Israel strips residence of over 14,500 Jerusalemites since 1967

[ 03/05/2011 - 09:29 AM ]

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- The Israeli Interior Ministry revoked the right to residence of more than 14,500 native Jerusalem Palestinians since the occupation of Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1967, a new report by a Jerusalem rights group says.

The occupation ministry did so under a law that states that any Palestinian that leaves the city for more than seven years loses the right to live there.

The report, released Monday by the Al-Maqdese for Society Development (MSD) organization, also points out that last month Israeli occupation authorities gave notices to twelve Bedouin families to evacuate their tents northeast of Jerusalem, in an obvious bid to increase the Jewish population of the city and displace the Palestinians.

Regarding the education sector, the MSD said that the Israeli occupation ministry of education has taken control of the school curricula and printing of books. It recently instructed that the “Israeli declaration of independence” is posted in classrooms and explained to the students.

• IOA exiles Jerusalemite woman from Sheikh Jarrah zone for 5 days

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

New Israeli plan to build 386 settlement units in Sheikh Jarrah revealed

[ 28/04/2011 - 02:54 PM ]

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- An Israeli municipal source revealed that the district committee for planning and building would discuss next Tuesday a plan to build 386 housing units in place of Palestinian homes in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in occupied Jerusalem.

The source affirmed that the Zionist real estate agent known as Arieh King in cooperation with the association of Jewish right-wingers submitted this plan to the district committee for approval.

Palestinian sources warned that if this plan was implemented, more than 30 Palestinian families comprised of about 280 individuals would be displaced from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.

The families started to receive notices ordering them to leave their homes before they are knocked down.

According to the plan, the Palestinian homes on eight dunums of lands near Kubaniyet Umm Haroun in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood will be demolished before building 386 housing units, a school, a kindergarten and a synagogue.

This settlement outpost is part of five big settlement projects in the holy city and will be encircled with a tall wall heavily guarded by private security men.

In a related context, Youth for Jerusalem association strongly denounced the escalating Israeli violations against the holy city and the Aqsa Mosque.

In a press release on Wednesday, the association said the attacks waged by Israeli troops and settlers on Jerusalem and its natives have become more aggressive and intensive during this month.

It noted to the recent arson attack by settlers on trees inside the Aqsa Mosque compound, the repeated break-ins of its courtyards and the attempts to uproot the Palestinians from their holy city.

Youth for Jerusalem also condemned the Arab and Islamic nations for their silence towards Israel's violations in Jerusalem and their preoccupation with their internal affairs.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Honest people can't be indifferent to Israeli fascism

By Khalid Amayreh

Thursday, 28 April 2011 13:00


Michael Weiss is a typical Zionist propagandist who wants the entire world to swallow Israeli lies and disinformation in their entirety.
I read with utter contempt the article by Israeli apologist Michael Weiss in which he asked, "Why is Amnesty hosting a Hamas-friendly publisher of racists?".

It deserves a response, not because Weiss and other propagandists for the Zionist state of Israel are right; as far as I and millions like me are concerned, they aren't, and never will be. They inhabit a murky "hasbara" world, a fact which is being acknowledged and condemned not only by Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims but also by millions of conscientious people around the globe, including many Jews. Increasingly, the creation of the state of Israel is being seen for what it was and remains; the rape of a land and people to create a racist entity devoid of any moral legitimacy.

Weiss named me in his article, so I think I have the right to respond, lest readers fall victim to furthe Zionist mendacity and malicious distortion of the facts.

From its inception, Zionism and its followers viewed Palestine as "a land without a people for a people without a land". This denial of my people's very existence didn't arise out of ignorance. It was an expression of virulent and violent racism, originating among those European barbarians who exterminated untold millions of indigenous Native Americans and called the genocide "Manifest Destiny".

The Zionists knew full well that Palestine was populated by hundreds of thousands of Christians and Muslims. In 1897, two Austrian rabbis visiting Palestine to assess the feasibility of making it a Jewish state, sent a pithy telegram summing up the situation: "The bride is beautiful but she is married to another man." That "other man" was, of course, none other than the Palestinians, long-established as a distinct political entity.

Michael Weiss is a typical Zionist propagandist who wants the entire world to swallow Israeli lies and disinformation in their entirety. For people like him, it has to be "Israel, right or wrong"; the truth must be cast aside if it interferes with Israeli colonialism. Even Israel's criminality must be excused due to its "exceptionalism" in Zionism's perverted world view.

The truth of the matter, which is being discovered by millions around the world, mainly thanks to the new social media and the internet, is simple: far from being the innocent victim of a hostile Arab world, Israel is a state whose very existence is based, and depends, on ethnic cleansing, land theft and lies.

In fact, it is reasonable to claim that Israel itself is a crime against humanity. How else can we describe a state imposed on the land of another people, the Palestinians, and which proceeded to drive the people from their homes in order to accommodate Zionist Jewish immigrants from around the world?

As a Palestinian who has been living under the oppressive yoke of Israeli military occupation for 44 years; who has seen three innocent uncles and several other relatives, in addition to tens of thousands of my people, killed to satisfy Zionist racism, I have no problem comparing Israel with the worst criminals in history, including Hitler's Nazis.

It is true that Israel has not introduced gas chambers into Palestinian towns and villages (although relatively innocuous tear gas is often used in confined spaces, against the manufacturers' recommendations, with often lethal results). However, gas chambers were never the only extermination method used by the Nazis. Israel has been killing and tormenting Palestinians in a variety of ways that, for sheer brutality and evil, don't differ in substance from Nazi Germany's murderous behaviour.

Moreover, it is important to remember that the Nazi Holocaust didn't begin with Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen; it was the end result of years of brutality; the "Final Solution" that began with an idea, then a book and then with state-sanctioned discrimination and terrorism of a distinct group of people. The sort of things, in fact, that are rampant in Israel 's collective thinking and actions these days as Jewish society in the Zionist state continues to drift menacingly towards religious and jingoistic fascism. Israel is a democracy, we are told; let us not forget that Hitler came to power via the ballot box.

The minute a Zionist Jew sets foot on Palestinian soil in order to live on land stolen from its rightful owners; or live in a house seized at gunpoint from its native Palestinian occupants, this Zionist Jew loses his sense of morality.

Zionism is supposed to be about "building a national homeland for the Jews". However, for the millions of its victims, Zionism is about dispossession; it is about the uprooting, expulsion and dispersion of the bulk of the Palestinian people from their ancestral homeland through organized terror and violence. Israel's state ideology has always been clear about one thing: the Palestinians have to leave their land, willingly or by force. There is ample evidence to support this statement, including documents written by and for Zionism's pioneers and Israel's founders.

In 1948, the Zionists ethnically cleansed more than 90% of Palestinians in historic Palestine. Today's Zionism ideologues are planning to "complete the task" with the "transfer" of millions of Palestinians across the River Jordan in order to maintain Israel's Jewish identity and have more "Lebensraum" for "God's chosen people".

This is not fantasy on my part, or on theirs. A conference in Ramleh on 26 April heard several leading rabbis calling for the "cleansing the land of the Arabs."

"Today there is a lot of land in Saudi Arabia and in Libya , too. There is a lot of land in other places," said Dov Lior, the extreme right-wing rabbi of Kiryat Arba, an illegal settlement built near Hebron. Such rabbis are not marginal figures in Israeli Jewish society; they have thousands of fanatical - and fully armed - followers at their beck and call.

Hence, it would be unethical and dishonest to deny let alone defend this racism, fascism and territorial expansionism (the search for lebensraum) by a state that calls itself "Jewish" while committing every sin possible.

Michael Weiss tries to discredit pro-Palestinian activism by throwing the "Hamas" card onto the table. The Islamic Resistance Movement may not be perfect and one may not agree with everything it says or does. However, Hamas was elected by the Palestinian people in elections that were declared to be free and fair by the international community, including Israel and its guardian ally, the United States .

However, Hamas has been demonised because it insists on Palestinians being given their rights as defined by the United Nations; for this the movement is listed as a terrorist organization due in no small measure to intensive lobbying by well-funded and generous Zionist groups in Western capitals.

Israel, of course, was founded on the terrorism of the Stern Gang, Irgun and even the Haganah (the forerunner of the Israel Defence Forces). Its declaration of independence is stained by the blood of Palestinian civilians butchered by the nascent state's armed militias. So it knows a thing or two about terrorism. To this day, for every innocent person killed by Hamas, Israel kills at least a hundred innocent people.

In 2006, Israel dropped 2-3 million cluster bomblets over southern Lebanon, enough to kill and maim between 2-3 million children; or half a holocaust worth of innocent people. And in 2008-2009, Israel carried out a blitzkrieg against Gaza, using state-of-the-art American-funded and built weaponry and munitions, including white phosphorus bombs, against an essentially helpless and unprotected people. Thousands of civilians were killed and maimed. Despite this, some Zionists still have the temerity to invoke Hamas as the bogey in the region.

In any reasoned analysis, Zionists are the last people who are fit to lecture the Palestinians on the evils of terrorism: Israel was born in terror; Israel is the embodiment of terror; Israel represents ultimate terror. The Israelis have destroyed our homes, stole our land, massacred our people and expelled us from our birthright. For arrogant Zionists to call us terrorists is, to quote Professor Norman Finkelstein, "beyond chutzpah".

The world is changing, and Michael Weiss and his hasbara chums should wise up; Zionism tomorrow will be as unacceptable as other forms of racism are today. The writing is on the wall, and the irony is that the Zionists know this to be true; they are fighting a losing battle. And Palestine will be free.
.

Nazi rabbis call for expulsion of non-Jews from Palestine

Rabbi Dov Lior

From Khalid Amayreh

[ 27/04/2011 - 09:09 PM ]

A conference of Nazi-minded rabbis in Israel has called for the expulsion of non-Jews, especially Palestinians, from occupied Palestine in order to maintain the "ethnical and religious purity of the peoples of Israel."

"Today there is a lot of land in Saudi Arabia and in Libya, too. There is a lot of land in other places," Dov Lior, the Nazi-minded rabbi of Kiryat Araba, an illegal settlement near Hebron, told the so-called fourth annual Ramale conference on Tuesday.

The main theme of the conference centered on how to get non-Jews in mandatory Palestine to leave the country for the sake of Jewish immigrants, many without roots in Palestine.

Lior, who in 1994 praised arch-terrorist Baruch Goldstein for massacring 29 Arab worshipers at the Ibrahimi Mosque in downtown Hebron, said peace in the Holy Land was out of question because the Arabs wouldn't allow Jews to usurp the land.

He claimed that the Arabs were working against "our very existence," ignoring the fact that Israel itself is based on land theft, ethnic cleansing and aggression and as such could not be accepted by the victims, namely the Palestinians who are constantly discriminated against, terrorized, deported and killed for not being members of the "superior race."

Among other speakers attending the conference was Rabbi Shmuel Elyahu, notorious for his belief that non-Jews are mentally and intellectually notorious to Jews.

Elyahyu said Israel was fighting a different war over its very essence and character, adding that Jews and non-Jews shouldn't be allowed to intermix or be neighbors.

He suggested that while fascism was a repugnant idea in general, Jewish fascism was different because it was ordained by God.

Elyahu, son of the equally racist rabbi Mordechai Elyahu, the anti-Gentile rabbi, was the author of the so-called Rabbis letter" which implored Jews not to rent or sell property to non-Jews.

Critics say the letter, which was singed by more than 50 Israeli rabbis last year, resembled to a shocking degree the Nazi-era incitement literature against Jews in Germany when Germans were exhorted to refrain from renting or selling their property to Jews or mixing with them at the social level.

Talab al-Sanaa, an Arab Knesset member representing the Arabs of the Negev in southern Palestine, described some of the rabbis at the conference as "racist animals."

"These people breathe racism as they breathe oxygen. They think that the lives of non-Jews are worthless and have no sanctity, they think the property of non-Jews belong to Jews, they think that the Almighty created the whole universe for the sake of Jews."

Some of the more liberal Jewish speakers at the conference strongly rejected the anti-Arab discourse.

"People won't leave a city if it is a good place to live in, no matter who their neighbors are. I live in a neighborhood with Arabs, and I have no problem" said Acre mayor Shimon Lankari.

He added "with Arabs and Jews there will always be tensions, always. It is built inside of us and nothing can change this. They watch al-Jazeera and we watch channel 10 and 2, and there is nothing to do about this. If the city is strong, if the population is strong, people won't leave the city."

In his hate-filled speech at the conference, the rabbi of Kiryat Arba suggested that Israel should offer Palestinians financial incentives to leave their ancestral homeland.

Al-Sana retorted that "instead, we are happy to pay for a one-way ticket for him to leave the land."

"Our land rights are part of our basic rights, and we wouldn't trade them for any money in the world."

He noted that most of the speakers at the racism-promoting conference were themselves emigrants from distant lands in Europe and the Americas and those they had no roots in Palestine.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Islamic-Christian commission warns against Judaization activities in J'lem

[ 24/04/2011 - 09:37 AM ]

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- The Islamic-Christian commission for the support of Jerusalem and holy sites warned of the escalating Judaization and settlement activities in occupied Jerusalem.
Secretary-general of the commission Hasan Khater appealed to the Arab and Islamic worlds to stand by Jerusalem people and help them to confront the Israeli occupation's scheme aimed to expel them from their holy city.
In a press release on Saturday, Khater noted that there is no strategy for strengthening the Jerusalem people's steadfastness at the Palestinian official level, but the opposite is happening, where they are forced to work and live outside their city.
For his part, preacher of the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem Sheikh Jum'ah called on the Arab and Muslim nations and the world's free people not to forget Jerusalem which is exposed to daily Israeli massacres targeting its identity, history and indigenous people.
Sheikh Jum'ah noted that the Israeli occupation authority (IOA) imposes heavy taxes on the merchants of Jerusalem and hefty fees on the natives who want to get building permits, while it builds thousands of settlement units for Jewish settlers in order to bring about a demographic change.
He added that the IOA is now besieging Jerusalem with settlements and outposts in order to Judaize it and separate it from its Palestinian surrounding.
The IOA has demolished hundreds of Palestinian homes, especially in Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, Shuafat, Issawiya districts resulting in the displacement of thousands of Jerusalemites, withdrew thousands of IDs from them, prevented religious and national figures from entering the holy city or the Aqsa Mosque, initiated a systematic campaign to obliterate Arab and Islamic landmarks and sites in Jerusalem, the preacher affirmed.

Palestinian Christians accuse Israeli police of blocking religious freedoms

[ 24/04/2011 - 05:26 PM ]

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- The Arab Orthodox Institutions in Jerusalem has accused Israeli police of persecuting Christians and violating their right to perform religious rites on Holy Saturday as well as most of their holidays.

The group said in a statement on Sunday that Israeli police blocked Palestinian Christians from entering the Church of the Resurrection in Jerusalem as they tried to perform religious rites on the Christian Holy Saturday. They said police assaulted and hurled tear gas at Christians trying to enter.

The group said the behavior was “totally incompatible with the most basic human rights and conflicts with standard procedure followed for hundreds of years”.

“Israeli measures have been escalating year after year. The facilities authorities have promised to Christian Palestinians is formal and designed to absorb anger and local and international pressure,” the statement says.

The Arab Orthodox Institutions called on Christian and human rights institutions to intervene immediately to help stop Israel's repeated violations in Jerusalem and to exert serious and urgent efforts to guarantee the rights of Christian Jerusalemites to perform religious rites “with freedom and safety”.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Settlers set up a new settlement post near Awarta

[ 22/04/2011 - 09:24 AM ]

NABLUS, (PIC)-- Jewish settlers started on Thursday bulldozing large areas of Palestinian land belonging to the villagers of Awarta to the south east of the northern West Bank city of Nablus to establish a new settlement outpost.

Eyewitnesses said that occupation bulldozers levelled areas of land to setup mobile homes left there more than a month ago by settlers in response to the murder of a settler family in nearby Itamar settlement which the occupation blamed on the Palestinians.

The setting up of this new settlement outpost is a new attempt by the occupation to impose a fait accompli on the ground confiscating more Palestinian land. The village of Awarta has so far lost 90% of its lands.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Strategic plan to link settlement to occupied Jerusalem

[ 21/04/2011 - 11:26 AM ]

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- The Israeli Ministry of Housing has laid down plans to build a new neighborhood including 800 houses in the Givat Ze'ev settlement northwest of occupied Jerusalem, Israeli Army Radio reported on Thursday.

What makes the neighborhood special is its strategic geographical placement, as it is designed to connect the outlying settlement and make it an integral part of the holy city.

The ministry had announced designating a budget for the plan ahead of implementation on the ground.

Israeli Army Radio said exclusive sources told it that the plan is linked to the approval of the Israeli war minister Ehud Barak, but Housing Minister Ariel Attias vowed to press ahead with the plan in order to reach the stage of application on the ground.

News sources inside the 1948-occupied territories said that international pressure has caused Israel to avoid announcements of new settlement plans in the West Bank. But what is actually happening during the current stalemate in the political process is that the government has been funding plans that have accumulated, waiting for the moment when it is able to implement such strategic plans on the ground.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Interview: Hamas lawmaker defies order to leave Jerusalem

 

Jillian Kestler-D'Amours

The Electronic Intifada

20 April 2011

Muhammad Totah (Jillian Kestler-D’Amours)

Approximately a hundred persons gathered in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah on Friday, 15 April for midday prayer, and to show their solidarity with three Palestinian politicians who have lived inside a makeshift tent at the International Committee of the Red Cross headquarters since last July.
Shortly after the 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) elections, three Jerusalem deputies and the former minister of Jerusalem affairs — Muhammad Abu Tir, Ahmad Attoun, Muhammad Totah and Khaled Abu Arafeh, respectively — were told by Israeli authorities that they must resign from the Hamas-led Palestinian government or have their East Jerusalem permanent resident status revoked.
Prosecuted before an Israeli military court, the four Hamas-affiliated lawmakers were sentenced to two to four years in Israeli prison when they refused to resign from their posts. Shortly after their release in the summer of 2010, the Israeli authorities again threatened to forcibly transfer the men and strip them of their East Jerusalem residency rights.
Muhammad Abu Tir was arrested on 30 June 2010 when he refused to leave the city. The next day, the three remaining deputies took refuge at the International Committee of the Red Cross headquarters in occupied East Jerusalem to avoid a similar fate. As of Friday, 15 April 2011, when the following interview was conducted, they had spent 289 days living there.
The Electronic Intifada contributor Jillian Kestler-D’Amours spoke with Muhammad Totah about why he and his colleagues decided to request help from the Red Cross, the impact the situation has had on his family, and what he hopes for in the future.

Jillian Kestler-D’Amours: What led you and your colleagues to seek refuge at the Red Cross headquarters?

Muhammad Totah: Our case started in 2006, when there were [Palestinian Legislative Council] elections in the [occupied West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem]. … All the factions participated in the elections. [The international community] said that they wanted us as Palestinians to practice democracy. They said that they will respect the results. The election was fair and free and it was monitored and witnessed by the international community. But after the results were announced, the international community denied the results and refused to deal with the [Hamas] list Change and Reform, which won in these elections.
Four or five months after these elections, the Israeli occupation [authorities] arrested 64 [persons]. All of them were ministers in the government, deputies in the parliament and mayors. Me and my other three colleagues from East Jerusalem [Ahmad Attoun, Muhammad Abu Teir and Khaled Abu Arafeh] have endured what our colleagues have endured and I have spent time in the prison, three and a half years.
I was released on 2 June 2010. After one day only, they gave me and my other three colleagues an order to leave Israel within ten days. The main reason given was that we are disloyal to Israel because we participated in the election and we have been members in the Palestinian parliament. They have asked us to resign from the parliament.
After three or four days, they have arrested one of our colleagues, Muhammad Abu Tir, on 30 June. We thought that our case would be the same. For that reason, on 1 July 2010, we came to the Red Cross, to the headquarters here in East Jerusalem, to put our case on the [radar] of the international community.
JKD: What will happen if you and your colleagues are deported from Jerusalem?

MT: It means deporting thousands of people from East Jerusalem for disloyalty. This word does not have any dimensions or any measures, so they can claim that anybody living in East Jerusalem … is disloyal to the Israeli occupation and then deport him. We know that it is one of the main objectives of the Israeli plan to empty East Jerusalem of the Palestinian people.
East Jerusalem is an occupied territory and it is illegal to deport people who are under occupation. It is now the tenth month that we haven’t left these headquarters. If we leave it, then we will be immediately arrested.
We think the only way to cancel the decision of the deportation is with the intervention of the international community. We are constantly asking the international community to uphold its responsibility regarding us, since we are occupied and it is their responsibility to take care of the people who are under occupation.
JKD: What impact has the situation had on you personally and on your family?


MT: We and our families are suffering from this separation since we have been in the prison, and we are again now separated from our children, from our wives.
I have five children. Most of them couldn’t understand the situation here because it is the first time that people are coming and [seeking refuge] in the Red Cross. It is the first time in the history of Palestine. So they couldn’t understand. They have understood that when we were in the prison, that the Israelis have imprisoned us. They understand that we have been deported but they couldn’t understand, why here? Why are we living in the Red Cross?
My little child, each time he comes here, he takes my hand he says, ‘OK, I can understand that when you were in the prison, the door was closed so you couldn’t go out. I can understand that. But now I can’t understand that the gate is open, it’s a very big gate, and you cannot go out.’
‘You have very strong legs, you can go,’ he says. He takes my hand and goes to the gate and asks me, ‘Come on, I can take you if you cannot go out.’ Then, he starts to cry and says, ‘OK, it means that you do not like me and my brothers. You hate us.’ And then he goes running to his mother.
He’s now six years old; who can explain to him the situation? I tried. And I have asked many of my friends to try with him to explain. But he couldn’t understand.

JKD: What do you think will happen in the future?

MT: We don’t have very many choices. The only choice that we have is to leave this headquarters but that means opening the door to deporting thousands of people from East Jerusalem. It is very dangerous.
It is not easy to put yourself in one place and not move. It is very difficult. We feel that it is more difficult than prison. Because prison, the decision to go out is not [yours] because the door is closed. It is not your decision to go or not to go. Here, it is your decision, to leave or not to leave.
We know that we have to endure what we are enduring now for the benefit of our people, for the Palestinian people. For that reason, we will not leave even though it is very difficult for us. We are hoping that the international community will uphold its responsibility.

Jillian Kestler-D’Amours is a reporter and documentary filmmaker based in Jerusalem. More of her work can be found at http://jkdamours.com/.

Palestinians silently transferred from East Jerusalem

Jillian Kestler-D'Amours

The Electronic Intifada

19 April 2011

Israeli border police in the occupied Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan. (Oren Ziv/ActiveStills)

For Mahmoud Qaraeen, the Israeli government’s revocation of residency rights from Palestinian residents of occupied East Jerusalem is more than just a troublesome policy; it’s a concrete threat that impacts his ability to study, work or even just travel abroad.
“People feel that they are under siege,” Qaraeen, a 25-year-old resident of Silwan in East Jerusalem, told The Electronic Intifada. “I cannot do anything to risk the possibility of not coming back [to Jerusalem].”
A field researcher with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel’s (ACRI) “Human Rights in East Jerusalem” project, Qaraeen submitted a petition with ACRI and Hamoked - the Center for the Defence of the Individual, to the Israeli high court on Thursday 7 April.
The petition demands that the current practice of revoking residency rights be changed to protect the rights of Palestinians in East Jerusalem and in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.
“We should be treated as the indigenous people of the place. We are not guests. We are from here and we should be able to leave [the city] and come back if we choose,” Qaraeen said.

More specifically, Hamoked wrote in a 7 April press release that the petition is asking “the court to determine that with respect to East Jerusalem residents, for whom this piece of earth is home, permanent residency visas cannot expire, even following extended periods of living abroad or the acquisition of status in another country” (“HaMoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel lodge a petition”).

Since Israel illegally occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, later annexing the territory, it is estimated that more than 14,000 identification cards have been revoked from Palestinian Jerusalemites, who have thereby lost their residency rights and the ability to live in the city.
“The main focus of the petition is the Entry into Israel regulations,” Hamoked staff attorney Noa Diamond told The Electronic Intifada.
Put into place in 1974, article 11a of the Entry into Israel regulations states that “a person shall be considered as having left Israel and settled in a country outside of Israel” if this person has resided outside of Israel for at least seven years, has received permanent residency in another country or has received citizenship of another country through naturalization.
In 1988, the Israeli Ministry of Interior attempted to revoke the residency of Mubarak Awad, a Palestinian resident of Jerusalem who was born in the city in 1943. Awad fought his deportation order and took his case to the Israeli high court.
In what is now known as the “Awad judgment,” the court upheld the deportation order against Awad and, most importantly, determined that the law regulating the status of East Jerusalem residents is the Entry into Israel Law.
This ruling has formed the basis of Israel’s policy of revoking residency rights of Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem ever since. Should Palestinian residents of Jerusalem leave the city for a prolonged period of time or accept foreign status, they risk losing the right to return to their homes.
“Widely what we’re saying in the petition is there’s a very basic problem with applying these regulations to people that were born here and have been living here all their lives or most of their lives,” Diamond explained.
“We’re talking about an area that Israel annexed in 1967. We’re not talking about immigrants that filed and requested status in Israel, but rather native people that were here from before,” she added.

A 10 April ACRI explained the petition further: “The organizations further requested that the law be amended to provide special protection clauses for those who reside in areas that were annexed by the State of Israel (currently East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights) so that residents of these areas could exit and enter the country freely” (“Petition: Stop Revoking Permits of E. Jerusalem Palestinians”).

The statement adds “Thus, a distinction would be made between immigrants who had acquired status in Israel for reasons such as marriage to an Israeli citizen, who would still be required to continuously prove that their center-of-life is here, and between residents of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights who would be allowed to leave and return at will, as is the case with citizens.”
More than 14,000 ID cards revoked since 1967
Shortly after Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967, and subsequent annexing of the territory, Israeli authorities conducted a census of the Palestinian population in Jerusalem and distributed identification cards to those living in the city, granting them permanent residency — not citizenship — rights.
Palestinian Jerusalemites were permitted to apply and receive Israeli citizenship if they met certain conditions, including swearing allegiance to the State of Israel. Most refused on principle.
As permanent residents, Palestinians in East Jerusalem have the right to live and work in Israel yet are denied other provisions that come with full Israeli citizenship. For instance, unlike citizenship, permanent residency is only passed on to a person’s children if certain conditions are met, including most notably proving that one’s “center of life” is in Jerusalem.
The Israeli interior ministry introduced the “center of life” policy in 1995, placing the burden of proof on Palestinians to show that their day-to-day life takes place in the city. Electricity, telephone and tax bills, and school or work certificates are some of the documents Palestinians can use to prove that their center of life is in Jerusalem.
If they fail to prove this, Palestinians can be stripped of their residency rights and, by extension, forced to leave East Jerusalem.
According to the aforementioned petition drafted by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, “in recent years, there has been a sharp rise in revocation of residency, and 2008 set a record with 4,577 revocations. Almost 50 percent of the total revocations of permits since the annexation of Jerusalem in 1967 occurred between the years 2006 to 2008.”
While no concrete figures are available yet, the Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER) estimates that an additional 191 identification cards have been revoked so far in 2011 alone.
Municipal taxes also used to evacuate residents
In the last month, Jerusalem-based Palestinian rights groups have also denounced what they see is a subtle attempt by the Jerusalem municipality to force Palestinians from the city: the collection of taxes.
“We have some claims from the Palestinians that said that they didn’t receive the bills from the arnona [municipal tax]. Some of the people went to the municipality to ask for this bill. Then they told them, ‘Look, we are not going to give you [the tax bill] and we will not consider as if you are in East Jerusalem,’” explained Ziad al-Hammouri, the Director General of the Jerusalem Center for Social and Economic Rights (JSCER).
Calculated by neighborhood, size of the home and construction quality, among other factors, the arnona tax is collected from all residents of Jerusalem. Palestinian Jerusalemites pay some of the highest levels of municipal taxes in the city, despite the fact that they don’t hold Israeli citizenship and receive far less municipal services compared to Jewish Israelis living in West Jerusalem.
Palestinians living on the other side of Israel’s wall — in communities like Anata, Shufat and Ras Khamis — are the ones who haven’t received their bills, al-Hammouri said.
“[The Jerusalem municipality says] that they are collecting from the Palestinians roughly between 33 and 35 percent of their budget, and they are spending not more than 5 percent [on Palestinian neighborhoods]. Of course, they are spending this [money] on the settlements,” he explained.
Al-Hammouri added that not receiving the arnona tax bill is a dangerous new development — just as dangerous as the revocation of identity cards — in the municipality’s attempt to evict Palestinians from Jerusalem, and that more than 100,000 Palestinian residents of Jerusalem could be affected.
“I think most of the Palestinians they would be happy, more than happy, if they will get rid of this taxation. But, in our case, the Israelis are using this arnona tax, this bill, as one of the documents to protect your existence in East Jerusalem,” he said.
“In the end of the day, you will lose your property from this kind of taxation. Then, if you will lose your property then you will leave the city.”
Slow ethnic cleansing taking place

In late March, United Nations Human Rights Council investigator and international law expert Richard Falk stated that Israel is carrying out a form of ethnic cleansing against Palestinians in East Jerusalem.

“The continued pattern of settlement expansion in East Jerusalem combined with the forcible eviction of long-residing Palestinians is creating an intolerable situation in the part of the city previously controlled by Jordan,” Falk told the UN council.
“This situation can only be described in its cumulative impact as a form of ethnic cleansing,” Falk added.
According to Mahmoud Qaraeen, this is indeed the purpose of Israel’s policy of revoking identity cards from Palestinian Jerusalemites: forcing Palestinian residents out of the city.
“The increase in the number of residencies revoked [from 2006 to 2008] shows that there is a threat to the mere existence of Arabs in East Jerusalem,” said Qaraeen, explaining that even if he has the opportunity, he will not study abroad for fear that his residency rights will be revoked.
Although he said he doesn’t expect much from the petition to the Israeli high court, Qaraeen added that he hoped some change or alteration to the way the laws are applied to Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem is possible.
“It’s also an attempt to refresh people’s minds and consciousness regarding the revocation of residency in East Jerusalem. We hope to force the issue into public opinion, into people’s minds,” he said.
“It’s about breaking the barrier of fear. Even as occupied [people], we do have the right to petition against the law and to have our voices heard.”

Originally from Montreal, Jillian Kestler-D’Amours is a reporter and documentary filmmaker based in occupied East Jerusalem. More of her work can be found at http://jilldamours.wordpress.com.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Again: armed and non-violent resistance!!!

Adib S. Kawar  

Through out the history of the Arab Zionism struggle, it was proved that the Zionist movement was and is still adamant to uproot every Palestinian and some other Arabs and replace them with Zionist colonizers in their homes and land. This is the ultimate Zionist goal.

The moment the Zionist entity occupied in 1967 the mere 22%, which was left of Palestine (The West Bank and the Gaza Strip) after the so-called war of independence of 1948, it started colonizing the left over of Palestine.

We all know that non-violent resistance started only during the what is known as the first INTIFADAH, while armed resistance, which some people call violent resistance (Zionists and Americans and some others call it terrorism) and we are sure that Dr. Hannan Ashrawi, who calls for non-violent resistance, is fortunate enough to be still living even in occupied Palestine; so we don't have to teach the teacher of what is going on there.

The Apartheid wall, which is called by the Zionist entity leaders, the separation wall, is only temporary in the sense that those Palestinians who are not yet in the diaspora will be walled in ghettos to make life impossible for them to finally decide to quit their land and homes, or what Zionists call "voluntary transfer". Then and only then the apartheid wall will be dismantled. If we want to give up Palestine on a gold platter to Zionist occupation, those Arabs who are still in Palestine should be ordered to "behave well", and be satisfied with resisting Zionist occupation with their greatest and most sophisticated weapon proposed by pacifists, stone throwing, then they will be thrown out of their homes again sooner then expected!!! 

Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated by Zionist extremists, even though he ordered his soldiers to break the limbs of teen age stone throwers, if they escape being killed by fire arms, just because those extremists thought he was willing to compromise with Arabs and let some of them stay in their homes.

In 1982 the Zionist entity occupied about half of Lebanon, massacring in the process more that twenty thousand Lebanese, Palestinians and Syrians, and committed the Sabra and Shatila massacre plus others, but when few of their soldiers and officers were hunted by the Lebanese resistance fire, they went around in the streets of Beirut with their loud speakers  pleading to the resistance not to target Zionist occupation men, promising to withdraw from Beirut within two days, which they did.

Twenty two years later the Zionist occupation army was forced by the relentless Lebanese resistance to withdraw from South Lebanon, or what they called "The Security Belt". For sure the occupation army with its puppet "South Lebanon Army" was at least one hundred times stronger in numbers and armament than the Lebanese resistance, but they had to evacuate without use of negotiations with their tails between the hind legs, why? Because they could not bear with the casualties they suffered. The Zionist occupation forces withdrew without notifying their SLA collaborators whom they left behind to face their fate.

During WWII the French resistance, which was equally weaker in armament, like the Lebanese resistance, inflicted heavy losses on the notorious German Nazi occupation army with it French collaborators, and its assistance was of great value for the allied forces that liberated France and then the rest of Europe.

The Vietnamese and Algerian resistance, the first was able to defeat the French occupation army, and later the mightiest army in the history of the world, the American army, which had to withdraw after very heavy casualties (also not as a result of negotiations!!!). As for Algerian resistance, which even though lost about a million martyrs, but due to inflicting heavy losses on the strong French army and the equally brutal settlers (colonialist) like Zionist colonialists, the Algerians were able to liberate what French colonialists considered as an integral part of Main land France.

Again the American coalition armies in Iraq were not received with rice and flowers, which they expected the Iraqis would shower them with, instead they were showered with all sort of armament, although not as sophisticated as what the occupiers possess. The occupation army had already declared the "liberation" of Falloujah and other Iraqi cities several times, but what!... The Americans invaded Iraq claiming that they came to liberate it but what... At what price is this liberation costing both the occupier and the occupied... up till now more than a hundred thousand Iraqi martyrs fell in about a year and a half after the invasion, this in addition to the casualties they left behind after their 1991 invasion, and the hundreds of thousands of deformed newly born babies as the result of the uranium depleted ammunitions the Americans bombarded the Iraqis with, plus the half million indirect infant casualties due to malnutrition, which was a result of economic sanctions imposed on Iraq. Iraqi armed resistance against the mightiest army in the world is paying off, and Americans are already biting their nails.

Just for a reminder, Zionist leaders are not trying to hide their role in driving the United States of America to invade Iraq, because they thought it was the biggest threat to their security. Then what type of resistance Iraqis should face the occupation armies with, civil resistance or armed resistance? If they chose the second alternative they will be permanently occupied by "their liberators"!!!

Lets return to Palestine, and the Gaza strip, and remember what Sharon said about the Zionist colonies he planted in it, which he considered to be as dear to him as Tel Aviv itself, Sharon who drove his colonizers to build colonies on every hill, this same Sharon is withdrawing, under the threat of the Palestinian armed resistance, of course not willingly, from the Gaza Strip unilaterally. Of course he intends to make of this withdrawal a smoke screen to get almost full hold of the West Bank, but with armed resistance it will finally be liberated, and his strongest and mightiest army in the region and one of the few strongest armies in the world, shall also withdraw.

Unless the ZioAmerican plan to control all the Arab land from the gulf to the ocean is met with armed resistance than we are finished once and for ever.

Some Palestinians want to apply Gandhi's non-violent resistance, but I believe that they are trying to fool themselves, if they pretend not to see the difference between Palestinians facing Zionist occupation and aggression and its type of colonialism, and the British colonialist rule of India. The British occupation army counted about 70,000 men, and their armament compared to the Israeli Occupation Army is too primitive. India's population at the time was 300,000,000 people, while at the moment there are in Palestine more Zionists than Palestinian Arabs both living in an area of about 27,000 sq. kms, compared with the vast area of the Indian subcontinent. But the most important difference is that the British type of colonialism, which was the traditional type of exploiting the land and its cheep labor, while Zionist colonialism is the type that aims at, as we mentioned above, uprooting every Palestinian from his land, and replace him with a Zionist colonizers: so the only way to stay in our land is to:

Keep the armed INTIFADAH alive.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Lydd residents protest home demolitions

Report, The Electronic Intifada, 14 April 2011

A woman in Lydd cries beside the rubble of her destroyed home, December 2010. (Oren Ziv/ActiveStills)

The Electronic Intifada attended a demonstration against home demolitions in Lydd on Tuesday night, 12 April. The demonstration was part of regular weekly protests against the increasing ghettoization of the heavily-segregated Palestinian areas of the city, which is located southeast of Tel Aviv. The weekly protest have been held since the December 2010 demolition of seven homes belonging to the Abu Eid family.

Home demolitions in Lydd are just another form of discrimination faced by Palestinian citizens of Israel, mirroring the tactics faced by Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Among the protesters were residents of Lydd and the "unrecognized" village of Dhammash, which is between Lydd and the neighboring town of Ramle, and where home demolition orders still stand against more than a dozen homes. They marched together with community leaders from Sheikh Jarrah in occupied East Jerusalem and Israeli solidarity activists and protesters stood at a busy intersection holding a banner reading "Refugee camp Abu Eid" in Arabic, Hebrew and English. Children from the community chanted slogans against Israeli policies and banged on drums and other percussion instruments.

Riyadh Abu Eid, whose home was one of the seven demolished, spoke to the crowd of protesters following the demonstration. He urged them to keep demonstrating and to increase public pressure on the local government, which ordered the demolitions.

"There were a lot of cars that passed by our demonstration tonight," Abu Eid said. "And after next week's demonstration, we plan to hold a sit-in at the mayor's offices to demand our rights."

Suhad Bishara, senior attorney with Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, told The Electronic Intifada that the Israeli government has imposed demolition orders under the guise of "illegal construction" in Palestinian neighborhoods. She said that what's happening in Lydd and Dhammash is similar to building restrictions imposed on Palestinian neighborhoods across Israel and in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

"The process of obtaining building permits is very difficult," Bishara said. "People are trapped, because they need to build homes, but the authorities won't give them permits. All claims related to the history of these families who have been in the area, their circumstances as the families expand, it almost doesn't play a role [in the legal procedures]. It's a formula initiated by the [Israeli] authorities."

Bishara added that the land on which the Abu Eid family was living was zoned by the city municipality as "non-residential," even though it is surrounded by homes in a residential neighborhood. She said that although the families in Lydd and Dhammash are in the process of submitting paperwork to have the area re-zoned, it could take years "even in the best-case scenario."

"If the authorities want to, they can make it very difficult for Palestinian families," Bishara said. "But the families are engaged in planning procedures. They're doing a lot of public activism and media work, which could help."

She added, "It's an ongoing threat ... You see what's going on in the Naqab [Negev], and Israel's plans to evict tens of 'unrecognized' villages from their land. You see the policies of segregation in the cities, where there are huge areas where Arabs are not allowed to live. [What's happening in Lydd] is a small part of the whole policy, but we have to take a look at the whole picture."

Position of the local Palestinian Christian community on restrictions on religious rights (especially during Holy Week)

 

April 11, 2011 The Palestinian Christian initiative Kairos Palestine has issued a statement spelling out the position of the Palestinian Christian community concerning Israeli imposed restrictions on religious rights, especially during Holy Week.

The statement notes that "for Christians, Holy Week in Jerusalem has a special spiritual connection." It says that the various gathering points to which pilgrims from all over the world journey, namely the Old City, its gates and roads, the Mount of Olives, Via Dolorosa and The Holy Sepulchre Church, are equally important to the Palestinian Christians of the West Bank and Gaza.

The statement underlines the strong desire of Christians in the West Bank and Gaza "to join their Jerusalemite Christian brothers and sisters in the liturgical events leading to the resurrection, the holiest celebration in Christianity".

The statement points out that "in every country that respects (and practices) freedom of worship, they do so without restrictions from the governing authorities". It proceeds to bemoan the fact that the occupying power has denied free access to Holy places of worship to both Christians and Muslims on several important occasions over the last decade.

This discriminatory and restrictive policy by Israel allows only 8000 pilgrims and few hundreds of locals to enter the city on Holy Fire Saturday. The Holy Sepulchre Church and other crucial religious sites are rendered "off limits for Christians through a complex network of walls, checkpoints, and security apparatuses".

Traditionally, Palestinian Christians welcome The Holy Light seated on the roof of the Patriarchate and at the Church of Saint Jacob, adjoining the Holy Sepulchre. This religious tradition is something they are unwilling to forfeit because it is a violation of a fundamental human rights and a restriction on their right to religious freedom. It further upsets a centuries old tradition for the Palestinian Christians.

Kairos Palestine decries this unjust and one-sided policy which compels Christians and Muslims to apply for permits to enter while Jews continue to have free access. At best, not more than two or three thousand Palestinian Christians will receive entry permits. The permit system instated by Israel is in obvious violation of various Human Rights, international covenants and treaties to which Israel is a signatory.

Kairos Palestine rejects "the imposition of a permit/quota system to access our churches and shrines". The Kairos statement points to how "the heavy presence of Israeli Police and Military forces prevents Christians from accessing the Holy Sepulchre Church and the Old City thus disturbing the spiritual atmosphere of Easter". The presence of Israeli commanders in and around the Tomb of Christ under the pretext of security is unacceptable.

The Kairos statement states that such actions taken against Palestinian Christians are an affront not only to them, the first and oldest Christian community in the world, but also to Christianity as a whole.

The Palestine-Israel Ecumenical Forum urges churches around the world to support the call of Kairos Palestine which invites "all our leaders, friends, brothers and sisters around the world to continue exerting pressure on Israel, to end its military occupation on this land and to respect international law and human rights". In terms of practical measures, Kairos Palestine urges:
Church leaders not to submit and accept the conditions that deprive indigenous and international worshippers of the joy of celebrating Easter.

Letters to political representatives to pressure Israel by political means to end its restrictions on the freedom to religion in general and with regard to the Easter celebrations in particular.

Letters of protest to Israeli ambassadors in your countries complaining against such actions.

Click here for the full text of the statement from Kairos Palestine.

Author : Kairos Palestine Article : 76743 sent on 11-apr-2011 23:11 ECT Url : www.newsfrommiddleeast.com?new=76743 The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

New 900 housing units in Gilo in OJ

[ 14/04/2011 - 09:15 AM ]

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- The Israeli planning and construction committee has endorsed the building of 900 new housing units south of Gilo settlement suburb near the Palestinian village of Walaja in occupied Jerusalem.

The housing units would be built on an area of 228 dunums and would also include building infrastructure such as roads and public utilities.

The committee had published the new scheme last Wednesday only one day after the endorsement of 942 housing units in the same area.

Both schemes envision the establishment of around 1900 housing units south of Gilo

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Jewish National Fund Challenged for Complicity in Ethnic Cleansing

Canadian, Israeli activists push to remove organization's charitable status

Canada Park is being built over the ruins of former
alestinian villages. The JNF-Canada is funding the
 project, leading Palestinians and Canadians alike
to demand that its charitable status be revoked.
Photo: Jillian Kestler-D'Amours

by Jillian Kestler-D’Amours

JERUSALEM—Israeli, Palestinian and international protestors gathered in Tel Aviv and Ramallah in late February to denounce ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. But instead of levelling their criticisms at the Israeli state, the chants and banners were aimed at an unexpected target: Canada.

Among other issues, protestors were targeting Canada for its role in building Canada Park, an Israeli park built over the ruins of three Palestinian villages with donations made to the Jewish National Fund of Canada (JNF-Canada). JNF-Canada's role is being challenged both at home and in Israel, while a targeted campaign against the JNF overall is presently underway.

“Canada Park was planted and funded with the support of the Jewish National Fund of Canada over the lands and over the ruins of three ethnically cleansed villages: Imwas, Yalu and Beit Nuba, occupied and ethnically cleansed in the course and the wake of the 1967 [Six Days] war,” explained Israeli activist and member of the Committee for Defending the Latrun Villages, Uri Davis, in Tel Aviv.

Plaques featuring the names of donors to Canada Park line the area. Donations to the JNF-Canada, the charity which built the park on top of bulldozed Palestinian villages, are tax-deductible. Photo: Jillian Kestler-D'Amours

Institutionalized Racism: The history of the JNF

The Jewish National Fund was created in 1901 before the founding of the State of Israel. Early Zionist leaders used the organization to secure property and land rights for exclusive Jewish use in British-mandate Palestine.

“The JNF was the principal Zionist tool for the colonization of Palestine. It served as the agency the Zionist movement used to buy Palestinian land upon which it then settled Jewish immigrants,” wrote Israeli historian Ilan Pappe in his 2006 book The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.

According to Pappe, in the early 1940s the head of the Jewish National Fund’s settlement department, Yossef Weitz, stated that, “all we need is 400 tractors, each tractor can cultivate 3000 dunam – cultivating not just for the purpose of procuring food but in order to prevent anyone from returning to their lands.”

Today, the JNF controls approximately 13 per cent of the land in Israel, which it continues to lease only to Jews. This land falls under the management of the Israeli Lands Administration (ILA), an Israeli governmental agency that controls 93 per cent of the land in Israel.

In addition, the JNF controls 50 per cent of the seats at the ILA Council, giving the organization substantial power to decide how virtually all ILA lands are distributed. Under Israeli law, the JNF has also been given the same status as a public authority for the purposes of confiscating land.

According to a 2006 brief submitted to the UN Commission on Human Rights by Habitat International Coalition and Adalah, The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, “Palestinian citizens, who constitute 20 per cent of the population, are denied access to [the JNF’s] 13 per cent of ‘Israel Lands.’ This discriminatory policy contributes to the institutionalization of racially segregated towns and villages throughout the state.”

The report continues: “Due to the explicitly discriminatory nature of the ILA and JNF’s policies, Adalah and HIC call upon the Commission to initiate an investigation into Israel’s discriminatory land allocation policies and to urge the State of Israel to cease discriminatory land allocation practices using institutions such as the JNF, and to apply covenanted principles of equality, just distribution and fairness.”

Plaques featuring the names of donors to Canada
Park line the area. Donations to the JNF-Canada,
the charity which built the park on top of bulldozed
Palestinian villages, are tax-deductible.
Photo: Jillian Kestler-D'Amours

“Canada Park represents a blatant violation of international law, but it also represents a blatant violation of official Canadian policy condemning any intervention of settlement or occupation or change of demographic composition or any other alteration in the 1967 occupied territories,” he added.

JNF-Canada operates as a charity and collects approximately $10 million annually in tax-deductible donations. Canadian citizens have donated about $15 million to the JNF, which has gone to fund Canada Park and similar projects.

Located in the Latrun enclave, just off the major highway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Canada Park is a popular weekend picnic and hiking spot for Israeli families. What most road signs or tourist brochures won’t tell you, however, is that Canada Park extends several kilometres into the West Bank, far beyond the Green Line, the internationally recognized armistice line separating Israeli and Palestinian territory.

Today, the majority of Imwas, Yalu and Beit Nuba’s original Palestinian inhabitants are refugees living in Jordan or in and around the West Bank city of Ramallah. Since they are barred from entering Israel, these Palestinian residents are unable to access Canada Park, or visit the ruins of their ancestral villages.

According to the JNF-Canada website, “The history of the Jewish National Fund of Canada and the State of Israel are inseparable. Jewish National Fund of Canada land reclamation projects have created the infrastructure for countless residential areas and other communities across Israel.”

Operating as a branch of JNF-Israel, the JNF-Canada website vaguely states that the funds raised by JNF-Canada “are primarily directed to the payment of wages to workers engaged in various aspects of Jewish National Fund activities.”

Today, the JNF operates 11 regional offices across Canada, from Vancouver to Halifax.

Scott Weinstein is a Steering Committee member of Independent Jewish Voices Canada (IJV), which according to its website is “an organization that promotes a just resolution to the dispute in Israel and

Palestine through the application of international law and respect for the human rights of all parties.” Weinstein told The Dominion that IJV is working on a campaign to raise awareness in Canada about the Jewish National Fund and its activities, including how it built Canada Park over Palestinian communities. The long-term goal, he said, will be to de-list the JNF as a Canadian charity.

“The JNF's legal mission and strategy is explicit – Land [sic] for Jews only. Technically, the land is collectively titled to the JNF. Palestinians are denied the right to their land – forever – be it in Israel or even the occupied territories,” Weinstein wrote in an email to The Dominion.

“Since Israel was founded, no new Palestinian villages, forests or territory in Israel have been allowed, but hundreds of Jewish villages, cities, parks and forests are constructed. Thanks to Canadian JNF tax support, Palestinian territory shrinks as Jewish territory expands. Palestinian olive trees are destroyed so Jews can plant non-native pine trees, or orange trees,” he explained. “The propaganda cover-up of a very un-ethical mission is frankly upsetting, and shocking to many who learn the reality.”

A few hundred metres from the Palestinian Bedouin village of al-Araqib sit half a dozen bulldozers. Surrounded by razor wire and heavily guarded by Israeli police officers and soldiers, a sign hangs on a shed inside the permanent bulldozer encampment: “Works being carried out by Keren Kayemeth Leisrael – Jewish National Fund.”

“There was police in al-Araqib and also the [JNF] bulldozers. They plowed some parts of the land. We tried to resist them, but we were arrested and handcuffed,” explained 17-year-old al-Araqib resident Adam Salim Abu Mdeghem.

Located inside Israel proper in the Israeli Negev desert about an hour south of Tel Aviv, al-Araqib has been demolished a total of 19 times since July 2010. The village’s destruction was commissioned by the JNF’s Israeli branch.

The Jewish National Fund in Israel aims to plant a forest over the village of al-Araqib. Co-sponsored by evangelical Christian organization God-TV, this forest would involve forcibly displacing the 300 indigenous residents of al-Araqib, who are all Israeli citizens, from their homes.

Since JNF-Canada is a chapter of JNF-Israel, funds allocated to the JNF in Canada are transferred to projects sponsored by the organization in Israel, such as planting trees in the Negev or Galilee, or restoring the Old City walls in Jerusalem, among others.

It is unclear whether the specific trees JNF-Israel wants to plant over al-Araqib lands were donated or purchased thanks to donations provided by Canadians. JNF-Canada does, however, advertise a project called "Action Plan Negev.” This is “a program designed to meet the challenge of developing the Negev for the 21st century” and aims to populate the Negev region.

The destruction of al-Araqib is part of a larger JNF-Israel project called “Blueprint Negev.” Launched in 2005 at the cost of $600 million, the project aims to increase the population in the Negev area by 250,000 Jewish residents by 2013.

Whether “Action Plan Negev” and “Blueprint Negev” are directly related, or constitute two parts of the same program, however, is unspecified.

Haia Noach, the Director of the Negev Co-Existence Forum, a joint Jewish-Arab organization that, among other things, works for Bedouin land rights in the Negev, explained that as the forestation authority in Israel, the JNF developed the project to plant trees over al-Araqib.

She said that while the JNF initially denied any involvement in the destruction of al-Araqib, residents and local activists saw JNF bulldozers destroying property in the village during a demolition in early February.

“We connect them directly and they are responsible for what is going on there, to the fact that people lost their houses, lost their herds, their orchards,” Noach said.

“The situation is devastating, but this is what we have,” said Abu Mdeghem, sitting on the hillside next to the small, make-shift tent where he, his parents and seven other siblings now live. “I am...very sad for what has happened to the al-Araqib area. We never expected that anything would happen to our land.”

According to Noach, the JNF’s policy doesn’t end in al-Araqib; the organization is threatening the existence of dozens of other Palestinian Bedouin villages that have existed in the area for hundreds of years.

“The JNF is willingly part of this game where they serve as a foresting authority. [You] see it all over Israel, in the North and even in the South,” Noach said.

“There will be more and more Arab villages in the Negev that are threatened by the forestation of the JNF.”

A new campaign called “Stop the JNF” was recently launched with the goal of documenting and exposing the Jewish National Fund’s complicity in Israeli ethnic cleansing, disrupting JNF fundraising activities and revoking the organization’s charitable status in countries around the world.

According to Akram Salhab, an organizer of this international campaign and a Communications Officer at Badil, the Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, the campaign aims to co-ordinate between various organizations and provide the resources and information needed for a united campaign.

“One of the first aims of the campaign is to expose and document the role of the JNF. One of the problems with trying to understand the role of the JNF is that it's shrouded in an esoteric legal language, which is indicative more broadly of the way in which the Israeli apartheid regime functions,” Salhab explained.

Despite this challenge, Salhab said he is hopeful that the campaign will unite activists around the world who are working to raise awareness about the JNF’s complicity in Israeli crimes.

“Our main aim is to influence public opinion and influence individuals in places where the JNF collects the largest amount of revenue. The problem with that is that those are the places where the JNF has a big deal of support. So we’re trying to find places where we can set a precedent of JNF discriminatory policy,” he said.

According to IJV’s Weinstein, this campaign will focus on first educating the Canadian public about the JNF’s true nature and making connections between Indigenous land rights in Israel/Palestine and Canada.

“Imagine if we had a Canadian charity that provided homes and parks to English Canadians only, on land taken from French Canadians. It could never happen, except if we lied about what the charity does. Yet it is precisely what we have done to the Native people of Canada – and few of us are proud of that legacy. So there are Canadian examples where we can make common cause with human rights issues around Indigenous land rights,” Weinstein explained.

“Most Canadians don't realize that our taxes support the JNF mission to erase Palestinian villages and lives so Jews can live as first-class citizens,” he continued. “We don't know that we support racial discrimination in Israel that would be illegal in Canada.”

Originally from Montreal, Jillian Kestler-D'Amours is a reporter and documentary filmmaker based in Jerusalem. More of her work can be found at http://jilldamours.wordpress.com/.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian