West Bank colonisation surge

All over the West Bank, the signs are that there is no longer a feeling among the colonists that they should hide their inexorable spread into stolen land behind legalese or diplomatic pettyfoggery. Residents of Saeer village, south of al-Khalil / Hebron, said on Wednesday 29th that colonists had begun work on 1,500 dunums of lands confiscated for settlement expansion. Heavy equipment was brought to the area and lands bulldozed.

A day earlier, the Palestinian Authority cabinet condemned what it called "Israeli attacks on Palestinians and their property," saying that within the past week, in addition to the land confiscation in the southern West Bank, 40 dunums in Nablus had been appropriated by the Israeli military, and dozens of trees had been taken down as the construction of the "separation" Wall continues in Walajeh.

Also on Wednesday, several homes in the unrecognized Bedouin village of As-Sadir, in Israel's Negev region, were bulldozed to the ground, according to President of the Arab Democratic Party in Israel, Talab As-Sane.

He said the homes belonged to the Al-Freijat family, adding that the continued moves to demolish Bedouin homes in the Negev region was a "crime... wreaking havoc on the land and displacing peoples."

He accused Israel of targeting its Arab population, saying the country's "only aim is to steal the lands."

Earlier in December, 67 members of the extended Abu Eid family were displaced when their six concrete homes were demolished by police in Lyd.

The six buildings were among more than 100 in the city under immediate demolition orders, following an autumn Knesset decision to destroy an estimated 4,000 illegal housing structures in a plan said to cost millions of shekels.

Electronic Intifada reports:

More than 100 Palestinian protesters and their supporters blocked a main street in the city of Lyd on 28 December, demonstrating against the recent demolition of Palestinian homes and what residents say is a rise in racism and police brutality.

Palestinian women from Lyd sit on top of the rubble of their home after it was destroyed by Israel http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11709.shtml

On 13 December, officials with the Israel Lands Administration (ILA), the government agency that manages and leases state land, entered the Palestinian section of the segregated city flanked by bulldozers and hundreds of municipal, riot squad and border police forces. The bulldozers then demolished seven homes all belonging to the Abu Eid family in Lyd.

The demolition, which took several hours, made homeless 67 members of the entire family, including dozens of children, during one of the worst rainstorms of the season. Dozens of other Palestinian homes have been demolished over the years in Lyd, which is a few miles east of Tel Aviv inside the state of Israel.

Lyd is a so-called "mixed city," as is the neighbouring city of Ramle, with significant Palestinian minority communities living alongside the Jewish majority. Palestinian residents of these communities have been chronically discriminated against and brutalized by police.

Oren Ziv, a photojournalist with Israeli-based photography collective ActiveStills, witnessed the demolitions of the Abu Eid homes and told The Electronic Intifada that the family knew that the ILA had issued demolition orders against their homes, but they were given no notice of exactly when the destruction would take place.

"During the destruction, I climbed onto the roof of a neighbouring house and I saw several bulldozers demolishing the fourth house," Ziv said. "Many neighbours and a few activists were watching it all happen. I've been documenting [home demolitions] for seven years and this was one of the biggest demolitions I've ever seen."

Ziv added that when the bulldozers finished demolishing the seventh house, children were starting to come back from school only to find their homes reduced to rubble.

"People were trying to salvage their papers and belongings from underneath the destroyed homes," he said. "It was hard to find a solution for the family, especially during the terrible weather. They built a protest tent and a tent camp."

Ma'an News Agency reported that the homes were among more than 100 in the city "under immediate demolition orders" following a decision in the Israeli parliament to destroy an estimated 4,000 "illegal" housing structures.

Report: Israel demolishes 55 Jerusalem homes in 2010
Israel's Jerusalem municipality levelled 40 homes and forced 15 Palestinian families to rip down their homes by their own hands in the holy city in 2010, according to the Wadi Ain al-Halwa Information Centre.
http://www.palestine-info.co.uk/En/default.aspx?xyz=U6Qq7k

Gazan Women and children paint their traumas

by Ane Irazabal, IMEMC
An art exposition shows, in Gaza City, the work of hundreds of refugee women and children from the coastal enclave, who use the artwork as a way to convey their traumas, the Spanish daily El País echoed.

(photo from El País)

Under the title "If you are happy, click your fingers," the exhibition shows portraits, murals and a "Tree of Dreams" that have been made by 300 mothers and children from Beit Hanun, Jabalia, Nuseirat and Rafah refugee camps.

The initiative has been leaded by the NGO Creart (Catalonia), with the cooperation of Mundubat (The Basque Country) and Solidaridad International. Using art workshops, the organizers have tried to help Palestinians affected by the Israeli "Operation Cast Lead" offensive on Gaza in the winter of 2008–2009, to transmit their traumas in a creative way.

The 'war' left 1,400 Palestinians dead and devastated Gaza, leaving the inhabitants in a difficult situation to overcome.

According to a member of Creart Chené Gómez, the massacres of those days and the current Israeli blockade in the strip have drastically affected the Gazans' vitality, especially with regard to children. As a result "There are many children with problem to concentrate. It is difficult to draw them a smile," he added.

In the opinion of Marta Mercadé, another organizer of the exhibition, the workshops aimed to be part of a creative process to help "rebuilding the social fabric and relationships broken during the war, " as well as to develop other skills to face the economical, cultural and humanitarian siege that Gazans suffer in their daily life.

The daily reality of the Zionist putsch in the West Bank

This girl looks like a pleasant enough sort, talking about her idyllic life in the sun, her perfect home; until you realise that she is a cold-blooded colonist.

She stole that home, from people she truly believes to be less than human and to be no more than talking trash, defiling the purity of the land that her god gave her 'people'. Watch her as she insults the defenceless Palestinians, the citizens of Al-Kalil (Hebron), part of the country that the UN in its lofty wisdom decided would be "Palestine" rather than "Israel", and which is being slowly taken from The People by the impatient invaders, whose army continues to be well-supplied by Britain and America. While the so-called Peace Talks continue, Hilary Clinton spouts hot air and Obama, in a combination of question-begging and sheer hypocrisy, advises the Palestinians to resist peacefully not violently.

Norway supports statehood; Hamas anniversary; PA continues franchise

OSLO, Norway (17th December) -- Norway's foreign ministry announced on Wednesday that the status of the Palestinian representative's office in Oslo would be upgraded to a diplomatic mission as part of an effort of the Scandinavian nation to support Palestinian efforts toward building a state.

The announcement came while Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad was in Oslo, where officials announced the coming international donors conference to take place in the city in April 2011. During the announcement the official said he hoped a Palestinian state could be established within the year.

Speaking after talks with Salam Fayyad, Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere, who heads the committee in charge of coordinating international aid to the Palestinians, did not give an exact date or venue for the meeting.

"We should all cling to the vision of 2011 being the year when we can see a new state on the world stage: the Palestinian state," he told reporters in Oslo.

"For that to happen, institutions need to be solid, governance needs to be transparent, security, schools, all these elements need to come in place," he added.

Fayyad meanwhile stressed the work done by the Palestinian Authority to lessen its dependence on international aid.

On the same day, a top Fatah official, Azzam Al-Ahmad said the party would not participate in further negotiations with Hamas after the talks later this month in Damascus.
Al-Ahmad, who heads the party's reconciliation team, said Hamas should sign the Egyptian reconciliation document. That remains unlikely. This week, on Tuesday, thousands of Hamas supporters filled the streets of Gaza City in a mass rally to boost support for the Palestinian resistance group on its 23rd anniversary, while the PA continues in the West Bank as an ‘Occupation-franchise’ in many respects. 

Cars and buildings were adorned in Hamas's trademark green colours, and flag-waving supporters clogged the streets to reach the rally, where Hamas leaders lauded the group's history of fighting Israel.
The large crowd cheered Hamas's pledge never to recognise Israel, as sonic booms blasted from Israeli jets overhead.
"Hamas has not failed, Hamas has not collapsed," Ismail Haniyeh, the group's leader in Gaza, told the crowd. "Hamas did not fail to bring together government and resistance."
Hamas has often been torn between its roots as a military group and a local government responsible for providing services to 1.5 million citizens.
While sticking to its logical rhetoric, Hamas has largely observed an informal truce since the murderous Israeli bombing and invasion two years ago. It remains in power, although the Palestine Peoples’ Party is, at least anecdotally, more popular with many Gazans. Hamas insists it is more popular than ever.
In a message distributed to news media on Tuesday morning, Hamas said it remains committed to destroying Israel, bringing back Palestinian refugees and seizing control of Jerusalem's holy sites.
"Anyone who gives up these rights is a traitor," it said - an apparent dig at Hamas's rival, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who favours a peace agreement with Israel, inevitably meaning yet more losses for Palestine. Simultaneously, in the West Bank, the PA ‘security’ militias carried out a widespread arrest campaign in the ranks of Hamas’ cadres and supports in West Bank cities and kidnapped 20 of them during raids on homes and a school.
In order to obstruct any attempt to celebrate the anniversary, the militias also summoned for interrogation hundreds of citizens thought to be affiliated or supporting Hamas throughout the West Bank.
Local sources in Al-Khalil city reported that civilians affiliated with Fatah faction and security militias raided and ransacked on Monday evening and Tuesday morning many Palestinian institutions, mosques, clubs and homes in the city at the pretext of aborting events that might be held on the anniversary of Hamas.

No more Jaw-jaw
On Wednesday again, Arab foreign ministers rejected any resumption of Palestinian-Israeli peace talks unless it was based on a "serious offer" guaranteeing an end to the conflict - which would include an immediate end to ‘settlement’ building, seeking a UN Security Council resolution against Israeli ‘settlement’ construction on Palestinian land.
Arab foreign ministers decided to "bring up the entire situation with the Security Council and to activate the follow-up committee's decision to bring up the issue of Israeli settlements again to the Security Council."
The Arab League wants "to obtain a decision that confirms, among other things, the illegal nature of this activity and that would oblige Israel to stop it," a ministerial committee meeting at League headquarters in Cairo said.
The ministers, in their final statement, also urged the United States, which has traditionally vetoed Security Council resolutions against Israel, not to obstruct its decision.
The Arab League ministerial committee on the so-called ‘peace process’ "sees that the direction of talks has become ineffective and it has decided against the resumption of negotiations," the League's chief Amr Mussa said.
"Resuming the negotiations will be conditioned on receiving a serious offer that guarantees an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict," he said, reading from a statement after the meeting.

Meanwhile outside the committee rooms, the reality of the tensions between Palestine’s Big Two takes flesh:
The Islamic Jihad Movement said that prisoner Faisal Khalifa is being exposed to excruciating torture at the hands of interrogators from the Palestinian Authority in Tulkarem city and demanded his immediate release.
The Movement added it received reliable information affirming that Khalifa, an ex-detainee in Israeli jails, is being tortured severely by the PA intelligence interrogators and prevented from seeing his family.
Khalifa was kidnapped on Tuesday 7th December by PA intelligence militias from a school in Nur Shams refugee camp in Tulkarem.
Islamic Jihad also said that the PA militias also refuse to release ex-detainee Rafat Hussein despite his poor health condition in addition to two others of its cadres jailed in solitary confinement in Juneid prison.

Sex, lies, Iran, Israel and Wikileaks

Anthony Lawson has produced another fine thought-provoking news-bomb, reminding us of that old truth about the first casualty of war being "Truth"; and of course it's arguable that the Second World War never ended. Most important: anyone who claims to have a monopoly of the truth has to be looked on with a little scepticism... As Claude Cockburn said, "Never believe anything, until it's been officially denied."

Edinburgh Council boycotts Veolia

Edinburgh Council has rejected Veolia's attempt to take over public services in the city!

A Council report published on 10th Dec 2010 indicates that Veolia is no longer being considered for any contracts in the city, despite having been seen as the leading contender for its environmental services bid.

Veolia works with Israeli authorities in Occupied Palestine to provide waste and transport services to Israel's illegal settlements. The French multinational has already lost contracts across Europe due to sustained protest over its complicity in Israel's war crimes.

This comes on top of similar losses throughout Europe and beyond as it becomes ever more clear that it no longer pays to profit from Israel's Occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people.

Read SPSC media release

R2H: Bristol Boys come home

After a very long journey indeed, and adventures that no one could have anticipated, the two remaining representatives from Bristol made it all the way to Gaza. Keith Darkin had plenty of time to see for himself the effects of the ongoing UK/US backed siege, and to meet survivors. Shahid Iqbal, leading Bristol graffitist, was able to make his mark in a big way - at one point a policeman helped him do a giant version of his famous 'toff'. After a Welcome Home at the Farm pub, St Werburgh's on Tuesday 7th, there was a party at the same venue on Thursday, also hosting an art show/ fund-raiser for Gaza.

NOW: See short film report here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndwZWVGUBNg