"Rise in home demolitions in 2010"

B’Tselem Report Indicates Rise in Home Demolitions in 2010
Thursday January 27, 2011 15:48 by Ramona M. - IMEMC and Agencies

Demolitions by Israel of Palestinian homes in the West Bank tripled in 2010, figures from an Israeli human rights group showed on Wednesday, with a big increase in demolitions in the Jordan Valley.

Yearly figures published by B'Tselem showed that Israel demolished 86 homes across the West Bank in 2010, compared with 28 a year earlier.

Last year's house demolitions left 472 people homeless, almost half of them children.

Demolitions more than doubled in the Tubas region, which is in the Jordan Valley, rising to 51 from 24 in 2009 and leaving some 219 people homeless, 94 of them children, the group said.

They also increased sharply in Nablus, which also encompasses part of the central Jordan Valley, with 19 demolitions last year, compared with none the year before. Some 134 people were made homeless, 51 of them children.

B'Tselem spokeswoman Sarit Michaeli said the group had noticed an increase in demolition activity in the Jordan Valley and in the south Hebron Hills area, which has mainly affected Bedouin-owned structures built without an Israeli building permit.

"The trend now is toward demolishing temporary accommodation, usually put up by the Bedouin," she said, describing them as non-permanent structures, but stressed they served as homes.

"The net result is the same -- people are displaced," she told AFP, saying it was not clear why the authorities were focusing their attention on these two particular areas.

"The ongoing policy seems to be aimed at pushing the nomadic community out of these areas and towards the population centres," she said.

A spokesman for the Israeli Civil Administration, the branch of the army responsible for all building issues in Area C, which is under Israeli control, said he was not aware of any rise in demolitions.

"If there was a rise, it may be because we now have more inspectors to monitor compliance" with building regulations, Guy Inbar told AFP, saying the number of inspectors had risen at the end of 2009 when Israel began a 10-month "freeze" of Jewish "settlement" construction.

Picture by IMEMC

The PA is Vichyite franchise for the occupation - hard evidence

Palestinian Authority 'Tortures its Own People' to please Israel and the United States

Since well before the second intifada, the Palestinian Authority has been well-known for its authoritarian and sometimes brutal behaviour, at least in the streets, towards its own people, as it gained in power and the zionists withdrew to an extent from the West Bank - but this power has always been allowed it on the understanding that it would 'police' the so-called territories in the absence of the army of occupation. It is important for us all to know exactly what is meant by 'policing' in this context:

From Tony Greenstein's blog -

This shocking report comes from the Arab Organisation for Human Rights in Britain and the London-based Middle East Monitor. It outlines abuse of detainees in the West Bank, including the types of torture used by Palestinian Authority (PA) security services against detainees, as well as a description of US and Jordanian participation in the training of the perpetrators, and a critique of the EU's role in funding PA security services. The report covers cases from October 2007 to October 2010.

It is important to understand that the European Union is the largest funder of these security services and the United States provides them with training at its Police International Training Centre near Amman in Jordan. Recruits are vetted for any links with ‘terrorist’ groups, i.e. any Palestinian resistance organisations. The Palestinian security services therefore consist of the scum of Palestinian society, the most degenerate and criminal types, hand picked by the United States and Israel.

Apart from being shocking in itself, 95% of security service detainees are tortured and all of them, without exception are subject to some ill-treatment, this Report should have political consequences. No longer can or should Palestinian solidarity organisations in Britain turn a blind eye and pretend nothing untoward is happening. This is a quisling regime which has been sub-contracted by the United States and Israel in the not-so-gentle arts of repressing their own peoples. To give the creatures who run the Palestinian Authority any support whatsoever is to undermine the Palestinian struggle still further. The Palestinian Authority, the bastard child of the Oslo Accords, is one more weapon that Zionism and Western Imperialism employ in the subjugation of the Palestinian people.

As the Wiki Leaks documents have shown 'Palestinian Leaders Weak and Increasingly Desperate' [Observer 23rd January 2011] the Palestinian Authority have been treated with all the contempt they deserve by the Zionists. Saeb Erekat goes into negotiations willing to sign everything away because he has no cards to play except increasing the misery and torture of his own people. Erekat, Abbas and co. are interested in nothing more than becoming yet another Arab regime, preying and leaching on its people.

But they are not the only guilty ones. Those who deliberately and consciously foster illusions in these parasites and seek to pretend that nothing is amiss, are equally complicit. In particular the leadership of Palestine Solidarity Campaign in Britain, whose silence is becoming deafening. Our demands should be simple – the complete dismantling of the Palestinian Authority as an arm of the Israeli State and the distribution of its weapons to ordinary Palestinians so they may defend themselves against the settlers and Israeli army.

Those who say we should not criticise the PA for fear of playing into Zionist hands miss the point - the PA is itself the rabid offspring of Zionism.

And they also miss the point that supporters of the Palestinians can hardly condemn Israel for its use of torture and then ignore the barbaric practices of the security forces of the Palestinian Authority, whose operations are directed solely at other Palestinians in the service of Israel.

Tony Greenstein

Documenting torture in the Palestinian Authority’s Territories

Introduction

The Arab Organization for Human Rights in Britain has issued several reports on human rights violations in the territory of the Palestinian Authority highlighting the practice of torture in prisons. It is clear that the Palestinian security services have been using torture on a wide and systematic basis for several years using, inter alia, the following techniques: shabh (hanging) of all kinds, beating with cables, pulling out nails, suspension from the ceiling, flogging, kicking, swearing and cursing, electric shocks, sexual harassment and the threat of rape.

At least six people have been killed while undergoing torture in Palestinian Authority centres: Shadi Shaheen, Ramallah; Majd Barghouti, Ramallah; Mohammed al-Haj, Jenin; Kamal Abu Taima, Hebron; Haitham Amro, Hebron; Fadi Hamadna, Nablus. Many ex-detainees have permanent disabilities. Mass arrests have taken place on political grounds.

Given the ongoing torture in the prisons of the Palestinian Authority, on a large scale and systematically, the Arab Organization for Human Rights in Britain has documented such crimes for the three years from October 2007 to October 2010. The work was based on several primary sources:

Meetings with victims of their relatives to find out what happened to them on custody and written testimonies of the victims explaining what they had been subjected to.

Distributing a questionnaire, in secret, to detainees in prisons.

The analysis of data and figures about detention and torture mentioned.

Video testimonies of victims or their relatives.

We [AOHRB] have taken these steps discreetly, away from the eyes of the security services. Where requested, some of the victims or witnesses have been promised anonymity so that they will not face further persecution.

An analysis of the data shows that in the period under review, the security services detained almost 8,640 people at a rate of 8 arrests per day; on occasions, there were between 600-900 arrests in the space of a few days. Every one of those detainees has been subject to humiliating and degrading treatment and stayed in cells for more than ten days. Many have spent the prime of their youth behind bars. The analysis also shows that an astonishing 95% of the detainees were subjected to severe torture, others feeling the detrimental effects on their health for varying periods. Seventy-seven percent of the detainees had been in the custody of the occupation before being released and rearrested by the Palestinian Authority on the same charges.

Men and women from all sectors of Palestinian society have been subject to arrest and torture: students, workers, teachers, doctors, engineers, university professors and lawyers. Like their Israeli counterparts, the Palestinian security services also detain minors.

There is no sanctity for the house, university or school; even hospitals are violated. Raids with personnel wearing civilian and military clothing take place in the middle of the night; citizens are abducted from their places of work or study in broad daylight. Arrests themselves are harsh and often accompanied by verbal insults and physical beatings;

detainees’ homes are ransacked and all too often valuables are stolen by the security forces. It is rare for an arrest warrant to be shown, the reasons for the arrest to be explained or the detainees’ rights to be read out. The mandatory court hearing within 24 hours of arrest does not usually take place and the victim is subject to torture and

interrogation from the moment he is detained.

The Two-state 'solution' - time to get real

Map of Area A,B,C by ICAHD

Lieberman's “solution” : Palestinians will be forced to live on 13% of their original land

For anyone who has given even the most cursory look at the zionist regime's current slicing-up of the West Bank, which was meant, with the Gaza Strip, to be the remaining part of "free" Palestine after the 1967 aggression, the idea of a two-state solution is a wild fantasy, and when our MPs believe in such a chimera it casts doubt on their abilities to act intelligently in any other situations.

Saed Bannoura of IMEMC News writes of one plan for the near future; perhaps the most extreme but not very far from the centre of zionist policy:

The Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, known for his controversial stance advocating the 'transfer' of Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, has drafted his own map to “solve” the Israel-Palestine conflict, in which all land taken from the Palestinians by Israeli brute force would be allowed to remain in Israeli hands, leaving Palestinians with several non-contiguous land reservations made up of 13% of their original land, and refugees would be denied their internationally recognized right of return.

Lieberman has previously come under fire for calling on the Israeli government to forcibly remove the 1 million Palestinians with Israeli citizenship from Israel, and has stated that these one million people would have to move to any future Palestinian state, and have their Israeli citizenship revoked. In his announcement Saturday of a “solution” for the conflict, he did not mention what would happen to this population of people, but implied that they would be forced to move.

According to Lieberman, the Palestinian 'state' he proposes would consist of the areas known as “A” and “B” under the Oslo Agreement. This means 25 separate reservations in the West Bank, none of which are geographically contiguous. When such a proposal was made in the past, then-US President George W. Bush said that it was unacceptable, as it created a “swiss cheese state” with no geographic contiguity.

Many Palestinians have compared the proposal with the 'land reservation' system in the United States, in which Native American nations which were virtually wiped out by colonial forces beginning in 1492 were allocated small swaths of land on which to survive, and these reservations are considered “sovereign” by the US, despite being surrounded by the United States.

Although Lieberman has not issued the final draft of his map yet, if it follows the “A” and “B” areas allocated in the Oslo Accords, this means that there would be at least 25 reservations, each of which would have to be governed separately, as there would be no geographic connection between them. These would include: the Bethlehem reservation, the Tulkarem reservation, the Jenin reservation, the Ramallah reservation, the Jericho reservation, the Qalqilia reservation, and many more smaller disconnected villages and towns.

In Lieberman's proposal, the West Bank would essentially remain under Israeli military occupation, and Palestinians would continue to be denied their internationally recognized rights of equality, freedom of movement, freedom of association, right to self-determination, and the right of return of Palestinian refugees.

The Foreign Minister says that his proposal would prove that Israel is a partner for peace, and if Palestinians refuse to accept it, they are obstructing peace, and should be sanctioned. He added that he will instruct the US Congress to halt all aid to the Palestinian Authority if they do not accept his 'solution'.

Flotilla: survivors speak out after Israeli whitewash

Sunday 23rd January from VivaPalestina

Today, Israel has released a report into its actions on the Mavi Marmara last year, when the ship - carrying aid as part of a flotilla to Gaza - was attacked by Israel, leading to the deaths of 9 Turks and the injuring of dozens more. Viva Palestina's Kevin Ovenden, who was on board the Mavi Marmara when she was attacked by Israeli forces in May last year, said, "The claim by Israel's Turkel Commission that Israeli forces acted legally when they killed nine people aboard the Mavi Marmara, and left another brain dead, will be laughed out of court by all but the Israeli government and its most fanatical supporters. "This whitewash commission was set up by the Netanyahu government, the same people who commissioned the assault on the aid ship. It is simply unfeasible to claim that, for example, the two men shot immediately to the left and right of me, were gunned down in some act of self-defence. They were shot from above. No Israeli commando was in sight of us when the bullets rang out. "Israel has refused an independent international inquiry and instead was brazen enough to establish this farce. No Turkish official, lawyer or representative was allowed to take part. One of the only two international observers who was a fig-leaf for the commission's "impartiality" was Lord (David) Trimble. He was invited on to it a few months after founding a friends of Israel initiative. And as a leading establishment figure in the north of Ireland he refused for decades an independent inquiry into the killing of 14 unarmed civilians on the streets of Derry in 1972, the truth about the massacre only being officially acknowledged 38 years later with the report of the Saville inquiry. "The United Nations Human Rights Council already found last year prima facie evidence of grave human rights abuses and war crimes aboard the Mavi Marmara. "Rather than entertaining this charade from Tel Aviv, the British government should demand that Israel and those responsible for the atrocity of Bloody Monday on the Mediterranean on 31 May last year are held to account and to the same universal standards of justice that are required of other states. "Whatever risible PR Israel and its supporters attempt to spin, that is going to happen. And on the one year anniversary of the attack on the Mavi Marmara a second, bigger international aid effort will set sail for the point at where it was so brutally attacked and will ask, civil society organisations, religious groups, politicians, governments, and people of conscience around the world to demand that all relevant governments and international bodies allow it safe passage to Gaza. "Wikileaks has confirmed what independent Israeli researchers told us last year. The siege on Gaza is carefully calibrated by the Israeli government to keep the Palestinian people in a state of dependency, with their economy society hovering just above complete collapse. "The French foreign minister Michele Alliot-Marie is the latest high profile visitor to Gaza and Palestine to call for an end to the blockade. "The pressure to end this barbarous policy is increasing. I think I can speak for all those who were aboard the Mavi Marmara in saying that we are redoubling our efforts in 2011 to bring it to an end this year. We will be part of the next aid missions, by land, by sea and by air. "This sick joke from an Israeli government that has already lost all international credibility will serve only to increase our determination to bring justice to the Palestinian people." Sarah Colbourne, Director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and who was also on-board the Marvi Marmara when the Israeli Defence Force attacked the boat said: “However hard the Israeli Government attempts to rewrite history, they can’t rewrite the truth. The facts are simple: the Marvi Marmara was carrying essential humanitarian aid like baby milk to the besieged people of Gaza. There were no guns or weapons on board the boat, we were in international waters, when over 300 bullets – or one for every two people on board - rained down on us, killing 9 people and injuring over 50. The actions of the Israeli Defence Force and the Israeli Government were by all international standards of law illegal as is their continued occupation of Gaza and the oppression of the Palestinian people.”

Mark Regev, the almost-human zionist spokesman, said on BBC Radio Four:

"Unlike your own Iraq inquiry we've got two international observers on the commission we've got Lord David Trimble from Britain and of course Kenneth Watkin from Canada there are also two special consultants experts in international law, one from Germany one from Britain and so we've actually I think shown seriously that this commission was professional and indeed independent from the executive branch it also has to be said and you know this at the BBC that we have in Israel a history of these commissions which in the past ministers have had to resign, defence ministers prime ministers chiefs of staff of our military we have a whole history of commissions coming with results for governments."

We can take it that whoever programmed the Markregev on Monday morning, he or she didn't have time to insert any actual facts into the mix, although the context was sorted.

West Bank: the greening of genocide

On the morning of Thursday, 20th January, around three thousand Israeli colonists stormed farmlands owned by Palestinians.

Farmers owning the land from Ertas and Wadi Rahal marched up to the lands seized by colonists. Israeli soldiers protecting colonists fired tear gas and assaulted some of the protestors. Troops detained a teenager, Khalil Abu Sidah, but released him three hours later.

Villagers say that the colonists brought tents with them, indicating that they would try to set up a new 'settlement' outpost.

In related news on Thursday, a group of Israeli colonists planted trees on the site of the evacuated 'settlement' of Homesh in the northern West Bank. In 2005, Homesh was evacuated as part of Israel's 2005 so-called 'disengagement plan' from the northern West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Regardless of the caucus race in Israeli politics, as Ehud Barak deserts the so-called left, the Labor Party, for a new wildly mis-titled “democratic” zionist party, the zionist regime is being reshaped by a trickle-up effect, as the lowest in the chain take the lead. The government has certainly been active enough in ignoring the most basic precepts of humanity - and the UN’s demands - as it has so far demolished one village nine times, and continued building its colonies during the ‘freeze’. Add to this the Jews-only road being pushed through the ancient West Bank city of Hebron/al-Khalil. But this pace of change is not enough for the colonisers who are mostly imported from the USA and bring its gun-culture and pulp-fiction cowboys-and-indians ‘history’. Although the army has occasionally stepped in to interfere with the more aggressive activities of these immigrants, it generally backs them up against the indigenous Palestinians, or ‘sees no ships’. And the people at the forefront of the great putsch know that with the Jewish National Fund greening-over the rubble behind them and the politicians rewriting history in Unspeak, they have in reality a freedom which extends to anarchy without responsibility.

One of many world organisations which have sprung up in response to the creation of the zionist regime is the International Jewish Antizionist Network.

And they have a lot to say about the current state of the ‘green‘ ethnic cleansing of Palestine, at http://hosted.verticalresponse.com/385137/b1d8be961a/1473000383/8f68ab491d/

You can also find out about planting a tree in Palestine at this address.

.................

Israeli Banks Finance Newspaper calling for Genocide

Monday, 17 January 2011 15:28

Yossi Bartal for the Alternative Information Center (AIC)

Major Israeli banks, credit institutions, and communication companies are among the advertisers in an extreme right wing weekly magazine that called for building concentration camps.

An Israeli Jewish orthodox magazine "Ma'ayanei Hayeshua" (Fountains of Salvation) that is distributed freely in hundreds of synagogues all across the country has been the center of attention after calling in its editorial for the concentration of Arabs in extermination camps. In the article, published on 25 of December 2010, the editors attack rabbis who refused to support the call against renting apartments to Palestinians and accuse them of being too cowardly to follow the biblical commend of wiping out the people of Amalek ( who through the context of the article clearly means Palestinians). In the last segment of the editorial the editors wrote "It will be interesting to see whether they (the moderate Rabbis) leave the concentration of the Amalekites [Palestinians] in extermination camps to others, or whether they will declare that wiping out Amalek is no longer relevant".

This blunt call for a genocide against Palestinians is not new in publications of the Israeli extreme right, but this is the first time it appears in a “family” magazine with prominent advertisers. Among the companies advertising in the website of of Maayanei Hayeshua there are three major banks in Israel: Bank Hapo'alim, Bank Le'umi and Bank Discount, along with the Isracard Group that is working together with Visa, Europay and Mastercard. The national phone company, Bezeq, also advertises their international call service on the website. Even an academic institution, the Jerusalem College of Technology, published its advertisement inside the print version of the magazine.

National Geographic: Holidays in the sun

The same month as Chile publicly 'recognised' the Palestinian state, Jewish organisations have condemned as misleading an advert that appeared in National Geographic Traveler magazine for implying that Palestine extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River.

The Zionist Federation, which has complained to the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA), said the advert also gave “false impressions” by describing Palestine as a country and suggesting that the city of Hebron / al-Khalil was under Palestinian control. (Of course, the city is under the control of the creeping colonialists and the army.)

The advert, which appeared in this month’s edition of the magazine, invited tourists to visit the famous city of Jerusalem, but makes no mention of Israel. In short, for better or for worse it employs unspeak from a Palestinian point-of-view.

It stated: “Palestine lies between the Mediterranean coast and the Jordan River, at the crossroads between Africa and the Middle East.”

More: http://www.thejc.com/node/43551

Hopes of Gaza cast in lead

Israel is gearing up for another major offensive into Gaza, yet the world community still remains bafflingly silent.

by RICHARD FALK

It is dismaying that during this dark anniversary period two years after the launch of the deadly attacks on the people of Gaza - code-named Operation Cast Lead by the Israelis - that there should be warnings of a new massive attack on the beleaguered people of Gaza.

The influential Israeli journalist, Ron Ren-Yishai, writes on December 29, 2010, of the likely prospect of a new major IDF attack, quoting senior Israeli military officers as saying "It's not a question of if, but rather of when," a view that that is shared, according to Ren-Yishai, by "government ministers, Knesset members and municipal heads in the Gaza region".

The bloody-minded Israeli Chief of Staff, Lt. General Gabi Ashkenazi, reinforces this expectation by his recent assertion that, "as long as Gilad Shalit is still in captivity, the mission is not complete". He adds with unconscious irony, "we have not lost our right of self-defence".

More accurate would be the assertion, "we have not given up our right to wage aggressive war or to commit crimes against humanity".

And what of the more than 10,000 Palestinians, including children under the age of 10, being held in Israeli prisons throughout occupied Palestine?

Red herrings

Against this background, the escalation of violence along the Gaza/Israel border should set off alarm bells around the world and at the United Nations.

Israel in recent days has been launching severe air strikes against targets within the Gaza Strip, including near the civilian-crowded refugee camp of Khan Younis, killing several Palestinians and wounding others.

Supposedly, these attacks are in retaliation for nine mortar shells that fell on open territory, causing neither damage nor injury. Israel also had been using lethal force against children from Gaza, who were collecting gravel from the buffer zone for the repair of their homes.

As usual, the Israeli security pretext lacks credibility. As if ever there was an occasion for firing warning shots in the air, it was here, especially as the border has been essentially quiet in the last couple of years, and what occasional harmless rockets or mortar shells have been fired, has taken place in defiance of the Hamas effort to prevent providing Israel with any grounds for the use of force.

Revealingly, in typical distortion, the Gaza situation is portrayed by Ashkenazi as presenting a pre-war scenario: "We will not allow a situation in which they fire rockets at our citizens and towns from 'safe havens' amid [their] civilians."

With Orwellian precision, the reality is quite the reverse: Israel from its safe haven continuously attacks with an intent to kill a defenceless, entrapped Gazan civilian population.

Silence is complicity

Perhaps, worse in some respects than this Israeli war-mongering, is the stunning silence of the governments of the world, and of the United Nations.

World public opinion was briefly shocked by the spectacle of a one-sided war that marked Operation Cast Lead as a massive crime against humanity, but it has taken no notice of this recent unspeakable escalation of threats and provocations seemingly designed to set the stage for a new Israeli attack on the hapless Gazan population.

This silence in the face of the accumulating evidence that Israel plans to launch Operation Cast Lead 2 is a devastating form of criminal complicity at the highest governmental levels, especially on the part of countries that have been closely aligned with Israel, and also exhibits the moral bankruptcy of the United Nations system.

We have witnessed the carnage of 'preemptive war' and 'preventive war' in Iraq, but we have yet to explore the moral and political imperatives of 'preemptive peace' and 'preventive peace.' How long must the peoples of the world wait?

It might be well to recall the words of one anonymous Gazan that were uttered in reaction to the attacks of two years ago: "While Israeli armed forces were bombing my neighbourhood, the UN, the EU, and the Arab League and the international community remained silent in the face of atrocities. Hundreds of corpses of children and women failed to convince them to intervene."

International liberal public opinion enthuses about the new global norm of 'responsibility to protect,' but not a hint that if such an idea is to have any credibility it should be applied to Gaza with a sense of urgency where the population has been living under a cruel blockade for more than three years and is now facing new grave dangers.

And even after the commission of the atrocities of 2008-09 have been authenticated over and over by the Goldstone Report, by an exhaustive report issued by the Arab League, by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, there is no expectation of Israeli accountability, and the United States effectively uses its diplomatic muscle to bury the issue, encouraging forgetfulness in collaboration with the media.

Truths

It is only civil society that has offered responses appropriate to the moral, legal, and political situation. Whether these responses can achieve their goals, only the future will tell.

The Free Gaza Movement and the Freedom Flotilla have challenged the blockade more effectively than the UN or governments, leading Israel to retreat, at least rhetorically, claiming to lift the blockade with respect to the entry of humanitarian goods and reconstruction materials.

Of course, the behavioural truth contradicts the Israeli rhetoric: sufficient supplies of basic necessities are still not being allowed to enter Gaza; the water and sewage systems are seriously crippled; there is not enough fuel available to maintain adequate electric power; and the damage from Operation Cast Lead remains, causing a desperate housing crisis (more than 100,000 units are needed just to move people from tents).

Also, most students are not allowed to leave Gaza to take advantage of foreign educational opportunities, and the population lives in a locked-in space that is constantly being threatened with violence, night and day.

This portrayal of Gaza is hardly a welcoming prospect for the year 2011. At the same time the spirit of the people living in Gaza should not be underestimated.

I have met Gazans, especially young people, who could be weighed down by the suffering their lives have brought them and their families since their birth, and yet they possess a positive sense of life and its potential, and make every use of any opportunity that comes their way, minimising their problems and expressing warmth toward more fortunate others and enthusiasm about their hopes for their future.

I have found such contact inspirational, and it strengthens my resolve and sense of responsibility: these proud people must be liberated from the oppressive circumstance that constantly imprisons, threatens, impoverishes, sickens, traumatises, maims, kills.

Until this happens, none of us should sleep too comfortably!

This was first published at english.aljazeera.net

Richard Falk is Albert G. Milbank Professor Emeritus of International Law at Princeton University and Visiting Distinguished Professor in Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has authored and edited numerous publications spanning a period of five decades, most recently editing the volume International Law and the Third World: Reshaping Justice (Routledge, 2008).

He is currently serving his third year of a six year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

Photo by EPA

Jericho under demolition

What would Joshua say? If he cared about the land, the culture and environment of this country he might have a few angry comments. The zionist regime delivered 15 demolition orders to farmers in the Ad-Dweik Al-Foqa area north of Jericho on Thursday, marking the second day such orders were handed out in the West Bank.

Director of Agriculture in Jericho Omar Al-Bsharat said in a statement that the demolition orders were part of a larger plan to evacuate the northern Jericho area, saying farmers had already seen an increase in the number of patrols in the area ahead of the demolition orders.

Troops would harass livestock herders, he said, intimidating Palestinian agricultural workers and preventing them from getting to fertile grazing areas.

A spokesman for the zionist Civil Administration said no orders were handed out on Thursday, but confirmed that several were handed out on Monday in the same area, for homes that he said were "built without a permit".

The day before, Israeli troops handed a number of demolition orders to residents of the Ein Assy area in Halhul, north of the city of Hebron / al-Khalil.

Residents said Israeli authorities told them the buildings were slated for demolition because they were "built without permission" in Area C, a zone under full Israeli planning, civil and military control. Area C makes up 60 percent of the West Bank, and Palestinian building is rarely approved by Israeli authorities.

As ever, the fact that even small repairs to already established homes require 'permits', combined with those permits being withheld from all non-Jewish applicants, is behind this mindless destruction.

Locals said most of the homes to be demolished have been inhabited for many years, and that one of the buildings was a Palestinian Authority civil defence centre.

More airstikes on Gaza; latest convoy in after yet more delays

Israel warplanes have carried out three airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, but there is no word yet on any possible casualties.

Two of the air raids targeted the east of Gaza City and the third airstrike hit an area east of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. The Israeli military has not commented on the attack so far.

Israel has been repeatedly targeting the Gaza Strip since its 22-day war on the enclave launched in late December 2008, which killed over 1,400 Palestinians and inflicted over $1.6 billion in damage.

Convoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=560u4EnteOc

Meanwhile, the Egyptian regime has imposed heavy restrictions on the Asian aid convoy, dubbed Asia to Gaza Solidarity Caravan, or Asia 1, which is carrying an estimated one million dollars worth of medicine, foodstuffs and toys as well as four buses and 10 power generators for hospitals.

Egyptian authorities have prevented some convoy members, including Iranians and some Jordanians, from crossing into the besieged Palestinian territory and have, until today, the 6th January, refused to allow the convoy into Gaza through the Rafah border crossing.

According to a Press TV correspondent in the region, the Egyptian authorities have demanded a certain amount of money to allow the convoy's humanitarian cargo, recently stuck at the Egyptian port of al-Arish, to be delivered to Gaza.

The activists also told Press TV that during their stay in Egypt, the authorities had stopped them on several occasions, asking them for money.

Cairo insisted the humanitarian cargo, including medicine, food and toys, should be delivered to Israel and that the relief supplies would enter Gaza through Israel.

Palestinians have, with good reason, frequently accused Cairo of collaborating with Tel Aviv to increase pressure on Gaza by refusing to allow aid convoys to reach the region.

The Asian aid convoy, with 160 activists of 18 various nationalities, has travelled through Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and Lebanon. It was forced to remain in Syria for a week, awaiting Cairo's authorization to dock at its northeastern port of al-Arish.

The activists, who managed to cross into the Gaza Strip on January 3, have vowed to stay in the Palestinian territory until they make sure that the aid convoy has entered Gaza and been delivered to those in need.

The activists say they seek to show solidarity with the Palestinian people in their resistance against Israel.

Return of the Mavi Marmara

The return of the Mavi Marmara
Faiz Ahmed witnessed the Mavi Marmara's return to a hero's welcome at Istanbul's Sarayburnu port late last month, as the world's news media including, of course, the BBC, looked elsewhere.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11713.shtml

Gaza youth breaks the wall of silence

If you are young, you have no time for patience: six months may feel like a lifetime. The older generation is always going to look complacent. Even in a land where everyone is equally enchained by a regime which affords them absolutely no rights at all. In a young society - over half the population is under 18 - it was inevitable that a 'movement' of some kind would come together. Here it is:

GAZAN YOUTH’S MANIFESTO FOR CHANGE
Fuck Hamas. Fuck Israel. Fuck Fatah. Fuck UN. Fuck UNWRA. Fuck USA! We, the youth in Gaza, are so fed up with Israel, Hamas, the occupation, the violations of human rights and the indifference of the international community! We want to scream and break this wall of silence, injustice and indifference like the Israeli F16’s breaking the wall of sound; scream with all the power in our souls in order to release this immense frustration that consumes us because of this fucking situation we live in; we are like lice between two nails living a nightmare inside a nightmare, no room for hope, no space for freedom. We are sick of being caught in this political struggle; sick of coal dark nights with airplanes circling above our homes; sick of innocent farmers getting shot in the buffer zone because they are taking care of their lands; sick of bearded guys walking around with their guns abusing their power, beating up or incarcerating young people demonstrating for what they believe in; sick of the wall of shame that separates us from the rest of our country and keeps us imprisoned in a stamp-sized piece of land; sick of being portrayed as terrorists, homemade fanatics with explosives in our pockets and evil in our eyes; sick of the indifference we meet from the international community, the so-called experts in expressing concerns and drafting resolutions but cowards in enforcing anything they agree on; we are sick and tired of living a shitty life, being kept in jail by Israel, beaten up by Hamas and completely ignored by the rest of the world.

There is a revolution growing inside of us, an immense dissatisfaction and frustration that will destroy us unless we find a way of canalizing this energy into something that can challenge the status quo and give us some kind of hope. The final drop that made our hearts tremble with frustration and hopelessness happened 30rd November, when Hamas’ officers came to Sharek Youth Forum, a leading youth organization (www.sharek.ps) with their guns, lies and aggressiveness, throwing everybody outside, incarcerating some and prohibiting Sharek from working. A few days later, demonstrators in front of Sharek were beaten and some incarcerated. We are really living a nightmare inside a nightmare. It is difficult to find words for the pressure we are under. We barely survived the Operation Cast Lead, where Israel very effectively bombed the shit out of us, destroying thousands of homes and even more lives and dreams. They did not get rid of Hamas, as they intended, but they sure scared us forever and distributed post traumatic stress syndrome to everybody, as there was nowhere to run.

We are youth with heavy hearts. We carry in ourselves a heaviness so immense that it makes it difficult to us to enjoy the sunset. How to enjoy it when dark clouds paint the horizon and bleak memories run past our eyes every time we close them? We smile in order to hide the pain. We laugh in order to forget the war. We hope in order not to commit suicide here and now. During the war we got the unmistakable feeling that Israel wanted to erase us from the face of the earth. During the last years Hamas has been doing all they can to control our thoughts, behaviour and aspirations. We are a generation of young people used to face missiles, carrying what seems to be a impossible mission of living a normal and healthy life, and only barely tolerated by a massive organization that has spread in our society as a malicious cancer disease, causing mayhem and effectively killing all living cells, thoughts and dreams on its way as well as paralyzing people with its terror regime. Not to mention the prison we live in, a prison sustained by a so-called democratic country.

History is repeating itself in its most cruel way and nobody seems to care. We are scared. Here in Gaza we are scared of being incarcerated, interrogated, hit, tortured, bombed, killed. We are afraid of living, because every single step we take has to be considered and well-thought, there are limitations everywhere, we cannot move as we want, say what we want, do what we want, sometimes we even cant think what we want because the occupation has occupied our brains and hearts so terrible that it hurts and it makes us want to shed endless tears of frustration and rage!

We do not want to hate, we do not want to feel all of this feelings, we do not want to be victims anymore. ENOUGH! Enough pain, enough tears, enough suffering, enough control, limitations, unjust justifications, terror, torture, excuses, bombings, sleepless nights, dead civilians, black memories, bleak future, heart aching present, disturbed politics, fanatic politicians, religious bullshit, enough incarceration! WE SAY STOP! This is not the future we want!
We want three things. We want to be free. We want to be able to live a normal life. We want peace. Is that too much to ask? We are a peace movement consistent of young people in Gaza and supporters elsewhere that will not rest until the truth about Gaza is known by everybody in this whole world and in such a degree that no more silent consent or loud indifference will be accepted.

This is the Gazan youth’s manifesto for change!

We will start by destroying the occupation that surrounds ourselves, we will break free from this mental incarceration and regain our dignity and self respect. We will carry our heads high even though we will face resistance. We will work day and night in order to change these miserable conditions we are living under. We will build dreams where we meet walls.
We only hope that you – yes, you reading this statement right now! – can support us. In order to find out how, please write on our wall or contact us directly: freegazayouth@hotmail.com
We want to be free, we want to live, we want peace.
FREE GAZA YOUTH!