Briefing Paper April 2011

12th April 2011 8:04 pm

Scottish Friends of Palestine AGM

Sunday 17 April 2011 12.30pm to 2.15pm

STUC Centre 333 Woodlands Road Glasgow G3 6NG

Thereafter to Deir Yassin commemoration plaque in Kelvingrove Park (to the rear of the Art Galleries) for a short ceremony of commemoration (commencing around 2.45pm)

Motions for the AGM can be submitted to the Secretary 31 Tinto Road Glasgow G43 2AL or to info@scottish-friends-of-palestine.org or on the day of the AGM

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What shines through the documents is the reluctance of US officials to put reciprocal pressure on Israeli negotiators, even as the Palestinian team make major concessions on core issues.

The Palestine Papers: Israel’s peacemakers unmasked

Jonathan Cook 26/01/11

Jonathan Cook views some of the key revelations to emerge from the leaked confidential documents recording major, unreciprocated concessions made by Mahmoud Abbas’s team in talks with Israel, including relinquishing Palestinian sovereignty over Muslim holy places, selling out the Palestinian refugees’ fundamental rights and betraying Israel’s Arab citizens – all in return for nothing!

For more than a decade, since the collapse of the Camp David talks in 2000, the mantra of Israeli politics has been the same: “There is no Palestinian partner for peace.” This week, the first of hundreds of leaked confidential Palestinian documents confirmed the suspicions of a growing number of observers that the rejectionists in the peace process are to be found on the Israeli, not Palestinian, side.

Some of the most revealing papers, jointly released by Al-Jazeera television and Britain’s Guardian newspaper, date from 2008, a relatively hopeful period in recent negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. At the time, Ehud Olmert was Israel’s prime minister and had publicly committed himself to pursuing an agreement on Palestinian statehood. He was backed by the United States administration of George W. Bush, which had revived the peace process in late 2007 by hosting the Annapolis conference.

“…the most significant Palestinian compromise – or “sell-out”, as many Palestinians are calling it – was on Jerusalem.”

In those favourable circumstances, the papers show, Israel spurned a set of major concessions the Palestinian negotiating team offered over the following months on the most sensitive issues in the talks. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, has tried unconvincingly to deny the documents’ veracity, but has not been helped by the failure of Israeli officials to come to his aid. According to the documents, the most significant Palestinian compromise – or “sell-out”, as many Palestinians are calling it – was on Jerusalem.

During a series of meetings over the summer of 2008, Palestinian negotiators agreed to Israel’s annexation of large swaths of East Jerusalem, including all but one of the city’s Jewish settlements and parts of the Old City itself. It is difficult to imagine how the resulting patchwork of Palestinian enclaves in East Jerusalem, surrounded by Jewish settlements, could ever have functioned as the capital of the new state of Palestine. At the earlier Camp David talks, according to official Israeli documents leaked to the Haaretz daily in 2008, Israel had proposed something very similar in Jerusalem: Palestinian control over what were then termed territorial “bubbles”.

“Saeb Erekat, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s chief negotiator … effectively surrendered Palestinian rights enshrined in international law.”

In the later talks, the Palestinians also showed a willingness to renounce their claim to exclusive sovereignty over the Old City’s flashpoint of the Haram al-Sharif, the sacred compound that includes Al-Aqsa mosque and is flanked by the Western Wall. An international committee overseeing the area was proposed instead. This was probably the biggest concession of all – control of the Haram was the issue that “blew up” the Camp David talks, according to an Israeli official who was present. Saeb Erekat, the Palestine Liberation Organization’s chief negotiator, is quoted promising Israel “the biggest Yerushalayim in history” – using the Hebrew word for Jerusalem – as his team effectively surrendered Palestinian rights enshrined in international law.

The concessions did not end there, however. The Palestinians agreed to land swaps to accommodate 70 per cent of the half a million Jewish settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and to forgo the rights of all but a few thousand Palestinian refugees. The Palestinian state was also to be demilitarized. In one of the papers recording negotiations in May 2008, Erekat asks Israel’s negotiators: “Short of your jet fighters in my sky and your army on my territory, can I choose where I secure external defence?” The Israeli answer was an emphatic: “No.” Interestingly, the Palestinian negotiators are said to have agreed to recognize Israel as a “Jewish state” – a concession Israel now claims is one of the main stumbling blocks to a deal.

Israel was also insistent that Palestinians accept a land swap that would transfer a small area of Israel into the new Palestinian state along with as many as a fifth of Israel’s 1.4 million Palestinian citizens. This demand echoes a controversial “population transfer” long proposed by Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s far-right foreign minister.

The “Palestine Papers”, as they are being called, demand a serious re-evaluation of two lingering – and erroneous – assumptions made by many Western observers about the peace process. “What shines through the documents is the reluctance of US officials to put reciprocal pressure on Israeli negotiators, even as the Palestinian team make major concessions on core issues.”

The first relates to the United States’ self-proclaimed role as honest broker. What shines through the documents is the reluctance of US officials to put reciprocal pressure on Israeli negotiators, even as the Palestinian team make major concessions on core issues. Israel’s “demands” are always treated as paramount.

The second is the assumption that peace talks have fallen into abeyance chiefly because of the election nearly two years ago of a right-wing Israeli government under Binyamin Netanyahu. He has drawn international criticism for refusing to pay more than lip-service to Palestinian statehood.

The Americans’ goal – at least in the early stages of Mr Netanyahu’s premiership – was to strong-arm him into bringing into his coalition Tzipi Livni, leader of the centrist opposition party Kadima. She is still widely regarded as the most credible Israeli advocate for peace. However, Ms Livni, who was previously Mr Olmert’s foreign minister, emerges in the leaked papers as an inflexible negotiator, dismissive of the huge concessions being made by the Palestinians. At a key moment, she turns down the Palestinians’ offer, after saying: “I really appreciate it.” The sticking point for Ms Livni was a handful of West Bank settlements the Palestinian negotiators refused to cede to Israel. The Palestinians have long complained that the two most significant – Maale Adumim, outside Jerusalem, and Ariel, near the Palestinian city of Nablus – would effectively cut the West Bank into three cantons, undermining any hopes of territorial contiguity.

Ms Livni’s insistence on holding on to these settlements – after all the Palestinian compromises – suggests that there is no Israeli leader either prepared or able to reach a peace deal – unless, that is, the Palestinians cave in to almost every Israeli demand and abandon their ambitions for statehood. One of the Palestine Papers quotes an exasperated Mr Erekat asking a US diplomat last year: “What more can I give?”

The man with the answer may be Mr Lieberman, who unveiled his own map of Palestinian statehood this week. It conceded a provisional state on less than half of the West Bank.

Al-Arakib had already been destroyed 12 times within less than a year, and each time the residents returned to set up shacks and huts at the site of their destroyed homes. Yesterday was the 13th time.

Why is the government of Israel, the only democratic state in the Middle East (?), so insistent upon repeatedly destroying a small village which existed long before Israel itself came into being?

The village and the forest – and a bit about God

Gush Shalom 8/2/11

Yesterday at 7am., large police forces, accompanied by bulldozers and many trucks, were observed at the Kama Intersection northwest of Be’er Sheba. Residents of Al-Arakib village instantly understood that they were the target for these forces. Al-Arakib had already been destroyed 12 times within less than a year, and each time the residents returned to set up shacks and huts at the site of their destroyed homes. Yesterday was the 13th time.

Police forces surrounded the area on all sides, to prevent any villager or Human Rights activist from interfering with the demolition operations. Members of “Bimkom” – an association of architects and urban planners who are trying to formulate alternative zoning plans to those of the political establishment – were stopped by the police, their I.D.’s were taken and they were informed: “The area is closed, entry forbidden”

“How far does the closed area extend?” asked activist Alon Cohen-Lifshitz, and was told “From horizon to horizon.” He was not satisfied with this answer and stated: “If you close an area, you must present a precise map.” The answer to this was immediate and decisive: the activist was dragged to the police patrol car to spend seven hours in detention, on suspicion of “insulting a police officer” and “failing to obey a police officer.”

Meanwhile, behind the police cordon, the bulldozers continued their work. The twelve miserable huts where the villagers had lived were pulled down, as was the protest tent where they had received guests who came to visit them from Israel and abroad. Every remnant, from this and previous demolitions, was loaded on the ten trucks and taken away, to make sure that Arakib villagers would not recycle them in the next reconstruction. Residents watched the destruction from the cemetery where their ancestors had been buried in the past century, and which remains (so far?) untouched by the bulldozers. The Mosque in the cemetery remains the only structure still left standing, providing children with a bit of a shelter in the cold Negev winter nights.

The Police does not have enough manpower to keep the area permanently closed. Tomorrow or the day after, the police will leave and the residents return to the land which they have no intention of giving up. They will erect new huts and live in them until the next wave of destruction, a month or two hence.

Why is the government of Israel, the only democratic state in the Middle East (?), so insistent upon repeatedly destroying a small village which existed long before Israel itself came into being? The answer is well known: to make the desert bloom. Yes, it is the proclaimed and outspoken intention of the Jewish National Fund to plant a forest on this site. This damned unrecognized village called Arakib poses an obstacle to their noble forestry plans. A forest? Is it really possible to let a forest grow in this arid area, even if a lot of water is pumped there from other regions. Possibly the JNF might manage a little grove, should the police ever manage to rid them of the stubborn villagers. Maybe.

In fact, the Jewish National Fund already intended to embark on planting several weeks ago, on Tu B’Shvat, the Tree Holyday. But the villagers disrupted these plans by rebuilding the huts in their destroyed village and demonstrating in front of the JNF headquarters in Jerusalem and appealing to the court in Be’er Sheba. Judge Nehama Netzer-Shalom did not order the JNF to stop their work, although she did note that “the JNF should avoid planting on the site, as it is doubtful whether such planting is consistent with preserving the existing situation. She also stated that “There can be no doubt that the time has come to regulate the construction proble , so that also such people as the Bedouins of Al-Arakib would be able to build legally and establish communities without being later declared to be “unrecognized villages”. All this, however, are but recommendations without the power of a verdict – and in this enlightened democratic country, the authorities are often very tardy in carrying out even explicit judicial rulings. (The residents of Bil’in have been waiting for more than three years already for implementation of the Supreme Court ruling to move the “Separation Fence” – but that’s another story …)

God is also involved in this story – at least, GOD TV – established by American Evangelical churches based in the United States – has been providing generous funding to the tree-planting project. “It is an apostolic, prophetic act, to restore the desert places to the lush green land it once was, make the deserts livable (sic!) once more, preparing the Holy Land for the return of the King of Kings” so did God declare yesterday by means of a communiqué published in the website of his TV station. . And what about the uprooting of the Arakib villagers from their land? Well, this is between the villagers and the government of Israel, not the business of GOD TV. Of what importance are a few villagers compared with the return of the King of Kings to the Holy Land?

Gaza

Rami Almeghari, The Electronic Intifada, 10/02/11

“I still cannot believe my eyes as I see the machines of our new factory, scattered to all corners,” said Rabah al-Hatto as he surveyed the rubble of his recently-established plastic water tank factory in northeast Gaza, which was bombed by Israeli warplanes early yesterday. “What have I and the twenty workers here done to find ourselves jobless?” al-Hatto told The Electronic Intifada. The factory was due to start distributing its products in the local market in two weeks. “I am completely shocked,” the trim-bearded al-Hatto said. “I never imagined that the factory in which I and my partners invested all our money and energy, would become rubble.” As he spoke, al-Hatto was surrounded by workers, friends, reporters and a field worker from a human rights group.

“Yesterday [Tuesday] afternoon, we left the factory to go home. Just before 1am on Wednesday morning I heard Israeli warplanes bombing the area, but I did not imagine it was the factory. Later in the morning, I came to work to find our machines and the ceiling torn apart,” Bashar al-Wehaidi, a technician in the factory, told The Electronic Intifada. “Everything in this 1,200 square meter building was hit.” Israeli air strikes early Wednesday hit a number of sites in northern Gaza, injuring eight persons, according to medical sources. Three men, three women and two children were hit by debris and shrapnel that struck area homes. The Israeli attacks also destroyed a medical storage building and damaged a school.

Near to where owner Rabah al-Hatto was seated on a chair at his factory site, there was a large truck badly damaged by the Israeli bombing and a heap of aluminum and iron bars on the ground. “Please look! Please look! A modern truck has been struck before it even traveled the streets of Gaza to distribute our products. Why?” al-Hatto asked. Commenting on Israeli claims that the attack was in retaliation for several rockets fired from Gaza at Israel, al-Hatto said, “Oh my God! What kind of a response is this!”

Now in his early forties, al-Hatto told The Electronic Intifada the story behind his factory. “A year ago, my brother, others partners and I decided to build this factory,” he said. “I used to work as a steelworker, but with the lack of steel due to the Israeli blockade, I decided to invest all my savings in manufacturing plastic water tanks.” Al-Hatto estimates the losses to him and his partners from the Israeli attack to be $300,000, as well as the incomes for the twenty now jobless workers and their families. Bashar al-Wehaidi, the now unemployed technician, said that the attack was a complete injustice by Israel. “We have been working tirelessly over the past year in order for this important facility to see the light. May God compensate us such a great loss,” he said.

In the vicinity of the factory, which is located in the al-Qerem neighborhood in the northeast of the Gaza Strip, there are a number of other facilities hit in the Israeli attack. Among them are a large medical storage building, a primary school for 600 students, as well private homes. The school’s ceiling and windows were damaged, forcing the administration to suspend classes until further notice. According to the Gaza-based health ministry, the al-Qerem medical storage facility was hit by a missile fired from an F-16 fighter jet, causing enormous damage. “The attack on this store constitutes a flagrant Israeli occupation violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention for the protection of civilian persons in time of war, as well as other relevant world health conventions,” Dr. Munir al-Bursh, chief of Gaza’s medical stores with the Gaza health ministry, told The Electronic Intifada at his office in Gaza City on Wednesday.

The bombed facility is one of nine storage sites run by the Gaza health ministry according to al-Bursh, who estimates the losses from the Israeli attack at $400,000. “This is a great loss, in light of the four-year-long Israeli blockade,” Dr. al-Bursh said. “Recently we have listed 183 drugs that our stores are lacking as Israel continues to delay deliveries through the crossings into Gaza.” (Israeli army sources said on Wednesday that their latest air strikes on Gaza were in response to five homemade rockets that landed in southern Israel causing no injuries and minor property damage.)

Though they were born in the city, have spent their lives there and have no other home, Palestinians resident in Jerusalem are treated like foreign citizens. Unlike Israelis, they must prove that Jerusalem is their “centre of life” if they are to retain the Jerusalem ID card without which they cannot gain access to the city, its markets and services. In order to safeguard their residency status, families crowd into inadequate housing. When they seek permission to expand their homes, they are refused. When, left with no option, they build unapproved extensions, they face demolition.

Sheikh Jarrah and the “masterplan” for Jerusalem

Mike Marqusee The Hindu 20/2/11

In Sheikh Jarrah, a neighbourhood north of the Old City, where 28 extended Palestinian families are waging a struggle against eviction and displacement by Jewish settlers.

The families came here in 1948 as refugees from Israel. With the sponsorship of the Jordanian government and the United Nations they built their homes and established their community. In 1967, East Jerusalem, including Sheikh Jarrah, was occupied and annexed by Israel. Soon after, Jewish settler groups began laying claim to the land, on the basis of an alleged Ottoman era purchase. But it’s only since 2007, as Israel has intensified its efforts to create facts on the ground, especially in Jerusalem, that these claims have secured enough political backing to result in actual evictions. So far, three Sheikh Jarrah families have been removed from their homes, to be instantly replaced by Jewish settlers, who have swathed the occupied building in Israeli flags, barbed wire and surveillance equipment. Eviction orders are pending against the remaining families, with more settlers poised to move in.

The residents of Sheikh Jarrah know their history. They are defending homes built by their families on land that their families have occupied for 60 years, land and homes which they had every reason to believe they were legally entitled to. They have kept vigil under trees. They have camped out in their own gardens. They and their children have been assaulted — by settlers and police. They have tried every conceivable legal recourse, though the Israeli courts rebuff them time and again. They have organised non-violent demonstrations. They have appealed to Obama, the EU and the UN. But the Israelis have plans for Jerusalem and at the moment they see no reason to allow the residents of Sheikh Jarrah — or Silwan or Al-Bustan or any of the other Palestinian neighbourhoods under similar pressure — to stand in their way.

Within weeks of the 1967 war, Israel announced the annexation of 70 sq km of land captured from Jordan and the creation on that land of an enlarged Jerusalem municipality. It declared the “unified” Jerusalem its capital and shifted its national institutions there. This annexation is in clear violation of international law and has never been formally recognised by other countries, which retain their embassies in Tel Aviv. Yet, at the same time, these governments have been willing to tolerate and, in the case of the US, subsidise the Israeli policy of “Judaisation” of Jerusalem, the policy that ousts the people of Sheikh Jarrah from their homes.

The “master plan” for Jerusalem, endorsed by the Israeli Government and the Jerusalem Municipality, aims explicitly at preserving a Jewish majority of 60 or 70 per cent (the exact ratio is in dispute). It’s hard to think of another example, since the fall of South African apartheid, of an ethnic planning quota being adopted as state policy. In pursuit of ethnic dominance, Israel has created a complex regime of discrimination — in planning, residency rights, restrictions on movement, and provision for education, healthcare and infrastructure. Palestinian private land is confiscated (as at Sheikh Jarrah), settlement building and road construction fragment and limit Palestinian development, and the wall, in its tortured progress through, across, into and out of Jerusalem, sets in concrete the whole policy. This has nothing to do with the security of Israel and everything to do with Israeli control over Palestinians and Palestine as a whole.

In the Old City, the Jewish Quarter feels sanitised. The restoration has a heavy touch. The area is colonised by tour groups and the souvenir industry, whose wares include tee shirts bearing the slogans: “Super Jew”, “Don’t Worry America Israel’s Behind You” (illustrated with a tank), and “Guns n Moses”. In this city of multiple, entwined histories, only one history, one thread, is permitted. The Muslim Quarter, though physically more decaying, lives more in the present. It’s a marketplace similar to marketplaces in other Arabic cities, with Palestinians mainly buying from and selling to each other.

Here and there in the Muslim Quarter Jewish settlers have occupied buildings, easily identified by the Israeli flags and bulging security apparatus. I watched Jewish kids playing football on barbed wire enclosed rooftops — a strange form of self-imprisonment. If nothing else, it testifies to an ideological will power strong enough to compel parents to subject their own children to a life of fear and stress. It’s a platitude that Jerusalem means different things to different people. Even in the Bible itself, and certainly in the Talmudic literature that followed, Jerusalem is more a symbol than a geographical space. The city is a metaphor, an object of longing, a place from which we are all exiled, a better world to which we all aspire. In some parts of the tradition Jerusalem is an ideal of social justice. The literalism of Zionism, and of many pro-Zionist Christians, is very much a modern, reductive twist. At Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan and elsewhere, it is thin cover for a naked land grab.

Shortly after our visit, the Jerusalem Municipality demolished part of the Palestinian owned Shepherds Hotel, perched on a ridge above the Sheikh Jarrah homes. It is to be replaced by a new apartment block for Jewish settlers. Another blow followed soon after: the revelation in the Palestine Papers — leaked documents published by Al Jazeera and the Guardian — that Palestinian Authority negotiators were prepared to barter away Sheikh Jarrah. The families we met expected little from the PA, but not outright betrayal. Nonetheless, they feel they have no choice but to continue their struggle. It is a duty to themselves and to the future. They embody the critical Palestinian virtue of “sumoud” — steadfastness. Events in Egypt will have given them new hope. But until world opinion rouses itself against the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem, the odds are stacked against them.

Ghost town – a private outing in Hebron

Ha’aretz 25/02/11

The skies darkened, the wind howled and a hard rain began to fall. Three people walked along a deserted street: two heavily armed soldiers, and between them a young Palestinian, blindfolded, hands bound behind his back. Without a word, they hustled the youth into a military jeep and disappeared up the alley. What had the Palestinian done? How had he transgressed? We will never know. He was seized, and disappeared.

Not far from there, Palestinian workers unloaded food packages from a truck, a gift from the International Red Cross to the thousand or so needy families here. Soon the children of poverty will appear, load the rice-pasta- flour -sugar-oil onto their ramshackle carts and take it home. The Red Cross spokesman in Israel, Ran Goldstein, says that about 78 percent of the neighbourhood’s residents live below the poverty line. It’s a disaster area. With walking stick and backpack, we drove to the Tomb of the Patriarchs on a rainy winter day for a private outing, following the education minister’s decision to encourage Israeli school children to visit the holy site. Holy, for sure. How do we know? On the bulletin board at the entrance to the holy cave we read: “If your cellular phone’s battery goes dead, there is a charitable box of chargers in the yeshiva in Yeshanei Hevron hall.” Charitable charges, only in Israel, only in Hebron.

When were you last here? When were your children here? Thanks to Gideon Sa’ar, who just had to correct his leftist image in the Likud Central Committee, they will soon be visiting here. So here’s a preview of their next school outing. Drive through the Valley of Elah, or through the tunnels road to the “Gush [Bloc] intersection.” Look right, look left at the sea of settlements all around, cruise along a road, parts of which were once lush Palestinian vineyards – that’s something worth telling the pupils – and turn right off Route 60 into Kiryat Arba.

A checkpoint, entry to Jews only, and of course also to the Palestinian workers who are widening the entry road to the community, which was conceived by Yigal Allon, a man of the Labor Party, the left and the peace movement. The place has since been developed by all his successors from Labor and Likud. More than once I was asked here: “Are all the passengers in the car Jews?” That’s a question your children would do well to hear, and to reflect on its implications. Be that as it may, we will cross the huge settlement of Kiryat Arba from east to west, pass another checkpoint and turn left down the road.

The picture changes in a twinkling. The well-kept (relatively) and busy (relatively) streets now give way to ghost streets. The lower down the slope we drive, the more deserted they are. Hundreds of locked, sealed stores, hundreds of abandoned apartments, blinds shut, windows barred, ancient stone homes that could be Palestinian heritage sites but are now desolate. Welcome to Hebron H2, under Israeli control, the way to the caves of the patriarchs and the matriarchs. The feeling of a vast cemetery strikes the visitor, a cemetery of property that was plundered and rights that were trampled. Welcome to the scene of the crime.

The school children should look out the window. Maybe one of them will pluck up the courage to ask the teacher: Where are the people? Where are the shop owners? Why did they run away? Who frightened them? Where are they now? But the pupils will probably be preoccupied with their own interests, and anyway, no teacher will tell them, for fear their tender souls will be corrupted. You might want to know, though, that in 2007 the human rights organization B’Tselem counted 1,014 abandoned apartments and 1,829 locked stores in a quarter from which thousands of owners scattered every which way, terrorized by rioting settlers and the endless curfew days – 377 days of full curfew in the three years of the second intifada, 182 of them in succession. One of the pupils might want to know what curfew means. It means being imprisoned at home, day and night. And is it imposed on everyone in the neighbourhood? No, dear pupil, only on the Palestinian residents.

Isn’t that apartheid? Of course, it’s not apartheid. Nor is the monstrous phenomenon by which only Jewish cars are allowed into the neighborhood. No Palestinian vehicle has entered this area for years, not even to transport a sick old woman or load a broken refrigerator. Only by foot. By foot? Palestinians are not even allowed to walk on adjacent Shuhada Street, which the Americans spent a lot of money to refurbish. Only Jews, of course. And how, one of the pupils might ask, how do the people who live on this street get home? They sneak in via the roofs from the back. But don’t worry, most of them fled long ago.

Another Border Police checkpoint and we have reached our destination. The Tomb of the Patriarchs is a spectacular Herodian structure with a ragged Israeli flag flapping in the breeze in front. We walk up stone stairs, are checked by metal detectors and enter the holy temple. Just before you enter, grab another look from the high platform at the desolate neighbourhood that lies below. You’re young, so you don’t remember what a bustling place the city centre used to be, how lively was the market that is no more. Soldiers bundled up against the cold stand at every corner, settlers whiz by in their cars and a handful of Palestinians pass the checkpoints quickly, with looks whose meaning is unfathomable, on their way home or out of this hell. Praise be to God, today is not a Jewish holiday or day of assembly, so they are allowed to move about. Try visiting here on Purim or Pesach – curfew. When you grow up and become soldiers, maybe you will serve here. You shall not rest, guardians of Israel, in protecting these settlers.

A worker from the Tribe of Menashe, from the Burmese border area, collects cigarette butts at the entrance. Someone decided that he is a Jew, so he’s here. A Gemara lesson is underway in the yeshiva at the entrance to the cave. About a dozen old men listen to a rabbi who is peeling an apple and giving them the Word. “What happens if the letter yod is too long and looks like a vav? That does not invalidate a Torah scroll.” This must be what the information pamphlet published by the Jewish community here, which is handed out at the entrance, means when it says, “Jewish spiritual life is flourishing here.” A group of settler children sit on a long row of plastic chairs and recite in chirpy voices a passage from Tractate Megilla, while their rabbi is immersed in a phone conversation on his mobile. They have long sidelocks and big white skullcaps, some of which are inscribed with the “Nachman from Uman” incantation.

“To all our brethren of the House of Israel who lost a coat, a tallit or other objects in this structure of the Tomb of the Patriarchs: You are invited to leave a text message and detail the type of loss and identifying marks. If we find the lost item, we will get back to the number you left in your message. If not, please consult the book ‘A Prayer to Moses,’ p. 271. There you will find a tried and tested remedy for finding what you lost. Blessings.” Another note on the bulletin board.

“Good morning, I am your guide today.” A group of soldiers comes in, Samson’s Foxes, in their purple Givati infantry brigade berets. They are now serving in the southern Hebron hills and have come here for a day of “educational additives” as guests of the settlers. Not only Gideon Sa’ar visits, but the IDF too, and their educational additive includes not only a visit to the cave but also to the settlers’ homes, where they will undoubtedly be served a particularly sublime pedagogic poem. Why should they get an educational additive from the settlers and not from Breaking the Silence?

Exactly 17 years ago, in nearby Isaac Hall, the Goldstein massacre was perpetrated, but that of course is not included in the educational additive. Instead, the soldiers hear about how Rabbi Shlomo Goren, the army’s chief chaplain at the time, ordered his driver to come here immediately after he liberated the Western Wall, and how the rabbi fired a number of shots into the air in the face of local residents who were waving white flags and sheets and were surrendering unconditionally. Any questions? No questions. The Samson’s Foxes know everything.

In the meantime, the call of the muezzin is heard, one of the last expressions of the neighborhood’s disappearing Palestinian presence. His booming voice, carried by loudspeakers, infiltrates the cave, drowning out for a moment, but just for a moment, the exhortations of the rabbi, the chants of the children and the voice of the guide of the Polish pilgrims. The last time I was here, last summer, I accompanied the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010, Mario Vargas Llosa, who said to me, in the face of the ghost city and its savage masters, “This is the other side of Israel and it is very sad that so few Israelis visit here. They don’t know. It is so close to Jerusalem and they do not have the slightest idea of what is going on here. It is important to make them aware, it will help very much.” His words echoed in my mind like a tolling bell as I watched the soldiers disappear into the Avraham Avinu compound, amid the graffiti of hatred for the Arabs, most of whom no longer live here.

No, a young soldier, heavily armed and well equipped, targeted Omar, who was standing there, with shabby clothes and stones in his hands, and decided to shoot him. A young soldier on a sunny winter morning felt the need to kill a man his same age who he probably considered as not so important. He knew that this act would never have any consequences, that he wouldn’t have to justify that deed to anyone. Because it was a Palestinian who has no rights, whose life doesn’t count

Omar Maruf is the eighth civilian being shot dead in the buffer zone in the last two months. Since the beginning of last year, far more than a hundred workers and farmers have been shot by Israeli snipers in the buffer zone, 18 of them died.

The Names of the Innocent who are Killed

Vera Macht Dissident Voice 6/03/11

This article is about Omar Maruf. What makes this one so important when every day dozens of innocent people die all over the world? Why an article about this one?

Omar Maruf was killed by a soldier who was heavily armed, and well equipped with everything the latest Western military industry has to offer. Omar was wearing old, dirty clothes, and collecting stones with his donkey. Omar was not even a so-called “collateral damage” who was unfortunately hit by a misguided bullet or bomb during a military attack. In our modern wars, where everything is precisely calculated, sometimes someone is just at the wrong time at the wrong place. But it wasn’t like that. No, a young soldier, heavily armed and well equipped, targeted Omar, who was standing there, with shabby clothes and stones in his hands, and decided to shoot him. A young soldier on a sunny winter morning felt the need to kill a man his same age who he probably considered as not so important. He knew that this act would never have any consequences, that he wouldn’t have to justify that deed to anyone. Because it was a Palestinian who has no rights, whose life doesn’t count.

This article is about Omar Maruf, because his life does count. Because his death deserves outrage and a demand for justice. Because I’ve looked into the silent faces of Omar’s grieving brothers, because I have listened to his cousins, who spoke all the more, out of anger and helplessness. How can you just murder a young man, they asked me. How it is possible that the Israeli soldier will not be sued, that there is no justice, that no one cares? Why you can just kill people like us, why you can just shoot Palestinians? Why does no one do anything? Why no government in the world is helping us, when the Israeli government believes that international law does not apply for them?

So here it is, the story of the death of Omar Maruf. He was twenty years old, and the father of a two years old son. “Don’t go too close to the border, it’s too dangerous,” his cousin Talal has previously warned him. He had no choice, Omar had responded. He had a son who needs food. So he went to the border to collect stones. It was 9:30 in the morning of the 28th February 2011, Talal was about 700 meters away from the border, on his own land. Omar was at 400 meters, when the Israeli soldiers opened fire. He was outside the so-called buffer zone, the 300-meter-wide strip of land along the border with Israel, which the Israeli military has banned from entering under threat of death. It is debatable whether it is lawful to declare publicly to shoot any civilian of the neighbour state who is on his own farmland close to the border. But that is not important, Omar was over a hundred yards away from this area.

Talal couldn’t see Omar from where he was standing. He didn’t know what had happened to him, whether the shots had hit him. The soldiers fired several volleys, and with the last volley, they shot the donkey, Talal could see how he died. Why the donkey, one wonders, such a pointless additional cruelty. But Talal didn’t know yet what had happened to Omar. Shortly after, two bulldozers and a tank broke into the land. It was impossible for Talal to come closer. Even the ambulance from the Red Cross which he had called received no permission to approach the donkey cart, even after several attempts to coordinate with the Israeli side.

The bulldozers began to dig a ditch around the cart with the dead donkey, almost half a kilometer away from the territory of their own state. Why, one wonders. Why did they dig a ditch around the donkey cart? Shortly after, Talal watched from a safe distance how Omar’s lifeless body was brought into the tank. Why, one wonders. Why did they take Omar with them? Maybe they wanted to treat him, said his cousin. Treat? For two hours, the paramedics of the Red Cross were trying to find out what happened to Omar, where he was, whether he was still alive. In vain. Finally, the paramedics received a call from the hospital of Gaza City: A body had been brought in from the Israeli Erez crossing, Omar was dead

“What on earth was this soldier thinking when he shot him?” his cousin asks me. “Did he think he would pose any danger? He doesn’t even have money to buy milk for his child. Did he think he had money for a weapon? Did he think he would have a tank?” As if I would have the answer. So I follow the question of why the soldiers have taken Omar with them. They wanted to help him, the family is convinced.

I ask one of his brothers whether traces of medical treatment were visible on his body. He shakes his head. “No,” he says, “I have seen his body. There were no puncture marks of an infusion, no bandages. The bullet had entered at the left side of his body, and had come out again on the other side.” A dumdum bullet, which causes maximum damage. Bullets which explode on impact inside the body are prohibited according to Geneva Convention 1889, Declaration 3. I don’t mention that that hardly matches the version that soldiers wanted to help. Perhaps the idea is just too reassuring that one of them has actually seen Omar as a human being who needs help.

But something had changed on him. As Omar’s dead body reached the hospital, a notice was fixed to his chest. “Terrorist” it said.

European policy on Palestine can no longer be said to reflect the values and aspirations of the people. The survey confirms a disturbing level of disconnect between public opinion and governments’ actions. Whereas the EU took a decision in 2003 to place Hamas on its list of terrorist organisations and preclude it from any negotiations, 45% of those polled said it should be included in peace talks, while only 25% said it should be excluded

Europe’s Israel romance is on the wane

Europeans are losing their illusions about Israel, our survey shows. Policy is out of step with the publicIn Europe, Israel has historically enjoyed a high level of support, not least because it was perceived as a progressive democracy in a sea of Arab backwardness. At the same time, most Europeans knew very little about the Israel-Palestine conflict: as recently as 2004, the Glasgow University Media Group found that only 9% of British students knew that the Israelis were the illegal occupiers of Palestinian land. Astonishingly, there were actually more people (11%) who believed that the Palestinians were occupying the territories.

However, according to a new poll by ICM for the Middle East Monitor, Europeans’ perception of Israel has changed decisively, and their understanding of the Israel-Palestine conflict, while still giving some cause for concern, has improved significantly. The survey of 7,000 people in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Britain reveals only a small minority (10%) now believe their countries should support Israel rather than the Palestinians, while many more, 39%, think they should not.

This shift in European public opinion may owe something to an improved understanding of the conflict; 49% of respondents were now able to identify Israel as the occupying power. However, 22% still didn’t know. This persistence of ignorance about issues that have been long established in international law may reflect media bias, or inadequate coverage of the conflict. It could also be a result of campaigns undertaken by the Israeli public relations machinery in Europe. Whatever the cause, the shift in public opinion is clearly not mainly due to the success of a pro-Palestinian lobby.

This decisive shift appears to be primarily a consequence of Israel’s violation of international law, specifically its actions in Gaza, the 2010 attack on the humanitarian flotilla, its settlement expansion programme, and the construction of the separation wall. There is, across Europe, a growing rejection of Israeli policies. Its blockade of Gaza was said to be illegal by 53% of those polled (16% thought it legal) – an appreciation of the international legal opinion that recognises the siege as a form of collective punishment and a violation of the Geneva conventions. While it is important to note that those polled saw fault on both sides, 31% considered Palestinians to be the primary victims of the conflict, while only 6% thought Israelis the primary victims. A third of respondents believe Israel is not a democracy, while fewer than half believe it is, and most of those surveyed (65%) agree Israel does not treat all religious groups the same, compared with 13% who believe it does.

Similarly, a clear majority of Europeans (58%) are against changing the law to make it easier for those accused of war crimes to visit Europe – a ringing indictment of governments that have either changed or are attempting to change their laws to protect Israeli war crime suspects. The Conservatives are committed to changing the law, yet only 7% of the 2,000 Britons polled would support such a change – the lowest figure in Europe.

Hugh Humphries

Sec

Scottish Friends of Palestine

0141 637 8046

info@scottish-friends-of-palestine.org

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