The British government has raised concerns about Israel's treatment of Palestinian minors arrested and interrogated for stone-throwing and other crimes, highlighted in an article in the Guardian. Alistair Burt, the Foreign Office minister for the Middle East, urged Israel to address the UK government's concerns when on a visit to the country a fortnight ago. Burt told the Guardian he had "raised concerns about the treatment of Palestinian children in Israeli detention. I urged the Israeli government to address these concerns." Burt was also asked in the House of Commons last week about the issue of solitary confinement for Palestinian minors. Labour MP Sandra Osborne called on the government to condemn the practice and demand the release of 106 children detained in the Israeli military prison system. In response, Burt referred to an earlier statement in which he said the practice of shackling children was wrong. Minors are routinely shackled throughout court hearings in the Israeli military justice system. Osborne told the Guardian Israel's treatment of Palestinian minors was "unjustified in the context of human rights". She had been appalled and distressed on visits to the Israeli military juvenile court at Ofer, near Jerusalem. "No civilised democracy should treat children in that way," she said. The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said the state should apply the same protection to Palestinian minors in detention that it allows to Israeli children. B'Tselem confirmed that descriptions given to the Guardian by Palestinian juveniles of arrest, detention and interrogation under the military justice system were consistent with testimonies it had collected although mostly with over-18s. "We have also seen long periods of solitary confinement in a small cell, with lights on 24 hours a day, with detainees unable to follow time and disconnected to the rest of the world," said B'Tselem spokeswoman Sarit Michaeli. "We have testimonies of detainees cuffed in painful positions while under interrogation and sometimes left for long periods. "Throughout the military justice process, the rights of suspects are violated." B'Tselem, she said, took issue with the claim by Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev that detainees alleging mistreatment would have complaints dealt with fairly. "This is disingenuous at best," she said. A B'Tselem study last year showed that out of more than 700 complaints of abuse by Israeli Security Agency (ISA) interrogators brought between 2001 and 2011, none resulted in a criminal investigation. The complaints were examined by an official of the ISA. "It is not surprising that in most cases the inspector determines that the complaint is not true," said B'Tselem. In a few cases, the inspector found abuse had taken place but the file was closed without the state attorney's office ordering a criminal investigation. B'Tselem said this "transmits a message to … the potential complainants that the chances of measures being taken against the persons responsible is zero". Regev insisted anyone who had a complaint that an Israeli official had acted in an improper fashion should bring the information to the Israeli authorities and civil courts. "It will be thoroughly investigated," he said. He added: "Minors deserve special attention, special consideration … The test of a democracy is how you treat people incarcerated, people in jail, and especially so with minors." B'Tselem said the provisions of Israeli youth law should formally be applied to Palestinian minors. Night-time arrests in military operations should cease; interrogations should be video-taped; minors should be questioned in the presence of a parent or lawyer; they should have their rights clearly read to them; and proper options for remand should be put in place. Unicef, the UN agency for children, also raised concerns following the Guardian's article. Children had the "right to protection against violence and abuse," it said in a statement. Unicef was "monitoring the arrest and detention of children and is currently in dialogue with the Israeli authorities to improve the protection of child detainees … All children, at all times, must be treated with dignity and respect, in accordance with the convention on the rights of the child." In the first 11 months of last year, 222 cases of stone-throwers were brought before the military court, according to a letter sent by the Israeli foreign ministry to Lady Scotland, who visited the Ofer court last autumn, and is writing a report on her findings. The period from indictment to the conclusion of proceedings had dropped to an average of 92.5 days in 2011 from 167 days in 2007, the letter said. It pointed out that "many crimes carried out by minors in [the West Bank] are of a violent ideological nature and pose a clear and imminent threat to the public … Despite the unique dilemmas in the dealing with minor suspects in [the West Bank], Israel makes significant efforts to provide for just and fair treatment throughout the entire military legal process in accordance with international standards." Human rights organisations say Israel's treatment of Palestinian minors breaches the international convention on the rights of the child and the fourth Geneva convention.
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By: Harriet Sherwood
Date: 23/01/2012
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The Palestinian Children – Alone and Bewildered – in Israel's Al Jalame Jail
The room is barely wider than the thin, dirty mattress that covers the floor. Behind a low concrete wall is a squat toilet, the stench from which has no escape in the windowless room. The rough concrete walls deter idle leaning; the constant overhead light inhibits sleep. The delivery of food through a low slit in the door is the only way of marking time, dividing day from night. This is Cell 36, deep within Al Jalame prison in northern Israel. It is one of a handful of cells where Palestinian children are locked in solitary confinement for days or even weeks. One 16-year-old claimed that he had been kept in Cell 36 for 65 days. The only escape is to the interrogation room where children are shackled, by hands and feet, to a chair while being questioned, sometimes for hours. Most are accused of throwing stones at soldiers or settlers; some, of flinging molotov cocktails; a few, of more serious offences such as links to militant organisations or using weapons. They are also pumped for information about the activities and sympathies of their classmates, relatives and neighbours. At the beginning, nearly all deny the accusations. Most say they are threatened; some report physical violence. Verbal abuse – "You're a dog, a son of a whore" – is common. Many are exhausted from sleep deprivation. Day after day they are fettered to the chair, then returned to solitary confinement. In the end, many sign confessions that they later say were coerced. These claims and descriptions come from affidavits given by minors to an international human rights organisation and from interviews conducted by the Guardian. Other cells in Al Jalame and Petah Tikva prisons are also used for solitary confinement, but Cell 36 is the one cited most often in these testimonies. Between 500 and 700 Palestinian children are arrested by Israeli soldiers each year, mostly accused of throwing stones. Since 2008, Defence for Children International (DCI) has collected sworn testimonies from 426 minors detained in Israel's military justice system. Their statements show a pattern of night-time arrests, hands bound with plastic ties, blindfolding, physical and verbal abuse, and threats. About 9% of all those giving affidavits say they were kept in solitary confinement, although there has been a marked increase to 22% in the past six months. Few parents are told where their children have been taken. Minors are rarely questioned in the presence of a parent, and rarely see a lawyer before or during initial interrogation. Most are detained inside Israel, making family visits very difficult. Human rights organisations say these patterns of treatment – which are corroborated by a separate study, No Minor Matter, conducted by an Israeli group, B'Tselem – violate the international convention on the rights of the child, which Israel has ratified, and the fourth Geneva convention. Most children maintain they are innocent of the crimes of which they are accused, despite confessions and guilty pleas, said Gerard Horton of DCI. But, he added, guilt or innocence was not an issue with regard to their treatment. "We're not saying offences aren't committed – we're saying children have legal rights. Regardless of what they're accused of, they should not be arrested in the middle of the night in terrifying raids, they should not be painfully tied up and blindfolded sometimes for hours on end, they should be informed of the right to silence and they should be entitled to have a parent present during questioning." Mohammad Shabrawi from the West Bank town of Tulkarm was arrested last January, aged 16, at about 2.30am. "Four soldiers entered my bedroom and said you must come with us. They didn't say why, they didn't tell me or my parents anything," he told the Guardian. Handcuffed with a plastic tie and blindfolded, he thinks he was first taken to an Israeli settlement, where he was made to kneel – still cuffed and blindfolded – for an hour on an asphalt road in the freezing dead of night. A second journey ended at about 8am at Al Jalame detention centre, also known as Kishon prison, amid fields close to the Nazareth to Haifa road. After a routine medical check, Shabrawi was taken to Cell 36. He spent 17 days in solitary, apart from interrogations, there and in a similar cell, No 37, he said. "I was lonely, frightened all the time and I needed someone to talk with. I was choked from being alone. I was desperate to meet anyone, speak to anyone … I was so bored that when I was out [of the cell] and saw the police, they were talking in Hebrew and I don't speak Hebrew, but I was nodding as though I understood. I was desperate to speak." During interrogation, he was shackled. "They cursed me and threatened to arrest my family if I didn't confess," he said. He first saw a lawyer 20 days after his arrest, he said, and was charged after 25 days. "They accused me of many things," he said, adding that none of them were true. Eventually Shabrawi confessed to membership of a banned organisation and was sentenced to 45 days. Since his release, he said, he was "now afraid of the army, afraid of being arrested." His mother said he had become withdrawn. Ezz ad-Deen Ali Qadi from Ramallah, who was 17 when he was arrested last January, described similar treatment during arrest and detention. He says he was held in solitary confinement at Al Jalame for 17 days in cells 36, 37 and 38. "I would start repeating the interrogators' questions to myself, asking myself is it true what they are accusing me of," he told the Guardian. "You feel the pressure of the cell. Then you think about your family, and you feel you are going to lose your future. You are under huge stress." His treatment during questioning depended on the mood of his interrogators, he said. "If he is in a good mood, sometimes he allows you to sit on a chair without handcuffs. Or he may force you to sit on a small chair with an iron hoop behind it. Then he attaches your hands to the ring, and your legs to the chair legs. Sometimes you stay like that for four hours. It is painful. "Sometimes they make fun of you. They ask if you want water, and if you say yes they bring it, but then the interrogator drinks it." Ali Qadi did not see his parents during the 51 days he was detained before trial, he said, and was only allowed to see a lawyer after 10 days. He was accused of throwing stones and planning military operations, and after confessing was sentenced to six months in prison.The Guardian has affidavits from five other juveniles who said they were detained in solitary confinement in Al Jalame and Petah Tikva. All confessed after interrogation. "Solitary confinement breaks the spirit of a child," said Horton. "Children say that after a week or so of this treatment, they confess simply to get out of the cell." The Israeli security agency (ISA) – also known as Shin Bet – told the Guardian: "No one questioned, including minors, is kept alone in a cell as a punitive measure or in order to obtain a confession." The Israeli prison service did not respond to a specific question about solitary confinement, saying only "the incarceration of prisoners…is subject to legal examination". Juvenile detainees also allege harsh interrogation methods. The Guardian interviewed the father of a minor serving a 23-month term for throwing rocks at vehicles. Ali Odwan, from Azzun, said his son Yahir, who was 14 when he was arrested, was given electric shocks by a Taser while under interrogation. "I visited my son in jail. I saw marks from electric shocks on both his arms, they were visible from behind the glass. I asked him if it was from electric shocks, he just nodded. He was afraid someone was listening," Odwan said. DCI has affidavits from three minors accused of throwing stones who claim they were given electric shocks under interrogation in 2010. Another Azzun youngster, Sameer Saher, was 13 when he was arrested at 2am. "A soldier held me upside down and took me to a window and said: 'I want to throw you from the window.' They beat me on the legs, stomach, face," he said. His interrogators accused him of stone-throwing and demanded the names of friends who had also thrown stones. He was released without charge about 17 hours after his arrest. Now, he said, he has difficulty sleeping for fear "they will come at night and arrest me". In response to questions about alleged ill-treatment, including electric shocks, the ISA said: "The claims that Palestinian minors were subject to interrogation techniques that include beatings, prolonged periods in handcuffs, threats, kicks, verbal abuse, humiliation, isolation and prevention of sleep are utterly baseless … Investigators act in accordance with the law and unequivocal guidelines which forbid such actions." The Guardian has also seen rare audiovisual recordings of the interrogations of two boys, aged 14 and 15, from the village of Nabi Saleh, the scene of weekly protests against nearby settlers. Both are visibly exhausted after being arrested in the middle of the night. Their interrogations, which begin at about 9.30am, last four and five hours. Neither is told of their legal right to remain silent, and both are repeatedly asked leading questions, including whether named people have incited them to throw stones. At one point, as one boy rests his head on the table, the interrogator flicks at him, shouting: "Lift your head, you." During the other boy's interrogation, one questioner repeatedly slams a clenched fist into his own palm in a threatening gesture. The boy breaks down in tears, saying he was due to take an exam at school that morning. "They're going to fail me, I'm going to lose the year," he sobs. In neither case was a lawyer present during their interrogation. Israeli military law has been applied in the West Bank since Israel occupied the territory more than 44 years ago. Since then, more than 700,000 Palestinian men, women and children have been detained under military orders. Under military order 1651, the age of criminal responsibility is 12 years, and children under the age of 14 face a maximum of six months in prison. However, children aged 14 and 15 could, in theory, be sentenced up to 20 years for throwing an object at a moving vehicle with the intent to harm. In practice, most sentences range between two weeks and 10 months, according to DCI. In September 2009, a special juvenile military court was established. It sits at Ofer, a military prison outside Jerusalem, twice a week. Minors are brought into court in leg shackles and handcuffs, wearing brown prison uniforms. The proceedings are in Hebrew with intermittent translation provided by Arabic-speaking soldiers. The Israeli prison service told the Guardian that the use of restraints in public places was permitted in cases where "there is reasonable concern that the prisoner will escape, cause damage to property or body, or will damage evidence or try to dispose of evidence". The Guardian witnessed a case this month in which two boys, aged 15 and 17, admitted entering Israel illegally, throwing molotov cocktails and stones, starting a fire which caused extensive damage, and vandalising property. The prosecution asked for a sentence to reflect the defendants' "nationalistic motives" and to act as a deterrent. The older boy was sentenced to 33 months in jail; the younger one, 26 months. Both were sentenced to an additional 24 months suspended and were fined 10,000 shekels (£1,700). Failure to pay the fine would mean an additional 10 months in prison. Several British parliamentary delegations have witnessed child hearings at Ofer over the past year. Alf Dubs reported back to the House of Lords last May, saying: "We saw a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old, one of them in tears, both looking absolutely bewildered … I do not believe this process of humiliation represents justice. I believe that the way in which these young people are treated is in itself an obstacle to the achievement by Israel of a peaceful relationship with the Palestinian people." Lisa Nandy, MP for Wigan, who witnessed the trial of a shackled 14-year-old at Ofer last month, found the experience distressing. "In five minutes he had been found guilty of stone-throwing and was sentenced to nine months. It was shocking to see a child being put through this process. It's difficult to see how a [political] solution can be reached when young people are being treated in this manner. They end up with very little hope for their future and very angry about their treatment." Horton said a guilty plea was "the quickest way to get out of the system". If the children say their confession was coerced, "that provides them with a legal defence – but because they're denied bail they will remain in detention longer than if they had simply pleaded guilty". An expert opinion written by Graciela Carmon, a child psychiatrist and member of Physicians for Human Rights, in May 2011, said that children were particularly vulnerable to providing a false confession under coercion. "Although some detainees understand that providing a confession, despite their innocence, will have negative repercussions in the future, they nevertheless confess as the immediate mental and/or physical anguish they feel overrides the future implications, whatever they may be." Nearly all the cases documented by DCI ended in a guilty plea and about three-quarters of the convicted minors were transferred to prisons inside Israel. This contravenes article 76 of the fourth Geneva convention, which requires children and adults in occupied territories to be detained within the territory. The Israeli defence forces (IDF), responsible for arrests in the West Bank and the military judicial system said last month that the military judicial system was "underpinned by a commitment to ensure the rights of the accused, judicial impartiality and an emphasis on practising international legal norms in incredibly dangerous and complex situations". The ISA said its employees acted in accordance with the law, and detainees were given the full rights for which they were eligible, including the right to legal counsel and visits by the Red Cross. "The ISA categorically denies all claims with regard to the interrogation of minors. In fact, the complete opposite is true – the ISA guidelines grant minors special protections needed because of their age." Mark Regev, spokesman for the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, told the Guardian: "If detainees believe they have been mistreated, especially in the case of minors … it's very important that these people, or people representing them, come forward and raise these issues. The test of a democracy is how you treat people incarcerated, people in jail, and especially so with minors." Stone-throwing, he added, was a dangerous activity that had resulted in the deaths of an Israeli father and his infant son last year. "Rock-throwing, throwing molotov cocktails and other forms of violence is unacceptable, and the security authorities have to bring it to an end when it happens." Human rights groups are concerned about the long-term impact of detention on Palestinian minors. Some children initially exhibit a degree of bravado, believing it to be a rite of passage, said Horton. "But when you sit with them for an hour or so, under this veneer of bravado are children who are fairly traumatised." Many of them, he said, never want to see another soldier or go near a checkpoint. Does he think the system works as a deterrent? "Yes, I think it does." According to Nader Abu Amsha, the director of the YMCA in Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem, which runs a rehabilitation programme for juveniles, "families think that when the child is released, it's the end of the problem. We tell them this is the beginning". Following detention many children exhibit symptoms of trauma: nightmares, mistrust of others, fear of the future, feelings of helplessness and worthlessness, obsessive compulsive behaviour, bedwetting, aggression, withdrawal and lack of motivation. The Israeli authorities should consider the long-term effects, said Abu Amsha. "They don't give attention to how this might continue the vicious cycle of violence, of how this might increase hatred. These children come out of this process with a lot of anger. Some of them feel the need for revenge. "You see children who are totally broken. It's painful to see the pain of these children, to see how much they are squeezed by the Israeli system."
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By: Amira Hass
Date: 27/05/2013
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Slain Bedouin girls' mother, a victim of Israeli-Palestinian bureaucracy
Abir Dandis, the mother of the two girls who were murdered in the Negev town of Al-Fura’a last week, couldn't find a police officer to listen to her warnings, neither in Arad nor in Ma’ale Adumim. Both police stations operate in areas where Israel wants to gather the Bedouin into permanent communities, against their will, in order to clear more land for Jewish communities. The dismissive treatment Dandis received shows how the Bedouin are considered simply to be lawbreakers by their very nature. But as a resident of the West Bank asking for help for her daughters, whose father was Israeli, Dandis faced the legal-bureaucratic maze created by the Oslo Accords. The Palestinian police is not allowed to arrest Israeli civilians. It must hand suspects over to the Israel Police. The Palestinian police complain that in cases of Israelis suspected of committing crimes against Palestinian residents, the Israel Police tend not to investigate or prosecute them. In addition, the town of Al-Azaria, where Dandis lives, is in Area B, under Palestinian civilian authority and Israeli security authority. According to the testimony of Palestinian residents, neither the IDF nor the Israel Police has any interest in internal Palestinian crime even though they have both the authority and the obligation to act in Area B. The Palestinian police are limited in what it can do in Area B. Bringing in reinforcements or carrying weapons in emergency situations requires coordination with, and obtaining permission from, the IDF. If Dandis fears that the man who murdered her daughters is going to attack her as well, she has plenty of reason to fear that she will not receive appropriate, immediate police protection from either the Israelis or the Palestinians. Dandis told Jack Khoury of Haaretz that the Ma’ale Adumim police referred her to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Coordination and Liaison Committee. Theoretically, this committee (which is subordinate to the Civil Affairs Ministry) is the logical place to go for such matters. Its parallel agency in Israel is the Civilian Liaison Committee (which is part of the Coordination and Liaison Administration - a part of the Civil Administration under the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories). In their meetings, they are supposed to discuss matters such as settlers’ complaints about the high volume of the loudspeakers at mosques or Palestinians’ complaints about attacks by settlers. But the Palestinians see the Liaison Committee as a place to submit requests for permission to travel to Israel, and get the impression that its clerks do not have much power when faced with their Israeli counterparts. In any case, the coordination process is cumbersome and long. The Palestinian police has a family welfare unit, and activists in Palestinian women’s organizations say that in recent years, its performance has improved. But, as stated, it has no authority over Israeli civilians and residents. Several non-governmental women’s groups also operate in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and women in similar situations approach them for help. The manager of one such organization told Haaretz that Dandis also fell victim to this confusing duplication of procedures and laws. Had Dandis approached her, she said, she would have referred her to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which has expertise in navigating Israel’s laws and authorities.
By: Phoebe Greenwood
Date: 27/05/2013
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John Kerry unveils plan to boost Palestinian economy
John Kerry revealed his long-awaited plan for peace in the Middle East on Sunday, hinging on a $4bn (£2.6bn) investment in the Palestinian private sector. The US secretary of state, speaking at the World Economic Forum on the Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea, told an audience including Israeli president Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that an independent Palestinian economy is essential to achieving a sustainable peace. Speaking under the conference banner "Breaking the Impasse", Kerry announced a plan that he promised would be "bigger, bolder and more ambitious" than anything since the Oslo accords, more than 20 years ago. Tony Blair is to lead a group of private sector leaders in devising a plan to release the Palestinian economy from its dependence on international donors. The initial findings of Blair's taskforce, Kerry boasted, were "stunning", predicting a 50% increase in Palestinian GDP over three years, a cut of two-thirds in unemployment rates and almost double the Palestinian median wage. Currently, 40% of the Palestinian economy is supplied by donor aid. Kerry assured Abbas that the economic plan was not a substitute for a political solution, which remains the US's "top priority". Peres, who had taken the stage just minutes before, also issued a personal plea to his Palestinian counterpart to return to the negotiations. "Let me say to my dear friend President Abbas," Peres said, "Should we really dance around the table? Lets sit together. You'll be surprised how much can be achieved in open, direct and organised meetings."
By: Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
Date: 27/05/2013
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Isolation Devastates East Jerusalem Economy
Thick locks hug the front gates of shuttered shops, now covered in graffiti and dust from lack of use. Only a handful of customers pass along the dimly lit road, sometimes stopping to check the ripeness of fruits and vegetables, or ordering meat in near-empty butcher shops. “All the shops are closed. I’m the only one open. This used to be the best place,” said 64-year-old Mustafa Sunocret, selling vegetables out of a small storefront in the marketplace near his family’s home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City. Amidst the brightly coloured scarves, clothes and carpets, ceramic pottery and religious souvenirs filling the shops of Jerusalem’s historic Old City, Palestinian merchants are struggling to keep their businesses alive. Faced with worsening health problems, Sunocret told IPS that he cannot work outside of the Old City, even as the cost of maintaining his shop, with high electricity, water and municipal tax bills to pay, weighs on him. “I only have this shop,” he said. “There is no other work. I’m tired.” Abed Ajloni, the owner of an antiques shop in the Old City, owes the Jerusalem municipality 250,000 Israeli shekels (68,300 U.S. dollars) in taxes. He told IPS that almost every day, the city’s tax collectors come into the Old City, accompanied by Israeli police and soldiers, to pressure people there to pay. “It feels like they’re coming again to occupy the city, with the soldiers and police,” Ajloni, who has owned the same shop for 35 years, told IPS. “But where can I go? What can I do? All my life I was in this place.” He added, “Does Jerusalem belong to us, or to someone else? Who’s responsible for Jerusalem? Who?” Illegal annexation Israel occupied East Jerusalem, including the Old City, in 1967. In July 1980, it passed a law stating that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. But Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and subsequent application of Israeli laws over the entire city remain unrecognised by the international community. Under international law, East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory – along with the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syrian Golan Heights – and Palestinian residents of the city are protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention. Jerusalem has historically been the economic, political and cultural centre of life for the entire Palestinian population. But after decades languishing under destructive Israeli policies meant to isolate the city from the rest of the Occupied Territories and a lack of municipal services and investment, East Jerusalem has slipped into a state of poverty and neglect. “After some 45 years of occupation, Arab Jerusalemites suffer from political and cultural schizophrenia, simultaneously connected with and isolated from their two hinterlands: Ramallah and the West Bank to their east, West Jerusalem and Israel to the west,” the International Crisis Group recently wrote. Israeli restrictions on planning and building, home demolitions, lack of investment in education and jobs, construction of an eight-foot-high separation barrier between and around Palestinian neighbourhoods and the creation of a permit system to enter Jerusalem have all contributed to the city’s isolation. Formal Palestinian political groups have also been banned from the city, and between 2001-2009, Israel closed an estimated 26 organisations, including the former Palestinian Liberation Organisation headquarters in Jerusalem, the Orient House and the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce. Extreme poverty Israel’s policies have also led to higher prices for basic goods and services and forced many Palestinian business owners to close shop and move to Ramallah or other Palestinian neighbourhoods on the other side of the wall. Many Palestinian Jerusalemites also prefer to do their shopping in the West Bank, or in West Jerusalem, where prices are lower. While Palestinians constitute 39 percent of the city’s population today, almost 80 percent of East Jerusalem residents, including 85 percent of children, live below the poverty line. “How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t control your resources? How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t have any control of your borders?” said Zakaria Odeh, director of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, of “this kind of fragmentation, checkpoints, closure”. “Without freedom of movement of goods and human beings, how could you develop an economy?” he asked. “You can’t talk about independent economy in Jerusalem or the West Bank or in all of Palestine without a political solution. We don’t have a Palestinian economy; we have economic activities. That’s all we have,” Odeh told IPS. Israel’s separation barrier alone, according to a new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD), has caused a direct loss of over one billion dollars to Palestinians in Jerusalem, and continues to incur 200 million dollars per year in lost opportunities. Israel’s severing and control over the Jerusalem-Jericho road – the historical trade route that connected Jerusalem to the rest of the West Bank and Middle East – has also contributed to the city’s economic downturn. Separation of Jerusalem from West Bank Before the First Intifada (Arabic for “uprising”) began in the late 1980s, East Jerusalem contributed approximately 14 to 15 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the Occupied Palestinian territories (OPT). By 2000, that number had dropped to less than eight percent; in 2010, the East Jerusalem economy, compared to the rest of the OPT, was estimated at only seven percent. “Economic separation resulted in the contraction in the relative size of the East Jerusalem economy, its detachment from the remaining OPT and the gradual redirection of East Jerusalem employment towards the Israeli labour market,” the U.N. report found. Decades ago, Israel adopted a policy to maintain a so-called “demographic balance” in Jerusalem and attempt to limit Palestinian residents of the city to 26.5 percent or less of the total population. To maintain this composition, Israel built numerous Jewish-Israeli settlements inside and in a ring around Jerusalem and changed the municipal boundaries to encompass Jewish neighbourhoods while excluding Palestinian ones. It is now estimated that 90,000 Palestinians holding Jerusalem residency rights live on the other side of the separation barrier and must cross through Israeli checkpoints in order to reach Jerusalem for school, medical treatment, work, and other services. “Israel is using all kinds of tools to push the Palestinians to leave; sometimes they are visible, and sometimes invisible tools,” explained Ziad al-Hammouri, director of the Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER). Al-Hammouri told IPS that at least 25 percent of the 1,000 Palestinian shops in the Old City were closed in recent years as a result of high municipal taxes and a lack of customers. “Taxation is an invisible tool…as dangerous as revoking ID cards and demolishing houses,” he said. “Israel will use this as pressure and as a tool in the future to confiscate these shops and properties.”
By the Same Author
Date: 16/05/2013
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Return to Iqrit: how one Palestinian village is being reborn
On a breezy hilltop in sight of the Lebanese border, a village last populated 65 years ago is being reclaimed from the dead for the living. Vegetables and herbs have been planted amid the rubble; a couple of donkeys graze on spring grass; traditional food is cooked and eaten in a makeshift structure next to the Church of Our Lady, where mass is celebrated for up to 200 worshippers on the first Saturday of every month. This is Iqrit, a Palestinian Christian village in northern Galilee, whose inhabitants left in the bitter war that followed the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948, and who have never been permitted to return to their land and razed homes. But in recent months, a group of young men, grandsons of Iqrit's original residents, have moved back in an attempt to reclaim and rebuild the village. And as Palestinians commemorate on Wednesday the Nakba, or catastrophe, of the loss of their land to Israel 65 years ago, work is being completed on a proposal for around 500 homes to be built on the site for the descendants of Iqrit's inhabitants, 90% of whom wish to return to the village. The plan is expected to be published in September. What is unusual about this demand for the "right of return" is that the villagers and their descendants are Israeli citizens, mostly living in the area, rather than refugees in Palestine and in the diaspora. In November 1948, six months after the state of Israel was declared, the new Israeli army arrived at Iqrit to tell the villagers they must leave because the area was dangerous. Most of the 490 inhabitants were transferred to a nearby village, taking only basic necessities, in the belief they would be gone for two weeks. But the area was declared a military zone and the villagers were forbidden from returning. The people of Iqrit took their case to Israel's newly constituted supreme court, which ruled in July 1951 that their evacuation was illegal and they must be permitted to return to the village. But on Christmas Eve of that year, Israeli soldiers demolished the village, leaving only the church and the cemetery intact. Later, the village land was taken for state use. Since then, the villagers have fought a legal battle that ended 10 years ago with a final supreme court ruling rejecting their demand to be allowed to reclaim their land. The original villagers and their descendants – now around 1,500 people scattered across northern Israel – are allowed only to hold services in the church and bury their dead in the cemetery. "We are refugees in our own country," said Nemi Ashkar of the Iqrit community association. Last summer, around a dozen young men decided to take matters into their own hands. "At the moment Iqrit people have the right to return only in a coffin, but we want to live here," said Walaa Sbait, 26, a schoolteacher in Haifa, 40 miles away. The group planted young saplings and built a chicken coop, which Sbait said the Israeli authorities had demolished. "They are making the chickens refugees, too," he said, adding that the two donkeys had also been threatened with eviction. The group consists of university students, factory and restaurant workers, and teachers. "Of course, it would be more comfortable to sip espresso in a coffee shop in Haifa, but we have a belief in our right to live here," said Sbait. The Iqrit community association says it has been offered support by Israeli politicians on both the right and left, and from Israeli artists and intellectuals. Father Souhail Khoury, the priest of the church, says he grew up listening to his parents reminisce about their lost land. "We are all in different villages and towns now, but this is the place where we still meet every month as a family," he said. "This is the place we call home."
Date: 15/05/2013
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Gaza gastronomy in a refugee camp
In a kitchen in the "martyrs' quarter" of the Aida refugee camp in Bethlehem, one of the toughest places in the West Bank, Islam Abu Aouda is preparing a soft dough of yoghurt, oil and flour. Soon she will fill small pockets with chopped spinach, sumac and lemon, and bake them in the oven. The mouthwatering parcels are called krass; I ate four but I wanted 14. Less than 50 miles away, Reem Daloul is also kneading dough in a makeshift kitchen in Gaza City, lit only by a small window during one of the coastal enclave's regular eight-hour power cuts. This dough is for small cigar- and horseshoe-shaped pastries, filled with za'atar, a blend of spices, or soft, salty cheese mixed with hot chilli. These two Palestinian women are divided by walls, fences and checkpoints, but connected by a love of traditional food – and the will to use this to improve their circumstances. Islam, whose six children include a 13-year-old disabled son, is part of a small collective of women, nearly all mothers of disabled children, who offer cookery classes and homestays in the Aida camp; Reem is part of the Zeitun Kitchen women's co-operative, which caters for weddings and family parties in Gaza. The tastes and aromas of traditional Palestinian food are at the heart of every home, where vividly flavoured dishes are created from scratch using the freshest ingredients, herbs, spices and olive oil. For foreigners, it's not easy to find this food: restaurants and street stalls concentrate on the staples of grilled meat, salads, falafel and hummus; real Palestinian cuisine is found at home. Invariably women rule the home kitchens: mothers, daughters, grandmothers, aunts and cousins cooking together while passing on techniques and swapping recipes. The restaurants and street stalls are the domain of men. The two spheres do not overlap. Among the most common home-cooked dishes are maqluba, meat and vegetables cooked in a spicy broth, served with nuts, herbs and yoghurt; baba ghanoush or muta'abal, a dip of roasted aubergine, garlic, lemon and tahini; mujadara, rice and lentils topped with caramelised onions; and musakhan, chicken roasted with sumac and served with sweet onions on taboon bread. In Gaza, traditional dishes often revolve around fish and seafood caught off its 25-mile Mediterranean coastline and tend to be fiery, reflecting an Egyptian influence. Recipes include Zibdiyit gambara, spicy shrimps cooked in a clay pot topped with pine nuts; habari ma'daggit il samak, small squid stuffed with dill, coriander and chilli; sayadiyya, a classic dish of spiced rice and fish; fattit ajir, roasted watermelon salad with green chillies and dill. These dishes are to be found in an enticing new cookbook, The Gaza Kitchen, which combines recipes with stories from Gaza and the political context of the residents' hardships. One of its two authors, Laila el-Haddad, a Palestinian-American, who spent her childhood summers in Gaza, says: "Food was always a way for me to stay connected to my heritage and Palestinian identity. "Even in such a small place there is remarkable regional distinction which generation after generation holds on to with great pride. In general, it's spicy, piquant, herby, sour and very earthy, relying on fresh herbs, green dill, dill seeds and a love for all things sour – sour plums or pomegranates, or lemon juice – and hot." The women of the Aida refugee camp have also produced a small booklet of their recipes, called Zaaki, in collaboration with the Noor Women Empowerment Group, a tiny Bethlehem-based grassroots project. While chopping tomatoes and cucumbers into tiny chunks for a traditional Arabic salad and roasting whole aubergines over a naked flame, Islam, 32, says that the cookery project stemmed from a need to raise money for consumables and equipment for the women's disabled children. But the first task was to get the women together in a supportive network. "Sometimes, families hide their children in the house because they are ashamed," she says. Some disabled children never go to school. The cookery classes allowed the mothers to make a small income without abandoning their domestic responsibilities. At first the women, brought up in a tradition of Palestinian hospitality, recoiled from charging strangers to eat their food. And their husbands were initially reluctant for men to be admitted to the classes. "At the beginning, everything was really difficult," says Islam, scraping the smoky aubergine flesh into a bowl with lemon juice, garlic, tahini and salt. "There was a lot of gossiping about the project in the camp, with foreigners coming to our home, but now people are supportive." Islam, who married at 16 and whose husband's brother and sister were both shot dead in the house in Israeli military raids, is learning English so she can deal with foreign visitors without the need for translation. Her husband is unemployed, like most of the men in the camp, where many families depend on food aid. Despite the traditions and skills of home-cooking, Aida children suffer from high rates of calcium deficiency, anaemia and tooth decay. In Gaza, almost 1 million people – more than half the population – receive basic food assistance from the United Nations. The 13 women of the Zeitun Kitchen co-operative have learned to adapt to the privations of life in Gaza: shortages of power and cooking oil; Israel's ban on many foodstuffs during the three years in which a stringent blockade was in place; the fluctuations in black market supplies through the tunnels to Egypt; the destruction of and restrictions on access to prime agricultural land; the imposition of strict limits on how far from shore Gaza's fishermen can lower their nets. Olive oil is just one example. An essential ingredient in most Palestinian dishes, the uprooting of olive trees in both Gaza and the West Bank has made the once-abundant oil prohibitively expensive for many families. Now it is often used just to dress a dish, rather than create it. "We either use a lower quality oil, or we import olive oil from Syria, which adds to the price," says Jamila Daloul, who founded the Zeitun Kitchen eight years ago. "Even when the farmers re-plant the trees, it takes three years for them to bear fruit, and at least 10 years to good olives." On the day I visited the Zeitun Kitchen, there was no power. "We used to have a generator, but it broke. The power goes off every other day for up to eight hours. We make everything fresh so we don't depend on fridges," says Jamila. The dish in preparation at the start of our visit was maftoul, the Palestinian version of couscous. A dough of flour, salt and water is pressed over a flat sieve to create fine grains which are then steamed with chopped onions, peppers, dill and lemon. Maftoul is traditionally served with a meat and vegetable stew. The women gossip and laugh as they cook, and occasionally disagree over technique. Reem, whose speed in rolling and shaping her dough doesn't compromise her perfectionism, remonstrates with a less careful colleague. But all is forgiven over an early lunch washed down with thick Arabic coffee and sweet mint tea. Food is more than a mere necessity; it nurtures, and binds people to each other and their cultural identity. In their introduction to The Gaza Kitchen, Laila el-Haddad and her co-author Maggie Schmitt say they conceived the cookbook as a way of allowing them "to tell the story of the place in a very special way. Nearly everyone in Gaza to whom we explained the project understood it immediately: to talk about food and cooking is to talk about the dignity of daily life, about history and heritage in a place where these very things have often been disparaged or actively erased. "Approached for an interview, Gazans braced themselves to explain one more time – gently, patiently – the impossible political situation of the Strip. When they discovered we did not want to talk about political parties or border crossings but about lentil dishes, there was a moment of astonished delight before they launched into the topic. Passers-by crowded around, each proffering a hometown recipe: 'No, no, it's much better if you add the onions at the end …' Food is a passionate subject."
Date: 27/04/2013
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West Bank convent loses appeal over Israeli separation barrier route
Israel is expected to press ahead with construction of the vast West Bank barrier around a convent near the Christian town of Beit Jala, following a ruling from a special appeals committee. The route of the barrier will separate a small community of elderly nuns at the Cremisan convent from 75% of their land and from a nearby monastery with which it has close ties. The playground of a nursery and a school run by the Cremisan sisters will be bordered on three sides by the wall. More than 50 Palestinian families will lose free access to their agricultural land, causing economic hardship to the dwindling Christian community. The campaign against the route of the barrier at Cremisan was taken up by the UK foreign secretary, William Hague, and the archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols. In a letter disclosed by the Guardian last year, Hague told Nichols that he shared his "concerns about the problem of land confiscation by the Israeli authorities affecting the people of Beit Jala and similar Palestinian communities in the occupied territories". Following a seven-year legal campaign, Israel's special appeals committee this week ruled in favour of the route, which leaves the convent on the Palestinian side of the barrier and the monastery and land belonging to the convent and local families on the Israeli side. According to the Society of St Yves, a Catholic human rights organisation that represented the nuns, the committee decided that the proposed route was "a reasonable solution that balances Israel's security needs on one hand and freedom of religion and the right to education on the other". However, the society said the ruling was "highly problematic and unjust". It failed to properly address "the violation of freedom of religion, the right to education as well as the economical damage caused for a unique Christian minority in Beit Jala by the construction of the wall," it said. It is considering an appeal to Israel's supreme court. The UK government provided indirect funding for the legal case. It says Israel is entitled to build a barrier but it should lie on the internationally recognised 1967 Green Line, not on confiscated Palestinian land. About 85% of the barrier is inside the West Bank. The route is harming the prospects of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to Britain. In his Christmas Eve homily in 2011, Nichols offered prayers in support of the community's "legal battle to protect their land and homes from further expropriation by Israel". Last year Israel's defence ministry told the Guardian: "The route of the security fence in the Beit Jala region is based purely on security considerations. This portion is there solely to keep terror out of Jerusalem."
Date: 15/04/2013
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Israel rules out criminal charges over Dalou family deaths
Israeli military authorities have closed their investigation into the killing of 10 members of one family in an air strike during November's eight-day war in Gaza, saying no criminal offence was suspected. The home of the Dalou family was destroyed the conflict, resulting in the biggest single incident of civilian deaths. Among the 12 victims were four Dalou siblings aged between one and seven, and five women, including one aged 80; two of the dead were neighbours of the family. Images of the children's corpses, squashed together on a morgue tray and covered in dust and debris, were shown around the world. The decision by Israel's Military Advocate General (MAG) to take no further action follows a special commission that examined about 80 incidents during the conflict which involved the deaths of "uninvolved civilians" or led to claims of alleged misconduct. In 65 of those cases, the MAG "did not find a basis for opening a criminal investigation". It ordered further investigation in the remaining cases. According to a report released by the Israeli military, the MAG found that in an unspecified number of cases "there is indeed basis for the claim that as a result of IDF [Israeli Defence Forces] attacks, uninvolved civilians were killed or injured". This was attributed to "unintended damage" or "operational errors". The report said: "This result, while regrettable, does not indicate a violation of the Laws of Armed Conflict, and stems directly from actions of Palestinian terrorist organisations which have chosen to conduct their unlawful activities from within the civilian population." It also described the deaths of the Dalou family as "regrettable", saying the air strike was targeted at "a senior terrorist and several other terrorists … who constituted a military target". It went on: "Operations staff had not foreseen that, as a result of the attack, collateral damage would be caused to uninvolved civilians to the extent alleged." Surviving members of the Dalou family have insisted there were no militants among them. Three weeks after the air strike, Bodour al-Dalou, 25, who lost her mother, brother, two sisters, a sister-in-law, an aunt and four nephews and nieces, told the Guardian: "There were no fighters in the house. I have no idea why the Israelis targeted us. I have heard they said it was a mistake, but what difference does that make?" In response to the MAG report, Human Rights Watch said asserting that consequences of an attack were unintended or a mistake did not mean it was lawful. "In fact, 'unintended damage' and 'mistakes' that kill civilians can indeed be violations of the laws of war, if the attackers failed to take all feasible precautions before attacking to ensure their attacks would not cause disproportionate civilian harm," said HRW's Bill Van Esveld. The Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights condemned the MAG's decision to close the Dalou and other cases. "Israel's legal system is used as a smokescreen, to provide an illusion of investigative rigour, while in fact providing systematic cover for widespread violations of international law," it said in a statement. About 160 Palestinians and six Israelis were killed during the conflict. The IDF said it had targeted approximately 1,500 sites inside Gaza during the eight days, and a similar number of rockets were launched by militants in Gaza with more than half reaching Israel. The MAG concluded that the death of the son of a BBC picture editor on the first day of the conflict was not the result of IDF action. A UN report last month said it was likely that 11-month-old Omar Misharawi was killed by a stray Palestinian rocket.
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