http://www.imemc.org/article/49800

45 villages, 90.000 residents in the Negev on the verge of displacement
Thursday August 09, 2007 09:34 by Maisa Abu Ghazala – IMEMC saed at imemc dot org

Thousands of residents participated on Wednesday in a conference which comes in solidarity with the “unrecognized” Arab villages in the Negev, and the ongoing Israeli threats to evacuate these villages and displace the 90.000 Arab residents in the Negev living in 45 unrecognized villages.

Beduin children in an unrecognized village in the Negev

Translated by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC

The participants in the conference stated that Israel is housing thousands of Israeli settlers in the Negev and establishing towns for them while it rejects to recognize the Arab villages in the Negev and continues to displace the residents.

The participants also called on the Arab countries to act in support to the residents of the Negev and counter the Israeli racist policies against them.

On Wednesday, the regional council of the unrecognized villages conducted a press conference to expose the Israeli policies against the Arab residents in the Negev, and the continuous demolishing of Arab houses there. Several Arab members of Knesset, and dozens of Arab leaders in addition to hundreds of residents participated in the conference.

The participant carried banners written in Arabic, Hebrew and English; the banners read; “Yes for recognizing our villages”, “Israel wants us out of our lands, and wants settlers to replace us” in addition to several others banners confirming their steadfastness in their lands.

Arab member of Knesset, Talab Al Sane’, said that the Negev is 12000 square kilometers, which it as twice as big as the West Bank, but after the 1967 war Israel displaced 90% of the Arabs and replaced them with settlements and settlers.

Al Sane’ also said that now there are only 90000 Arab residents in the Negev, and that those residents are facing displacement by Israel “just because they are Arabs”.

He added that the Israeli government is financing the annexation of Arab lands in the Negev, already annexed graveyards in Be’er Shiva, and transformed an old mosque into a museum.

He also said that the Arab residents are not provided with the basic services, such as water supply and electricity and are denied construction licenses which forces them to build houses without licenses and that these houses are always demolished by the Israeli authorities.

“meanwhile, settlers in the Negev are allowed to have their own farms, they have water and electricity, and are receiving all services from the state”, Al Sane’ added.

Hussein Al Rafay’a, head of the regional council of the unrecognized villages, stated that Israel wants the Arabs to be refugees in their own lands, and is ongoing with its violations by demolishing the houses and displacing the residents.

“The Arabs used to own 5.5 Million Dunams of lands in the Negev, now they only own less than 200.000”, he stated, “We will resort to the security council, and the international court to provide the residents and their lands with the needed protection”.

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http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1632089,00.html?xid=rss-world&iid=sphere-inline-sidebar

A Fight to the Death in Gaza
Tuesday, Jun. 12, 2007 By TIM MCGIRK/JERUSALEM

Hamas Victory a Blow to U.S. Policy
Since the new clashes erupted on Sunday, gangs have tossed their enemies alive off 15-story buildings, shot down one another's children, and burst into hospitals to finish off wounded foes lying helplessly in bed. The revenge motive alone could now be enough to sustain the civil war.

The fighters of Hamas are better organized and motivated than those of President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah organization, and by the second day of fighting they had seized the advantage, flushing Fatah militants out of security posts and installations throughout the Gaza Strip. Doctors reported that in the last 24 hours, 21 Palestinians have been killed and another 120 wounded in the fighting. Both Hamas and Fatah have vowed to kill each other's political and military leaders, and have tried to do so with a vengance. Twice in the past 48 hours, Fatah members shelled the home of Hamas leader and Prime Minister Ismael Haniyeh. He and his family were unhurt.

It did not help the morale of Fatah gunmen that their senior commander, Mohammed Dahlan — a sharp-suited favorite of the Israelis and the U.S. — slipped out of Gaza as soon as the fighting started. Soon afterwards, Hamas members cornered a top Dahlan commander, Jamal Abud a-Jediyan, near his home and pumped 45 bullets into him. One Fatah officer, Colonel Nasser Khaldi, contacted by a news agency, complained: "There is a weakness of our leaders. Hamas is just taking over our positions. There are no orders."

Meanwhile, President Abbas, who remains a safe distance away from the fury of Gaza at his fortress home in the West Bank city of Ramallah, has accused Hamas — his partner in a short-lived unity government — of trying to stage a coup. Abbas aides warned that unless Hamas calls off its fighters in Gaza, Fatah will begin targeting Hamas members in the West Bank, where Fatah may be marginally stronger than the Islamists.

The reverses being inflicted on Fatah in Gaza have alarmed the Bush Administration, which has been backing Abbas. Washington sees the Palestinian Authority President as more moderate and flexible than the Islamists of Hamas, but at the same time, too mercurial and indecisive to take charge and rally the disparate and demoralized Fatah forces. Tel Aviv intelligence sources tell TIME that the U.S. is putting urgent pressure on Israel to open up Gaza's sealed frontiers to allow in shipments of Israeli ammunition and weapons to enable Fatah to turn the tide. As of Monday, the Israeli military was balking at the request, out of concern that new shipments of weapons might eventually be turned against Israel.

"How do we explain it if mortar shells with Israeli markings are then used to shell towns inside Israel?" one officer asked.

More importantly, the Israelis are more realistic and better-informed than Washington as to what's happening in Gaza, and its likely outcome. Many Israeli intelligence officers doubt that a last-minute infusion of weapons could shift the balance away from Hamas. By Tuesday at dusk, 200 Hamas fighters had besieged a main Fatah headquarters, where 500 fighters were holed up inside, and were pounding the building with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. By nightfall, Hamas had overrun their rivals' last bastion. Elsewhere in Gaza, say locals, droves of Fatah milita are surrendering. Israeli arms could be delivered to the gates of Gaza, but it is likely that nobody among the Fatah forces is capable any longer of fighting their way through Hamas' lines to pick up the weapons. It could, quite simply, be too late to help Abbas' men in Gaza.

—With reporting by Aaron J. Klein/Tel Aviv
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http://www.imemc.org/article/49799
Abbas: “No talks with Hamas before it ends its coup”
Thursday August 09, 2007 08:57 by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC & Agencies saed at imemc dot org

Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, stated on Wednesday that talks with Hamas movement cannot be carried out before “Hamas returns the Gaza Strip to its previous state”, referring to Hamas’ military control over Gaza.

Abbas added that “Hamas knows very well how to return the situation to its previous state, and knows that what it did in Gaza was destructive”.

The statements of Abbas came during a press conference in Alexandria – Egypt, following his meeting with the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak,

Commenting on peace initiatives with Israel, Abbas said that the sees no conflict between the Arab Peace Initiative and the American Initiative, presented by the US president George W. Bush, regarding peace in the Middle East and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

“Our aim is to end the occupation to the Palestinian territories occupied by Israeli since 1967, including East Jerusalem”, Abbas said, “both initiatives will lead to a Palestinian state, ending the occupation and finding a just solution to the refugees issue in accordance to security council resolution number 194”.

He also said that the Palestinian Authority is now empowering its security devices in order to impose law and order in the Palestinian controlled areas.
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http://www.imemc.org/article/49817
Palestinian security forces in Gaza arrests a doctor
Thursday August 09, 2007 18:18 by Wissam Afifah - IMEMC News ghassanb at imemc dot org

The Hamas affiliated executive force arrested on Thursday Dr. Jom'a Al Saqa, the director of the public relation office at Al Shifa hospital in Gaza city.

Islam Shahwan the spokesman of the executive force said that the arrests comes due to criminal charges and has no political reasons. Workers at the Al Shifa hospital has accused the executive force member of assaulting them and forcing them out of their jobs based on decisions taken by the fired Palestinian government headed by Hamas.

On Wednesday Dr. Al Saqa received an order removing him from his post at the hospital, he told IMEMC on Wednesday that when he went to is office at the hospital he was denied access by the member of the executive force and was forced to leave the hospital.

He added that when his coworkers tried to protest the diction the Hamas officers attacked them and assaulted them.

Shahwan stated that his force did not assault anyone at the hospital and that the executive force will continue to enforce law and order in the Gaza strip.

Translated by : Ghassan Bannoura – IMEMC News Room
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http://www.imemc.org/article/49818
Palestinian court releases a Hamas activist and security forces refuse the order
Thursday August 09, 2007 18:51 by Najeep Faraj - IMEMC News ghassanb at imemc dot org

The Palestinian court in the southern West Bank city of Bethlehem has orders on Thursday the release of Yasser Abed Al Majeed, a Hamas activist, but the local security forces loyal to the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah refused to release them man.

Abed Al Majeed and other 12 Palestinians were arrested by the Palestinian security forces in Bethlehem after being accused of attempting to form executive force division in the city of Bethlehem.

Executive force, formed by Hamas after taking the office was announced illegal by the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas shortly after Hamas took total control of the Gaza strip two months ago.

The court orders the release of Yasser Abed Al Majeed due to the lace of evidence but still the security forces refused to let him go.

The attorney general in the city also refused on Thursday to attend to one other court hearing for anther two Hamas activists fearing that the court will release them, the judge had to postponed the ruling until next Sunday in this case.

Translated by: Ghassan Bannoura- IMEMC News Room

http://www.imemc.org/article/49294
Israeli employers mistreat Palestinian workers, study found

Tuesday July 03, 2007 11:28 by Vasilena Todorova - IMEMC News news at imemc dot org

Palestinians employed in West Bank settlements and industrial zones earn less than half the minimum wage, receive no health insurance and are insufficiently insured for work-related accidents, according to a study by Israel’s Committee on Foreign Workers released today.

The committee started researching the issue of low wages after receiving complaints about the poor working conditions for Palestinians employed in occupied and Israeli territories. About 18,000 Palestinians work in the industrial, agricultural, construction and services sectors of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

According to the report, some 120,000 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip have work permits issued by the Israeli government but less than 22,000 of them work in Israel. However, Israeli law have established a cap on the number of Palestinians hired in Israel – 13,500 in construction, 2,000 at factories and services sector, 3,500 in agriculture and 3,000 more in East Jerusalem and Atarot industrial zone in north Jerusalem. There are no regulations constricting the number of Palestinian employees in West Bank settlements.

Palestinians earn 11 to 13 shekels an hour -- rates far below the minimal wage stipulated by Israeli law, and they often work over 10 hours a day, according to and Israel’s Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor and Israeli workers’ rights groups. The study found that Israeli employers, especially in the West Bank, are not properly monitored by the labor department and, therefore, the mistreatment of Palestinian workers goes unchecked.

"Due to the many testimonies of infringement of Palestinian workers' rights by Israeli employers in the West Bank, it is worthy to probe whether employers comply to the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor laws," the study said.

http://www.imemc.org/article/49281
Israeli soldiers kidnapped 581 Palestinian in Hebron since the beginning of this year
Monday July 02, 2007 22:00 by Saed Shiokhy – IMEMC saed at imemc dot org

The Hebron office of the Palestinian Prisoner Society (PPS) issued an official report on Monday stating the Israeli soldiers kidnapped 581 residents, including 27 children and four women, from Hebron and its surrounding villages since the beginning of this year.

Translated and Edited by Saed Bannoura - IMEMC

The Society stated that testimonies collected by its lawyers revealed that the abducted children were tortured and humiliated, and that one of the abducted women is only 16-year old identified as Ayat Mohammad Dababsa from Nouba town near Hebron.

A total of 23 women from Hebron are currently imprisoned in Hasharon Israeli detention facility.

The PPS report also revealed that 74 detainees were transferred to administrative detention for periods that varies between 4 and 6 months, and that 29 of the abducted residents are in immediate need for medical attention.

77 of the abducted residents were moved to Asqalan Central Prison for interrogation, 33 were interrogated in Al Maskobiyya prison, 9 in Al Jalama, and three in Petah Tikva.

Amjad Al Najjar, head of the PPS office in Hebron, stated that 16 residents were kidnapped by the army at Al Karama crossing between Jordan and the West Bank.

Al Najjar added that the Ofer Israeli military court is imposing high fines on the detainees, which increases the suffering of the detainees and their families especially under the harsh economic situation in the Palestinian territories.

Al Najjar demanded the United Nations, the International Red Cross and Human Rights groups to intervene and to dispatch a fact-finding committee to the Israeli prison in order to expose the illegal Israeli violations against the detainees.

http://www.counterpunch.org/landau06302007.html
Weekend Edition
June 30 / July 1, 2007

Meet the New Goliath
Israel is Bad for Jewish Ethics
By SAUL LANDAU

You can trace the current Middle East conflicts back to Moses, who was deaf. God said: "Moses, take your people to Canada." Moses heard Canaan.

One group of religious Jews believes Israel is anathema to Jewish ethics. On June 10, a group of Naturei Karta (Guardians of the City) joined a demonstration in Washington DC to protest the Israeli occupation of Palestine and of Syria's Golan Heights. Back in October 2005, Neturei Karta leader Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss had made the group's position clear about Israel and the Zionist movement. "The Zionists use the Holocaust issue to their benefit. We, Jews who perished in the Holocaust, do not use it to advance our interests. We stress that there are hundreds of thousands of Jews around the world who identify with our opposition to the Zionist ideology and who feel that Zionism is not Jewish, but a political agenda...What we want is not a withdrawal to the '67 borders, but to everything included in it, so the country can go back to the Palestinians and we could live with them ... "

Two years ago, I talked to one of the men in black suits, with black hats and the traditional curls of the Hassidic Jews--but they are not Hassidic.

"How can the ethics of Judaism be practiced by corrupt state officials, and most are corrupt in most governments?" He said this before the July 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, meaning before the revelation that the then head of the Israeli army, General Dan Halutz, was busy selling off his stock portfolio on the morning of the invasion for fear that prices would plunge. In addition, as Israel prepared to go to war, two Cabinet officials were charged with pinching the butts of young women staff members.

"Do you realize, that a man who calls himself a Jew," he continued, "gave orders to Israeli young men and women in the army or police to kill Palestinian civilians, to break their bones [referring to Labor Party Defense Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, who in 1989 urged Israeli soldiers to break the bones of Palestinian demonstrators]. Is such behavior compatible with our ethics? With morality on any level? As long as Israel exists as a state, Jewish men and women will commit unpardonable sins and pollute the religion for future generations. Israeli has fomented a pernicious lobby in the United States and its equivalent in Europe to tell the non-Jewish public that it is a democratic David fighting a fanatical Goliath. This is a lie. No Messiah will ever return to such a terrible place. A state of Israel can exist only after the Messiah Returns."

I tried to lighten the mood a little, fearing he would explode in anger. I recounted the story of the man shortly after the 1948 creation of Israel who returns home and tells his wife. "The rabbi said all Jews have to move to Israel because the Messiah will soon come there. "Are you crazy?" she retorted, "After we spent all that money fixing up the apartment!"

He didn't laugh.

"Have you lost your sense of humor?" I asked.

"When it comes to Israel," he replied, "I see nothing funny."

As a child, my family elders, rabbis and other religious figures taught me the same lessons as Israeli journalist Uri Avnery learned: "Judaism a humane religion, a 'light unto the Gentiles'. Judaism means to loathe violence, to value the spiritual above the powerful, to turn an enemy into a friend. A Jew is allowed to defend himself. 'If somebody comes to kill you, kill him first' as the Talmudic injunction goes--but not as a lover of violence and the intoxication of power."

These ideas long preceded the creation of Israel as a Jewish state, one that has been routinely at war--or on the edge of war -- with its neighbors. After the 1967 war, Orthodox and Hassidic sects began to gain influence in Israeli politics and culture.

Settlements grew in the territories taken in that war against Israel's neighbors. And with these new colonies, some of them fervently religious, arose justification for discriminating against Palestinians who, began to acquire in the language of these Israelis the characteristics of the hated "other." The great irony of course was that the Nazis had developed just such a language for Jews. What Israelis did to Palestinians was a far cry from the Holocaust, but nevertheless it sounded deeply discordant to Jews like myself to listen to devout rabbis justifying a system that former President Jimmy Carter called "apartheid" in his book.

John Ross recounts his experience when he went to Palestine to observe the olive harvest and seven, young men in yarmulkes "charged down the bare brown hillside swinging thick clubs and hurling large lethal stones, war-whooping in Hebrew their harsh curses upon the people of this lacerated land. I was standing with a Palestinian farmer and his family under a freshly-picked olive tree when they came for us and thus, I suppose, guilty of being a race traitor in their perverted vision."

As Ross began to run, "the savages [members of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane's fascist cult] broke out of the trees and before I had time to turn towards them, they were upon me The first blow glanced off the small of my back and I tumbled to the red-brown earth, trying to cover my head with my forearm. The second smashed into my wrist and the blood began to spurt One Nazi youth picked up a large, jagged rock and advanced upon me with malice glowing in his evil, rabid eyes, hurling it from five feet away. I felt the painful crack against my knee and then they were pulling me to my feet, tearing my clothes and booting me down the hill like a punctured soccer ball." (Anderson Valley Advertiser December 3, 2003)

Compare the thugs who put Ross in the hospital to the words of Mordechai Eliyahu, former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel and key spiritual guide for Israeli settlers in Palestinian territory. In early June, he wrote to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. He offered his decree: having compassion with the civilian population of Gaza is incompatible with protecting Israeli soldiers' lives. Those holding supposedly humane feelings imperil Israeli lives. The rabbi's son, Shmuel, interpreted this decree: "if killing 100 Arabs is not sufficient to stop the launching of Qassam rockets at Israel, then 1,000 must be killed. And if that is not sufficient, then 10,000, and 100,000 and even a million. Whatever it takes to make them stop."

Eliyahu claimed that "all civilians living in Gaza" are "collectively guilty for Qassam attacks on Sderot" and that "there was absolutely no moral prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of civilians during a potential massive military offensive on Gaza aimed at stopping the rocket launchings."

Journalist Avnery found the letter in Olam Katan [Small World], "a weekly pamphlet to be distributed in synagogues nationwide. Eliyahu wrote that "This is a message to all leaders of the Jewish people not to be compassionate with those who shoot [rockets] at civilians in their houses." Eliyahu's son, Shmuel Eliyahu, chief rabbi of Safed, said his father "advocated carpet bombing the general area from which the Qassams were launched, regardless of the price in Palestinian life." (Avnery, Gush Shalom, June 9, 2007)

In his letter, Eliyahu justified his edict by quoting from Psalms. "I will pursue my enemies and apprehend them and I will not desist until I have eradicated them."

Avnery reported on Eliyahu's disproportionate equation. Over the last six years, nine Israelis in Sderot died from "crudely built Qassam missiles." 650 Palestinians died last year (more than half unarmed civilians, according to Amnesty International) from attacks by Israel, one of the most potent and sophisticated military powers in the world."

In Israel, so far neither outrage nor outcry has come from this bloody call. Instead, writes Avnery, "The number of rabbis who publicly support such methods has risen to the hundreds. Most of them come from the settlements," where Jews have taken Palestinian land and water and built their own communities--albeit the World Court declared that one nation cannot claim the conquered territory of another. (Gush Shalom)

In the United States, Israeli propagandists and uncritically loyal supporters, including Congress, cling to the image of Israel as a besieged David surrounded by Goliaths, as a nation of democrats and justice seekers isolated in a sea of anti-democratic and unjust enemies. A nation with 200 nuclear missiles and the best conventional army, the highest industrial and technological capacity in the region as poor little David?

In front of Washington DC's synagogues, signs declare: "We support Israel in its struggle for peace and justice." Israel has shown little interest in either peace or justice. Its government knows no nation or group of nations would dare attack it lest it feel the wrath of a government well in tune with Rabbi Eliyahu's sentiments. Israel has become Goliath. Hopefully, an Israeli David will also emerge and guide his people toward peace and justice.