Sanctions Against The Palestinians
heather on February 22nd, 2007Wednesday February 21, 2007
The Guardian
www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,,2017677,00.html
On February 8, Fatah and Hamas issued the Mecca agreement. Palestinians are now working to create a national-unity government to rebuild Palestinian society, which has faced systematic destruction under Israeli occupation (Leaders, February 20). Given the international Quartet is meeting today, the British government must seize this opportunity to overturn its wrong and disastrous position of supporting sanctions against the Palestinians, which have created a humanitarian disaster.
For over a year, our government has been complicit with the European Union, the US and Israel in collectively punishing the Palestinian people, because they did not agree with the result of the Palestinian Authority elections. The EU, previously the largest donor, withdrew its funding to the PA from April 2006. The US also stopped its funding, and the Israeli government has withheld tax revenues collected on behalf of the PA of around $60m a month. A recent report by the Commons international development committee said: “As a result, the Palestinian Authority is facing financial crisis and this is seriously affecting the Palestinian people: 51% of Palestinians are now food insecure and 66% of families are below the poverty line.” The report concluded that the withdrawal of aid was counterproductive and threatened the viability of the occupied territories.
The government must end its role in punishing the occupied people, the Palestinians, rather than the occupying nation, Israel. It should ensure the EU resumes its funding of the Palestinian Authority, and that it puts all possible pressure both on the US to resume its aid and on Israel to release the withheld tax revenues.
Betty Hunter
Palestine Solidarity Campaign
For the full list of signatories please see the Guardian link above.
Stop Arming Israel Update - February 2007
heather on February 13th, 2007PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE CALLS FOR SANCTIONS ON ISRAEL
The House of Commons has, with the publication of a new report on the Occupation of the Palestinian Territories, called for the international community to impose sanctions on Israel. Read more in this article by War on Want’s John Hilary http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/john_hilary/2007/01/mps_back_sanctions_on_israel.html
Also see Stop Arming Israel at www.stoparmingisrael.org
Just Like Life Under Pinochet
heather on February 11th, 200711/02/2007
By Nir Hasson
“The Palestinians’ lives under the occupation are reminiscent of the lives of Chile’s citizens under the dictatorship,” says Chilean Judge Juan Guzman, who is visiting Israel, last week. “There, too, people who thought differently were considered enemies: They were imprisoned, tortured and killed. There, too, people couldn’t move from place to place, they didn’t have freedom and they didn’t have equality before the law. But here it’s harder. It has been going on for longer,” he added.
Guzman, 68, became known at the end of the 1990s as an investigative judge pursuing Augusto Pinochet, Chile’s military dictator between 1973 and 1990. Guzman waged a long legal battle against Pinochet. Despite the former dictator’s immunity, Guzman succeeded in filing several indictments against him and bringing him to trial. Pinochet’s trial was never completed because of his health, and he died two months ago at age 91.
Last week Guzman came to Israel as a guest of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and the Alternative Information Center (AIC) to examine indicting Israelis responsible for house demolitions in European courts. Thus far, legal proceedings have been initiated only against military officers. The committee wants to indict civilians as well.
ICAHD has a list of three officials from the Civil Administration, the Jerusalem municipality and the Interior Ministry who ordered the demolition of houses. It is seeking to submit investigation requests against the officials in a European country where the courts have the authority to address international human rights violations. Guzman is slated to give the international seal of approval to the move. If such an investigation is opened, presumably arrest orders will be issued against the three and they will encounter difficulties in visiting Europe.
Guzman’s great antagonist, Pinochet, died on December 10, International Human Rights Day. “I did not feel satisfaction, but I wasn’t sad either,” he says. “Chile lost a historic opportunity to rebuild itself,” he says. “After the justice system was destroyed during the 17-year-long dictatorship, this was an opportunity to demonstrate its independence and to prove to Chile and to the entire world that no one is above the law, that even Pinochet can be tried.”
Guzman disagrees with the Chilean Supreme Court, which ruled that Pinochet was not mentally able to stand trial. He says Pinochet was lucid until his last day.
Guzman has been a judge for 36 years. In January 1998, when he was serving as a judge in the Supreme Court of Santiago, he was chosen to investigate human rights charges filed against Pinochet and his officers. Guzman received 98 cases involving Pinochet. He traveled throughout Chile and conducted a comprehensive investigation into Pinochet’s crimes.
Several months later, Pinochet was arrested in London by order of a Spanish judge, over Spanish citizens killed under the dictatorship. Pinochet returned to Chile a year and five months later, after a British court ruled that because of his poor health, he could not be extradited to Spain. Soon after that, Guzman field his first indictment on charges of responsibility for the “death squad,” a secret police unit that murdered 75 regime opponents. Guzman also ordered the house arrest of the former dictator. The decision aroused a storm in Chile: Rightist elements and military officials took Pinochet’s side, whereas the left took to the street to celebrate.
“It was no simple matter to bring Pinochet to trial,” explains Hebrew University political science professor Mario Sznajder. “For some of the country’s inhabitants, Pinochet was considered the nation’s savior from the Communists.” In addition, Pinochet enjoyed immunity after appointing himself a senator for life, and by virtue of the “amnesty law” he legislated. This law granted “automatic amnesty” to anyone who committed crimes before 1978, but Guzman circumvented this in a sophisticated way.
“I proved the law does not cover disappearances (the fates of more than 1,000 regime opponents are still unknown - N.H.). Thus, as in cases of kidnapping, this is a matter of a crime that did not end in 1978, but rather is ongoing, and until we find out what happened to those people, even if the amnesty law covers part of the crime, it does not cover all of it. The Supreme Court accepted my opinion,” Guzman says.
In 2001, the Chilean Supreme Court ordered the proceedings against Pinochet cancelled due to his mental unfitness. Two years later, Guzman came across an interview Pinochet gave a Cuban television station in the United States on the 30th anniversary of the military coup.
“He spoke about 158 different subjects and appeared to be in very good and lucid shape,” recalls Guzman. In the wake of the interview, which proved the dictator was fit to stand trial, Guzman reopened the investigation. The Supreme Court again revoked Pinochet’s immunity, and Guzman filed another indictment against him, this time for Operation Condor - the South American military regimes’ cooperation in persecuting opponents, which resulted in hundreds of murders.
Guzman went to Pinochet’s home and interrogated him. “He could tell the difference between good and evil, and he could also tell the difference between what was convenient for him to answer and what was not convenient,” relates Guzman. “This time he was less nice to me than he had been the first time. He understood I was prosecuting him. But he did not insult me and he was not aggressive.”
Half a year later Guzman succeeded in filing yet another indictment, this time for what was called Operation Colombo, during the course of which 119 Communist activists disappeared. Their bodies were never found. These legal proceedings, like others opened by other investigative judges, were not completed by the time Pinochet died. “These investigations did the country a great favor. They openly showed what had happened during the time of the dictatorship,” says Guzman. “Many Chileans did not believe things like that had indeed happened, and thought they were an invention of the Communists. But when the investigations began, they started to believe. I believe that thanks to those investigations, my country will never again fall into a dictatorship. In Spanish we say nunca mas - never again.”
Professor Sznajder agrees. “Guzman’s importance was that he tried to get to Pinochet, not as a journalist or as a political opponent, but rather by virtue of the authority of democratic law. He contributed to eliminating Chile’s black hole, to erasing the second version of what had happened during those years. He touched upon the most painful things, opened wounds, uncovered facts and brought about a change, even if no verdict was obtained.”
Guzman has no doubt that like Pinochet’s officers and officials, Israeli officers and officials will pay the price of the crimes he believes are being committed against the Palestinians. “If we learn from history, it appears that ultimately those who commit crimes against humanity and violate human rights are judged, whether by a special international court or in a country. Sooner or later, human right violations come to court,” he says.
During his trip, Guzman visited two Palestinian families whose homes in Issawiyeh and A-Tur were demolished. One of the families has been living in a tent near the ruins for two weeks.
“I saw them crying. Every home demolition is the demolition of a person’s dignity and intimacy, and is prohibited by international law. I have also seen the wall built in occupied territory. I don’t understand this, and I don’t believe it is connected to security. It isn’t logical. I am certain there are other ways to protect the Israelis, and at the same time, the Palestinians must be protected.
“I admire the Jewish people for the suffering it has endured and for its achievements in science, literature and music,” he continues. “I identify with the Israelis, but my heart is with the people living under occupation and whose rights are being violated. Israel feels it is the victim of terror, but when you are here, you realize that what the Palestinians are doing is resisting occupation. The Palestinians are the victims, they are being exploited, their homes are being demolished, they are being detained under administrative orders, their property is being damaged, they need permits to move from place to place and their cities are becoming large prisons. There is no doubt they are the victims.”
Guzman does not make any commitment that indictments will be filed against those responsible for demolishing homes. “I will study the issue, I will consult and I will see how the process can be advanced,” he says, “but there is no doubt that with respect to international law, civilians directly responsible for human rights violations can be indicted, just like soldiers.”
Meir Margalit, the field coordinator for ICAHD and the person who invited Guzman to visit Israel, says he has despaired of the Israeli justice system. “We feel we have exhausted the option of an Israeli investigator. Salvation won’t come from here, and things are getting worse. Every year, about 400 houses in East Jerusalem and the territories are demolished.”
“I am here on a peace mission,” says Guzman. “I want my activities to awaken discussion of whether what is happening here is justified. From the Chilean experience, we know activity like this can cease human rights violations. I implore the Israeli government to stop the house demolitions, for the sake of its good reputation and for the sake of the good reputation of the entire human race.”
www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=824148
Jerusalem Post URL:
www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1170359797839&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Oxford, Cambridge & London Students Hosting Israeli Apartheid Week
heather on February 8th, 2007Recalling the UN International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the crime of Apartheid, students at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge and London (SOAS) will concurrently hold Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) events in their respective campuses between Monday the 12th and Friday the 16th of February. In hosting this week, Oxford, Cambridge and University of London students will be joining their peers in several major US and Canadian universities.
The aim of Israeli Apartheid Week is to push forward the analysis of Israel as an apartheid state and call for a boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign to achieve the demands in the famous July 2005 Palestinian civil society statement: full equality for Arab citizens of Israel, an end to the occupation and colonization of the West Bank and Gaza, and the implementation of the right of return and compensation for Palestinian refugees pursuant to UN resolution 194. IAW Speakers will include Palestinian Israeli Knesset member Dr. Jamal Zahalka, Israeli poet Yitzhak Laor and South African educationalist and social justice organizer Salim Vally.
Cambridge University Palestine Society member Sirine Rached recalls that now as ever, peace in the Middle East can only be achieved through putting an end to the Israeli occupation, the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes and equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel. Oxford University Arab Cultural Society member Abdel Razzaq Takriti states that an international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions is the only way to get an apartheid regime like Israel to adjust its policies towards the Palestinian people and to pursue peace.
On both sides of the Atlantic, the organizers of IAW 2007 join a growing international chorus of opposition to Israeli apartheid that includes voices of Palestinians, Israelis, South Africans, and many others across the world that stand for justice and human dignity. We are sending a message to our governments and institutions in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada that we refuse any economic, political, or cultural ties with the state of Israel until it complies with international law and respects the rights of Palestinians to self determination and to return home.
For further information please contact:
Abdel Razzaq Takriti (Oxford) 07870-341537
Sirine Rached (Cambridge) 07970-671059
Email: peacenotapartheid@yahoo.co.uk
Website: www.endisraeliapartheid.net
Impact of Occupation and Globalization on the Agricultural Sector in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
heather on February 5th, 2007Palestinian Agricultural Association (PARC), Ramallah, Palestine
World Social Forum- Nairobi/ Kenya (20-25/01/2007)
To read this press release issued by PARC please click here
