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CONFLICT IN CITIES AND THE CONTESTED STATE Everyday life and the possibilities for transformation in Belfast, Jerusalem and other divided cities

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JERUSALEM WEB REVIEW

10th Jan -23rd Feb 2010

1 Jerusalem Web Review (1st Jan -23rd Feb 2010)

Contents

Mamilla/ Museum of Tolerance

1. Campaign to preserve Mamilla Jerusalem Cemetery 2. Jerusalem families come out against museum built on ancestors' graves 3. Gehry Will Not Design Jerusalem’s Museum of Tolerance

Sheikh Jarrah – Protests and Evictions

4. Jerusalem to turn Sheikh Jarrah land into parking lot near Jewish tomb 5. Confronting Settlement Expansion in East Jerusalem 6. Why are they really demonstrating in Sheikh Jarrah? 7. The Sheikh Jarrah Demonstrations: What Protestors Need to Know 8. Sheikh Jarrah: Going Mainstream

Planning and Settlement expansions

9. Making Bricks Without Straw: The Jerusalem Municipality’s New Planning Policy for East Jerusalem 10. What to Do With the Settlements? 11. Only an idiot would say Israel has frozen settlement activity

Crackdown on NGO’s/Activists

12. Israel's NGO crackdown spells trouble 13. J'lem police 'waging war' on secular protests, activists say

Other current issues

14. Is Israel severing East Jerusalem from the West Bank 15. 'PA officials involved in sale of Jerusalem assets to Jewish groups' 16. Children as young as 12 arrested in night raids in Silwan, East Jerusalem 17. Interview with Fakhri Abu-Diab: Can Non-Violence Work in Jerusalem? 18. Israel Detains Around 60 In Shu'fat Refugee Camp Raid 19. Israel stole $2 billion from Palestinian workers 20. Israel silently allows Palestinians to open Jerusalem institutions 21. This police station is brought to you by: A right-wing NGO 22. Spitting on Christians in Jerusalem raises eyebrows 23. Land collapse at main entrance to Al-Wad in the Old City

2 Mamilla/ Museum of Tolerance

1. Campaign to preserve Mamilla Jerusalem Cemetery PNN, 2/20/2010 http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7883

A. THE MAMILLA CEMETERY: ITS HISTORY AND IMPORTANCE

The Petitioners are individuals whose human rights have been violated by the destruction and desecration of an ancient Muslim cemetery, the Ma’man Allah (Mamilla) cemetery in Jerusalem, by the government of Israel working in conjunction with the Simon Wiesenthal Center (“SWC”) of Los Angeles, California, USA. Petitioners also include human rights non-governmental organizations concerned about this desecration. A significant portion of the cemetery is being destroyed and hundreds of human remains are being desecrated so that SWC can build a facility to be called the “Center for Human Dignity - Museum of Tolerance” on this sacred Muslim site.

The Mamilla cemetery has been a Muslim burial ground since the 7th century, when companions of the Prophet Muhammad were reputedly buried there. Before that, it was the site of a Byzantine church and cemetery. It is well attested as housing the remains of soldiers and officials of the Muslim ruler Saladin from the 12th century, as well as generations of important Jerusalem families and notables.The cemetery grounds also contain numerous monuments, structures, and gravestones attesting to its hallowed history, including the ancient Mamilla Pool, which dates back to the Herodian period, or the 1st century B.C. Since 1860, the cemetery has been clearly demarcated by stone walls and a road surrounding its 134.5 dunums (about 33 acres). The antiquity of the cemetery was confirmed by the Chief Excavator assigned to excavate the Museum site by the Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA), who reported that over 400 graves containing human remains buried according to Muslim traditions were exhumed or exposed during excavations on the Museum site, many dating to the 12th century. His estimation that at least two thousand additional graves remain under the Museum site in 4 layers, the lowest dating to the 11th century, also verifies the antiquity and importance of the cemetery.

The Mamilla cemetery’s significance was recognized by successive authorities. It was declared an historical site during the British Mandate by the Supreme Muslim Council in 1927, and as an antiquities site by the British in 1944.6 It continued in active use as a burial ground throughout the Mandatory era. In 1948, soon after the new State of Israel seized the western part of Jerusalem, where Mamilla is located, the Jordanian government objected to any desecration of the cemetery. The Israeli Religious Affairs Ministry acknowledged in response Mamilla’s great importance to the Muslim community in a communiqué,stating: [Mamilla] is considered to be one of the most prominent Muslim cemeteries, where seventy thousand Muslim warriors of Salah al-Din al-Ayubi’s [Saladin’s] armies are interred along with many Muslim scholars. Israel will always know to protect and respect this site. In 1986, in response to urgent protests to the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural

3 Organization (UNESCO) regarding destruction of parts of the Mamilla cemetery, Israel avowed that “no project exists for the deconsecration of the site and that on the contrary the site and its tombs are to be safeguarded.” Subsequently, the IAA itself included Mamilla on its list of “Special Antiquities Sites” in Jerusalem, and determined it to be a site of especially high value with “historical, cultural and architectural importance,” on which there should be no development, and which should be rehabilitated and maintained.

These earlier proclamations by Israeli authorities appeared to recognize the sacredness with which Muslims view their burial grounds, and the Mamilla cemetery in particular. Islamic jurisprudence consistently holds burial sites to be eternally sanctified, and disinterment of human remains is expressly prohibited. As with other monotheistic religions, the rites and beliefs associated with death and burial are an integral part of the religious practices and beliefs of Muslims everywhere.

B. ISRAEL’S PROGRESSIVE DESECRATION OF MAMILLA FAILS ITS OBLIGATION TO PROTECT HOLY SITES UNDER ITS CONTROL

The western part of Jerusalem, including the Mamilla cemetery, came under Israeli control in 1948. This was despite United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 of 1947, which aimed to create an international corpus separatum for Jerusalem and ensure the protection of all holy sites. The resolution specified that “existing rights in respect of Holy Places and religious buildings or sites shall not be denied or impaired,” and that “Holy Places and religious buildings or sites shall be preserved. No act shall be permitted which may in any way impair their sacred character.” On 9 December 1949, the United Nations General Assembly, in resolution 303(IV), restated its intention that “Jerusalem should be placed under a permanent international regime, which should envisage appropriate guarantees for the protection of the Holy Places, both within and outside Jerusalem …” In 1967, after occupying the remainder of Jerusalem, Israel passed the Holy Places Law which purports to protect religious sites from violators.

Notwithstanding the above, the government of Israel, over several decades, has progressively encroached upon the cemetery with the construction of roads, buildings, parking lots and parks. Israel has ignored the repeated protests of Jerusalemites and other Palestinians (as well as Jews and others) against these desecrations, which included appeals to international bodies such as UNESCO. Amir Cheshen, former Arab-Affairs Advisor to Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek from 1984-94, who has first- hand knowledge of such events, confirmed this history of protest, stating that:

Islamic stakeholders, particularly in Jerusalem, also among the Muslim community both in Israel and abroad, never abandoned their interest in what transpired in the cemetery, nor their sensitivity in this regard. And they always viewed construction that damaged the tombs and human remains as a violation of sanctity and their religious sensibilities.

The latest incursion, and the one most outrageous to the Petitioners and others, involves the construction of this so-called “Center for Human Dignity – Museum of Tolerance” by the SWC, with the support of the Israeli government. This

4 construction project has resulted in the undignified disinterment and disposal of several hundred of graves and human remains, the exact amount and whereabouts of which are currently unknown, and threatens to erect a monument to “Human Dignity” and “Tolerance” atop thousands more graves. It has proceeded in the face of ongoing opposition to this desecration by Palestinian individuals and organizations, by numerous Jewish individuals and organizations who morally oppose the project,and notwithstanding opposition from the current Israeli Mayor of Jerusalem, who early on urged that the museum not be built on the Mamilla cemetery site.

The petitioners have exhausted all means at their disposal to prevent further desecration of this sacred cemetery and, hence, bring the matter to your urgent attention, as Israel’s conduct blatantly violates international human rights law, as detailed below.

C. ISRAEL’S TREATMENT OF MAMILLA IS PART OF A PATTERN OF DISREGARD FOR MUSLIM RELIGIOUS SITES

Israel’s actions on the Mamilla cemetery illustrate the state’s disdain for the religious and spiritual beliefs and sentiments that holy sites engender among Palestinians and Muslims everywhere. The disparity in the treatment of Jewish and non-Jewish holy sites is clear. There is a marked inequality, for example, in the treatment of Jewish remains found on construction sites and those of non-Jews. This is illustrated by the fact that Jewish religious authorities are immediately called upon when it is believed that there are Jewish remains so that they be accorded proper religious treatment and excavations may be stopped. In contrast, as in the case of Mamilla and other non- Jewish sites known to be Muslim cemeteries, no Muslim religious authorities were consulted in order that the remains and the cemetery be dealt with according to Islamic law. As Gideon Suleimani, the Chief Excavator appointed by the Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA) to excavate the Museum site on Mamilla attested, “[A Ministry of Religion official] came to the site and told me, 'If one Jewish skeleton were found, I would stop the excavations immediately.’ But no Jewish remains were found and [he] was not concerned.” This attitude on the part of Israeli authorities, and the discriminatory practices underlying it, is confirmed by a recent study on the treatment of non-Jewish holy sites in Israel, which documents several cases in which Israeli authorities continued construction works despite the discovery of Muslim graves during construction projects.

The desecration occurring at Mamilla is, thus, part of a larger pattern of disrespect, denigration, and desecration of the cultural heritage, including religious sites such as cemeteries, of non-Jewish individuals and groups by the Israeli state. This pattern of discrimination was discussed in a recent report by the Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion and belief, stating that: all the 136 places which have been designated as holy sites until the end of 2007 are Jewish and the Government of Israel has so far only issued implementing regulations for Jewish holy sites.The United States State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report of 2009 similarly found that:

The Government [of Israel] implements regulations only for Jewish sites. Non-Jewish Holy Sites do not enjoy legal protection . . . because the Government does not recognize them as official holy sites…While well-known sites have de facto

5 protection as a result of their international importance, many Muslim and Christian sites are neglected, inaccessible, or threatened by property developers and municipalities.

Given this pattern of discrimination, not only with regard to the treatment of holy sites, but in all facets of the Israeli government’s relationship with the Muslim and Christian communities under its control,23 it is no surprise that attempts to stop the desecration of Mamilla, legally and otherwise, have been rebuffed by Israeli authorities.

D. EXHAUSTION OF REMEDIES

Numerous avenues have been pursued in attempting to stop the current desecration of the Mamilla cemetery. Resort to the Israeli judiciary has been futile. Although a petition to halt construction presented to the Israeli Muslim Shari’a Court was granted, the Israeli High Court overruled it, holding that the Shari’a court lacked jurisdiction. The High Court ultimately ruled, on a separate petition, that construction on the cemetery was lawful. Significantly, since the High Court ruling in October, 2008, it has been revealed that the High Court’s decision was based on serious misrepresentations made by the Israeli Antiquities Authority (IAA) regarding the extent of graves and human remains located on the site and discovered during excavations. In particular, Gideon Suleimani, the Chief Excavator assigned by the IAA to excavate the site, attested that the IAA withheld from the High Court his considered conclusion that the site should not be approved for construction. This conclusion was based on the facts that:

• his archaeological excavations were completed in only 10% of the entire project site, while in the remaining 90% of the site, “excavation was either only partial or preliminary”;25 • “A total of 250 skeletons were excavated, some of them from secondary burials, and another 200 graves were exposed but not excavated,”26 and, • the site contains at least 4 more as yet unexcavated layers of Muslim graves dating back to at least the 11th century, with an estimated 2000 graves remaining under the site.27

Instead of forwarding these conclusions to the High Court, the IAA withheld Suleimani’s report and submitted to the Court that there were no impediements to construction on most of the site, and released it for construction. The High Court ruling relied in large part on the submissions of the IAA that only a small portion of the Museum site contained the majority of the human remains found, that the excavations were otherwise complete, and that “no scientific data remained,” all of which contradicted the findings of the IAA’s own Chief Excavator, Suleimani. Suleimani has since declared that the IAA “under pressures on the part of the entrepreneurs and politicians, participated in the destruction of a valuable archeological site,” and that its conduct constitutes an “archeological crime.”As he stated in an interview, “We’re talking about tens of thousands of skeletons under the ground there, and not just a few dozen.”

6 A subsequent petition to nullify the IAA’s decision to release the site for construction, based on the above revelations, has recently been denied by the High Court on largely procedural grounds, namely, that there was nothing in the second petition that was novel, and that it therefore could not reconsider its previous ruling. While stating that Suleimani’s report to the IAA had been submitted to the Court during hearings on the previous petition, the Court did not address, as it had failed to do in its first judgment, the significant contradictions between Suleimani’s report and the information provided by the IAA regarding the progress and results of the excavations on the site. Rather, it reiterated the IAA’s version of the results, which its Chief Excavator Suleimani attested was “a factual and archaeological lie.” This showed a puzzling disregard of the facts that should have been central to the Court’s decision in both judgments, namely, that the Museum’s construction was taking place on an ancient cemetery site replete with Muslim graves and human remains, which were being desecrated in the process. This ruling, together with the Court’s 2008 ruling, clearly illustrates the Court’s bias in favor of allowing the SWC “Center for Human Dignity - Museum of Tolerance” to be constructed. Its decisions make evident that the High Court, in keeping with the Israeli judiciary’s clear bias in favor of Jewish interests above those of Palestinians, views Israel’s development prerogatives as more important than respecting the religious beliefs of and preserving the cultural heritage of its disdained minority Muslim and Christian populations.

Informal avenues to convince the Israeli authorities and the U.S. backers of the project (the SWC) to consider alternative locations have also been unsuccessful, and have revealed the callousness of these authorities to the claims of Palestinians and Muslims regarding their rights and feelings toward the desecration of the cemetery. Petitioners thus have no recourse but to international human rights law and the institutions tasked with upholding it, to which this petition is submitted.

E. INTERNATIONAL LAW VIOLATIONS

Construction of the Museum on a portion of the cemetery constitutes a violation of numerous international human rights, including:

• The right to protection of cultural heritage and cultural property, including religious sites such as cemeteries, as guaranteed by international human rights instruments such as the UNESCO World Heritage Convention, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), and buttressed by extensive international humanitarian law protections, the principles of which are considered customary international law principles. • The right to manifest religious beliefs, as propounded in the UDHR and the ICCPR. • The right to freedom from discrimination, as set forth in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), the ICCPR and the ICESCR. IV. The right to family and culture, as set forth in the UDHR, ICCPR, and the ICESCR.

F. REQUESTS FOR ACTION

In light of these violations, the petitioners request the following actions on the part of the officials and bodies addressed herein:

• Petitioners request that the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion and Belief, the Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, and the Independent Expert in the Field of Cultural Rights urgently demand that the Government of Israel: 1. Immediately halt further construction of the Museum of Tolerance on the Mamilla cemetery site; 2. Document and reveal to the petitioners the whereabouts of all human remains and artifacts, as well as archaeological fragments and monuments exhumed in the construction; 3. Recover and rebury all human remains where they were originally found, in coordination with, and under the supervision of, the competent Muslim authorities in Jerusalem; and, 4. Declare the entire historic site of the Mamilla cemetery an antiquity, to be preserved and protected henceforth by its rightful custodians, the Muslim Waqf (public endowment) authorities in Jerusalem.

• Based on the mandate laid out in the Human Rights Council resolution of October 21, 2009, petitioners request that the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights consider this complaint on an urgent basis and investigate and report on Israel’s violation of the above human rights, which, together with other Israeli actions that degrade or damage non-Jewish religious sites, constitute a pattern of gross violations of the human rights of Palestinians and Muslims. • Petitioners request that the Director General of UNESCO consider this complaint in light of existing UNESCO resolutions on the subject and the human rights violations alleged herein, and coordinate efforts with the above- mentioned United Nations officials in order that the Mamilla cemetery, a cultural and religious heritage site of great value, be preserved and protected. • Petitioners request that the Government of Switzerland, in its capacity as depository of the Fourth Geneva Convention, consider this issue in the context of resuming the High Contracting Parties’ Conference to the Fourth Geneva Convention. •

2. Jerusalem families come out against museum built on ancestors' graves Marian Houk, The Electronic Intifada, 19/02/ 2010

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article11085.shtml

Members of prominent Palestinian families from Jerusalem came out last week in protest against plans by the Simon Wiesenthal Center to build a Museum of Tolerance on top of part of the ancient Mamilla Cemetery where their ancestors are buried.The initiative includes filing a petition in Geneva to various United Nations human rights bodies and to UNESCO, the Paris-based UN agency responsible for protecting the world's cultural heritage. The petition was also addressed to the Swiss Government, which is the repository for the Geneva Conventions.

One family member behind the initiative said it is not just symbolic, but instead a full- blown campaign. He expects this issue to be included in a resolution being drafted for a March session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. In the East Jerusalem press conference at which this initiative was announced last week, petitioner Asem Khalidi noted that a number of men from Salah al-Din's army, who liberated Jerusalem from the Crusaders, were buried in the Mamilla Cemetery. Much of the momentum behind the initiative comes from Palestinians who grew up and who still live in the Diaspora, many of them in the United States. Press conferences were held in Jerusalem, Geneva and Los Angeles, home of the Simon Wiesenthal Center (and the first Museum of Tolerance, built in 1993), which says it is moving forward with its plans despite passionate legal and moral opposition.

Mamilla Cemetery

The corner of the Mamilla Cemetery slated for construction was paved over in the 1960s, and used as a car park. When excavations began on the site in 2005, human remains were found, and the chief archeologist stated that he believed there were many thousands of graves in many levels in that section of the cemetery.

The cemetery is situated in West Jerusalem, which fell under Israeli control during the fighting that surrounded the proclamation of the self-declared Jewish state in mid- May 1948. There have been no new burials since that time. From the May 1948 war, until the June 1967 war when Israeli forces captured East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank, the cemetery was inaccessible to many if not most of the Palestinian families concerned, who were living under Jordanian administration.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center claims that it has spent a lot of money on reburying -- in "a nearby Muslim cemetery" -- the remains it has excavated there. However, a press release announcing the initiative of the Palestinian families said that "It was an active burial ground until 1948, when the new State of Israel seized the western part of Jerusalem and the cemetery fell under Israeli control ... The construction project has resulted in the disinterment and disposal of hundreds of graves and human remains, the whereabouts of which are currently unknown."

The Los Angeles-based center broke ground for the Jerusalem branch of the Museum of Tolerance in a corner of the Mamilla Cemetery in May 2004. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger delivered the keynote address.

Families denied justice

9 There are 60 individual Palestinian petitioners from some 15 Jerusalem families including Adnan Husseini, the Palestinian Authority's appointed Governor of Jerusalem; AbdulQader Husseini, the son of the late Faisal Husseini, who was the Palestine Liberation Organization representative in Jerusalem; and Sari Nusseibeh, head of Al-Quds University in Abu Dis.

Rashid Khalidi, Professor of History at Columbia University in New York, who is also a petitioner, has been closely involved in organizing this effort. In an interview with Democracy Now! he explained that the petitioners are asking that the Mamilla Cemetery be treated as a heritage site. "This is a cemetery where people have been buried since the 12th century ... The fact that it is still being desecrated, not just by this Museum, but by vandalism of the remaining tombs, is a scandal". He said the families were also asking for "reinterment of the excavated remains under religious supervision", with information provided to the families about exactly where "within the cemetery."

Palestinian and Israeli co-petitioners include the organizations Al-Haq, Addameer, Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, the Arab Association for Human Rights, Badil and the Zochrot Association. Because it is in West Jerusalem, Palestinians have been hesitant to take any high-profile action asserting either physical or moral claims. Until now, much of the opposition to the building plan has come from Israeli and Jewish rights activists who have argued, in part, that the construction on this site offended their Jewish beliefs and values. They have worked through the Israeli court system, and through appeals directed mainly to Israeli and international Jewish public opinion.

Gershon Baskin, co-director and founder of the Israeli Palestinian Center for Research and Information (IPCRI), told this reporter that the first he heard of the Museum of Tolerance project was in newspaper reports of the ground-breaking ceremony. "We came in only after the whole thing was licensed and all the legal proceedings were finished -- and this is one argument that the court used against our petitions."

The Israeli high court has recently dismissed another challenge and ruled that the Museum of Tolerance construction project is legal, and can proceed. Baskin believes that the legal avenues in Israel are now basically now closed.

Meanwhile, a private Palestinian offer to donate an alternative location for the Museum of Tolerance hasn't been taken up by the Wiesenthal center.

At a public discussion sponsored by IPCRI in East Jerusalem in March 2009, attended by lawyers representing the Wiesenthal Center and the Museum of Tolerance project in West Jerusalem, Dr. Mohammad Dajani of Al-Quds University in Abu Dis offered to donate alternative land for construction of the museum in Anata near the concrete wall that Israel is currently building around the Jerusalem area. The offer was for 12 dunams (one dunam is approximately 1,000 square meters). At that alternative site, Dr. Dajani said to the public meeting, both Israelis and Palestinians could visit the future Museum of Tolerance -- which many Palestinians would not be able to do if it were built in the heart of West Jerusalem, as is currently planned.

The lawyers for the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Museum of Tolerance merely smiled, without replying.

10 About six months ago, Dr. Dajani said, he was surprised by an Israeli military decision to confiscate, "for security reasons," about half of the parcel of land he had offered for the museum project. Just this past week, he said, he received a new notification that the military intends to take the remaining six or so dunams as well. He said he is challenging the order.

Marian Houk is a journalist currently working in Jerusalem with experience at the United Nations and in the region. Her blog is www.un-truth.com.

3. Gehry Will Not Design Jerusalem’s Museum of Tolerance Artinfo, 15/01/ 2010 http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/33643/gehry-will-not-design-jerusalems- museum-of-tolerance/

JERUSALEM—After years of protests and an unfruitful legal challenge, the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem can add one more obstacle to its long-running list: Architect Frank Gehry has pulled out.

Craig Webb, the design partner in charge of the project for the Gehry Partners firm, declined to explain the decision, telling the Web site Tablet earlier this week that the project is something “we are no longer involved in,” and “it is politically very sensitive.”

UPDATE: Now Gehry himself has released a statement that contradicts Webb's comments. “Contrary to a published report quoting my partner Craig Webb, this parting has nothing whatsoever to do with perceived political sensitivities,” he says. The LA- based Simon Wiesenthal Center, which is overseeing the planning of the museum, also released a statement to Tablet via e-mail that seems to confirm Gehry's assertion, saying that the decision to go with someone other than Gehry was made “to reflect today’s world economic realities.” The Museum of Tolerance is slated to be built on a parking lot that was once part of an ancient Muslim cemetery. Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat has given the project his full support in such statements as, “I don’t see any problem with the site, it’s a non-issue,” but the city’s former deputy mayor, Meron Benvenisti, has denounced it as “so hallucinatory, so irrelevant, so foreign, so megalomaniac.”

In addition, Israeli scholars, cultural figures, Orthodox leaders, and some American rabbis are vehemently opposing the project. A number of British architects have signed a petition condemning the idea of the museum as a “blow to peaceful coexistence” in the city.

Shimon Shamir, head of the Institute for Diplomacy and Regional Cooperation at Tel Aviv University, said he met with Gehry in Los Angeles two years ago in an attempt to persuade him to withdraw from the project. Shamir said, “I explained what a big mistake it was” and that “I hope it will never be built.”

11 This is not the first time that Gehry has been unable to see a big-profile project come to fruition: The architect’s design for the controversial Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn was dropped last June.

Sheikh Jarrah – Protests and Evictions

4. Jerusalem to turn Sheikh Jarrah land into parking lot near Jewish tomb Nir Hasson, Haaretz, 18/02/2010 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1150665.html

The Jerusalem municipality will appropriate a plot of land in East Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood to build a public parking lot near the tomb of a Second Temple- era high priest, despite arguments that the move is intended to benefit Jewish pilgrims and expand the Jewish presence in East Jerusalem.

The plan is the brainchild of city council member Yair Gabbay, who said a parking lot is required for visitors to the tomb of Simon the Just, or Shimon Hatzadik.

"There are days when thousands of people come to the tomb, and safety and security issues complicate their visit," Gabbay said. "This tomb was there long before the Arabs arrived - there is no dispute among archaeologists about that." The municipality is not expected to offer financial compensation to the owner of the plot in question, even though it previously required a Palestinian company seeking to build a hotel in the area to pay for the right to build there.

Neighborhood residents and non-governmental organizations maintain parking is not limited in Sheikh Jarrah, and say the lot is intended to benefit Jewish visitors alone.

Both the municipality and Gabbay, who said he hopes the parking lot will be built within two months, maintain there is a parking shortage and that the lot will benefit Arabs as well as Jews.

"All those who live there, both Arabs and Jews, lack proper parking," said Gabbay. "We'll build a lot for everyone's use - no one will be asked to identify himself upon entering."

The Jerusalem municipality said in a statement that parking, not politics, was behind the move.

"The lot will be designated as a public space," the municipality said. "The municipality recently built a parking lot in the neighborhood of Silwan in response to a request from the neighborhood committee. The lot [in Sheikh Jarrah] is designated for the benefit of neighborhood residents given the shortage of parking in the area, and there are no political motives involved in the matter." But Meir Margalit of the

12 city's Meretz party said the proposal was meant to create an impression of Jewish contiguity in East Jerusalem.

"It's enough that the area is transferred to Jewish ownership, that there is a municipality sticker and an information booth, and that will create the visual and emotional impression that there is Jewish contiguity in the area," he said.

"To claim there is a parking problem in Sheikh Jarrah is ridiculous, an insult to one's intelligence," said Margalit. "There is no parking problem in the area. There is no denying that the move is politically motivated."

5. Confronting Settlement Expansion in East Jerusalem Joel Beinin, Middle East Report, 14/02/ 2010 http://www.merip.org/mero/mero021410.html

The neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, a 20-minute walk up the hill from the Damascus Gate to the Old City of Jerusalem, has become the focal point of the struggle over the expanding project of Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

In the first week of February a settler in Sheikh Jarrah attacked a young boy from an Arab family evicted so that Jewish activists could move in. The al-Ghawis were displaced in August 2009, and since then they have been living in front of their former home in a tent, refusing to move in protest of the eviction. Settlers have gone after them more than once. On this occasion, an older al-Ghawi, Nasir, was beaten and menaced with an M-16 by a settler when he attempted to protect the young boy. Police arrived on the scene and disarmed the settler. But they also served Nasir with a restraining order forbidding him to enter Sheikh Jarrah for 15 days. Then the police destroyed the al-Ghawis’ tent. The makeshift abode was rebuilt, but the next day police and municipal officials came to the site and threatened to dismantle it a second time.

Police Intimidation

Every Friday since December, Israeli, Palestinian and international demonstrators have gathered in Sheikh Jarrah to protest Jewish settlers’ takeover of the homes of the al-Ghawis and two other Palestinian families in the neighborhood, the Hanouns and al-Kurds, who are also living in tents out front. In Hebrew and Arabic, the activists chant, to the beat of rhythmic drumming: “Thou shalt not steal. Get out of Sheikh Jarrah immediately.” “Sheikh Jarrah is Palestine. Evacuate the settlers.”

The protests have been entirely peaceful. But Israeli police have arrested nearly 100 of the activists, beating many in the process. Among those detained on January 15 was the director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, Hagai El-Ad. Another form of police intimidation is the intrusive photographing of protesters by undercover agents posing as journalists. One such “journalist,” later identified through his Facebook page, even physically assaulted a demonstrator with impunity.

13 At the outset, the demonstrators marched to Sheikh Jarrah from downtown West Jerusalem. But the police will not issue permits for such marches if they are larger than 50 people, and they no longer permit demonstrators or journalists to step into the street where the settlers now live. So the rallies convene in a park nearby. While the demonstrations have grown larger, the number of Palestinians participating has shrunk because the consequences of being arrested are much more severe for them than for Israelis or foreigners.

Police harassment of the evicted families, restrictions on peaceable assembly and the arrest and abuse of demonstrators are all aspects of Israel’s escalating efforts to repress non-violent, popular resistance to the settlement project in the occupied West Bank, which is nowhere more aggressive than in East Jerusalem. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stridently excluded Jerusalem from the parameters of the ten- month pause in settlement construction he announced in a belated and partial response to President Barack Obama’s now abandoned demand for a freeze on new settlement activity.

In Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, Ras al-‘Amud and other Arab neighborhoods surrounding the Old City, the radical, religious settler organizations Ateret Cohanim and Elad are remaking the demography and geography of the city, making it increasingly unlikely that it could serve as the capital of a Palestinian state. Moreover, the expansion of metropolitan Jerusalem to the east threatens to cut the West Bank in half, undermining the possibility of establishing a contiguous Palestinian state of any sort in the West Bank. Ateret Cohanim, Elad and the settlement project in Ras al-‘Amud are funded heavily by the American Jewish bingo and gambling magnate Irving Moskowitz, who is ideologically committed to “judaizing” the eastern precincts of the city.[1]

Court Battles

Israeli courts do not work on the Sabbath. So anyone arrested on a Friday afternoon, no matter how trivial or spurious the charge, must remain incarcerated until Saturday evening. Hagai El-Ad and 16 others were released at the conclusion of the Sabbath after their January 15 arrest because the Jerusalem magistrates’ court rejected police assertions that the demonstration had required prior authorization because the protesters shouted anti-occupation slogans and used a megaphone.

In defense of the right to peaceable assembly, a much larger group of about 350 people -- including Muhammad Barakeh, a Member of Knesset and chairman of the Democratic Front for Peace and Equality, and former MKs Uri Avnery, Avram Burg and Yossi Sarid -- gathered in Sheikh Jarrah the following Friday. The police declared the gathering illegal and arrested 22 demonstrators, loading them onto vans along with their placard declaring, “Jews and Arabs Don’t Want To Be Enemies.” Commenting in his weekly column in the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, Sarid wrote, “If the police view Friday’s demonstration as a criminal act, then the democratic right to demonstrate has been destroyed, and Jerusalem has begun to resemble Tehran.”[2]

The demonstrations in Sheikh Jarrah erupted in response to an August Israeli court decision evicting the Hanouns and the al-Ghawis, who together number 53 people, including 20 children. The families’ clothing and furniture were dumped on the street and their homes were handed over to a settler organization, which immediately

14 occupied them. The al-Kurd family had been kicked out already, in November 2008. All three families are part of a group of 28 Palestinian refugee families (altogether, approximately 450 people) who were settled in Sheikh Jarrah in 1956 based on an agreement between the UN and the government of Jordan, which then ruled the area.

The Sephardic (Jewish) Community Committee and the Knesset Israel Committee maintain that they have deeds to the properties dating to 1875. After Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967 the two committees asserted their claims to ownership. A lengthy legal battle ensued. In 1982 the lawyer for the Palestinian residents agreed to an out-of-court settlement granting them the status of “protected tenants.” This status would ordinarily mean they could not be evicted as long as they continued to pay rent. Nonetheless, the Hanoun and al-Ghawi families were removed in 2002.

They returned to their homes after a 2006 Israeli Supreme Court ruling determined that Jewish claims to the properties were not incontrovertibly established. Subsequently, a Palestinian named Sulayman Darwish Hijazi presented documents showing that his family has owned the buildings since at least 1927. Lower courts have not recognized this evidence of Arab ownership. Consequently, the two families were evicted for a second time in August 2009.

Settler organizations have regularly employed claims of prior Jewish ownership to seize properties in East Jerusalem. Some of these claims are legitimate, as thousands of Jews did live in and around the Old City, including in Sheikh Jarrah, until Jerusalem was divided as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Israeli courts have disallowed some settler claims. But the executive authorities rarely evict Jewish settlers, no matter how dubious the documentary evidence of their ownership. Moreover, no Israeli court has recognized the property rights of any of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have resided in East Jerusalem and the West Bank since becoming refugees in 1948 and who owned land and buildings subsequently included in the territory of the state of Israel.

“We’re Just Cleaning”

Another settlement flash point is the Palestinian village of Silwan (pop. 55,000), which lies south of the Dung Gate of the Old City. There, ancient claims of ownership based on archaeology are being used to dispossess the Arab inhabitants. The Elad Association, whose name is a Hebrew acronym for “To the City of David,” has been subsidizing excavations conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority in Silwan since the late 1990s.

Elad believes that Silwan is the site of the original Jewish settlement in Jerusalem established by King David, on a slope below where David’s son Solomon built the first Temple. Some Israeli archaeologists contest this biblical version of the area’s history,[3] and to date no archaeological evidence of King David’s presence in the area or of the existence of a Temple on the scale described in the Bible has been found. The excavations funded by Elad are meant to supply the proof for its claim. In the process, they are destroying the evidence of the presence of many other peoples and cultures on the site -- from the Canaanites who established the city 5,000 years ago to the Muslims who ruled it from the seventh to the twentieth centuries.

15 A videotape of a guided tour of the dig shows that Elad admits it is undermining the structural integrity of the homes of the Arab residents of Silwan. Elad’s founder, David Be’eri, explains, “At a certain point we came to court. The judge approached me and said, ‘You’re digging under their houses.’ I said, ‘I’m digging under their houses? King David dug under their houses. I’m just cleaning.’ He said to me, ‘Clean as much as possible.’ Since then, we're just cleaning; we're not digging.”[4]

The epicenter of Elad’s activities in Silwan is a district known to most of its inhabitants as Wadi Hilwa. On January 2, an excavation tunnel dug by Elad caused part of the main road of Wadi Hilwa to collapse, creating an enormous pothole. Although Silwan has been part of what Israeli governments since 1967 have called the “united and eternal capital of the Jewish people,” no police or other municipal authorities were immediately dispatched to the scene. The police arrived only four hours later to help rescue a bus serving the settler population, which had driven into the pothole. Through dubious legal maneuvers and other chicanery, Elad has occupied about 25 percent of Wadi Hilwa.

Be’eri, a former officer in an Israel army unit which specialized in impersonating Arabs, came to Wadi Hilwa in 1986 and, posing as a tour guide, befriended one of the residents, Musa ‘Abbasi. ‘Abbasi unwittingly helped Be’eri collect information on the legal status of houses in the village and which owners were living abroad. Be’eri used this information to petition the Israeli Custodian of Absentee Property to have these buildings declared “absentee property.” In October 1991 Be’eri took possession of ‘Abbasi’s house.

Many of the Arab homes in Silwan were built “illegally.” After Israel annexed Arab East Jerusalem in 1967, some villagers who also owned and farmed land in the Hebron area moved back to their property in Silwan and built homes on it in order to maintain their presence. These structures did not appear on the aerial photos of Silwan taken earlier by the Israel Defense Forces and so were declared “illegal.” Others who have lived continually in Silwan expanded their homes or built new ones for their growing families. Since the Jerusalem municipality rarely gives permits for construction by Arabs, they had to build illegally. Demolition orders have been issued for 88 homes sheltering some 3,600 people in the Bustan neighborhood to make room for the expanding settler presence.

Elad has also used fraudulent deeds and purchases conducted through front men to acquire property. In 1992 an Israeli government investigation concluded that Jewish settler organizations had acquired Arab property in East Jerusalem using false affidavits, misapplication of the Absentee Property Law, illegal transfers of public property to private, ideologically motivated associations and illegal transfers of tens of millions of shekels in public monies to settler organizations. Nonetheless, in one recent case that has gained attention, Jerusalem’s right-wing mayor, Nir Barkat, has refused to implement a court order to evacuate “Beit Yonatan” in Silwan, which is occupied by settlers affiliated with Ateret Cohanim.[5]

In 2002 the Israel Nature and National Parks Protection Authority gave Elad a ten- year contract to manage the “City of David National Park” located in Wadi Hilwa. The Israel Antiquities Authority, reflecting the opinions of many professional

16 archaeologists, has expressed reservations about Elad’s excavation methods. But it did not oppose awarding the contract.

Elad also plans to build on the Giv‘ati parking lot, which is used by buses taking tourists to visit the nearby Wailing Wall, the Temple Mount, the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. The Israel Antiquities Authorities objected to proceeding with the construction without an archaeological survey of the site. So Elad is now funding salvage excavations aimed at quickly finding and preserving evidence of a Jewish presence in preparation for constructing a large function hall, a commercial center, guest rooms and an underground parking lot. Elad’s presence at the parking lot has taken away the livelihoods of Arab residents of Silwan who formerly worked there, such as Jawad Siyam, who sold souvenirs and refreshments to tourists. Now Elad keeps the tourists away.

Distress and Solidarity

Silwan is one of the poorest parts of East Jerusalem. Its residents pay the same taxes as Israeli citizens but receive few municipal services in return. There are no playgrounds, green parks, public libraries, sports facilities or public medical clinics. The dearth of public services depresses private investment -- there are no cafés or cinemas, either. The settler takeover of tourist-related economic activities has further impoverished Silwan. An estimated 75 percent of its children live under the poverty line.

In response to economic distress and settler encroachment, Silwan residents established the Madaa (Horizons) Silwan Community Center in 2007. Danny Felsteiner, an Israeli student in a Dutch musical conservatory, and his wife, Fabienne van Eck, volunteered to teach music in the center during summer visits to Jerusalem. When Danny finished his studies in The Hague, he and Fabienne moved to Jerusalem to teach music at the center on a long-term basis. Danny explains his motivations in an e-mail: “For 42 years the Jerusalem municipality has completely neglected Silwan. Madaa Silwan was the residents’ answer to this neglect and discrimination. I care about this country and this city, and that’s why I put so much effort into giving the children in Silwan what my country, Israel, denies them: the right to be children, to play, to learn, to grow, especially through music. Children are the future of this region, and if we take away their childhood, I'm afraid the future might be darker than the present.”

Danny and Fabienne set up a non-profit foundation in the Netherlands to help fund the center and helped the center’s staff prepare a grant proposal for a ten-month library project. The Dutch legation to Ramallah accepted the proposal and is funding the purchase of books and computers for the library. The grant has allowed the center to hire Muna Hasan, a young Palestinian woman, as librarian. In addition to music instruction, the center now offers classes in art, dance, theater, sports, computer skills and languages. The center promotes non-violent methods to secure the civil and social rights of the residents of Silwan and collaborates with other Palestinian-Israeli organizations like Ta‘ayyush (Coexistence).

The community center has also contributed substantially to transforming Silwan from a center of poverty, drugs and criminal activity into a node in the network of

17 Palestinian grassroots resistance. Riyad, a former drug user, now volunteers at the center and has recently planted a garden in the entryway.

Jawad Siyam, the ex-souvenir vendor and one of the center’s leaders, says, “We are not going to call for freeing Palestine. Each neighborhood has its own problems.” For the residents of Silwan, these local travails are not only the loss of their property and livelihoods, but discrimination in every aspect of their daily lives from the assessment of parking fines to the removal of Arabic street signs and their replacement with Hebrew signs. Wadi Hilwa has become Ma‘alot ‘Ir David, or City of David Heights.

The local character of the struggle in Silwan and the close collaboration between Israelis, many of whom, like Danny Felsteiner, have learned Arabic, and Palestinians are characteristic of popular struggles that have developed throughout the West Bank since Israel began constructing its separation barrier in 2002.[6] The embattled villages of Bil‘in and Budrus, along the route of the wall in the West Bank, are known globally as centers of non-violent resistance to occupation involving Palestinians, Israelis and internationals alike. But it has been more difficult to sustain resistance and establish coordination among Arab residents of East Jerusalem neighborhoods than in villages of the West Bank. Jerusalem is the center of Israel’s power in the West Bank. There are already nearly 200,000 Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem. And the economic dependence of the city on tourism undermines any kind of broad-based militancy.

Silwan is, therefore, exceptional in the Jerusalem area. The Madaa Silwan Community Center has created enough bonding in the community to motivate residents to organize to defend their rights. This strengthened sense of solidarity led to the establishment of the Silwan Information Center, whose mission is “to tell the stories of our forefathers…to all people without reservation, hesitation, intolerance, or racism.” While acknowledging “all the civilizations that have passed through the village,” the Information Center’s website asserts the “historical and humanitarian right” of the Arab residents of Silwan to remain there.

To that end, the Silwan Information Center has effectively used the Israeli civil legal system to challenge some of the property claims of the settlers and succeeded in obtaining the court order to evacuate Beit Yonatan. As Siyam says, “They accuse us of being radicals because we go to court to get our rights. But we don’t go to an Iranian court. We go to an Israeli court.”

As the cases of the al-Ghawis, Hanouns and al-Kurds show, however, Israeli courts have proven unreliable protectors at best of the residency rights of East Jerusalem Arabs. In the face of the settlement’s project’s relentless forward creep, protesters continue to assemble on Fridays to voice their demand: “From Sheikh Jarrah to Silwan, stop [Jewish] colonization.”

-----

Endnotes

[1] Guardian, July 19, 2009.

18 [2] Yossi Sarid, “Jerusalem Is Starting to Resemble Tehran,” Ha’aretz, January 24, 2010.

[3] Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, David and Solomon: In Search of the Bible's Sacred Kings and the Roots of the Western Tradition (New York: Free Press, 2006). See also the information at http://www.alt-arch.org/.

[4] Ha’aretz, October 5, 2009.

[5] Ha’aretz, January 20, 2010.

[6] Joel Beinin, “Building a Different Middle East,” The Nation, January 15, 2010.

6. Why are they really demonstrating in Sheikh Jarrah? Orly Noy, Ir Amim, Jan 2010, http://www.ir-amim.org.il/Eng/_Uploads/dbsAttachedFiles/sheikhjarrahrevieweng.pdf

In the last few weeks, the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah was featured in the headlines in Israel and abroad as a result of weekly demonstrations that take place in protest of the evacuation of Palestinian families from their homes and the entry of Jewish Israeli settlers into their homes. As a result of the hardlined policy that the Jerusalem police have taken towards the demonstrators and the arrest of dozens of them, a significant part of the public discourse about this matter revolves around freedom of expression and the severe harm to the right to demonstrate in a democratic state. Along side this principled and important discussion, this short survey seeks to clarify the historical process of this matter until the issuing of the evacuation order, as well as the current political implications.

Sheikh Jarrah is a Palestinian neighborhood north of the Old City of Jerusalem. On the western side of the neighborhood, is an area of 18 dunams known as the Shimon Hatsadik compound, in name of the great high priest from the Second Temple era, who is buried there according to some traditions. A small Jewish community that settled in the late 19th century around the tomb was dispersed gradually beginning in the 1920s and 1930s and through 1948.

During the Jordanian rule from 1948 to 1967, this area of land passed to the Jordanian government by the Enemy Property Law. In 1956, 28 Palestinian refugee families were settled in this compound by the Jordanian government and the UNRWA, in exchange for giving up their refugee status and payment of symbolic rent. In 1972, 27 families (one family left on its own accord) received notice that their rent was to be paid to the Sephardic Community Committee and to the Knesset Israel Committee – the owners of the homes whose existence until then was unknown. In the same year, the two committees began a process with the Israel Lands Authority to register the lands in their names, based upon Ottoman documents from the 19th century.

About a decade later, in 1982, the two committees sued 23 families for non-payment

19 of rent. According to the agreement reached between the lawyer of the Palestinian families and the representatives of the committee, the Palestinian families were declared “protected tenants” whose residence in the homes was guaranteed as long as they paid the rent to the committees. Some of the Palestinian families claimed that this agreement was signed without their consent. This decision constitutes the legal basis in the decisions of additional court petitions, as well as in the present cases. Most of the families refused to pay the rent for various reasons, including the reluctance to recognize the committees as the rightful owners. This refusal to pay rent stands at the basis of the legal proceedings against these families today, concluding with court-issued eviction orders from the disputed homes. These legal processes are not only between the committees and the Palestinian residents. The Nahlat Shimon

International, a settler organization that has purchased part of the lands from the Sephardic Committee, has also submitted legal petitions against the residents. Until now, 3 families (al-Kurd, Hannun, and al-Ghawi) have been evicted, and legal proceedings are being held to evict a number of additional families who were not part of the agreement signed in 1982. Moreover, the court has allowed the entry of settlers into another building within the compound, which was built without a permit as an addition to a house where another branch of the al-Kurd family lives. Against the al- Kurd family, legal proceedings are being held, with the aim of bringing their eviction also from the original part of the home where they are living today. The Shimon haTsadik compound also was subject to another ownership legal case: in 1997 a Palestinian resident of Jerusalem, Suleiman al-Hijazi, petitioned the court, objecting to the ownership claims by the two committees, and claimed that he was the owner of the contended area. His claim was rejected in 2002, as was his appeal to the High Court four years later, while an additional petition to the District Court was rejected on 31 March 2008.

Although the proceedings of this matter took place in the legal sphere, it is important to emphasize that this is not purely a matter of land ownership, but rather a first rate political issue. The settlers’ activity in Sheikh Jarrah constitutes an additional link in the chain of settlements – existing or planned – that aim to surround the historical basin of the Old City with an Israeli-Jewish ring and to create Jewish enclaves in the heart of Palestinian neighborhoods, in order to create a territorial contiguity that will endanger future political agreements in the future. In the Shimon haTsadik compound itself, the Nahlat Shimon International organization plans to destroy the existing buildings and build a new settlement of 200 housing units. Additional building plans of the settlers in Sheikh Jarrah include the Shephard’s Hotel compound, which was purchased by the patron of the settlers, Irving Moskowitz, and the Mufti’s Grove, opposite the hotel, and the Glassman Campus at the south-western part of the neighborhood.

It is important to emphasize: The legal recognition of the rights of Jews to sue for ownership over properties that were theirs before 1948, and in their name to evict Palestinian families living there for decades, constitutes a precedence that is liable to have serious political consequences. Indeed the Israeli law does not recognize the right of Palestinians to sue in a similar manner for the return of their properties within the Green Line from before 1948, but a collective lawsuit – if only symbolic – is liable to place the State of Israel in the most embarrassing situation in both the local

20 and international arenas, in addition to transforming the discussion around solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from discourse around the 1967 borders to one around the 1948 borders. It is doubtful whether a process such as this will serve the interests of the Israeli governments.

Despite their declared obligation to a process of political negotiations, in reality, the governments of Israel in the last decades, together with the settler organizations, have gained control over properties in the heart of Palestinian neighborhoods, transforming them into settler enclaves that enjoy outrageous building rights and exist in the midst of ongoing confrontation with their environment and with the rule of law. Sheikh Jarrah is another link in the process that is transforming East Jerusalem to an arena where extremist organizations do as they please: taking control of properties in dubious ways, administering private police with government funding, and engaging in endless confrontation with the Palestinian population. All this is done with direct and indirect government support, while placing obstacles in the way of the prospects of achieving a resolution in Jerusalem and the region as a whole.

7. The Sheikh Jarrah Demonstrations: What Protestors Need to Know By Hajr Al-Ali for MIFTAH 17/02/ 2010

http://www.miftah.org/PrinterF.cfm?DocId=21729

A drummers’ circle, Palestinian children holding flags, Avatar activists painted in blue with kuffiyehs around their waists, and just your everyday Israeli soldiers looking on, armed and ready. Another Friday afternoon; another demonstration in Sheikh Jarrah. Israeli and international activists gathered in the east Jerusalem neighborhood again this past Friday, February 12, to protest the house evictions of Palestinian families, which has been occurring ever frequently to make room for Jewish settlers. Organized by Israeli human rights organizations such as Peace Now, the demonstration brought out around 250 protestors who demanded justice from Israel's government.

Unfamiliar with Hebrew, I asked one of the protestors what was being chanted. “(They’re saying) You can’t have democracy with walls,” she told me. An older woman with short grey hair told me her name was Irit and that she lived in a suburb of west Jerusalem. “What they’re doing (the house evictions) is illegal,” she told me. “(Also) they arrested my son for protesting and detained him for 36 hours. That’s unacceptable. The freedom of speech, to protest, is an important part of democracy.”

Ronnie agreed, and showed his opposition against government policies in a creative way. A young Israeli man from Tel Aviv, Ronnie belongs to several groups such as “Anarchists Against the Wall”, the “Israeli Boycott Movement and “Boycotting from Within.” He explained to me that, “As a Jew, I can say, ‘This is not anti-Semitic, this is against the state.’” He was also one of the two “Avatars” present at the Sheikh Jarrah demonstration. They were both part of a larger group of activists who have gained widespread media attention for reenacting scenes from director James

21 Cameron’s most recent blockbuster, “Avatar”; equating the struggle of occupied Palestine to its intergalactic counterpart portrayed in the film.

There is something to be said for Irit and Ronnie’s presence at the demonstration that afternoon; the fact that they felt compelled to engage in their “fundamental right to protest” by speaking out against the unjust plight of their Palestinian neighbors. However, that’s where I get befuddled. Freedom? Justice? Democracy? Since when is it even plausible to associate any of those concepts with Israel? A (truly) democratic state is an entity which is founded upon principles concerning the human rights of its citizens relative to the government that works for them. It operates based on some form of a constitution of rights, and implements this constitution through legislations which ensure that all citizens are treated equally, whether through the distribution of resources or legal policies and procedures.

Israel has no such constitution, though, despite over five decades of the international community’s call for it to create one. I suppose this means pittance to Palestinians anyway, who are neither citizens, nor have their own state. Rather, Palestinians living in the West Bank, Gaza, or east Jerusalem are subject to the ruthless military rule of Israel’s occupation, not its “democracy.” In order for a state to be democratic, it must recognize the equal citizenship of all residents within its borders, regardless of race, religion, political views or gender.

We could stop right there. It’s facetious to expect Israel to adhere to principles of equality, let alone the “equal distribution of resources.” In east Jerusalem alone, 67% of Arab Palestinian families live below the poverty line compared to 21% of Jerusalem’s Jewish families; over half of Palestinian residents, approximately 160,000, have no connection to the water network; over 91,000 children in east Jerusalem live in a perpetual state of poverty; and by the end of 2007, 50,197 housing units for the Jewish population had been built on expropriated land while none had been built for the Palestinian population. If anything, these houses have been torn down. The condition of Palestinians living in east Jerusalem has been described as a continuing cycle of neglect, discrimination, poverty, and shortages, which has only been exacerbated by the huge wall eclipsing every aspect of their lives.

It's important for Israelis such as those present at the protest to remember this vital part of the country’s history: the story of the evictions of Palestinians from their homes doesn’t date back to November when these demonstrations first began. It began in 1948 when the establishment of the state of Israel meant the forced removal of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes, continuing past 1967 when Israel (illegally) annexed east Jerusalem, claiming the city as its capital. In case anyone’s forgotten, this was all in violation of international law, most notably Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention which states, "...The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population in the territory it occupies."

The demonstration itself, although a good attempt by Israel’s left to bring attention to the situation of Palestinians in east Jerusalem, felt more like a carnival than a political protest. Although they connect activists and create a brouhaha, the demonstrations can be problematic if protestors don’t recognize the root of the problem they’re protesting against: the oppressive military occupation of Palestinians. I’m glad that the Israeli protestors I met were concerned enough to come out that day; that they felt a sense of

22 purpose and responsibility to speak out against their government's practices. However, if protestors do not recognize that the democratic principles they may enjoy do not apply to those they are speaking out for, such rallies are ultimately ineffectual.

Hajr Al-Ali is a Writer for the Media and Information Department at the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy (MIFTAH). She can be contacted at [email protected].

8. Sheikh Jarrah: Going Mainstream By Bernard Avishai - January 24/01/ 2010 http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/01/24/sheikh_jarrah_going_mainstream/ ?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+tpmcafe- main+%28TPMCafe%29

This past Friday, the weekly protest at Sheikh Jarrah grew to about 800. It is going mainstream, as the young organizers had hoped.

The atmosphere was electric, owing to the police's denial of a permit last week and its subsequent arrest of 17 demonstrators, including Association for Civil Rights in Israel director Hagai El-Ad. The arrested were summarily released late Saturday night, Jaunuary 16, by Judge Eilata Ziskind; she ruled that, within certain guidelines, protest did not require a police permit at all. But the police responded defiantly, again denying the protest group a permit to march from the center of town, and threatening to arrest the leaders if they gathered at all. (Eventually, 20 more were indeed arrested. Their fate is going to be determined in court on Tuesday.)

Not coincidentally, the police now answer to Public Security Minister Yitzchak Aharonovich, from Avigdor Lieberman's ultra Yisrael Beiteinu Party; and to Jerusalem's mayor, Nir Barkat, who's long been connected to reactionary groups funded by, among others, Sheldon Adelson.

Friday's 3:00 PM newscast on Reshet Bet, the dominant radio outlet, led with the story, just as the protest took shape. Former Education Minister and Meretz leader Yossi Sarid came out, as did the former Speaker of the Knesset, Avrum Burg, and the old lion of the peace movement, Gush Shalom's Uri Avneri. Peace Now's old guard leadership finally came out in large numbers, and were joined by people who could hardly be characterized as a left fringe (though the Israeli press persists in calling the demonstration one of "leftists," apparently for no other reason than because the rights of all people, not only Jews, are at stake). Among the protesters this week were Prof. Yaron Ezrahi, formerly a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, and Prof. Moshe Halbertal, who helped write the IDF's Code of Ethics, and who's been getting a lot of attention lately for his anguished response to the Goldstone Report.

I mentioned the protest's young organizers. Perhaps the most heartening feature of this growing movement is its leadership group, about 75 young people, who came out last Tuesday to plan for the future. They are articulate, calm, nuanced. They are very much aware that their protest symbolizes something much larger than one dreadful injustice in a sea of injustices: the need to see East Jerusalem as the future capital of

23 Palestine, the insanity of continuing Jewish settlement across the Green Line through the prostitution of Israeli land law (we look at pre-1948 deeds on their side of the Line, but not at deeds on our side), the insanity of the Ateret Kohanim settlers themselves, the defiance of the Geneva Conventions by the police of a state that depends utterly on a globalized economy, the immanent dangers to freedom of speech in country that wins friends, if at all, for its residual democratic freedoms. The torch is being passed to another generation, who are carrying it with courage and grace.

Yossi Sarid adds:

In my long years of demonstrating I have never seen a protest so restrained, so not in need of a permit according to any rational interpretation of the law. Not every police officer - yea, not even every brigadier general - is authorized to declare it illegal. If the police views Friday's demonstration as a criminal act then the democratic right to demonstrate has been destroyed and Jerusalem begins resembling Tehran. Already it is not entirely clear whether what we have is the Israel Police or the Yisrael Beiteinu Police.

Since leaving active political life I have not attended demonstrations despite repeated requests; after all, there is no shortage of reasons to demonstrate in these parts. I told myself - I've paid my protesting dues, time to make way for the next generation. But Nitzan Horowitz and Ilan Ghilon and Shelly Yachimovich and Daniel Ben Simon are social-welfare-oriented MKs, and the removal of Palestinian families from their homes is not a social-welfare issue.

This time I could not refuse. All citizens, not just public figures, have a duty to resist. And so, on Friday afternoon the retired demonstrators came and filled the little square. The struggle in Sheikh Jarrah isn't over, it's just beginning. More Palestinian families are slated for transfer, and one cannot trust this government, the mayor of Jerusalem or even the city's judges to do the right thing.

When the judges rule in favor of the settlers the latter stop mocking them and celebrate the confirmation of their position; but when they rule against them, they blow them a giant raspberry. Months ago the High Court of Justice ordered the demolition of Beit Yonatan, in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, and it is as if it never happened. It's only when they agree with the decision that they follow it.

The cabinet ministers may be unaware that in their folly they are affirming the Palestinian right of return de facto. If Palestinians who have been in their homes since 1948 can be driven out and replaced with Jewish families on the grounds of ownership from time immemorial, then Nasser Gawi can return to his home in Sarafind (Tzrifin), using the same argument. Now Gawi sits in a tent with his large family next to the home in Sheikh Jarrah they were thrown out of. As a two-time refugee he watches the settlers in the rooms that still hold the smell of his family's means - and Sarafind calls to him.

He is not alone: The Arabs of Jerusalem, too, would be glad to return to their homes in the West Jerusalem neighborhoods of Talbieh, Bak'a and Katamon.

Planning and Settlements

9. Making Bricks Without Straw: The Jerusalem Municipality’s New Planning Policy for East Jerusalem

Ir Amim, January 2010 http://www.ir-amim.org.il/Eng/_Uploads/dbsAttachedFiles/ NewPlanningPolicyFinalEnglish%281%29.pdf

Summary

Against the backdrop of an expedited debate initiated by four right-wing members of the Knesset on December 13, 2009, aimed at preventing enforcement of a court order to seal and vacate Beit Yehonatan in Silwan, East Jerusalem, Mayor Nir Barkat presented the city’s “new planning policy” for East Jerusalem. According to Barkat, this policy should provide “significant expansion of the number of floors and of the building ratio with regard to the approved plan, many solutions for adding residential units in the area, and a response to the existing hardship, while in practice some 90 percent of building infractions could theoretically become moot.” The two areas selected to serve as “test cases” for the implementation of this new policy are al- Bustan in Silwan and the western slopes of Silwan, where Beit Yonatan is located. Beit Yehonatan, which houses several settler families, was erected without a building permit and has an outstanding order against it for its evacuation and sealing. In scrutinizing the reality of the planning situation in East Jerusalem, the “significant expansion” presented by Barkat will be nearly impossible to implement by Palestinian residents for several reasons, including:

• The inability of East Jerusalem residents to prove ownership of their lands, given the lack of land registration with the Israeli authorities. • The space constraints and prohibitive costs for meeting the standard parking requirements for buildings of four or more stories. • The difficulty in creating sufficient access roads to the building sites. • Lack of proper sanitation infrastructure, required for approval of building plans

In addition, private building plans in East Jerusalem are often denied approval as they do not conform to the Jerusalem Master Plan 2000, which, despite having been completed more than a year ago, has yet to be submitted for public review, and hence is not yet officially in effect. Thus, when various Israeli officials, like Mayor Barkat or Housing and Construction Minister Ariel Attias, make pronouncements regarding building plans for the Palestinian population of East Jerusalem, these declarations tend to be empty gestures designed to forestall local and international criticism on one hand, and to “whitewash” Israeli construction (such as Beit Yehonatan) on the other. In the meantime, the authorities shirk their obligations to provide basic services and infrastructure (including sewage and paved roads) to the residents of the eastern part of the city. Rather, the residents themselves are burdened with this responsibility,

25 meaning that Barkat’s policy offer to enable residents to build is rendered extremely expensive and, in practice, impossible. (for more details see full report)

10. What to Do With the Settlements? By Hillel Halkin, Wall Street Journal, 4/02/2010 http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704259304575043101789714506.ht ml?mod=googlenews_wsj

Labourers work at the construction of new housing in the Jewish settlement of Ma'ale Adumim, east of Jerusalem, on November 11, 2009.

There is one obvious solution for Israel's West Bank settlements that has been all but completely overlooked: Let the settlers continue living where they are, but in the state of Palestine.

As a conception, it's stunningly simple. Its very obviousness has rendered it invisible, like something in one's field of vision that goes unnoticed because it has been there all the time. If over one million Palestinian Arabs can live as they do in towns and villages all over Israel, why cannot a few hundred thousand Israeli Jews live, symmetrically, in a West Bank Palestinian state?

The West Bank settlers have not only been a major obstacle to the success of peace negotiations in the past, they have now turned into an obstacle to negotiations taking place at all. Although Israel, under heavy American pressure, has agreed to a 10- month freeze on new settlement construction, it has refused to suspend construction already under way or in Jerusalem. The Palestinian Authority, initially encouraged by American intimations of a more comprehensive Israeli gesture, has declared that it will not return to the negotiating table in its absence. Yet if the settlers could live under Palestinian sovereignty, what need would there be for a freeze at all? And why wrangle endlessly over where a tortuous border between Israel and Palestine should run so that a maximum of settlers ends up on the Israeli side and a minimum gets evicted from the Palestinian side if there is no inherent necessity for any to be on the Israeli side or for any to be evicted?

Because, you may say, the settlers have no right to be on Palestinian land to begin with. Or because they would not tolerate living under Palestinian rule. Or because the Palestinians would not tolerate them. Or because they and the Palestinians could never get along even with the best of intentions.

"They," though, are hardly a monolithic group. They are a highly heterogeneous population, having in common only one thing: the fact that all live across the Israeli- Jordanian cease-fire line with which Israel's 1948-49 war of independence ended, on land wrested by Israel when it conquered Jordan's holdings west of the Jordan River in 1967. All are in "Area C," the part of the West Bank that has remained, according to the terms of the 1993 Oslo agreement, under temporary Israeli jurisdiction.

26 Beyond that, however, the differences are great. Some settlements were built on former Jordanian government-owned land that passed to Israeli jurisdiction, some on land purchased from Palestinians, some on land that was expropriated. Some are 40 years old and some were established recently. Some are isolated outposts, some small villages, some medium-sized towns with six- and eight-story apartment buildings. Some settlers are living where they are, often in the more isolated areas of the West Bank, for religious or ideological reasons; others, generally closer to the old 1967 border, because they have found well-located and pleasant surroundings at affordable prices. There are those who would willingly accept compensation in return for being evacuated as part of a peace agreement and those who would resist evacuation with all their might.

Palestianian youths throw rocks in protest of Israel's controversial separation barrier in the West Bank village of Nilin on November 13, 2009.

And there are settlers, roughly 225,000, who live on the "Israeli" side of the anti- terror West Bank security fence and settlers, about 75,000, who live on its "Palestinian" side. (Another 200,000 Israelis living in parts of former Jordanian Jerusalem that were annexed by Israel in 1967 are not listed by Israeli statistics as settlers at all.) Approximately 1/20th of Israel's Jewish population, the settlers' numbers have grown by over 5% a year, some three times the national average—a figure due to in-migration, mostly of young couples, and a high birth rate.

Indeed, given the political uncertainty and physical risk of living in the West Bank, where Palestinian terror has stalked the settlers repeatedly, their increase has been phenomenal. In 1977, the year in which the Labor government of Yitzhak Rabin, which had reined in settlement activity, was replaced by the pro-settlement Likud government of Menachem Begin, the West Bank's Jewish population was barely 7,000. By 1988, it had grown to 63,000; by 1993, to 100,000; by 2006, to 230,000. And even with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's current freeze on new West Bank building starts, enough pre-freeze units are under construction to ensure that this rate of growth continues through 2010.

By contrast, the Palestinian population of the West Bank, though also increasingly rapidly, has done so less spectacularly: it is currently guesstimated (agreed-on figures are impossible to come by) at about two million. Aren't the Palestinians, then, justified in their alarm over settlement growth and their insistence that it be stopped? How can they establish a state of their own with a swelling Jewish minority with whom they live in relations of hostility?

This is a fair question that deserves an honest answer—the first part of which is that, even if the settlements were indeed an insurmountable obstacle to peace, Jews would still have a right to live in the West Bank, the hill country south and north of Jerusalem that has always been called by them Judea and Samaria. It was there that the Jewish people was born; that the Hebrew language originated; that the Bible was written and most of the events described in it took place; that the kings of Israel reigned and the Prophets of Israel spoke out. By what principle should Jews be able to live anywhere in the world except for the most traditionally cherished part of their ancestral homeland?

27 Nor is it true, conventional wisdom notwithstanding, that the settlements are "illegal." The case for this belief rests almost entirely on the fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, article 49(6) of which states that an occupying military power "shall not deport or transfer part of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies." Yet not only has Israel "deported" or "transferred" no one to the settlements, whose inhabitants are there of their own free will, it did not come into possession of the West Bank as an occupying power.

This is because, after its 1967 victory, Israel had as good a legal claim on the West Bank as anyone. The Jordanian annexation of the area, while consented to by the same Palestinian leadership that rejected the 1947 United Nations partition resolution which would have created a Palestinian state then, was unrecognized by the rest of the world, and Jordan itself refused to make peace with Israel or accept the 1949 border as permanent. As the sole sovereign state to have emerged from British-Mandate Palestine, Israel, it can be maintained, was the West Bank's legitimate ruler pending final determination of the area's status.

Of course, it can be retorted that, however true, all this is irrelevant. In practice, Israel has behaved in the West Bank like an occupying power by systematically favoring the settlers over the Palestinian population, with whose interests and welfare it has rarely been concerned. This is a major reason why the Palestinians need a state of their own. And if they do, and if the settlers are in the way of it, must not the settlers go, no matter how great their theoretical right to live in the West Bank may be? When theory clashes with reality, must not reality come first?

It certainly must. But there is another reality as well. Even if all the settlers living on the "Israeli" side of the security fence end up in Israel in the land swap that has come to be an assumed part of any peace deal, the 75,000 who would find themselves in a Palestinian state happen to be the very element of the settler population—the ideological and religious militants living deep in Palestinian territory—who are most committed to being where they are. What does one do with them?

The standard answer is: one evacuates them by force, just as was done with the 8,000 settlers forcibly evicted in the summer of 2005 when Israel left the Gaza Strip. Whoever doesn't want to leave the Palestinian state on his own two feet can be carried by his arms and legs.

But this cannot be done—and it cannot be done because of what happened in Gaza. To carry out the Gaza operation, Israel had to undergo months of agonizing debate that fractured its political party system; to divert a large part of its army and police force to the task in expectation of settler violence; to experience the national trauma of witnessing men, women and children literally dragged from their homes as Jews were in the past only by their persecutors in their countries of exile; to find itself saddled with a bill of billions of dollars for the evictees' relocation and rehabilitation; and today, nearly five years later, to face the reality that many of them have had their lives severely disrupted and still lack permanent homes. If this is what happened with 8,000 settlers who did not resort to violence in the end, what will happen with 10 times that many who almost certainly will?

28 This is something the Israeli public is not prepared to find out. It is not going to let itself undergo a trauma 10 times greater than that of 2005 and it will not be pushed to, or over, the brink of civil war. It lacks the political will to oust the more militant settlers from their homes and it will not do so, no matter what the world expects of it or some of its own politicians say.

Clearly, these settlers do not want to be under Palestinian rule and would threaten violent resistance to it, too. But they would quickly find out that a Palestinian police force would not coddle them as Israeli governments have done, and paradoxically, because they attach a greater value to the Land of Israel than to the State of Israel, many of them might ultimately be willing, if they could have their civil and property rights safeguarded and continue to be Israeli citizens, to live in the land but outside the state. So might many of the more politically moderate ultra-Orthodox and secular Jews in the settlements, whose approach would be more pragmatic. Were they offered a status analogous, say, to that of French Canadians living in Vermont a short drive from the Quebec border, they might well prefer it to giving up their homes.

Needless to say, the Palestinians are not Vermonters and have no love for the settlers. Yet they, too, might agree to such an arrangement if there were substantial benefits in it for them. And there could be: a return to the 1967 frontier, the dismantling of the security fence, open borders with Israel, and the reciprocal right of Palestinians to live and work there as Palestinian citizens. Nor would the continued presence of the settlements on Palestinian territory choke Palestinian development as it does now, for while Area C occupies close to three-fifths of the West Bank, once it were under Palestinian jurisdiction, the settlements themselves would remain with only a tiny fraction of the West Bank's land.

Granted, the settlers living in a Palestinian state would constitute a potential tinderbox that, given the built-in tensions between them and the Palestinian population, could flare up at any time. Preventing this from happening would depend on both them and on the Palestinian government, both of which would have to curb extremist elements. Yet the fact that the settlers would not have Palestinian citizenship would isolate them from the Palestinian political process and remove some points of friction, and if their Palestinian neighbors felt that they, too, were the recipients of a fair deal, the moderates among them might well prevail. And there would be an advantage in each country playing host to a large number of the other's citizens, for each would in effect be holding a body of hostages that it would have to treat well.

It would be difficult. It would be complicated. It would be risky for both sides. But isn't it at least worth thinking about? Not a conventional two-state solution, and not a disastrous one-state solution, but a Palestinian-Israeli federation with Palestinians in Israel and Israelis in Palestine. It may be the only real solution now left.

Hillel Halkin is an American-born author and translator who has lived in Israel for the past 40 years.

11. Only an idiot would say Israel has frozen settlement activity By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz, 17/02/2010 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1145224.html

Monday morning, as George Mitchell was on the way home from another diplomatic mission short on breakthroughs, Saeb Erekat did not sound dismayed. On the contrary, the head of the Palestinian negotiation team vehemently argued that the American envoy's last visit actually moved up the moment of truth for the White House.

The veteran adviser to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's favorite move of throwing the ball into the Palestinians' court stopped working with the Americans.

They are patiently waiting for the prime minister's answer to two questions: First, is he ready for the negotiations to pick up where they left off at the end of the former prime minister Ehud Olmert's term? Second, does he accept the principle that the territory transferred to a Palestinian state will be the same size as the territory captured by Israel in the West Bank and Gaza during the Six-Day War.

The international community's patience, Erekat concluded, is wearing thin.

Erekat is not alone in his thinking. Over the weekend, UN Secretary General Ban Ki- moon pointed at Israel as not only the one responsible for the stagnation in the diplomatic process, but also for the thawing of the freeze on construction in the settlements.

Two months after the government decision on November 26 to freeze construction in Jewish settlements for 10 months, you'd have to be blind, an idiot, or a member of the Yesha Council of settlements to use the term "freeze" to describe the real estate situation in Judea and Samaria.

Two days ago, when Netanyahu planted a tree in Gush Etzion, he promised to place many more trees in the Ariel bloc as well, which is 20 kilometers east of the Green Line. In the case of Ariel, Netanyahu kept his word even before he gave it; as he was speaking yellow bulldozers were feverishly working on a new site for Ariel's industrial zone.

The Civil Administration confirmed that the freeze also applied to industrial and commercial zones, and that surveys conducted last week in the Ariel region found several violations of the freeze order and an injunction to halt the construction was even issued. So what?

As mentioned, two days ago Haaretz documented bulldozers at work there (and also in the Barkan industrial zone). The Civil Administration spokesman explained that "the enforcement efforts and issuing of injunctions is done in accordance with all the relevant considerations and priorities."

It seems that the freeze on the construction of new industrial zones in national priority zones of the government in the heart of the West Bank is not at the top of the defense minister's list of priorities. He apparently was busy upgrading the status of Ariel University Center of Samaria.

30 Netanyahu's colleagues will probably explain to the Americans that besides for the settlers, factories also experience natural growth.

Who's getting called into the office

Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar (Likud), who has acquired a reputation as a moderate politician (he was even invited to speak at the most recent memorial ceremony for Yitzhak Rabin), has his priorities.

The day after remarks by Ram Cohen, the principal of the Tel Aviv Ironi Alef high school, to the effect that an army must defend borders and not "the accursed occupation" were published, Sa'ar came out sharply against the principal's "preaching" in the Knesset and in the media.

The district supervisor, Dalit Shtauber, was instructed to summon Cohen for a thorough clarification.

Two weeks ago, this column published extensive quotes from an article Rabbi Yisrael Rosen published in weekly Torah pamphlet, "Shabbat Beshabbato" which is supported by the Education Ministry and distributed in hundreds of synagogues.

Rosen wrote that the time has come "'to declare war' ... on Israeli Arabs... who are not loyal to the state ... and to designate them as 'enemies.'"

He called for their removal from main traffic arteries and for their right to vote for and be elected to the Knesset to be taken away.

"His brothers" on the Jewish left and some High Court of Justice judges, who identify with them, were also referred to as "enemies."

The day after the article appeared, I asked the ministry if the taxpayers, including Israeli Arabs and also "enemy brothers" will continue funding the printing of the pamphlet that incites against them.

The response of the Education Ministry's spokesman, Hagit Cohen, arrived Monday.

She stated that following Haaretz's query, the ministry's director general asked Rabbi Rosen for clarification. In a letter to the director general, Rabbi Rosen explained that he appreciates the contribution of loyal Arab Israelis to the state and primarily those among them who volunteer to do military and national service.

The rabbi added that his remarks should have been worded more appropriately and that "as one educated in the centrist stream of religious Zionism, I would not want to collectively tarnish anyone's reputation based on nationality or ethnic origin."

In Sa'ar's defense, it may be said that while right-wing Knesset members made a big fuss about Cohen's remarks, in the case of Rosen, the Labor and Meretz party members did not trouble the minister.

Shalom didn't do it

A thorough review of the case of the appointment of Alon Pinkas as ambassador to the UN found that even though Silvan Shalom has an account to settle with Pinkas dating from their time in the foreign minister's bureau, the Likud members' petition against the appointment is not connected to Shalom's vow to get back at the former consul general in New York.

You could say that Shalom's work was done by others; the prime minister has reasonable cause to oppose the favored candidate of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. It has nothing to do with the relationship between Netanyahu and businessman Sheldon Adelson and his free newspaper, Israel Hayom. Given the embarrassing humiliation of the Turkish ambassador, it is regrettable that no one upheld Shalom's old vow to stop Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon.

Crackdown on NGO/Activists

12. Israel's NGO crackdown spells trouble - Seth Freedman , Guardian online, 25/01/2010 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/25/israel-visas-ngo- palestine/print

The Israeli government's restrictions on the movement of NGO workers will impose more hardship on beleaguered Palestinians

Last week saw the latest move in the Israeli government's clampdown on those working in solidarity with the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. Ending a decades-old policy of granting work visas to employees of NGOs operating in the region, Israeli officials are now issuing NGO workers with tourist visas instead, prohibiting them from working in areas under Israeli jurisdiction, including Area C (which makes up 60% of the West Bank) and all of East Jerusalem. Many NGOs maintain a presence in East Jerusalem and in locations throughout Area C, and as a result of the policy change they fear having to shut up shop and relocate to towns and cities inside Area A. Once there, it appears that NGO employees will be subject to the same restrictions on entering Israel as Palestinians are currently, which would severely hamper their ability to serve the needs of the Palestinian population in East Jerusalem and in Area C.

There are around 150 NGOs currently working with the Palestinian population, and all but those 12 registered prior to Israel's occupation of the West Bank will be affected by the new policy, including Oxfam, Save the Children and Médecins Sans Frontières. The restriction on the movement of the hundreds of NGO employees sends yet another message from the Israeli government that they have no qualms about imposing further hardships on the already-beleaguered Palestinian people, regardless of how many previous accords are trampled upon and past agreements rescinded in the process.

32 2009 was a bad year for relations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, and all the signs point to 2010 proving equally fractious. President Obama's frank admission of his failure to break the deadlock between the two sides has reinforced the belief among observers that the perenially intractable conflict has a long time left to run, and his capitulation to Binyamin Netanyahu over settlements has bolstered the resolve of politicians on the Israeli right.

Avigdor Lieberman and his deputy Danny Ayalon have spent months breathing fire in the direction of anyone they deem inimical to the state, whether Palestinian officials, foreign diplomats, domestic dissidents or aid workers. While some of their threats turned out to be long on bark and short on bite, there has been a concerted wave of crackdowns against certain targets which reveal the government's true face when it comes to its political opponents.

Despite the violence of the second intifada having all but died out, Israel's rulers continue to apply intense heat to the resistance movement, incarcerating several key Palestinian activists on trumped-up charges relating to their anti-occupation protests. At the same time, internationals visiting Palestinian Authority areas find themselves barred from entering Israel, thanks to a new policy of stamping "PA-only" visas on their travel documents.

With every repressive measure taken by Israeli officials, the more apparent it becomes that Netanyahu and his cabinet have long stopped caring about the effects of their authoritarian actions on what is left of the peace process. Violence emanating from the West Bank has all but ceased in recent months, a development which could, and should, have been capitalised upon by Israeli and Palestinian leaders keen to exploit the relative calm to embark on fresh negotiations. However, Israel's intransigence over settlements and the sabre-rattling of Lieberman and his cohorts has prevented any progress whatsoever being made, and moves such as those taken against the NGO community only rub salt into the wound.

Taken in isolation, each restrictive policy enacted by the Israeli government is problematic enough to warrant challenging by those in the region with a real interest in justice. However, when viewed together as a chain of interlinked hardline tactics, the whole is far greater – and far more disturbing – than the sum of its parts. After almost a year in office, it is clear that the incumbent Israeli cabinet is engaged in a process of wilfully undermining as much as they can of the goodwill that previously existed between the two sides, and that can only spell serious trouble for the future – for Israelis as well as Palestinians.

The last thing Israelis need is for more Palestinians to be driven into the arms of extremist groups as a result of heightened Israeli repression. PA officials require far greater concessions from their Israeli counterparts as a means to convince their people that they can be relied upon to deliver results, and Israeli politicians ought to do all within their power to strengthen the moderate Palestinian leadership in order to negate the influence of Hamas and other radical groups.

Cracking down on NGO workers, foreign journalists and Israeli peace activists does nothing to achieve these ends, and will only result in more hostility, more suspicion and more recriminations. In the interests of citizens on both sides of the border, Israeli

33 leaders would do well to ratchet the tension down rather than up – but if past performance is anything to go by, the chances of such a comprehensive volte-face occurring are faint at best, and receding with every passing day.

13. J'lem police 'waging war' on secular protests, activists say Nir Hasson, Haaretz, 23/02/2010 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1151398.html

The Jerusalem police have declared war on secular protest in the city, secular activists claimed last week after being questioned on suspicion of damaging an eruv in Kiryat Yovel, a neighborhood that has become a flashpoint of the capital's culture wars.

An eruv is a set of poles and wires marking the bounds within which religious Jews may carry objects outside their homes on Shabbat. While Jerusalem already has one maintained by the municipality, Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jews have set up their own eruvs in several neighborhoods, deeming the municipal eruv insufficient.

The campaign against the Kiryat Yovel eruv is now in its second year, as secular residents view it as a sign that their neighborhood is undergoing unchecked "Haredization." The activists, seven of whom were questioned, said the poles were erected illegally and without building permits.

Upon taking office, Mayor Nir Barkat established a committee to determine the route of the Kiryat Yovel eruv. But of the hundreds of illegally erected poles, only 20 were ultimately removed.

In recent months, the conflict has heated up again: Protesters have hung Israeli flags and other banners on eruv poles and in some cases cut the wire between them.

"The eruv poles are a symbol," said activist Nir Pereg. "It's an attempt to demarcate a public area of a non-Haredi neighborhood. It's also a symbol of the municipality's powerlessness."

Last week, the city's religious council filed a complaint and police began summoning the activists for questioning.

Ilan Engels, a 25-year-old student who police said had cut the wire, was held in overnight detention Thursday night after refusing to answer questions. An injunction issued against Engels at the police's request will keep him out of the capital for two weeks.

Engel's attorneys, Ariel Naor and Shai Weiselberg, pointed an accusatory finger at police.

"I served in the police for 12 years and never came across such a scandalous request," Weiselberg said in court. "This is a political decision of the worst kind. The police don't want a confrontation, so they're trying to maintain quiet."

Esti Kremayer, an activist leader in Kiryat Yovel, said yesterday, "It's clear that the police's goal is to deter residents. I told the investigator that everything we did was

34 legitimate political protest.

"The ultra-Orthodox apply pressure as if they're the ones under attack," she continued. "Whoever knows what's happening in Jerusalem understands that that's absurd. It's ridiculous that the real criminals in this whole affair, those who put up the poles, are not being questioned."

Last week, police widened their circle of suspects beyond Kiryat Yovel: On Thursday, they called in Danny Tauber, a resident of the Ramat Beit Hakerem neighborhood. Tauber had campaigned against construction of a mikveh, or ritual bath, in the area.

Tauber was questioned on suspicion of causing property damage by spraying graffiti on the site designated to house the mikveh nine months ago. "The truth is that I wasn't able to stop laughing throughout the interrogation," he said.

Yehoshua Shai, chairman of the city's religious council, is the one who filed the police complaint. "As agreed with the municipality, the eruv was transferred to the religious council's authority, and damaging it is therefore damaging municipal property," he said. "There is no difference between breaking it and breaking a school fence.

"When you damage a pole, you can ruin the eruv for all of Jerusalem, and being responsible for that is serious," he added.

The Jerusalem police said that "The poles were set up legally, and damaging them is illegal. All those involved in causing damage have been questioned. The police treat members of all communities equally, and all those who participate in illegal activity will be questioned."

Barkat's office said, "In an effort to resolve the matter, and at the mayor's request, the municipality took down 80 eruv posts that were put up illegally ... The municipality urges residents not to be drawn in by radicals on either side, and reminds them that either setting up or taking down eruv poles independently is a violation of the law, a criminal offense."

Other current issues

14. Is Israel severing East Jerusalem from the West Bank? Amira Hass, Haaretz, 23/02/2010 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1151428.html

Blocked roads and asphalt that has been ripped open like a zipper can be seen everywhere in Ramallah these days. And whether or not the municipality bothers posting explanatory signs, people know what is being done - a new road, sewage pipes, a sidewalk.

But seven or ten kilometers away, at the Qalandiyah and Jaba checkpoints, which together form the southern border of the Ramallah enclave, it is not clear what is

35 happening. This area, which is completely under Israeli control, is also the scene of intensive construction. But nothing is known about this work other than rumors about Israel's intentions.

Every night for the past four months or so, bulldozers guarded by army jeeps have been changing the appearance of the Qalandiyah checkpoint. Its area has been expanded, the number of lanes has been increased and another booth and building have been added. Sometimes the checkpoint is closed to vehicular traffic at night to prevent the work from being disrupted.

People complain, just as they complain about the traffic jams in Ramallah. But here, the complaints have another aspect: People are upset over the lack of control, the lack of information and the intuitive feeling that nothing good will come of this. To a Palestinian, every checkpoint drives home the fact that Israel sees him as a subject - someone who need not be consulted and whose welfare is not taken into account.

Israel calls the checkpoint a "terminal" and relates to it as an existing, legal border between the State of Israel and the Palestinian entity. For Palestinians, the Qalandiyah checkpoint is a physical representation of the fact that for most of them, East Jerusalem has become as far away as the moon. Most of the people who pass through Qalandiyah are Palestinian residents of Jerusalem. A minority are West Bank residents who have temporary permits to enter Israel.

Those going to Jerusalem cross the checkpoint from north to south. Those heading for other towns in the West Bank drive three kilometers to the east, to the Jaba junction, which is on the new Route 60 that bypasses Ramallah. During the daytime, Israeli bulldozers are busy expanding this junction. The military checkpoint at Jaba, which controls entry into Ramallah, also contributes to the creation of the long traffic jams that characterize the junction.

Every morning and afternoon, tens of thousands of vehicles flow through the junction. For Palestinians, this is the only north-south axis connecting the southern West Bank with the northern part. For Israelis, this is the road that turns the settlements into luxurious suburbs of the capital.

It was possible to find an echo of the fears generated by the construction at Qalandiyah in one telegraphic sentence of the statement issued last Monday by Salam Fayyad's government. As usual, it condemned a long list of Israeli activities, including "the attempt to expand the area of the Qalandiyah military checkpoint as part of the plan to separate the West Bank from Jerusalem." Does the government have any concrete information? No, officials replied in answer to my question. They do not know for sure, but they are guessing, and condemning. In other words, the hallmarks of subjugation that characterize individual Palestinians - the passivity, the fear and the lack of influence - are being replicated by their government.

According to the rumors, the real objective behind the expansion of the Qalandiyah checkpoint is to tighten supervision over the Jerusalem residents who pass through it. It is no secret that many Palestinian residents of Jerusalem work in Ramallah. Some of them even live there, due to the difficulty of finding appropriate housing in Jerusalem. And Israel's Interior Ministry is constantly trying to trace people about

36 whom it can assert that "the center of their lives is not in Jerusalem," thus enabling it to revoke their residency status.

The rumor mill claims that all Palestinian residents of Jerusalem will eventually have to pass through Qalandiyah, which will have computerized record-keeping. Public transportation from Jerusalem is already obliged to travel only through Qalandiyah; buses and taxis have been forbidden to drive through the Jaba junction to the Hizmeh (Pisgat Ze'ev) checkpoint, which the settlers use. West Bank residents who have permits to enter Israel are also forbidden to cross at Hizmeh.

The only ones who are allowed to use Hizmeh are Palestinian residents of Jerusalem in private vehicles, which drive bumper to bumper with the vehicles of settlers from Eli and Migron. And in the long run, so the rumors in Ramallah and Jerusalem say, they, too, will be obliged to drive through Qalandiyah. If all Jerusalem residents were ordered to drive only through Qalandiyah, Hizmeh would be totally closed to Palestinians; only settlers and other Israelis would be allowed to cross through it.

Other rumors talk of a special lane that will be built at Qalandiyah for VIPs and diplomats. Machsom Watch activists have heard a guess to this effect from the soldiers and security guards stationed at Qalandiyah. Today, in order not to waste their precious time, diplomats and VIPs drive through a special crossing for the privileged, located east of Ramallah near the Beit El military base. But if a special lane were set up for them at Qalandiyah, the road on which the Beit El checkpoint is located could be permanently blocked.

The rumors might indicate a general belief that VIPs would not shy away from or oppose driving on a special fast lane separate from the one used by ordinary mortals.

But an Israeli security source told Haaretz that the rumors are unfounded. There is no intention of closing the Beit El crossing, there are no instructions to open a special VIP lane at Qalandiyah, and there is no intention of forcing everyone to drive through Qalandiyah while forbidding Palestinians to use the Hizmeh crossing, he said.

The Israel Defense Forces Spokesman said the work now underway was undertaken "due to a combination of safety considerations and transportation considerations, and the aim is to improve the fabric of life of the Palestinian and Israeli citizens who pass through this site, and to lessen the traffic load." The spokesman added that numerous accidents have occurred at the Jaba junction.

Regarding the issue of Palestinian residents of Jerusalem using the Hizmeh crossing, the spokesman said that "at present, no changes can be expected in the existing traffic arrangements at this site."

Which leaves us with one question: What does "at present" mean?

15. Children as young as 12 arrested in night raids in Silwan, East Jerusalem 16/02/2010, B’Tselem http://www.btselem.org/English/Press_Releases/20100216.asp

37 B'Tselem recently uncovered a number of cases in which minors aged 12-15 from Silwan, in East Jerusalem, were arrested in the middle of the night by police officers and Israel Security Agency agents accompanied by armed border policemen. In four cases documented by B'Tselem, the minors were taken from their beds and homes and brought, their hands cuffed, to interrogation at the police station in the Russian Compound, in West Jerusalem. The parents of the children were not allowed to accompany them. The minors were then interrogated on suspicion of stone throwing. Testimonies given to B'Tselem indicate that, during the questioning, the interrogators beat and threatened them. The detention of one of them, a 14-year-old, was extended for seven days. The rest were released. There are indications that several other minors were similarly arrested and interrogated.

The ongoing friction between residents of Silwan and the settlers in nearby Beit Yehonatan and security personnel guarding it, in which context Palestinian children in the neighborhood throw stones at the building, is apparently the reason for the arrests.

The authorities' treatment of the minors completely contravenes the Youth Law, as amended in 2008 (Amendment No. 14). Under the Law, a minor who is suspected of committing a criminal offense may consult as a rule, with a parent or other relative prior to being questioned, and the parent or relative may be present during the questioning. The Law also prohibits, other than in exceptional cases, questioning a minor at night, and states that, if the objective can be achieved in a less harmful way, the minor should not be arrested. In the present case, some of the parents were willing to undertake to bring the minors in the morning for questioning, and there was no need for the night operation.

The actions by the authorities severely violated the human rights of the minors, all of whom are Israeli permanent residents. A military-style operation conducted in the middle of the night, with the aim of detaining for interrogation minors aged 12-15 suspected of stone throwing is illogical and unjustifiable on any grounds. It is hard to believe that the security forces would have acted similarly with Jewish minors.

B'Tselem has sent urgent letters to the Jerusalem police commander, Maj. Gen. Ilan Franco, and to the head of the Department of the Investigation of Police, Herzl Shviro, calling for an end to police, ISA, and Border Police operations to detain minors in Silwan. If any child from the neighborhood is suspected of having committed a criminal offense, he can be summoned for questioning in the presence of an adult on his behalf. Also, the questioning must be conducted by youth interrogators.

16. 'PA officials involved in sale of Jerusalem assets to Jewish groups' Ali Waked, 22/02/2010, Israel News http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3852990,00.html

Former Palestinian intelligence head who uncovered sex scandal involving Abbas' bureau chief tells reporters PA did not prosecute officer who sold Old City asset to Jewish organization; mentions other corruption cases

38 Former Palestinian General Intelligence chief Fahmi Shabana told a press conference in Jerusalem Monday that a senior officer in the Palestinian Authority's security apparatus sold Palestinian assets in the Old City to a Jewish organization.

According to Shabana, the officer was not prosecuted despite the fact that investigators were able to gather solid evidence against him.

The former intelligence chief said the decision not to prosecute the officer was made by senior PA officials, which, according to him, indicates their involvement in the selling of Palestinian assets in Jerusalem.

Shabana further claimed that another Palestinian officer served as a go-between in the sale of a building that housed the Palestinian newspaper Al-Fajr to an extremist Jewish organization.

The former intelligence director added that on another occasion a prominent attorney with connections to the PA tried to transfer the ownership of a Palestinian home in the Old City to Jews. However, a Palestinian court refused to authorize the transfer, he said.

Shabana claimed that senior Palestinian officials are involved in the transfer of Palestinian assets to the hands of extremist Jewish groups, adding that so far no action has been taken against them.

The former intelligence head recently revealed an embarrassing video from 2008 depicting the head of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' office, Rafik al- Husseini, rubbing his body against his secretary and apparently trying to convince a woman seeking employment in the office to have sexual relations with him.

He claimed that officials close to Abbas and his predecessor Yasser Arafat were entangled in corruption scandals amounting to millions of shekels stolen from public coffers.

Shabana, who was in charge of the PA's anti-corruption campaign, claimed in interviews with the media that he placed before Abbas evidence of widespread economic corruption around him, but that the president declined doing anything about it. According to him, senior Fatah officials during Arafat's rule stole millions of shekels from PA coffers, a large amount of which originated from Arab states, Europe, and the US as donations.

17. Interview with Fakhri Abu-Diab: Can Non-Violence Work in Jerusalem? Reported by Ziva Galili, Ir Amim blog, Huffington Post , 19/02/2010 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ir-amim/interview-with-fakhri- abu_b_467934.html?view=print

"There is very little hope in East Jerusalem today, but we are committed to the struggle for our homes and our rights, and we are determined to do it by legal means and without violence."

39 The speaker is Fakhri Abu-Diab, a resident of Al-Bustan neighborhood in the Silwan quarter of East Jerusalem. Situated just south of the holiest and most contested ground in Jerusalem -- Temple Mount to Jews, Haram-al-Sharif to Muslims -- Silwan is a troubled place. What used to be a cluster of villages spread over some 550 acres, is now a crowded neighborhood of over 30,000 Palestinians. It is one of the poorest neighborhoods in Jerusalem and still lacks basic urban infrastructure, such as paved roads and adequate schools. Israeli settlers began to move in two decades ago, and have received both tacit and overt support from several government agencies. Today, close to 500 of them live in fortified enclaves, complete with private guards and surveillance cameras.

Fakhri Abu-Diab lives in the most contested part of Silwan, comprising of Wadi Hilweh and Al-Bustan neighborhoods. Located within this area of about 30 acres are the archeological digs of the "City of David"; the ancient Shiloah tunnel and pool; and the Bustan [orchard] at the bottom of the hill, along the Shiloah spring. Much of this area was declared a national park -- intended as one link in a ring of national parks that is projected to surround the Old City. In 1997, the Parks and Nature Authority transferred all responsibility for the national park to the settler association Elad. The State's Antiquities Authority has likewise given Elad direct responsibility for the archeological digs in the "City of David." The massive digs it has conducted have been criticized by leading archeologists as tendentious and dangerous to the surrounding homes of Wadi Hilweh. Meanwhile, Elad is creating an archeological "theme park" around the digs and is moving with government support to turn the Bustan into a park -- "The King's Gardens." This plan looms large and heavy over my conversation with Abu-Diab. His home and roughly 90 other homes in Al-Bustan stand where "The King's Gardens" are planned. Since all of the houses were either built or expanded without permits, they all face court-issued demolition orders.

"My home is where I used to find shelter from the confusion and pressures of living under occupation, but now the occupation has reached into my home; when I enter, I look around me at the kitchen, the rooms, the furniture that makes a home, and I remember that I might be seeing it for the last time... When a home is demolished, a family is destroyed... In media reports, you don't hear about the emotional toll it takes. I volunteered to tutor a boy in the local school and discovered that he had no books in his school bag, only toys. When his parents asked him about it, he said he was so afraid the bulldozers would come while he was in school that he took his most beloved toys to school every day..."

I ask Fakhri about his family's history in Jerusalem. He belongs to one of 12 clans that make up Silwan's Palestinian population and can trace his own lineage seven generations back. He was born in 1962 in a one-room home in the bustan, right next to the Shiloah spring. There he grew up with 14 other siblings, but like many Silwan residents, half of his siblings left for other countries -- in the Arab world, Europe and America. Fakhri inherited the one-room home and after he married and children began to be born (there are five of them, ages 17 to 26), he began to worry about enlarging his home. Like many Palestinian residents of Jerusalem he could never obtain a building permit from the Jerusalem municipality and eventually decided to build without it. This decision now serves as the grounds for the demolition order on his home.

40 "It is my basic right as a human being to have a home for my five children, to have a kitchen, to have a place to sleep... I like the idea of a park, it is my dream to sit there with my wife, but I want it to be near my house, not in place of it. Now it looks as if the municipality wants to take my place, to erase me."

It was not always so hopeless. A few years back, international criticism forced the Jerusalem municipality to suspend plans for a massive eviction of Al-Bustan residents. Lupuliansky, then Jerusalem's mayor, offered to work with the residents on a plan that would minimize the number of home demolitions while addressing environmental and planning needs. The residents got organized, each contributed some money (some sold their cars, some women gave their dowry gold), and they hired an architect and a lawyer. But in February 2009, after five years of work and many a back-and-forth with the planning authorities, and just a few days after the city confirmed that the plan met all the requirements, the approval was retracted. Left with no recourse, the residents built a "protest tent" to highlight their plight and to keep themselves organized.

The conversation with Fakhri points to some interesting developments.The Residents' Committee of Al-Bustan is part of a larger network: a Silwan-wide committee, and another committee for all of Palestinian Jerusalem. Fakhri is proud that today women make up about 30% of the committees' membership. In Al-Bustan, the Residents' Committee no longer limits itself to planning and housing issues; instead, it tries to address the many gaps in municipal services. It operates a sort of community center in a house that was donated by a resident of Al-Bustan for a school (this was when the city argued it could not open a much needed new school because there was no place to put it; now the city argues that there is no money for construction). The place is used for educational activities and other gatherings. During Ramadan, the women cooked together the traditional evening meal. Fakhri thinks the opportunity to spend time with each other helps the women and children of Al-Bustan to cope with the uncertainty and frustrations.

It seems that every story Fakhri tells me leads to the same point: his belief in using legal, non-violent means. He tells me of another member of the Residents' Committee who had spent time in an Israeli prison for acts of violence, and who changed his mind -- not because of prison, but through conversations with other committee members.

"He and I work together now to educate our children to struggle in legal, democratic ways. But we worry that one day our children will stop believing us, because they see that non-violence brings us nowhere. How can I speak to them of co-existence when they see the home of our neighbors -- a family with five children, ages 5 to 11 -- being destroyed? Reality contradicts our preaching and pushes our youth toward radicalism. Discrimination and neglect by the Israeli government and Jerusalem municipality have created a vacuum in East Jerusalem, and it invites radical elements. When the mayor refuses to open in Silwan a "milk station" (an infant service center), he forces us to accept services from Hamas and the Islamic Movement in Israel."

I ask Fakhri how he feels about Israeli individuals and organizations like Ir Amim, who are trying to help.

41 "I judge people by their actions, not their religion or nationality. It is important to me that Israelis come to Silwan and see the situation as it is, and it is also important that the many people in the Arab world who are in contact with me by phone and email know that among the Israelis there are those who care. For the conflict to be resolved, people must hear each other, meet face to face and see the other, talk together over coffee. It is essential if our two peoples are to safeguard the future for our children. The presence of Israelis and international visitors also gives us some protection. The police see that we are not alone."

Finally, I ask Fakhri how he finds the strength to hold on to his belief in non-violence.

"The strength comes from my hope and belief that one day things will be better. It comes from our strong desire not to lose the children -- not to see them commit violence and end up in jail... I think of international law and of the law of humanity -- don't do anything to hurt another person... Of course, the reality around us makes it difficult for many to accept this position, so I have to argue with my own children and my neighbors...

I myself don't see much hope for Silwan and East Jerusalem in the next few years. This is why our direction must be one of autonomy; we should build our own services -- electricity, infant care, education, health, even judicial matters. We have to make ourselves ready for the moment Jerusalem is ours. I want to live in a Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem, but I don't want it to be like other Arab states. I want a truly democratic state."

18. Israel Detains Around 60 In Shu'fat Refugee Camp Raid Eurasia Review, 08/02/ 2010 http://www.eurasiareview.com/2010/02/31660-israel-detains-around-60- in.html

(Ma'an) -- A large deployment of Israeli Border Guards and police raided a number of neighborhoods in the Shu'fat Refugee Camp, north of occupied East Jerusalem, and detained over 60 Palestinians affiliated to the Salafi and Fatah movements, according to Ma'an's correspondent.

The raid included house to house searches to locate weapons, the correspondent said. Those detained include Fawzi Muheisin, Amir Ad-Dibs, Mu’taz Ad-Dibs, Hamza Ad- Dibs, Udayy Abu As-Sa’d, Ibrahim Ad-Dib’I, Hasan Abu At-Tein, Ali Issa, and more than 20 construction workers from the West Bank who reside in the refugee camp.

Amir Ad-Dibs is the son of a Fatah member and, according to locals, his mother was pushed to the ground by Israeli forces during his detention.

The exact number of those detained during the operation is uncertain, with locals estimating over 60.

Israeli police sources said that 11 of those detained were deemed "wanted" and confirmed that the detention campaign is ongoing.

42 On Saturday, confrontations erupted between young Palestinians and Israeli soldiers manning the military checkpoint at the refugee camp's entrance as Palestinian youths protested against the inspection policy widely considered as humiliating. A number of complaints have been lodged against Israeli soldiers manning the Shu'fat checkpoint.

Shu'fat Refugee Camp is home to more than 25,000 Palestinian refugees, most of whom were displaced from their homes across Jerusalem. The camp is isolated from Jerusalem by the separation wall, and two military checkpoints were erected at the western entrance of the camp to monitor Palestinian movement.

Residents have to pass through these checkpoints on a daily basis to go about their daily lives.

Earlier on Monday the Anata Refugee Camp was also stormed, with a number of detentions reported.

Separately, Israeli forces stormed the villages of Hajja and Azzun east of Qalqiliya, and detained six Palestinian teenagers.

Locals told Ma'an that Israeli forces raided Hajja at daybreak and detained Munjid Atif Hassan, 17, and Muhammad Arif Thiab, 17, after forcibly searching their family homes.

In Azzun, locals identified those detained as Amjad Jamal Shilo, 19, Ja'far Abdul- Karim, 16, Adham Shahir Salim, 17, and Mustafa Bilal Hussein, 17.

Additionally, Israeli forces detained ten Palestinians in Qalqiliya, Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Hebron districts at daybreak.

Soldiers said a home-made rifle was confiscated during the search of a home in Beit Ummar, north of Hebron.

19. Israel stole $2 billion from Palestinian workers By Jonathan Cook, Tehran Times, 6/02/2010 http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=213791

JERUSALEM -- Over the past four decades Israel has defrauded Palestinians working inside Israel of more than $2 billion by deducting from their salaries contributions for welfare benefits to which they were never entitled, Israeli economists have revealed.

A new report, “State Robbery”, to be published later this month, says the “theft” continued even after the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994 and part of the money was supposed to be transferred to a special fund on behalf of the workers.

According to information supplied by Israeli officials, most of the deductions from the workers’ pay were invested in infrastructure projects in the Palestinian territories - - a presumed reference to the massive state subsidies accorded to the settlements.

43 Nearly 50,000 Palestinians from the West Bank are working in Israel -- following the easing of restrictions on entering Israel under the “economic peace” promised by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister -- and continue to have such contributions docked from their pay.

Complicit in the deception, the report adds, is the Histadrut, the Israeli labour federation, which levies a monthly fee on Palestinian workers, even though they are not entitled to membership and are not represented in labour disputes.

“This is a clear-cut case of theft from Palestinian workers on a grand scale,” said Shir Hever, a Jerusalem-based economist and one of the authors of the report. “There are no reasons for Israel to delay in returning this money either to the workers or to their beneficiaries.”

The deductions started being made in 1970, three years after the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories began, when Palestinian workers started to enter Israel in significant numbers, most of them employed as manual laborers in the agriculture and construction industries.

Typically, the workers lose a fifth of their salary in deductions that are supposed to cover old age payments, unemployment allowance, disability insurance, child benefits, trade union fees, pension fund, holiday and sick pay, and health insurance. In practice, however, the workers are entitled only to disability payments in case of work accidents and are insured against loss of work if their employer goes bankrupt.

According to the report, compiled by two human rights groups, the Alternative Information Centre and Kav La’Oved, only a fraction of the total contributions -- less than eight per cent -- was used to award benefits to Palestinian workers. The rest was secretly transferred to the finance ministry.

The Israeli organizations assess that the workers were defrauded of at least $2.25bn in today’s prices, in what they describe as a minimum and “very conservative” estimate of the misappropriation of the funds. Such a sum represents about 10 per cent of the PA’s annual budget.

The authors also note that they excluded from their calculations two substantial groups of Palestinian workers -- those employed in the Jewish settlements and those working in Israel’s black economy -- because figures were too hard to obtain.

Mr. Hever said the question of whether the bulk of the deductions -- those for national insurance -- had been illegally taken from the workers was settled by the Israeli High Court back in 1991. The judges accepted a petition from the flower growers’ union

44 that the government should return about $1.5 million in contributions from Palestinian workers in the industry.

“The legal precedent was set then and could be used to reclaim the rest of these excessive deductions,” he said.

At the height of Palestinian participation in the Israeli labor force, in the early 1990s, as many as one in three Palestinian workers was dependent on an Israeli employer.

Israel continued requiring contributions from Palestinian workers after the creation of the Palestinian Authority in 1994, arguing that it needed to make the deductions to ensure Israeli workers remained competitive.

However, the report notes that such practices were supposed to have been curbed by the Oslo process. Israel agreed to levy an “equalization tax” -- equivalent to the excessive contributions paid by Palestinians -- a third of which would be invested in a fund that would later be available to the workers.

In fact, however, the Israeli State Comptroller, a government watchdog official, reported in 2003 that only about a tenth of the money levied on the workers had actually been placed in the fund.

The finance ministry has admitted that most of the money taken from the workers was passed to Israeli military authorities in the Palestinian territories to pay for “infrastructure programs”. Hannah Zohar, the director of Kav La’Oved who co- authored the report, said she believed that the ministry was actually referring to the construction of illegal settlements.

The report is also highly critical of the Histadrut, Israel’s trade union federation, which it accuses of grabbing “a piece of the pie” by forcing Palestinian workers to pay a monthly “organizing fee” to the union since 1970, even though Palestinians are not entitled to membership.

Despite the Histadrut’s agreement with its Palestinian counterpart in 2008 to repay the fees, only 20 percent was returned, leaving $30m unaccounted for.

The Histadrut was also implicated in another “rip-off”, said Mr. Hever. It agreed in 1990 to the Israeli construction industry’s demand that Palestinian workers pay an extra two per cent tax to promote the training of recent Jewish immigrants, most of them from the former Soviet Union.

Mr. Hever said that in effect the Palestinian laborers were required to “subsidize the

45 training of workers meant to replace them”. The funds were never used for the stated purpose but were mainly issued as grants to the families of Israeli workers.

In one especially cynical use of the funds, the report notes, the money was spent on portable stoves for soldiers involved in Israel’s three-week attack on Gaza last year.

In response, the finance ministry called the report “incorrect and misleading”, and the Histadrut claimed it was “full of lies”. However, neither provided rebuttals of the report’s allegations or its calculations.

Mr. Hever said the government body responsible for making the deductions, the department of payments, had initially refused to divulge any of its figures, but had partly relented after some statistics were made available through leaks from its staff.

Assef Saeed, a senior official in the Palestinian Authority’s labor ministry, said the PA was keen to discuss the issue of the deductions, but that talks were difficult because of the lack of contacts between the two sides.

Jonathan Cook is a British writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel.

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

20. Klein: Israel silently allows Palestinians to open Jerusalem institutions. Sources confirm decision taken under heavy U.S. pressure by Brenda J. Elliott, RBO, 1/02/ 2010 http://therealbarackobama.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/klein-israel-silently-allows- palestinians-to-open-jerusalem-institutions-sources-confirm-decision-taken-under- heavy-u-s-pressure/

Aaron Klein, Jerusalem bureau chief for World Net Daily, reports:

Under intense American pressure, Israel has silently agreed to allow the Palestinian Authority to open official institutions in eastern sections of Jerusalem, a senior official in PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ office told WND.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office did not deny the report.

When asked whether Netanyahu agreed to allow PA institutions in Jerusalem, Netanyahu’s spokesman Mark Regev told WND, “the prime minister’s position on Jerusalem is clear. Jerusalem will remain the united capital of Israel.”

Separately, an official from Netanyahu’s office confirmed to WND that in recent meetings, President Obama’s envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell pressed

46 Netanyahu to freeze Jewish construction in eastern Jerusalem as a confidence building measure to begin direct talks with PA President Mahmoud Abbas. US National Security Adviser Jim Jones also pushed for a contruction freeze, even imploring Netanyahu to quietly impose the freeze without making any public announcements.

Abbas had publicly stated he would not commence direct negotiations with Israel unless a Jewish construction freeze was imposed in eastern Jerusalem.

The Netanyahu official said the prime minister rejected any construction freeze in eastern Jerusalem, but did acquiesce to a U.S. request to allow the PA to open institutions in Jerusalem.

According to Israeli law, the PA cannot officially open institutions in Jerusalem. The PA previously maintained a de facto headquarters in Jerusalem, called Orient House, but the building was closed by Israel in 2001 following a series of suicide bombings in Jerusalem. Israel said it had information indicating the House was used to plan and fund terrorism.

In defiance of the accords, however, the Palestinians in recent months have opened up in eastern Jerusalem official institutions, including PA ministry offices. Israel largely took no measures to stop the institutions from opening. Now it seems Netanyahu has paved the way for more PA institutions in Jerusalem.

A WND investigation previously determined the U.S. has been aiding the Palestinians in developing infrastructure in eastern Jerusalem, including on property legally owned by Jews.

That situation has been unfolding in multiple area C neighborhoods, such as the northern Jerusalem neighborhoods of Kfar Akeb, Qalandiya and Samir Amis, which are close to the Jewish neighborhoods of Neve Yaacov and Pisgat Zeev in Israel’s capital. Kfar Akeb, Qalandiya and Samir Amis are located entirely within the Jerusalem municipality.

A tour then of the Jerusalem neighborhoods found some surprising developments. Official PA logos and placards abound, including one glaring red street sign at the entrance to the neighborhoods warning Israelis to keep out.

Another official sign, in Kfar Akeb in Jerusalem, reads in English, “Ramallah- Jerusalem Road. This project is a gift form (sic) the American people to the Palestinian people in cooperation with the Palestinian Authority and PECDAR. 2007.”

The sign bears the emblems of the American and PA governments and of the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID. The displays were not present during a previous WND tour of the neighborhoods in 2006.

Some local schools in the Jerusalem neighborhoods are officially run by the PA – some in conjunction with the U.N. – with many teachers drawing PA salaries. Civil disputes are usually settled not in Israeli courts but by the PA judicial system, although at times Israeli courts are used, depending on the matter.

47 Councils governed by Abbas’ Fatah organization oversee some municipal matters. USAID provides the PA funds for road and infrastructure projects.

Israeli security officials said the local Jerusalem police rarely operate in peripheral eastern Jerusalem Arab neighborhoods. Instead, security has been turned over to the Israel Defense Forces and Border Police, who work almost daily with PA security forces. The PA police operate in the Jerusalem neighborhoods in coordination with Israel.

Shmulik Ben Ruby, spokesman for the Jerusalem police, confirmed the arrangement.

“If there are fights between some local families, sometimes we involve the PA police to make peace between the families,” he told WND. “Yes, the PA police can operate in these neighborhoods in coordination with the IDF and Border Police.”

Dmitri Ziliani, a spokesman for the Jerusalem section of Fatah, confirmed to WND the Palestinians have set up local command in some neighborhoods of Jerusalem.

“We were covering the best ways to improve our performance on the street and how we can be of service to the community,” Ziliani said.

Ziliani said the PA holds regular official meetings in Jerusalem in anticipation of a future Palestinian state encompassing all of eastern Jerusalem.

“Our political program, as Fatah, dictates there will be no Palestinian state if these areas – all of east Jerusalem – are not included,” Ziliani told WND.

21. This police station is brought to you by: A right-wing NGO Uri Misgav, Yediot Friday Political Supplement, 22/01/2010 http://coteret.com/2010/01/22/yediot-expose-settler-orgs-fund-police- infrastructure-in-east-jerusalem/

On the hilltop stands a building, like a colonial palace in the Third World. Around it lie the barren pastures of the surrounding villages, a flock of sheep chewing the grass, and two Palestinian shepherds suspiciously eyeing the construction. A gazelle with sharp antlers, which finds itself on the road, gives a startled look and takes off. Welcome to the brand new Samaria and Judea District Police headquarters.

The road ascends the hill, revealing the impressive infrastructure: straight terraces, gravel and limestone beds smoothed into the rock, traffic circles, safety railings, electricity poles and lights. Large signs on behalf of the nearby city of Maale Adumim direct the drivers to “Mevasseret Adumim,” a new neighborhood, which today remains on paper only. The establishment of the neighborhood was approved by the Sharon government in 2004, but was quickly brought to a halt due to American pressure. If established, it will contain 3,900 housing units. To date no approval has been given to begin construction. A new and broad bridge which is to link Maale Adumim with the new neighborhood has already been built. Today there is still no traffic allowed on it.

48 The construction of the police headquarters began in 2005 and was completed in 2008. It was intended for an area known as E-1, which constitutes a bone of contention between Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the Americans. The construction of the police headquarters by the government was seen as a blatant violation of the political status quo, and sparked a wave of criticism. A petition filed by Palestinian residents and human rights organizations concerning the confiscation of land required for the construction, was dismissed. But this, it now seems, is only the tip of the iceberg.

A Yedioth Ahronoth investigation reveals some very surprising facts concerning the funding of the new headquarters. According to our findings, only a small portion of the funding originates from the state. The bulk of the money comes from private organizations with a clear right wing orientation: the Bukhara Community Trust, and the Shalem Foundation — a subsidiary formed by the Jerusalem-based Elad NGO.

The funding of the construction by the Bukhara Community Trust was undertaken in broad daylight, as part of an agreement which included the removal of the old Samaria and Judea District Police headquarters in the Ras el-Amud neighborhood in East Jerusalem and handing it over to the Bukharan community, which owned the area prior to 1948. In exchange for the return of the property, the trust financed part of the construction of the new headquarters.

In the course of the hearing before the High Court of Justice, the state argued that no funding from any additional private sources had been received, and that the Bukhara Community Trust had alone born the cost. However a more detailed examination reveals that a private company called the Shalem Foundation has funded the construction of the headquarters as well as its surrounding infrastructure, at the cost of millions of shekels.

The Shalem Foundation is a subsidiary of Elad—which is considered one of the most powerful and rich right wing NGOs operating today, known for its vigorous activity in the Old City and East Jerusalem. Among others, Elad and the Bukhara Community Trust are involved in operations to strengthen the Jewish enclaves around Mount Olives, one of Jerusalem’s most contested areas.

The channels and sources of the funding, revealed here for the first time, raise some serious questions. Why does the Israeli Police require outside funding to build a police station? Is it acceptable that the construction of police headquarters, the entire activity of which concerns the West Bank, will be funded by organizations with a clearly political agenda? Is it acceptable that a police headquarters is being built in a politically contested area by organizations with a clear political interest?

“This is a scandal,” says Peace Now Secretary General Yariv Oppenheimer. “Since when does a private company fund the Israeli Police, build one police station, and in exchange receive another? And all this is occurring in the most volatile areas in the Middle East, in order to establish facts that effect the entire state as well as the fate of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Funded by “outside sources”

49 E-1 is an area that spans from East Jerusalem to the large settlement of Maale Adumim. The area is not large, however a simple glance at the map reveals its strategic importance. If Israel is able to expand the settlement of Maale Adumim to the west, the Palestinians will be unable to have territorial contiguity between the northern West Bank and southern parts of the West Bank: the future Palestinian state will remain carved and free movement of Palestinians will be possible, if at all, only through the Jordan Valley. This is why for the Palestinians this a matter of life and death and the Americans have strictly forbidden Israel to build in the area. The construction of the Samaria and Judea District Police headquarters is the only breach of the status quo noted to date.

In the Defense Ministry’s 2006 and 2007 budget there is on page 55 a clause pertaining to the construction of the Samaria and Judea District Police headquarters, with a stated cost of NIS 60 million. The comments state: “NIS 9 million from the Internal Security Ministry, and the rest from outside sources.” But who exactly are these anonymous “outside sources”?

The old headquarters in Ras el-Amud in the pre-1948 building was Bukharan property, and after the war remained in Jordanian hands. Events proceeded as follows, according to the response of the Internal Security Ministry as conveyed to Yedioth Ahronoth: “With the renewed seizure of the area by Israel, the state was registered as the owner of the property. The Bukhara Community Trust filed a lawsuit over the confiscation, and a court ruling instructed the state to compensate the trust for the land. However the payment failed to materialize.

“Seeing that according to the law, the trust may purchase the land by means of return of ownership, and that the trust sought to do this, an agreement was signed between the Israel Lands Administration and the trust, in which the administration acquiesced to the trust’s request to obtain the land in exchange for the trust’s agreement to provide alternative construction for the state. In other words, the trust would undertake construction for the police in exchange for the buildings in Ras el-Amud.

“The construction took place in an area allotted to the police for this purpose by the Israel Lands Administration in the area of E-1. The trust undertook construction in proportions equivalent to those in the confiscated area, with the police also undertaking some of the construction, seeing that the headquarters’ area is larger than the area evicted.”

Among the leaders of the Bukharan Community Trust there are several familiar faces. The tycoon Lev Leviev, for example. In the state’s 2008 budget, Leviev is mentioned as the person who donated NIS one million for the renovation of the old Jewish cemetery on Mount Olives. Leviev had been seen in the past at several events of Elad, which also invests much efforts on Mount Olives and in other projects aimed at strengthening Jewish holdings in East Jerusalem.

Among the leaders of the trust is also the Ben David family, which once owned the large hotel in Gush Katif. This family is also linked to Elad. One of the brothers, Eitan Ben David, was one of Elad’s founders. Another brother, Rami Ben David, purchased one of the houses in Silwan for Elad in 1996, with the commencement of the Jewish settlement effort in the village (Elad’s flagship operation, as is noted in its name, an

50 abbreviation for the City of David—an excavation and large tourist site in Silwan). With all this in mind, one can understand the roots of Elad’s involvement in the construction project in the E-1 area.

A NIS 35 million loan

The Elad organization is a powerful, rich and successful organization. Its stated aims were changed several times in the NGO Registrar in order to take more and more activity under its wing. Its present stated aim is “the strengthening of Jewish ties to historic Jerusalem, by means of tours, education, population and PR literature. Providing guides as well as Torah and Zionist education, development of tourism in the City of David, support for educational and cultural activity in the City of David.”

However the construction of a neighborhood and/or a police headquarters in E-1 fails to abide by even this rather expansive definition (E-1 is not part of Jerusalem and not part of the City of David). Perhaps this is why the channels of funding were concealed by means of small print and various sub-clauses. It was eventually revealed haphazardly, due to an inspection by the accountant general. The inspection, which was undertaken by an accountant, was aimed at determining whether there was just cause for support provided by the state to Elad. […]

22. Spitting on Christians in Jerusalem raises eyebrows by Ben Harris, JTA, 21/01/2010 http://www.thejewishchronicle.net/printer_friendly/5622865

JERUSALEM — From his ceramics gallery along Armenian Patriarchate Road, Garo Sandrouni has a sweeping view of one of the Old City of Jerusalem’s longest thoroughfares, stretching from Jaffa Gate deep into the Jewish Quarter.

Jewish worshipers heading to and from the Western Wall jostle for space along the narrow passage with Armenian priests and seminarians, and Sandrouni says about once a week he finds himself breaking up fights between them.

Typically the skirmishes begin when a young yeshiva student spits on or near a group of teenage seminarians, who occasionally respond by beating up their attacker. Several years ago, a young religious man pulled a gun when Sandrouni moved to intervene in a fight.

“Most of the incidents that happen, unfortunately, they happen in front of my store,” said Sandrouni, who more than once has come to the aid of a yeshiva student bloodied after a run-in with a group of seminarians.

“Almost everybody, after the fight, they apologized,” Sandrouni said. “They say, ‘We are sorry. We didn’t know that their reaction would be so strong.’”

Attacks on Christian clergyman in Jerusalem are not a new phenomenon, and may result from an extreme interpretation of the Bible’s injunction to “abhor” idol worshipers. Five years ago, in what many say is the worst incident on record, a

51 crucifix hanging from the neck of the Armenian archbishop, Nourhan Manougian, was broken in the course of an altercation with a yeshiva student who had spit on him.

Christian leaders stress that the problem is not one of Christian-Jewish relations in Israel. Most Israelis, they say, are peaceful and welcoming. In an interview with several Armenian Jerusalemites, they emphasized repeatedly that their relations with the largely religious community in the Old City’s Jewish Quarter are normal.

The assaults, according to George Hintlian, a spokesman for the Armenian community in Jerusalem, are carried out by people from the outside — visitors to Jerusalem from other towns, and even from abroad.

Several people familiar with the issue say the attacks recently have reached epidemic proportions — or at least enough that government officials and Orthodox rabbinic figures have begun to take notice.

A recent meeting between Foreign Ministry officials, the Jerusalem municipality and fervently Orthodox, or haredi, leaders resulted in a statement by Beth Din Tzedek, a haredi rabbinic tribunal, denouncing the phenomenon. In a sign of the ministry’s concern over the issue, both the meeting and the statement were publicized on the Web site of Israel’s diplomatic mission to the Vatican.

“Besides desecrating the Holy Name, which in itself represents a very grave sin, provoking gentiles is, according to our sages — blessed be their holy and righteous memory — forbidden and is liable to bring tragic consequences upon our own community, may God have mercy,” said the statement.

The incident that appears to have gotten the ministry’s attention occurred last September, when a pair of teenage Armenian seminarians reportedly fought with a young yeshiva student who spit on them. Police intervened, arrested the seminarians and referred the matter to the Interior Ministry.

According to Hintlian, the seminarians are now facing deportation — a decision the Armenians have officially protested. Carrying out the order would require the police to seize the boys from their seminary in the Old City, Hintlian said, which likely would result in a public relations disaster.

“It won’t happen easily,” Hintlian said. “They’ll think twice.”

Though they may bear the brunt of the phenomenon, given the proximity of the Armenian and Jewish quarters, cases of spitting are confined neither to Armenian clergy nor the Old City.

Athanasius Macora, a Texas-born Franciscan friar who lives in western Jerusalem, frequently has been the target of spitting during his nearly two decades residing in the Israeli capital.

Macora, whose brown habit easily identifies him as a Christian clergyman, says that while he has not endured any spitting incidents recently, recollections of past incidents started flowing over the course of 30-minute interview.

In a sitting room at Terra Sancta College, where he is the superior, Macora recalled the blond-haired man who spit at him on Agron Street, not far from the U.S. Consulate. Another time, walking with an Armenian priest in the same area, a man in a car opened his window to let the spittle fly. Once it was a group of yeshiva students in the Old City, another time a young girl.

Sometimes the assailants are clad in distinctive haredi garb; other times the attackers are wearing the knitted yarmulkes of the national religious camp. In almost all cases, though, they are young religious men.

A Franciscan church just outside the Old City walls was vandalized recently with anti-Christian graffiti, Macora said.

“I think it’s just a small group of people who are hostile, and a very small group of people,” Macora said. “If I go to offices or other places, a lot of people are very friendly.”

Meanwhile, the Beth Din Tzedek statement, and an earlier one from Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger, have impressed the Christians and raised hopes that the spitting may soon end.

“We hope that this problem will be solved one day,” Sandrouni said, “for the sake of mutual coexistence.”

23. Land collapse at main entrance to Al-Wad in the Old City JCSER, 22/02/ 2010 http://www.jcser.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=364:land- collapse-at-main-entrance-to-al-wad-in-the-old-city&catid=34:news

Land collapsed in the street inside Damascus Gate near the main entrance to al-Wad St. in the Old City. The incident took place before yesterday mid night and is believed to result from the Israeli diggings of tunnels under the Old City.

A big hole measuring about two meters wide with around one meter deep suddenly appeared in the street which is usually overcrowded with people. However, there were no reports about any casualties. According to close resources to the Municipality the hole was the result of a burst in a big drinking water pipe.

Recently, employees of Israel's Jerusalem Municipality had been active in replacing old tiles with new ones along the market area in order to overcome the leaking problem of rain water to the tunnels under the city.

Similar incidents of land collapse occurred in various parts of the Old City in the past due to Israeli diggings as was the case with the yard of Issseileh Family which lives in Bab Al-Silsileh area. Recently, the diggers of the Old City tunnels opened a hole in the wall of the bedroom of Shahin Family while lives near headquarters of the Islamic Waqf. Also, house of Fityani Family which locates inside al-Harm al-Sharif suffers of some cracks in its walls because of the Israeli diggings.

Also the sanitary facility of al-Harm al-Sharif suffers of wall cracks due to the Israeli diggings. Before one-and-a-half year ago officials of the Islamic Waqf decided to begin maintenance and restorations in the area, yet, Israeli officials refuse to allow them to do so. Most recently, when the facilities began to leak rain and sanitary water to the tunnels, the Municipality was obliged to allow the Islamic Waqf to implement the maintenance process which began only few days ago.

Land collapse has become a major fear among Palestinian residents of the Old City. In case an earthquake hit the region, Gods forbid, the residents fear that the Old City will suffer of a major toll of casualties because of the presences of a big network of tunnels.