http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=16840
Al-Haq to US ambassador: Make Israel comply with the Geneva Conventions!
Date: 06 / 11 / 2006 Time: 17:07


Smoke rising from Beit Lahiya (MaanImages)
Ma'an - In an open letter to US ambassador to Israel, the Palestinian human rights organisation 'Al-Haq' calls for the United States to force Israel to comply with the Geneva Conventions and respect international humanitarian law.

The letter, sent on 4 November 2006, is found below:

Ambassador Richard H. Jones
71 Hayarkon Street
Tel Aviv 63903

4 November 2006

Your Excellency:

As a Palestinian organisation dedicated to the protection and promotion of human rights, Al-Haq is extremely alarmed by the current intensification of Israeli military operations in Gaza. This operation, codenamed "Autumn Clouds", which is exerting a heavy toll on the civilian population of Gaza, is disturbingly reminiscent of operation "Defensive Shield" of 2002. Further, the ongoing military assault is effectively contributing to the destabilisation of the entire region. We hereby call upon you and the international community as a whole to take immediate and concrete steps to halt the indiscriminate attacks being carried out in Gaza.

Over the last four days, Israel has stepped up military operations, including intense air strikes in densely populated areas, causing the death of approximately 40 people. Many of these were civilians not taking part in hostilities, including women, young children and two paramedics working for an emergency unit of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. Furthermore, the military incursion is causing extensive destruction of civilian infrastructure, places of worship and private properties. Since 1 November, the 30,000 residents of Beit Hanoun have been effectively under tight army curfew, with all men between the age of 16 and 45 ordered to present themselves for questioning. The area has been deprived of running water for the last three days and the provision of electricity in the entire Gaza Strip is gravely deficient.

The Israeli security cabinet has expressed the intention of launching a large scale offensive extending throughout the entire Gaza Strip. No restraint in the use of force seems to have been taken into account; on the contrary the newly appointed Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman suggested operating in Gaza "like Russia operates in Chechnya."

The international community and the UN Secretary-General have clearly condemned this renewed wave of violence in Gaza. However, in light of Israel's blatant disregard of its legal obligations as an Occupying Power, actions - not words - are needed.

The Israeli military forces in Gaza are operating in patent violation of the fundamental humanitarian law principles of proportionality and distinction. The loss of numerous Palestinian lives, including many civilians, is alarming and will only increase as the attack escalates. Opening fire on civilians and the extensive destruction of their properties, not demanded by imperative military necessity, constitute grave breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention as stated in Article 147. Also, Israel has failed to fulfil its obligation to respect the special protection awarded to medical personnel and places of worship, as respectively provided in Article 15(1) of the First Additional Protocol of 1977 and Article 56 of The Hague Regulations, both reflective of customary international law.

Al-Haq wishes to make it emphatically clear that Israel's right to defend itself is not unrestrained, as might be understood from official declarations recently made by the United States of America State Department. The current violence must also be placed in the context of almost 40 years of military occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. During this time Palestinians have been subjected to immeasurable violations of their rights, including the right to self-determination. Uncritical support of Israel with no call to respect international law and its obligations as an Occupying Power further contributes to increasing tension and conflict in the region with global repercussions on international peace and security.

In light of the recent escalation in Gaza and the unrelenting violations of the fundamental principles of international humanitarian law, we urge the United States of America, as a High Contracting Party to the Fourth Geneva Convention, to uphold its obligation under Article 1 to ensure respect for international humanitarian law. Israel must be brought to uphold its obligations under the Convention. In view of the exceptionally severe current circumstances, we call upon you to exert all means at your disposal to affect the immediate halt of the alarming wave of violations in Gaza.

Al-Haq is deeply concerned that the continuous flagrant violations of the fundamental principles of humanitarian law and the impunity which Israel enjoys are diminishing the trust of Palestinians in law as a means of protection of their rights, which in turn prompts further disrespect for the rule of law. With this in mind, Al-Haq urgently requests the United States of America to actively pursue the reconvening of the Conference of High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Moreover, we invite you to reconsider your unwavering support of Israeli policies of indiscriminate use of force in the Gaza Strip and in the rest of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, and to acknowledge that the necessary prerequisite for the solution of this conflict is an end to the occupation, to be achieved under strict adherence to international law.

Please kindly acknowledge receipt of this letter; we trust you will give it due consideration. In anticipation of your response.

Sincerely,

Shawan Jabarin
General Director
Al-Haq

http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=16823
Red Crescent staff hold protest march against Israel's targeting of ambulances in Gaza
Date: 06 / 11 / 2006 Time: 13:28

Jenin - Ma'an - The Red Crescent and other medical institutions in Jenin organized a protest march against the Israeli aggressions on ambulance crews in the Gaza Strip.

The march started from in front of the Palestinian Red Crescent offices in the West Bank city of Jenin and proceeded through the streets of the city. A rally was held in front of the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in which a letter was addressed to the international community, demanding protection for the medical crews. The Red Crescent staff condemned being direct targets of the Israeli aggression.

Walid Abu Al-Haija from the Palestinian Red Crescent assured that the medical crews will carry on their humanitarian duties despite the bloodshed and the continued Israeli crimes against them.

In a statement, they appealed to the international human right institutions to intervene to stop the Israeli aggression and to force them to respect the international humanitarian law, which demands respect for all medical crews. They also called for Israel to be held accountable for the successive crimes committed against Palestinian medical crews, considering Israel's actions as war crimes and inhumane.

http://www.maannews.net/en/index.php?opr=ShowDetails&ID=16822

Date: 06 / 11 / 2006 Time: 13:20

Ma'an - A member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation's Executive Committee, Taysir Khalid, has called upon the Arab League to act immediately and decide collectively to fulfil their responsibilities following the Israeli escalation against the Palestinian people, especially in the Gaza Strip.

In a statement, Khalid called on Farouq Qaddoumi, the PLO's political head, and Mahmoud Zahhar, the government's foreign minister, to meet and coordinate in order to ask the Arab League to convene to discuss the Israeli aggression against Beit Hanoun and other areas in the occupied Palestinian territories.

The statement also called on Palestinians to form a new government in order to address the international community and urge the world to lift the crippling international siege.

Beit Hanoun: A People's Will vs. an Army's Arsenal
Rami Almeghari, Exclusive to IMEMC - Monday, 06 November 2006, 15:50

"The Israeli army soldiers are now blockading the mosque; while a number of resistance fighters are inside, where they have taken sanctuary for fear of being attacked. Dozens of women made their way into the mosque, to make a defensive shield for the helpless men inside", Faten Sehwai, of Beit Hanoun town, told me by cellphone while huddled inside her home, unable to go outside because of the Israeli army-imposed curfew.

Beit Hanoun is a small Palestinian city in the northern Gaza Strip, where Israeli-created “autumn clouds” are now over the heads of its residents, making their days as black as their nights. Such clouds are poisonous ones, as they have killed --up to the moment of this article-- about 50 Palestinian women, men and children and wounded about 200 others.

“Autumn Clouds” is the codename of the Israeli attack currently underway in Beit Hanoun, an offensive that is considered to be the most severe of the past few years. Israel claims that the pretext for the invasion is to “prevent the Palestinian resistance from firing rockets into the nearby Israeli town of Sderot.” Such a pretext has always been the claim for every invasion into Gaza, invasions which have claimed thousands of innocent lives in the last six years of open conflict.

Beit Hanoun has been exposed to several Israeli army attacks since the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in September 2000, including “Operation Rainbow” in 2004, “Operation Summer Rains” from June to October of this year, currently “Operation Autumn Clouds”, and who knows what euphemistic name will be chosen next…..?
In 2004, the Israeli army's “Operation Rainbow” killed more than 120 Palestinian men, women and children, and caused a great deal of destruction to bridges, houses and farms, yet Israel failed to achieve its objective (which was supposedly to 'stop homemade rocket attacks over the border into Israel' by punishing the civilian population in the area from which most rockets were fired).
During the Israeli “Operation Summer Rains” since June 27 of this year, 1000 acres of orange and olive orchards have been razed, 18 Palestinian-owned homes have been completely destroyed, and 26 industrial and commercial facilities have been devastated in Beit Hanoun alone, according to the Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights
As of November, 2006, the Israeli army is currently launching its latest military attack, codenamed “Operation Autumn Clouds”, which in five days has already claimed the lives of 50 Palestinians and wounded more than 200 others.
But even having incurred such a high number of losses in Beit Hanoun, the Palestinian resistance never stopped. Even amidst the heavy Israeli army presence, in every single corner of the city, dozens of home-made rockets landed on the nearby Israeli town of Sderot.
"As for the resistance, it is not important the amount of impact; the resistance wants to convey a message to the world that there are people with a question, seeking, by all possible means at their disposal, to reach their goal of freedom and establishing their own state -- which is a right of all peoples. If you observe the dead and wounded, you find out that children, women and elderly have suffered the lion's share of the losses", says Abu Adnan, a senior leader of the Palestinian Popular Resistance Committees.
" The Palestinian people, with their naked chest, are facing a huge, horrible Israeli military arsenal, but at the end of the day, the Palestinian people's will to attain their freedom forces them to endure such attacks. They will never achieve their freedom if they simply go along with Olmert(the Israeli Prime Minister)'s agenda", Abu Adnan maintains.
Consecutive Israeli governments have thus far failed to make the Palestinian people in Beit Hanoun succumb to the occupation, despite the fact the army has used all possible means at their disposal to reach that end.
"This government is characterized by its obvious extremism, which now includes Avigdor Lieberman, who has just been given considerable power in the Israeli government. This man has a very extremist position towards the peace process. He also shows a racist stance towards the Palestinians by calling for the transfer of all Palestinians out of Palestine", says Talal Aukal, a leading Gaza political analyst.
"The other part of the equation is related to the Israeli government's psychological condition concerning the outcome of its war on Lebanon in June, which has led to a feeling of failure within the Israeli army. So Israel wants to compensate for their failure in Lebanon by soundly crushing the Palestinians in Gaza", Aukal adds.
Since June27, the Israeli army has been attacking various parts of the Gaza Strip, including Beit Hanoun, killing approximately 350 Palestinians, wounding thousands, destroying main infrastructure points including power plants (leading to rolling blackouts throughout Gaza since June), bridges, ministerial buildings, farm lands and houses. At the same time, the poverty rate in Gaza has reached about 70%, due to the international aid cutoff after the Hamas-led government took power after elections in January.
Compared with the massive losses the Palestinian people have incurred due to the ongoing Israeli actions across the Gaza Strip, including the latest siege on Beit Hanoun, the Israeli army has lost two soldiers, including one by friendly fire, while the injuries among Sderot's residents from Palestinian rocket attacks have been slight and few.

http://www.imemc.org/content/view/22481/1/
You exist if the Israeli computer says so
Amira Hass - Ha'aretz - Monday, 06 November 2006, 12:41

Commentators in the media and elsewhere proclaimed after the disengagement from Gaza that "the frontier posts in the Strip are now international crossings," and that "removing Israeli control of access to Gaza is in line with the national interest of ending the occupation."

These conclusions were based on a systemic ignorance of the nuances in the Israeli control over the Palestinians. Mainly they reflect the lack of desire to know that Israel controls the Palestinian population registration. This state of affairs began in 1967, continued after signing the Oslo Accords and still exists today, after the Israel Defense Forces' pullout from the Gaza Strip.

Israel's control of the border crossings and the Palestinians' freedom of movement is not reflected merely in Israel's presence in roadblocks and border passes. It derives first and foremost from controlling the Palestinian population registration. Identity numbers, births, deaths, marriages, changing addresses - if these details have not been updated in Israel's Interior Ministry computers, they don't exist.

If Israel does not approve a registration act of any kind, Palestinian Interior Ministry officials cannot do a thing about it. The Israeli representative of the Interior Ministry in the Israeli "coordination and liaison office," subordinate to the Israeli Ministry of Defense, has more authority than he does. For example, the Palestinian Interior Ministry wishes to issue identity cards to Bedouin children in the Gaza Strip, who were born in a tent or in the field and were not registered at birth. The Palestinian ministry has sufficient proof of the birth and existence of these children, who have now turned 16.

The Israeli Interior Ministry refuses. If a senior director in the Palestinian Interior Ministry does fails to convince the Israeli official after tedious prolonged negotiations, the boy will not have an identity card.

Israel's control over the Palestinian population registration denies the Palestinian Authority any possibility of "naturalizing" Palestinians who were born or lived in the diaspora. This involves not merely the refugees of 1948, but also those born in the West Bank and Gaza Strip but who were not living there in 1967 - and Israel has deprived them of their residency rights.


The PA also cannot naturalize Palestinians who went to work and study overseas after 1967 and who did not return before the expiration of the military administration's three-year limit, after which Israel cancels the Palestinian's residence.

Israel approves or denies Palestinian "family reunions" not only within its borders but in the occupied territories as well. Since September 2000, Israel has stopped handling requests for family reunions in the territories, which it had processed with sluggish slowness beforehand. The lives of tens of thousands of families are thus disrupted: couples live apart because Israel denied those who were deprived of their residency permission to live in the territories with their families. Some do live in the territories, but those who are not residents may not leave the West Bank or Gaza Strip, and in the West Bank they are always in danger of being arrested at a roadblock and deported.

Israel's control over the population registration also enables it to refuse to change peoples' addresses in their identity card. According to the Oslo Accords, the Palestinian Interior Ministry must only "report" to the Israeli one on address changes. But in 1997 the Palestinians discovered that the Israeli authorities refuse in many cases to change the address registration of Palestinians who moved from Gaza to the West Bank. This includes Gaza Strip natives who have worked and lived in the West Bank for many years with their children. Consequently, many of them are considered illegal residents there. They live in fear of running into military roadblocks, they are unable to travel overseas or in the West Bank, and have not seen their families in Gaza for many years.

The issue of population registration did not come up at all in the disengagement talks. Israeli officials hinted that the situation will remain as is. For example, the IDF's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories advised the Palestinians that as part of the disengagement "good will gestures," Israel would approve 5,000 requests (out of tens of thousands that are gathering dust) for family reunions and for receiving identity numbers in the Gaza Strip.

Had Israel intended to give up its control of the Gaza Strip population registration, it would have told the Palestinians that from now on it is their right and authority to deal with all those tens of thousands of requests in that region.

The Palestinians have no interest in severing the population registration in the Gaza Strip from the Israeli computer and control, as long as the population registration in the West Bank is an inseparable part of the Israeli registration.

International decisions, the Oslo Accords and of course the Palestinian position make it clear that the West Bank and Gaza Strip are "one territorial unit" that will be the basis of the Palestinian state. Ariel Sharon is doing and will do everything to cut the Gaza Strip off from the West Bank and give Gaza a different status from that of the West Bank.

Was population registration dropped from the talks out of ignorance and negligence? Or was it because Israel knows the severing of it would set off political shock waves?