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Scottish Friends of Palestine
Briefing Paper
October 2010
The occupation is corrupt, and it corrupts by its very nature. It denies all human rights, including the right to property. It fills the occupied territories with an atmosphere of general lawlessness. It enriches the occupier and everybody connected with him. It creates a climate of wanton cynicism, an environment of "anything goes". Such an atmosphere does not stop at the Green Line. It permeates the state of the conqueror. Uri Avnery 31.5.08
No words to console Gaza child after mother is killed by Israeli shelling Vittorio Arrigoni 26 July 2010
Flechettes are small metallic daggers with barbed points, four centimeters long with four small fins in the back. According to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, flechettes are loaded into shells fired by tanks. When the shells explode in mid-air, 30 meters from the ground, they propel a swarm of 5,000 to 8,000 flechettes, covering a cone-shaped radius, 300 metres wide and 100 metres long
The Abu Said family are Bedouin whose isolated farm is located near Gaza's boundary with Israel in the vicinity of Johr al-Dik. For the last forty years, the family never had any major problems with their belligerent Israeli neighbors. Abu Said, the family patriarch, explained that after the first and second Palestinian intifadas and following the start of the siege on Gaza, the threat of being shot by Israeli soldiers forced him to stop cultivating plots of land closest to the border. Twenty years ago, the family could still plough their property near the border, while in recent times they've had to retreat 400 meters, with considerable losses to their harvest. Beautiful orchards brimming with fruit once prospered; now even the trees' roots are gone.
This year, Israel's brutal policies and actions affected the family directly.
Around 8:45pm on 13 July, 2010, a few of the women of the family were enjoying the cool of the evening in the courtyard in front of their house. They heard a muffled shooting sound, followed soon after by another, and then by a loud buzzing noise, as if a swarm of insects was approaching at full speed. The facade of their home was reduced to Swiss cheese and the flesh of the women was attacked.
Without provocation, an Israeli tank fired two artillery shells at the family's home. Amira Jaber Abu Said, 30, was hit and wounded in the shoulder by a piece of shrapnel and by steel darts, called flechettes. Her sister-in-law, 26-year-old Sanaa Ahmed Abu Said, was wounded in the foot. Panicking, they took shelter inside their home and called an ambulance. Meanwhile, from the direction of the nearby military turret, an Israeli armor-plated vehicle was stationed underneath and a machine gun was still shooting toward the family and continued to do so for a solid ten minutes.
After being delayed for 15 minutes by Israeli troops, ambulances reached the family farm. However, the paramedics were forced to flee as soon as they arrived under threat of Israeli fire.
Ali Abu Said, a family member, said in an interview "After Amira and Saana were wounded, we continued to call for the Re Crescent ambulance. After 15 minutes the paramedics arrived in our area, but they told us they couldn't get to our house because the Israeli soldiers wouldn't given them permission. They threatened to shoot them if they had gotten near. They've had to go back to where they'd come from, in Deir al-Balah."
After an hour of apparent calm, Nema Abu Said, a 33-year-old mother of five, realized that her youngest child, Nader, was still asleep outside the family home. Nema rushed out to find Nader when another dull shot was heard and she was hit by a round of flechettes, and was killed on the spot. Her brother-in-law, Jaber Abu Said, 65, was wounded by flechettes in his right thigh.
The family continued to call in vain for ambulances. The Israeli military allowed a Red Crescent ambulance to enter the area two hours later and retrieve the dead woman and three injured family members.
Israel's winter invasion, dubbed "Operation Cast Lead," resulted in the deaths of more than 1,400 Palestinians, the vast majority of whom were civilians, including more than 300 children. On 27 January, 2009, Amnesty International compiled a list of prohibited weapons that the Israeli forces used against the population of Gaza.
Flechettes are small metallic daggers with barbed points, four centimeters long with four small fins in the back. According to the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem, flechettes are loaded into shells fired by tanks. When the shells explode in mid-air, 30 meters from the ground, they propel a swarm of 5,000 to 8,000 flechettes, covering a cone-shaped radius, 300 meters wide and 100 meters long ("Flechette shells: an illegal weapon").
Although flechette shells are considered an illegal weapon, Israel continues to use them. In 2002, the Israeli high court rejected a petition presented by Physicians for Human Rights-Israel and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights to end use of the flechettes in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. Flechettes were also used by Israel during is July 2006 invasion of Lebanon.
On 5 January 2009, in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip, numerous flechette shells were fired onto a main street, killing two civilians. Wafa Nabil Abu Jarad, a 21-year-old mother expecting twins, and 16-year-old Islam Jaber Abd al-Dayem were both killed by the darts.
Similarly, on 16 April 2008, Fadel Shana, a cameraman for Reuters news agency and two children nearby were also killed by flechettes. Shana was filming in Johr al-Dik, a few hundred meters from the Abu Said family's farm, when he was hit by a tank shell.
In spite of the attack and Nema's death, the Abu Said family will remain on the farm. They will do this out of a sense of pride, a desire to live and die on their own property, and because they have nowhere else to go.
Jaber, a member of the Abu Said family and a survivor of the attack, explained: "No form of resistance activity has ever taken place anywhere near our farm, ever. No threat whatsoever to Israel and its soldiers exists. I really don't understand why they've done this to us."
Meanwhile, young Nader asks relatives and visitors about his mother. None of his relatives have yet found the right words to explain to this innocent child what happened to his mother. Do those words actually exist?
"Life is paralysed here," says 45-year-old Sami Abu Ouaf, an unemployed father of seven, who lives at the Buriej camp in the middle of the Gaza Strip. "And this is the price we are paying for democracy.
"I never imagined this kind of punishment -- having my electricity, water and gas cut off -- for casting my vote," he adds. Abu Ouaf needs to keep a sharp eye on the time to make sure he doesn't miss the rationed supply when it comes. "It's democracy by candlelight -- if one is lucky enough to afford candles."
Gaza children shelled with flechette bombs Adie Mormech 27 July 2010
Haitham Thaer Qasem, a four-year-old boy and an only child, was asleep on a hospital bed, occasionally gasping for breath through the apparatus around his nose. He had suffered deep nasal trauma, and flechette darts from the bomb were still embedded in his tiny body, through his back, right elbow and right leg. He was 200 metres from the impact of the bomb
"She came in through the front door and it wasn't clear she was injured. Suddenly a lot of blood came from her nose and she vomited, all of the family saw this -- her little brothers were very scared. She had just been playing in the front of the house."
That is how Nihed al-Massry describes what happened to her daughter, nine-year-old Samah Eid al-Massry, after the Israeli army reportedly shelled and fired four bombs into and around a residential area in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza Strip, on 21 July. Samah is now being hospitalized in serious condition, suffering from extensive blood loss and very low haemoglobin. She was hit by shrapnel and flechettes from a nail bomb that landed 100 meters away, causing internal bleeding to the chest and severe head trauma. Nails are now embedded throughout her body. Three other children were wounded in the attack.
Two young men were killed; Muhammad al-Kafarneh, 23, suffered severe shrapnel injuries to the back and chest and Kasim al-Shinbary, 19, was wounded by nails embedded in his skull and shrapnel his back. It was unclear earlier whether they were resistance fighters or if they were civilians.
Haitham Thaer Qasem, a four-year-old boy and an only child, was asleep on a hospital bed, occasionally gasping for breath through the apparatus around his nose. He had suffered deep nasal trauma, and flechette darts from the bomb were still embedded in his tiny body, through his back, right elbow and right leg. He was 200 meters from the impact of the bomb.
Haitham's mother was standing off to the side, quietly crying while one of his aunts at his bedside explained what happened. "We had asked Haitham to get shopping for [his mother] from the market, then we heard the bombings and somebody came to our home and told our family that he was in the hospital and was injured in the bombing. We came quickly to the hospital."
Meanwhile, Samah's doctor explained that the girl's blood loss was a major concern. Her injuries are exacerbated by the fact that she, like three of her brothers, already suffers from the blood condition thalassemia and the drug to treat the condition, Exjade, is scarce because of the Israeli blockade. She was clearly in pain and confused, trying to remove the nasal tubes. Her mother showed us the bandages on her chest.
Her doctor, Muhammad Abu Hassan, described her situation as "semi-critical."
"She was in very bad condition when she arrived -- it's difficult for children and very traumatic to insert a chest tube for small children -- very painful. Blood was mainly coming from the chest. We will have to perform surgery and we will further explore her abdominal pain," he explained.
The al-Massry family has been affected by Israeli attacks before. Samah's four-year-old brother Ryad was injured during Israel's three weeks of attacks on the Gaza Strip during winter 2008-09 when more than 400 Palestinian children were killed.
"Our house was hit during the war, a neighbor was killed inside and our son suffered severe head injuries. He wasn't cared for and because of this his sight is now permanently damaged."
As we left Samah, she had begun to cry, moaning in serious discomfort and confusion. There were two more injured children in the hospital from the attack, also from the al-Massry family in Beit Hanoun: Azzam Muhammad al-Massry, 11, who suffered a severely fractured left elbow and Ibrahim Wasseem al-Massry, 4, with light injuries to his abdomen.
The previous week in Gaza, Nema Abu Said, a 33-year-old mother of five, was killed by Israeli shelling as she went outside frantically looking for her youngest son after a previous round of shelling. Three more family members were injured by the flechette shells, many of the darts remaining permanently embedded in their bodies.
Ethnic cleansing in the Israeli Negev Neve Gordon 29 July 2010
“A whole village comprising between 40 and 45 houses had been completely razed in less than three hours.”
A menacing convoy of bulldozers was heading back to Be'er Sheva as I drove towards al-Arakib, a Bedouin village located not more than 10 minutes from the city. Once I entered the dirt road leading to the village I saw scores of vans with heavily armed policemen getting ready to leave. Their mission, it seems, had been accomplished.
The signs of destruction were immediately evident. I first noticed the chickens and geese running loose near a bulldozed house, and then saw another house and then another one, all of them in rubble. A few children were trying to find a shaded spot to hide from the scorching desert sun, while behind them a stream of black smoke rose from the burning hay. The sheep, goats and the cattle were nowhere to be seen – perhaps because the police had confiscated them.
“A whole village comprising between 40 and 45 houses had been completely razed in less than three hours.”
Scores of Bedouin men were standing on a yellow hill, sharing their experiences from the early morning hours, while all around them uprooted olive trees lay on the ground. A whole village comprising between 40 and 45 houses had been completely razed in less than three hours.
I suddenly experienced deja vu: an image of myself walking in the rubbles of a destroyed village somewhere on the outskirts of the Lebanese city of Sidon emerged. It was over 25 years ago, during my service in the Israeli paratroopers. But in Lebanon the residents had all fled long before my platoon came, and we simply walked in the debris. There was something surreal about the experience, which prevented me from fully understanding its significance for several years. At the time, it felt like I was walking on the moon.
This time the impact of the destruction sank in immediately. Perhaps because the 300 people who resided in al-Arakib, including their children, were sitting in the rubble when I arrived, and their anguish was evident; or perhaps because the village is located only 10 minutes from my home in Be'er Sheva and I drive past it every time I go to Tel Aviv or Jerusalem; or perhaps because the Bedouins are Israeli citizens, and I suddenly understood how far the state is ready to go to accomplish its objective of Judaising the Negev region; what I witnessed was, after all, an act of ethnic cleansing.
They say the next intifada will be the Bedouin intifada. There are 155,000 Bedouins in the Negev, and more than half of them live in unrecognized villages without electricity or running water. I do not know what they might do, but by making 300 people homeless, 200 of them children, Israel is surely sowing dragon's teeth for the future.
Nixon Center debate, "Israel; Asset or Liability?" Chas Freeman’s prepared remarks 20/07/ 2010
Is Israel a strategic asset or liability for the United States? Interesting question. We must thank the Nixon Center for asking it. In my view, there are many reasons for Americans to wish the Jewish state well. Under current circumstances, strategic advantage for the United States is not one of them. If we were to reverse the question, however, and to ask whether the United States is a strategic asset or liability for Israel, there would be no doubt about the answer.
American taxpayers fund between 20 and 25 percent of Israel’s defense budget (depending on how you calculate this). Twenty-six percent of the $3 billion in military aid we grant to the Jewish state each year is spent in Israel on Israeli defense products. Uniquely, Israeli companies are treated like American companies for purposes of U.S. defense procurement. Thanks to congressional earmarks, we also often pay half the costs of special Israeli research and development projects, even when , as in the case of defense against very short-range unguided missiles -- the technology being developed is essentially irrelevant to our own military requirements. In short, in many ways, American taxpayers fund jobs in Israel’s military industries that could have gone to our own workers and companies. Meanwhile, Israel gets pretty much whatever it wants in terms of our top-of-the- line weapons systems, and we pick up the tab.
Identifiable U.S. government subsidies to Israel total over $140 billion since 1949. This makes Israel by far the largest recipient of American giveaways since World War II. The total would be much higher if aid to Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and support for Palestinians in refugee camps and the occupied territories were included. These programs have complex purposes but are justified in large measure in terms of their contribution to the security of the Jewish state.
Per capita income in Israel is now about $37,000 -- on a par with the UK. Israel is nonetheless the largest recipient of U.S. foreign assistance, accounting for well over a fifth of it. Annual U.S. government transfers run at well over $500 per Israeli, not counting the costs of tax breaks for private donations and loans that aren’t available to any other foreign country.
These military and economic benefits are not the end of the story. The American government also works hard to shield Israel from the international political and legal consequences of its policies and actions in the occupied territories, against its neighbors, or ‘ most recently ‘ on the high seas. The nearly 40 vetoes the United States has cast to protect Israel in the UN Security Council are the tip of iceberg. We have blocked a vastly larger number of potentially damaging reactions to Israeli behavior by the international community. The political costs to the United States internationally of having to spend our political capital in this way are huge.
Where Israel has no diplomatic relations, U.S. diplomats routinely make its case for it. As I know from personal experience (having been thanked by the then Government of Israel for my successful efforts on Israel?s behalf in Africa), the U.S. government has been a consistent promoter and often the funder of various forms of Israeli programs of cooperation with other countries. It matters also that America , along with a very few other countries , has remained morally committed to the Jewish experiment with a state in the Middle East. Many more Jews live in America than in Israel. Resolute American support should be an important offset to the disquiet about current trends that has led over 20 percent of Israelis to emigrate, many of them to the United States, where Jews enjoy unprecedented security and prosperity.
Clearly, Israel gets a great deal from us. Yet it’s pretty much taboo in the United States to ask what’s in it for Americans. I can’t imagine why. Still, the question I’ve been asked to address today is just that: what’s in it -- and not in it -- for us to do all these things for Israel.
We need to begin by recognizing that our relationship with Israel has never been driven by strategic reasoning. It began with President Truman overruling his strategic and military advisers in deference to personal sentiment and political expediency. We had an arms embargo on Israel until Lyndon Johnson dropped it in 1964 in explicit return for Jewish financial support for his campaign against Barry Goldwater. In 1973, for reasons peculiar to the Cold War, we had to come to the rescue of Israel as it battled Egypt. The resulting Arab oil embargo cost us dearly. And then there’s all the time we’ve put into the perpetually ineffectual and now long defunct ‘peace process.’
Still the US-Israel relationship has had strategic consequences. There is no reason to doubt the consistent testimony of the architects of major acts of anti-American terrorism about what motivates them to attack us. In the words of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is credited with masterminding the 9/11 attacks, their purpose was to focus "the American people ... on the atrocities that America is committing by supporting Israel against the Palestinian people ." As Osama Bin Laden, purporting to speak for the world’s Muslims, has said again and again: "we have . . . stated many times, for more than two-and-a-half-decades, that the cause of our disagreement with you is your support to your Israeli allies who occupy our land of Palestine ...." Some substantial portion of the many lives and the trillions of dollars we have so far expended in our escalating conflict with the Islamic world must be apportioned to the costs of our relationship with Israel.
It’s useful to recall what we generally expect allies and strategic partners to do for us. In Europe, Asia, and elsewhere in the Middle East, they provide bases and support the projection of American power beyond their borders. They join us on the battlefield in places like Kuwait and Afghanistan or underwrite the costs of our military operations. They help recruit others to our coalitions. They coordinate their foreign aid with ours. Many defray the costs of our use of their facilities with ‘host nation support’ that reduces the costs of our military operations from and through their territory. They store weapons for our troops, rather than their own troops’ use. They pay cash for the weapons we transfer to them.
Israel does none of these things and shows no interest in doing them. Perhaps it can’t. It is so estranged from everyone else in the Middle East that no neighboring country will accept flight plans that originate in or transit it. Israel is therefore useless in terms of support for American power projection. It has no allies other than us. It has developed no friends. Israeli participation in our military operations would preclude the cooperation of many others. Meanwhile, Israel has become accustomed to living on the American military dole. The notion that Israeli taxpayers might help defray the expense of U.S. military or foreign assistance operations, even those undertaken at Israel’s behest, would be greeted with astonishment in Israel and incredulity on Capitol Hill.
Military aid to Israel is sometimes justified by the notion of Israel as a test bed for new weapons systems and operational concepts. But no one can identify a program of military R & D in Israel that was
initially proposed by our men and women in uniform. All originated with Israel or members of Congress acting on its behalf. Moreover, what Israel makes it sells not just to the United States but to China, India, and other major arms markets. It feels no obligation to take U.S. interests into account when it transfers weapons and technology to third countries and does so only under duress.
Meanwhile, it’s been decades since Israel?s air force faced another in the air. It has come to specialize in bombing civilian infrastructure and militias with no air defenses. There is not much for the U.S. Air Force to learn from that. Similarly, the Israeli navy confronts no real naval threat. Its experience in interdicting infiltrators, fishermen, and humanitarian aid flotillas is not a model for the U.S. Navy to study. Israel’s army, however, has had lessons to impart. Now in its fifth decade of occupation duty, it has developed techniques of pacification, interrogation, assassination, and drone attack that inspired U.S. operations in Fallujah, Abu Ghraib, Somalia, Yemen, and Waziristan. Recently, Israel has begun to deploy various forms of remote-controlled robotic guns. These enable operatives at far-away video screens summarily to execute anyone they view as suspicious. Such risk-free means of culling hostile populations could conceivably come in handy in some future American military operation, but I hope not. I have a lot of trouble squaring the philosophy they
embody with the values Americans traditionally aspired to exemplify.
It is sometimes said that, to its credit, Israel does not ask the United States to fight its battles for it; it just wants the money and weapons to fight them on its own. Leave aside the question of whether Israel’s battles are or should also be Americ’?s. It is no longer true that Israel does not ask us to fight for it. The fact that prominent American apologists for Israel were the most energetic promoters of the U.S. invasion of Iraq does not, of course, prove that Israel was the instigator of that grievous misadventure. But the very same people are now urging an American military assault on Iran explicitly to protect Israel and to preserve its nuclear monopoly in the Middle East. Their advocacy is fully coordinated with the Government of Israel. No one in the region wants a nuclear-armed Iran, but Israel is the only country pressing Americans to go to war over this.
Finally, the need to protect Israel from mounting international indignation about its behavior continues to do grave damage to our global and regional standing. It has severely impaired our ties with the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims. These costs to our international influence, credibility, and leadership are, I think, far more serious than the economic and other burdens of the relationship.
Against this background, it’s remarkable that something as fatuous as the notion of Israel as a strategic asset could have become the unchallengeable conventional wisdom in the United States. Perhaps it’s just that as someone once said: ‘people will more easily fall victim to a big lie than a small one.’ Be that as it may, the United States and Israel have a lot invested in our relationship. Basing our cooperation on a thesis and narratives that will not withstand scrutiny is dangerous. It is especially risky in the context of current fiscal pressures in the United States. These seem certain soon to force major revisions of both current levels of American defense spending and global strategy, in the Middle East as well as elsewhere. They also place federally-funded programs in Israel in direct competition with similar programs here at home. To flourish over the long term, Israel’s relations with the United States need to be grounded in reality, not myth, and in peace, not war.
BY COLONIAL DESIGN - Boycott of Israel Endorsed Ann Stoler 10 September 2010
If democracy is defined, as Hannah Arendt did, by “the right to have rights” for an entire population within the state’s jurisdiction, the Israeli state cannot be considered a democratic one.
As someone who has worked for some thirty years as a teacher and student of colonial studies– on comparative colonial situations, colonial histories, and the violent and subtle forms of governance on which colonial regimes rely, it would be difficult not to describe the Israeli state as a colonial one. It would be difficult not to recognize Israel’s past and ongoing illegal seizure of Palestinian land, the racialization of every aspect of daily life, and the large-scale and piecemeal demolition of Palestinian homes, destruction of livelihoods, and efforts to destroy the social and family fabric, as decimation by concerted and concentrated colonial design. These are the well-honed practices of regimes that define colonialisms and have flourished across the imperial globe. As with other colonial regimes, the Israeli state designates and redraws geographic borders, suspends Palestinian civil rights and arbitrarily transgresses what for Israelis are recognized and guarded as private space. Israel is particular but it is not unique. Its techniques of occupation are based on unfounded uses of the legal apparatus of Israeli law. These are the practices of a colonial state committed to replacing and displacing a Palestinian population, and committed to its own expansion. That expansion is persistent, both surreptitious and blatant everyday: room by room in the old city of Jerusalem, house by house in the spread of settler communities, meter by meter as the placement of the Wall in the name of “security” cuts through homes and fields, and divides neighborhoods while it infringes further into legally recognized Palestinian territories. At issue is both a confiscation of history and a confiscation of the future possibilities of those who today find their bedding thrown on the streets in the middle of the night by Israeli settlers. If democracy is defined, as Hannah Arendt did, by “the right to have rights” for an entire population within the state’s jurisdiction, the Israeli state cannot be considered a democratic one. Nor can a democracy be founded on the principle of expulsion and the creation of a diasporic population shorn of its land, belongings and citizenship – a principle avidly embraced by Israel since l948. For these reasons, I confirm my support for the BDS international boycott of those Israeli institutions that actively or passively accept a status quo that condones and expands the occupation, violates international law, enforces military control and denies Palestinian rights to self-determination. (Ann Laura Stoler Willy Brandt Professor Of Anthropology and Historical Studies The New School for Social Research New York, New York 10003)
PA decision at UN a "betrayal of Gaza victims' rights" Press Release, 29 September 2010
Once again, we urge the PA to act as a genuine representative of Palestinian victims and not to sacrifice their rights on the altar of political expediency.
As members of the Palestinian Council of Human Rights Organizations, we strongly condemn the decision of the Palestinian Authority (PA) to support a UN Human Rights Council resolution that accords further time for ineffective domestic investigations, thus effectively failing to pursue accountability for crimes committed during the Israeli offensive code-named "Operation Cast Lead."
The death toll of Operation Cast Lead exceeded 1,400 Palestinians, 83 percent of whom were civilians, including 355 children; over 5,000 more were wounded. Nearly two years after the end of the Israeli offensive, the results of domestic investigations are self-explanatory: one conviction for stealing a credit card.
The figures above, coupled with the recent findings of the UN Committee of Experts on domestic investigations, clearly indicate that domestic investigations have failed to result in effective judicial mechanisms for victims due to a lack of genuine commitment to justice. International law, as reflected in the recommendations of the UN Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict [the Goldstone report], is unequivocal: when justice cannot be achieved through domestic mechanisms, recourse must be made to mechanisms of international justice.
Both the General Assembly and the Security Council have already been seized with the matter, therefore no further delay can be allowed and full implementation of the recommendations of the UN Fact-Finding Mission must be pursued. The Human Rights Council must expedite the cause of justice and recommend that the General Assembly urge the Security Council to refer the situation of Palestine to the International Criminal Court.
For decades, the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people have been forfeited in favor of political interests and an illusory peace process. The PA's decision not to pursue international criminal justice perpetuates this practice and gravely frustrates the rights of victims. By holding justice hostage to politics, the PA is extending impunity to Israeli military and political leaders. Justice is a necessary precondition for the achievement of any sustainable peace and must constitute the foundation of any peace negotiations.
Should the Member States of the Human Rights Council support such a politically-motivated resolution that whitewashes the rights of victims of international crimes, they will effectively fail to uphold their legal responsibility to ensure respect for international law and be complicit in the prevailing climate of impunity for violations committed in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
Once again, we urge the PA to act as a genuine representative of Palestinian victims and not to sacrifice their rights on the altar of political expediency.
Settlement freeze? It was barely a slowdown Ha’aretz 28 September 2010
Those who know the reality in the West Bank should not be surprised at what is written here. However it seems that it is possible nevertheless to take comfort from one thing - Benjamin Netanyahu will probably not win the Nobel Peace Prize but he is certainly likely to win the Nobel Prize for Physics, or at least Chemistry, in the name of the Israeli government, which discovered that - contrary to what scientists had thought until now - water is not the only substance that expands instead of contracting when it freezes.
The official statistics supplied by the Central Bureau of Statistics describe the story behind the 10-month construction moratorium in the West Bank. The story can be called many things but "freeze" is certainly not one of them. What took place in the past few months is, in the best case scenario, not more than a negligible decrease in the number of housing units that were built in settlements.
The data that appeared in the bureau's tables clearly show that. At the end of 2009, the number of housing units that were actively being built on all the settlements together amounted to 2,955. Three months later, at the end of March 2010, the number stood at 2,517. We are therefore talking about a drop of a little more than 400 housing units - some 16 percent of Israeli construction in the West Bank over that period.
The sounds of lamentation and wailing coming from the settler functionaries, for whom moaning is a profession, shouldn't surprise anyone. After all, they did not cease to whine even when Ehud Barak, "the leader of the peace camp," built 4,700 housing units for them in 2000, the only entire year he held the position of prime minister.
But the truth is that the settlers know better than anyone else that not only did construction in settlements continue over the last 10 months, and vigorously, but also that a relatively large part of the houses were built on settlements that lie east of the separation fence, such as Bracha, Itamar, Eli, Shilo, Maaleh Mikhmas, Maon, Carmel, Beit Haggai, Kiryat Arba, Mitzpeh Yeriho and others.
The real story behind the PR stunt known as the freeze took place in fact in the months prior to that, during which the settlers, with the assistance of the government, prepared well for the months of hibernation foisted upon them. In the half year that preceded the declaration of the freeze, which started at the end of November 2009, dozens of new building sites sprang up, especially in isolated and more extreme settlements east of the fence.
This piece of information is also well documented in the bureau's numbers. In the first half of 2009, they started to build 669 housing units in the settlements, and then, as the months wore on, the pace of construction increased. Thus in the second half of 2009, no fewer than 1,204 housing units were built - an increase of some 90 percent in construction starts as compared with the first half of the year.
That is a summary of the "Israbluff" behind the freeze. All that was left for the politicians to do in the past few months was - wearing expressions of sorrow - to invite television crews every few months to film how the administration's inspectors were destroying some miserable hut built in contravention of the freeze order.
If we add to these statistics the fact that the government announced in advance that it planned to approve, in any circumstances and with no connection to the "freeze," the construction of 600 housing units in various settlements, and the chaos and anarchy that exists in some settlements and outposts, making it possible for every person to build where and when he feels like it, we shall get quite a good picture of what really happened to the settlements in the past few months.
For their part, the Palestinians did not really ask for a total freeze on construction. They demanded, and justifiably so, to once and for all get recognition of the principle that negotiations on the future of the settlements not take place while they are continuing to be built up. Accordingly, the Palestinians agreed to turn a blind eye to the construction so long as the official freeze policy of the Israeli government continued.
Those who know the reality in the West Bank should not be surprised at what is written here. However it seems that it is possible nevertheless to take comfort from one thing - Benjamin Netanyahu will probably not win the Nobel Peace Prize but he is certainly likely to win the Nobel Prize for Physics, or at least Chemistry, in the name of the Israeli government, which discovered that - contrary to what scientists had thought until now - water is not the only substance that expands instead of contracting when it freezes.
Resistance Art Calendar 2011
As in previous years, Scottish Friends of Palestine can offer the Canadian based Resistance Art calendar for 2011 at a discounted price of £9 + £1.72 p & p
All proceeds will benefit young women artists in Gaza.
Carlos Latuff
A Cartoonist with an edge
In an appreciation of the solidarity work of international artists, Resistance Art is introducing a "World for Palestine" calendar series for international artists who are committed to the Palestinian struggle and social justice in the world. Their "World for Palestine" series begins with the talented and gifted cartoonist Carlos Latuff.
His work on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict made him a target to the Israeli terror machine; to the point that the Likud party in Israel (the ruling party today) openly called for his assassination. On the Likud party official web site they called for "Neutralizing Lattuf by any means necessary". When Carlos was asked about the open call to "assassinate him, he said "Of course, we can expect anything from IsraHell. If they can carry on "selective killings" of Palestinians, and carpet Beirut with tons of bombs murdering hundreds of civilians, what is the big deal about "neutralizing" one cartoonist in Brazil? Death threats, cheap attempts to terrorize me, however, will not prevent me from supporting Palestinians in their struggle against brutal Israeli occupation. The most that Likud creeps can do is silence me with a bullet, but they will never be able to silence my art."
The calendar can be viewed at www.resistanceart.com
Orders should be sent to:
Scottish Friends of Palestine
31 Tinto Road
Glasgow G43 2AL
Cheques should be made payable to Scottish Friends of Palestine (£10.72 per calendar)
Hugh Humphries
Sec
Scottish Friends of Palestine 0141 637 8046 Info@scottish-friends-of-palestine.org
Hugh Humphries
Sec
Scottish Friends of Palestine 0141 637 8046 Info@scottish-friends-of-palestine.org
