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

Khater calls for comprehensive national plan for Jerusalem after reconciliation

[ 01/05/2011 - 12:20 PM ]

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- Dr. Hassan Khater, the secretary general of the Islamic Christian society for the support of Jerusalem, hoped that the Palestinian national reconciliation would boost concern with the issue of Jerusalem.

Khater said in a press release on Sunday that Jerusalem paid a heavy price as a result of the inter-Palestinian rift, explaining that Israel exploited the division to increase its Judaization of the holy city, intensify settlement activity, and impose de facto conditions on the Aqsa Mosque and other holy shrines.

He said that the current situation in Jerusalem necessitates greater concern and plans, adding that Jerusalem was impatiently waiting for a national, comprehensive plan to confront the Judaization threat.

Return to national unity should entail an essential upgrading in the concern for Jerusalem starting with the national plan that should help the Palestinian leadership and Arab and international institutions concerned with Jerusalem to restore the balance to the confrontation with occupation, he concluded.

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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”.

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Thousands of Palestinians attend 9th Aqsa child festival

[ 24/04/2011 - 10:41 AM ]

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- More than 15,000 Palestinians from occupied Jerusalem and the 1948 occupied lands attended on Saturday the ninth festival of the Aqsa child and the third drawing contest for kids in the Aqsa Mosque's courtyards.

Deputy head of the Islamic Movement in the 1948 occupied lands Sheikh Kamal Al-Khatib expressed his extreme delight to see such crowds attending this event to show their attachment to their holy sites.

For his part, head of the higher Islamic commission Sheikh Ikrima Sabri urged in his speech the participating parents and teachers to break the barrier of fear inside the hearts of their children and students and familiarize them with the Islamic values of courage and honesty.

The festival included songs, poetry and awards for the winning boys and girls in the drawing contest.

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Israel issues demolition orders for Jerusalem school

The Electronic Intifada

21 April 2011

Malak, eight, is in her last year at al-Nabi Samwil School, occupied East Jerusalem. (Phoebe Greenwood/IRIN)

JERUSALEM (IRIN) - The one-room school building in the Palestinian village of al-Nabi Samwil, near Jerusalem, serves as a classroom for eight pupils, a staff room, storeroom and the principal’s office. During the winter months or on hot summer days, it is also the children’s playground.

“The biggest difficulty I face here is that I am not able to add anything more to our premises,” says school principal Khalil Abu Argu. “We have no facilities.”

The school serves thirty families in the picturesque village, which has panoramic views of Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank. But a major problem for residents is that it is a struggle to reach either, as the village — along with 15 others — lies on the Jerusalem side of Israel’s wall in the occupied West Bank.

Israel’s wall has been under construction since 2002. Israel claims it is essential to protect its citizens from Palestinian “terrorism.” In Jerusalem this wall, however, has not been built along the Jerusalem municipal boundary, meaning that these 16 Palestinian communities are cut off from their families and basic services.
Al-Nabi Samwil village also falls within Area C of the occupied West Bank. Under the Oslo accords, Israel retains military authority and full control over building and planning permission in Area C. Responsibility for the provision of services falls to the Palestinian Authority, but because of the wall, the PA cannot access the area.

Most of the villagers hold West Bank identification cards and so are not recognized by Israel as Jerusalem residents. This means they are forbidden from entering the city and anyone in the occupied West Bank wishing to visit the village needs an Israeli permit to pass through the checkpoints surrounding it.
There is another challenge that Argu, who lives in the West Bank city of Ramallah, faces. He has been working at the school for four years. He now needs a permit allowing him to pass through the al-Jib checkpoint but is not allowed any further in the direction of Jerusalem than the end of al-Nabi Sawil village boundary.

“That wall went up last year,” he says, pointing out the black electric fence winding through the valley below. “In the past, when the way was open, it was a twenty-minute walk to school. Now it takes me an hour and I need a car.”

Planning restrictions in Area C mean that new structures and the expansion of existing buildings can only be carried out with Israel’s permission. No permission has been given to Argu’s school.

Demolition orders

Instead, the Israeli military have issued demolition orders on the school’s small outside toilet and a tent they had been using as an extra classroom because they were built without permits. Israeli soldiers have visited the school more than once, warning that the illegal structures must be taken down.

Argu remains defiant: “They’ll come and take it down and I’ll put something else up. I plan to bring a shipping container to the school next year and turn it into a classroom.”

At al-Nabi Sawil, lack of space has forced the school to only teach grades 1-3. From grade four onwards, local children must travel to schools in the nearby villages of al-Jib and Beit Iksa, which the principal says are more than an hour’s drive away thanks to the wall.

One of Argu’s brightest students, Malak, aged eight, is looking forward to starting grade four at a bigger school in al-Jib this October.

“I like my school now but it’s ver

y small; there isn’t enough space,” she said. “It would be better if we could have different classrooms for the different grades.

It’s very difficult now, because we have to wait for the teacher to go through three different sets of lessons.”

“Cut off”

Within the boundaries of occupied East Jerusalem there is a different set of educational problems. Around 50 percent of the educational system is run by the Israeli municipality, the rest by a combination of the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), private educators and Waqf, an Islamic religious endowment that essentially operates in lieu of the PA in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem, which is not able to operate in Jerusalem.

A recent report published by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs warned of the long-term impact of the restrictions on access to education in occupied East Jerusalem.

Permit restrictions, checkpoints and the wall, it said, meant that pupils, and especially teachers with West Bank identification cards, face significant difficulties getting to schools in occupied East Jerusalem, which is increasingly cut off from the rest of occupied West Bank.

Ray Dolphin, the report’s author, told IRIN a key concern is the shortage of classrooms: “Even within Jerusalem [the Jerusalem Municipality] where students don’t need to cross checkpoints to get to school, there aren’t enough school buildings to meet their needs.

“And many of the buildings that are there weren’t designed as schools. Palestinian children living in Jerusalem have the right to an education but there currently aren’t the facilities.”

Despite the significant obstacles his school faces, Argu is full of enthusiasm: “I’m not at all frustrated with my job. My students work hard and that makes me proud and happy. What brings me most satisfaction is when I managed to develop the school somehow. It would be shameful for me to give up.”

This item comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian news and information service, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. All IRIN material may be reposted or reprinted free-of-charge; refer to the copyright page for conditions of use. IRIN is a project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

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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.

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Israel gearing to open tunnel network under Aqsa Mosque area

[ 20/04/2011 - 03:53 PM ]

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- Israeli occupation authorities are making preparations ahead of opening a network of underground tunnels near the Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem, the Israeli Haaretz newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The tunnels stretch from under walls of the sacred zone to Jerusalem's Old City.

Several tunnels had been dug out over various periods over the last forty years, Haaretz said. They were also interconnected through a tunnel network plan, with the main entrance in the city's Silwan district, which neighbors the mosque area. From there, they can be taken to the Al-Buraq wall, known to Jews as the Wailing Wall, west of the mosque, and they extends to the Old City's Muslim quarter, where a number of settlement outposts and Jewish synagogues have been built.

Israeli officials expect the tunnel network will serve as a new tourist attraction for hundreds of thousands of foreigners yearly, Haaretz said. Tourists would be able to enter Silwan and walk below the surface of the earth to Jerusalem's Old City.

According to Haaretz, the excavations have ruined the archaeological features under the ground. The objective was to dig past Islamic and Christian features in a bid to stumble upon Jewish artifacts.

The project itself was aimed at enhancing settlement outposts erected in the city's Muslim quarter by linking them to outposts in the Silwan district.

Israeli archaeologist Yoram Tseverir has declared that digging under the mosque is ”wrong”, assuring that no scientific findings can be made thereby.

The digging has caused serious cracking and cave-ins in the mosque's square.

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Maqdesi slams Israeli decision to introduce independence paper into schools

[ 20/04/2011 - 01:59 PM ]

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- Al-Maqdesi foundation for society development strongly denounced the Israeli ministry of education for deciding to introduce, as of the new academic year, the (alleged) declaration of Israel's independence into all Palestinian schools in the occupied lands including Jerusalem.

The foundation said the Israeli ministry of education ordered on Sunday in a booklet all private and municipal schools to post the declaration of independence in a place where all students and teachers can read it.

This decision has been taken as Israel's independence festival is approaching, it said, adding that it is part of Israel's comprehensive scheme to Judaize the awareness and mindset of Palestinian students.

One month ago, the Israeli ministry ordered all Palestinian schools to only buy books printed by the municipal administration. It also altered the curriculum for the years 2011-2012. This decision intends to change and control the way subjects are taught and make them only according to the Zionist and Jewish teachings and perspectives.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Palestinian citizens call for their rights during Land Week

Budour Youssef Hassan

The Electronic Intifada

18 April 2011

Palestinians commemorate Land Day in Jaffa (Oren Ziv/Activestills)

Last month I toured Lifta as part of Palestinian Land Week, a series of activities organized by the Balad Student Movement at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to commemorate the 35th anniversary of Palestinian Land Day. The underlying purpose of Land Week 2011 was to reiterate that Land Day, which commemorates the slaying of Palestinian citizens demonstrating for their rights by Israel in 1976, goes far beyond the narrow geographical limits and the traditional annual demonstrations held in the Galilee villages of Sakhnin and Arraba.

Although the Land Day demonstrations originally erupted in Sakhnin, Arraba and Deir Hanna — known as the Land Day Triangle — the March 1976 events, when six Palestinian civilians were murdered by the Israeli police, carry an enormous practical and symbolic significance that should not be reduced to mere folklore. Shackled for years by a repressive military regime, Palestinian citizens of Israel broke the psychological barrier of fear and braved the austere emergency rules to organize peaceful demonstrations against the mass land expropriation in an inspiring act of civil disobedience and nonviolent resistance.

Adamant to expand the scope of Land Day, we kick-started Land Week 2011 with a massive demonstration of approximately 2,000 protesters in the southern city of Lydd on Tuesday, 29 March, in order to show our unwavering solidarity with its Palestinian inhabitants who have been the victims of a systematic policy of house demolition that exclusively targets Palestinian citizens.

The demonstration was unique in the sense that it was not organized by the High Follow-Up Committee for the Arab Citizens in Israel, an umbrella organization representing Palesitnian citizens of Israel on a national level, but rather by university students and young activists. That Tuesday’s demonstration drew thousands of Palestinian youngsters from the south, the north and Jerusalem as well as Jewish solidarity activists. They flooded the streets of Lydd, chanting against the occupation, land confiscation, house demolitions, the siege on Gaza, racist Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, the totalitarian regimes in the Arab world and the harmful intervention of the US in the region.

On 30 March, Palestinians from all walks of life — students, teachers, workers and shop owners — went on the annual public strike.

On Friday, 1 April, we participated in the Lifta tour organized by the Civic Coalition to Save Lifta and followed it by taking part in the weekly demonstration in the occupied East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. There, we voiced our support for all the Palestinian families who have been evicted from their own homes to make way for settlers in occupied East Jerusalem. The families of Ghawy, al-Kurd and Hannoun — to name just a few — have been expelled from their own homes by Israeli forces in the last few years. These same forces have been unashamedly turning a blind eye to the violent settler attacks against Palestinian residents and have tried on countless occasions to crush the peaceful demonstrations in Sheikh Jarrah and Silwan with tear gas, bullets and arbitrary arrests.

Land Week 2011 came to a close on Wednesday, 6 April. The final event was titled “The Youth Revolution” and took place at Hebrew University. The evening’s events, however, were overshadowed by the tragic death of the great Palestinian filmmaker, actor, theater director and freedom fighter Juliano Mer-Khamis, who was murdered days earlier by unknown gunmen outside the Freedom Theatre in Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. We screened a short but touching documentary filmed in the Freedom Theatre in Jenin, in which “Jule” and his students explain what freedom means to them (“The Freedom Theatre”).

The evening was capped off by the Haifa-born revolutionary singer and songwriter Ala Azzam, who sang for Palestine and social justice and against blithe apathy and the status quo. Azzam, singing and playing the oud in front of the Palestinian flag, articulated with his lyrics the challenges that Palestinian citizens in Israel face, along with our insistent yearning for freedom and justice.

Land Week may have officially concluded, but our nonviolent struggle against the ongoing onslaught of the racist, apartheid government against the Palestinian land and collective memory — demonstrated with the newly-approved “Nakba law” which criminalizes the commemoration of the Nakba (the dispossession of historic Palestine in 1948) and continuous land confiscation and house demolitions — will go on.

Budour Youssef Hassan, originally from Nazareth, is a Palestinian socialist activist and third-year Law student at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Follow her on Twitter: twitter.com/Budouroddick.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Israel appropriating historical sites for colonial ends

Sarah Irving

The Electronic Intifada

18 April 2011

Orthodox Jews walk past Israel’s wall near Rachel’s Tomb in the occupied West Bank. (Inbal Rose/MaanImages)

Moves by the Israeli government and settler movement to appropriate historical sites undermine Palestinian cultural rights and highlight how Israel exploits archaeological claims for colonial ends.

Last spring, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared the Ibrahimi Mosque/Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and the Bilal Mosque/Rachel’s Tomb outside Bethlehem to be “Israeli national heritage sites.” As The Electronic Intifada has reported since, the State of Israel seems to have two approaches to Palestine’s ancient sites. If, like the sites Netanyahu claimed or the remains at Sebastia, they fit into Israeli narratives about the Jewish history of the region, they are appropriated, renovated and incorporated into “archaeological parks.” If, like excavated finds and important buildings in Gaza, they highlight ancient Philistine or more recent Islamic periods of history, they can be bombed along with Gaza’s residents, or simply allowed to decay as vital conservation chemicals are excluded by the blockade. As an American-accented tour guide, overheard in Jerusalem’s Haram al-Sharif in October 2010, put it: “Having worked on two or three archaeological digs here [in Jerusalem], I can tell you that if anything is between 200 and 500 years old, it just gets tossed. It’s nothing.”

It’s against this setting that in October 2010, while researching a guidebook to Palestine, I found myself increasingly confused about a number of historical sites scattered around the occupied West Bank. None of them had the religious and historical importance of the Ibrahimi Mosque or Rachel’s Tomb, but they had their own place in Palestinian history and architecture. They were places mentioned in Palestinian tourism publications such as the locally-published Alternative Tourism Group travel guide Palestine and The Palestinians, the official Palestinian Authority Ministry of Tourism website, Jericho Municipality’s tourist listings or the “Places to Visit” section of the PA’s diplomatic mission to Japan website. This implied that they were recognized by Palestinian sources as being part of the country’s heritage. But the information about them was hazy, as if their existence was being acknowledged but at the same time they weren’t being incorporated into the itineraries of the growing Palestinian cultural tourism industry. Palestinian tour organizers I spoke to dismissed my inquiries, saying only that “I’ve never been there” or “we don’t take groups there.” There was, I soon found, a very good reason for this.

The first site that mystified me is a cluster of remains south of Jerusalem, close to the recently-expanded highway that runs through the occupied West Bank desert toward Jericho and the Jordan River. This comprises three buildings (or groups of buildings), only one of which was visible from the main road. This is an Ottoman caravanserai (most of the building is 16th century, although it may have older Mamluk elements), where merchants and their baggage-trains once took refuge for the night on the bandit-ridden road. It’s known as the Khan al-Ahmar or, in the way that many buildings in Palestine pick up Biblical names, as the Inn of the Good Samaritan, a reference to one of Jesus’ parables.

The other two buildings in the cluster are the monasteries of St. Euthymius and St. Martyrius, both founded in the fifth century. Along with other cells, monasteries and lavras (groups of isolated hermits’ dwellings) of the Desert Fathers, these are some of the most ancient Christian monasteries in existence and immensely important to Palestine’s historical, architectural and religious heritage. In the 2008 edition of The Holy Land: An Oxford Archaeological Guide From Earliest Times to 1700, Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, Professor of New Testament at the Ecole Biblique et Archeologique Francaise, Jerusalem refers to the Monastery of St. Euthymius as a “forlorn ruin surrounded by graceless factories.” The factories Murphy-O’Connor mentions are those of Mishor Adumim, the industrial section of the sprawling and illegal settlement of Maale Adumim, which is a key part of Israel’s division of the occupied West Bank into unviable bantustans. Assuming that Murphy-O’Connor, researching the 2008 edition of his guide, saw it “forlorn” and abandoned in perhaps 2007, St. Euthymius’ monastery was not to remain a “ruin” for much longer.

Maale Adumim is apparently, like some of the Etzion Bloc settlements (which are increasingly selling themselves as wine tourism destinations), seeking to add heritage tourism to its economic activities. In 2009 an invitation to the opening of a “mosaic museum” at the Inn of the Good Samaritan was circulated around Israeli ministries and media. “On Behalf of the Head of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories,” it offered a range of activities at the 4 June launch, including tours by “Civil Administration’s Staff Officer of Archeology and Antiquities.” Tellingly, descriptions of the attractions on offer emphasized Second Temple-era and Byzantine Christian remains, but made no mention of the Ottoman and possibly earlier Islamic buildings of the caravanserai which is the core of the Khan al-Ahmar site. If there was ever any doubt on the subject, Israeli archaeology was exposed as being entirely complicit with the occupation, sidelining Palestine’s Islamic heritage, appropriating its Christian sites (and in doing so also sidelining Palestine’s own historic Christian communities) and highlighting its Jewish remains above those of the main other cultures which have enriched this land.

The website of the Maale Adumim settlement offered an insight into the activities at the three sites over the last couple of years. It declared that “The Municipality of Maale Adumim is developing the Good Samaritan’s Inn and the hills surrounding it as a tourist complex, aiming to meet the demand for modern tourism services without losing the site’s unique ancient nature” (“The Good Samaritan Inn”). The site details plans for “restoration of the existing building to accommodate incoming groups, including a praying and religious studies section. Development will include a motel and restaurant modeled in an authentic ‘khan’ style.” In the future, a 150-room “ecological hotel” will be built on the cliffs overlooking the site.

By February 2011, the final pieces fell into place when the website of the Israel Nature and Parks Authority (INPA) declared “New Sites’ Opening – The Inn of The Good Samaritan and more.” The INPA runs nature reserves and archaeological parks in both Israel and the occupied West Bank, including the one at Sebastia, which was previously reported on by The Electronic Intifada. According to the website, the Inn of The Good Samaritan, and the Euthymius and Martyrius monasteries are due to open to the public in July 2011. In addition, the mosaic museum and archaeological remains at these sites will also be opened to tourists. The entrance fees for the sites will pour into Israeli state coffers and, as they are situated within a settlement and will very possibly be run by settler staff, Palestinians will most likely be denied even the privilege of paying the 21 shekel ($6 US) ticket price to the Israeli occupation authorities to visit their own heritage.

A second example lies in the green, intricately curving hills of the central West Bank. On the road between Ramallah and Nablus, near the village of Luban al-Sharqiya and the small town of Sinjel, is Khirbet Seilun, or Tel Shilo. The layers of habitation deposits at the tel (an archaeological term referring to a hill made up of centuries of building remains) show that people have lived there since at least the Canaanite Bronze Age, and there are significant Roman, Byzantine and Islamic remains. Khirbet Seilun is regarded as sacred by some Jews because is has been identified by some historians as the Biblical Shiloh, where the Ark of the Covenant was kept for a period on its travels north from Mount Sinai. Excavations in the early 1980s uncovered remains from the Canaanite and Israelite periods, but nothing resembling the Tabernacle, the building which may have housed the Ark at Shiloh. More recent archaeological digs have been controversial because they have uncovered a spectacular Byzantine mosaic which some settlers want to move so they can continue searching for the Israelite sacred remains they believe lie beneath the three Byzantine churches and two small mosques on the site.

Unlike the Khan al-Ahmar and monasteries of St. Euthymius and St. Martyrius, a visitor center at Tel Shilo is already functioning. Rather than being managed by the INPA, the Tel Shilo site is run by the extremist settlers of Shiloh who, journalists and human rights groups report have been responsible for innumerable attacks, including shootings and arson, against neighboring Palestinian villages and olive farmers. The Shiloh settlement was founded in the 1970s by the Gush Emunim terrorist group, which exploded car bombs against the mayors of several Palestinian cities in 1980, seriously injuring Bassam Shakaa, then mayor of Nablus (see “Shiloh: An Obstacle to Peace,” Time, 13 February 1978 and Nur Masalha, Imperial Israel and the Palestinians, 2000, p 123). Shiloh and the archaeological remains it has appropriated are now marketed as a destination for pilgrimages and religious tourism but, perhaps unsurprisingly given the beliefs of the settlers here, some non-Jewish tourists report being turned away.

Controversy over the archaeological heritage of Khirbet Seilun looks set to escalate. Last month, The Jewish Press reported that the Israeli government had authorized large-scale new excavations at the site. The aims of the excavations were explicitly said by the paper to be “to showcase the life and times of ancient Israel,” which suggests that the archaeologists carrying them out have specific intentions as to what they will find – or not find (“New archaeological effort seeks to unearth Mishkan’s secrets,” 23 March 2011). The article did not name the director of the new excavations, but previous digs at Khirbet Seilun have been led by Rachel Ehrlich, a hard-line settler who, in a profile on one Christian Zionist website, was described as being “determined to put the site [of Shiloh] on the map [as] the place where the people of Israel first entered the land, where religious life for the Jewish people was centered for the 369 years the Tabernacle stood there” (“Uncovering our Past, Christian Friends of Israel Communities).

Tzofia Dorot, the manager of the Shiloh visitor center, made some telling comments to The Jewish Press about the importance to settler public relations of Israel’s appropriation of heritage sites. She claimed that Shiloh has been “seeing more and more local and foreign visitors” and that three companies with proposals for a “major visitor center” had visited the settlement. This activity occurred in spite of the skepticism from archaeologists about whether Dorot’s “headline-making discoveries” were really likely to be made.
Tzofia Dorot’s comments to The Jewish Press illustrate why the expropriation of Palestinian heritage sites – whether by the State of Israel or by settler groups acting as its proxies – has a significance well beyond the loss of individual buildings or artifacts. In the eyes of settlers and their supporters, in Israel and beyond, stealing Palestinian archaeological and architectural heritage isn’t just about attracting tourists with open wallets. It’s about asserting settler claims to the land, by emphasizing Jewish history over and above that of the peoples and faiths who came before and after them in Palestine. It is also about presenting the Jewish people as the legitimate custodians of Palestine’s Christian heritage, diverting attention from Israeli oppression of the world’s oldest and longest-lived Christian communities and reinforcing misconceptions about the Palestinian struggle as a religious rather than anti-colonial movement. As Dorot sees it, the international “effort to discredit and delegitimize our connection to the Land of Israel is gathering steam.” Thus, showing settler archaeology to gullible tourists, she believes, will be vital in countering “the international community’s clamoring for Israel to make concessions.”

Meanwhile, Palestinian heritage organizations such as PACE and Riwaq are increasingly using models of community participation to raise awareness of the value of archaeological remains and the importance of protecting them (Ghattas J. Sayej, “Palestinian archaeology: knowledge, awareness and cultural heritage, Present Pasts, Vol 2, 2010). In Jerusalem, the Centre for Jerusalem Studies and Emek Shaveh are fighting official and settler expropriation of cultural and historical sites. But defending Palestine’s cultural heritage from the Israeli state and settlers is still low on the priority list.

Archaeologists, including Hamdan Taha, director-general of the PA’s Department of Antiquities and Cultural Heritage, have voiced their concerns. And in March 2010 Algeria, Egypt, Kuwait, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Tunisia submitted a provisional agenda item on Netanyahu’s claims at the Haram al-Khalil and Rachel’s Tomb to the UNESCO executive board meeting, noting that “much of the settlement enterprise is concentrated around archaeological areas where Israel makes claims of exclusive heritage, including the settlements of Shilo, Bet El and Kiryat Arba” (see UNESCO Executive Board, Hundred and eighty-fourth session, Item 37 of the provisional agenda, 19 March 2010 [PDF]). After initial failure to reach an agreement, UNESCO declared that it “regretted” Israel’s inclusion of the Haram al-Khalil and Bilal ibn Rahmeh Mosque on a list of its heritage sites and urged it to remove it; it also “regretted” Israel’s “unilateral actions” regarding historical sites in Jerusalem; no mention was made of Tel Shilo (see UNESCO Executive Board, Hundred and eighty-fifth session, Decisions adopted by the executive board, 19 November 2010 [PDF]). But much greater international recognition of and opposition to Israel’s cultural colonialism is needed, if Palestine’s heritage is to be preserved, both for its cultural significance and economic potential.

Sarah Irving is a freelance writer. She worked with the International Solidarity Movement in the occupied West Bank in 2001-02 and with Olive Co-op, promoting fair trade Palestinian products and solidarity visits, in 2004-06. She now writes full-time on a range of issues, including Palestine. Her first book, Gaza: Beneath the Bombs, co-authored with Sharyn Lock, was published in January 2010. She is currently working on a new edition of the Bradt Guide to Palestine and a biography of Leila Khaled.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Jewish settlers order families in OJ to evacuate their homes

[ 19/04/2011 - 02:56 PM ]

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- A group of Jewish settlers affiliated with settlement institutions delivered evacuation notifications to ten Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrah suburb in occupied Jerusalem.

Local sources said on Tuesday that the settlers claimed that those houses were owned by them.

They noted that some of those settlers broke into one of those homes and tried to force the family members out of it but were expelled out of it. They added that the settlers took photos of a number of nearby houses.

The Sheikh Jarrah suburb is a favorite spot for Judaization efforts and settlers constantly attempt to seize control of its homes.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

IOF troops detain 7 in Silwan, a minor in Al-Khalil

[ 17/04/2011 - 09:17 AM ]

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)-- Israeli occupation police forces stormed the Silwan town, south of the holy Aqsa Mosque in occupied Jerusalem, on Sunday triggering confrontations with young men.

Local sources said that Israeli border guards and police stormed three suburbs in the town firing bullets and teargas at random at residential neighborhoods causing breathing problems to many civilians.

They said that young men threw stones and crude firebombs at the police jeeps as plain clothed security men were seen roaming the alleys in a bid to arrest citizens.

The Hebrew radio said on Sunday that the Israeli police rounded up seven Jerusalemites over the past few days on suspicion of throwing stones and firebombs at police vehicles.

It claimed that the youth confessed to the charge of organizing riots in Silwan and would face a trial hearing in the central court on Sunday.

Meanwhile, Israeli occupation forces (IOF) detained a Palestinian minor in Al-Khalil's Old City on Saturday night as he was heading home.

Local sources said that the soldiers took the 15-year-old Mutaz Mohtaseb to the nearby Kiryat Arba settlement.

IOF soldiers at dawn Sunday stormed the city of Jenin and nearby villages but no detentions were reported. The soldiers installed a roadblock between Jenin and Nablus and searched vehicles on Sunday morning.

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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.

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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

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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/.

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Israel steps up Jerusalem expulsions

Even Tony Blair can’t save Palestinian bookseller to the stars

by Jonathan Cook

Global Research, April 13, 2011

Munther Fahmi is known as the “bookseller of Jerusalem”. Among his customers are to be found Tony Blair, Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter and Hollywood actress Uma Thurman.

In a city riven by political and social tensions, Mr Fahmi’s bookshop has provided an oasis of dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis, with well-known writers and scholars from both sides of the divide regularly invited to give readings and talk about their work.

But despite his high-profile connections, Mr Fahmi’s days in the city of his birth look to be numbered.

Israeli officials have told him that, after 16 years running his bookshop in the grounds of East Jerusalem’s landmark 19th-century hotel the American Colony, he is no longer welcome in either Israel or Jerusalem.

Two months ago he exhausted his legal options when Israel’s high court refused to overturn the deportation order. His only hope now rests with a governmental committee to which he has appealed on humanitarian grounds.

Mr Fahmi, 57, is far from optimistic. “My lawyer tells me applications from Palestinians are almost never accepted.”

The holder of an American passport for many years, Mr Fahmi said he was staying on a tourist visa that expired on April 3. “If the committee rejects my case, I will be sent packing on a plane at very short notice.”

Mr Fahmi is one of thousands of Palestinians who over the past four decades have fallen foul of an Israeli policy stripping them of their right to live in Jerusalem, said Dalia Kerstein, director of Hamoked, an Israeli human rights group.

Although Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, in violation of international law, most of its Palestinian population received only Israeli residency permits, not citizenship.

According to Israeli figures, more than 13,000 Palestinians -- from a current population of 260,000 in East Jerusalem -- have had their residency revoked since then.

Ms Kerstein said the number of revocations had risen sharply in recent years, with more than 4,500 Palestinians losing residency in 2008 alone, the last year for which complete figures are available.

Israeli law stipulates that Palestinians in Jerusalem can be stripped of residency if they spent at least seven years abroad -- defined as including the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza -- or acquired a foreign passport.

Since a test case in 1988, the Israeli courts have backed revocations in cases where the authorities claim Palestinians have transferred their “centre of life” elsewhere.

“There is clearly a policy to push Palestinians out of Jerusalem and Israel to reduce what is called here the ‘Palestinian demographic threat’,” said Ms Kerstein. “It’s really a case of ethnic cleansing.”

Last week Hamoked and another human rights group, the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (Acri), petitoned Israel’s supreme court to overturn the policy, arguing that it contravenes international law.

Oded Feller, a lawyer for Acri, said Palestinians in East Jerusalem were effectively “prisoners”, punished by Israel if they took part in a more globalised world.

“The problem for people like Munther is that the Israeli government and the courts treat them as though they are immigrants, ignoring the fact as the city’s native residents they have an inalienable right to live here,” Ms Kerstein said.

Like most other Palestinians in East Jerusalem, Mr Fahmi’s family declined Israeli citizenship in 1967. “We are Palestinians and Israel is occupying us. Why would we take citizenship and give a stamp of legitimacy to our occupation?”

But that decision left him and other Palestinians in Jerusalem in a precarious position.

Mr Fahmi’s residency was revoked -- without his knowledge -- during a long period spent in the United States, starting in 1975 when he left to study. He gained his American passport after marrying there and raising a family.

He decided to settle back in Jerusalem in 1995, after the signing of the Oslo accords. “I had seen Yasser Arafat [the Palestinian leader] and Yitzhak Rabin [Israel’s prime minister] shake hands in front of the White House. Naively, I thought it heralded a new era of reconciliation.”

For the last 16 years, he has been forced to exit and enter the country every few months on a tourist visa.

But Mr Fahmi learnt the full significance of his loss of residency 18 months ago, when interior ministry officials told him that, according to a new policy, he would no longer be automatically issued tourist visas.

Now, he has been told, he can spend only three months a year in Israel, including Jerusalem. In his appeal to the humanitarian committee, he has said he needs to be in Jerusalem to care for his 76-year-old mother.

“Is there any other country where the native population is treated like this in its homeland?” he said.

The policy to withhold tourist visas to Palestinians with foreign passports has been only patchily implemented, said Ms Kerstein, following objections from US and European embassies.

Mr Fahmi appeared a surprising choice for enforcement, given his influential supporters. A petition has attracted more than 2,000 signatures, including those of the British novelist Ian McEwan, who won this year’s Jerusalem Prize for literature, the historian Eric Hobsbawn, and Simon Sebag Montefiore, whose book Jerusalem: The Biography has been a bestseller.

Mr Fahmi hopes backing from many Israelis and diaspora Jews, including Israel’s two most famous novelists, Amos Oz and David Grossman, may forestall his expulsion.

“I hope the authorities will take note that many of my supporters are people who describe themselves as friends of Israel,” he said.

Mr Grossman told Reuters news agency last week that the Israeli government’s actions were “a scandal”.

Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Middle East history at Columbia University in New York, who has also signed the petition, said Mr Fahmi’s case highlighted Israel’s determination to maintain a clear Jewish majority in Jerusalem.

A formula devised by an Israeli government committee in 1973 fixed the percentage ratio of Israeli Jews to Palestinians in the city at 73 to 27. Despite an aggressive policy of settling Jews in East Jerusalem, higher birth rates among Palestinians have seen their proportion swell to just over a third of the city’s total population.

“There isn’t a family I know in East Jerusalem that doesn’t have someone affected by this revocation policy,” said Prof Khalidi. “It’s systematic.”

Last year Israel appeared to be expanding the policy when it revoked the residency of four Hamas members of the Palestinian legislative council who live in East Jerusalem.

Earlier this year it also banned from Jerusalem Adnan Gheith, a prominent Palestinian political activist who has opposed a Jewish settlement drive in his Silwan neighbourhood of East Jerusalem. He was told to keep out of the city for four months.

Reports in the Israeli media suggest that Israel’s security services have drawn up a list of several hundred activists in Jerusalem who they want issued with expulsion orders.

In an indication of the fear among Palestinians in East Jerusalem that their residency rights are under threat, Israeli officials have noted a marked increase in Palestinians applying for Israeli citizenship over the past five years.

Figures this year from the Israeli interior ministry revealed that about 13,000 Jerusalem Palestinians, or 5 per cent of the population, are now Israeli citizens.

Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

A version of this article originally appeared in The National (http://www.thenational.ae/), published in Abu Dhabi.

Jonathan Cook is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Jonathan Cook
River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian