A privatized Nakba

Charlotte Silver, The Electronic Intifada, 18 November 2010

Palestinians describe the Israel Land Administration Law (ILA) quietly passed by the Israeli Knesset in 2009 as the final stage in the 62-year process of displacement from their homeland. The legislation is expected to have a long-term, disastrous impact on Palestinian lives and precludes the possibility of a negotiated resolution to the conflict.

This legislation builds on a gradual transition from a welfare-based government to one based on neoliberal policies that began in the 1980s. Recently, the evolution took a dramatic step, as Israel enacted laws that privatize its historically state-owned land. While very little media attention has been given to this development, this law has profound implications for Palestinians.

In contrast to most countries, Israel has retained state control over and ownership of the bulk of its land. During the establishment of the state in 1948, Israel expelled more than 700,000 Palestinians from approximately 400 villages and cities -- what Palestinians call the Nakba or catastrophe. Since then publicly-owned lands have accounted for 93 percent of the state's territory.

"The state nationalized all the land in 1948 in order to facilitate the misappropriation of Palestinians and the reallocation of land in favor of Jews," Shir Hever, an economist for the Alternative Information Center, commented to The Electronic Intifada.

Israel has operated a system wherein Israelis and Palestinians leased their property from the state. However, in August 2009, the Knesset made the first move to end this system by enacting the ILA, also referred to as the Land Reform Law. This law allows the state to transfer ownership of all developed land to an individual, private company or corporation. With egregious disregard for international law, Israel's Land Reform Law applies not only to land within Israel proper, but also to occupied East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights, which Israel annexed in violation of international law in 1981.

The passage of this bill has grave consequences for internally-displaced Palestinians living in Israel and Palestinian refugees everywhere. Palestinians have long maintained a legal claim to return to the land from which they were forcefully evicted from and have held on to the hope to do so.

"This is the last phase"

"This is the last phase. You confiscate, you use it for whatever you want; the last phase is to sell it," Suhad Bishara, an attorney for the Israeli human and civil rights organization Adalah, said.

A significant portion of Israel's state-owned land was acquired through expropriation and confiscation of Palestinian property during and immediately following the 1948 dispossession. Through subsequent laws, most extensively through the Absentee Property Law (1950) and Land Acquisition Law (1953), Israel was able to systematically prevent the return of Palestinian refugees who fled or were expelled from their homes in 1948.

These confiscations have continued until the present day. For example, in order to obtain a building permit, one must enter into a lengthy, bureaucratically arduous and very costly process that presents an insurmountable obstacle for Palestinians to build "legally." This gives Israel the excuse to wantonly demolish Palestinian homes and confiscate their land.

As the seemingly endless peace negotiations continue into their 17th year, Israel has been quietly making plans to sell this very land.

"Privatizing all of these lands is basically ending this whole story. The state is not a stakeholder anymore. You have third parties -- who are individuals and companies -- who will have a say. Because they are the stakeholders, they are the owners of the land," Bishara added.

Economist Shir Hever explained that by redrawing property lines and changing the registry of the land, Palestinians will have an even more difficult time to assert their claim to the land or ask for compensation for it.

"The land reform will mainly affect Palestinians living inside Israel, and Palestinian refugees, because the re-drawing of property lines and the changing of the registry of land may be used as a tool to conceal the evidence for the previous Palestinian ownership of the land, and make it harder for refugees to demand their property back, or a suitable compensation," Hever said.

"This means you cannot ask for the properties back at any stage, once privatized," Bishara said.

Neoliberalism and ultra-nationalism

"The timing of the reform [bill] coincides with the very deep shift within Israel from a republican, strong-state model of an ultra-nationalist welfare state, into a new model of neoliberalism, while still keeping the ultra-nationalism," Hever said.

The stated intention of the Land Reform bill is to improve efficiency by decreasing government bureaucracy and its intrusion into free market activity. However, Hever refutes this as merely a guise. He explains that the decision to privatize land now is rooted in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's desire to appeal to the upper class and real estate capitalists of the country in anticipation of an economic downturn within Israel that will mirror the western world's current economic woes.

"There are many ways to deal with inefficiency, and the 'free market' approach is only one out of many. It favors the rich and gives them the ability to manipulate the market by creating local monopolies. [For example,] once a real-estate tycoon has taken over all available land in a certain area, he or she can set the price for everyone who wishes to live there. That is the real reason for the reform, in my opinion -- Netanyahu needs the support of wealthy people who also fund his campaigns," Hever said.

The city of Jaffa provides a prescient example of the havoc that private development can wreak on the lives of the indigenous Palestinian population. Here, one can see how the neoliberal scheme can in itself be used as an ethnic cleansing device. Beginning in the 1960s, ILA sold the land of Jaffa to the highest bidders. This resulted in the proliferation of elegant and expensive condominium complexes and housing units along the desirable coastal land, pushing out the indigenous population to overcrowded and under-served neighborhoods.

According to Dr. Yosef Rafiq Jabareen, a senior lecturer at The Technion - Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, the privatization of land in cities throughout Israel would spell the final stage of the forced expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland which began in 1948. With privatization, the property of Palestinians would go on sale to capitalists and developers.

According to Adalah, "The legislation would eventually lead to the transfer of ownership, even without payment, to Jewish leaseholders and to a "clearance" sale of what remains of Palestinian property in many cities in Israel, such as Jaffa, Ramla, Lod, Beer Sheva, Tiberias, Beit Shean, Haifa and Acre, as well as the Palestinian property in West Jerusalem. Thus, the Palestinian Nakba would be completed in these cities in the future when the Palestinian space that has existed for many generations would be finally eliminated and it would become a case of privatized real estate for the enjoyment of Jewish developers, tycoons and individuals" ("The Geo-Political and Spatial Implications of the New Israel Land Administration Law on the Palestinians" Adalah's Newsletter, Volume 62, July 2009).

However, the Land Reform Law goes beyond this prototype that uses free market competition as a tool to drive out Palestinian residents. Within the bill and a previous agreement with the Jewish National Fund (JNF), Israel has ensured that the organization will be a dominating and guiding influence on how land sale transactions will be carried out from now on.

Ensuring that land sales will go primarily to Jewish buyers, the Land Reform Law has restructured the ILA so that it yields considerable control to the JNF. The Land Authority Council will become the new government body that oversees the sale of state land. The JNF, an organization whose charter directly prohibits it from leasing any of its land to non-Jewish residents, will now hold 6 out of 13 of the membership slots of the Land Authority Council.

With the JNF solidifying power over the process of privatization, it is impossible to characterize this reform as devoid of a political agenda. Israel's plan to sell the land of Palestinian refugees as well as land in the occupied Golan Heights and East Jerusalem belies any of its feigned gestures toward engaging with the international community on a real solution for peace.

Charlotte Silver is a litigation assistant at the American Civil Liberties Union, Immigrant Rights Project and was active in the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement at Stanford. She lives in San Francisco and can be reached at charlottesilver A T gmail D O T com.

Progressive Canadians must challenge JNF's charitable status

Yves Engler, The Electronic Intifada, 1 November 2010

Last month, Greg Selinger, the New Democratic Party (NDP) Premier of the Province of Manitoba, and two of his ministers visited Israel. Among other things, the official delegation strengthened the longtime "progressive" government's ties to the Jewish National Fund (JNF). The trip was a sad spectacle that should embarrass every Canadian who opposes racism. Indeed, J.S. Woodsworth, the Winnipeg-based founder of Canada's social democratic party, must be turning in his grave.

The province and JNF signed an accord to jointly develop two bird conservation sites while Manitoba water stewardship Minister Christine Melnick spoke at the opening ceremony for a park built in Jaffa by the JNF, Tel Aviv Foundation and Manitoba-Israel Shared Values Roundtable. During the trip Mel Lazerek, a regional JNF president, was also appointed Manitoba's special representative to Israel for Economic and Community Relations.

Manitoba's ties to this openly racist institution are shocking, but also part of a decades-old pro-Israel policy of the NDP that must be challenged by real progressives.

Shutting out Palestinian citizens of Israel, JNF lands can only be leased by Jews. A 1998 United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights found that the JNF systematically discriminated against Palestinians in Israel. According to the UN report, JNF lands are "chartered to benefit Jews exclusively," which has led to an "institutionalized form of discrimination." In 2005, Israel's high court came to similar conclusions. It found that the JNF, which owns 13 percent of the country's land and has significant influence over most of the rest, systematically excluded Palestinian citizens from leasing its property.

JNF Canada officials are relatively open about the racist character of the organization. In May 2002, Mark Mendelson, JNF Canada's executive-director for Eastern Canada, explained that "We are trustees between world Jewry and the land of Israel." This sentiment was echoed by JNF Canada's head Frank A. Wilson in July 2009. Wilson stated that the "JNF are the caretakers of the Land of Israel on behalf of its owners, who are the Jewish people everywhere around the world."

Established in 1910, JNF Canada is one of the most important Israel-focused charities registered in Canada. It raises about $10 million annually in tax-deductible donations. Despite projecting itself as "an environmentally friendly organization concerned with ecology and sustainable development," it is a linchpin of Zionist colonialism.

The Canadian branch of the JNF has been directly complicit in Palestinian dispossession. At the end of the 1920s, a JNF representative came to Canada to raise $1 million for the lands of Wadi al-Hawarith (or Hefer Plain). A 30,000 dunam (roughly 7,500 acres) stretch of coastal territory located about half way between Haifa and Tel Aviv, the land was home to a Bedouin community of 1,000 to 1,200 persons. Without consulting the Palestinians living on the land, in 1928 the JNF acquired legal title to Wadi al-Hawarith from an absentee landlord in France.

For four years the tenants of Wadi al-Hawarith resisted British attempts to evict them. In All That Remains historian Walid Khalidi explains that "The insistence of the people of Wadi al-Hawarith to remain on their land came from their conviction that the land belonged to them by virtue of their having lived on it for 350 years. For them, ownership of the land was an abstraction that at most signified the landlords' right to a share of the crop."

The conflict at Wadi al-Hawarith became a lightning rod for the growing Palestinian nationalist movement. In 1933 a general strike was organized in Nablus to support the tenants of Wadi al-Hawarith. Palestinians, especially those without title to their lands, resented the European influx into their homeland.

After the June 1967 War, JNF Canada raised $15 million to build Canada Park on illegally occupied land. Three peaceful villages (Beit Nuba, Imwas and Yalu) were demolished to make way for the park.

Despite repeated attempts, the 5,000 expelled Palestinians were not allowed to return home. A 1986 UN Special Committee reported to the Secretary-General that it considers it "a matter of deep concern that these villagers have persistently been denied the right to return to their land on which Canada Park has been built by the JNF Canada and where the Israeli authorities are reportedly planning to plant a forest instead of allowing the reconstruction of the destroyed villages" (UN Report A/41/680, 20 October 1986).

The JNF Canada, which launched a $7 million campaign to refurbish the park in 2007, replaced most traces of Palestinian history with signs devoted to Canadian donors such as the Metropolitan Toronto Police Department, the City of Ottawa and former Ontario premier Bill Davis. Inaugurated by former Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker in 1975, the Diefenbaker Parkway bisects the park.

In the early 1980s JNF Canada helped finance an Israeli government campaign to "Judaize" the Galilee, the largely Arab northern region of Israel. "The government is building Jewish settlements on our land, surrounding us and turning our villages into ghettos," Khateeb Raja, mayor of Deir Hanna, a Palestinian-Israeli town in the Galilee, told The Globe and Mail in 1981. Ishi Mimon told the paper that he planned to move his family to the newly settled "Galil Canada" area because "the Galilee should have a Jewish majority" (John Goddard, "14 settlements financed Canada's stake in the Galilee," The Globe and Mail, 27 June 1981).

JNF Canada's representative in Israel, Akiva Einis, described the political objective of Galil Canada stating that "The government decided to stop the wholesale plunder (by Israeli Arabs) of state lands [conquered in the 1947/48 war]. ... The settlements are all on mountain tops and look out over large areas of land. If an Arab squatter takes a plow onto land that is not his, the settlers lodge a complaint with the police."

JNF Canada spent tens of millions of dollars ($35 million was the total fundraising target) on 14 Jewish settlements in Galil Canada. In the contested valley of Lotem a stone wall and monument was erected, reported the Globe, with "hundreds of small plaques etched with names and home towns of Canadians who have contributed money to the Galilee settlements." Most of the donors to Galil Canada were Jewish, "but a Pentecostal congregation in Vancouver, the Glad Tidings Temple, has given $1-million."

Tawfiz Daggash, Deir Hanna's deputy mayor, denounced Canadian financial support for the settlements. "I want to say to the people of Canada that every dollar they contribute [to JNF] is helping the Israeli government in its attempt to destroy the Arab people here."

The JNF has long been supported by key figures in the Canadian political elite. Former Prime Ministers John Diefenbaker, Lester Pearson and Brian Mulroney have all spoken at JNF events and leading politicians continue to endorse the organization. In addition to this political support, the JNF is a registered charity, which means that up to a third of its budget effectively comes from public coffers. Yet Canada is supposed to outlaw institutional racism.

In 2007, Lebanese-Canadian Ronald Saba filed a detailed complaint concerning the JNF's charitable status with the Canadian Human Rights Commission. The claim was leveled at the "Government of Canada for violating the Canadian Human Rights Act and Canada Revenue Agency Policy Statement CPS-021 by subsidizing racial discrimination through granting and maintaining charitable status for the Jewish National Fund."

Considering the group's political connections, it's not surprising that Canadian officials refused to address Saba's complaint or follow-up ones (all the documents can be found at Montreal Planet Magazine). With the government's failure to address Saba's legitimate complaint, it is now time to launch a political campaign to push the Canada Revenue Agency to revoke the JNF's charitable status.

Victory won't be easy but the educational work involved in such an endeavor will be invaluable. With quasi-state status in Israel, the JNF is at the heart of Israeli apartheid and drawing attention to this institution is a way to discuss the racism intrinsic to Zionism.

Real progressives in Canada have never shied away from difficult, but important tasks such as fighting racism wherever it raises its ugly head.

Yves Engler is the author of Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid and The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy. For more information visit yvesengler.com.

The Red, White & Economic Blues

download: (1) or (2)

The current median house price in Detroit is $6000.

Good Morning!
You Shall Be Made Tenants On Your Own Land
Beyond Greed ~ How Bear Stearns ***ed Us All
The Great Depression ~ by design
The Dark Side Of The Looking Glass
Hollywoodism ~ Jews, Movies & The American Dream
israel admits no Hamas rockets were fired during Ceasefire
Red Cross declares humanitarian crisis in Gaza worse than Darfur
The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights
Vandalism to Palestinian property (graphic)
zooks surround Palestinian man and open fire
Gazan speaks of white phosphorus use
Like giving a piece of candy to the dying
Neil Young ~ When God Made Me
Hannukost ~ Mount Zion womb service
The Story Of Ikhlass
The Story Of Nadya
Johnny Cash ~ Hurt
Palestinian Land Ownership (map)
a contiguous, sovereign Palestinian state?
Endangered red-herring may become extinct
Jordan's refugees live in despair
Aimee & Henry Sing the Blues
Judged guilty until proven affluent
Three years in jail for journalist who threw shoe at bush
Mike Farell on taking a stand
Gaza War Crimes Investigation
George Galloway's Gaza Speech
Refugees in Lebanon
Obama = zionist puppet
operation enduring aftermath
Dear God, let me purge pure my heart, and be of Heaven's Hope a part!
Meet The Greatest President
Steve Vai ~ Alien Love Secrets

downloads:
How to kill the hate bills ~ Rev. Pike (Feb.17,2009)
Do it for the tribe ~ Unrepentant liars (Oprah)
Who brought the slaves to America?
jewish ritual murder on Oprah
israel runs over babies with tanks
Orthodox Christian Russia under communism
Ali-G show (Sacha Noam Baron Cohen) ~ Hunting the Jew
Ali-G show (Sacha Noam Baron Cohen) ~ "Throw the Jew down the Well"
israeli army vandalizes Palestinian homes and smears shit everywhere
Borat movie (Sacha Noam Baron Cohen) ~ "Make My Day, Jew!"
israeli soldiers swim in Palestinian drinking water
israeli Karen Levy ~ "I'm a little bit fascist"
racist israeli settlers ~ Tel Rumeida, Palestine (HQ)
Z100 (NY) The Morning Zoo jewish prank call
Obama's plan the same as bush

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Dream as Nightmare

By Jeremy Salt - Ankara

In the Guardian recently , Carlo Strenger launched yet another defence of Israel as the democracy in the Middle East. His defence of himself is that he opposes 'many of Israel's policies' and fights the occupation 'day by day' but this is only the occupation of land seized and plundered in 1967 and not the land seized and plundered in 1948. Much of this land was never allocated to the state of Israel in the first place and the sovereignty conferred on Israel gave the Zionists no right to take it from its owners. Had they remained, a different kind of democracy would have developed in Palestine, one in which the indigenous people would have retained control of their land through the ballot box. That was why they had to go.

Nothing less democratic can be imagined than the denial of the right even to live in the land of one’s birth. The Palestinian ‘refugees’ did not ‘emigrate’. They were not fleeing an oppressive political system. They were the majority and they were hounded out of their country because only without them could the ‘democracy’ known as Israel come into existence.

Mr Strenger implies that Palestinian Muslim or Christian citizens of Israel enjoy the same rights as Jewish citizens. Of course they don’t. Free speech and the right to vote are not the sum total of democracy. Institutional and structural racist discrimination against ‘the Arabs’ extends from the top to the bottom of Israeli society. It applies to land use and is reflected in health, welfare and education statistics and municipal grants and services provided to local communities. It is consecrated in the laws of the land and the rulings of the courts.

On the West Bank the settlers continue to create ‘facts on the ground’ confident in the knowledge that God and the state is behind them. They are certainly right on the second count. On the first no God worthy of worship could possibly countenance what the state of Israel has done to the Palestinians over the past six decades. From time to time the government tries to distance itself from settler ‘extremism’. In fact the settlers have been the instruments of government policy for more than four decades. The racism of the settlers is the racism of the state. The two are intertwined and inseparable. Occupation and settlement are inherently racist. It is no wonder that this country is filled with blind hatred of ‘the Arabs’.

In occupied Jerusalem the ‘democracy’ which Mr Strenger defends is waging a brazenly racist war on the Palestinians. Under international law the entire city is occupied. Apart from the question of sovereignty, 70 per cent of the buildings in the western half of the city were owned by Palestinian Muslims and Christians up till 1948. .In the eastern half they owned all but about two per cent of all property. The fine stone houses eagerly sought by Israeli politicians and wealthy American Zionists belong to Palestinians. These usurpers are living in stolen property. Time does not efface the rights of ownership. Albert Hourani has described Jerusalem as one of the best examples of a medieval Islamic city. Jerusalem does not belong to Israel and Israel needs reminding of that at every opportunity. The city was built over centuries by Palestinian Muslims and Christians. Its wall, streets, markets, mosques and madrasas were paid for with their taxes and their philanthropy. Yet since 1948 the city which is their collective heritage has been living through the blackest period in its history since the Crusades. The tolerance that marked Arab, Mamluk and Ottoman rule over the city for almost a millennium has been all but destroyed in the past four decades by an unholy combination of secular and religious fanatics. They want the Palestinians out of the way whatever it takes. What is good for the Jews is all that counts. They are unable to see that what is bad for ‘the Arabs’ cannot possibly be good for the Jews.

On the West Bank the centre of Hebron has been gutted and ethnically cleansed with the backing of the state. The Ibrahimi mosque has been taken over by soldiers and settlers. Racist fanatics protected by the Israeli military roam the streets. Elderly Palestinians are too frightened to venture outside their front doors. The young are stoned and cursed on their way to school. The state does nothing to stop them and in fact is outraged when the obvious parallels are drawn between these thugs and the National Socialists who humiliated Jews on the streets of Berlin in the 1930s. In East Jerusalem the fate of Hebron is now being imposed on Silwan by settlers funded and protected by the state. One should not leave out the Golan Heights, emptied of 90,000 Syrians in 1967 to make way for settlers, vineyards and day excursions for Jewish tourists. This is the brutal, ugly, racist reality of what Carlo Strenger derides as ‘the self-righteous left’s simplistic world’.

Every day brings a new offence. Israel’s lobbyists in the US are now arguing that Barack Obama’s insistence that settlement growth should be frozen amounts to ethnic cleansing of Jews. Unfortunately there are no signs that Obama has the backbone to stand his ground and take the fight straight back to Netanyahu and his arrogant confreres. What is emerging from ‘discussions’ between the two governments is a ‘compromise’ that will allow Israel to maintain ‘natural growth’ while ‘freezing’ settlement expansion for a limited period of time. As each settlement is set within a large area of expropriated land, the growth of existing settlements will continue as before. The number of settlers will continue to rise. In the case of Jerusalem Netanyahu has refused to accept even these restrictions. The ‘international community’ wrings its hands helplessly as though there is nothing it can do. Travelling to Britain and Germany, Netanyahu is given a red carpet welcome.

Israel is a powerful state living in the grip of a deep moral crisis which is the inevitable outcome of Zionist ideology. It could lead nowhere else. Herzl’s plan to drive the indigenous population of Palestine from their homes to make way for European settlers was deeply and intrinsically immoral if no more than typical of the European mindset at the end of the 19th century. His ‘dream’ was partly realized in 1948. The decision of the Israeli Minister of Education to remove the nakba from school textbooks is an attempt to bury the past. If it can be denied then it did not happen. Having embarked on a life of crime the state has simply followed generation after generation. The obliteration of Palestine meant the destruction of close to 500 villages and the calculated oppression of the Palestinians who remained within the borders of the new state in the name of ‘security’. It meant the theft of their land. It meant breaking anyone – organizations, individuals and states - who threatened to wrest the proceeds of this massive historical smash and grab from Israel’s hands. It led to war after war, the seizure of more land and the destruction of the basic human rights of more people as soon as the opportunity came up. It led to the construction of a wall and fences penning in the Palestinians as if they were wild animals (a metaphor indeed used by Benny Morris). It led to massacres and the steady growth of a deeply racist society which is at the same time aggressive, paranoid and undoubtedly deeply fearful at some subconscious level that one day it will have to pay for its crimes. This is the blind moral alley into which Israel has backed itself by putting an atavistic ideology ahead of humanity and universal values.

Israel has had its chances of peace and has rejected all of them. It has done nothing to come to terms with its enemies and everything to antagonize them. ‘Negotiations’ with Palestinian puppets and the heads of corrupt Arab regimes do not fall into the category of coming to terms with the enemy. With its conventional military forces, nuclear weapons and the apparently open-ended support of the US Israel may feel adequately insured against any challenge by the state surrounding it. Yet the danger signals have been flashing for years. Israel’s capacity to impose its will on the surrounding states by military means probably reached its peak in 1967. In 1973 Israel would have been defeated by the combination of the Egyptian and Syrian armies had Anwar Sadat actually wanted to defeat it.

In Lebanon - traditionally the weakest Arab state of all – Israel has suffered a series of strategic defeats at the hands of Hizbullah. It forced out of the occupied south after two decades of occupation and when it sought to teach Hizbullah a lesson in 2006 it was itself taught a lesson. Its ground forces could not even capture villages a few kilometers north of the armistice line. It was the air force that saved them from further humiliation. Now even Israel’s air superiority is being threatened. Since the end of the 2006 war Hizbullah has been augmenting its defences with ground to air missiles. Only a small number of Israeli aircraft (presently overflying Lebanon whenever they want) would have to be shot down for Hizbullah to clock up another psychological victory if Israel attacks Lebanon again.

Now Iran has moved into position as the next Middle East state to face attack by Israel. The prospect of the world’s first military attack on active nuclear installations do not disturb the dream-like somnolence of the ‘international community’. Israel is confident that it can attack Iran and get away with it but Iran has had five years of threats to work out how it is going to strike back. Israel has succeeded in setting up a trade between Iran and Palestine. The US has agreed to ratchet up the pressure on Iran and in return Israel will settle for ‘natural growth’ of its West Bank colonies. But if Iran does not respond to threats and sanctions Israel reserves its so-called right under its understanding with the US to go to war against Iran. There is no telling where such a war would lead and how it would end.

The ‘zionist dream’ is a nightmare. The Palestinians wake up to it every morning and it is still there. It is a succubus clinging to their backs and destroying their past, their present and their future but this is the role Israel has chosen for itself in the Middle East. This is where it wanted to be and apparently this is how the ‘only democracy in the Middle East’ wants to be. source

- Jeremy Salt is associate professor in Middle Eastern History and Politics at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey. Previously, he taught at Bosporus University in Istanbul and the University of Melbourne in the Departments of Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science. Professor Salt has written many articles on Middle East issues, particularly Palestine, and was a journalist for The Age newspaper when he lived in Melbourne.

Life in Palestinian Refugee Camps

By STEPHEN LENDMAN

Besides mass slaughter and destruction, wars create refugees, millions at times, uprooted, displaced and homeless, on their own somehow to survive. Israel's "War of Independence" was no different, dispossessing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, a story Western media reports don't explain or even mention.

In his book, "My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story," Ramzy Baroud recounted his father Mohammed's story. Born in 1938 in Beit Daras village, he saw it conquered, leveled and erased, except from the memory he took to his grave. A captive in his own land, he lived years as a Gaza Nuseirat camp refugee, raising his family including son Ramzy, dreaming always of going home, struggling as a freedom fighter to end decades of conflict, violence, occupation, and oppression, what Edward Said called "a slow death," shattered hopes, and inexorable toll of its incalculable horror to so many.

Spanning over seven decades of history and survivor recollections, it tells a powerful firsthand story of those who lived it, not the airbrushed Western version of the new Israeli state, born in blood, mass slaughter, destruction, and displacement of hundreds of thousands of survivors, to this day oppressed, harassed, intimidated, humiliated, attacked and arrested for being Muslims, not Jews on their own land, in their own country, illegally occupied for decades.

In his book "Behind the Wall: Life, Love, and Struggle in Palestine," Rick Wiles recounts other refugee stories, people he encountered firsthand in the West Bank, connecting them to their original villages, expulsion, daily life and dreams of return.

Abu Gaush shared his own 1967 experience, saying:

During the Six Day War, "My family fled to the mountains as we were frightened that 1948 was happening all over again....The soldiers emptied all the houses in the villages and forced everyone out onto the streets. The only direction left was to Ramallah, and they told us to go there. Other soldiers were saying, 'Go to Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) - all land before there is ours - and if you stop before (arriving), we will kill you.' "

Including poignant photos, Wiles' book includes seven sections, discussing: Memories of Exile, The Wall, The Spirit of Resistance, Purity and Love, Land of Palestine, Strength and Sumoud (steadfastness), and Dreams of Return, including his final image of a grandfather giving his original home's key to his son, symbolic of the continuing right to return struggle, what won't ever stop until succeeding.

Numbers of Palestinian Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons

Al Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, says Palestinian refugees today are the world's "longest suffering and largest refugee population." In its January 2010 report titled, "Survey of Palestinian Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons, 2008 - 2009," the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights (BRC) calls them "the largest and longest-standing case of forced displacement in the world today," numbering 9.8 million, increasing by about 100,000 a year.

Most are refugees, another 450,000 internally displaced. For over six decades, they've been denied solutions and reparations for their rights under international law and UN resolutions. An earlier article discussed BRC's report in detail, accessed through the following link:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/05/palestinian-refugees-and-internally.html

Life in Occupied Camps

Besides those internally displaced, Palestinians have lived in forced exile for decades throughout the world, most within 100 km of their original homes. Those in camps comprise about 21% of the total. Hundreds of thousands of others are in 17 unofficial camps in Occupied Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. About 79% live outside UNRWA's 58 camps, including many in West Bank villages and cities, about 100 locales comprising over half the population.

In 2008, the European University Institute's Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies published a report titled, "Palestine Refugee Camps: Disciplinary Space and Territory of Exception," examining daily camp life in 59 camps: 19 in the West Bank, 8 in Gaza, 12 in Lebanon, 10 in Jordan, and 10 in Syria. Saying they're not "natural" settings, they become "slum areas" or under-developed urban sprawls, some "open spaces," others "closed."

In Lebanon, for example, "the gap between the numbers of camp and urban refugee dwellers....is enormous," compared to Jordan and Syria where differences are minimal, yet even "country-by-country analysis does not in any way suggest internal homogeneity, because the question of camp locations within the different countries matters as well."

Some are more urban, other peripheral or rural, the differences among them huge, including job discrimination, poverty, and overall conditions. According to Norweigian Institute for Applied Social Science surveys in Jordan and Syria, Palestinian refugee living conditions for those outside camps differ little from host country populations. In camps, however, it's worse, especially in Lebanon. Education there is one of many problems, 60% of 18 - 29 year old Palestinians not finishing school.

In Lebanon and Jordan, 60% of camp homes lack proper sanitary installations for safe drinking water. Population density is a major issue, too many people occupying too little space, creating an enormous environmental and public health problem. Buildings are crammed together in narrow alleys, with little natural light, exposure to hazardous substances, inadequate temperature control, and poor ventilation. In Lebanon, the infant mortality rate is 239 per 100,000 births, and chronic infant illnesses are up to three times higher than the country's norm.

The Schuman Centre's study preceded Cast Lead, so its Gaza analysis needed updating. The war displaced up to 90,000 people and caused mass destruction. Yet little reconstruction is possible with the Strip under siege and virtually all needed materials and spare parts banned. In addition, three years of closure wrecked Gaza's economy, and sent unemployment and poverty levels soaring - the former up to 65%, the latter 80% with 96% of the Strip's industrial capacity shuttered, leaving well over 80% of the population aid-dependent. Three-fourths of Gazans live in camps, but all of them get below minimal amounts of everything, struggling daily to survive.

Overall, Palestinians see camps as "symbols of illegitimacy," a disconnected gray zone under occupation conditions. Of the 4.8 million registered by UNWRA, about 1.2 million live in Gaza, another 800,000 in the West Bank in 27 camps - 19 in the West Bank, 8 in Gaza, the rest in towns and villages.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), their 2009 dependency ratio is 85.3% in Gaza and 72.1% in the West Bank. High unemployment and poverty remain grave in both areas, especially in Gaza. So does public health and malnutrition, causing growing levels of illnesses and chronic diseases.

UNWRA calls the refugee population "victims of health inequalities," the occupation, of course, the main contributor, resulting in a chronic imbalance between needs and demands on the one hand, and resources and other constraints on the other. Healthcare, personal safety, legal and political protection, and human welfare are fundamental human rights. Under occupation, they're consistently denied, especially in Gaza under siege.

Despite established laws, no international body has an explicit mandate to protect Palestinian refugees. After the 1948 Nakba, the UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine (UNCCP), UNWRA, and later the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) were supposed to provide aid, protection, and reparations, but supplied little. In addition, UN agencies, the ICRC, and world community, in deference to Israel, avoided durable solutions, including their obligation to enforce binding international law provisions.

Moreover, refugees are seen more as needing humanitarian aid than having mandated rights, even though international law protects them, including their "inalienable right" of return. As a result, displaced Palestinians remain among the world's most neglected, abused people, including diaspora ones (the majority) excluded from the political process and peace negotiations.

The Palestinian National Authority (PA) represents those in the Territories alone, but, in fact, given the Hamas/Fatah split, only West Bank and East Jerusalemites. Most Palestinians are thus disenfranchised. As a result, a volunteer Civitas participant, a collective research project on exiled Palestinian communities, expressed her frustration, saying:

"Before the peace treaties, Palestinian political parties were more effective, and we had a voice: we worked properly! We made our voice heard to the entire world. But the world now hears only the voice of the Palestinian president, and his prime minister. As a citizen, I no longer have a voice. His voice is enough, (and he collaborates with Israel. Earlier) my voice was heard. If....peace....silence(s) me then I don't want it!"

Diaspora and internal refugees demand their legal rights. Those in Gaza and the West Bank can challenge their occupier directly. Those outside cannot. Without legal documents, passports, travel rights, identity papers, electoral involvement, and ownership and inheritance entitlements, they can't seek redress for decades of injustice, what Israel all along has denied, unchallenged by PA officials. Unless their collective voices are heard, the conflict's historical roots and their rights will go unaddressed, and they'll remain the world's "longest suffering and largest refugee population."

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

The "banality of evil" and israel's destruction. of al-Araqib

Joseph Dana writing from al-Araqib,
Live from Palestine, 10 August 2010

In the early hours of 10 August, Israeli forces destroyed -- for the third time -- the Bedouin village of al-Araqib in the northern Negev desert. Israel had first destroyed the village on 27 July as EI reported, and each time the villagers have attempted to rebuild. Joseph Dana witnessed the latest destruction.

We arrived in the darkness. The horizon was blurred from the desert night sky and all that could be seen was ruin. Piles of concrete, steel reinforcing bars and wood in places where the village once sat. In this maze of construction material there were small makeshift living spaces, barely suitable for the harsh desert climate. Simple tent structures consisting of four wood shafts and a black tarp was the only remains of this village.

We, Israeli and international activists, were invited to sit in these tents through the night and sip coffee in the cool desert night with the villagers. They told us about their livelihood now that the village is constantly facing demolition. Some talked about their military service in the Israeli army and their disbelief that the country they served could behave in such a way as to destroy their entire village. Others expressed hope that at least some Israelis understood the grave nature of their government and were standing arm in arm with them.

As the night closed and the light began to change, the first sounds of the demolition crew could be heard far off in the distance. Before we had time to blink, 200 fully clad police officers were on microphones telling us to leave and that any violence would be met with harsher violence. As soon as the voices on the microphones stopped, the bulldozers began to work. The place we had been sitting and having coffee through the night was leveled before our groggy, disbelieving eyes. We barely had time to register the fact that the village was being leveled, as the police began pushing us away from the living structures with extreme force.

A Bedouin woman sits in front of her rebuilt home in al-Araqib after it was destroyed by Israeli forces, again. (Joseph Dana)

The demolition crew worked efficiently and without pause. Every structure that served some form of life in the village was leveled and all the building materials from it were trucked away. As we were pushed further from the village, a couple of activists tried to sit inside or in front of the tents. This was met with violence by the police as people were thrown to the ground like rag dolls. At one point in the chaos, a professor of medieval history at Tel Aviv University was grabbed by a police officer, who quickly wrenched his hand behind his back. The professor was held like this for a number of minutes and then arrested. It is still unclear under what terms.

Finally, the police confined us to a hilltop and had us look over the village as it was destroyed. The water canisters, which are needed because Israel refuses to give the villagers water pipes, were broken and then placed on flat bed trucks to be carted away. The image of massive bulldozers flanked by heavily armed riot police destroying makeshift Bedouin living structures is something that no one would be able to forget. As soon as the forces left, the villagers began rebuilding what little they have left. Every week, their resources shrink and yet they rebuild. They have no choice.

All of the police officers and members of the demolition crew this morning were simply following orders. It was another day for them and due to the Israeli cultural understanding of the Bedouins and Palestinians as "nearly people," they will probably not lose a wink of sleep this evening. However, the complete destruction of the village of al-Araqib is yet another powerful example of the Israeli banality of evil.

Joseph Dana, a writer and filmmaker living in Jerusalem, is active in direct action groups such as Taayush and the Anarchists Against the Wall. His website is josephdana.com.

Homeless Take On lsraeli Forces

By MEL FRYKBERG

RAMALLAH, Aug 10, 2010 (IPS) - A bruising battle of will is taking place between Israeli security forces and Palestinians recently made homeless after two Palestinian villages were razed and hundreds left homeless.

During the last few weeks over a thousand heavily armed Israeli riot police, soldiers and police, at times accompanied by helicopters and bulldozers, have clashed with the expelled Palestinians and their supporters as the latter attempt to rebuild the villages.

Al-Araqib, a Bedouin village in Israel's Negev desert, was destroyed in a pre- dawn raid at the end of July to make way for a Jewish National Fund forest. The razing of the village was carried out despite pending legal action on land ownership that Al-Araqib residents have launched in the local Beer Sheva District Court.

During the destruction hundreds of Palestinians -- including at least 200 children - were left homeless. At least 45 homes, chicken co-ops, animal pens, carob trees and fruit orchards were leveled, and about 800 olive trees uprooted. A protesting Arab-Israeli member of the Knesset (the Israeli parliament) was amongst those injured.

The destruction of the village came two days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at a government meeting of the "threat" of losing Jewish majority in the Negev region. Bedouin constitute 25 percent of the population of the northern Negev, but occupy less than two percent of its land.

According to a media statement released by Human Rights Watch (HRW), "Israel has demolished thousands of Negev Bedouin homes since the 1970s and over 200 since 2009. The Land Administration also began spraying villagers' crops with herbicides in 2002 as a mechanism to cause evacuation, a practice deemed illegal by the Israeli Supreme Court in 2007."

HRW says thousands of Bedouin were displaced following the establishment of Israel in 1948. In the 1950s and 1960s Israel passed laws enabling the government to lay claim to large areas of the Negev where the Bedouin had formerly owned or used the land. Planning authorities ignored the existence of Bedouin villages when they created Israel's first master plan in the late 1960s.

The Negev Coexistence Forum, a Bedouin rights group, said in a statement that Al-Araqib existed before the creation of Israel in 1948, and that residents returned there after being evicted by the state in 1951.

Tens of thousands of Bedouin live in "unrecognised" villages in the south of Israel. Israel considers them "illegal", and has refused to connect them to basic services and infrastructure.

However, Israeli authorities granted large tracts of land and public funds for Israeli Jews to establish ranches in the area, and connected them to national electric and water grids despite the absence of proper planning permits, according to Israeli rights group Adalah. The ranches were legalised a month ago.

"It is clear to us that this action by the Israeli government is politically motivated and systematic discrimination. Here we have a large group of Israeli-Arabs who want to be part of Israel and this is how they are treated. It appears the Israeli government is shooting itself in the foot and the consequences will be bad," Noga Malkin from HRW told IPS.

Last week clashes broke out again, and structures were destroyed when Israeli security forces dispersed Al-Araqib villagers and their supporters as they tried to rebuild the village.

Meanwhile, across the Green Line, the internationally recognised border between Israel proper and the occupied Palestinian West Bank, many Palestinians were recently made homeless. Israeli authorities declared the decades-old village Farasiya in the northern West Bank a closed military zone, and razed it.

In the middle of July Israel's Civil Administration, which controls large swathes of the West Bank, demolished 55 structures, including animal shelters and agricultural buildings.

On Saturday Farasiya villagers, accompanied by Israeli and international sympathisers, tried for the third time to rebuild the village after it had been leveled twice during the last month.

Farasiya falls within Area C of the West Bank, which is under full Israeli control. Under the 1993 Oslo Accords Area C, which comprises approximately 60 percent of the territory, was meant to be slowly handed over to the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Instead, Israel has been enlarging and establishing new Israeli settlements and expropriating Palestinian land for the benefit of Israeli settlers in the area in violation of international law and UN resolutions. Farasiya village was located near to five of the illegal settlements.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says that more than a hundred structures in the Jordan Valley have been demolished in the last month.

"The spate of demolitions raises concerns over whether Israeli authorities could further escalate demolitions throughout Area C. More than 3,000 demolition orders handed down by Israeli officials to locals are still outstanding," says OCHA.

Residents from both villages, and their supporters, have vowed to return to the site of the destroyed villages and continue attempting to rebuild them, while the Israeli authorities have warned that they will take further action. "The recent plans of the government and the level of force used indicate longer and bigger clashes ahead," Malkin told IPS. (END)

West Bank home demolitions continue

Palestine Note , August 9, 2010

As Israeli-Palestinian peace talks stall, Israel’s military continues to raze Palestinian homes in the West Bank.Ma’an News Agency reported from Tubas in the West Bank Monday:
Israel’s Civil Administration began razing housing units Monday in the Ein Hilwa area of the northern Jordan Valley, campaign officials said.

Save the Jordan Valley campaign coordinator Fathi Ikhdeirat said Israeli authorities, accompanied by border guards, began tearing down structures and handing down stop-work orders to residents.

He described the move as an attempt “to clear the area of its indigenous people and include it into Israel and called on international human rights groups to intervene to bring the demolitions to a halt.

A spokesman for Israel’s Civil Administration did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

The US as arbiter for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has called on both parties not to take part in an inflammatory behavior, but Israel has demolished several West Bank structures as well as Arab homes within Israel with frequency over the past several months.

Ma’an said the Jordan Valley in particular has been “a target for demolitions by Israel’s Civil Administration.”

On Sunday, dozens of Palestinians as well as foreign activists rebuilt areas in the nearby Al-Farisiya village that were recently bulldozed by Israel’s Civil Administration.
Over the past 10 days, several shacks, homes and agricultural structures were torn down in the village by the administration, which has complete planning and building control over Area C. Last Thursday, the Civil Administration returned to the valley to demolish 23 structures rebuilt by residents and farmers.
Meanwhile, in the nearby Bardala village, locals said the Civil Administration distributed several stop-work orders to residents in late July.

The orders, known locally as “demolition orders,” demand that homeowners appear before a magistrates court to defend allegations. Because legal action at the court rarely succeeds, the stop-work orders essentially constitute a demolition order.

Ma’an News Agency reported from Tubas in the West Bank Monday:
Israel’s Civil Administration began razing housing units Monday in the Ein Hilwa area of the northern Jordan Valley, campaign officials said.

Save the Jordan Valley campaign coordinator Fathi Ikhdeirat said Israeli authorities, accompanied by border guards, began tearing down structures and handing down stop-work orders to residents.
He described the move as an attempt “to clear the area of its indigenous people and include it into Israel and called on international human rights groups to intervene to bring the demolitions to a halt.
A spokesman for Israel’s Civil Administration did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

The US as arbiter for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has called on both parties not to take part in an inflammatory behavior, but Israel has demolished several West Bank structures as well as Arab homes within Israel with frequency over the past several months.

Ma’an said the Jordan Valley in particular has been “a target for demolitions by Israel’s Civil Administration.”

On Sunday, dozens of Palestinians as well as foreign activists rebuilt areas in the nearby Al-Farisiya village that were recently bulldozed by Israel’s Civil Administration.

Over the past 10 days, several shacks, homes and agricultural structures were torn down in the village by the administration, which has complete planning and building control over Area C. Last Thursday, the Civil Administration returned to the valley to demolish 23 structures rebuilt by residents and farmers.
Meanwhile, in the nearby Bardala village, locals said the Civil Administration distributed several stop-work orders to residents in late July.
The orders, known locally as “demolition orders,” demand that homeowners appear before a magistrates court to defend allegations. Because legal action at the court rarely succeeds, the stop-work orders essentially constitute a demolition order.

Ma’an cited a recent UN report, saying some 86 Jordan Valley structures were razed two weeks ago, and another 17 were demolished the following week other parts of the West Bank.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanian Affairs said Palestinians living in Israeli-controlled Area C in the West Bank have no choice but to build illegally:

“The spate of demolitions raises concerns over whether Israeli authorities could further escalate demolitions throughout Area C,” a UN report said, noting more than 3,000 demolition orders handed down by Israeli officials to locals were still outstanding.

“Currently, it is nearly impossible for Palestinians to obtain building permits to maintain, repair or construct homes, animal shelters or necessary infrastructure in Area C,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its latest report on Area C.

Ma’an cited a recent UN report, saying some 86 Jordan Valley structures were razed two weeks ago, and another 17 were demolished the following week other parts of the West Bank.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanian Affairs said Palestinians living in Israeli-controlled Area C in the West Bank have no choice but to build illegally:

“The spate of demolitions raises concerns over whether Israeli authorities could further escalate demolitions throughout Area C,” a UN report said, noting more than 3,000 demolition orders handed down by Israeli officials to locals were still outstanding.

“Currently, it is nearly impossible for Palestinians to obtain building permits to maintain, repair or construct homes, animal shelters or necessary infrastructure in Area C,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in its latest report on Area C.

Uprooted Villagers Hold Fast During Ramadan

By Jerrold Kessel and Pierre Klochendler

JERUSALEM, Aug 18, 2010 (IPS) - On the eve of the start of Ramadan last week, Israeli police demolished the Bedouin village of al-Araqib in the Negev desert. It was the third time within two weeks that the village had been razed.

Unfazed, the Bedouin villagers immediately began rebuilding.

"We have already put back up some 20 of our huts, and we're putting up more every day -- despite the fast," village leader Sheikh Sayyah Abu Drim told IPS when reached by telephone a week after the last police action.

"We have nowhere else to go," said the Sheikh. More than 40 families live in al-Araqib.

At dawn last Tuesday, Israel Land Administration (ILA) officials, accompanied by a large police detail including over 100 border guards and mounted police, began their operation with the support of two bulldozers.

The police removed water tanks and the remains of several dozen makeshift structures that had been erected since the previous demolition only last week. Dozens of families including infants and elderly people were forcibly removed.

In a non-violent protest, a score of Israeli Jewish activists who had slept in the village in solidarity tried unsuccessfully to stay the police action.

"Who will reap all this hatred?" asked Arab Israeli legislator Talab al-Sana, arriving on the site. "The government found a solution for the Jewish settlers who were evacuated from Gaza (as part of Israel's 2005 unilateral withdrawal from the Palestinian area). Why not here?" said al-Sana.

After the previous forced eviction, Ilan Jan, an ILA official, said, "It is a test of their spirit. We're doing our job. Now, we'll file a claim against the illegal occupiers for the costs of the evacuation."

Another ILA official, Ortal Tzabar, confirmed that 850 olive trees had been uprooted and would be "replanted elsewhere."

Al-Araqib sits between the Israeli desert town Beersheba and the state-built Bedouin town Rahat. The al-Turi family says its members have lived on the site since the 19th century and that since then they have worked the land and paid taxes, that both Turkish and British documents testify. There is an old cemetery on the site.

"Tearing down an entire village and leaving its inhabitants homeless without exhausting all other options for settling longstanding land claims is outrageous," Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director of Human Rights Watch said in a statement.

Israel police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld maintained the police were simply acting on a court order issued 11 years ago but not executed. Rosenfeld added that that the al-Araqib residents were moved to an area close to Rahat where, he claimed, they had homes.

In 1951, three years after Israel's creation, the al-Araqibs, like many other Bedouin communities, were removed on the grounds that the area would be used for military training.

They were promised that their removal was only temporary and that they could return in six months. They have never been allowed back, but were allowed to graze their flocks. Several families returned to live on their land just over a decade ago.

"We are not invaders, nor squatters," said Sheikh Sayyah. "It is the state that has invaded us."

The repeated demolitions of the village have taken place despite the fact that the ownership issue is the subject of a complex court case before the Beersheba District Court.

Academic experts have already testified in court to support residents' land ownership rights.

An estimated 90,000 Bedouin citizens of Israel, indigenous inhabitants of the desert region of the southern part of the country, live in "unrecognised" villages like al-Araqib. These villages do not appear on official maps though some existed before Israel was established in 1948.

Because the government considers the villages "illegal", they do not enjoy basic services such as water, electricity, sewage treatment, and garbage disposal. As a result they risk being destroyed at any time.

ILA officials contend that they are simply enforcing zoning and building codes, and insist that Bedouin can relocate to seven existing government-built townships townships or to a handful of recently recognised villages.

Coinciding with the time that al-Araqib was razed for the second time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke during a cabinet meeting of the "threat of losing a Jewish majority in the Negev."

Most Beduoin youth serve voluntarily in the Israeli army. Yet, when addressing the issue of loyalty to the state pending a new citizenship law, Netanyahu was quoted as saying, "We are under real attack on this issue (of Israel as a Jewish state). Different elements could demand national rights within Israel, for example in the Negev, if we allow a region not to have a Jewish majority. It has happened in the Balkans, and it is a palpable threat."

One of the villagers, Salim Abu Midyam, expressed anger that the Israeli authorities had undertaken their demolition of al-Araqib on the eve of the Muslim holy month. "We will continue to cling to the land of our forefathers and rebuild our village until our right to live here is recognised."

An ILA official had told reporters on the site, "This is state land, set aside for the grazing of Bedouin flocks, not for houses. The al-Turi clan insists on remaining on the site. We will not capitulate to them. We're trying to show sensitivity, but if we need to demolish on Ramadan, so be it."

Yaakov Manor, a Jewish activist with the Forum for Coexistence in the Negev told IPS he does not believe the police would actually demolish the village during Ramadan for a fourth time.

Sheikh Sayyah was more sceptical: "Three times they brought us presents just before the holy month. You really believe they won't bring us a fourth present during the Holy month itself!"

“Israel” knocks down Araqib village for the fourth time

NEGEV, (PIC)– Clashes erupted between Israeli police backed by special forces and the villagers of Araqib as a heavy fleet of Israeli troops raided the village for the fourth demolition process against the ramshackle.

Israeli police assaulted and arrested a number of residents after they attempted to protect their village from the demolition.

The Israeli Land Authority (ILA) in its third demolition operation in the beginning of Ramadan confiscated the contents of all leveled houses and loaded them on trucks, plowed the streets, and took down the sign bearing the town’s name.

“The [Israeli] occupation’s bulldozers began at 05:00 a lightning campaign and removed all of the tents we live in, and left us in the open without respect for the month of Ramadan,” Sheikh Sayah al-Touri, a Bedouin chief, told reporters.

Regional council chairman, Ibrahim al-Waqeeli denounced the demolition and Israel’s lack of respect for Ramadan. “We do not expect good from the Zionist regime. They knock down and we build,” he said.

Settlers Boot (Yet Another) Palestinian Family From Their Home

Rioting settlers on Tuesday forced a Palestinian family from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah out of its home, after the district court denied the residents' appeal to remain on the premises.

Shortly after the verdict was passed dozens of settlers stormed into the house with hired security guards, and demanded that the family vacate immediately.

A violent riot erupted between the settlers and the neighborhood's Palestinian residents, and police were called to disperse the protesters.

A legal battle has raged for some 30 years over the ownership of 28 houses in this neighborhood.

This particular house, built 10 years ago by the al-Kurd family, was unoccupied and locked for eight years by court order pending settlement of a land-ownership dispute.

Police kept members of the family back as a dozen Israeli men removed furniture.

"They can go to Syria, Iraq, Jordan. We are six million and they are billions," said Yehya Gureish, an Arabic-speaking Yemen-born Jew who said his family owned the land and had Ottoman Empire documentation to prove it.

"This land is Israel. We are in Israel. God gave this land to the Jews. The Torah tells us so. You want war? Declare war on God, not on us," he said. 

"I am Jerusalemite, a Palestinian. I didn't come from all over the world," said Rifqa al-Kurd, who had the house built 10 years ago for her married daughter. 

Villagers Rebuild Razed Bedouin Village

AlternativeNews, 28 July 2010

"We successfully rebuilt all the structures and tents destroyed, noted Dr. Awad Abu Freih, spokesperson of the el Araqib village and member of the el Araqib Popular Committee and the Arab Education Forum in the Negev. In a conversation with the AIC, Dr. Abu Freih stated that the residents of el Araqib "plan on building more than what was destroyed, in an attempt to prevent future demolitions."

Over 300 Bedouins, mainly children, were forcefully removed from their village Tuesday morning (27 July) as they watched the Israeli police destroy their homes and property. The raid began at about 4:30 in the morning and residents woke up surrounded by a huge force of 1,500 police with guns, stun grenades, helmets and shields, including hundreds of Special Riot Police as well as mounted police, helicopters and bulldozers.

Despite being unrecognized by Israel, the village of el Araqib has existed since before the creation of Israel in 1948. Bedouin residents were evicted by the newly declared Israeli state in 1951, but returned to the land on which they live and where they cultivate. Ownership of the land is now the subject of proceedings in the Be'er Sheva District Court.

Dr. Abu Freih calls on internationals to help the Bedouins of El-Araqib in their struggle for survival to remain in their village. He states that they are currently in need of “everything,” from money to visits to media attention. He encourages anyone interested to speak to the villagers and spend the day or night with them.

Dr. Yeela Raanan of the Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages urges fundraising efforts to raise much-needed money to rebuild the destroyed homes and recultivate the devastated land. Dr. Raanan emphasizes that the residents also need to know that they are not alone in this battle, explaining that the more support people will show them, the more strength they will have to remain firm in their resistance.

Dr. Raanan notes that the sole just solution to this issue is to simply allow the residents to remain on their property, grant them their land rights, and allow them access to their land resources. She urges Europeans and Americans in particular to demand that their governments recognize this issue of demolishing unrecognized villages and to pressure Israel into allowing the indigenous people access to their land.

A prayer ceremony open to the public will be taking place this Friday, July 30, at 11 AM in the village of El-Araqib.

West Bank Bedouins worse off than Gazans

AL HADIDIYA, WEST BANK, 28 July 2010 (IRIN) - The road to al-Hadidiya village in the northeastern West Bank district of Tubas is dotted with boulders etched with a warning in Hebrew, Arabic and English: “Danger - Open Fire Area”.

The boulders arrived about six months ago, and are positioned at the entrance to Palestinian villages, indicating that chunks of the Jordan Valley have become a closed military zone claimed by the Israeli army. They signal a further squeeze on the Bedouin communities here.

Shepherd Abdul Rahim Bsharat, 59, and his family have lived and farmed in al-Hadidiya since the 1960s. At that time, he said, there were 400-500 families there. Now, there are 17, who stay on despite having no access to water or electricity. Every building in the village has an Israeli demolition order on it.

On 21 June, the Israeli military gave Bsharat notice that his house and animal shelters could be destroyed at any time. When Bsharat’s house was previously demolished in 2002, his water tank was confiscated too. “If they destroy my property again, I’ll come back and rebuild it again. This is my land,” he told IRIN.

Bsharat’s home is a canopy of sewn-together sacks propped up over bare ground. It can easily be rebuilt. His other problems are more difficult to solve.

Photo: Phoebe Greenwood/IRIN

Bsharat in front of his home, which has an Israeli demolition order against it

Al-Hadidiya is in a part of the West Bank under complete Israeli control, known as Area C. The estimated 40,000 Palestinians living there are unable to build or repair their homes, schools, hospitals or sewage systems under Israel’s strict permit system, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). In a region where almost all families are herders, Israel’s restrictions on Palestinian access to and development of agricultural land mean thousands are going hungry, aid agencies say.

A report published recently by Save the Children UK entitled Life on the Edge, warns that many parts of Area C have plummeted into a humanitarian crisis more acute than in Gaza.

Israeli townships

Al-Hadidiya is surrounded by three expanding Israeli townships, Ro’i, Beka’ot and Hemdat. Its land is directly adjacent to Ro’i and the community collects any over-flow from the water pumps irrigating the settlers’ crops in rusting tins.

Despite a lengthy petition from Bsharat, Israeli authorities have not permitted al-Hadidiya to be connected to the main water network. There is no health centre and no permit to build one. The nearest hospital is several hours away in Jericho.

Israeli roadblocks and checkpoints mean that reaching a doctor can take hours. In 2002, Bsharat’s then two-and-a-half-year-old son was hospitalized for 16 days when a common cold turned into pneumonia. In the same year, his eight-year-old son was badly injured falling off a tractor. It was six hours before a car could get through to al-Hadidiya to get him to hospital. He died from blood loss.

Israel has suffered deadly suicide bombings launched from the West Bank in the past and says strict rules on Palestinian movement enforced through checkpoints and roadblocks are necessary for its security.

According to the Israeli military, homes in al-Hadidiya and much of the Jordan Valley are being demolished because they have either been built illegally, without an Israeli building permit, or are located in “closed military areas”. Around 18 percent of the West Bank is now a closed military zone.

Stunting

Photo: Phoebe Greenwood/IRIN

Bedouin children wander away from their home in al-Hadidiya village, which is now within a closed military zone claimed by the Israeli army

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) found that in Bedouin communities like al-Hadidiya, rates of stunting are more than double those in Gaza. Almost half the children have diarrhoea, one of the biggest killers of children under five in the world, and three quarters of families do not have enough nutritious food.

Save the Children works with local NGO Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) to help families in al-Hadidiya repair damaged buildings and farmland, when possible. But the strict restrictions on building and access mean that the Palestinian Authority and aid agencies are limited in the help they can offer families anywhere in Area C.

“In recent weeks the international community has rightly focused on the suffering of families in Gaza but the plight of children in Area C must not be overlooked. Many families, particularly in Bedouin and herder communities, suffer significantly higher levels of malnutrition and poverty,” Salam Kanaan, Save the Children UK’s country director, said.

“It’s now urgent that steps are taken to ensure children here have safe homes and proper classrooms, enough food to eat and clean water to drink.”

pg/ed/cb

The “Summer Camp Of Destruction:” israeli High Schoolers Assist The Razing Of A Bedouin Town

by Max Blumenthal

AL-ARAKIB, ISRAEL — On July 26, Israeli police demolished 45 buildings in the unrecognized Bedouin village of al-Arakib, razing the entire village to the ground to make way for a Jewish National Fund forest. The destruction was part of a larger project to force the Bedouin community of the Negev away from their ancestral lands and into seven Indian reservation-style communities the Israeli government has constructed for them. The land will then be open for Jewish settlers, including young couples in the army and those who may someday be evacuated from the West Bank after a peace treaty is signed. For now, the Israeli government intends to uproot as many villages as possible and erase them from the map by establishing “facts on the ground” in the form of JNF forests. (See video of of al-Arakib’s demolition here).

“]

Moments before the destruction of the Bedouin village of al-Arakib, Israeli high school age police volunteers lounge on furniture taken from a family's home. [The following four photos are by Ata Abu Madyam of Arab Negev News.

One of the most troubling aspects of the destruction of al-Arakib was a report by CNN that the hundreds of Israeli riot police who stormed the village were accompanied by “busloads of cheering civilians.” Who were these civilians and why didn’t CNN or any outlet investigate further?

I traveled to al-Arakib yesterday with a delegation from Ta’ayush, an Israeli group that promotes a joint Arab-Jewish struggle against the occupation. The activists spent the day preparing games and activities for the village’s traumatized children, helping the villagers replace their uprooted olive groves, and assisting in the reconstruction of their demolished homes. In a massive makeshift tent where many of al-Arakib’s residents now sleep, I interviewed village leaders about the identity of the cheering civilians. Each one confirmed the presence of the civilians, describing how they celebrated the demolitions. As I compiled details, the story grew increasingly horrific. After interviewing more than a half dozen elders of the village, I was able to finally identify the civilians in question. What I discovered was more disturbing than I had imagined.

Israeli police youth volunteers pick through the belongings an al-Arakib family

Arab Negev News publisher Ata Abu Madyam supplied me with a series of photos he took of the civilians in action. They depicted Israeli high school students who appeared to have volunteered as members of the Israeli police civilian guard (I am working on identifying some participants by name). Prior to the demolitions, the student volunteers were sent into the villagers’ homes to extract their furniture and belongings. A number of villagers including Abu Madyam told me the volunteers smashed windows and mirrors in their homes and defaced family photographs with crude drawings. Then they lounged around on the furniture of al-Arakib residents in plain site of the owners. Finally, according to Abu Matyam, the volunteers celebrated while bulldozers destroyed the homes.

“What we learned from the summer camp of destruction,” Abu Madyam remarked, “is that Israeli youth are not being educated on democracy, they are being raised on racism.” (The cover of the latest issue of Madyam’s Arab Negev News features a photo of Palestinians being expelled to Jordan in 1948 juxtaposed with a photo of a family fleeing al-Arakib last week. The headline reads, “Nakba 2010.”)

According to residents of al-Arakib, the youth volunteers vandalized homes throughout the village

The Israeli civilian guard, which incorporates 70,000 citizens including youth as young as 15 (about 15% of Israeli police volunteers are teenagers), is one of many programs designed to incorporate Israeli children into the state’s military apparatus. It is not hard to imagine what lessons the high school students who participated in the leveling of al-Arakib took from their experience, nor is it especially difficult to predict what sort of citizens they will become once they reach adulthood. Not only are they being indoctrinated to swear blind allegiance to the military, they are learning to treat the Arab outclass as less than human. The volunteers’ behavior toward Bedouins, who are citizens of Israel and serve loyally in Israeli army combat units despite widespread racism, was strikingly reminiscent of the behavior of settler youth in Hebron who pelt Palestinian shopkeepers in the old city with eggs, rocks and human waste. If there is a distinction between the two cases, it is that the Hebron settlers act as vigilantes while the teenagers of Israeli civilian guard vandalize Arab property as agents of the state.

The spectacle of Israeli youth helping destroy al-Arakib helps explain why 56% of Jewish Israeli high school students do not believe Arabs should be allowed to serve in the Knesset – why the next generation wants apartheid. Indeed, the widespread indoctrination of Israeli youth by the military apparatus is a central factor in Israel’s authoritarian trend. It would be difficult for any adolescent boy to escape from an experience like al-Arakib, where adults in heroic warrior garb encourage him to participate in and gloat over acts of massive destruction, with even a trace of democratic values.

Youth volunteers extract belongings from village homes as bulldozers move in

As for the present condition of Israeli democracy, it is essential to consider the way in which the state pits its own citizens against one another, enlisting the Jewish majority as conquerers while targeting the Arab others as, in the words of Zionist founding father Chaim Weizmann, “obstacles that had to be cleared on a difficult path.” Historically, only failing states have encouraged such corrosive dynamics to take hold. That is why the scenes from al-Arakib, from the demolished homes to the uprooted gardens to the grinning teens who joined the mayhem, can be viewed as much more than the destruction of a village. They are snapshots of the phenomenon that is laying Israeli society as a whole to waste.