Issue no 132

| 1

Issue No : 132 7th MAY 2015

Palestinian Cultural Organization Malaysia | 1


Palestinian Cultural Organization MalaysiaMalaysiaM

2 |


Palestinian Cultural Organization Malaysia

Read in This Issue

UN: Israel responsible for Gaza strikes on UN schools and shelters, inquiry

Israeli troops told to ‹kill on sight› in Gaza war

FEATURED STORY

Israeli insider

Articles & analyses

Read in This Issue

The litmus test of Palestine

P 11

P 4

P 21

Israel killed 7 Palestinians, detained 50 children in April

DFLP calls for ‘futile’ negotiations with Israel to be abandoned

Dozens injured in Tel Aviv during anti-racism protests

P 12

P 14

P 18

Hamas calls for new strategy to protect Aqsa Mosque

P 22

| 3



CONTENTS

Israel Insider

Articles & Analyses

News of Palestine

FEATURED STORY

Israel responsible for Gaza strikes on UN schools and shelters, inquiry finds 4

US Pressuring France to Postpone UN Resolution on Palestine? 6

Morocco officially cancelled invitation of Peres 7

3,500 Palestinian children stranded in Yarmouk: UNRWA 8

Israeli forces attack journalists in W. Bank 9

Gaza ‹jobless› workers find no solace in Labor Day 10

Israel killed 7 Palestinians, detained 50 children in April 11

DFLP calls for ‘futile’ negotiations with Israel to be abandoned 12

Palestinians bury youth killed by Israeli forces 13

Dozens injured in Tel Aviv during anti-racism 14

Hamas says ready for elections 15

Israel to build 1531 new settlement units in E. Jerusalemprotests 16

Jimmy Carter calls situation in Gaza ‹intolerable› eight months after war 2 May 2015 17

Hamas calls for new strategy to protect Aqsa Mosque 18

Palestinian dies in Gaza tunnel collapse 19

Israel’s Lieberman says won’t join new government 20

Israeli troops told to ‹kill on sight› in Gaza war 21

The litmus test of Palestine 22

4 |



Featured Story

Israel responsible for Gaza strikes on UN schools and shelters, inquiry finds Ban Ki-moon condemns attacks, including strike on UN school that killed 20 people and wounded doz-ens, ‘as a matter of the utmost grav-ity’srael was responsible for striking seven United Nations sites used as civilian shelters during the 2014 Gaza war in which 44 Palestinians died and 227 others were injured, an inquiry ordered by UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon has conclud-ed.Releasing the report on Monday, Ban condemned the attacks “as a matter of the utmost gravity” and said “those who looked to them for protection and who sought and were granted shelter there had their hopes and trust denied”.Ban insisted that UN locations were “inviolable”.The issue is particularly sensitive as the locations of all UN buildings – including schools used as shel-ters – are routinely provided to the Israeli military and updated in times of conflict.Ban’s criticism was contained in the published summary letter of a confidential internal report, commis-sioned by the secretary general in November, running to 207 pages.In his letter Ban also hit out at Pal-estinian militant groups for putting some UN schools in Gaza at risk by hiding weapons in three locations that were not being used as shel-ters.“I am dismayed that Palestinian mil-itant groups would put United Na-tions schools at risk by using them

to hide their arms.”He added, however, that: “The three schools at which weaponry was found were empty at the time and were not being used as shelters.”Israeli diplomats had exerted pressure on the UN to delay publication of the report until the completion of Israel’s own investigations into the attacks – conducted by the Israeli military advocate general Danny Efroni. Israel’s military in September opened five criminal investiga-tions into its Gaza war operations, including attacks on some of the UN schools and an incident that killed four Palestinian children on a beach.The UN inquiry, which examined both forensic evidence and testimo-nies of UN staff in Gaza during the 50-day war last summer, concluded seven incidents were attributable to the Israel Defence Forces.Ban added: “I will work with all concerned and spare no effort to ensure that such incidents will never be repeated.”Although the report has no legal status, the disclosure of the inquiry’s findings comes at a difficult time for Israel on the international stage, facing increasing international isolation over its policies and following the acceptance of the Palestinian Authority as a signatory to the Inter-national Criminal Court earlier this month.The attacks on UN schools being used as shelters were among some of the mostcontroversial incidents of the war. International humanitar-ian law – while complex – requires attacking forces in areas where there are non-combatants to protect civilians and adhere to the prin-ciple of proportionality, safeguards even more stringent when civilians are under UN protection.In one of the most serious incidents, the UNRWA school in Jabaliya was struck by Israeli fire, killing 20 people and wounding dozens.

| 5



In the aftermath of the attack Israel claimed – including in a report into the incident – that soldiers near the school were had come un-der fire.In another incident that saw Israeli muni-tions strike a UN school in Beit Hanoun 15 Palestinians were killed in the playground as they awaited evacuation while dozens more injured.Israeli sources had originally tried to suggest that the attack had been due to a Hamas weapon falling short.The UN inquiry – separate form an inquiry launched by the UN Human Rights Council – was headed by retired general Patrick Cam-maert, a former officer in the Dutch military and included military and legal experts.More than 2,100 Palestinians, most of them civilians, were killed during the Gaza con-flict last July and August. Sixty-seven Israeli soldiers and six civilians in Israel were killed by rockets and attacks by Hamas and other militant groups.The details of the contents of the board of inquiry are confidential and only Ban’s cover-ing letter has been made public. Conceding that the report was of “considerable interest” he said he had taken the decision to release a summary of the inquiry’s findings.The report was compiled from analysis of weapons, medical reports, photographs and video footage, and submissions and testi-monies both by UN staff and other organisa-tions.Ban thanked Israel for its cooperation in pre-paring the report and allowing investigators to access Gaza.Ban wrote: “I deplore the fact that at least 44 Palestinians were killed as a result of Israeli actions and at least 227 injured at United Nations premises being used as emergency shelters. United Nations premises are invio-lable and should be places of safety, particu-larly in a situations of armed conflict.”He added: “I note this is the second time during my tenure as secretary general that I have been obliged to establish a board of in-quiry into incidents involving United Nations premises and personnel in Gaza that have occurred during the course of tragic conflicts in the Gaza Strip.

“Once again I must stress my profound and continuing con-cern for the civilian population of the Gaza Strip and Israel, and their right to live in peace and security, free from the threat of violence and terrorism.”When Ban visited Gaza in October, he said the destruction was “beyond description” and “much more serious” than what he witnessed in the Palestinian territory in 2009 in the aftermath of a previous Israel-Hamas war.Ban said on Monday he has established a group of senior managers to look into the inquiry’s recommendation. A number of questions remain unaddressed in the summary of the report, not least the issue of what communications there were between UN staff and the Israeli military in par-ticular ahead of the attack on the school in Beit Hanoun when UN staff are understood to have communicated to Israeli forces their intention to bus out civilians who were waiting for evacuation at the time of the attack.Also unaddressed is why Israeli forces fired on designated protected locations outside of the principle of immediate self-defence when they were aware of concentrations of civilians sheltering there.Chris Gunness, spokesman for UNRWA, which runs Gaza’s UN schools said: “The inquiry found that despite numerous notifications to the Israeli army of the precise GPS coordi-nates of the schools and numerous notifications about the presence of displaced people, in all seven cases investi-gated by the Board of Inquiry when our schools were hit directly or in the immediate vicinity, the hit was attributable to the IDF.“The board confirms the use by the IDF of weaponry such as 120 mm high explosive anti-tank projectiles and 155 MM high explosive projectiles on or in the surrounding area of UNRWA schools where civilians had taken refuge. In the incidents investigated at least 44 people were killed and 227 injured including women and children. In none of the schools which were hit directly or in the immediate vicinity, were weapons discovered or fired from. If it were confirmed that militants did fire rockets from our schools we would condemn it, just as we robustly we condemned other viola-tions of our neutrality.”“The findings of the secretary general’s inquiry are fully consistent with the statements made by UNRWA that we did not hand any weapons over to Hamas. The Board of Inquiry has not found any evidence that we did. The Board of Inquiry found that upon the first discovery UNRWA se-nior management notified local authorities in Gaza about the weapons and asked for their removal. Within days of the first unprecedented discovery, the UN had established a mechanism for dealing with the weaponry and by the time of the third discovery, international experts were on hand.”

Source: The Guardian

6 |



US Pressuring France to Postpone UN Resolution on Palestine?

Israeli newspaper “Haaretz” has published a report saying that the United States and several other countries – including Arab states – have asked the French govern-ment, over the past two weeks, to postpone its initiative for aUnited Nations Security Council draft resolution on the Israeli-Palestin-ian issue – at least until after the June 30th deadline for reaching a comprehensive nuclear agree-ment with Iran.According to Haaretz, Senior US officials and European diplomats told the newspaper that the mes-sage was also relayed to French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, as well as to French diplomats at the UN headquarters in New York and to officials in Washington and in other capitals. Foreign Policy was the first to report on Wednes-day regarding the American mes-sages to France.PNN further reports that, accord-ing to the American and Euro-pean diplomats, the messages relayed to the French stressed that the Obama administration – as well as other powers – are currently focused on reaching a comprehensive agreements with Iran. Taking action on the Israe-li-Palestinian issue, they said, would only distract from and dis-rupt this goal.A senior American official said that the administration is also wor-ried that such a move by France would harm efforts to win the sup-

News of Palestine

port for the Iran deal from Democratic congressmen and senators. He added that Israeli opposition to negotiations with Iran is already hindering the efforts to win support in Congress; therefore, there is no need for a Security Council showdown over another issue which Israel views as harmful to its interests.French diplomats met over the past two weeks, with representa-tives of various Arab states, and presented a first draft of a resolu-tion they wish to submit to the UN Security Council on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The diplomats were surprised by the position taken by some Arab states; their representatives requested that the move be postponed, on the grounds that the timing is inap-propriate.French Foreign Minister Fabius implicitly hinted at American reser-vations from the move in an interview, last week, with the Financial Times. “We need to agree on timing with [US Secretary of State] John Kerry,” he said. “There are other issues to deal with. One negotiation should not hurt another, but at the same time, there’s always a lot going on, so the risk is we never find time.”A few weeks ago, France announced that it was interested in re-newing the initiative to advance a resolution on the Israeli-Pales-tinian issue at the UN Security Council. The French already tried to advance the move a few months ago, but failed due to a Palestin-ian refusal to accept the proposal drafted in Paris. The Palestinians pushed through a much more extreme proposal, but did not succeed in winning nine out of 15 Security Council member votes needed. Because of this, the US did not have to use its veto power.According to the French initiative, the draft UN proposal would in-clude principles for resolving the conflict, such as establishing the borders of the Palestinian state based on the 1967 lines with land swaps, making Jerusalem the capital of both Israel and Palestine, setting a timeline for ending the occupation and holding an inter-national peace conference.

Source: Agencies

| 7



Morocco officially cancelled invitation of Peres

The name of former Israeli President Shimon Peres has been removed from the of-ficial guest list of the Clinton Global Initiative Middle East and North Africa Conference in Marrakech.Morocco has backtracked an earlier invitation extended to the former Israeli president Shimon Peres to pop in the Kingdom to attend the Clinton Global Initiative’s First Middle East and Africa Conference set to kick off on May 5 in the Moroccan city of Marrakesh.Morocco rescinded the invita-tion it had dispatched earlier to the notorious former Israeli PM Shimon Peres after his projected stopover stirred up a hornet’s nest among the King-dom’s pro-Palestine activists and organizations.Earlier, on Friday, a series of protest rallies staged in obser-vance of the International May

Day also voiced firm rebuff of Peres’s stopover.Morocco’s National Federation of Labor, affiliated with the Justice and Development Party, called for ceasing all poli-cies of normalization with the Israeli occupation.Meanwhile, the Moroccan Association to support the na-tion’s causes has organized 25 protest vigils throughout the country.At the same time, 30 civil and political committees called on the government of Morocco, in a joint statement, to halt normalization with Israel and cancel Peres’s visit without further shilly-shallying.Additionally, according to new360, Hamas government agencies in Gaza had written to Moroccan officials asking that the infamous Israeli politician be blocked from entering Morocco.The Moroccan government has not responded to any of the calls to arrest or deport Peres. It was noted on Sunday that his invitation had been rescinded and he would not be at-tending the conference.Morocco and Israel have not had diplomatic relations since the Kingdom closed Israel’s liaison offices in Casablanca and Tangiers in 2000. Moroccan activists have been vocal in their outrage over Israel’s brutality toward Palestinians and continued illegal colonization activities.

Source: World Bulletin

8 |



3,500 Palestinian children stranded in Yarmouk: UNRWA

03 April 2015 Over 3,500 Palestinian children are stranded in Syria’s flashpoint Yarmouk camp for Palestinian ref-ugees, the UN agency for Palestin-ian refugees (UNRWA) has said.“There are some 3,500 children stranded in the camp, while the sick and the elderly continue to die from lack of medical care,” UNRWA spokesman Sami Msha-sha said during a Sunday press conferencein the West Bank city of Ramallah.Mshasha said that some 90 per-cent of Yarmouk’s 180,000 Pales-tinian residents have fled the camp – which continues to see violent clashes between Daesh militants and Aknaf Beit al-Maqdis militant group for over a month.Moreover, Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime forces routinely drop barrel bombs on the beleaguered camp, according to the UNRWA.“The situation in Yarmouk camp is indescribably tragic,” Mshasha said.“The UNRWA has repeatedly urged the Syrian regime to stop strik-ing the camp indiscriminately with highly-destructive barrel bombs which results in civilian casualties as well as massive destruction.”Militants affiliated with Daesh – a militant group that has overrun vast territories in both Iraq and Syria –entered Yarmouk camp in early April, prompting clashes with Aknaf Beit al-Maqdis militant group inside

the camp.Several international humanitarian organizations have said they were incapable of offering aid to around 18,000 residents who were unable to leave camp as clashes rage on between the two militant groups.Syria has been ravaged by a deadly civil war since 2011, when al-Assad regime violently cracked down on anti-government demonstrations.More than 220,000 people have been killed in the conflict to date, according to the latest UN figures.Prior to the conflict, Palestinians living in Syria were estimated at some 581,000 – one third of whom had been living in the Yarmouk camp, according to the UN.In recent years, however, as the conflict between Assad’s forces and armed opposition groups raged on, thousands of Palestinians in Syria have fled to neighboring Lebanon and Jordan, while hundreds of others have fled to the Gaza Strip.Around 166 Palestinian refugees starved to death in mid-2013 when Syrian regime forces besieged the Yarmouk camp.

Source: AA & Albawaba

| 9



Israeli forces attack journalists in W. Bank

Three journalists including syndicate head Abdel-Nasser al-Naggar were hurt as Israeli troops used teargas to disperse a protest by Palestinian journalists.Three journalists were injured Saturday when Israeli troops used teargas to disperse a pro-test by Palestinian journalists in the West Bank city of Bethlehem.The protest, organized by the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate, was staged on the eve of World Press Freedom Day, which is celebrated on May 3.Israeli army troops used teargas and stun grenades to disperse protesters, who marched from northern Bethlehem to Israeli checkpoint 300 in the eastern part of the city, an Anadolu Agency correspondent reported.Three journalists were hurt in the dispersal, including syndicate head Abdel-Nasser al-Nag-gar, and they were treated on the spot.“The Israeli occupation has adopted a policy of systematic repression of Palestinians in gen-eral, and journalists in particular,” al-Naggar addressed demonstrators.“The [Israeli] occupation always impedes the work of journalists and restricts their move-ments,” he said.Al-Naggar said that his syndicate was working “to deliver a clear picture to international or-ganizations and institutions of Israel’s violations against [Palestinian] journalists.”At least 16 Palestinian journalists have been detained by Israel, according to Abdel Nasser Ferwana, the head of the Census Department of the Detainees and ex-Detainees Affairs Committee.


10 |



Labor Day is often marked by ral-lies and marches staged by work-ers to demand better work condi-tions and higher pay.Labor Day no longer represents an important occasion for Pales-tinian civil servant Khaled Salama.Salama is one of thousands of civil servants appointed by the Palestinian Authority (PA), who were barred from going to work in Hamas-controlled ministries since the Islamist group seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007.However, those employees are still being paid by the Ramallah-based authority.“I feel as if I have become with-out any real value,” Salama, 42, an accountant, told The Anadolu Agency.“I have not gone to work for eight years now,” he added.Like thousands of civil servants, Salama was ordered by the PA not to go to work since Hamas seized control of Gaza after routing rival Fatah group of PA President Mah-moud Abbas.“We are unemployed civil ser-vants,” Salama said.The father of six hopes that Hamas and Fatah, which controls the occupied West Bank, would reach reconciliation so that he and other civil servants could go back to work.In April of last year, the two fac-tions hammered out a reconcili-ation deal, one that opened the door for the formation of a national unity government.Nevertheless, the deal remains to

Gaza ‹jobless› workers find no solace in Labor Day

be mere ink on paper, while the unity government has failed to take responsibility for the Gaza Strip.Sueheir al-Rayes, a schoolteacher, finds no reason to celebrate Labor Day.“Palestinian divisions have persisted for so long,” al-Rayes, 39, told AA. “There is no reason for me to celebrate Labor Day. It is not for people like me,” she added.Labor Day is often marked by rallies and marches staged by workers to demand better work conditions and higher pay.However, in the Gaza Strip, which has been blockaded by Israel since Hamas took control of it in 2007, workers are in need of psychiatric rehabilitation, accord-ing to Ahmed Ashour, an engineer.“Though I’m still young, I feel I have reached the retirement age,” Ashour, 34, said.He said some of Gaza’s civil servants would find it difficult to go back to work after these long years of idleness.“We continue to receive our salaries from the Palestinian Authority, while we do not do any type of work,” he added.The PA pays the salaries of its 55,000 workers in the Gaza Strip. At the same time, it asks them not to go to work, especially after Hamas controlled the Gaza Strip.-Sorrow-There is no official estimate of the number of civil servants who abstain from going to work in the Gaza Strip.Nevertheless, some officials put the number at 15,000, saying most of those work-ers belonged to security and military agencies in Gaza in addition to hundreds of schoolteachers and doctors.Medical doctor Anwar Sobeih feels sorry for doing nothing.“Our social life has changed, not only the economy,” Sobeih, 42, said.“We do not add any value, not to mention the psychological problems caused by our long stay at home,” he added.A Palestinian newspaper quoted a European official on Thursday that the Euro-pean Union had told the PA that it would not be able to maintain its financial sup-port – through which the authority pays the salaries of its civil servants – if these civil servants continued to stay at home.

Source: AA

| 11



A Palestinian NGO has said that Israel had killed 7 Palestinians and detained at least 375 people, 50 of which were childrenIsraeli forces have killed seven Palestinians and detained 375 others in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in April, a Palestinian NGO said Friday.“Israeli forces killed 7 Palestinians and arrested 375 [others] in April,” the Ahrar Center for Prisoner Studies and Human Rights said in a statement.The NGO said that 113 Palestinians were detained by Israeli forces in East Jerusalem, 86 in Hebron (Al-Khalil), 54 in Nablus, 40 in Bethlehem and 29 in Ramallah.According to the statement, Israeli forces also detained 26 Palestinians in Jenin, 11 in Qalq-iliya, four in Tulkarem and one in Salfit.The NGO said that Israeli forces also detained 11 Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, including ten while trying to cross border into Israel.According to the statement, 55 children and 19 women were among those detained by Israeli forces in April.Israeli forces frequently raid Palestinian homes in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusa-lem to arrest local Palestinians on claims of being “wanted” by Israeli security agencies.Over 6,500 Palestinians are currently languishing in prisons throughout Israel, according to official Palestinian figures.


Israel killed 7 Palestinians, detained 50 children in April

12 |



DFLP calls for ‘futile’ negotiations with Israel to be abandoned

The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) has called for an end to what it describes as the “futile” negotiations with Israel. The group said that there is a need to find “an alternative political strategy that reflects the Palestinian Central Council’s decisions.” The council is part of the Palestine Liberation Organisation; its decisions are normally binding on the Palestinian Authority.“A Palestinian political strategy should combine the internationalisation of the Palestinian cause and the adoption of a comprehensive popular resistance plan,” said the DFLP. It added that the Palestin-ians’ internal political split must also be brought to an end. National unity, it stressed, will allow the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip to be addressed as well as the formation of a truly representative government.The movement described the Palestinian Central Council’s 27th session held in March as very impor-tant, not least because it ignored the negotiating process and provided answers to a series of disputed issues. “These included the negotiation process, joining international treaties, activating popular resis-tance and stopping security coordination with the Israeli occupation,” a DFLP report claimed.The report said that developing an alternative national strategic plan requires the restoration of Pal-estinian unity and enhancement of the Palestinian people’s resilience. The latter needs an alterna-tive economic and social policy to be implemented which addresses the widening gap between the Palestinian Authority and the people. “Human rights, political rights and trade union rights must all be respected,” the DFLP report concluded.

Source: World Bulletin, 02 April 2015

| 13



Palestinians bury youth killed by Israeli forces

The young man, Mohamed Yahia was the 4th to be killed in three days, with mourners vowing for revenge Hundreds of Palestinians on Tuesday staged a funeral procession near the West Bank city of Jenin for a young man who succumbed to gunshot wounds sustained one day earlier dur-ing clashes with Israeli troops.Angry mourners converged on Al-Arqa village to bury 20-year-old Mohamed Yahia.Yahia died at a West Bank hospital on Tuesday from gunshot wounds to the thigh, which he sustained during Mon-day clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian protesters.“Revenge!” mourners shouted in uni-son. “We will continue in our struggle!”Village headman Raed Yahia told The Anadolu Agency that the slain youth had not been taking part in the clashes when he was shot.“Israeli forces shot [Yahia] while he

was standing in his family’s field near the [West Bank] separa-tion wall,” the village chief told AA.“He did not pose a threat to Israeli forces, but they shot him anyway,” he said.Recent days have seen violent clashes in the occupied West Bank between Israeli troops and Palestinian protesters that have left at least two of the latter dead.There has been an uptick in violence in recent months – both in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories – that have led to several deaths and injuries on both sides.A number of Israelis have been killed or wounded amid a rise in Palestinian attacks on Israelis.Israeli forces, meanwhile, continue to carry out regular raids on West Bank villages, frequently rounding up groups of young Palestinian men on claims they are “wanted” by Israeli authori-ties.What’s more, Israeli troops typically use force to disperse weekly rallies in the West Bank against the self-proclaimed Jewish state’s decades-long occupation of Palestinian land, which occasionally leads to deaths among protesters.Palestinians also decry frequent attacks by extremist Jewish settlers on their communities and property in the occupied ter-ritories.


14 |



Dozens injured in Tel Aviv during anti-racism protests

Dozens of Israeli police forces were injured while many Ethio-pian Jews were arrested during anti-racism rally in Tel Aviv.Tens of black Jews were injured.Israeli media sources affirmed that 50 police members suffered different injuries when clashes broke out in Tel Aviv in protest against racism and police brutality directed at members of the Ethiopian-Israeli community. The protesters began last Thursday in occupied Jerusalem, after a video surfaced of two cops beating up an IDF soldier of Ethio-pian origin.The demonstrations spread quickly throughout Tel Aviv and con-tinued till late Sunday, where more injuries were reported, the sources added.“We are here against police violence and brutality directed against us,” one of the demonstrators said.The protesters chanted slogans against police brutality toward Israeli Jews of Ethiopian descent.Similar violent clashes broke out throughout Israel three years ago when some Israeli educational institutions refused to enroll students of Ethiopian descent.

4 May 2015 Source: PIC

Source: MEMO

protests

| 15



Hamas says ready for elections

On Saturday, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said that Ab-bas would hold presidential and legislative elections once he re-ceives a written request in this regard from Hamas.Palestinian resistance faction Hamas on Sunday said it is ready to compete in the parliamentary and presidential elections and accused President Mahmoud Abbas of hampering its conduct.In a Sunday statement, the resistance faction declared its readi-ness to compete in Palestinian elections and accused Abbas of stalling its procedures.Hamas said that Abbas is not serious about conducting the elec-tions, as he hasn’t issued a presidential decree setting a date for the polls.The movement also condemned Abbas for demanding a written request from Hamas to hold elections, saying that the demand serves to “deepen the [Palestinian] divide” and avoid implement-ing the outcome of the reconciliation agreements.On Saturday, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said that Ab-bas would hold presidential and legislative elections once he re-ceives a written request in this regard from Hamas.


16 |



Israel to build 1531 new settlement units in E. Jerusalemprotests

According to Israel’s Channel 10, instructions have been issued to the Israeli District Committee for Plan-ning and Building to erect 1,531 settlement units in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood of East Jerusalem.The Israeli government is set to approve the construction of 1,531 settlement units in occupied East Jeru-salem next week, a plan that was frozen years ago after criticism from the U.S. administration.According to Israel’s Channel 10, instructions have been issued to the Israeli District Committee for Plan-ning and Building to erect 1,531 settlement units in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood of East Jerusalem.The project was first introduced in 2010 during a visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden to the region, but the Israeli government later decided against it after it drew strong criticism from Washington.The new Ramat Shlomo settlement project was reintroduced in late 2012, after the UN General Assembly voted for granting Palestine non-Member Observer State status.The Israeli government has yet to officially comment on the report.Israel occupied East Jerusalem during the 1967 Middle East War. It annexed the holy city in 1980, claiming it – with West Jerusalem - as the unified capital of the self-proclaimed Jewish state, a move that has never been recognized by the international community.


| 17



Jimmy Carter calls situation in Gaza ‹intolerable› eight months after war

2 May 2015

Former US president, in Jerusalem with former Norwegian prime minister, says residents ‘cannot live with the re-spect and dignity they deserve’Former US president Jimmy Carter said Saturday that eight months after a bloody war in the Gaza Strip the situ-ation there remains “intolerable”.Carter and his delegation were sup-posed to visit the isolated territory but earlier this week called it off, citing un-specified security concerns. Speaking to reporters in Jerusalem, Carter said he was still determined to work for a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza.“What we have seen and heard only strengthens our determination to work for peace,” he said. “The situation in Gaza is intolerable. Eight months after a devastating war, not one destroyed house has been rebuilt and people cannot live with the respect and dig-nity they deserve.”More than 2,000 Palestinians were killed in the 50-day summer war be-

tween Israeli forces and Hamas militants who fired rock-ets into Israel.Earlier in the day, Carter, 90, visited Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah and laid a wreath on the grave of former leader Yasser Arafat.Carter was accompanied by Gro Harlem Brundtland, a former prime minister of Norway and fellow member of his Elders group.But Carter was shunned by Israeli leaders who long have considered him hostile to the Jewish state.Although he brokered the first Israeli-Arab peace treaty during his presidency, Carter outraged many Israelis with his 2006 book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid. He has also repeatedly reached out to Gaza’s Islamic Hamas leaders, considered terrorists by much of the west.Carter did meet with a group of Israelis living in towns bordering Gaza and heard about life under the threat of rocket attacks and militant infiltrations from Gaza. But he said that he had no interest in meeting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has ignored him in the past.“This time we decided it was a waste of time to ask,” Cart-er said. “As long as he is in charge, there will be no two-state solution and therefore no Palestinian state.”

Source: The Guardian

18 |



Hamas calls for new strategy to protect Aqsa Mosque

Palestinian faction Hamas on Saturday called for devising an Arab-Palestinian strategy for the protec-tion of Al-Aqsa Mosque.Israeli authorities are trying to impose a new fait accompli by allowing Israeli settlers to repeatedly force their way into Al-Aqsa Mosque complex, Hamas said in a statement.Israel is trying to exploit the Arab world’s preoccupation with its domestic problems to divide up Al-Aqsa Mosque complex and continue with its “Judaisation,” Hamas saidThe Palestinian faction went on to reiterate that Al-Aqsa Mosque was at the heart of the conflict be-tween the Arabs and Israel and that the responsibility of defending it fell on the shoulders of Palestinian resistance factions.In a Saturday report by Himma News – a media group focused on Jerusalem news and Al-Aqsa Mosque in particular – said that some 1,300 Israeli settlers have barged into Al-Aqsa Mosque complex throughout April.In recent months, groups of extremist Jewish settlers – often accompanied by Israeli security forces – have repeatedly forced their way into the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex.The frequent violations anger Palestinian Muslims and occasionally lead to violent confrontations.For Muslims, Al-Aqsa represents the world’s third holiest site. Jews, for their part, refer to the area as the “Temple Mount,” claiming it was the site of two Jewish temples in ancient times.Israel occupied East Jerusalem during the 1967 Middle East War.It annexed the entire city in 1980, claiming it as the capital of the self-proclaimed Jewish state – a move never recognized by the international community.In September 2000, a visit to Al-Aqsa by controversial Israeli politician Ariel Sharon sparked what later became known as the “Second Intifada,” a popular uprising against Israel’s decades-long occupation in which thousands of Palestinians were killed.

Source: MEMO

| 19



Palestinian dies in Gaza tunnel collapse

A Palestinian worker died on Monday when a tunnel collapsed in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, a health official said. A Ministry of Health spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra told Ma’an that Muhammad Khalid al-Najjar, 27, was killed in the incident.His body has been taken to the Abu Youssef al-Najjar hospital.Last week, Ahmad Majed Salim al-Saqqa, 19, from Khan Younis died after he was electrocuted in a tunnel beneath Rafah, while another Palestinian from Khan Younis, Ibrahim Fathi Isleih, 21, died a week before in similar circumstances.The smuggling tunnels are notoriously dangerous, and workers are frequently killed working in-side them.The Institute for Palestine Studies reported in 2012 that Hamas authorities had counted 160 deaths inside the tunnels since the Israeli blockade began.Smuggling tunnels that pass beneath the Egyptian border have served as a lifeline to the outside world for Gaza’s 1.8 million inhabitants since Israel imposed a crippling siege on the coastal en-clave in 2007, which is supported by Egypt.While the tunnels are used by Hamas as a source of tax revenue and inflow of weapons, they also supply highly demanded necessities for Gazans including food, medicine, as well as infra-structure materials including concrete and fuel.

Source: Ma’an

20 |



Israel’s Lieberman says won’t join new government

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Li-eberman said on Monday he would not join the new coalition govern-ment being formed by Prime Min-ister Benjamin Netanyahu, citing disputes over legislation.The walkout by the far-right Li-eberman raised the prospect that Netanyahu, whose conservative Likud party won the most votes in a March 17 election, may have to settle for a narrower alliance to secure a majority in the 120-seat parliament.That could hobble the fourth-term premier, whose domestic policies are often resented at home while his championing of Israeli settle-ment in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, lands the Palestinians seek for a state, is op-posed abroad.Netanyahu could ask the leading centre-left opposition party Zionist Union to join forces in a “national unity” government, though both sides have so far played down any such possibility.

Briefing reporters, Lieberman said his party had been offered two cabinet posts as part of the coalition talks but remained unsatisfied.“This is certainly a coalition that, to my regret, does not reflect the positions of the nationalist camp and is not to our liking, to put it mildly,” said Lieberman, adding that he was resigning as foreign minister.Netanyahu last week signed up his first new coalition partners, the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism (UTJ) party and centrist Kulanu, giving him control of 46 parliament seats.Likud is still negotiating with the far-right Jewish Home and ultra-Orthodox Shas parties.Lieberman’s Yisrael Beitenu party draws support from Israelis who immigrated from the former Soviet Union and has often come out against benefits for ultra-Or-thodox constituents.Lieberman also complained that legislation anchoring in law Israel’s identity as a Jewish state, which had been advanced by the outgoing government, was be-ing played down in the current coalition talks.Shelly Yachimovich, a senior Zionist Union lawmaker, did not rule out her pa rty joining Netanyahu but said it appeared unlikely.“I don’t see an option like this,” she told Israel’s parlia-mentary television station. “It would be silly of me to consider something that does not exist.”

4 May 2015 Source: UK Reuters

| 21



Israeli troops told to ‹kill on sight› in Gaza war

The NGO said it had collected testimo-ny from 60 Israeli soldiers and officers who had participated in last summer’s offensive – dubbed “Operation Protec-tive Edge” – against the Gaza Strip.

An Israeli NGO expressed concern on Monday over the Israeli army’s “in-discriminate fire” policy against Pal-estinians after collecting testimony suggesting that soldiers were ordered to “kill on sight” during last summer’s military onslaught on the Gaza Strip. In a Sunday statement, Breaking the Silence, an Israeli NGO, said that tes-timonies that it had collected painted a “troubling picture” of the Israeli army’s policy of “indiscriminate fire,” which, it asserted, had “directly resulted in the deaths of hundreds of innocent Pales-tinian civilians.”The NGO said it had collected testimo-ny from 60 Israeli soldiers and officers who had participated in last summer’s offensive – dubbed “Operation Protec-tive Edge” – against the Gaza Strip.More than 2,160 Palestinians, mostly civilians, were killed – and another 11,000 injured – during seven weeks of unrelenting Israeli bombardments across the Gaza Strip in July and Au-gust of last year.“Testimonies collected by Breaking the Silence paint a troubling picture of a drastic change” in the Israeli army’s combat procedures, the NGO said.It added that the Israeli army’s “guid-ing values – such as the ‘purity of arms’ principle, which mandates that

Israeli insider

soldiers use the minimum amount of force necessary and ‘maintain their humanity even in combat’ – were devalued, and even discarded, by the Israeli army itself.”The NGO said “the rules of engagement” relayed to sol-diers “were the most permissive Breaking the Silence has ever heard,” adding that numerous soldiers had testified that “the orders they received were to shoot to kill every person sighted in the area.”It went on to assert that Israeli soldiers had been misled in some cases into believing that the army’s combat activities were taking place in areas devoid of civilians, when, “in reality, the [army] forces entered areas in which innocent civilians, and sometimes even entire families, remained.”During the seven-week onslaught against Gaza, the Israe-li army “carried out mass destruction of civilian infrastruc-ture and homes,” the NGO noted, adding that, “in many cases, the destruction occurred without any clear oper-ational justification and after ground forces had already ‘cleared’ and left the area.”Breaking the Silence was founded by Israeli veterans who have served in the army since the second Palestinian inti-fada (uprising), which erupted in late 2000.According to the NGO’s website, these veterans “have taken it upon themselves to expose the Israeli public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories.”It states: “We endeavor to stimulate public debate about the price paid for a reality in which young soldiers face a civilian population on a daily basis and are engaged in the control of that population’s everyday life.”

Source: AA

22 |



The litmus test of PalestineAsa Winstanley28 April 2015Something that contributed mas-sively to my own political awak-ening in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the United States was the work of the brilliant dissident journalist John Pilger.I watched many of his documen-taries. These were often broad-cast on ITV fairly late at night as if some kind of underground rebel transmission, sneaked past the powers that be.I bought his 2002 book The New Rulers of the World and devoured it. It is a tour de force, in which Pilger traveled the world, docu-menting the far too often hidden histories of modern capitalism, backed up by US imperial power. These powers prop up human-rights abusing dictatorships and torture regimes around the world, stretching from Indonesia, and its bloody-thirsty occupation of East Timor, to torture regimes all over Latin America.Pilger brought the same humanis-tic inclination to his journalism no matter which country he covered. This included the issue of Pales-tine. His 2002 film Palestine is Still the Issue, released at the height of the second intifada, is still one of the best ever made on Palestine. The moral clarity of his reporting shines through at all times.Part of the appeal of Pilger is how he takes sometimes complex and detailed historical and political is-

Articles & Analyses

sues and presents the essential facts of the situation in a clear and easy to understand way. When his reporting is so often overturning and debunking the propaganda of mainstream journalism, this can come as a shock to the system, leading the reader to question long-held assumptions, and hence to want to look into the facts more.This is certainly how The New Rulers of the World struck me, reading it in my early 20s. Is it re-ally true that the US government backed up a dictatorship that slaughtered hundreds of thou-sands in the coup that brought it to power, as well as in its occupa-tion of East Timor? Can it really be true that Israel was only estab-lished in 1948 on the back of of a mass act of ethnic cleansing that deliberately drove out the majority of the indigenous population?

Historically speaking, these facts are not controversial in any mean-ingful sense. But they are only two examples of inconveniences far too often ignored in mainstream reporting. Which is why the report-ing of dissident journalists can be so refreshing.I’ve just finished reading another such work, The Racket, a new book just released by radical pub-lishers Zed Books. With this, his second book, Matt Kennard has announced his presence on the scene as the next generation’s John Pilger.A former Financial Times inves-tigative reporter, Kennard has spent years interviewing those in-timately involved in running what he terms the racket, the corpora-tions and their political servants that really run our world in their own interests, and that of their

| 23



global hegemony. But he also talks to its victims. As he mentioned at his book launch earlier this month, The Racket has essentially been ten years in the making.There is a lot of material here that he simply could not use while re-porting for the Financial Times, since it would just not have been done .Kennard is a conscientious and humanistic reporter, who takes the radical and outrageous approach that journalists should not be the stenographers of cor-porate or imperial power. As he put it at the launch event, if you spend years reporting on banks and then move onto working for them, you’ve clearly been doing something wrong for years, be-cause the banks should hate you by then. Far too many former Fi-nancial Times journalists spend a few years working there and later move on to the more lucrative field of public relations for banks, he said.The book is a fantastic achieve-ment which, reminds me slightly of George Harrison when he left The Beatles and released the massive triple-album All Things Must Pass: he’d clearly been saving up top material for years too.More aptly, it also reminds me of Pilger’s work. Kennard deftly manages the balancing act be-tween making judgments (in fa-vour of people over profit and the progress of society) and of getting out of the way while he lets his interview subjects tell their own stories.The book spans the globe, and is strongest in its sections on Latin America – especially on Bolivia and the US-backed terror war

against the leftist government there. But Kennard does a brilliant job of tying the strands together and joining the dots between dis-parate struggles against corporate greed and imperial power around the world.His reporting suggests links be-tween the Arab uprisings of 2011 and the Occupy protests against economic injustice that erupted in New York that same year, sug-gesting young protesters in the west were inspired by Arab peo-ples’ fights for freedom against US-backed dictatorships.And again, like Pilger, Kennard covers Palestine too. The section on Israeli occupation of Palestine and how it fits into the wider global system of corporate and imperial control is strong. He interviews Palestinian activists who are re-sisting Israel’s occupation, which suggests ways forward.Increasingly, Palestine is the moral litmus test for today’s jour-nalists. The pressure within the mainstream to conform on the is-sues of the day is immense, and none more so than Palestine, with the Israel lobby’s power to affect media narratives. But as Kennard shows us, the mainstream media almost always aligns with the in-terests of imperial and corporate power anyway – which partly ex-plains why they are so amenable to Israel lobby power in the first place.The book is a breath of fresh air, which will hopefully inspire the younger generation of readers to start questioning and reassess-ing what they have been told by dominant media and societal nar-ratives.

Source: MEMO

Palestine is the moral litmus test for today’s

journalists.

24 |



Issue no 132

Documents