential items. This year in solidarity with Palestinian political prisoners and their families we call on all Palestine solidarity groups and prisoners solidarity groups to hold demonstrations and deliver a letter of protest to ICRC missions
on April 18th (April 17th falls on a Sunday). We are calling on the ICRC to take more meaningful steps in the monitoring of prisoner conditions. Despite the grave violations of prisoner rights that take place in Israeli prisons, the ICRC mission in the West Bank and Gaza Strip is not carrying out frequent visits to central Israeli
prisons and has failed to deliver urgently needed supplies. We call for demonstrations at ICRC offices to demand that the ICRC take public action and let the world know what is happening to Palestinian political prisoners inside Israeli jails and detention centers. We call on all Palestine solidarity groups and prisoners support groups to endorse this day of action and sign onto a letter being delivering to the ICRC. To endorse or receive more information please contact http://sumoud.tao.ca

WHAT YOU CAN DO

1. As prisoner support organizations in Palestine are demonstrating outside local ICRC offices we must come together in the Palestine solidarity movement to support them and the prisoners. Join other groups all over the world on April 18 to organize a demonstration at an ICRC office in your area. Sumoud Political Prisoner Solidarity Group can provide you with resources (letter to ICRC, fact-sheets, event poster, press release, powerpoint presentation and video for educationals around the topic). Information available at http://sumoud.tao.ca

2. Sign an online petition being delivered to the ICRC on April 18 at http://www.petitiononline.com/sumoud/petition.html

3. Organize a Call-in / Fax Day to the ICRC on April 18. Below is a list
of central ICRC delegation contacts and a sample letter that can be faxed/emailed and used for talking points when making phone calls.
CONTACT
UNITED STATES, Washington DC (covers U.S.A. and Canada)

Tel.:
Fax: (+1) 202 293 94 31
E-mail: washington.was@icrc.org

GENEVA

Tel.:
Fax: ++ 41 (22) 733 20 57
Email: anotari.gva@icrc.org

PALESTINE / ISRAEL
JERUSALEM
Tel.: / 582 84 41
Fax: (+972 2) 581 13 75
jerusalem.jer@icrc.org

GAZA
Tel.: (+972) 57 756 860
Mobile: (+972) 59 60 30 15
SAMPLE LETTER

Dear Sir/Madam:

I address this letter to you on the occasion of Palestinian Prisoner Day, April 17, 2005. As the guardians of international humanitarian law, the ICRC is responsible "…to take cognizance of any complaints based on alleged breaches of that law" (Article 5.2c of the Statutes of International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement). In the case of Palestinian prisoners however, this responsibility has quite clearly not been fulfilled. It appears to us that the ICRC has preferred to quietly accept Israel's considerable and increasing violations of the rights of Palestinian prisoners without taking any meaningful action. It appears that the ICRC has quietly accepted Israeli restrictions on which prisoners they can visit. Furthermore, the ICRC visits take place in official 'visiting areas' and do not include any kind of monitoring of the prison and detention conditions inside the prison/detention centre as a whole (through, for example, walk-throughs of the general prison areas). I believe this would be a simple and effective way of placing
pressure on the Israeli prison administrations to improve the conditions in these prisons.

In particular, I am concerned about cases such as Palestinian female prisoner Manal Naji Mahmoud Ghanim, 29 years old from Tulkarem, and her child Nour, 1 and a half years old, who have been imprisoned since 17 April 2003. Both Manal and Nour are being held in Telmond Prison. Manal, who suffers from Thalasemia, was arrested while she was pregnant. Taken away from her family in handcuffs, Manal delivered Nour in an Israeli hospital. The prison administration does not provide Manal and Nour with the special medical care they require, nor does it provide Nour with the milk he needs as his mother cannot breast-feed him.
While I understand that Israel places very real obstacles in front of the work of the ICRC, this situation must be urgently addressed. I therefore call on you to immediately take steps to fulfill the following measures:

*To take effective and public action to end the practice of Israel's incarceration of Palestinian prisoners from the West Bank and Gaza Strip in areas outside of the occupied territories.
*To take effective and public action against Israel's widespread use of torture against Palestinian detainees.
*To immediately demand that sick and injured prisoners are provided with adequate and appropriate medical treatment.
*To urgently increase the frequency of visits by the ICRC to Israeli prisons.
*To insist that visits by ICRC staff to Israeli prisons also include the provision of urgently needed items such as clothes, underwear, shoes, sanitary products and educational materials.
*To pressure Israel to allow unobstructed family visits by Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip to their relatives in Israeli jails. Most importantly, these visits should take place unobstructed by glass or other barriers.
*To increase the visibility of the work of the ICRC to the Palestinian public, in particular the actions you carry out around the above measures. This should be done in much closer coordination with Palestinian human rights organizations.
While I understand fully the ICRC concerns over confidentiality in regards
to your work, I would appreciate an official response to these concerns.
I seek some indication that the ICRC is aware of these concerns and is taking steps to address them. If these complaints over the ICRC mission are inaccurate and unrepresentative of your activities then I would greatly appreciate further clarification.
Sincerely,

The quintessential Palestinian experience

Laila El-Haddad writing from the United States, Live from Palestine, 14 April 2009


Laila El-Haddad and her daughter, Noor, in the US in 2008.

"Its not very comfortable in there is it?" said the stony faced official, cigarette smoke forming a haze around his gleaming oval head.

"Its OK. We're fine," I replied wearily, delirious after being awake for 30 hours straight.

"You could be in there for days you know. For weeks. Indefinitely. So, tell me, you are taking a plane tomorrow morning to the US?"

It was our journey home that began with the standard packing frenzy: squeezing everything precious and dear and useful into two suitcases that would be our sustenance for three months.

The trips to the outdoor recreation store in preparation for what I anticipated to be a long and tortuous journey across Rafah Crossing to Gaza. The insect repellent, the mosquito netting, the water purifier, the potty toppers for my kids and the granola bars and portion-sized peanut butter cups. This time, I wanted to be ready, I thought to myself, just in case I got stuck at the crossing. The crossing. My presumptuousness is like a dull hit to the back of my head now.

In addition packing the suitcases, we were also packing up our house -- my husband Yassine was finishing up his residency at Duke University and set to start a medical fellowship at Johns Hopkins in July. In the meantime, we were "closing shop," putting our things in storage, selling the rest, and heading overseas: me to Gaza, my husband to Lebanon to visit his family; and eventually I was to meet him there (assuming I could get into Gaza, and then assuming I could get out). Yassine is a third-generation Palestinian refugee from the village of Waarit al-Siris in northern historic Palestine; he was born in a refugee camp in Lebanon and holds a laissez passer for Palestinian refugees. Israel denies him return to his own home -- or even to the home of his spouse in Gaza. So when we go overseas, we often go our separate ways; we cannot live legally, as a unit, as a family, in our own homes.

I hold a Palestinian Authority passport. It replaced the "temporary two-year Jordanian passport for Gaza residents" that we held until the Oslo Accords and the creation of the Palestinian Authority in the mid 1990s, which itself replaced the Egyptian travel documents we held before that. A progression in a long line of stateless documentation.

It is a passport that allows no passage. A passport that denied me entry to my own home. This is its purpose: to mark me, brand me, so that I am easily identified and cast aside without questions; it is convenient for those giving the orders. It is a system for the collective identification of those with no identity.



We finished packing as much as we could of the house, leaving the rest to Yassine who was to leave a week after us, and drove four hours to Washington, DC, to spend a few day at my brother's house before we took off.

First, we headed to the the Egyptian embassy.

Last year, my parents were visiting us from Gaza City when Rafah was sealed hermetically. They attempted to fly back to Egypt to wait for the border to open -- but were not allowed to board the plane in Washington. "Palestinians cannot fly to Egypt now without a visa, new rules," the airline personnel explained, "and no visas can be issued until Rafah is open," added the Egyptian embassy official. They were in a conundrum, aggravated by the fact that their US entry stamp had reached its six-month limit. Eventually, they got around the issue by obtaining an Egyptian tourist visa, made easier by their old age, which they used to wait in Egypt for one month until Rafah Crossing opened again.

I did not want to repeat their ordeal, so I called the embassy this time, which assured me the protocol had changed. Now it was only Palestinian men who were not allowed to fly to or enter Egypt; women were allowed and could get their visa at the Egyptian port of entry. I was given a signed and dated letter (6 April 2009) by the consul to take with me in case I encountered any problems. It read:

"The Consular Section of the Embassy of the Arab Republic of Egypt hereby confirms that women, who are residents of the Gaza Strip, and who hold passports issued by the Palestinian Authority are required to get their visa to enter Egypt at Egyptian ports and NOT at the various Egyptian consulates in the United States on their way to the Gaza Strip for the purpose of reaching their destination (i.e. Gaza Strip)."

With letter and bags in hand, we took off, worried only about the possibility of entering Gaza; the thought of not being able to enter Egypt never crossing my mind.

Two long-haul flights and one seven-hour transit later, we made it. I knew the routine by heart. Upon our arrival, I was quick to hit the bank to buy the $15 visa stamps for my children Yousuf and Noor's American passports and exchange some dollars into Egyptian pounds. I figured it would help pass the time while the lines got shorter.

I then went and filled out my entry cards. An officer came and filled them out with me seeing my hands were full, a daypack on my back, Noor strapped to my chest in a carrier, Yousuf in my hand.

We submitted our passports and things seemed to be going smoothly. Just then the officer explained he needed to run something by his superior. "You have a Palestinian passport. Rafah crossing is closed ..."

"I promise it will just be five minutes," he assured me. But that's all I needed to hear. I knew I was in for a long wait. It was at this point I yanked out my laptop and began to Tweet and blog about my experience. At first I thought it would simply help pass the time; it developed into a way to pool resources together that could help me, and ended as a public awareness campaign.



The faces were different each time. Three or four different rooms and hallways to navigate down. They refused to give names and the answers they gave were always in the form of cryptic questions.

The first explained I would not be allowed entry into Egypt because Palestinians without permanent residency abroad are not allowed in; and besides, Rafah Crossing is closed, he said (my response: so open it). I was told I was to be deported to the United Kingdom first. "But I have no British visa," I explained. I was ordered to agree to get on the next flight. I refused. I didn't come all this way to turn back.

I was escorted to the "extended transit terminal." It was empty at first, save for a South Asian man in tightly buckled jeans and with a small duffel bag, who spent the good part of our time there there in a deep sleep. During the day the hall would fill up with locally deported passengers -- from villages and cities across Egypt, and we would move our things to the upper waiting area.

Most of the time was spent in this waiting area with low-level guards who knew nothing and could do nothing.

At different intervals, a frustrated Yousuf would approach them angrily about "why they wouldn't let him go see his seedo and tete [grandpa and grandma]" and why "they put cockroaches on the floor." When we first arrived, he asked if these were the "Israelis," his only experiences with extended closure, delay, and denial of entry being at the hands of the Israeli soldiers and government. "No, but why don't you ask why [Israelis] are allowed through to [Egypt to] sunbathe and we aren't allowed to our own homes?"

"Rabina kbeer," came the response, signifying impotence. God is great.

There was very little time I was given access to anyone who had any authority. I seemed to be called in whenever the new person on duty arrived, when they were scheduled for their thrice daily interrogation and intimidation, their shooting and crying.

Officers came and went as shifts began and ended. But our status was always the same. Our "problem," our case, our issue was always the same. We remained, sitting on our chairs, with our papers and documents in hand, waiting.

Always waiting. For this is what the Palestinian does: we wait. For an answer to be given, for a question to be asked; for a marriage proposal to be made, for a divorce to be finalized; for a border to open, for a permit to be issued; for a war to end; for a war to begin; for a child to be born; for one to die a martyr; for retirement or a new job; for exile to a better place and for return to the only place that knows us; for our prisoners to come home; for our homes to no longer be prisons; for our children to be free; for freedom from a time when we no longer have to wait.

We waited for the next shift as we were instructed by those who made their own instructions. Funny how when you need to pass the time, the time does not pass.

"You need to speak with whose in charge -- and their shift starts at 10am." So we pass the night and wait until the next morning. "Well, by the time they really get started it's more like noon." So we wait until till noon. "Well, the real work isn't until the evening." And we wait until evening. Then the cycle starts again.

Every now and then the numberless phone would ring, requesting me, and a somber voice would ask if I changed my mind. I insisted all I wanted to do was go home; that it was not that complicated.

"But Gaza is a special case, we all know that," I was told. Special -- as in expendable, not human, not entitled to rights, I thought.

Unfamiliar faces that acted as though though I was a long-lost friend kept popping in and out to see me. As though I were an amnesiac in a penitentiary. They all kept asking the same cryptic question, "So you are getting on a plane soon, right?"

First, a gentleman from the Palestinian representative's office that someone else whose name I was meant to recognize sent. "It'll all be resolved within the hour," he promised confidently, before going on to tell me about his son who worked with Motorola in Florida.

"Helping Israeli drones do their job?"

"That's right!" he beamed.

An hour came and went, and suddenly the issue was "unresolvable," and I was "a journalist up to trouble."



Friends and family in Egypt, the US and Gaza worked around the clock with me, calling in any favors they had, anyone they knew, doing anything they could to get some answers and let me through. But the answer was always the same: State Security and Intelligence says no, and they are the ultimate authorities. No one goes past them.

Later a second Palestinian representative came to see me.

"So you are not going on that second flight, are you?"

"What are you talking about? Why does everyone speak to me in question form?"

"Answer the question."

"No, I came here to go to Gaza, not to return to the US."

"Ok, that's all I needed to know; there is a convoy of injured Palestinians with security clearance heading to the border with some space; we are trying to get you on there with them; 15 minutes and it'll all be resolved, we just need clearance, it's all over," he assured me.

Yousuf smashed another cockroach.



We were taken down a new hallway. A new room. A new face. The man behind the desk explained how he was losing sleep over my case, how I had the whole airport working on it, how he had a son Yousuf's age. He then offered me an apple and a bottle of water and told me to rest, a command I would hear again and again over the course of the 36 hours.

Is this man for real? An apple and a bottle of water? I thought to myself, my eyes nearly popping out of my face.

"I don't want your food. I don't want to rest. I don't want your sympathy. I just want to go home! To my country. To my parents. Is that too hard to understand!?" I screamed, breaking my level-headed calm of the past 20 hours.

"Please don't yell, just calm down, calm down, everyone outside will think I am treating you badly, come on, and besides its ayb [disgraceful] not to accept the apple from me."

"Ayb? What's ayb is you denying my entry to my own home! And why should I be calm? This situation doesn't call for calm; it makes no sense and neither should I!"

"C'mon lady don't have a breakdown in front of your kids, please. You know I have a kid your son's age and its breaking my heart to do this, to see him in these conditions, to put him in these conditions, so please take the plane."

"So don't see me in these conditions! There's a simple solution, you know. Let me go home! It's not asking a lot, is it?"

"Hey now, look lady," he said, stiffening suddenly into bad cop mode, his helpless grimace disappeared.

"Rules are rules, you need a visa to get in here like any other country, can you go to Jordan without a visa?"

"Don't play the rules game with me. I had approval from your embassy, from your consul general, to cross into Egypt and go to Gaza; and besides, how else am I supposed to get into Gaza?" I shouted, frantically waving the stamped and signed document in front of him as though it were a magic wand.

"So sue him. State Security supersedes the foreign ministry's orders, he must have outdated protocol."

"The letter was dated 6 April, two days ago, how outdated could it be? Look, if I could parachute into Gaza I would, trust me. With all due respect to your country, I'm not here to sight-see. Do you have a parachute for me? If I could sail there I would do that too, but last I checked Israel was ramming and turning those boats back. Do you have another suggestion?"

"What is it you want, lady? Do you want to just live in the airport? Is that it? Because we have no problem letting you live here, really. We can set up a shelter for you. And no one will ever ask about you or know you exist. In any case you don't have permanent residency abroad so our government policies say we can't let in a Palestinian who does not have permanent residency abroad."

"I have a US visa -- the stamp in my passport is expired but my extension of status document is valid until the end of June. And besides -- what kind of illogical law is that? You aren't allowing me back home unless I have permanent residency abroad?"

"I don't read English please translate."

"You see it says here that my status is valid until 30 June 2009."

"Good, so then we can deport you back to the US," he said, picking up the phone and giving a quick order for the Palestinian convoy of injured Palestinians heading to Rafah Crossing to go on without me, my only hope of returning home dissipating before my eyes at the hands of a barely literate, manipulative enforcer.

"You just said if I have permanent residency abroad I can go home, now you say I can't, which is it?"

"I'm sorry you are refusing to go on the plane. Take her away, please."

We were ushered back to the extended waiting area, back to the roach-ridden premises that had become our home, along with a newly arrived Luxemburger and French couple and their two children who had failed to produce their passports and were being sent back home. Here I was, about to be deported away from home, over-prepared, with my documents and signed papers, from consulates and universities and governments -- and they, used to traveling passport-free within the EU, being sent back home because they had only their ID cards.



It wasn't long before a new guard came to us, and requested we follow him "to a more isolated room." "It will be better for you, more private. All the African flights are arriving now with all their diseases, you don't want to be here for that! It'll get overcrowded and awful in here."

Given the the well-wishes that preceded my last interrogation about the "discomfort" I might endure, I somehow had a feeling where we were headed.

Before we were asked to bring all our luggage and escorted down a different hallway. This time we were asked to leave everything behind, and to give up our cameras, laptops, and mobile phones. We took our seats in the front of a tiny filthy room, where 17 other men (and one Indonesian woman who was sleeping on the floor, occasionally shouting out in the middle of her interrupted sleep) of varying nationalities were already waiting.

A brute man -- illiterate by his own admission -- took charge of each of the files, spontaneously blurting out vulgarities and ordering anyone who so much as whispered, to shut the hell up or get sent to real prison. The room was referred to as "habs," or a cell; I can probably best describe it as a detention or holding room. A man with a protruding belly that seemed at odds with his otherwise lanky body was the door guard.

Officer number one divided up the room into regions: the five or so South Asians who were there for whatever reason -- expired paperwork, illegal documentation -- were referred to as "Pakistan" when their attention was needed. The snoozing, sleep-talking woman in the back was "Indonesia," and the impeccably dressed Guinean businessman, fully decked in a sharp black suit and blue-lined tie, was "Kenya" (despite his persistence to the contrary). There was a group of Egyptian peasants with forged, fake, or wrongly filed ID cards and passports: a 54-year-old man whose ID said he was born in 1990, another who left his ID in his village five hours away, and so on.

By this point, I had not slept in 27 hours, 40 if one were to count the plane ride. My patience and my energy were wearing thin. My children were filthy and tired and confused; Noor was crying. I tried to set her cot up, but a cell within a cell did not seem to her liking and she resisted, much as I did.

We took the opportunity to chat when officer number one was away. "So what did you do?" asked "Kenya," the Guinean businessman.

"I was born Palestinian," I replied. "Everyone in here is being deported back home for one reason or another right? I bet I am the only one being deported away from home; the only one denied entry to my home."

Officer number one returned, this time he asked me to come with him "with or without your kids." I brought them along, not knowing what was next.

There were two steely-eyed men on either end of a relatively well-furnished room, once again inquiring about my "comfort" and ordering -- always in the form of a question -- whether I was taking a flight that morning to the US.

Noor began making a fuss, bellowing at the top of her lungs and swatting anyone that approached her.

"She is stubborn. She takes after her mother, I see," said the man.

Soon we were escorted back to the waiting area. I knew there was nothing more I could do. We waited for several more hours until my children exhausted themselves and fell asleep. I bathed them in the filthy bathroom sinks with freezing tap water and hand soap and arranged their quarters on the steel chairs of the waiting room, buzzing with what seemed like a thousand gnats. Thank God for the mosquito netting.

Eventually, dawn broke, and we were escorted by two guards to the ticket counter, our $2,500 flights rerouted, and put on a plane back to Washington.

I noted on one of my tweets that I would be shocked if my children's immune system survived this jolt. It didn't.

My daughter vomited for the whole flight to London as I slipped in and out of delirium, mumbling half-Arabic, half-English phrases to the flustered but helpful Englishman sitting next to us. I thank him wherever he is for looking after us.

Whatever Noor had, Yousuf and I caught along with an ear and throat infection in the next days.

Eventually, we reached Dulles Airport. I walked confidently to the booth when it was my turn.

What was I going to say? How do I explain this? The man took one look at my expired visa, and my departure stamps.

"How long have you been gone?"

"Thirty-six hours," I replied bluntly.

"Yes, I see that. Do you want to explain?"

"Sure. Egypt forbade me from returning to Gaza."

"I don't understand -- they denied you entry to your own home?"

"I don't either, and if I did, I wouldn't be here."

With that, I was given a a stamp and allowed back to the US.

Now that we are warm, clothed, showered, rested and recovered from whatever awful virus we picked up in the bowels of Cairo airport, I keep thinking to myself: what more could I have done?

"The quintessential Palestinian experience," historian Rashid Khalidi has written, "takes place at a border, an airport, a checkpoint: in short, at any one of those many modern barriers where identities are checked and verified."

In this place, adds Robyn Creswell, "connection" turns out to be only another word for separation or quarantine: the loop of airports never ends, like Borges's famous library. The cruelty of the Palestinian situation is that these purgatories are in no way extraordinary but rather the backdrop of daily existence."

Laila El-Haddad is a Palestinian freelance journalist, photographer and blogger (http://a-mother-from-gaza.blogspot.com/) who divides her time between Gaza and the United States.

Four injured and dozens suffered teargas inhalation during International Children’s Day demonstration in Bil’in

10 April

Following Friday prayers in Bil’in today, residents held a protest against the wall and settlement building. A group of children from the village were at the front of the protest holding Palestinian flags and banners remarking International Children’s Day. Some banners said “It’s our right to live safely”, “The wall kills our hopes and dreams”, “Settlements and the wall leave us with no future”. There were also pictures of children with the caption “Wanted by the Israeli occupation for resisting the wall”.

The protest began in the center of the village and was joined by international and Israeli activists. The demonstration headed towards the Apartheid Wall, which is built on Bil’in’s land. An Israeli army unit had been stationed behind the wall since early morning and prevented the crowd from going through the gate. The army fired tear gas canisters to disturb the crowd, causing dozens to suffer gas inhalation, and they injured four young’s, one of them journalist his name Mohammed Muhesen working in AP, Kubi from Israel, Abdullah Aburahma, and Adeeb Aburahma.

On the other hand, the Israeli army, which is at the wall, arrested two children from Bil’in : Wajdy Ali Shehada Abu Rahma (16 years) and Hamouda Emad Hahmouda Yassin (16 years). They have beat them and then leave them near the village of Qatana after midnight, where they have access to the city Ramallah, and then arrived in the village on foot early in the morning, and this is came within the suffering of the Palestinian children by the Israeli soldiers, which coincides with the Children’s Day. For this the Popular Committee for wall resistance in the village they intervention of human rights organizations in general and children’s rights in particular, to stop the violence from the soldiers that they injured or arrest, or beat them and intimidate them and leave them in areas far from their homes after midnight.

Urgent action for Palestinian school children from Tuba and Maghaer-al-Abeed

Luisa Morgantini, 11 April 2009

Of utmost concern for CPT and Operation Dove is the safe travel of Palestinian school children who walk from the nearby villages of Tuba and Magaher-al-Abeed to At-Tuwani’s elementary school. These school children face a treacherous daily walk past the illegal Israeli settlement of Ma’on and the illegal outpost of Havat Ma’on. For years, armed adult settlers have attacked, threatened and harassed the children along the path from Tuba to Tuwani. In 2004 the Knesset recommended that the Israeli military provide the children with an armed escort. However, since settlers constructed a gate across the road one year ago, the escort soldiers have refused to walk with the children far enough to ensure their safety.

In the past two weeks internationals working with Operation Dove and Christian Peacemaker Teams have twice witnessed settlers grazing sheep directly in the path of the children at the time they walk home from school. Because the children have been physically attacked in the past, and threatened with death by settlers earlier this school year, they are terrified by the presence of these settlers. Since an incident on March 24 in which settlers were present at the end of the children’s walk home, internationals and the children have repeatedly asked the soldiers to walk with the children until they are out of danger. On April 1 settlers again came onto the land between the outpost of Havat Ma’on and the village of Tuba while the children were
walking. Members of CPT and Operation Dove were present and the children ran towards them crying and very frightened.

Internationals now request that concerned people make calls to the Communications office of the Southern District Commander of the Israeli Military. It is an Israeli phone number, (country code 972) 2 996 7200. Please ask Commander BenMoha to instruct the soldiers who perform the escort of the Tuba and Magaher-al-Abeed school children to accompany the children all the way past the Ma’on chicken barns and past any settlers present. Please stress that this is particularly necessary because of the repeated presence of settlers in this area at the time of the children’s walk home, and remind the commander that settlers used violence against the school children on fourteen occasions in the 07-08 school year and on two occasions during the current school year.

For a complete report on the school escort, including maps, photographs and interviews with the children, please see “A Dangerous Journey.”

In addition to phone calls, Operation Dove and CPT ask that people send the IDF Public Appeals office a simple message.

Sample message:

Subject: Request to Commander BenMoha

Palestinian school children from Tuba and Magaher-al-abeed must walk past militant settlers from Ma’on and Havat Ma’on to attend school in At-Tuwani. The Knesset recommended in 2004 that the IDF escort these children. Currently soldiers refuse to escort the children far enough to ensure their safety. In order to do so they must accompany the children all the way past the Ma’on chicken barns and past any
settlers present.

IDF Public Appeals Fax: 011-972-3-569-9400.
IDF Public Appeals Phone: 011-972-3-569-1000.

Amnesty International urges Obama to halt further exports to Israel

Ma’an News Agency

11 April 2009

The United States sent a massive new shipment of arms to Israel despite evidence that US weapons were misused against civilians in the Gaza attacks, Amnesty International revealed on 1 April.

The human rights organization said about 14,000 tons worth of arms and munitions sent to Israel on the Wher Elbe, a German cargo ship chartered and controlled by the US Military Sealift Command, docked and unloaded its cargo on 22 March at the Israeli port of Ashdod, about 25 miles north of Gaza.

Amnesty called on US President Obama to suspend future arms shipments to Israel until there is no longer substantial risk of human rights violations.

The Pentagon confirmed the successful unloading of the ship, which left the United States for Israel on 20 December, a week before the start of Israel’s attacks on Gaza.

According to the Amnesty report, the ship carried 989 containers of munitions, each of them 20 feet long with a total estimated net weight of 14,000 tons.

“Legally and morally, this US arms shipment should have been halted by the Obama administration given the evidence of war crimes resulting from military equipment and munitions of this kind used by the Israeli forces,” said Brian Wood, arms control campaign manager for Amnesty International. “Arms supplies in these circumstances are contrary to provisions in US law.”

Amnesty International has issued documented evidence that white phosphorus and other weapons supplied by the United States were used to carry out serious violations of international humanitarian law, including war crimes in Gaza. The human rights organization provided comprehensive details on munitions used in the fighting in a 37-page briefing paper, Fueling Conflict: Foreign Arms Supplies to Israel/Gaza, in February.

Asked about the Wehr Elbe shipment, a Pentagon spokesperson confirmed to Amnesty International that “the unloading of the entire US munitions shipment was successfully completed at Ashdod [Israel] on 22 March.” The spokesperson said that the shipment was destined for a US “pre-positioned ammunition stockpile” in Israel.

Under a US-Israel agreement, munitions from this stockpile may be transferred to the Israeli military if necessary. A State Department official told Amnesty that Israel’s use of US weapons during the Gaza conflict is under review and efforts are being made to ensure that Israel complied with US law. A conclusion has not yet been reached.

“There is a great risk that the new munitions may be used by the Israeli military to commit further violations of international law, like the ones committed during the war in Gaza,” said Wood. “We are urging all governments to impose an immediate and comprehensive suspension of arms to Israel, and to all Palestinian armed groups, until there is no longer a substantial risk of serious human rights violations.”

“The United States government now has ample evidence from the Gaza attacks indicating that the arms it is sending to Israel have been misused to kill and injure men, women and children and to destroy hundreds of millions of dollars of property. It can no longer send weapons to Israel while ignoring these facts,” said Curt Goering, senior deputy executive director, Amnesty International USA, who was
in the region during the Gaza crisis.

The United States was by far the largest supplier of weapons to Israel between 2004 and 2008. The US government is also due to provide 30 billion US dollars in military aid to Israel, despite the alleged misuse of weaponry and munitions in Gaza and Lebanon by the Israeli military.

President Obama, according to published reports, has no plans to cut the billions of dollars in military aid promised to Israel under a new 10-year contract agreed in 2007 by the Bush administration. This new contract is a 25 percent increase, compared to the last contract agreed by the previous US administration.

Amnesty International has documented suspected war crimes committed by the Israeli military and by Palestinian armed groups in Gaza. On 15 January, Amnesty International called on all governments to immediately suspend arms transfers to all parties to the Gaza conflict to prevent further violations being committed using munitions and other military equipment.

German and Italian nationals arrested by Israeli forces while accompanying Palestinian farmers still being held by police

12 April 2009, 1pm:
A German national, Christian Becke, and an Italian national, Sara Pagani, continue to be held by Israeli police at the Russian Compound police station in Jerusalem. Becke and Pagani were arrested on the 11th of April while nonviolently accompanying
Palestinian farmers on their lands in the village of At-Tuwani, south of the city of Hebron.

Both Becke and Pagani appeared in a Jerusalem court today where they were ordered to appear for deportation hearings at a later date. An Israeli judge has ordered Pagani to deposit a 5,000 shekel surety bond in order for her to be released before the upcoming hearing. Becke was ordered to deposit a 10,000 shekel surety bond.

The Italian and German embassies have repeatedly been prevented from speaking to their citizens by police at Kiryat Arba over the past 24 hours.

Palestinian farmers in At-Tuwani rely on the presence of International and Israeli human rights workers to mitigate violence from settlers. As soldiers in the area frequently ignore settler violence and rarely interfere to protect the farmers, international volunteers provide support for the Palestinians. The grazing action began around 8.30 am, and the German and Italian nationals were arrested at 11am.

At-Tuwani is a village of 300 Palestinians located in South Hebron Hills. Residents make their living through farming, primarily wheat, barley, olives and grazing sheep. At-Tuwani is also one of several villages under daily threat from extremist settlers living in the area. Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills are daily nonviolently resisting settlement expansion and violence at the hands of settlers
and soldiers.

Internationals accompany Palestinians as they perform agricultural work on their land and in other nonviolent demonstrations: Internationals accompany Palestinians as they work their land, use video to document settlers, soldiers, and police, and intervene as Palestinians request.

Video available upon request, please email palreports@gmail.com
For more information:
Silvia Pogda (Italian) 059 703 6903
Christian Peacemaker Team (English) 054 253 1323
Thomas Patterson (English), ISM Media Office 059 850 3948

Weekly Report: On Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territory

Israeli soldiers push away a group of protesters made up of Palestinians, Israelis and international activists during a demonstration against Israel's controversial barrier in the West Bank village of Ma'asarah


Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) Continue Systematic Attacks against Palestinian Civilians and Property in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and Continue to Impose a Total Siege on the Gaza Strip

* IOF killed two activists of the Palestinian resistance in the Gaza Strip and one civilian in the West Bank.
* 16 Palestinian civilians, including two children and two journalists, were wounded by IOF gunfire in the West Bank.
* 9 of these civilians were wounded by IOF and Israeli settlers in Kherbat Safa area, north of Hebron.
* IOF conducted 26 incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank.
* IOF arrested 52 Palestinian civilians, including 8 children, in the West Bank and 10 fishers in the Gaza Strip.
* IOF conducted a wide scale incursion into Kherbat Safa area, north of Hebron.
* IOF occupied 8 Palestinian houses, and reclassified them as military sites.
* IOF have continued to impose a total siege on the OPT and have isolated the Gaza Strip from the outside world.
* IOF troops positioned at military checkpoints in the West Bank arrested 9 Palestinian civilians.
* IOF have continued measures aimed at the creating of a majority Jewish demographic in East Jerusalem.
* IOF demolished two Palestinian houses in Jerusalem.
* A Palestinian house in the old town of Jerusalem was seized.
* IOF have continued settlement activities in the West Bank and Israeli settlers have continued to attack Palestinian civilians and property.
* IOF ordered the demolition of a number of houses in Hebron.
* Israeli settlers seized 4 shops in the old town of Hebron.


Summary

Israeli violations of international law and humanitarian law escalated in the OPT during the reporting period (02 – 08 April 2009):

Shooting: During the reporting period, IOF killed two activists of the Palestinian resistance in the Gaza Strip and one civilian in the West Bank. They also wounded 16 Palestinian civilians, including two children and two journalists, in the West Bank. Three of these civilians were wounded by Israeli settlers in a joint attack with IOF.

In the Gaza Strip, on 04 April 2009, IOF killed two members of the 'Izziddin al-Qassam Brigades (the armed wing of Hamas) near the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel. IOF also fired artillery shells at the ambulance that attempted to evacuate the bodies from the area.

In the West Bank, on 07 April 2009, IOF shot dead a Palestinian civilian in Sour Baher village, south of Jerusalem, claiming that he ran down three Israeli soldiers.

On 04 April 2009, a Palestinian child was wounded by IOF during an incursion into Qalqilya.

On 06 April 2009, IOF wounded a Palestinian child in Qabalan village, south of Nablus.

On 08 April 2009, dozens of Israeli settlers, escorted by IOF, attacked Palestinian civilians in Kherbat Safa area, north of Hebron. As a result, nine Palestinian civilians were wounded by gunshots, including three who were shot by settlers; 26 others suffered from tear gas inhalation.

During the reporting period, five Palestinian civilians, including two journalists, were wounded when IOF used force against peaceful demonstrations organized in protest to the construction of the Annexation Wall.

Incursions: During the reporting period, IOF conducted at least 26 military incursions into Palestinian communities in the West Bank and two incursions into the Gaza Strip. IOF arrested 52 Palestinian civilians, including eight children.

Following the death of one Israeli settler, and the injury of another, in the “Beit Ain” settlement (northwest of Beit Ummar village, north of Hebron), IOF moved into the Kherbat Safa area. This operation was allegedly conducted in order to search for a Palestinian worker suspected of killing the Israeli settler. The military operation continued for a number of days, during which time IOF occupied eight Palestinian houses, transforming them into military sites.

In the Gaza Strip, IOF arrested 10 Palestinian fishers off the coast of the northern Gaza Strip.

Restrictions on Movement: IOF have continued to impose a tightened siege on the OPT and imposed severe restrictions on the movement of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem.

Gaza Strip

IOF have continued to close all border crossings to the Gaza Strip for more than two years. The IOF siege of Gaza, which has steadily tightened since June 2007, has had a disastrous impact on the humanitarian and economic situation in the Gaza Strip.

· 1.5 million people are being denied their basic rights, including freedom of movement, and their rights to appropriate living conditions, work, health and education.

· The main concern of 1.5 million people living in the Gaza Strip is to obtain their basic needs of food, medicines, water and electricity supplies.

· IOF have continued to prevent the entry of raw construction materials into the Gaza Strip for more than two years.

· IOF have not allowed fuel supplies into the Gaza Strip – excluding limited amounts of cooking gas – since 10 December 2008.

· The Rafah International Crossing Point has been opened for a few days for a number of patients who received medical treatment abroad and needed to return home to the Gaza Strip.

· IOF have continued to close Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing for Palestinian civilians wishing to travel to the West Bank and Israel for medical treatment, trade or social visits. In the past two months, five patients, including two children, died due to the denial of access to medical treatment outside the Gaza Strip.

· IOF have imposed additional access restrictions on international diplomats, journalists and humanitarian workers attempting to enter the Gaza Strip. They have prevented representatives of several international humanitarian organizations from entering the Gaza Strip.

· The Palestinian civilian population’s living conditions have seriously deteriorated; levels of poverty and unemployment have sharply increased.

· At least 900 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails have been denied family visitation for more than 17 months.

· At least 10% of the population of the Gaza Strip is deprived of electricity supplies.


West Bank

IOF have continued to impose severe restrictions on the movement of Palestinian civilians throughout the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem. Thousands of Palestinian civilians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip continue to be denied access to Jerusalem.

· IOF have established checkpoints in and around Jerusalem, severely restricting Palestinian access to the city. Civilians are frequently prevented from praying at the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

· There are approximately 630 permanent roadblocks, and manned and unmanned checkpoints across the West Bank. In addition, approximately 60-80 ‘flying’ or temporary checkpoints are erected across the West Bank by IOF every week.

· When complete, the illegal Annexation Wall will stretch for 724 kilometers around the West Bank, further isolating the entire population. 350 kilometers of the Wall has already been constructed. Approximately 99% of the Wall has been constructed inside the West Bank itself, further confiscating Palestinian land.

· IOF continue to harass, and assault demonstrators who hold peaceful protests against the construction of the Annexation Wall.

· At least 65% of the main roads leading to 18 Palestinian communities in the West Bank are closed or fully controlled by IOF (47 out of 72 roads).

· There are approximately 500 kilometers of restricted roads across the West Bank. Access to these roads is restricted to those vehicles with Israeli license plates. In addition, approximately one third of the West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem, is inaccessible to Palestinians without a permit issued by the IOF. These permits are extremely difficult to obtain.

. Palestinian civilians continue to be harassed by IOF in Jerusalem, and across the West Bank. This harassment includes regular spot checks and searches by IOF; these are often carried out in the street.

· During the reporting period, IOF troops positioned at military checkpoints in the West Bank arrested nine Palestinian civilians.

Annexation Wall: IOF have continued to construct the Annexation Wall inside the West Bank territory. IOF started to establish an iron fence on the northern edge of 'Azzoun village, east of Qalqilya, which – when finished – will be 3.5 kilometers long and 2.5 meters high. It will extend from 'Izbat al-Tabeeb area to the intersection of "Ma'ale Shomron" settlement. The fence will separate 'Azzoun village from its northern lands. A week earlier, IOF had closed the main entrance to the village, and a month earlier, they closed its northern entrance, claiming that stones were thrown at Israeli vehicles traveling in the area. According to sources in the local council of the village, at least 200 donums[1] of land belonging to the village will be seized for the purpose of the establishment of the fence. The establishment of the fence is part of the construction of the Annexation Wall near Qalqilya, which has been conducted in four stages, the fourth of which is the current one. According to the local council, there are concerns that a fifth stage may be implemented to the south of the village. At least 8,000 Palestinians live in 'Azzoun village, in an area estimated at approximately 9,000 donums. The construction of the Wall in the area has restricted access of Palestinian civilians to their lands.

The establishment of a majority Jewish demographic in Jerusalem: IOF have escalated arbitrary measures against Palestinian civilians in East Jerusalem in order to force them to leave the city. On 03 April 2009, a number of Israeli settlers, escorted by IOF police, stormed a house belonging to Nasser 'Ali Jaber, 30, in al-Sa'diya quarter in the old town of Jerusalem. They removed the door of the house and seized the house, claiming that it belongings to an extremist Jewish association. It is worth noting that Jaber was repairing and maintaining the house, in which he has lived together with his family for more than 20 years. On 06 April 2009, IOF demolished a 100-square-meter house belonging to 'Abdul Rahman al-Fakhouri, 24, in the al-Luqluq quarter of the old town of Jerusalem. The IOF Municipality of Jerusalem had informed the family on Thursday, 02 April 2009, that the house would be demolished, claiming that it was built without a license. On the same day, the Israeli High Court gave permission to IOF to evacuate two houses, belonging to the al-Ghawi and al-Jarrah families in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem, in favor of Jewish groups. The court rejected a petition filed by the families against the evacuation, although the families submitted documents that support their ownership of the house.

Settlement Activities: IOF have continued settlement activities in the OPT in violation of international humanitarian law. Israeli settlers have continued to attack Palestinian civilians and property. On 02 April 2009, at least 20 Israeli settlers blew up the doors of four shops in the second-hand clothes market near "Abraham Avino" settlement outpost in the south of Hebron. They then removed the rubble and started to rehabilitate the four shops in order to seize them. On 06 April 2009, IOF informed five Palestinian civilians in Deir Sa'da area to the south of al-Zahiriya village, south of Hebron, that their houses would be demolished. IOF claim that these houses were built without licenses. These civilians filed petitions against the demolition orders.


Israeli Violations Documented during the Reporting Period (02 – 08 April 2009)

1. Incursions into Palestinian Areas and Attacks on Palestinian Civilians and Property in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip

Thursday, 02 April 2009

· At approximately 00:15, IOF moved into al-'Araqa village, west of Jenin. They raided and searched a number of houses and arrested 15 Palestinian civilians, including three children:


1. Eihab Hussein Yahia, 20;
2. 'Imad Hussein Yahia, 15;
3. Mahmoud Qassem Hammad, 64;
4. Fadi Mahmoud Hammad, 24;
5. Ahmed Mohammed Yahia, 15;
6. Rabee' Sameer Yahia, 25;
7. 'Izziddin Sameer Yahia, 18;
8. 'Aali Nafe' Yahia, 25;
9. Saleh Qabel Waked, 19;
10. Mo'tassem Tawfiq Yahia, 15;
11. Yousef Tawfiq Yahia, 20;
12. 'Allam Mohammed Yahia, 29;
13. Ayman 'Abdul Malek Hammad, 33;
14. Mohammed Bassam Yahia, 18; and
15. 'Omar 'Abdullah Yahia, 40.


· At approximately 01:00, IOF moved into al-'Eizariya village, southeast of Jerusalem. They raided and searched a number of houses and arrested three Palestinian civilians:

1. 'Eissa Hussein al-Khatib, 27;
2. Ahmed Tariq Shaheen, 32; and
3. Mahdi 'Ali Tmaira, 28.


· At approximately 01:30, IOF moved into Beit Fajjar village, south of Bethlehem. They raided and searched a number of houses and arrested Maher Saber Dairiya, 24.

· At approximately 04:00, IOF moved into Tulkarm. They raided and searched a number of houses and arrested Ra'ed Wasfi Zahran, 33.

· In the afternoon, following the death of an Israeli settler and the injury of another one in "Beit Ain" settlement to the northwest of Beit Uammar village (north of Hebron), IOF moved into Kherbat Safa area near the settlement, allegedly to search for a Palestinian worker suspected of killing the settler. This military operation continued for a number of days.

According to investigations conducted by PCHR, at approximately 13:00, IOF moved into Kherbat Safa area and imposed a curfew. They raided and searched dozens of houses and turned four of them into military sites. During the house raids, five houses were damaged. IOF troops also violently beat Ahmed Mohammed Radwan, 40, who is physically disabled. IOF held and interrogated dozens of Palestinian civilians on a schoolyard. Later, they arrested three Palestinian civilians:

1. Fadi 'Omar 'Aadi, 20;
2. Shadi 'Omar 'Aadi, 23; and
3. Mohammed 'Aaref Darwish, 21.

IOF withdrew from the area on Saturday noon, 04 April 2009.
Friday, 03 April 2009

· At approximately 02:00, IOF moved into Ba'ein village, west of Ramallah. They raided and searched a number of houses, but no arrests were reported.

· At approximately 18:00, IOF moved into Shwaika suburb, north of Tulkarm. They erected a number of checkpoints in the streets. They stopped and checked Palestinian civilians and arrested Jihad Mohammed Qattawi, 18.

Saturday, 04 April 2009

· At approximately 04:40, IOF troops positioned at the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel to the east of Jabalya town in the northern Gaza Strip fired a number of artillery shells at activists of the 'Izziddin al-Qassam Brigades (the armed wing of Hamas). Two activists were killed. The activists were transporting explosive devices approximately 150 meters away from the border. At approximately 07:30, two ambulances of Palestine Red Crescent Society arrived at the area to evacuate to the bodies of the two activists, but IOF fired three shells near them and forced them to leave the area. At approximately 11:00, following coordination through the ICRC, IOF allowed a Palestinian ambulance to reach the area and evacuate the bodies. The two dead activists were identified as:

1. Jameel Mohammed 'Aaraf Qanna, 22, from Khan Yunis; and

2. Mohammed Na'im al-Hamaida, 20, from Rafah.

· At approximately 18:00, IOF moved into al-Naqoura village, northwest of Nablus. They patrolled in the streets. They withdrew later. No arrests were reported.


Sunday, 05 April 2009

· At approximately 21:00, IOF moved into al-Sa'diya quarter in the old town of Jerusalem. They attacked Palestinian civilians who gathered near a house belonging to the Jaber family – which was confiscated by IOF – to express solidarity with the family. IOF violently beat these civilians and arrested a number of them for some time.

Monday, 06 April 2009

· At approximately 01:00, IOF moved into Ethna village, west of Hebron. They raided and searched a number of houses and arrested two Palestinian civilians:

1. Tariq Ibrahim 'Awadh, 35; and
2. Nader 'Abdul Fattah Abu Juhaisha, 28.

· At approximately 01:30, IOF moved into Kherbat Safa area to the northwest of Beit Ummar village, north of Hebron. They raided and searched a number of houses and arrested two Palestinian civilians:

1. Jamal Mohammed 'Ouda, 39; and
2. Mazen Hussein al-Teet, 19.


· At approximately 06:30, IOF gunboats besieged at least 30 fishing boats were fishing northwest of Beit Lahia town in the northern Gaza Strip. There were 69 Palestinian fishers on board at the time. The IOF gunboats opened fire at the fishing boats, most of which were able to flee to the beach. IOF gunboats held three fishing boats and took them to a harbor outside the Gaza Strip. Two IOF gunboats chased a fishing boat to the west of Jabalya town and forced it to sail towards the same harbor. IOF naval troops forced the fishers to take their clothes off and jump into the water and an IOF gunboat then took them to Ashdod Harbor, nearly 40 kilometers away from the Gaza Strip. Eight of those fishermen were identified as:

1. Waheeb Jom'a al-Sultan, 22;
2. Mohammed Jom'a al-Sultan, 17;
3. Nasser Mohammed Zayed, 40;
4. Ref'at Zayed Zayed, 19;
5. Safwat Zayed Zayed, 30;
6. Hafeez As'ad al-Sultan, 22;
7. Tariq Kamel al-Sultan, 17; and
8. Hafez As'ad al-Sultan, 24.


· At approximately 16:45, a number of Palestinian children gathered near the road linking between Za'tara intersection, south of Nablus, and Jericho town, to the north of Qabalan village. They threw stones at IOF military vehicles traveling on the road. Immediately, IOF troops fired at the children wounding Rimah 'Omran Aqra', 16, with two rubber-coated metal bullets to the thigh and pelvis.


Tuesday, 07 April 2009
· At approximately 01:00, IOF moved into Nablus and the neighboring Balata and 'Askar refugee camps. They raided and searched a number of houses and arrested six Palestinian civilians, including two children:

1. Jihad Mohammed Hashash, 22;
2. Bahaa' Khalil Marshoud, 22;
3. Muntasser 'Ali 'Eissa, 21;
4. Salam Hani al-Shalabi, 18;
5. 'Adnan Kamal al-Mallah, 16; and
6. Saddam Hussein al-Qunairi, 16.

· At approximately 01:30, IOF moved into Qabatya village, southeast of Jenin. They raided and searched a number of houses and arrested Murad Suleiman Kmail, 27.

· At approximately 02:00, IOF moved into Kherbat Safa area to the northwest of Beit Ummar village, north of Hebron. They raided and searched a house belonging to Jameel Mahmoud Abu Dayah and turned it into a military site.

· At approximately 02:00, IOF moved into Bal'ein village, west of Ramallah. They raided and searched a number of houses, but no arrests were reported.

· At approximately 02:30, IOF moved into Tubas town. They raided and searched a number of houses and arrested two Palestinian civilians:

1. Ashraf Ahmed Daraghma, 27; and
2. Nasser Fawzi Sawafta, 30.

· Also at approximately 02:30, IOF moved into al-Far'a refugee camp, south of Tubas. They raided and searched a number of houses and arrested two Palestinian civilians:

1. Hassan 'Ali Tayeh, 17; and
2. Majdi Subhi 'Abdul Jawad, 22.

· At approximately 11:00, IOF border guard troops opened fire at Eyad 'Azmi 'Owaisat, 20, from al-Sawahar village southeast of Jerusalem, when he was traveling in his car in the village. He was instantly killed. IOF claimed that 'Owaisat ran down three members of the IOF border guard, but eyewitnesses refuted this claim.


Wednesday, 08 April 2009

· At approximately 01:00, IOF moved into Nablus and the neighboring Balata and 'Askar refugee camp. They raided and searched a number of houses and arrested six Palestinian civilians, including two children:

1. Ahmed Sbaih al-Masri, 19;
2. Mohammed Nasser al-'Anani, 18;
3. Fadi Salem Ja'ja', 18;
4. Yazan Ra'ed al-'Aassi, 16;
5. Waleed Ibrahim Abu Msallam, 16; and
6. Mohammed 'Atallah al-Dairi, 21.

· At approximately 02:00, an IOF undercover unit moved into al-Far'a refugee camp, south of Tubas, traveling in two civilian vehicles. The vehicles stopped near a house belonging to the family of Ahmed Rashad Sawalma, 32. IOF troops raided and searched the house and arrested Sawalma.

· At approximately 04:30, IOF moved into 'Anabta village, east of Tulkarm. They raided and searched a number of houses and arrested three Palestinian civilians:

1. Najeeb Salah 'Abdul Halim, 30;
2. Baraa' Salah 'Abdul Halim, 21; and
3. Islam 'Abdul Karim Hassan, 27.

· At approximately 06:10, at least Israeli settlers from "Gush Etzion" and "Beit Ain" settlements, escorted by IOF troops, gathered to the north and east of Kherbat Safa area northwest of Beit Uammar village, north of Hebron. Many of those settlers were armed. They opened fire at Palestinian civilians who gathered to protect themselves and their property. The settlers and IOF troops moved forward and opened fire at Palestinian civilians and houses. Palestinian civilians in response threw stones at them to prevent them from storming their houses. The settlers and IOF used firearms, sound bombs and tear gas canisters against Palestinian civilians. IOF brought reinforcements to the area and declared it as a closed military zone. These attacks continued for 90 minutes, and peaked when IOF broke into the village and raided houses. As a result of these attacks, nine Palestinian civilians were wounded by gunshots, including three who were shot by settlers. Additionally, 26 civilians suffered from tear gas inhalation. IOF also transformed three houses in the area into military sites. Those who were wounded are:

1. Tha'er Nasser 'Aadi, 20, seriously wounded by a gunshot to the neck and shrapnel to the chest and the right shoulder and arm;
2. Waleed Mohammed Ekhlil, 35, wounded by a gunshot to the right ankle;
3. Suhail Ahmed Abu Dayah, 33, wounded by two gunshots to the right knee and leg;
4. Mohammed 'Ali Ekhlil, 34, wounded by a gunshot to the right leg;
5. 'Ammar Kassab Abu Dayah, 31, wounded by a gunshot to the right thigh;
6. Mohammed Hussein Ekhlil, 24, wounded by a gunshot to the left hand;
7. Amjad Ibrahim Abu 'Ayash, 33, wounded by a rubber-coated metal bullet to the head;
8. Mohammed 'Ali Ekhlil, 21, wounded by a gunshot to the left leg; and
9. Nader 'Ali Abu Dayah, 19, wounded by a rubber-coated metal bullet to the right shoulder.


2. Continued Siege on the OPT

IOF have continued to impose a tightened siege on the OPT and imposed severe restrictions on the movement of Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including Occupied East Jerusalem.

Gaza Strip

IOF have continued to close all border crossings to the Gaza Strip for more than two years. The IOF siege of Gaza, which has steadily tightened since June 2007, has had a disastrous impact on the humanitarian and economic situation in the Gaza Strip.

· 1.5 million people are being denied their basic rights, including freedom of movement, and their rights to appropriate living conditions, work, health and education.

· The main concern of the 1.5 million people living in the Gaza Strip is to obtain their basic needs of food, medicines, water and electricity supplies.

· IOF have continued to prevent the entry of raw construction materials into the Gaza Strip for more than two years.

· IOF have not allowed fuel supplies into the Gaza Strip – excluding limited amounts of cooking gas – since 10 December 2008.

· The Rafah International Crossing Point has been opened for a few days for a number of patients who received medical treatment abroad and needed to return home to the Gaza Strip.

· IOF have continued to close Beit Hanoun (Erez) crossing to Palestinian civilians wishing to travel to the West Bank and Israeli for medical treatment, trade or social visits. In the past two months, five patients, including two children, died due to the denial of their access to medical treatment outside the Gaza Strip.

· IOF have imposed additional access restrictions on international diplomats, journalists and humanitarian workers attempting to enter the Gaza Strip. They have prevented representatives of several international humanitarian organizations from entering the Gaza Strip.

· Living conditions of the Palestinian civilian population have seriously deteriorated; levels of poverty and unemployment have sharply increased.

· At least 900 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails have been denied family visitation for more than 17 months.

· At least 10% of the population of the Gaza Strip is deprived of electricity supplies.


Movement at Border Crossings during the Reporting Period:

Movement at Karm Abu Salem (Kerem Shalom) Crossing

01 – 07 April 2009

Date
Details
01 April 2009

88 containers of food aid for international humanitarian organizations and goods for
local traders were allowed into the Gaza Strip.

02 April 2009
102 containers of food aid for international humanitarian organizations and goods for
local traders were allowed into the Gaza Strip.

03 April 2009
74 containers of food aid for international humanitarian organizations and goods for
local traders were allowed into the Gaza Strip.

04 April 2009
Closed.

05 April 2009
109 containers of food aid for international humanitarian organizations and goods for
local traders were allowed into the Gaza Strip.

06 April 2009
115 containers of food aid for international humanitarian organizations and goods for
local traders were allowed into the Gaza Strip.

07 April 2009
113 containers of food aid for international humanitarian organizations and goods for
local traders were allowed into the Gaza Strip.


Movement at Rafah International Crossing Point

01 – 07 April 2009

Date
Details

01 April 2009
Two persons, including a US citizen, were allowed to travel to Egypt and 20 patients
were allowed into the Gaza Strip.

02 April 2009
31 members of a Moroccan medical delegation were allowed to travel to Egypt and 21 patients were allowed into the Gaza Strip.

03 April 2009
23 Palestinians, including a number of patients and a 10-member delegation of Hamas,
were allowed into the Gaza Strip.

04 April 2009
Closed.

05 April 2009
15 patients and 7 containers of medicines were allowed into the Gaza Strip.

06 April 2009
17 patients were allowed into the Gaza Strip.

07 April 2009
23 persons, including a Canadian citizen, were allowed into the Gaza Strip.

Al-Mentar (Karni) Crossing: During the reporting period, IOF allowed approximately 4,000 tons of seeds and fodder into the Gaza Strip.


The West Bank

IOF have imposed a tightened siege on the West Bank. During the reporting period, IOF imposed additional restrictions on the movement of Palestinian civilians.

· Jerusalem: IOF have continued to impose severe restrictions on the movement of Palestinian civilians to and from the city. Thousands of Palestinian civilians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have been denied access to the city. IOF have established many checkpoints around and inside the city. Restrictions on the movement of Palestinian civilians often escalate on Fridays to prevent them from praying at the al-Aqsa Mosque. IOF often violently beat Palestinian civilians who attempt to bypass checkpoints and enter the city. IOF have denied the entry of medical supplies and equipment from Palestinian National Authority controlled areas into Jerusalem. This measure has affected six Palestinian hospitals in Jerusalem.


· Nablus: IOF have continued to impose severe restrictions on the movement of Palestinian civilians. Although IOF dismantled Beit Eiba checkpoint, west of Nablus, IOF troops positioned at an iron gate established on Nablus-Tulkarm road, west of Nablus, often stopped and searched Palestinian civilian vehicles especially at times of heavy traffic. In the same context, IOF troops positioned at Hawara checkpoint, south of Nablus, often conduct prolonged and complicated checking on Palestinian civilians. Additionally, IOF have continued to erect checkpoints on roads leading to the city.

On Thursday morning, 02 April 2009, IOF troops positioned at Za'tara checkpoint, south of Nablus, arrested Mahmoud Jameel Jawabra, 25, from Kufor Ra'ei village southwest of Jenin.

On Sunday morning, 05 April 2009, IOF troops positioned at Za'tara checkpoint, south of Nablus, arrested Yousef Mahmoud Abu Ja'as, 22, from Jenin refugee camp.

· Hebron: IOF have continued to impose severe restrictions on the movement of Palestinian civilians. On Thursday noon, 02 April 2009, IOF moved into Kherbat Safa area, north of Hebron, and imposed a curfew. They closed the entrances to the area with sand barriers. On Friday evening, 03 April 2009, IOF troops positioned in the center and south of Hebron established a new iron gate and a checkpoint in Jaber quarter in the south of Hebron. IOF obligated Palestinian civilians who wish to travel in their cars in the area to obtain permits.

At approximately 01:20 on Sunday morning, 05 April 2009, IOF troops positioned at a checkpoint at the entrance of Beit Ummar village, north of Hebron, stopped an ambulance of the Palestine Red Crescent Society on its way towards the Tunnel checkpoint, south of Jerusalem, in order to evacuate a wounded person. IOF troops forced the two medics traveling in the ambulance to get out of it. They violently beat the two medics and held them for 20 minutes. The two medics are: 'Ali Mohammed Tumaizi, 25; and Eyad 'Adnan Madiya, 26.

On Monday morning, 06 April 2009, IOF troops positioned near the Annexation Wall to the west of Ethna village, northwest of Hebron, arrested Sameer Mohammed Tumaizi, 55, and his two sons, Younis, 22, and Fares, 20, when they were farming their land. IOF claimed that the three farmers were in a closed military zone.

On Tuesday morning, 07 April 2009, IOF troops positioned at the northern entrance of al-Fawar refugee camp, southwest of Hebron, arrested Samer Mohammed Ahmaru, 18.

Also on Tuesday, IOF troops positioned near the Ibrahimi Mosque in the south of Hebron arrested unidentified Palestinian civilian.

· Bethlehem: On Thursday afternoon, 02 April 2009, IOF erected a number of checkpoints in areas located to the southwest of Bethlehem. They stopped and searched hundreds of Palestinian civilian vehicles. One of those checkpoints was erected at the entrance of Beit Fajjar village, southwest of Bethlehem. IOF troops positioned at the checkpoint stopped and violently beat 4 Palestinian workers who were on their way back to their homes in the village. They sustained bruises and cuts. The workers were identified as:

1. Majed Mousa al-'Ajouri, 28, seriously injured in the head;
2. Mahmoud Rasmi Taqatqa, 37;
3. Saleh Taqatqa, 26; and
4. Mohammed Dairiya, 33.


· Jenin: IOF have continued to impose severe restrictions on the movement of Palestinian civilians. On Thursday morning, 02 April 2009, IOF erected a checkpoint between Masliya and Qabatya villages, southeast of Jenin. They stopped and searched Palestinian civilian vehicles.

· Qalqilya: On Saturday morning, 04 April 2009, IOF troops positioned at the eastern entrance of Qalqilya, arrested Jamal Yousef Yameen, 26, from Jeet village east of the town.


3. Construction of the Annexation Wall

IOF have continued to construct the Annexation Wall inside West Bank territory. During the reporting period, IOF used force against peaceful demonstrations organized by Palestinian civilians and international and Israeli human rights defenders in protest to the construction of the Wall.

· At approximately 08:00 on Thursday, 02 April 2009, IOF started to establish an iron fence on the northern edge of 'Azzoun village, east of Qalqilya, which will be 3.5 kilometers long and 2.5 meters high. It will extend from 'Izbat al-Tabeeb area to the intersection of "Ma'ale Shomron" settlement. The fence will separate 'Azzoun village from its northern lands. A week earlier, IOF had closed the main entrance to the village, and a month earlier, they closed its northern entrance, claiming that stones were thrown at Israeli vehicles traveling in the area. According to sources of the local council of the village, at least 200 donums of land belonging to the village will be seized for the purpose of the establishment of the fence. The establishment of the fence is part of the construction of the Annexation Wall near Qalqilya, which has been conducted in four stages, the fourth of which is the current one. According to the local council, there are concerns that a fifth stage may be implemented to the south of the village. At least 8,000 Palestinians live in 'Azzoun village, whose area is estimated at 9,000 donums. The construction of the Wall in the area has restricted access of Palestinian civilians to their lands.

· Following the Friday Prayer on 03 April 2009, scores of Palestinian civilians organized a peaceful demonstration in Bal'ein village, west of Ramallah, in protest at the construction of the Annexation Wall. The demonstrators moved towards the Wall and threw stones at IOF troops positioned in the area. Immediately, IOF troops fired gunshots, rubber-coated metal bullets, sound bombs and tear gas canisters at the demonstrators. As a result, two journalists were wounded:

1. Sa'ed al-Hawari, 33, a Reuters reporter, wounded by a rubber-coated metal bullet to the leg; and
2. Reebhi al-Koubari, 45, a Palmedia reporter, hit by a tear gas canister to the leg.

· Also following the Friday Prayer on 03 April 2009, dozens of Palestinian civilians and international and Israeli human rights defenders gathered in the center of Ne’lin village, west of Ramallah. They moved towards the area where IOF were razing land to construct a section of the Wall in the village. Immediately, IOF troops fired at the demonstrators. As a result, three Palestinian civilians were wounded:

1. Mohammed 'Abdul Hafiz Musleh, 21, wounded by a gunshot to the left leg and a rubber-coated metal bullet to the right hand;
2. Sabti Mohammed al-Khawaja, 22, wounded by a rubber-coated metal bullet to the back; and
3. Mohammed Rateb 'Amira, 24, hit by a tear gas canister to the right leg.


· Also following the Friday Prayer on 27 March 2009, scores of Palestinian civilians and a number of international human rights defenders organized a peaceful demonstration against the construction of the Wall in al-Ma'sara village, south of Bethlehem. The demonstrators moved towards the Wall, but IOF troops intercepted them at the entrance of the village. IOF troops fired tear gas canisters at the demonstrators. Dozens of demonstrators suffered from tear gas inhalation. IOF troops also violently beat two Palestinian children:

1. Usayd Hassan Braijiya, 7; and
2. Yousef Jom'a Zawahra, 14.

4. The establishment of a Jewish majority demographic in Jerusalem

IOF has recently escalated arbitrary measures against Palestinian civilians in East Jerusalem in order to force them to leave the city. PCHR has devoted this section in the Weekly Report to highlight violations of human rights perpetrated by IOF against Palestinian civilians in East Jerusalem.

· At approximately 02:30 on Friday, 03 April 2009, a number of Israeli settlers, escorted by IOF police, stormed a house belonging to Nasser 'Ali Jaber, 30, in al-Sa'diya quarter in the old town of Jerusalem. They removed the door of the house and seized the house, claiming that it belongings to an extremist Jewish association. It is worth noting that Jaber was repairing and maintaining the house, in which he has lived together with his family for more than 20 years. On Sunday, 05 April 2009, IOF arrested Jaber, but released him on bail on the following day and prevented him from going to his house. The family filed a petition at the Israeli Central Court in Jerusalem against the confiscation, but the court postponed considering the petition until 16 April 2009 and allowed the settlers to stay in the house.

· At approximately 08:00 on Monday, 06 April 2009, IOF demolished a 100-square-meter house belonging to 'Abdul Rahman al-Fakhouri, 24, in al-Luqluq quarter in the old town of Jerusalem. The IOF Municipality of Jerusalem had informed the family on Thursday, 02 April 2009, that the house would be demolished, claiming that it was built without a license.

· On Monday, 06 April 2009, the Israeli High Court gave permission to IOF to evacuate two houses belonging to the al-Ghawi and al-Jarrah families in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem in favor for Jewish groups. The court rejected a petition filed by the families against the evacuation, although the families submitted documents that support their ownership of the house.

· At approximately 06:00 on Tuesday, 07 April 2009, IOF police and border guard moved into Sour Baher village, south of Jerusalem. They besieged a two-storey house belonging to the family of Hussan Tayseer Dwayat, who was killed by IOF. They demolished a flat on the second floor of the house. The Israeli Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, issued a demolition order on 04 December 2008 against the house. The family filed a petition against the order at the Israeli High Court, which approved the demolition of the aforementioned flat not the whole house. Dwayat was killed on 02 July 2008 after he ran down 4 Israelis using a bulldozer in the center of Jerusalem.


5. Settlement Activities and Attacks by Settlers against Palestinian Civilians and Property

IOF have continued settlement activities in the OPT in violation of international humanitarian law, and Israeli settlers have continued to attack Palestinian civilians and property.

· On Thursday morning, 02 April 2009, at least 20 Israeli settlers, lead by the extremist Baroch Mazeil, blew up the doors of four shops in the second-hand clothes market near "Abraham Avino" settlement outpost in the south of Hebron. They then removed the rubble and started to rehabilitate the four shops in order to seize them. The shops belong to Hassan Bader, 'Azzam al-'Owaiwi, Mohammed al-Qawasmi and Bahaa' al-'Owaiwi.

· On Monday morning, 06 April 2009, IOF informed five Palestinian civilians in Deir Sa'da area to the south of al-Zahiriya village, south of Hebron, that their houses would be demolished. IOF claim that these houses were built without licenses. These civilians filed petitions against the demolition orders.
…………………………………………………………

Recommendations to the International Community

1. PCHR calls upon the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention to fulfill their legal and moral obligations under Article 1 of the Convention to ensure Israel's respect for the Convention in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. PCHR believes that the conspiracy of silence practiced by the international community has encouraged Israel to act as if it is above the law and encourages Israel to continue to violate international human rights and humanitarian law.

2. PCHR calls upon the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention to convene a conference to take effective steps to ensure Israel's respect of the Convention in the OPT and to provide immediate protection for Palestinian civilians.

3. PCHR calls upon the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention to comply with its legal obligations detailed in Article 146 of the Convention to search for and prosecute those responsible for grave breaches, namely war crimes.

4. PCHR calls for the immediately implementation of the Advisory Opinion issued by the International Court of Justice, which considers the construction of the Annexation Wall inside the West Bank illegal.

5. PCHR recommends international civil society organizations, including human rights organizations, bar associations and NGOs to participate in the process of exposing those accused of grave breaches of international law and to urge their governments to bring these people to justice.

6. PCHR calls upon the European Union to activate Article 2 of the Euro-Israel Association Agreement, which provides that Israel must respect human rights as a precondition for economic cooperation between the EU states and Israel. PCHR further calls upon the EU states to prohibit import of goods produced in illegal Israeli settlements in the OPT.

7. PCHR calls on the international community to recognize the reality of the Gaza disengagement plan, which was implemented in September 2005. Disengagement resulted, not in an end to occupation but rather in a compounding of the occupation and the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

8. In recognition of the ICRC’s role as the guardian of the Fourth Geneva Convention, PCHR calls upon the ICRC to increase its staff and activities in the OPT, including the facilitation of family visitations to Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

9. PCHR appreciates the efforts of international civil society, including human rights organizations, bar associations, unions and NGOs, and urges them to continue their role in pressuring their governments to secure Israel's respect for human rights in the OPT and to end its attacks on Palestinian civilians.

10. PCHR calls upon the international community to pressure Israel to lift the severe restrictions imposed by the Israeli government and its occupation forces on access for international organizations to the OPT.

11. PCHR reiterates that any political settlement not based on international human rights law and humanitarian law cannot lead to a peaceful and just solution of the Palestinian question. Rather, such an arrangement can only lead to further suffering and instability in the region. Any peace agreement or process must be based on respect for international law, including international human rights and humanitarian law.
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Public Document

For further information please visit our website (http://www.pchrgaza.org) or contact PCHR’s office in Gaza City, Gaza Strip by email (pchr@pchrgaza.org) or telephone (+972 (0)8 2824776 – 2825893).
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[1] 1 donum is equal to 1,000 square meters.