Israeli Minister comes clean on human rights

 Quote of the week

On Today earlier this week the Israeli Minister made this priceless observation to John Humphrys –

"Anyone who listens to this programme and follows the news regularly will know which regimes are associated with human rights abuses and they will not be coming to our Games."

I swear I didn’t make it up but, knowing that the BBC does its utmost to conceal or play down what is hurtful to Israel’s image, perhaps the Minister and Humphrys can be forgiven their naivety.

 Liverpool correspondent

Beit Hanina shops targeted

As you gfrieve for the loss of your corner shop, spare a thought for the residents of Beit Hanina, in East Jerusalem, where the ruling authorities have decided that as of Thursday 14 June there should be no shops of any kind. Israeli bulldozers recently demolished several. The shops, belonging to the Edris family of Jannet Adan area of Beit Hanina were demolished by Municipality bulldozers, were the second site of destruction that day. 700 square metres of retail buildings belonging to Sal’a neighbourhood resident Aziz Ja‘aibes were also demolished, leaving the five families whose businesses it supported with no income.http://silwanic.net/?p=27237

Bedouins forced to move to landfill sites

Bedouin tents and wandering goats and sheep dot the barren hills from Jerusalem down to the Dead Sea, giving residents and visitors a glimpse of how the Holy Land must have looked in pre-biblical times.

With their corrals, water cisterns and tractors the camps look more like rudimentary homesteads, reports
Jihan Abdalla. But the land-friendly nomadic Bedouin tradition is slowly dying out as Israel clears the camps to make way for ever-expanding Jewish urban colonies, further breaking up any plans for a contiguous Palestinian state; and worse: the regime expects these people, who have for countless generations been at one with the land, to live on top of land-fill. The areas they are currently expected to move to are the worst kind of wasteland.

More on this from Maan News Agency

Denial of water to Palestinians

The behaviour of Israeli troops as reported below by Palestine Today - The Headlines makes it undeniable that, not content with syphoning off Palestine's precious water resources at source, the Regime's priority is flatly to deny water to all who belong to the 'wrong tribe'.
Occupation forces conduct a survey of water wells west of Jenin

Dry well, Bethlehem

JENIN (PIC) 17 June -- The Israeli occupation forces have stormed, on Sunday afternoon, Marj Bin Amer Plain west of Jenin and launched combing operations in search of water wells, investigating a number of farmers. Local sources pointed out that several equipped vehicles accompanied by white military jeeps belong to the Israel Water Authority have entered to the plains of Silat Harithiya, Ta‘anak [Ti‘inik], and Yamoun towns and conducted a survey of private drinking water wells, an act which has been repeated in the recent times. The occupation forces have interrogated the farmers in that region, and asked them about the water wells which they used in light of an extensive campaign aimed at targeting water resources in the occupied West Bank. The occupation forces had demolished, last week, six wells east of Jenin, in addition to dozens [of] wells that were filled [in] during the past year.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk


New settler tourism and sewage facilities to be built in Ein al Daraj
Jerusalem (Silwanic) 17 June -- The Jerusalem City Planning Committee announced this week that a new tourism centre and sewage facilities servicing Israeli 'settlers' in the Ein al Daraj neighborhood of Silwan are scheduled for construction ... Land seizure began in Ein al-Daraj in 1995, when settlers successfully had the area closed off for archaeological excavation and development. Local residents’ lives were thrown into disarray as the excavations blocked their access to the primary water source in the area, land used for agriculture and recreational areas for children. The area is now the exclusive domain of Israeli settlers and Zionist tourists.
http://silwanic.net/?p=27234

One piece of good news in the middle of all this:

Israeli Supreme Court orders return of land stolen from Dura al Qare‘ farmer
Stop the Wall 17 June -- "The only alternative that would be acceptable to me would be your complete withdrawal from all Palestinian land." The case of Khalid Abdullah Yassin. Thus spoke Khalid Abdullah Yassin, a farmer from the small village of Dura, near Ramallah, when the Israeli government offered him a huge sum of money to lease from him the land upon which Israeli settlers had illegally built. Though comprising no more than 11 acres of land, this small patch of Palestine, and what happens to it over the coming weeks, could become a litmus test for Israel’s further spiral into outright contempt and blatant disregard for not only international law, but also Israeli. The story of Khalid and the villagers began in 1995, when, living in the shadow of the Israeli settlement of Beit El, they began to notice that settlers were regularly encroaching upon their land.
http://stopthewall.org/2012/06/17/israeli-supreme-court-orders-return-land-stolen-dura-al-qare-farmer

Mass demo planned for Scotland Euro clash

copyright www.edinburghcastle.gov.uk

As reported in The Scotsman 15 June, a high-profile European qualifying match in the capitol is liable to be targeted by hundreds of protesters over the alleged detention of Palestinian football players. Campaigners are set to gather at Tynecastle Stadium as Scotland play Israel in a women’s Euro qualifier on Saturday. Organisers said that the demonstration would be mounted both outside the stadium and on the terraces during Saturday’s game. They refused to rule out the possibility of direct action such as a pitch invasion.
http://www.scotsman.com/edinburgh-evening-news/2355741


update: 
Not the BBC Sports News -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMnimP0o1NQ

Hamas' 5th anniversary in Gaza

Iseems like more than five years since Hamas were voted in and fought off the US-sponsored Fatah to secure control of Gaza, for better or worse; it has been a period of such profound change and activity. The Guardian is looking at life there in depth: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/blog/2012/jun/08/gaza-live-blog

Also in the news:
'Settlers' torch wheat fields near Nablus

Colonists set fire to wheat fields in Palestinian villages near Nablus on Sunday.

Four locations were set alight in the villages of al-Sawiya and al-Lubban al-Sharqiya, located by Eli settlement.
Palestinian Authority official Ghassan Daghlas said the arson attacks were designed to destroy the entire fields, adding that settlers attempt to burn Palestinian agricultural crops at the beginning of every summer.

Last Monday, a group of settlers set fire to wheat fields in the Hebron town of Yatta. Palestinians from nearby village Susiya found seven piles of harvested grain had been torched in a field near an Israeli settlement earlier last week.

In the West Bank, over 90 percent of villages which have experienced multiple attacks by settlers are under Israeli security control, The Palestine Center says, meaning local Palestinians only have the official protection of an army which they claim ignores settler violence.

Hezbollah flag

This is based on an article published by Ma'an News Agency  and acknowledged with thanks

War planes strafe Gaza

In May 2012, the regime in Palestine continued to behave as if at war with its own citizens.

In Northern Gaza – in May 2012, two people were wounded when Israeli war-planes strafed people in Beit Lahia.

And in the West Bank -

Jerusalem: Israeli forces positioned at the Qalandya checkpoint, fired rubber-coated bullets and tear gas grenades at pedestrians.

Economic sabotage continues: near Rafah, the Israeli Navy intercepted fishing boats and imprisoned three fishermen.

picture: school, Beit Lahia