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$39 million from Saudi Arabia to re-house Palestinian refugees in Rafah
Date: 14 / 05 / 2007 Time: 14:16

Bethlehem - Ma'an - The Saudi Fund for Development (SFD) has increased its contribution to the United Nations agency for Palestine refugees, UNRWA, by $9 million for a project to re-house over 3,500 refugees in Rafah.

According to a press release from UNRWA, the donation of $39 million will fund 752 dwelling units for Palestine refugees whose homes in Rafah were demolished during the second intifada. The contribution will also fund the construction of public buildings: four schools, a health clinic, a community centre with a market area and a mosque.

Construction of the public buildings is 80% complete, the press release adds, and, on Monday, contracts with five local construction companies, valued at $23 million, were signed for the construction of the housing units.

UNRWA’s Director of Operations in Gaza, John Ging, said at the signing: “This very generous donation from the Saudi Fund for Development is of immeasurable importance to Rafah as it creates 340,000 man-days over the next eight months.” He added: “Work will commence within a week”.

On Sunday, UNRWA’s Commissioner-General Karen Koning AbuZayd visited the construction site. “I am delighted to see first hand, how these construction projects are giving hope and the dignity of work to so many refugees," the press release quotes her as saying. "I am very grateful to the Saudi Fund for Development for a donation that will help to replace despair with hope for thousands of families in this impoverished area.”

The UNRWA press release adds that SFD is also funding the construction of an UNRWA school in Deir el-Balah and the reconstruction of 'Special Hardship Case' shelters throughout the Gaza Strip.
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Remembering 'Al-Nakba', the great Palestinian catastrophe of 1948
Date: 15 / 05 / 2007 Time: 11:40

Bethlehem - Ma'an - Tuesday 15 May, 2007 is the 59th anniversary of the Palestinian 'Nakba', or catastrophe,in 1948.

On 14 May, Israel celebrates its independence, although the date moves from year to year according to the Hebrew calendar. The following day, Palestinians commemorate their catastrophe.

The Nakba is considered to be the biggest catastrophe for Palestinians in modern history; the immediate consequences of the Nakba was the occupation, by Israel, of more than three quarters of historic Palestine and the expulsion of more than 85% of the population. Around 750,000 Palestinians were displaced as a result of the Nakba.

To highlight the importance of remembering the Nakba several organizations from around the world have issued statements on this great Palestinian tragedy.

Australians for Palestine issued the following statement:

"For 59 years, the 15th of May has evoked painful memories for some 750,000 Palestinians and their descendants. They were the Palestinians who were forced to flee in 1948 - in effect, two-thirds of the Palestinian population living in the cities, towns and villages of historic Palestine - to make way for the artificially-created state of Israel.

"That was the year that Palestinian society and their way of life was destroyed - first by Zionist terrorist groups and then by the new Israeli army. By the time Israel’s independence was declared on 14 May, almost half of the Palestinian population had already begun their frightening journey out of historic Palestine never thinking that they would be denied the right to return home at the end of hostilities.

"At least 50% of Palestinians fled under a barrage of bombs and artillery fire as the poorly-organised armies of the neighbouring Arab states were drawn into the conflict. The rest panicked and fled on hearing of the massacres being carried out in the villages of Deir Yassin and
Tantura.

"Hundreds of Palestinian towns and villages were depopulated. The Israeli army then set about demolishing the homes to prevent the return of the refugees. They also confiscated Palestinian properties and there were many cases of Jewish immigrants moving into Palestinian homes that still held the personal belongings of their owners.

"Effectively, Israel had increased - from 55% to 78% - the land allocated to it by the UN Partition of Palestine in 1947. This additional 23% of land was deliberately plundered and illegally appropriated with the aim of making all of Palestine an exclusively Jewish state. That aim still drives Israel relentlessly today, a catastrophe or Nakba for the Palestinians no less now than it was then."

The importance of remembering al-Nakba

Australians for Palestine continued:

"While man-made human calamities ought to be remembered in order to prevent them from happening again, the compelling reason for remembering al-Nakba is the tragic refugee problem it created and that it still remains unresolved today. The Palestinian refugees have been refused their right to return home and have had no compensation paid to them by Israel. Nor does Israel intend to pay them compensation or recognise their right to return.

"Therefore, the right of return must remain one of the fundamental issues needing a resolution that is fair and equitable in any final status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. In fact, the right of return should be in the forefront of all the issues concerning the Palestinians because Israel’s refusal to allow the Palestinian refugees to return home exposes Israel as a state existing exclusively for Jews.

"The injustice of the original sins of displacement and dispossession is compounded by the injustice of giving exclusive rights to people of the Jewish religion, regardless of their ethnicity and nationality, “to return home” over the natural, basic rights of the indigenous people of Palestine whose home, possessions and homeland was - and continues to be - stripped from them. This is the burning issue."

Numbers of Palestinians made refugees

Of the 9.6 million Palestinians worldwide (Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, 2004):

• 7.2 million are refugees (BADIL, 2005)
• 4.4 million are UNRWA registered Palestinian refugees and descendants from the 1948 displacement and 33% of these refugees live in UNRWA’s 59 refugee camps inside the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the neighbouring Arab countries (UNRWA, 2006)
• 1.7 million are not registered with UNRWA (BADIL, 2005)
• 834,000 are Palestinian refugees and their descendants from the 1967 displacement (BADIL, 2005)
• 355,000 Palestinians and their descendants are internally displaced inside Israel (BADIL, 2005)
• 57,000 Palestinians have become internally displaced in the occupied Palestinian West Bank as a result of home demolitions, revocation of residency rights and construction of illegal settlements on confiscated Palestinian-owned land. Of these, 15,000 have been displaced by Israel’s Annexation/Apartheid Wall. (BADIL, 2005)
• 6,000 Palestinians have been deported from the Occupied Territories between 1967 and the early 1990s (BADIL, 2005)
• 100,000 have had their residency rights revoked by Israel (BADIL, 2005)

International Law

According to international law, all refugees have the right to return to their homes after being forced to flee in fear of their lives and safety, once hostilities cease. Under the Principle of Self Determination adopted by the UN in 1947 and explicitly applied to the Palestinian people in 1969, neither occupation nor sovereignty diminish the rights of ownership.

UN Resolution 194 of 1948 expressly affirms the right of the Palestinians to return home if they wish and that compensation be paid to those not choosing to return and for loss and damage to property. This has been re-affirmed 130 times by the UN with universal consensus except for
Israel and the US. In 1974, UN resolution 3236 clarified the right of return as an “inalienable right”.

Israel’s breaches and obligations

Thus far, Israel has refused to recognise the right of Palestinians to return to their homeland, breaching international humanitarian law, customary international law and human rights law. Denying the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands is a war crime and an act of aggression.

PLO

The Palestine Liberation Organisation issued a statement condemning the actions of Israel in the Nakba. The PLO highlighted the massacre of Palestinians and the razing of more than 500 Palestinian villages by the Israeli Haganah gangs in 1948.

The PLO also noted the Six Day War of 1967 in which another 350,000 Palestinians were banished from their homes in the West Bank. Today, says the PLO, the separation wall and siege on the Palestinian territories continues to displace more and more Palestinians.

The PLO commented on the refugees undiminished desire to return to their homeland after so many years in diaspora.

"DAIR [Department for Arab and International Relations] in PLO assures the Palestinians right of return to their homeland is legitimate and internationally recognized," reads the statement.

It continues, "DAIR calls upon the International society to uphold to its moral responsibilities towards the Palestinians, solve the Palestinian question according to International resolutions, and end the Palestinian refugees' crisis."

Hamas

The 'Islamic resistance movement of Hamas' issued a statement declaring, "In the name of Allah the Most Gracious, the most merciful at the 59th anniversary of catastrophe, liberation of Palestine is legitimate and the right of return will never fade whatever time passes."

Hamas stated that the Palestinian catastrophe resulted in the "slaughtering by gangs of Zionist terrorism (sic), which made Palestinians refugees tormented and homeless suffering from horrible political economic and social conditions too difficult to be imagined."

Hamas commemorated the massacres in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, in Beirut, Lebanon in 1982, in which the Israeli forces surrounding the camps were complicit in the slaughter of up to 3,500 Palestinian refugees, by Lebanese militias.

The Islamic movement also noted the ongoing persecution of thousands of Palestinians in Israeli jails.

Hamas concluded by declaring that the inalienable Palestinian rights will never be sacrificed.

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World Bank: Israel preventing Palestinian economic recovery
Date: 09 / 05 / 2007 Time: 12:24


Palestinians queue to cross Huwwara
checkpoint near Nablus (MaanImages)
Bethlehem - Ma'an - Israel's policy of closure and movement restrictions has "stymied" Palestinian economic revival, the World Bank says in a harshly critical 18-page report, issued 9 May.

The report accuses Israel of using its closure system to "expand and protect settlement activity."

"It is often difficult to reconcile the use of closure for security purposes from its use to expand and protect settlement activity and the relatively unhindered movement of settlers in and out of the West Bank," the report states. The report points out that there is currently double the number of Israeli settlers residing in the occupied West Bank, excluding east Jerusalem, than at the time of the Oslo Accords.

The World Bank notes that, in December 2004, the government of Israel agreed with the Palestinian Authority that Palestinian economic revival was essential.

However, "freedom of movement and access for Palestinians within the West Bank is the exception rather than the norm," the report states, noting that this is "contrary to the commitments" made between Israel and the PA. For example, the Oslo Accords said that the movement of people and vehicles in the West Bank “will be free and normal, and shall not need to be effected through checkpoints or roadblocks,” the World Bank recalls.

"disconnected cantons"

Currently, however, closure in the West Bank, is "implemented through an agglomeration of policies, practices and physical impediments which have fragmented the territory into ever smaller and more disconnected cantons," the World Bank notes.

The report also outlines the range of impediments and obstacles to freedom of movement and access in the occupied West Bank, highlighting "the ease by which physical impediments can be removed in one form and reinstated in another."

"This was underlined by the admission by the IDF in January 2007 that forty-four impediments it claimed to have removed as part of a plan to ease movement did not actually exist," the World Bank report recalls.

The report criticizes Israel for limiting its relaxation of movement restrictions to "incremental steps," which the World Bank says "are not likely to lead to any sustainable improvement" because they "lack permanence and certainty and can be easily withdrawn or replaced by other restrictions."

The World Bank also questions why the system of separate roads for Israeli settlers in the West Bank and the Palestinian population, which "ensures that settlers can travel between the West Bank and Israel and between settlements with relative ease, but at the same time has forced Palestinians on to an inferior set of roadways which often involve a slow and circuitous route," means "the overwhelming onus of control and restriction falls on the Palestinian population." There are 700km of roads in the occupied West Bank that Palestinians are restricted from using, the report states.

"draconian permit policies"

The World Bank describes the government of Israel's control of the Palestinian population registry, as "the core of the system of administrative obstacles," noting that this control supports the extensive permit regime which, as the report states, "can be used to control nearly all facets of Palestinian movement outside of an individual’s immediate village or municipal area."

In addition to Israel's "increasingly draconian permit policies," further ad hoc measures, communicated verbally to Palestinians, "create a system of movement restrictions which is non-transparent and highly unpredictable," the report finds.

"Holding a valid permit does not necessarily guarantee the ability to cross a checkpoint," the report continues. "Requirements can be changed without notice at particular checkpoints and comprehensive closures, banning all movement, can be imposed at any time."

The report also criticizes Israel for its policy of denying (re-)entry to foreign passport-holders, particularly those of Palestinian background, wishing to enter the occupied Palestinian territory, either for work or family reasons. "Given that the vast majority of new investment in WB&G [West Bank and Gaza] since the signing of the Oslo Accords [1993] has been through overseas Palestinians, such practices and the high degree of uncertainty connected to them will inevitably lead to a loss of foreign investment and knowledge transfer and a further contraction of the Palestinian economy," the World Bank warns.

Conclusion: "restoration of the presumption of movement" needed

The World Bank concludes that "sustainable economic recovery will remain elusive if large areas of the West Bank remain inaccessible for economic purposes and restricted movement remains the norm for the vast majority of Palestinians and expatriate Palestinian investors."

The report mentions not just the Israeli settlements and their municipal jurisdiction as contributing to the "highly fragmented Palestinian economy." The “seam zone” (the territory trapped between the Separation Wall and the Green Line, in which some 50,000 Palestinians live), the Jordan Valley and other so-called “closed areas”, which are unpredictable, make economic recovery currently almost impossible.

The World Bank recommends that, "Economic recovery and sustainable growth will require a fundamental reassessment of closure practices, a restoration of the presumption of movement, and review of Israeli control of the population registry and other means of dictating the residency of Palestinians within WB&G [West Bank and Gaza] as embodied in the existing agreements between GOI [Government of Israel] and the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization]."

Israel: closures due to terrorism

According to Associated Press, Israel is insisting that the closures are driven by security concerns alone.

"We have no interest whatsoever in seeing a failed Palestinian economy," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev told AP. "Many of the current problems are a direct result of terrorism, violence and political instability inside the Palestinian territories ... And the overall anarchy that exists."

The full report may be downloaded at www.worldbank.org/we

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UN meeting in South Africa addresses Palestinians' inalienable rights, the deepening humanitarian crisis, and apartheid
Date: 11 / 05 / 2007 Time: 11:12

Bethlehem - Ma'an - Diplomats, parliamentarians, representatives of the United Nations and other intergovernmental organizations, along with civil society and media personnel, gathered on Wednesday in Pretoria, South Africa for the UN African Meeting on the Question of Palestine.

The two-day meeting, which was sponsored by the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People-Africa, aims to bolster African solidarity with the Palestinian people, as well as build on recent international and regional momentum to bring the Israeli and Palestinian sides back to the negotiating table," according to press statements.

“South Africa firmly believes in the Palestinian peoples’ inalienable right to self-determination and the fact that there was no military solution to the conflict,” Essop Pahad, a minister in the office of President Thabo Mbeki, said opening the meeting on Wednesday, according to a press statement. He added that South Africa firmly believes that there can be no peace in the Middle East unless a sustainable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is found.

Pahad also stressed that South Africa urges the international community to give unconditional recognition to, and engage in dialogue with, the Palestinian unity government, lift all restrictions on that government, and recognize and take appropriate action to address the dire humanitarian crisis facing the Palestinian people, the statement reads.

A statement from UN secretary-general Ban Ki-Moon said, “A viable and independent Palestine and a safe and secure Israel would not only be a blessing for the two peoples, but would also help promote peace and stability in the wider region.”

"I encourage both parties to demonstrate a true commitment to peace through a negotiated two-state solution,” Mr. Ban said.

Urgent action needed in face of humanitarian crisis

On Wednesday, a panel, which included human rights and legal experts, a columnist from Israel's Haaretz newspaper, a United Nations official based in Gaza, and the Palestinian minister for public works, called for urgent action to alleviate the suffering of Palestinians living in the occupied Palestinian territory, according to a UN press statement.

The panel also highlighted the plight of residents of the Gaza Strip, "who face a deepening humanitarian crisis due to the Israeli authorities' prolonged closure of the Strip's only cargo crossing point," the statement says.

Many other issues were discussed, including the possible deployment of an international protection force in the Gaza Strip and Israel's accountability under international law.

Basem Khaldi, a senior officer in Gaza working for the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, pointed out that in Gaza, there are an estimated 1.4 million Palestinians and approximately 80 per cent of the population live below the poverty line. The Palestinian gross domestic product (GDP) has collapsed by 23 per cent in the last year. One fourth of Gazans do not have access to safe water, employment is at 40 per cent, and food insecurity is rampant. The Agreement on Movement and Access has gone largely unimplemented, and “people are lucky if the Rafah crossing is open once or twice a week,” Mr. Khaldi said.

Iain Scobbie, a senior research professor in law, human rights and peace-building in the Middle East at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, stressed that Israel was still responsible for the situation in Gaza despite its disengagement two years ago. This was clear since Israel still controlled a significant portion of Gaza's tax revenues, its airspace, its offshore territory, and, importantly, ingress and egress from the area, he said.

Why sanctions on the occupied people?

In regards to the international siege on the Palestinians since the election victory of Hamas in January 2006, Samih Al-Abed, the Palestinian minister for public works, said that the major powers were punishing the Palestinians for exercising democracy and destroying the institutions that they had helped to build.

Apparently no United Nations resolution can be implemented and international action is always prevented by the use of the United States veto power, Al-Abed continued.

"It is a tragic and glaring irony that such sanctions have been imposed on an occupied people and not on the occupying power that for years has been committing systematic human rights violations and grave breaches of international law - war crimes - against the Palestinian civilian population under its occupation,” he said. Despite warning that it appears that "Israel does not want a peaceful settlement," he assured that, "If there is a partner for peace on the Israeli side to come and negotiate without conditions, we are ready to negotiate to bring an end to this tragedy and to make peace.”

Apartheid

"We believe that the country of Oliver Tambo, of Nelson Mandela and other renowned freedom fighters is the appropriate venue for holding this meeting,” the Senegalese chairman of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, Paul Badji, said at the meeting, taking place in post-apartheid South Africa.

Many other participators did not hesitate to draw parallels between apartheid-era South Africa and the situation today in the occupied Palestinian territory.

Mr. Pahad of the South African president's office said, "Comparing the situation of Palestinians in the Occupied Territory with the situation of South Africa’s during apartheid, while Israel denied such intention or purpose, its oppressive actions -- closures, checkpoints extrajudicial killings, among others -- in contravention of international humanitarian and human rights law, certainly belies that stance."

The press statement added, "In a poignant address Gideon Levy, columnist for Ha'aretz, Tel Aviv, said it was very unpleasant to sit and hear accusations against one's country, but it was much more unpleasant to sit and listen to such accusations knowing that they were justified."

Levy also said that the similarities between the occupation and apartheid, as well as the differences, should rightly be on the table. “Roads” in the occupied Palestinian territory are not really roads, he said, because they are impassable. Israel's legal system metes out different punishments to different people and there are different rules for Palestinians and different rules for Israelis, he added.

Yasmin Sooka, the executive director of the Foundation for Human Rights in Pretoria, said the situation of the Palestinian people had a huge resonance with South Africans, "for those who had lived under apartheid had believed that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would have been solved long before the back of apartheid had been broken," the press statement said. However, she had hope, she said, particularly since the world had witnessed “old enemies” in Great Britain and Ireland sitting down at the same table after so many years of tension. She stressed that the solution to the question of Palestine should be based on the search for justice.

The two-day meeting will be followed on Friday 11 May by the UN Public Forum in Support of Israeli-Palestinian Peace, to be held at the University of Pretoria.

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Saudi-Egyptian bridge, across Gulf of Aqaba, to be launched Saturday
Date: 11 / 05 / 2007 Time: 11:59

Bethlehem - Ma'an - Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz and Egyptian President Husni Mubarak are expected to lay the foundation stone on Saturday for a 50km bridge that will link Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

The bridge, which is expected to be completed in three years, is estimated to cost some 3 billion US dollars, funded through an agglomeration of investors led by the Kuwaiti 'Al-Khurafi' company, and two Saudi companies 'Ojeh' and 'Bin Laden'. These Gulf companies will collaborate with an alliance of Egyptian companies led by Arab contractors.

The two-part bridge will span the Gulf of Aqaba from Ras Humaid in the Tabuk area of northern Saudi Arabia to the Egyptian resort of Sharm Al-Sheikh, passing through the Saudi island of Tiran, located in the Red Sea between the two countries.

Media sources have said the causeway, which will link Asia and Africa by a 30-minute drive, will make passenger and cargo traffic easier between Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and also between Gulf nations and the northeast of the African continent.

The bridge is also expected to ease the travel of the 50-70,000 Egyptian pilgrims who travel every year to the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia.

Well-informed sources reported that the Egyptian president will be present at the ceremony, due to take place in the Tabuk area, while Saudi officials did not deny or confirm the whole subject of the bridge.

For its part, an Israeli intelligence website referred indirectly to the possibility of the eruption of armed conflict as a result of this huge project. The Debka.com website, which is affiliated to the Israeli intelligence, noted that "The 1967 Israel-Arab war flared when Egypt blockaded the Tiran Strait by deploying artillery batteries at Sharm el Sheik."

The website also expressed its concern that the establishment of this bridge will present unfavourable consequences for Israel, economically, strategically, militarily and geologically. The website adds, "Israel was not advised of the $3bn project or informed how international shipping in the Tiran Strait would be regulated - even though its military and economic interests are vitally affected."