On Tuesday, Palestinians will commemorate the exodus of hundreds of thousands of their kin following the foundation of the Jewish state in 1948.

Nakba Day, commemorated annually on May 15, is normally marked by protests, and often by clashes with Israelis in the Palestinian territories.

The Higher Arab Monitoring Committee, which represents Arab communities in Israel, called for a general strike and for Israeli Arabs to go to displaced Palestinian villages.
The committee said that this year’s Nakba events were also in solidarity with the “struggle of our brave prisoners in the Israeli jails.”

On Monday evening Palestinian prisoners reached a deal with Israel to end a mass hunger strike by inmates, in exchange for better conditions.

Tuesday’s central Palestinian rally will be in the West Bank city of Ramallah, organized by the Palestinian Authority.

Demonstrations are also scheduled for Israeli-occupied east Jerusalem and throughout the Gaza Strip.

Israel from its side, is bracing for possible unrest on Tuesday.

“We are coordinating with the military and border police, we hope things will be quiet,” Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP on Monday. “We have mobilized a number of units in various areas,” he said, without elaborating.

Last year, Israeli troops opened fire on demonstrators from Lebanon and Syria as they tried to breach a security fence on the borders.

Four protesters from Syria were killed along with another 10 from Lebanon. Hundreds were wounded.

A senior military official in Israel’s northern command said troops had trained to handle all situations, although they were not aware of plans for any big demonstrations along the borders as it happened last year.

“We are getting ready for all kinds of provocations,” he told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Palestinians traditionally mark on May 15 the “Nakba” or “catastrophe” when hundreds of thousands of them were expelled from their homes in the war that accompanied Israel’s declaration of state.

More than 760,000 Palestinians -estimated today to number 4.7 million with their descendants – fled or were expelled out of their homes in the Arab-Israeli war which accompanied Israel’s establishment.

Around 160,000 Palestinians stayed in their homes and are now known as Arab Israelis. They number about 1.3 million people, or some 20 percent of the population.

An estimated 2,000 Palestinian political prisoners are on an open-ended hunger strike that began on 17 April, Palestinian Prisoners’ Day. The strike is a direct challenge to Israel’s regime of arrest and detention to try to break the Palestinian struggle for liberation.

Prisoners are specifically calling for a resumption of family visits and an end to the widespread, abusive practices of administrative detention — imprisonment without charge or trial — and solitary confinement. Ahmad Saadat, Palestinian parliamentarian and leader of the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, is currently on hunger strike after more than three years of solitary confinement. Israel currently holds nearly 20 percent of the 132 Palestinian Legislative Council members in administrative detention.

Two prisoners, Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahleh, both being held without charge or trial, are on the brink of death after 68 days of hunger strike. Amnesty International has issued a call for urgent action to save Diab and Halahleh’s lives. Several other prisoners have also been on hunger strike for weeks and have been transferred to a prison clinic. Some, like Biab and Halahleh, have not been allowed to see independent doctors.

Today, Addameer and Physicians for Human Rights – Israel issued an urgent, joint statement regarding the grave condition of Thaer Halahleh, Bilal Diab and a third hunger striker, Hassan Safadi, whom they said are being subjected to “medical negligence” by Israeli authorities.

In contrast to the deafening silence from world media and governments, there has been widespread support for the mass hunger strike throughout historic Palestine and in exile. Nearly all Palestinian families living under Israeli occupation have been affected by Israel’s regime of arrest and detention and Palestinian political prisoners are celebrated as national heroes.

Coming Thursday, May 17, will mark a month to the hunger strike, with over 2,000 Palestinian political prisoners in Israeli jails participating in it. As Israel refuses to accept the prisoners’ demands for their basic rights, including humane treatment, many of them face immediate risk of death as the world watches over in silence.

The prisoners have decided to live in dignity or starve to death in their isolation cells, and a global mobilization is urgently needed to break the deafening silence! A month into the hunger strike, join a

Global 24-hour hunger strike

In front of Israeli embassies, consulates and UN offices

May 17, 2012

Endorse the Palestinian civil society call for a boycott of G4S due to its complicity in Israel’s violations of Palestinian prisoners’ rights

Click here to pledge to join the Global 24-hour hunger strike Email if you are organizing a sit-in in your community

Background More than two weeks ago, some 2,000 Palestinian prisoners have launched an open-ended hunger strike and their life is in danger. Their demands are simple and the strike’s slogan, echoing through the prison walls, is just as plain- freedom or death. The lives of all prisoners on strike are currently under danger, but among them is a smaller group, which has been striking for a longer period and whose lives are under immediate threat.

Thaer Halahleh and Bilal Diab have not eaten for more than 70 days – since the 29th of February. Israeli courts have rejected their appeals and refused to free them from administrative detention where they remain without charge or trial, subject to secret evidence and secret allegations. They are in critical condition.

Hassan Safadi has been refusing food since the 2nd of March, Omar Abu Shalal, 54, since the 4th of March, Mahmoud Sarsak, the only Gazan to have been incarcerated under Israel’s Illegal Combatants Law, since the 24th of March, Mohammed al-Taj, 40, also since the 24th of March and Ja’afar Ezzadeen, 41, since the 27th of march.

The Prisoners’ key demands include:

Ending the policy of solitary confinement and isolation;

End to the use of administrative detentions;

The restoration of visitation rights to families of prisoners from the Gaza Strip, a right that has been denied to all families for more than 6 years;

Canceling ‘Shalit’ law, which restricts prisoners’ access to educational materials as punitive measure. The law remains intact despite a prisoner swap deal last October.

Ending systematic humiliation, including arbitrary strip searches, nightly raids and collective punishment.

Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike have been hit hard with retaliation from Israel Prison Services, including beatings, transferring from one prison to another, confiscation of salt (an act that could have severe health consequences for hunger strikers), denial of family and lawyer visits, and isolation and solitary confinement of hunger strikers.

In response, Human Rights Watch issued a statement chiding Israel’s over its administrative detention policy; it said, “It shouldn’t take the self-starvation of Palestinian prisoners for Israel to realize it is violating their due process rights.” Amnesty International also issued a call for urgent action from individuals around the world to contact Israeli authorities about Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahleh.

Emphasizing imprisonment as a critical component of Israel’s system of occupation, colonialism and apartheid practiced against the Palestinian people, Palestinian civil society and human rights organizations have called for intensifying the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign to target corporations profiting directly from the Israeli prison system. In particular, we call for action to be taken to hold to account G4S, the world’s largest international security corporation, which helps to maintain and profit from Israel’s prison system, for its complicity with Israeli violations of international law.

Signed: Popular Struggle Coordinating Committee Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC)

Bilal Thiab … 77 Days
Thaer Halahleh … 77 Days
Hassan Safadi … 71 Days
Omar Abu Shallal … 69 Days
Mohammedd Al-Taj … 61 Days
Mahmoud Sarsak … 55 Days
Faris Al-Natur … 48 Days
Ja’far Ezz Al-Din … 54 Days
Abdallah Al-Barghouthi 33 Days
more than 2000 Prisoner …. 28 Days

Don’t let the Western media burry your case, all these prisoners are asking for are their basic rights as prisoners of war, visitation rights, right of education and other rights that are declared by international law.

Israel’s ability to commit crimes against Palestinians with impunity relies on international complicity.

Chicago, IL – There is a determined international effort to ensure that Palestinians are shut out of every legal forum where they could pursue justice for Israel’s crimes against them. Nothing illustrates this better than the horrifying case of the Samouni massacre.

Last week, Israeli military prosecutors announced that no charges would be filed against the soldiers responsible for killing dozens of members of the Samouni family during the 2008-2009 Operation Cast Lead attack on Gaza.

Israeli officials decided, according to Haaretz, that “the attack on civilians ‘who did not take part in the fighting’, and their killing, were not done knowingly and directly, or out of haste and negligence ‘in a manner that would indicate criminal responsibility’”.

We ought to remind ourselves of what actually happened to put the claim that the killings “were not done knowingly and directly” in its proper context. The events are recounted in harrowing detail in the UN-commissioned Goldstone report, based on a thorough investigation.

100 civilians forced into house, then deliberately shelled

On January 4, 2009, nine days into the assault on Gaza, Israeli soldiers invaded the Zaytoun area south of Gaza City.

In an area named al-Samouni – after the extended family that lives there – the invaders entered houses by force, killing and injuring occupants in the process. They then forced about 100 civilians, mostly women and children, to gather in the home of Wa’el Samouni. Israeli forces forbade them to leave for a safer area and, as the UN report states: “There was hardly any water and no milk for the babies.”

“Twenty-one family members were killed and 19 injured in the shelling of just that house… Nine of the dead in Wa’el Samouni’s house were children, the youngest a baby of six months.”

On the morning of January 5, Wa’el Samouni and five other men stepped out of the house to collect some firewood. Israeli soldiers positioned on surrounding rooftops could see the men clearly.

“Suddenly,” the report states, “a projectile struck next to the five men, close to the door of Wa’el’s house, and killed Muhammad Ibrahim al-Samouni and, probably, Hamdi Maher al-Samouni. The other men managed to retreat to the house. Within about five minutes, two or three more projectiles had struck the house directly.”

Twenty-one family members were killed and 19 injured in the shelling of just that house. Others had been killed, injured and left to die in nearby homes. Nine of the dead in Wa’el Samouni’s house were children, the youngest a baby of six months. The dead children included Wa’el Samouni’s 14-year-old daughter, Rizqa, and 12-year-old son, Faris.

Those who were able to, fled the house toward Gaza City to seek help.

Children left for days among bodies of their parents

As if the massacre wasn’t bad enough, the Israeli army then repeatedly turned away several efforts by Red Crescent ambulances to rescue the injured. Soldiers even blocked an ambulance that had been thoroughly searched and sent it back to Gaza City empty.

When ambulances finally reached the devastated area on January 7, they found 15 bodies and two seriously injured children in Wa’el Samouni’s house. The children, lying among the decomposing corpses of their family members, were dehydrated and terrified.

Four children who survived the massacre, including one rescued from the rubble, narrated the horror they lived through, and the effort to rebuild their lives afterwards in a moving video named Samouni Street.

Israeli armed forces were in full control

The Israelis could not even use the usual excuse of “collateral damage” amid fierce fighting for this atrocity.

The UN commission found that “already before daybreak on January 4, 2009 the Israeli armed forces were in full control of the al-Samouni neighbourhood”, and there was no fighting there.

“Everything indicates that the Israeli forces knew that there were about 100 civilians in the house. Indeed, the families had asked to be allowed to leave the area towards a safer place, but had been ordered to stay in Wa’el al-Samouni’s house. The house must have been under constant observation by the Israeli soldiers, who had complete control over the area at the time,” the report added.

Four days after the massacre, the Israeli army even denied publicly that any attack on the house of Wa’el Samouni had taken place. That’s the same army, charged with investigating itself, that has now concluded that no crime occurred.

Why did the Israeli decision come now?

“The decision to close the Samouni family case clearly indicates Israel’s genuine unwillingness to uphold the rule of international law, and highlights the urgent need for recourse to mechanisms of international criminal justice,” said the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, which represents many Gaza victims.

But it seems likely that Israel waited to announce this brazen whitewash precisely until it was certain there would be little chance of international courts pursuing the culprits.

“It is important to understand that such impunity is no accident; it depends on international complicity and determined joint action … to close every door to justice for Palestinians.”

Last month, Luis Moreno Ocampo, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), rejected an application from the Palestinian Authority (PA) to assume jurisdiction over war crimes committed in Gaza because, the ICC prosecutor argued, it was up to UN bodies or ICC states parties to decide if the PA was a “state” for the purposes of joining the court.

Amnesty International condemned the ICC prosecutor’s decision as “dangerous” and “political”.

The decision “opens the ICC to accusations of political bias and is inconsistent with the independence of the ICC”, said Marek Marczynski, head of Amnesty International’s international justice campaign. “It also breaches the Rome Statute which clearly states that such matters should be considered by the institution’s judges.”

“It’s disgraceful but not surprising that the ICC has dismissed Palestine’s complaint against Israel,” said Michael Mandel, a professor at Osgoode Hall Law School at York University in Toronto. “It sat on the complaint for over three years, always proudly announcing that it was investigating it to give the appearance of impartiality.”

Given what he saw as the ICC prosecutor’s biases toward the agenda of the United States – which is not even a signatory of the Rome Statute that established the court – Mandel concluded that the ICC “was a hoax from the start”.

Obstruction of justice

The ICC prosecutor’s deeply troubling decision to let Israel off the hook sent Israeli authorities the signal that it was safe to close the file on the Samouni massacre. And if Israel saw no crime in that brazen case, then don’t expect Israel to hold itself accountable for any other killings.

But it is important to understand that such impunity is no accident; it depends on international complicity and determined joint action – in effect a conspiracy – to close every door to justice for Palestinians.

At the head of all these efforts has been the United States, especially under the Obama administration. President Barack Obama’s then newly appointed ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, told Politico in 2009 that one of her key tasks would be to battle “the anti-Israel crap”.

In fact what Rice has done is lead a relentless anti-Palestinian crusade at the UN, which included efforts to discredit and bury the Goldstone report, blocking the Palestinian Authority’s bid for “Palestine” to be admitted as a full UN member (which I opposed for different reasons), cutting off funds to UNESCO for admitting Palestine, and most recently attempting to bully the UN Human Rights Council into abandoning a probe of Israel’s illegal West Bank colonies.

But these efforts go back further and rely on more than just the United States.

“Former prisoners and hunger strikers have said that even the smallest demonstration, the smallest acts of solidarity anywhere in the world – which those still in Israel’s jails might hear about on smuggled radios – make an enormous difference to their morale.”

Recall that a decade ago, survivors of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre in Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut attempted to pursue justice in Belgium against Israel’s Ariel Sharon, who was defence minister in charge of Israeli forces occupying Lebanon at the time. Under US pressure, Belgium changed its widely acclaimed universal jurisdiction law just to protect Israel.

And after a UK magistrate issued an arrest warrant for former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni in 2009, for accusations related to her role in the attack on Gaza, the UK government rushed to change its laws, effectively taking away the independence of the courts as a venue for victims of international crimes to seek justice.

Rubbing salt into the wounds of the surviving Samouni family members, UK foreign secretary William Hague welcomed Livni to London in October 2011.

“It was an appalling situation when political abuse of our legal procedures prevented people like Ms Livni from travelling legitimately to the UK,” Hague said of the effort to bring her to justice.

In fact the appalling abuse is the political interference to constantly change the legal rules to ensure Israeli impunity.

What can Palestinians do?

Given how determined the United States and its clients are to block all official channels for redress and justice for Palestinians, it is clear that Palestinians and those who support their rights must intensify their efforts by other means.

This would include mass mobilisation, the option of resistance through all legitimate means and building international solidarity especially through the campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) on Israel.

Right now the battle is being waged by more than 1,500 Palestinian political prisoners on hunger strike, subjected to a cruel system of prolonged detention without charge or trial, or conviction by Israeli military kangaroo courts, and to inhumane and illegal conditions of imprisonment.

The most urgent cases are of ten hunger strikers, who are gravely ill and close to death, and who are still being denied family visits and access to independent doctors and lawyers.

The Susan Rices and William Hagues of the world are not only silent about these crimes, but fully complicit in them.

Former prisoners and hunger strikers have said that even the smallest demonstration, the smallest acts of solidarity anywhere in the world – which those still in Israel’s jails might hear about on smuggled radios – make an enormous difference to their morale.

So we must not sit by in despair; it remains up to all of us to put as much pressure on Israel and its accomplices as citizens can.   Ali Abunimah is author of One Country, A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. He is a co-founder of the online publication The Electronic Intifada and a policy adviser with Al-Shabaka.

‘I can’t take any more. I am going on hunger strike because the situation has become unbearable.’ Today, assuming he survived last night, will mark the 68th day of his protest, a period in which Hahlaleh, 33, has consumed nothing but water and a little salt.  Rallying point: Protesters wearing symbolic chains gather outside a jail near the West Bank city of Ramallah last week in support of the hunger-strikers He and a second hunger-striker, Bilal Diab, are in a critical condition in an Israeli military hospital. It’s worth noting that only two out of the ten Irish Republican hunger-strikers who died in the Maze prison in 1981 lasted longer without food than Hahlaleh and Diab. But the pair are not the only protesters – about 1,600 Palestinians in Israeli jails have refused to eat anything for more than three weeks. This is one of the biggest hunger strikes in history, and the prisoners’ supporters believe that if they start to die, their deaths will prove as significant as those in Northern Ireland 30 years ago. Last week, I sat with Hahlaleh’s family at their home in Kharas, a prosperous village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank which is blessed with stunning views of the Hebron mountains.

Defiant: A protester chained and blindfolded stands inside a mock prison cell during a rally outside the Israeli embassy residence in Ankara, Turkey Also present was Ola Tamimi, 23, a student and blogger from the West Bank’s top university, Birzeit. ‘Since the Arab Spring began last year, young Palestinians have looked at what happened in Tunisia and Egypt with envy. But we needed a focus for something similar to happen here,’ she said.

‘Now I think we have found it, and through our blogs and social media we are getting organised. ‘If someone dies, it will create a dramatic situation. Students have already started to demonstrate outside the prisons, but none of us is talking about bombing or shooting.  More…Maryland terror teen who dreamed of joining Al Qaeda pleads guilty to web conspiracy with blue-eyed ‘Jihad Jane’ Defiance of a monster: 9/11 mastermind refuses to answer to judge as his Guantanamo trial for 2,976 murders begins Former CIA chief claims Pelosi DID know they were waterboarding suspected Bin Laden henchman Prisoners can be honest and motivated workers, Ken Clarke tells business as he urges the High Street to give ex-offenders jobs

‘This will be a movement of non-violent resistance, with hunger strikes among those not in prison, massive demonstrations and non-co-operation with the Israelis.’ Hahlaleh and Diab are among those subjected to ‘administrative detention’ – internment by any other name. The pair are alleged to be members of Islamic Jihad, a banned organisation behind many of the thousands of rockets fired at Israel in recent years from the other section of the Palestinian territories, the Gaza Strip. Both men deny the claim, and no evidence has ever been produced and tested in court. According to Shireen Hahlaleh, her husband has been held under administrative detention for more than six years in total.  Demo: Supporters of the Islamic Hamas movement call for the release of prisoners held in Israeli jails during the protest in Ramallah ‘This time he was arrested in June 2010, two weeks before I was due to have our first child, our daughter Lamar,’ she said. ‘We were just getting ready for the birth.

‘Can you imagine the state of mind he left me in? The previous time they arrested him was 14 days after our wedding. They seem to choose their moments carefully. ‘The baby has only seen her father six times. My husband has a young family. Why would he want death? He wants life. But he is desperate.’ Thaer’s brother Shaher is also on hunger strike. The 35-year-old, serving an 18-year sentence for helping to organise attacks on Israelis, began his fast on April 17 in protest at a toughening of the prison regime. Some of the harshest measures brought in include a widespread use of solitary confinement – in some cases for years at a time – severe restrictions on family visits, and frequent strip-searches for both prisoners and visitors.

The measures were introduced following the abduction of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit by the Islamist organisation Hamas in 2006.  Anger: Palestinians burn Israeli flags during the Ramallah rally for the hunger striker

West Bank student: ‘Since the Arab Spring, young Palestinians have looked at what happened in Tunisia and Egypt with envy’ Although Shalit was freed last October, jail conditions have not improved – to the prisoners’ fury. ‘Now that Shalit has been freed and conditions are as bad as ever, they feel they have nothing to lose,’ said Shaher’s wife Nada. ‘I was refused permission to visit my husband at all for seven years. When his daughter goes to see him, she is strip-searched although she is only 13.

‘I was pregnant with her when Shaher was arrested. She didn’t meet him until she was almost five.

‘Empty stomachs are the only weapons the prisoners have, and the people on the outside support them totally.’ In Kharas, as in many other areas on the West Bank, protesters gather every day to highlight the plight of the hunger-strikers. These rallies are addressed by political leaders and prisoners’ families, and they are notable for one thing: although Palestinian politics have been characterised for years by bitter and sometimes violent divisions, representatives of all the main factions appear to be uniting around the prisoners’ cause. Getting detailed information from the Israelis on the exact numbers of hunger-strikers, the length of their fasts and the locations where they are held is difficult.

Resistance: Protesters say their movement is one of non-violence  Widespread: Around 1,600 Palestinian inmates have joined the hunger strike Officials say little other than to give assurances that they have access to medical care. Yet despite the intense security, it is clear that the protests are co-ordinated, with news passing freely from jail to jail – and to the outside world. In villages in the north of the West Bank, I gained an insight into how the strikes are being organised when I spent a morning with Khader Adnan, a former administrative detainee. He was the first prisoner to go on hunger strike and came close to death during a fast that lasted 66 days. He was freed two weeks ago after agreeing to end his protest. Now something of a celebrity, Adnan was visiting former prisoners and their families.

Among those he caught up with in the village of Anabta was  Mouayad Abdus Samad, who was freed last month after serving 25 years of a life sentence imposed for the murder of two Israeli soldiers. Samad revealed that inmates use smuggled mobile phones to communicate with those beyond the prison walls.

The phones are often bought from Israeli prisoners at astronomical cost: the going rate is currently about £5,000. ‘We hide them in hollowed-out cavities in the walls. We reckon one phone usually lasts about a month before it’s discovered,’ said Samad. The release of Adnan, he added, had electrified Palestinian inmates: for the first time, it seemed it might be possible to ‘make Israel blink’.  Allegations: A rocket is held aloft by a masked member of Islamic Jihad, the banned organisation which Israel is claiming Hahlaleh and Diab are members of Samad added: ‘We have studied the Northern Ireland hunger strikes carefully. Ten were martyred, and we are ready to follow their example.’

To do so, self-evidently, takes determination. Adnan gave me a detailed account of the physical effects of his strike, which saw him lose more than four stone – a third of his body weight. ‘The Irish started dying at 46 days,’ he said. ‘Apart from sheer hunger, my symptoms started on day four, with a constant, blinding headache.

‘After a while, the headaches began to subside but then from day 38 to 57, I was vomiting every day. I found it very hard to keep down even water.

‘On the 57th day I developed an excruciating abdominal pain – far worse than the pain a woman feels when giving birth. That night I vomited seven times.

‘But after that, until I ended my fast on the 66th day, I was stable. However, doctors told me my potassium levels were very low, which meant my heart could malfunction at any time.’ In Israel, there is little awareness of the potential crisis. ‘It’s not part of our narrative,’ said one supporter of the right-wing Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu. Mr Netanyahu faces elections in September, but the stalled Palestinian peace process will barely register in the campaign.  Protest: A Belfast mural of Bobby Sands who died in the 1981 hunger strike ‘Israel knows that because of the Iranian nuclear issue and the Arab Spring, the Palestinian file is at the bottom of the agenda,’ added Pazit Ravina, a leading Israeli reporter and columnist. While I sat with Hahlaleh’s family, news came via a telephone call from the Red Cross of dramatic events at the Supreme Court in Jerusalem, where Hahlaleh and Diab were petitioning for release. In the middle of the hearing, Diab lost consciousness and had to be rushed to hospital. For the judges, however, there was  no sense of urgency. Having heard arguments from the men’s lawyers, they adjourned the case without reaching a decision. They will not sit again until today at the earliest. Like the young bloggers at Birzeit, veteran Palestinian leaders scent an unexpected political opening, one that may be weighted equally with peril and possibility. ‘I am really worried about these men and if there are deaths, I believe there may well be an intifada [a rebellion against Israeli occupation],’ said Nabeel Shaath, a member of the central committee of Fatah, the party of the Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. ‘We are doing our best to make sure that it will be unarmed and non- violent, but we can’t be sure we’ll succeed. By definition, uprisings cannot be planned in advance.’

The scheduled ruling of the Israeli Supreme Court on the appeal of hunger striking administrative detainees Thaer Halahleh and Bilal Diab was delayed “until further notice” today, Thursday, May 3, as Halahleh and Diab enter their 66th day of hunger strike. Halahleh and Diab are now tied with Khader Adnan in engaging in the longest-lasting hunger strike by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Addameer reported that:

“No decision was made in today’s Israeli High Court hearing regarding the administrative detention of Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahleh, currently on their 66th day of hunger strike. Both Bilal and Thaer were brought to the hearing and attended in wheelchairs. During the hearing, Bilal fainted and there were no doctors present inside the court. Thaer testified to the mistreatment he has suffered since his arrest. Judge Amnon Rubenstein announced that the panel of judges would make a decision after reviewing the “secret file”, but after the review there was still no decision. He said that the parties will be informed of the decision later on, without stating when.”

Both are held under administrative detention without charge or trial. Bilal Diab is shackled with six sets of shackles in his prison hospital bed, and guarded by four guards at all times, even as he has repeatedly lost consciousness.

Human Rights Watch on Wednesday called on Israel to “immediately charge or release people jailed without charge or trial under so-called administrative detention,” in a statement. “It shouldn’t take the self-starvation of Palestinian prisoners for Israel to realize it is violating their due process rights,” HRW deputy regional director Joe Stork.

Physicians for Human Rights reported on May 1 that Diab and Halahleh are in grave, life-threatening condition.

Addameer reported:

An independent doctor from Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-Israel) determined yesterday, 30 April, that Bilal is at immediate risk of death and that both he and Thaer must be transferred immediately to a civilian hospital in order to receive adequate medical attention. Yesterday’s visit by PHR-Israel was only the second visit from an independent doctor since the beginning of their hunger strikes, and only came following a legal petition filed in an Israeli District Court for the Israeli Prison Service (IPS) to allow access to Bilal and Thaer in Ramleh prison medical center. Any subsequent visit may still require going back to court.

According to PHR-Israel, “both detainees suffer from acute muscle weakness in their limbs, which prevents them from standing. They both are in need of full assistance in daily activities such as showering, though such help is not provided in the IPS clinic. They both suffer from an acute decrease in muscle tone and are bedridden, which puts them under dual threat: muscle atrophy and Thromobophilia, which can lead to a fatal blood clot.”

Furthermore, the PHR-Israel doctor noted that Bilal’s life-threatening condition includes sharp weight loss, concern for peripheral nerve damage, extremely low pulse (39 beats per minute) and blood pressure, severe dehydration, and possible internal bleeding. The doctor stated that Bilal should be transferred to a hospital immediately and receive full monitoring of his heart. Following the doctor visit, Bilal was transferred to a civilian hospital, only to be transferred back to Ramleh prison a few hours later. After collapsing this afternoon, he was transferred again to Assaf Harofeh hospital, where he currently remains. These frequent transfers only serve to further endanger his fragile condition.

The doctor noted that Thaer is also in grave condition and suffers from sharp weight loss and pain on the left side of his upper back, which, according to PHR-Israel, coupled with his other symptoms “may indicate inflammation of the pleura [membrane around the lungs] or even a blood clot, which can be lethal without proper medical attention.” Therefore, the doctor concluded that Thaer must be transferred to a civilian hospital as he urgently requires a CT scan of his lungs, which is not provided at the IPS medical center.

Addameer’s fears that Bilal and Thaer’s serious medical condition has been met with inadequate and harmful responses by the IPS in the Ramleh prison medical center have been confirmed by yesterday’s doctor visit. In addition to the reckless transfers back and forth to the hospital for Bilal, both Thaer and Bilal reported that prison guards had recently entered their cells and carried out violent searches. Thaer also reported being abused by an IPS doctor two days prior.

Moreover, Bilal and Thaer’s lawyer Jamil Al-Khatib attempted to visit Bilal this afternoon in the hospital and was refused by the IPS. He was told he had to submit a “special request” to the legal advisors of the IPS. Bilal and Thaer’s petitions to the Israeli High Court against their administrative detention orders will be heard on 3 May. A request for family visits to Bilal was also rejected today by the IPS, who stated that he was officially being denied family visits from 9 February to 9 July for “violating an IPS order” by being on hunger strike. The IPS continues to employ every obstacle at its disposal in preventing access for lawyers and doctors to hunger striking prisoners. These tactics are designed to isolate the hunger strikers as much as possible from trusted sources of support and medical information, in complete disregard to their most urgent condition.

Addameer condemns the IPS’ blatant violation of medical ethics in its treatment of Bilal, Thaer, and all the other hunger strikers requiring medical attention, and holds the Occupation responsible for their current condition. Addameer calls on the international community to demand that both Bilal and Thaer be immediately admitted to civilian hospitals, without further transfers, and that they have unconditional access to independent doctors and their lawyers. Addameer urges the European Union, the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross to take immediate action and intervene with Israel in the strongest manner possible to save Bilal and Thaer’s lives before it is too late.

By Fida Jiryis

“I don’t want to open all my wounds…,” says Maher Daoud, a descendent of Iqrit refugees, as we drive to the site where the village of his parents once stood. I wince and apologise, aware of how difficult the subject must be for him. Iqrit is one of the 350 or so Palestinian villages that were completely destroyed and ethnically cleansed in 1948, its residents barred from returning and turned, overnight, into internal refugees in their own country.

Maher, 43, is married to my cousin, Njoud, and they live in Mi’ilya, a village in the Galilee. They regularly drive up to Iqrit, whose church is all that remains today, to partake in religious celebrations at Christmas and Easter and to visit dead relatives in Iqrit’s cemetery. The occasion of our visit now is sombre: Maher’s mother passed away two years ago, and we are here to visit her grave on the occasion of Good Friday, as is the custom among Palestinian Christians.

The drive to Iqrit takes a mere twenty minutes from my village, Fassouta. Both are in the Galilee: the north of historical Palestine, a few kilometres from the Lebanese border. During Israel’s “War of Independence” in 1948, or the Nakba (Catastrophe) as Palestinians refer to it, the residents of Iqrit and Biram, another nearby village, were uprooted from their homes on “security grounds,” presumably for Israel to protect its northern border. The residents of Iqrit were bussed to Rama village, twenty kilometres south in the Galilee, and told it would be for a few weeks, until the security situation was calm and they could return. But they never did. On Christmas Eve, 1950, the Israeli army blew up all the houses of Iqrit, in a timely “Christmas gift” to its expelled Christian residents. My father, a boy of 12 at the time, saw the smoke rising above the village in the distance, and, in panic and haste, told a man named Tu’meh from Iqrit, who had taken refuge in Fassouta. Tu’meh’s eyes filled with tears.

In 1951, the Israeli High Court ruled that the villagers be allowed to return “as long as no emergency decree” existed against the village. With cold predictability, the government was quick to issue such a decree against the Iqrit evacuees. In 1953, it blew up the houses of Biram, too, leaving only the churches of the two villages standing. Two years later, the theft was completed: the land of the two villages – 16,000 dunams (1 dunam = 1000 m2) in Iqrit and 12,000 dunams in Biram – was expropriated for establishing Jewish settlements, which are there today: Even Menahem, Shlomi, and Shtula.

I’d read about this before; Israel coldly and ruthlessly destroyed about 350 Palestinian villages and turned close to 700,000 Palestinians into homeless refugees during the Nakba. I had visited Suhmata, another such village, already, so I was prepared for what I expected to see. Nothing stopped the flood of goose bumps, though, when my cousin whispered: “Here it is. The village starts here.”

“The village” that she was referring to “started” as a small pile of rubble by the roadside. Maher was quick to point to the church atop a hill in the distance. “That’s Iqrit,” he said.

I experienced the same sickening disbelief I’d felt when an old relative had pointed to a tree-covered hill and told me: “Here it is. This is Suhmata.”

In fact, it is completely surreal: all you see are shrubs and trees, thick greenery as is characteristic of the wilderness of Galilee. The small piles of rubble dotted periodically around are the only small reason to believe that those speaking to you are not deranged or delusional.

The climb to Iqrit’s cemetery and church is up a tiny, winding road with tall grass on either side. April is springtime in Palestine, and the Galilee has rightfully been dubbed the most beautiful area in the country, with superb views and hills luscious with thick, deep greenery. The site of Iqrit has one of the best views that I’ve ever seen: the greenery is so vivid, thick, and beautiful that it blows my mind away.

As we climb up the winding road in Maher’s car, I notice piles of fresh rubble by the side. He says: “We put asphalt on the road a few years ago, just to be able to drive up to the cemetery because the old people can’t walk up this far. But the Jewish settlers came and tore up the road. You can see the piles every few meters.” Such is the refusal and phobia of Israel that Palestinians may exercise their right of return to their stolen homes: even a simple road to get to a cemetery is torn apart, lest it become a precedent.

We reach the cemetery and walk in with flowers and candles to pay our respects. I notice a large stone at the entrance with these words on it: “We remember and will not forget – This stone was erected in memory of our fathers and mothers who staged a sit-in in Iqrit Church, in the hope of returning alive, as the highest judicial authority in the country deemed, to rebuild what the hands of decision makers have destroyed. But the policy of rights abuses and land confiscation did not allow them to do so, and they died refugees in their own land.”

I start to read the names that follow… Elias Yousef Daoud, Atallah Mousa Atallah, Elias Diab Sbeit, Najib Jiryis Khayyat, and on it goes… Eighteen names of people who tried desperately to undo the cruel fate that they had been dealt by Israel and return to their homes, but whose efforts were in vain, until they could only return as dead to be buried in their village.

In fact, such was not even the case – from the time Iqrit was ethnically cleansed in 1948 until 1972, its scattered residents were not even allowed to bury their dead in the village. This posed a serious problem, for they had to rely on the kindness of the people of Rama to give them a space in its cemetery. Suddenly, a death was not only cause for mourning but for logistical worry as well. In a sad story that Maher told me, a group of young men once decided to break the rule and took the body of one of their dead for burial at night in Iqrit. Israeli soldiers heard of the matter and followed them, then forced them to dig the ground again, retrieve the coffin and take it to be buried elsewhere.

Life for the living wasn’t much easier. The people of Iqrit settled in Rama in harsh conditions. With the sudden influx of refugees, daily living was crowded and difficult, and jobs were scarce. The pain of having just lost, overnight, everything that they owned was compounded by this new and harsh reality. Maher, for example, was the grandson of the mukhtar, or head of the village, of Iqrit. His grandfather was very well off, owned a shop and an olive oil press, and traded in tobacco. The shock of losing all that he owned – his home, lands, and businesses – and being turned into a homeless, penniless refugee overnight was overwhelming. Maher’s father lived in denial. “For years, all the time that I was growing up, my father refused to paint the house or do any badly needed renovation to it. Why? Because he feared that in doing so, he would be seen as acclimatising to his new home, having forgotten Iqrit or his hope of returning.”

The people of Iqrit proved themselves in Rama, taking menial work and enduring difficult conditions to support their families. Eventually, the next generations moved to Haifa and elsewhere in search of work.

Do they feel a connection to Rama, now, as their surrogate home? I pose the question to Maher and he says, “Sure, I was born in Rama and grew up there, I have memories there and feel some belonging. But I’m not from Rama. I’m from Iqrit.” He tells me that the people of Rama also add to this feeling; when he asked for directions to someone’s house, for example, the man in the street responded with: “Oh! The man from Iqrit…” before giving him directions. This was despite the man in question having lived in Rama for more than sixty years.

Maher was sorely reminded of this misfit when he decided to build a house for himself and his family. His father had no land in Rama. When Maher got married, he rented a flat in Kfar Veradim, a Jewish locale near the Palestinian village of Tarshiha where he works, and lived there for a number of years. Then, with rent becoming too high for him, he moved to Mi’ilya, another nearby Arab village, where he bought land to buy a house. He then faced a problem that he had never thought of: some residents of Mi’ilya did not want him. He was labelled a stranger, and an uproar ensued on his owning land in the village, including threats and slander against him. Maher comments bitterly: “If I were still in Iqrit, my grandfather’s land would have been more than enough. I would not have needed to beg anyone for a corner to live in with my family!”

“Every day, I feel that I’m a living testimony to the injustice that was done to us,” he continues. I ask him how he reconciles, internally, living in Israel, alongside the people who took away his village and committed this injustice. “It’s a huge contradiction,” he says painfully. “They are the ones who did this to me, to us, yet they are my customers in my hummus shop; I need them to survive.” He finds it emotionally difficult to separate work from the personal, though. Sometimes, he enters into political discussions with Jewish customers, but is frustrated because he can’t say everything he wants. He cites an incident that took place when he was living in Kefar Veradim. One of his neighbours had come to his shop to buy food and enquired, “So, what’s it like living in our place?” Maher quickly looked at her and replied, “Actually, you’re the ones living in my place. You’re the guests in this country, and unwanted ones at that.” The customer did not return.

The people of Iqrit are remarkably tight-knit and steadfast in their resolution to return to their village. Six decades after they were ousted from their homes and lands, they still pray in their church, bury their dead in Iqrit, and hold summer camps there annually for their children, to teach them about their village. A famous poet from Iqrit, Aouni Sbeit, was once quoted telling a reporter, during a demonstration of the people of Iqrit in front of the Israeli prime minister’s office: “If you put your ear to the belly of a pregnant woman from Iqrit, you will hear the baby saying that we shall return!”

Powerful words, but whether they will ever come true for these internal refugees is anyone’s guess. Despite an on-going legal battle, Israel will not allow them to return, lest it set a precedent for the return of other Palestinian refugees to their homes. Despite the fact that, in 1998, then-justice minister Tzachi Hanegbi recommended to the Netanyahu government that “no obstacles should be placed in the way of the return of the evacuees,” the final settlement offered to them in 1995 and 1996 was that Iqrit and Biram be re-established as community settlements on the basis of long-term land leases. In other words, the residents would have to “rent” their own lands from the state. Not surprisingly, they refused. The case has since been at a stalemate. Maher remarks bitterly: “How many articles have been written about Iqrit… How much material circulated… And we still can’t go home.”

The story of Iqrit, though, illustrates the power of home and belonging. No one, not even Israel, can take that away. Palestinians have been connected to this land for generations; it’s not a connection that they can sever or replace. They know no other home and ask only for their basic human right: to return to this home that they were so cruelly ousted from. “My father has lived a temporary existence for sixty-four years,” Maher says. “Because, for sixty-four years, he’s been sitting on his suitcase, waiting to go home.”

Fida Jiryis is a Palestinian writer, editor, and author of Hayatuna Elsagheera (Our Small Life), 2011, a collection of Arabic short stories depicting village life in the Galilee. She can be reached at fida_jiryis@hotmail.com

‘Occupation & Water Rights’

Guest speaker, visiting Palestinian Zayneb Al-Shalalfeh (of the NGO ‘Life Source’
http://www.lifesource.ps) will report on and discuss the environmental impact
of Israel’s occupation and s peak on popular resistance and the issue of water
justice.  Also featuring Martin Hemingway, Leeds Green Party.

At the Headingley enterprise and arts centre (HEART),
Bennett Road,
Leeds.
LS6 3HN

Tuesday 15th May 2012, 7:30- 9:30 pm

Part of the annual commemoration of the Palestinian Nakba.

Can anyone doubt that if there were more than 1300 hunger strikers in any country in the world other than Palestine, the media in the West would be obsessed with the story?  It would be featured day after day, and reported on from all angles, including the severe medical risks associated with such a lengthy refusal to take food. At this time two Palestinians who were the first to start this current wave of resistance, Thaer Halaheh and Bilal Diab, entering their 64^th day without food, are reported by the prisoner protection association, Addameer, and the NGO, Physician for Human Rights-Israel, to be in critical condition with their lives hanging in the balance.  Despite this dramatic state of affairs there is scant attention in Europe, and literally none in North America.

            In contrast, consider the attention that the Western media has devoted to a lone blind Chinese human rights lawyer, Chen Guangcheng, who managed to escape from house arrest in Beijing a few days ago and find a safe haven at the U.S. Embassy. This is an important international incident, to be sure, but is it truly so much more significant than the Palestinian story as to explain the total neglect of the extraordinary exploits of these thousands of Palestinians who are sacrificing their bodies, quite possibly their lives, to nonviolently protest severe mistreatment in the Israeli prison system.? Except among their countrymen, and to some extent the region, these many thousand Palestinian prisoners have been languishing within an opaque black box ever ever since 1967, are denied protection, exist without rights, and cope as best they can without even the acknowledgement of their plight.

            There is another comparison to be made. Recall the outpouring of concern and sympathy throughout the West for Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who was captured on the Gaza border and held captive by Palestinians for five years. A powerful global campaign for his release on humanitarian ground was organized, and received constant reinforcement in the media. World leaders pleaded for his release, and Israeli commanding officers even told IDF fighting forces during the massive attacks on Gaza at the end of 2008 that killed more than 1450 Palestinians that their real mission was to free Shalit or at least hold accountable the entire civilian population of Gaza. When Shalit finally released in a prisoner exchange a few months ago there was a brief celebration that abruptly ended when, much to the disappointment of the Israeli establishment, Shalit reported good treatment during captivity. Shalit’s father went further, saying if he was a Palestinian he would have tried to capture Israeli soldiers. Not surprisingly, Shalit, instead of being revered as an Israeli hero, has quietly disappeared from public view.           

            This current wave of hunger strikes started on April 17^th, Palestinian Prisoners’ Day, and was directly inspired by the recently completed long and heroic hunger strikes of Khader Adnan (66 days) and Hana Shalabi (43 days) both of whom protested against the combination of administrative detention and abusive arrest and interrogation procedures. It should be understood that administrative detention is validated by secret evidence and allows Israel to imprison Palestinians for six months at a time without bringing any criminal charges, with terms renewable as they expire. Hana Shalabi was among those released in the prisoner exchange, but then barely recovering from her prior detention period, was rearrested in a night arrest raid, and sentenced once again to a term of confinement for four months. Or consider the experience of Thaer Halahla, eight times subject to administrative detention for a total of six and a half years.

Both Mr. Adnan and Ms. Shalabi were released by deals negotiated at a time when their physical survival seemed in doubt, making death seem imminent. Israel apparently did not want to risk a third intifada resulting as a reaction to such martyrdom. At the same time Israel, as usual, did not want to seem to be retreating, or draw into question its reliance on administrative detention and imprisonment. Israel has refused, until the present, to examine the grievances that gave rise to these hunger strikes. In Hana Shalabi’s case her release was coupled with a punitive deportation order, which cruelly confines her to Gaza for the next three years, away from her family and the familiar surroundings of her home village of Burqin near Jenin in the West Bank. There are some indications that Ms. Shalabi was not fully informed about the deportation feature of her release, and was manipulated by prison authorities and the lawyer representing her interests. The current hunger strikers have been offered similar conditional releases, but have so far steadfastly refused to resume eating if it led to deportation or exile. At this time it is unclear how Israel will respond. There is a fierce struggle of wills between the strikers and the prison authorities, between those with hard power of domination and those with the soft power of moral and spiritual courage. The torment of these striking prisoners is not only a consequence of their refusal to accept food until certain conditions are met. Israeli prison guards and authorities are intensifying the torments of hunger. There are numerous reports that the strikers are being subjected to belittling harassment and a variety of punishments, including solitary confinement, confiscation of personal belongings, denial of family visits, denial of examination by humanitarian NGOs, and a hardhearted refusals to transfer to medically threatened strikers to civilian hospitals where they could receive the kinds of medical treatment their critical conditions require.

              The Israeli response to the hunger strikes is shocking, but hardly surprising, within the wider setting of the occupation. Instead of heeding the moral appeal implicit in such extreme forms of resistance, there are widespread reliable reports of punitive responses by Israeli prison authorities. Hunger strikers have been placed in solitary confinement, held in shackles despite their weakened conditions, denied family visits, had personal belongings confiscated, were subjected to harassing comments by guards intended to demoralize. Israeli media has generally taken a cynical attitude toward the strikes, suggesting that these hunger strikers are publicity seeking, aiming to receive ‘a get out of jail free’ card, and deserve no empathy even if their life is in jeopardy because they voluntarily gave up food by their own free will, and hence Israeli prison authorities have no responsibility for their fate. Some news reports in Israel have speculated about whether if one or more hunger strikers dies in prison it will spark an uprising among the Palestinians, but this is less an expression of concern or a willingness to look at the substantive issues than it is a source of worry about future stability.

            Broader issues are also at stake. When in the past Palestinians resorted to violent forms of resistance they were branded by the West as terrorists, their deeds were covered to bring out sensationalist aspects, but when Palestinians resort to nonviolent forms of resistance, whether hunger strikes or BDS or an intifada, their actions fall mainly on deaf ears and blind eyes, or worse, there is a concerted propaganda spin to depict the particular tactic of nonviolent resistance as somehow illegitimate, either as a cheap trick to gain sympathy or as a dirty trick to destroy the state of Israel. All the while, Israel’s annexationist plans move ahead, with settlements expanding, and now recently, with settler outposts, formerly illegal even under Israeli law, in the process of being retroactively legalized. Such moves signal once and for all that the Netanyahu leadership exhibits not an iota of good faith when it continues to telling the world that it is dedicated to negotiating a peace treaty with the Palestinians. It is a pity that the Palestinian Authority has not yet had the diplomatic composure to call it quits when it comes to heeding diversionary calls from the Quartet for a resumption of yet another round of meaningless direct talks. It is long past time to crumble bridge to nowhere.

            That rock star of liberal pontificators, Thomas Friedman, has for years been preaching nonviolence to the Palestinians, implying that Israel as a democratic country with a strong moral sensitivity that would yield in the face of such a principled challenge. Yet when something as remarkable as this massive expression of a Palestinian commitment to nonviolent resistance in the form of this open-ended hunger strike, dubbed ‘the war of empty stomachs’, takes place, Friedman along with his liberal brothers is stony silent, and the news sections of the newspaper of the New York Times are unable to find even an inch of space to report on these dramatic protests against Israel’s use of administrative detention and abusive treatment during arrest, interrogation, and imprisonment. Shame on you, Mr. Friedman!

(At last, the NY Times on May 3, 2012 reports on the hunger strikers in a front page story, perhaps yielding to the growing shame of its silence up to now!)

            Robert Malley, another influential liberal voice who had been a Middle East advisor to Bill Clinton when he was president, while more constrained than Friedman, suggests that any sustained display of Palestinian nonviolence if met with Israeli violence would be an embarrassment for Washington. Malley insists that if the Palestinians were to take to the streets in the spirit of Tahrir Square, and Israelis responded violently, as the Netanyahu government certainly, it “would put the United States in an ..acute dilemma about how to react to Israel’s reaction.” The dilemma depicted by Malley derives from Obama constant encouragement of the democratic aspirations of a people who he has repeatedly said deserve their own state on the one side and the unconditional alignment with Israel on the other. Only a confirmed liberal would call this a genuine dilemma, as any informed and objective observer would know, that the U.S. Government would readily accept, as it has repeatedly done in the past, an Israeli claim that force was needed to maintain public order. In this manner, Palestinian nonviolence would be disregarded, and the super-alliance of these two partners in crime once more reaffirmed.

            Let there be no mistake about the moral and spiritual background of the challenge being mounted by these Palestinians. Undertaking an open ended hunger strike is an inherently brave act that is fraught with risks and uncertainties, and is only undertaken as an expression of extreme frustration or acute deprivation. It is not an act undertaken lightly or as a stunt. For anyone who has attempted to express protest in this manner, and I have for short periods during my decade of opposition to the Vietnam War, it is both scary and physically taxing even for a day or so, but to maintain the discipline and strength of will to sustain such a strike for weeks at a time requires a rare combination of courage and resolve. Only specially dedicated individuals adopt and maintain such a tactic. For a hunger strike to be done on such a scale of collective action underscores the horrible ordeal of the Palestinians that has been all but erased from the political consciousness of the West in the hot aftermath of the Arab Spring, and may also point to a wider willingness of Palestinians to mount their own version of Tahrir Square.

            The world has long refused to take notice of Palestinian one-sided efforts over the years to reach a peaceful outcome of their conflict with Israel. It is helpful to recall that in 1988 the PLO officially accepted Israel within its 1967 borders, a huge territorial concession, leaving the Palestinians with only 22% of historical Palestine on which to establish an independent and sovereign state. In recent years, the main tactics of Palestinian opposition to the occupation, including on the part of Hamas, has been largely to turn away from violence, adhering to a diplomacy and practice that looked toward long-term peaceful coexistence between two peoples. Israel has not taken note of either development, and has instead continuous thrown sand in Palestinian eyes. The official Israeli response to Palestinian moves toward political restraint and away from violence have been to embark upon a program of feverish  settlement expansion, extensive targeted killing, reliance on excessive retaliatory violence, as well as an intensifying oppressiveness that gave rise to these hunger strikes. One expression of this oppressiveness is the 50% increase in the number of Palestinians held under administrative detention during the last year, along with an officially mandated worsening of conditions throughout its prison system.

Illegal Settlements Bonanza

Israel Plots an Endgame

by RAMZY BAROUD

Israel’s colonization policies are entering an alarming new phase, comparable in historic magnitude to the original plans to colonize Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem following the war of 1967.

On April 24, an Israeli ministerial committee approved three settlement outposts – Bruchin and Rechelim in the northern part of the West Bank, and Sansana in the south. Although all settlement activities in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem are considered illegal by international law, Israeli law differentiates between sanctioned settlements and ‘illegal’ ones. This distinction has actually proved to be no more than a disingenuous attempt at conflating international law, which is applicable to occupied lands, and Israeli law, which is in no way relevant.

Since 1967, Israel placed occupied Palestinian land, privately owned or otherwise, into various categories. One of these categories is ‘state-owned’, as in obtained by virtue of military occupation. For many years, the ‘state-owned’ occupied land was allotted to various purposes. Since 1990, however, the Israeli government refrained from establishing settlements, at lease formally. Now, according to the Israeli anti-settlement group, Peace Now,  “instead of going to peace the government is announcing the establishment of three new settlements…this announcement is against the Israeli interest of achieving peace and a two states solution”

Although the group argues that the four-man committee did not have the authority to make such a decision, it actually matters little. Every physical space in the occupied territories – whether privately owned or ‘state owned’, ‘legally’ obtained or ‘illegally’ obtained – is free game. The extremist Jewish settlers, whose tentacles are reaching far and wide, chasing out Palestinians at every corner, haven’t received such empowering news since the heyday of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

The move regarding settlements is not an isolated one. The Israeli government is now challenging the very decisions made by the Israeli Supreme Court, which has been used as a legitimization platform for many illegal settlements that drove Palestinians from their land.

On April 27, the Israeli government reportedly asked the high court to delay the demolition of an ‘unauthorized’ West Bank outpost in the Beit El settlement which was scheduled to take place on May 1st. The land, even by Israeli legal standards, is considered private Palestinian land, and the Israeli government had committed to the court to take down the illegal outposts – again, per Israeli definition – on the specified date.

Now the rightwing Netanyahu government is having another change of heart. In its request to the court, the government argued: “The evacuation of the buildings could carry social, political and operational ramifications for construction in Beit El and other settlements.” Such an argument, if applied in the larger context of the occupied territories, could easily justify why no outposts should be taken down. It could eradicate, once and for all, such politically inconvenient terms such as ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’.

“Previous Israeli governments have pledged to demolish the unauthorized settler outposts in the West Bank, but only a handful have been removed,” according to CNN online. In fact, that ‘handful’ are likely to be rebuilt, amongst many more new outposts, now that the new legal precedence is underway.   Michael Sfard, an attorney with Yesh Din, which reportedly advocates Palestinian rights, described the request as “an announcement of war by the Israeli government against the rule of law.” More specifically, “they said clearly that they have reached a decision not to evacuate illegal construction on private Palestinian property.”

Some analysts suggested that Netanyahu was bowing down to the more rightwing elements in his cabinet – as if the man had, till now, been a peacemaker. The bottom line is that Israel has decided embark on a new and dangerous phase, one that violates not only international law, but Israel’s own self-tailored laws that were designed to colonize the occupied territories. It appears that even those precarious ‘laws’ are no longer capable of meeting the colonial appetite of Israeli settlers and the ruling class.

Israeli settlements have been contextualized through Israeli legal and political references, as opposed to references commonly accepted in international law. The emphasis on differences between Israeli governments, political parties and religious/ultra-nationalist settlement movements is distracting and misleading; colonizing the rest of historic Palestine has been and remains a national Israeli project.

An article in the rightwing Israeli Jerusalem Post agrees. “Support for settlement is not simply a program of right-of-center Likud. Its history has firm roots in Labor party activity during the periods of its governments, and activities by predecessors of the Labor party going back before the creation of the Israeli state” (April 27).

The only variable that might be worth examining is the purpose of the settlement, not the settlement itself. Following the war of 1967, the Allon plan sought to annex more than 30 percent of the West Bank and all of Gaza for security purposes.

It stipulated the establishment of a “security corridor” along the Jordan River, as well outside the “Green Line”, a one-sided Israeli demarcation of its borders with the West Bank. Then, there was no Likud party to demonize, for that was the Labor party’s vision for the newly occupied territories.

While the Israeli settlement drive since then has swallowed much of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, populating them with over half a million Israelis, the international community’s response was as moot in 1967 as it is now in 2012. Responding to the latest sanctioning of illegal outposts, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon declared that he was “deeply troubled” by the news. Meanwhile, Russia was ‘deeply concerned’ and so was the EU’s Catherine Ashton. As for the US, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland insisted that the Israeli measure is not “helpful to the process.” What process?

While Israel has now showed all of its cards, and the international community declared its complacency or impotence, the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah continues to plan some kind of UN censure of the settlements. Even if a watered-down version of some UN draft managed to survive the US veto, what are the chances of Israel heeding the call of international community?

There is no doubt that Israel is plotting its version of the endgame in Palestine, which sees Palestinians continuing to subsist in physical fragmentation and permanent occupation. Unless a popular Palestinian uprising takes hold, no one is likely to challenge what is actually an Israeli declaration of war against the Palestinian people.
—-
Ramzy Baroud is editor of PalestineChronicle.com. He is the author of The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle  and  “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story” (Pluto Press, London).

The two children who were kidnapped on Wednesday at dawn were identified as Hani Sarhan, 14, and Taha Sarhan, 10.

On Tuesday, Israeli soldiers kidnapped Adnan Al-Joulani, 12, from Ath-Thoury neighborhood, and took him to an Israeli Police Center in Talpiot area.

The Al-Joulani family stated that their son was picnicking with his friends in the meadows of the Jabal Al-Mukabber area in East Jerusalem, and was kidnapped while on his way back home. His brother, Shadi, stated that the police claimed Adnan was carrying stones in his hands when he was kidnapped, but the family denied the Israeli claims and stated that what their son carried was a football. The Police interrogated Al-Joulani for several hours and released him on 500 NIS bail.

Several human rights groups recently warned of a sharp increase in arrests of Palestinian children in Occupied East Jerusalem.

Israeli soldiers broke into and searched several homes in the Silwan area according to Radio Bethlehem 2000, based in the West Bank city of Bethlehem

On April 22, Bob Simon and the US news show “60 Minutes” shared the painful truth with 13 million viewers — the primary cause for the exodus of Palestinian Christians from the Holy Land is the nearly 45 year-old illegal Israeli occupation. Now “60 Minutes” is being attacked for telling the truth.  A range of Israel-first partisan groups have gone on the attack against CBS, and they have received over 29,000 emails of complaint. If “60 Minutes” backs down, then other media outlets will do the same. Sign the  petition below to be sure that CBS hears from supporters for its brave and truthful reporting.

UK’s largest mutual takes lead among European supermarkets

The Co-operative Group has become the first major European supermarket group to end trade with companies that export produce from illegal Israeli settlements.

The UK’s fifth biggest food retailer and its largest mutual business, the Co-op took the step as an extension of its existing policy which had been not to source produce from illegal settlements that have been built on Palestinian territories in the West bank.

Now the retail and insurance giant has taken it one step further by “no longer engaging with any supplier of produce known to be sourcing from the Israeli settlements”.

The decision will hit four companies and contracts worth some £350,000. But the Co-op stresses this is not an Israeli boycott and that its contracts will go to other companies inside Israel that can guarantee they don’t export from illegal settlements.

Welcoming the move, Palestinian human rights campaigners said it was the first time a supermarket anywhere in the west had taken such a position.

The Co-op’s decision will immediately affect four suppliers, Agrexco, Arava Export Growers, Adafresh and Mehadrin, Israel’s largest agricultural export company. Other companies may be affected by the policy.

Hilary Smith, Co-op member and Boycott Israel Network (BIN) agricultural trade campaign co-ordinator, said the Co-op “has taken the lead internationally in this historic decision to hold corporations to account for complicity in Israel’s violations of Palestinian human rights We strongly urge other retailers to take similar action.”

A spokesperson for the Palestinian Union of Agricultural Work Committees, which works to improve the conditions of Palestinian agricultural communities, said: “Israeli agricultural export companies like Mehadrin profit from and are directly involved in the ongoing colonisation of occupied Palestinian land and theft of our water. Trade with such companies constitutes a major form of support for Israel’s apartheid regime over the Palestinian people, so we warmly welcome this principled decision by the Co-operative. The movement for boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel until it complies with international law is proving to be a truly effective form of action in support of Palestinian rights.”

Boycott campaigns against Israel are routinely denounced by Israeli officials as part of a drive to “delegitimise” the Jewish state. A law, passed last July, allows those that call for economic, cultural or academic boycotts against Israel, its institutions or areas under its control to be sued.

The delegates to the Annual Conference of the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC), the umbrella group for every trade union in Scotland, today voted unanimously and repeatedly against Israeli apartheid.

The 450 delegates voted to:

* campaign to expose the role of the racist JNF (Jewish National Fund) in the Israeli apartheid system
* support the participants in the Welcome to Palestine initiative who tried to travel peacefully to Palestine via Tel Aviv Airport
* fully support the Palestinian-Brazilian call for the World Social Forum-Free Palestine in Brazil in November
* support the Palestinian hunger strikers and the work of Addameer, the Palestinian prisoner support organisation.

STUC <http://www.scottishpsc.org.uk/images/STUC.jpg> Congress delegates congratulated the students for their work organising Israeli Apartheid Week 2012 events, and who initiated action in support of the Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike, and called for support for the Scottish demonstration this Saturday 28th April in Edinburgh.

These decisions of the Scottish TUC in support of the Palestinian freedom struggle, by a union confederation representing half a million organised workers in every sector of the economy, will be widely seen as a continuation of the international solidarity the STUC also provided to the liberation struggle in South Africa.

Glasgow, Scotland’s biggest city, named a city centre street after Mandela in 1986 while he was still on Robben Island. How long till there is a Palestine Square or Palestine Street in our major cities?

The full text of the resolutions – all passed unanimously: http://bit.ly/JnCgOG <http://t.ymlp270.net/bheanamwujagaqmapamybu/click.php>

JERUSALEM — UN agencies in the occupied West Bank said on Sunday that Israel last week destroyed 21 homes of Palestinian Bedouin refugees, making 54 people including 35 children homeless.

A joint statement from the refugee agency UNRWA and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs condemned the April 18 demolition of the structures at Khalayleh north of Jerusalem, along with the removal the same day of refugees from two houses in annexed east Jerusalem.

“The forced eviction of Palestine refugees and the demolition of Palestinian homes and other civilian structures in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is contrary to international law,” UNRWA’s West Bank director, Felipe Sanchez, said in the statement.

“We urge the Israeli authorities to find an immediate solution to enable the Palestinian population of the occupied West Bank, to lead a normal life, in full realisation of their rights”, he added.

Israeli officials could not immediately confirm or deny the Khalayleh demolitions.

The European Union on Saturday condemned the east Jerusalem eviction, in which 14 Palestinians were removed from two houses in the Beit Hanina neighbourhood ahead of Jewish settlers moving in.

The EU’s diplomatic missions in Jerusalem and Ramallah said in a statement that they were “deeply concerned by the plans to build a new settlement in the midst of this traditional Palestinian neighbourhood.”

“Settlements are illegal under international law,” it added.

Israeli police evicted the Natshe family from their Beit Hanina homes after Jewish settlers won a court battle over ownership.

It was the first successful attempt by settlers to secure property in the well-heeled Arab district in the northern part of east Jerusalem.

Israel captured east Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War, and considers all the city to be its “eternal, undivided” capital. It does not consider construction in the eastern sector as settlement building.

But the Palestinians want east Jerusalem as the capital of their promised state, and furiously denounce any move by Israel to buy or build property there.

The international community considers all Israeli settlement on occupied land to be illegal under international law.

Several large families–among them, Ihrizat, Ihraini, and Abu Samra–belong to Um al-’Amad, perched on a high hill west of the desert and directly across from the drab and violent settlement of Otniel. In fact, Otniel sits on the Abu Samra family’s lands. Like all other settlements, Otniel has also drawn a wide perimeter fence around itself, effectively annexing another large chunk of Palestinian land; still worse, for the last thirteen years the settlers and soldiers have denied the Palestinians access to the relatively fertile grazing and agricultural land in the wadis just under the settlement. Israeli courts have confirmed Palestinian title to these lands in the wadis, but in itself this is by no means a promise of access. Quite the contrary: like in most places in south Hebron, we are faced with a hard micro-struggle for every inch.

Abu Khalil Abu Samra tells me: “Even three weeks ago we could only look with longing at our lands, knowing our feet would never again touch them.” You have to hear this sentence in Arabic and let yourself begin to feel what it means for a farmer to watch his fields being stolen in broad daylight. Then you have to imagine all the rest of it–the endless battle in the courts, the continuous hassle with the soldiers, the threats and abuse, the humiliation of being driven off your property at gun-point. It has gone on like this for years, and it will happen again today.

Last week there was a miracle. Ta’ayush volunteers accompanied Palestinian shepherds into the wadi and stood by them while the sheep grazed and the farmers plowed one field. Today we are eager to extend the grazing grounds, to recover another chunk of land, closer to the settlement. We make our way on dirt and gravel roads through Al-Karma and Bayt Al-Imra to Um al-’Amad, and we descend into the valley where the sheep are already grazing to their content. It is spring–a brief burst of green; in two weeks it will be gone. The hills, usually a mélange of browns and yellows, look like Ireland. Whole fields are soaked in the red of poppies and the green-yellow of mustard; here and there you can see sheaves of ripening barley and wheat. Who would believe that they have come up out of this caked and arid soil?

It is still early in the morning under a dense blue sky. These are the moments of blessing that I have learned to cherish–the short overture before the soldiers arrive. The world looks almost livable. There are a handful of shepherds, and Abu Khalil and his brother Abu Khalid are with us, not quite believing that they are standing, like free men, on their own soil.

But how free can they be? The first batch of soldiers is waiting for us. For some time they watch us from the hillside as we move along the wadi with the sheep. We can see them calling some superior on their cell phones; even from a distance they’re already busy photographing us. One officer has a camouflage net incongruously pasted over his helmet, a comic touch in these open spaces, as if it were possible for him to go unseen. They have guns and all the metal trinkets that go with guns.

Finally, since by now we’re only 200 meters or so from the perimeter wall of Otniel, they come striding toward us through the fields. They tell us the Matak–a senior officer from the Civil Administration–is on his way with the police. We wait. We know the law is on our side, there is no question about it, we even have it in writing, but we also know that this means next to nothing in south Hebron.

Matak never arrives. Instead, a detachment of Border Policemen turns up, led by Yusuf, a Druze officer, whom we know all too well. The Border Police are bad news. Now the standard sequence kicks in. We know it by heart; here’s a simple précis.

Yusuf: What are you doing here?
Danny and Guy: We’re here with the shepherds who are grazing their sheep on their land.
Yusuf: Who told you it’s their land?
Dani: They know it, and the court confirmed it. We have the documents with us.
Yusuf: Why should I believe them?
Guy: It’s not a matter for belief.
Yusuf: The only place you and I can argue about this is in court. Definitely not here. No one is allowed to be here without coordinating with the army.
Guy: Wrong. What you are saying is completely illegal, as the courts have ruled over and over. You have no right to tell these people to leave, or to order us to leave.
Yusuf: You’re just here to make trouble.
Danny: We’re here to protect these people and to see that their claim is honored.

Two settlers, one in Shabbat white, have turned up, on cue, to control the proceedings. Yusuf looks at the map and the court order. Surely he must realize that he is facing the truth. He has a problem.

“I tell you what,” he says. “If these men”–he means the two Abu Samra brothers–“want to come with me to the end of the wadi to look at the land, I’m prepared to go.” Turning to Guy: “You, only you, can come, too. The rest of your group waits here.”

So we wait. Ten minutes later they’re back, and Yusuf, with the settlers above him, knows what to do: OK, you’ve seen the wadi, now all of you have to leave. I’ll give you five minutes before I start making arrests.

Danny: No! You’re breaking the law, and you know it. You have no right to drive these people off their land. We’ve been through this many times before.   Yusuf: We have reason to fear a clash between you and the settlers. You’re a threat to the peace. I’m a police officer, and I’m ordering you to leave.
Neriya: That’s very nice. The real criminals are right here on the hill, and you’re accusing us of disturbing the peace.
Me: What about these shepherds? Do they or don’t they have the right to graze down here in the wadi?
Yusuf: Yes they do. Now I’m done talking with you. This argument is over.

For good measure, one of his soldiers, short, stocky, and mean, eager to attack and/or arrest us, looks at his watch and says: “Four minutes.”

All of this takes time, much longer than it takes to read my summary, long enough for the sheep to go on happily feeding. But it’s the usual choice, and unfortunately the decision has been made for us–the shepherds and the two brothers are already 50 meters away, heading back toward Um al-’Amad. Perhaps they came to some tacit agreement with Yusuf. They are our hosts; if they leave, there’s no way we can stay.

“Don’t feel bad,” Abu Khalil says to me. “We’re making progress. It’s like climbing a ladder. You go one step at a time, daraj daraj.”

But I do feel bad. The gun has spoken. The gun lies.

We linger in the wadi together with the sheep and the village boys. Yusuf and his men slowly depart. We want to be sure that the Palestinians’ presence here is seen and recognized, that it turns into fact. It’s not a trivial matter. The whole business is as fragile as the little bud of okra–sown just a week ago–that has pushed up through the brown dirt right here before us. In another week, Abu Khalil says, the shoot will be high, and a few days later they’ll harvest the crop–the first from this soil in many years.

The village boys are into theology. “What’s your name?” they ask me. “Da’ud,” I say. “Named for the Prophet Da’ud! Are you a Muslim?” “No, I’m a Jew.” “Do you know how to pray?” “Maybe a little.” I can recite the Fatiha, the opening to the Qur’an. This makes a positive impression. “Sing it,” they say to me, “like the Mu’ezzin does.” I try. They correct me. It’s not so easy to get my voice to the upper register you need for the second phrase, but they seem happy with my efforts. “So why don’t you become a Muslim?” they ask me. “I don’t want to,” I say; “I already told you I’m a Jew.” “But on the Day of Judgment, yaum al-qiyama, only Muslims will go to Paradise, Al-Jannah, Firdaws; the rest will be burned in fire.” “I like the fire.”

They laugh. This has to be put to the test; they borrow a cigarette lighter and hold it to my finger. I fail the test. “Well, maybe we Jews won’t be thrown into the fire,” I say. “Maybe it will be cold there in Hell.” “No way!” They’re very certain. “Fire means fire. The believers and only the believers don’t get burned.” “OK,” I say, “but couldn’t a Jew also be a believer of some sort?” “Absolutely not.”

Now again: “So why don’t you take on Islam?” I’m having trouble explaining, in halting Arabic, the rationale of my choice. Meanwhile, other questions arise. Ella, for example, wants to know if there are animals in Al-Jannah. “Definitely.” “OK,” she says to me, “maybe we should go for it.” She has two beloved cats. Soon a large, ungainly turtle turns up, on his leisurely way to somewhere via this hill, blissfully indifferent, I would guess, to soldiers, settlers, and theologians. They lift him, cradle him in their hands. Might he, too, get a pass into Paradise? It’s definitely possible, they assure me. Things seem to be looking up for turtles, if not for the Jews. One thing we can all agree on: on the Day of Judgment, the settlers will be sent to the fire. The boys laugh again in the relief that certainty brings. Sinners are sinners, and God knows right from wrong.

I hope He does, though sometimes I’m not sure. Or maybe this is the definition of God, which we’ve arrived at together, gently teasing one another on this hill of rocks and thorns. It’s midday: a fierce sun offers a slight, still bearable taste of hellfire. I promise them that, infidel that I am, I’ll be back here next week or the one after. I climb the hill with Abu Khalil. Suddenly I see he has tears in his eyes. “Two weeks ago,” he says, “there was another officer, not Yusuf; a Jew. He was cruel. He told me I would never walk for even one centimeter on my land. And today you came and I walked the whole length of the wadi. My feet are standing on this soil. Do you understand what it means? And we plowed last week and already the first shoots are coming up. I talked to the elders in the village, they said, Forget it, there’s no hope, we’ll never get back the lands they took. I said to them, God will help us.”

RAMALLAH, April 18, 2012 (WAFA) – British Consul General Vincent Finn Wednesday said that the Palestinian flag will fly alongside the flags of every other participating nation in the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympics games that will kick off in 100 days.

Finn said in a press conference in Ramallah marking 100 days to go until the London 2012 Olympics that “the Palestinian Olympic and Paralympics athletes have overcome unique obstacles to participate in the London games, and have demonstrated an inspiring unity of purpose, overcoming the difficulty of division that we all hope ends soon.”

He stressed that the Palestinian cause is one that resonates in the United Kingdom, especially at a time when people around the world focus on the principles of the Olympic Truce and the concept of non-violence.

“We strongly hope that a negotiated solution between Palestine and Israel will enable Palestine to one day compete in the Olympics as a full member of the community of nations – enabling Palestinian athletes to compete as their competitors do under the name of their state,” said Finn.

He added that the UK welcomes the work of President Mahmoud Abbas, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and the Palestinian Authority to develop the capacity to run a democratic and peaceful state, founded on the rule of law and living in peace and security with Israel.

Finn also said that the UK is funding sports clothing for the Palestinian Olympic team and will be working with Palestinian sporting charities over the coming year to ensure that the legacy of London 2012 will be alive in Palestine.

The head of the Egyptian Natural Gas Holding Company has said it has terminated its contract to ship gas to Israel because of violations of contractual obligations, a decision Israel said overshadowed the peace agreement between the two countries.

Mohamed Shoeb, the gas company’s top official, said Sunday’s decision was not political. “This has nothing to do with anything outside of the commercial relations,” Shoeb said.

He said Israel had not paid for its gas in four months. Yigal Palmor, Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, denied the claim of not paying.

The 2005 Egypt-Israel gas deal has come under strident criticism from leaders of the popular uprising that toppled Hosni Mubarak, the longtime Egyptian president, last year.

Critics charge that Israel got bargain prices, and Mubarak cronies skimmed millions of dollars off the proceeds.

The sale of gas to Israel, which signed a peace treaty with Egypt in 1979, has always been controversial in the Arab world’s most populous country. It was the largest trade deal between the two former foes.

Egyptian radicals have blown up the gas pipeline to Israel 14 times since the uprising.

The country’s military ruler was quoted by the MENA news agency as saying that the Egyptian armed forces would defend the borders with Israel if necessary.  Addressing troops in the Sinai Peninsula during annual field exercises on Monday, Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi said: “Our borders, especially the northeast ones, are inflamed. We do not attack neighbouring countries but will defend our territory. We will break the legs of any trying to attack us or come near the borders.”

‘Great concern’

Tantawi’s statement came apparently in response to remarks the previous day by Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s finance minister, that the Egyptian announcement was of “great concern” politically and economically.

“This is a dangerous precedent that overshadows the peace agreements and the peaceful atmosphere between Israel and Egypt,” Steinitz said in a statement.   Israel relies on Egyptian natural gas for 40 per cent of its supplies to produce electricity, the chairman of a government holding firm said on Sunday.

The Israeli side said the decision was “unlawful and in bad faith”, accusing the Egyptian side of failing to supply the gas quantities it is owed. The dispute is under international arbitration.

Israel insists it is paying a fair price for the gas.

Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna, reporting from Cairo, said the row would have major political consequences.

“At the base of it, this is a commercial dispute, which has in reality been under international arbitration since September last year,” he said.

“But when this agreement was reached in 2005, it was subject to government approvals of Israel and Egypt, many believe under pressure from the government of the US.

“So although this maybe a commercial situation at the moment, this is an issue that will have immense political, international fallout in the days to come.”   However, Al Jazeera’s Cal Perry, reporting from Jerusalem, said that the Israeli government had been downplaying the dispute.

“Everyone here is downplaying it. In fact we just heard from the prime minister’s office that the deal is not off, that this is just a commercial issue between the israeli and Egyptian gas companies,” he said.

“It is not surprising that they’re downplaying it if you look at the implications this could have.

“If this deal falls apart the concerns I think many people have is that the peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, which was signed in 1979, could be in jeopardy.”

Mubarak defended

In January, a lawyer defending Mubarak told a Cairo court that there was not a shred of evidence linking the deposed Egyptian president to the controversial gas deal.

Farid al-Deeb said Egypt’s spy agency negotiated the deal in line with international norms.

“There isn’t an ounce of evidence that Mubarak was involved in the deal to import gas to Israel,” costing the state $714m  in losses, Deeb told the court.   Among the shareholders of East Mediterranean, the joint Egyptian-Israeli company that carries the gas to Israel, is Hussein Salem, a close friend of Mubarak.
After the many disruptions to the supply of gas over the past year, Israeli ministers have urged the speedy exploitation of recently discovered gas fields off the country’s northern coast.

Israeli officials believe that exploitation of two major natural gas fields could compensate for the loss of Egyptian gas.

Israel has already moved to begin exploiting the fields, signing a deal with Cyprus to mark out maritime borders, but it faces challenges from Lebanon, which claims that the gas fields lie in its territorial waters.

Al Jazeera’s Perry said that the attacks on the pipeline had become a major problem for Israel in the past 14 months, and as a result the country had to purchase gas supplies from other countries as far away as Mexico.

“The price of electricity has gone up 20 per cent and the cost of living continues to go up as well,” he said.