Israeli Military Enters Budrus
February 11, 2004
Report from the International Solidarity Movement
By: S'ra and Erik
The Israeli military entered Budrus, a rural village 3 kilometers from the Green Line in the Ramallah district in the West Bank, at least four times yesterday. Budrus is earmarked to be encircled by the Apartheid Wall in the coming weeks. Each time one to four army vehicles were present. During the incursions the Israeli soldiers used live ammunition, rubber bullets and tear gas.
Tear gas filled many homes in the center of the village, making it very difficult to breathe. Many elderly people and children were badly affected. One 75-year old woman said, "I thought I was going to die from the tear gas, it was so strong."
Her 16-year old nephew was beaten by six Israeli soldiers while walking from the store to his home, just meters away. According to eyewitnesses the boy did nothing to provoke the soldiers. The military entered one Palestinian's house by breaking down the door but no one was home. One boy and one man were injured by rubber bullets. One home had a window shot out by a rubber bullet, the type filled with metal and coated with a thin layer of rubber. These types of rubber bullets are especially lethal and have caused fatalities. The hole in the window was exactly at height of a person's head when standing. No one was hit by the bullet.
Abu Ahmed, a community leader, did not know why the Israeli military entered Budrus. "Maybe they are just trying to disrupt our lives more or maybe they have something else planned that we do not know about."
The Israeli government informed Budrus last Thursday that the construction of the wall will commence any day now. Every morning everyone in the village, both Palestinians and internationals, wake up to see if trees are being cut or if the wall is being constructed. The village does not know yet exactly where the wall will be built and if it will be concrete or fence.
In the last couple of days the preparation for the wall has increased dramatically. The workers, protected by private security forces, have been digging trenches to lay electrical wires and leveling the earth where the wall will stand. Yesterday, olive trees that were donated by Rabbis for Human Rights and planted in a previous demonstration were destroyed by construction equipment.
Budrus and eight neighboring villages will be completely imprisoned by the wall. Budrus will loss 1000 of its 5000 dunums of land (4 dunums equal 1 acre) due to the construction of the wall. This will include at least 3000 olive trees, much of the grazing land for the sheep and goats and the land dedicated to the cultivation of wheat. Only one entrance gate is planned for the entire area, which will be controlled by the Israeli military. This will almost completely obstruct the Palestinians' ability to travel to other areas in the West Bank. Families will be separated even further; there will be no access to universities, jobs and hospitals, and agricultural products will never make it to markets. The preparations for the wall have already destroyed 60 trees in Budrus, and unfortunately more will be toppled as the bulldozers continue to invade the area.
This Thursday, February 12 at noon there will be another demonstration in Budrus in the olive grove, next to the construction site of the wall.
Palestinians, Israelis and internationals have participated in protests against the wall for the last two months.
This report was based on information collected from community leaders and
eyewitnesses from the village.
For more information about the continuing struggle in Budrus please visit:
http://www.palsolidarity.org
http://www.stopthewall.org
http://www.womenspeacepalestine.org
http://www.rhr.israel.net
"For the tyrant has the power to inflict only that which we lack the strength to resist"... Krishnalal Shridharani
INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT
10 February 2004
BUDRUS VILLAGERS CONTINUE PROTESTING LAND GRAB
Israelis Join Palestinians in their Nonviolent Resistance Against the Wall
[Budrus, RAMALLAH] On Thursday 12 February, 2004 at 1200 noon hundreds of Palestinians, Israelis, and Internationals will demonstrate against the planned construction of the Wall through the olive groves surrounding the village of Budrus. The villagers plan to continue planting trees donated to them by Rabbis for Human Rights to replace the over 100 olive trees uprooted by the Israeli military over the last two months. Almost 60 trees have already been cooperatively planted, though construction crews have driven over some of these
newly planted trees with their mechanical diggers.
This demonstration is about the 25th in a series of nonviolent actions planned by the villagers of Budrus, who are remaining steadfast in the face of attempts to uproot their livelihood. Villagers are also resisting attempts to intimidate them, which have included the arrest of nonviolent organizers, and today, the firing of teargas and live ammunition by Israeli soldiers throughout the village. Budrus has been welcoming Israeli peace activists and internationals from all over the world to join them in stopping the destruction of their land, ghettoization of their communities and massive violations of basic human rights.
Palestinians, Israelis and Internationals have been joining to protest against the systematic isolation of the Palestinian people elucidated by the construction of a Wall of Apartheid. Thursday's protest comes two weeks before the International Court of Justice in The Hague is scheduled to decide about the legality of the Wall. Activists in the Occupied Palestinian Territories need your support for their nonviolent resistance to the institutionalized violence of the Occupation. Please join us on Thursday.
For more information, please contact:
INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT
http://www.palsolidarity.org
No Road, No Money, No Treatment
A story of a lack of accessibility to health
Physicians for Human Rights - Israel
Fatma, two years old, is the daughter of Abed and Fathiya *. The family resides in a tent in an unrecognized village south of Be'er Sheba.
Fatma suffers from Hydrocephalous (accumulation of liquid in the head which leads to swelling), and she has a paraplegic vesicostomy (for draining urine via an opening above the bladder) implanted in her body, needed due to a spinal cord injury which caused paralysis below the waist and developmental problems. She also suffers from repeated urinary tract infections, from significant increase in the size of the heart chambers and from anemia.
The parents speak little Hebrew, and are not literate in any language whatsoever. The accessibility to their rights is thus impeded. The father does not work, nor does he receive any welfare payments- the family is not recognized by the Welfare Services, and the child does not receive a stipend as do most Israeli children.
Their accessibility to health rights- physically, economically and culturally- is severely limited.
Physically: Even though their village is one of the few in which there is a clinic, it is not equipped to deal with their specific and unique needs. The child is cared for at "Alin" Hospital in Jerusalem (over 120km from the village) and in a center for child development in Be'er Sheba (some 37km from the village). Without a car, the parents find it difficult to reach Be'er Sheba and to reach Jerusalem is unfeasible since there is no public transportation and the costs of the trips are not returned by the Sick Funds (HMOs).
Economically: Every X-Ray, outpatient examination, para-medical treatment or visit to a specialist, requires a payment. Fatma may arrive at the hospital for 10 different treatments each month, which can cost up to NIS200 ($45) a month, even before the first medicine is bought. For a family which is sustained by a small stipend, these costs are significant. The costs of traveling involved are also very expensive. In 2003, Fatma only made two of the four needed trips to Jerusalem, due to the parents' inability to cover the travel costs.
Culturally: The difficulty in communicating with the medical personnel, as dedicated as they might be, is immense because of the language barrier. However, cultural differences lead to misunderstandings which harm the child's treatment. The medical staff worked very hard in order to teach the mother the physiotherapy techniques to use on her daughter, however the attempt to explain the catheterization device for draining urine, which could have helped avoid having to create an opening above the bladder, failed and the less preferred opening was made.
Beyond receiving a handicap pension, neither the law nor the Sick Funds provide solutions for this family. In 2003, following legislative changes, the burden of co-payments for visits to specialists was placed on the families, even in the event that the family is living on welfare. Other treatments were always the burden of the families even before the recent changes. Traveling costs are only covered for dialysis and oncology treatments. This is yet another example of how poverty, equal opportunity and health are inherently interconnected.
Link to PHR-Israel report on the unrecognized Negev villages entitled
"No Man's Land":
http://www.phr.org.il/Phr/downloads/dl_157.rtf
The report can also be downloaded in Hebrew:
http://www.phr.org.il/phr/Downloads/hefker-ver-sofi-light.pdf
Please also see:
`An island of sanity' - by Josef Algazi, Haaretz Newspaper, 16 January 2004
http://www.phr.org.il/phr/Pages/PhrArticle_Unit.asp?Cat=10&art=645&Pcat=5
For more information:
Physicians for Human Rights http://phr.org.il
OPEN LETTER TO ISRAELI ACADEMICS
Dear Colleague,
We have drafted the enclosed open letter in response to an urgent distress
call from Palestinian academics concerning the continued denial of human and
educational rights in the West Bank and the Gaza strip. The Israeli occupation through its associated checkpoints, curfews, and military assaults is having appalling consequences for academic staff and students alike. Palestinian academic freedom is being fatally constricted. Yet except for a handful - perhaps one in a hundred - of exceptionally brave colleagues, Israeli academics and their institutions have remained silent about, or sometimes have become accomplices in, this destructive process.
It was in response to this situation of escalating human rights abuses that,
nearly two years ago, in Europe, North America and Australia, there were a number of initiatives, signed by many thousands of university teachers ranging from a call for a European moratorium on research collaboration to the French institutional boycott of Israeli universities and the US divestment campaign. Opponents to these calls argued that the way forward was for increased Israeli/Palestinian research collaboration, and a number of Israeli academics claimed that they were indeed doing this, often to the surprise of their supposed partners.* Meanwhile, senior Israeli academics have set up an ''anti-boycott forum'', declaring it to be an "attack on Israeli academic freedom".
We believe that it is important to engage in debate with those engaged in this counter-move, to ask them to make clear what they are doing to foster or protect Palestinian education and scholarship, and in so doing help bring the desperate plight of our Palestinian colleagues into public attention. This is the intention of the enclosed letter, to which we hope you will be prepared to add your signature.
We are currently circulating this letter widely. Once a sufficient number of
academics have endorsed it, we will both send it to Professor Magidor as the
head of the Israeli anti-boycott forum and endeavour to have it published in
Israeli and international newspapers, and on a web site so that others can
continue to add their names.
If you are willing to join us in signing the letter, please reply to me
(taraki@p-ol.com) including your e-mail, title (where appropriate) and
institutional affiliation (this is sought for identification purposes only and does not commit the institution in any way).
Yours sincerely,
Lisa Taraki
Birzeit University
* see the editorial in Nature, 417, 2002, p207
An Open Letter to Professor Menachem Magidor and the members of Israel's forum to combat the academic boycott:
Recent reports tell us that leading members of Israel's academic institutions are organizing to "fight the international boycott." We are told that Israeli academics are outraged at this "unwarranted attack on Israeli academic freedom."
In order that the issue of academic freedom may be discussed within a context free of hypocrisy we the undersigned, defenders of Palestinian academic freedom and supporters of the academic boycott against Israel, call for a response to the deterioration of Palestinian education as a consequence of Israeli policies from those leaders of Israel's universities who now organize to fight the boycott.
Academics worldwide should have an accurate picture of the situation that has long confronted Palestinian education. the Israeli government has set up a system of roadblocks and checkpoints that makes it difficult or impossible for Palestinian teachers and students to come and go to their universities, colleges, and other schools. Its policy of harassment, arrests, random shootings and assaults is carried out almost weekly by Israeli troops on Palestinian campuses. All of this takes place against the backdrop of an ongoing 37 year occupation and relentless attack on Palestinian civil society, thus disrupting the necessary framework for any successful educational structure. Such Israeli government policies negate Palestinian academic freedom.
Given the destructive nature of Israeli government action against Palestinian education and academic freedom, and your simultaneous expression of concern for Israeli academic freedom in the face of the boycott, we feel that it is only fair to ask the Israeli academic leadership where it stands on the issue of current Israeli policy as described above, and to share with us what Israeli academic institutions are doing to challenge the behavior of your government.
Finally, to help you do this we are prepared to join you and other parties in public debate of the academic boycott of your institutions at any time and in any neutral venue.
Please also see:
Report of the U.N.Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967 [Advanced edited version] http://www.unhchr.ch/pdf/chr60/ECN420046[AE].doc
Palestine Media Watch http://www.pmwatch.org/pmw/index.asp
Access Denied: Palestinian Land Rights in Israel
Reviewed by Isabelle Humphries
I arrived in Sakhnin village in summer 1999, to stay with a Palestinian family before I began my MA in Middle East Politics back in the UK. To be honest, I didn’t know much about the situation for Palestinians in the Galilee before my visit. http://www.islamonline.net/english/Views/2004/02/article01.shtml
Israeli Lawyers Sue Gov't. over West Bank Wall
The project "cannot be carried out inside an occupied territory without violating international law," attorney Michael Sfard told Israel's Supreme Court this week during a two-hour opening session.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=655&ncid=1312&e=7&u=/oneworld/20040211/wl_oneworld/4536789841076509550
EU denounces Israeli barrier but rejects court action
Irish Europe Minister Dick Roche, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, said Wednesday that construction of a barrier "which extends deep into Palestinian territories is a major obstacle to progress and to peace in that region".
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1514&ncid=1312&e=3&u=/afp/20040211/wl_mideast_afp/mideast_barrier_icj_eu_040211154037
Statement by the French Foreign Ministry Spokesperson
About the Court's competence: we leave it to the court to decide. It's for the Court in The Hague to say whether or not it is competent to consider the case. In other words, we trust it. It's for the Court to determine its competence.
http://www.france.diplomatie.fr/actu/article.gb.asp?ART=40422
15 Palestinians Die As Israelis Raid Camp
Israel sent troops and tanks into a densely populated neighborhood and a refugee camp Wednesday to search for Palestinian militants, setting off the bloodiest day of fighting in the Gaza Strip in 16 months. Fifteen Palestinians were killed and more than 50 were wounded.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&ncid=540&e=1&u=/ap/20040211/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_palestinians
Sharon to ask Bush for $2b for disengagement, fence
With this money, Sharon intends to finance the construction of two settlements in the Negev, and compensation to those who will be forced to leave their homes. Sharon also seeks to finance a railway from Eilat to the center of the country in this way.
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=769287&fid=942
U.S.-Israeli c'tee to rule on second tranche of loan guarantees
The joint U.S.-Israeli economic committee will be convening in two weeks to rule whether the U.S. should release the second $3 billion allocation of the $9 billion loan guarantees, said Dan Kurtzer, Washington's ambassador to Israel...
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=393262&contrassID=1&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
Sharon's ally safe from arrest in Britain
Mr Mofaz, the army chief of staff during the Israeli military reoccupation of West Bank cities in 2002, left Britain hurriedly during a visit 16 months ago after lawyers for Palestinian families sent a dossier of alleged war crimes to the director of public prosecutions.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1145468,00.html
Earthquake rattles Middle East from Cairo to Amman
In Jerusalem, many buildings were evacuated as a precaution, and the radio reported two buildings suffered minor damage, including one in Tel Aviv. In the West Bank, Palestinian residents also rushed shouting into the streets of Nablus and Hebron, witnesses said.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1515&ncid=1515&e=17&u=/afp/20040211/wl_mideast_afp/mideast_quake_040211110334
Israel Hems In a Sacred City
Projects to cut off access to Jerusalem to Palestinians living in the West Bank, which borders the city on three sides, have accelerated since the start of the current Palestinian uprising in September 2000. Today, Jewish settlements outside the city have been integrated with the urban core, redrawing the map of Jerusalem and complicating any negotiations...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27078-2004Feb9.html?referer=email
Interview: Wendy Pearlman, author of 'Occupied Voices: Stories of Everyday Life from the Second Intifada'
So in a debate setting, lies win. I feel like that's something you see in the media. It's very easy, it takes one sentence, one line, to launch the completely unfair, maybe utterly fabricated, accusation that Palestinian textbooks teach hate -- Palestinian mothers send their children out to die."
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2408.shtml
Iraq: Israeli influence concerns Sunnis
Dr al-Dhari who descends from a family well known for resisting the British occupation of Iraq early in the twentieth century, is the secretary-general of the Association of Muslim Scholars, the highest Sunni authority in Iraq, which wants "liberation before elections".
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B474A467-678F-4AF3-BBD0-CC4E8A398EE4.htm
Pope tells Quraya: Bridges not walls
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/ED6E9AC0-1FEE-4C5E-B972-EAAFC2EDCB27.htm
February 11, 2004
Report from the International Solidarity Movement
By: S'ra and Erik
The Israeli military entered Budrus, a rural village 3 kilometers from the Green Line in the Ramallah district in the West Bank, at least four times yesterday. Budrus is earmarked to be encircled by the Apartheid Wall in the coming weeks. Each time one to four army vehicles were present. During the incursions the Israeli soldiers used live ammunition, rubber bullets and tear gas.
Tear gas filled many homes in the center of the village, making it very difficult to breathe. Many elderly people and children were badly affected. One 75-year old woman said, "I thought I was going to die from the tear gas, it was so strong."
Her 16-year old nephew was beaten by six Israeli soldiers while walking from the store to his home, just meters away. According to eyewitnesses the boy did nothing to provoke the soldiers. The military entered one Palestinian's house by breaking down the door but no one was home. One boy and one man were injured by rubber bullets. One home had a window shot out by a rubber bullet, the type filled with metal and coated with a thin layer of rubber. These types of rubber bullets are especially lethal and have caused fatalities. The hole in the window was exactly at height of a person's head when standing. No one was hit by the bullet.
Abu Ahmed, a community leader, did not know why the Israeli military entered Budrus. "Maybe they are just trying to disrupt our lives more or maybe they have something else planned that we do not know about."
The Israeli government informed Budrus last Thursday that the construction of the wall will commence any day now. Every morning everyone in the village, both Palestinians and internationals, wake up to see if trees are being cut or if the wall is being constructed. The village does not know yet exactly where the wall will be built and if it will be concrete or fence.
In the last couple of days the preparation for the wall has increased dramatically. The workers, protected by private security forces, have been digging trenches to lay electrical wires and leveling the earth where the wall will stand. Yesterday, olive trees that were donated by Rabbis for Human Rights and planted in a previous demonstration were destroyed by construction equipment.
Budrus and eight neighboring villages will be completely imprisoned by the wall. Budrus will loss 1000 of its 5000 dunums of land (4 dunums equal 1 acre) due to the construction of the wall. This will include at least 3000 olive trees, much of the grazing land for the sheep and goats and the land dedicated to the cultivation of wheat. Only one entrance gate is planned for the entire area, which will be controlled by the Israeli military. This will almost completely obstruct the Palestinians' ability to travel to other areas in the West Bank. Families will be separated even further; there will be no access to universities, jobs and hospitals, and agricultural products will never make it to markets. The preparations for the wall have already destroyed 60 trees in Budrus, and unfortunately more will be toppled as the bulldozers continue to invade the area.
This Thursday, February 12 at noon there will be another demonstration in Budrus in the olive grove, next to the construction site of the wall.
Palestinians, Israelis and internationals have participated in protests against the wall for the last two months.
This report was based on information collected from community leaders and
eyewitnesses from the village.
For more information about the continuing struggle in Budrus please visit:
http://www.palsolidarity.org
http://www.stopthewall.org
http://www.womenspeacepalestine.org
http://www.rhr.israel.net
"For the tyrant has the power to inflict only that which we lack the strength to resist"... Krishnalal Shridharani
INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT
10 February 2004
BUDRUS VILLAGERS CONTINUE PROTESTING LAND GRAB
Israelis Join Palestinians in their Nonviolent Resistance Against the Wall
[Budrus, RAMALLAH] On Thursday 12 February, 2004 at 1200 noon hundreds of Palestinians, Israelis, and Internationals will demonstrate against the planned construction of the Wall through the olive groves surrounding the village of Budrus. The villagers plan to continue planting trees donated to them by Rabbis for Human Rights to replace the over 100 olive trees uprooted by the Israeli military over the last two months. Almost 60 trees have already been cooperatively planted, though construction crews have driven over some of these
newly planted trees with their mechanical diggers.
This demonstration is about the 25th in a series of nonviolent actions planned by the villagers of Budrus, who are remaining steadfast in the face of attempts to uproot their livelihood. Villagers are also resisting attempts to intimidate them, which have included the arrest of nonviolent organizers, and today, the firing of teargas and live ammunition by Israeli soldiers throughout the village. Budrus has been welcoming Israeli peace activists and internationals from all over the world to join them in stopping the destruction of their land, ghettoization of their communities and massive violations of basic human rights.
Palestinians, Israelis and Internationals have been joining to protest against the systematic isolation of the Palestinian people elucidated by the construction of a Wall of Apartheid. Thursday's protest comes two weeks before the International Court of Justice in The Hague is scheduled to decide about the legality of the Wall. Activists in the Occupied Palestinian Territories need your support for their nonviolent resistance to the institutionalized violence of the Occupation. Please join us on Thursday.
For more information, please contact:
INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT
http://www.palsolidarity.org
No Road, No Money, No Treatment
A story of a lack of accessibility to health
Physicians for Human Rights - Israel
Fatma, two years old, is the daughter of Abed and Fathiya *. The family resides in a tent in an unrecognized village south of Be'er Sheba.
Fatma suffers from Hydrocephalous (accumulation of liquid in the head which leads to swelling), and she has a paraplegic vesicostomy (for draining urine via an opening above the bladder) implanted in her body, needed due to a spinal cord injury which caused paralysis below the waist and developmental problems. She also suffers from repeated urinary tract infections, from significant increase in the size of the heart chambers and from anemia.
The parents speak little Hebrew, and are not literate in any language whatsoever. The accessibility to their rights is thus impeded. The father does not work, nor does he receive any welfare payments- the family is not recognized by the Welfare Services, and the child does not receive a stipend as do most Israeli children.
Their accessibility to health rights- physically, economically and culturally- is severely limited.
Physically: Even though their village is one of the few in which there is a clinic, it is not equipped to deal with their specific and unique needs. The child is cared for at "Alin" Hospital in Jerusalem (over 120km from the village) and in a center for child development in Be'er Sheba (some 37km from the village). Without a car, the parents find it difficult to reach Be'er Sheba and to reach Jerusalem is unfeasible since there is no public transportation and the costs of the trips are not returned by the Sick Funds (HMOs).
Economically: Every X-Ray, outpatient examination, para-medical treatment or visit to a specialist, requires a payment. Fatma may arrive at the hospital for 10 different treatments each month, which can cost up to NIS200 ($45) a month, even before the first medicine is bought. For a family which is sustained by a small stipend, these costs are significant. The costs of traveling involved are also very expensive. In 2003, Fatma only made two of the four needed trips to Jerusalem, due to the parents' inability to cover the travel costs.
Culturally: The difficulty in communicating with the medical personnel, as dedicated as they might be, is immense because of the language barrier. However, cultural differences lead to misunderstandings which harm the child's treatment. The medical staff worked very hard in order to teach the mother the physiotherapy techniques to use on her daughter, however the attempt to explain the catheterization device for draining urine, which could have helped avoid having to create an opening above the bladder, failed and the less preferred opening was made.
Beyond receiving a handicap pension, neither the law nor the Sick Funds provide solutions for this family. In 2003, following legislative changes, the burden of co-payments for visits to specialists was placed on the families, even in the event that the family is living on welfare. Other treatments were always the burden of the families even before the recent changes. Traveling costs are only covered for dialysis and oncology treatments. This is yet another example of how poverty, equal opportunity and health are inherently interconnected.
Link to PHR-Israel report on the unrecognized Negev villages entitled
"No Man's Land":
http://www.phr.org.il/Phr/downloads/dl_157.rtf
The report can also be downloaded in Hebrew:
http://www.phr.org.il/phr/Downloads/hefker-ver-sofi-light.pdf
Please also see:
`An island of sanity' - by Josef Algazi, Haaretz Newspaper, 16 January 2004
http://www.phr.org.il/phr/Pages/PhrArticle_Unit.asp?Cat=10&art=645&Pcat=5
For more information:
Physicians for Human Rights http://phr.org.il
OPEN LETTER TO ISRAELI ACADEMICS
Dear Colleague,
We have drafted the enclosed open letter in response to an urgent distress
call from Palestinian academics concerning the continued denial of human and
educational rights in the West Bank and the Gaza strip. The Israeli occupation through its associated checkpoints, curfews, and military assaults is having appalling consequences for academic staff and students alike. Palestinian academic freedom is being fatally constricted. Yet except for a handful - perhaps one in a hundred - of exceptionally brave colleagues, Israeli academics and their institutions have remained silent about, or sometimes have become accomplices in, this destructive process.
It was in response to this situation of escalating human rights abuses that,
nearly two years ago, in Europe, North America and Australia, there were a number of initiatives, signed by many thousands of university teachers ranging from a call for a European moratorium on research collaboration to the French institutional boycott of Israeli universities and the US divestment campaign. Opponents to these calls argued that the way forward was for increased Israeli/Palestinian research collaboration, and a number of Israeli academics claimed that they were indeed doing this, often to the surprise of their supposed partners.* Meanwhile, senior Israeli academics have set up an ''anti-boycott forum'', declaring it to be an "attack on Israeli academic freedom".
We believe that it is important to engage in debate with those engaged in this counter-move, to ask them to make clear what they are doing to foster or protect Palestinian education and scholarship, and in so doing help bring the desperate plight of our Palestinian colleagues into public attention. This is the intention of the enclosed letter, to which we hope you will be prepared to add your signature.
We are currently circulating this letter widely. Once a sufficient number of
academics have endorsed it, we will both send it to Professor Magidor as the
head of the Israeli anti-boycott forum and endeavour to have it published in
Israeli and international newspapers, and on a web site so that others can
continue to add their names.
If you are willing to join us in signing the letter, please reply to me
(taraki@p-ol.com) including your e-mail, title (where appropriate) and
institutional affiliation (this is sought for identification purposes only and does not commit the institution in any way).
Yours sincerely,
Lisa Taraki
Birzeit University
* see the editorial in Nature, 417, 2002, p207
An Open Letter to Professor Menachem Magidor and the members of Israel's forum to combat the academic boycott:
Recent reports tell us that leading members of Israel's academic institutions are organizing to "fight the international boycott." We are told that Israeli academics are outraged at this "unwarranted attack on Israeli academic freedom."
In order that the issue of academic freedom may be discussed within a context free of hypocrisy we the undersigned, defenders of Palestinian academic freedom and supporters of the academic boycott against Israel, call for a response to the deterioration of Palestinian education as a consequence of Israeli policies from those leaders of Israel's universities who now organize to fight the boycott.
Academics worldwide should have an accurate picture of the situation that has long confronted Palestinian education. the Israeli government has set up a system of roadblocks and checkpoints that makes it difficult or impossible for Palestinian teachers and students to come and go to their universities, colleges, and other schools. Its policy of harassment, arrests, random shootings and assaults is carried out almost weekly by Israeli troops on Palestinian campuses. All of this takes place against the backdrop of an ongoing 37 year occupation and relentless attack on Palestinian civil society, thus disrupting the necessary framework for any successful educational structure. Such Israeli government policies negate Palestinian academic freedom.
Given the destructive nature of Israeli government action against Palestinian education and academic freedom, and your simultaneous expression of concern for Israeli academic freedom in the face of the boycott, we feel that it is only fair to ask the Israeli academic leadership where it stands on the issue of current Israeli policy as described above, and to share with us what Israeli academic institutions are doing to challenge the behavior of your government.
Finally, to help you do this we are prepared to join you and other parties in public debate of the academic boycott of your institutions at any time and in any neutral venue.
Please also see:
Report of the U.N.Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since 1967 [Advanced edited version] http://www.unhchr.ch/pdf/chr60/ECN420046[AE].doc
Palestine Media Watch http://www.pmwatch.org/pmw/index.asp
Access Denied: Palestinian Land Rights in Israel
Reviewed by Isabelle Humphries
I arrived in Sakhnin village in summer 1999, to stay with a Palestinian family before I began my MA in Middle East Politics back in the UK. To be honest, I didn’t know much about the situation for Palestinians in the Galilee before my visit. http://www.islamonline.net/english/Views/2004/02/article01.shtml
Israeli Lawyers Sue Gov't. over West Bank Wall
The project "cannot be carried out inside an occupied territory without violating international law," attorney Michael Sfard told Israel's Supreme Court this week during a two-hour opening session.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=655&ncid=1312&e=7&u=/oneworld/20040211/wl_oneworld/4536789841076509550
EU denounces Israeli barrier but rejects court action
Irish Europe Minister Dick Roche, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, said Wednesday that construction of a barrier "which extends deep into Palestinian territories is a major obstacle to progress and to peace in that region".
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1514&ncid=1312&e=3&u=/afp/20040211/wl_mideast_afp/mideast_barrier_icj_eu_040211154037
Statement by the French Foreign Ministry Spokesperson
About the Court's competence: we leave it to the court to decide. It's for the Court in The Hague to say whether or not it is competent to consider the case. In other words, we trust it. It's for the Court to determine its competence.
http://www.france.diplomatie.fr/actu/article.gb.asp?ART=40422
15 Palestinians Die As Israelis Raid Camp
Israel sent troops and tanks into a densely populated neighborhood and a refugee camp Wednesday to search for Palestinian militants, setting off the bloodiest day of fighting in the Gaza Strip in 16 months. Fifteen Palestinians were killed and more than 50 were wounded.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&ncid=540&e=1&u=/ap/20040211/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_palestinians
Sharon to ask Bush for $2b for disengagement, fence
With this money, Sharon intends to finance the construction of two settlements in the Negev, and compensation to those who will be forced to leave their homes. Sharon also seeks to finance a railway from Eilat to the center of the country in this way.
http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=769287&fid=942
U.S.-Israeli c'tee to rule on second tranche of loan guarantees
The joint U.S.-Israeli economic committee will be convening in two weeks to rule whether the U.S. should release the second $3 billion allocation of the $9 billion loan guarantees, said Dan Kurtzer, Washington's ambassador to Israel...
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=393262&contrassID=1&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y
Sharon's ally safe from arrest in Britain
Mr Mofaz, the army chief of staff during the Israeli military reoccupation of West Bank cities in 2002, left Britain hurriedly during a visit 16 months ago after lawyers for Palestinian families sent a dossier of alleged war crimes to the director of public prosecutions.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1145468,00.html
Earthquake rattles Middle East from Cairo to Amman
In Jerusalem, many buildings were evacuated as a precaution, and the radio reported two buildings suffered minor damage, including one in Tel Aviv. In the West Bank, Palestinian residents also rushed shouting into the streets of Nablus and Hebron, witnesses said.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1515&ncid=1515&e=17&u=/afp/20040211/wl_mideast_afp/mideast_quake_040211110334
Israel Hems In a Sacred City
Projects to cut off access to Jerusalem to Palestinians living in the West Bank, which borders the city on three sides, have accelerated since the start of the current Palestinian uprising in September 2000. Today, Jewish settlements outside the city have been integrated with the urban core, redrawing the map of Jerusalem and complicating any negotiations...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27078-2004Feb9.html?referer=email
Interview: Wendy Pearlman, author of 'Occupied Voices: Stories of Everyday Life from the Second Intifada'
So in a debate setting, lies win. I feel like that's something you see in the media. It's very easy, it takes one sentence, one line, to launch the completely unfair, maybe utterly fabricated, accusation that Palestinian textbooks teach hate -- Palestinian mothers send their children out to die."
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2408.shtml
Iraq: Israeli influence concerns Sunnis
Dr al-Dhari who descends from a family well known for resisting the British occupation of Iraq early in the twentieth century, is the secretary-general of the Association of Muslim Scholars, the highest Sunni authority in Iraq, which wants "liberation before elections".
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B474A467-678F-4AF3-BBD0-CC4E8A398EE4.htm
Pope tells Quraya: Bridges not walls
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/ED6E9AC0-1FEE-4C5E-B972-EAAFC2EDCB27.htm