Palestinian protesters and medics evacuate a man suffering from tear gas inhalation after Israeli soldiers fired canisters directly at protesters during a demonstration against the theft of Palestinian land by Israel in the village of Kafr Qaddum, near the West Bank city of Nablus, on February 10, 2012.
A French woman was injured at a demonstration last week in Nabi Saleh when Israeli soldiers fired tear gas directly at her. She was bleeding profusely and had to be taken to hospital. In December 2011, a Palestinian man named Mustafa Tamimi was killed by an Israeli soldier who fired a tear gas canister directly at his face from close range. Tamimi died from his wounds the next morning. His funeral procession took place the day after, during which the Israeli army fired teargas on some of the mourners, beat unarmed demonstrators and arrested seven activists. (AP / Getty Images)
An injured Palestinian man screams in pain after an Israeli army driver drove a trailer hooked to a tractor over his legs, as he tried to block him when Israeli forces stopped Palestinians from rebuilding a house in al-Dirat village, south of Yatta in the West Bank, January 25, 2012. Israeli forces seized equipment and a trailer from Palestinian construction workers as the site falls in the occupied area C in which Israel prevents Palestinians from building on their own land.
Area C, which is entirely Palestinian land and under full Israeli control, comprises 60 per cent of the West Bank and has twice as many Israeli settlers as Palestinians. Israeli authorities have allocated only 1 per cent of Area C for Palestinian development, while the number of Israeli settlements — illegal under international law — continue to expand. The Palestinian population in the area continue to diminish due to house demolitions, lack of access to water, building permits, and the occupation itself. (Getty Images)
EU ‘should block finance for Israeli settlements’
The European Commission should consider passing legislation to prevent finance generated within its member states being used to support illegal Israeli settlements in occupied territory, the bloc’s top diplomats in Jerusalem and Ramallah have advised.
The proposal is made in a report warning that a new surge in Jewish settlement expansion in Arab East Jerusalem, among other policies, is “systematically undermining the Palestinian presence” in the city and making the prospect of it becoming the shared capital of two states “increasingly unlikely and unworkable”.
The report argues that “attempts to emphasise the Jewish identity of the city at the expense of Muslim and Christian residents” – including outsourcing archaeology in sensitive sites close to the Old City to a powerful settler group, Elad – “threaten its religious diversity and provide fuel to those want further to radicalise the conflict with regional and global repercussions”.
It makes an urgent call for the EU to adopt a more “active and visible” implementation of its policy. And it paints a bleak picture of how Israel is “perpetuating” its unilateral annexation of East Jerusalem after the 1967 war – a move never accepted as legal by European governments – in ways that are “increasingly undermining the two-state solution”.
The report points out that 10 per cent of the city’s resources are spent on services for Palestinians, who represent 37 per cent of the population. There are 200 planning permissions granted to Palestinians per year compared with the 1,500 they need, it adds, with a consequent wave of house demolitions. Up to 90,000 people live under threat of having their homes demolished.
The potentially radical proposal for “appropriate EU legislation to prevent/discourage financial transactions in support of settlement activity” is the first indication that some member states are seeking European divestment from businesses actively involved in the settlement enterprise.
The finance recommendation has been worded with deliberate vagueness to maintain a consensus among sharply differing views within the EU. But the clear implication is that some of the European Consuls General – ambassador-rank representatives to the Palestinians – want the Commission to consider for the first time whether it has an obligation to legislate on the grounds that the settlements contravene international law.
Under one interpretation of the proposal, the Commission would use legislation to force companies in Europe to break their links with businesses involved in settlement construction and commercial activities. This follows some high-profile voluntary examples like that of Deutsche Bahn, which last year pulled out of electrification of the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem rail link because it cut through the West Bank.
The report also says the Jerusalem municipality is failing in its obligation to provide schooling for all Palestinian children, with less than half now attending municipal schools.
Asaf Sharon, a member of the Israeli group Solidarity, which has been active in opposing evictions and demolitions in the Sheikh Jarrah district of East Jerusalem, said he was struck by the urgency with which the European diplomats regarded the situation in Jerusalem, compared with a lack of a similar sense in Israel itself. “I hope EU would act on the report’s conclusions,” he said. “Now they have to be proactive for all our sakes.”
Photo: Palestinian and international demonstrators rally during a weekly protest against the theft of Palestinian land in the form of the nearby illegal Israeli settlement of Halamish and a water spring belonging to Palestinians that Israeli settlers have occupied for themselves, near Ramallah, December 16, 2011. (Reuters)
French parliament report accuses Israel of water ‘apartheid’ in West Bank
The French parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee published an unprecedented report two weeks ago accusing Israel of implementing “apartheid” policies in its allocation of water resources in the West Bank.
The Israeli Embassy in Paris had no foreknowledge of the report and thus did not refute it or work to moderate it. Foreign Ministry officials called the incident “a serious diplomatic mishap.”
The report said that water has become “a weapon serving the new apartheid” and gave examples and statistics that ostensibly back this claim.
“Some 450,000 Israeli settlers on the West Bank use more water than the 2.3 million Palestinians that live there,” the report said. “In times of drought, in contravention of international law, the settlers get priority for water.”
The author of the report was Socialist Party MP Jean Glavany, who in the past served as agriculture minister under French President Lionel Jospin and as cabinet secretary for President Francois Mitterrand.
The Foreign Affairs Committee had assigned Glavany to report on the geopolitical impact of water in confrontation zones throughout the world. He visited Israel and the Palestinian territories on May 17-19 of last year and met with several senior government officials, including Energy and Water Resources Minister Uzi Landau and Water Commissioner Uri Shani.
Both the Foreign Ministry and the embassy in Paris were aware of the visit and knew that Glavany planned to write a report. But Israeli Ambassador to France Yossi Gal did not follow up on Glavany’s work.
No one in the embassy attempted to get a draft copy of the report so as to ensure that its conclusions were not overly harsh. Nor were Israel’s allies on the French Foreign Affairs Committee contacted to ascertain whether the report could be moderated.
The embassy only learned about the report a few days after it appeared on the French parliament’s website, when the Foreign Ministry’s European desk in Jerusalem, which heard about it from an outside source, informed the embassy.
The report states that water is not allocated fairly to West Bank Palestinians and that Palestinians have no access to the territory’s underground aquifers. Glavany said Israel was perpetrating a “water occupation” against the Palestinians.
“Israel’s territorial expansion is seen as a ‘water occupation’ of both streams and aquifers,” the report said.
It also said that “the separation wall being built by Israel allows it to control access to underground water sources” and to “direct the flow of water westward.”
The report accused Israel of “systematically destroying wells that were dug by Palestinians on the West Bank,” as well as of deliberately bombing reservoirs in the Gaza Strip in 2008-09. It also claimed that “Many water purification facilities planned by the Palestinian Water Ministry are being ‘blocked’ by the Israeli administration.”
Photos: A Palestinian man argues with an Israeli officer in a futile attempt to stop the illegal destruction of a water reservoir used by Palestinian farmers. Despite being located on Palestinian land — in the West Bank city of Hebron — outside Israel’s borders, the structure was destroyed by Israeli army machinery, on June 14, 2011. (Getty Images)
On a presidential visit to Israel in 2008, Bush travels to Bethlehem by car rather than helicopter against the wishes of the Israelis because Rice wants him to see “the ugliness of the occupation, including the checkpoints and the security wall…for himself and [because] it would have been an insult to the Palestinians if he didn’t.” The barriers were taken down, the convoy traveled at speed, but Bush got the point, according to Rice: “‘This is awful,’ he said quietly.
Israeli soldiers push a Palestinian demonstrator dressed as Santa Claus during a protest against the illegal Israeli separation barrier in the West Bank village of al-Masara near Bethlehem, December 23, 2011. (Reuters)
Dozens of rightists break into IDF base in West Bank, wound officer
Some 50 right-wing activists throw rocks, burn tires, and vandalize military vehicles; no one arrested in incident; earlier, right-wing activists arrested on Jordan border.
Some 50 settlers and right-wing activists entered a key West Bank military base early Tuesday morning and threw rocks, burned tires, and vandalized military vehicles.
The settlers were acting in response to a rumor that the IDF would act to evict a West Bank settlement in accordance with an August Supreme Court ruling.
In the attack on the Efraim Regional Brigade’s base near the West Bank city of Qalqilya, right-wing activists threw stones at region’s brigade commander and his deputy after forcefully opening the door to their jeep. The brigade commander was lightly wounded after a stone hit his head.
In addition to the attack on the IDF base, right-wing activists blocked a main West Bank road and threw stones at passing Palestinian vehicles and IDF soldiers in the area.
Around 100 right-wing activists and settlers came to the area of the base before 50 of them enetered the base, according to the IDF spokesman.
The youths were repelled by security forces. No arrests were made.
Earlier during the night, the IDF and police rushed to the otherwise quiet border with Jordan after a group of 17 right-wing activists, three of them minors, occupied structures near the border. The activists said the action was intended as a message to Jordanian authorities to keep out of Temple Mount affairs.
The IDF and police surrounded the activists, who were hilltop youth, and prepared to evacuate. Four other activists were arrested before joining the group on the border.
The activists seized abandoned churches near the Qasr al-Yahud holy site, which is the believed site of Jesus’ baptism.
The activists, accompanied by television crews, cut their way through a fence that used to protect a minefield surrounding the area, before it was cleared by Israeli security forces. The activists danced near the structures, entered one of the churches and chanted songs. They were all arrested.
In another incident overnight Tuesday, a group of five Breslov entered Joseph’s Tomb in the West Bank to pray without permission. Palestinian security forces opened fire, but no one was hurt.
A similar incident took place in September, when unknown perpetrators infiltrated a base in the Binyamin region and snuck their way to a mechanics workshop on site, where they slashed the tires and cut the cables of twelve army vehicles.
The settlers were galvanized into action by rumors that the eviction of several West Bank settlements was imminent. The Supreme Court ruled in September that the state must destroy Migron, the largest outpost in the West Bank. Forty-five families live in Migron, which has a total population of 280 people.
(Photo: Haggai Ofen)
Update: Mustafa Tamimi, the Palestinian protester who was shot directly in the face at close range by an Israeli soldier with a teargas canister, died this morning from his wounds.
Israeli pro-Palestinian activist Jonathan Pollack says the 28-year-old protester, Mustafa Tamimi, died in an Israeli hospital Saturday from severe brain damage. Tamimi’s relative Mahmoud Tamimi also confirmed his death.
Protesters say Tamimi was hit in the face Friday with a gas canister fired by Israeli forces in the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh. An Israeli military spokeswoman said they are investigating the incident.
Palestinians have held weekly demonstrations there for the past few years to protest Jewish settler activity in the area.
The Israeli rights group B’Tselem says Tamimi is the 20th person to be killed at similar West Bank demonstrations over the past eight years.
(Photos: Haim Scwarczenberg / Lazar Simeonov, December 8, 2011)
Rabbi killed, three wounded in ‘accidental’ IDF West Bank shooting
Israel Defense Forces shot and killed an Israeli early Friday in the southern Hebron region of the West Bank, when the man driving a vehicle did not notice a checkpoint and passed through without stopping. The soldiers involved in the incident said the shooting was accidental.
Initial reports suggest that the incident, which took place just after 5 am, occurred after IDF soldiers erected a makeshift checkpoint between Yatta and Hebron, after receiving reports of a suspicious truck leaving one of the settlements in the area.
IDF forces attempted to flag down and stop the vehicle. When the vehicle showed no signs of slowing down, IDF forces opened fire, killing 55-year-old Dan Mertzbach, a rabbi and resident of Otniel, and wounding two other passengers.
Moments later, a Palestinian truck struck one of IDF soldier who fired the shots, and was standing by the side of the road near the scene of the shooting. The soldier suffered light to moderate injuries.
The passengers were evacuated to Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem in Jerusalem.
GOC Central Command Avi Mizrachi said that an investigation would be opened into the incident.
A Central Command representative told reporters, “at 5.30 A.M. an IDF observation post in Beit Hagai spotted a suspicious vehicle. IDF forces came out of the observation tower, but did not manage to set up a checkpoint in time, and so they signaled to the vehicle to stop. The vehicle did not stop and an IDF soldier fired eight shots at it. The vehicle got stuck on the side of the road. The soldier who fired the shots ran towards the vehicle and was run over by a Palestinian truck. The incident is currently under investigation, we will investigate why the soldiers opened fire, because according to instructions on opening fire, soldiers are not supposed to shoot at a moving vehicle.”
Mertzbach is to be laid to rest later Friday in Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives cemetery following a short ceremony in Otniel.
(Photos: Judea and Samaria Rescue Forces)
A woman floated in the Dead Sea near the illegal Jewish settlement of Mitzpe Shalem, West Bank, Wednesday 9 November 2011. The Dead Sea, a salt lake below sea level, is one of 28 landmarks vying for the title of one of the new 7 Wonders of Nature. (Nir Elias/Reuters)
