The International Court of Justice, the principal judicial organ of the UN, holds public hearings on the request for the indication of provisional measures submitted by South Africa in the case South Africa v. Israel on 11 and 12, 2024, at the Peace Palace in The Hague, the seat of the Court. Credit: ICJ

By Cecilia Russell
JOHANNESBURG, Feb 18 2024 (IPS)

The International Court of Justice has declined the South African government’s urgent application for further measures to prevent an “unprecedented military offensive against Rafah,” but reiterated that Israel is bound to protect civilians in the country.

South Africa argued in an urgent application that this military offensive “announced by the State of Israel, has already led to and will result in further large-scale killing, harm, and destruction in serious and irreparable breach both of the Genocide Convention” and of the Court’s Order of January 26, 2024.

In a letter to South Africa and the State of Israel, the court noted it’s concern about the recent developments in the Gaza Strip and in Rafah, saying that the military developments “‘would exponentially increase what is already a humanitarian nightmare with untold regional consequences,” as stated by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres.

However, while this situation demanded the immediate and effective implementation of the provisional measure indicated by the court in January, the new developments did not require additional measures.

“The Court emphasizes that the State of Israel remains bound to fully comply with its obligations under the Genocide Convention and with the said Order, including by ensuring the safety and security of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”

In its application, South Africa noted that:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the IDF and security establishment to submit a plan to evacuate Rafah and destroy the four Hamas battalions in the area.

Rafah, normally home to 280,000 Palestinians, currently houses—primarily in makeshift tents—more than half of Gaza’s population, estimated at approximately 1.4 million people, approximately half of them children, who had fled to the city from homes and areas largely destroyed by Israel.

The International Committee of the Red Cross and the UN Special Rapporteur had also expressed concern about the conditions and the threat of evacation, and military offensives, with UNICEF urgently highlighting the “need” for “Gaza’s last remaining hospitals, shelters, markets and water systems”—which are in Rafah—”to stay functional”, underscoring that “[w]ithout them, hunger and disease will skyrocket, taking more child lives

Israel argued in response that South Africa’s request was an attempt to relitigate “through a truncated process in which it alarmingly sought to deprive Israel of the right to be heard.”

Instead of a “significant development” in Gaza, South Africa’s request was in fact based on an “outrageous distortion” and was the “depiction of a limited operation on the night of 11 February 2024, which was directed at military targets and enabled the release of two Israeli hostages—Fernando Merman, aged 60, and Luis Har, aged 70—from over four months in captivity as an ‘unprecedented military offensive’.”

It also accused South Africa of neglecting to inform the court that “Hamas continues to demonstrate its contempt for the law, including by refusing to release the hostages immediately and unconditionally. Nor is there any mention made of ongoing negotiation efforts by relevant stakeholders, currently underway, to pursue a release of the hostages that may create conditions for a humanitarian pause in the hostilities.”

The Court in January had ruled that Israel should, in accordance with the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, “take all measures within its power to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article II of this Convention, in particular: (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; and (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.”

This includes ensuring its military doesn’t commit any of the acts and directing Israel to use measures to punish direct and public incitement to commit genocide in relation to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

It was also told to take immediate and effective measures to enable both basic services and humanitarian assistance, preserve evidence related to the allegations of genocide and submit a report to the court on the measures taken to give effect to the order.

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Banner in the village of Fidae (near Byblos) which reads: "The municipality of Al Fidae announces that there is a curfew for all foreigners inside the village every day from 8 pm to 5.30 am". Credit: Oriol Andrés Gallart/IPS

By Oriol Andrés Gallart
BEIRUT, Nov 21 2014 (IPS)

Staring at the floor, Hassan, a 21-year-old Syrian refugee from Idlib in northwestern Syria, holds a set of identification papers in his hands. He picks out a small pink piece of paper with a few words on it stating that he must obtain a work contract, otherwise his residency visa will not be renewed.

Hassan (not his real name) has been given two months to find an employer willing to cough up for a work permit, something extremely unlikely to happen. After that, his presence in Lebanon will be deemed illegal.

Hassan, who fled Syria almost three years ago to avoid military service, tells IPS that all that awaits him if he returns are jail, the army or death, so he has decided that living in Lebanon illegally after his visa expires is his best bet.Hassan, who fled Syria almost three years ago to avoid military service … [says that] all that awaits him if he returns are jail, the army or death, so he has decided that living in Lebanon illegally after his visa expires is his best bet.

Sitting next to Hassan is 24-year-old Ahmed (not his real name) from Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria, who lost his residency one month ago. Since then he has been forced to watch his movements. “I live with permanent fear of being caught by the police and deported,” he says.

Since the start of Syria’s civil war in March 2011, over 1.2 million Syrians have sought refuge in Lebanon, where they now account for almost one-third of the Lebanese population.

Particularly since May, the Lebanese government has increasingly introduced measures to limit the influx of Syrian refugees into the country. Speaking after a cabinet meeting on Oct. 23, Information Minister Ramzi Jreij announced that the government had reached a decision “to stop welcoming displaced persons, barring exceptional cases, and to ask the U.N. refugee agency [UNHCR] to stop registering the displaced.”

Dalia Aranki, Information, Counselling and Legal Assistance Advisor at the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), told IPS that Lebanon “is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention” and, as a result, “is not obliged to meet all obligations resulting from the Convention.”

“Being registered with UNHCR in Lebanon can provide some legal protection and is important for access to services,” she wrote together with Olivia Kalis in a recent article published by Forced Migration Review. “But it does not grant refugees the right to seek asylum, have legal stay or refugee status. This leaves refugees in a challenging situation.”

Current legal restrictions affect the admission of newcomers, renewal of residency visas and the regularisation of visa applications for those who have entered the country through unofficial border crossings.

One aid worker who is providing assistance to Syrian refugees in Mount Lebanon told IPS that the majority of the Syrian beneficiaries they are working with no longer have a legal residency visa.

Aranki notes that fear of being arrested often forces those without legal residency papers to limit their movements and also their ability to access various services, to obtain a lease contract or find employment is severely limited. It could also impede birth registration for refugees -with the consequent risk of statelessness, or force family separations on the border.

Before May this year, Syrians could usually enter Lebanon as “tourists” and obtain a residency visa for six months (renewable every six months for up to three years), although this process cost 200 dollars a year, which already was financially prohibitive for many refugee families.

However, NRC has noted that under new regulations Syrians are only permitted to enter Lebanon in exceptional or humanitarian cases such as for medical reasons, or if the applicant has an onward flight booked out of the country, an appointment at an embassy, a valid work permit, or is deemed a “wealthy” tourist. Since summer 2013, restrictions for Palestinian refugees from Syria have become even more severe.

Under its new policy, the Lebanese government also intends to participate in the registration of new refugees together with the UNHCR. Khalil Gebara, an advisor to Minister of Interior Nohad Machnouk, says that the government has taken these measures for two reasons.

“First, because the government decided that it needs to have a joint sovereign decision over the issue of how to treat the Syrian crisis. (…) Previously, it was UNHCR to decide who was deemed a refugee and who was not, the Lebanese government was not involved in this process.”

Secondly “because government believes that there are a lot of Syrians registered who are abusing the system. A lot of them are economic migrants living in Lebanon and they are registered with the United Nations. The government wants to specify who really deserves to be a refugee and who does not”.

Ron Redmond, a UNHCR spokesperson, said that the U.N. agency has “for a long time” encouraged the Lebanese government to assume a role in the registration of new refugees and affirms that registration is going on.

“There is concern about the protection of refugees but there is also understanding on UNHCR’s part,” said Redmond. “Lebanon has legitimate security, demographic and social concerns.”

Meanwhile, accompanying the increasing fear of deportation from Lebanon, Syrian refugees have also been forced to deal with routine forms of discrimination.

Over 45 municipalities across Lebanon have imposed curfews restricting the movement of Syrians during night-time hours, measures which, according to Human Rights Watch’s Middle East Director Nadim Houry, contravene “international human rights law and appear to be illegal under Lebanese law.”

Attacks targeting unarmed Syrians – particularly since clashes between the Lebanese army and gunmen affiliated with Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State in Arsal in August – have  also occurred.

Given such realities, life in Lebanon for Hassan, Ahmed and many other Syrian refugees, is becoming a new exile, stuck between a rock and a hard place.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Israeli settler home in the middle of Sheikh Jarrah, a predominantly Palestinian neighbourhood in East Jerusalem, following the eviction of a number of Palestinian families. Credit: Mel Frykberg/IPS

By Mel Frykberg
RAMALLAH, West Bank , Oct 12 2014 (IPS)

A deliberate Israeli policy to Judaise East Jerusalem has forced thousands of Palestinians out of their homes and created a chronic housing shortage in the occupied part of the city.

Simultaneously, Israeli settlers have been encouraged by the Jerusalem Municipality to settle in the growing number of settlements mushrooming in East Jerusalem neighbourhoods, all illegal under international law.

The municipality has employed a number of strategies to ensure a Jewish majority so that the city remains under Israeli control indefinitely while preventing Palestinians from establishing East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.

“Since 1967 the Israeli government has pursued a declared policy of maintaining a 72 percent majority of Jews over Palestinians in the city,” according to Jeff Halper of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD).The municipality [of Jerusalem] has employed a number of strategies to ensure a Jewish majority so that the city remains under Israeli control indefinitely while preventing Palestinians from establishing East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state

“Towards that end it has not allowed Palestinians to build new homes, creating an artificial shortage of some 25,000 housing units in the Palestinian sector, while Palestinians are not able to access most of the Jewish neighbourhoods.

“This induced shortage raises the price of renting or buying, and since 70 percent of Palestinians live under the poverty line, they are forced to move outside the Jerusalem borders to acquire affordable housing where they can be stripped legally of their Jerusalem residency,” explains Halper.

“Such are the political machinations behind the seemingly justified policy of demolishing ‘illegal’ homes, a key element of a broader policy of ethnic cleansing,” he adds.

The International Peace and Cooperation Centre (IPCC) – a Palestinian non-governmental organisation specialised in urban planning and community development – issued an East Jerusalem Housing Review 2013 report describing some of the obstacles Palestinians face in trying to build new homes or extend current homes.

“House construction is severely stifled by deficiencies in the planning and, to a lesser extent, delivery systems, both of which have been derailed by Israeli policy makers,” stated the report.

“Building legally, by obtaining a permit through the planning system, is impossible within the majority of land in East Jerusalem. The permit system rigidly maintains requirements that cannot be met as a result of the planning and infrastructural deficiencies.”

According to IPCC, these include “insufficient outline and detailed master plans, inappropriate zoning of urban areas as low density or ‘green’ land, insufficient physical infrastructure, including road, sewage and water networks and the near total absence of registered land.”

Most of the land in East Jerusalem (92 percent) is unregistered, making it impossible to obtain building permits.

The IPCC report said that “development is further stifled by institutional shortcomings such as the unavailability of suitable housing loans, insufficient capacity or willingness of the private sector to plan and deliver large housing projects, the limited amount of suitable development land for sale and its extraordinary cost.”

As a result, Palestinians have been forced to build without the requisite permits. Over 70 percent of new construction from 2001 to 2010 was undertaken without building permits, with informal dwellings comprising between 42 and 54 percent of all housing.

Average room density is 1.9 people per room, making it 90 percent higher than in Jewish West Jerusalem.

While the Israeli authorities have set strategies concerning the Judaisation of East Jerusalem, Israeli settlers have been using other methods to slowly take over.

Muhammad Sabbagh is a resident of Sheikh Jarrah in East Jerusalem who, together with other Palestinian activists, is involved in a long, ongoing battle with Israeli settlers over home ownership and possible eviction.

His extended family is part of a group of 28 Palestinian refugee families who live right next to several Israeli settlement homes.

These Palestinian families were allocated land by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and the Jordanian government in 1956 when the West Bank was under Jordanian rule. The Jordanian government had said that after three years the Palestinians would be given the homes.

However, following Israel’s occupation of the territory in 1967 Israeli settlers tried to evict the Palestinians claiming they had documents proving ownership of the homes from the late 1800s during the Ottoman Empire.

The case went back and forth to the Israeli courts until an agreement was reached that the Palestinians could stay for the next 90 years if they agreed to pay rent.

When some of the families refused to pay the rent on the basis that the homes belonged to neither the Israeli government nor the settlers, they were evicted in the middle of the night by heavily armed soldiers and police.

Subsequent court action and original Turkish documentation proved that the settlers’ documents were forged and that the homes had never belonged to the Jewish community several hundred years ago as the settlers had claimed.

Further evictions have currently been frozen by the Israeli courts on the basis of the documents being forgeries but Sabbagh says that is insufficient.

“We are now fighting to have the homes returned to us as their legal owners and so that the families who were evicted can return home.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

The appointment of Italian Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini as the new European Union foreign policy chief offers the opportunity for an overhaul of EU foreign and security policy.

With many EU leaders, ministers and senior officials slow to respond to world events given Europe’s traditionally long summer break, the 2014 summer of death and violence has left the reputation of ‘Global Europe’ in tatters, highlighting the EU’s apparent disconnect from the bleak reality surrounding it.

When she takes charge in November along with other members of the new European Commission, led by Jean-Claude Juncker, Mogherini’s first priority must be to restore Europe’s credibility in an increasingly volatile and chaotic global landscape.

Shada Islam. Courtesy of Twitter

It cannot be business as usual. A strategic rethink of Europe’s global outreach is urgent.

Europe can no longer pretend that it is not – or only mildly – shaken by events on its doorstep. In a world where many countries are wracked by war, terrorism and extremism, EU foreign policy cannot afford to be ad hoc, reactive and haphazard.

Given their different national interests and histories, European governments are unlikely to ever speak with “one voice” on foreign policy. But they can and should strive to share a coherent, common, strategic reflection and vision of Europe’s future in an uncertain and anxious world.

Changing gears is going to be tough. Many of Europe’s key beliefs in the use of soft power, a reliance on effective multilateralism, the rule of law and a liberal world order are being shredded by governments and non-state actors alike.

With China and other emerging nations, especially in Asia, gaining increased economic and political clout, Europe has been losing global power and influence for almost a decade.“Europe can no longer pretend that it is not – or only mildly – shaken by events on its doorstep. In a world where many countries are wracked by war, terrorism and extremism, EU foreign policy cannot afford to be ad hoc, reactive and haphazard”

Despite pleas by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the crisis in Ukraine, most European governments remain reluctant to increase military and defence spending. At the same time, the Eurozone crisis and Europe’s plodding economic recovery with unacceptably high unemployment continue to erode public support for the EU both at home and abroad.

Populist far-right and extreme-left groups in Europe – including in the European Parliament – preach a protectionist and inward-looking agenda. Most significantly, EU national governments are becoming ever greedier in seeking to renationalise important chunks of what is still called Europe’s “common foreign and security policy”.

To prove her critics wrong – and demonstrate foreign policy expertise and flair despite only a six-month stint as Italy’s foreign minister – Mogherini will have to hit the ground running.

Her performance at the European Parliament on September 2, including an adamant rejection of charges of being “pro-Russian”, appears to have been impressive. Admirers point out that she is a hard-working team player, who reads her briefs carefully and speaks fluent English and French in addition to her native Italian.

These qualities should stand her in good stead as she manages the unwieldy European External Action Service (EEAS), plays the role of vice president of the European Commission, chairs EU foreign ministerial meetings, chats up foreign counterparts and travels around the world while also – hopefully – spearheading a strategic review of Europe’s global interests and priorities.

Italian Foreign Minister Federica Mogherini with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider

The tasks ahead are certainly daunting. There is need for reflection and action on several fronts – all at the same time. Eleven years after the then EU High Representative Javier Solana drew up the much-lauded European Security Strategy (partially revised in 2008), Europe needs to reassess the regional and global security environment, reset its aims and ambitions and define a new agenda for action.

But this much-needed policy overhaul to tackle new and evolving challenges must go hand-in-hand with quick fire-fighting measures to deal with immediate regional and global flashpoints.

The world in 2014 is complex and complicated, multi-polar, disorderly and unpredictable. Russia’s actions in Ukraine have up-ended the post-World War security order in Europe. The so-called “Islamic State” is spreading its hateful ideology through murder and assassination in Syria and Iraq, not too far from Europe’s borders. A fragile Middle East truce is no guarantee of real peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Relations with China have to be reinforced and consolidated. These and other complex problems require multi-faceted responses.

The days of ‘one-size-fits-all’ foreign policy are well and truly over. In an inter-connected and interdependent world, foreign policy means working with friends but also with enemies, with like-minded nations and those which are non-like-minded, with competitors and allies.

It is imperative to pay special attention to China, India and other headline-grabbing big countries, but it could be self-defeating to ignore the significance and clout of Indonesia, Mexico and other middle or even small powers. Upgrading ties with the United States remains crucial. While relations with states and governments are important they must go hand-in-hand with contacts with business leaders, civil society actors and young people.

Finally, Europe needs to acquire a less simplistic and more sophisticated understanding of Islam and its Muslim neighbours, including Turkey, which has been left in uncertainty about EU membership for more than fifty years.

Europe’s response to the new world must include a smart mix of brain and brawn, soft and hard power, carrots and sticks. Isolation and sanctions cannot work on their own but neither can a foreign policy based only on feel-good incentives. The EU’s existing foreign policy tools need to be sharpened but European policymakers also need to sharpen and update their view of the world.

Mogherini’s youth – and hopefully fresh stance on some of these issues – could be assets in this exercise. Importantly, Mogherini must work in close cooperation and consultation with other EU institutions, including the European Parliament and especially the European Commission whose many departments, including enlargement issues, trade, humanitarian affairs, environment, energy and development are crucial components of ‘Global Europe’.

The failure of synergies among Commission departments is believed to be at least partly responsible for the weaknesses of the EU’s “Neighbourhood Policy”.

Also, a coherent EU foreign policy demands close coordination with EU capitals. This is especially true in relations with China. Recent experience shows that, as in the case of negotiations with Iran, the EU is most effective when the foreign policy chief works in tandem with EU member states. Closer contacts with NATO will also be vital if Europe is to forge a credible strategy vis-à-vis Russia and Ukraine.

Such cooperation is especially important if – as I suggest – Mogherini embarks on a revamp of EU foreign and security policy.

Mogherini will not be able to do it on her own. Much will depend on the EEAS team she works with and the knowledge, expertise and passion her aides bring to their work. Team work and leadership, not micro-management, will be required.

Putting pressing global issues on the backburner is no longer an option. The change of guard in Brussels is the right moment to review and reconsider Europe’s role in the world. Global Europe’s disconnect needs to be tackled before it is too late.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

* Shada Islam, Head of the Asia Programme at Friends of Europe, a leading independent think tank in Brussels, is an experienced journalist, columnist, policy analyst and communication specialist with a strong background in geopolitical, foreign, economic and trade policy issues involving Europe, Asia, Middle East, Africa and the United States.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Following an Israeli airstrike, Palestinian youth inspect the building their families lived in. Credit: Khaled Alashqar/IPS

By Khaled Alashqar
GAZA CITY, Jul 22 2014 (IPS)

As a result of over two weeks of Israeli bombardment, thousands of Palestinian civilians have fled their homes in the north of Gaza and sought refuge in schools run by the UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees.

Among the worst affected are Gazan children who have been forced to live in constant fear and danger, according to Dr. Sami Awaida, a specialised child psychiatrist for the Gaza Mental Health Programme – a local civil society and humanitarian organization that focuses on war trauma and mental health issues concerning children and adults in Gaza.“Children in Gaza have already suffered from two recent violent and shocking experiences in 2009 and 2012 … This trauma now re-generates previous pain and shock and also leads to a mental state of permanent fear and insecurity among children here” – Dr. Sami Awaida, a specialised child psychiatrist for the Gaza Mental Health Programme

Describing the impact of the current trauma, Awaida told IPS:  “Children in Gaza are suffering from anxiety, fear and insecurity because of this war situation.  The challenge we now face as mental health practitioners is ‘post-traumatic disorder’.”

“This means that children in Gaza have already suffered from two recent violent and shocking experiences in 2009 and 2012,” he continued. “This trauma now re-generates previous pain and shock and also leads to a mental state of permanent fear and insecurity among children here.”

Since Monday July 7, Israel has subjected the Gaza Strip to a severe military assault and engaged with the Palestinian factions in a new round of violence.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health has so far reported 230 Palestinians killed; most of them are entire families who were killed in direct shelling of Palestinian houses. Meanwhile, the number of injured has risen to 2,500. Many of the injured and the dead are children.

Hospitals in Gaza are currently suffering from a severe shortage of medical supplies and medicines. Ashraf Al-Qedra, spokesperson for the Gaza Ministry of Health, has called on the international community “to support hospitals in Gaza with urgent medical supplies, as Israel continues its military attacks, leaving more than 800 houses completely destroyed and 800 families without shelter.”

Since Israel began its current offensive against Gaza, its military forces have been accused of pursuing a policy of destroying Palestinian houses and killing civilians. Adnan Abu Hasna, media advisor and spokesperson for UNRWA in Gaza, told IPS that “UNRWA has officially demanded from Israel to respect international humanitarian law and the neutrality of civilians in the military operation.”

He added: “UNRWA stresses the need to fulfill the obligations of the U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon to immediately stop violence, due to the increasing number of children and women killed in the Israeli striking and bombardment of Gaza.”

Assam Yunis, director of the Al-Mezan Centre for Human Rights in Gaza, spoke to IPS about the stark violations of human rights and the urgent need for justice and accountability. “The current situation is catastrophic in every aspect,” he said.

“Human rights abuses are unbelievable and these include targeting medical teams and journalists, in addition to targeting children and women by Israel.  This points to clear violations of international law as well as war crimes.  Israel must be held legally accountable at the international level.”

Analysing the situation, Gaza-based political analyst and intellectual Ibrahim Ibrash says he believes that “Israel will never manage to end and uproot both Hamas movement and the Palestinian resistance from Gaza. On the other hand, the Palestinian militant groups will never manage to destroy and defeat Israel.”

He told IPS that the consequences for the Palestinians at the internal level after this military aggression ends will be critical, including “a split between the Palestinian people and the Palestinian Authority; many people will be outraged with the Palestinian leadership, and this of course will leave Gaza in a deplorable state.”

This critical crisis in Gaza comes against a backdrop of a continued blockade imposed on the territory by Israel, widespread unemployment, severe poverty, electricity cuts, closure of borders and crossings since 2006, destroyed infrastructure and a stagnant Gazan economy, combined with a lack of political progress at the Israeli-Palestinian political level.

The real truth that no one can deny is that the civilian population, including women and children, in Gaza are the real victims of this dangerous conflict.

Palestinian workers at the SodaStream plant. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS.

By Pierre Klochendler
MISHOR ADUMIM INDUSTRIAL ZONE, Occupied West Bank, Feb 9 2014 (IPS)

The longstanding Israeli practice of labelling settlement products “Made in Israel” is leading to mounting opposition to the occupation.

Settlements are considered a violation of international law. In Israel, they aren’t. And so, more often than not, consumers of Israeli products across the world do not know whether they’re purchasing a product made in Israel proper or in a settlement.Germany, Israel’s strongest European ally, reportedly intends to widen the ban to private companies operating in the occupied territories.

This blurring of borders and labels by Israeli businesses trading on land, which the Palestinians envision as part of their future state, and the ensuing calls for boycott, have entrapped a Hollywood star in the nitty-gritty of the conflict, and in a conflict of interest.

Till recently, Scarlett Johansson doubled as charity ambassador for the British NGO Oxfam and as brand ambassador for SodaStream, an Israeli soda maker company listed on NASDAQ whose main manufacturing plant is established on an old munitions factory near the settlement Ma’aleh Adumim.

Her praise of the soda makers, carbonators, eco-friendly bottles and syrup flavours went viral even before the commercial was aired during the Super Bowl.

Oxfam, which opposes trade with settlements, pressed her to recant her support for SodaStream, but she instead resigned from Oxfam.

In a statement, Johansson extolled SodaStream’s commitment to “building a bridge to peace”, in that 500 Palestinians, 450 Israeli Arabs and 350 Israeli Jews are “working alongside each other, receiving equal pay, equal benefits and equal rights.”

Palestinians earn twice to three times as much working on the SodaStream assembly line than they would in the Palestinian Authority.

“This is a coercive relationship by definition,” counters Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement co-founder and Palestinian human rights activist Omar Barghouti.

“After decades of systematically destroying Palestinian industry and agriculture and imposing extreme restrictions of movement preventing many from reaching their workplaces, Israel has forced tens of thousands of Palestinian workers and farmers to seek jobs in illegal Israeli colonies.”

BDS activists dub the make-your-own home fizzy drink company a “blood bubble”.

“We’re an anomaly,” acknowledges SodaStream CEO Daniel Birnbaum, who describes himself as an ardent supporter of the two-state solution. He hastily invited foreign journalists on a tour of the controversial manufacturing facility.

He strikes a pose of self-righteous indignation at the BDS movement and on “why providing employment is an obstacle to peace.”

“If this area ends up as part of Palestine, I have no problem paying taxes to the Palestinian government,” he says, while commending Johansson’s “heroic stance”.

But, Barghouti tells IPS, “Through popular civil resistance and sustained BDS efforts, as against apartheid South Africa, Israel will be compelled to recognise our rights under international law and end its regime of occupation, colonisation and apartheid.”

In recent days, Nordic institutions decided to cut off their ties with Israeli companies involved in the construction of settlements or that maintain branches in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Danske Bank, Denmark’s largest bank, has blacklisted Israel’s Bank HaPoalim. The Norwegian Ministry of Finance excluded Israeli firms Africa Israel Investments and Danya Cebus from its Government Pension Fund Global.

PGGM, the Netherlands’ largest pension fund management company, withdrew all its investments from Israel’s five largest banks.

While the scientific agreement “Horizon 2020” recently signed by Israel and the European Union bans European funding to academic research carried out in the settlements, now Germany, Israel’s strongest European ally, reportedly intends to widen the ban to private companies operating in the occupied territories.

In July last year the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, released new guidelines forbidding EU institutions from providing grants or loans to Israeli organisations with ties to settlements.

Barghouti emphasises the rise in support for the academic boycott of Israel in the U.S. and Ireland, and the growing number of western artists who refuse to perform in Israel.

The CEO of the fizzy drink company seemed unfazed by the wave of BDS actions. “Nordic countries boycott products manufactured in this facility. We shifted the production to our plant in China.”

But U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has warned the Israeli government that if the peace talks collapse, Israel risks facing increasing threats of boycott and de-legitimisation campaigns.

BDS advocates an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, including the dismantling of Israel’s security barrier and settlements. The movement also calls for “the U.N.-sanctioned and inherent right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes of origin.”

For most Israelis, the right of return of millions of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 War and their descendants to what is now Israel would be tantamount to upending Israel as a Jewish state. Recognition of Israel as such by the Palestinian Authority is a major demand of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Inversely, such characterisation is adamantly rejected by the Palestinians as it would be equivalent to ignoring not only the right of return, a major Palestinian demand and a core issue of the conflict, but also the existence of the Palestinian-Israeli minority which constitutes roughly 20 percent of Israel’s population.

Netanyahu has called a cabinet meeting to devise strategic options to counter potential European BDS initiatives.

“The most effective and immediate strategy to blunt BDS and other forms of political warfare is to end the massive funding given to radical NGOs that promote these anti-Israel campaigns,” NGO Monitor, an Israeli right-wing non-government organisation close to the Israeli government states on its website.

Ayman e-Deis near his demolished shack. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS.

By Pierre Klochendler
JORDAN VALLEY, Israeli-occupied West Bank, Jan 13 2014 (IPS)

Israeli settler Gadi Blumenfeld distributes machetes to 15 Palestinian labourers and instructs them to cut the thorns off of his dates’ fronds. “I might be stabbed in the back,” he says, “but thanks to farming, we keep the area safe from terrorists.”

Yet the fate of this arid strip of land that is home to 56,000 Palestinians and 7,000 settlers is uncertain as the rain.

A U.S. blueprint of a framework agreement for a two-state solution is said to put an end to Israel’s settlement enterprise in the Jordan Valley but to maintain an Israeli military presence for 10 years – contingent on the capacity of the future Palestinian state to protect not just itself, but Israel.“For this paradise on earth, we pay a heavy price. Settlements and military bases control our land."

Meanwhile, Blumenfeld prides himself on his dates – “fruit of our brains and their hands.” Israeli minds and Palestinian hands, he means.

In 2013, he produced 400 tonnes of prime Madjhoul dates from 5,000 trees which he planted on 400 dunam (400,000 square metres) since he settled in Patsa’el four decades ago. “We made the desert bloom, a miracle.”

Like Blumenfeld, Palestinian landowner Ameen Al-Masri, whose orchards are just a few kilometres away, is proud of his dates – “the mothers of the valley’s dates.” His farmland, he says is “Palestine’s most fertile off-season cash crops area.”

He owns the same amount of arable land as Blumenfeld. “For this paradise on earth, we pay a heavy price. Settlements and military bases control our land,” stresses Al-Masri.

After Israel captured the valley from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War, tracts of land were expropriated from Palestinian farmers and allocated to settlements and military camps.

A segment of the Great Rift Valley, the Jordan Valley holds 28.3 percent of the West Bank’s land, and is the largest single Palestinian territory under full Israeli military and administrative rule, classified as Area C since the 1990s.

Only built-up areas – 13 percent of the valley – are under Palestinian rule, known as Area A.

Israel controls all the passages between it and the West Bank, and the border crossings on the Jordan River, the international border between the West Bank and Jordan.

Allenby Bridge is the only crossing to Jordan open to Palestinians from the West Bank.

“The Jordan Valley is a strategic buffer zone between a Palestinian state and Jordan. It must be kept under Israeli sovereignty because it prevents Jihadists, Al-Qaeda, Salafis from infiltrating Israel,” argues David El-Haiiani, head of the Jordan Valley Regional Council, which includes 21 Jewish settlements.

On Dec. 29, days before U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to the area to seek approval for his framework agreement, the Israeli government approved a right-wing legislator’s bill which, if voted in parliament, would annex the Jordan Valley’s settlements and access roads to them to Israel.

Palestinians reject any Israeli presence, military or civilian, in the valley.

“If we agreed to a 10-year military presence here, [Israel’s Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu would find an excuse on the ninth year to expand it for another 10 years,” is Al-Masri’s calculation.

Blumenfeld also farms a 200-dunam orchard in the closed military zone that lies between the electronic fence and the Jordan River. “Palestinian workers aren’t allowed in,” he notes.

Though Israel signed a peace treaty with Jordan in 1994, anti-personnel landmines are strewn along the fence.

In the late 1960s, the jagged terrain was dubbed “the land of hot pursuits” against Palestinian guerrillas.

Now peaceful, the no-man’s-land is a land of wolves and wild boars, of sentry boxes, outposts and trenches – of sentinels left behind in a distant past.

“We didn’t come here for ideological reasons, but to farm and secure the area. We’re farmers, not politicians,” says Blumenfeld.

“I’m a peaceful man, a farmer,” Al-Masri concurs. “Yet farmers fight for their land.”

Many Palestinians living here are semi-nomadic sheepherders and seasonal farmers. Most are wretchedly poor; most work land they don’t own.

“If you don’t work for settlers, you don’t work at all,” seethes a Palestinian picking bell peppers in Patsa’el. About 6,000 Palestinians work in settlements.

Sheepherder Ayman eDeis is homeless. His shack and sheep enclosure were demolished twice this year – last time just before winter.

“The Israeli authorities won’t give you a permit, not in a lifetime,” he says, standing on the rubble of his home.

Israel counters that the dearth of building permits stems from the valley being a sensitive security area.

A water reservoir is under construction in the closed military zone to increase the irrigation capacity of four Israeli reservoirs and 12 artesian wells.

Settlers get sweet water from the West Bank’s deep aquifer, from the Jordan River, from flash floods.

Palestinian farmers wait for the rain, making use of the seasonal Ein Shibli spring and four licenced artesian wells. They can dig only 400 metres deep into the shallow aquifer, where water is saline.

In 2013, settlers produced 11,000 tonnes of dates, mostly for export. Palestinians produced 2,000 tonnes, mostly for local and Israeli markets. “The best business in the world today is the occupation,” says Al-Masri.

A World Bank report estimates that if Palestinians could exploit Dead Sea minerals in the southern Jordan Valley, their economy would derive up to 918 million a year.

Access to more farmland and water would deliver a further 704 million dollars to the economy. The Jordan Valley could become a Palestinian breadbasket.

“I don’t want a state on paper where Israel controls our resources and borders,” says Mahmoud Daraghmeh, an unemployed Palestinian engineer who sows yellow beans in his family plot. “This isn’t freedom. This isn’t a state.”

Blumenfeld watches the myriads of migratory starlings freely overlooking the border. “I love this valley,” he exclaims.

“Yet for a real peace agreement which the whole world guarantees; for the end of terror – because in the past, terrorists took control of territories Israel evacuated – for end of conflict, I’m willing to pay the price.”

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.

Mahmoud Raba’I in Jinba. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS.

By Pierre Klochendler
JINBA, Occupied West Bank, Dec 26 2013 (IPS)

Jinba is in the crosshair of ‘Firing Zone 918’ – and ‘Firing Zone 918’ is a microcosm of the Israeli occupation. Together with seven other communities, Jinba is slated for demolition to make way for an Israeli training ground. Forced eviction hangs over a thousand Palestinians.

Mahmoud Raba’i is sowing wheat in his field. Winter is here, but it hasn’t rained a single drop in the rugged, unforgiving, South Hebron Hills. “God willing, rain will come and fill the wells,” the Palestinian farmer murmurs.

Jinba is home to 300 Palestinian tent- and cave-dwellers who struggle for the right to carry on living on their land like their forefathers.“We and our children live here; our sheep graze here. They want us to carry our land on our back and leave.”

It’s a furrow these subsistence wheat farmers and sheepherders have been ploughing generation after generation for over 150 years – steadily, relentlessly.

“This is our land,” Raba’i seethes. “We and our children live here; our sheep graze here. They want us to carry our land on our back and leave.”

Jabarin enters his cave. Mattresses are piled up against dark walls near tools. Toothbrushes, a comb, are strewn on a makeshift shelf. A stove lights his weathered face. “My grandfather, my father, and I were born here.”

The villagers in Jinba are among the West Bank’s poorest Palestinians. Living off the land isn’t easy when the land is under occupation.

In all 60.2 percent of the West Bank is designated ‘Area C’ – that is, under full Israeli military and administrative control. The largest community in the South Hebron Hills, the village of Jinba, is in ‘Area C‘.

The village has no access road, no running water and no electricity, no building permits, only demolition orders.

“We were handed demolition orders against the concrete poured on the floors of our tents and clinic. For everything we do, there’s a demolition order,” Jabarin tells IPS.

Jinba abuts Israel. Here, the infamous ‘Green Line’ which marked the border between Israel and the West Bank prior to the 1967 War is a white furrow crisscrossing the desert.

Strange boundary stones mark an area encompassing 12 Palestinian communities.

On them, commanding inscriptions in English, Arabic and Hebrew: “Danger. Firing Area. Entrance Forbidden.”

“Let’s get rid of the occupation,” reads the Arabic and Hebrew graffiti sprayed on the opposite side of a marker.

“Why a firing zone here? There’s enough open space inside Israel. They want to expel us and move us into heavily populated Palestinian areas. This firing zone’s just an excuse for Israel to pursue its land grab,” asserts Jabarin.

In contrast, ten illegal settlement outposts located within the firing zone are under no such threat.

Head of Jinba and guardian of his community, Jabarin incessantly patrols the village by foot to protect it from Palestinian smugglers and workers who cross into Israel illegally and, above all, from incursions by the Israeli military stationed in the area.

He documents the routine raids for the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, and is one of the petitioners to the Supreme Court in Israel in a 14-year legal battle against the firing zone.

In September, the court interceded in favour of mediation between the Israeli authorities and the Palestinians. But the pressure hasn’t stopped.

Jabarin’s daughter Nawal, 12, is scared. Only a fortnight ago, Jabarin was arrested on suspicion of arson at a military base. “I wouldn’t have been released after eight days if I wasn’t innocent,” Jabarin scoffs.

The legal battle against forced eviction from ‘Firing Zone 918’ is part of a three-decade war of attrition waged by the Israeli authorities and local settlers against 4,000 impoverished Palestinian dwellers in the South Hebron Hills.

Land expropriation, harassment and acts of vandalism perpetrated by settlers against them are common practice, and the lack of law enforcement is glaring.

Earlier this month, a military squad was seen inspecting 25 uprooted olive trees in ATuwani area. In a separate incident, two days earlier, in Umm elAra’is, Israeli troops cracked down on Palestinians who complained of a settler trespassing on their land.

A week earlier on the same spot, soldiers stood idly by while settlers attacked Palestinians.

The Palestinian Authority is powerless in the face of these acts as it doesn’t control the area.

In solidarity with the peasants, peace activists have entered the fray.

Founded in 2009 by two Israeli physicists-activists, ‘Comet’ is a joint Israeli-Palestinian initiative. Its purpose – to provide basic solar and wind energy access to the off-grid, marginalised Palestinian communities of the area.

“Our NGO is political in essence,” Comet’s co-founder Elad Orian tells IPS. “We support their struggle to stay on their land.”

‘Comet’ builds and installs hybrid wind and solar mini-grids. These stand-alone systems provide about two kilowatt-hours per family per day to 2,000 Palestinians.

Rural electrification facilitates socio-economic empowerment, say the Gawawis encampment dwellers.

“Sometimes there’s no sun, no wind, but in general, thank God, the electricity works fine,” Abu ElAbed tells IPS.

“It helps us economically. Women prepare more butter effortlessly with the electric butter churn. And we have a refrigerator, a washing machine, a TV.”

Sixteen of the 24 installations operated by Comet are under threat of demolition.

“You need a building permit. It makes sense. The problem is you have a bureaucratic mechanism whose purpose is to prevent people from obtaining permits,” says Orian. “And the people subjected to this bureaucracy aren’t Israeli citizens.”

Fortunately, Comet enjoys German government support, both financial and political, and can afford to fight legal battles on behalf of the Palestinian communities.

Abu ElAbed recalls that the army came to Gawawis two years ago with a demolition order, “but we haven’t heard from them since.”

In Jinba, the local clinic, mosque and elementary school remain off the grid. Fields remain under Israeli rule. But the Palestinian flag atop the elementary school leaves no doubt as to whom the land belongs.

Reconstruction at Nahr El Bared has been slow, and has left refugees deprived and unhappy. Credit: Rebecca Murray/IPS.

By Rebecca Murray
NAHR EL BARED, Dec 15 2013 (IPS)

As the Syrian war intensifies sectarian clashes in Lebanon’s northern coastal city Tripoli, Palestinians in the area worriedly watch the violence from the sidelines.

In the summer of 2007, the Palestinian refugees of Nahr el Bared, just 16 kilometers north of Tripoli, paid a devastating price in the battle between the Lebanese army and a small militant group living in their midst, Fatah al Islam.

The three-month fight emerged from a power vacuum left by competitive Palestinian factions unable to effectively police the community themselves. It destroyed the camp and its regional market for local Lebanese farmers and smuggled Syrian goods.“I think the community is broken. The neighbourhood has changed, and the memories that make us think about the old times have gone.”

Over 30,000 refugee families fled to one of the other 11 official Palestinian camps in Lebanon, leaving their homes, possessions, and jobs behind.

In Vienna the following year, international donors pledged to fund reconstruction by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) of the camp’s thousands of homes. To date, only a fifth of the community has returned to the now declared military zone, and building funds are about to run out.

A combination of the war in Syria and donor fatigue is to blame, and the area’s impoverished Palestinian community – at risk again of being sucked into the nearby violence – sees itself as a low priority for international help.

Shadi Diab, 40, a barber from Nahr el Bared, lives in the camp’s temporary housing while waiting for his own home to be totally rebuilt. He said he fled the camp with his wife and children on the third day of the fighting. When he returned he found the seaside community isolated by security checkpoints, and his building destroyed.

“We are being punished for something we didn’t do,” he said. “Nahr el Bared is not the same – it’s worse than before. The marketplace economy is ruined, and is now only for us. For people to come in there are a lot of military restrictions – not anyone can enter now.”

Palestinians in Lebanon are legally banned from owning property and from work in about 70 professions. Although the labour law was recently revised, very little has changed on the ground, forcing the impoverished population to compete with the influx of Syrian refugees over manual work for meagre wages.

UNRWA is restricted to rebuilding 5,000 homes in the ‘old’ UNRWA-mandated camp, established in 1949, and not in its larger outlaying areas, nicknamed the ‘new camp’. Having completed the development of four out of eight parcels of land, the agency estimates 2,500 families will move back by spring 2015, which is when funding ends.

UNRWA director Ann Dismorr said the agency received around 345 million dollars in pledges. “We still need about 50 percent of that. If the money was there we could finish the whole camp in a few years, but the problem is that it isn’t.”

Reconstruction has been slow and plagued by challenges. Among the allegations is that it has been heavily bureaucratic, favouring construction contractors aligned with politicians, with political grandstanding over issues like the discovery of an archeological site. And then there is the controversial shape of the newly built camp itself.

The new homes are smaller and the streets wider, to allow the army – historically banned from patrolling inside Lebanon’s Palestinian refugee camps – to drive their armoured vehicles through.

In Vienna, the Lebanese government had promised that the reconstruction of Nahr el Bared would serve as a model for the other camps. But Sahar Attrache, a researcher for the International Crisis Group, does not believe it has turned out that way.

“Nahr el Bared was not just a model for reconstruction, but a model for the state and Palestinians. That Lebanese and Palestinians could reconcile in a way, and Palestinians could go under the authority of the Lebanese state,” Attrache said.

“Unfortunately all parties failed in this, mostly on the Lebanese side. All the promises that have been given to Palestinians have not been realised, and in fact have helped to fuel resentment and undermine credibility.”

The charity Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) has had a unique role in Nahr el Bared, navigating Lebanon’s opaque legal system to rebuild houses, with European Union money, on land adjacent to the ‘old’ town, Mohajareen.

Originally bought by the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) from Lebanese landowners, Mohajareen was built to house Palestinian refugees fleeing the massacre in Tel al Zaatar camp in 1976. However, the land sale was never officially registered with the state.

After 2007, the destroyed neighbourhood was handed over to the Islamic Waqf, or charity, which in turn donated its use for the over 100 Palestinian families who lived on the land.

The NRC, after a drawn-out period of legal wrangling, is slated to hand over nearly 90 finished homes, hooked up to electricity and water, to Mohajareen’s old residents in February. But they recognise the Palestinians’ disappointment.

“It is the same number of families going back in, but with less space which is an area of particular difficulty,” said NRC director Niamh Murnaghan. “One of the conditions of rebuilding was that the pathways between accommodation space are wider, so the inevitable loss is from housing space.

“If you have been displaced for 65 years and you feel that something more is taken away, then inevitably it’s hard to feel positive,” she said.

Fouad el Haj, is a 24-year-old from Mohajareen. As a site supervisor he is proud of his role in rebuilding his community. But he said his biggest challenge is dealing with his old neighbours, upset with the architecture and the wait to move back in.

“I think the community is broken,” el Haj said. “The neighbourhood has changed, and the memories that make us think about the old times have gone.”

The Israeli army is systematically using crowd control weapons and live ammunition unlawfully against Palestinians in the West Bank, signaling a widespread breach of military regulations and an alarming culture of impunity, a leading Israeli human rights group has warned.

At least ten Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army’s use of crowd control weapons in so-called “disturbance of the peace” situations in the West Bank since 2005, Israeli group Btselem stated in a new report, titled ‘Israel’s Use of Crowd Control Weapons in the West Bank’.

Additionally, Israeli soldiers killed 46 Palestinians with live ammunition in the same time period.

“Members of the security forces make almost routine use of these weapons in unlawful, dangerous ways, and the relevant Israeli authorities do too little to prevent the recurrence of this conduct,” the report found.

When used properly, Israel’s crowd-control weapons – which include tear gas, stun grenades, rubber-coated steel bullets, water cannons, foul-smelling liquid called ‘The Skunk’, and more – are meant to disperse crowds. The way the Israeli army uses these weapons today, however, can make them deadly, Btselem said.

“The authorities must ensure that the troops on the ground obey the open-fire regulations and use crowd control weapons within the parameters that keep them non-lethal. It follows that every soldier, officer, or police officer violating these rules must be prosecuted,” the report stated.

In an e-mail to IPS, the Israeli army spokesperson’s office disputed Btselem’s findings as “biased”, and stated that the incidents outlined in the report “are exceptions to IDF policy, rather than the rule.”

“The IDF does everything in its power to ensure that the use of riot dispersal means is done in accordance with the Rules of Engagement, minimising collateral damage and maintaining stability and security in the region,” the spokesperson’s unit stated.

Still, since the beginning of 2013 alone, at least five Palestinian youths were killed by live ammunition fired by the Israeli military in the West Bank.

Seventeen-year-old Samir Awad was killed after sustaining four bullet shots near the separation fence in Budrus village on Jan. 15. The Israeli army said Awad was trying to enter Israel illegally when he was shot.

On Jan. 23, 22-year-old Palestinian student Lubna al-Hanash was shot and killed on a main road near Al Aroub refugee camp, in the southern West Bank. The Israeli army said soldiers only fired after Molotov cocktails and rocks were thrown at them.

United Nations humanitarian coordinator James Rawley released a statement on Jan. 30 highlighting his concern at the Israeli army’s use of live fire in the West Bank, which has killed eight Palestinians since mid-November, and urged “maximum restraint in order to avoid further civilian casualties.

“Using live ammunition against civilians may constitute excessive use of force and any such occurrences should be investigated in a timely, thorough, independent and impartial manner. Individuals found responsible must be held accountable,” Rawley stated.

Palestinians have engaged in non-violent civil disobedience against Israel’s policies of occupation and colonisation for decades. Weekly, non-violent demonstrations have taken place in several West Bank villages since 2005.

A handful of Palestinians have been killed, and dozens more have been seriously injured by Israeli soldiers attempting to quell these protests and through the army’s inappropriate use of crowd control weapons.

In April 2009, Bassem Abu Rahmah was killed in the Palestinian village of Bil’in after being hit in the chest by an Israeli army-fired extended range tear gas grenade. Abu Rahmah’s sister, Jawaher, was killed in January 2011 after inhaling massive amounts of tear gas during another protest in the village.

Twenty-eight-year-old Mustafa Tamimi, from the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, was also killed in December 2011, when a tear gas canister struck his head. The Btselem report stated that despite photographic evidence proving a soldier fired the tear gas canister directly at Tamimi, the Israeli army continues to deny this direct-firing practice.

“The IDF carefully investigates complaints that are tendered, instigating military police investigations when necessary, as per the policy determined by the Supreme Court and in line with the IDF’s ethical code,” the army spokesperson’s unit told IPS.

According to Israeli human rights group Yesh Din, however, only 3.5 percent of complaints received by the Military Police Criminal Investigations Unit of crimes committed by Israeli soldiers against Palestinians and their property in the West Bank lead to indictments.

“The State of Israel is not meeting its obligation to protect the civilian population living in the area it occupied through the proper and effective investigation of suspicions of criminal offences committed by soldiers,” Yesh Din found. (END)

A Palestinian demonstration in Haifa in Northern Israel. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/IPS.

By Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
HAIFA, Northern Israel, Nov 19 2012 (IPS)

Dozens of Israeli tanks slowly made their way south on the back of flatbed trucks along Israel’s Road 6 highway Sunday. Emblazoned with Stars of David and Hebrew letters, and carrying frayed Israeli flags, the movement of these tanks has left many believing that Israel will soon launch a large-scale ground operation into the Gaza Strip.

“I see (the tanks) every day. It hurts me because I know they are going to kill children,” 20-year-old Mohammad Eghbariya told IPS at the computer store where he works in Umm Al-Fahm, a Palestinian city in Israel’s northern triangle area.

A Palestinian citizen of Israel, Eghbariya said that while it also hurts him to see Israeli civilians get injured in rocket attacks, he is Palestinian and stands in solidarity with the people of Gaza.

“We are behind them. We support them. They are related to us, as Palestinians,” Eghbariya said, as Israel’s Channel 2 Hebrew-language news showed images of the war on a nearby computer screen. “But of course it’s going to be worse. It’s going to be worse because of the pride of both sides.”

Last Wednesday Israel assassinated Ahmad Jabari, the head of Hamas’s military wing in Gaza City. A barrage of Israeli air strikes on the besieged Palestinian enclave quickly followed; a total of 1,350 sites have been targeted throughout the Gaza Strip, according to the Israeli military.

About 90 Palestinians were killed, and several hundred injured in less than a week of violence.

Hamas, the Islamic movement that governs the Gaza Strip, declared that Jabari’s killing would “open the gates of hell” for Israel. Palestinian fighters fired hundreds of rockets from Gaza onto Israeli cities, with some reaching as far as the Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Three Israelis have been killed as a result of rocket fire.

“Deterrence is always a very important thing in Israel’s calculations. It’s always viewed itself as a small country facing many, many enemies that outnumber it, and therefore it needs to be perceived as tough,” Nathan Krall, a Jerusalem-based Middle East policy analyst for the International Crisis Group told IPS, commenting on the possibility of further escalation.

Despite the uncertainty about what’s to come, Palestinians have mobilised against a possible increase in Israeli attacks on Gaza, holding demonstrations across the West Bank and Jerusalem, and inside Israel itself.

“We are here to demonstrate against Israeli aggression and Israel’s war on Gaza. We are here in solidarity with the people of Gaza and with the resistance,” said 23-year-old Said Suidan, who was among some 40 people demonstrating in Haifa Sunday evening against the attacks in Gaza. Haifa is the largest city in northern Israel, and the third largest in Israel.

A philosophy and sociology student at Tel Aviv University, Suidan said that while Palestinian resistance to Israeli policies takes various forms – bullets in Gaza, stones in the West Bank, and protests inside Israel – it is all the same fight.

“I’m part of the Palestinian people. This is my duty. We’re raising our heads higher because of their strength (in Gaza),” Suidan told IPS.

There are approximately 1.6 million Palestinian citizens in Israel, representing some 20 percent of the total population. Israeli leaders often describe Palestinian citizens as a “demographic threat” to the state’s self-defined Jewish character.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has gone so far as to suggest forcibly transferring Palestinian cities in Israel to the control of the Palestinian Authority. Newly passed Israeli legislation also mandates all citizens to declare their loyalty to Israel as a “Jewish and democratic” state.

According to Jafar Farah, director of the Mossawa, the Advocacy Centre for Arab Citizens of Israel, the violence in Gaza is rebuilding solidarity among Palestinians who have for decades been divided by geographic location and daily circumstances.

Discussion between Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel about what’s happening in Gaza, however, is almost entirely absent, Farah said.

“People don’t talk about the issue, don’t talk about the situation. If you look at Israeli media, Jews are talking to each other and that’s it. They don’t want to listen to the voice of the Arab community, and this is also reflected on the street,” Farah told IPS.

While many Palestinians were hesitant to talk openly to IPS about their feelings towards the violence in Gaza, the community is becoming increasingly vocal about their opposition to the situation as Israeli air strikes continue and Palestinian deaths mount.

“Children and people in Gaza are suffering, and America and the world are complicit,” said Mariam Odeh, a Haifa resident who participated in the protest there Sunday. “We’re one people. We’re Palestinians. When they bleed (in Gaza), we bleed.” (END)

Badr Abu Ad-Dula at the entrance of his home. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS.

By Walter García and Pierre Klochendler
SHEIKH JARRAH, Occupied East Jerusalem, Sep 18 2012 (IPS)

“See the bullets from the 1948 and 1967 wars,” Badr Abu Ad-Dula says, showing the scars of the old frontline on the outer walls of the building where he and his family of 13 live. “Here’s the Jordanian outpost.” The elderly Palestinian points at a loophole, now a bedroom window.

Across the narrow street, a nondescript mound of corrugated metal and oxidised barbed wire marks the now non-existent border.

Ad-Dula’s house is located on the pre-1967 no-man’s-land between the city’s eastern and western sectors. Forty-five years on, the three-storey building has become one of the multiple frontlines within Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem.

The five families who live there under one roof – 70 people all in all – are united against a common threat – that of eviction by an Israeli settler group called Nahalat Shimon whose purpose is to settle Jews in the neighbourhood.

During the Jordanian rule interlude (1948-1967), Palestinians – many of them refugees – were granted squatters’ rights in East Jerusalem houses under the jurisdiction of the Jordanian Custodian of Enemy Property, and replaced the former Jewish residents who’d vacated their homes and went to live on the Israeli side.

Ultra-nationalist Israelis invoke Israel’s Absentee Property Law imposed on the occupied part of the city in order to evict Palestinians from houses where they’ve now been living for decades.

Up the street, a Jewish activist comes out of an Arab house that, up until four years ago, was exclusively occupied by the Al-Kurds. Graffiti scribbled on the front leaves no doubt as to the bitter conflict that pitted the Israeli intruders against the Palestinian family. “Free Palestine – of Leftist scum”, it reads.

“Pro-Palestinian activists wrote their part; we added ours,” says Yaakov Fauci, one of the Jewish tenants who now occupy the front rooms. The Al-Kurds were relegated to the back of the house.

“(Israel’s) Supreme Court ruled in our favour,” he adds. “But the front is an illegal extension of the original construction in the back. It didn’t have building permits, and thus was in violation of the squatters’ rights agreement.

“So the Court ruled that the Arabs had to move out to the back. We actually moved into the illegal annex,” he says.

“It’s a strange situation – unprecedented in Israeli law, one might say: we legally live in an illegal building,” Fauci concedes, “but lots of strange things happen nowadays. It’s just a very bad situation.”

Enforced by means of legalistic battles which can last for years, forced cohabitation is closely monitored, under surveillance, so to speak. Houses occupied by Jewish settlers are equipped with CCTV cameras.

And, there’s no genuine co-existence when the mutual perception is that national existence is at stake. “Everybody minds their own business. We must hold on to what we have,” declares Fauci.

Down the street, “to hold on to what we have” reflects precisely Badr Abu ad-Dula’s mindset.

“I’m only getting out of here with the bulldozers,” angrily warns the head of the family, mimicking a caterpillar forklift with his arms. “I’ve lived here for the past 57 years. I’m staying here – that’s it.”

Ever since he was three years old, ad-Dula has been living in this building. Following the 1948 war, it was abandoned by its Jewish owners. At the time, the ad-Dulas lived in the Old City. They were poor.

Granted squatters’ rights by the Jordanian authorities in 1955, they moved into what’s now home. “Nobody wanted to live here, close to the border. We were considered crazy,” he recalls.

A couple of months after the city’s re-unification under Israeli rule in 1967, the Jewish owners’ heirs set to claim back their property.

“In 1972, the Israeli District Court ruled that the building belongs to Jews, fine. But it also forbade our eviction. It forbade us from renovating the premises, fine. But it also forbade the owners to raise the rent,” he says.

Yet two years ago, the “rightful” owners sold the property to U.S. Jewish tycoon Irving Moskowitz, the backer of many settlement projects within Palestinian areas of the city.

The case is now back in court. “Moskowitz wants to evict all the Arabs from here. I don’t care. There’s a court ruling. We pay our rent,” protests Ad-Dula, who works as director of maintenance at the nearby Mount Scopus Hotel.

This is a house which the tenants persist to call home. Ad-Dula’s neighbour, Umm Auni Bashiti claims that her family had “four shops and seven houses” in the Old City’s Jewish Quarter before 1948. “Let the Israelis give those properties back to me,” she says.

Yet, Israelis enjoy a privilege that Palestinians don’t have – the return of property abandoned in the wake of the 1948 war.

The settlers’ rationale goes like this: “East Jerusalem properties were taken over by legitimate war and conquest,” affirms a settler neighbour who wouldn’t divulge his name.

“However, if they want to challenge us legally, I’m sure that they’ll have their day in court,” he adds confidently.

The settlers are self-assured – soon, they believe their multiple legal battles over ownership rights and deeds in East Jerusalem will cement an irreversible reality.

Meanwhile, the Israeli government’s laissez-faire policy in the face of the settlers’ resolve is only deepening the diplomatic stalemate. “The way to peace is assertion of our claims and rights,” is the settlers’ motto.

Dusk – dinnertime. It’s simple fare at the ad-Dula’s household – roast chicken, boiled rice and salads.

In times of uncertainty, it’s also time to seek comfort in family, and pray. “I wish my children and grandchildren would live here all their lives like me. But they’ll have to leave,” predicts Ad-Dula. “The settlers have laws and lawyers; we’ve got only God’s justice.”

(This is the second of a two-part report on the battle being waged by Israeli settlers over land and real estate within Palestinian neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem.)

A housing estate in Tripoli. Property disputes have hit the Palestinian refugee community hard. Credit: Rebecca Murray/IPS.

By Rebecca Murray
TRIPOLI, Aug 23 2012 (IPS)

Just before the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime one year ago, Huda and her Palestinian family were forcefully evicted from their Tripoli home.

“This was last August and there was a lot of violence. There was no government. My husband had suffered a heart attack and we were scared,” says Huda, an anxious middle-aged woman clad head to toe in black. She breaks into tears.

“We begged for more time to look for another place, but the owner’s children came and yelled bad words. We left our home with all its furniture. We were kicked out violently.”

The original homeowner had his properties confiscated by the government in 1978 under the far-reaching housing Law 4, which decrees only one residence allowed per family.

When the revolution erupted last year, Huda says the owner demanded some properties back, but felt assured when he instructed his children to “leave the Palestinian family alone.”

Originally from Acca in Palestine, Huda’s parents fled the violence in 1948 to south Lebanon. Three decades later, Huda and her husband escaped from another brutal war. They went to Libya on Lebanese travel documents, finally finding a job, house and stability.

After shelling out nominal government rent for over three decades, Huda switched to paying the owner five times the amount. But when he died last year, his children came knocking to claim their inheritance.

Since Libya’s revolution, property disputes have emerged as a primary threat to Libya’s national security. Although mostly relevant to Libyans, the crisis has hit the Palestinian refugee community hard. With more Palestinians arriving from Syria, it underscores the heightened vulnerability of their ‘guest’ status in the face of future government legislation.

There are an estimated 45,000 to 70,000 Palestinians in Libya today. Statistics are hard to pin down especially after last year’s conflict, because many fled the country, are internally displaced or have irregular status.

A signatory to the 1965 Casablanca Protocol, which protects Palestinian rights in Arab states, Libya has generally welcomed Palestinian refugees from across the region, including Gaza and Lebanon. Many have provided skilled labour for Libya’s oil and gas industry, and received subsidised housing, free education and healthcare.

Although Gaddafi trumpeted the Palestinian cause – variously favouring one Palestinian faction over the other, including recruiting a Palestinian mercenary force for his war with Chad – the population also suffered the brunt of his political grandstanding in a series of mass-expulsions.

Gaddafi’s political media stunt in 1995-96 to prove the Oslo Accords a sham was disastrous, resulting in thousands of Palestinians expelled, and thousands more stranded in tents at the border with Egypt.

“Since the Palestinian leaders claim they have now got a homeland and a passport,” Gaddafi said, “let the 30,000 Palestinians in Libya go back to their homeland, and let’s see if the Israelis would permit them to return. That’s how the world will find out that the peace it’s been advocating is no more than treachery and a conspiracy.”

Many Palestinians who managed to return to Libya found they had lost their relative safety of subsidised homes and jobs, exacerbating their insecure status and displacement.

Dr. Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, a researcher at the Refugee Studies Centre at Oxford University, says when the revolution kicked off in 2011, it was a frightening time for Palestinians, who staked out a position as bystanders.

“A few individuals I spoke to claimed they were being attacked by pro-regime forces for not engaging in armed activities, or being attacked by the anti-regime movement because of an assumed association with the pro-regime,” she says.

The Palestinian community had the sting of Gaddafi’s ‘Oslo’ expulsions fresh in their minds.

According to Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, “many wanted to sit tight and stay and not lose their houses and economic opportunities that they hoped would return once the situation calmed down.”

Dr. Al Mutawakel Taha, the new Palestinian Ambassador to Libya, says the biggest challenge is that more than half the Palestinians carry expired documents because they are afraid to report to authorities.

“The Libyan government will soon ask Palestinians for residence permits,” he warns. “With new laws things are going to change – socially, economically and legally.”

Taha predicts the new government’s free market policies will drive up prices for Palestinians by eliminating food subsidies, and will narrowly define who can receive free health, education, housing and utilities.

An obvious casualty will be Anwar, a 67-year old Palestinian, who came to Libya from south Lebanon in 1972. Recently evicted from his house, he says the former owner waved a piece of paper in his face and told him to leave.

“There is no law that protects me,” he says. “I knew if I said no there would be trouble because my neighbours were evacuated by force.”

Anwar now struggles to support his wife and children in an apartment with a much higher rent. Four of his children suffer genetic disabilities – and are entirely dependent on their parents and Libya’s health care system.

Housing Law 4 is still on the books, with new a legislative proposal awaiting the incoming government’s decision.

“Probably those evictions were illegal,” says human rights lawyer Salah Marghani. “But the court system has almost collapsed in the past few months. If someone forcefully evicts you and you went to the court, it is unlikely you’d find a judge to put you back. And you could get a piece of paper. But if the owner has a khatiba (militia) behind him, what can you do?”

Shakr Mohamed Dakhil spearheads the growing Libyan Property Owners Advocate’s Association, composed of those who had their properties confiscated by Gaddafi. He admits it is challenging to control some of his members from resorting to violence.

“The Palestinian ambassador was very worried. We made a small protest outside the embassy about four months ago about all the properties occupied by Palestinians that our members want back. The protest was a warning.”

Ambassador Taha says he met Dakhil’s group, and is waiting for them to draw up a list of all Palestinians living in disputed properties so he can determine their economic status, case by case. He has also amicably moved his embassy from Dakhil’s childhood villa to a new site.

“If you feel your home is threatened, you feel insecure,” says Salah Marghani. “And insecurity is damaging to social peace. Most property occupiers are Libyan. But foreigners are weaker than nationals. They are an easier target.”

Ovad Arad, sitting before one of Regavim's aerial photography maps. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/IPS.

By Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
ROAD 60, OCCUPIED WEST BANK, Jul 30 2012 (IPS)

Sitting in an airconditioned car along Road 60 in the heart of the occupied West Bank, Ovad Arad explained how he goes about his job: driving unannounced into Palestinian towns and villages, taking photographs, having coffee with families, and leaving almost as quickly as he arrived.

“I don’t lie. When they ask me what I’m doing there, I say I’m doing research into the area. I try not to go into deep conversation. I do the work and go,” Arad told IPS. But he adds that he doesn’t reveal who he works for, or the real reason he takes photos.

A resident of the Israeli settlement Mero Horon, Arad is head of the Judea and Samaria (West Bank) division of Regavim, a right-wing Israeli organisation whose work focuses primarily on using legal channels to have demolition orders on Palestinian homes and other structures carried out.

Asked whether he feels bad when a Palestinian family has their home destroyed as a result of his work, Arad responded: “No. Really, no.” And what about Israeli settler homes being destroyed? “I don’t feel good. It actually hurts me when I see Jews being thrown out of their house. But I’ve never seen Palestinians thrown out of their house; I’ve seen Jews being thrown out of their house.”

Regavim works mainly in the Negev desert in southern Israel and Area C of the occupied West Bank, which covers approximately 60 percent of the territory and, according to the 1995 Oslo Accords, is under complete Israeli military and administrative control.

Approximately 150,000 Palestinians and 300,000 Israeli settlers currently live in Area C. Israeli settlements are illegal under the Fourth Geneva Convention, and settlement outposts are illegal under Israel’s own laws. Under international law, Israel – as the occupying power in the area – is also responsible for providing for the needs of the population living under its control, namely the Palestinians.

For Regavim, however, the applicability of international law to Israel’s control of the West Bank is up for debate. “The position of Regavim (is that) there is no (Israeli) occupation,” said Ari Briggs, director of Regavim’s International Department.

Regavim relies on the legal framework of the Oslo Accords in carrying out its work in the West Bank, Briggs explained. He said that Regavim gets most of its information through freedom of information requests submitted to the civil administration.

Using geographic information systems (GIS) software and detailed aerial photography, Briggs said Regavim can map out virtually every inch of Israel – which, he said, encompasses both Israel proper and Area C.

“Hundred percent of Jewish illegal building will get a demolition order; only a third of illegal Arab building will get a demolition order,” Briggs, a native of Australia who has lived in Israel for 18 years, said. He added that the Civil Administration often retroactively legalises Palestinian construction, something that, he said, isn’t done for Jewish building.

“There are too many lies flying around that actually there’s discrimination against Arabs, and (that) the government and the civil administration is fully pro-Jewish. And we’re saying actually it’s the opposite.”

On its website, Regavim describes itself as “a social movement established to promote a Jewish Zionist agenda for the State of Israel” that “protect Israel’s lands and national properties.” Despite this mission statement, Briggs told IPS that Regavim’s work isn’t politically motivated, but rather guided by “moral and ethical” considerations.

“Regavim is not using the law for political purposes. We’re using the law to try and bring a rule of law and put a rule of law in place. Our opponents are using the law courts to make political gains and political points to an ideological point of view that they have,” he said.

Not everyone is convinced.

“We are concerned about Regavim’s involvement because we see them as a very, very political organisation,” said attorney Tamar Feldman, director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) department of human rights in the occupied territories.

“They are not concerned about human rights. They’re not concerned about international law. They’re just out to promote their political agenda and of course this is very worrying when one is trying to promote human rights within the territory.”

Feldman explained that Regavim petitions have sped up legal processes and awakened cases dealing with Palestinian building and planning in Area C, in particular in the South Hebron hills, one of the poorest and most disadvantaged regions in the area.

While Briggs was unable to provide exact data about the number of demolitions executed as a result of Regavim’s work, the organisation recently appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court to carry out 162 interim orders on Palestinian constructions, which have been frozen since 2008.

One of the most prominent cases of Regavim’s influence has been in Susiya, a Palestinian village in the South Hebron hills, which, after Regavim appealed to the Israeli Supreme Court to carry out demolition orders, now faces the prospect of being completely razed to the ground.

“They portray the situation in Area C as if Palestinians don’t have any rights there, they are just stealing the land, it belongs to Israel and the Jewish people and (the Palestinians) are outlaws. This has very little to do with reality,” Feldman said.

“The Palestinians in those areas, (like the) South Hebron Hills and Jordan Valley, have been sitting there for many decades, and for generations on.”

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA) in the occupied territories, the Israeli Civil Administration rejected 94 percent of Palestinians’ building permit applications in Area C between 2000 and 2007.

A reserve soldier went on hunger strike in solidarity with Palestinian prisoners last week, vowing to surrender his citizenship and live as a Palestinian in a refugee camp; another activist was briefly jailed. They are Israel’s new dissidents. An e-book now comes to light, shedding light on their raison d’être.

Symbolically, non-violently, they stand up against the social, political and racist iniquities perpetrated in their country against fellow citizens (the poor, women, activists, the Palestinian-Israeli minority), against ‘the other’ in their midst (the migrants and political refugees from Africa), and against ‘the other’ (the Palestinians).

They fight ‘the system’. Systematically, they test their nation’s Zionist promise – to establish an independent, sovereign, free-for-all, equal-for-all, and democratic Jewish state in the Promised Land, as officially inscribed in Israel’s declaration of independence.

“The State of Israel…will be based on freedom, justice and peace…it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture,” stated the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

They feel betrayed by their State having long reneged on its original pledge. For them, the real promise is not land, but justice.

“Despite having won independence and political sovereignty, we’re enslaved. Enslaved to our conquest, to the injustices we create; to foreign labourers whom we exploit and oppress; to the Sudanese refugees whom we – the persecuted people, the refugee people – throw in jail,” protested Na’ama Carmi, former Chair of the Israeli Civil Rights Association (ACRI), in a prescient blog written six years ago.

Marking 40 years of the now 45-year occupation of Palestinian lands, Carmi mourned June 1967 as “the time when we ceased to be free,” concluding, “The enslaver cannot be free himself.”

Now, 35 such blogposts are included in an e-anthology entitled ‘Israeli Dissidents: Notes from a slippery slope’.

They were originally written in Hebrew by ten alternative media and human rights activists from local NGOs, such as ‘Anarchists Against The Wall” (the wall which separates Palestinians from families and lands under the arguable pretext of security); or, “Boycott From Within” (which supports the Palestinian boycott, divestment and sanctions call).

“All is ripe, just waiting for the match to ignite the fire that’ll consume Israel’s democracy, and it’ll surely come,” warns Noam Rotem.

Cassandra-like prophets of doom predicting the demise of the Jewish people’s dream to live free on the land, they’re disregarded, often damned as “traitors”, by fellow Israelis. Their dissidence is critical patriotism, they retort.

“We do not hate this land, on the contrary we love our homeland, its landscapes, flavours, scents, sounds and languages to not only live here despite the hardships and the policies we find infuriating and indefensible, but to openly champion highly unpopular ideas we believe to be crucial for the future well-being – and even existence – of a liveable polity in this country we love,” writes Rechavia Berman, editor of the compilation in the preface.

They’re branded as “self-hating” and “anti-Semite” Jews, accused of abetting terrorism.

“We do not hate ourselves,” counters Berman. “Our anger and struggle are directed at apartheid and occupation, abuse and oppression, those who support them, and those who stand in our way as we seek to battle them.”

Conscience objectors of the Internet era, they’ve taken an oath – to respect the commandment of memory, not to forget, conscientiously documenting abuses by their country. A country, they point out, born out of the ashes of the Nazi Holocaust, the extermination of six million Jews during World War II.

Shaking off the shackles of – or perhaps truly shackled to – the unfathomable tragedy, they dream of, act for, the establishment of an exemplary society that ought to abide by universal justice. Saving Israel against itself is their quixotic crusade.

Throughout the compilation, they warn against “the gradual, accelerated process in which Israel’s polity is drifting even farther away from core principles and guaranteed rights inherent in democracy.”

Some blogs relate to religious coercion – especially against Jewish women – by radical, ultra-orthodox Jews, whom the authors call “the Jewish Brotherhood”, in reference to the Muslim Brotherhood movement.

Most reckon the difficulty of instilling a stringently peaceful message stems from their country being rooted in a strongly-knit society. Solidarity precedes tolerance when the prevailing – albeit sometimes irrational – sentiment is of living under the constant fear of existential threats.

The political and religious establishments have managed to maintain a powerfully consensual narrative. “There’s no negotiating partner on the other side”; the ultimate Palestinian goal is “to throw us into the sea”, are public mantras.

When national extinction is believed to still hang in the balance, the occupation becomes the lesser of two evils. Living by the sword in the foreseeable future seems to be the best recipe for those – and they’re the majority – who remain convinced that a huge Damocles sword is hanging above their heads.

“It’s impossible to discuss these issues with most of my friends. They don’t want to hear, they don’t believe me, or they think ‘the Arabs’ deserve what happens to them,” laments Lisa Goldman, feeling “increasingly isolated”.

The tragedy is, most Israelis would probably be ready to support a two-state solution that would entail a withdrawal – military and civilian – from the occupied territories, if only to preserve the Jewish and democratic character of their state.

But most also believe that the endeavour would be Sisyphean, with over half-a-million settlers living in Palestine. And, they wouldn’t easily relinquish occupied east Jerusalem.

Noting that “the worst decisions can be made in a perfectly democratic manner” – a clear reference to the democratically-elected Nazi regime in the 1930s – Berman acknowledges in the foreword, as if posthumously, “We may be unable, or too late, to sway the disastrously misguided majority, but I for one refuse to let it be said that there was no other way, or that the danger could not be foreseen.”