PNN site syndication http://english.pnn.ps/images/M_images/joomla_rss.png http://english.pnn.ps PNN site syndication http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7854&Itemid= New York Times correspondent Isabel Kershner has covered Israel-Palestine for years. She knows her beat, and this shows in both her news reporting and her in-depth features. 'Barrier (http://www.amazon.com/Barrier-Israeli-Palestinian-Conflict-Isabel-Kershner/dp/1403968012/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8 s=books qid=1260173473 sr=8-1)' is her riveting, humane examination of how Israel's controversial barrier has affected people on the ground. From a reviewPalestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (http://www.pcpsr.org/)in Ramallah: Nothing expresses the folly of the two peoples as this thing does. When viewed close-up, the barrier turns into a tall hideous curtain, still ugly even if made from cement rather than iron, swallowing cities and hopes. As with most walls in history, fear may have created the impulse to build it; but greed and other human faults determine its path. Isabel Kershner's book is not about the concrete and wire fences; it is about those who created them, the bombers as well as the mighty occupiers; but most importantly, it is about those victimized by its unwelcome and destructive presence. We hear their voices and feel their pain. More than that, Kershner's storytelling digs deeper into the strategic implications, making her book useful to experts as well as all concerned with the Middle East. Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:34:57 +0100 http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7852&Itemid= They Do Not Exist (Laysa lahum wujud), Mustafa Abu Ali, 1974, 25 min Salvaged after the 1982 Lebanon War with Israel and only recently been made available, Mustafa Abu Ali's early film They Do Not Exist focuses on Lebanon's Palestinian refugees. Abu Ali worked with French New Wave-filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard on Ici et Ailleurs (Here and Elsewhere) and founded the PLO's film division. A filmmaker of militant cinema, Abu Ali took the title of his film from a remark by former Israeli PM Golda Meir: There were no such thing as Palestinians... They did not exist (Washington Post, 1969 (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Golda_Meir)). Shot under extraordinary circumstances, Abu Ali's work examines conditions in Lebanon's refugee camps, the effects of Israeli bombardments, and the life in guerrilla training camps. They Do Not Exist is a stylistically unique work, which demonstrates the intersection between the political and the aesthetic in Lebanon. click here to view the film Tue, 09 Feb 2010 13:28:15 +0100 http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7850&Itemid=56 AN Australian pro-Palestine activist says she was arrested at gunpoint, falsely imprisoned and denied food and phone contact for 15 hours over what Israeli authorities say is a visa irregularity. Bridget Chappell of Canberra was one of two foreign activists arrested by Israel's military in a pre-dawn raid on Sunday on the apartment she shared with a Spanish woman Ariadna Jove Marti in the Palestinian West Bank town of Ramallah.Israel's Supreme Court freed the two activists on bail, declaring their arrests illegal because Israeli officials had no jurisdiction in Palestinian territory.But the two are banned from re-entering the occupied territories.Ms Chappell said she and her Spanish companion were arrested by immigration police armed with rifles and travelling in armoured personnel carriers.They were taken to a police station, then a military camp and ordered to sign a form declaring they agreed to be deported from Israel within 48 hours, or they would be jailed for six months.They refused, and were taken to a prison. From 2am until about 5pm we were not given any food or access to our phones so that we could call our friends and our lawyer and tell them what had happened, Ms Chappell said.Ms Chappell said her visa had expired in November but she had arranged to meet with immigration officials on March 1 to have it extended.Because of that appointment, she said she was legally entitled to stay at least until then. Our arrest was not about our visas. The Israelis are trying to take away anyone who works for the Palestinian struggle, she said. Anyone involved with the Palestinian struggle is being arrested because there is a large crackdown on activists at the moment. A lot of Palestinian activists have been arrested at gunpoint in raids in the middle of the night. Ms Chappell said she intended to stay in Palestinian territory and her legal team has five days to appeal against her deportation.Activist spokesman Omer Shatz told AFP that Israeli forces raided the Ramallah offices of the Stop the Wall campaign, a group that helps organise weekly demonstrations against Israel's separation barrier.He said Israel had also arrested 17 foreign activists in the past month and deported six of them, including a Czech activist seized last month in a military raid in Ramallah.Weekly protests held in a handful of West Bank villages are billed as non-violent but frequently result in clashes between stone-throwing Palestinians and Israeli troops armed with tear-gas and rubber bullets. Source: AFP, AAP Tue, 09 Feb 2010 12:01:50 +0100 http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7849&Itemid=56 Independent and professional journalists throughout Occupied Palestine are scoffing at the “journalists’ union elections” which took place on Saturday, 6 February, under the aegis of the Fatah organization, describing the event as a “farce” and “fraud.” The Fatah group, in coordination with some erstwhile leftist organizations, selected some 60 journalists who are supposed to form the new journalists union to replace the old moribund union headed by Naim Tubasi.Tubasi had been accused of corruption and monopolizing the union for his own personal expediency. He denies the charges, arguing that his foes within Fatah were only trying to use the union as a bridge for normalization with Israel.The new elections are widely considered an internal PLO affair as hundreds of independent and professional journalists in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip didn’t participate.“The election was a joke, the results were a foregone conclusion,” said Yusuf, a radio journalist from the Hebron region.He adds “I wouldn’t want to offend language by calling this farce an election. True elections must be open to all journalists, irrespective of their ideological orientations. This so-called election reminds me of union elections under the old communist regimes in Eastern Europe where everything was concocted by the Communist party.”Another journalist, Fathi Sabbah, described the process as “illegitimate and illegal.”“There is no doubt that the aim of this election had nothing to do with efforts to reform the journalists’ union. The process was a fraud from A to Z and the main purpose of the elections was to create a union with a form but without a substance in order to be manipulated and used by Fatah for political and factional considerations.“They just want a union at their beck and call, this is the reason they concocted this body out of quasi and little journalists and other people who lack the professional qualifications to be true journalists.”Sabbah castigated the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and other leftist organizations for allowing themselves to be “duped” by Fatah, which he said led to the “arrogation of the union”“Hundreds of present and former union members have been shocked to see the PFLP stoop to this level in order to obtain a piece of this sinful cake.”A third journalist, Gibreil Saadeh described the new union as “lame horses replacing dead horses.”A fourth, Hisham Sharabati of Hebron, likened the union elections with union elections in tyrannical Arab states where everything is arranged beforehand.“As I was watching the plenary session of the union elections on the Palestine TV, I remembered how things are done in one of the very nationalistic Arab states, run by a vanguardist party in whose orbit other parties revolve. I sought refuge in Allah from the evil of Satan, and beseeched the Almighty to keep us away from the un-straight path that would take us to a similar situation.”CriticismsCritics, who hail from various ideological backgrounds, are citing numerous flaws in the Fatah-dominated journalists union, which they say would render the union decidedly illegal and un-representative of Palestinian journalists.One of the most delegitimizing flaws is the issue of membership which critics claim is manipulated rather brazenly in order to ensure that the union remains permanently in the hands of the Fatah organization.“They grant memberships to people who have little or nothing to do with the profession of journalism as long as they go with the flow. It is like allowing blacksmiths to join the doctors’ guild or allowing shepherds to join the engineers’ union,” says Nael from Ramallah.“Besides, it is conspicuously clear that a large number of members are actually members of the various security agencies. They are journalists in name, but security officers in reality.”Nael’s remarks don’t seem to be exaggerated. The membership of the journalists union has not been sifted for many years, and many of the people previously registered as journalists in the early or mid 1990s are no longer practicing the profession, assuming they had ever done that in the first place.“There is irrefutable evidence that many of the estimated 300-400 people who voted as a bloc for the new union were security cadres. This is why this is a fraudulent election, it is an affront to the profession of journalism, it is an insult to Palestinian democracy, it is even an insult to our dignity as a people.”Additional criticisms are directed at the hasty manner in which the elections were conducted. For example, a complete list of union members was never released to allow objections. Similarly, numerous aspirant members, many of them independents or unaffiliated with Fatah, were not accepted for unknown reasons.Indeed, hundreds of practicing journalists who have joined the profession, have been unable to find their way to the union due to its protracted paralysis and dysfunction as a result of political manipulation by the Fatah organization.Furthermore, the Fatah organization, in collusion with the erstwhile leftist organizations, refused to allow elections to take place in places other than Ramallah, apparently in order to ensure that the process remains under their tight control. This apparently prevented many journalists from outlaying regions such as Hebron and Nablus from taking part in the elections.Another scandalous flaw blemishing the new Union is the so-called quota system which means that the union seats are divided among PLO factions in accordance with an anachronistic system dating back to the early 1980s.Pursuant to this system, Fatah receives the lion’s share of the seats, followed by the PFLP and its former ideological sister, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), followed by a myriad of small factions, most of which have few followers and supporters on the ground. Hamas and the Islamic Jihad are totally unrepresented in the new body and the same applies to dozens, if not hundreds, of independent journalists.In other words, the new union, very much like the old one, will not reflect the present political reality in occupied Palestine where probably over half of the population don’t view the PLO as their “sole and legitimate representative.”This fact, say some journalists, might prompt journalists who are unaffiliated with PLO to establish their own representative body instead of risking being marginalized by the Fatah-dominated body.None the less, there are those who would rather give the new union the benefit of the doubt, at least for the time being.“Let us look at the half-full of the proverbial glass. The old union had been virtually dead from time immemorial. This union is not going to be an idealistic union, but let us wait and see. Maybe something good might come out of it,” says Awadh Rajoub, a West Bank correspondent for al-Jazeera.net Arabic service. “An ailing union is better than a dead one, isn’t it?” Khalid Amayreh Tue, 09 Feb 2010 11:57:37 +0100 http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7847&Itemid=56 Nablus - 08/02/10: On Saturday, about 1.300 children and fathers from 5 villages South of Nablus (Burin, Madama, Einabus, Urif and Assira) participated to a marathon race. More than a sport event, the marathon was a community-based activity that aimed at improving vulnerable children’s psychosocial well-being.The Burin marathon was a fathers’ activity that stood as the launching event for a wider year-long mental health project. “Psychosocial and Psycho-medical support in Public schools and Primary Health Care Centers of Nablus Governorate” is a project implemented by MDM-F and funded by the European Commission Humanitarian Aid (ECHO) to improve the access and the quality of local psychosocial child well-being supports and psycho-medical care services in 5 villages of Nablus Governorate. All over the year, adequate training will be provided to the members of the community that are involved in the psychological development of the child: parents, school staffs, local health facilities staff etc.Given that parents are the main source of protection and care for children, supporting them is an essential component to ensure the psychosocial well-being of children. Researches demonstrated that young children with involved fathers tend to be more outgoing and secure. As children get older, this translates into better academic performance and peer relationships. “Through field expertize among the communities, we have noticed a need for gradually integrating fathers –who are often busy due to work constraints- to become more involved in the psychosocial well-being of their children”, comments Olivier Fauritte, Medecins du Monde – France’s Head of Mission. This race involved community as a whole and provided fathers and children with an ideal opportunity to play together, have fun and therefore contribute to the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional well-being of the child.” He continues: “Such a recreative joint activity, enhance self-esteem, self-control and to create a positive environment of confidence which also enabled some fathers to request for attending a “listening point”[1] in order to confidentially talk about their concerns regarding their children or their own stress.”Along with its local partners, Medecins du Monde-France is implementing the psychosocial and psycho-medical projects in 5 villages of the West Bank, South of Nablus. “Considering that the mental health of children and young people has become a public concern in the West Bank, there is a growing awareness on mental disorders, insecure feeling among the population and above all, a lack of psychosocial services”, mentioned Olivier Fauritte. “In those villages, the population is quite vulnerable and suffers from difficulties in accessing the city of Nablus as result of the lack of transportation means or the presence of check points, added to the proximity of numerous Israeli settlements surrounding all the villages. As well, a lack of economic resources and very limited access to social and health facilities just increase dramatically an already extremely complicated political situation”, said Olivier Fauritte. “There, we can significantly reduce the psychological impact of the conflict on children through psychosocial support in schools and in the communities.”From his side, Herve Caiveau, head of ECHO office in Jerusalem added that: “ECHO, the Humanitarian Aid department of the EC is sensitive to the psychosocial well being of children in the occupied Palestinian territory, particularly in areas most affected by violence, by the construction of the barrier, lack of access to essential services or closure. This project funded by ECHO and implemented by MdM in the villages of the Nablus Governorate brings children and their caregivers together to offer a more protective and caring environment to Palestinian children. Through the Marathon and other activities, ECHO’s involvement contributes to improving the daily life of 847 children from ages 8 to 12” . Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:43:19 +0100 http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7846&Itemid=56 This document is the Christian Palestinians’ word to the world about what is happening in Palestine. It is written at this time when we wanted to see the Glory of the grace of God in this land and in the sufferings of its people. In this spirit the document requests the international community to stand by the Palestinian people who have faced oppression, displacement, suffering and clear apartheid for more than six decades. The suffering continues while the international community silently looks on at the occupying State, Israel. Our word is a cry of hope, with love, prayer and faith in God. We address it first of all to ourselves and then to all the churches and Christians in the world, asking them to stand against injustice and apartheid, urging them to work for a just peace in our region, calling on them to revisit theologies that justify crimes perpetrated against our people and the dispossession of the land. In this historic document, we Palestinian Christians declare that the military occupation of our land is a sin against God and humanity, and that any theology that legitimizes the occupation is far from Christian teachings because true Christian theology is a theology of love and solidarity with the oppressed, a call to justice and equality among peoples. This document did not come about spontaneously, and it is not the result of a coincidence. It is not a theoretical theological study or a policy paper, but is rather a document of faith and work. Its importance stems from the sincere expression of the concerns of the people and their view of this moment in history we are living through. It seeks to be prophetic in addressing things as they are without equivocation and with boldness, in addition it puts forward ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and all forms of discrimination as the solution that will lead to a just and lasting peace. The document also demands that all peoples, political leaders and decision-makers put pressure on Israel and take legal measures in order to oblige its government to put an end to its oppression and disregard for the international law. The document also holds a clear position that non-violent resistance to this injustice is a right and duty for all Palestinians including Christians. The initiators of this document have been working on it for more than a year, in prayer and discussion, guided by their faith in God and their love for their people, accepting advice from many friends: Palestinians, Arabs and those from the wider international community. We are grateful to our friends for their solidarity with us.To sign the document, click here . Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:43:38 +0100 http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7845&Itemid=56 Interior Minister Eli Yishai has banned Palestinian geographer Khalil Tufakji, a resident of Jerusalem, from traveling abroad for six months, citing unspecified security concerns. The ban was issued on the recommendation of the Shin Bet security service and is based on 1948 Emergency regulations. Having been convinced that there is real concern that the exit of Mr. Khalil Tufakji from Israel may harm the security of the state, I order that he be banned from exiting the country until 2 August, 2010, the order reads. Tufakji, 60, was summoned last week to a meeting at Jerusalem police headquarters in the Russian Compound. There, a man in civilian clothes calling himself Shadi, gave him the order. The Shin Bet said that the man was a policeman. Tufakji has for years been researching Israel's settlement policy and the ways by which Palestinian land is taken over, as well as planning policy which discriminates against Palestinians. He heads the cartography department of the Arab Studies Society, established in 1980 to document the social, political and cultural history of the Palestinians. Since 1992 Tufakji has been part of Palestinian negotiating team on property borders, land and settlements. In addition to his research, he lectures in Israel and abroad and is often interviewed by journalists. Tufakji says that he has no scheduled lectures abroad in the near future. Palestinian activists say that the order against him is part of a policy of oppression by the Israeli authorities, targeting popular and public opposition to the occupation. The Shin Bet said in response that as far as we know the minister issued the order after reviewing relevant information and a recommendation by the Shin Bet that there is a significant security threat by the exit of the aforementioned person abroad. Amira Hass / Haaretz Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:59:58 +0100 http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7844&Itemid=56 Israeli occupation forces kidnapped 70 Palestinian workers overnight in the west bank near Bait Aor Al-Tahta village, in west of Ramallah. The workers were hidden in a van as they were not given permissions to work inside 1948 occupied lands. The workers were hiding in a van launched from Jerusalem towards the1948 occupied lands.Shaher Sad, the secretary general of the Palestine General Federation of Trade Unions, condemned the performance of the Israeli occupation forces of pursuit and kidnapping the Palestinian workers overnight. These workers were on their way to work inside the1948 occupied lands as there are no work chances inside the West Bank. The Palestinian workers are humiliated every day by the Israeli soldiers at the checkpoints and barriers. Last month number of the Palestinian workers were beaten and kidnapped in Jerusalem. Source: The Palestine Telegraph Mon, 08 Feb 2010 11:46:13 +0100 http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7843&Itemid=56 I like to travel and when I travel, I like to have a guide book. Here in Jerusalem, that guide book is the Tanah, the Bible. This is how guide Asher Altshul likes to start his tours at the expansive City of David archaeological site in Jerusalem. The site stretches along and down one of Jerusalem's hills, just outside the Old City. Hundreds of tourists gather. Most are Jewish people from countries all over the world, like the Schneider family from Los Angeles. The father, Avshalom, says coming here was a must. You feel like you're walking on the same stones our forefathers walked on. This is an important part of my children's Jewish education, he told me. The Israeli foundation that runs the City of David aims to strengthen the Jewish connection to Jerusalem in modern times by emphasising ancient ties. In this case, it is to David, King of the Jewish people three millennia ago. Some historians believe this was the site of King David's palace. But archaeology has become mired in controversy. Battle for sovereigntyThe City of David excavations, with their underground tunnels and ancient pools, centre around the Palestinian district of Silwan. It is in East Jerusalem, which Israel has occupied since its 1967 war. About 40,000 Palestinians live in Silwan. Some families have been here for generations. They say Israel is digging here less out of archaeological interest but rather to make political claims over land. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. Israel says it intends to keep hold of the whole city. The battle for sovereignty over Jerusalem goes to the very heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Musa Odeh guided me through the graffiti-rich, winding alleyways of Silwan's al-Bustan neighbourhood. About a hundred houses here, including Musa's family home, have been served with demolition orders for illegal building. But Palestinians say the Israeli authorities make it virtually impossible for them to get construction permits in Jerusalem. Musa says the City of David archaeological dig is also weakening the structure of many of the houses in Silwan. A local girls' school partially collapsed last year, injuring 17 students. Residents blamed the incident on archaeologists tunnels running through the village. They say tunnels have been exposed again this year after gaping holes appeared in several Silwan streets, following heavy rainfall. Musa is adamant that this is all part of an Israeli plan to drive Palestinians from Jerusalem. Hive of activityThe latest large archaeological excavation in Silwan's City of David site is a hive of activity. Archaeology students from the world over are digging, dusting and displaying ancient artefacts found here.The land here is privately owned by Elad, an Israeli association that also funds Jewish settlement building across occupied East Jerusalem. But the state archaeologists overseeing the City of David excavations say that's not their concern. John Seligman has worked for Israel's Antiquities Authority for years. He told me that it was not his job to agree or disagree with the political motivation of the sponsors of an archaeological site. He said the Antiquities Authority also supervised excavations for the Vatican and the Waqf, the Islamic authority that manages Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. The work we do here is not about looking for a particular heritage of one or other. We find what there is and display what there is, Mr Seligman said. Here on this site we've had finds from the Arab period, from Roman times and from the First and Second Temple periods. Everything is displayed on an equal basis, as it will be in the future too, he added. Not all Israeli archaeologists agree with Mr Seligman.Yonatan Mizrahi runs alternative, critical tours around the City of David and across Silwan. As a former archaeologist for the Antiquities Authority who worked in East Jerusalem, he told me he saw first hand how Israel and Jewish-interest groups sometimes use archaeology as a political tool. Mr Mizrahi says archaeology is about learning about the past but that individuals then choose how to interpret the past. One religion or another may look at an excavation site and say - that land is ours, Mr Mizrahi said. But he qualified this by saying even if archaeologists were to find a big sign, reading 'Welcome to King David's Palace', that wouldn't give Jewish Israelis the right to claim East Jerusalem today. Just like if the Vatican found something here, it wouldn't give the church the right to take ownership of this land. The bottom line is that Palestinians are the majority in East Jerusalem, Mr Mizrahi said. Jerusalem is said to be the most fought-over city in the world. Different nations and cultures have battled to dominate it for thousands of years. Israelis and Palestinians will tell you the struggle is still very much alive today. Souce: Katya Adler / BBC Sat, 06 Feb 2010 12:24:46 +0100 http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7842&Itemid=56 JERUSALEM // They start just after the Israeli checkpoint near the city of Modi’in, along this fast, scenic motorway that connects Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. All along the hilly road, vast concrete boulders, rubble heaps and piles of rubbish barricade access from several Palestinian villages. At one such barrier at the village of Beit Sira, cars with Israeli registration plates deposit groups of dusty-looking workers, who squeeze between the concrete boulders to the Palestinian cars and cabs that can take them back home. This is how it has been for the thousands of Palestinians who have been barred access to Highway 443 since 2002. The Israeli military had cited security reasons for the closure – five Israelis were shot dead in 2001, at the height of the second intifada, and dozens more have been injured in attacks along this 28km stretch of road that cuts into the West Bank. However, in December last year, the Israeli supreme court ruled that the state had to revoke the ban and allow Palestinians access to the road within five months. Campaigners saw the ruling as a breakthrough and a clear legal rejection of a segregated system of Israeli-only roads. But sections of Israeli society have opposed the ruling, and some of the Palestinian villagers affected hold out little hope that it ever will be implemented.“So many times, when the Israeli army says yes it means no – I have no reason to trust them now,” said 32-year-old Farouk, who lives in Beit Sira. This Palestinian village, home to fewer than 3,000 people, is one of the six villages whose petition against the closure was successfully taken to court by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (Acri) and led eventually to the supreme court ruling.One of the points raised by their petition was that the closed road policy was a form of collective punishment for the 55,000 Palestinians thought to be affected by it. “One day the army came and told us that they were taking the road away because we were making problems,” said Farouk. “What problems? We never did anything … but they said that terrorists were coming from our villages onto the road.” Farouk is one of the Palestinian workers forced to navigate the roadblock by foot, queuing up to cross the Israeli checkpoint near Beit Sira in the early hours of the morning and tracing the same path back at nightfall. For those who do not hold permits to work in Israel, it is an equally roundabout daily commute to Ramallah, in the West Bank. “Once, you’d light up a cigarette and barely have time to smoke it before you’d be in Ramallah,” said Aish, a 38-year-old cab driver from Beit Sira, of the short drive to the West Bank town around 20km away.“Now, it can take an hour and a half, or more.” Barred from the motorway, Palestinians have to use a winding series of inferior roads – sometimes running right underneath the 443. And it is not just their working life that is affected. “I’ve had women give birth in my cab, because we couldn’t get to the hospital in Ramallah in time,” said Aish. “And people have died on the way to hospital, because it takes too long on the roads we are allowed to use.” It is precisely such humanitarian aspects – along with the underlying concepts of a segregated road – that prompted the high court ruling over Highway 443. According to Acri, the road ban represents “a serious violation” of the basic human rights of Palestinians who used the road to get to work and school, gain access to emergency services and to maintain social and family ties. The Israeli supreme court said the ban on Palestinians using the road was “unauthorised and disproportional” and that it created a “sense of inequality and improper motives”. “It is illegal to take the resources of an occupied people and use it for the benefit of the occupiers,” said Melanie Takefman, a spokeswoman for Acri, of the road built in part on land expropriated from Palestinian villages, and which cuts through a part of the occupied West Bank to connect Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a faster alternative to the clogged motorway that runs between the two cities. Highway 443 was given high court approval in the 1980s, on the understanding that it would be of primary benefit to local Palestinians – who, for those initial years, did use the road. But now for Israelis, the reopening of the road to the local Palestinian population has raised the spectre of attacks. The latest poll conducted by the War and Peace Index showed 63 per cent of Israelis wanted the 443 to remain closed to West Bank Palestinians, while 30 per cent of those polled believed this practice to be discriminatory. Families of those killed in terrorist attacks along the 443 have made public pleas to keep the road Israeli-only, and the Israeli transport ministry recently warned that Route One, the motorway running between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, would “collapse completely” if security fears pushed Israeli drivers off the 443 and on to it. Around 40,000 Israelis use the 443 daily, as a convenient alternative to Route One.The Israeli army has said that it is preparing to implement the supreme court ruling on Highway 443 and is engaged in “an extensive study of the actions required for the matter”. At Beit Sira, many of those Palestinians taking the wearily slow route home from work wonder just how that will affect them.A report in the Jerusalem Post this week said the defence forces planned to set up another four roadblocks on 443 when it is reopened to enhance security. One of those roadblocks would be at Beit Sira. Source: The National Sat, 06 Feb 2010 12:18:06 +0100 http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7839&Itemid= THE Israeli movie industry, once a sorry mix of ethnic melodrama and soldier slapstick, has come distinctly into its own in the past decade with a crop of admired writers, directors and actors. For two years now an Israeli film of subtlety and power has made the Oscars’ final five for best foreign picture: “Beaufort” (http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/350383/Beaufort/overview) in 2008 and “Waltz With Bashir” last year. So the fact that yet another Israeli film is among the shortlisted nine this year comes almost as no surprise. But everything else about the film, a tribal crime drama called “Ajami,” (http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/458111/Ajami/overview) is utterly unexpected: It is mostly in Arabic; it was co-written and directed by two novices, a Jew and an Arab; the actors were not professionals, they had no scripted dialogue, and the budget came in at under $1 million. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the movie, however, is what it does to viewers. In a conflict where each side lives and breathes its own victimhood, feeling the hurt of the other is a challenge. “Ajami” meets it. When a Palestinian (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/p/palestinians/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) youth turns to drug selling to help pay for his mother’s surgery, Jewish filmgoers here have wept. When the family of a kidnapped Israeli soldier breaks down over his murder by Palestinians, Palestinians in the theater have had tears in their eyes.“I consider that our biggest achievement,” said Scandar Copti, the Arab member of the directing pair. His Jewish colleague, Yaron Shani, elaborated: “People live in bubbles unaware of each other. Each side has its narrative, each side has its dreams and sees the other as threatening those dreams. But if you enter the other’s bubble, you see his dreams, his inner world and his values. Our idea was to make the audience experience what it meant to be the other.” There are many competing narratives in “Ajami,” not just those of Jews and Arabs but also of West Bank Palestinians under occupation versus Palestinians with Israeli citizenship, Christians versus Muslims and urban Arabs versus Bedouins. The action takes place inside Ajami, a poor Arab but increasingly Jewish and gentrified part of Jaffa, the ancient port that abuts Tel Aviv to its south. The story begins when a member of a prominent Bedouin family demands protection money from the owner of an Arab restaurant, leading to a shooting and vendetta against the men of the restaurant family. Along the way there is a doomed love affair between a Christian girl and a Muslim boy, a tough Jewish policeman whose soldier brother is kidnapped in the West Bank and an illegal West Bank Palestinian restaurant worker whose mother needs that expensive operation. Each tribe is seen in its deepest frailty by the viewer but feared as the powerful enemy by the others. All the characters in the film are portrayed by nonactors. Many, like the cops playing cops or a Bedouin judge playing a Bedouin judge, act as versions of themselves. The directors trained them during a year of workshops where they were placed in dramatic situations and urged to react as they would in life. For the film itself, many scenes were shot without the actors knowing what was about to happen, only their general circumstances. A child is murdered, creating pandemonium. Dialogue in Hebrew-flecked Jaffa Arabic comes straight off the streets. The result is a film that feels at times like journalism. Mr. Shani, 37, said that while in film school at Tel Aviv University 12 years ago he came upon the idea of steering away from professional actors. “I had written a script and had gotten actors to act in it,” he recalled, sitting at an editing table in his Tel Aviv studios. “When the scene ended, and the camera stopped, I watched the interaction among the actors, and I realized that was what I wanted, the genuineness of the way they were talking at that moment rather than the acting that had gone on before.” Mr. Shani began to explore documentaries as well as the work of directors like Ken Loach (http://movies.nytimes.com/person/99998/Ken-Loach?inline=nyt-per), the English social realist who has made films about homelessness and working-class struggles, and who largely prefers unknown talent to established actors. Within a few years Mr. Shani became the director of a student film festival and wanted to get young people to make short films about their lives and surroundings. He was fascinated by Jaffa because of its history, crime and tensions. Thousands of years old, a once-glorious port known for its citrus industry, Jaffa is now well known for its underworld ways and rejection of Israeli law. In recent years, due to its commanding location of the sea, Jaffa has attracted well-off Israelis, and its traditional cramped apartments are being replaced by the local equivalent of McMansions, producing keen tensions with the local Palestinians (also represented in the movie). “The place itself is unique and had never been portrayed in Israeli cinema before — an Arab ‘ghetto’ inside the main Jewish center of Israel,” Mr. Shani said.In Jaffa he was introduced to Mr. Copti, an Ajami native, Christian and graduate of Israel’s top engineering college, the Technion in Haifa. “I knew I didn’t want to be an engineer, but all the men in my family do it, so that is what I studied,” Mr. Copti, 34, said. The chance to make a short film about his neighborhood intrigued him, and along with a friend he made a 12-minute mockumentary about local myths called “The Truth.” (http://movies.nytimes.com/gst/movies/titlelist.html?v_idlist=114625;340380;130294;114626;157607 inline=nyt_ttl) He also co-starred in it. Source: The New York Times Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:58:31 +0100 http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7838&Itemid= Standing in the dusty, half-lit lobby of Cinema Jenin with paint splattered builders beavering away all around, it's hard to imagine that this venue was once the place to be on the Jenin social scene.The cinema in the centre of the West Bank city was first opened in 1957. But over the years, Jenin has seen some of the worst violence between Israelis and Palestinians, and the cinema was eventually forced to close during the first Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, in the mid 1980s. But now it is being renovated, and is due to re-open in August 2010. It will be finished. It will definitely be finished, says assistant project manager Mamoun Kanan with a cheeky smile, as he stands on the pile of rubble that will eventually be the cinema's main entrance. The cinema will seat more than 300 people, in the original chairs from the 1950s and 1960s, which are now being restored. The inspiration for the cinema's renovation followed the success of the film Heart Of Jenin. The award-winning documentary directed by German filmmaker Marcus Vetter followed the story of Palestinian Ismail Khatib. Five years ago, Mr Khatib's 11-year-old son Ahmed was shot dead by Israeli soldiers who mistook his toy gun for a real one during the second Intifada. The Israeli military expressed regret for the death. Lives savedRemarkably, Khatib chose to donate his son's organs to five children and a woman in Israel. Ahmed's kidneys, liver, heart and lungs were transplanted into Israeli citizens including Jews, Arabs and a Druze girl. For five of them, the organ donations saved their lives. For me this new cinema is for Ahmed, Mr Khatib says. It's for all his friends. They can come here and feel Ahmed all around them. At the time, Mr Khatib said saving lives was more important than religion, adding I feel that my son has entered the heart of every Israeli . I ask him how it would feel to one day watch an Israeli film in Cinema Jenin. No problem, he says, it's all about respecting each others' culture and learning. Until a few years ago, Jenin was a dangerous place. It was not uncommon to see gunmen from different Palestinian militant groups on the streets.Incursions from the occupying Israeli army were frequent. Now things seem relatively calm. The Palestinian Authority has stepped up security and Israel has relaxed some of the checkpoints into the city. Some militants have sought work in the security forces. One has even opened a theatre company. 'Red carpet'It is estimated the new cinema will cost close to 500,000 euros. Much of the money has come from the Palestinian Ministry of Culture. The German government has contributed 170,000 euros. The musician Roger Waters from Pink Floyd has also donated a state-of-the-art sound system for the cinema. In August 2010, the cinema is due to host the first Jenin International Film Festival. Heart of Jenin will be shown on the opening night. The whole project is a real positive change for Jenin, says Mr Kanan. We have high unemployment here and it will provide jobs and boost the economy. Also its fun. People here need something to enjoy. Kanan says the cinema will eventually show films from all around the world. Israeli films? I ask him. Yes of course, because we are looking for peace. International movies, Palestinian movies, Israeli movies. It's all the same. We are all human above everything. A special council is being set up including the mufti, the local Muslim religious leader, to help decide the films that will be shown. In the 1960s and 1970s, locals say the cinema used to show sex films one night a week. There'll be none of that this time, laughs projectionist Franz Macher, who's over from Germany to train young Palestinian projectionists. These days society is much more conservative so we need to be careful what we show. We don't want to censor films, but we would rather show a good film censored than not show it at all. What about violent films? I ask. Yes the mufti has not forbidden it but he has asked us to be careful about violent films. People have seen enough violence here already. That will be no problem for five-year-old Safedin, who I meet outside the cinema. He is keen to see Toy Story - while his eight-year-old sister Kutel is hoping for Barbie on the opening night. In a ramshackle room at the back of the building sits the old cinema's projector. Two metres high, the machine still whirs into action after a bit of tinkering from Mr Macher. In the summer we'll be rolling out the red carpet, says Felix Gebauer, who's organising the 2010 Jenin Film festival. He says they are expecting Hollywood star Leonardo Di Caprio and the former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to be among the guests, although neither have given public confirmation of their attendence. But 15-year-old Rassan, who runs the food kiosk next to the cinema, is not impressed. I want to see the Barcelona football! he demands, I hear they are coming too. Source: BBC Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:56:05 +0100 http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7837&Itemid=56 The Israeli prime minister has said he expects peace talks with the Palestinians, which have been stalled for more than a year, to resume in the coming weeks. I have reasons to believe, realistically, that we will resume the peace process with the Palestinians, without prior conditions, in the coming weeks, Binyamin Netanyahu told a conference on security in Herzliya, northern Israel, on Wednesday. Without providing details, Netanyahu suggested that the United States had a hand in the breakthrough. It is customary to say that it takes two to tango, but it sometimes takes three in the Middle East, at least to get started dancing the tango, after which I suppose a couple can carry on dancing, he said.New initiative I hope that if there is willingness on the Palestinian side to build peace, to conduct negotiations to reach a peace accord, we will see a resumption of the peace process in the coming weeks, he added. Al Jazeera's Jacky Rowland, reporting from Herzliya, said that Netanyahu's optimisim was not reflected on the ground. Certainly there's nothing of a tangible, actual nature that seems to be happening on the ground at the moment that would give any calls for such optimism. I think he made very clear the yawning gap between the Israeli and Palestinian position. Netanyahu did not reveal the basis on which the talks would take place. But George Mitchell, the US Middle East envoy, was in the region at the end of January. He met with leaders on both sides and presented a new initiative aimed at bringing the parties closer together. At the time, Netanyahu spoke of interesting ideas, but did not elaborate. For his part, Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, said on Monday that he would give a response to Mitchell's proposal within a week. 'US suggestion' A senior Israeli official told AFP the United States had suggested discussions take place initially at the level of teams working on different subjects, before proposing confidence-building measures. Such a strategy would pave the way for normal discussions to resume, the official added, without elaborating. Abbas has not dropped his demand that Israel halt all settlement growth in the occupied West Bank and mostly Arab east Jerusalem ahead of any talks, or his insistance on a framework of guidelines for the negotiations. Talks came to an abrupt halt when Israel invaded the Gaza Strip in December 2008 in a brief but very deadly war. The four-day conference in Herzliya that started on Sunday was attended mainly by Israeli officials to discuss politics and the state of the Israeli nation. Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, met Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, in a conference session on Tuesday - the first meeting of senior officials from the two sides since the talks broke down. The annual conference has gained a reputation over the years as a platform for announcement of new Israeli policies. Source: Aljazeera Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:50:10 +0100 http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7835&Itemid=56 Israeli aircraft have struck tunnels in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian witnesses say, a day after two explosive devices said to have originated in Hamas-ruled Gaza washed up on Israel's coastline. The Israeli army had no immediate comment on the alleged strikes on Tuesday which witnesses say were carried out by Israeli air force jets against an abandoned airport building in Gaza and on tunnels along the border with Egypt that Israel says are used to smuggle weapons into the territory. There were no immediate reports of injuries from the bombings, according to the witnesses cited by the Reuters news agency. The attacks came shortly after Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, told a news conference alongside his Italian counterpart, Silvio Berlusconi, that Israel would respond to the explosives found on Monday. Palestinian fighters from the Israeli-blockaded territory claimed responsibility for what Israel described as an unusual attempted attack. Most attacks from Gaza in the past few years have been by rocket shootings at Israeli towns. The Islamic Jihad group said it had floated the explosives out to sea in a joint operation with two other groups including the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of the Fatah faction led by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president. Source: Aljazeera Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:38:29 +0100 http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7834&Itemid=56 Leading Hamas official Mahmoud Zahar has said talks on swapping Palestinian prisoners for the captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit have collapsed. Late last year a German-mediated deal emerged in which hundreds of Palestinian prisoners would be exchanged for Gilad Shalit. In an interview with the BBC, Mr Zahar blamed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the talks' failure. Gilad Shalit was captured in a raid by Palestinian militants in 2006. Speaking on the BBC's Hardtalk programme, Mr Zahar maintained Prime Minister Netanyahu pushed for stricter conditions for the release of several high-profile Palestinian prisoners. As regarding negotiations, as of now the process has failed. The main cause, well known to everybody, well known to the mediator, that after the interference of the political element, after the appearance of Netanyahu personally, there was a big regression and retraction. For this reason negotiations have now stopped, he said. Mr Zahar, one of the founders of Hamas, said the prospect for future talks looked uncertain. We are looking to set free our people and also to give a chance for the family of the Israeli soldier to live as a human being also. We demanded a considerable number of prisoners, but the Israeli side, after hundreds of rounds of talks, reached backward too much. Sgt Shalit, 23, was captured in a raid into southern Israel by Palestinian militants from Gaza, in 2006. Hamas want hundreds of Palestinians held by Israel, including senior militant leaders that Israel holds responsible for the deaths of dozens of Israeli citizens, to be freed in exchange for Sgt Shalit's release. Israel holds about 10,000 Palestinian prisoners in jail on security grounds - a major bone of contention with the Palestinians. Source: BBC Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:33:07 +0100 http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7833&Itemid=56 Hamas has denounced the Palestinian Authority for the participation of the caretaker Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in an Israeli conference. Fayyad addressed Israel's 10th annual Herzilya conference on Tuesday, following remarks by Tel Aviv's Defense Minister Ehud Barak. The Palestinian Authority's cooperation with Israel reached a political level and this is a serious indicator that this national side has connected its projects with Israeli interests and policies, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said in a statement. The conference, organized by the Strategic Studies Institute, is held annually in Israel and contributes to decisions on Israeli policy and strategy relating to security and politics. During his speech to the Israeli audience, Fayyad denoted the Palestinian Authority's recognition of Israel's right to peace and security, and pledged sustained adherence to that commitment, The Jerusalem Post said on its website. Just as the Palestinians recognized Israel's right, Fayyad reportedly said, so the concept of two states must be accepted in Israel. He also offered Israelis his sympathy for the “pain” they have been through in their long history. Like you, we Palestinians have our own history. Right now we are going through lots of pain and suffering. And we have one key aspiration, and that is once again to be able to live alongside you in peace, harmony and security, Fayyad said. The presence of the Palestinian Authority's caretaker prime minister in an Israeli meeting and his overly conciliatory gesture has irritated Hamas officials in the Gaza Strip, where Israel is strongly resented for the killing of some 1,400 people during the war Tel Aviv launched against the coastal strip last January. The resistance movement, who came to power following a sweeping electoral victory in the 2006 general polls, has been resisting Western diplomatic and economic sanctions in order to force it to recognize Israel. Hamas had to limit its rule to the blockaded Gaza Strip following an orchestrated coup by the rival, Western-backed Fatah faction against the democratically elected Hamas administration. Fatah, has in turn created its own government in the West bank. Source: Press TV Wed, 03 Feb 2010 12:30:29 +0100 http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7831&Itemid=56 DAMASCUS // Although the exact circumstances of the death of Mahmoud al Mabhouh may have been unanticipated he was believed electrocuted and then strangled in a Dubai hotel room the fact of his murder hardly comes as a surprise. Anyone whose job is to make sure that Hamas fighters are well-supplied with weapons for their war with Israel probably does not expect to make it to retirement age. His funeral on Friday, in Yarmouk Camp, a suburb of Damascus built by Palestinian refugees, was well-attended and accompanied by the standard rhetoric of glory and revenge. Al Mabhouh’s body was buried beneath a layer of stony concrete in the corner of a bleak graveyard alongside other martyrs to the cause. It is the place where Palestinian fighters from Syria are laid to rest, if there are any remains left to bury, after being killed in action. Al Mabhouh must have known he would end up there, just as he must have known his life would end violently.There was a subdued atmosphere in the nearby Hamas office the day after the burial, members of the Islamic Resistance Movement trying to work through the details of what had happened and, perhaps more importantly, trying to determine if the death of al Mabhouh signalled the opening of the next bloody chapter in this six-decade-old Middle East conflict.Events leading up to the murder are apparently absurd in their simplicity. According to Hamas, rather than fly on one of his false passports, al Mabhouh’s airline booking was made in his own name. At the same time, an oversight meant no reservations were made for his security guards and, consequently, he travelled alone and unprotected.Within five hours of arriving in the emirate, on what Hamas described vaguely as “a mission” presumably an arms deal, given his line of work al Mabhouh was dead. Hamas officials are adamant there could be no spy inside their organisation tipping off Israeli agents. They insist Mossad carried out the killing, a not unreasonable stand given Israel’s liberal use of assassination as a tool of policy. That means it may well have been a straightforward flight reservation that undid one of the leading military strategists of Hamas. His name would have been on an airline-computer database at least a day before he travelled, so the details of his expected arrival in Dubai could have been passed to Israel’s security services in plenty of time to prepare a murder. The second question being pondered by Hamas after al Mabhouh’s killing is more difficult to answer because it involves the future, not the past. Is his death another cloud in a storm gathering over the region?Since the turn of the year, tensions have been slowly but perceptibly rising in the Middle East, as they so often do. There are signs Hizbollah and Israel, under the hardline leadership of Benjamin Netanyahu, may resume their war, the last instalment of which ended in 2006 in embarrassment for Israel’s vaunted military and widespread destruction in Lebanon. Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbollah’s chairman, has promised that in the event of a new outbreak of hostilities, his fighters will “change the face of the Middle East region”, apparently a threat that his disciplined and battle-hardened guerrillas will enter Israel and recapture some small part of historic Palestine.At the same time, Iran continues to defy international efforts designed to prevent it developing nuclear weapons, its atomic programme considered a red-line issue for the Israelis. Israel has said Tehran must be stopped, by military force if necessary. Syria, still officially at war with Israel over the occupied Golan, and a key supporter of both Hamas and Hizbollah, as well as an ally of Iran, would unavoidably be dragged into any new war. There are reports that Damascus has mobilised its military reserves in recent weeks, an indication it is preparing for the worst.Al Mabhouh’s killing came on top of all this, surely signalling the collapse of an unofficial Hamas-Israeli truce that has largely held since the end of the Gaza invasion a year ago. Despite the insistence by Hamas that it is not overly dependent on any of its senior leaders, there was a clear sense in the group’s Damascus office that al Mabhouh will not be easily replaced. Hamas members said he had been central in supplying their fighters with materiel in the last Gaza war. Without him, at least in the short term, Hamas never as accomplished militarily as Hizbollah may be even less of a threat to Israel. “Israel is preparing for a war, we’re just not sure where or when, but it is coming,” said one of the Hamas officials, sounding distinctly downbeat about the prospect. “It might be against Iran, or Hizbollah, or us. All we know now is that it will happen and it will happen soon.”If Mr Netanyahu’s administration is planning to launch a new assault on any of these various and interlinked fronts, al Mabhouh’s death may have been a small but critical step in the path to war. By: Phil Sands / The National Tue, 02 Feb 2010 10:12:53 +0100 http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7829&Itemid=56 The Interior Ministry is demanding that a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem be deported for having spent too many years in the United States. Elias Khayyo - who holds no foreign citizenship - has been detained for three weeks at Givon incarceration facility in Ramle with other people deemed illegal residents and slated for deportation. Khayyo, 41, was born in East Jerusalem and currently resides in the Christian Quarter of the Old City, where his parents also live. He says he has no relatives in America, nor a home, property or employment there. The Interior Ministry, however, maintains that his permanent residency in Israel was revoked in January 2006, due to Khayyo having lived in the U.S. from 1998 to 2005 and receiving permanent-residence status there. Khayyo received bachelor's and master's degrees in biology over two extended stays in the U.S. He is now working as a translator in Jerusalem.The ministry claims Khayyo resided abroad for more than seven years, and that he returned to Israel in 2005 as a tourist by presenting U.S. travel documents. Khayyo was detained at the Qalandiyah checkpoint on January 10 while en route from Ramallah to Jerusalem, and his identity documents and mobile phone were confiscated. He was instructed to sign unspecified documents but refused, stating that the documents in question were written only in Hebrew. Khayyo was then transported to Givon by members of the Oz task force against immigration violations. Once there, he was informed that papers had been filed for his deportation from Israel. From his incarceration, Khayyo told Haaretz by phone that he had studied in the U.S. from 1990 to 1996, then returned to Jerusalem. He replaced his expired ID card with a new one, and did not encounter problems with Israeli authorities. After capturing and annexing East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel granted Palestinian residents living there permanent residency - a status based on the Law of Entry to Israel, even though they and their families didnot enter Israel, but were born in Jerusalem. In 1998 Khayyo returned to the U.S. to pursue a master's degree. He married a U.S. citizen and began the naturalization process to receive citizenship. The day after the September 11, 2001 attacks he was dismissed from his job - in his view, due to anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiment. In 2002, he and his wife divorced. Khayyo comes from a Christian family. His mother, Elizabeth, is of Armenian descent, whose family survived the genocide in Turkey. In 2005 Khayyo decided to return to Jerusalem. He said he had sought to have his Israeli-issued travel documents extended, but was told by the Israeli consulate in Philadelphia that due to his possession of a U.S. Green Card he had to enter Israel as a tourist, and have his American travel document stamped with an Israeli visa, valid for three months. Consulate authorities told him his status vis-a-vis Israel would be taken care of once in the country. In 1995, under Haim Ramon, the Interior Ministry began taking a harder line against East Jerusalem Palestinians, revoking the permanent-residence status of many of those living outside the municipal borders of Jerusalem (often due to policy-created housing shortages) and those living abroad. In 2000, after a long public campaign against the new measure, then-minister Natan Sharansky told the High Court of Justice that the Interior Ministry would return to its pre-1995 policy, and vowed to reinstate the permanent-residence status of those East Jerusalemites for whom it had been revoked, as long as they had been living again in the city for at least two years. After returning to his Jerusalem home, Khayyo contacted an attorney and understood from him that he fell within Sharansky's category of Jerusalemitee entitled to permanent residency status. The Interior Ministry maintains that his ID card was revoked in 2006, though Khayyo had used it throughout the four years since then without complications. Attorney Nabil Izhiman, whom Khayyo contacted when placed into the immigration authorities' custody, petitioned the Administrative Court to issue a preliminary order to prevent Khayyo's deportation and the revocation of his residency. For now, the deportation has been postponed. By: Amira Hass / Haaretz Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:33:39 +0100 http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7828&Itemid= This week, a screening of Avatar erupted into a small ruckus in a suburb when one moviegoer loudly announced that the Palestinians should learn from this movie what to do to the Jews, causing a commotion and angering others in the audience. The opinionated moviegoer was Juliano Mer-Khamis. Born in Nazereth to a Jewish mother and Arab father, he is an accomplished actor of many years, a filmmaker as well as a political activist who is very outspoken against the occupation. Mer-Khamis confirmed the incident and added in the newspaper Maariv: No one dares to make the real analogy. 'Avatar' is one of the bravest films made. It portrays the occupation, but people aren't making the analogy. Many would like to be like the blue people but don't understand the meaning. This is why people got angry at the movie theater. It is no secret that I think the Israelis are occupiers and the Palestinians occupied. Israel sits forcefully on lands that belong to others and this is exactly what the movie is talking about. Freedom Theatre (http://www.thefreedomtheatre.org/aboutus-new.php), which he established a few years ago for the children of the Palestinian refugee camp there and to use the magic and fantasy of theater to offer some respite to the population, according to its website. The Jenin theater was attacked with Molotov cocktails last year. Mer-Khamis was threatened, denounced in leaflets by militant Palestinians as morally corrupt and an agent of Zionism -- probably a first for that allegation. The music center (http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3688276,00.html) in town was also torched later. Mer-Khamis acknowledged that he was afraid but said that he wasn't the type to run away. It drives them crazy that a person who's half-Jewish heads one of the most important projects in the northern West Bank, he had told the news media at the time. The Jenin theater was a tribute to his mother, Arna Mer-Khamis, whose earlier work in the town was documented in the film Arna's Children. Either way, Avatar already got on the wrong side of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman -- or his spoof, really, on the Eretz Nehederet ('It's a Wonderful Country') satire show. Blowing off claims that his foreign policy had left Israel with no allies in the world, the minister introduced the country's new best friend, an ally out of this world : the prime minister of Avatar. The new diplomatic alliance lasts only until the blue thing explains that the movie is about a people resisting occupation. A leftist movie, sniffs the minister, and he promptly shoots the blue being. Sorry, folks, he says. There's isn't going to be an Avatar No. 2. Source: LA Times Mon, 01 Feb 2010 11:22:35 +0100 http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7827&Itemid=56 The Israeli army has disciplined two high-ranking officers for approving the use of white phosphorous shells during the Gaza offensive last year, according to local media. The Haaretz newspaper's website said on Monday that a military inquiry concluded that the Gaza division commander and a brigade commander endangered human life by firing the highly incendiary weapon towards a compound run by a UN aid agency. The military spokesman's office had no immediate comment on Monday, saying it would issue a statement shortly. Haaretz said that the officers, Eyal Eisenberg and Ilan Malka, were the subject of disciplinary action, but did not specify any punishment. It said the allegations were included in the government's dossier submitted to the UN on Friday in response to the UN-sponsored Goldstone report's harsh criticism of Israeli military conduct as well as the actions of the Palestinian group Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since June 2007. The Palestinian Authority (PA) said it had also submitted a response to the UN, along with preliminary findings. The reports come as a deadline looms for Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, to address the General Assembly with his own report on Gaza in next Friday. Phosphorus munitions Many human rights organisations had accused the Israeli army of illegally using phosphorous munitions, which caused severe burned injuries among the Palestinian population.However, the Israeli army justified its actions by saying that similar shells are in use by other Western armies and insisting that the munitions were used in remote locations in the Gaza Strip, which has a high population density and limited land access. Al Jazeera's Jacky Rowland reporting from Jerusalem, said: We must stress that the Israeli army is investigating itself. This is not in anyway an independent inquiry. When you bear in mind that a number of human rights groups identified what they described as a systematic, random and wide-ranging use of the chemical, the Israeli report just focuses on this one incident and two individuals being disciplined. But we've seen pictures from Gaza that hundreds of people were burned by white phosphorous during that military campaign a year ago. It seems that just this one isolated incident is being focused on in the Israeli investigation. With the conclusion of Operation Cast Lead, Gabi Ashkenazi, the Israeli army chief, ordered the convening of five special investigative committees. One of the committees examined the use of phosphorus shells. The members noted in their findings that the two army officers, in approving the firing of phosphorus shells, were guilty of exceeding their authority in a manner that jeopardised the lives of others . Gideon Levy, a Haaretz political analyst, told Al Jazeera: This is the first time that Israel has admitted it did something wrong. This by itself is a progressive step. Without international pressure, the [Israeli army] would have not carried out investigations, but I guess the world will not be satisifed with this very minor step. War crimes committed The Goldstone report, requested by the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council, was put together by an expert panel headed by Richard Goldstone, a South African jurist.Based on its findings in Gaza, the committee accused both Israel and Palestinian fighters of committing war crimes during the Gaza war which lasted from December 27, 2008, to January 18, 2009. Initially, Israel refused to co-operate with Goldstone and angrily rejected his findings. But after the General Assembly urged in November both Israel and the Palestinians to investigate Goldstone's charges, Israel decided it would provide Ban with information on the military offensive it called Operation Cast Lead. Yigal Palmor, the Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, said the response, entitled Gaza Operation Investigations: An Update, defends Israel's investigations of its offensive, but does not address the international body's main demand - the creation of an independent commission of inquiry. Our response includes a description of the Israeli legal system, the fact that it is responsible and independent and acts in accordance with international law, how it operates and why it can be trusted, he said. Onus on Netanyahu The decision to establish a commission of inquiry must be made by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, Palmor said. Israel's government has long rejected such a move, but there have been increasing calls inside Israel for an independent inquiry, even if just to prove that the allegations made in the Goldstone report are false. Menachem Mazuz, Israel's outgoing attorney-general, said in a farewell interview on Friday that Israel must establish such a commission. If it does not, he said, the Goldstone allegations will pursue us and continue to pursue us and undermine our legitimacy . Israel's report to the UN says that the convening of a sixth committee has been set up to examine additional allegations made against the Israeli army. So far, Israel's military says, it has investigated about 150 incidents that took place during the fighting. At least 29 investigations are ongoing, the military said, and one soldier has been convicted of misconduct. 'No symmetry' Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian UN representative, said he submitted a letter from Salam Fayyad, the PA prime minister, and other documents on a commission of five judges and experts set up to probe Goldstone's charges.Leaders of Hamas say they did not target civilians while firing hundreds of rockets at Israeli towns. They argue that the rockets fired from Gaza were meant to hit Israeli military targets, but because they are unguided, they hit civilians by mistake. A ceasefire was declared on January 18 after the Israeli assault left about 1,400 Palestinians dead, many of them women and children. On the Israeli side, three civilians and 10 soldiers were killed. Source: AlJazeera Mon, 01 Feb 2010 11:15:37 +0100 http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7826&Itemid=56 A senior member of the Palestinian militant group Hamas has been found murdered in a Dubai hotel. Hamas accused agents from Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence service, of assassinating Mahmoud al Mabhouh, a founder of their military wing, the Ezzedeen al Qassam Brigades. The Israeli government has not commented on the claims.Dubai Police confirmed that the body of al Mabhouh, 50, was found on January 20, a day after he entered the country from an unnamed Arab state.A statement said the suspects were mostly European passport holders and members of an “experienced criminal gang” who had been monitoring al Mabhouh’s movements.The suspects fled the country before al Mabhouh’s body was found in a room in a hotel, which police sources last night identified as Al Bustan Rotana in Al Garhoud. Dubai Police are co-ordinating with Interpol on the case in an attempt to track down the killers.Hotel staff, speaking anonymously, confirmed that a Palestinian man had been found dead on the premises “about a week ago”.Speaking to Al Jazeera from the Gaza Strip, al Mabhouh’s brother, Fayeq, said the family had been informed by Hamas and “people close to the UAE authorities” that his brother had been murdered. document.write(''); <a target= _blank href= http://ad.doubleclick.net/click%3Bh=v8/3932/3/0/%2a/c%3B215241118%3B0-0%3B0%3B33429252%3B4307-300/250%3B31260188/31278064/1%3B%3B%7Esscs%3D%3fhttp://www.thenational.ae/section/register?template=userreg ><img src= http://s0.2mdn.net/2200381/tn_300x250.gif border= 0 alt= ></a> “The information we have is that he was assassinated inside his hotel room,” he said. “He first received an electrical shock on the head and then he was strangled.”According to a Hamas statement issued from Damascus yesterday, al Mabhouh “died a martyr in Dubai on January 20, 2010 in suspect circumstances that require an inquiry in co-operation with the United Arab Emirates authorities”.The statement vowed that Hamas would “retaliate for this Zionist crime at the appropriate moment”. Ahmed Yousef, a senior Hamas official in the Gaza Strip, said last night that the killing showed that Israel “does not respect international law. It does not respect the sovereignty of other states. The country wants to show its hands can reach anywhere without being held accountable.”Al Mabhouh was born in the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza and was reportedly a key military planner in Hamas. Some sources suggest that he was a pivotal figure in attempts to procure weapons for Gaza. Hamas said he had been involved in the capture and subsequent killing of two Israeli soldiers in 1989, when he was exiled. Since then he had been based in Damascus, where he was reportedly close to the exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal.Al Mabhouh spent his life in and out of Israeli detention and was one of the state’s most wanted men. The Israeli army destroyed the al Mabhouh family house in Gaza by way of retaliation, a common form of punishment by Israel. On Thursday, his body was flown to Syria and yesterday a funeral was held in Al Yarmouk, a Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus. Mr Meshaal told thousands of Palestinians who turned out to mourn al Mabhouh that the “resistance will go on” and described him as a “great man” who fought the Israelis for 30 years. “I say to you Zionists, do not rejoice. You killed him, but his sons will fight you.”Over the years a number of Hamas leaders have been killed in Israeli assassinations, or what Israel calls “targeted killings”. The founder of Hamas, Ahmed Yassin, a quadriplegic, was killed in Gaza when two missiles struck his wheelchair as he returned from morning prayers in 2004. A month later, Abdel Aziz Rantissi, who succeeded him, was killed in a similar attack.Since then, the Hamas leadership has divided responsibilities between those within the occupied Palestinian territories and those in exile. Overall leadership now rests with Mr Meshaal, who, in 1997, was himself the target of an unsuccessful Israeli assassination attempt in Jordan. Al Mabhouh’s assassination comes as a fragile truce is holding in and around Gaza. Hamas has been largely successful in ending the rocket fire against Israel, wary of a repeat of Israel’s fierce attacks on the impoverished strip last year. Omar Karmi / The National Picture by Mohammad Salem / Reuters Sat, 30 Jan 2010 12:08:29 +0100 http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7824&Itemid=56 PNN/ Bethlehem. The January 29th online edition of the Washington Post has reported the death of Boston University Professor Dr. Howard Zinn, a noted author and a founding advisory board member of Jewish Voices For Peace, an American-based organization that works with Palestinians involved in the nonviolence movement. Dr. Zinn had suffered an apparent attack while on a speaking tour in the US. Dr. Howard Zinn was born to working-class Jewish immigrants from Austria-Hungary in 1922. He served in the US Army Air Corps as a bombardier during World War II, and saw combat over the European theatre. Impacted by the war, he gained a reputation as an “activist historian” who frequently spoke out against US Foreign Policy, supported the civil rights movement, and became well known for publishing a populist history book entitled “The People’s History of the United States.” He was an active opponent of both the Iraq War, and a proponent of the recognition for Palestine. He is survived by his wife, Roslyn, two children and five great-grandchildren. In a January 29th press release, Jewish Voice for Peace Executive Director Rebecca Vikolmerson praised Zinn’s commitment to human rights in the Holy Land. “(Zinn) was a tremendous supporter of our work and vision for justice and full equality in Israel and Palestine,” Vilkomerson stated. “He spoke out on behalf of…Israel's young conscientious objectors who waited in jail for refusing to serve the occupation. He spoke frankly about the intolerable subjugation of millions of Palestinians, and how it hurt both peoples. And he stood up for the full humanity of all people everywhere.” Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:33:00 +0100 http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7823&Itemid=56 The battle is on for the holiest city in the holy land Jerusalem, a spiritual centre to Jews, Christians and Muslims. To the Palestinians, east Jerusalem is a future capital of a Palestinian state, but Israelis say Jerusalem must never be divided. Panorama reporter Jane Corbin, walks through the disputed streets and parks, meeting families thrown out of their homes, witnessing bulldozers demolishing houses and goes underground to explore tunnels excavated deep below the biblical sites. In the aftermath of Israel's victory in the Six Day War, Panorama reported on the complexity and tensions of life for the differing religions living in Israeli-controlled east Jerusalem. The tension between the two nations was not only exclusive to those interviewed in the documentary. But were extended with comments on youtube from both sides. One person tried to explain to an Israeli his point of view by comparing America and the Native Indians. “what if you were sitting in you livingroom in somewhere North America and a Native Indian and S.W.A.T arrive at your door to issue an eviction_ notice because the land your house is on, belonged to some tribe in the 1400's and you have 24hrs to get out?” Palestinians are rushing to watch the videos posted on youtube and try and comment on them as well as pass them around as fast as possible. The Zionist lobby is working its utmost on removing those videos by calling them and the BBC anti-semetic. To watch the three part documentary on youtube, click on “A Walk In The Park ”. Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:39:23 +0100 http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7822&Itemid=56 PNN/ Ramallah. Health professionals have observed a raise of mutations at birth in Gaza, since the Israeli offensive last year. One of these, is a story of a child born at the Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip. The child was born with severe congenital malformations, such as his face, eyes, short stature, flattened nose, reddish-brownish skin discoloration, short limbs with feet and toes severely curled towards the inside in a similar shape to that in gorillas.The baby weighed 4 kilos, suggesting that he was in good health. His appearance showed otherwise. His parents left him at the hospital and refuse to go back and claim him as their own child.The baby, also nicknamed the gorilla baby, is still under the custody of the hospital until his parents return to claim him. The hospital has tried to convince the parents to come and take their child especially that he isn’t in a stable condition and has problems in breathing.According to various medical reports, there has been an increase in the rates of birth defects in newborn children since 2009, with fifty cases of deformity compared to 30 cases in the years prior.There has also been a significant increase in the number of miscarriages amongst pregnant woman after the end of the war.Doctors say such malformations cannot occur for genetic reasons, nor are they related to the mother's age or other factors. these come as a result of the white phosphorus used during the war. A few months earlier, the hospital was faced with a very similar case to this one , however, the baby died directly after it was born.White phosphorus (WP) is a material made from a common allotrope of the chemical element phosphorus that is used in smoke, tracer, illumination and incendiary munitions.As and incendiary weapon, WP burns fiercely and can set cloth, fuel, ammunition and other combustibles on fire. Since, WWII, it has been extensively used as an anti-personnel weapon capable of causing serious burns or death.The Israeli military used white phosphorus munitions in the Gaza War. The Israeli Occupation Forces repeatedly denied using white phosphorus munitions but acknowledged use after the war ended.Human Rights Watch said its experts in the region had witnessed the use of white phosphorus. Kenneth Roth, the organization’s executive director, added: This is a chemical compound that burns structures and burns people. It should not be used in populated areas.”Amnesty International said a fact-finding team found indisputable evidence of the widespread use of white phosphorus in crowded residential areas of Gaza City and elsewhere in the territory. Donatella Rovera, the head of an Amnesty fact-finding mission to southern Israel and Gaza, said: Israeli forces used white phosphorus and other weapons supplied by the USA to carry out serious violations of international humanitarian law, including war crimes. Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:36:39 +0100 http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7821&Itemid= Larissa Sansour is currently exhibiting in group show in Bahrain and has her first solo show in New York. Born in Jerusalem in 1973 to a Russian mother and a Palestinian father, educated in New York and London and living in Copenhagen, Sansour has exhibited internationally. Visitors to her shows in New York and Bahrain will encounter her video A Space Exodus . In A Space Exodus, Larissa Sansour quirkily sets up an adapted stretch of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey in a Middle Eastern context. The film follows the artist herself on a phantasmagoric journey through the universe echoing Kubrick’s thematic concerns for human evolution, progress and technology. However, in her film, Sansour posits the idea of a first Palestinian in space, and, referencing Armstrong’s moon landing, she interprets this theoretical gesture as “a small step for a Palestinian, a giant leap for mankind”. This five-minute short is packed with highly produced visual imagery. The arabesque elements ranging from the space suit to the music are merged within a dreamy galactic setting and elaborate special effects. A great deal of attention is paid to every detail of the film to create a never before seen case of thrillingly magical Palestinian displacement. To watch the video, click on A Space Exodus (http://vimeo.com/5199652) Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:51:51 +0100 http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7820&Itemid= Under the patronage of Prime Minister Dr. Salam Fayyad, Palestine’s largest mural is unveiled. Created jointly by Women’s Affairs Technical Committee (WATC) (http://learningpartnership.org/en/partners/palestine) and the Open Workshop for Culture and Arts (OWCA) to honor Palestinian women, it is the culmination of year-long activities centered on celebrating the contributions of women in culture. This project was supported by the EU which has provided almost 70% of the project budget that reached €72000. Celebrating Jerusalem as the 2009 Arab Capital of Culture, the 20-meter-long mural has been split between Ramallah and Jerusalem University-Abu Dis to reflect Jerusalem’s unity with the whole of Palestine in spite of the artificial separation created by Israel’s military occupation. Many local and international parties have also supported the project.The festival will begin beside Ramallah’s location and continue inside nearby Ashtar Theater. Participants will enjoy music, art exhibitions, literary reading and a documentary film featuring the artists and the mural’s theme. WATC and OWCA’s devotion to this project reflects their strong belief in women’s crucial role in creating a healthy society, while at once honoring the contributions they’ve made in the field of art, culture and Palestinian heritage.The artists’ sculpted imagery was inspired by the literature of female Palestinian authors: Laila Al Atrash, Rose Shomali, Dalia Taha, Hala Shrouf, Mai Sayyeg, Randa Jarrar, Rania Rsheid, and Aisheh Owdeh, an old Canaan script. Accordingly, their words have been carved into the mural.The project included cultural exchange with European artists to enhance local artists’ skills and increase their knowledge of alternative techniques applied in modern and international arts. Austrian sculptor Christian Peintner, French artist and expert in “arts for all” Frank Loret, and Spanish environmental artist Christina Ferrandez led workshops along with local artists Jamal Afgahani, Mazen Saadeh, and American Palestinian artist Julia Bailey.The nine-month workshop kept its doors open to the public as interested amateurs spent time forming small shapes which have been included in the Mural as flowers, houses, trees, waves, and other beautiful and reflective images. Among the aspiring artists, the workshop was visited by the Minister of culture, Siham Bargouti, a Swedish delegation, and many Palestinians from all walks of life.The mural’s artists are: Bassam Abu Al Hayyat from Nablus, Mirna Bamiyeh from Jerusalem, Ruba Hamdan from Haifa, Ibrahim Jawabeh from Bethlehem, Randa Maddah from Golan, Lara Abu Sharkh, Afaf Dar Omar, and Maxim Zaqtan from Ramallah. They were carefully selected from a larger group of competitors by a specialized committee. Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:38:51 +0100 http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7819&Itemid=56 Israel has paid $10.5m to the United Nations for property damage and injuries the world body suffered during Israel's war on Gaza a year ago, officials have said. With this payment, the United Nations has agreed that the financial issues relating to those incidents ... are concluded, Martin Nesirky, a UN spokesman, said on Friday. A senior Israeli diplomat at the UN, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: We have decided to make an ex gratia [without liability] payment to the United Nations and we have indeed done it. A total of 53 installations used by the United Nations Relief and Works agency were damaged or destroyed during Israel's Gaza campaign including 37 schools, six health centres, and two warehouses. Aid destroyed The main damage to UN property came on January 15 when Israeli shells hit a UN compound, setting fire to a warehouse and destroying badly-needed food and medical aid. UN officials say they have evidence that [[white phosphorous]], a smokescreen agent that can cause severe burns, was used in the attack that left three people injured. Israel said Hamas fighters had used the compound to launch attacks on its forces but later apologised for the incident. A UN inquiry last year put the cost of damage to seven UN buildings in Gaza during the 22-day assault at $11.2m, almost all of it caused by Israeli forces. Loss adjusters hired by the UN subsequently reduced that by $750,000, Nesirky said. Nesirky said the UN's compensation claims related both to the property damage and to minor injuries suffered by 11 employees. Israel's onslaught on Gaza killed more than 1,400 Palestinians and left much of the territory in ruins. A total of 13 Israelis were killed during the conflict.Source: AlJazeera Wed, 27 Jan 2010 11:30:47 +0100 http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7818&Itemid=56 Holland –Cris Toala Olivares, a Dutch citizen of Ecuadorian origin, has won the “Silver Camera Award” in the Foreign News category for a photo taken during a protest in Nilin Village in the West Bank in October 2009. The image is of a cluster of tear gas grenades exploding over a grove of Olive trees while demonstrators take cover.A private Twitter released by a Dutch national in late January states that Olivares was part of a Olive harvesting program provided by the Joint Advocacy Initiative of the YMCA and YWCA of Palestine. Olivare’s website showcases work also produced in Gaza, Hebron, and West Bank settlements, along with albums taken in Europe and Africa. The Silver Camera award is a long-running competition for Dutch photojournalists working both in the Netherlands and abroad. The online edition of The Hague reported that there were 9500 entries for 2009. Nilin is a West Bank village in the Ramallah District with a population of about 9,000. Much of its agricultural land has been seized by the Israeli occupational forces during the construction of the Separation Wall. Protests regarding the affects of the ongoing occupation are frequent, and often attract both international human rights activists and journalists. Tear gas is regularly used by both the Israeli Defense Forces and various police units to disperse non-violent demonstrations in the West Bank and Israel, making difficult for those who inhale it to breathe. While the gas itself is not lethal, the canisters themselves can be lethal when shot as a projectile, as shown in Olivare’s photo, as opposed to being lobbed by hand. PNN Staff: An exhibition of Toala’s work can be seen online at www.toalaolivares.com (http://www.toalaolivares.com/) . Please respect the work of Toala Olivare by asking permission before using this and other images by contacting him at the above website. Tue, 26 Jan 2010 22:57:56 +0100 http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7817&Itemid=56 With a new year comes new tactics from Israel’s security forces. 2009 began with a determined effort to destroy their enemies in Gaza, claiming the lives of 500 children in the process. It must have been an irritation to the military that they could not so easily wipe out the journalists, activists and relief workers who made their atrocities public. As a new year dawns, it is these voices of conscience who are becoming an endangered species.There is growing evidence to suggest a co-ordinated campaign to lessen international presence in the Palestinian territories. This week the Ministry of Interior announced there would be no new work permits for NGO employees, forcing them to rely on tourist visas that prohibit employment. The impact on the work of aid organisations like Handicap and Save the Children International is likely to be severe. A Handicap spokesman claimed the ruling will strongly affect the implementation of projects-as most of the project managers are expatriates. The process will be slower and field work will suffer . Of around 150 NGOs at work in the Palestinian territories, only the 12 established before 1967 will not face the disruption of losing their staff. The ruling will also affect the ability of local NGOs to recieive funding from foreign donors, whose representatives will be prevented from making on site assessments of costs. Dr. Ali Ahmed of Save the Children in Gaza predicts expensive work with the physically disabled will now be harder to facilitate. Although Save the Children is apolitical, Ahmed believes the decision is based on higher level issues, it is another case of collective punishment for Palestinians. Last July saw the creation of ’Oz’ (Hebrew for courage), an elite task force charged solely with identifying and expelling immigrants from Israel’s borders. Given a target of 100,000 expulsions by 2013, the force’s zeal for their work is renowned. Oz’s practises within Israel proper, including violent arrests and the detention of minors, have courted controversy. But in several cases this year Oz, working with the Israeli police, have used their powers to arrest western activists in the West Bank. It means we are back to direct occupation , says Omar Shatz, a defence lawyer who has represented victims of this new policy. It means Israel are recognising the West Bank as Israel, he continued, the police have no authority in Ramallah but still we are seeing an increase in these cases. One of his clients, Eva Novakova, was media co-ordinator for the International Solidarity Campaign. The 28 year old was pulled out of bed at around 3am on the 11th of January and promptly deported to her native Czech Republic the same day. Shatz believes that had the case gone to court the illegal manner of her arrest would have invalidated the expulsion, but tired and intimidated , Novakova chose to accept it. The immigration unit’s entrance into Ramallah violates the Palestinian Authority’s sovereignty on its territory and the Oslo Accords, said lawyer Yiftach Cohen, who also represented Novakova. Another activist, Ryan Olander, was held for over a month in Tel Aviv for participating in a Sheikh Jarrah demonstration. Along with two other foreign nationals, was seized by Israeli police before being turned over to Oz. We were basically kidnapped from court by immigration , Olander explained, they took me and cancelled my visa (which was valid) and said I was here illegally. The collusion between police and immigration was quite clear. Olander was later cleared on appeal. The judge ruled that my arrest was illegal and was very critical of the police .Last week saw the most high profile case of its type. Hagai Elad, head of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, was one of 17 Israelis arrested at a protest in Sheikh Jarrah last Friday. All were released without charge within 36 hours. Many believe Elad’s fame was the reason for his arrest, making a statement that such activism will not be tolerated, regardless of nationality or stature. The pattern of arresting Palestinian protestors is well established. 32 residents of Bi’lin, a hub of ’stop the wall’ protests, have been arrested in the past six months. But the focus on international participants is a new development, a sign that Israel’s security forces are going to ever greater lengths to suppress dissent. Dr Mustapha Barghouthi, Secretary General of the Palestinian National Initiative, believes the ongoing campaign of harassment and intimidation against activists indicates that Israel clearly aims to dismantle any resistance .The press have also become a target. In the annual Press Freedom Index, compiled by Reporters Sans Frontieres, Israel falls from 47th to 93rd in the world. For the first time it is no longer the top middle eastern nation, which RSF attributes to five arrests of journalists, some of them completely illegal, and three cases of imprisonment. The military censorship applied to all the media is also posing a threat to journalists. The index does not include Israel’s ’extra-territorial’ actions, most notably Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, that saw three journalists killed and 20 injured during the conflict. This week Jared Malsin, an American editor at Ma’an News Agency, was deported after a week’s detention at Ben Gurion airport. While the Ministry of Interior have claimed this was unrelated to Malsin’s reporting, which often criticised Israeli policy, it has emerged that his interrogators were fully aware of his position. While in custody Malsin was forced to sign a paper waiving his right of appeal, giving the lie to official reports that he left voluntarily. I had no clue I was waiving anything , he said from New York, I wish I hadn’t signed it. The guards were extremely manipulative and misleading in the way they dealt with me. There is no such thing as a voluntary deportation. Although individual organisations face disruption through loss of staff and expertise, the Palestinian population as a whole may suffer more through loss of witnesses. Whatever the plans of Israel’s security forces, it seems they are determined the world know as little about them as possible. So much for transparency in the middle-east’s flagship democracy. Source: Palestine Monitor Tue, 26 Jan 2010 14:50:21 +0100 http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7816&Itemid=56 The Israeli prime minister has taken part in tree-planting ceremonies in the West Bank while declaring Israel will never leave those areas. Benjamin Netanyahu said the Jewish settlements blocs would always remain part of the state of Israel. His remarks came hours after a visit by US envoy George Mitchell who is trying to reopen peace talks between Israel and Palestinians. A Palestinian spokesman said the comments undermined peace negotiations. Our message is clear: We are planting here, we will stay here, we will build here. This place will be an inseparable part of Israel for eternity , the prime minister said. Mr Netanyahu's comments have angered Palestinians, who want a state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. This is an unacceptable act that destroys all the efforts being exerted by Senator Mitchell in order to bring back the parties to the negotiating table , Palestinian spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina told the Associated Press. Meanwhile, in the Jordanian capital Amman, Mr Mitchell emphasised the US commitment to the creation of an independent Palestinian state. We intend to continue to pursue our efforts until that objective is achieved , he told AP. US attempts to revive peace talks have stalled over the Jewish settlement issue and the Palestinians' refusal to return to peace talks. The Palestinians insist that Israel has a long-standing commitment under an existing peace plan to stop settlement growth. But the Israeli government says it has temporarily curbed construction as a goodwill gesture. All settlements in the the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this. Source: BBC Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:30:07 +0100