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Israeli military continues to torture Palestinian children

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[RAMALLAH, 26 June 2008] - On the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, Defence for Children International/Palestine Section (DCI/PS) releases further evidence that Israeli military forces in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt) continue to abuse, threaten and torture Palestinian children.

 

Today, DCI/PS is releasing two case studies to draw attention to the continuing plight of Palestinian children, in particular, the 700 Palestinian children who are arrested, interrogated and often abused by the Israeli military and police each year.

 

In one case, Israeli interrogators beat 15-year-old Ibrahim S. over the course of several hours. Ibrahim was then threatened with sexual assault for the purpose of extracting his confession. The accusation, which Ibrahim kept denying, was that he had thrown stones at the Israeli army when it invaded his village the day before. A Military Court accepted Ibrahim’s confession and he was imprisoned in Israel for five months.

 

In the second case, 14-year-old Mohammad E. was standing with a group of friends near the Wall which passes close to his village near Ramallah. Mohammad was suddenly grabbed by four men in plain clothes who proceeded to hit him about the head with the butts of their guns whilst spraying his face with tear gas. Bleeding from wounds sustained during his arrest Mohammad was coerced into signing papers written in Hebrew in which he confessed to throwing stones at the Wall. An Israeli Military Court accepted this confession and sentenced Mohammad to four and-a-half months’ imprisonment.

 

‘Palestinian children like Mohammad and Ibrahim are routinely exposed to physical and psychological abuse, amounting to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment, and sometimes torture during arrest, interrogation and imprisonment,’ said George Abu Al Zulof, DCI/PS General Director. ‘Unfortunately, these cases are not isolated incidents as Palestinian children are systematically subjected to such abuses by the Israeli military authorities’, he said.

 

Israel is a signatory to a number of international conventions, including the UN Convention against Torture which strictly prohibits the use of torture and abuse in all circumstances. In 1999, the Israeli High Court responded to mounting pressure to deal with the increasing number of allegations of torture and agreed that an interrogation must be free of torture and any degrading treatment whatsoever, and that these prohibitions are absolute, without exception.

 

DCI/PS is deeply concerned that the Israeli army and police are continuing to act above the law in the oPt and those who commit these acts of torture and abuse appear to do so with complete immunity, while other governments, well aware of the situation, 'see nothing'.

 

 

George Bush Performs for Knesset

As US President George W. Bush sang his messianic "happy birthday"speech to the Israeli Knesset, 50,000 or so demonstrators calling for the rightful return of the Palestinian refugees crammed into Ramallah's Manara Square. Just a few metres away from the mass
demonstration, the Baladna Cultural Centre opened its contributionto the Nakba commemoration events: a three-day exhibit entitled From the Scent of Bil'in's Wall. The exhibit closed on 17 May, and we were the first guests that day.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/artmusicculture.shtml

 

Palestinians Barred From Dead Sea

Under cover of security, Israeli forces bar Palestinians from reaching Dead Sea for sake of settlers Nablus / Amin Abu Wardeh - The Association for Civil Rights petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court against the Israeli forces Chief of General Staff and the Commander of the Army in the West Bank and others, urging them to remove the checkpoint leading to the
northern Dead Sea.
This checkpoint ensures that no Palestinian can reach the Dead Sea, that it has become for Jews and tourists only.
http://www.pnn.ps

Letter from captured Israeli soldier released

 

Wednesday June 11, 2008 - 09:19
In what the Hamas leadership called a "goodwill gesture to Jimmy Carter" in exchange for his meeting with the group, the Islamic movement released a letter written by captured Israeli soldier GiladShalit to his parents. Full Story
http://www.imemc.org

Al Jazeera at the AIPAC Conference
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPJsx5dG0tc
 

 

Jazz musician Branford Marsalis urged to cancel Israel concert

The following is an open letter to jazz musician Branford Marsalis, sent by the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine: "We are writing to ask you to reconsider your decision to play in Israel. We are wondering how a musician with your sensitivity will be able to stand on a stage and play reflective, subtle jazz while less than an hour's drive away, a million-and-a-half people in Gaza -- two-thirds of them refugees -- endure yet another night of hunger, darkness and fear because of the iron-clad siege the Israeli government has enforced against them for years."

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9624.shtml

 

Islamic, Christian leaders criticize Obama for remarks on Jerusalem

Date: 11th June    

 

Ramallah -  Palestinian Supreme Judge Sheikh Tayseer Tamimi and Bishop Atallah Hanna urged Palestinians to unite on Tuesday, and condemned remarks by US presidential candidate Barak Obama referring to Jerusalem as the "undivided" capital of Israel.

 

Speaking at a press conference at the Palestinian Information Ministry's media centre in Ramallah, Tamimi, a high-ranking Islamic official, and Hanna, a Christian, reaffirmed that Jerusalem is the capital of the Palestinian people.

 

The press conference, staged by the Christian-Islamic Front for the Defence of Jerusalem, was intended to publicize a report about the status of Jerusalem and its holy sites.

 

The report alleges that Israel, supported by the American administration, is tightening its grip on occupied land in an attempt to make the "retrieval" of Palestinian land, talked about by Palestinian politicians, impossible.

 

The two leaders said they appreciated the Algerian National and Islamic call to make Jerusalem the final headquarters of the Arab League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference along with keeping the current headquarters on hold.

 

The report highlights Israeli construction and excavation in the area of the Al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in Islam and a symbol of the Palestinian nation.

 

The Islamic-Christian Front says that Israel has allocated 17.5 million shekels for the construction, ignoring concern from archaeologists, religious figures, and Palestinians in general.

 http://www.maannews.net

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AT-TUWANI: Israeli settler kills goats with car in South Hebron Hills  

At the beginning of June at around 5:00 pm an Israeli settler driving in the South Hebron Hills killed three goats and injured two others while on the settler bypass road, Route 317.  A local Palestinian shepherd from the village of Ma'in was on his way home, bringing his flock across the road from a field he had been grazing nearby.  The settler saw the flock on the road, aimed his car, and rammed into three of the goats.  He then redirected his car and aimed for more, hitting another two.  Three goats were killed and two others were injured with broken legs. http://www.pnn.ps

Construction disrupted, 23 injured in Nailing

[Anarchists Against The Wall]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

01/06/2008

Soldiers running away from teargas Photo By Tess Scheflan\Activestills

After a relatively calm demonstration on Friday since no construction was taking place, a general strike was declared in the village today as the bulldozers resumed destroying the olive orchards. At around eleven am, over 300 people set out to the lands to stop the bulldozers. The demonstrators were met by a massive contingent of soldiers who rained volleys of teargas, concussion grenades and rubber-coated steel bullets on them. Nevertheless, in the nearly four hours of clashes, protesters have managed to intermittently get to the bulldozers and disrupt the construction three times. http://www.awalls.org

Critically ill patients from Gaza appeal to Israeli court
Report, The Electronic Intifada, 22 May 2008

 

JERUSALEM, 22 May (IRIN) - Ahmed al-Baghdadi's doctors said he must leave the Gaza Strip and travel to Israel to receive urgent life-saving medical care if he hopes to fight the tumours in his body. Rada al-Khadir, aged 22, needs to get treatment immediately, her Israeli doctor said, or her liver disease could prove fatal. Both patients have been denied permission to leave by the Israeli military.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Nakba inherited
Rami Almeghari, Live from Palestine, 21 May 2008

 At the southernmost area of the Gaza Strip, where the Philadelphia route separates the coastal enclave from Egypt, there are scores of knocked down buildings. The destruction dates back to 2002, when Israeli army bulldozers demolished the houses of the Palestinian inhabitants of this border line. Among the houses that used to stand here was that of Ali Shaath, a 75-year-old Palestinian refugee from the Beer al-Saba' village of historical Palestine. Rami Almeghari writes from the occupied Gaza Strip.
 

Investors warned about access to occupied Palestine
Press release, Campaign for the Right to Entry, 21 May 2008

 

As hundreds of international investors begin arriving in Bethlehem for the Palestine Investment Conference scheduled for 21-23 May, the threat of being barred from entering the occupied West Bank by Israeli officials is likely to be foremost on everyone's mind. Those hoping to actually invest in Palestine will be looking for answers regarding who will guarantee unhindered access in the future for themselves, their staff and the suppliers needed for investments to succeed in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
 

Rights org: "Fog of war" no cover for Gaza killings
Report, Al-Haq, 19 May 2008

 

At approximately 9:15 am on 14 May 2008, 17-year-old Hamdi Salemeh Khader was riding his bicycle on al-Karama Road near a local cement factory in the northern Gaza Strip when he was shot twice (once in the shoulder and once in the upper right quadrant of the chest) by machine gun fire emanating from the tanks, killing him instantly. Hamdi's death is just one of many wilfull killings perpetrated by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip.

 

Rafah ambulance drivers struggle amidst "miserable" work conditions  

13th May

Gaza - Palestinian Centre for Human Rights - As the gruelling Gaza fuel crisis continues, so does the strain on local public transport services, including ambulances, across the Gaza Strip. Approximately 15% of local public services are operating across Gaza, whilst up to ninety percent of private cars remain off the roads, and all of Gaza's 450 fuel stations remain closed.

 

For ambulance drivers, the situation is particularly fraught, as demands for their services have soared over the last two months due to an almost complete lack of alternative transport to hospitals. The city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, has a total of fifteen ambulances serving a population of more than 175,000 people. At the local headquarters of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS), ambulance drivers say the fuel crisis is making their work "Difficult and miserable." Fawzi Abdul Hadi is head of the Rafah PRCS Ambulance Service, and says the fuel crisis is severely affecting the delivery of health services across southern Gaza. "We are managing to keep our ambulances on the roads, but we've been forced to limit our movements, and now we can respond only to urgent cases" he says.

 

The Rafah PRCS ambulance drivers normally respond to 250-300 cases a month in and around Rafah, though their work is by nature unpredictable. But Fawzi Hadi says they are now receiving up to 350 calls a month. "We can't respond to all the calls now, because overall demand has increased so much. As well as emergencies, we also regularly transfer patients between local hospitals - and now we can operate less than half of the transfers, even though we sometimes ask transfer patients to share the ambulances in order to save fuel."

 

Samir Abdul Hamid Akil has been working as a full-time PRCS ambulance driver in Rafah for the last five years. "We have four ambulances which all run on diesel" he says. "We never used to operate our ambulances on less than half a tank of diesel, but of course we can't do that now, although we actually need more fuel, because now many people have no other way of getting to hospital except by ambulance." The Rafah PRCS ambulance drivers say locals have regularly resorted to using donkeys and carts in order to access hospitals. "We know of many cases where people have to use donkeys or mules and carts" says Fawzi Hadi. "Under these current conditions, it is very difficult for Gazans to travel anywhere at all."

 

Collective punishment of a civilian population is illegal under international human rights and humanitarian law, but Israel has been imposing a crippling siege on the Gaza Strip for almost two years. In addition to denying 1.5 million civilians their basic rights to freedom of movement, including freedom of movement in order to access appropriate medical facilities outside of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli siege of Gaza has devastated the Gazan economy and infrastructure, and continues to severely undermine the delivery of all essential services, including humanitarian aid and emergency medical services.

 

Asad Daoud is an ambulance driver at the Emirates Hospital in Rafah. The hospital, which has a large obstetrics unit, receives around 1,800 patients a month, but has only one ambulance. Ten days ago the ambulance completely ran out of fuel, and the ambulance service had to be temporarily suspended. "The situation is miserable" says Asad Daoud. "We used to be able to deliver a good standard of service to our patients. But these conditions are extremely difficult because we do not have sufficient fuel in Gaza. I regularly transfer patients to the European Hospital in Khan Yunis, which is only seven kilometres from here. But today I don't still have enough diesel in the ambulance to drive to the European hospital and back here again." He says the Emirates hospital ambulance service is now operating "On a day-to-day basis."

 

The hospital Director, Dr Khamid Se'am, points out that the Emirates hospital does not have an intensive care unit, and therefore needs to be able to transfer critically ill patients immediately. "Up to twenty babies a day are born here" he says, "and if they need specialist care we have to transfer them to the European hospital urgently."

 

The hospital Nursing Director, Saleh Al-Hams, reiterates that patients, including pregnant women, are arriving at the hospital on donkeys and carts, but stresses that all aspects of health care in Gaza are being affected. "Patients now come to our hospital any way they can" he says. "We are facing problems transferring patients, getting hold of emergency blood supplies, and sending our doctors out on emergency calls.

 

The bottom line is that patients' lives in Gaza are being put at risk."

 

Meanwhile, Zionist leader Ehud Olmert has promised to build about 600 housing 'units' in the illegal West Bank settlements, adding new tensions to the so-called peace talks.

 

The announcement came shortly before  George W. Bush arrived in Israel to take part in the racist state's 60th anniversary celebrations - and to try to nudge forward Israeli-Palestinian 'peace' negotiations.

 

Palestinians want all of the West Bank as part of their future state. They oppose all Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank, as it undermines peace talks. Some 270,000 Israelis live in West Bank ‘settlements’.

 

New settlement building could help Olmert keep his coalition together while police investigate corruption suspicions against him. But it would make it tougher for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to convince his people that diplomacy, not resistance, could win them back a state.

 

Before Bush's plane had landed, the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, a member of Olmert's coalition, affirmed that the prime minister had agreed to new construction in the Beitar Ilit settlement near Jerusalem, one anonymous official stating that construction would be approved early next week. Olmert spokesman Mark Regev disputed the Shas claim, saying no decision had been made on the project, though he did not rule it out in the future.

 

The U.S.-backed 'road map' obliges Israel to halt all settlement construction. But a 2004 letter from Bush to then- Prime Minister Ariel Sharon appeared to support Israel's claim to keep some settlements. More recently, the Bush administration has criticized Israeli settlement construction announced since peace talks were relaunched last November, after a seven-year breakdown.

 

Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat denounced the latest report of construction plans.

 

"It's Israeli settlements or peace," he said. "They can't have both."

The two sides set a December target to clinch a deal. But both sides and the U.S. have cast doubt on whether that goal is realistic.

 

 

The Israeli army attacks the weekly Bil'in protest, dozens treated for tear gas inhalation  

Friday May 09 by Ghassan Bannoura - IMEMC News

 

On Friday, villagers from Bil'in, located near the central West Bank city of Ramallah, supported by international and Israeli peace activists conducted their weekly nonviolent protest against the illegal Israeli wall built on the village's land.

Protesters carried banners demanding the removal of the Israeli wall, settlements, and calling the international community to help Palestinians retain Jerusalem from the Israeli army.

 

As the case each week since the past three years the protests started after the mid-day Friday prayers were finished in the local mosque, villagers from Bil'in, along with Israeli and international peace activists, marched towards the location of the Wall which is separating the village from its land.

 

Immediately after the protest reached the gate of the Wall, soldiers showered the protestors with tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets. Scores of protesters were treated for gas inhalation.

 

In related news this week the villagers of Bil'in along with Adallah centre- the Centre for Arab Minority in Israeli- succeeded of stopping a Jewish billionaire from opening business in the United Arab Emirates.

 

Liv Livaiv, The Jewish American billionaire, is a main founder of the settlement that Israeli is building in the village of Bil'in land, the villagers of Bil'in along with Adallah center launched a Media campaign against the billionaire which led officials in United Arab Emirates to refuse the business of Livaiv.

 

 

 

 

 

Gaza streets to

be flooded with wastewater if fuel crisis continues

 29 April

GAZA,The popular committee against the siege warned that the Gaza streets are threatened to be flooded with wastewater after drainage wells stopped working as a result of the fuel crisis and the Israeli persistence in preventing the entry of any kind of petroleum derivatives.

 

The popular committee underlined that the situation in Gaza as a result of the fuel crisis is worsening every day and new negative impacts surface, where this crisis already led to the collapse of many crucial services such as ambulance service and rubbish collection service.

 

The committee added that the nitrous gas which is used to narcotize patients during surgical operations also ran out of hospitals leading to the closing of operating rooms which is foreshadowing a dangerous health catastrophe.  

 

In a related context, nine human rights organizations in Gaza and the 1948 areas issued an urgent appeal for ending all restrictions on fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip and for lifting the siege immediately to end the unprecedented destruction of humanitarian needs.

 

The organizations called on the IOA as an occupying force to end its restrictions on fuel supplies allowed into Gaza, which led to the paralysis of the infrastructure and jeopardized the lives of one and a half million citizens there.

 

The organizations underscored that all acts of revenge and mass punishment against innocent civilians are unjustifiable and must be condemned and investigated immediately as war crimes.

 

The signatories to the appeal are Al-Haq centre, Al-Mizan centre, Al-Dhameer centre, the Gaza Community mental health programme, the Maslak centre for defending the freedom of movement, the HaMoked centre of the defence of the individual, the general assembly against torture, physicians for human rights, and volunteers for human rights.

 

Palestinian resistance attacks Israeli troops in central Gaza

Monday April 14 by Ghassan Bannoura - IMEMC News

 

A Palestinian resistance group announced that its fighters attacked an Israeli army patrol along the Gaza-Israel border, in central Gaza, on Monday morning.

The Al Quds brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Jihad, claimed responsibility for the attack and said it comes as a response to the Israeli army attacks and continued siege on Gaza. The Israeli army reported no injuries or damage among its troops.

 

Bristol Nakba conference a huge success

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ilan Pappe addresses the Conference

26th April

A twelve-hour event organised by Bristol PSC included speakers Ilan Pappe , Maha Rahwanji (whose family was expelled from Haifa in 1948) and MP Kerry McCarthy, whose presence sparked noisy  reactions from the floor, mostly about her party’s support for Israel and the ‘War on Terror’. The Conference Chair, Katt Cremer was also able to add a short but fiery speech to round it off. Several campaigning workshops took up the rest of the daylight hours, and the night was given over to music and dance for Palestine.

 

The War Comes Home

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The ‘World Against War’ demo in London on 15th March, although primarily about UK/US aggression in Iraq, had plenty of Palestinian content, too. Although the day passed peacefully and positively, several police officers were disappointed at the lack of rioting, and at least one marcher (above) was beaten up on his way home.

 

Peace Now, for 30 years  

 

By Mazal Mualem   7th April    

 

Peace Now will be holding a ceremony in Rabin Square tomorrow [8th April] to mark 30 years since its inception, but its slogan - "Peace Now - Leading Israel Toward Peace for 30 Years" - raises significant questions about the relevance of the organization.

 

Although Peace Now is considered to be a breakthrough movement, in 2008 its political agenda is practically the consensus and does not cause consternation even within the Likud, but still remains little more than a vision.  

What is left of the protest movement that fought for years against illegal settlement in the West Bank but on the eve of the release of the Winograd report on the Second Lebanon War protected Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who has consistently avoided evacuating outposts and gives in to Shas every time the "division of Jerusalem" comes up? And it's all in the name of the "Annapolis process," a process that even the security-oriented National Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer referred to over the weekend as "virtual."

 

Peace Now has apparently never before looked or sounded more part of the establishment than during the days of the Olmert government. It joined the protest against the Second Lebanon War only a few days before it ended - and this is the movement that brought hundreds of thousands of people to the historic Malchei Yisrael Square in 1982 to protest the Sabra and Chatila massacre.

 

"We failed in the final analysis," said former MK Dedi Zucker, who - along with Education Minister Yuli Tamir - led Peace Now's first rally in Malchei Yisrael Square 30 years ago to protest the stalled peace talks between Israel and Egypt. "The more I think about it, I reach the sad conclusion that the intense investment was a waste in comparison to the achievements and the compensation. Creating a climate and winning hearts is not enough. ... There is peace with Egypt, there's an agreement with Jordan, but the chances of peace are a lot lower today."

 

It appears that the most painful element for Zucker is that the pro-settlement Gush Emunim movement seems to have won the battle against the rival movement.

 

"Unfortunately, Gush Emunim is the one that sets the boundaries of the conflict, the agenda between us and the Palestinians," said Zucker.

 

Peace Now secretary general Yariv Oppenheimer said he agrees with some of Zucker's sentiments.

 

 

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Life in the Refugee Camps - short video

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15693.htm

Samia Halaby talks about Palestinian artist Mustapha al-Hallaj

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tt_oXoocwI

Palestine Paintings

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