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confront the enormous challenges posed by the ongoing Israeli occupation while continuing the momentum towards full sovereignty. Regrettably, Israel, the occupying Power, is attempting to deflect attention from its culpability in the continued deprivation of the Palestinian people’s right to economic prosperity, freedom and independence. The occupying Power has produced a document alleging that the Palestinian economy was unstable despite its certain knowledge that the statement is false and irrelevant.
economic potential, which have been monopolized by Israel, to the detriment of Palestine’s economy. In 2011, the Palestine National Authority produced, for the first time, a study that calculates the quantifiable cost of Israel’s continued military occupation of the Palestinian Territory. The study revealed that in 2010, Israeli occupation cost to the Palestinian economy amounted to 6.897 billion USD, a staggering 93.3% of the total Palestinian GDP that year.
Costs are raised through higher transportation costs, difficulties in importing inputs, and through adjustment costs while adapting to fluctuating demand conditions”.[4]
The last hope of halting Israel’s steady ghettoization of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and calculated
destruction of the Palestinian economy is the imposition of sanctions against Israel, especially the revoking of the $9 billion in U.S. loan guarantees. If we allow Israel to complete its massive $2-billion project to ring Palestinians in militarized, pod-like encampments in Gaza and the West Bank with security barriers, walls and electric fences, we will condemn Israel and the Palestinians to endless cycles of violence that could ultimately, given the mounting rage and despair that grip the Middle East, doom the Jewish state.
There is little dispute about the illegality of Israel’s actions. The International Court of Justice has called on Israel to dismantle the security barrier under construction in the West Bank and asked outside states not to render any aid or assistance to the infrastructure. But this call has been ignored, although even the U.S. State Department has gently admonished Israel for its behavior. The U.S. loans that make the barrier and expansion of Jewish settlements possible were granted with the stipulation that if the Israeli government used the funds to build housing and infrastructure beyond the 1967 border known as the Green Line these funds would be deducted from the loans. In April 2003, when Congress authorized the $9 billion in loan guarantees for Israel it said that the loans could be used “only to support activities in the geographic areas which were subject to the administration of the Government of Israel before June 5, 1967.” The legislation warned that the loan guarantees shall be reduced “for activities which the President determines are inconsistent with the objectives and understandings reached between the United States and Israel regarding the implementation of the loan guarantee program.” The State Department, acknowledging the misuse of the money, has made a symbolic deduction in the amount handed to the Israeli government and reduced the loan guarantees by $289.5 million. But unless there is heavy pressure brought on Israel soon the project will be completed, made possible by Washington’s complicity and a callous disregard for justice.
Israel is pumping hundreds of millions of dollars, some reports say as much as half a billion yearly, into its colonization of the West Bank. Since 1967, Israel has spent more than $10 billion on its settlements, and the total estimated cost for the snaking security barrier, which slices deep into the West Bank and connects with settlements and security roads to create pod-like Palestinian ghettos, is at least $1.5 billion. The barrier is being used not only to annex Palestinian land but give Israel control of Palestinian aquifers and at least 40,000 acres of Palestinian farmland. It has devastated Palestinian communities, often cutting them in half or denying farmers access to farmland. Travel, even between communities on the West Bank, has become difficult, especially for men, and many have lost their jobs, plunging with their families into squalor and despair.
The spate of deadly attacks by Palestinian suicide bombers in Israel gave Israel the right to impose draconian measures. A barrier running along the 1949 armistice/Green Line, which demarcates the boundary between Israel and Palestinian-held territory, was Israel’s prerogative. But the barrier is being used as an excuse to seize Palestinian land, with 80 percent of the barrier cutting into Palestinian territory, often as deeply as 20 kilometers. The barrier, which costs about $1 million per mile, will eventually be 703 miles long. About 450 miles of the barrier are finished or under construction. When it is done the Palestinians in the West Bank, like those in Gaza, will be caged like animals, with little ability to move, even to neighboring towns, find work or live beyond a subsistence level.
The assault on Palestinian society has been accompanied by an alarming increase in Israeli attacks against Palestinians, including the current Israeli offensive in Gaza. Fifteen tank shells landed this month in the town of Beit Hanoun, killing 19 people and wounding 40. Four women and nine children were among the dead. Two Palestinians were killed Saturday as Israel continued airstrikes and ground operations against suspected militant positions in the Gaza Strip, all coming a day after the U.N. General Assembly urged an end to the escalating violence.
Israeli leaders, angered over Palestinian rocket attacks, have dismissed calls for restraint, with far-right cabinet minister Avigdor Lieberman calling for Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya and other militant leaders to be sent to “paradise.”
When Yasir Arafat agreed to end his exile to return to Gaza, swallow his pride and formally recognize Israel’s right to exist, when he turned his Fatah fighters into a collaboration police force in the West Bank and Gaza, he was broke. The communist states that had once bankrolled him had collapsed. He was humbled to the Oslo peace accord, under which he took the bitter pill of accommodation with his detested Zionist enemy. Unless Israel too feels pressure it will never seek accommodation with the Palestinians, relying instead on increasing forms of repression and mounting violence. These measures, depriving Palestinians of hope and dignity, are the fuel of radical movements and ensure not peace but unending war. Israel has ignored the terms stipulated for the U.S. loan guarantees, and so we have a choice—to uphold our own demands and international law or be a party to Israeli policies that will lead to an unraveling of the region’s stability.
A foreign peace activist holds on to a fence in front of Israeli security forces in riot gear during a protest against the construction of Israel’s separation barrier in the West Bank village of Bil’in near Ramallah in 2005.
By Jessica Purkiss
Ali Shamlawi, 17, was held in solitary confinement, beaten and intimidated into confessing to throwing stones. He has now been in Israeli military detention for a year facing charges of attempted murder.
A Palestinian teenager who confessed to throwing stones after he was tortured in Israeli custody faces attempted
murder charges and a severe prison sentence.
Ali Shamlawi, 17, is accused of throwing stones at a truck near Ariel, a settlement in the occupied West Bank, causing a traffic accident in which a three-year-old Israeli girl was seriously injured.
He is facing charges of attempted murder. The maximum sentence for attempted murder under Israeli military law is life in prison.
Shamlawi says he confessed to throwing stones under duress and now denies the charges.
In a sworn testimony given to DCI-Palestine, he claims he was held in solitary confinement, beaten and intimidated, and denied access to counsel by Israeli authorities during his arrest and interrogation.
He has now been in detention for a year and neither his lawyer, nor his family know when a verdict will be reached.
After Shamlawi’s latest appearance in court on March 13, 2014, his mother, Nema Shamlawi said: “[Ali’s] childhood is being lost. He doesn’t see the sun and the air…doesn’t live his childhood as it should be.”
Under Israeli military law, Palestinian children can be imprisoned for up to a maximum of one year before legal proceedings must be completed against them. The military court has the right to extend detention by a further 60 days. After that, the military court of appeals can extend custody indefinitely in three-month chunks.
Shamlawi is one of five boys arrested in connection with the same stone-throwing incident. The others are: Mohammed Suliman, Mohammad Kleib, Tamer Souf, and Ammar Souf. They were all aged 16 at the time.
The Israeli army alleges that on the evening of March 14, 2013, the boys were throwing stones at passing vehicles on a main road near Ariel settlement.
The stones caused a passing truck to brake suddenly, and Edva Biton, an Israeli woman from the West Bank settlement, Yakir, crashed the car she was driving into the back of the truck. She and her three daughters were injured in the accident – her three-year-old daughter, Adele, suffered serious head injuries.
The boys are each charged with 20 counts of attempted murder – among other charges. The Israeli military prosecution insists that the boys consciously “intended to kill.” A senior Israeli military officer speaking on the condition of anonymity previously declared that factors specific to the case merited filing attempted murder charges, but prosecutors would not seek life sentences because the case did not warrant it, according to Al-Jazeera English.
Israeli military law, which fails to ensure and denies basic and fundamental rights, is applied exclusively to the Palestinian population, including women and children. Settlers living in the West Bank are subject to the Israeli civil legal system. No Israeli children come into contact with the military court system.
The case received extensive press coverage inside Israel. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu branded stone throwing as an act of terror, saying “stones are lethal weapons.” While Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman called for the Israeli army’s rules of engagement to be changed to allow them to open fire on stone-throwers.
“Palestinian kids, whether they throw stones or not, must be judged impartially,” said Adnan Rabi, a lawyer with DCI-Palestine. “In this case, punishment and retribution seem to be underlying statements made by some Israeli officials.”
Throwing an object, including a stone, at a moving vehicle with the intent to harm it or the person travelling in it carries a maximum penalty of 20 years’ imprisonment under Israeli Military Order 1651.
While the age of majority for Palestinians was raised from 16 to 18 in 2011, the amendment did not apply to sentencing provisions, leaving children 16 and older subject to the same maximum sentences as adults.
Each year, around 500-700 Palestinian children, some as young as 12, are arrested, detained and prosecuted in the Israeli military detention system, with the majority of Palestinian child detainees held on charges of throwing stones. Israeli children living in the same territory do not come into contact with the military court system.
According to figures from DCI-Palestine, three out of four Palestinian children experience physical violence during their arrest, transfer or interrogation.
Shamlawi testified to DCI-Palestine that he was subjected to both physical and psychological abuse during his arrest and interrogation. He says he was repeatedly beaten by soldiers during his arrest and strip-searched.
Shamlawi was interrogated without being informed of his rights and without the presence of a lawyer or a family member. During interrogation, he says that his interrogator pulled his hair, made him watch his friends being interrogated and threatened to torture his mother if he did not confess.
Shamlawi did sign a confession in which he admitted to throwing two stones. He says he confessed under duress – and continues to deny that he did actually throw stones.
An Israeli army spokesperson commented on the case in October 2013: “We would like to emphasize that the defendants received all of their rights according to the law, including the right to avoid self-incrimination and the right to legal counsel over the course of the investigation.”
Shamlawi says he also spent five days in solitary confinement.
In 2012, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, Richard Falk, condemned Israel’s use of solitary confinement against Palestinian children saying it “flagrantly violates international human rights standards.”
In sworn testimonies to DCI-Palestine, the other four boys also reported physical abuse and stints in solitary confinement. One boy reported sexual threats from a prison guard.
The boys’ allegations constitute a violation of international human rights treaties ratified by Israel, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.
A 2013 United Nations report from the Committee on the Rights of the Child found that “Palestinian children arrested by the [Israeli] military and police are systematically subject to degrading treatment, and often to acts of torture.”
All five teens are currently being held in Megiddo Prison in Israel. The transfer of Palestinian children to prisons inside Israel contravenes article 76 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.
It provides that “protected persons accused of offences shall be detained in the occupied country, and if convicted they shall serve their sentences therein.”
DCI-Palestine lawyer Adnan Rabi added: “We are concerned that the children’s best interests, which should be regarded as a primary consideration by the military prosecutors and judges, will not be factored in at all.”
*Jessica Purkiss is a freelance contributor to Defence for Children International Palestine.
Source:
http://www.dci-palestine.org
Posted on: 2014
By Patrick O. Strickland
Fadi Abu Nemeh cannot remember a time during his four years at Al-Quds University (AQU) when Israeli occupation
authorities did not harass students and local residents alike.
“I also grew up in Abu Dis,” Abu Nemeh, a 21-year-old media studies student, explained, referring to the Jerusalem-area town where the university is located.
“The military’s violence has been especially consistent since the second intifada,” he added. “My high school shared a building with AQU and the soldiers used to come there, too.”
A number of military checkpoints and outposts of Israeli settlements are located near the campus and each day armored military vehicles pass by several times, often stopping to clash with students and local residents.
Israel’s wall in the West Bank — which is illegal, according to the International Court of Justice — dissects land belonging to Abu Dis and cuts off the university and town from the rest of Jerusalem.
“We come to school, where we have human rights programs and a liberal arts education but we step outside to have our rights constantly violated by Israel’s military,” Abu Nemeh told The Electronic Intifada.
Military attack
On the third day of school this semester, 22 January, students were greeted with one of the worst raids the campus has seen in years.
Around 10 AM, Israeli soldiers stopped in front of the university entrance and demanded that students show their identification cards.
The military then launched an attack, firing rubber-coated steel bullets and showering the campus with tear gas.
Nour Hamayel, 20, a third-year English literature major, was sitting with friends drinking coffee in a university corridor when they heard frantic screams.
“We were all alarmed as a weird smell suffocated our throats and [the gas] blurred our vision,” she recalled. “Students were running aimlessly in search of oxygen.”
A group of soldiers then stormed the building and busted into a classroom, where they arrested at least one student.
“Struggling to breathe”
Hamayel and her friends tried to gather their books as quickly as possible, scrambling for an exit as the soldiers clashed with other students. “[University] medics then screamed, ‘Girl down! Girl down!’” she said. “There was a girl on the floor struggling to breathe [and] with swollen eyes.”
A local popular committee spokesperson subsequently told Ma’an News Agency that more than 100 persons suffered from excessive tear gas inhalation (“Israeli forces raid Abu Dis campus, clash with students,” 22 January 2014).
The campus is also home to Bard College at Al-Quds University, an international satellite campus of New York’s Bard College.
AQU and Bard at AQU faculty and staff issued a collective statement calling on Bard College President Leon Botstein to denounce the raid and provide a plan of action in order to “ensure the safety and welfare of all AQU students, staff and faculty” from Israeli soldiers.
Bard College replied by issuing a rare statement, a brisk two paragraphs despite the years of systematic harassment (“Bard College responds to military incursion at Al-Quds University,” 29 January 2014).
“Incursions such as these interfere directly with the mission of the university to promote scholarship and encourage the free exchange of ideas,” Botstein wrote in a joint statement with Jonathan Becker, Bard College’s vice-president.
“Al-Quds University students and faculty, including those in the Al-Quds Bard Honors College for Arts and Sciences [the building that was raided], must be allowed to pursue their educational goals free from fear of violence,” the statement added.
But Botstein and Becker did not refer to any of the prior assaults, which number in the dozens each year, according to students and faculty.
Asked for a comment, Becker told The Electronic Intifada: “We have many campuses around the world and do not issue statements on every event that takes place on or near them.”
Bard College’s other satellite campuses are in Russia, Hungary, Kyrgyzstan and Germany. It is unlikely that their students face the same level of human rights abuses that Palestinians face.
Becker declined to answer whether Bard College has taken any concrete steps to address the problems faced by students at AQU.
Hypocrisy
Faculty, students and activists say the prevailing silence about the attacks is part and parcel of the hypocrisy with which many academic institutions across the world treat Palestinians.
In November 2013, a rally organized by student affiliates of Islamic Jihad included a military-style parade. A small group of students assembled that day to pay tribute to Palestinians who died while engaged in armed attacks against Israel or were killed by Israel’s military.
Tom Gross, a staunchly rightwing and pro-Israel journalist who reported on the parade, accused the students of “fascist-like displays,” and decried them for bearing plastic guns.
Although AQU released an official condemnation of the rally, referring to it as “totally unacceptable,” both Brandeis University and Syracuse University indefinitely suspended long-standing academic relationships with AQU.
“Intellectual dishonesty”
Omar Barghouti, a founding member of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), argued that Brandeis and Syracuse were morally inconsistent.
“US universities that took action against Al-Quds University in occupied East Jerusalem because of a tiny student protest with fake guns have taken hypocrisy and intellectual dishonesty to the next level,” he told The Electronic Intifada.
Barghouti pointed out that neither Brandeis nor Syracuse condemned Israel’s 22 January assault, explaining that Israeli soldiers who regularly attack Palestinian students were armed with real weapons, but that “did not warrant any opprobrium from the same US universities.”
“No means to protect”
AQU students and faculty alike explained that the constant military incursions have created a militarized learning environment.
“It is constantly surprising to me how we ask of our students to rise above their daily circumstances and join the world of higher thinkers, when we have no means to protect them or ourselves when the Israeli military attacks our campus,” Tala Abu Rahmeh, 29, an Arabic and English literature professor, told The Electronic Intifada.
According to AQU’s Human Rights Clinic, a university project, the Israeli military attacked the campus or clashed with students at least 12 times in 2013.
Amnesty International researcher Saleh Hijazi explained that the Abu Dis area, which includes the university and at least two nearby high schools, has been subjected to “clear intimidation in certain instances in 2013.”
On 22 October last year, Israeli forces demolished a home near AQU’s campus. When students and locals confronted them, soldiers fired at them with rubber-coated steel bullets and tear gas canisters (“Clashes in Abu Dis following Israeli house demolition,” Ma’an News Agency, 22 October 2013).
“As an occupying force, Israel has an obligation to protect civilians,” Hijazi told The Electronic Intifada. Demolishing a home in broad daylight demonstrated “a total disregard to safety of people.”
Students and faculty continue to suffer the consequences of Israel’s actions.
Abu Rahmeh asked, “How do you ask a student to delve into Aristotle when he or she feels like their basic safety is constantly violated?”
Editors’ note: one paragraph was slightly ammended to clarify that Bard at AQU staff also signed onto the statement calling on Leon Botstein to denounce the Israeli raid.
* Patrick O. Strickland is an independent journalist .
Source:
ElectronicIntifada
Palestinian prime minister Rami Hamdallah presented Tuesday a draft budget for 2014 of $4.2 billion (3.1 billion euros)
with a deficit of $1.3 billion, a statement read.
As in previous years, the budget anticipates considerable foreign aid, expected to reach $1.6 billion (1.2 billion euros), a slight rise from 2013.
The bulk of the budget was running expenditure, estimated to reach $3.9 billion (2.9 billion euros), with $2 billion (1.5 billion euros) to be spent on salaries and pensions, an increase of 4.9 percent compared to 2013.
The salaries are primarily financed by tax and tariff funds levied by Israel on goods destined for Palestinian markets that pass through Israeli ports it transfers to the Palestinian Authority at approximately $121 million (90 million euros) a month.
In a September report to donor states, the PA stressed that “without an end to the Israeli occupation… and its prohibitive restrictions… private sector-driven sustainable economic growth is unattainable.”
A World Bank report from October said the economy could grow by more than a third, if Israel lifted restrictions on about 60 percent of the West Bank it controls, assessing the current losses to the Palestinian economy at about $3.4 billion (2.5 billion euros).
Source: Agence France-Presse
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