http://www.imemc.org/content/view/22826/1/
Israel denies visas to foreigners living in Palestine
IMEMC & Agencies - Wednesday, 22 November 2006, 15:15

All foreign passports belonging to spouses and children of Palestinian ID-holders who had applied for visa extensions have recently been marked as “last permit” by the Israeli authorities. One hundred and five foreign passport holders who had submitted their passports for renewal are now being forced to leave via Israeli controlled entry/exit points before the end of the year.

The Israeli Ministry of Interior (MoI) office at Beit El began returning the passports on November 19 after a six-week strike by Israeli MoI employees. Those who overstay their allotted time will be considered “illegal” and are subject to immediate deportation from the Israeli occupied Palestinian territories (oPt). In an effort to avoid being considered “illegal” and threatened with arrest by the Israelis, some families are opting to relocate abroad. The pattern of refusing visa renewals for family members is part of an overall Israeli effort that denies entry to foreign nationals seeking access to the oPt.

The impact of Israel’s practice includes the forced separation of spouses, parents from their children, educators and students from their schools, health care, NGO and humanitarian workers from access to needy communities, and business owners from their investments. According to the Palestinian MoI, hundreds of applications for Israeli visa extensions following Israeli guidelines were submitted in October and are still pending. Israel is also refusing to process an estimated 120,000 family unification residency applications.

Every denial of entry and visa renewal refusal impacts an estimated 10 people, many of whom subsequently resort to moving to another country. “This is a silent ethnic cleansing,” said Basil Ayish, a spokesperson from the Campaign for the Right of Entry/Re-Entry to the oPt.

Despite official complaints by foreign governments of discrimination against their citizens, Israel continues to disregard its obligations under international law and agreements and persists in its practice of changing the demographics within the oPt. The U.S. State Department, EU, and at least one Latin American country have all submitted demarches to Israeli officials since October. Foreigners wishing to reside in, visit or work in the oPt continue to be banned at Israeli-controlled ports of entry.

Israel refuses to permit non-Jewish foreigners from receiving residency status in the oPt. This means that the only mechanism for foreign passport-holding spouses and children of Palestinian ID-holders to join their families has been to rely on a system of renewable 3-month ‘visitor’ permits.

This practice was widely expected to be a transitory measure until mechanisms were put in place to provide permanent residency status for non-ID holding family members. Some family members have been following this procedure for more than 30 years as the only option open to them.

*this article was sourced from a press release from the Campaign for the Right of Entry

http://www.imemc.org/content/view/22824/1/
Fighter killed in Beit Lahia, second Palestinian to be killed Wednesday
Ghassan Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies - Wednesday, 22 November 2006, 17:44

Palestinians sources in Beit Lahia, in the northern part of the Gaza Strip, reported that one fighters was killed on Wednesday evening by military fire of the Israeli under-cover forces. Earlier on Wednesday, one fighter was killed in the Jabalia refugee camp, in the northern part of the Gaza strip.

The fighter was identified as Sami Anwar Zibda, 22, member of the Al Qassam brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas.

Zibda is a resident of sheikh Radwan neighborhood, north of Gaza City. He was shot in Jabal Al Kashif area, east of Beit Lahia.

The Al Qassam brigades issued a press release stating that Zibda fired a homemade shell before he was shot in his head by an Israeli military sharpshooter.

Earlier on Wednesday Massad Abu Massiq, 25 from Beit Lahia was killed by an Israeli shell.

At least ten residents were injured in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, among them three school children.

The two latest casualties in the Gaza Strip rise the death toll for the month of November to 106 residents.

The Israeli invasion of Jabalia is ongoing, with the nearby town of Beit Hanoun having also been surrounded by Israeli military forces. The Palestinian civilians in the area, have been huddled in darkness in their homes, unable to escape the constant shelling, and without electricity since June due to the Israeli bombing of their only power plant.

http://www.imemc.org/content/view/22823/1/
Israeli security cabinet decides to continue offensive in Gaza
Saed Bannoura - IMEMC & Agencies - Wednesday, 22 November 2006, 14:08

The Israeli security cabinet held a session on Wednesday morning and decided to continue the military offensive in the Gaza Strip without any changes to the current operations, but by concentrating the shelling to areas used as launching pads for homemade shells.

The decision means the continuation of assassinations, invasions and shelling houses of fighters or people suspected on involvement with resistance groups.

Israeli sources reported that Israel's Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, is waiting for his military commanders to prepare new plans for operations in the Gaza Strip.

Olmert met with the Israeli Defense Minister, Amir Peretz, before the cabinet session. This is the first meeting between the two Israeli leaders since Monday after their dispute over a phone call between Peretz and the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas.

Military commanders presented their proposals and tactics of operations in the Gaza Strip, including tactics against arms smuggling tunnels and homemade shells.

The Israeli Security Cabinet approved a decision to increase the attacks against the resistance factions, especially against Hamas, by carrying further military and intelligence activities.

Also, Peretz suggested fortifying the Israeli Negev town of Sderot and Israeli cities in the Western Negev against the homemade shells.

A senior military official told the Israeli Maariv newspaper that he suggested “strangling Rafah”, by disconnecting it from the rest of the Gaza Strip in order to minimize the amounts of arms and ammunition smuggled into the souther Gaza Strip city which is located on the borders with Egypt.

Several Israeli military commanders said that Peretz “foiled” concentrated long-term operations in the Gaza Strip and thus he “limited the pressure against the Palestinian factions and the Palestinian Authority”.

On Tuesday, Peretz met with several military commanders in order to weigh plans for controlling Palestinian areas used as launching pads for homemade shells.

A senior security source in Israel stated that Israel should weigh the possibility of deploying international forces in the Gaza Strip, similar to the force that was deployed after the recent war in southern Lebanon.

“The war stopped after a political solution was enforced”, the source stated, “It wasn't the military operations that stopped it”.

Two weeks ago, Olmert met with the Italian counterpart, Romano Prodi, and rejected the idea of implementing a deal similar to the one that brought about a cease fire between Israel and Lebanon.

“It is still early to judge whether this solution is successful”, Olmert stated, “International forces cannot stop the shells, they also bar Israel from retaliation”.

http://www.imemc.org/content/view/22822/1/
In Gaza; several injuries reported as army offensive is ongoing
Ghassan Bannoura – IMEMC & Agencies - Wednesday, 22 November 2006, 12:18

Palestinian medical sources in the Gaza Strip, reported that several residents were injured on Wednesday morning, among them school children. The Israeli army continued its invasion to the city that started last Monday, bulldozers are destroying farm land while soldiers occupying houses and shooting randomly at the residents.

In Beit Hanoun, medical sources reported three residents were critically injured on Wednesday morning when targeted by army helicopters.

Dr. Mo'awiah Hasanin, head of the Emergency Unit at the Palestinian Ministry of Heath in Gaza strip said that Waleed Abu Qumsan, 19, suffered critical wounds in the head, while Sharef Al Bakri, 17, was moved to an Israeli hospital due to critical wounds, and a third resident was hospitalized at the Shifa hospital for treatment.

Three school girls were also injured today in the northern Gaza strip after being fired at by the invading Israeli forces.

They sustained moderate-to-sever injuries after soldiers opened fire at UNRWA School in Jabalia town, two were treated on the spot, and one was moved to a nearby hospital.

Moreover, Israeli forces attacked the house Jamilia Al Shanti, a Palestinian Parliament member, located in Ezbit Abed Rabbu area, east of Jabalia town in the norther part of the Gaza strip on Wednesday morning.

Army bulldozers and tanks stormed the village fired intensively at residents' houses, then attacked the house of Al Shanti.

Soldier searched and ransacked her house and forced Al Shanti and her family in one room during the search.

Al Shanti's house was bombed by the Israeli army several months ago, killing her sister-in-law, a mother of eight children.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/11/21/world/main2202261.shtml
JERUSALEM, Nov. 21, 2006
(CBS/AP) Forty percent of all West Bank settlements were built on private Palestinian land and are therefore illegal, a settlement watchdog group said Tuesday, basing its claims on data provided by Israel's military.

"We are talking about an institutional land grab," said Dror Etkes, a settlement expert with the Peace Now group.

Etkes said Peace Now's claims were based on data the court ordered the military to provide. The group has forwarded the information to Attorney General Meni Mazuz, asking him to take immediate action against the illegal land seizures.

Israel claims that the settlements are built on state land and not on private property, reports CBS News correspondent Robert Berger.

In other developments:
Israel's Supreme Court has ordered the government to recognize same-sex marriages performed abroad, reports Berger. The decision sent shock waves through the ultra-Orthodox rabbinate that has a monopoly on marriage and divorce. One religious member of parliament, Moshe Gafni, said, "This is not a Jewish state, it's Sodom and Gomorrah," referring to two cities the Bible said was destroyed because their citizens were so sinful.

Prominent anti-Syrian Christian politician Pierre Gemayel was assassinated in a suburb of Beirut on Tuesday, his Phalange Party Voice of Lebanon radio station reported. The shooting will certainly heighten the political tension in Lebanon. Gemayel was a supporter of the anti-Syrian parliamentary majority, which is locked in a power struggle with pro-Syrian factions led by Hezbollah.

Two Italian aid workers were kidnapped in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, Palestinian officials said, the latest in a string of abductions of foreigners in the lawless area. The officials said the Italian, both employees of the Red Cross, were captured in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza.

In the Gaza Strip, Israeli troops killed a top Hamas commander in the latest military operation against Palestinian rocket squads, as troops operated in two areas of northern Gaza. A 70-year-old woman was also killed in the battle.

Palestinian rockets crashed into the Israeli town of Sderot on the Gaza border during a visit by the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Louise Arbour. "Suddenly, there were two loud explosions. One of those explosions was approximately 200 yards away from where we were with the high commissioner," UN spokesman Chris Gunness said. An Israeli was critically injured. Berger reports Israeli officials said it's good that the U.N. official got a first-hand look at the intolerable situation in Sderot.

It's a box office hit in America, but in Israel, it's facing censorship before it even opens. It's not the anti-Semitic jokes in the hit movie "Borat" that got the attention of Israeli censors, reports Berger. Rather, it's the racy advertising. Posters showing comedian Sacha Baron Cohen in skimpy underwear were banned amid objections from ultra-Orthodox Jews who charged that it violated decency laws. So advertisers printed new posters, featuring the star in his trademark — and more modest — suit.

Peace Now's report singles out the two largest settlements. It says that more than 86 percent of Ma'ale Adumim, a community of 30,000 people outside Jerusalem, is built on Palestinian land, and more than 35 percent of Ariel.

The group says that the report "demonstrates that the property rights of many Palestinians have been systematically violated in the course of settlement building."

"We are talking about an institutional land grab," said Dror Etkes, a settlement expert with the Peace Now group.

Emily Amrusi, a spokeswoman for the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, dismissed the report.

"There is nothing to it," she told the Jerusalem Post. "It's just another lie to attack the settlement movement."

"In the war of Peace Now against the Jews, everything is kosher," Amrusi added.

A government spokesman said he could not comment on the data without studying it, but said that sometimes Palestinians would sell land to Israelis but be unwilling to admit to the sale publicly because they feared retribution as collaborators.

"I'm not sure that all the land Peace Now says is Palestinian, is Palestinian," Civil Administration spokesman Shlomo Dror said.

The Israeli Supreme Court's decision to recognize same sex marriage performed abroad underscores a growing rift between synagogue and state, reports Berger.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews are furious, but gay activist Yossi Ben Ari disagrees.

"It's a very important day for anyone that is fighting for civil rights, for liberty, for democracy," he said.

(AP)
Yossi Ben-Ari and Laurent Schuman, left, were married in Canada after that country legalized same-sex marriage in 2003. Determined, after a 21-year partnership, to enjoy all the privileges of a married couple in Israel, they were among five couples who petitioned the Supreme Court to have their marriage registered here, too.

"We're delighted, but the struggle is not over," Ben-Ari said.

Moshe Negbi, a legal expert, said the court's decision is mostly symbolic because gay couples in Israel already had many of the rights of heterosexual partnerships. The significant changes are that they will now get the same tax breaks as a married couple and be able to adopt children, Negbi said.

Israeli law stipulates a couple must be married to adopt a child.

"The marriages of same-sex couples who marry in places like Canada, where the law recognizes such marriages, will also be recognized in Israel, and they will be registered as married here," Negbi said.

But the efforts by Israel's gay community to win approval for same-sex marriage, a key issue in the U.S. and Europe, face a major obstacle because Israel's rabbinate has a monopoly over marriage and divorce.

Civil marriages cannot be performed in Israel because of the rabbinate's monopoly on family law. But couples married in civil ceremonies abroad have all the rights of a married couple, and their marriages are registered here. The court uses the term "register" instead of "recognition" to ward off religious criticism of the ruling, Negbi said.

Animosity toward gays and lesbians is one of the few issues that unites Jews, Muslims and Christians in the Holy Land. They have jointly come out against gay parades in the city, and are all likely to oppose the Supreme Court ruling.

Earlier this month, a planned gay parade in Jerusalem set off days of violence in the city's ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods. Protesters burned trash bins and hurled stones at police, demanding the parade be canceled or moved to secular Tel Aviv.

In the end, Jerusalem's gay community moved the event to a stadium on a university campus in Jerusalem, quelling the threats of violence and allowing 4,000 people to celebrate peacefully.

Still, many cities in Israel have thriving gay scenes. And the Israeli military, an influential and respected institution, is banned from discriminating against gays. Homosexuals are drafted into the army for mandatory service and are given the opportunity to progress up the ranks.

Rocket attacks in Sderot like Tuesday's are turning it into a ghost town, reports Israel's YNet news Web site. Its market and shopping centers are all but empty, as many residents have moved out to safer communities.