A monthly report on the Israeli Violations

Issued by

The Department of Arab and International Relations (DAIR)

Issue no.  14   (January 2007)

In this Issue:

The Palestinian National Unity is our only way out from the crises

Palestine is now facing the worst crisis ever in its history. The Israeli occupation is escalating its attacks against the Palestinian people and properties, confiscating more and more of the Palestinian lands to build new sections of the Apartheid Segregation Wall and continuing the Judaization of East Jerusalem. Meanwhile, the ongoing International economic siege is taking the Palestinians to disastrous and uncounted situation. 

In the wake of the above, tensions have risen in the Palestinian areas, disagreement among political groups is getting wider, lack of security spreads and armed internal clashes dominated the scene and lead to the killing and harming tens of Palestinians. The Palestinian Future seems to be bleak more than ever as Palestine’s real enemies are not wasting any time and are working with full speed on their settling plans and other policies that closes the doors for peaceful settlements in the region .

National unity is indeed the major source of strength and consolidation for nations and states alike, the Palestinians, among all the nations of the world are aware that  now they need to be united to be able to stand up to the challenges and demands that are facing them. They are also aware that without being united, they would not fulfill their people’s dreams the establishment of the Palestinian independent state with East Jerusalem as a capital.

Since the first day of the Israeli occupation to our homeland, maintaining our national unity has been regarded the prerequisite for the survival of our case. Today, things seem to be more pressing and national reconciliation and unity became a must in order for the Palestinian people to be able to absorb and deal with all the harassment and hardships that are obstructing them.  We need not to remind our selves that we are still under the Israeli occupation, and that our internal conflict gives the occupation extra power, time and space to expand.

The National Reconciliation paper proposed by the Palestinian prisoners few months back forms the bases for a National Unity Government; which seems the sort of government that would lead to breaking of the siege. A NUG would provide a safe exit from the current crisis, and this is why it’s formation must be the top priority of all Palestinian parties and politicians who are seeking a way out from the dilemma.

The only other alternative if we failed to agree on the NUG is to go to the public elections and to give the Palestinian people the final word and the chance to decide what is best for them. None of the different parties should have a problem with this, as they all approved and praised the democratization of the Palestinian political system and vowed to abide by its clauses.

-2 -Summary of the Israeli violations against the Palestinian Human rights (August 2006)

During January 2007, the IOF incursions into the Palestinian areas caused the following causalities:

*10 Palestinians, including 1 child, were killed by IOF;

*75 Palestinian civilians, including 7 children, were injured by IOF;

*225 Palestinian civilians were arrested by IOF;

*5 Palestinian houses were evacuated and transformed by IOF into military sites.

*9 houses were ruined;

*400 olive trees were uprooted;

*1058 dunums were expropriated to construct the Apartheid Segregation Wall and expand some settlements.

-During the period between 29/9/2000 and 31/1/2007, the IOF killed 4683 Palestinians; 897 of the martyrs were children, 295 were women, 360 were members of the Palestinian National Forces, 486 were assassinated in cold blood, 144 of the martyrs were ill and died on Israeli Military checkpoints, 65 were killed by Jewish settlers, 6 were foreign volunteers from the ISM, 10 of the martyrs were journalists, 220 were athletes and 36 were Palestinian paramedic members .  

**During 2006: 621 Palestinians, including 107 children and 57 women, were killed by IOF.

-During the same period, 38,620 Palestinians were injured, 7600 were children and young men who were left with permanent disabilities. 50,000 Palestinians were detained, 10,700 are still in the Israeli jails, including 112 women and 383 children; 5671 of whom were arrested in 2006. Total number of the broken Palestinian houses is 65,700; 7,763of which were demolished leaving thousands of the Palestinian citizens with no shelter.

**During 2006: 360 Palestinian houses were demolished by IOF.

-Agriculture is the main resource of living for the Palestinians; but the Israeli measures affected it severely by uprooting, burning and sweeping away more than a 1,300,000 trees.

**During 2006: 20,300 trees were uprooted by IOF.

-Since 29/3/2003, the IOF have expropriated more than 300,000 dunums of land to construct new Jewish settlements, expand standing settlements, and to complete building the Apartheid Segregation Wall.

**During 2006: IOF confiscated 7313 dunums of land and swept away another 5,000 dunums.

3-Willful Killings: 

**Several Palestinians have been killed by the IOF, among those was the ten-year-old girl Abeer Bassam Al-Arameen from Anata town /Jerusalem; Abeer was killed when the IOF opened fire towards some Palestinian students who were on their way homes from school.

For more information:

http://www.pnic.gov.ps/arabic/quds/arabic/shohada_aqsa/7-2006.asp

4-Apartheid Segregation Wall (ASW) & Settling

The Enclaves inside the ASW are not more than big jails

The Israeli planning and human rights organization "Bimkom" issued a report about the ASW, It confirms that the wall is trapping 250,000 Palestinians in enclaves and that it is designed to shelter Jewish settlers in the occupied territory. It also said that the creation of the enclaves is cutting off Palestinian communities from the rest of the West Bank and is "almost totally ignores the daily needs of the Palestinian population". It "meets almost exclusively with the desire to maintain the fabric of life of Israeli settlers". The ASW is closing the doors of employment and marketing opportunities for the citizens of those areas, causing "particularly serious damage" to the residents' health-care needs and undermining their social and family life.

The report focuses on two categories of cut-off communities in the West Bank. The first are "seam enclaves" between the barrier, broadly to the east, and the 1967 Green Line, to the west. It comprises around 8,000 residents whose movements into the rest of the West Bank, where 2.5 million Palestinians live, are heavily restricted by checkpoints. Pointing out that residents in such enclaves require a military permit, the report says "Palestinians who existed for centuries must now acquire permits to go staying on their father’s lands, without having permits from the Israeli occupation, their presence would be seen as a violation to the law.

The second ­ and larger ­ category are "internal enclaves" which are bound in, sometimes virtually encircled, by the barrier and roads forbidden to Palestinians to protect "fingers" of occupied territory inhabited by Jewish settlers and to ensure the settlers' access to Israel proper.

The report cites the example of the Bir Nabala enclave in which residents of five villages traditionally linked to Jerusalem will have only two ways out, through tunnels, to Ramallah or the area of the West Bank village of Biddu.

The report also says, despite a series of Supreme Court decisions in favour of rerouting the barrier, "there has been no meaningful change in the system of considerations guiding the planners".

** Javier Solana, the EU Foreign Policy Chief, toured several Arab towns near Jerusalem and said that he is shocked by the Israeli settlement growth in the occupied West Bank. Solana, also, stated that the ASW is built on Palestinian lands that are to be part of the future Palestinian state and described the acts as obstacles in the Arab-Israeli peace process.

** Bal'ein village and the Peace demonstrations:

12 January 2007, tens of Palestinian civilians and international and Israeli solidarity activists demonstrated in a protest against the Wall in Bal’ein village, west of Ramallah. IOF soldiers positioned near the Wall fired rubber coated metal bullets, sound bombes and tear gases at the demonstrators. Nine demonstrators, including an American solidarity activist and an Israeli one, and a journalist from Associated Press, were wounded.

*** Israeli Fanatic settlers attack Palestinian Properties and Citizens:

A video Tape obtained by Israeli Movement, B’Tselem, shows an incident where SFS attacks Palestinians in Hebron; a female settler was filmed harassing her neighboring Palestinian woman while other settlers were throwing stones towards some Palestinian houses. An IOF soldier witnessed the incident and watched without any interference. The Israeli minister of defense, Beretz, said that the Israeli soldier failed to interfere because he wasn't instructed to do so.

Ruti Tirosh, an activist in the Israeli "Peace Now" movement, said, "This isn't a neighborly spat. This is a political attempt to expel the Palestinians from their land. The entire people of Israel are paying a huge price for the settlers to stay here in Hebron."

During January 2007:

11 January 2007, Israeli settlers escorted by IOF started to level large areas of agricultural land in Yatta village, south of Hebron, to open a new road for their settlement “Sousi”.

15 January 2007, the Israeli Ministry of Housing announced a plan to construct 44 new housing units in “Ma’ale Adomim” settlement, east of occupied Jerusalem. The plan is to expand the settlements around Jerusalem to change the demographic map in the city and accelerate the Judaization of East Jerusalem.

**IOF confiscated 8 dunums of farming lands in Boreen village /Nablus.

**IOF 300 dunums from Om Salmoneh village lands /Bethlehem, 800 Palestinians live on farming that same land. 

**IOF confiscated 700 dunums from Deer Al-Hatab and Azmoot villages' lands to the east of Nablus city, for military purposes.

** IOF uprooted 400 olive trees from the lands of Dei Balout village / Salfeet.

**23 January 2007, 3 Israeli settlers kidnapped 16-yearold Ra’fat Sameh al-Khatib, in Hazma village, northeast of Jerusalem, while heading towards home. They took him to a place near “Ma’ale Adomim” settlement, east of Jerusalem. They violently beat him and brought him back to the village after he lost conscious.

5- Israeli Checkpoints & Barriers:

** IOF removes Fake Checkpoints

Israeli military resources admitted the fact that the 44 checkpoints which were removed by the IOF from the entrances of some Palestinian villages were fake because those checkpoints don't exist actually. This confess the announcement came after the declaration of UN human rights section report that the Israeli claims of removing checkpoints and relaxing restrictions on others are false.

This information was gathered by: United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs:

* There were 75 infantry checkpoints in the West Bank as of January 9, 2007.

* There are on average 150 mobile checkpoints (as of September 2006).

* There are 446 barriers placed between roads and villages, including concrete cubes and earth ramparts. In all, 88 iron gates and 74 kilometers of fences are detected in the West Bank.

* There are 83 iron gates along the separation wall, separating Palestinian lands from their owners; only 25 of the gates are opened to the public from time to time.

**Pregnant Palestinian women are often prevented by Israeli forces from reaching hospitals to receive appropriate medical attention, which lead to miscarriages and the deaths of some women; 68 pregnant Palestinian women gave birth at Israeli checkpoints, 35 had miscarriages and five women died.

144 ill Palestinians died on the Israeli checkpoints while waiting for a permission to pass while on their way to hospitals.

*** Rafah International Crossing Point is under the IOF control: Rafah International Crossing Point on the Egyptian borders is the only exit for the people of Gaza Strip to the outside world. The IOF have closed Rafah International Crossing Point, even though they do not directly control it. They have prevented the European observers working at the crossing point form reaching it. The crossing point has been closed since 25 June 2006. The closure of the border crossings deprives the citizens of Gaza Strip from traveling abroad; the procedure affects mostly those who need to join universities or those in need of medical attention abroad.

** The Suffering of Al-Sawahreh families is continued:

During August 2006: The Israeli occupying authority replaced the Sheikh Sa'ed checkpoint with a fence which separated East and West Sawahreh from each other and locked in 1,500 people who live in Sheikh Sa'ed area. The people in East Sawahreh are now unable to reach their cemetery in Sheikh Sa'ed. Four other villages near Abu Dis and Sawahreh have also been disconnected from each other.

6- Arrests & Jails:

Palestinians in the Israeli Jails:

**Jamal Hasan al-Sarahin, 37, a Palestinian prisoner from Al-Thahriyeh /Hebron, has died in the Israeli Negev Prison (Ansar 3) Israel, due to medical negligence

**Since 1967, 187 Palestinian prisoner died in the Israeli jails due to torture, medical negligence and willful killing; there are currently around 11,000 Palestinian captives in Israeli jails, about a 1000 of them suffer various ailments and are victims of intentional medical neglect by the Israeli prisons authority. 383 under eighteen, 700 administrative prisoners, 117 in cells, 112 women, 112 in bad detaining conditions and 181 sentence is more than 15 years. During 2006, 5671 Palestinian were detained by IOF; since 1967 700 thousands Palestinians entered the Israeli Jails.

** the Palestinian detainees Rabee' Rabee' 25-year-old from Salfeet and Afeef Awawdeh 39-year-old from Hebron city are in Al-ramleh jail hospital for being seriously ill; they might not survive if they aren't transferred to a specialized hospitals. Rabee' has already lost part of his stomach while Awawdeh is suffering from serious problems in his ears because the IOF exploded his house while arresting him.

7-House Demolition:

** Demolition of the Palestinian houses in Jerusalem is part of an expulsion plan.

** Since Israel occupied East Jerusalem in 1967, the Israeli authorities have
pursued a policy of limiting new construction in the Arab part of the city. The expropriation by Israel of large areas of the Palestinian lands
left the Palestinians in and around East Jerusalem with little or no space
 for building new homes or public amenities. Much of the privately owned lands has been zoned as "green land", where no one can built. Attempts by the Palestinians to have their lands re-zoned so that it can be used for building homes have failed. Israel has been building large Israeli settlements (which are illegal under the international law) on expropriated Palestinian lands in the area, while Palestinians' homes are being demolished because they were built without acquiring Israeli permits to do so.

House demolish

**IOF demolished two houses in Al-Sawhra village, southeast of Jerusalem belonging to Jamal al-Taweel and ‘Aamer Abu Diab, the IOF claimed that the houses were built without licenses.

**IOF demolished a four story building belongs to Mahmoud Al-A'mas from Sour Bahir  /Jerusalem.

**IOF demolished 4 houses in Al-Jeftlik village, north of Jericho, claiming that they were built without licenses:

8- Religious Violations:

***A synagogue is to be built 100 meters away from Al-Aqsa mosque:

The General Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine, Sheikh Ikrema Sabri, said that the Israeli occupation authorities are secretly building a synagogue under the holy Al- Aqsa Mosque.

Fanatic Israeli settlers were given the green light to build a synagogue 100 meters away from Al-Aqsa mosque; the construction of new Israeli settling Units in the Holly City is escalating. Atirat Kohaneem settling group was permitted by Jerusalem municipality to build 300 living units in the neighborhood of Damascus gate; it has also invited bidders to construct 44 new settling units in Ma'aleh Adomeem settlement to the east of Jerusalem city. 1500 new settling unit were built in the above mentioned settlement during 2006

** According to the Israeli newspaper "Ha'aretz", some Israeli settling organizations started to dig a ten meters deep tunnel near Silwan town and would end near Al Aqsa Mosque.

**Tens of fanatic Israeli settlers, accompanied by IOF soldiers broke into Awarta village, south of Nablus city, and looted the village and the cemetery there.

9-DAIR activities during Jan. 2007:

****DAIR issued an appeal the Judaization of East Jerusalem, and alarmed from the Israeli plans that are threatening the existence of Al-Aqsa Mosque".

*** Tow more appeals were issued by the department: one on the alarming status of the Palestinian Refugees in Iraq. The Iraqi Government, International and Arab Humanitarian Organizations as well as the UNRWA have been addressed and urged to take the initiative to provide protection to the Palestinian refugees in Iraq.

***DAIR sent two letters to the German and Canadian representatives in Palestine, conveying its deepest condemnation of the attacks that were carried out against their offices in Ramallah city.

www.safsaf.org