Israel’s War Against Palestine: Documenting the Military Occupation of Palestinian and Arab Lands

June 2010

Israel Police arrested Hamas official Mohammed Abu Tir on Wednesday for failing to comply with orders to leave his East Jerusalem home… In early June, Jerusalem police confiscated Abu Tir’s Israeli identity card, along with those of three other Hamas legislators – Mohammed Totach, Khaled Abu Arafa, and Ahmed Atoun – giving them until July to leave Jerusalem.

Jewish “settlements and the demolition of homes are illegal under international law, constitute an obstacle to peace and threaten to make a two-state solution impossible,” [EU foreign affairs chief Catherine] Ashton warned in a statement.

A new “anti-boycott bill”, the third in a series of proposed laws that aim to curtail the ability of civil society to criticise Israeli government policy, will punish Israelis or foreign nationals who initiate or promote a boycott of Israel.

Israeli and Polish activists met in the ruins of Warsaw’s old Jewish Ghetto; they sprayed ‘Liberate All Ghettos’ in Hebrew, followed by ‘Free Gaza and Palestine’ in English on a wall of an original block in the ghetto…

Ironically, a number of progressive organizations … have called on the peace and human rights community to support the re-election and to donate money to some of the right-wing Democrat senators, including Barbara Boxer, Ron Wyden, and Russell Feingold, who defend attacking peace and human rights activists and lie about the circumstances to justify it.

The continuing struggles against the occupation, on the ground in the territories, take their usual grim course, but inside Israel hardly a day passes without some new and sickening jolt. The country is in the grip of violent nationalist paranoia spiked with inventive forms of wickedness and active hatred for Palestinians, of an intensity I’ve never seen before.

6,800:1

29 June 2010

6,800 Detainees are currently imprisoned by Israel, including 300 children, 34 women, 213 detainees in administrative detention, and 11 elected legislators. Nearly 1,500 detainees are ill and need urgent medical attention, dozens of them requiring surgeries and constant hospitalization… Gilad Shalit is the only Israeli held by the Palestinians.

ALSO: Boy receives second administrative detention order

Hassan Jabareen (Adalah): “Under international law, an occupying power cannot demand loyalty from the the people it occupies. Palestinians in East Jerusalem are ‘protected persons’ in law and cannot be expelled.”

Successive Israeli cabinets have worked to enforce on the ground in Jerusalem and the Occupied Territories a situation that they could present as irreversible. Have they now reached the point where the biblical book of Daniel’s prophecy is once again relevant?

Dan Plesch, director of the University of London Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy: “They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran … US bombers and long range missiles are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours … The firepower of US forces has quadrupled since 2003.”

Many senior military officials believe that Netanyahu and Barak prefer to remove anyone who might disagree with them on military policy. Ashkenazi is known to have close ties with Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Armed Forces, who made a brief unscheduled visit to Israel on Sunday. The apparent purpose of the visit, at least in part, was to gauge the mood in the country and make sure that Jerusalem is not planning to do anything wild in Iran.

IOA Editor: Unclear what the actual purpose of the reportedly “unscheduled visit” was. What if it was a planned visit to coordinate the timing of a joint US-Israeli attack on Iran? If so, “leaking” this sort of a statement would be the appropriate psywar. Anybody’s guess.

Senior Turkish diplomat: If Israel fails to meet the demands, Turkey will downgrade its diplomatic representation to the level of a charge d’affaires … Ankara would consider no new cooperation agreements with Israel … [and] existing deals were being reviewed.

The Jerusalem District Planning and Building Committee is set to approve an unprecedented master plan that calls for the expansion of Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, a move largely based on construction on privately owned Arab property.

[Israel's] refusal to negotiate in 1971 led to the grimmest moment in [its] history, and preference for expansion over security and diplomacy has had dire consequences since, with perhaps worse to come. Israel often speaks of an “existential threat.” The most immediate and severe “existential threat” is its unwillingness to pursue diplomatic options that are open.

The IDF views Mullen as someone who is capable of effectively presenting Israel’s stance in Washington. Officials hope that Mullen will become convinced during his visit that Israel acted appropriately during the May 31 raid of the Mavi Marmara, and that Israel should be allowed to investigate the event independently, without U.S. interference.

So an “occupation” becomes a “dispute”. Thus a “wall” becomes a “fence” or “security barrier”. Thus Israeli acts of colonisation of Arab land, contrary to all international law, become “settlements” or “outposts” or “Jewish neighbourhoods”. It was Colin Powell … who told US diplomats to refer to occupied Palestinian land as “disputed land” – and that was good enough for most of the US media.

Berlusconi: “Iran is not guaranteeing a peaceful production of nuclear power [so] the members of the G-8 are worried and believe absolutely that Israel will probably react preemptively.”

Over the last year, the cooperation between the Israeli and American militaries has grown tremendously in a string of joint exercises and the constant exchange of intel … The IDF views Mullen as someone who is capable of effectively presenting Israel’s stance in Washington. Officials hope that Mullen will become convinced during his visit that Israel acted appropriately during the May 31 raid of the Mavi Marmara, and that Israel should be allowed to investigate the event independently, without U.S. interference.

Seven oxygen machines donated to the Palestinian Authority by a Norwegian development agency were seized by Israeli officials en route to hospitals in the West Bank and Gaza, the Ramallah-based health ministry said.

The bill was introduced by 25 Knesset members, of both coalition and opposition parties. The bill would outlaw a wide range of BDS activities, both inside and outside of Israel and in the Occupied Territories, heavily penalize participants, and be applied one year retroactive to its effective date. Also, this proposed law would require the state of Israel to monitor the views and actions of activists abroad.

[U]ntil Gaza’s borders, port and airspace are its own, its factories are rebuilt, and exports are again possible, the hobbled economy has no hope of recovering. For the overwhelming majority of Palestinians in Gaza, mired in poverty, the new list of permissible items – including coriander – will remain nothing more than an aspiration.

Each of us, each of you, can draw the line through BDS and act as a caring, responsible citizen of the world. To end Israel’s 43-year-old occupation. To end the unacceptable, criminal siege of Gaza. To end racist laws and policies inside Israel, openly targeting the Palestinian citizens of Israel. To end more than sixty years of ongoing dispossession of the Palestinian people.

No commission of inquiry into the killing of civilians on the Mavi Marmara is necessary. What is necessary is to end the siege, rebuild the Gaza Strip and implement viable border controls enabling people and goods to enter and exit the beleaguered strip without leading to violent outbursts that will re-impose a siege. Israeli policy has deteriorated to a virtual economic stranglehold of the Gaza Strip, with the international community accepting it.

Turkey had allowed Israel to use their air space for training because their terrain closely resembled areas of Iran that Israel planned to attack. However, Turkey was unaware that planes involved in this effort were being relocated to forward staging areas in the Republic of Georgia, making Turkey, technically, fully complicit in this planned illegal attack.

A semi-official Iranian news agency reported Wednesday that Israel Air Force helicopters recently landed at a Saudi Arabia airport and unloaded equipment intended for attacking targets in a Muslim state. This follows last weekend’s reports of an American fleet passing through the Suez Canal, triggering fears that the US and Israel were preparing for an attack on Iran, with Egypt’s cooperation, the Arabic language newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi said.

The Council of Europe parliamentarians Thursday called on Israel to completely end its siege of the Gaza Strip, days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered an ease of the land blockade.

The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) strongly condemns aggressive measures taken by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) in East Jerusalem, which are part of a series of measures aimed at ethnic cleansing and creating a Jewish majority in the city.

A Swedish Dock-workers union week-long blockade of goods to and from Israel is underway. The ongoing nation-wide blockade in Swedish harbors, based on the request of the united Palestinian union-movement, is the Swedish Dockworkers Union’s attempt to contribute to pressuring Israel on: Lifting the blockade on Gaza, and allowing an independent, international investigation of the Israeli boarding of the Freedom Flotilla.

Group of Greek citizens who took part in Gaza-bound flotilla that was taken over by the IDF last month to sue senior Israeli officials – including Defense Minister Barak, and army chief Ashkenazi.

Belgian lawyers … working on behalf of a group of Palestinians intend to charge 14 Israeli politicians, including Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak, Tzipi Livni … for crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Uzi Arad: “The creation of a Palestinian state remains the choice of many … But in the process, have you failed to notice that the more we lend legitimacy to a Palestinian state, the more it comes at the expense of our own?”

IOA Editor: So much for Netanyahu’s commitment to a Palestinian state, and Obama’s.

This [PA] language would have removed the entire issue from the auspices of the HRC. Taken together, the evidence indicates that the PA was directly involved in trying to dilute and undermine Turkey’s robust position and to protect Israel from accountability.

Israeli police … are sent to the streets of East Jerusalem as enforcers of government and municipal policy. It is that same policy of intentional discrimination that has brought 65% of the 303,429 Palestinians living in East Jerusalem below the poverty line (double the number of poor Jews in the city) and 74% of Palestinian children below that line. The police serve the government that since 1967 has expropriated 24,000 dunams (8,000 acres) of land from Palestinians and over the years has built more than 50,000 housing units on it – for Jews only. Police accompany the bulldozers that demolish homes built, for lack of choice, without permits.

Gisha – Legal Center for Freedom of Movement launched the first computer game of its kind in Israel: “Safe Passage” allows the user to experience interactively the restrictions on movement between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank through innovative use of animation, flash documents, video clips and a blog. The game includes an archive of dozens of legal documents.

Attorney Sari Bashi, director of the NGO Gisha that closely follows the restrictions on the freedom of movement of persons and goods, says that as far as is known, the “easing” has not included construction materials or raw materials. “Continuing the restrictions on the ability to produce will also limit the [Palestinians] buying power,” she said.

Israel on Tuesday launched a spy satellite from a base in the south of the country, the defence ministry said, with the device reportedly capable of monitoring arch-foe Iran.

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