This is a roundup of news related to Palestine with a particular focus on grassroots action and peaceful civil disobedience in the Occupied Territories and within the borders of Israel proper.
We use the name Filasṭīn, since that is the pronunciation preferred by Arabic speakers (irrespective of faith) for their homeland.
Female IDF soldiers barred from mess hall due to presence of ultra-Orthodox troops (Haaretz)
The army closed a mess hall to women and barred a female officer from entering when new recruits of the ultra-Orthodox Nahal battalion were having lunch, the Israel Defense Forces said.
The incident happened at the Tel Hashomer induction base Thursday. The IDF explained the move by saying the army had promised that there would be no women around ultra-Orthodox recruits during their induction.
[...]
The reservist said a female officer who arrived at the mess hall was told she could not enter and eat because of the presence of the ultra-Orthodox recruits.
“If a female officer can’t sit in the mess hall on this day, we’ve gone crazy,” said the reservist, who said he knew ultra-Orthodox society well. “What if a group of settlers said they didn’t want to sit with Arabs or Druze, or that we couldn’t serve with Muslims?”
After the officer was barred from the mess hall, women soldiers who came to eat were sent to another mess hall usually reserved for officers, the reservist said.
The NY Times discussed this issue in the context of plane flights:
When a Plane Seat Next to a Woman Is Against Orthodox Faith
There have been prior incidents of violence towards women in Israel by ultra-Orthodox men over seating and dress:
When shooting a Palestinian in the back is merely 'reckless' (+972mag)
In January 2013, an Israeli soldier shot a 16-year-old Palestinian who posed absolutely no threat in his back. Samir Awad, from the village Budrus, didn’t survive the valiant military operation, and was killed. Last December, the High Court of Justice harshly criticized the Military Advocate General’s (MAG) handling of the case calling on it to finish its investigation.
On Tuesday, the State announced that it would charge the soldier reckless and negligent use of a firearm. Had the incident not ended with the death of a teenager, it could have come off as no more than a silly act of mischief.
Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem, which accompanied the Awad family throughout the legal process, called the decision a “new low in Israeli authorities’ disregard for the lives of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. The State Attorney’s Office has sent security forces in the Occupied Territories a clear message: if you kill an unarmed Palestinian who poses no threat, we will do everything to cover it up and ensure impunity.” According to Yesh Din, an Israeli organization that provides legal assistance to Palestinians in the occupied territories that has researched this issue in the past few years, 97.8 percent of the Criminal Investigation Division’s (CID) investigations vis-a-vis harm caused to Palestinians have ended without indictments.
Here's Gideon Levy on the killing:
Only The Hague can deal with Israel’s war criminals (Haaretz)
Murder. I don’t think I’ve ever used that word to describe what Israeli soldiers have done. But at the separation barrier near the village of Budrus late on the morning of Tuesday, January 15, 2013, a murder was committed.
Samir, 16, had finished a science test and gone with six friends to where the fence had a breach. It was a test of courage they played: To get near the fence that imprisons their village. His friends stayed back and he crossed the breach. He didn’t know that armored-corps soldiers were lying in ambush between the cacti and the ditch alongside the barrier.
They shot and wounded him in the thigh. Bleeding and terrified, he fled for his life toward the village. One of the soldiers grabbed him by the arm, but he broke free. He made his way up the rocky hillside and they shot him again, this time from behind. They shot an unarmed and already wounded youth with two live bullets. It was a distance of about 10 meters; one in his back, one in his head.
[...]
The months passed and the Israel Defense Forces of course didn’t lift a finger. After about a year the father, with the help of the rights group B’Tselem, petitioned the High Court of Justice, to require the military advocate general to decide whether to put the soldiers on trial or close the case.
The IDF prolonged the investigation another year, as it always does. The soldiers were released from the army and went back to their civilian lives, the case was transferred to civilian prosecutors, and two days ago there was a decision: The soldiers, it’s not clear who, will go on trial on two grotesque charges — recklessness and negligently handling a weapon.
[...]
This is the example that should finally convince every supporter of justice: only The Hague. Only at the International Criminal Court will it be possible to put on trial those who commit war crimes like the murder of Samir Awad. Anyone who objects to The Hague wants the crimes to continue. Anyone who fears The Hague knows he has a lot to hide.
High Court on BDS: Somewhere between terror and Holocaust denial +972mag quotes selectively from the Israeli Supreme Court's decision legitimizing civil compensation claims against anyone calling for a boycott of Israel or its institutions, and anyone publishing such a call. Taken together with the ruling on confiscation of Palestinian property in Jerusalem, this may set the stage for settler organizations to push the envelope again by claiming BDS speech is "political terror" causing them direct economic harm for which they would like to be compensated with the Palestinian "terrorist's" house and building over there please.
“Thus the call for boycott falls into the category that is known in constitutional literature: the democratic paradox, which allows for limiting the rights of those who seek to enjoy the fruits of democracy in order to harm it. Calling for boycott and participating in it, therefore, can sometimes be considered ‘political terror.’”
(Justice Meltzer, pg. 37)
“Even the boycott against Israel, in its old form, which Israel — as well as other countries, headed by the United States — worked to combat, falls within the realm of freedom of speech; it would be terrible for this freedom of speech to reach its goals. It may be akin to — without comparing — Holocaust denial and anti-Semitic and racist remarks, which in my eyes must enjoy the protection of free speech.”
(Justice Rubinstein, pg. 164)
And also from +972mag is the opinion piece:
You can boycott anything in Israel — except the occupation
A few months ago, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman called for a boycott of businesses owned by Arab citizens of Israel. Such remarks — blunt racism directed at 20 percent of Israelis, regardless of their actions, opinions or political affiliations — are nowwell-embedded within the Israeli mainstream. Liberman himself is a legitimate coalition partner as far as either Labor or Likud are concerned. Meanwhile, the call to boycott those who profit from the occupation is now officially considered a civil offense. This is the bottom line of the High Court of Justice’s verdict, which approved the Knesset’s anti-boycott law (with the exception of a single article) on Wednesday afternoon.
[...]
This verdict should put an end, once and for all, to the myth of Israel’s “liberal” High Court. Just in recent years, the court has approved the Nakba Law (allowing the state to withdraw funds from institutions that teach about the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948); the “admission panels” law(allowing small communities to reject applicants based on race or ethnicity); The “citizenship law” (forbidding Arab citizens who marry non-citizen Palestinians to settle in Israel with their spouse); and now the boycott law. There were also other troubling rulings, which received little public attention, such as the one allowing Israel to operate quarries in the West Bank, profiting from the little resources Palestinians actually own, in direct violation of international law regarding occupied territories.
A show of unity from Zionist Union on Iran deal (Haaretz)
In a position paper issued on Sunday on the framework agreement between Iran and the six world powers on restricting Tehran’s nuclear program, Zionist Union refrained from criticizing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s approach, calling it an issue “on which there is no coalition or opposition.”
The three-page document, published nearly two weeks after the deal was announced in Lausanne, Switzerland, comes in the midst of the stalled coalition negotiations between Likud and the right-wing and ultra-Orthodox parties. Given the impasse, some in Likud have recently raised the possibility of forming a unity government with Zionist Union.
IDF soldier charged for ordering Palestinian to drive him to settlement (Haaretz)
An elite Israeli soldier has been charged with extortion after military prosecutors said he ordered a Palestinian man to drive him to the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar in late March.
The Palestinian man, Bader Yasser Oudeh, drove into a tree to escape the soldier, whom he said he thought was abducting him.
[...]
The appeals court said the soldier, who serves in the elite Golani Brigade, "exploited his position and his weapon to act in a threatening and aggressive manner toward a local resident in an area subject to military control. In so doing, he seriously damaged the might and the image of the army."
Interview with Dr. Basman Alashi in Gaza in Gaza, Interview April 14, 2015 (Int'l Solidarity Movement)
“You corner me, you kill me, and on top of that you ask me not to defend myself. Human beings in this world have the right to defend themselves. We, as Palestinians, have the right to defend our land and our families by all means available”, said the Dr. Basman Alashi.
The night of the 17th of July 2014 the Israeli occupation forces bombed the Al Wafaa Hospital, in Shijaia, Gaza Strip. The hospital´s speciality was the rehabilitation of paralyzed patients.
This is the moving testimony of Dr. Basman Alashi, its director:
How is it possible to reach the point of bombing a hospital full of patients and medical staff?
“The UN told me that, according to a report from the Israeli occupation forces, the bombing of the hospital was due to the fact that there were weapons within its facilities … I can assure you that this report is completely false; the hospital opened its doors to the international press and to all the foreigners who freely inspected our facilities without finding any weapons at all. Despite all the overwhelming evidence, our hospital was bombed in the middle of the night, with its patients, medical staff, and some international witnesses, still inside the buildings.”
Israeli settlers profit from Palestinian child labor (Haaretz)
Human Rights Watch said the settlement farms, most of them in the Jordan Valley, employ children as young as 11, pay them low wages and subject them to dangerous working conditions. In a 74-page report, the New York-based group said hundreds of children work in the settlement farms, often in high temperatures, carrying heavy loads and are exposed to hazardous pesticides.
[...]
"Israel's settlements are profiting from rights abuses against Palestinian children," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "Children from communities impoverished by Israel's discrimination and settlement policies are dropping out of school and taking on dangerous work because they feel they have no alternatives, while Israel turns a blind eye."
The report is titled
Ripe for Abuse
Aid groups urge world to push for end of Gaza blockade (Haaretz)
Reconstruction of thousands of homes and businesses destroyed in last summer's Israel-Hamas war in Gaza has barely begun and living conditions in the territory have only worsened six months after donor countries pledged $3.5 billion for the task, a coalition of international aid groups said Monday.
The Association of International Development Agencies (AIDA) urged the international community to adopt a new approach to Gaza, including by pressuring Israel to lift its border blockade of the Hamas-controlled territory. The blockade, also enforced by Egypt, has been in place since the Islamic militant group Hamas seized Gaza in 2007.
‘Price tag’ settler argues in court that revenge isn’t a crime (+972mag)
Were people’s lives and livelihoods not at stake, it would have been an almost sublime piece of parody. During the trial of four teenage Israeli settlers who set fire to a Palestinian-owned cafe in the West Bank town of Dura, which concluded on Monday, the defendants’ attorneys – as reported by Ynet – brought forth the claim that because the arson was an act of revenge, their clients were not guilty of breaking the law.
Welcome to Netanyahu's 'resolution' to the conflict By Noam Sheizaf | November 18, 2014
Let’s think about that for a moment. The arson was investigated by the Israel Police’s Nationalistic Crimes Unit in the Samaria and Judea (SJ) District. This body was set up as a response to settler violence, which frequently manifests as price tag attacks – i.e. acts of violent revenge by Israelis against Palestinians and their property
[...]
As per the recent findings of Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din, the rate of indictment for nationalistic crimes is remarkably low; a survey of SJ District Police files investigating attacks against Palestinians and/or their property by Israeli civilians showed that between 2005 and 2014, only 7.4 percent of such cases ended with indictments.
Israel demolishes homes in unrecognized Palestinian village (+972mag)
Israeli bulldozers demolished three structures in the unrecognized Palestinian village Dahmash, near Lyd (Lod in Hebrew) on Wednesday morning. The demolition took place despite both a High Court decision that called for a mutual agreement and a demand by the Lod District Court that the State delay its demolition plans. The homes were uninhabited at the time of the demolition.
The unrecognized village Dahmash is under the jurisdiction of the Emek Lod Regional Council, a mere 20 minute drive from Tel Aviv. The village has been around since 1948, and its residents even have proof of ownership in the Israel Land Registry. However, the State does not recognize their claim to the land, and does not provide the village with the necessary infrastructure or even the most basic services, such as sewage, roads, electricity, garbage collection or a post office. Over the past few years, the residents have been struggling against repeated home demolitions by coming up with their own master plan in order to gain recognition for their rights to live on their land.
Haaretz on the same story says
Israeli Arabs call for general strike over home demolitions (Haaretz)
The Arab Higher Monitoring Committee, the main Israeli Arab leadership body, announced a general strike in the Arab sector on April 28, including in schools, because of the demolitions. The committee also said it would help the affected families rebuild their homes without any help from international organizations. Many Israeli Arabs believe that the recent spate of demolitions signifies a change of policy in the wake of the recent Knesset election.
Four years ago we lost Vik (Int'l Solidarity Movement)
“History is us.
History is not cowardly governments
with their loyalty to whoever has the strongest military
History is made by ordinary people
everyday people, with family at home and a regular job
who are committed to peace as a great ideal
to the rights of all
to staying human...."
These were the first words Vittorio Arrigoni posted to his Italian blog after he arrived to Gaza.
Today April 15, 2015, marks the fourth anniversary of the murder of ISM activist and comrade Vittorio “Vik” Arrigoni in the Gaza Strip. Vittorio arrived in Gaza on the 23rd of August 2008, breaking the Israeli siege on Gaza with around 40 other international activists which he described as one of the happiest moments of his life: “It became clear, not only to the world, but Palestinians also that there are people who are willing to spend their lives to come and hug their brothers here in Gaza.”
In the words of Vik’s mother, Egidia Beretta:
This lost child of mine is more alive than ever before, like the grain that has fallen to the ground and died to bring forth a plentiful harvest. I see it and hear it already in the words of his friends, above all the younger among them, some closer, some from afar…we were a long way from Vittorio, but now we are closer than ever, with his living presence magnified at every passing hour, like a wind from Gaza, from his beloved Mediterranean, blowing fierily to deliver the message of his hope and of his love for those without a voice, for the weak and the oppressed, passing the baton.
Zionism is an abominable, racist and colonial movement. Like all colonial and apartheid systems, it’s in the interest of all that it be swept away. My hope is to see it replaced, without any bloodshed, with a democratic, secular and lay state – for example on the borders of historic Palestine – and where Palestinians and Israelis could live under equal rights of citizenship without ethnic and religious discrimination. It’s a wish that I hope will soon become a reality.
Victory for Residents of the Village of Burka in Petition Submitted with the Assistance of Yesh Din against a Planned Mass Event on the Village’s Land at Passover: Israel Police Opens Investigation against the Planners of the Event
The State Attorney’s Office, on behalf of the Commander of IDF Forces in the West Bank and the Commander of the SJ District Police, this morning announced that they intend to take action to prevent a “pilgrimage” to land belonging to the Palestinian village of Burka (the former settlement of Homesh) planned by a group of Israelis. The announcement was made in response to a petition submitted by Yesh Din. The authorities added in their response that the Israel Police plans to open an investigation against the planners of the event.
[...]
Israel evacuated the settlement of Homesh, in the north of the West Bank, as part of the Disengagement Plan in 2005. At the time of the evacuation, an order was imposed prohibiting the entry of Israelis to the site. Despite this order, hundreds of Israeli civilians continue to visit the site on festivals and special days. There is even a permanent presence on the site of a group known as the “Homesh Yeshiva.” Homesh has become a symbol of opposition to the Disengagement Plan, and the squatters on the site enjoy visits of support from politicians and various public figures.
Help came too late for Jafar Awad in Israeli jail (Haaretz)
But on January 21, Jafar, weak and frail, was taken by ambulance from the Ramle clinic to Al Ahli Hospital in Hebron. His father says the family had to pay 40,000 shekels (about $10,000) before their son could be released. That night Jafar lost consciousness again, but before that, his father says, his son told him that Shin Bet security service agents offered to arrange treatment for him if he became a collaborator.
A spokesperson for the Shin Bet said in response to that claim: “As you know, the Shin Bet does not comment on its operational activities. However, the claim that it conditioned the medical treatment of Jafar Awad on his agreement to collaborate totally lacks any basis in fact or connection to reality.”
UCLA Jewish studies director cancels Illinois lecture, citing treatment of Salaita case (Haaretz)
The director of UCLA’s Jewish studies center canceled a lecture at the University of Illinois over its withdrawal of a job offer to Steven Salaita, a harsh critic of Israel.
Professor Todd Samuel Presner sent a letter in late March to Phyllis Wise, chancellor at the Urbana-Champaign school, informing her that he will not come to the campus for its Rosenthal Lecture because of how her office and the university board handled the Salaita case. The letter was made public by the university on Wednesday.
This is a roundup of news related to Palestine with a particular focus on grassroots action and peaceful civil disobedience in the Occupied Territories and within the borders of Israel proper. The goal is to provide a bi-weekly update on the non-violent resistance movement.
Diplomatic negotiations and actions by armed resistance groups are covered quite widely by the mainstream press and in other diaries on DKos so they will rarely be included.
We use the name Filasṭīn, since this is the pronunciation used by Arabic speakers (irrespective of faith) for their homeland. The more familiar Palestine is the Hellenic or Roman variant. Filasṭīn refers to the geographic entity roughly encompassing Israel and Palestine. It is a likely cognate of "Philistine", the name used in the Hebrew bible to describe a rival of the Jewish kingdom of that era.
Prior diaries:
April 12, 2015: Filastin week: Yarmouk refugees, NYU divestment letter, Terrorizing Children
April 5, 2015: Filastin Week: Segregated Streets in Hebron, Palestinians observe Land Day
March 29, 2015: Filasṭin Week by Week: A March for the Bedouin, A License to Kill & To Teach the Nakba
