Court orders IDF to reopen road closed for Palestinian use (full article…)

Any time I see a story like this I can’t help laughing… So the court rules that this single road cannot be part of the apartheid structure? Big deal. What about the hundreds of others illegally constructed roads in the West Bank that have been designated “Israeli only”?

But in Israel, the force is seen as an expedient for countering Hamas and other militant groups – a vehicle to enable the Palestinian Authority to fight terror within its own cities so that Israel doesn’t have to. (full article…)

The brewery was started in 1995 by David Khoury and his brother Nadim, who had returned from the United States with his head full of ideas about hops and German beer-purity laws as well as his own recipes. They almost went broke during the intifada that erupted in 2000, and while never directly challenged by Islamist groups, they feared that the enterprise would be pushed to the fringes of Palestinian society. (full article…)

Reading this article, you would imagine that the second intifada was a conflict between Islamists and these friendly beer-brewing Christian Palestinians. Israel is not even mentioned. But according to the standards of the Washington Post, Israel posed no threat at all to Palestinian businesses with is random demolition of buildings, destruction of numerous offices and all-out assault on large parts of West Bank civilian areas. No, these nice Christians only faced difficulties from the Islamists.

The administration also concluded, wrongly, that obtaining an unconditional Israeli settlement freeze was an essential first step. In fact settlements are no longer a strategic obstacle to peace; as a practical matter, most of the construction is in areas that will not be part of a Palestinian state. (full article…)

This is the kind of absurd editorial that can only appear in the U.S. media. Who says that the illegally settled West Bank enclaves will remain in Israel’s hands? Who but the Israeli government? I suppose the Washington Post doesn’t mind that East Jerusalem is being depopulated of its Palestinian population as families are thrown out of houses they have lived in for fifty years. No that’s the kinds of ethnic cleansing they like.

Every single settlement is illegal, including all the building in East Jerusalem. Every new housing unit is a slap in the face of international law and to initiate peace talks while this continues is to repeat the conditions of every single episode of bilateral talks for the past 40+ years. The only way the settlements can be ignored is if the talks address borders immediately. Once the prospect of remaining under Palestinian rule dawns on the settlers, they will stop of their own accord.

Spain boycotts Ariel college for being on ‘occupied territory’ (full article…)

Still, nineteen demonstrators have been killed by the Israeli army in these nonviolent demonstrations against the wall. Many have been injured, including Israeli and international activists protesting with us. Here in Bil’in we recently lost our friend Bassem Abu Rahme, who was fatally shot by soldiers in April while he was imploring them to stop shooting at demonstrators. (more…)

By clamping down on crime and guerrilla violence in the West Bank, the Palestinian security forces have enabled Israel’s forces to pull back from most of the Palestinian cities. (more…)

Yes, Israel has been able to withdraw… but does this not lead one to the conclusion that the Palestinian Authority has become a proxy occupier (i.e. keeping the savages at bay)? Moreover, what the Economist here calls “crime and guerilla violence” is only the tip of the iceberg; they fail to mention the draconian measures the PA has taken against Hamas activists, yet they cite the Israeli-American training program as a positive step instead of what it is: a way for Israel to disguise its occupation and outsource its fight with Hamas. I am very surprised at the Economist – their reporting is usually much better than this.

Three years after being shot by a Border Guard officer during an anti-security fence rally in the West Bank village of Bil’in, Limor Goldstein was awarded damages in the amount of NIS 3.25 million (about $860,000). (more…)

Israel’s defence ministry has proposed legalising 60 existing homes at a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank, and building another 240 homes at the site, despite US calls for a halt to settlement growth. (more…)

As the day progressed Danny said he realized the scene he had witnessed was not an isolated incident. “It kept repeating itself. At one point I asked the people at the register if they really weren’t letting Arabs in and they answered straight out that they were not. One of the workers told me that the men just aren’t let in alone, but families are. I asked why and she said that they bothered the female tourists… she said there’s nothing that can be done, it’s just the way it is. (more…)

“We have been waiting for a permit from the Israelis to install a water network since 2000,” Dr. Amer Abu Farha, head of the village council told IPS. “But they refuse to give us one. We are also not allowed to dig deep wells or repair current wells. The Israeli settlements are allowed to dig wells far deeper than us, and to repair their other wells.” (more…)

[M]any settlers say the West Bank is Jewish land and if Palestinians want to live there they must abide by Israeli law. (more…)

Fine, then annex the West bank once and for all and give the Palestinians full rights as Israeli citizens. Oh, but this would end the Jewish demographic balance… Ok, then you have another choice: get out now.

He said about 150 Palestinians, some as young as 14, were bound, blindfolded and detained at the village school during the operation, which lasted from 3am to 3pm. He was told it was aimed at preventing village youths throwing stones against nearby settler roads. It was clear many of the people detained had done nothing wrong, but they were held to gather intelligence, he said. (more…)

Rabin, who had commanded the troops during the war and was about to head to Washington as Israel’s ambassador, did not want to return the West Bank to Jordan. He looked for a way to overcome the demographic problem: “We are not going to relocate half a million Arabs,” he said. Eshkol was dubious. “Will the new state have an army?” he asked. Rabin said it would have a police force, not an army. “Who determines that?” asked Eshkol. Rabin answered: “We do.” (more…)

The two, Muhammad Samman and Ahmed Yassin, were killed in a pre-dawn raid carried out by Abbas’s security forces on a building where they were hiding. Three policemen and the owner of the building, Abdel Nasser Basha, were also killed in the raid, which was described as one of the bloodiest intra-Palestinian incidents in the West Bank in recent years. (more…)

Israelis use 240 cubic metres of water a person each year, against 75 cubic metres for West Bank Palestinians and 125 for Gazans, the bank said. Increasingly, West Bank Palestinians must rely on water bought from the Israeli national water company, Mekoro. (more…)

An Israeli tourism poster is being pulled from the London subway after the Syrian Embassy complained that the map on it appeared to show the Golan Heights and Palestinian territories within Israel’s boundaries, officials said Friday. (more…)

The Palestinian farmers said that after repeated requests filed with the Civil Administration and the IDF’s Coordination and Liaison Office, they were finally given authorization to cultivate their lands. However, they said, when they arrived at the fields Tuesday morning they were stormed by the settlers, who appeared to be unfazed by the army’s presence in the area. (more…)

Israel has found a cheap and easy way to get rid of its waste, much of it hazardous: dump it into the West Bank. A few Palestinians can be bought, the rest are in no position to complain. “Israel has been dumping waste, including hazardous and toxic waste, into the West Bank for years as a cheaper and easier alternative to processing it properly in Israel at appropriate hazardous waste management sites,” Palestinian Environmental Authority (PEA) deputy director Jamil Mtoor told IPS. (more…)

Lack of new housing is causing “a silent evacuation of hundreds of young couples from Judea and Samaria,” settler leader Dani Dayan told reporters on Monday. …
In the past year, some 2,100 newly married couples registered in Judea and Samaria, but there were only about 400 open housing units that could house
them, he said. (more…)

During his visit, the pope will be personally accompanied by the Palestinian Authority’s military intelligence and Preventive Security Service. (more…)

Palestinians from the West Bank village of Sinjil, near Ramallah, claimed Wednesday that settlers from the Givat Haroeh outpost have cut 45 olive trees belonging to the village.

The Palestinians also claimed that the settlers tried to stop them from farming their land. (more…)

At least 60,000 out of the estimated 225,000 Palestinians in East Jerusalem are at risk of having their homes obliterated because they have been deemed illegal by Israeli officialdom, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) stated. Some 90 Palestinian buildings were demolished in 2008 alone, uprooting about 400 people.

All this destruction is being wrought as part of a systematic policy of ensuring that the entire city of Jerusalem falls into Israeli hands, even though a raft of UN resolutions have insisted there is no legal validity to building settlements in East Jerusalem. To date one-third of East Jerusalem has been expropriated by Israel and almost 200,000 settlers housed. (more…)

The crowd approached the barrier, still singing. One man flew a paper kite shaped as a plane. “This land is a closed military zone,” an Israeli soldier shouted in flawless Arabic over a loudspeaker. “You are not allowed near the wall.” Then the soldiers fired a barrage of teargas.

It has been like this every Friday in the village of Bil’in for more than four years – the most persistent popular demonstration against Israel’s vast steel and concrete barrier. It is a protest founded on non-violence that is spreading to other West Bank villages. But it has become increasingly dangerous. (more…)

Israel has taken a step towards expanding the largest settlement in the West Bank, a move Palestinians warn will leave their future state unviable and further isolate its future capital, East Jerusalem. (more…)

A Palestinian was moderately-to-seriously injured Friday after an IDF tear gas canister hit him in the face during the weekly rally against the separation fence in the village of Na’alin near Ramallah, witnesses at the place said. (more…)

Last Friday, 17 April, during a demonstration in Bi’lin, in the Ramallah District, a soldier fired a tear-gas grenade from an increased distance at Bassem Ibrahim Abu Rahma, 30. The grenade left a hole in his chest, causing massive internal bleeding, which led to his death. Two video clips filmed at the site prove that Abu Rahma was standing on the eastern side of the fence, about thirty meters from the soldiers, when he was hit. The video clips also show that during the incident, he did not throw stones, did not damage the fence, and did not endanger soldiers in any way whatsoever. (more…)

The [Palestinian Authority] security forces arrested professor Abdul-Sattar Qasem, an author and lecturer in the Political Science Department of Al Najah University in Nablus, and reporter Murad Abu Al Baha’, from Betunia, West of Nablus. (more…)

Palestinian sources reported Friday that a local demonstrator was killed after being hit in the chest by a tear gas canister during a protest against the separation fence in the West Bank village of Bilin. (more…)

After Tristan Anderson, an American demonstrator, was seriously injured by an Israeli tear-gas canister last month, Israel denied the weapon that tear-gas canisters were being used as weapons. But as the Israeli human rights organization B’tselem points out, “Firing of this kind has already resulted in injuries, some grave, to dozens of Palestinians and Israeli and foreign citizens.” This is the daily reality of life under Israeli brutality…

At approximately 08:00 a.m., the settlers – armed with pistols and machine guns – opened fired directly at Palestinian civilians and houses. The settlers and soldiers then advanced towards the houses, firing their weapons and tear gas. The Palestinian civilians responded with stones, in an attempt to prevent the attackers from entering the houses. Soldiers and settlers shot directly at Palestinian civilians, at distances ranging from 2 to 20 metres. The attack lasted for approximately 90 minutes, without interruption. (more…)

Residents of a Palestinian Christian housing project in the West Bank village of Beit Sahour say Israel is encircling their community with a security road to separate them from a nearby Jewish settlement. “With this situation they will put us in a cage, a zoo,” said William Sahouri, 42, a resident and member of the project’s housing committee. “We will not be able to expand.” (more…)

The United States has been training senior Palestinian security officials in an advanced officers course in Ramallah for top-brass, Haaretz has learned. The new course, entitled “senior leaders’ course,” is a two-month long program conducted in Ramallah with the assistance and supervision of the U.S., and is part of the project overseen by the U.S. security coordinator in the territories, Gen. Keith Dayton. (more…)

Although the Labor Party seeks to give up most of the West Bank to the Palestinians, more settlement homes were begun and completed per year under Barak than under either Sharon, Olmert or during Netanyahu’s first term. (more…)

Two Palestinian students claimed that they were severely beaten on Saturday by Border Guard officers manning a checkpoint situated between the West Bank city of Jericho and Jerusalem. (more…)

Israeli police dressed in Palestinian garb who have gone under cover to catch violent Jewish settlers got a taste of what Palestinians routinely confront as Jewish settlers attacked undercover officers thinking they were Arabs, Israeli press reported. Six Jewish settlers who mistook under cover Israeli cops for Palestinians attacked them Thursday, throwing stones and damaging a police under cover vehicle, Haaretz reported Saturday after a court ruling on the incident came out Friday. The settlers also tried to run the disguised police over near an illegal Jewish outpost in the West Bank. (more…)

Discriminatory and unfair division of the shared water sources creates a chronic water shortage in the West Bank. Average per capita daily water consumption of Palestinians in the West Bank is two-thirds of the amount recommended by the World Health Organization. Due to the shortage, many Palestinians have to buy water from tankers at three to six times higher than regular prices, forcing poor families to spend up to one-fifth of their income on water, compared to the slightly more than one percent that average-income Israeli families spend on water. (more…)

A Jewish outpost in the West Bank, illegal under Israeli law, appears to benefiting from state funding, the BBC has uncovered. (more…)

Under international law the whole area of East Jerusalem seized by the IDF in 1967 is still–like the rest of the West Bank–judged to be “occupied territory.” Under the Fourth Geneva Convention Israel is therefore prohibited from either implanting its own population as settlers into East Jerusalem or in any other way materially changing the lives of the city’s indigenous Palestinian residents.

Successive Israeli governments flouted these prohibitions from the beginning. In 1967 Israel unilaterally expanded the municipal boundaries and then annexed the whole of the expanded city. That act of Anschluss has never been judged legal by the United States or any other significant government. Since 1967 Israel has implanted nearly 200,000 Jewish-Israeli citizens into settlements in East Jerusalem. (more…)

The Israeli police were following the orders of Israel’s Public Security Minister Avi Dichter to use whatever force was necessary to prevent the Palestinian Authority (PA) from celebrating “Jerusalem as the capital of Arabic culture for 2009.”

The tough crackdown, on what on the surface appeared to be a harmless and fun cultural event, underlines the growing conflict between the Israel government and the PA over the division of the city between Israeli West Jerusalem and Palestinian East Jerusalem. (more…)

“I have no intention of building new settlements in the West Bank,” Netanyahu told Blair in a meeting Sunday. “But like all the governments there have been until now, I will have to meet the needs of natural growth in the population. I will not be able to choke the settlements.” (more…)

“It is unbelievable that, all over the world, people were supporting Gaza,” Yazid Khader, a spokesman for the movement, said last week. “Yet here on the West Bank people were unable to do so. We ask: will the blood spilled in Gaza be enough for the Palestinian Authority to move towards reconciliation with us?” (more…)

The Israeli army is to investigate claims it used white phosphorus illegally during its three-week offensive in Gaza. (more…)

Coming from a state that justifies both the siege of the civilian population in Gaza and the expansion of colonies in the West Bank, I have very high hopes…

Fatah by now is more or less functioning as Israel’s police force in the West Bank. (more…)

Once again, Gaza violence spilled over into the West Bank after Muslim prayers on Friday, and Palestinian medics said that IDF soldiers shot a Palestinian dead during a violent protest against the army’s operation in the Strip. (more…)

A Palestinian has been shot dead and several others wounded after Israeli security forces opened fire during a protest in the West Bank against Israel’s war in Gaza. (more…)

A settler shot and killed a Palestinian rock-thrower after his vehicle was pelted with stones on Tuesday evening. (more…)

Israel prevents toddler in need of surgery from returning home from Gaza to West Bank (more…)

Documents signed in strange places – and crooked deals – are not unusual in the lucrative and clandestine trade in Palestinian-owned land. Another recent challenge to a settler land deal in the town of Hebron involved forged documents, and a third revolved around Israeli businessmen who set up a notary with a prostitute, filmed their encounter, and then blackmailed the man into signing a sales document in Cyprus. (more…)

Some time before Israelis vote in February, Mr Obama should spell out precisely the sort of peace America envisages: two states sharing Jerusalem, with a border very close to the pre-1967 armistice line, not one that lets Israel keep its settlement blocks deep in the West Bank. Just as Hamas needs to hear that Israel is not going to disappear, so Israel—especially if it elects a Likud government—needs to hear that America will not let it hold those settlements for ever. (more…)

“We demand that the settlement expansion stop,” he said, adding that settlements distance the opportunities for a just and comprehensive peace. (more…)

Israel’s siege of Gaza, largely unseen by the outside world because of Jerusalem’s refusal to allow humanitarian aid workers, reporters and photographers access to Gaza, rivals the most egregious crimes carried out at the height of apartheid by the South African regime. It comes close to the horrors visited on Sarajevo by the Bosnian Serbs. It has disturbing echoes of the Nazi ghettos of Lodz and Warsaw.

“This is a stain on what is left of Israeli morality,” I was told by Richard N. Veits, the former U.S. ambassador to Jordan who led a delegation from the Council on Foreign Relations to Gaza to meet Hamas leaders this past summer. “I am almost breathless discussing this subject. It is so myopic. Washington, of course, is a handmaiden to all this. The Israeli manipulation of a population in this manner is comparable to some of the crimes that took place against civilian populations fifty years ago.”

The U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, former Princeton University law professor Richard Falk, calls what Israel is doing to the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza “a crime against humanity.” Falk, who is Jewish, has condemned the collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza as “a flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law as laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.” He has asked for “the International Criminal Court to investigate the situation, and determine whether the Israeli civilian leaders and military commanders responsible for the Gaza siege should be indicted and prosecuted for violations of international criminal law.” (more…)

The settler population in the West Bank is growing three times as fast as the population in the rest of the country and has doubled over the past 12 years, according to an extensive demographic study published Monday by the Ariel University Center in Samaria (the College of Judea and Samaria). (more…)

To the Jewish West Bank settlers who attacked Palestinian people and property in Hebron this month, it was Operation Price Tag — an attempt to increase the price to the Israeli government of evacuating them from ground they view as sacred.

To the prime minister of Israel, it was a “pogrom.” (more…)

Israel proposed to annex 6.8 percent of the West Bank and take in 5,000 Palestinian refugees, the chief Palestinian negotiator said Friday, speaking for the first time in detail about the yearlong U.S.-backed negotiations that failed to produce an agreement. (more…)

This is how Israel negotiates—by announcing which of their illegal settlements they plan on keeping. The current peace process is directed not according to Israel’s obligations under international law but by how much land the Palestinians are willing to give up. 5,000 refugees is nothing compared to the Israeli Arabs Livni has said will be expelled from parts of Jerusalem. But I’m sure this hypocritical gesture will be depicted as a “generous offer” as it always is.

The settlers call this the post-Gaza “price-tag policy”, whereby any attempt by the Israeli authorities to evacuate any settlement is resisted not only by confrontation with the evacuators but also by violent attacks elsewhere against Palestinians and the army. Such tactics have recently led to injury and extensive damage to Palestinian property. Two Israeli army officers were also hurt by settler militants.(more…)

The settlers continued their attack for about two hours. My children and I stayed in one room. They children were terrified and we were all crying. We heard the sound of the windows breaking and of the water tanks being punctured. Flames spread into the house and we had to put them out with blankets, because the settlers had damaged our water system. (more…)

A Jerusalem court on Wednesday freed a Jewish settler suspected of firing on Palestinians at point blank range in the flashpoint West Bank city of Hebron. (more…)

Extremist settler groups currently involved in violent confrontations with Palestinians in the centre of Hebron have chosen their next battleground, this time outside the West Bank.

A far-right group know as the Jewish National Front, closely associated with the Hebron settlers, is preparing to march through one of the main Arab towns in northern Israel. The march, approved by the Supreme Court back in October, is scheduled to take place on December 15, the group announced this week.

The police are expecting to deploy thousands of officers to prevent trouble, and have limited the number of Front members participating to 100. The march will not enter the heart of the city, say police, though it is not yet clear whether Front members will be allowed to carry the guns most have been issued as settlers.

The Front says it will wave Israeli flags in what the group has dubbed a demonstration of “Jewish Pride” through Umm al-Fahm, home to nearly 45,000 Palestinian citizens of Israel. (more…)

Two documents appeared side by side in Haaretz last week, on November 21: a giant advertisement from the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and the results of a public opinion poll.The proximity was accidental, but to the point. The PLO ad sets out the details of the 2002 Saudi peace offer, decorated with the colorful flags of the 22 Arab and the 35 other Muslim countries which have endorsed the offer.

The public opinion poll predicts a landslide victory for Likud, which opposes every single word of the Saudi proposal.

The PLO ad is a first of its kind. At long last, the PLO leaders have decided to address the Israeli people directly.

The ad discloses to the Israeli population the exact terms of the all-Arab peace offer: full recognition of the State of Israel by all Arab and Muslim countries, full normalization of relations – in return for Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders and the establishment of the Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The refugee problem would be solved by mutual agreement – meaning that Israel could veto any solution it considered unacceptable.
(more…)

The Hamas government is preventing thousands of Muslims from leaving the Gaza Strip to go on the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca – a religious duty – on the Id al-Adha (feast of the sacrifice) holiday.

What a sensational headline, what a fascinating paradox. What Israel has never dared to do – certainly not to this extent – is being done by a Palestinian government for which Islam is the basis of its platform and provides personal guidance for each of its ministers.

Why does the Ismail Haniyeh government need the headache of the images of security roadblocks on the main road in Gaza preventing would-be pilgrims from reaching the Rafah crossing, which Egypt has announced will be temporarily opened, and the reports, including exaggerated ones, about people beaten by Hamas security forces because they insisted on getting close to the crossing? Why did the government decide not to allow out some 3,000 Gazans registered for the pilgrimage with the Palestinian religious affairs ministry in Ramallah as long as Egypt and Saudi Arabia don’t allow an additional 3,000 Gazans who registered with the religious affairs ministry in Gaza to go on hajj? (more…)