Showing posts with label jerusalem. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jerusalem. Show all posts
Saturday, 15 March 2008
Al Jazeera English: Jerusalem's new housing plans
March 12, 2008
Jerusalem remains a bone of contention between Israelis and Palestinians.
Now, new moves to consolidate the Jewish presence there are increasing tensions.
For the first time since 1967, Jewish owned buildings and properties in the Old City are being officially registered by the state.
Friday, 11 January 2008
VIDEO: Inside Story - Bush wants peace in 2008
This episode of Inside Story aired on Thursday, January 10, 2008
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Ilan Pappe, 2001 : "Together with the Palestinian Intifada, the issue of the Palestinian right of return has effectively erased the Israeli left from the political map in this election. And this is because of the peculiar character of the left in Israel. For this is not a 'left' in the European sense, in the sense of being socialist or even social democratic in its economic, social or human policies.
"It is 'left' solely vis-à-vis the peace process with the Palestinians. It saw itself as the 'vanguard' of Israeli Jewish society. Its self-appointed task was to be the 'enlightened minority' that would help other Israelis cross the bridge from war to peace. Yet when that decisive moment came, between the failure of the Camp David meeting in July and the Palestinian uprising in October, the left betrayed its promise. And it did so precisely on the issue of the Palestinian right of return.
Wednesday, 19 December 2007
The right wing's Jerusalem gambit
A new coalition of religious hard-liners with ties to President Bush seeks to scuttle any plans for dividing Jerusalem between Israelis and Palestinians.
Gregory Levey, Salon.com, December 13, 2007
On Nov. 26, the U.S. State Department got hit with an unexpected barrage of phone calls. The Coordinating Council on Jerusalem, a new coalition of American groups with hard-line views on Israel, was on the line -- all of the lines. Or so the group said two days later in a press release, proudly proclaiming that with 10,000 calls in less than 48 hours it had managed to overload the State Department's voice-mail system. The group was making known its opposition to any Israeli concessions on dividing Jerusalem between Israelis and Palestinians -- an issue that was swirling around the Bush administration's peace summit taking place in Annapolis, Md.
The new coalition's dubious achievement wasn't much noticed by the media, and perhaps isn't in itself important, but it was a sign of battles to come in the year ahead, as Israeli and Palestinian leaders struggle to move forward with any real progress after Annapolis. Although most appraisals of the conference were reservedly positive -- after all, at least the two sides were talking seriously again after a seven-year drought -- the event also opened a can of worms.
On the eve of Annapolis, the new right-wing coalition's representatives directly lobbied a top Bush official with their concerns about the summit. Even Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert took notice and seemed threatened by their potential to obstruct progress -- leveling some harsh words just before the Annapolis conference apparently directed at the coalition.
Annapolis was only the beginning of a renewed series of high-level negotiations, and the joint Israeli-Palestinian statement read by President Bush at the event was purposefully vague so as to avoid angering either leader's constituents or allies. Anyone reading between the lines, however, could see that the most explosive issue of all, dividing Jerusalem, had reemerged. The new coalition of religious groups seeks to use the incendiary Jerusalem question to scuttle any of the progress promised by Annapolis. Its efforts also threaten to cause painful rifts among American Jews, and perhaps shake up some pro-Israel political alliances.
Although the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the most influential pro-Israel lobbying group in the U.S., seems to be taking a wait-and-see approach to the new high-level negotiations, some of AIPAC's major donors and allies are involved with the Coordinating Council on Jerusalem. The coalition is also being aided in its efforts by evangelical Christian groups and supported by figures such as G. Gordon Liddy. It is directed by an influential former fundraiser for George W. Bush, Jeff Ballabon.
Ballabon is a Washington lobbyist who served as a major fundraiser for the 2004 Bush reelection campaign and was the architect of a strategy that has sought to bring Orthodox Jews into the Republican fold, in an effort to balance the overwhelmingly Democratic voting habits of mainstream American Jews. Just before the conference in Annapolis, Ballabon, along with Christian leaders and representatives of various Orthodox groups, met with Bush's national security advisor, Stephen Hadley, to make sure their point of view, and the force of their commitment, were understood by the administration. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Hadley reportedly assured them that, for the time being, the issue of Jerusalem was in fact not on the negotiating table.
Some interesting fissures have begun to crop up along with the new coalition. A few weeks before the Annapolis meeting, a congressional letter requesting increased aid for the Palestinian Authority -- which would help it meet some of its obligations toward achieving peace -- was endorsed by AIPAC, surprising many in Washington lobbying circles. (The Israeli government had not opposed the aid.) That decision earned AIPAC a sharp rebuke by one of its most important donors, billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who said, "If someone is going to jump off a bridge, it is incumbent upon their friends to dissuade them." Adelson, reportedly the third richest person in the United States and a prominent donor to the Republican Party, is also a major donor to the Zionist Organization of America, a group that, although lacking anything near the clout that AIPAC wields, is still influential among Middle East hawks in the GOP. And it is a core member of the new Coordinating Council. The national president of ZOA, Mort Klein, told Salon in an interview that "Israel should not be willing to give away any part of Jerusalem to another entity, just as the U.S. wouldn't give away any part of Washington." He added, "Jerusalem is mentioned 700 times in our holy book. It's not mentioned even once in the Quran."
ZOA has been active for a long time, but has never gotten the kind of political attention enjoyed by AIPAC and other more mainstream groups, or by the Christian evangelical groups pushing hawkish Middle East polices who have joined the Coordinating Council. What has changed is that the obstructionist agenda of the ZOA and the evangelical groups is now being aided by the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jewish member organizations of the newly formed coalition -- many of which have, prior to now, stayed aloof from international politics.
Agudath Israel, for example, an umbrella organization of ultra-Orthodox American Jews and a member group of the Coordinating Council, recently broke its long-held rule of not delving into Middle East politics by speaking out against the division of Jerusalem. The Orthodox Union, the largest Orthodox Jewish umbrella organization in the United States, also recently broke its tradition of supporting the policies of the Israeli government, issuing a press release that sharply criticized Olmert's statements at Annapolis because he "did not explicitly resist Palestinian President [Mahmoud] Abbas' claim to a piece of Jerusalem."
That a successful peace deal would necessitate some sharing of Jerusalem is at this point essentially a given in the eyes of most political leaders. It has been floated subtly by Prime Minister Olmert's Cabinet allies, is quite clearly supported by many in the State Department and is thought of as an absolute minimum for agreement by Abbas.
To Orthodox Jews, however, Jerusalem is a red line (just as it is to their opposites on the Muslim side). Any perceived threat to sole ownership of the holy city summons dangerous levels of emotion and energy, even from those who would not normally pause from their prayers and everyday lives to wade into the swamp of Middle East politics. It is these thousands of Americans, normally not involved in Middle East discourse, that may give the Coordinating Council for Jerusalem the strength and potential to be a real obstacle to peace in the year to come.
These stirrings stateside have not gone unnoticed by the Israeli government. In response to the lobbying intended to preempt any talk of dividing Jerusalem, Olmert stated, "Israel is sovereign to decide on any issue regarding Israel." The message was that Jerusalem is an issue to be determined by Israel itself, and not by its hard-line American cheerleaders.
To be sure, the views of this new American coalition of religious right-wingers don't come anywhere near representing the consensus of American Jewry or of Israel's mainstream supporters in the United States -- whose views, unlike those of the CCJ, don't generally turn on Scripture but rather on issues of peace and security. Still, the vigor with which these actors have recently entered the debate, and the determined efforts with which they will likely proceed over the next year, aren't going to make anything easy for those striving for a Middle East accord of any kind.
The Annapolis conference may have been a start, but it has also unleashed a zealotry on U.S. shores that may once again help demonstrate how nearly impossible achieving Middle East peace could really be.
Gregory Levey, Salon.com, December 13, 2007
On Nov. 26, the U.S. State Department got hit with an unexpected barrage of phone calls. The Coordinating Council on Jerusalem, a new coalition of American groups with hard-line views on Israel, was on the line -- all of the lines. Or so the group said two days later in a press release, proudly proclaiming that with 10,000 calls in less than 48 hours it had managed to overload the State Department's voice-mail system. The group was making known its opposition to any Israeli concessions on dividing Jerusalem between Israelis and Palestinians -- an issue that was swirling around the Bush administration's peace summit taking place in Annapolis, Md.
The new coalition's dubious achievement wasn't much noticed by the media, and perhaps isn't in itself important, but it was a sign of battles to come in the year ahead, as Israeli and Palestinian leaders struggle to move forward with any real progress after Annapolis. Although most appraisals of the conference were reservedly positive -- after all, at least the two sides were talking seriously again after a seven-year drought -- the event also opened a can of worms.
On the eve of Annapolis, the new right-wing coalition's representatives directly lobbied a top Bush official with their concerns about the summit. Even Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert took notice and seemed threatened by their potential to obstruct progress -- leveling some harsh words just before the Annapolis conference apparently directed at the coalition.
Annapolis was only the beginning of a renewed series of high-level negotiations, and the joint Israeli-Palestinian statement read by President Bush at the event was purposefully vague so as to avoid angering either leader's constituents or allies. Anyone reading between the lines, however, could see that the most explosive issue of all, dividing Jerusalem, had reemerged. The new coalition of religious groups seeks to use the incendiary Jerusalem question to scuttle any of the progress promised by Annapolis. Its efforts also threaten to cause painful rifts among American Jews, and perhaps shake up some pro-Israel political alliances.
Although the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the most influential pro-Israel lobbying group in the U.S., seems to be taking a wait-and-see approach to the new high-level negotiations, some of AIPAC's major donors and allies are involved with the Coordinating Council on Jerusalem. The coalition is also being aided in its efforts by evangelical Christian groups and supported by figures such as G. Gordon Liddy. It is directed by an influential former fundraiser for George W. Bush, Jeff Ballabon.
Ballabon is a Washington lobbyist who served as a major fundraiser for the 2004 Bush reelection campaign and was the architect of a strategy that has sought to bring Orthodox Jews into the Republican fold, in an effort to balance the overwhelmingly Democratic voting habits of mainstream American Jews. Just before the conference in Annapolis, Ballabon, along with Christian leaders and representatives of various Orthodox groups, met with Bush's national security advisor, Stephen Hadley, to make sure their point of view, and the force of their commitment, were understood by the administration. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Hadley reportedly assured them that, for the time being, the issue of Jerusalem was in fact not on the negotiating table.
Some interesting fissures have begun to crop up along with the new coalition. A few weeks before the Annapolis meeting, a congressional letter requesting increased aid for the Palestinian Authority -- which would help it meet some of its obligations toward achieving peace -- was endorsed by AIPAC, surprising many in Washington lobbying circles. (The Israeli government had not opposed the aid.) That decision earned AIPAC a sharp rebuke by one of its most important donors, billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who said, "If someone is going to jump off a bridge, it is incumbent upon their friends to dissuade them." Adelson, reportedly the third richest person in the United States and a prominent donor to the Republican Party, is also a major donor to the Zionist Organization of America, a group that, although lacking anything near the clout that AIPAC wields, is still influential among Middle East hawks in the GOP. And it is a core member of the new Coordinating Council. The national president of ZOA, Mort Klein, told Salon in an interview that "Israel should not be willing to give away any part of Jerusalem to another entity, just as the U.S. wouldn't give away any part of Washington." He added, "Jerusalem is mentioned 700 times in our holy book. It's not mentioned even once in the Quran."
ZOA has been active for a long time, but has never gotten the kind of political attention enjoyed by AIPAC and other more mainstream groups, or by the Christian evangelical groups pushing hawkish Middle East polices who have joined the Coordinating Council. What has changed is that the obstructionist agenda of the ZOA and the evangelical groups is now being aided by the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jewish member organizations of the newly formed coalition -- many of which have, prior to now, stayed aloof from international politics.
Agudath Israel, for example, an umbrella organization of ultra-Orthodox American Jews and a member group of the Coordinating Council, recently broke its long-held rule of not delving into Middle East politics by speaking out against the division of Jerusalem. The Orthodox Union, the largest Orthodox Jewish umbrella organization in the United States, also recently broke its tradition of supporting the policies of the Israeli government, issuing a press release that sharply criticized Olmert's statements at Annapolis because he "did not explicitly resist Palestinian President [Mahmoud] Abbas' claim to a piece of Jerusalem."
That a successful peace deal would necessitate some sharing of Jerusalem is at this point essentially a given in the eyes of most political leaders. It has been floated subtly by Prime Minister Olmert's Cabinet allies, is quite clearly supported by many in the State Department and is thought of as an absolute minimum for agreement by Abbas.
To Orthodox Jews, however, Jerusalem is a red line (just as it is to their opposites on the Muslim side). Any perceived threat to sole ownership of the holy city summons dangerous levels of emotion and energy, even from those who would not normally pause from their prayers and everyday lives to wade into the swamp of Middle East politics. It is these thousands of Americans, normally not involved in Middle East discourse, that may give the Coordinating Council for Jerusalem the strength and potential to be a real obstacle to peace in the year to come.
These stirrings stateside have not gone unnoticed by the Israeli government. In response to the lobbying intended to preempt any talk of dividing Jerusalem, Olmert stated, "Israel is sovereign to decide on any issue regarding Israel." The message was that Jerusalem is an issue to be determined by Israel itself, and not by its hard-line American cheerleaders.
To be sure, the views of this new American coalition of religious right-wingers don't come anywhere near representing the consensus of American Jewry or of Israel's mainstream supporters in the United States -- whose views, unlike those of the CCJ, don't generally turn on Scripture but rather on issues of peace and security. Still, the vigor with which these actors have recently entered the debate, and the determined efforts with which they will likely proceed over the next year, aren't going to make anything easy for those striving for a Middle East accord of any kind.
The Annapolis conference may have been a start, but it has also unleashed a zealotry on U.S. shores that may once again help demonstrate how nearly impossible achieving Middle East peace could really be.
Wednesday, 31 October 2007
Formalizing Apartheid Masked as a Peace Initiative
Neta Golan and Mohammed Khatib - October 13, 2007
Next month the US plans to host a regional meeting to discuss peace in the Middle East, or at least peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The maneuvering, deal making and negotiating about what will be on the table has been going on for some time. But the details of the agreement being discussed have been a well guarded secret but for the steady flow of leaks and trial balloons. Deciphering this information combined with facts on the ground, one can put together a clear outline of Israel’s “next generous offer.”
Next month the US plans to host a regional meeting to discuss peace in the Middle East, or at least peace between Israel and the Palestinians. The maneuvering, deal making and negotiating about what will be on the table has been going on for some time. But the details of the agreement being discussed have been a well guarded secret but for the steady flow of leaks and trial balloons. Deciphering this information combined with facts on the ground, one can put together a clear outline of Israel’s “next generous offer.”
Jewish West Jerusalemites object to Arab-Jewish school
More difficult than Noah's Ark
Ned, Ramallah, 22 October 2007
In Jerusalem, a mixed Arab-Jewish school is causing discomfort in the conservative Jewish neighbourhood of Pat. The School, which was built by an organisation with the name Hand in Hand, is the third school built and managed by this organisation. The schools allow Arabs and Jews to grow up together paving the way for a better understanding of each other.
However, the problem is not with the children, who, if left alone, would create a generation of people who are willing to live peacefully and put aside the petty differences and racism that roam this place. It is with the older generations who have these racist tendencies entrenched in their mindsets.
One woman from the neighbourhood where the school is built tells Ha'aretz "I've got nothing against Arabs, but why do they have to go to school with Jews?"
Another resident says "It's the mixing between Jews and Arabs that's the problem. The rest pales in comparison."
Hebrew, Arabic mix upsets neighbors
Or Kashti, Ha'aretz, 22 October 2007
The new building that will soon house the Arab-Jewish bilingual school Hand in Hand sticks out against the rest of the houses in the Pat neighborhood in Jerusalem. The roomy halls and spacious lawns are not very characteristic of the nearby streets. Neither is the multicultural atmosphere which many of the religious Jewish neighbors don't care for.
Brighter future for Arabs and Jews in the school that teaches peace
Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, Monday, 22 October 2007
Projected coexistence
Ahinoam Pollack, Jerusalem Post, August 23, 2007
Rabbi Shalom Dov Lifshitz, who heads the anti-missionary group Yad L'Achim, says that Pat is a religious neighborhood, and as such opposes the pluralistic school. Lifshitz says the school will encourage intermarriage, and that its Jewish students are too young to study with Arabs - he advises waiting until college to encounter and understand Arabs.
A Higher Grade
Peggy Cidor, Jerusalem Post, April 6, 2006
'There is a particular day that we have to struggle through every year', Josy Mendelssohn, co-chair of 'Hand in Hand' explained to the assembled guests. Explaining the philosophy and workings of the Hand-in-Hand Center for Jewish-Arab Education in Jerusalem to the representatives of the Rayne Foundation and other dignitaries, Mendelssohn was referring to Israeli Independence Day.
'It is perceived in a totally different manner by the Arab population of Israel. The Arabs call it Nakba, meaning catastrophe. For the Jews, it is the major event in the modern history of Israel. We face the issue each and every year - and we do not try to run away from it, though it is not easy', she said
==============================
Peace studies: Children of Israel
Donald Macintyre, The Independent, 18 October 2007
In a city marked by division, the Max Rayne school is unique – the only one in Jerusalem where pupils, principals and teachers are from Jewish and Arab communities.
One of the school's newest pupils is Maria Amin, a six-year-old Palestinian girl from Gaza who is confined to a wheelchair which she navigates with a joystick operated by her chin. A patient at Jerusalem's remarkable rehabilitation hospital, the Alyn, she was paralysed from the neck down when the car she was travelling in was caught in an Israeli missile strike on an Islamic Jihad commander which killed her mother, uncle, grandmother and elder brother.
She wasn't at the school yesterday because of medical problems, but Mrs Peretz hopes she will be at the school for several years to come.
You can't miss, fixed to the door of her classroom, under inscriptions of greeting in Arabic, a colourful painting – a house a flower, a tortoise, a vivid rainbow – by her new classmates. In large letters on the painting are written the words "Welcome Maria". In Hebrew.
Ned, Ramallah, 22 October 2007
In Jerusalem, a mixed Arab-Jewish school is causing discomfort in the conservative Jewish neighbourhood of Pat. The School, which was built by an organisation with the name Hand in Hand, is the third school built and managed by this organisation. The schools allow Arabs and Jews to grow up together paving the way for a better understanding of each other.
However, the problem is not with the children, who, if left alone, would create a generation of people who are willing to live peacefully and put aside the petty differences and racism that roam this place. It is with the older generations who have these racist tendencies entrenched in their mindsets.
One woman from the neighbourhood where the school is built tells Ha'aretz "I've got nothing against Arabs, but why do they have to go to school with Jews?"
Another resident says "It's the mixing between Jews and Arabs that's the problem. The rest pales in comparison."
Hebrew, Arabic mix upsets neighbors
Or Kashti, Ha'aretz, 22 October 2007
The new building that will soon house the Arab-Jewish bilingual school Hand in Hand sticks out against the rest of the houses in the Pat neighborhood in Jerusalem. The roomy halls and spacious lawns are not very characteristic of the nearby streets. Neither is the multicultural atmosphere which many of the religious Jewish neighbors don't care for.
Brighter future for Arabs and Jews in the school that teaches peace
Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, Monday, 22 October 2007
Projected coexistence
Ahinoam Pollack, Jerusalem Post, August 23, 2007
Rabbi Shalom Dov Lifshitz, who heads the anti-missionary group Yad L'Achim, says that Pat is a religious neighborhood, and as such opposes the pluralistic school. Lifshitz says the school will encourage intermarriage, and that its Jewish students are too young to study with Arabs - he advises waiting until college to encounter and understand Arabs.
A Higher Grade
Peggy Cidor, Jerusalem Post, April 6, 2006
'There is a particular day that we have to struggle through every year', Josy Mendelssohn, co-chair of 'Hand in Hand' explained to the assembled guests. Explaining the philosophy and workings of the Hand-in-Hand Center for Jewish-Arab Education in Jerusalem to the representatives of the Rayne Foundation and other dignitaries, Mendelssohn was referring to Israeli Independence Day.
'It is perceived in a totally different manner by the Arab population of Israel. The Arabs call it Nakba, meaning catastrophe. For the Jews, it is the major event in the modern history of Israel. We face the issue each and every year - and we do not try to run away from it, though it is not easy', she said
==============================
Peace studies: Children of Israel
Donald Macintyre, The Independent, 18 October 2007
In a city marked by division, the Max Rayne school is unique – the only one in Jerusalem where pupils, principals and teachers are from Jewish and Arab communities.
One of the school's newest pupils is Maria Amin, a six-year-old Palestinian girl from Gaza who is confined to a wheelchair which she navigates with a joystick operated by her chin. A patient at Jerusalem's remarkable rehabilitation hospital, the Alyn, she was paralysed from the neck down when the car she was travelling in was caught in an Israeli missile strike on an Islamic Jihad commander which killed her mother, uncle, grandmother and elder brother.
She wasn't at the school yesterday because of medical problems, but Mrs Peretz hopes she will be at the school for several years to come.
You can't miss, fixed to the door of her classroom, under inscriptions of greeting in Arabic, a colourful painting – a house a flower, a tortoise, a vivid rainbow – by her new classmates. In large letters on the painting are written the words "Welcome Maria". In Hebrew.
Sunday, 30 September 2007
Report on the Educational System in East Jerusalem
Alternative Information Center Publishes Research on Dismal State of Education in East Jerusalem
Shir Hever, Alternative Information Center (AIC)
Tuesday, 04 September 2007
The report does not purport to cover the entire educational system in East Jerusalem. Rather, it presents, as much as possible, an up-to-date and extensive picture of education, and recommends several alternative actions to change and improve the current situation. It goes without saying that none of these recommendations can be realized without the help of the Israeli educational system, since Israel’s illegal annexation of East Jerusalem by military force created a responsibility for the Israeli government to provide for the civilian services to the local population.
This report is based on research that Niv Hachlili conducted and wrote between September 2005 and January 2006. For the purpose of the study, extensive bibliographical research, onsite tours, meetings and personal interviews were conducted. Shir Hever edited and expanded the report. Rima Essa helped in preparing the research.
==============================================
The Education System in East Jerusalem – Summary
Shir Hever, Alternative Information Center (AIC), 4.9.07
When Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, it assumed responsibility for the well-being of East Jerusalem’s population and for fulfilling their rights, regardless of religion or ethnicity. The right to education is one of the most basic rights, and is an essential prerequisite for the plural democracy Israel claims to be.
Education is especially important because in the long term it determines a population’s ability to deal with the rest of society on a par. The education system in Israel maintains and expands gaps between the Jewish and the Palestinian Arab sectors. In East Jerusalem the differences and discrimination are especially stark and apparent.
The economic situation in East Jerusalem is a testament to years of inequity and neglect. Sixty-six percent of Palestinian families and 76% of Palestinian children live below the poverty line. While Palestinians make up 34% of the total population in Jerusalem, they make up 56% of the poor and about 58% of poor children, despite the fact that the percentage of Muslim men in Jerusalem employed in the civilian workforce is greater than that of Jews.
While Palestinian school pupils make nearly 42% percent of the pupils in the whole of the Jerusalem education system, they receive little more than 20% of the education budget (this figure is provided by the official statistics: the real amount of money that ends up in the hands of the Palestinian schools is even smaller than that). As a result, the infrastructure is hazardous and studying conditions are unbearable in many of the schools.
Classroom density and the ratio of pupils per teacher are alarming and the situation is worsening. Apartments are converted to classrooms, creating unsuitable conditions for teaching. The shortage in classrooms has also led to the adoption of a “double-shift” system, in which many pupils go to school in the afternoon instead of the morning, causing a decline in performance and cutting tuition hours for both shifts.
About 18,000 Palestinian children of school age have dropped out of the education system altogether because of these conditions and due to the lack of resources to supervise their studies and bring them back to school. On top of all this, the Separation Wall blocks the path of tens of thousands of Palestinian schoolchildren who live east of the city on their daily route to school.
About 14,500 pupils in East Jerusalem are unknown to the Israeli authorities, and as there is no place for them in the official schools, they must make do with private schools that are largely unsupervised and often fail to provide basic learning conditions. The situation is even more critical among children at kindergarten age. Ninety percent of children aged between three to five years receive no kind of preschool education at all.
Even those pupils who succeed in overcoming and pulling through the harsh conditions of the education system are taught a curriculum that is different from the Israeli schooling system and prevents integration of the Palestinian students in Israeli society, higher education and the job market. This policy goes hand in hand with the policy that prevents residents of East Jerusalem from obtaining Israeli citizenship.
In the general picture of the economic aspects and mechanics of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the education system of the Palestinian population in East Jerusalem and its many serious problems is only one of many cases that must be addressed and researched, but it is a stark example of the discrimination and inequality that are a direct and intentional result of the Israeli policy towards the Palestinian population since 1967.
Shir Hever, Alternative Information Center (AIC)
Tuesday, 04 September 2007
The report does not purport to cover the entire educational system in East Jerusalem. Rather, it presents, as much as possible, an up-to-date and extensive picture of education, and recommends several alternative actions to change and improve the current situation. It goes without saying that none of these recommendations can be realized without the help of the Israeli educational system, since Israel’s illegal annexation of East Jerusalem by military force created a responsibility for the Israeli government to provide for the civilian services to the local population.
This report is based on research that Niv Hachlili conducted and wrote between September 2005 and January 2006. For the purpose of the study, extensive bibliographical research, onsite tours, meetings and personal interviews were conducted. Shir Hever edited and expanded the report. Rima Essa helped in preparing the research.
==============================================
The Education System in East Jerusalem – Summary
Shir Hever, Alternative Information Center (AIC), 4.9.07
When Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, it assumed responsibility for the well-being of East Jerusalem’s population and for fulfilling their rights, regardless of religion or ethnicity. The right to education is one of the most basic rights, and is an essential prerequisite for the plural democracy Israel claims to be.
Education is especially important because in the long term it determines a population’s ability to deal with the rest of society on a par. The education system in Israel maintains and expands gaps between the Jewish and the Palestinian Arab sectors. In East Jerusalem the differences and discrimination are especially stark and apparent.
The economic situation in East Jerusalem is a testament to years of inequity and neglect. Sixty-six percent of Palestinian families and 76% of Palestinian children live below the poverty line. While Palestinians make up 34% of the total population in Jerusalem, they make up 56% of the poor and about 58% of poor children, despite the fact that the percentage of Muslim men in Jerusalem employed in the civilian workforce is greater than that of Jews.
While Palestinian school pupils make nearly 42% percent of the pupils in the whole of the Jerusalem education system, they receive little more than 20% of the education budget (this figure is provided by the official statistics: the real amount of money that ends up in the hands of the Palestinian schools is even smaller than that). As a result, the infrastructure is hazardous and studying conditions are unbearable in many of the schools.
Classroom density and the ratio of pupils per teacher are alarming and the situation is worsening. Apartments are converted to classrooms, creating unsuitable conditions for teaching. The shortage in classrooms has also led to the adoption of a “double-shift” system, in which many pupils go to school in the afternoon instead of the morning, causing a decline in performance and cutting tuition hours for both shifts.
About 18,000 Palestinian children of school age have dropped out of the education system altogether because of these conditions and due to the lack of resources to supervise their studies and bring them back to school. On top of all this, the Separation Wall blocks the path of tens of thousands of Palestinian schoolchildren who live east of the city on their daily route to school.
About 14,500 pupils in East Jerusalem are unknown to the Israeli authorities, and as there is no place for them in the official schools, they must make do with private schools that are largely unsupervised and often fail to provide basic learning conditions. The situation is even more critical among children at kindergarten age. Ninety percent of children aged between three to five years receive no kind of preschool education at all.
Even those pupils who succeed in overcoming and pulling through the harsh conditions of the education system are taught a curriculum that is different from the Israeli schooling system and prevents integration of the Palestinian students in Israeli society, higher education and the job market. This policy goes hand in hand with the policy that prevents residents of East Jerusalem from obtaining Israeli citizenship.
In the general picture of the economic aspects and mechanics of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the education system of the Palestinian population in East Jerusalem and its many serious problems is only one of many cases that must be addressed and researched, but it is a stark example of the discrimination and inequality that are a direct and intentional result of the Israeli policy towards the Palestinian population since 1967.
Saturday, 25 August 2007
Israel's oppressive architecture of occupation
Eyal Weizman interview: Israel's oppressive architecture of occupation
Socialist Worker 2065 Anindya Bhattacharyya, 21 August 2007
Socialist Worker 2065 Anindya Bhattacharyya, 21 August 2007
Dissident architect Eyal Weizman explains the mechanics of Israel’s occupation of Palestine.
The occupied West Bank, 1999. A group of Israeli settlers complain that their mobile phone reception cuts out on a bend in a road from Jerusalem to their settlements.
The mobile phone company Orange agrees to put up an antenna on a hill overlooking the bend.
The hill happens to be owned by Palestinian farmers, but since mobile phone reception is a “security issue”, the mast construction can go ahead without the farmers’ permission.
Other companies agree to supply electricity and water to the construction site on the hill.
In May 2001 an Israeli security guard moves on to the site and connects his cabin to the water and electricity mains. Then his wife and children move in with him.
In March 2002 five more families join him to create the settler outpost of Migron. The Israeli ministry for construction and housing builds a nursery, while donations from abroad build a synagogue.
By mid-2006 Migron is a fully fledged illegal settlement comprising 60 trailers on a hilltop around the antenna, overlooking the Palestinian lands below.
This blow-by-blow account of just one example of the ongoing Israeli colonisation of Palestine appears in the opening pages of a fascinating new book by Eyal Weizman, the dissident Israeli architect.
Called Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation, it is an extraordinarily detailed account of exactly how the occupation works in practice, focusing on the physical organisation of space and the political dynamics that shape it.
The 300 page book is packed with fascinating diagrams and photographs that shed a revealing light on almost every aspect of the occupation.
Housing
It explains the way that housing projects in Jerusalem are clad with a specific kind of stone to give the houses a “Biblical” look, and the use of one-way mirrors at border posts in the West Bank.
Eyal Weizman started work on the book in 2001 when he was commissioned by B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organisation, to help document how Palestinian rights were being violated through the planning of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
This work was later turned into an exhibition and book called A Civilian Occupation. The Israeli Association of Architects commissioned the project – only to prevent the exhibition from being shown and then destroy 5,000 copies of the book.
Today Eyal Weizman lives and works in London as director of the Centre for Architectural Research at Goldsmiths College.
His students work on a variety of similar projects that combine architectural and political analysis, including studies of Dubai, Beirut and United Nations protectorates in the former Yugoslavia.
I asked Eyal what had prompted him to write the book – and what the significance was of its subtitle referring to the “architecture of occupation”.
“As I was working, it seemed to me more and more that the entire occupation, the entire formation of the terrain itself, could be thought of in the same way as you think of the structure of a building,” he says.
“This first occurred to me while reading the Oslo Accords of 1993. The partition of the territory put forward there is not two dimensional but three dimensional – it partitions a volume, rather than a land, giving Palestinians some bits of land while maintaining the subterranean water reservoirs and airspace for Israel.
“As soon as you imagine geopolitics operating in a volume like that, architecture comes into play.”
This analogy led him to consider how architectural analysis could be applied to a military and political situation: “For instance, what’s the most basic analytic tool you use if you’re an architecture student and you want to understand a building? You draw a cross-section through it.
“In fact, the book Hollow Land is structured as a cross-section through the entire Occupied Territories. The first chapter is about the underground water reservoirs.
“Then it looks at the archaeology, then the valleys, the hills and finally the airspace. It’s a series of episodes that make up a volume, layer by layer, chapter by chapter.
“So you can think of the entire occupation as if it was some kind of complex building, such as an airport or a shopping mall, with security corridors inbound and outbound, and movement through it.”
This focus on the material organisation of Israel’s encroachment into the West Bank might sound rather dry – but in fact Hollow Land’s relentless and patient accumulation of details throws the human catastrophe of the occupation into even starker light.
One particularly chilling section of the book discusses Israeli military techniques for sending assassination squads into the dense urban sprawl of Palestinian settlements.
Rather than use the alleyways and paths of the settlement – and risk ambush – the Israeli soldiers simply blast their way in a straight line through to their target. They cut holes in the walls of residential buildings and literally march straight through people’s living rooms.
To train the occupation troops the Israelis have built a fake Palestinian settlement in the Negev desert – whose buildings are ready equipped with holes cuts into their walls. The US has now started building similar fake villages to train its troops for the occupation of Iraq.
Hollow Land does not just document the shape of the Israeli occupation – it also looks into the dynamics that created that shape in the first place. “It’s about the way in which politics, culture and other formative forces register themselves in the organisational form of the landscape,” says Eyal.
“The idea is that you look at a piece of architecture, or any piece of design, and study it as a consequence of conflicts, forces, practices and so on. So form becomes a kind of diagram of the forces that create it – process is frozen into form.”
One example of this is the Migron settlement described at the beginning of the book, which arises out of the interplay of a whole host of actors – Israeli settlers, mobile phone companies, utility firms, state institutions, the army and so on.
Eyal is keen to stress how “settlements emerge out of organisational chaos”. The very nature of the occupation is one of “uncoordinated coordination”, where the government allows degrees of freedom to rough elements and then denies its involvement. He says this is characterised by “micro-processes that become wheels in larger processes”.
The wall
A key example of this is the construction of the “separation wall” in the Occupied Territories – a huge barrier designed to wall off the Palestinians into tiny enclaves while annexing vast portions of the West Bank for Israel.
The wall is fiercely controversial even within Israel, and its precise route is constantly being contested. As a result the wall snakes through the West Bank in a curiously fluid manner, sometimes swinging out east to take in an illegal Israeli settlement, at other times being pushed back west again.
“The trick is to understand how the wall is flexible without justifying it as benign – it’s a dangerous flexibility!” says Eyal.
“But what the course of the wall registers the most is opposition to it – the constant petitions of Israeli NGOs to the Israeli high court of justice and the weekly demonstrations by Israeli human rights groups, for instance.”
In a striking analogy, Eyal suggests that the space of possible routes of the wall maps the spectrum of official Israeli politics – the doves seeking a wall to as close to Israel’s pre-1967 borders as possible, the hawks wanting to push the wall out towards Jordan.
The wall’s route reflects the dynamic between these two forces.
But for Eyal the problem is that fierce battles over the precise route of the wall can fail to challenge the wall’s very existence.
“These micro-political acts of resistance are paradoxical because by pursuing the lesser evil they allow the greater evil of the wall to exist and function,” he says. “The opposition to the wall becomes part of what designs it – it becomes complicit in the wall.”
Eyal argues that this paradox is part of a larger pattern whereby the occupation has absorbed and incorporated the views of the human rights organisations and NGOs at work in the Occupied Territories.
Human rights
“In some cases human rights organisations end up influencing the design plans for checkpoints,” he notes.
“They end up sustaining the occupation. They go to the military and plead for certain things. Governance always needs carrots and sticks – it operates not just on the basis of threats, but by absorbing the opposition into a governing system.”
One example of this is the fact that Palestinians in Gaza are dependent on food aid from international donors.
“If humanitarian organisations did not feed Palestinians in Gaza there would be a crisis – some 1.8 million Palestinians live off international aid,” he says.
“Consequently a significant part of Israeli intelligence is to monitor the levels of hunger in Gaza and keep it just at the level that the world will tolerate. This level changes – a level of hunger that would not have been tolerated in the 1990s is tolerated now.”
Eyal is aware that this might sound “anti-humanitarian” but he insists he is not suggesting that NGOs should simply down tools and leave the Palestinians to their fate.
Rather it’s a matter of a clear sighted acknowledgement that even the best intentioned and most benign of humanitarian organisations operating in the Occupied Territories is to a certain extent complicit, and, to a certain extent, part of the problem.
Ultimately Eyal says he is pessimistic over the current prospects for Palestinians. He believes the madness and terror of the occupation stem out of the paradoxes of trying to partition the land in the first place into separate “Israeli” and “Palestinian” territories.
“You have to understand the idea that guides the Israeli occupation, which is how to resolve the paradox of maintaining overall control while ensuring separation,” he says.
“It’s very different from other kinds of colonial geography – for instance, the ‘bantustans’ in apartheid South Africa were special designated zones, but with Israel and Palestine you get overlapping claims over the same sites woven together into mutually exclusive separate networks that try to never cross.”
This pattern of settlements and camps arranged in space, connected by bridges and tunnels, has a long history. “This is something you get from the very first attempt to divide Israel and Palestine,” Eyal notes.
“If you look at plans from the 1920s and 1930s prepared for the League of Nations during the mandate period by diplomats and mapmakers, you’ll see that nobody could find a line that separates Israel from Palestine – it was always a matter of building bridges or tunnels over or under the other’s territory to maintain continuity.
“So my critique throughout the book is against the politics of partition. I want to show how paradoxical partition is – and that it just cannot operate physically.”
The occupied West Bank, 1999. A group of Israeli settlers complain that their mobile phone reception cuts out on a bend in a road from Jerusalem to their settlements.
The mobile phone company Orange agrees to put up an antenna on a hill overlooking the bend.
The hill happens to be owned by Palestinian farmers, but since mobile phone reception is a “security issue”, the mast construction can go ahead without the farmers’ permission.
Other companies agree to supply electricity and water to the construction site on the hill.
In May 2001 an Israeli security guard moves on to the site and connects his cabin to the water and electricity mains. Then his wife and children move in with him.
In March 2002 five more families join him to create the settler outpost of Migron. The Israeli ministry for construction and housing builds a nursery, while donations from abroad build a synagogue.
By mid-2006 Migron is a fully fledged illegal settlement comprising 60 trailers on a hilltop around the antenna, overlooking the Palestinian lands below.
This blow-by-blow account of just one example of the ongoing Israeli colonisation of Palestine appears in the opening pages of a fascinating new book by Eyal Weizman, the dissident Israeli architect.
Called Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation, it is an extraordinarily detailed account of exactly how the occupation works in practice, focusing on the physical organisation of space and the political dynamics that shape it.
The 300 page book is packed with fascinating diagrams and photographs that shed a revealing light on almost every aspect of the occupation.
Housing
It explains the way that housing projects in Jerusalem are clad with a specific kind of stone to give the houses a “Biblical” look, and the use of one-way mirrors at border posts in the West Bank.
Eyal Weizman started work on the book in 2001 when he was commissioned by B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organisation, to help document how Palestinian rights were being violated through the planning of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
This work was later turned into an exhibition and book called A Civilian Occupation. The Israeli Association of Architects commissioned the project – only to prevent the exhibition from being shown and then destroy 5,000 copies of the book.
Today Eyal Weizman lives and works in London as director of the Centre for Architectural Research at Goldsmiths College.
His students work on a variety of similar projects that combine architectural and political analysis, including studies of Dubai, Beirut and United Nations protectorates in the former Yugoslavia.
I asked Eyal what had prompted him to write the book – and what the significance was of its subtitle referring to the “architecture of occupation”.
“As I was working, it seemed to me more and more that the entire occupation, the entire formation of the terrain itself, could be thought of in the same way as you think of the structure of a building,” he says.
“This first occurred to me while reading the Oslo Accords of 1993. The partition of the territory put forward there is not two dimensional but three dimensional – it partitions a volume, rather than a land, giving Palestinians some bits of land while maintaining the subterranean water reservoirs and airspace for Israel.
“As soon as you imagine geopolitics operating in a volume like that, architecture comes into play.”
This analogy led him to consider how architectural analysis could be applied to a military and political situation: “For instance, what’s the most basic analytic tool you use if you’re an architecture student and you want to understand a building? You draw a cross-section through it.
“In fact, the book Hollow Land is structured as a cross-section through the entire Occupied Territories. The first chapter is about the underground water reservoirs.
“Then it looks at the archaeology, then the valleys, the hills and finally the airspace. It’s a series of episodes that make up a volume, layer by layer, chapter by chapter.
“So you can think of the entire occupation as if it was some kind of complex building, such as an airport or a shopping mall, with security corridors inbound and outbound, and movement through it.”
This focus on the material organisation of Israel’s encroachment into the West Bank might sound rather dry – but in fact Hollow Land’s relentless and patient accumulation of details throws the human catastrophe of the occupation into even starker light.
One particularly chilling section of the book discusses Israeli military techniques for sending assassination squads into the dense urban sprawl of Palestinian settlements.
Rather than use the alleyways and paths of the settlement – and risk ambush – the Israeli soldiers simply blast their way in a straight line through to their target. They cut holes in the walls of residential buildings and literally march straight through people’s living rooms.
To train the occupation troops the Israelis have built a fake Palestinian settlement in the Negev desert – whose buildings are ready equipped with holes cuts into their walls. The US has now started building similar fake villages to train its troops for the occupation of Iraq.
Hollow Land does not just document the shape of the Israeli occupation – it also looks into the dynamics that created that shape in the first place. “It’s about the way in which politics, culture and other formative forces register themselves in the organisational form of the landscape,” says Eyal.
“The idea is that you look at a piece of architecture, or any piece of design, and study it as a consequence of conflicts, forces, practices and so on. So form becomes a kind of diagram of the forces that create it – process is frozen into form.”
One example of this is the Migron settlement described at the beginning of the book, which arises out of the interplay of a whole host of actors – Israeli settlers, mobile phone companies, utility firms, state institutions, the army and so on.
Eyal is keen to stress how “settlements emerge out of organisational chaos”. The very nature of the occupation is one of “uncoordinated coordination”, where the government allows degrees of freedom to rough elements and then denies its involvement. He says this is characterised by “micro-processes that become wheels in larger processes”.
The wall
A key example of this is the construction of the “separation wall” in the Occupied Territories – a huge barrier designed to wall off the Palestinians into tiny enclaves while annexing vast portions of the West Bank for Israel.
The wall is fiercely controversial even within Israel, and its precise route is constantly being contested. As a result the wall snakes through the West Bank in a curiously fluid manner, sometimes swinging out east to take in an illegal Israeli settlement, at other times being pushed back west again.
“The trick is to understand how the wall is flexible without justifying it as benign – it’s a dangerous flexibility!” says Eyal.
“But what the course of the wall registers the most is opposition to it – the constant petitions of Israeli NGOs to the Israeli high court of justice and the weekly demonstrations by Israeli human rights groups, for instance.”
In a striking analogy, Eyal suggests that the space of possible routes of the wall maps the spectrum of official Israeli politics – the doves seeking a wall to as close to Israel’s pre-1967 borders as possible, the hawks wanting to push the wall out towards Jordan.
The wall’s route reflects the dynamic between these two forces.
But for Eyal the problem is that fierce battles over the precise route of the wall can fail to challenge the wall’s very existence.
“These micro-political acts of resistance are paradoxical because by pursuing the lesser evil they allow the greater evil of the wall to exist and function,” he says. “The opposition to the wall becomes part of what designs it – it becomes complicit in the wall.”
Eyal argues that this paradox is part of a larger pattern whereby the occupation has absorbed and incorporated the views of the human rights organisations and NGOs at work in the Occupied Territories.
Human rights
“In some cases human rights organisations end up influencing the design plans for checkpoints,” he notes.
“They end up sustaining the occupation. They go to the military and plead for certain things. Governance always needs carrots and sticks – it operates not just on the basis of threats, but by absorbing the opposition into a governing system.”
One example of this is the fact that Palestinians in Gaza are dependent on food aid from international donors.
“If humanitarian organisations did not feed Palestinians in Gaza there would be a crisis – some 1.8 million Palestinians live off international aid,” he says.
“Consequently a significant part of Israeli intelligence is to monitor the levels of hunger in Gaza and keep it just at the level that the world will tolerate. This level changes – a level of hunger that would not have been tolerated in the 1990s is tolerated now.”
Eyal is aware that this might sound “anti-humanitarian” but he insists he is not suggesting that NGOs should simply down tools and leave the Palestinians to their fate.
Rather it’s a matter of a clear sighted acknowledgement that even the best intentioned and most benign of humanitarian organisations operating in the Occupied Territories is to a certain extent complicit, and, to a certain extent, part of the problem.
Ultimately Eyal says he is pessimistic over the current prospects for Palestinians. He believes the madness and terror of the occupation stem out of the paradoxes of trying to partition the land in the first place into separate “Israeli” and “Palestinian” territories.
“You have to understand the idea that guides the Israeli occupation, which is how to resolve the paradox of maintaining overall control while ensuring separation,” he says.
“It’s very different from other kinds of colonial geography – for instance, the ‘bantustans’ in apartheid South Africa were special designated zones, but with Israel and Palestine you get overlapping claims over the same sites woven together into mutually exclusive separate networks that try to never cross.”
This pattern of settlements and camps arranged in space, connected by bridges and tunnels, has a long history. “This is something you get from the very first attempt to divide Israel and Palestine,” Eyal notes.
“If you look at plans from the 1920s and 1930s prepared for the League of Nations during the mandate period by diplomats and mapmakers, you’ll see that nobody could find a line that separates Israel from Palestine – it was always a matter of building bridges or tunnels over or under the other’s territory to maintain continuity.
“So my critique throughout the book is against the politics of partition. I want to show how paradoxical partition is – and that it just cannot operate physically.”
---
Hollow Land: Israel’s Architecture of Occupation by Eyal Weizman is published by Verso
© Copyright Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original and leave this notice in place.
Saturday, 11 August 2007
An Interview with Rauda Morcos on Palestinian Gay Women
Out of the Closet in Palestine
Susanna Mendoza, Alternative Information Center (AIC): Thursday, 9 August 2007
The Alternative Information Center (AIC) spoke with Rauda Morcos about the situation for Palestinian gay women in Palestine/Israel. Rauda, a Palestinian from Nazareth is a poet, peace activist, feminist, and cofounder and coordinator of ASWAT: Palestinian Gay Women.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rauda Morcos in Belgium and Netherlands
Photo Report Tour by Lieve Snellings: November, 2006
Queering Palestinian Solidarity Activism
Yoshie Furuhashi : Sunday, June 06, 2004
However well-intentioned white male queer activists may be, their actions would be effective only when they prove themselves as reliable allies of GLBT Palestinians, rather than ineptly trying to zap a multiracial interfaith demonstration for free Palestine. OutRage! might begin by listening to Rauda Morcos, the coordinator of ASWAT [Voice], which is a Palestinian lesbian group endeavoring to develop a lesbian-feminist perspective within Arab society and to formulate its own criticism of the politics of the Israeli occupation, autonomously of Israeli lesbian and gay projects.
Making Zionism Gay or Queering Israel into Post-Zionism?
Yoshie Furuhashi : Monday, June 07, 2004
June 8th, 2006
Apropos of forming queer communities, there was one question asked by a middle-aged white lesbian (my assumption, yes) that was particularly ridiculous but got such a well-put answer that I feel like I need to write it out here: “Let’s say I was a lesbian and lived in the West Bank and didn’t have a computer to access your listserv, and I wanted to find other lesbians. Is there a bar or neighborhood where I might go?”
And Morcos answered the woman, looking at her straight in the face and not skipping a beat, “If you lived in the West Bank, you would never ask that question. Because we are under occupation, it’s a war zone! We don’t go to bars very often.” The woman said, “Well, where do *you* meet lesbians?” Morcos answered, “I met most of my friends at demonstrations, through my activism, or my writing group. There was one bar in Ramallah that LGBT people used to go to but it was bombed by the Israeli army. I don’t go to bars very often.”
Susanna Mendoza, Alternative Information Center (AIC): Thursday, 9 August 2007
The Alternative Information Center (AIC) spoke with Rauda Morcos about the situation for Palestinian gay women in Palestine/Israel. Rauda, a Palestinian from Nazareth is a poet, peace activist, feminist, and cofounder and coordinator of ASWAT: Palestinian Gay Women.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Rauda Morcos in Belgium and Netherlands
Photo Report Tour by Lieve Snellings: November, 2006
Queering Palestinian Solidarity Activism
Yoshie Furuhashi : Sunday, June 06, 2004
However well-intentioned white male queer activists may be, their actions would be effective only when they prove themselves as reliable allies of GLBT Palestinians, rather than ineptly trying to zap a multiracial interfaith demonstration for free Palestine. OutRage! might begin by listening to Rauda Morcos, the coordinator of ASWAT [Voice], which is a Palestinian lesbian group endeavoring to develop a lesbian-feminist perspective within Arab society and to formulate its own criticism of the politics of the Israeli occupation, autonomously of Israeli lesbian and gay projects.
Making Zionism Gay or Queering Israel into Post-Zionism?
Yoshie Furuhashi : Monday, June 07, 2004
June 8th, 2006
Apropos of forming queer communities, there was one question asked by a middle-aged white lesbian (my assumption, yes) that was particularly ridiculous but got such a well-put answer that I feel like I need to write it out here: “Let’s say I was a lesbian and lived in the West Bank and didn’t have a computer to access your listserv, and I wanted to find other lesbians. Is there a bar or neighborhood where I might go?”
And Morcos answered the woman, looking at her straight in the face and not skipping a beat, “If you lived in the West Bank, you would never ask that question. Because we are under occupation, it’s a war zone! We don’t go to bars very often.” The woman said, “Well, where do *you* meet lesbians?” Morcos answered, “I met most of my friends at demonstrations, through my activism, or my writing group. There was one bar in Ramallah that LGBT people used to go to but it was bombed by the Israeli army. I don’t go to bars very often.”
Sunday, 29 July 2007
An introduction to Hebrew University, Jerusalem
Reflection, Seán O'Neill, 18 July 2007
When I went to the orientation for international students at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, I expected the ethos to be pro-Israeli. However, I was taken aback by the level of anti-Palestinian propaganda and fear-mongering.
Jerusalem: Hebrew University part II, Seán O'Neill, July 28, 2007
Until I studied at Hebrew University, with mostly American Jewish but alsoIsraeli students, I did not understand just how high the level of fear is amongmany of Israel's Jewish citizens and American visitors. When I tell many of myfellow students that I stay on the Mount of Olives, a Palestinian neighborhoodnear campus, their eyes open wide and their faces tighten, as if I'm eithercrazy or in imminent danger. When I explain that I work in the West Bank, andgo there often to visit friends, their jaws drop.
When I went to the orientation for international students at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, I expected the ethos to be pro-Israeli. However, I was taken aback by the level of anti-Palestinian propaganda and fear-mongering.
Jerusalem: Hebrew University part II, Seán O'Neill, July 28, 2007
Until I studied at Hebrew University, with mostly American Jewish but alsoIsraeli students, I did not understand just how high the level of fear is amongmany of Israel's Jewish citizens and American visitors. When I tell many of myfellow students that I stay on the Mount of Olives, a Palestinian neighborhoodnear campus, their eyes open wide and their faces tighten, as if I'm eithercrazy or in imminent danger. When I explain that I work in the West Bank, andgo there often to visit friends, their jaws drop.
Saturday, 21 July 2007
Al Jazeera: Israel's wall divides Arab East Jerusalem
It's been described as a violation of human rights, now it's prompting dire economic consequences.
The effects of Israel's so-called security wall are sharply felt in the communities of Arab East Jerusalem.
Sunday, 15 July 2007
Consolidation of Jerusalem annexation continues with the Light Rail
Report, Al-Haq, 2 July 2007
On 28 June 1967, Israel implemented legislation that established de facto the illegal annexation of East Jerusalem to the State of Israel. Al-Haq takes the opportunity of the 40th anniversary of this unlawful action to remind international community that, despite the claims of successive Israeli governments, Palestinian East Jerusalem remains occupied territory under international law.
Accordingly, any measures, legislative or otherwise, aimed at altering the status of the city and depriving the Palestinian civilian population of the protections afforded by international humanitarian law, have no validity.
On 28 June 1967, Israel implemented legislation that established de facto the illegal annexation of East Jerusalem to the State of Israel. Al-Haq takes the opportunity of the 40th anniversary of this unlawful action to remind international community that, despite the claims of successive Israeli governments, Palestinian East Jerusalem remains occupied territory under international law.
Accordingly, any measures, legislative or otherwise, aimed at altering the status of the city and depriving the Palestinian civilian population of the protections afforded by international humanitarian law, have no validity.
Saturday, 14 July 2007
Three Years Later: The Humanitarian Impact of the Barrier Since the International Court of Justice Opinion
Special Focus The Humanitarian Impact of the Barrier since the International Court of Justice Opinion July 2007
Three years ago today, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory opinion stating that the route of Israel's Barrier in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and its associated permit and gate regime, constitute a serious breach of international law.
In this Special Focus, OCHA looks at several communities in the northern West Bank that have been severed by the Barrier from their neighbouring communities, from agricultural lands and livelihoods.
Three years ago today, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued an advisory opinion stating that the route of Israel's Barrier in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and its associated permit and gate regime, constitute a serious breach of international law.
In this Special Focus, OCHA looks at several communities in the northern West Bank that have been severed by the Barrier from their neighbouring communities, from agricultural lands and livelihoods.
Thursday, 21 June 2007
Interview with the Mayor of Bethlehem
October 24, 2005: AUDIO
The Mayor of Bethlehem, Victor Batarseh, joins host Jeffrey Callison in studio today to talk about life in Bethlehem and the West Bank, and Middle East politics.
-----------------
O, little town
Nicholas Blincoe
Bethlehem began life as a walled citadel, and will end as a prison town. Beside it looms Israeli Jerusalem, which has redrawn its boundaries constantly since the occupation. As far as Israel is concerned, Jerusalem's borders now encompass all the settlements surrounding the city of Bethlehem.
As an ex-deputy Mayor of Jerusalem has said, the expansion was planned according to Talmudic law which states that a city is defined by sightlines: if a collection of buildings can be seen from another point, then each constitutes a part of the same city. By grabbing the orchards of Bethlehem, Jerusalem has doubled and trebled in size over the past two decades, like a concrete amoeba, whose pseudopodia absorb and digest everything they encircle.
The Mayor of Bethlehem, Victor Batarseh, joins host Jeffrey Callison in studio today to talk about life in Bethlehem and the West Bank, and Middle East politics.
-----------------
O, little town
Nicholas Blincoe
Bethlehem began life as a walled citadel, and will end as a prison town. Beside it looms Israeli Jerusalem, which has redrawn its boundaries constantly since the occupation. As far as Israel is concerned, Jerusalem's borders now encompass all the settlements surrounding the city of Bethlehem.
As an ex-deputy Mayor of Jerusalem has said, the expansion was planned according to Talmudic law which states that a city is defined by sightlines: if a collection of buildings can be seen from another point, then each constitutes a part of the same city. By grabbing the orchards of Bethlehem, Jerusalem has doubled and trebled in size over the past two decades, like a concrete amoeba, whose pseudopodia absorb and digest everything they encircle.
Thursday, 17 May 2007
Leaders who follow ordinary people's courage earn respect
Karma Nabulsi
Thursday May 17, 2007
The Guardian
The inability of political leaders in Britain to take a sustained principled position on Palestine has been served by the mainstream media, which in the past few years have so obscured the nature of the struggle in Palestine that hardly anyone understands what the conflict is about, or what must be done to end it. Instead we have an existential war about religion and extremism, where Israel, the occupier and regional hyperpower, is cast as eternal friend, liberal, victim and hero.
A recent study at Glasgow University revealed the astonishing fact that over 70% of young people surveyed did not know that East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza are under military occupation by the Israeli army; 11% believe it is the Palestinians who are occupying that land.
The most elementary facts have been separated from the truth. To now propose foreign investment in Gaza as the solution to the expanding illegal settlements and land seizures by Israel, the increasing violence of a 39-year military occupation, the continued dispossession of millions of Palestinian refugees living in dangerous circumstances for nearly 60 years, and even today's violence in Gaza (entirely a byproduct of these larger issues) is, quite simply, to propose the death of Palestine and its people.
Karma Nabulsi teaches politics and international relations at Oxford University.
Thursday May 17, 2007
The Guardian
The inability of political leaders in Britain to take a sustained principled position on Palestine has been served by the mainstream media, which in the past few years have so obscured the nature of the struggle in Palestine that hardly anyone understands what the conflict is about, or what must be done to end it. Instead we have an existential war about religion and extremism, where Israel, the occupier and regional hyperpower, is cast as eternal friend, liberal, victim and hero.
A recent study at Glasgow University revealed the astonishing fact that over 70% of young people surveyed did not know that East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza are under military occupation by the Israeli army; 11% believe it is the Palestinians who are occupying that land.
The most elementary facts have been separated from the truth. To now propose foreign investment in Gaza as the solution to the expanding illegal settlements and land seizures by Israel, the increasing violence of a 39-year military occupation, the continued dispossession of millions of Palestinian refugees living in dangerous circumstances for nearly 60 years, and even today's violence in Gaza (entirely a byproduct of these larger issues) is, quite simply, to propose the death of Palestine and its people.
Karma Nabulsi teaches politics and international relations at Oxford University.
Wednesday, 9 May 2007
Israeli Central Court acquits border policeman who killed a Jerusalem Palestinian
Saed Bannoura, IMEMC, Thursday April 19, 2007
The Jerusalem District Court acquitted Shmuel Yehezkel, an Israeli border policeman, from charges of manslaughter today. Yehezkel was accused of killing Samir Dari, a Palestinian resident of Al Isawiyya neighborhood in east Jerusalem in November 2005.
Dari was killed when the policeman shot him in the back at close range. The Israeli police stated that Dari was shot as the police were chasing a car thief in the French Hill neighborhood in Jerusalem.
The indictment, filed in January 2006, indicated that Yehezkel fired at Dari at close range.
Yehezkel claimed that the shooting was in self defense and stated in the trial the he and other policemen “were attacked by a crowd at the entrance of the village”, Israeli Ynetnews reported.
The police also claimed that the crowd attempted to grab a detainee who was in their vehicle.
Also, Yehezkel claimed that after he and other policemen fired several warning shots into the air, a vehicle hit him, throwing him into the street. Dari, according to the police report, was in that vehicle.
The officer further claimed that two passengers got out of the vehicle in order to grab Dari who attempted to get into the car.
“I was convinced that they would try to run me over, I was also sure that I and other policemen were in direct danger”, the policeman said.
“I warned him that I will shoot if he didn’t stop”, Yehezkel added, “He didn’t stop”.
But eyewitnesses reported that the statements of the police are false and that Dari was shot in the back.
Moreover, an investigator who questioned the policemen after the incident stated that there was no justification for firing at Dari since he posed no danger to the policemen.
The forensic report also revealed that Dari was shot in his back, apparently as he was stepping out of the car. This contradicts the police report which stated that Dari was in the car when he was shot and that he tried to ram his car into the policemen.
The judge wrote in his ruling that the policeman made a terrible mistake and killed Dari for nothing, but added that “his criminal responsibility is negligible”, Ynetnews reported.
He further wrote that the situation was complicated and included a mix of justification, necessity and self-defense. “There is a reasonable doubt, therefore I acquitted him”.
==================
May 10, 2007
In Israel, Not All Blood is the Same
The Death of Samir Dari
by Neve Gordon and Yigal Bronner
There are conflicting versions about how the events unfolded, but there is no dispute about the following facts: Samir was unarmed and the policeman Shmuel Yechezkel shot him from close range in the back.
The Israeli police were quick to disseminate a fallacious version of the incident which portrayed the killing as an act of self-defense. This is a typical and almost automatic police response, one which inverts the order between victim and aggressor. When an Arab is killed, he is said to have been violent; when he is beaten up, he is said to have struck the policeman first; when he is oppressed, he is the one who is guilty.
Also typical was the lack of public interest in Samir's death. The killing of an Arab is, after all, not the kind of event that makes headlines in Israel.
The Jerusalem District Court acquitted Shmuel Yehezkel, an Israeli border policeman, from charges of manslaughter today. Yehezkel was accused of killing Samir Dari, a Palestinian resident of Al Isawiyya neighborhood in east Jerusalem in November 2005.
Dari was killed when the policeman shot him in the back at close range. The Israeli police stated that Dari was shot as the police were chasing a car thief in the French Hill neighborhood in Jerusalem.
The indictment, filed in January 2006, indicated that Yehezkel fired at Dari at close range.
Yehezkel claimed that the shooting was in self defense and stated in the trial the he and other policemen “were attacked by a crowd at the entrance of the village”, Israeli Ynetnews reported.
The police also claimed that the crowd attempted to grab a detainee who was in their vehicle.
Also, Yehezkel claimed that after he and other policemen fired several warning shots into the air, a vehicle hit him, throwing him into the street. Dari, according to the police report, was in that vehicle.
The officer further claimed that two passengers got out of the vehicle in order to grab Dari who attempted to get into the car.
“I was convinced that they would try to run me over, I was also sure that I and other policemen were in direct danger”, the policeman said.
“I warned him that I will shoot if he didn’t stop”, Yehezkel added, “He didn’t stop”.
But eyewitnesses reported that the statements of the police are false and that Dari was shot in the back.
Moreover, an investigator who questioned the policemen after the incident stated that there was no justification for firing at Dari since he posed no danger to the policemen.
The forensic report also revealed that Dari was shot in his back, apparently as he was stepping out of the car. This contradicts the police report which stated that Dari was in the car when he was shot and that he tried to ram his car into the policemen.
The judge wrote in his ruling that the policeman made a terrible mistake and killed Dari for nothing, but added that “his criminal responsibility is negligible”, Ynetnews reported.
He further wrote that the situation was complicated and included a mix of justification, necessity and self-defense. “There is a reasonable doubt, therefore I acquitted him”.
==================
May 10, 2007
In Israel, Not All Blood is the Same
The Death of Samir Dari
by Neve Gordon and Yigal Bronner
There are conflicting versions about how the events unfolded, but there is no dispute about the following facts: Samir was unarmed and the policeman Shmuel Yechezkel shot him from close range in the back.
The Israeli police were quick to disseminate a fallacious version of the incident which portrayed the killing as an act of self-defense. This is a typical and almost automatic police response, one which inverts the order between victim and aggressor. When an Arab is killed, he is said to have been violent; when he is beaten up, he is said to have struck the policeman first; when he is oppressed, he is the one who is guilty.
Also typical was the lack of public interest in Samir's death. The killing of an Arab is, after all, not the kind of event that makes headlines in Israel.
Tuesday, 8 May 2007
Israeli army demolishes a Palestinian disabled children’s society in Jerusalem
(IMEMC)
May 8th, 2007
Ghassan Bannoura
Israeli army bulldozers demolished a Palestinian owned building that host disabled children’s society located in Wadi Al Joze neighborhood in east Jerusalem on Tuesday morning.
Palestinian sources reported that Israeli army troops stormed the neighborhood in the morning then two bulldozers destroyed a building that belongs to Hanni Totah from Jerusalem. The building was used by a Palestinian NGO called Al Nojom ( stars) society that works with physically challenged children.
Israeli authorities used the same excuse that the building was built without needed documents; documents that after Israeli occupied the city of Jerusalem in 1967 rarely gave to Palestinians living in the city.
Human rights organizations in the city stated that since the beginning of the year Israeli have destroyed 48 Palestinian owned buildings and houses under the pretext of built without permits.
--------
April 29, 2007
from ICAHD
Demolition of Centre for Autistic and Special Needs Children in East Jerusalem
May 8th, 2007
Ghassan Bannoura
Israeli army bulldozers demolished a Palestinian owned building that host disabled children’s society located in Wadi Al Joze neighborhood in east Jerusalem on Tuesday morning.
Palestinian sources reported that Israeli army troops stormed the neighborhood in the morning then two bulldozers destroyed a building that belongs to Hanni Totah from Jerusalem. The building was used by a Palestinian NGO called Al Nojom ( stars) society that works with physically challenged children.
Israeli authorities used the same excuse that the building was built without needed documents; documents that after Israeli occupied the city of Jerusalem in 1967 rarely gave to Palestinians living in the city.
Human rights organizations in the city stated that since the beginning of the year Israeli have destroyed 48 Palestinian owned buildings and houses under the pretext of built without permits.
--------
April 29, 2007
from ICAHD
Demolition of Centre for Autistic and Special Needs Children in East Jerusalem
Monday, 30 April 2007
Prevention of Demolition of Centre for Autistic and Special Need Children in East Jerusalem
April 29, 2007
from ICAHD
Prevention of Demolition of Centre for Autistic and Special Needs Children in East Jerusalem
The Jerusalem Municipality is planning, during the coming days, to demolish a building in Wadi Joz in East Jerusalem which is used by the Iyat amuta, (an amuta for advancement of children with special needs) and the amuta Kochavey Jerusalem. Prevention of demolition will help the children and families of a particularly vulnerable sector of the community, in very real need of urgent help.
Tomorrow morning (Monday), from 7.00 a.m. onwards, activists will be present at the centre’s site in Wadi Joz to try to prevent the demolition. In order to get there, go to Wadi Joz, in Suwani, after the wholesale market continue straight down, 50 metres, to the entrance to the industrial area, and then turn right onto a rough track and you will see the centre (Palestinian public transport goes to that area from nearby Damascus Gate). The centre is within walking distance of Augusta Victoria and the Hebrew University.
The demolition is being carried out according to the final decision of the district court. The centre hosts children for 2-week special stays, and is an afternoon daycare centre.
It is important to state that all special education schools in the east of the city are located in the Wadi Joz area, near the centre’s address. This is something which affects access and transport to the centre. The Iyat amuta searched for a long time for suitable premises for the school, but didn’t manage to find such a place, because of the scarcity of available buildings and sky-high rents charged in the area.
At the premises of the centre they already undertook various renovations to serve the children’s special needs and are involved in ongoing work there for that end. Iyat is the only service provider in the entire East Jerusalem area providing for the special needs and therapy for autistic children, handicapped or challenged children and on many occasions has to refuse to accept any more children for treatment, with all the anguish involved in such refusal.
Please come to help.
For further information, or directions contact:
Abdul Rahman, of Iyat: 0548-121 925, Shai Haim (ICAHD): 0506-986 964, Meir Margalit (ICAHD): 0544 345 503
http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2007/04/30/demolition-speacial-needs-centre/
UPDATE
Israeli army demolishes a Palestinian disabled children’s society in Jerusalem
(IMEMC)
May 8th, 2007
Ghassan Bannoura
Israeli army bulldozers demolished a Palestinian owned building that host disabled children’s society located in Wadi Al Joze neighborhood in east Jerusalem on Tuesday morning.
Palestinian sources reported that Israeli army troops stormed the neighborhood in the morning then two bulldozers destroyed a building that belongs to Hanni Totah from Jerusalem. The building was used by a Palestinian NGO called Al Nojom ( stars) society that works with physically challenged children.
Israeli authorities used the same excuse that the building was built without needed documents; documents that after Israeli occupied the city of Jerusalem in 1967 rarely gave to Palestinians living in the city.
Human rights organizations in the city stated that since the beginning of the year Israeli have destroyed 48 Palestinian owned buildings and houses under the pretext of built without permits.
from ICAHD
Prevention of Demolition of Centre for Autistic and Special Needs Children in East Jerusalem
The Jerusalem Municipality is planning, during the coming days, to demolish a building in Wadi Joz in East Jerusalem which is used by the Iyat amuta, (an amuta for advancement of children with special needs) and the amuta Kochavey Jerusalem. Prevention of demolition will help the children and families of a particularly vulnerable sector of the community, in very real need of urgent help.
Tomorrow morning (Monday), from 7.00 a.m. onwards, activists will be present at the centre’s site in Wadi Joz to try to prevent the demolition. In order to get there, go to Wadi Joz, in Suwani, after the wholesale market continue straight down, 50 metres, to the entrance to the industrial area, and then turn right onto a rough track and you will see the centre (Palestinian public transport goes to that area from nearby Damascus Gate). The centre is within walking distance of Augusta Victoria and the Hebrew University.
The demolition is being carried out according to the final decision of the district court. The centre hosts children for 2-week special stays, and is an afternoon daycare centre.
It is important to state that all special education schools in the east of the city are located in the Wadi Joz area, near the centre’s address. This is something which affects access and transport to the centre. The Iyat amuta searched for a long time for suitable premises for the school, but didn’t manage to find such a place, because of the scarcity of available buildings and sky-high rents charged in the area.
At the premises of the centre they already undertook various renovations to serve the children’s special needs and are involved in ongoing work there for that end. Iyat is the only service provider in the entire East Jerusalem area providing for the special needs and therapy for autistic children, handicapped or challenged children and on many occasions has to refuse to accept any more children for treatment, with all the anguish involved in such refusal.
Please come to help.
For further information, or directions contact:
Abdul Rahman, of Iyat: 0548-121 925, Shai Haim (ICAHD): 0506-986 964, Meir Margalit (ICAHD): 0544 345 503
http://www.palsolidarity.org/main/2007/04/30/demolition-speacial-needs-centre/
UPDATE
Israeli army demolishes a Palestinian disabled children’s society in Jerusalem
(IMEMC)
May 8th, 2007
Ghassan Bannoura
Israeli army bulldozers demolished a Palestinian owned building that host disabled children’s society located in Wadi Al Joze neighborhood in east Jerusalem on Tuesday morning.
Palestinian sources reported that Israeli army troops stormed the neighborhood in the morning then two bulldozers destroyed a building that belongs to Hanni Totah from Jerusalem. The building was used by a Palestinian NGO called Al Nojom ( stars) society that works with physically challenged children.
Israeli authorities used the same excuse that the building was built without needed documents; documents that after Israeli occupied the city of Jerusalem in 1967 rarely gave to Palestinians living in the city.
Human rights organizations in the city stated that since the beginning of the year Israeli have destroyed 48 Palestinian owned buildings and houses under the pretext of built without permits.
Sunday, 29 April 2007
A New Era of Settlement Expansion in Jerusalem and Environs Begins
A New Era of Settlement Expansion in Jerusalem and Environs Begins
Settlement Report Vol. 17 No. 2 March - April 2007
Israel is stepping up its effort to enclose Jerusalem with a ring of barriers and settlements designed to sever Palestinian East Jerusalem from the West Bank. Recent announcements of significant settlement expansion in the areas in and around Neve Ya'acov and the former siteof the airport at Atarot signify a major push by Israel to link East Jerusalem area settlements on both sides of the separation barrier, to establish an unbroken belt of settlement along East Jerusalem's northern perimeter, and perhaps of most significance, to tie Road 60 settlements--from Ma'ale Adumim north to Shilo and Eli--to the Tel Aviv metropolis and the coastal plain.
Settlement Report Vol. 17 No. 2 March - April 2007
Israel is stepping up its effort to enclose Jerusalem with a ring of barriers and settlements designed to sever Palestinian East Jerusalem from the West Bank. Recent announcements of significant settlement expansion in the areas in and around Neve Ya'acov and the former siteof the airport at Atarot signify a major push by Israel to link East Jerusalem area settlements on both sides of the separation barrier, to establish an unbroken belt of settlement along East Jerusalem's northern perimeter, and perhaps of most significance, to tie Road 60 settlements--from Ma'ale Adumim north to Shilo and Eli--to the Tel Aviv metropolis and the coastal plain.
Looking for alternatives to failure: An answer to Uri Avnery
Looking for alternatives to failure: An answer to Uri Avnery
Ilan Pappe, The Electronic Intifada, 26 April 2007
We need to wake up. The day Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush declared their loyal support for the two-state solution, this formula became a cynical means by which Israel can maintain its discriminatory regime inside the 1967 borders, its occupation in the West Bank and the ghettoization of the Gaza Strip. Anyone who blocks a debate over alternative political models allows the discourse of two states to shield the criminal Israeli policies in the Palestinian territories.
Moreover, not only are there no stones left in the occupied territories with which to build a state after Israel ruined the infrastructure there in the last six years, a reasonable partition is not offering the Palestinian a mere 20 percent of their homeland. The basis should be at least half of the homeland, on the basis of the 181 partition route, or a similar idea. Here is another useful avenue to explore, instead of embroiling forever inside the Sodom and Gomorrah stew that the two-state solution has produced so far on the ground.
And finally, there will be no solution to this conflict with a settlement of the Palestinian refugee problem. These refugees cannot return to their homeland for the same reason that their brothers and sisters are being expelled from greater Jerusalem and alongside the wall and their relatives are discriminated against in Israel. They cannot return for the same reason that every Palestinian is under the potential danger of occupation and expulsion as long as the Zionist project has not been completed in the eyes of its captains.
They are entitled to opt for return because it is their full human and political right. They can return because the international community had already promised them that they could. We as the Jews should want them to return because otherwise we will continue to live in a state where the value of ethnic superiority and supremacy overrides any other human and civil value. And we cannot promise ourselves, as well as the refugees, such a fair and just solution within the framework of the two-state formula.
Ilan Pappe, The Electronic Intifada, 26 April 2007
We need to wake up. The day Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush declared their loyal support for the two-state solution, this formula became a cynical means by which Israel can maintain its discriminatory regime inside the 1967 borders, its occupation in the West Bank and the ghettoization of the Gaza Strip. Anyone who blocks a debate over alternative political models allows the discourse of two states to shield the criminal Israeli policies in the Palestinian territories.
Moreover, not only are there no stones left in the occupied territories with which to build a state after Israel ruined the infrastructure there in the last six years, a reasonable partition is not offering the Palestinian a mere 20 percent of their homeland. The basis should be at least half of the homeland, on the basis of the 181 partition route, or a similar idea. Here is another useful avenue to explore, instead of embroiling forever inside the Sodom and Gomorrah stew that the two-state solution has produced so far on the ground.
And finally, there will be no solution to this conflict with a settlement of the Palestinian refugee problem. These refugees cannot return to their homeland for the same reason that their brothers and sisters are being expelled from greater Jerusalem and alongside the wall and their relatives are discriminated against in Israel. They cannot return for the same reason that every Palestinian is under the potential danger of occupation and expulsion as long as the Zionist project has not been completed in the eyes of its captains.
They are entitled to opt for return because it is their full human and political right. They can return because the international community had already promised them that they could. We as the Jews should want them to return because otherwise we will continue to live in a state where the value of ethnic superiority and supremacy overrides any other human and civil value. And we cannot promise ourselves, as well as the refugees, such a fair and just solution within the framework of the two-state formula.
Jerusalem’s apartheid tramway
Jerusalem’s apartheid tramway
By Philippe Rekacewicz and Dominique Vidal
The politics of urban planning
Two French companies are involved in the construction and operation of a light rail system from the centre of Jerusalem to a northern terminus. It is promoted as a unifying project: in fact, it will be yet another way to isolate the Palestinians.
.................................
THE tram will not operate before 2009 but it’s already a presence across Jerusalem, and garish ads show it running beside the walls of the Old City. The strangest ad features a pensive Theodor Herzl; in his book Altneuland, published two years before his death in 1902, Herzl dreamed of an electric tram system as a symbol of the Jerusalem of the future.
A century later this ecological and economic solution is a necessity. “Our city is in gridlock,” said Shmulik Elgarbly, Israeli spokesman for the mass transit system. “Ever since cars got cheaper, we’ve had terrible congestion in Jerusalem. By 1980 the percentage of urban dwellers using public transport dropped from 76% to 40%.” New roads jam up almost as soon as they are finished. Most streets are too narrow for bus lanes. The geological structure under the city would be ideal for the construction of a subway system, but why not let passengers see the most beautiful city in the world?
Ten years ago those arguments convinced Jerusalem’s mayor, then Ehud Olmert, of the need for a light rail system. The project would be financed by the private sector under a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) contract and the network would be handed over after 30 years. An international tender was put out in 2000 and the French company Alstom won the construction bid. Two years later Connex, the subsidiary of another French company, Veolia, won the operating rights. They formed a consortium called Citypass with two Israeli companies, Ashtrom Construction and Pollar Investment, as well as two banks, Hapaolim and Leumi. The contract was signed in July 2005. The initial aim is to carry 500 passengers by 2009 on each of 25 trains running between the terminus points of Pisgat Ze’ev and Mount Herzl.
According to Elgarbly, the project will be profitable if two conditions are met: “It must be perfectly safe and not a target for suicide attacks; and the route must meet the needs of the greatest possible number of inhabitants. We based our projections on 150,000 passengers a day. That is why the tram must serve the Jewish quarters [Israel’s politically correct term for settlements] such as Pisgat Ze’ev, as well as Arab quarters like Shu’fat. At present there are two separate bus networks serving those areas but there’s no room for two separate tramlines in Jerusalem. We’re building a single, peacetime tramway.”
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, even in the holy city. This project has raised many urban and, more important, political objections. It uses a stretch of Route 60, depriving Palestinians of a vital artery to the city and, beyond it, between the north and south of the West Bank. Yet Elgarbly insists that: “We will serve both populations in Jerusalem.” That seems doubtful. The fare, which is reasonable for Israeli passengers at $1.37, will be expensive for those Palestinians currently using the small buses, on which the fare is just 82 cents. There is also the question of how the continuing safety of the tram can be assured. How will the settlers react to seeing Arabs travelling on the tram? One person we spoke to wondered whether there should be separate carriages for Arabs and Israelis.
Who will park and ride?At the North Shu’fat stop, planners have designed park-and-ride lots for suburban commuters, especially Palestinians. The Israeli project director, Shmulik Tsabari, who came with us on our site tour, seemed oddly unaware of the fact that a large number of potential passengers, such as the inhabitants of Ras Khamis, or the Shu’fat and Anata refugee camps, live behind the separation wall. One checkpoint in the wall is open at present, but that doesn’t mean it will remain so in the future. The army already often closes it during the rush hour so that settlers can circulate more easily.
So who will use the park-and-ride lots — if they are built? “The 50 dunum (5 hectare) plot belongs to dozens of Palestinian families and the town hall has stymied negotiations,” explained lawyer Mahmud al-Mashni. “But a permit is required to build on the land since it’s in a green zone. The city authorities plan to use part of the area for the parking lot and allow the owners to build a shopping centre and homes on the remainder. But the owners can’t afford to do that — they won’t be able to pay the taxes, which are far higher on building land. According to Israeli law, the owners should get 60% of the land’s value in the event of state expropriation. Instead they’re being offered a ‘generous’ 25%.”
Many observers believe that at the first security threat the trams will cease to go via Shu’fat. Instead they will follow the safer roundabout route inside the wall. It will mean explaining away the expensive infrastructure that may already have been built, but that is not the point. According to international law, the route currently planned is illegal. It brings the Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem closer to the city centre in West Jerusalem: French Hill, then Pisgat Zeev, then Neve Yaakov in the north, and later, with eight more routes planned, many more. The tram facilitates colonisation.
This goes against the Fourth Geneva Convention of 12 August 1949, ratified on several occasions since by the United Nations Security Council. Resolution 465 of 1 March 1980 stipulates: “All measures taken by Israel to alter the physical character, the demographic composition, the institutional structure or status of the Palestinian territories including Jerusalem, have no legal validity.” So if this new project is to be used specifically for colonisation, Israel should not get assistance from other countries.
For a long time the Palestinians did not react, but now they are sounding the alarm. In October 2005 President Mahmoud Abbas raised the issue with a visibly embarrassed President Jacques Chirac. A month later the French foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, sent a carefully worded letter to the chairman of the Association France-Palestine Solidarité, which is campaigning against the tram, saying: “Private companies bidding for international tenders in no way reflect a change in France’s well-known stance on Jerusalem.”
He went on to stress France’s attachment to Jerusalem’s international status as laid down when partition was declared in 1947: “France and the European Union have a clear and consistent position on the illegal nature of the settlements in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 as well as the security wall that Israel is building, which violates international law” (1).
Occupation entrenchedThis clarification did not prevent Nasser al-Kidwa, then the Palestinian Authority’s foreign minister, from writing to Alstom CEO Patrick Kron on 6 January 2006, to criticise Alstom’s involvement “which is not purely commercial, but carries extremely important implications in terms of aid to Israel in its illegal settlement policy in and around East Jerusalem, and which is viewed [by the Palestinian Authority] as an attempt to legitimise this policy”. This, he claimed, runs counter to “the principles that have long been held in France”. In Jerusalem two advisers from the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Fouad Hallak and Wassim H Khazmo, confirmed this view: “Ultimately, the tramline will connect West Jerusalem with the Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem. It is therefore entrenching the occupation. Without East Jerusalem, there cannot be a Palestinian state.”
Meanwhile, the Arab League condemned the illegal construction of the tramline at its March 2006 summit in Khartoum. Alstom and Connex were invited to withdraw immediately from the project to avoid steps being taken against them, and the friendly French government was urged to adopt a position on this issue in accordance with its responsibilities and international law.
Never has there been a greater divide in the official and unofficial positions of French diplomacy.
This is a far cry from “business is business”, which is what an economic adviser to the French embassy in Tel Aviv (2) was quoted as having said. The consortium for the $518m Jerusalem tramway had also hoped to win the $1.29bn contract for Tel Aviv (in December 2006 it found out that it hadn’t). Even before Douste-Blazy, there were other French ministers, including Nicolas Sarkozy, who had talked about the profits to be made.
Yet there are laws behind the money. According to international lawyer Monique Chemillier-Gendreau: “A state is accountable for the actions of its country’s major companies if they break international law and if the state does not do what it can to prevent them.” Doubtless aware of the risk, a French consulate official in Jerusalem stressed that neither Alstom nor Connex benefited from any export credits or guarantees from Coface, the official French export guarantee department.
A diplomat in Paris, who wished to remain anonymous, went further: “The French foreign office has always discouraged companies from taking part in this venture.” Maybe. But in that case why did Gérard Araud, France’s ambassador to Israel, take part in the official contract-signing ceremony in the offices of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon?
The diplomat confirmed that the foreign ministry “always had strong reservations about French companies taking part in this project”. In the event of confrontation “it would give rise to a crisis on the scale of the Muhammad cartoons row”. France would be in violation of international law. He added “That tram is the tram of apartheid” and claimed that the lawyers hired by Alstom and Connex are “dubious”, which confirmed recent comments by the two companies.
Despite all this, the contract was signed. Our diplomat saw that as an expression of “the climate in 2004 when there was a reconciliatory mood in Tel Aviv. But even so, that goal doesn’t justify stupidity. And that’s exactly what this tramway is. Pure stupidity”. He added that the stupidity owed much to the personality of the then French ambassador, Gérard Araud, who was “a firm believer in the project. He certainly asked to take part in the contract-signing ceremony.”
The light rail system may be a good solution for the inhabitants of Jerusalem, but why did the Israeli government not discuss it with the Palestinian Authority first? Since they made no attempt to do so, the Israeli government is open to accusation, at home and abroad, of using the tram to strengthen its policy of occupation, colonisation and annexation.
Having Theodor Herzl as the tramway’s poster boy may be a Freudian slip. Herzl certainly extolled modernity. But first and foremost he was the founder of Zionism.
By Philippe Rekacewicz and Dominique Vidal
The politics of urban planning
Two French companies are involved in the construction and operation of a light rail system from the centre of Jerusalem to a northern terminus. It is promoted as a unifying project: in fact, it will be yet another way to isolate the Palestinians.
.................................
THE tram will not operate before 2009 but it’s already a presence across Jerusalem, and garish ads show it running beside the walls of the Old City. The strangest ad features a pensive Theodor Herzl; in his book Altneuland, published two years before his death in 1902, Herzl dreamed of an electric tram system as a symbol of the Jerusalem of the future.
A century later this ecological and economic solution is a necessity. “Our city is in gridlock,” said Shmulik Elgarbly, Israeli spokesman for the mass transit system. “Ever since cars got cheaper, we’ve had terrible congestion in Jerusalem. By 1980 the percentage of urban dwellers using public transport dropped from 76% to 40%.” New roads jam up almost as soon as they are finished. Most streets are too narrow for bus lanes. The geological structure under the city would be ideal for the construction of a subway system, but why not let passengers see the most beautiful city in the world?
Ten years ago those arguments convinced Jerusalem’s mayor, then Ehud Olmert, of the need for a light rail system. The project would be financed by the private sector under a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) contract and the network would be handed over after 30 years. An international tender was put out in 2000 and the French company Alstom won the construction bid. Two years later Connex, the subsidiary of another French company, Veolia, won the operating rights. They formed a consortium called Citypass with two Israeli companies, Ashtrom Construction and Pollar Investment, as well as two banks, Hapaolim and Leumi. The contract was signed in July 2005. The initial aim is to carry 500 passengers by 2009 on each of 25 trains running between the terminus points of Pisgat Ze’ev and Mount Herzl.
According to Elgarbly, the project will be profitable if two conditions are met: “It must be perfectly safe and not a target for suicide attacks; and the route must meet the needs of the greatest possible number of inhabitants. We based our projections on 150,000 passengers a day. That is why the tram must serve the Jewish quarters [Israel’s politically correct term for settlements] such as Pisgat Ze’ev, as well as Arab quarters like Shu’fat. At present there are two separate bus networks serving those areas but there’s no room for two separate tramlines in Jerusalem. We’re building a single, peacetime tramway.”
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, even in the holy city. This project has raised many urban and, more important, political objections. It uses a stretch of Route 60, depriving Palestinians of a vital artery to the city and, beyond it, between the north and south of the West Bank. Yet Elgarbly insists that: “We will serve both populations in Jerusalem.” That seems doubtful. The fare, which is reasonable for Israeli passengers at $1.37, will be expensive for those Palestinians currently using the small buses, on which the fare is just 82 cents. There is also the question of how the continuing safety of the tram can be assured. How will the settlers react to seeing Arabs travelling on the tram? One person we spoke to wondered whether there should be separate carriages for Arabs and Israelis.
Who will park and ride?At the North Shu’fat stop, planners have designed park-and-ride lots for suburban commuters, especially Palestinians. The Israeli project director, Shmulik Tsabari, who came with us on our site tour, seemed oddly unaware of the fact that a large number of potential passengers, such as the inhabitants of Ras Khamis, or the Shu’fat and Anata refugee camps, live behind the separation wall. One checkpoint in the wall is open at present, but that doesn’t mean it will remain so in the future. The army already often closes it during the rush hour so that settlers can circulate more easily.
So who will use the park-and-ride lots — if they are built? “The 50 dunum (5 hectare) plot belongs to dozens of Palestinian families and the town hall has stymied negotiations,” explained lawyer Mahmud al-Mashni. “But a permit is required to build on the land since it’s in a green zone. The city authorities plan to use part of the area for the parking lot and allow the owners to build a shopping centre and homes on the remainder. But the owners can’t afford to do that — they won’t be able to pay the taxes, which are far higher on building land. According to Israeli law, the owners should get 60% of the land’s value in the event of state expropriation. Instead they’re being offered a ‘generous’ 25%.”
Many observers believe that at the first security threat the trams will cease to go via Shu’fat. Instead they will follow the safer roundabout route inside the wall. It will mean explaining away the expensive infrastructure that may already have been built, but that is not the point. According to international law, the route currently planned is illegal. It brings the Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem closer to the city centre in West Jerusalem: French Hill, then Pisgat Zeev, then Neve Yaakov in the north, and later, with eight more routes planned, many more. The tram facilitates colonisation.
This goes against the Fourth Geneva Convention of 12 August 1949, ratified on several occasions since by the United Nations Security Council. Resolution 465 of 1 March 1980 stipulates: “All measures taken by Israel to alter the physical character, the demographic composition, the institutional structure or status of the Palestinian territories including Jerusalem, have no legal validity.” So if this new project is to be used specifically for colonisation, Israel should not get assistance from other countries.
For a long time the Palestinians did not react, but now they are sounding the alarm. In October 2005 President Mahmoud Abbas raised the issue with a visibly embarrassed President Jacques Chirac. A month later the French foreign minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, sent a carefully worded letter to the chairman of the Association France-Palestine Solidarité, which is campaigning against the tram, saying: “Private companies bidding for international tenders in no way reflect a change in France’s well-known stance on Jerusalem.”
He went on to stress France’s attachment to Jerusalem’s international status as laid down when partition was declared in 1947: “France and the European Union have a clear and consistent position on the illegal nature of the settlements in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 as well as the security wall that Israel is building, which violates international law” (1).
Occupation entrenchedThis clarification did not prevent Nasser al-Kidwa, then the Palestinian Authority’s foreign minister, from writing to Alstom CEO Patrick Kron on 6 January 2006, to criticise Alstom’s involvement “which is not purely commercial, but carries extremely important implications in terms of aid to Israel in its illegal settlement policy in and around East Jerusalem, and which is viewed [by the Palestinian Authority] as an attempt to legitimise this policy”. This, he claimed, runs counter to “the principles that have long been held in France”. In Jerusalem two advisers from the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Fouad Hallak and Wassim H Khazmo, confirmed this view: “Ultimately, the tramline will connect West Jerusalem with the Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem. It is therefore entrenching the occupation. Without East Jerusalem, there cannot be a Palestinian state.”
Meanwhile, the Arab League condemned the illegal construction of the tramline at its March 2006 summit in Khartoum. Alstom and Connex were invited to withdraw immediately from the project to avoid steps being taken against them, and the friendly French government was urged to adopt a position on this issue in accordance with its responsibilities and international law.
Never has there been a greater divide in the official and unofficial positions of French diplomacy.
This is a far cry from “business is business”, which is what an economic adviser to the French embassy in Tel Aviv (2) was quoted as having said. The consortium for the $518m Jerusalem tramway had also hoped to win the $1.29bn contract for Tel Aviv (in December 2006 it found out that it hadn’t). Even before Douste-Blazy, there were other French ministers, including Nicolas Sarkozy, who had talked about the profits to be made.
Yet there are laws behind the money. According to international lawyer Monique Chemillier-Gendreau: “A state is accountable for the actions of its country’s major companies if they break international law and if the state does not do what it can to prevent them.” Doubtless aware of the risk, a French consulate official in Jerusalem stressed that neither Alstom nor Connex benefited from any export credits or guarantees from Coface, the official French export guarantee department.
A diplomat in Paris, who wished to remain anonymous, went further: “The French foreign office has always discouraged companies from taking part in this venture.” Maybe. But in that case why did Gérard Araud, France’s ambassador to Israel, take part in the official contract-signing ceremony in the offices of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon?
The diplomat confirmed that the foreign ministry “always had strong reservations about French companies taking part in this project”. In the event of confrontation “it would give rise to a crisis on the scale of the Muhammad cartoons row”. France would be in violation of international law. He added “That tram is the tram of apartheid” and claimed that the lawyers hired by Alstom and Connex are “dubious”, which confirmed recent comments by the two companies.
Despite all this, the contract was signed. Our diplomat saw that as an expression of “the climate in 2004 when there was a reconciliatory mood in Tel Aviv. But even so, that goal doesn’t justify stupidity. And that’s exactly what this tramway is. Pure stupidity”. He added that the stupidity owed much to the personality of the then French ambassador, Gérard Araud, who was “a firm believer in the project. He certainly asked to take part in the contract-signing ceremony.”
The light rail system may be a good solution for the inhabitants of Jerusalem, but why did the Israeli government not discuss it with the Palestinian Authority first? Since they made no attempt to do so, the Israeli government is open to accusation, at home and abroad, of using the tram to strengthen its policy of occupation, colonisation and annexation.
Having Theodor Herzl as the tramway’s poster boy may be a Freudian slip. Herzl certainly extolled modernity. But first and foremost he was the founder of Zionism.
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