A fence guards a neighbourhood under construction in the Ariel settlement in the Occupied West Bank. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS

By Kanya D'Almeida
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 11 2015 (IPS)

Just weeks after an 18-month-old baby was killed in an arson attack in the Palestinian village of Duma, located south of Nablus city in the Occupied West Bank, a United Nations special committee has blasted Israel’s policy of settlement expansion, saying it is the root cause of violence towards Palestinians.

In the first seven months of 2015, the U.N. has documented over 120 attacks by Jewish settlers on Palestinians living in the West Bank, including shootings, beatings, cutting down of fruit trees, poisoning of livestock and dumping of waste on Palestinian farmland.
Having completed their annual fact-finding mission to Jordan on Aug. 8, the same day that the father of the baby boy also succumbed to severe burns after settlers threw a fire bomb into the family’s home, the Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories stated it was “alarmed” at the escalation of violence towards Palestinians, blaming a “climate of impunity relating to the activities of settlers” for tragedies such as the attack on Jul. 31.

In a press release issued on Aug. 10, the committee revealed that testimony from a range of civil society groups and Palestinian officials all pointed to one conclusion: that until the government of Israel reigns in illegal settlement activity in the West Bank, the violence will likely continue.

According to the non-governmental organisation Peace Now, Israeli settlers in the West Bank currently number some 350,000, in addition to an estimated 300,000 settlers residing in parts of Jerusalem that Israel captured and illegally annexed from Jordan in 1967.

Settlements are primarily concentrated in a zone marked ‘Area C’, which accounts for 61 percent of the West Bank’s territory. Here, an estimated 60,000 Palestinians are squeezed into an ever-shrinking space, while new settlements further segregate and marginalize them in an already miniscule area.

Last year, Israel upped its annual spending on settlement activity in the West Bank to 100 million dollars, representing an increase of 600 percent from the previous year. Factor in settlement expenditure in the Golan Heights, and the number shoots up to 200 million dollars per year.

Peace Now says that since 2009 the Israeli government has approved bids for some 4,485 new units including houses, roads, industrial buildings and agricultural sites; in the last two years alone, two-thirds of fresh construction has taken place on the Palestinian side of a border agreed upon in the 2003 Geneva Initiative.

The U.N. has, on countless occasions, reiterated that the building of settlements on occupied land is illegal under international law. Despite repeated entreaties by a string of U.N. secretaries-general, including most recently Ban Ki-moon, there are now close to 220 Israeli settlements dotting the 2,100 square-mile West Bank.

According to one comprehensive report by the New York Times, these residences range from scrappy “hilltop outposts”, to sprawling cities that house their own universities and movie theatres.

The largest of these, an Orthodox enclave known as Modiin Illit, houses 60,000 residents and is growing at a terrific pace, recording 60 births every week in 2009.

The separation wall runs between the Israeli settlement of Pisgat Ze’ev and a Palestinian refugee camp. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/IPS

Besides annexing Palestinian land and further fragmenting West Bank territory, settlement expansion has also contributed to a climate of impunity in which crimes against Palestinians – often at the hands of settlers themselves – continue unchecked.

A recent report by the Israeli rights group Yesh Din revealed that “only 7.4 percent of police investigations carried out by the SJ (Samaria and Judea) District Police into offenses committed by Israeli civilians against Palestinians and Palestinian property in the West Bank have resulted in indictments against the suspects.”

The organisation says the figure is based on a sample of some 1,000 investigations carried out by the SJ District Police between 2005 and 2014. Many acts of violence and vandalism occur on Palestinian farmland, or on the outskirts of Palestinian villages.

Yesh Din has labeled these attacks as “a calculated strategy designed to restrict and dispossesses Palestinians of their land.”

In the first seven months of 2015 alone, the U.N. has documented over 120 attacks by Jewish settlers on Palestinians living in the West Bank. Reports by Yesh Din indicate that these violent incidents run the gamut from shootings and beatings, to running Palestinians over with vehicles.

Settlers also routinely attempt to destroy Palestinian farmland by cutting down trees, setting fields ablaze, damaging machinery or stealing and poisoning livestock.

Attacks on property account for 41 percent of all complaints filed, half of which involve the destruction of fruit trees. Since 1967, over 800,000 olive trees have been uprooted in the West Bank and Gaza.

Yesh Din also says that five percent of the SJ District Police’s investigative files “include the killing of farm animals, desecration of mosques and cemeteries, discharging of sewage into Palestinian farmland [and] dumping of waste on land belonging to Palestinians.”

A further 14 percent of criminal offenses against Palestinians involve settlers attempting to seize Palestinian land by practicing unauthorized cultivation, fencing off certain areas, illegally trespassing or setting up portable homes and greenhouses on the Palestinian side of the border.

Although the Israeli government often publically condemns settler violence, a quick look at the numbers paints a clearer picture of its policies: according to a comprehensive analysis of the settlements’ economic costs published by the Tel Aviv-based Macro Center for Political Economics in 2015, the state allocated 950 dollars to each Israeli resident in the West Bank in 2014, twice the amount spent on residents in larger cities like Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.

Its expenditure on Israeli citizens in more isolated settlements amounted to 1,480 dollars per person last year.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

A stretch of Route 443 near the Giv'at Ze'ev intersection. Barbed wire fencing forms a section of the Israeli barrier on the West Bank. Credit: Etan J. Tal CC BY 3.0

By Pierre Klochendler
ROUTE 443, Occupied West Bank, Dec 29 2013 (IPS)

The full moon sets; another dawn rises over Route 443. For over 40,000 Israeli residents and settlers commuting daily between Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, it isn’t yet rush hour.

For hundreds of Palestinian construction workers who reside along 443, it already is. To get to construction sites inside Israel, they rise in the dead of night.

Route 443 is one of Israel’s major traffic routes. About 15 kilometres of the 28-kilometre trunk road meanders through the occupied West Bank, including four kilometres on the outskirts of occupied East Jerusalem.

In a landmark ruling four years ago, Israel’s Supreme Court annulled a military order which, for eight years, had completely barred Palestinians from travelling on 443.Route 443 is the story of the 46-year occupation of Palestine writ on forbidding signposts.

“We still can’t use 443,” rants Seif al Jamal from Beit Surik, a Palestinian village not far from the Modi’in checkpoint to Israel. “We wake up at 3:30 am instead of at 6 am.”

To enter Israel, entrepreneur Muhammad Farraj must pass through a checkpoint which blocks the access road linking his nearby village of Beit Sira to 443, drive on 443 a few metres, park by the roadside, and cross the Modi’in checkpoint on foot.

Such are the vicissitudes of Israel’s military rule. A simple 20-minute drive becomes a two-hour journey. For Route 443 is the story of the 46-year occupation of Palestine writ on forbidding signposts.

Signposts sometimes are incongruous. “It’s strictly prohibited to cross the road other than at a clearly marked Palestinian crossing,” reads one.

But there’s no crosswalk on 443’s four lanes, and traffic is at full speed. So the labourers literally run for their lives to reach the checkpoint.

In theory, Palestinians can drive along 443. In practice, it’s an exasperating experience. One can spend a whole day crisscrossing 443 without spotting a single Palestinian licence plate.

Route 443 was built in the 1980s for Israeli drivers seeking to escape the regular morning and evening traffic jams plaguing Highway 1, the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv thoroughfare.

At the time, residents from the 22 adjacent Palestinian villages joined forces with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) and petitioned the Supreme Court against confiscation of land for the purpose of laying out 443.

The petition was rejected on the grounds that Route 443 was meant to also serve the 35,000 Palestinians who live alongside it.

During the Oslo process (1990s), as the road to peace seemed assured, Palestinians used 443 to commute to the administrative and economic centre of Ramallah.

But in 2000, the Intifadah uprising erupted. Within two years, seven Israelis were killed in Palestinian attacks on Route 443. Scores were wounded.

As a result of deteriorating security conditions, the Israeli military authorities in the area closed 443 to Palestinian traffic.

Following the promulgation of the military order, Palestinian villagers and ACRI submitted a new petition to the Supreme Court challenging the legality of the sweeping travel ban, arguing that the collective punishment contradicted not only international humanitarian and human rights laws, but also the Court’s own previous judgment.

When the Court revoked the ban, the ruling stressed that the ban was “unauthorised and disproportional”, and that “freedom of movement constitutes a basic liberty, and it is a duty to undertake all necessary measures in order to preserve it in territory held by Israel.”

Yet at one fell swoop, the Court ordered the Israeli Defence Forces to find “another means” of ensuring the security of Israelis.

“The military commander in the area decided on such restrictive security arrangements that, in effect, Palestinians must mount at one point, and disembark very close by,” says Tamar Feldman from ACRI. “Besides, the passageway to Ramallah is closed.”

The military authorities did comply with the verdict, but the same security measures which were enforced during the Intifadah are still in place, Feldman stresses.

“The verdict was celebrated as a human rights achievement, yet legitimises the military’s own discretion powers while giving a sense of justice.”

Nothing’s changed. While driving up and down 443 though the Judean Hills, it’s hard to escape the sensation of being trapped along a frontline – sometimes on both sides of the road.

A web of electronic fences, watch towers and walls of concrete slabs – parts of which merge into Israel’s ‘Security Wall’ – insulates the driver from potential sniper attacks, concealing minarets of mosques, as if 443 itself ran inside Israel, not within the swath of land which Palestinians envision as part of their future state.

Painted murals confer on the driver the illusion of a wall with a view.

Israelis are warned not to enter Palestinian villages. And if by mistake they do, a signpost reads ominously, ‘Israeli, beware, if you reached that point, you erred!’

Access roads to 443 from the villages are shut down with fences, metal gates, dirt barriers, roadblocks and blockers.

Palestinians are directed to alternative routes underneath 443, some of which are paved especially by Israel.

Most Israeli motorists justify the de facto ban and separate road system – “in case some lunatic shoots at us,” many charge.

“Layers of legislation, policies and practices have created a system of segregation and separation which discriminates the Palestinian population,” says Feldman.

Driving along 443 also allows the traveller to reflect on how the lay of the land has shaped the conflict. Perennial fixtures of the Israeli occupation pass before the eyes, be they the Bet Horon settlement or the Ofer military prison in which hundreds of Palestinians are detained.

Occasionally, it’s the weather that’s the real master of the land. When earlier this month a snowstorm hit the area, both Palestinians and Israelis were barred from driving along 443.

Some Israeli motorists felt so secure that they insouciantly stopped on the roadside to revel in the first snow, within striking distance from the incarceration facility.

All that remains of a house demolished in Al-Jiftlick village in the Jordan Valley. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/IPS

By Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
JIFTLICK, Occupied West Bank, Sep 14 2013 (IPS)

In the Jordan Valley, contrasts are stark. Lush green agricultural fields and fenced-in greenhouses belong to the Israeli settlements that dot the landscape and benefit from the area’s abundant water supply on one hand. On the other, Palestinian farmers denied access to their lands and other resources by the Israeli authorities struggle to cultivate the most basic crops and make a living wage.

“It’s a struggle for the farmers,” Palestinian farmer Ahmad Said Moahri told IPS from his home in Jiftlick, a Palestinian village in the Jordan Valley. “The farmers lose money sometimes by farming the land, but they cannot leave or Israel will take it.”

The 46-year-old owns 47 dunams (47,000 square metres) of agricultural land in Jiftlick. He harvests vegetables – eggplant, tomatoes, zucchini, and more on 27 dunams, and rents the remainder to another local farmer.

While Moahri earns between 15,000 to 20,000 shekels (4,200 to 5,600 dollars) annually through farming, he said that for five months each year, between September and January, he takes on a second job to support his family: packaging Israeli dates at a factory in Massu’a, an illegal Israeli settlement near Jiftlick.“I love the land and our home is here ... There is not a day that I won’t visit, or look at, or take care of my land.” -- farmer Ahmad Said Moahri

“From the beginning, when the settlement was established, Israel gave them everything. There is no government support [for us], but in the settlement, there is,” said Moahri, who is paid 10 shekels (2.80 dollars) per hour, and makes between 12,000 to 14,000 shekels (3,400 to 4,000 dollars) each year from working in the settlement.

According to a report published by the Maan Development Centre, 1,800 dunams are allocated to agriculture in Massu’a, and the settlement produces eggplant, pepper, zucchini, cucumbers, watermelons, melons, and dates.

“The geographical location of settlements in the Jordan Valley has been determined by the important potential agricultural growth in the region. In addition, these agricultural settlements were established and maintained as export-oriented settlements,” Ma’an reported.

The Jordan Valley constitutes nearly 30 percent of the West Bank; 87.5 percent of this area is located in Area C, which falls under complete Israeli military control. Today, some 9,300 Israeli settlers and 65,000 Palestinians live in the Jordan Valley.

Palestinians are prohibited from accessing almost 95 percent of Jordan Valley, as half the land is being used by Israeli settlements, and the Israeli army declared another 45 percent as closed military zones, which are off-limits to Palestinians.

The Jordan Valley is known as the Palestinian breadbasket, as most of the West Bank’s arable land is located there. In a 2010 report, the World Bank stated that if Palestinians could access 50,000 more dunams of land and additional water resources in the area, they could earn approximately one billion dollars annually.

This economic potential is not lost on Palestinian, or Israeli, leaders.

As the “peace talks” between Palestinians and Israelis continue, the Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership has once again stated that the creation of a Palestinian state is impossible without control of Jericho and the Jordan Valley. “We are committed to that. We have said that more than once,” PA President Mahmoud Abbas said on Aug. 16.

The Israeli government, on the other hand, views the Jordan Valley as an important security buffer separating it from Jordan, and provides generous economic support to its settlements and settlement industries operating in the area.

In contrast, the PA government in Ramallah has done very little to support Palestinians in the Jordan Valley. The PA has never allocated more than one percent of its budget to the agricultural sector, and between 2001 and 2005, over 85 percent of that budget went to paying PA salaries.

The overall contribution of agriculture to the Palestinian GDP dropped from around 13.3 percent in 1994 to 5.7 percent in 2008, according to a report released by Al Shabaka, the Palestinian policy network.

“The support we get as farmers in the Jordan Valley is less than what we need. The government does not care about the agricultural situation. Agriculture was damaged because the (Palestinian Authority) neglected it. They didn’t change their strategy,” Moahri said.

Moayyad Bsharat heads the Jericho office of the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, which supports Palestinian farmers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He told IPS that because it is bound by the Oslo Accords agreement of the early 1990s, the PA is unable to support the most marginalised Palestinian farmers working in Area C.

“The first (solution is) to end the Oslo agreement. The solution in the Jordan Valley is political, 100 percent. We are talking about rights. The farmers want to go to their natural resources – the land, the water and the cultivation – and these things will not be done on the ground without a big political solution,” Bsharat said.

In the meantime, Israel aims to force Palestinians to leave the area, and exploits the resources and economic potential of the Jordan Valley, Bsharat added.

“The Israeli settlements have three million palm trees in the Jordan Valley, which gives yearly millions of shekels to the Israeli government. They have the grapes, flowers… all these things are exported. It gives it a lot of national income for Israel,” he said.

For farmer Ahmad Said Moahri, making a living from agriculture in the Jordan Valley is a struggle, but he sees his work as a form of resistance.

“I love the land and our home is here. For this reason, I cannot leave the land. There is not a day that I won’t visit, or look at, or take care of my land.”

Children selling their wares in Gaza. Credit: Mohammed Omer/IPS

By Elizabeth Yousefi
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 2 2013 (IPS)

In most countries, children are treated more gently by law enforcement than adults, with the right to have a parent present during questioning, for example. The situation is different in the Occupied Territories.

“The common experience of many children is being aggressively awakened in the middle of the night by many armed soldiers and being forcibly brought to an interrogation centre, tied and blindfolded, sleep deprived and in a state of extreme fear,” according to a recent UNICEF report on the Israeli detention of Palestinian children.

Israeli law enforcement officials have arrested approximately 700 Palestinian boys every year for the past 10 years, demonstrating patterns of ill-treatment that UNICEF calls “widespread, systematic and institutionalised”.

The majority of these boys are accused of the same crime – throwing stones at Israeli soldiers or their vehicles.

For the past several years, human rights organisations, U.N. experts, and both Palestinian and Israeli lawyers have made numerous attempts to bring attention to this issue as a clear violation of international human rights law.

In March, UNICEF released a report entitled “Children in Israeli Military Detention”, which outlines Israel’s violations from arrest to detention to interrogation to trial.

It makes specific reference to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Geneva Convention regarding the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, all of which Israel has ratified.

In an interview with IPS, Permanent Observer of Palestine Ambassador Riyad Mansour praised UNICEF’s work in “defending the rights of children, regardless of where they are”, and said he hopes, in the case of Palestinian children, that as more people become aware of the situation, more powerful voices will demand action from Israel.

International law demands that “all countries who are party to these conventions hold Israel responsible for violating any of the provisions,” said Mansour.

According to the CRC, arrest and detention of children, and their overall exposure to criminal proceedings, should always be the measure of last resort and should be minimised as much as possible.

If arrest is deemed necessary, the child under arrest and their parents or guardians must be informed immediately of the reasons; the child should only be physically restrained if they become a physical threat to themselves or others.

During interrogation, the child has a right to legal representation, the presence of a family member, and the right to refrain from self-incrimination.

Interrogators are forbidden from obtaining statements through any form of physical compulsion or verbal intimidation; illegally obtained statements are invalid in court proceedings.

Finally, children must be brought before a judge within 24 hours.

Israeli military detention of Palestinian children deviates quite radically from this model.

Situation in Israel

According to the UNICEF report, soldiers often apprehend children from their homes late at night in a violent manner, damaging property, offering no explanation as to what the charges are or where the child is being taken, and making threats of physical violence and further consequences should the family protest.

Children generally find themselves in the interrogation room within a day of arrest.

Of the cases examined by UNICEF, no child was accompanied by the requisite lawyer and family member; most did not see a lawyer until the day of their trial.

As of this month, the law will require that children under 14 be brought before a judge within 24 hours (reduced from four days), but those under 18 can still be held for 48 hours; furthermore, the judge may delay trial for 30 days at a time, up to 188 days.

Almost all children confess to their alleged crimes, which is no surprise considering the interrogation techniques reportedly employed by Israeli officials – harsh restraint, physical abuse, verbal intimidation, solitary confinement, and threats of worse abuse and even death against both the child and their family members.

Overwhelmingly, confessional documents – often in Hebrew – are the primary evidence for convictions.

Children and their lawyers tend not to object to forced confessions for fear of provoking harsher punishments.

On average, sentences range from two weeks to 10 months.

Technically, children aged 14 and older can receive the maximum sentences for crimes – 10 years for throwing an object at a person and 20 for throwing it at moving vehicle.

Enforcing military law

According to Catherine Weibel, UNICEF’s chief of communication in the occupied Palestinian territories, Israeli officials who worked with UNICEF on the report “generally acknowledged that there were problems, but tended to minimise their scope.”

In a correspondence with IPS, Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs Spokesperson Yigal Palmor identified what Israel believes to be major sources of the conflict.

While no internationally recognised state sovereignty exists in the territories, Israel, as an occupying power, can only enforce military law.

“Obviously, military law does not provide the same rights and safeguards as civil law,” said Palmor, “for adults and minors alike.”

The “main reason”, Palmor says, is that potentially threatening Palestinian activist groups “use minors to stir violence and confront security forces, to make propaganda gains”.

Moving forward

UNICEF’s report includes a series of recommendations, which it intends to implement with Israel’s cooperation.

According to Palmor, “The recommendations are the fruit of our joint work and we will work with UNICEF to implement those recommendations.”

Ambassador Mansour has his doubts.

“We don’t believe that the Israeli occupying authority is putting any serious effort to stop these blatant violations of international human rights law,” he told IPS, however, he believes that reports like UNICEF’s “play a role in maximising pressure on the violators of the law”.

Thousands of Palestinian mourners have gathered in the town on Sair in the occupied West Bank for the funeral of Arafat Jaradat, who died in an Israeli jail under disputed circumstances.

Palestinian officials say preliminary autopsy results show Jaradat’s death on Saturday was caused from torture by his Israeli interrogators. Israeli officials say there is no conclusive cause of death and that more tests are needed.

Monday’s funeral comes at a time of rising tensions after weeks of protests by Palestinians outraged over Israel’s treatment of thousands of Palestinians prisoners.

The demonstrations have stoked Israeli fears of a third Palestinian uprising.

Palestinian Authority (PA) police kept order as Jaradat’s funeral got under way, while Israeli forces remained outside the village.

Al Jazeera’s Nicole Johnston, reporting from the funeral, said people in Sair “never believed the official Israeli version of events … that he had died of a heart attack”.

“There is a great deal of concern across Israel and the Palestinian territories that this death, and the last few weeks of protest about the issue of Palestinian political prisoners inside Israeli jails, could lead to further uprisings, demonstrations and clashes between Palestinian protesters and the Israeli army,” she said.

“At this point it’s difficult to know if the situation will calm down in a few days or if these protests will intensify.”

Vowing revenge

Fighters from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement, vowed on Monday to avenge the death of Jaradat.

“This horrific crime will not go unpunished and we promise the Zionist occupation that we will respond to this crime,” said a statement distributed to crowds at the funeral, while masked members of the group fired assault rifles into the air.

Palestinians have been staging regular protests demanding the release of prisoners, particularly several who are on hunger strike, but tensions have soared since Jaradat’s death.

On Sunday, a Palestinian man was seriously wounded after he was hit by live fire near Ramallah, and two others were injured in the same protest near Ofer prison, medics said.

Israel on Monday demanded that the PA rein in unrest. “Israel expects the Palestinian Authority to act responsibly to prevent incitement and violence which will only exacerbate the situation,” said Mark Regev, a spokesman for prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Torture accusations

Issa Qaraqaa, the Palestinian minister of prisoner affairs, accused Israel on Sunday of torturing Jaradat to death, citing the preliminary findings of an Israeli-Palestinian autopsy.

Qaraqaa said the autopsy, carried out at Israel’s national forensic institute in the presence of a Palestinian doctor, indicated bruises on Jaradat’s torso and damage to muscles, as well as broken ribs.

Israel released a similar account of the post mortem but stressed that there were “fractures in the ribs” which “could be testimony to resuscitation efforts”.

*Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

Rehabilitation efforts have allowed 10,000 Palestinians to return to the old city of Hebron. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/IPS

By Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
HEBRON, Occupied West Bank, Dec 29 2012 (IPS)

Every day, Anas Maraka sees his family’s home, but can’t go inside. “It’s hardest for my grandfather,” said Maraka, referring to the house overlooking Shuhada Street, once the central marketplace in Hebron’s old city.

While he never lived there himself, Maraka explained that being so close – and yet, so far – from his family’s ancestral home motivates him to maintain Palestinians’ presence in the largest, and one of the most tense and volatile, cities in the West Bank.

“I like the old city. It’s our culture. Our goal is to rehabilitate houses in the old city and bring people back to abandoned houses. We want to improve the quality of life,” explained Maraka, a member of the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee (HRC).

Maraka told IPS that in 15 years of work, HRC has refurbished approximately 900 houses in the old city of Hebron. This rehabilitation, he said, has allowed some 10,000 Palestinians to return to the area.

“After the Second Intifada, most people left their houses. They were afraid to go back because of the Israeli settlers and the Israeli military. They can’t live easily in the old city, but we’re trying to bring them back. We can’t leave this area because the settlers would come to take the houses,” Maraka said.

According to a 2006 survey conducted by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, over 1,000 Palestinian homes were abandoned and over 1,800 shops were closed in the centre of Hebron as a result of Israeli restrictions in the area. This represents about 42 percent of homes, and 77 percent of businesses, that were originally used by the city’s occupants.

Currently, about 500 Jewish-Israeli settlers live in five settlements in the heart of Hebron in an area known as H2; their presence there is protected by thousands of Israeli police and soldiers.

Some 15,000 to 20,000 Palestinians also live in the old city, where they face a myriad of movement restrictions and a near-constant threat of harassment and violence at the hands of Israeli soldiers and settlers.

On Dec. 12, an Israeli border police officer shot and killed 17-year-old Hebron resident Muhammad al-Salaymeh at an Israeli checkpoint near the Ibrahimi mosque in Hebron’s old city.

Officials said al-Salaymeh threatened soldiers with a gun. The alleged weapon later turned out to be a toy. Violent clashes broke out between the Israeli military and Palestinian youth in the volatile neighbourhood after the killing.

“We want to keep Palestinians living in this area and to keep resisting. It’s an important place in all of the West Bank. It’s difficult still, but we’re trying to help as much as we can,” Maraka said.

Historic buildings have been refurbished and renovated throughout Palestine for decades. Today, entire villages and towns are being rehabilitated. These efforts are seen as a way to insist on the Palestinian character of the area and to maintain Palestine’s unique, cultural heritage, according to Palestinian architect and planner Iyad Issa.

“It’s part of our history, part of our identity,” said Issa, who works with ‘Riwaq’, a Ramallah-based centre for architectural conservation, adding that rehabilitating buildings provides people with a lasting “visual memory and a tangible cultural heritage.”

Issa told IPS that Riwaq has documented some 50,000 historic buildings in Palestine that need conservation. To date, about 100 buildings in 90 different Palestinian villages have been refurbished, while four villages in the West Bank are currently undergoing overall reconstruction.

“It is a creative way to use the space. It provides social (and) cultural infrastructure and creates new functions for the (local) community,” Issa said, explaining that architectural value and social impact are the two main criteria used to select a building for conservation.

The Palestinian town of Birzeit, just north of Ramallah, is an example of a community that has benefited from overall rehabilitation. The town counts some 200 historic buildings, including over 100 in the historic old city, with some dating back to the Mamluk era.

After the Birzeit University campus moved, leaving dozens of buildings unoccupied, rehabilitation reinvigorated social and economic development, and brought tourism back to the town.

Still, according to Issa, keeping the focus on smaller, more isolated Palestinian communities is crucial, as is making sure that local residents use the buildings for their own needs.

“People in villages are quite marginalised. This heritage belongs to the community and should be used by the community,” he said. “Renovation is a process to see what’s possible, to envision a better future.”

(END)

A family member expressing outrage outside the house of the slain Muhammed Salaymi (17). A notice on the door declares this to be the home of a martyr. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

By Mel Frykberg
HEBRON, Occupied West Bank, Dec 19 2012 (IPS)

A new Palestinian group called the National Union Battalions (NUB), comprising Palestinians from across the political spectrum, has called for a third Palestinian uprising or Intifada. Simultaneously, Israeli intelligence is warning that conditions on the ground in the West Bank are ripe for another Palestinian revolt.

These warnings come as protests and clashes between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian youths broke out across cities and towns in the West Bank over the weekend, sparked by 17-year-old Muhammad Salayma’s untimely death at the hands of an Israeli border guard in Hebron.

A video distributed over the weekend by NUB members from Hamas, Fatah, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) announced the establishment of their organisation as a means of consolidating the struggle against Israel.

While the group stressed its support for the United Nation’s recognition of Palestine as a non-member observer state, it said it would fight to recover “all of Palestine – from the sea to the river”.

“This is the beginning of a third Palestinian Intifada, which is erupting from the heart of Hebron and will spread to all of Palestine,” according to the video.

The members further threatened to kidnap Israeli soldiers if the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) didn’t stop arresting Palestinians, adding that if Israel continued to kill Palestinians with impunity, the group would retaliate in kind.

The Battalions’ demands include removing all IDF checkpoints in the West Bank, the release of all Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, an Israeli withdrawal from all occupied Palestinian land, and the transfer of all tax revenues Israel has been withholding from the Palestinian Authority (PA) since the U.N. voted on upgrading the Palestinians’ status.

The NUB also demands the opening of all border crossings, and the supply of water and electricity to the besieged Gaza Strip.

The group released their statement on Friday, the day following the fatal shooting of Salayma, after Israeli soldiers claimed he had threatened them with a plastic gun. However, when IPS spoke to members of the Salayma family a very different picture emerged.

“I doubt Muhammad had any plastic gun. I believe the Israelis planted that gun near him in the aftermath of the shooting,” the dead youth’s uncle Muhammad Salayma Sr., a policeman with the PA, told IPS.

“It was his birthday and he had gone out to buy a celebratory birthday cake. To get to the shop he had to pass through an Israeli military checkpoint and then pass through it again when returning home. If he had a replica gun on him the x-ray machine would have detected this,” Salayma told IPS.

“He was a happy and intelligent student, and represented Palestine’s wrestling team in France. He was returning home with his birthday cake and we are meant to believe that he suddenly tried to overpower a group of heavily-armed and well trained Israeli soldiers with a plastic gun? He wouldn’t have been that stupid,” Nasim Salayma (22), a cousin of the late Muhammad Salayma, told IPS.

Israeli, Palestinian and international human rights organisations have documented numerous cases over the years where Palestinians were shot dead by Israeli soldiers under highly disputed circumstances.

What is undisputed, however, is the mass anger this latest killing has sparked – hundreds of Palestinian youths took to the streets in Hebron on Thursday to vent their anger against Israeli troops, throwing stones and burning tyres. Dozens were injured in the subsequent clashes, some seriously, by live ammunition, rubber bullets and teargas. The protests then spread to other West Bank towns and cities.

IPS witnessed further clashes in Hebron the following day as a large rally of Hamas supporters marked the 25^th anniversary of the organisation’s establishment.

This was the first time in years that the PA has allowed Hamas rallies to take place in the West Bank; it follows recent steps towards rapprochement between Hamas and the PA-affiliated Fatah, Palestine’s two main political factions and, hitherto, staunch enemies.

The baby steps towards unity follow Hamas’ growing political strength in the wake of the most recent Gaza war, which united Palestinians from all factions.  Security forces from both sides have also drastically reduced the number of arrests of opposition members.

As a result, Hamas’ strength in the West Bank is growing. This, coupled with Israel’s forthcoming transfer of a number of Hamas prisoners from Gaza to the West Bank, will further consolidate the Islamist organisation’s presence here.

Also preparing the ground for another uprising against Israel’s occupation is the possible collapse or dissolution of the cash-strapped PA as Israel continues to withhold more than one hundred million Palestinian tax dollars.

The PA is a source of livelihood for several hundred thousand Palestinians and their dependents, leading experts to predict that mass unemployment, which will surely arise from the dissolution of the PA, will make Palestinians more desperate.

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks are frozen. Palestinian outrage has been aggravated by the increase in Israeli settler attacks and the continued expropriation of Palestinian land.  Furthermore, following growing international recognition, Palestinian dreams of statehood have been emboldened.

Meanwhile, the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, says widespread unrest in the area could foster the development of the kind of infrastructure that could potentially support a third Intifada, according to Israeli media reports.

Afnan Hamad (far right) and her colleagues demonstrate their invention to convert plastic waste into fuel. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D'Amours/IPS

By Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
RAMALLAH, Occupied West Bank, Dec 16 2012 (IPS)

Afnan Hamad stands proudly in front of a booth at the Ramallah Cultural Palace exhibition hall, three plastic bottles filled with discoloured liquid on the table in front of her.

“We designed a device to convert plastic waste into gasoline, kerosene and diesel fuel,” explains the 23-year-old chemical engineering graduate from An-Najah National University in Nablus, pointing to one of the bottles. “We hope to see a real factory built, and be the first supplier of alternative fuel in Palestine.”

Hamad and her colleagues – Marah Jamous, Mohammad Manasrah and Rahal Rashed – displayed their machine to convert waste into reusable fuel as part of the ‘Made in Palestine 2012’ fair held last week in Ramallah, an annual event that aims to promote skills and innovations that often get buried beneath the hardships of daily life in Occupied Palestine.

While it started off as a miniature experiment, Hamad’s machine can now hold ten kilogrammes of plastic waste and produce nine litres of fuel, she explained, adding that the invention was designed to address economic and environmental problems prevalent in the area.

“Using our device, we can get rid of a huge amount of waste, which is difficult to do in Palestine,” she told IPS. “Also since we don’t have petrol here, we can produce fuel at a lower cost. One litre of fuel will cost five shekels (about 1.30 dollars).”

Now in its seventh year, the ‘Made in Palestine’ event was co-sponsored by the local Palestinian organisation Al Nayzak and the Swedish NGO Diakonia. Two exhibitions were held, one in Ramallah and one in the Gaza Strip, showcasing over 20 innovations in the fields of engineering, IT, biology and other sciences.

“It doesn’t only tackle science, innovation and technology; (the event) also addresses the idea of business entrepreneurship. We aim to create scientific entrepreneurs who are able to make and found businesses on those innovations that they’ve thought about and put into action,” explained Maha Thaher, international relations officer at Al Nayzak.

With offices in Gaza, Jerusalem and Ramallah, Al Nayzak aims to build a more vibrant scientific culture in Palestine, and encourage critical thinking and science education among Palestinian youth.

“We don’t want students to just avoid these subjects (until) they disappear from our community,” Thaher told IPS, adding that Palestinian students are endowed with a range of talents, which deserve to be nurtured, rather than ignored, by the education system.

“This is the one thing that occupation fails to seize and severely damage: we can (always) count on our minds, our intellect and our people,” she added.

Other innovations on display in Ramallah included a multi-tasking robot equipped with special wheels that allow it to move from left to right without turning, a cell phone application that helps users reserve library books in advance, and an onion planting machine.

Planting onion bulbs can be a tricky exercise, but this machine “plants the bulbs in exactly the right way”, explained inventor and local farmer Ibrahim Da’abes, who owns 100 dunams (nine square kilometres) of farmland in the Jordan Valley area of the West Bank and believes his machine will cut farming costs in half.

“The cost is much lower than employing workers to do it by hand. Bigger farmers would need this machine,” he told IPS.

At another booth, 20-year-old computer engineering student Rasha Saffarini, and her colleagues Isra’ Al-Qatow and Abdullah Al-Qatow, showcased their cell phone application that helps people reach a healthy weight.

Called ‘Healthy Gate’, the application asks users for various inputs – including current and ideal weight, age and food preferences – and sets alarms to alert them when, and what, they should eat throughout the day.

“Because of the difficulty of going to the gym, we make it easy for people to be their ideal weight,” said Saffarini, who is in her last year at the Palestine Technical University in Tulkarm, a city in the western West Bank.

Many of the participants of the ‘Made in Palestine’ fair were women. This, according to Thaher, highlights a growing acceptance within the Palestinian community of science education as a legitimate pursuit.

Families have generally been sceptical of the idea of their daughters pursuing dreams of making an important scientific invention or discovery, since this strays so far from the traditional path women are expected to walk.

“At times we had to go door-to-door and talk to parents about how they should let their daughters be involved in such programmes and build on their ideas,” Thaher said.

“But once the parents see their children so involved in this system that cares for their scientific approaches, they start to think differently themselves.”

According to Hamad, “Our families are very proud and so are we. We invented something new for Palestine.”

(END)