Israel resumes work on controversial separation wall in Cremisan valley

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Israel resumes work on controversial separation wall in Cremisan ​​valley

Peter Beaumont in Jerusalem
Tuesday 18 August 2015 10.20 BST

Israel has resumed construction of a section of its controversial separation wall in the Cremisan valley near Bethlehem, despite a court appearing to rule against further work on the barrier in April.

The wall will separate the West Bank city of Beit Jala from the settlement of Har Gilo and the village of Walaja. Critics claim its real purpose is not to increase security but to allow settlement expansion.

Earth movers have started uprooting olive trees to break the ground for the wall. The planned route runs through the Cremisan valley on land owned by 58 Christian Palestinian families, close to a monastery and its sister convent and school.

The wall has been opposed by local Christian leaders and the Vatican. In April it appeared that its construction had been blocked when Israel’s high court ordered the defence ministry to reconsider the route. But a subsequent ruling in July gave it the green light.

[font size=1]-snip-[/font]

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/18/israel-resumes-work-controversial-separation-wall-cremisan-valley

[geek tragedy]

1. and thus the gears of apartheid continue to grind nt

[Israeli]

2. It's Time to Admit It.......

Israeli Policy Is What It Is: Apartheid

I used to be one of those people who took issue with the label of apartheid as applied to Israel. Not anymore.

Bradley Burston Aug 17, 2015 2:23 PM

What I'm about to write will not come easily for me.

I used to be one of those people who took issue with the label of apartheid as applied to Israel. I was one of those people who could be counted on to argue that, while the country's settlement and occupation policies were anti-democratic and brutal and slow-dose suicidal, the word apartheid did not apply.

I'm not one of those people any more.  Not after the last few weeks.

Not after terrorists firebombed a West Bank Palestinian home, annihilating a family, murdering an 18-month-old boy and his father, burning his mother over 90 percent of her body - only to have Israel's government rule the family ineligible for the financial support and compensation automatically granted Israeli victims of terrorism, settlers included.

I can't pretend anymore. Not after Israel's Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, explicitly declaring stone-throwing to be terrorism, drove the passage of a bill holding stone-throwers liable to up to 20 years in prison.
The law did not specify that it targeted only Palestinian stone-throwers. It didn't have to.

Just one week later, pro-settlement Jews hurled rocks, furniture, and bottles of urine at Israeli soldiers and police at a West Bank settlement, and in response, Benjamin Netanyahu immediately rewarded the Jewish stone-throwers with a pledge to build hundreds of new settlement homes.

This is what has become of the rule of law. Two sets of books. One for Us, and one to throw at Them. Apartheid.

We are what we have created. We are what we do, and the injury we do in a thousand ways to millions of others. We are what we turn a blind eye to. Our Israel is what it has become: Apartheid.

There was a time when I drew a distinction between Benjamin Netanyahu's policies and this country I have loved so long.

No more. Every single day we wake to yet another outrage.

I used to be a person who wanted to believe that there were moral and democratic limits – or, failing that, pragmatic constraints - to how low the prime minister was willing to go, how far he was willing to bend to the proud proponents of apartheid, in order to bolster his power.

Not any more. Not after Danny Danon.

Not when the prime minister's choice to represent all of us, all of Israel at the United Nations, is a man who proposed legislation to annex the West Bank, effectively creating Bantustans for Palestinians who would live there stateless, deprived of basic human rights.

The man who will represent all of us at the United Nations, the man who will speak to the Third World on our behalf, is the same man who called African asylum seekers in Israel "a national plague."

The man who will represent all of us at the United Nations is the same politician who proposed legislation aimed at crippling left-leaning NGOs which come to the aid of Palestinian civilians and oppose the institution of occupation, while giving the government a green light to keep financially supporting right-wing NGOs suspected of channeling funds to support violence by pro-settlement Jews.

What does apartheid mean, in Israeli terms?

Apartheid means fundamentalist clergy spearheading the deepening of segregation, inequality, supremacism, and subjugation.

Apartheid means Likud lawmaker and former Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter calling Sunday for separate, segregated roads and highways for Jews and Arabs in the West Bank.

Apartheid means hundreds of attacks by settlers targeting Palestinian property, livelihoods, and lives, without convictions, charges, or even suspects. Apartheid means uncounted Palestinians jailed without trial, shot dead without trial, shot dead in the back while fleeing and without just cause.

Apartheid means Israeli officials using the army, police, military courts, and draconian administrative detentions, not only to head off terrorism, but to curtail nearly every avenue of non-violent protest available to Palestinians.

Late last month, over the explicit protest of the head of the Israeli Medical Association and human rights groups combatting torture, Israel enacted the government's "Law to Prevent Harm Caused by Hunger Strikes." The law allows force-feeding of prisoners, even if the prisoner refuses, if the striker's life is deemed in danger.

Netanyahu's Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, who pushed hard for passage of the bill, has called hunger strikes by Palestinian security prisoners jailed for months without charge or trial "a  new type of suicide terrorist attack through which they will threaten the State of Israel".

Only under a system as warped as apartheid, does a government need to label and treat non-violence as terrorism.

Years ago, in apartheid South Africa, Jews who loved their country and hated its policies, took courageous roles in defeating with non-violence a regime of racism and denial of human rights.

May we in Israel follow their example.

Source: http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special-place-in-hell/.premium-1.671538

[Israeli]

3. Demolishing Palestinian structures is the norm — not the exception

A sharp increase in demolitions of structures in the West Bank displaces over 120 Palestinians, drawing media attention and a harsh response from the United Nations.

By Natasha Roth |Published August 19, 2015

Over August 17-18 Israeli authorities demolished around 40 Palestinian structures in the West Bank, displacing over 120 Palestinians. The demolitions were carried out during a record-breaking heat wave that has hit Israel-Palestine over the past week.

Monday’s total of 22 demolitions — in the Ma’ale Adumim area of the West Bank — displaced 78 Palestinians (including 49 children), the highest such number in one day since October 2012. Tuesday saw 17 structures demolished in the village of Fasayil in the Jordan Valley, leaving 48 homeless, including 31 children. All the affected families belong to Bedouin communities found throughout the West Bank, including the Jordan Valley.

The majority of the demolished structures are located within Area C of the West Bank, defined as being under full Israeli security and administrative control. However, the village of Fasayil is partly located within Area B, which is under Palestinian administrative control and Israeli military control.

The high number of demolitions provoked a strongly-worded press release from the United Nations, calling for “an immediate freeze on demolitions in the West Bank.” The statement notes that the majority of those that Israel has rendered homeless are already refugees. The Director of UNRWA Operations in the West Bank, Felipe Sanchez, is quoted in the statement as saying that “[m]any of these refugee families have now been displaced four times in the last four years.”

The attention that the spike in demolitions has garnered belies the fact that it is just that – a spike. Demolitions throughout the West Bank and East Jerusalem are not sporadic occurrences but a daily fact of life for Palestinians in occupied territory.

A cursory glance at the Twitter feed of the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the occupied Palestinian territories (OCHA-oPt) is enough to understand that the bulldozers are in perpetual motion. Between January 1st and August 18th of this year, Israel demolished 331 Palestinian structures in the West Bank (not including East Jerusalem) – an average of around 1.4 demolitions per day.

The last two weeks in particular have seen a sharp increase – 32 Palestinian-owned structures were demolished between August 4th and 10th, while the week of August 11th-17th saw 34 demolitions, according to data provided to +972 Magazine by OCHA-oPt.

The demolitions of August 17th and 18th also tell a wider story of displacement in various areas of the West Bank. Monday’s demolitions took place within the context of the ongoing threat of expulsion for Palestinians living in the Ma’ale Adumim and E1 areas of the West Bank, amid Israel’s plans to create a contiguous territory between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim.

Tuesday’s demolitions are part of a broader policy of dispossession and displacement of the Jordan Valley’s Bedouin communities, with the ultimate aim of forcing them out and annexing the Jordan Valley. Demolitions occur alongside Israeli military training exercises and designation of land as a firing zone, archaeological site or nature reserve, all of which displaces Palestinians and officially bars them from accessing their own land.

Israel justifies its demolition of Palestinian structures by arguing that they have been built without a permit. This explanation fails to take into account that it is almost impossible for Palestinians in Area C to acquire the necessary permission to build. Furthermore, such demolitions breach Israel’s responsibilities under international humanitarian law: as the occupying power, Israel is forbidden from forcibly transferring civilians unless it is for their own safety, or in the event of military necessity. Israel is also obligated to ensure the welfare of those whose territory it is occupying.

Source: http://972mag.com/demolishing-palestinian-structures-is-the-norm-not-the-exception/110664/