Personal reflections on my forthcoming lecture

Since the date for my new lecture became fixed, a few months back, at my alma mater university in the State of Minnesota, USA, where I received my first 4 years of higher education, and earned my Bachelor’s degree, I was in a quandary.  Certainly, this would not be the first lecture I give to an American academic audience in my long career, but since I chose the topic of “Whither Palestine/Israel: What Future?  I have been preoccupied almost constantly with this lecture.  Whatever else I was doing, researching, writing, attending conferences, workshops, meetings, etc, or being involved in domestic and manual chores at home, and so forth, this forthcoming lecture dominated my mind.  It was my nagging concern, and I kept pushing to have it become my wife’s nagging concern too.  Why?

Whatever I read on this broad subject during this period (and I read a lot!); whatever came into my “in box”—reports, studies, analyses, position papers, book reviews, articles, petitions to sign, etc., all was perused; and some was read thoroughly and carefully, with the forthcoming lecture in mind! Why? What was I looking for?

The audience to whom I will be speaking, who is not unfamiliar to me (because I taught there for seven years) was firmly nestled in the back of my mind … my memory.  Basically, this is an audience of privileged Catholic young men and women; the product of middle and upper economic classes; well-bred and well-immersed in the so-called “Judeo-Christian tradition”; and who do well financially when they graduate.  They succeed in gravitating voluntarily and enthusiastically, with unmatched conviction, nurtured by a deep sense of Catholic loyalty (avoiding the wrath of generations of cumulative Catholic guilt), to good job opportunities in mainstream sectors that reproduce and sustain prevalent American culture.  My recollection of this audience (at least in the mid to late 1970’s and through the review of the “Alumni magazine”, which I receive regularly) is that they are not much interested in knowing and analyzing the changing state of the world beyond US borders, unless they happen to have been somehow affected by it, or participating in it through the direct occupation of other countries, e.g., Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Haiti, etc, or indirectly, e.g., Palestine.

Therein lays my quandary.  My main and nagging concern was this: How can I constrict more than a century-old Palestinian struggle for liberation and against foreign colonialism in a lecture of about 30-40 minutes, to such an audience, without “force spoon-feeding” them; without suffocating them with reams and reams of information; and without thrusting them into the realm of history, to where they would be very reluctant to go on their own volition? How best to etch in their brains one or two deep insights that they will not forget, and that they would keep coming back to for reference, even if they naturally resist doing so?

At the same time, doesn’t this quandary apply in speaking to any audience who identifies and supports the illegal American invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan as their patriotic duty? Wouldn’t this require at least two to three “pruning” attempts before you can get to the core of the issues, and before you can get such an audience to see and acknowledge the core?

Initially, and as a way out of my predicament, I began working on a basic premise that I need to find and cast in front of them bits of critical data, strung in a somewhat coherent logical chain that can be verified empirically, without requiring leaps of a different system of logic.  I started squeezing my mind, and everything I read and re-read.  I wanted to come up with some type of a list of what is important (for them to know) and what is less important?

I concluded, readily, that they needed to have a visual image of how the land of Palestine was effectively eviscerated, decimated, dismembered … since 1947.  So, I worked on providing maps revealing the gradual obliteration of the land of Palestine.  This is easy to show, because such maps abound.  But this, in itself, wasn’t satisfactory to me.  Should I, then, refer them to basic good references that document this process of genocidal tragedy? But, then, how I can bring them from there to today? How can I entice them to cross with me, quickly and without major diversions, the last century of the Zionist colonial onslaught on Palestine?

How much detail should I expose them to, while introducing the entire “Oslo process”, for example? But, regardless of the level of detail I would provide them, what essence would they retain from these “Oslo” details? And what essence I want them to hold on to and, hopefully, internalize? Should I, for example, highlight the fragmentation of the land (the essence of coherent geography and space)? Should I underscore the acquiescence to a continued military colonial occupation, as it is driven and encouraged by the emergence of a Quisling “Palestinian Authority” in its role as a sub-agent for Israeli control and oppression? Or, should I give more attention to the pre-designed role of “Oslo” in the total fragmentation of the Palestinian people, and the dissolution of their struggle for liberation and freedom, etc ? Or, should I deal with all the above components as constituting the elements of an insidious plan? And finally, is my audience opposed, in principle, to military occupation and colonization of another people?

Or, on the other hand, should I start with the now and telescope it back into its historical context? Why not, it occurred to me, start shocking them by focusing, for example, on the most recent racist genocidal calls to “curb Palestinian births” by one Martin Kramer of Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs? Or, by the Israeli decision to erase the 800 years old Palestinian Mamilla Cemetery in Jerusalem to make room for a Jewish so-called “Museum of Tolerance” in its stead?  Or, by the multitude of stories of Palestinian daily human sufferings and humiliation on the military checkpoints, in all Palestinian areas under occupation (Gaza, West Bank, Jerusalem)?  Or, should I focus on the rise in numbers and percentages (since 2001) of attempted suicides among Palestinian young people (18 – 30 years of age), mostly women (about 80%), because of the absence of hope, blocked horizons, and evaporating alternatives for decent human and free existence? Etc, etc.

As always, I attempted to engage my wife in this process of mental deliberations.  She was instrumental in helping me get out of this predicament.  “This is important, but not shocking ”, she advised.  “Why don’t you focus on the real basics? It is about time, at this critical stage, to re-focus on the real essentials of the entire struggle, and to forcefully engage your American audience to reflect on these essentials.” And this is what I am doing.  I “shifted gears” to go faster towards the target! What are the real essentials, and where do we go from here? This will be the core of my forthcoming lecture.

Essential one:

The creation of Israel, as a result of the “Partition Resolution” (UNGA 181) in 29 November 1947 is illegal and has no legitimacy, just like the invasion and occupation of Iraq by American forces.

*  “Israel was created, mainly, by Zionist terrorism and ethnic cleansing – a pre-planned process that saw three-quarters of the indigenous Arab inhabitants of Palestine dispossessed of their homes, their land and their rights.” 

*  The assertion that Israel’s birth certificate and legitimacy was given by the UN Partition Resolution is pure Zionist propaganda, because: 

“In the first place the UN without the consent of the majority of the people of Palestine did not have the right to decide to partition Palestine or assign any part of its territory to a minority of alien immigrants in order for them to establish a state of their own.” 

• “The UN General Assembly did pass a resolution to partition Palestine and create two states, one Arab, one Jewish, with Jerusalem not part of either. But the General Assembly resolution was only a recommendation – meaning that it could have no effect, would not become policy, unless approved by the Security Council.”
   
• “The General Assembly's recommendation never went to the Security Council for consideration because the U.S. knew that, if approved, it could only be implemented by force given the extent of Arab and other Muslim opposition to it; and President Truman was not prepared to use force to partition Palestine.  So the partition plan was vitiated.”

*  Hence, the push and pressure on the Palestinians to recognize the Zionist state.  “In international law only the Palestinians could give Israel the legitimacy it craved.”  (See Alan Hart, “ Zionism Unmasked" , Palestine Think Tank, 13 February 2010.)

*  “The vote was 33 in favor, 13 against and 10 abstentions, with a requirement for a 2/3 majority. Is that a large majority? Abstentions obviously were not counted, but why and under what pressure of ideals were those abstentions made? And what about the other countries, more than the fifty-six voting within the UN, and probably more including the many colonies that were probably excluded at the time?”

*  “The UN Partition Plan of 1947 is of dubious validity … based as it was on a limited and perhaps contrived vote count. … Further questions arise from the Plan itself in which it says: ‘The Security Council determine as a threat to the peace, breach of the peace or act of aggression, in accordance with Article 39 of the Charter, any attempt to alter by force the settlement envisaged by this resolution;’

*  The historical record documents clearly that there was a large "attempt to alter by force the settlement envisaged by this resolution," and that “rose immediately from the Israeli ‘defence' forces who quickly set about the ethnic cleansing of over 400 towns using tactics which today would be considered terror.”  (For the above, see Jim Miles, “ Shlaim's Israel and Palestine”,, 18 January 2010,  Jim Miles's ZSpace Page).

*  Although I accept the position of those who argue that “Israel exists and the vote is irrelevant”, it is, nevertheless, imperative to keep reminding that Israel, as a state, was created by Zionist colonialism and terror, not a political peaceful entity along side of Palestine, but a settler colonial entity on top of Palestine, and obliterating it.

*  It is vital to keep questioning “What is the true nature of this state of Israel that commands the allegiance of the American people and is now seeking to enlist the governments of the world against its perceived ‘existential’ enemy, Iran?” and that may ignite a third world war!

*  It is vital to keep reminding that this rogue state is in defiance of international law, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions that apply to occupying powers.  This is a state “that possesses weapons of mass destruction, including hundreds of nuclear weapons, and refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty”, not to mention stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons;

*  It is crucial to keep reminding that this State “has defied more than 160 UNGA and 39 UNSC resolutions, demanding it act as a civilized state abiding by international law and protocol”;

* It is fundamental to keep reminding that this is “a state that has systematically confiscated, appropriated, annexed, and assimilated virtually all land belonging to the Palestinians in a sixty-year period of time, leaving them approximately 14 percent of their original land, making it the greatest visible land theft known to human kind in our day”;

*  It is important to keep reminding that this is “ a state that proclaims itself a democracy but is not and, with malicious intent, confiscates the money belonging to a democratically elected government in Palestine and arrests their representatives without charge or trial.” (See William A. Cook,  “The Unstated Script of the Wiesel Open Letter to President Obama”,  23  February 2010, Information Clearing House. 

Essential Two:

The “Oslo Process” with all its accords, starting with the “Declaration of Principles” in September 1993, is an international plan, inspired, devised and supported by the very Western powers that created the illegitimate state of Israel.  It was imposed on the Palestinians for the simple reason to force them to acquiesce to the status quo of Israeli colonialism and occupation of the entire land of Palestine. “By mortgaging the Palestinian leadership to US and Israeli sponsorship, by creating and maintaining administrative, legal and financial structures that will ensure this dependence, Oslo has been what it was designed to be from the start: the mechanism of ending the Palestinian quest to end Israeli colonialism and occupation, and the legitimation of Israel's racist nature by the very people over whom it exercises its colonial and racist dominion.”

The main pillars of this process, as it has been shown in actual application and results, are the following:

• The fragmentation of Palestinian political leadership, and the obfuscation and destruction of the principle of “representation”, namely, the relationship between the PLO and the PA;
• The fragmentation of the Palestinian people into unconnected pieces and geographies: West Bank, Gaza, Jerusalem, Areas occupied in 1948, refugees in camps, “shatat” (Diaspora) Palestinians, Areas “A”, “B”, and “C” in the West Bank, etc ;
• The Palestinian dependence on international aid for their basic physical survival, the daily running of the administrative governing apparatus, with emphasis on security rather than on the productivity of agricultural lands for food security, etc;
• The creation of distorted and corrupt social and economic classes who usurped power and economic resources, rendering society more pauperized: “A political class”, “A policing class”, “A bureaucratic class”, “An NGO class”, and “A business class”;
• The continued international legitimation of Israel’s racist nature.  (For the above, See Joseph Massad, “Oslo and the end of Palestinian independence”, Al-Ahram Weekly Online, 21-27 January 2010). 

Essential Three:

The only way to ensure Palestinian emancipation from this system of occupation, colonialism and apartheid is to work towards establishing a free, democratic, secular and non-racist country in the entire land of historic Palestine, while Israeli Jews embark on self-liberation from the dominant racist Zionist ideology.  The cardinal question is this:  How to break this vicious cycle of colonial occupation and apartheid, and to expose the various measures of “managing the conflict” as delusionary substitutes for a just, lasting and democratic solution targeting the entire people of the historical land of Palestine? How to really seize the initiative for freedom and democracy? What should be our guiding principles?

To start with, what’s the situation today in Palestine/Israel?

• The status quo on the ground reveals the presence of 3.8 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, about 40% of whom live in, what has been described, an open air prison in Gaza; nearly half a million illegal Zionist colonists (called “settlers”)living in the West Bank; and 1.3 million Palestinians living as a subjugated minority on their land, inside Israel, among nearly 6.0 million Israeli Jews.
   
• At the end of 2008, at least 7.1 million Palestinians, representing 67 percent of the entire Palestinian population (10.6 million) worldwide were displaced persons (6.6 million refugees and 427,000 IDPs). This makes Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) the largest and longest-standing case of displaced persons in the world today.
   
• Starting sometime un the late 1980s, “the number of settlements, and even the size of their population, became immaterial because the apparatus of Israeli rule was perfected to such a degree that the distinction between Israel proper[Areas occupied in 1948] and the occupied territories [Areas occupied in 1967]—and between settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and Jewish communities inside Israel—was totally blurred.   Similarly, the takeover of land ceased to be chiefly for the purpose of settlement construction and became primarily a means of constricting the movements of the Palestinian populace and of appropriating their physical space”.
   
• “As far as Israeli citizens and their range of interests are concerned, the annexation of the territories is a fait accompli. …  The continuation of the status quo creates a quasi-stable situation: the Jewish community, a loose framework of cultures and ethnic tribes in constant tension, is held together by enmity to the Palestinian “Other”, and by a determination to rule them. … Fragmentation became the major tool of Israeli control, to preserve their rule over Israel/Palestine from the river to the sea. … The ruling Jewish community will continue, even when it becomes a minority, to force this split on the Palestinians with the usual carrots and  sticks, dictating the agenda, presenting threats, imposing collective punishments and bribery. … The ‘peace process’ serves as a curtain behind which divide and rule is entrenched”.
   
• “They have invented a unique concept of a ‘state’: its ‘sovereignty’ will be scattered, lacking any cohesive physical infrastructure, with no direct connection to the outside world. …  The airspace and the water resources will remain under Israeli control.  Helicopter patrols, the airwaves, the hands on the water pumps and the electrical switches, the registration of residents and the issue of identity cards, as well as passes to enter and leave, will all be controlled (directly or indirectly) by the Israelis.”
   
• “The status quo will endure as long as the forces wishing to preserve it are stronger than those wishing to undermine it, and that is the situation today in Israel/Palestine.”  

• Several factors sustain the current status quo and ensure its survivability.  These include the high level of fragmentation of Palestinian society and the ongoing incitement of the fragments against each other; the “mobilization of the Jewish community into support for the occupation regime, which is perceived as safeguarding its very existence”; the sustained funding of the status quo by the so-called “donor countries”, which “frees Israel from the burden of coping with the enormous cost of maintaining the control over the Palestinians and creates a system of corruption and vested interests” ; the ongoing delusion that “negotiations” will end the status quo, thus rendering it a temporary state; and “the silencing of all criticism as an expression of hatred and anti-Semitism”.
• The status quo is characterized by a huge gap in GDP between Palestinians under occupation and the occupying Israelis, of a magnitude of 1:20. “This gap cannot endure without the force of arms … which enforces a draconic control system. … All the economic, social and spatial systems of governance in the occupied territories are designed to maintain and safeguard Israeli privileges and prosperity on both sides of the ‘Green Line’, at the expense of millions of captive, impoverished Palestinians”.  

• This status quo is labeled, by Benvenisti, as “de facto bi-national regime” , a term stressing  “the total dominance of the Jewish-Israeli nation, which controls a Palestinian nation that is fragmented both territorially and socially.” (For the above quotes, see Meron Benvenisti, “The Inevitable Bi-national Regime”, January 2010).
   

To work strategically on our liberation process, we need to instill an appropriate discourse that embodies our future strategic vision.  This discourse should start by purging itself from the language of  “two-state solution”,  “two states for two people”, “West Bank and Gaza”, “East Jerusalem”, “peacemaking”, “direct or indirect negotiations”, “state building”, “legal or illegal settlements”, etc.  Our language should focus on means of resistance to achieve our liberation towards living in a free, non-racist, secular country in the entire land of historical Palestine; on emancipation from occupation and economic dependency; on individual and collective rights; on international law; on responsive and accountable leadership; on self-reliance and productivity; and on the right of all the refugees and displaced persons, who were ethnically cleansed from their homes and country by the Zionist colonial movement, to return to Palestine.

To embark on this course, we should be committed to struggle, with anti-Zionist Jews, for:

• “The dismantlement of the existing system of colonial apartheid, and all forms of racist political, spatial, economic, and psychological separation on the historical land of Palestine”, on the premise that: “all activities resulting from the illegal and criminal Zionist-Western colonization of Palestine, since Palestine was targeted at the turn of the twentieth century, including land and water theft for exclusive Jewish-Zionist settlements, political and legal structures, displacement and replacement of indigenous populations, privileged access and exploitation of natural resources, etc, are null and void, and should be dismantled.”

• “The unhindered return of all Palestinian individuals and groups who were forced by the Zionist colonial enterprise, with the active support of the Western imperialist centers, to abandon their homes and properties; and to exercise their inalienable natural right to acquire these properties back;”
• “The unobstructed productive use of their lands and other natural resources for the indigenous development of the society;”
• “The total freedom of all the people of historical Palestine to chose the type of their governance system, without any coercion or prejudice;”
• “The safeguarding of the seminal principle of separating religious beliefs from the political system, and the use of religion as the basis of government;”
• “The legal guarantee of equal rights of individuals and groups for all minorities living in the new Palestinian Society;”
• “The insistence on the basic principle that majority-minority relations must be based on equality and non-exploitation.” 

Such a worthwhile, justified, and difficult but legitimate struggle would: 

• “Rectify the historical and continuous evil and injustice done to the Palestinian people;
• Preserve the geographical and territorial integrity of the land of Palestine, and will work as a counterweight to the insidious process of fragmentation;
• Insist on the Right of Return of all Palestinians to their lands and properties from which they were forcefully and criminally evicted;
• Dismantle all Zionist and Jewish-Israeli structures and laws that were built on inequality and on the exclusion of Palestinian Arabs, with the purpose of imposing and maintaining a hegemonic control of the Zionist-Ashkenazi state over the entire region;
• Allow and encourage mutual living and existence between the Palestinian Arabs and Israeli anti-Zionist Jews in the historical land of Palestine, within a democratic, non-sectarian, equal, non-repressive, non-exploitative, just and open society;
• Promise genuine and sustainable development of the territory of Palestine, for the benefit of all its inhabitants, especially the poor and the marginalized, by focusing on the effective, productive and purposeful use of land and water, for the full employment potential of its workers;

Set an important human example of how antagonists may live together harmoniously in a delineated physical space, once racist and exclusionary ideology and practices are expunged.”

(For the above quotes, see Khalil Nakhleh, “Thinking the Thinkable”, 20 August 2008,  http://www.kanaanonline.org/articles/01633.pdf). 

Khalil Nakhleh, Ph.D.

Independent Researcher and Writer

Ramallah, Palestine/Israel

(Struggling to Transform Our Homeland)

Nakba survivors and their descendents commemorate their destroyed villages with Zochrot

The Nakba law is coming up again for consideration in the Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, in a more moderate version than before but with the same motivation:  to frighten everyone who wishes to commemorate the human and political tragedy that occurred in 1948, in which the Zionists expelled most of the Palestinian inhabitants of the country and the state of Israel destroyed most of the localities in which they lived.  Those proposing the law hope to mobilize Zionist patriotism by threatening to forbid commemorating Independence Day as a day of mourning.  They are blind, of course, to the historical context, and the development of that tradition among the displaced Palestinians who remained in Israeli territory.  Let us not forget that Arab localities in Israel were ruled by a military government until 1966.  Palestinian citizens were forbidden to travel “beyond the pale” without a permit from the military governor.  On Independence Day all the residents had a vacation, even the Arabs!  The most important place for them to visit was the one where they had lived, to which they were forbidden to return.  As the years went by, and they understood that the Jewish state would never allow them to return home, this event took on a national-political aspect, and in recent years it is celebrated with a “March home” to the remains of one of the localities captured during the nakba.  “Their independence; our Nakba,” became the main slogan of these events. 

The government intends to impose economic sanctions on the organizers of these important commemorations, which will only increase the discrimination suffered by Palestinian citizens of Israel.  The economic sanctions contradict the state’s obligation to the welfare of all its citizens, regardless of their political beliefs or national identity.  In recent years, a growing number of Jews have participated in the return marches to Palestinian localities which Israel captured during the Nakba, and support for the right of return is increasing.  These Jews are undermining the ethno-national dichotomy of the slogan, recognizing that the tragedy which occurred in 1948 is part of their own history.  The participation of Jews in events commemorating the Nakba undermines the effort, which is as old as Zionism itself, to bring about confrontation and schism between Arabs and Jews in the country. 

It may not come as a surprise that in this difficult time for Israeli public relations efforts, the government disseminates absurd “facts” about the Palestinian refugees.  For example, that they numbered only 320,000, not approximately 800,000, as a result of the Nakba, while 150,000 “were absorbed in Arab countries” and 50,000 “ returned to their countries.”  Such newspeak insults the intelligence of many Israelis, who have known for a long time that the official government explanations for the events of 1948 are intentional lies. 

Hundreds of Israelis contact Zochrot every year.  Educators, students, journalists, directors and others who are interested request information which has been concealed for so long about what happened just outside the house where they were born.  The editor of the most comprehensive web site about the Nakba, www.palestineremembered.com reports that the number of Israelis entering the site is second only to the number of Palestinians.  These are dramatic developments which no law which tries to compel people to forget the Nakba will be able to stop. 

The Nakba is increasingly present in Israeli cultural production, no longer ignored by best-selling books and films by young directors.  Even architects are beginning to show signs of addressing the traditions of local Palestinian architecture. 

Despite these positive signs, it is impossible to underestimate the danger presented by the strengthening of anti-democratic currents in Israel.  The present government is acting to greatly restrict the freedom of civil society to negotiate with the regime over the most controversial topics.  Arbitrary arrests, outrageous investigations and draconic legislation are what you find in the toolbox of a government which knows that its survival depends on creating a “iron wall” that, for now, protects the Israeli colonial regime.

Eitan Bronstein
Zochrot

February 2010

www.zochrot.org

This "incident" is only one episode of an ongoing series of collapses which jeopardize the safety of residents and passers-by alike in the town of Silwan and the old city of Jerusalem. 

Just last year, it was a United Nations-affiliated school in East Jerusalem that took the hit when a landslide caused one of the school's floors to collapse over the heads of the stunned students injuring 14 Palestinian schoolgirls. 

The looming menace of structural damage and hazardous cracks is omnipresent in the old city, haunting every Palestinian citizen living in that entire area; for tomorrow it could be anyone's house, commercial propriety or even mosque; and of course should any of these buildings survive the aforementioned risks, there will always be possible future land confiscations and arbitrary demolition orders. 

Now the real "smuggling" goes down through these Israeli tunnels (and contrary to the ones in Gaza; it does not involve the trafficking of canned food, milk or medicine), as according to a report issued by Al-Aqsa Foundation for Religious Endowments and Heritage; many Islamic-era artifacts and valuable antiquities are being stolen by the Israeli Occupation forces and removed from the Palestinian territories to unknown places. 

Whereas Gaza's network of underground tunnels that reach the Egyptian side of Rafah are constructed out of despair and absolute necessity by a besieged and cornered population, Jerusalem's underground mining is carried out by -and with the tight guardianship of- the Israeli military; allegedly to unearth historical evidence for the presence of King David in that area when in reality these operations are solely driven by a salivating desire to Judaize the entire city and drastically alter its Palestinian identity.  

Needless to say; these Israeli tunnels are dug freely and openly; its accelerated mining activities and daily construction go unabated and unchallenged by the international community, no one went out of his way to "think outside the box" to come up with a brilliant scheme of super steel walls and cutting-edge monitoring technologies to try and halt these illegal underground tunnels, it does not even get sufficient media coverage, and of course that makes perfect sense, because evidently nowadays unless it involves an exaggerated malicious feud over a football match or a six-year-old boy on a home-made helium balloon; stories from occupied East Jerusalem simply do not make the cut. 

And with each Israeli violation in Jerusalem; The frustratingly disjointed Arab league and the lamentable Organization of Islamic conference tend to grow a thicker callous skin, splashing around in the safe, familiar water of political pragmatism, issuing the same old recycled "strong-worded" condemnations (which by the way are a dime a dozen); never really taking any long strides outside the confines of what we have all become accustomed to over the years despite the ever-increasing existential threats to Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock which are both considered the oldest surviving examples of early Islamic architecture and religious heritage. 

Everything is a myth until it’s too late to face the fact that it’s reality; and sadly, that's exactly the case with our perception of what's happening right now in Jerusalem, Unfortunately, it seems we have somehow over the years mastered the art of not caring, we turn a blind eye to the Israeli Occupation Forces' daily exercises of humiliating the City’s citizens and desecrating its holy sites, we know that it is "easier" to sweep everything under the rug and pretend that we're not there yet, but make no mistake; the absolute worst of what could ever happen to Jerusalem is happening right now, warning signs are far behind us, and the fact that we have managed to fail miserably in acknowledging them does not make what’s happening any less real and frightening.

To:  The Cabinet and Parliament of Lebanon;

Secondary only to ending the siege of Gaza and achieving Statehood, the enactment of the basic civil right to work and to own a home for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Refugees living in squalor in Lebanon is perhaps the most critical and immediately achievable goal of the Palestinian resistance and the ideals enshrined in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Friends of Palestine and supporters of basic civil rights, wherever they live, can help this happen without violence or martyrs by signing and distributing the Online Petition and by twinning with a Palestinian Refugee in Lebanon.

The Palestine Civil Rights Campaign-Lebanon and the Sabra Shatila Foundation Beirut, Lebanon-Washington DC.

We the undersigned from many countries, mindful of the urgent need for equal human rights for our Palestinian Refugee sisters and brothers in Lebanon in their Civil, Political, Social and Economic dimensions, herewith signify our solidarity with Lebanon as this great country nobly corrects six decades of injustices by enacting civil rights legislation for her guests from Palestine.

Affixing my name to this petition expresses my wish to personally "twin" in solidarity with one of Lebanon's Palestinian refugees as they and their Lebanese hosts continue to work and prepare for their Return.

Sincerely, (signed)

PLEASE SIGN HERE! http://www.petitiononline.com/ssfpcrc/petition.html

In May 1948, the Israeli army launched an attack to occupy the villages of Imwas [Emmaus], Yalu and Beit Nuba, but failed to conquer these villages.  Elsewhere, in Palestine, the Zionist terrorist gangs and the Israeli army were committing massacres against the predominantly unarmed Palestinian people and conducted their long-planned campaign of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people from their homeland. There was one day, out of many during that conflict, that left painful sights in my life. It was on July 10, 1948 that Israeli army troops, led by Yitzhak Rabin, occupied the Palestinian cities of Lydda and Ramleh. Rabin and his officers proceeded to drive these 50 – 60,000 civilian inhabitants of these two cities away from their homes in terror, with low-flying airplanes over their heads shooting the occasional person and forcing them to run. The sight of the terror-stricken, hungry and thirsty men, women and children fleeing in terror in the midday sun of the hot summer, having run approximately twenty-five kilometres to the village of Beit Nuba, where I, a 15 year old boy, saw them with my own eyes, is a sight not to be forgotten.

The defeat of the Israeli army and its failure to occupy these three villages, in May 1948, brought about a brutal revenge 19 years later in the war of aggression that Israel planned and effected on June 5, 1967 against its Arab neighbours. On June 6, these three villages were occupied, without a single shot being fired, and were systematically dynamited and bulldozed, on the direct orders of Yitzhak Rabin, the then chief of staff of the Israeli army.  The villagers, over 10,000, were expelled from their land. In the village of Beit Nuba, 18 were buried alive under the ruins of their homes because they were old or infirm and unable to move out of their homes before they were demolished. One of them, Mohammad Ali Baker, was an uncle of my mother. When our home was demolished, my uncle, who was old and arthritic, was slow to move out, the Israeli soldiers told him, while they were demolishing the western part of our home, that he will be buried alive if he did not move when they will be soon demolishing the eastern part of our home. He was hurriedly moved out. The pain and suffering that my mother sustained was immense and continued to feel until her dying day. My mother, brother, sisters and my uncle were driven out from our land and never allowed to return, and I continue to bear that pain.

 The destruction of these three villages in June 1967 was described, in the CBC documentary below, as an act of revenge, by General Narkiss the commander of the Israeli forces that demolished these villages.

The destruction of these villages was witnessed and described by the Israeli journalist Amos Kenan, who was a reserve soldier in the occupying force in Beit Nuba. He gave this account to the Israeli newspaper Ha'Olam Hazeh, which was prohibited by the censor from publishing it. It was sent to all members of the Knesset, and to the Israeli Prime Minister and Defence minister, but no response was received.

"The unit commander told us that it had been decided to blow up three villages in our sector; they were Beit Nuba, Imwas and Yalu … We were told to block the entrances of the villages and prevent inhabitants [from] returning …. The order was to shoot over their heads and tell them not to enter the village.

"Beit Nuba is built of fine quarry stones; some of the houses are magnificent. Every house is surrounded by an orchard, olive trees, apricots, vines and cypresses. They are well kept. Among the trees, there are carefully tended vegetable beds.

 "At noon the first bulldozer arrived and pulled down the first house at the edge of the village. Within ten minutes the house was turned into rubble. The olive trees and cypresses were all uprooted. After the destruction of three houses, the first refugee column arrived from the direction of Ramallah. We did not fire in the air. There were old people who could hardly walk, murmuring old women, mothers carrying babies, small children. The children wept and asked for water. They all carried white flags.

"We told them to go to Beit Sira. They told us they had been driven out. They had been wandering like this for four days, without food, some dying on the road. They asked to return to their village … Some had a goat, a lamb, a donkey or a camel. A father ground wheat by hand to feed his four children …. The children cried. Some of our soldiers started crying too.

We went to fetch the Arabs some water. We stopped a car with a major, two captains and a woman … We asked the officers why these refugees were sent from one place to another and driven out of everywhere. They told us that this was good for them, they should go. 'Moreover', said the officers, 'what do we care about the Arabs anyway?' "

"We drove them out. They go on wandering like lost cattle. The weak die. Our unit was outraged. The refugees gnashed their teeth when they saw the bulldozers pull down the trees. None of us understood how Jews could behave like this. No one understood why these fellaheen [villagers] shouldn't be allowed to take blankets and some food.

"The chickens and doves were buried in the rubble. The fields were turned into wasteland in front of our eyes. The children who went crying on the road will be fedayeen in nineteen years, in the next round. Thus we have lost the victory." (From Israel Imperial News, March 1968.)

Uri Avnery, then a Knesset member, described the destruction of these villages as a definite war crime. This was carried out on the direct orders of Yitzhak Rabin, then Chief of Staff of Israel's armed forces. These acts are in direct violation of The Fourth Geneva Convention, 1949, to which Israel is a signatory. Article 53 of the convention states: " Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property, belonging individually or collectively to private persons, or to the state, or to other public authorities or social or cooperative organizations, is prohibited".

It is now difficult to spot the ruins and the rubble. Today there stands on the site of the ruins of these three village, Imwas [the biblical village Emmaus, where Jesus Christ first appeared after his Resurrection to meet with his Apostles], Yalu and Beit Nuba, the infamy called "Canada Park", with picnic areas for Israelis, built with Canadian tax-deductible dollars provided by the Canadian Jewish National Fund (JNF), a registered Canadian charity.

It was in 1973 that Bernard Bloomfield of Montreal, then President of the JNF of Canada, spearheaded a campaign among the Canadian Jewish community to raise $15 million to establish Canada Park, so as to provide a picnic area accessible to Israelis from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

 At the entrance of Canada Park, just off John Diefenbaker Parkway (opened by Diefenbaker himself in 1975), is a sign that reads: "Welcome to Canada Park in Ayalon Valley-a project of the Jewish National Fund of Canada."

The JNF, responsible for the upkeep of the park, has removed all signs of the villages and their inhabitants from the area. It would seem that only the Canadian donors are worthy of being remembered; their names are engraved in the bronze plaques which cover an entire wall. Interestingly, these donors are not directly informed that the park is built on the site of the demolished villages. The Director of the American JNF stated that,
"It is a delicate situation, and one cannot expect an institution [such as the Canadian JNF] which gathers money from abroad, to publicise the issue [of the demolition of these villages]." ("Canada Park: A Case Study," by Ehud Meltz and Michal Selah, Kol Hair, Aug. 31, 1984.)

The glossy guidebook, published by the JNF of Canada, has an entire page devoted to the history of the area, including the biblical, Roman, Crusader and British periods, but has no mention of these villages or their destruction. Another step in the obliteration of the villages from memory can be seen in their absence from Israeli maps.

As a new Canadian, my personal pain was compounded when I read on Dec. 4, 1978, in our local newspaper, The Halifax Herald, that Peter Herschorn, a prominent Halifax businessman and past chairman of the Atlantic branch of the JNF, was honored by the JNF for his humanitarian work and "choosing the right goodness" in his participation in the building of Canada Park. The Lieutenant-Governor of Nova Scotia, the Premier of N.S. and the Mayor of Halifax were in attendance and offered their greetings. I was mortified that political leaders in my new country, Canada, would consider the erection of recreation centres on the site of ruins of criminally demolished peaceful villages, illegally occupied, as a humanitarian act.

When I was invited to come to Canada to teach at Dalhousie University Medical School, I accepted with enthusiasm, as I had a vision of Canada as a country of liberal values upholding human rights and international law. However, the story of our government, allowing our tax dollars to be used to build this infamy of Canada Park, a war crime, has been a source of torment and pain for me. Over many years, I have written repeatedly, supported by some honourable politicians like Senator Heath Macquarrie and Mr. R.A. Corbett, MP, to successive Revenue Canada Ministers, expressing concern about this, and receiving only vague unhelpful answers. It was in the midst of this that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Fifth Estate Programme prepared and broadcast a documentary on Canada Park, titled: "Park with no Peace", broadcast on Oct. 21, 1991. This deserves to be viewed and study by all . http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-2500957394773313398 

In summation, I stand before you today, to express gratitude to The Canadian Museum for Human Rights for agreeing to listen to my story exposing the violation of my human rights and to express the pain and suffering of the Palestinian people who were systematically expelled from their homeland and continue to live as refugees denied the fundamental right of return to their homes, a right clearly stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and repeated UN resolutions. As Israel continues to defy international law and to compound our agony, we witness deafening silence from countries, like Canada, which claim to uphold the UN Charter and universal human rights. To compound that, I, as a Canadian citizen, feel, with pain and shame, the complicity of my country in continuing to subsidize this war crime, sadly called Canada Park, defaming Canada's name.

Ismail Zayid's site: http://izayid.tripod.com/

see: www.thecanadiancharger.com/page.php?id=5&a=262

WRITTEN BY Khalil Nakhleh – Ramallah

I remember it was one Sunday afternoon, sometime around one or two o'clock, when my father barged running into the house shouting "we have to leave, we have to leave". His face was all red; his eyes shined with piercing outrage, uncertainty and incredulity.

I remember it was Sunday because my mother was fixing our special Sunday lunch that included meat –the only day in the week where we had a little bit of meat. Sundays were the only days in the week where the butchers would butcher fresh goat meat. I remember my mother had prepared a big kettle of “tabeekh” (stew of beans, tomato sauce and a bit of meat) with rice on the side. My village was mostly Christian with some Druze. We were a farming community relying, primarily, on olives and oil, without much cash.

“What do you mean we have to leave? Leave to where and how?” my mother screamed with agony. “I don’t know to where and how”, my father screamed back: “El-Yahood (the Jews) are already at the gate to our compound with armored cars and machine-guns posted on the gate posts, and are ordering us to leave.” My father was helpless and impotent and could do nothing to protect our family from being kicked out by force. He kept going down to the entrance of our family compound and back up, a distance of not more than three hundred meters, trying to get more information, but to no avail. Every time he came back his helplessness was showing on his face and in his eyes. I remember his face and eyes were getting redder every time he came back. Whatever new information he got was contradicting the one before. My mother would scream with desperation: “Can we take things with us? What things? Are we walking? Or, are there trucks to take us? And take us where?” The more my mother insisted on finding reliable information to help her “plan” what to do, and how to do it with her family of 4 boys and one girl, and another child in her belly (she was pregnant in her 9th month), the more frustrated and helpless my father became, and the more he kept going down to the entrance of our compound and back up again to the house.

One of the times, my father came back up and declared: “there will be trucks to take us”. My mother would scramble to start sorting out the things she would take with. Next information, however, was stuck on: “No, there will be no trucks to take us; we have to walk”. My mother would start re-sorting her things. I remember that this took some time (it seemed forever, then), until finally my father came with definitive instructions: “No trucks, and the house had to be left unlocked with the doors wide open; houses with locked doors would be exploded, he repeated; houses with weapons in them would be detonated; we have to start walking to the North, on the Beit Jann road” (Beit Jann is a Druze village about 10 KMs up the mountain).

I have a vivid memory of the entire village (population of 1,690 according to “Village Statistics 1945) thronging up that road sometime later that afternoon of that horrible Sunday. I remember women carrying on their heads bags of wheat, other grains, flour, sugar, home-made square soap bars of olive oil, because the sight of spilled flour, sugar, soap bars, etc, on the side of the road still sticks in my mind.  Some people were carrying cans of olive oil, and anything that they could carry on their backs, on their heads, or in their hands. My mother wrapped the pot which contained the meal she had prepared for that Sunday, and carried it on her head. My father carried “libreek” (the terracotta water jug), because it was dry and hot that afternoon, but without realizing until later that it was empty.

As we walked up, some were screaming; some were crying; kids were screaming; all types of loud voices and cries were intermingled savagely in my head. This was not a walk by choice, or with objective; we were ordered to do it. The sticking image in my head is that of bodies in the olive orchards on the side of the road, and the sound of low flying airplanes. As we got up the hill, my little sister screamed for water. My father, who was carrying the empty water jug all along, realized then that it was empty. He ordered one of my older brothers to go and knock on the door of an old “hunting buddy” of his (who was a Druze), just a few meters away from the road, to ask him to fill the jug with water. He refused. (The Druze were allowed by the invading Jewish forces to remain in their homes). My mother was pregnant in her ninth month. My father kept repeating with determination, as we inched our way up the hill, “even if you—to my mother—give birth to Jesus Christ I will throw him on the side of the hill in the bushes!”).

By the time we got to a flat plateau on top of the mountain (which we refer to as “as-sahleh”, the little plain), it was nearly dark. Someone in my family decided that we should spend the night there until the morning. We bedded there. I don’t remember who all was there, but I remember, though, that I wanted a pillow for my head and my father kicked me and screamed “go to sleep ‘ya ars’ (bastard) and put your sandals under your head”. 

“As-sahleh” is at the junction of the Druze village of Beit Jann, where my grandfather had developed historically friendship and commercial ties with one of the two large clans there. By that time they got word that we were expelled from our homes. The next morning, a delegation from that clan came to “as-sahleh” and urged my grandfather and his family to stay with them until the situation became clear. We did. I don’t remember how long we stayed in Beit Jann, but I do remember, with the chaos, eating hot bread with “labaneh” (a kind of soft cream cheese made from goat milk). Next I remember we were back in our village, but not in our home. How and why? I don’t know. I wasn’t preoccupied, as a child, with why or how I was allowed to return to my village, to my home, and other Palestinians (parts of my people) were not! Our house was occupied by Israeli soldiers. Here, too, we stayed for a week or two weeks in the house of Druze friends, a stone throw from our home, until my father could sort things out.

I remember my father would go down every day to check on the state of our house, as if he was checking on the health of a patient, and to see when we could be allowed to return to it. He would come back and “report”. All I remember is the overwhelming and engulfing mood of frustration, anger, and helplessness. In one of his “reports”: “Jewish women soldiers were living in the house, and they were giggling and listening to music on ‘our’ gramophone” (which was cranked by hand). In his next report: “all the pigeons (about 50 or so, which were being raised on the side of the house as a source of meat for sudden occasional guests) were shot by the soldiers and killed”.

After a week, or 2 weeks (and perhaps longer) we were able to go back to our house. Basically, our house was intact, in terms of bedding, quilts, blankets, etc. I remember, however, that some of my uncles came back to their homes and found all their beddings, quilts and blankets were piled up in the yard and burnt. They came back to nothing. They had to go around to their relatives looking for some blankets, quilts, mattresses, etc, to help them survive the first few nights at least of the beginning of the cold season until they could manage their affairs.

For the next 18 years, we, as part of the 160,000 Palestinians who remained in what became Israel, were placed under a strict and severe military rule, especially during the first 10-15 years of the occupation. A military governor was installed in my village, and we were forbidden to move within the village without a special permit from his office. Permits were handed out only to those with “wasta”, or privileged connection (i.e., knowing someone or a relative with special connection to the military government apparatus, or doing a collaborationist service to them, etc). In our case, a relative was employed in the military governor’s office, which occupied a building in the central part of the village. Every time one needed to leave the house, one required a “permit to move” from the military governor’s office; and every request for a permit entailed waiting for long hours, humiliation, pleading, bribing, stamina, etc. My father pleaded for such a permit and before he got it, he was issued a piece of mimeographed  paper stating: “To the military police, the guards on the checkpoints: The below mentioned, Abdallah Jamil Nakhleh, submitted a request for a permit to move, but has not received it yet. He is allowed to move in Rameh. Date: 6 November 1948.”

Thus, began the bifurcated history of my people: we became a remnant of the Palestinian people, under military occupation on our land for the next 18 years, and continued to live in an apartheid system of racism and control, while most of the rest of our Palestinian people were ethnically cleansed, and were transformed into hapless refugees in neighboring Arab countries.
 
A Necessary Postscript: An Introspective View

When my village Rameh (Al-Rama), located in Western Galilee, was occupied by the Israeli army—like the rest of the indigenous Palestinian villages and towns in Western and Northern Galilee—in late October 1948, I was 5 years old. My childhood memories of al-Nakba, as I experienced it, are, I am certain, a mixture of the indelible marks those tragic and shocking events embedded in my brain, with the stories my parents told and repeated in front of us afterwards, about those same horrific events. They are as true in my mind as the relevant narratives documented by historians about the same events. Retrospectively, I am writing this at the age of 67 years old, or 62 years later.

My mother delivered her baby girl, my youngest sister, less than 3 weeks after we returned and re-settled in our house. Early on, we joked about it sanguinely with my sister by saying that she was fortunate that my mother waited; otherwise, she would not have been with us! Both of my parents lived a full life after that tragic, evil and shocking uprooting.

The composition of my village was always, as I grew up, two-thirds Christians and one-third Druze. The Druze were not expelled; only Christians and Muslims were. Normal and natural relations of friendship, commerce, neighborly relations, etc, existed between Druze and Christians. Some Christian homes, like ours, were watched over by some of our Druze friends during the period in which we were uprooted and expelled; others were not. Many houses and shops were looted clean by the invading army, or by the Druze, or in collaboration between the two. The existing normal relations of friendships, etc, between the Druze and Christians, which dominated the scene before the occupation, were so seriously shaken, and could not be restored afterwards to their previous state.

As-Sahleh (the little plain) where we bedded for the first night after our uprooting from our homes and village is an elevated place that overlooks my village and other neighboring Galilee villages existing in the lower valley. In retrospect, it is a beautiful natural location, and it is straight up hill from Rameh. I feel drawn to it; I kept in connection with it: many times I feel compelled to walk to it, and sit and rest. A few weeks ago, I decided to see how long it would take me— at my fast walking clip— door-to-door, so to speak. It took me, in my sane and relaxed mental set, slightly over one hour straight up hill, and non-stop! Then, I thought, it could not have taken any less than 4-5 hours for our aimless, shocking and fearful march 62 years ago.

The other vexing question is: why were we (as a family and as a village) allowed to return? Ilan Pappe wrote in his book, “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine” (2006): “Some villages suffered more than others from heavy pounding: Rama, Suhmata, Malkiyya and Kfar Bir’im. Only Rama was left intact: the other three were occupied and destroyed. … Most of the villages in the Upper Galilee were seized in a single day at the end of October. … Some villages were evicted, some were allowed to stay. The main question about those days is no longer why villages were expelled, but rather why some were allowed to remain, obviously almost always as a result of the decision made by a local commander. … Why was Rama spared, while nearby Safsaf was totally demolished? It is hard to tell and much of what follows is based on speculation. Located on the well-travelled road between Acre and Safad, the village of Rama was already overcrowded, having earlier taken in a large number of refugees from other villages. The size of the village, but quite possibly its large Druze community, were two factors that probably influenced the local decision not to expel its population” (p. 181).

As shown earlier, we were expelled, but we were allowed to return, why? While growing up, this academic question was never raised, and so it did not beg for an answer. Even those in my family who suspected why we were allowed to return, were hush-hush about it. The story goes that a certain local commander, named “Owerbach” (?), gave the order to allow Jamil Nakhleh (my grandfather) to return with his family. My grandfather, the story goes, refused to return, only he and his family, on the grounds that he was expelled with the entire village and we would return only with the entire village. Obviously, this is what was done. However, it became clearer later that one of my relatives who was a commander in the Lebanese army at the time was a collaborator with the Israeli army, and following our occupation, he was plucked from Lebanon and returned with his family to the village. He was later groomed for the Knesset in one of the early Zionist parties, under the guise of “representing” the Christians (and the Nakhleh’s). He “served” two terms in the Knesset, embedded in the ruling Zionist parties, with the manifest support and sanction of the collaborationist Catholic Clerical hierarchy at the time. Whenever his name was mentioned, it was immediately connected with the name of “Owerbach”, and vice versa.

It is clear from my experience, as discussed above, that active collaboration with the invading enemy was a factor in the decision to allow us to return.

A Final Note

I have been hovering around the notion and desire to document this episode in my personal life, and in the collective life of my people, for some time now. I have been reluctant and fearful to embark on it for all the pain that oozes from it, and for the deep reflection and introspection that I have to undertake about the colossal evil that was done to us; about the lack of justice regarding our case where our entire indigenous society and structure were destroyed; and the recurrent and persistent incapacity and impotence of our proclaimed “leadership”, after 62 years, to rectify it. Numerous painful experiences, both personal and collective, about the Nakba ethnic cleansing have been narrated, documented, published, filmed, archived, etc. This is another one of those experiences. It is immaterial how different or similar this experience is; it is imperative, however, to document this record of serious and colossal evil that was perpetrated, with malice and pre-determination, against my people by the colonial Zionist enterprise. “I have no illusion that it will take more than this book”, Ilan Pappe wrote, “to reverse a reality that demonises a people who have been colonized, expelled and occupied, and glorifies the very people who colonized, expelled and occupied them.” (p. 181). These personal childhood memories are recorded in the ardent hope and determination that a day will come when the necessary just and moral rectification will take place, and it will!

My baker is a Palestinian. A while ago, every time I went to her bakery and there were no customers, we were never short of topics of conversation. That is how I learned many things about her country that the mass media never report, because quite often she used to communicate by phone with her family or with her neighbors from overseas when they came to Spain.

When the news is compelling, newspapers report it, of course, although most of the time in a distorted way. At minimum, the distortion consists of treating the Palestinian tragedy as a conflict between more or less equal sides. And they refer to that tragedy, the tragedy of a whole people, the suffering of Palestinians, as the Israeli-Palestinian “conflict.” I once published a piece on the topic at Rebelión.

The media, for instance, have not informed their readers that the looting of Palestinian homes by the Israeli army is a daily matter. Every day, groups of soldiers patrol the streets of cities and towns and burst into homes, breaking TVs and other appliances, furniture, ripping up pictures, throwing clothes on the floor. Their excuse is that they “suspect” that terrorists are being hidden there. And very often they even find them, because, in theory, for Israelis all Palestinians are terrorists. There is no doubt that this behavior is part of a continuous maneuver to wear down all moral resistance, to physically and mentally exhaust the Palestinians so that those who don’t want to be stacked in jails or cemeteries flee and go to live crammed together with others in refugee camps.

But later it was I who started to bring news and articles about the problem to my friend. She had a computer, but no connection to the Internet. So I printed all the articles published at Rebelión and gave them to her when I went by to get my bread.

I could write a book with what Mariam has told me over the years, but I will only refer here to an event that happened three years ago during the month of August, just a few days after she arrived from a visit to a village – I forgot its name – near Jerusalem. That event by itself could fill several volumes of a universal history of infamy:

"I was on their kitchen terrace, watching how a boy no older than eleven or twelve removed an Israeli flag that was hanging on the door of a building and replaced it with a Palestinian one. Palestinian flags have been forbidden for a long time and, at night, boys switch them. But the boy I was watching got caught by soldiers. They took hold of him and jokingly tried to force him to kiss the Israeli flag and to step on the Palestinian one. The boy did just the opposite: he kissed the Palestinian flag and stepped on the Israeli one. They dragged him to his house. He lived a few doors from ours. A few minutes later, I’m not sure how long, I heard a shot. Do you know what the soldiers had done? They had taken the boy to his house, forced his parents to sit in an armchair, placed him on their knees AND then they shot him in the head.

Don’t ask me to tell you more histories about Palestine. I’ve seen many things and many of them I’ve not been able to avoid because I had an M16 aimed at my head. The life of Palestinians is worth so very little.”

There was a period in our conversations, after she came back, that we tried to figure out the root of such behaviour by the Israelis, a people who, three years after the end of their own Holocaust, began a series of predations and crimes that would end up in a new Holocaust – this one even more despicable due to its atrocious cynicism and hypocrisy, its almost burlesque challenge to both international bodies and the international community, its abuse of force: theirs is the third largest army in the world and the U.S. helps them to reach where their own power doesn’t. Readers of Rebelion know well that Israel has disregarded some fifty condemnatory resolutions by the United Nations, all them rejected by the U.S. veto.

Palestinians are the first cousins of those who now rob and kill them. They are descendants of Jews who remained in Palestine after the catastrophe of the year 70 A.D., and who later converted to Islam. Jewish historians themselves have now demonstrated that the so-called Diaspora never happened and was just another falsification of history by Zionism. Palestinians have lived in this land for more than two thousand years so they are its natural owners. They have remained on it in spite of successive occupations – Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, British – always as a people and even holding administrative positions. The plundering that began with the Balfour Declaration is well known by those who are interested in the topic.

Politically, the systematic deterioration of the Palestinian cause culminated in Oslo. In human terms, the horror became a real genocide last year in Gaza. In Oslo, the Israelis lied with knavery in front of Yasser Arafat, with whom – at least theoretically – they had to agree to a division of the territory (by the way, an even less equal and much more harmful one for Palestinians than the one that an incipient UN carried out in 1948, one which during more than sixty years nobody has dared to complete). Deceived or lacking any another option, Arafat signed an agreement that implied the recognition of the State of Israel but which said nothing of the most important problems: Jerusalem, the refugees, the Israeli settlements, security, the exact borders… Israel cared very little what it had just signed: the following day it forgot the pact on Gaza and the West Bank and approved new colonialist settlements, and continued harassment of Palestinians with controls that make it impossible for them to move, with highways for the occupiers and bad roads for the occupied, with continuous obstacles to the entry into the Palestinian territories of international aid and the most essential medicines , with the building of a separation wall and, in general, an real policy of apartheid. Israel needed just one excuse – a shooting in Hebron on November 18, 2002 – to declare the Oslo agreements null and void , while Ariel Sharon, who was president at the time, called on the Jewish community to move into the area.

Why so much falsehood, so much wickedness?, we wondered. Why so much disguised injustice, which is not the product of a sick isolated mind but rather of a broad group of people, an injustice that has not ceased to grow since the end of 19th century, when Theodore Herltz founded Zionism? They never cared for the natives of the land they claimed God had given them as property. Some statements by the Zionist’s own leaders clearly demonstrate this:

– We have to expel the Arabs and occupy their place. (David Ben Gurion)

– There cannot be Zionism, colonization nor a Jewish State without the expulsion of Arabs and the expropriation of their lands. (Ariel Sharon to France Press, November 15, 1998)

– The partition of Palestine is not fair. We will never accept it. Eretz Israel will be given back to the people of Israel. All of it and forever. (Menahem Begin)

– A Palestinian partner for a negotiation does not exists. (Ariel Sharon)

– I have always believed in the eternal and historical right of our people to all this earth. (Ehud Olmert, before the U.S. Congress, June 30, 2006)

– There is no such thing as a Palestinian people… It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn’t exist. (Golda Meir)

– We will never permit a Palestinian State. (Netanyahu, very recently)

Very recently, I heard a colonist from the West Bank – a tiny, supposedly Palestinian territory after Oslo – who said on TV: “We will never leave this land. It was given to us by God.”

So if it was given to them by God… who will discuss it?

From what place and from what philosophy could such a cold wickedness originate, such a poisonous scorn for other men and women, as much Semites as they themselves? After scribbling many pages trying to explain my feelings in a brief essay, I ended up writing the following poem, “The Prophet Claims,”

There are still
so many Palestinians alive,
oh, children of Zion.
Such a long time banishing them,
humiliating them,
imprisoning them,
torturing them,
murdering them,
slaughtering them
and they still breathe.

There are still so many Palestinians
living by your side.
Don’t you see them?
Don’t you hear them?
They pretend to be
the owners of this land,
because they were born of those who remained here
after the the sandals of the Roman legions
trampled their crops, their olive trees,
their stores and their dovecots.

What are you waiting for, sons of Zion?
Didn’t you hear Yahweh’s commandment?
Exterminate them.
‘Cause if you don’t the Eternal One
– great and terrible –
will vent its fury upon you.

Upon you, who know
– they have taught you since childhood –
that Palestinians,
women, men and children
don’t deserve to live
in your fields,
in your cities.
What are you waiting for to exterminate them?

They desecrate your land,
that glorious land
given to you by Yahweh as inheritance.
By Yahweh who , even if he doesn’t exist,
can still offer many fields,
many cities,
from East to West
and under the sea,
over the clouds
and beyond the horizon.
Fields of milk and honey
that are yours,
because you stole them,
you stole them twice,
as Yahweh had ordered you,
by the prophet’s mouth,
blessed is Yahweh,
the Saint of all Saints,
even if he doesn’t exist.

Look and see,
there is a woman there still
next to the well, under the palm.
She carries a son in her womb.
You can murder them both with a single slash.
Drag her,
tear out her entrails,
rip out the son she is awaiting
and throw him to the pigs….
Because you don’t eat pig,
but pigs do eat Palestinian children.

Over there, on the other bank, a man
with empty hands
because the harvest is yours,
the grain is yours
and the stalks
and the fruit of the vine, and of the olive trees.
He’s starving,
one of the living dead,
finish him off once and for all,
so his rags won’t sully Mount Zion’s
sacred hillsides.

Look, further off still,
at that group of children
who are playing by the Jordan,
their small feet splashing in the marshes,
between myrtles and balsam.
So as not to dirty your hands,
smash them with your tanks.
Do not fear the stones they throw at you,
stones do no harm
if they are thrown by an innocent hand.

Men, women and children
they are not men, women or children
if they are Palestinian,
oh, sons of Zion.
Their pain is not pain
their words are not words
their complaints are not complaints
their tears are not tears
their wounds are not wounds
their death is not death
Exterminate them.
Erase them from the face of the sacred land.
Obey.
Remember Moshe’s’ Law,
the servant of Yahweh,
the precepts and commandments
given to you by the Lord
the Saint of all Saints,
even if he doesn’t exist,
on Mount Horeb,
by the prophet’s mouth.

Obey, exterminate them,
lest the infinite thunder of Yahweh,
great and terrible,
fall upon you
to curse you all
and all your land.

If Israel doesn’t disappear once the U.S. stops helping it – a rather unthinkable possibility – it will never permit a Palestinian State. It is astonishing that both in the media and in international forums people still speak so profusely of a process of peace, of a roadmap, of meetings between the Israeli government and the sold out – more than weak – Palestinian Authority, all of this more than sixty years after the UN decreed a partition which was unjust but, in the end, was a partition nonetheless. Israel has frustrated all attempts and it will continue doing so. The Zionist’s will to keep all Palestinian land plus pieces of Syria and Lebanon to found Greater Israel, the biblical Israel, has been manifested with such clarity by its leaders that it seems incredible that there are still people willing to be deceived. Isn’t it sufficiently well known that Israel carried out an authentic massacre in Gaza, recognized as such by the UN – through the Goldstone Report – which found it guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity… and nothing happened? Isn't it true that, throughout more than half a century the preeminent international organization has pronounced fifty condemnatory resolutions against the Zionist government only to have it continue acting as if it couldn’t be bothered less, because it knows that, at the end the day, the U.S. veto will clear it of any condemnation? Who can expect anything from an encounter of ultra-right-wing Netanyahu with Mahmoud Abbas, held under unacceptable conditions, if everyone already knows what the Zionists seek? 

What I wanted to emphasize with my poem is how theocrats justify their misdeeds, seeking refuge in the "orders" of a God invented by them. But that is typical of all religions, which are cultural phenomena, creations of some men to dominate other men through the manipulation of their consciences. All have commonalities and discrepancies, depending on the culture in which they originate and develop. The Christian religion is not unique.  It is one among various Mediterranean religions. And, of course, it is syncretistic. It cannot be seriously argued that it was founded or inspired by a God who descended to earth. The Second Vatican Council decreed – in its Nostra Aetate encyclical – not that all the words of the Bible are inspired, but rather that it is as if God had written them himself. And then one goes on and reads the Tao Te Ching, the Zend Avesta, the Upanishads, the Koran and one finds that these are in no way inferior, either in form or in content, to what God has written. And not to mention Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Of all religions, Judaism is the one most clearly designed to suit the interests of a nation. And it will remain so. And so for that blatant theocracy to be proclaimed the only authorized democracy in the Near East and Middle East is nothing more than the most outrageous hypocrisy uttered by a society characterized by lies and hypocrisy.

Source: http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=96563

Original article published on 7 December 2009

About the author

Manuel Talens and David Brookbank are members of Tlaxcala, the international network of translators for linguistic diversity. This translation may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the source, author, translator and editor are cited.

URL of this article on Tlaxcala: http://www.tlaxcala.es/pp.asp?reference=9465&lg=en

Translated from Arabic by: Adib S. Kawar, revised by Mary Rizzo

1- The Right of Return is the right for individuals and groups to return at any time to their land and homeland and the original and historical place of residence in which they actually used to live at the time the incidents took place which resulted in their leaving it, without considering their absence temporally for work, study and tourism as a diminutive of this residence.

2- The Right of Return is a natural right. Not only that, it is also a right that is human, absolute, unconditional, individual and collective, material and moral, regional and national, inheritable (even for those who were born in the diaspora=Ashatat) to all their children. It is irrevocable and cannot be relinquished nor can anyone be delegated to represent another in relinquishing this right or negotiating it, nor can it be exchanged for compensation. It is indivisible, there shall be no distortion and disguising of it or shall it be limited to particular time or date. It also depends on personal proprietorship that doesn’t terminate by occupation, and should not be subjugated to restrictions that deteriorate or contradict with what is stated in covenants of international human rights and/or human and international laws. It also not cannot be diminished or distorted under the motto of the right of self determination. 

3- It  is a right for individuals and/or a collective right for those persons or their relatives expelled or dislodged from their places of residence, or who have been displaced or left their land and homes by forceful driving away, or who voluntarily left their homes under threat, or who ran away due to oppression and massacres from their homeland to other places inside it, or who were outside their place of residence at the time of the war that resulted in leaving their land and its occupation and confiscating it by others or delivering it to others occurred. And in the case of repeated dislodging inside their land, the Right of Return means to original place of residence before the first displacement.

4- And in case of appropriating any land from any country with the aim of occupying or confiscating it, this land is considered the property of all the inhabitants of the mother country totally and without appropriating. As it is not permissible to occupy the land of others by force, and it will be the property of all its citizens of the mother country from which this piece of land was appropriated, the right of ownership of the appropriated land and the right to return to it.

5- It is not by any means permissible to exploit the sufferings that the owners of the Right of Return, to obtain the approval of an individual to abandon his Right of Return due to his lack of aptitude, he himself, to deny his children from the right to inherit the land and identity, it is not permissible to condemn them in advance to vagabondage, or to remain without identity or homeland, because the ownership of the land is communal for all its citizens presently and in the future.

6- As per all the above, the Palestinian Authority, neither the Arab summit meetings, nor any international conferences, are fit to represent the owners of the Right of Return in any projects or agreements to abandon their rights.

7- It is also not permissible for any Arab or non-Arab state or any international organization to hold agreements or take decisions, by the force of which to settle any of the owners of the Right of Return on its land or other’s lands or to displace them to distant lands from their original place of residence, to make place for those who settled (colonized) their land and build a state on it.

8- It is not permissible forthe international community to abandon the rights of any human community, or to deal with it or its members using double standards, and to sacrifice its rights to others, whatever the excuses and reasons are, such as practicality, security requirements or the presence of a formidable force on this land, and it is not permissible for him to record a precedence in history allowing for the first time to bestow legality for an aggression by gangs and colonizing groups against weak peoples, and it is not permissible the aggression to become legal natural entity the basis of power instead on the basis of legality and morality.

9- As for the matter of financial compensation that is suggested every now and then, in various international conspiratorial projects suggested a replacement of the Right of Return as a price for settling them away from their original place of residence. These financial compensations can be acceptable under what was stated above, except for the owners of the Right of Return, and all the above mentioned parties in place of years of displacement and suffering, to which they were exposed by the international community by its consent to displace them by establishing an illegal entity on their land, and in place of using their homeland, exploiting it for tens of years by invading colonizing groups that occupied their homeland. It is not for accepting their settlement or for surrendering their Right of Return to their original place of residence, and should be paid to them after their return to their original place of residence to help them to return to their natural lives.
10- There is nothing in this document, and it should not be understood from anything in it, that it permits any state, organization, body or person to participate in any activity that shall result in depriving the owners of the Right of Return from enjoying it fully and fully obtaining their entitlements as per the laws, covenants and the principles of human rights followed at the time and before writing this covenant.

Explanation and comments
The natural and human right is the right of man and natural groups and it grew and developed its society in a certain region during the development of the natural history, which is a right that man gains because he is a human, as he is naturally social and his sociability is tied with the place assemblage, allowing him to leave and return to his family and community without restrictions.

The absolute and unstipulated right, is a right without stipulations, inherited and not granted, without deficit and not regulated by laws.

Communal right is a right for the community as it is an individual right, which is due to man being social by nature.

Material and moral right is the right of land, home and homeland ownership, as it is the right of the ownership of the moral identity connected to with the belonging to the homeland and the community, and the ownership of the homeland does not require the availability of documents and deeds to prove it. This right is extended to the right of residence around holy places, visiting them and holding complete, unlimited rituals with full freedom. In Islam, in particular there are clear texts that give special importance to the homeland and religion, as it is considered to fight man in his religion and expel him from his homeland the peak of oppression that couldn’t be accepted or which we cannot be silent about.

The regional and national right is a result of that the victorious international community in the First World War and the Western force of invasion to the Arab region (called colonialism). It appropriated Palestine from greater Syria and the whole Arab homeland in preparation to hand it over to the Zionist invaders, in the San Remo conference, which is the conference that decided on executing the Sykes Picot Agreement between France and the United Kingdom, when Palestine was taken from the Arab homeland and given to gangs and groups that came from all over the world, to establish in it through invasion, colonialism, displacement and replacement – illegal and immoral colonization, and to produce a permanent danger against regional and national security in the Arab region. This is a breach to all legal conventions that enforces on colonialists to return the land to its owners completely and without deduction. All of this means that the owners of Palestine are not simply its direct inhabitants, but they are the inhabitants the Arab homeland from which Palestine was appropriated, they have in it all the rights of any French citizens from northern France in the lands of southern France, which is his homeland, and he has the right to claim it if it was exposed to occupation. This is only an example and not in general. This the national right that is added to the regional right.

Everybody should be reminded of the massacres and oppression that Zionist gangs had committed in the land that came to be called the state of “Israel”, in violation of United Nations laws and any other moral legitimacy. In order to expel the Arab people from Palestine, (for Example the Deir Yassin massacre).

The international legitimacy covenants imposed by the victors in the Second World War, such as the Declaration of Human Rights, and the 4th Vienna agreements 1949 and the international laws related to the cause, and the clear and direct texts that endorse this right of all the above mentioned owners of the Right of Return to their original place of residence or that which was a part of their regional or national homeland, and it is not permissible to exempt any human being from this right whatever the are the excuses such as the presence of a formidable force on this land, and reaching a state of stability in the diaspora (Al-Shatat) and other excuses.

To return the Right of Return to some of its owners while settling others in any place in the Arab homeland or outside it, in addition to being an actual infringement of their human rights among which is the Right of Return, this shall expose them under threat of sedition and the danger of fighting each other and individual and collective killing that would deprive them of security. That is one of the important axis in the international charter of human rights. The massacres of Sabra and Shatilla as well as the Black September incidents, and what Arab Iraqi groups under occupation were exposed to; the Sudan incidents of Sudan and Kosovo as well as in many African states all form striking proof on this. And it is not the right of anybody to expose human groups to these dangers; so it is not possible to accept any guarantees to provide protection to any group, because security should be natural and impulsive and not under any artificial protection, which could be wiped out by a political decision at any time. 

All the human race should recognize that it cannot enjoy stability and security now and in the future, just while abandoning the rights of some of its members whether individuals or groups, and sacrificing them to others, dealing with them with double standards under any excuses or reasons, which applies to dropping the Right of Return, which creates a precedent in human history, by which it shall bestow legitimacy for the first time to aggression committed by colonizing gangs and groups against the weaker peoples and give it the right to change after the aggression into a legal entity, relying on the power of the force of arms and terror instead of legality and morality. 

Selective supportive texts from some covenants and state laws:

Texts from the International Covenant of Human Rights, as adopted and published as per the decision of the United Nations General Assembly 217A (D-3) dated Dec. 10^th 1948

Article 1 

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. 

Article 2 

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty. 

Article 3 

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. 

Article 13 

1.    Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.

2.   Everyone has the right to leave any country, including their own, and to return to their country.

Article 15 

1.    Everyone has the right to a nationality.

2.  No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Article 17 

1.    Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.

2.   No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Article 30 

Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein. 

Excerpts from Resolution 194 of the United Nations dated 11/12/1948 
The resolution: Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property

The same resolution also resolves: “of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible; (The resolution doesn’t specify who these neighbors are!!!) It is clear that this part of the resolution contradicts with human rights upon which the above-mentioned covenant states, which results in settling groups outside their homeland: thus their offspring shall not be able to inherit it, and separates them from their communities, as well as exploits their sufferings to impose on them to accept compensation, it also imposes other Arabs the right of proprietorship of what was occupied and separated from their homelands by force and conspiracy, and permanently threatening their security.

Agreements and documents on which the author relied upon in our understanding of Human Rights:

The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment of Punishment,

The Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War,

The Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts,

The Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons,

The Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness,

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,

The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights,

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination,

Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Human rights set out in the Declaration

The following reproduces the articles of the Declaration which set out the specific human rights that are recognized in the Declaration.^[17]

Article 1 

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Article 2 

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Article 3 

Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

Article 4 

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

Article 5 

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Article 6 

Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

Article 7 

All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

Article 8 

Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

Article 9 

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

Article 10 

Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

Article 11

1.      Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.

2.      No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.

Article 12 

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 13 

3.      Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.

4.      Everyone has the right to leave any country, including their own, and to return to their country.

Article 14 

1.      Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.

2.      This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 15 

3.      Everyone has the right to a nationality.

4.      No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Article 16 

1.      Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

2.      Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.

3.      The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Article 17 

3.      Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.

4.      No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Article 18 

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

Article 19 

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Article 20 

1.      Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.

2.      No one may be compelled to belong to an association.

Article 21 

1.      Everyone has the right to take part in the government of their country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.

2.      Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in their country.

3.      The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

Article 22 

Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

Article 23 

1.      Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

2.      Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.

3.      Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.

4.      Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 24 

Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25 

1.      Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

2.      Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.

Article 26 

1.      Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

2.      Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.

3.      Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.

Article 27 

1.      Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

2.      Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.

Article 28 

Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.

Article 29 

1.      Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.

2.      In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.

3.      These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 30 

Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

194 (III). Palestine — Progress Report of the
United Nations Mediator

The General Assembly,

Having considered further the situation in Palestine,

1. Expresses its deep appreciation of the progress achieved through the good offices of the late United Nations Mediator in promoting a peaceful adjustment of the future situation of Palestine, for which cause he sacrificed his life; and

Extends its thanks to the Acting Mediator and his staff for their continued efforts and devotion to duty in Palestine;

2. Establishes a Conciliation Commission consisting of three States members of the United Nations which shall have the following functions:

(a) To assume, in so far as it considers necessary in existing circumstances, the functions given to the United Nations Mediator on Palestine by resolution 186 (S-2) of the General Assembly of 14 May 1948;

(b) To carry out the specific functions and directives given to it by the present resolution and such additional functions and directives as may be given to it by the General Assembly or by the Security Council;

(c) To undertake, upon the request of the Security Council, any of the functions now assigned to the United Nations Mediator on Palestine or to the United Nations Truce Commission by resolutions of the Security Council; upon such request to the Conciliation Commission by the Security Council with respect to all the remaining functions of the United Nations Mediator on Palestine under Security Council resolutions, the office of the Mediator shall be terminated;

3. Decides that a Committee of the Assembly, consisting of China, France, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, shall present, before the end of the first part of the present session of the General Assembly, for the approval of the Assembly, a proposal concerning the names of the three States which will constitute the Conciliation Commission;

4. Requests the Commission to begin its functions at once, with a view to the establishment of contact between the parties themselves and the Commission at the earliest possible date;

5. Calls upon the Governments and authorities concerned to extend the scope of the negotiations provided for in the Security Council's resolution of 16 November 1948 1/ and to seek agreement by negotiations conducted either with the Conciliation Commission or directly, with a view to the final settlement of all questions outstanding between them;

6. Instructs the Conciliation Commission to take steps to assist the Governments and authorities concerned to achieve a final settlement of all questions outstanding between them;

7. Resolves that the Holy Places – including Nazareth – religious buildings and sites in Palestine should be protected and free access to them assured, in accordance with existing rights and historical practice; that arrangements to this end should be under effective United Nations supervision; that the United Nations Conciliation Commission, in presenting to the fourth regular session of the General Assembly its detailed proposals for a permanent international regime for the territory of Jerusalem, should include recommendations concerning the Holy Places in that territory; that with regard to the Holy Places in the rest of Palestine the Commission should call upon the political authorities of the areas concerned to give appropriate formal guarantees as to the protection of the Holy Places and access to them; and that these undertakings should be presented to the General Assembly for approval;

8. Resolves that, in view of its association with three world religions, the Jerusalem area, including the present municipality of Jerusalem plus the surrounding villages and towns, the most eastern of which shall be Abu Dis; the most southern, Bethlehem; the most western, Ein Karim (including also the built-up area of Motsa); and the most northern, Shu'fat, should be accorded special and separate treatment from the rest of Palestine and should be placed under effective United Nations control;

Requests the Security Council to take further steps to ensure the demilitarization of Jerusalem at the earliest possible date;

Instructs the Conciliation Commission to present to the fourth regular session of the General Assembly detailed proposals for a permanent international regime for the Jerusalem area which will provide for the maximum local autonomy for distinctive groups consistent with the special international status of the Jerusalem area;

The Conciliation Commission is authorized to appoint a United Nations representative, who shall co-operate with the local authorities with respect to the interim administration of the Jerusalem area;

9. Resolves that, pending agreement on more detailed arrangements among the Governments and authorities concerned, the freest possible access to Jerusalem by road, rail or air should be accorded to all inhabitants of Palestine;

Instructs the Conciliation Commission to report immediately to the Security Council, for appropriate action by that organ, any attempt by any party to impede such access;

10. Instructs the Conciliation Commission to seek arrangements among the Governments and authorities concerned which will facilitate the economic development of the area, including arrangements for access to ports and airfields and the use of transportation and communication facilities;

11. Resolves that the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible;

Instructs the Conciliation Commission to facilitate the repatriation, resettlement and economic and social rehabilitation of the refugees and the payment of compensation, and to maintain close relations with the Director of the United Nations Relief for Palestine Refugees and, through him, with the appropriate organs and agencies of the United Nations;

12. Authorizes the Conciliation Commission to appoint such subsidiary bodies and to employ such technical experts, acting under its authority, as it may find necessary for the effective discharge of its functions and responsibilities under the present resolution;

The Conciliation Commission will have its official headquarters at Jerusalem. The authorities responsible for maintaining order in Jerusalem will be responsible for taking all measures necessary to ensure the security of the Commission. The Secretary-General will provide a limited number of guards to the protection of the staff and premises of the Commission;

13. Instructs the Conciliation Commission to render progress reports periodically to the Secretary-General for transmission to the Security Council and to the Members of the United Nations;

14. Calls upon all Governments and authorities concerned to co-operate with the Conciliation Commission and to take all possible steps to assist in the implementation of the present resolution;

15. Requests the Secretary-General to provide the necessary staff and facilities and to make appropriate arrangements to provide the necessary funds required in carrying out the terms of the present resolution.

* * *
At the 186th plenary meeting on 11 December 1948, a committee of the Assembly consisting of the five States designated in paragraph 3 of the above resolution proposed that the following three States should constitute the Conciliation Commission:

France, Turkey, United States of America.

The proposal of the Committee having been adopted by the General Assembly at the same meeting, the Conciliation Commission is therefore composed of the above-mentioned three States.

____________________

1/ See Official Records of the Security Council, Third Year, No. 126.

by Carlos Latuff

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said on November 3, 2009 that the Palestinian Authority, and all Palestinian parties, must immediately end any and all illusions about the United States or its president, Barack Obama, and instead reject its "negotiations" based on surrender and rely on the Palestinian people and their resistance, unity and national rights.

Comrade Rayya Amin, of the Information Office of the PFLP, said that it must be abundantly clear that Barack Obama is nothing more than U.S. imperialism in new packaging, saying that the United States is an enemy of the Palestinian people and the Arab people, and all progressive and peoples' forces in the world. Comrade Amin stressed that the policy of the United States had not changed in any way, and was engaged in the same strategic alliance with Zionism and conquest of the Arab world that has always determined its actions. She demanded that the PA and all Palestinian, Arab and progressive forces cast aside any and all illusions about Obama and "change" and instead struggle to confront U.S. imperialism and the occupation.

Comrade Dr. Maher al-Taher, member of the PFLP and leader of its branch in exile, said that the U.S. administration is entirely hostile to the Palestinian people and has put all of its efforts into trying to force us to surrender by calling upon Palestinians to enter into unconditional "negotiations" with the occupier, recognizing none of the national rights of the Palestinian people.

Comrade Taher emphasized that the U.S. call for the resumption of so-called negotiations means that the U.S. wants to provide a Palestinian cover of surrender for the ongoing aggression of the Zionist enemy and its policies of Zionization of Jerusalem, escalation of settlement and land confiscation, and present a false image to the world of a "peace process". He said that the occupation wants a so-called "peace process" on the basis of force and intimidation, and said that there can be no "peace" with this enemy. Furthermore, said Comrade Taher, the only road forward for Palestinians is to continue the resistance, end internal division, and unite Palestinian ranks through the reconstruction of the Palestine Liberation Organization on clear national principles and rejecting the entire project of "political settlement" and "negotiations" under the auspices of the United States.

He emphasized that the U.S. is not an "honest broker," nor "neutral," but is instead a hostile party against Palestinian, Arab and Muslim interests and must be dealt with on that basis. He denounced the Netanyahu strategy of so-called "economic peace," noting that he wants to pay for Palestinian surrender with donor funds while continuing settlements, land confiscation, home demolitions and the imprisonment of thousands of Palestinian political prisoners while denying the Palestinian right to return or ending the occupation, and noted that the U.S. is involved in a direct partnership with Netanyahu in denying Palestinian national rights.

Comrade Jamil Mizher, member of the Central Committee of the PFLP, demanded that the Palestinian Authority end its reliance on the U.S. administration and President Barack Obama, saying that all must instead rely on the Palestinian people and uniting our forces in order to confront the occupation.

In an interview with Al-Jazeera Forum on November 2, 2009, Comrade Mizher described the U.S. position approving of Zionist settlements as "scandalous," and demanded that all forms of direct and indirect negotiations with the occupation be immediately ended. He said that all Palestinian and Arab illusions about Obama must be discarded immediately, and that anyone who claims to speak on behalf of the Palestinian people must instead rely on Palestinian national rights and requirements. Furthermore, he called for an end to official Arab silence and complicity with the U.S./Israeli attacks on Palestinian rights, emphasizing the need for popular Arab pressure to support Palestinian resistance.

Comrade Abu Ahmad Fouad, member of the Political Bureau of the PFLP, reacted to the U.S. Congress' official denunciation of the Goldstone Report on war crimes in Gaza on November 3, 2009 by denouncing the Congressional resolution and affirming that this only makes yet more clear that there should be absolutely no illusions about the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama. Comrade Fouad said that this once again reaffirms that there is no change whatsoever in U.S. policy toward the Arab-Zionist conflict, or its policy that supports the Zionist entity and all of its crimes and massacres against the Palestinian people.

Comrade Fouad said that the congressional resolution, House Resolution 867, comes on the heels of the announcement of Obama's Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, a few days ago that the fascist Zionist regime of Netanyahu was making "unprecedented concessions," stating the US' support for its settlement and land confiscation program, as well as the enemy's actions in Jerusalem and at Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Comrade Fouad denounced the warm reception Clinton met in Arab capitals while she affirmed the U.S. support for unlimited Zionist expansionism and attacks on the Palestinian people's rights, and stressed that these positions "are and always have been the real position of the Obama administration, and any postures to the contrary are nothing more than smokescreens to mislead Arabs and Palestinians."

He said further that the primary objective of Clinton's visit was to support Israel while promoting deceit about "peace" and "negotiations", but made it clear that the U.S. position is fully aligned with the Zionist policy of aggression, colonization and Zionization before the eyes and ears of the world.

Comrade Fouad commented also on recent joint military exercises between the U.S. and Israel, noting that the U.S. war machine is a full partner in Israeli state terror, recalling the comments of the commander of the U.S. naval ship, the USS Higgins, that the "defense" of Haifa is the same as the "defense" of San Diego, California.

source: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=59730

As an early and enthusiastic Barack Obama supporter and a professor of international relations who teaches Middle East politics and American foreign policy, I have been often asked in class and in public forums, “What do you think Obama will do regarding Palestine?”

My answers came down to that there was likely to be a dramatic improvement in the tone of American-Arab relations and with the Muslim world in general, but only within the limits of a continuing stalemate in Palestine.

This prediction has turned out to be all too true, as welcome as better general relations are. I am more pessimistic now, nine months into the Obama administration. I would say now that even when or if the domestic agenda calms down, if some form of health care gets passed, the economy recovers and the withdrawal of troops in Iraq takes place as planned, there will be no substantive improvement in the plight of the Palestinians. Israel will continue its policy of changing the facts on the ground, each day making concessions on settlements, Jerusalem, the wall and a multitude of other anti-Palestinian activities all the more difficult.

I have two reasons for this view — one direct, one indirect. Although far from Palestine, the war in Afghanistan is now Obama’s war. This increasingly evident futile effort — to do what? — eliminate al-Qaeda? bring democracy to the country? secure Pakistan? The list grows with each headline. I realize the pledge to root out terrorist bases was largely a promise driven by the campaign. Democrats are eager to show they are as murderous as Republicans on any issue related to national security, especially during an election campaign. Obama, however, seems sincerely committed to his policy. “The right war, the right time. It is not a war of choice but of necessity.” So goes the rhetoric. What president ever says a war he supports is the wrong war fought at the wrong time and is not necessary? And of course the war in Afghanistan remains a politically cheap way to establish Obama’s national security credentials. How many Americans object to the killing of Muslims, so long as any connection, however tenuous, can be made with terrorism, however ill defined? Given the interconnectedness of political issues, Obama cannot afford to lose any domestic support. Muslims will thus continue to provide the pound of flesh demanded by the Shylocks of national security.

Foreign policy elite retains hold on Palestine issue

Although I more or less anticipated these dreary developments, I retained my hope for Obama’s Palestinian policy. Perhaps, I reasoned, by demonstrating “strength and resolve” in Afghanistan, he would buy some leeway in Palestine? Always a slender hope, this thread now seems severed. Despite the appointment of George Mitchell, the foreign policy elite which has dominated Palestinian issues for decades remains intact. Apart from some rhetorical flourishes, almost immediately recanted or “put into the context of our undying commitment to our greatest ally, Israel,” nothing has changed. Settlements expand, despite their manifest illegality and official condemnation by the UN, the US included sort of. The wall continues to lengthen, creating more misery for Palestinians. The military incursions continue at the slightest excuse, killing and maiming civilians, including women and children.

I realize that Obama is much more skeptical than Bush-Cheney of Israel’s ultranationalist religious right. But how much difference will this make since the only viable opposition is also a right-wing party with a Palestinian platform virtually indistinguishable from the current extremist government that has avowed anti-Palestinian racists, like Avigdor Lieberman, in the cabinet? Let me suggest why I believe the Obama administration is not committed to substantive change in America’s policy toward Israel, which is to say America’s virtual absorption of the Israeli point of view in Palestine and the entire Middle East. Again, we must make an inference, since it is foolish to go by US rhetoric in this region. For any positive change to take place in Palestine, if America is to be taken seriously as an “honest broker” in the region, still the official policy, despite being thoroughly discredited, I believe it is imperative for Obama to discuss the danger of Israeli nuclear weapons.

My principal reason for pessimism is that every time Obama or Hillary Clinton refer to the unacceptability of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, they refer to non-existent Iranian weapons and ignore hundreds of Israeli nuclear warheads. The American mantra reconfirmed by Obama-Clinton is “no nuclear weapons in the Middle East.” Who can disagree with this? Who wants nuclear weapons in the Middle East or anywhere else for that matter? The difficulty with the American mantra could not be more simple or compelling. It is false in its premises and false in the facts. Americans have accepted nuclear weapons in the Middle East, so long as they are Israeli. And Israel has had nuclear weapons for over 30 years, hundreds of war loads and missiles capable of reaching every capital in the region. Every time an American official intones the mantra that “nuclear weapons are unacceptable in the region,” the hypocrisy bell clangs. Therefore, my critical indicator of change in American policy regarding Palestine is this: Would Obama say that all nuclear weapons in the Middle East are unacceptable, including those of Israel? So far there has been a resounding silence, except for the hypocrisy bell. Clang! Clang!

Much more is at stake than political consistency and the credibility dependent upon it. There is a much greater problem entailed in the mantra than a flagrant double standard. The very stability of the region, one of the principal objectives of American foreign policy, is being held hostage to this absurd mantra. So long as Israeli nuclear weapons are ignored, there can be no nuclear stability in the region. As every nuclear strategist knows, it is inherently unstable for only one adversary to have nuclear weapons. Nuclear deterrence, that is, nuclear stability, requires mutually assured destruction (MAD). This doctrine holds that stability requires that each nuclear power has the ability to retaliate effectively after the most devastating attack possible. This is called “second strike capability.” To be effective, it must inflict unacceptable damage to the nation which struck first. This has been the logic of nuclear stability ever since the Soviet Union developed its ability to strike the US. Its only assumption is the belief in the sanity of those who hold the nuclear triggers. Like it or not, precarious or not, MAD has worked. There is no reason to believe its fundamental logic no longer applies. It has applied regionally as well, as the case of India and Pakistan demonstrates.

Of course, the assumption of sanity is properly called into question by religious and other fanatics. No one wants such true believers to have control of nuclear weapons. “Aha! Therefore, we have to stop the Iranians!” The problem with this corollary of the American mantra is that it ignores Israeli fanatics, who are more firmly in control of Israel and its nuclear weapons than Islamic fundamentalists are in control of Iran and its non-existent nuclear weapons. No one doubts that Israel would use nuclear weapons on the Arabs, whether or not they have been attacked with such weapons. Everyone fears that Israel, rather than be defeated, would resort to nuclear Armageddon. Indeed this is one of the principal reasons that America does all it can to avoid an Israeli defeat. To the degree this is true, American foreign policy is held hostage to the existence of the Israeli monopoly of nuclear weapons, a fortiori, when Israel is controlled by right-wing fanatics, as is the current case.

There are alternatives to giving in to the threat of Masada. One is of course the denial of the American mantra. This would recognize the logic of deterrence by allowing Iran to develop a second strike capability vis-à-vis Israel. Or America could provide the second strike force by guaranteeing the nuclear security of every country in the region. America has provided nuclear deterrence for Japan for 60 years. America has made it clear that a Soviet or Russian attack on Europe would be considered an attack on the US. One can only wonder, however, if this protection applies to Muslim Turkey. If so, it has been kept very quiet. Or, thirdly, nuclear stability can be obtained by disarming Israel. Each of these options requires American acknowledgment of the existence and danger of Israeli nuclear weapons.

Nuclear instability a risk

Failure to do so condemns the region to nuclear instability, because (1) it gives Israel a free hand and (2) it gives other powers in the region an overwhelming incentive to develop their own deterrent capability. The American mantra that “nuclear weapons are unacceptable in the Middle East” is thus far more than hypocritical. It undermines American interests in the region, chiefly oil. And it imperils the lives and property of hundreds of millions of people. As a political realist, neither of these factors would, by itself or in combination, condemn American policy, if there were a reason to run these tremendous risks. What is this reason? The survival of Israel? There are two things wrong with making Israeli survival the predominant objective of American Middle East policy. It assumes that 5 million Israeli Jews are more important than more than 200 million Arabs, to say nothing of Turks and Iranians. No one even makes this argument in public, except the religious zealots of the Chosen People. Moreover, leaving human life aside, it assumes that resourceless Israel is more important than energy-rich Arab lands. Can one imagine an American capitalist making such an argument? Or an American motorist? From the realist perspective, unless it can be reasonably argued that Israel helps America meet its strategic objectives in the Middle East, America’s unquestioned support of Israel is absurd. One need not even get to the question of morality, the murder and oppression of millions of Palestinians, to conclude that America’s alliance with Israel comes at much too high a price.

It is important to note that this conclusion does not even broach the difficult topics surrounding a viable Palestinian state. My point is that no serious discussion of these topics can be undertaken until American policy makers acknowledge the facts of Israel’s nuclear monopoly. For Israeli nuclear weapons have emboldened right-wing Israeli governments to further and deepen their oppression of the Palestinians. And Israeli nuclear weapons have intimidated American policy makers who do believe that a Palestinian state is not only just but necessary for good relations with the Arab world.

I am compelled to warn that the next time we hear Obama intone the mantra that “nuclear weapons in the Middle East are unacceptable,” we should hear more than the “clang! clang!” of hypocrisy. We should hear the bell sounding the knell of political rationality. And what will take its place, if not the irrational forces of hatred, bigotry, racism and fanaticism?

'We may be witnessing the beginning of the end of the era of impunity,' Nadia Hijab, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Institute for Palestine Studies, was quoted by IPS in response to the findings of a 574-page report by a four-member United Nations Fact finding mission. The mission, led by internationally-renowned former South African supreme court justice and chief prosecutor in the international tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia, investigated alleged war crimes committed by Israeli troops in Gaza in a 23-day bloody, unprecedented onslaught against a largely defenseless population. 

But Hijab was not the only one who expressed optimism. Others did, encouraged perhaps, by the report’s use of terminology unfamiliar in a conflict where empirical experience has shown that Israeli actions, no matter how outrageously violent, will have no meaningful legal repercussions whatsoever. 

Goldstone’s report, released on September 15, made some important recommendations, following a most thorough investigation that was carefully compiled by the mission – which was organized by the UN Human Rights Council last April. 

One is that the UN Security Council should set up a team of experts to monitor Israel’s investigations of the war crimes committed in Gaza. If Israel fails to do so, then the situation should be referred to the Prosecutor in the International Criminal Court (ICC). 

This raises many questions, lead amongst them is: did Israel commit war crimes in Gaza, and, second, is Israel capable of conducting an honest investigation into those crimes, considering the state’s bloody legacy and lack of any serious legal accountability. 

Goldstone answers both questions. 

“The mission concluded that actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly in some respects crimes against humanity, were committed by the Israel Defense Force,” Goldstone told reporters on September 16. He also said that the Israeli government has carried out no credible investigation. 

Despite his recommendations that UN experts follow the progress of the internal investigation by Israel, and the Palestinians (since they too were accused of violating international law by lobbing home-made rockets into Israel, without taking into account the possible harm to civilians) it’s puzzling why Goldstone would think that any genuine investigation is possible in the first place.

Goldstone knows, as many of us already do, that the events in Gaza, which resulted in the deaths of 1,387 (other estimates put the number at 1,417, mostly civilians, including over 300 children), the wounding of thousands more, the targeting of an already dilapidating infrastructure (hospitals, police stations, factories, schools, and even chicken farms) of a deprived and besieged society was very much a political decision made at the highest levels by the likes of Olmert, Livni, Barak and other serial criminals who have tormented Palestinians for too long. 

Palestinians were also chastised for rockets fired from besieged Gaza. Of course, Goldstone was not expected to justify or applaud the homemade rockets, or even underline their lack of effectiveness, as four Israelis were killed by rocket fire, during the period of the war. Out of the nine Israeli soldiers killed in the fighting, four were killed in friendly fire. 

While both Hamas and the PA fully cooperated with Goldstone and his colleagues, Israel fully rejected the mission, refusing entry into Israel or Gaza, forcing the use of alternative routes into the besieged strip, through Egypt. 

Israeli officials claim that the report was pre-written, rendering it biased from the start. They used the same predictable pattern of smears, redundant diatribes and predictable language. 

Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesman said the report created unjust “equivalence of a democratic state with a terror organization,” in reference to Hamas. 

Following the good old democracy reference, racism kicks in. “We have nothing to be ashamed of, and don’t need lessons in morality from a committee established by Syria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia and Somalia,” Levy said. Apparently dark-skinned people of the South are both incapable of being democratic or moral. Only Israel and her allies are capable of those qualities. 

“The Goldstone report has set a new standard for equating the behavior of democratic nations and terrorists,” wrote Richard Sideman, President of the New York-based American Jewish Committee in a letter published in the New York Times on September 18. 

The same disingenuous sentiment utilized by Levy and Sideman (how curious that both seemed to be using the same script) echoed by many Israeli officials and their lobbyists abroad, who went into crisis management mode following the release of the report. 

But why should they care? 

Could it be because Goldstone called on the 192-member General Assembly to establish an escrow fund so that Israel can compensate Palestinians in Gaza? Israel would never spend its hard-earned US tax payers money on such frivolous matters. 

Could it be because the Human Rights Council is convening on September 29 in Geneva to discuss the report, and could call for its transfer to the Security Council, and even the ICC? 

Could it be because the report’s findings might empower an already growing boycott movement world-wide? 

Could it be because it’s much harder to doubt the credibility of Goldstone, to smear him as anti-Semite or a self-hating Jew? 

Could it be because all these factors are escalating Israeli fears that the “era of impunity” is indeed over? 

“Perhaps next time we set out to wage another vain and miserable war, we will take into account not only the number of fatalities we are likely to sustain, but also the heavy political damage such wars cause,” wrote Israeli columnist Gideon Levy. 

One would have to wait for the next miserable war, the next massacre to find out whether Israel has learned its lesson. Until then, thousands of starved, desperate yet resilient Palestinians in Gaza continue to live in their makeshift tents, atop the rubble, which was once called home, awaiting food, cement and international justice. 

- Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author of several books and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London), and his forthcoming book is, “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story” (Pluto Press, London), which is now available for pre-orders at Amazon.

Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of Islam, the custodian of its two holy mosques, the world's energy superpower and the de facto leader of the Arab and Muslim worlds — that is why our recognition is greatly prized by Israel. However, for all those same reasons, the kingdom holds itself to higher standards of justice and law. It must therefore refuse to engage Israel until it ends its illegal occupation of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Golan Heights as well as Shabaa Farms in Lebanon. For Saudis to take steps toward diplomatic normalization before this land is returned to its rightful owners would undermine international law and turn a blind eye to immorality.

Shortly after the Six-Day War in 1967, during which Israel occupied those territories as well as East Jerusalem and the Sinai Peninsula, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution stating that, in order to form "a just and lasting peace in the Middle East," Israel must withdraw from these newly occupied lands. The Fourth Geneva Convention similarly notes "the occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."

Now, Israeli leaders hint that they are willing to return portions of these occupied territories to Arab control, but only if they are granted military and economic concessions first. For the Arabs to accept such a proposal would only encourage similar outrages in the future by rewarding military conquest.

After the Oslo accords of 1993, Arab states took steps to improve their relationships with Israel, allowing for recognition in the form of trade and consular agreements. Israel, however, continued to construct settlements, making its neighbors understandably unwilling to give up more without a demonstration that they would be granted something in return.

Today, supporters of Israel cite the outdated 1988 Hamas charter, which called for the destruction of Israel, as evidence of Palestine's attitude toward a two-state solution, without considering the illegalities of Israel's own occupation. Israel has never presented any comprehensive formulation of a peace plan. Saudi Arabia, to the contrary, has done so twice: the Fahd peace plan of 1982 and the Abdullah peace initiative of 2002. Both were endorsed by the Arab world, and both were ignored by Israel.

In order to achieve peace and a lasting two-state solution, Israel must be willing to give as well as take. A first step should be the immediate removal of all Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Only this would show the world that Israel is serious about peace and not just stalling as it adds more illegal settlers to those already occupying Palestinian land.

At the same time, the international community must pressure Israel to relinquish its grip on all Arab territory, not as a means to gain undeserved concessions but instead as an act of good faith and a demonstration that it is willing to play by the Security Council's rules and to abide by global standards of military occupation. The Arab world, in the form of the Arab peace initiative that was endorsed by 22 countries in 2002, has offered Israel peace and normalization in return for Israeli withdrawal from all Arab territories including East Jerusalem — with the refugee issue to be solved later through mutual consent.

There have been increasing well-intentioned calls for Saudi Arabia to "do a Sadat": King Abdullah travels to Israel and the Israelis reciprocate by making peace with Saudi Arabia. However, those urging such a move must remember that President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt went to Israel in 1977 to meet with Prime Minister Menachem Begin only after Sadat's envoy, Hassan el-Tohamy, Sadat's envoy, was assured by the Israeli foreign minister, Moshe Dayan, that Israel would withdraw from every last inch of Egyptian territory in return for peace. Absent a similar offer today from Israel to the leaders of Palestine, Lebanon and Syria, there is no reason to look at 1977 as a model.

President Obama's speech in Cairo this summer gave the Arab and Muslim worlds heightened expectations. His insistence on a freeze on settlement activity was a welcome development. However, all Israeli governments have expanded settlements, even those that committed not to do so.

No country in the region wants more bloodshed. But while Israel's neighbors want peace, they cannot be expected to tolerate what amounts to theft, and certainly should not be pressured into rewarding Israel for the return of land that does not belong to it. Until Israel heeds President Obama's call for the removal of all settlements, the world must be under no illusion that Saudi Arabia will offer what the Israelis most desire — regional recognition. We are willing to embrace the hands of any partner in peace, but only after they have released their grip on Arab lands.

Prince Turki al-Faisal is chairman of the King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies. He has been director of Saudi intelligence and ambassador to Britain, Ireland, and the United States.

Netherlands/ The Hague, Amira Al-Qirim, a Palestinian girl aged 15, a victim and survivor of the Israeli massacre in Gaza last January, held a press conference together with her lawyer Gilles Devers in The Hague, in front of the building of the International Criminal Court, ICC, during which she stated: “I am here to present a complaint and to hand to the office of prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo in the ICC a file requesting an investigation into the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by the Israeli Zionists against the Palestinian civilians of Gaza Strip in which my father, my brother aged 14, and my sister aged 16, all civilians, were murdered by the IOF in the Tel Al-Hawa area south of Gaza City”.

Amira’s lawyer, Gilles Devers from the Court of Lyon (France) said “This was a crime against humanity, and we are here to raise the case to the International Criminal Court, against the Israeli politicians and the military leaders who must take responsibility of what they did. They murdered hundreds and injured thousands more of civilians”.

Amira herself was injured seriously, she survived and arrived in France for medical treatment.
Over the period of 27 December 2008 until the ceasefire of 18 Jan 2009, the criminal Israeli IOF deliberately dropped on Gaza more than one million and a half tons of explosives during their so-called “Operation Cast Lead”. With over 1.5 million inhabitants, Gaza is the most crowded area in the whole world. The IOF executed Palestinians in their houses in cold blood, either by shooting them directly or by launching missiles and rockets at them. The cold-blooded executions of these “prisoners of war” is clear violation to the international humanitarian treaties and conventions.

Since February 2009, the attorney general of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, is making a “preliminary study” of the charges of war crimes against Israel. According to his press office, the attorney general has received more than 360 letter, petitions from persons, association of human rights, and casualties in this regard:

The Israeli military massacre in Gaza had the purpose of ethnic cleansing of the civilians and murdering politicians in Gaza. According to the former cabinet chief of Ehud Olmert,  the criminal Ehud Barak, and the chief of the Israeli intelligence, Yuval Diskin, the military Operation “Cast Lead” had the purpose of putting an end to some political activists, Palestinian resistance activists and their families as the only solution to “decrease the terror” of revenge against Israel. The war criminals stated that the murder of the families of Palestinian political activists and resistance fighters was very important for the security of Israel. By murdering their families, Israel would guarantee that no revenge would be possible in the future. Another motive for this willfully planned crime was for it to secure votes for its organizers.

During the Israeli war crime in Gaza, most of the murdered and the causalities were civilians. Israel dropped phosphor bombs on civilians, and the victims have been found to be contaminated with depleted Uranium.

Simultaneously, and in solidarity with Amira Al-Qirim, another press conference was held by children in Gaza on Tuesday September 1 2009 in the “Small Journalist Club”, during which they demanded that the International Criminal Court and peace-loving people around the world “criminalize the Israeli occupation” and its officials, and sue them before to the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes against the civilians of Gaza.

The children demanded an international intervention to lift the Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip and to provide Gaza with the humanitarian supplies which can guarantee a human life for the children there, just like all other children around the world.

During the conference in Gaza, the children accused Israel of committing war crimes, genocide and of targeting the Palestinian people. The children called for international protection for them and for an end to the the violations of their rights.

During the Israeli crimes against humanity in Gaza, the so called “Operation Cast Lead”, over 1400 Palestinians were murdered and thousands more were injured, among them over 420 child who were murdered, and over 1600 more children are among the causalities.

Source: http://www.kawther.info/wpr/2009/09/01/a-palestinian-child-against-israel-at-the-icc

I also strongly condemn and reject the interference of the Israeli military censorship, who tries to impose his dirty mission on newspapers, websites and blogs, published outside Israel with continued terror, bullying and intimidation done by many front organizations and individuals of lacking intellect, who call themselves “glorious” names “Fancy Titles” but who in fact work for Israel and the IDF censorship office in Beit Agron, and who also get paid by them.

I strongly condemn the military censorship imposed on my correspondence with my homeland Palestine, by Israeli military “security” in the post office, in the West part of occupied Jerusalem, people who open and empty my packages of it’s content, destroying my videos which shows the crimes of the military occupation in Palestine. (See a copy of a letter from the Post office informed me that my letter had arrived at their office opened and damages).

Yesterday I was forwarded an email been sent by one of these “Fancy Titles”  people, IDF fronts abroad, who tried bully a German website which translated and published my article into removing my article, thus de-facto imposing the IDF censorship in a foreign publication. See the e-mail attached as a PDF. This slanderous and menacing E-mail was sent to German government ministers in copy. The writers of this badly written E-mail questioned the validity of the information I mention in my article, and the validity of my sources. While the Email was sent to another website and only forwarded to me, I thought it appropriate to answer these small-time bullies because the article is mine. My response to the threat Email sent to LinkeZeitung as a PDF. I will translate both e-mails as soon as I can.

As a journalist I know how to get direct access to ministers and government offices; I have documented the crimes perpetrated by Israel since my family left their homeland in the north of Palestine, today called Israel, 61 years ago.

After the criticism of  the “Fancy Titles” people against my latest article body snatching by the IDF and their partners in crime at Abu Kabir, I have decided to publicize each crime with further details to show that Israel is a state of cutthroats and thieves next to being a criminal occupier.

I am also sure that all the governments know what happened to the Palestinians since 1948 until today, and that Israel is established on the destruction and genocide of the Palestinian nation. But while these governments are paralyzed and unable to do much about about the Israeli genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the violations of the international humanitarian laws because of their thorough infiltration by zionist elements, I have decided to go ahead with my work exposing further details about the Israeli crimes, whether the criminals and their allies and frontmen like what I write or not.

I will not start from the story of my relative murdered and autopsied. First I will start presenting the full details of the murder of three children and the abduction of their bodies and autopsy which I mentioned before. Here is the Press Release issued by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights concerning this crime.

here is the testimony in Arabic by the director of Al-Shifa’a hospital in Gaza as PD F.

(I was not able to translate it because of the horrible things which are described. Perhaps the people “Fancy Titles” and the IDF military censorship will be able to translate it)  I hope that the bullies from “Fancy Titles” people will enjoy it).

Below is a Press release which I received in 2002

Press Release

New evidence in case of three Palestinian children unlawfully killed by Israeli forces

Ref: 11/2002

Date: 30 January 2002

New evidence has been obtained demonstrating the excessive and disproportionate use of force by Israeli forces against three Palestinian children killed last month. According to recent statements made by the Israeli military commander of the northern Gaza Strip, Israeli forces used “Fletchette” shells (shells containing dart-like shrapnel which is fired over a large area upon impact) in the incident when the three children were killed.

PCHR, the legal representative of the victims’ families, expresses its serious concerns regarding this case and reiterates its call for the international community and the United Nations to initiate a full, independent and impartial investigation into the case, to bring to justice those responsible and to provide effective reparations, including adequate compensation for the families of the victims.

On Sunday, 30 December 2001, Israeli forces fired artillery shells at three Palestinian children north of Beit Lahia, killing them. The victims, all from Sheikh Radwan neighbourhood in Gaza, were:

• Ahmed Mohammed Banat, age of 15.
• Mohammed ‘Abdel-Rahman El-Madhoun, age of 16
• Mohammed Ahmed Lubbad, age of 17.

At approximately 17:40 on that day, an Israeli tank positioned in the vicinity of “Elli Sinai” settlement, north of Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip, fired four artillery shells at a Palestinian agricultural area, under full control of the Palestinian National Authority, approximately 1200m south of the settlement.

Then, Israeli forces opened fire at the area from heavy and medium machine guns. Approximately 30 minutes later, the Israeli forces issued a statement claiming that they had killed three gunmen who were attempting to enter “Elli Sinai” settlement. Later, the Israeli forces stated that the three children were attempting to plant bombs in the area. A later statement from the Israeli military asserted that the children were armed with knives.

The Israeli authorities did not immediately release the bodies of the three victims and did not issue information regarding their identities or ages. Three families from Sheikh Radwan neighborhood notified PCHR about the disappearance of three of their children while they were returning home from a visit to a friend in Beit Lahia.

This raised fears that the three children might be the victims killed by Israeli forces. On 2 January 2002, PCHR, through an Israeli lawyer, Andre Rosenthal, sent a message to the Israeli military legal advisor, requesting the recovery of the three bodies to the Palestinian National Authority in order to be identified, and called for an investigation into the case. The bodies were handed over to the Palestinian National Authority on the same day, but no investigation was initiated by the Israeli military.

PCHR has continued to follow up the case internationally and within Israel. On 8 January 2002, PCHR sent appeals to John Dugard, Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Arab Territories, including Palestine; Asma Jahangir, Special Rapporteur for Summary, Arbitrary, and Extra-Judicial Executions; and Olara Otunnu, Special Representative of the Secretary General for Children in Armed Conflict. PCHR requested that they take immediate steps to ensure a thorough, independent and impartial investigation into this incident is conducted, and that other cases of possible willful killings and excessive use of lethal force perpetrated in the Occupied Palestinian Territories be similarly investigated, with appropriate legal action taken.

In addition to following the case through its lawyer in Israel, PCHR coordinated with the Public Committee against Torture in Israel (PCATI), and Physicians for Human Rights, providing the two organizations with information, in order for them to pressure inside Israel for an investigation into the case. In its letter to the two organizations, PCHR stated its initial comments and conclusions regarding the incident:

 

• The children were fired at from a significant distance, when they had posed no threat to the lives of Israeli soldiers.
• The three children were extra-judicially killed since no efforts were made to arrest them.
• The victims were unarmed civilians under the age of 18.
• The bodies were taken to the Legal Medicine Institute in Abu Kabir without the approval of their families and without a court decision.
• An autopsy conducted by Palestinian officials indicated that the bodies had been mutilated and that one of the victims had been trampled by a large vehicle.

Following a request by Member of Knesset Tamar Jabotnisky, the Israeli parliamentary foreign and security committee held a session on 23 January 2002 to address this case. Representatives of the PCATI and Physicians for Human Rights attended the session.

In his statement before the committee, the Israeli military commander of the northern Gaza Strip revealed new information which supports the conclusion that the children were willfully killed.

His statement can be summed up in the following points:

• At approximately 17:48 on 30 December 2001, three suspects were noticed in the vicinity of “Elli Sinai” settlement. The officer in command of a tank fired four artillery shells at the three, killing them.
  
• One of the bodies was then run over by the tank. The tanks shells fired contained nails (flechettes) which were scattered as far as 100m away from the point of impact.

In his statement before the committee, Director of the Legal Medicine Institute (Abu Kabir) explained that the victims died having sustained injuries inflicted by the nails in the shells and that one of the bodies had then been run over by a tank. This information further supports the conclusion that the killings were willful and a violation of international human rights and humanitarian law.

The Israeli military representative also produced video footage before the committee showing that the victims were positioned at a significant distance from the Israeli military position. It is PCHR’s opinion that this information collectively indicates that the Israeli military extrajudicially killed the three, and used excessive and disproportionate force. All evidence indicated that the victims had not posed any threat to the lives of the Israeli soldiers, that the soldiers had not resorted to less lethal force as required by international standards and had made no attempts to arrest the suspects prior to opening fire. The video footage also reaffirmed that the victims were unarmed contrary to claims made by the Israeli military.

The session was adjourned, to be reconvened later this week, pending receipt of the report of the Israeli Legal Medicine Institute on the case.

In light of these developments, PCHR asserts:

 

The killing of the three children was willful and extra-judicial in violation of international human rights and humanitarian law, and that Israeli forces have full legal responsibility for their deaths, including with respect to the provision of compensation to the victims families, in accordance with international law.

In immediately resorting to the use of artillery shells despite no threat having been posed to the lives of the soldiers, the Israeli forces employed excessive and disproportionate force.

It was not the first time that Israeli forces have employed “Fletchette” shells against Palestinian civilians. A number of Palestinian civilians have been killed or injured by such shells, including when no threat was posed to the lives of Israeli soldiers, according to PCHR’s investigations.

Despite all these facts, Israeli forces have not initiated a full and proper investigation into this case or many other similar cases. The autopsy of the bodies took place at the Israeli Legal Medicine Institute without the approval of the victims’ families and without a court decision – according to the director of the institute, the bodies of the victims were brought to the institute without having been identified in contravention of Israeli law.

The video footage showing the killing of the three children should be made public.

The international community and the United Nations must call for a thorough, independent and impartial investigation into this incident, and that other cases of possible wilful killings and excessive use of lethal force perpetrated in the Occupied Palestinian Territories be similarly investigated.

The use of such shells against a civilian population is unlawful under international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. The Israeli military commander also confirmed that an Israeli tank ran over the body of one of the victims.

SOURCE: http://www.kawther.info/wpr/2009/08/28/fancy-title-people-and-the-idf-against-journalists

The plan keeps the Israelis as occupiers, but with a few twists like in Oslo, such as political prisoners should be released. It seems to be asking Palestinians to sanction occupation instead of dismantling the system of the occupiers. Critics note that no one should be asked to trade freedom for political prisoners in exchange for accepting control of their air space, or any other type of control.

Legislative Council member Hassan Khreisheh told PNN Wednesday that he is among those who have obtained a copy of the draft plan which US President Barack Obama intends to announce during the next month.

The draft is in heavy circulation in Palestinian and Arab circles, and addresses a new American plan.

Media sources report that during his recent meetings in the US, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak also saw the American plan to be launched by Obama.

A spokesperson for the Egyptian president said the US administration is planning to announce a political plan with regard to Palestine and the Israelis at the beginning of the opening of the new session of the United Nations General Assembly in September.

The Israelis have yet to heed the dozens of United Nations resolutions, both from the General Assembly and the Security Council, on the issue. If Obama is looking for a new resolution it is expected that the Israelis will honor it only if it is clearly in their favor.

According to Khreisheh of the PLC, the draft plan includes ten basic points, including:

- An international presence in the Jordan Valley and other areas in the West Bank.

- Reducing the areas of East Jerusalem to be under Israeli control, with respect to the Islamic religious sanctities. It will be under the sovereignty of Arab and Islamic countries.

- Resolving the Palestinian organizations and turning them into political parties.

- Keeping the major settlement blocs in the West Bank, and negotiating on small settlements in three months.

- To keep other areas in the West Bank, demilitarized zones, with Israeli control of the skies.

- To intensify the Israeli-Palestinian security coordination in the West Bank.

- The Palestinian Authority to prevent the establishment of any military alliance with any regional state.

- An assurance by the United States for a Palestinian state in the summer of 2011.

- Agreed to accommodate the number of refugees in the Jordan Valley and other areas in the West Bank, and specifically between the towns of Nablus and Ramallah, and the establishment of an international fund to support the refugees.

- Israel begins release of Palestinian prisoners, with the start of the signing of this Convention, continue to release for a period of three years.

As usual, the Zionists were ready with sharpened teeth to shred his efforts by their usual Hasbara methods of sending their false poisonous comments in an attempt to mask any efforts at explaining what is really going on in Palestine. One of the comments left by one of those Zionists on his blog complained that ‘Hebron Arabs today have access to 98% of the entire city. Jews have only access to 3% of Hebron’.

In the comment of this ‘anonymous’ reader, what seems to look like an innocent number of complaints, should the reader not know much about that part of the world he/she will fall a victim to the false impression that the presence of the Israeli Occupation in my hometown is justified and not an illegal occupation according to international law and even by Israeli standards. His comments sounded like as if they are coming from a victim who is supposed to have equal rights of access.

The 3% of the Jews in Hebron he was talking about are not supposed to be there, the occupying force according to international law is not supposed to allow or facilitate the transfer of its own citizens to the occupied areas.

He complained that the owners of the city – the Arab Palestinians – have access to 98% of their own city and the occupiers who are called for well-known media manipulation reasons ‘the settlers’ have access to 3%. ‘The expression settlers’ seems to be a very benign use of the language for a malignant reason. Of course the total according to his figures makes the population of Al-Khaleel more than 100%, this is a good example of what happens when Israeli authorities employ cyber amateurs to defend its crimes against the Palestinians, they work very fast so that they conjure numbers that do not make any sense. The Zionist state employs thousands every year to work on character assassination of the writers who bring to light any information about the absurdity of the Israeli occupation in Palestine, like Mr Kassab.

This shows how far they can go to fabricate false stories by throwing numbers without any verifications or referencing, and as usual, the Westerners swallow it all because the numbers and figures are connected in their experience with studies and statistics, and methods we all respect and do not doubt their credibility. I want to surprise ‘Mr anonymous’ and tell him that the people in Al-Khaleel are supposed to have 100% access to their own city because it is their home. It seems that the Zionists are full of themselves to a point they think that people can’t figure out that it is unacceptable for a total stranger to come from as far as Russia to occupy the living room of any Palestinian by hooliganism, and deny the owner access to his own kitchen or bathroom. Blocking the way of the locals is preaching their human rights and this is what the claimed 3% Jewish ‘settlers’ are doing in my hometown.

Those Jewish ‘settlers’ who have access to 3 % of my home have killed three students while walking on campus in 1986 for no reason whatsoever. Those 400 gun-wielding settlers are guarded and protected by 1,500 Israeli soldiers who witness their daily attacks on the unarmed local Palestinians and do nothing about it even though they are supposed to protect the locals according to International law. The Israeli authorities tend to demolish any home, should the owner build one brick without their permission, but at the same time claim that they could do nothing to handle the illegal presence of the Jewish settlers in the heart of Al-Khaleel, occupying the roof tops of the Palestinians homes and throwing their rubbish on them every day, and calling the Palestinian women whenever they open their doors ‘whores’.

I guess those ‘chosen by God’ people show the Almighty as an under-achiever, he could not even choose a respected lot who behave themselves when he went to choose his own loved lot. I would imagine no ordinary person would ever choose to be a friend with someone with a bad reputation and despicable manners like the Jewish settlers, let alone a wise compassionate God, but it seems that they know that the Western world is a hypocritical lot, they would support their claims even though they are a secular majority who deny even the presence of God, but when it comes to Israel suddenly they turn to be serious believers of every claim told by the Zionist lot, and the angel halo appears shining, bright and glowing above their heads, you can almost touch their holy wings. Even those who have just converted to Judaism only yesterday for visa reasons to work in Israel and care less about Moses, Jacob, Solomon, or any other prophet mentioned by any holy book, turn by a swift magic wand into very religious people even when they are posing naked in adult magazines to promote tourism in ‘the Holy Land’.

My brother-in-law is a doctor whose clinic is located in the heart of the city of Hebron, where the settlers are turning the people’s lives into living hell because they are God’s chosen brats.  His practice is located in an area where poor, sick, underprivileged people need medical attention. The soldiers who are supposed to be guarding the locals according to international law are not doing so, on the contrary, they are helping the settlers to occupy the rooftops of the neighbouring houses including his clinic, the soldiers themselves used to urinate in the water reservoir on the rooftop of his practice to drive him out, and to evacuate the area from the last few Palestinians who were persevering and trying to get on with their miserable lives against the odds. For years he used to go every single day to his practice and just set there, even though he knew perfectly well that he could not treat the ever-decreasing number of sick people who could reach his clinic, not because of the intimidation of the settlers and the hygiene problems only, but because they are hindered by tens of roadblocks and obstacles as well. But he never gave up on his mission, he continued to go to work every morning anyway – to send the Israeli occupying forces a clear message of ‘I am not leaving’. All his patients knew about his daily struggle and used to knock on his home door asking for help at odd hours, he could not turn them back, but one can imagine what kind of life this must have been for him and for his wife and children who hardly have any privacy at home, and who could not anticipate when the next banging on the door will start.

Many times he would go to his work and could not come back home that day because a new curfew had started while he was in his practice.

This is a reality every single Palestinian in my hometown has to deal with day in day out. I remember asking him once ‘what you were doing in the clinic then if you could not treat your patients’? He smiled and said I used to help my wife in her housework. I have been able to pick the leaves of almost 30 Kg of Oregano one summer to dry them for family use for the rest of the year’.

Storing food to manage during the curfews is another problem. The Israeli authorities used to cut the electricity of the city on purpose until all the stored food kept in homes’ freezers rotted and was no longer edible, besides subjecting the lives of sick people in the operation theatres at the hospital to great danger. My late husband told me about a number of surgical operations he had to perform at Princess Alia Hospital which turned to be a challenge when the electricity was cut off, besides the fact that most drugs including anaesthetics were banned, many patients were stitched without any sedation. Those are only a few kinds of inflicted pains the people had to deal with.

Year after year of hardships taught the Palestinians to find their own solutions, the people knew that the curfews can be imposed at any time, and for no reason whatsoever, no one is allowed to look through a window or walk outside the door during such enforced siege, no shops will be opened, no cars are permitted to take a dying person to hospital. The people of Al-Khaleel had to find solutions to this hard reality. They were forced to become self-sufficient and learn how to survive, no more they rely on freezing their food, they started drying, pickling, salting, and bottling the very little they managed to cultivate in their home gardens.

The same paid Zionist to attack the article and assassinate its writer’s character says ‘Close to 100 Jews have been killed in the Hebron region by Arab terrorists, in cold blood over the years and this number does not include 67 Jews murdered in Hebron 80 years ago, during the 1929 riots and massacre’.

I dare this person who threw at us the first rounded figure using his ‘close to’ expression to come with any evidence of his claim, but still I would like to tell him that according to official statistics by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics the number of reported innocent civilians killed in Hebron by Israeli soldiers in only 8 years not 61 years, between 29 September 2000 – 31 December 2008 is 265 people, those were all innocent civilians.

This same person evidently employed by the Foreign Ministry of Israel to bleach its burned image is complaining about what he described as ‘noise’ in my occupied home town, he claims ‘the Muslim call-to-prayer begins at about 4:00 AM and is repeated five times daily, with other public interludes, until after 11:00 PM, waking up sleeping people and preventing them from sleeping, with this noise being broadcast from numerous points in the city’.

For goodness sake, if you do not like living there just go back where you came from, you are living in our home, you have no right to tell us how to behave or complain about our worshiping rituals, at least the not chosen people who still worship God unlike his own chosen people who smeared his name. So…this chosen by God man considers calling for prayers a ‘noise’, while shelling, bombing, and demolitions of homes, snipers’ bullets whizzing all the time, and hovering military aircrafts since 1967 are not? How about sleeping somewhere else where you will have the right to sleep without being disturbed by the ‘non chosen people by God’.

The same chatterbox complains as well about the Ibrahimi Mosque which no more is treated with the dignity and respect it deserves, he says ‘the largest hall, the Isaac Chamber, is off-limits to Jews so that Moslems may hold their prayers there’. I guess he forgotten to mention that the Israelis occupy more than half the Mosque and as such Muslims have no access to their own place of worship, and the 3 main entrances are fitted with metallic security doors and Muslims have access through one entrance only where they are searched and humiliated, men and women, before every prayer by God’s chosen people. But most of all he forgot willingly to mention that a fundamentalist racist Jew shot down 29 Muslims while kneeling in prayer in that same mosque and was considered a hero by the Jewish Zionist society.

Not only that, he lies through his teeth, he claims that ‘Most of those 400 settlers are children, and they aren’t gun-wielding’. Oh really, that is fascinating information, so…the fourth strongest army in the world could not handle less than 400, people the majority of which are children? I would indicate such a story-teller to the Israeli Foreign office should he want to knit a lie, to do some research… and make a lie-proof story because there are people who read and there are those who do their own research. And by the way, when 4000 years ago, the prophet Abraham came to my city as an Iraqi immigrant, he bought the cave which became later the burial place for his wife from us, we the Palestinians, the people of Al-Khaleel…surely you are not serious to believe that whoever buys a cave owns the whole country, and pass it as an inheritance to his believers wherever they are!!!

Visit Palestinian Mothers to see some films of the scenes this article talks about.

Read the magazine online at: http://www.badil.org/al-majdal/al-majdal.htm

Bethlehem, August 2009: The BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian
Residency and Refugee Rights announces the release of its Spring /
Summer 2009 issue of al-Majdal, Badil's English-language quarterly magazine.

This issue of al-Majdal draws on the research and experience of the
participants in the Israel Review Conference
(http://israelreview.bdsmovement.net), and the topics on which they
focused to provide an overview of routes, challenges, and
recommendations for "Litigating Palestine." They evaluate past attempts at taking Israel and its abettors to court, assess the role of law in
attaining justice for victims, and ­perhaps of particular interest to
non-lawyers ­the role of civil society in supporting legal battles to
attain justice for Palestinians.

A recurring theme is the consistent interference of executive and
legislative branches of government to shield Israel and its agents from
prosecution. Susan Akram and Yasmine Gado's article on civil tort claims
in U.S. courts shows how the U.S. government has consistently interfered
to ensure that courts dismiss Palestinian cases on procedural and
jurisdictional grounds. Bill Bowring looks into the situation in Europe
making it clear that Palestinians “do not have the possibility of
addressing complaints to the European Court of Human Rights and the
European Court of Justice.

Contributions in this issue also explore possibilities for legal action
that can potentially overcome ­or at least bypass  someome of these
limitations, by targeting third parties. John Reynolds describes the
case targeting the U.K. government as a third party complicit in Israeli
violations. Deborah Guterman examines the case of Quebec courts against
Canadian corporations involved in the construction of Israeli colonies
in the West Bank. Karen Pennington and Joseph Schechla revisit US courts
in an examination of whether recent precedents targeting Islamic
charities may reopen the door to challenging the Jewish National Fund
and other Zionist para-state organizations as charitable organizations
in that country.

As this issue goes to print, news is circulating about the change in
Spanish universal jurisdiction laws as a direct attempt to protect
Israeli war crime suspects from prosecution. Meanwhile, there is an
ongoing legal challenge to Heidelberg Cement for its plunder of quarries
in the occupied West Bank, and a German-E.U. challenge to European
imports from Ma'ale Adumim's Soda-Club. The U.K. has announced a partial
arms embargo on Israel, while U.K. courts have dismissed the case
challenging the U.K. government for its failure to fulfill its
obligations under international law with respect to Israel's activities
in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. These are some of the many
examples of the ways in which the courtroom has developed as a site of
struggle to attain justice for Palestinians. As such, it is important to
learn from the experiences of the past and coordinate action for the
future in order to increase chances for success.

———————————
Visit the al-Majdal homepage at http://www.badil.org/al-majdal/al-majdal.htm

or download the full PDF version of this issue of al-Majdal at:
http://www.badil.org/al-majdal/2008/autumn-winter/majdal39-40.pdf

Annual subscriptions to the printed version of the magazine are
available for Euro 25 (4 issues).

Subscribe online at
http://www.badil.org/paypal/publications.htm
or through email requests addressed to the editor at info@badil.org

Palestinians are waiting to return home

Jerusalem – Ma’an News Agency, 20 July 2009 Senior Hamas and Fatah officials stated their objections on Sunday to what they said were US suggestions that Palestinians accept a land swap with Israel and give up the right of return.

The officials said that the US is pushing for a final status agreement with Israel that does not include the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, and maintains so-called Israeli settlement blocs in the West Bank.

Senior Fatah official Hatem Abdul Qader, who deals with Jerusalem issues, said “the United States is trying to deceive the Palestinians through these proposals, which they think are creative, but [exist] only in their imaginations.” He called for the US to take concrete steps to stop Israel’s expansion of illegal settlements as an alternative.

The official said, “If the United States cannot take small steps in this direction, then how it can make these big leaps that will not be accepted by the Palestinians?”

“The main challenge for this administration is to stop the settlements and land confiscation, particularly canceling the Israeli decision to confiscate 139,00 dunums [of land along the Dead Sea shores and to stop the settlement plans in Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah neighborhoods in East Jerusalem.”

If the US takes these “basic steps,” it could lead to “real peace,” he said. He also said that Palestinians refugees cannot give up the right to return to their homes in what is now Israel, basing their claim on UN Resolution 194. “Going around [Resolution 194] will not lead to real peace between Palestinians and Israelis.”

Meanwhile Hamas senior official Salah Bardawil said that “the issue of land swap was proposed since the Camp David negotiations … President Yasser Arafat rejected this at the time then and paid his life as a price for this rejection.”

Bardawil also said “We cannot accept anything that is proposed by the Americans regarding this issue.” He said “all Palestinian factions” believe that a resolution to the conflict should be based on an Israeli withdrawal from the land it occupied in 1967 (the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem), the creation of a Palestinian state, and the realization of the right of return.

He also stated Hamas’ “categorical rejection” of the alleged American proposals. “It’s a waste of time for the US administration headed by [Barack] Obama to begin its political maneuvers with a rejected argument.”

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=213367 via http://australiansforpalestine.com/breaking-news-hamas-fatah-us-wants-palestinians-to-abandon-right-of-return

Every year since June 1967, Israelis celebrate Jerusalem Day. To Palestinians, it is a day to commemorate, to unite, and continue the fight for a free Palestine and a free Jerusalem. To Palestinians, Al Quds is not only the holy sites, the ancient houses and the beautifully old streets and alleys, it's the land and the people. The Zionists are not ashamed of celebrating a “state” that is built on the bodies of Palestinians and on the ruins of their homes and villages. Speeches and articles on such occasions often talk of how proud they are of their army, those “courageous men” fighting for their state: a state that is watered with the blood of its innocent victims, not the blood of its “courageous” men, for there is no courage in fighting an unarmed civilian population, in killing little children and walking on the bodies of raped women and bullet-riddled elderly to reach a state. They are only courageous as long as they are heavily armed, take away from them their machine guns, tanks and apaches and not one soldier of this “courageous army” would dare stand against a small unarmed Palestinian child. In the internet there’s a countless number of videos and photos that show just how “courageous” they soldiers are: heavily armed they shoot at little school children, beat women and elderly, and take photos near the bodies of slain Palestinians as souvenirs of their “trophies”. But when their weapons are taken away from them, they start crying and are faster than the wind. Yes, the Zionists, with their ideology and history, have a number of things to “celebrate” and be “proud of”: a listing of all the “courageous” acts of the Zionists and their army and their “state”, towards Palestinians and other nations, would be too long, thus a few keywords: Ethnic cleansing, massacres, theft (land theft, theft of property, cultural theft, etc…). As with the Nakba of 1948, during the Nakba of 1967 the Israeli army, the “courageous and most moral army in the world”, carried out organized and wide-scale ethnic cleansing and destruction, particularly in East Jerusalem and the area surrounding it.

The Latroun area, well-known for its ample water resources and fertile land, is located northwest of Jerusalem and close to the Green Line. Before 1948, this area consisted of a number of picturesque villages: Latroun, Imwas, Yalu and Beit Nouba. Imwas alone had a population of 1450 inhabitants and owned some 55,000 dunums of agricultural land. During the Nakba of 1948, the Zionist terrorists tried occupying Imwas several times, but were defeated. As a result of the truce-agreements signed at the time, Imwas lost some 50,000 dunums of its land, some of which becoming a No-Man’s land. The village Latroun, ethnically cleansed of its residents who were forced to move to nearby Imwas, fell within this assigned No-Man’s land. During the 1967 war and with the withdrawal of the Jordanian army, the Israeli army was able to occupy the Latroun area. The three Latroun villages: Imwas, Yalu and Beit Nouba, were ethnically cleansed before being completely wiped off the map. Zionist propaganda claims that the 3 villages were already empty when the Israeli army arrived. But the testimonies of the residents of the 3 villages, in addition to testimonies of some of the Israeli soldiers who were present at the time, speak of a premeditated forced expulsion. Israeli photographer Yosef Hochman, who accompanied the soldiers at the time, reported that when he asked Major General Uzi Narkiss, who was Commanding General of the Central Command in 1967 and gave the orders for the destruction of the villages, why the 3 Latroun villages were destroyed, “Narkiss answered that it was revenge for what happened there in 1948.”[1] In his memories of the 1967 war, Moshe Dayan wrote about the destruction of the Latroun villages and half of Qalqilya: “[houses were destroyed] not in the battle, but as punishment … and in order to chase away the inhabitants.”[2]

On the morning of the 6th of June, Unit 4 of the Israeli army entered the 3 villages accompanied with tanks and bulldozers, yet another proof that the destruction was pre-planned. The majority of the inhabitants had stayed in their homes, because they feared a repetition of the 1948 expulsion and because they had nowhere else to go. Some had left the day before in fear of massacres similar to those committed during the Nakba. Others found refuge in nearby Imwas Monastery. In Imwas, under the orders of Yitzhak Rabin, armoured military jeeps wandered the streets and with loudspeakers ordered the villagers to leave, giving them only 3 hours to gather their possessions. Many refused to leave, so they were forced out under the threat of gun before the bulldozers started razing the houses. The Israeli soldiers told the residents to go to nearby villages such as Yalu and Beit Nouba, which were also being ethnically cleansed. As the villagers made their way out of the 3 villages in groups, the soldiers shot over their heads to hurry them and as warning not to come back. Zahda Abu Qtaish from Imwas remembers:”They told us to come with the children to the Mukhtar’s (community-leader) home. I replied that I couldn’t; I had bread baking in the oven, the closets were open, the house was not tidy, the chickens were hungry. The Jew said it was not important, that later I could come back and fix everything. I took the children. One was holding my hand, one was on my shoulder, one was holding my dress. When we got the Mukhtar’s house, the Israelis said to keep walking, to go to Yula. I pleaded that the house was open, that the bread was in the oven. We left everything, our clothes, our money, everything. When I reached Yula, my legs gave up. Everybody from Imwas was there. We were told to keep walking. We walked for three days to Ramallah (north of Jerusalem). A lot of people died on the road. My feet were bleeding. For the next two months we slept under trees. We had no tents, no blankets. We slept on dirt. My family was thirsty and hungry.”[3]

Even those who found refugee in the nearby Latroun monastery were also expelled by the Israeli army. In a testimony made by Al-Haq, Nihad Thaher from Imwas recalled: “At the dawn the following morning, 6 June 1967, some of the nuns went outside to inform the Israeli soldiers that several residents of Imwas village were present inside the monastery. The soldiers asked us all to get out. After we had done so, we were told by one of the Israeli captains to walk along the road to the city of Ramallah. He told us not to return to our houses and threatened to kill us if we did… thus, we were expelled on Thursday 6 June 1967. The Israeli soldiers were lined up on both sides of the road and would admonish anyone who asked for permission to go to their house to bring milk or food for their children. I was one of those who asked as I had my wife and three children to look after. My eldest child was five years old, the second was 3 years old and the youngest was 8 months old. My children were barefoot and half-naked. We walked on foot between the Israeli jeeps and tanks towards Beit Nouba, and then to Beit Liqya. There, the Israeli soldiers found a Jordanian soldier attempting to surrender. They started to beat him in front of everybody and then shot and beheaded him.”[4] Ahmad Abu Ghoush from Imwas recalled:”Some families went to the Latroun Ministry believing they would be safe there because it was a Christian place but they were not. My family first went to Yalu, then Beit Nouba, then onto Beit Ur before finally being forced to walk all the way to Ramallah. The soldiers emptied all the houses in the villages and forced everyone out onto the streets. The only way open was to Ramallah and they told us to go there. Other soldiers were saying `Go to Jedah, all the land before there is ours and if you stop before Jedah we will kill you!`… people took keys, small things, some were forced to go with no shoes or real clothes, they were forced out in just their nightclothes, I saw people walking barefoot. We walked all the way to Ramallah, 32 km with no food or water, it took us about nine or ten hours. Four people from the village died during this journey.”[5] ‘Aysha Hammad, who lived on the outskirts of Yalu testified to Al-Haq: “On the fourth day, I believe it was 9 June 1967, several people who had fled the village returned. In the evening, my husband came home and said: the Israelis are in the village and they are calling through loudspeakers.” The Israelis were saying “all residents of Yalu must leave to Ramallah. Those who don't will be in danger.” I got my 3 children ready, but couldn't carry anything, as I was six months pregnant. We walked to the nearby village of Beit Nouba, only one kilometer from Yalu. As I entered Beit Nouba, I saw several bulldozers guarded by Israeli soldiers razing houses in the village to the ground.”[6]  In the documentary Film “Memory of the Cactus”, directed by Hanna Musleh, Hochman comments on a photo he took at the time of an elderly couple forced to leave their home: “I took pictures of a couple trying to put everything onto a donkey and it fell off. With a soldier waiting for them to try again, and it fell off again.”[7]  The glee on the soldier’s face shows how much these criminals enjoyed what they were doing.

The first days of the occupation, bulldozers were used to flatten the houses, later with the arrival of the engineering unit of the Israeli army, explosives were used to blast the houses and wipe out the 3 villages completely. Houses, schools and mosques were destroyed. This wide-scale destruction of property, accompanied by looting, took place during and after the war. Few days later, the Israeli army announced in radios that the residents of the villages could come back. But when they did come back, not only did they find their villages destroyed, but were also shot at by Israeli soldiers, killing a number of them (it was reported that at least 5 Palestinians were killed this way). Amos Kenan, a journalist who served as a soldier during the 1967 war, recalled the story of Beit Nouba:

“We were told it was our job to search the village houses; that if we found any armed men there, they were to be taken prisoners. Any unarmed persons should be given time to pack their belongings and then told to get moving – get moving to Beit Sira, a village not far away. We were also told to take up positions around the approaches to the villages, in order to prevent those villagers who had heard the Israeli assurances over the radio that they could return to their homes in peace – from returning to their homes. The order was – shoot over their heads and tell them there is no access to the village. The homes in Beit Nouba are beautiful stone houses, some of them luxurious mansions. Each house stands in an orchid of olives, apricots and grapevines; there are also cypresses and other trees grown for their beauty and the shade they give. Each tree stands in its carefully watered bed. Between the trees, lie neatly hoed and weeded rows of vegetables. At noon the first bulldozer arrived, and ploughed under the house closest to the village edge. With one sweep of the bulldozer, the cypresses and the olive-trees were uprooted. Ten more minutes pass and the house, with its meagre furnishings and belongings, has become a mass of rubble. After three houses had been rowed down, the first convoy of refugees arrives, from the direction of Ramallah. We did not shoot into the air. We did take up positions for coverage, and those of us who spoke Arabic went up to them to give them the orders. There were old men hardly able to walk, old women mumbling to themselves, babies in their mother’s arms, small children weeping, begging for water. The convoy waved white flags. We told them to move on to Beit Sira. They said that wherever they went, they were driven away, that nowhere were they allowed to stay. They said they had been on the way for four days now – without food or water; some had perished on the way. They asked only to be allowed back into their own village; and said we would do better to kill them. Some had brought with them a goat, a sheep, a camel or a donkey. A father crunched grains of wheat in his hand to soften them so that his four children might have something to eat. On the horizon, we spotted the next line approaching. One man was carrying a 50 kg sack of flour on his back, and that was how he had walked mile after mile. More old men, more women, more babies. They flopped down exhausted at the spot where they were told to sit. Some had brought along a cow or two, or a calf – all their earthly possessions. We did not allow them to go into the village to pick up their belongings, for the order was that they must not be allowed to see their homes being destroyed. …. We asked the officers why the refugees were being sent back and forth and driven away from everywhere they went. The officers said it would do them good to walk and asked “why worry about them, they’re only Arabs”? …. More and more lines of refugees kept arriving. By this time there must have been hundreds of them. They couldn’t understand why they had been told to return, and now were not being allowed to return… The platoon commander decided to go to headquarters to find out whether there was any written order as to what should be done with them, where to send them and to try and arrange transportation for the women and children, and food supplies. He came back and said there was no written order; we were to drive them away. Like lost sheep they went on wandering along the roads. The exhausted were rescuing (In other testimonies, Kenan writes here: the weak die).[8]  Towards evening we learned that we had been told a falsehood – at Beit Sira too bulldozers had begun their work of destruction, and the refugees had not been allowed to enter. We also learned that it was not in our sector alone that areas were being “straightened out”; the same was going on in all sectors.”[9] Part of them went to Ramallah, where they slept in the bus station for a week, but the majority walked all the way to the Bridge and crossed to Amman. During this second Nakba, some 400,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes. In 1988 Narkiss talked of the transfer operation in an interview:” I placed several buses in Jerusalem and in other cities (of the west bank), written on them: “to amman – free of charge” the bus used to carry them to the (partly) destroyed Allenby bridge and then they would cross it (to Jordan).” He also mentioned the daily telephone calls of Pinhas Sapir, Finance Minister at the time: “Pinhas Sapir used to phone me twice a day, to ask: how many [Arabs] got out today? Is the number of the inhabitants of the West bank diminishing? The number [of those being transported by the buses] began with 600 and 700 persons a day, and then it began to decline until it reached a few scores, and after two or three months the [bus] operation stopped.”[10] 

Although often denied by Israel, some houses were destroyed on the heads of their inhabitants, those being mostly elderly and handicapped, who either refused to leave or didn’t have enough time to leave before the destruction began. Some died on the way to Ramallah and other places after being expelled by the Israeli army, and others were shot dead by the Israeli army as they tried to return to their villages. The Latroun monks went to Imwas days after the village had been occupied. “Father Tournay, Catholic priest who has lived in East Jerusalem since 1945 and was head of the Ecole Biblique there, said the Latroun monks “smelled bodies” rotting inside the demolished homes.”[11]  In testimonies collected by Al-Haq, a number of eye witnesses, who snuck into the 3 villages immediately after the destruction, mention bodies under the ruins of houses or decomposed bodies in the area. In Beit Nouba, at least 18 residents were found dead under the rubbles of their houses. Ahmad Isa from Beit Nouba testified: “We tried to enter the village from several locations, but we were prohibited from doing so by the soldiers. Accordingly, we were forced to take refuge in Beit Sira, which is close to our village. My father and I snuck to our house in Beit Nouba in order to bring back food, oil and mattresses. We saw horrible things along the way, namely several men and women who had been killed: Lutfi Mahmoud Hassan Abu Rahhal, Mahmoud Ali Baker, who was blind and who appeared to have been killed as a result of his house being demolished while he was inside it … the bodies of another 3 men who were also dead had been thrown amongst the trees: Al Abed Ayyad, Isa Muhammad and Abdallah Zuhdi.”[12] Dr. Ismail Zayid from Beit Nouba recalled:” In the course of the Israel army’s occupation and destruction of my village of Beit Nouba in June 1967, 18 people died under the rubble of their demolished homes because they were too old or disabled to get out of their houses in time, before the Israeli explosives were effected to destroy the houses…. One of those killed was Mohammad Ali Bakr, an uncle of my mother. He was old and infirm, and was buried alive under the rubble of his home in Beit Nouba, not far from ours. My mother also told me that when the Israeli army came to blow up our house, they told my uncle Hussain Zayid, an elderly and arthritic man whose ability to move was severely limited, that they would first blow up the western part of our house, which was in a walled quadrangle. They said they would then move to destroy the eastern part of the house, and should he still be there, he would not be given the opportunity to leave.”[13]  In Imwas, at least 10 residents who were not able to leave their homes because they were either elderly or handicapped, are till today unaccounted for, suspected to have been killed inside their houses when the Israeli army destroyed these houses. A further 5 at least died on the way to Ramallah or were killed by landmines. Ahmad Abu Ghoush remembered:” There were ten elders in the village including one disabled man. They didn’t leave. We know they didn’t leave because they couldn’t, but nobody ever saw any of them again after that night. One soldier has written a testimony which said he ´saw another telling one of these old men to leave his house, but the man refused saying `I can't walk and I won't leave! You can kill me but I will not leave!`”[14] Dr. Musa Abu Ghosh from Imwas remembered: “In spite of all the difficulties, some of the younger people managed to infiltrate back to their homes to pick up some belongings, and when they dug into the rubble, some found bodies. A relative of mine was found this way – Hasan Shukri, the son of my cousin. He was 19, an invalid, paralyzed from polio. They found his body underneath his house.”[15] Ali Salma from Yalu said: “After 20 days (towards the end of June), I, together with another resident of my village, went to Yalu through the valleys, mountains and fields. As we reached the Beit Nouba fields, I saw 4 corpses laid out beside each other. They were: Ibrahim Shuebi, Al Abed Tayeh, Zuheir Zuhdi and Isa Abu Isa. All of them were from Yalu. I didn't examine the corpses because they were swollen. We entered the village at around midnight. We first went to the demolished home of Abu Wasim where we saw the body of Isa Ziyada and more demolished houses. We were both very scared. We both took some stuff from the rubble of his house and left to go back towards Kharbatha.”[16]

When the Israeli soldiers were done with their “duty”, more than 10,000 people had been forcibly expelled, no less than 39 residents were reported killed or are till today unaccounted for. In his article “Outrage at Emwas”, John Goddard writes: “I collected 39 names of people said to have been killed in the villages, 17 from Imwas, 11 from Beit Nouba, and 11 from Yalo.”[17]  Some 1464 houses were destroyed: 375 in Imwas houses, 539 in Yalu and 550 in Beit Nouba. A couple of months later, the villagers were allowed back to the Latroun, but only to collect their harvest. “my brother drove our truck. We saw everything destroyed, just the mosque was still standing. People were crying and weeping, some were just standing, looking, speechless … some had lost all their land in 1948 but had tried to rebuild their lives and now it had all happened again. People needed anything so took whatever they could find and put in into trucks. Some people found a sheep or a goat but the houses were totally destroyed. We found our `cawasheen` (a big box containing important documents such as deeds to property and land) but couldn’t get any clothes or anything else. We knew there was nothing left but we wanted to see what had happened to our village …”[18] The British reporter Michael Adams visited Imwas in 1968, wrote: “When my companion and I came to Beit Nouba 6 months after Kenan, much had changed. Most significantly, the rubble had disappeared. It had taken the Israelis 6 months to clear it, in great secrecy; while relays of volunteers were engaged in this macabre task, the authorities closed the approach road to Latroun…. Without a guide, I should probably have driven straight through without realising that there had been villages here at all. The demolition squads had been thorough. But when we stopped the car and got out to look, there were plenty of tell-tale signs; it isn’t easy, even in 6 months, to wipe out a thousand years of history without leaving a trace. There were a few pieces of masonry, a broken tile, a twisted rod of steel from some concrete extension and – a sure sign that people had once lived here – the cactus hedges, which the Palestinians use to protect their gardens and orchards against marauders, were starting to grow back. They are very hard to eradicate.”[19] 1970, the illegal settlement “Mevo Horon” was built on the lands of Beit Nouba. Three years later, the Jewish National Fund of Canada funded the establishment of a recreational park, the Canada Park, on the ruins of Imwas and Yalu. Zahda Abu Qtaish from Imwas remarked when she first visited the Canada Park: “I couldn't believe it …My home was down to the ground. They had turned the village into a park. They called it Canada Park. I cried and cried.”[20] Ahmad Abu Ghoush from Imwas talked of his visit to the park: “When returning to the park I had mixed feelings. It’s very hard, standing on the ruins of where you used to live while seeing people laughing, eating and enjoying themselves.”[21]

The ethnic cleansing of the 3 Latroun villages is only one example of the on-going ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the Judization of Jerusalem. In 1948, Israel occupied 85% of Jerusalem (the west part), 4 % were declared No-Man’s land, and the remaining 11% (including with the Old City) fell under Jordanian rule. Up to 80,000 Palestinians were forced out of their homes in West Jerusalem and 40 surrounding villages. The villages were wiped off the face of the earth and the homes, lands and property confiscated. In June 1967, during and after the war,  Palestinians were expelled from East Jerusalem and the surrounding villages, like the Latroun villages. The war was officially over on the 10th of June, 1967 and on the night of 10/11th of June, Israel began with its first measures to Judize East Jerusalem: the ethnic cleansing and destruction of the Magharbeh Quarter and the Al-Sharaf neighbourhood of the Old City. Given only 3 hours notice, the residents of the Magharbeh Quarter were ordered to pack their belongings and leave. The Quarter was then destroyed to make place for a plaza in front of the Western Wall. Palestinians living in Al-Sharaf neighbourhood were also expelled to enlarge the Jewish Quarter. Among others, Ben-Gurion, Dayan, Kollek and Lahat were responsible for the destruction of these Palestinian neighbourhoods. The eviction and destruction was carried out rapidly to avoid international attention and criticism. The residents were removed by force from their houses by Israeli soldiers. The bulldozers were ready, and the orders were to finish the eviction and destruction that very same night. Al Sharaf neighbourhood and the Magharbeh Quarter were emptied of their residents: over 6000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes and an estimated 135 houses were destroyed in the Old City. The boundaries of Jerusalem were redrawn by central command chief at the time, Rahavan Ze’evi. “The line he drew “took in not only the 5 km² of Arab east Jerusalem – but also 65 km² of surrounding open country and villages, most of which never had any municipal link to Jerusalem. Overnight they became part of Israel’s eternal and indivisible capital.”[21] In 1980, East Jerusalem was annexed to Israel.

Major General Narkiss, who was Commanding General of the Central Command in 1967 and had approved the destruction of the Magharbeh Quarter, recalled before his death in 1997 that a few hours after the capture of East Jerusalem, he was urged by Rabbi Goren to blow up the Aqsa mosque. Although Rabbi Goren’s wish was not fulfilled, it was the first of many future attempts by fanatic Jews and the Israeli government to destroy the Aqsa, whether directly by attempts to burn it or indirectly by building tunnels underneath it. Excavations beneath the Aqsa mosque and the area surrounding it continue, and the several tunnels dug beneath it weaken its foundations. At the same time, much needed renovations to the Aqsa and its surroundings are not permitted. Today, there is almost no Palestinian neighbourhood in Jerusalem that is not threatened with destruction, demolition and ethnic cleansing. Despite international criticism, Israel goes on in its Judization of Jerusalem. While illegal Jewish settlers from all around the world are allowed to buy property in Jerusalem and settle in it, and illegal settlements are rapidly expanding with ring after ring of settlements suffocating the city and the surrounding Palestinian villages and towns, Palestinian Jerusalemites are losing their homes and their lands and their birth right in their city Jerusalem. While Israel continues its brutal military occupation and the destruction of Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, Palestinians have two “prime ministers” and two sets of “cabinets” and a “legislative council” whose building is off-limits to Palestinians and where the “representatives of this so-called authority” are either locked up in Israeli jails, in the Gaza open-air prison or the West Bank ghettos or need Israeli permits to move between the Zones A, B or C, D, E and F and all the rest. Maybe while they fight over who gets to be the next president, they might want to stop for a minute and remember that the state they are fighting to rule is STILL under military occupation and that “their” people are either being massacred or expelled by this brutal occupation.

Today, the original inhabitants of the Latrun villages and their descendants are scattered around the world, some live in the Ramallah area, others in Jordan.  Adams found it difficult to convince editors to publish articles about the Latroun villages. “The Israeli government and whoever in the army command gave the order to destroy the villages, must have thought that it was possible to rearrange both history and geography in this way: that if they carted away the rubble and raked over the ground and planted seedlings where the homes of 9000 people had been, all of which they did, they would be able to get away with it. Why? Because of the Holocaust, and because Western newspaper editors don’t like to be called anti-Semitic.”[23] When Israel offered money to the inhabitants of the Latroun as compensation for their stolen lands and destroyed houses, they refused. Ahmad Abu Ghoush from Imwas remembers: “My father was on the committee that negotiated with Israel. They were offering money as compensation for our land and homes. My father told them `we will not accept all the money in the world for one dunum of Imwas, and we will not accept one dunum in heaven for one dunum in Imwas!`. The Israeli’s told him that he had three choices `…one, you can go the same way as Abdul Hameed (an exiled Palestinian activist for the Right of Return); two – prison; three – put something sweet in your mouth and keep quiet!”[24] For Zahda Abu Qtaish and all those expelled from the Latroun, things are clear: “I see everything; I remember everything; I will never forget.”[25]

Names of Latroun inhabitants killed under the rubble of their houses destroyed by the Israeli army, or on the road when they were expelled by the Israeli army:[26]

Hajar Khalil

Zaynab Hasan Khalil

Yamna Abu Rayalah

Fatmah Al Qbeibah

Hadia Al Qbeibah

Riyadh ElSkeikh

Hasan Nimer Abu Khalil

Hasan Shukri Abu Ghosh

Amnah Al Sheikh Hussain

Ayshah Salamah

Ahmad Hassan Al Saed

Ali Ismael Abdullah

Khaleel Jazar

Muhammad Abu Illas

Zaynab Ahmad Musa

Isa Ziyada

Hussein Hurani

Ali Alarab

Naimeh Hammad

Halimeh Hamadallah

Sabha Alarab

Fadda Ziyad

Sabha Mallah

Mahmoud Khalil

Ibrahim Shueibi

Suheil Musa

Abdel Rahim Tayeh

Isa Ibrahim

Abdel Karim Nimer

Lutfi Mahmoud

Hassan Abu Rahhal

Mahmoud Ali Baker

Al Abed Ayyad

Isa Muhammad

Abdallah Zuhdi

Bakr Hasan Shukri

Zuheir Zuhdi

Isa Abu Isa

The one year old daughter of Ahmad Atiyah

Sources:

www.emwas.org

www.palestineremembered.com

www.alhaq.org

www.nakbainhebrew.org

www.cactus48.com

http://izayid.tripod.com

www.canpalnet-ottawa.org

http://yayacanada.blogspot.com/2009/01/wiped-off-map.html

www.palestinemonitor.org

www.youtube.com

www.palestine-encyclopedia.com

http://prrn.mcgill.ca

http://www.ynbu3.com/vb/showthread.php?t=2103