Deadly mistake

   Deadly mistake: IDF wipes out Palestinian family due to technical error
The Israeli Defense Force has confirmed that while targeting Hamas’ rocket chief it mistakenly bombed the home of the Al-Dalou family, killing at least 11 civilians, four of them children and toddlers.

"Israel has killed a family of eleven people this evening, and many, many more. If Israel wants to stop its aggression, then we can talk. But before then, how could we consider any deal?" Salama Maroof, a senior Hamas spokesman told the Daily Telegraph.
IDF said the source of the error was either a failure to laser-paint the correct target or that one of the munitions in the strike misfired, Haaretz newspaper reported. The Israeli military is investigating the incident.

     
The Israeli military targeted Hamas' rocket-launching unit led by Yehiya Rabiah, but apparently hit the house of a neighbor, the newspaper noted. Rabiah seems to have survived the attack despite earlier claims that he was killed.

                Innocent victims: Children among dozens killed by Israeli airstrikes

Israel: No Place to Go - Activate - Al Jazeera English

Israel: No Place to Go - Activate - Al Jazeera English

Palestinian youth: New movement, new borders

        Palestinian youth: New movement, new borders
Palestinian youth in the West Bank, Gaza and the diaspora are looking to unify and strengthen their identity 

Reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah may present the first victory of a nascent Palestinian youth movement, which earned its moniker, the March 15th movement, from the first day of its mass protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Only one day after the launch of their movement demanding an end to the four-year internecine conflict that also divided the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas announced his willingness to travel to Gaza to engage in unity talks, while other leading Fatah members, aware of the youths' potential force, opened twitter accounts just to follow the pulse of the movement.

Arguably, the unity government is a preemptive tactic to thwart rising Palestinian discontent, and the increasing relevance of youth protests, in a broader Arab Spring. In fact, on the day of its announcement, Hamas security forces violently dispersed nearly 100 jubilant youth celebrating in Unknown Soldier Square in Gaza for failure to obtain prior approval to congregate. Ibrahim Shikaki, a recent UC Berkeley graduate and Ramallah-based youth organiser comments that Hamas and Fatah have tried to undermine the organisers' efforts by inhibiting media coverage, accusing its leaders of receiving foreign funding and shifting the focus of the protests to the factional division for fear of "losing grip over power and authority". In that case, thawed relations alone will not suffice to quell the budding movement.

According to youth leaders, reconciliation is only the first of many demands. The movement which transcends borders, and in some cases, the bounds of qualifying youth age, has its eyes set on rehabilitating the scattered Palestinian national body by holding Palestinian National Council elections that include all Palestinians, regardless of geographic location and circumstance. Its ultimate goal: to reconstruct a Palestinian national programme based upon a comprehensive resistance platform.

Palestinian youth's Arab Spring

The movement's horizon may render existing political parties meaningless as invigorated youth activists search for creative ways to shatter the stagnation of their domestic condition in an effort to buttress their ongoing struggle against Israeli colonisation. As put by Khaled Entabwe, a Palestinian-Israeli youth leader in Haifa and a coordinator with Baladna, the Association for Arab Youth: "Our new modes of organising include a direct challenge to entrenched institutional power. We do not want to just memorialise the past, but also to demand a new future."

Well before the call for the March 15th day of action, Palestinian youth, inspired by revolutionary protests in North Africa, had begun to organise themselves in the global diaspora. In late January, Palestinian students in the UK staged a sit-in in the Palestinian embassy in London and demanded that they, along with all Palestinians wherever they live, "in the homeland, the shatat, in the prisons, and the camps of refuge" be included in an election of a resuscitated Palestinian National Council (PNC).

The students deliberately organised themselves as the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS) in order to evoke a bygone era of national cohesiveness and, more importantly perhaps, transnational membership in a representative body.

According to Rafeef Ziadah, a doctoral candidate and one of the leading organizers of the UK action:

Where in the past, Palestinian students would belong to Palestinian political factions and organise within the structures of the General Union of Palestinian Students, these structures are nothing but empty shells today. That is why when we did hold the sit-in at the Palestinian embassy in the UK we insisted on using the name GUPS to take back those institutions meant to represent us.
Ziadah explains that the protesters' demands for the inclusion of a global Palestinian national body in an accountable PNC reflects an inevitable moment catalysed by the revelation of the Palestine Papers, coupled with the revolutionary fervour of an Arab Spring. She comments that for several years, Palestinian activists in diaspora had been "wondering what our role is in Palestinian politics beyond solidarity actions".

Across the Atlantic, similar discussions instigated the formation of the US Palestinian Community Network in 2006. Established with the aim of empowering the US-based Palestinian community, unifying its voice, and affirming "the right of Palestinians in the Shatat (exile) to participate fully in shaping of [their] joint destiny," the loose national network comprised of nearly a dozen local chapters and an inclusive and fluid leadership, has organised two national popular conferences to date. In its most recent conference in October 2010, the USPCN explicitly encouraged the formation of popular associations, reflecting an effort to revive long-defunct models that had once been the organisational cornerstone of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).

Factional discord vs unity

In late February, the USPCN's DC Chapter staged a protest in front of the PLO General Delegation Office - not just to demand inclusion in a revived PNC election, but for the annulment of Oslo and the termination of the Palestinian Authority (PA), among a longer list of pointed demands. The protesters presented the PA with a pink slip for "failure to uphold its duties as a governing body" and for "acting without proper delegation" in the course of its negotiations with Israel.

Reem El-Khatib, a leading member of the USPCN-DC and a communications specialist, acknowledges that while the US-based call is more radical than its counterparts in the OPT and elsewhere, demands for unity and termination of the PA are not in conflict because, "so long as there is corruption in a political representative body, there cannot be a unified stance. Once those who are not truly working for the Palestinian people are dismissed, unity among those who are sincerely working for progress can happen".

Organisers from Gaza and the West Bank do not agree - or at least they cannot for localised and pragmatic considerations. Mohammed Majdalawi, an aspiring filmmaker and youth activist from Gaza City notes that factional discord has impeded his group's ability to make more radical demands.

Majdalawi explains:

Our roof is the occupation and our floor, the political factions. In Gaza, nearly all political demands have been associated with one party or the other. If you demand elections you are accused of supporting Fatah and if you support ending Oslo you appear to be supporting Hamas. So, in order to maintain neutrality and establish a popular position, we have demanded an end to the division.
In the West Bank, Huwaida Arraf, co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement and leading member of the Free Gaza Movement, agrees that factional strife has politicised nearly all demands beyond those for unity. She adds that in the West Bank, where the termination of the PA would impact the source of income for thousands of Palestinian families, limiting the movement's demands is a tactical decision. Arraf explains, "in order to generate unity and to rehabilitate trust amongst Palestinians, it makes more sense to forcefully challenge the Israeli occupation to heighten your representative status. So rather than say 'screw you, PA' you are saying 'you've tried, thank you, now follow us'."

Youth activists within Israel are doing precisely that. Entabwe points out that within Israel, the annual commemoration of Land Day had become like a wedding ceremony where demonstrators "come to see and be seen, to offer gifts, and go home". This year youth organisers insisted on different tactics and urged responsible political parties to hold the demonstrations in Lydd or the Negev, where Jewish colonial settlement is ongoing, as opposed to its traditional site in Sakhnin. The group could not reach consensus and the idea was scrapped.

The youth organised their protest anyway and did so on March 29th so as to avoid overlap with traditional Land Day events on March 30th. Entabwe explains that the independent youth organisers successfully drew thousands of people forcing the resistant Palestinian political parties to join them but that, "not a single political party gave a speech that day which created quite a buzz among political circles".

'Between continents and countries'

For Entabwe and his counterparts, limiting the role of traditional political parties is the first of their three agreements, as the youth group has yet to agree on a set of demands. Entabwe elaborates: "We have a new conviction that, this time more than any other, that our work should not be based on party lines - and even if parties are involved, their agendas should be taken out of the meetings and everyone present will participate as an individual. Therefore, all decisions can and will be made at the meetings. We are ending the practice of taking positions 'back to the party'."

In Lebanon, Palestinian youth are building a movement that similarly responds to their local context as much as it does to their international condition. Rabih Salah, a youth leader and athletics coach who grew up between Ein El Hilweh, Beirut and Yarmouk, describes a four-pronged political program that predominantly responds to local conditions: 1) an end to the siege of the camps; 2) greater civil and political rights, primarily the right to work; 3) more representative Palestinian leaders of unions, parties, and institutions within Lebanon; and 4) the right to return. Salah explains: "We would like to create a national movement in Lebanon so that we can establish more representative bodies. Within Lebanon, we need to be able to elect local representatives that can represent us internationally. If we don't have locals making the demands for us we won't be able to make any demands at all."

While demands and tactics vary between continents and countries, the nascent and global Palestinian youth movement agrees on one thing thus far. As articulated by Shikaki, they seek to hold PNC elections to establish "a body that represents all 10 million Palestinians around the world, and [can] create a national Palestinian strategy".

In the immediate short-term, youth organisers globally are preparing for Nakba commemorations on May 15th. In the medium short-term, youth are preparing to respond to the proclamation of a Palestinian state. While those plans are not determined yet, most organisers, such as Arraf - who fear that the two-state frame may confine broader calls for human rights, are skeptical of the statehood strategy all together. In the long-term, the scattered youth groupings seek to meet one another and to build a collective vision.

In the words of Entabwe: "I refuse to become a piece of Israeli society with a different path…I am part of the Palestinian solution and my fate is part of a collective fate. We need a representative government to represent all of us."

Noura Erekat is a Palestinian human rights attorney and activist. She is currently an adjunct professor at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies in Georgetown University. She is also a co-editor of Jadaliyya.com.

The rights of Israel

                                                  The rights of Israel

Joseph Massad 
Joseph Massad is Associate Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University.

The Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, now entering their twentieth year had been hailed from the start as historic, having inaugurated a "peace process" that would resolve what is commonly referred to as the "Palestinian-Israeli conflict". For the Palestinians and the international community, represented by the United Nations and the myriad resolutions its Security Council and General Assembly issued since 1948, what was to be negotiated were the colonisation of land, the occupation of territory and population, and the laws that stipulate ethnic and religious discrimination in Israel, which, among other things, bar Palestinian refugees from returning to their land and confiscate their property. In their struggle against these Israeli practises, Palestinian leaders, whether in Israel, the Occupied Territories, or the diaspora, have always invoked these rights based on international law and UN resolutions, which Israel has consistently refused to implement or abide by since 1948. Thus for the Palestinians, armed by the UN and international law, the negotiations were precisely aimed to end colonisation, occupation, and discrimination.

On the other hand, one of the strongest and persistent arguments that the Zionist movement and Israel have deployed since 1948 in defence of the establishment of Israel and its subsequent policies is the invocation of the rights of Israel, which are not based on international law or UN resolutions. This is a crucial distinction to be made between the Palestinian and Israeli claims to possession of "rights." While the Palestinians invoke rights that are internationally recognised, Israel invokes rights that are solely recognised at the national level by the Israeli state itself. For Zionism, this was a novel mode of argumentation as, in deploying it, Israel invokes not only juridical principles but also moral ones.

In this realm, Israel has argued over the years that Jews have a right to establish a state in Palestine, that they have a right to establish a "Jewish" state in Palestine, that this state has a "right to exist," and that it has a "right to defend itself", which includes its subsidiary right to be the only country in the region to possess nuclear weapons, that it has the "right" to inherit all the biblical land that the Jewish God promised it, and a "right" to enact laws that are racially and religiously discriminatory in order to preserve the Jewish character of the state, otherwise articulated in the more recent formula of "a Jewish and democratic state". Israel has also insisted that its enemies, including the Palestinian people, whom it dispossesses, colonises, occupies, and discriminates against, must recognise all these rights, foremost among them its "right to exist as a Jewish state", as a condition for and a precursor to peace.

Rights are non-negotiable

Israel began to invoke this right with vehemence in the last decade after the Palestine Liberation Organisation had satisfied its earlier demand in the 1970s and 80s that the Palestinians recognise its "right to exist". In international law, countries are recognised as existing de facto and de jure, but there is no notion that any country has a "right to exist", let alone that other countries should recognise such a right. Nonetheless, the modification by Israel of its claim that others had to recognise its "right to exist" to their having to recognise "its right to exist as Jewish state" is pushed most forcefully at present, as it goes to the heart of the matter of what the Zionist project has been all about since its inception, and addresses itself to the extant discrepancy between Israel's own understanding of its rights to realise these Zionist aims and the international community's differing understanding of them. This is a crucial matter, as all these rights that Israel claims to possess, but which are not recognised internationally, translate into its rights to colonise Palestinian land, to occupy it, and to discriminate against the non-Jewish Palestinian people.

Israel insists that these rights are not negotiable and that what it is negotiating about is something entirely different, namely that its enemies must accept all its claimed rights unequivocally as a basis to establish peace in the region and end the state of war. However, the rights that Israel claims for itself are central to what the Palestinians and the international community argue is under negotiation – namely, colonisation, occupation, and racial and religious discrimination. But these three practises, as Israel has made amply clear, are protected as self-arrogated rights and are not up for negotiations. Indeed they are central to the realisation of Israel's very definition. To negotiate over them would mean to nullify the notion of a "Jewish State". As this is the case, then what does Israel think the negotiations between it and the Palestinians have been all about since the Madrid peace conference inaugurated them in 1991? Let me revisit the history of these claims in order to understand Israel's point of view and make clear what the basis of the negotiations are.

Israel's rights and the historical record

The Zionist movement has often argued that establishing a Jewish State for world Jewry was a moral and historical necessity that must be protected and enshrined in law, something it tirelessly pursued over the decades. However, this did not mean that its foundational texts proceeded from this juridical or moral principle. Indeed in his two foundational texts, The State of the Jews and Old-New Land, Theodor Herzl, the "father" of Zionism, never invoked the notion of Jewish "rights" to argue for a state of and for the Jews, whether in Palestine or Argentina, the other location he proposed. Herzl did speak of a "solution" to the Jewish Question but not of a "right". And neither did the first Zionist Congress Herzl convened in 1897 and the Basel Program it issued, which did not cite such a "right". This also applies to the three international foundational texts that Zionism worked hard to bring about. The first such text, the Balfour Declaration, issued on 2 November 1917 by the British government, rather than use the language of rights used the language of affect, promising that the British government "views with favour" the establishment in Palestine of a "Jewish national home", and that its declaration was a "declaration of sympathy with Jewish Zionist aspirations". This was followed by the Mandate for Palestine, issued in 1922 by the Council of the League of Nations, which based itself on the Balfour Declaration, and also did not recognise any Jewish rights to a state or even to Palestine. What it did recognise was "the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine" as "the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country", again asserting like the Balfour Declaration before it, that this should not prejudice the "rights" of non-Jews. The third and more major text, the November 1947 Partition Plan resolution issued by the UN General Assembly proceeded from a moral preamble, namely, that the General Assembly considered "that the present situation in Palestine is one which is likely to impair the general welfare and friendly relations among nations" and hence the need to provide a "solution" to the "problem of Palestine".

Israel's claims

Unlike these Zionist and international foundational documents which did not employ the language of rights, whether internationally recognised or self-arrogated, the Zionist movement insisted on its use in its own foundational document of the state, namely Israel's so-called "declaration of independence", formally titled "The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel". The declaration, which was signed by 37 Jewish leaders, 35 of whom were European colonists, and only one of whom was born in Palestine, misinforms us that "In the year… 1897… at the summons of the spiritual father of the Jewish State, Theodore Herzl, the First Zionist Congress convened and proclaimed the right of the Jewish people to national rebirth in its own country." As the documentary record shows, however, neither Herzl nor the Zionist Congress proclaimed such a right at all.  Yet the "Declaration of Independence" proceeds to tell us that:

"This right was recognised in the Balfour Declaration of the 2nd November, 1917, and re-affirmed in the Mandate of the League of Nations which, in particular, gave international sanction to the historic connection between the Jewish people and Eretz-Israel and to the right of the Jewish people to rebuild its National Home… On the 29th November, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel; the General Assembly required the inhabitants of Eretz-Israel to take such steps as were necessary on their part for the implementation of that resolution. This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable."
As none of these documents has affirmed such a right at all, the imputation to them that they did falls more in the realm of a Zionist investment in the new language of international relations within which the notion of rights became enshrined after World War II, not least in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This also coincided with the emergence of rights discourse in the same period as the hegemonic form of claim-making. Indeed, Israel's "Declaration of Independence" is so invested in this mode of argumentation that it invokes the European Enlightenment's notion of "natural" rights when it asserts in its preamble that "This right [to a Jewish State] is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State." The framers of the "declaration" conclude that "By virtue of our natural and historic right and on the strength of the resolution of the United Nations General Assembly, hereby declare the establishment of the Jewish State in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel."

It is important here to point out that the logic of this document is its insistence that its invocation of the Jews' right to establish a Jewish state in Palestine has a clear legal and moral genealogy, of which it is merely the conclusion, and that such a right was finally granted "irrevocabl[y]" by the Partition Plan. That none of this was true did not deter the framers, who, in asserting a right they arrogated to themselves, were now instituting a mode of argumentation that would be the most powerful rhetoric in establishing Israeli facts on the ground.

The meaning of the "Jewish State"

The United Nation's Partition Plan was a non-binding proposal that was never ratified or adopted by the Security Council, and therefore never acquired legal standing, as UN regulations require (although as far as the Palestinian people are concerned the United Nations had no right at any rate to partition what was not theirs to partition, much less to do so without the consultation of the Palestinian people themselves, thus denying them the right to self-determination). Nonetheless, it is important to consider what the Plan meant by "Jewish State" and "Arab State" due to the fact that the Israeli government uses this document as authorising its very establishment and subsequent policies. For Israel to rely on the Plan for its establishment and its policies, it would need to establish if the Plan proposed that the two states that would result from partition be exclusively Jewish and Arab demographically, or that their laws should grant rights to Jews or Arabs differentially and discriminate against non-Jews or non-Arabs. Expectedly, this was not the case. Even though Israel proceeded to institute a battery of racially and religiously discriminatory laws against its Palestinian Arab citizens (about 30 such laws exist at present), and set on to expropriate the large majority of lands in the country owned by Palestinian Arabs, the Partition Plan never proposed or authorised it to do so. The plan rather stated clearly that "No discrimination of any kind shall be made between the inhabitants on the ground of race, religion, language or sex" (Chapter 2, Article 2) and that  "No expropriation of land owned by an Arab in the Jewish State (by a Jew in the Arab State)… shall be allowed except for public purposes. In all cases of expropriation full compensation as fixed by the Supreme Court shall be said previous to dispossession." (Chapter 2, Article 8). When the Israeli "Declaration of Independence" was issued on May 14 1948, the Zionist forces had already expelled about 400,000 Palestinians from their lands and they would expel another 350,000 in the coming months. From this it follows clearly that not only is Israel's claim to establish a Jewish State that established demographic majority by ethnic cleansing was not authorised by the Partition Plan, but neither was its claim to be a Jewish state, in the sense of a state that privileges Jewish citizens over non-Jewish citizens legally and institutionally.

The proposed Partition Plan on which Israel bases its establishment initially envisioned a Jewish State with an Arab majority, which it later modified slightly to include 45 per cent Arab population and therefore it never envisioned it as free of Arabs or "Arabrein", as the Israeli state had hoped it would be and as many contemporary Israeli Jews contemplate today. Indeed as Palestine was divided into 16 districts, 9 of which were located in the proposed Jewish State, Palestinian Arabs were a majority in 8 of the 9 districts. Nowhere does the Partition Plan's use of the term "Jewish State" authorise ethnic cleansing or the colonisation of one ethnic group of the confiscated lands of another, especially as the Plan envisioned Arabs in the Jewish state to be a perpetual large "minority" and thus stipulated the rights that should be accorded to minorities in each state. But the fact that Arabs were a large minority and could conceivably, within a few years, have overtaken the Jewish population in the Jewish State remained uncontemplated by the Plan. For example, the Plan did not consider the consequences of the fact that if Jewish nationalism would define the Jewish State, how then could it accommodate almost half its population who had a different notion of nationalism and whom its excludes from its state nationalism a priori? And were the Palestinian Arabs in the Jewish State not adherents to Palestinian nationalism, they could not become, even if they so wished, Jewish nationalists, as they are excluded from Jewish nationalism ipso facto? How then could the Jewish State not discriminate against them?

This demographic situation would not have been a problem for the Arab State, as the Partition Plan envisioned that the Arab State would have a mere 1.36 per cent Jewish population. While the Zionist movement understood the contradictions of the Partition Plan and based on that understanding it set out to expel the majority of the Arab population of the projected Jewish State, they were unable to make the state Arabrein, which has complicated matters for them as time passed. Today over 22 per cent of Israel's population are Palestinian Arabs who are barred from inclusion in Jewish nationalism and suffer from institutionalised discrimination against them as non-Jews. Of course, had the state been Arabrein, there would not be a need for Israeli laws that discriminate between Jews and non-Jews, including the Law of Return (1950), the Law of Absentee Property (1950), the Law of the State's Property (1951), the Law of Citizenship (1952), the Status Law (1952), the Israel Lands Administration Law (1960), the Construction and Building Law (1965), and the 2002 temporary law banning marriage between Israelis and Palestinians of the Occupied Territories. Here Zionists, including prominent Israeli historian Benny Morris, have argued that it is the very presence of Arabs in the Jewish State that propels the Jewish State to enshrine its racism in all these laws. Otherwise, had Israel succeeded in expelling all Palestinians, the only law it would have needed to preserve its Arabrein Jewish status would have been an immigration law stipulating it.

Ultimately then Israel's claimed right to set up a Jewish State translates immediately into the right of Jews to colonise the lands of the Palestinians, which necessitates the prior confiscation of their lands so that they can be colonised by Jews, the reduction of the number of Palestinians through expulsion and the enactment of laws that prevent their repatriation, and the neutralisation of the rights of those not expelled through institutional and legal discrimination.

Here it is important to stress that for the architects of the Partition Plan, a "Jewish State" meant a state ruled by Jewish nationalists who adhere to Zionism but whose population is almost half Palestinian Arabs whose lands cannot be confiscated for Jewish colonisation and who would have equal rights to Jews and not suffer any racial or religious discrimination. For Israel, the meaning of a "Jewish State" is quite different as it seems to mean the expulsion of a majority of the Arab population, a refusal to repatriate them, the confiscation of their land for the exclusive colonisation of Jews, and the enactment of discriminatory laws against those Palestinian Arabs who remained in the country. When Israel insists today that the Palestinian Authority and other Arab states recognise its right to be a Jewish state, they do not mean that they should recognise its Jewishness in the way the Partition Plan envisioned, but rather in the way Israel understands and exercises this definition on the ground. It is important to note in this regard that it remains unclear which meaning of "Jewish" president Obama (and president Bush before him) has in mind when he demands that Arabs and Palestinians must recognise Israel's right to be a Jewish state – the Partition Plan's sense or Israel's.

The rights of the Palestinians

In contrast to Israel's invocation of rights that are not internationally sanctioned, the Palestinians invoke a number of internationally recognised rights that challenge Israel's self-arrogated rights. For example, Palestinians affirm their right to live in the Jewish State from which they were expelled, a right upheld by the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights which stated unequivocally that "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country" -Article 13(2), and in the Fourth Geneva Conventions passed in 1949. Furthermore, the United Nations General Assembly resolution 194 resolved in 1949 "that the [Palestinian] refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbours should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or in equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible." In 1974, UN General Assembly Resolution 3236, passed on 22 November 1974, declared the Palestinian right of return to be an "inalienable right". The right of refugees to return was also enshrined in 1976 in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights when it stated that "No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of the right to enter his own country" (Article 12).  Moreover, Palestinians cite the Partition Plan against Israel's confiscation of their lands for the exclusive use of Jewish colonisation as well as resolution 194 among other UN provisions against a state's confiscation of the land of a people based on ethnicity. Indeed, many Palestinians invoke the same legal instruments that Israel uses to reclaim the stolen and confiscated property of European Jews before World War II. Moreover, Palestinian civil society groups in Israel continue to challenge persistently Israel's racially discriminatory laws in Israeli courts, so far with little success.

The rights that Israel claims do not only affect Israel's Palestinian population and the Palestinian refugees living in the diaspora. Even though Israel's negotiations with the Palestinian Authority are said to address the Occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip only (and not East Jerusalem), it seems that these Israeli claimed rights also apply there. To begin with, Israel has insisted since 1967 that Jews have the right to colonise the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, and that this is not a negotiable right. Indeed, to get its point across and to make sure it is not misunderstood, since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993, Israel has more than tripled its Jewish colonial settler population in the West Bank and more than doubled it across the Occupied Territories, including East Jerusalem, totalling approximately half a million colonists. Israel continues to confiscate West Bank Palestinian lands for colonising purposes and suppresses all Palestinian resistance to its colonisation. Moreover, and in addition to the continuing confiscation of Palestinian lands inside Israel, in East Jerusalem, and in the West Bank, Israel has extended it discriminatory laws and enacted new ones to privilege the colonising Jewish population of the West Bank and East Jerusalem over the Palestinian Arabs. This includes an apartheid-style separation between Arabs and Jews, including the construction of the Apartheid Wall, the construction of Jewish-only roads across the West Bank, and the differential access to water resources, never mind confiscated land, to Jewish colonists. The United Nations has invoked the fourth Geneva conventions and passed numerous resolutions (the most famous being UN Security Council resolution 446 passed in March 1979) calling on Israel to dismantle its Jewish colonial settlements and nullify its confiscation of lands to no avail.

Israeli leaders have maintained that their colonisation efforts did not detract from their moral commitment to peace. On the contrary, Israel is clear that it was the Palestinian Authority who is to blame for the cessation of negotiations. Current Israeli prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu is not only committed to negotiations, but he, like his predecessors, insists that the Palestinian Authority's protests that Jewish colonisation must stop for negotiations to begin is nothing short of an infringement on the rights of Israel, and an imposition of "pre-conditions" for negotiations, which he cannot accept.

On the question of the occupation and whether the negotiations are supposed to end it, Israel has maintained that its occupation of East Jerusalem, which it initially expanded twelve-fold (from 6 to 70 square kilometres) at the expense of West Bank lands (and which was more recently expanded to 300 square kilometres, encompassing a full 10 per cent of the West Bank) is permanent and that its occupation of the Jordan Valley and of another ten per cent of the West Bank that now lies to the west of the Apartheid Wall are also permanent. Israel insists that the negotiations are about a rearrangement of the nature of the occupation of what remains of the West Bank that could facilitate a form of autonomy for the Palestinians that would not include sovereignty but which it might be willing to call a "Palestinian State."

The recently Al Jazeera leaked Palestine Papers have shown that Palestinian Authority negotiators offered more concessions on all these fronts and, that despite such "flexibility", Israeli negotiators rejected all such offers. Indeed, Netanyahu has since the late 1990s insisted that the basis of the negotiations should no longer be the formula of "land for peace" but rather "peace for peace", affirming Israel's refusal to end its colonisation, occupation, or discrimination. More recently, he proposed that the negotiations be over "economic peace", wherein his commitment to peace is offered as a moral stance that safeguards Israel's self-arrogated juridical rights from being subject to negotiations.

As I have argued before, Zionism and Israel are careful not to generalise the principles that justify Israel's rights to colonise, occupy, and discriminate, but are rather vehement in upholding them as subsets of an exceptional moral principle. It is not that no other people has been oppressed historically, it is that Jews have been oppressed more. It is not that no other people's cultural and physical existence has been threatened; it is that the Jews' cultural and physical existence is threatened more. This quantitative equation is key to why the world, and especially Palestinians, should recognise that Israel needs and deserves to have the rights to colonise, occupy, and discriminate. If the Palestinians, or anyone else, reject this, then they must be committed to the annihilation of the Jewish people physically and culturally, not to mention that they would be standing against the Jewish God.

Negotiating the non-negotiable

Israel's right to defend itself means its right to safeguard its rights (to colonise Palestinian lands, occupy them, and discriminate against non-Jews) against any threats that could endanger these rights, foremost among them the threat of negotiations. Its right to defend itself is a right to uphold these rights and is therefore a subsidiary, if essential, right deriving from its right to be a Jewish state. The logic goes as follows: Israel has the right to colonise and occupy Palestinian land and to discriminate against Palestinians whether in Israel within its pre-1967 boundaries or in the additional territories it occupied in 1967, and if this population resists these measures and Israel responds with military violence causing massive civilian casualties, Israel would simply be "defending" itself as it must and should.

Informed by the European Enlightenment understanding of rights, especially John Locke's discussion of alienable versus inalienable rights, wherein, according to him, indigenous populations, in contrast with European colonists, lack such rights given that they live parasitically on the land and do not improve it, Israel's arrogation of these rights to itself entails its insistence that Palestinians, in line with Locke's assertions, possess no right to resist it. Thus, Israel's moral and juridical defence of itself are combined in this context, wherein Israel has the right to colonise and occupy the lands of the Palestinians, and to discriminate against them based on the principle of exceptionalism and European colonial supremacy, but wherein the Palestinians do not have the right to defend themselves against Israel's exercise of these self-arrogated rights, and were they to do so, Israel would then have the right to defend itself against their illegitimate defence of themselves against its legitimate and moral exercise of its own rights.

But if Israel has no internationally recognised juridical rights to colonise, occupy, or discriminate nor does it have a universally-sanctioned moral or juridical right to exceptionalism, then the only mechanism by which it is able to make such claims is the absence of international accountability, or more precisely its refusal to be accountable to international law and legal conventions. This refusal to be accountable is protected by its alliance with the United States, which vetoes all UN Security Council resolutions that call on Israel to be accountable to international law, thus rendering international law unenforceable. The most recent such veto was on February 11, 2011 when the Obama administration vetoed the resolution, supported by the other 14 members of the Security Council, calling on Israel to cease its colonisation of West Bank and East Jerusalem lands.

It is in this context that Israel and the US State Department (under Bush and Obama) have gone into high gear in recent years characterising Palestinians' resorting to legal mechanisms and international law to challenge Israel's so-called rights as "lawfare", which they are demanding be immediately stopped. These include a rejection by Israel of the 2002 decision by the International Court of Justice of the illegality of the Apartheid Wall it built in the West Bank, or the war crimes accusations that the UN-issued Goldstone Report levelled against Israel in its war on Gaza in 2008-2009. It is significant that the term "lawfare", which emerged a decade ago, is usually used to mean "the effort to conquer and control indigenous peoples by the coercive use of legal means." That Israel and the US equate the colonised Palestinians with a conquering power and the colonising Israeli Jews as indigenous testify to the serious concern over the danger that legal mechanisms of challenge constitute to Israel's so-called rights.

The discourse of rights, itself various and hardly agreed upon, ultimately has no jurisdiction, and takes place, or does not, in the negotiation (or non-negotiation) of political power. This is clearly manifested in Israel's continued insistence that its "rights" are non-negotiable. With the recent fall of the Egyptian regime and the more recent reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, it remains unclear how the Palestinian Authority (PA) will proceed. The PA plan to get one more recognition of a Palestinian State from the General Assembly next September, even if successful, will have very little substantial positive results and could very well have negative ones. Unless the PA suspends all negotiations and seeks international legal redress by mounting diplomatic pressure (especially from European and Arab states) on the US government to join the international consensus and stop vetoing international decisions, the rights of Israel will continue to be safeguarded.

What Israel has been negotiating over with the Palestinians is the form, the terms, and the extent to which Palestinians must recognise its rights without equivocation. It is this reality that has characterised the last two decades of negotiations with the Palestinians. Negotiations will never restore the internationally-recognised rights of the Palestinians; on the contrary, the negotiations that the Palestinians entered with Israel two decades ago are ones wherein one party, the Palestinians, must surrender all their internationally recognised rights and recognise instead Israel's self-arrogated rights, which are not recognised by international law or any other country for that matter. Sixty-three years after the establishment of the Jewish settler-colony, this Palestinian act will not only lend the first international legitimacy to Israeli claims, it will constitute in effect nothing less than the first international recognition of Israel's self-arrogated rights. Israel need give up nothing in return.

Joseph Massad is Associate Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University in New York.

Revenge of the settlers

By Nour Samaha 

Fadi Quran is little different from any other Palestinian living in the West Bank, where violence from Israeli settlers is part of daily life. Hailing from the town of Al-Bireh, less than one kilometre from the settlement of Psagot, the 23-year-old Master's degree student has been forced to deal with attacks and harassment for years.

"Settler violence is a daily occurrence," he told Al Jazeera. On one occasion, he was playing football with friends when they came under fire from settlers with machine guns. In another altercation, settlers threw stones at him while he was driving. Their guns discouraged him from stopping. "I'm telling you my story, but there are literally hundreds of thousands of other cases that are much worse."

Last week, Quran was arrested after attending a non-violent protest in Hebron which demanded the re-opening of a street in the centre of the city. The Israeli army had made it a settler-only road 11 years previously, despite the presence of Palestinian families still living there.

Following a verbal dispute, Israeli soldiers pepper-sprayed him, beat him, arrested him, blindfolded him and took him to an interrogation centre at a nearby settlement. Once there, he discovered the arresting soldiers were actually from one of the area's settlements.

"I asked where they were from and they told me: 'Kiryat Arba'," he said. "One of them then asked me if I knew Baruch Goldstein [an Israeli settler who, in 1994, opened fire inside a mosque in the West Bank, killing 29 and wounding over 125 others]. They said he was a hero and they would do the same thing."

Quran was charged with attacking ten soldiers. In court a few days later, the judge stated there was no proof that Quran did not attack them. The hearing was postponed until the following day, by which point a video capturing the events leading up to Quran's arrest had gone viral. After the video was presented to the judge (which clearly showed Quran had not attacked troops), he was released on bail.

                 Olive harvest reaps animosity in West Bank


Palestinians are under increasing attacks from Israeli settlers, especially in the last few years, reports have found.

Settler violence has been forcing people to significantly change their lives, Quran said: "There are communities who don't use main roads because they are afraid they will be murdered. Many farmers can't farm anymore because their lands are being burned or vandalised, so they have to find another job."

A report published in January by the Washington-based Palestine Center revealed a 39 per cent increase in the number of settler attacks - from stone-throwing to arson and shootings - between 2010 and 2011.

Furthermore, in the five-year period between 2007 and 2011, the occupied West Bank has witnessed a 315 per cent increase in settler attacks - while, over the same period, there has been a 95 per cent decrease in Palestinian violence against Israeli settlements and settlers.

The report found "over 90 per cent of all the Palestinian villages which have experienced multiple instances of Israeli settler violence are in areas which fall under Israeli security jurisdiction".

The report revealed a geographical shift in violent acts; previously settler violence was concentrated in the southern West Bank city of Hebron and its environs. Over the past few years, the Nablus governorate, in the northern West Bank, has also been on the receiving end of a large proportion of the documented settler violence.

This shift to the north, "where rural villages are predominantly targets, suggested that settlers are exploiting unfettered access to isolated Palestinian villages to perpetrate violence more than ever before".

'Open hunting season'

"What we have here is a complete failure to enforce the law and uphold the obligations to protect Palestinians," Yousef Munayyer, director of the Palestine Center, told Al Jazeera.

"The Israelis really need to uphold their own obligations, otherwise we will continue to see violence and it will be open hunting season for settlers to attack Palestinians."

International law states that occupying powers have a duty to protect local populations, while maintaining security and ensuring public order.

Issa Amro, a Palestinian from Hebron who heads the Youth Against Settlements activist movement, was forced with his family to leave his home - now designated a "closed military area" - after years of attacks from settlers.

"Every time settlers attack a Palestinian house, they are escorted by the army who protect them," he explained. "I have filed dozens of cases and complaints, and not one time has anyone gone to court."

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), more than 90 per cent of monitored complaints filed by Palestinians have been closed without indictment.

"I have death threats against me, and I’ve been attacked many times by settlers," said Amro. "[The settlers] say to me 'I hope God erases your name', and they say this to me in front of the army and the police, who stand by and do nothing."

'They are there to protect the settlers'

Ezra Nawi, an Israeli activist who has been working with Palestinians against settler violence for the past decade, said the Israeli military in the West Bank was complicit through inaction.

"Settlers attack Palestinians, but the army has orders preventing them from arresting or stopping them," he said. "They are simply there to protect the settlers."

Nawi is no stranger to settler violence, with his work frequently making him a target. He said the attacks "serve the state's interests".

"The violence scares the Palestinians into not moving around or using their land for farming and agriculture," he said.

Further OCHA statistics also state approximately 10,000 Palestinian-owned trees were damaged or destroyed by settlers in 2011, while 139 Palestinians were displaced due to settler attacks.

The UN group also found that "80 communities with a combined population of nearly 250,000 Palestinians are vulnerable to settler violence, including 76,000 who are at high-risk".

"Every day there are attacks by settlers," said Amro. "What is new is that they have started burning mosques."

Sarit Michaeli, spokesperson for B'Tselem, an Israeli group which documents violence in the West Bank, told Al Jazeera that increasing violence was a result of a lack of law enforcement.

"The Israeli authorities have an obligation under international law to protect both settlers and Palestinians," she said. "While they fulfill their obligation to protect the settlers, with the Palestinians, we see a systematic failure to protect them from attacks."

"It is worth noting that Palestinians who are arrested by the Israeli army are prosecuted and charged through the military court system, which is very low in terms of protection of their rights, while settlers, if they get arrested, are held and tried in the civilian court system, which offers greater protection of their rights," she added.

'It's actually calmer now'

Yet not everyone agrees with the assertions made. David Ha'ivri, spokesperson for the settlement council covering the northern West Bank region, told Al Jazeera he felt the area "is over-exposed in the media in comparison to other areas in the world".

"I've lived here for many years and we have experienced violence, but that is not the situation currently," he said. "It is strange that someone is saying that there is an increase, while we've experienced a decrease in the violence. It's actually calmer now than in the past."

Dani Dayan, chairman of the Yesha Council, reiterated Ha'ivri's assertion, saying the levels of violence had decreased in the past two years, and that media had a tendency to "inflate and exaggerate things like the price-tag attacks".

"Life in Judea and Samaria [the Biblical term for the West Bank] is normal," he told Al Jazeera. "I don’t think violence during the last year has been a crucial problem, not for Jews and not for Arabs.

"Let's not forget that the numbers provided are actually the other way around," he added. "There have been at least 12 settlers who were murdered by Arabs in the last 24 months."

According to B'Tselem statistics 13 Israelis have been killed by Palestinians in the West Bank over the past two years, while four Palestinians were killed by Israeli civilians, and a further 22 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli army. In Gaza, 173 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli military during the past two years.

Both Ha'ivri and Dayan state the Israeli authorities were doing what was required of them in terms of protecting civilians and arresting perpetrators.

"I don't think there is less accountability, the state and the police are very serious about enforcing the law on both sides," said Ha'ivri. "For example, there are individuals in some communities in Samaria who have been arrested, or banished from living in this area."

"If the Arabs feel there is less accountability then they are not aware of the facts."

While Dayan agreed the authorities were performing their duties, he acknowledged flaws in the judicial system.

"There are very few indictments, if at all, presented to the courts," he said. "I do not have an explanation as to why there are so few indictments, and it is not my place to provide an explanation, but it does create problems, leading some to believe one side has a sense of immunity and can get off without punishment."

"I do know the government and police have a high interest in the public opinion, so I don't think they lack the motivation," said Dayan. "It's not a question of leniency, but maybe one of capability."

'They want Palestine'

The analysis of the Palestine Center's Munayyer focused on causes of settler violence and whether it was responsorial (a reaction to either Palestinian violence and/or Israeli government actions), or structural (a product of demographics and security arrangements).

"What we found actually is that instances of Palestinian violence trigger a decrease in settler violence," said Munayyer. "Palestinian violence tends to receive an official response from the Israeli army, so in these instances the settlers don't intervene.

"We also found that some of it is motivated by Israeli government actions, but ... it doesn't necessarily have to be provoked by anything. As settlers can get away with it at any given time, they will continue.

"The message the settlers are receiving is that 'this is okay, and the state is not going to stop them'."

B'Tselem's Michaeli, however, was keen to emphasise that violence was not something the majority of the settler community participated in. "The mainstream leaders in settler politics have denounced these attacks," she said, adding that settler violence and clashes with local Palestinians dated back to the 1970s.

"Having said that, the settlement community as a whole in an occupied area is violent," she said, referring to the illegal nature of the expanding settlements in the West Bank, frequently condemned by the international community.

Ha'ivri said that in most cases, when there is violence, it happens as a response to attacks on settlers. "I don't think it happens on a daily basis. All acts of violence that have occurred are isolated on both sides," he said. "I don't think either side is going out and actively looking for targets."

For Israeli activist Nawi, the motivations of settlers are much more straightforward.

"Most of the settlers are motivated by religious ideas; that the Arabs are unwelcome people and they need to leave," he said. "It is not an argument you can reason with."

"They want Palestine."

Follow Nour Samaha on Twitter: @samahanour

Homes Destroyed Lives Shattered

             By Graham Peebles . The Director of The Create Trust (www.thecreatetrust.org) E-mail graham@thecreatetrust.org.


Within the catalogue of criminality that is Israel’s occupation of the West bank and Gaza, the destruction of Palestinian homes must rank as one of the most cynical and heinous. “Some 90,000 people are currently reported to be at risk of displacement as a result of Israeli policies such as restrictive and discriminatory planning, the revocation of residency rights, the expansion of settlements and the construction of the West Bank Separation Wall.”[1]

All let us note and explore further, with the tacit engagement of America, who bank-roles the entire operation.

Home, a refuge from the world, safe and secure, somewhere to relax with family and friends, and breath easy, free from fear. This simple image of normality is unknown to many Palestinians living under the brutal illegal occupation by Israel. “The Israeli practice of demolishing homes, basic infrastructure and sources of livelihoods continues to devastate Palestinian families and communities in East Jerusalem and the 60 per cent of the West Bank controlled by Israel, known as Area C. Many of the people affected already live in poverty, and demolitions are a leading cause of their on-going displacement and dispossession in the West Bank.”[2]

Last year (2011) saw more homes demolished than in the previous six years, and record numbers of people made homeless and displaced, “by November 2011 Israeli authorities had demolished 467 Palestinian homes and other buildings in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem), displacing 869 people.”[3]  The UN puts the figure even higher, at 1000. (HRWHD) Alongside the illegal destruction of Palestinian homes, the settlement expansion has accelerated and with it, according to Human Rights Watch “an escalation of violence perpetrated by settlers.”[4]

The total number or recorded house demolitions since the occupation began in 1967, is estimated to be “24,813.”[5]  With Palestinians perversely being forced to either demolish their own home or face a charge for the IDF to do it, some homeowners undertake the task themselves, “it [the family] is liable for the costs of the house demolition which can run up to tens of thousands of dollars. To avoid these costs, Palestinians subject to administrative house demolitions may “opt” to undertake the demolition of their own home -it is not known how many Palestinians choose this route.”[6]  These ‘homemade’ demolitions will not be included in the (IAK) figure quoted, making the actual total much higher.

Let us ponder for a moment on the absurdity of living under the cloud of an illegal authority that forces families to bulldoze their own home.

Lives demolished

The impact on the families whose homes are demolished and the effects, immediate and long-term are devastating. Children are particularly vulnerable, as too are pregnant women and the elderly. Families are displaced and separated, children made homeless, frightened and unsettled for years. “Children who have had their home demolished fare significantly worse on a range of mental health indicators, including: withdrawal, somatic complaints, depression/anxiety, social difficulties, higher rates of delusional, obsessive, compulsive and psychotic thoughts, attention behavior - even six months after the demolition. They cry more, are afraid to go to school, feel they are not loved or that others are bad to them, feel guilty, nervous and are very tense. “ (BH)

House demolitions add to the numbers of Palestinian refugees, who constitute the largest single group of refugees in the World, “ In 2007, there were an estimated seven million Palestinian refugees worldwide and 450,000internally displaced in Israel and the OPT.” (BH)

Propaganda permitting violence

As well as the demolition of homes, places of work, businesses and sources of livelihood are destroyed, in addition to basic groundwork, “wells, rainwater harvesting cisterns, and other essential structures.”(HRHD) When in the West bank in 2009 I witnessed numerous roadside market stalls outside Hebron being demolished. I counted eight smashed to ruin or in the process of being destroyed at the hands of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF), America’s occupying security force. “Most demolitions in 2011 affected livelihood structures, negatively affecting the sources of income and living standards of some 1,300 people.”[1] The reasons given, “Palestinians set up shop without the required official permits.” (ISOPT)

Israeli explanations justifying demolitions serve only as propaganda, seeking to justify the unjust, the illegal, the inhumane. The nonsense of permits tramples on sanity. It is the Israeli authorities (IDF) that grant, or refuse to grant permits for a variety of aspects of daily life; Housing, importing goods, travel, trading and infrastructure development, such as water pipes, electrical lines, communication etc. We only destroy homes hat are built without a permit “13%” (BH), or for ‘military reasons’ “41%” (BH), claims the IDF. Disingenuous nonsense. The locution of the deceiver attempting to trap the right minded into legitimising the actions of the IDF and validating its illegitimate authority.

This bureaucratic maze of madness, established, maintained and administered as instruments of control adds to the armoury employed by Israel to bring Palestinians to their physical and emotional knees. “Military law (that) systematically deprives Palestinians of their rights and denies them the ability to have any real effect on shaping the policy regarding the land space in which they live and with respect to their rights.”[2]

The two-tier legal structure installed by the occupying force is designed and implemented to maximise the suffering of the Palestinians, leaving them with no choice but to live outside the system. “Israel’s discriminatory planning restrictions result in the lack of building permits for the Palestinian population in the West Bank forcing them to build without permits and live under the constant threat of eviction and demolition.“  (ISOPT)

Flouting conventions.

Whilst Palestinian homes and essential structures are destroyed, Israelis living comfortably and secure within the illegal settlements are allowed to flout the law. Peace Now has documented “a dramatic increase in the number of new illegal buildings in the settlements, construction is proceeding according to plans that were never approved by the IDF. At least 507 unapproved housing units are currently being built in 29 settlements,” these (Israeli) developments are not subject to a demolition order, even though they are building without the necessary permits ‘compulsory’ under Israeli law. “House demolitions exercised exclusively against Palestinians have displaced thousands of families, while neglecting to enforce the planning laws on Israeli settlers.” (ISOPT) Contradictions coil around the IDF, strangling its actions within a web of dishonesty and deceit as they justify atrocities with bureaucracy, whilst supporting criminality.

Israel has no legitimacy under international law, to build themselves, creating subsidized settler ghettos, or to destroy structures of those that do so without their permission. Full and complete domination of Palestinians is the aim, with all land under Israeli control, Israeli leader Menachem Begin "The return of even one bit of earth to the Arab would be a betrayal of the nation."(MM)

Demolitions of Homes, infrastructure and places of livelihood, are illegal under international law,  “The systematic policy of house demolitions carried out against Palestinian residents in Jerusalem contravenes the 4th Geneva Convention which forbids “any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons” except where such destruction is rendered “absolutely necessary by military operations.”[1]  Furthermore, “extensive destruction of property not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly constitutes a grave breach to the Convention, which can theoretically be prosecuted under the universal jurisdiction of States party to the convention.”[2]  Theory needs to turn into action, collective complacency giving way to international outrage. Implement and enforce the law.

Add to the above a raft of relevant articles in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), where we find “Article 9, 1 State Parties shall ensure that a child shall not be separated from his/her parents against their will, Articles 24, 1. States Parties recognize the right of the child to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health. Article 27. 1. States Parties recognize the right of every child to a standard of living adequate for the child's physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development.  Article 31 The right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts, and crucially article 38, State parties undertake to respect and to ensure respect for rules of international humanitarian law applicable to them in armed conflicts which are relevant to the child.”[3] All are implicitly relevant in the impact of house demolitions on children.  A plethora of International law engulfs Israel. What is required and most urgently is the implementation and enforcement of the law.

Quiet please, Ethnic transfer

The demolition policy is a tool of terror in a planned campaign, with the clear intention of subjugation, control and intimidation. House demolitions are tied in with the overall strategy of expansion by Israel and the realisation of imperialist goals “the grand design of Judaic-Zionist expansionist doctrine is to seize all the oil-rich lands from the shores of the Euphrates to the banks of the Nile,”[1] which includes the continuing illegal settlement building, violence at the hands of settlers and the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) “Israel has continued to flout agreements for a moratorium on illegal construction in Israeli settlements, evictions of Palestinian families to make way for incoming settlers continue apace,” [2]  “throughout the eastern half of the city [Jerusalem] nonstop pressure is applied as part of "quiet transfer". (GHD)

The ‘quiet transfer’ is far from quiet or peaceful. It is the violent, forced eviction and displacement of Palestinian families in East Jerusalem. ‘Quiet Transfer’ refers to the technique by the IDF of disempowering the Palestinian’s and extinguishing all hope by making daily life tortuous, leading to the ‘transfer’ of East Jerusalem citizens out of the city into the West bank. “The increasing rate of settlement expansion and house demolitions is pushing Palestinians to the brink, destroying their livelihoods and prospects for a just and durable peace.” (HRWHD) Just after Christmas last year, “Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat announced plans to strip IDs from 70,000 Palestinian residents of Jerusalem , and transfer them to the West Bank civil administration. Though not a physical transfer, this stripping of IDs will mark the largest en masse stripping of citizenship rights, since 1967,” The process of ethnic cleansing, continues apace in Jerusalem. It is illegal, enforce and implement the law.

 Intimidation, unjust house building controls, the theft and rationing of water and the issuing of demolition notices constitute a methodology of suffering underpinning the policy of ‘quiet transfer’ in East Jerusalem.  Eventually wearing the people down, until sooner or later they simply give up. “Once they leave, they rescind their rights to Jerusalem ID papers, destroying any hopes of employment in Israel proper – effectively keeping them caged in the poverty of the West Bank forever.” (GHD) Homes, infra structure, and businesses are demolished within East Jerusalem and Area C of the West Bank, ‘C’ for cleansing - ethnic cleansing it is, “the rate and the method of house demolitions show that this is more a policy of gradual ethnic cleansing than anything else, with clear political and strategic purposes.” [3]

Everything Israel does inside the OPT’s forms a constituent part to an overall plan, a vision of total domination. Demolitions are no exception to this rule. “Each demolition is a microcosm of the occupation: why they are demolishing a particular house in a particular area exposes how the wider occupation works and how the process of house demolitions is contributing to the wider occupation. We want to unmask the way Israel frames the occupation as a conflict of security. The policy of house demolitions shows exactly the opposite. In more than 90% of the cases the families whose house was demolished didn’t have a security record. House demolitions go hand in hand with land expropriation for settlements expansion.”[4]

Settlement building is illegal under international law. Implement and enforce the law.

American Partners in crime

Israel disregards international law, with the support and involvement of their chief criminal ally and partner in crime, America. Every time a Caterpillar bulldozer from the US storehouse of suffering smashes into a Palestinian home, Israel commits another illegal act and the US corporate giant is an accessory to a crime, causing ever more human agony and distress. “ Caterpillar’s [has a] long history of complicity in widespread human rights violations within the occupied Palestinian Territories. Caterpillar routinely provides Israel with equipment designed specifically for military use knowing it is used to demolish Palestinian homes, to kill and injure Palestinian and international civilians, to destroy olive trees and farmland, and to facilitate expropriation of Palestinian territory through construction of Jewish-only settlements and Israel’s apartheid wall.”[1]

America is the supplier of all that destroys and contaminates in the OPT’s, from white prosperous bombs burning the children of Gaza to Caterpillar bulldozers demolishing their homes. “The U.S. is providing Israel with at least $8.2 million each day” (IAK) in military aid alone. Amnesty International’s report Fuelling Conflict states, “transferring weapons to a consistent violator of human rights is illegal under international law.”  Norman Finkelstein referring to Amnesty’s findings, “Israel is a consistent violator of human rights, [emphasis mine] and therefore there has to be a comprehensive arms embargo on Israel.” The consistent supplying of arms by America to Israel maintains and sustains the occupation, “the US is by far the biggest supplier of weapons to Israel; supplying those weapons to Israel is not only illegal under international law, it’s illegal under domestic US law [2].” Implement and enforce the law, international and domestic, within America and the OPT’s,Those sitting in comfort, shrouded in complacency within the White House know well what US corporations are supporting, where US arms are deployed and what consecutive US administrations silence is allowing to continue. By their support the US is condoning the steady on-going demolition of homes and the destruction of lives too many too count. And what words of condemnation issue from the Obama administration, that plays lip service only to justice and the rule of law,  Secretary of State Hilary Rodham Clinton, “described the demolitions as “unhelpful”, noting that they violated Israel’s obligations under the US “road map” for peace.”[3] The US ‘road map for peace’ is a blood splattered road of rubble leading directly and swiftly nowhere, at the hands of a broker, whose vision is not of peace, “the US has blocked the two state-vision supported by virtually the entire World since the mid 1970’s”[4], but of extended hegemony and dominance, throughout the Middle East and the World.

Any ‘road map’ to peace, could be swiftly navigated and gently traversed were America to withdraw the manifest support it gives to Israel, the diplomatic, economic and military tools that are fuelling the illegal occupation and causing untold suffering to the Palestinian people.

The days are numbered for such tyranny and injustice. A growing movement of solidarity and cooperation daily builds in strength throughout the World. Shining light into the darkest corners, and there are few darker than Israel, sustaining all those who call for justice, freedom and unity. All that would pervert and soil the life of men women and children everywhere shall be exposed. Goodness will ought, justice shall be done. Implement and enforce the law is the cry.