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

Dweik slams international double standards towards issue of prisoners

[ 18/04/2011 - 01:47 PM ]

RAMALLAH, (PIC)-- Speaker of the Palestinian legislative council Dr. Aziz Dweik strongly denounced the international double standards and hypocrisy towards the issue of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Dr. Dweik made his remarks in a sit-in organized by families of prisoners on Sunday outside the Red Cross headquarters in Ramallah city on the 37th Palestinian prisoner day.

Dr. Dweik stated in his speech that the international community blatantly turns a blind eye to thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and only pays attention to one Israeli soldier detained in the Gaza Strip.

He said this sit-in was aimed to remind the world and human rights organizations of the suffering of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and their families.

The speaker also appealed in his speech to the international community to do justice to the two Palestinian lawmakers and one former minister who resorted to the Red Cross building in occupied Jerusalem after Israel decided to expel them from their native holy city.

The speaker also referred to the suffering of isolated prisoners, women and children locked up in Israeli jails and expressed hope the international community could enable them to live in dignity like humans.

In Al-Khalil city on the same day, hundreds of Palestinians and families of prisoners went on a march in solidarity with prisoners in Israeli jails following a ceremony organized by the Palestinian prisoner society to commemorate the Palestinian prisoner day.

Massive crowds also gathered in Gamal Abdulnasser park of Nablus city to mark the day.

They carried banners demanding freedom and rights for Palestinian prisoners.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

PCDD calls for boosted release efforts on Palestinian Prisoner Day - Captives fast to mark Palestinian Prisoner Day

Captives fast to mark Palestinian Prisoner Day

[ 17/04/2011 - 12:54 PM ]

WEST BANK, (PIC)-- 6,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons have gone on hunger strike to mark Palestinian prisoner day on April 17. About 245 of them are children.

The strike serves as a prelude to an open-ended hunger strike to be concluded when the prisoners demands for medical attention and an end to the Israeli prison system's policy of isolation are met.

According to a report released on the Palestinian prisoner day by Abdul Nasser Farwana, just about every Palestinian household has had members jailed, if not the entire family as has sometimes happened. The report details that Israel has arrested some 750,000 Palestinians since the 1967 war and occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, including nearly 12,000 women and tens of thousands of children.

The report says that most of the arrests were unrelated to occupation's security as alleged by Israeli occupation security forces, as the arrests have taken place in a manner that contradicts international and humanitarian law, in terms of how the conditions and places of arrest and the torture used to elicit confessions. There has also been no consideration for the special needs of women, children and the ill.

Figures have it that 820 of the current detainees have been sentenced to life in prison, including five women.

The Tadhamon prisoner rights organization has released another report on this day and said it has information proving that mass numbers of Palestinian children held in the prisons were subjected to torture or brutal treatment as they were arrested by Israel occupation force soldiers. Many were hospitalized due to the torture they underwent during violent interrogations, the report says, noting cases of degrading treatment, sexual assault and repeated threats.

PCDD calls for boosted release efforts on Palestinian Prisoner Day

[ 17/04/2011 - 10:10 AM ]

GAZA, (PIC)-- The Palestinian center to defend detainees has called for increased efforts to help release Palestinians held in Israeli jails marking Palestinian Prisoner Day on April 17.

The rights group confirmed that the Israeli occupation government continues to engage in abusive practice against its Palestinian captives and called on rights groups to pressure Israel to abide by international conventions protecting the rights of prisoners taken by an occupying force.

According to data provided by the PCDD in a fresh press release, the Israeli prison administration is currently holding 6,800 Palestinians, among them 36 women and 340 children. 304 of those prisoners were imprisoned before the Oslo Accords and 137 have been jailed for more than 20 years. Some 1,600 prisoners have fallen ill and are denied proper medical attention and doctor visits, the report states.

The most prominent violation the PCDD highlighted was solitary confinement and medical neglect.

PCDD director Ismail Thawabita vowed that the center would continue to fight for the Palestinian prisoners in ”all local, regional and international forums” until the day of their release.

Thawabita called on Palestinian factions that have captured Gilad Shalit to stand firm on their demands to release the tortured resistance prisoners in a swap deal, confirming that the Palestinians support those demands.

• Jabr: Prisoners in Israeli jails experiencing harsh conditions
• Report: More than 130 prison raids in 2010
• IOF troops violently disperse relatives of Palestinian prisoners

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Prisoners go on hunger strike to mark Palestinian Prisoner Day

[ 16/04/2011 - 05:06 PM ]

GAZA, (PIC)-- Palestinians held in Israeli prisons have decided to go on hunger strike on Sunday as a warning before going on an open ended hunger strike soon in order to have their demands met for an end to isolation and medical neglect, the Gaza ministry of prisoner affairs said on Saturday.

The ministry called on the Palestinian masses to take to the streets and show solidarity with those prisoners going on hunger strike as they mark Palestinian Prisoner Day in order to draw attention to their cause.

”The prisoner circumstances have reached the worst stage altogether. The prison administration has closed every door in front of them, and there remains nothing for them except to go on an open hunger strike until their legal rights are attained,” the ministry said in a fresh statement.

”The strike will not be successful unless there is a strong, parallel, and simultaneous solidarity campaign, in order to send a clear message to Israel that we will not renounce our prisoners, and we will not leave them easy prey for the Israeli prison system.”

The statement addressed Israel and the family of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured by resistance forces, asserting that the continued detention of Palestinian prisoners would force factions to try and capture more soldiers in order to negotiate the freedom of more Palestinian prisoners.

”If you want to regain your son Shalit, you must pressure your government in order to end its practices against those prisoners and meet the conditions of the factions and release the long time prisoners who have spent more than twenty years in detention.

Without that you will never see Shalit, but rather you will be forced to pay an even greater price should Allah permit that the resistance factions capture more soldiers.”

• Haneyya: Shalit capturers will not fail POW families
• IOF troops detain 845 Palestinians in three months including 105 children

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Popular committee planning march to occupied Palestine borders

[ 16/04/2011 - 09:59 AM ]

AMMAN, (PIC)-- The Jordanian popular committee to commemorate the Nakba (catastrophe) announced it was planning a march to the Jordanian borders with occupied Palestine on the 64th anniversary of the Nabka on 15th May.

Tawfik Abu Ershaid, the committee's spokesman, said on Friday that the march would pose as a symbolic return of Palestinian refugees to their occupied homeland.

He added that a massive sit-in and rally would be organized in front of the UN offices in Amman among other events that would be organized over a week to remember the Nakba back in 1948 when Zionist gangs usurped the land of Palestine and declared the state of Israel.

 The committee urged Jordanians in general and Palestinian refugees in Jordan in particular to participate in the events.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

PA prisoners' families call for their release

[ 13/04/2011 - 04:01 PM ]

RAMALLAH, (PIC)-- With Palestinian Prisoner Day coming next Sunday, the families of Palestinians held by the Palestinian Authority security agencies in the West Bank have renewed calls for the freedom of their relatives and to turn the pages of the past.

The PA currently holds more than 500 of such men in its prisons as the de facto PA chief Mahmoud Abbas has made fresh calls for a unity government with Hamas.

"Prisoner Day calls for us to turn the pages of the past and open a new page of brotherly ties and to pave the way for reconciliation and an end to the split by releasing those who have been abducted and held as political prisoners," said Mohammed Natshe, whose brother from Al-Khalil is currently held by the PA.

”It is irrational that Prisoner Day events are held and that the day gets special mention in West Bank schools without mentioning the suffering of more than 500 prisoners in the PA who are held on the same charges as the more than 6,000 male and 40 female prisoners in the Israeli prisons,” he said.

Separately, a Palestinian youth movement to end the Palestinian political split has condemned the PA security agencies after they destroyed a sit-in tent the movement set up in the West Bank city of Salfit. The militia men also summoned the activists to conduct investigations.

According to a statement released by the youth movement, the militia men engaged in a number of actions that clearly displayed ”tyranny and suppression of freedoms”. The PA intelligence service also summoned some of those activists for questioning.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

Israeli education ministry launches Land Day witch hunt

Report, The Electronic Intifada, 13 April 2011

Palestinians mark Land Day in Jaffa, March 2011. (Oren Ziv/ActiveStills)

Educators and students who took part in the 35th annual Land Day commemorations on 30 March are being investigated by the Israeli education ministry, which sent letters to Palestinian schools inside Israel demanding to see attendance reports.

Land Day is the annual day of remembrance for six Palestinians with Israeli citizenship gunned down by Israeli forces in 1976 during a general strike in protest of expanded land confiscation inside the state. Since Land Day protests began, many Palestinian citizens of Israel, across all sectors, have engaged in general strikes on 30 March.

The Alternative Information Center reported that "Dr. Orna Simchon, director of the [Israeli] Education Ministry's northern district, sent a letter to Palestinian schools in the region on Land Day, demanding to know whether classes were held that day and if not, why. They were also asked to immediately report the attendance records for the day, including lists of teachers who had and had not come to school" ("Israel Begins Witch Hunt against Palestinian Educators, Pupils who Honoured Land Day," 6 April 2011).

The Follow-up Committee on Arab Education - Israel responded to the investigation, sending a letter to members of the Knesset (Parliament) and the Ministry of Education.

The letter stated, in part: "We wish to emphasize that this is the full right of the Arab population, as a national minority and as citizens with equal rights, to conduct a strike in order to protest policies of discrimination and home demolitions, together with the worrying racist tendencies that have picked up speed in the state, in addition to the raging racism that is expressed by, amongst other ways, racist legislation that pushes Israel to become an apartheid state."

The letter demanded that education ministry officials cease the investigations and "persecution of the Arab teachers," and added that "[s]uch inexplicable steps serve solely to increase the feeling of distrust of the Arab public in the system and the alienation amongst Arab pupils, teachers and parents."

The Israeli daily Haaretz reported that Palestinian schools in Lydd were personally visited by education ministry representatives, who conducted "surprise visits that morning and checked which teachers were absent" ("Education Ministry hunting for Arab teachers absent on Land Day," 11 April 2011).

A teacher told Haaretz: "We felt like we were under a military regime ... Like they were searching for criminals."

This attack on Palestinians with Israeli citizenship who participate in actions that commemorate Palestinian struggle and resistance comes on the heels of the Knesset recently passing the so-called Nakba Law, which criminalizes recognition of the expulsion of more than 750,000 indigenous Palestinians during the establishment of the State of Israel in 1947-48.