This past week two Palestinian youths in the occupied West Bank were shot and killed by Israeli settlers, via Ma`an. Oday Maher Hamza Qadous on January 27th, and Yousef Fakhri Ikhlaylon, January 28th.
Joseph Dana reports:
19 year old Oday Maher Hamza Qadous was shot to death this afternoon while farming his land in Iraq Burin near Nablus. Qadous was farming with his cousin, Omer Ahmed Qadous, on the west side of Iraq Burin when settlers from Barcha entered the farmland and shot Oday in the stomach. Omer Ahmed Qadous saw the entire event and reported that there was no confrontation with the settlers before the shooting. He said that settlers entered the farmland and began to shot. Qadous was evacuated from the area to a Nablus hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
From +972 Mag
Around 100 settlers from Bat Ayn settlement descended upon the Palestinian villages of Saffa and nearby Beit Ummar in the southern West Bank, shooting 17-year-old Yousef Fakhri Ikhlayl in his head, leaving him critically injured Friday Morning.
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Yousef Fahkri Ikhlaylis from the village of Beit Ummar and has worked on initiatives with the Palestine Solidarity Project, an anti-occupation organization in Beit Ummar. In the summer of 2010, Yousef attended the Center for Freedom and Justice’s Freedom Flotilla Summer Camp where he engaged in educational projects, community service, and unarmed demonstrations against the Israeli occupation. In the fall of 2010 Yousef was a participant in a youth photography class also sponsored by the center.
Yousef Fahkri Ikhlaylis
Human Rights Watch criticized both Hamas in Gaza and the Ramallah based PA for clamping down on demonstrations in solidarity with the Egyptian protests. Neither Hamas nor Fateh, as As`ad Abu Khalil often writes.
The Israeli Antiquities Authority announced the tunnel in Silwan has been completed, Eyes on the Ground in East Jerusalem has reported. It runs from the Western Wall plaza under the houses and streets of the Palestinian community of Silwan to the Pool of Siloam on the slopes of Silwan.
In recent years, the Israel Antiquities Authority has come to function as an executive contractor for the settlers around Silwan and the Old City. Many of the largest digs in Jerusalem are initiated and funded by right wing organizations. In many cases these are underground digs, lacking transparency and hidden from the public, which spawn harsh professional criticism from many archeologists.
The revealed tunnel is a particularly significant step in the process of settlement tourism striking roots in Silwan. The tunnel’s Western Wall entrance is still closed, but once it is opened a new route will be available: The visitors to the "City of David" site, which is managed by settlers, would enter the tunnel by the Siloam Pool in the slopes of the Silwan neighborhood, pass underneath the Palestinian streets and houses, and come out again next to the Western Wall plaza within the walls of the Old City. This would be a tour of purely Jewish history, cut off from the present and hiding from the visitors the reality of the Palestinian neighborhood existing on the ground above them.
For backround and futher information on Silwan and Israel's plans in the area see Ir Amim's excellent reports:
Excavations and Parks as Political Instruments
Shady Dealings in Silwan (pdf)
Wadi Hilweh Information Center-Silwan
60 Minutes report on Silwan via unspeakable's excellent diary, How Palestinians Experience the Occupation.
Harsh Interrogations of Children Escalate in Nabi Saleh
+972 Mag
In an escalation of the repression of unarmed demonstration in the West Bank, 14 year old Islam Tamimi was seized from his home and arrested at 0200 on Sunday 23 January 2011 . It was the second time in roughly three weeks that he was taken by Israeli soldiers. The soldiers applied stress position techniques on the 14 year old boy, hoping to force his psychological collapse. The exhausted child was then taken to an unnamed police station where he was interrogated without his parents or a lawyer present. During an eight hour interrogation and after prolonged exposure and sleep deprivation, Tamimi capitulated to the army’s dictated script. The army interrogators continued to attack Tamimi with psychological torture in order to extract more false testimony about demonstrations in Nabi Saleh
Please see Fire bad tree pretty's excellent diary, Palestinian Political Prisoner's in Israel; Adalah series, and B'tselem's report on the illegal and discriminatory treatment of minors in Silwan, arrested or detained, the vast majority on suspicion of stone throwing.
Also see Human Rights Watch's recent, extensive report, Israel/West Bank: Separate and Unequal.
Israeli policies in the West Bank harshly discriminate against Palestinian residents, depriving them of basic necessities while providing lavish amenities for Jewish settlements, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The report identifies discriminatory practices that have no legitimate security or other justification and calls on Israel, in addition to abiding by its international legal obligation to withdraw the settlements, to end these violations of Palestinians' rights.
On the Syrian front Joshua Landis at Syria Comment notes:
Syrian authorities are jubilant about Mubarak’s difficulties and the popular uprising in Egypt. It is common in opposition circles to suggest that Syrian authorities are panicked by the vision of popular revolt in Tunis and Egypt. I believe the opposite is true. Ever since Sadat made peace with Israel at Syria’s expense, Syrian authorities have hoped for regime change in Cairo. It has finally come. Israel has been able to disregard Syria since 1979. Perhaps Israel will have to give peace making with Syria a new look if Egyptians manage to bring down the Mubarak regime? Assad explains in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that he believes that unpopular foreign policy is a key to the revolutions.
Not convinced Landis is entirely correct on that score as Al Jazeera English reports last night:
Calls for protests in Syria are spreading on social media websites, following popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.
Organisers say protests will be staged in front of the parliament in the capital, Damascus, on Friday and Saturday, and at Syrian embassies across the world.
Finally as Mubark's time runs out and "Plan B" hopefully fails some analyses re. the uprising in Egypt and the "peace process", also in light of the revelations in the Palestine Papers.
No, Egyptian uprising won’t hurt the peace process by Noam Sheizaf
The truth is there is no peace process, and it’s not because of the Palestinians, the Syrians, the Iranians, the reform movement or the coaching staff of the Minnesota Vikings. There is simply no point in talks with Israel right now. The Israeli government refuses to commit to evacuating settlements, refuses to discuss borders or even open maps and refuses to talk to Syria. In recent months, some ministers wanted to come out publicly with a "peace plan" that would leave the Palestinians with something like 60 percent of the West Bank, but even that was too radical for this government.
Helena Cobban in Salon
But most likely, if it is to mark the "clean break" with Mubarakism that is the only source for stability inside Egypt, it will not perform the many other "special services" that Mubarak always seemed so happy to offer to Washington -- and to Israel. That is: No more "torture on demand" for the U.S. Special Forces; no more collaborating with Israel to keep the people of Gaza imprisoned; no more covering up for Israel's gross violations of international law in the occupied territories; no more being a useful U.S. cat's-paw in the region.
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And without having an Egyptian president who is ready and able to act as Israel's shield and spear, both Israel and the United States are now going to have to look at the whole of the remaining "Arab-Israeli question" in a completely new way.
Daniel Levy in Foreign Policy
The lack of enthusiasm on the part of some of the pro-Israel community is an understandable if regrettable phenomenon. Israel is a strong status quo power in the region and Israel's establishment considers the rule of Western-oriented dictators (especially those with strong ties to U.S. aid and the U.S. military) to have served Israel's interests. President Mubarak has been a key facilitator of Israel's agenda in the region - partly due to his support for the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty but primarily centered around his maintenance of a "go-nowhere" peace process which helps shield Israel from international criticism while giving Egypt the appearance of being a useful ally to the U.S..
In recent years, this alliance has extended beyond preventing pressure on Israel and grown to include support for Israel's closure of Gaza (Egypt followed suit on its own border with Gaza), helping besiege Hamas, and playing host to the occasional peace gala in order to maintain the fiction that all of this "peace processing" might lead somewhere.
Tony Karon in Time
It's highly unlikely that any new Egyptian government would go to war with Israel, but an administration more responsive to its own citizenry than Mubarak would almost certainly cool relations. Mubarak's role as the go-to guy when the U.S. and Israel want to pressure the Palestinians into new talks, for example, is unlikely to be reprised by a successor. Nor can Israel count on Egypt's continued cooperation in imposing an economic siege on Gaza, which is aimed at unseating the territory's Hamas rulers.
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Mubarak has been an important source of political cover for Abbas in his dealings with Israel and the U.S., and has kept the pressure on Hamas in Gaza. And the Palestinian leader, who presides over a less-than-democratic administration, can't be thrilled by the Egyptians' example to Palestinians of the power of mass protest.
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